I put together a little video yesterday morning… Matt Davies, this one’s for you!

Three things happened yesterday:

• the Bay Area got its first big rain of the season and it was a doozy
• a local fire knocked out power for parts of Berkeley (including our home) for most of the day
• our sump pump, which drains water from our basement in the event of heavy rains, was rendered somewhat ineffective without the electricity needed to power it

The result? Our basement was completely flooded with a couple inches of water. Fortunately, there wasn’t anything down there. It’s just a cement floor. But we spent most of the evening soaking up the water with towels into buckets. We ended up draining about 40 bucketfuls, or something like 100 gallons, of water!

Thank goodness we hadn’t installed the hardwood floors yet…

If you write iPhone apps, you can download Promotional Codes to help promote your app. You only get 50 of them, but they’re very handy in promoting your app. You’d be surprised how fast they go. Reviewers want free promotional codes, various websites want free promotional codes, cheap-ass frugal friends want free codes, etc.

But I’ve occasionally run into problems downloading those codes from the iTunes Connect website using Firefox (my regular browser). Fortunately, I was able to download them just fine from Safari. So if you’re a iPhone app developer and you have problems downloading promotional codes, try using Safari.

Update: I think the problem wasn’t the browser, it was the fact that I hit “enter” after typing the number of codes that I wanted and it seems that that caused it to go to the next page without registering the number. Hitting “tab” and then “enter” fixed the problem.

I made an interesting discovery last week:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0RdTE-sn1Q

On Tuesday nights, I take part in a figure drawing class. Well, it’s not really a class, it’s uninstructed. But a model shows up and a bunch of us come and draw. And this time turned out okay. Not great, but not my worst, either.

Of course, doing this sort of thing at work is a bit of a mixed blessing. I’m fortunate enough to work with some amazing artists. One of the best parts of that is that I’m constantly learning and, hopefully, getting better. But it’s also very humbling to know just how far I have to go…

The other day, my iPhone started asking me for my password. No big deal, right? Except that it did this in the middle of me using another app. That was a little odd, so I immediately quit to the home screen. Then, it asked me for my password again. So I canceled again, but I was starting to worry a bit. I think it was just a little hiccup related to me upgrading the iPhone OS or upgrading iTunes.

Anyways, I was able to resolve it by doing a sync with my computer. When I did that, I got asked to type my iTunes password on my notebook, which I did. Then, it downloaded a huge update for one of my apps (I think it was the Lonely Planet guide that I got for free once). I’ve also heard that this might happen if your credit card that you have on file has expired.

So if it happens to you, don’t panic. In general, it’s probably better not to type in your password when you’re not expecting to have to type it in and it’s easy to sync to your computer to see if that fixes the problem.

I made a little video last week and I thought you might enjoy it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iI0ljNVYh10

I haven’t slept or eaten much in the last several days (five? I’m not sure). So in lieu of writing up a blog post for Wednesday, I’m going to go to bed.

I love working with other people. It’s fun and there’s just something about being with other people that creates a certain kind of energy that can’t be found working solo. But that’s not always possible. For example, I enjoy acting. Oh sure, I may not have the right “look”, or have much in the way of “experience”, or possess even a modicum of “talent” … but I do have a lot enthusiasm! Sadly, that doesn’t seem to be enough and I don’t tend to get a lot of roles.

Much of life requires other people’s willingness or approval and when it’s not there, there’s only so much you can do. So maybe I won’t get that job promotion, or get my screenplay made into a movie, or become homecoming queen. But there’s still a lot that I can do on my own. For starters, I can practice and maybe that’ll help in the future. I may not be good enough to be able to perform in a band, but I can play the piano by myself and hopefully, over time, I’ll get better.

The other thing I can do is focus my efforts on things that don’t require other people. I mean, I can’t force other people to work on a movie I’ve written. But I can make my own comic. Or write my own blog. Of course, I can’t guarantee that anyone will be interested. But hey, it’s a start, right?

I’ve been playing a lot of Word Ace lately on the iPhone. Actually, Tracy’s been playing it more than me and she’s better at it than I am. Neither of us is all that great but it’s still a lot of fun. What is it? Imagine Scrabble combined with Texas Hold ‘Em. It’s an ingenious idea and I’m amazed at how well it works.

The only issue I have is that I suspect that there’s some cheating going on at the bigger tables. I mean, when people regularly pull out words like “eosine” and “kalpas”, I gotta wonder if they’re playing with a dictionary nearby…