The blog that's gotten one comment ever! Thanks mom!

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

My friends are smart...

So AB submitted this little tip to the lifehacker blog about a month ago, but they just published it as a front page idea. Way to go AB!

Chasing pellets...


So Jer and I played some Bioshock last night on his 36" standard def set (verdict: very playable!), and we noticed this little homage to gaming past left by the level designers. Thanks Bioshock devs, made our day! Well, the game made our day, this was just bonus.

I failed at sleep...

So when Janie's out of town, I don't sleep all that well. In the past, I've dealt with this by staying up horribly late for the first few days, making me so tired for the following days that I'll gladly drop off to sleep at the first sign of a soft place to fall. However, since I'll be joining Janie in DC in a few days (tomorrow already!), being a sleep zombie didn't seem like the best way to go. Last night was especially bad. I finished getting a few things I needed for the trip located, watched a bit of TV, and went to bed right after midnight. I had two nightmares, one involving tiny Alien Xenomorphs jumping onto the bed and trying to take away my cats, whom I had to defend. The other, although I swore I'd remember it so I could tell you guys about it, is lost to me already. Speaking of the cats, the damn things are morning people, and routinely are up and doing stuff as early at 4 AM. Between waking up from two nightmares, and kicking squabbling cats off of the bed, I'm in no way ready for me day, despite it starting over an hour ago.

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Lost ring update

Well, it still hasn't turned up, but we did discover that it's loss is covered by our homeowner's insurance. We haven't filed a claim yet, as we're still hoping that it may turn up. But if it doesn't, at least we won't be out the whole cost of the ring. I wish we had any info on it other than the sketchy details I can recall about the diamond and ring when we bought it over eight years ago.

Monday, September 24, 2007

Missing Janie...

So Janie's in DC, for the last week of a training she's been doing this year, and I'm missing her, as I always do when she's away. I got a voice mail (missed the call, sorry J), informing me that she's missing me too, and also that her wedding ring turned up missing today. So, two things. One, if you come across a lost wedding band in the DC area, let me know, it might be J's. And two, gentlemen of our capital city, hands off. She's mine.

Thursday, September 20, 2007

My feline doppleganger...


My friends say that I look like this cat. What say you?

Monday, September 17, 2007

I'm handy!

A long time ago, when telling my friends about my dad's penchant for finding old rusty jeeps and turning em into cool, fully functional jeeps, my friend AB commented 'what happened to you?', inferring that in my case, the apple fell further from the tree than is often the case. And he has a point. I dislike getting dirty. I'm not a do-it-yourselfer, for the most part, instead preferring to pay someone who knows more about a subject for their time and knowledge. However, when it came to my broken bed, I didn't know of any bed repair persons to call upon. So I headed to the Bungalow Depository to pick up a few things. The pictures below bear witness to the fruits of my labor.

bed repair 1

bed repair 2

bed repair 3

Friday, September 14, 2007

Help out Gamer Dad

GamerDad is a website run by a father, offering up reviews of games with kids in mind, and advocating playing video games with your kids, and being aware of what they're doing with their game time, something I think's a pretty good idea. Earlier this month, he suffered a heart attack, and surprisingly or not, running a gaming blog doesn't tend to carry the best health insurance. His wife has a request on the site asking for donations to help them out of their medical bills (he's already had multiple bypass surgery, with more surgeries to come). If gaming is a hobby you enjoy, go over and help out a bit if you can. There are lots of gamers in the world, if most of us pitch in even a little, it'll go a long ways to helping out a good cause and a good guy.

Lunch break

Jer at Culver's. He gets a bit messy.

Thursday, September 13, 2007

Next X Prize: To the moon!

So Google is sponsoring a thirty million dollar prize for a team to develop a delivery system that can send a robotic probe to the moon and return live video and images, without government backing. Just as with the X Prize that brought us Space Ship One, this sort of stuff is incredibly inspiring to me. I want to see folks placing satellites at the lagrange points, I want to see us expand out from earth. I love this stuff.

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

360 developments

So last night, I got to try the 360's voice chat feature for the first time (other than with a few morlocks on xbox live). My friend Batty signed on, and requested a chat, and after we figured out that he was muted, had a fun chat, wherein I convinced him that he needed to buy UNO. Unfortunately, it was too late for me to actually play a game with him, so he got started on Bioshock, and judging by his achievements, made good progress for one day of playing! Looking forward to playing some GRAW2 with you, Batty.

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Eureka!

All hail Meebo. After struggling with crashing clients all day, I finally decided to try a web based client, and Meebo seems to be working fine so far.

Ugh...

So, the company I work at has instituted a new policy, forcing all IM (well, at least AIM, ICQ, Yahoo and MSN) through a proxy, to make sure we aren't sinking ships or downloading virii. I could care less really, as I'm not in the habit of doing either of those things. But apparently this new setup only works with the default IM clients. I've long been a fan of multi-IM clients, especially Trillian, but Trillian, in both the 2.x and 3.x flavors, crashes with this setup. So does Pidgin. And so I'm left cut off, disconnected from my friends. I know that Skype's IM works, but none of my friends (save Batty in Japan) uses Skype in this manner. I'm still looking for a workaround, but in the meantime, I'll just be looking forward to 4 or 5 local time, when Batty's getting ready for his day across the Pacific.

Monday, September 10, 2007

Thanks, Tim and Sherri!

Tim and Sherri took J and I out as a birthday present for Janie. Of course, J's birthday was back in June, but our schedules had conspired against us getting together till now. We've decided to try and revive a tradition of meeting for martini's on Sunday nights. But as my stomach can still attest, all things in moderation. Especially martinis.

Thursday, September 6, 2007

The iPhone...

Damnit. I didn't need to know this. I stopped by the AT&T store with my friends Jer and Steph so Jer could see a demo model of the iPhone. They had two out, one connected to the store's wifi, and the other connected to AT&T's GPRS network. I now officially want one. I like my HTC Wizard, and it can do a lot of things that the iPhone can't (easily run third party apps for instance), but wow, is that an amazing, intuitive, and effective interface.

Good bye, Aaron and Sonoko!!!

This morning, before leaving for work, I said and hugged my good byes to Aaron and Sonoko. They aren't leaving until tomorrow, but they're heading for Denver tonight, so they don't have to get up quite as painfully early to catch their flight. Have a safe trip you guys, and thanks so much for staying with us!

Wednesday, September 5, 2007

It's been a busy few days...

So Aaron and Sonoko have been staying with us for nearly a week. They head back to Japan on Friday, something I'm really not looking forward to. I've got few enough close friends these days, and those two definitely count towards that total. While they've been here, we've gone out to eat innumerable times, had martini's at our favorite martini place, mixed up some lychee martini's of our own, played enough Wii sports that my arms are aching today, and gone hiking/picnicking in Rocky Mountain National Park. Through a good part of that time, I've been fighting one heck of a cold too, which hasn't quite given up on me. In any case, thanks for coming to see us, Batty and Sonoko! We'll miss you guys tons when you go home! At least now that I have a 360, Aaron and I can schedule some game time every so often.

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