100 awesome things in no particular order

Thing number 100: These delicious Cherry Slices I only seem to be able to find at AM/PM.

I think these may be nature's perfect food (providing it still counts as nature after you mix it with a bunch of chemicals and coat it with sugar). These gummy gelatin candies are dipped in sugar, bagged up with 11 of their tastiest brothers and sisters and sold at the unbelievable bargain price of 2 bags for a dollar.

The "serving suggestion" says 3 pieces, but that's bullshit. My serving suggestion is to eat a bag of these over the course of an otherwise lame day, and save the second bag for sometime later, when you need a special treat.

People don't usually mention "Sathers" when they think of candy manufacturers, but a quick trip to their website proves that these guys make some pretty awesome stuff besides delicious cherry slices. Turns out they're also the geniuses behind that fruit striped gum with the freaky rainbow Zebra on it.

I'm pretty sure if Willy Wonka was a real person, Sathers would be giving him ulcers right now.

Out with the new, in with the old

This blog was down for almost a month as I tried some new formatting stuff. Basically, I moved from my web host over to Google hosting after reading promises of "Better templates, more features" and other stuff that was supposed to be awesome.

Turns out that stuff sucked, so the old blog is back. What a waste of a month, I totally could have been updating much more. Of course...if I go back and back date the entries, there will be no way to tell anything ever happend. That's what I'll do!

Things I shall soon post about:

Disneyworld
Superbowl Sunday
and many more upcoming 2009 festivities.

:-)

A packed Saturday

I got up bright and early this morning, got started with laundry then did a few errands. Post office, bank, Best Buy then drove all the way to Kenmore Camera to pick up a really cool Crumpler camera bag for my new DSLR. It was worth the drive, I think it's going to come in really handy. After that trip, I headed home to do a little more packing for the trip. Did some yardwork, then cleaned before heading to Toma's birthday party.

We ended up at a Sushi restaurant, not my favorite type of place, but it ended up being really good. I think that's probably because I had tempura and teriyaki instead of Sushi. It was a fun surprise party, and there ended up being about 16 or so people that showed up (none of whom the birthday girl knew were coming).

On the way home, we stopped at Mike's (which isn't really on the way, but Heather had left her sweater there at his last party and we needed to get it). One last shopping stop on the way home and I was finally ready to finish everything up. It looks like I'll be in bed by midnight, which is actually better than I was expecting.

Tomorrow: The fun begins!

Testing phone pictures again

Just wanted to make sure camera phone pictures were still working on this new site. They seem to be, as this is clearly a picture of my Christmas tree I took on Christmas Day (and not just a big Red X).

Fixored?

Looks like I fixed the images. Hosting a blog with Google is all sorts of difficult.

Today I'm telecommuting, so I could stay home and wait for UPS all day today. That has enabled me to do some laundry, work on my new computer a bit and even clean up the office a little.

If only I could do this every day.

Under Construction

I made a few changes to this blog and none of the images are working right now. I'm not sure how exactly to fix this, but for now, I've taken down all the links to this site that I can think of.

Fun times.

A new year...

Starting off the year with a post to this thing, just because I don't write here rarely enough. My most important (public) resolution this year is to try to keep track of stuff a little better, something this blog is handy for.

Woke up today a little tired from last night's festivities, but not too much. Heather brought me breakfast in bed (what a nice way to start the new year) and then I got up to try and tackle the mess that is my office.

I got a new PC and I'm still moving files from the old one onto this computer. It's taken all morning and most of the day yesterday as well. Next, I have to move files off two other old PCs that I was using pretty much exclusively as storage servers. There's no reason for them anymore, as I now have over 2TB of storage at my disposal, plus 1.5TB of external backup.

When I'm done with this, I'll do a little more cleaning, then maybe play a few games. I should also exercise at some point today (this being New Year's Day and all)....whether that will come in the form of an actual trip to the gym or just some DDR/Wii Fit at home remains to be seen.

My review of Midnight Club LA for the Xbox 360

I'm a fan of driving games, so after watching all the commercials for this one on TV, I was pretty excited to give it a try. Street racing, outrunning the cops, earning respect and cash to buy new rides? Sounds sweet. I popped it in this weekend and sat down expecting some fun.

My first impressions were positive. The world of the game is indeed beautiful. It's set in Los Angeles and you can drive all the way from the beach to the Hollywood hills. Some missions actually have you do this. It's a Rockstar developed title and while it's not as interactive as Grand Theft Auto, it looks just as nice. It's not quite as interactive though. You can't mess with the computer AI, and when you try to run them over, they dive out of the way. While the game is open world, your only options are "Win race" or "lose race". I did a lot of both.

You start out with one of three crappy cars. Many racing games do this to you, as a way of teaching you the ropes of the game. Usually, after a few races, you earn a better car or the money to buy one. This doesn't happen in Midnight Club LA. I started out in a piece of shit VW and 4 hours into the game, I was still driving the same piece of shit VW, even after winning a ton of races in it. By this point in most other racing games....I'd already have myself 4 or 5 new cars, but maybe this is a street racing "simulator" and they want to teach you that in real life, no one hands you the keys to their Corvette after two races in a crappy VW.

Around 6 hours in, I still didn't have enough cash to buy a decent ride, so instead, I bought a middle of the road Ducati motorcycle. It was much faster than my piece of shit car, and I was unable to win a few races with it. I finally unlocked a piece of crap Camaro that was slightly faster than my piece of crap VW. I went online to race a few people with my new car. They all had awesome Vettes, Saleens or other supercars and blew me away. Guess they'd put more than 6 hours in. I logged back out, and sat there wondering how long I wanted to grind in this game.

Instead of grinding for cars, I decided I'd try for some achievements. There was one for taking 15 pictures and submitting them to the site. Since all I had was my bike and my piece of crap car, I took 15 boring pictures in order to get the "Paparazzi" achievement. Here are a couple of my favorites:


Here I am getting ready to race against some souped up Fast and Furious car. This is exactly why I play video games, to simulate being someone who sucks at life.



At a glance you might think this next picture was me burning out my tires in an awesome show of acceleration and torque. In actuality, I believe my piece of crap car probably just needed a smog check.



One of the best things about Midnight club is supposed to be the police pursuits. Of course, the car they start you with doesn't go much faster than the speed limit, so in order to start a pursuit, I tried parking outside of the police station while playing some rap music really loud. They didn't chase me.



Finally, there were 10 gamerscore to be had for submitting your car to "rate my ride". I sent mine up, and it's been rated 11 times so far. The verdict? 4.64 out of 10. That's about the same score I give this bullshit game.

New Xbox Experience

So, the New Xbox Experience launched this morning and everyone on my friends list is slowly popping online with new avatars. Here's what mine looks like.

I think he's going to need a better costume than this though. Perhaps they'll make some stormtrooper armor soon. :-)

Lazy Sunday

No, I'm not talking about the awesome song. That's just all that can be said about today.

Yesterday evening after the yard work ended, a couple of folks came over and we watched some movies, had some pizza and Craig brought a cake for dessert. I opened a bunch of birthday cards and presents. After that, it was lots of Guitar Hero World Tour (My gift from John) before a break to listen to Wing from South Park sing happy birthday to me courtesy of Elizabeth. I didn't know what was going on at first, but apparently...if you buy her CDs, she will call you from the Netherlands and sing to you on your birthday and other occasions. She called at 11pm and I put the phone on speakre so we could all listen. It was pretty funny. Afterwards, we played games late into the morning, then went into the hot tub until it was almost light outside.

I didn't get to bed until 6:45am or so, then I woke up at 10:30 only because my clock said it was 12 and I thought that was a good time to be awake. Turns out it said 12 because the power had gone out for a minute the day before (thanks to the industrial saw Craig brought over blowing a breaker). I watched a movie with Heather then went back to sleep from 1-5. When I got up, we watched some more TV, then I beat Fable 2 and went to bed around midnight. Hopefully, that normalizes my sleep schedule.

The day

So, this morning I woke up around 7:30am to a birthday text message. Ordinarily on a Saturday morning, waking up this early would be cause for grumbling, but I had to get up at 8am anyway for Craig to call me so it was all good. He called right on the dot for my credit card number (he was buying some lumber for the fence) and I went out to the living room to play some Fable 2. I got almost to the end of the game before it was time to start yard work.

Craig and I worked on the fence until lunch time, then made a trip to Home Depot for some more lumber and some Carl's Jr. for lunch. When we got back home, he started cutting stuff for the trellis we're putting on the fence and I went up on the roof to get rid of the leaves. We worked until dark...then called it a day.

Now for some relaxing.

Secret Samadhi

11 years ago, Live released their 4th CD, which was a huge deal for me. Back then, Live was one of the biggest bands in my little musical universe. I had never even heard of them 3 years prior, but some friends convinced me to go see them play and I was hooked after that. A year later, I had followed them all over the northwest on their Throwing Copper tour, and Mental Jewlery and Foursongs had become two of my all time favorite CDs.

When Secret Samadhi came out, I remember being unimpressed with "Lakini's Juice" (the first single that was being played on the radio and MTV), but I bought the album anyway hoping it would grow on me. This is back before MP3s, so buying an album when you didn't even like the single was a risky proposition. I listened to it a lot, but none of the songs "clicked" for me. I tried to like it, but I just couldn't get into this album the way I did with their other music. Looking back now, I think maybe I just loved "Throwing Copper" so much that anything they released to follow it up would have been a letdown at that point in time for me.

2 weeks ago, I saw Zack and Miri make a porno and during a pivotal scene in the movie, "Lift me Up", (an unreleased track from the Throwing Copper days) came on. The next day I found myself listening to all my Live records again. One album in particular stands out more now than it ever did in the past.



I was completely wrong about Secret Samadhi. It's just as good as their first three disks and possibly better in some ways. I've listened to several of my Live cds on and off since the 90's, but this one has always been missing from the rotation. No more. This is on my mind tonight because I've got the record on and I can't seem to turn it off....even though it's a work night and I should be in bed.

Heather managed to sleep through my little evening of Live and almost the entire Secret Samadhi album, even though she's just one door away and I have the sound up pretty loud....but I think my singing just woke her up.

That's probably my cue to call it a night.

+Live+

You have a blog?

I'm on the "instant blogging" service Plurk with my friends all day long at work....but I don't think I ever really say anything there. Talking about what I had for lunch or where I'm going after work isn't exactly newsworthy. "News" like that might belong on a site like this, where no one reads regularly. :-)

At the beginning of this year, I tried blogging once a day. I couldn't hang. Later this year, I found plurk, and I don't think a day has gone by since I joined up where I didn't post there at least once.

I may start this daily thing up again. Can I make a calendar year? We shall see.

Election day once again

I got up this morning around 7am, actually excited to go vote. By 7:30 I was standing in line at the elementary school near my house, along with about a dozen other people who were waiting to vote in the 20 polling stations (all full). By the time I left, the line was twice as long...but everyone seemed to be in good spirits.

At this point, I'm just crossing my fingers and hoping that someone I voted for will actually win this time.

Little Big Planet

Last week on October the 21st, I got up a little bit early to head out in search of a copy of Little Big Planet. Sure, I knew that the title had been recalled because of some sort of offending song but I was hoping to find a retailer that hadn't heard the same news yet.

I tried Target first, where they had copies in, but their computer told them it was not to be sold until November 7th. My next stop was Fred Meyer, which actually had a sign up saying they wouldn't be selling the title. I drove across the street to Sears where the salesman laughed and said "We never get games the week they're out, man". I called around a bit more, but everyone else was abiding by the recall.


Flash forward to this Saturday, I'm browsing around the internet for news on when Little Big Planet might finally be released and I find a story on Joystiq that says it's out now at Gamestop. Excited, I call the closest store, only to find that they're only selling to pre-order customers. I call 4 more Gamestops before I find one (which used to be an EB Games) that is selling copies to normal folks like me. I asked Heather if she wanted to go for lunch, then we rushed down to the mall. They had 2 copies left...and I bought one of them.

Woohoo!



When I got the game home, it was a lot of fun. I played for hours and hours, enjoying the offline modes. I couldn't connect to the servers to experience the online features of the game, and I thought this was strange...but assumed maybe they were keeping them off until everyone could buy the game.

It's a fun little platformer, some of the levels caused me to curse and yell at the screen (always a good thing). Others were so fun and cutesy that I breezed right through them. On Sunday, the online features still weren't working, but I put a few more hours into it anyway. Monday, I read reports online that the servers were up, but by the time I finally got home from work last night....they were broken.

Today is Tuesday the 28th, a full week after this game was scheduled to ship...and the online mode is still broken. I'd love to give the game a full review, but I can't....because half of it doesn't work yet.

This sucks.

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PAX 2008 Day One: Friday

So, it's Tuesday morning and I'm still not fully recovered from PAX 2008. This year's PAX was quite possibly one of the most exhausting ones since the very first, and also the biggest one yet. It was so packed with events that this year, I didn't even have time to sit down and blog about it in the evenings afterwards (something that has been sort of the norm each year). I'll try to recap it all now, starting with Friday:

Friday morning began with a little breakfast at the Brown Bag Cafe in Kirkland with my dad and Ryan. Although both of my nephews were planning on coming up for PAX, Ryan was the only one who could actually make it. My Dad flew up with him (he was down in California on business anyway) and we enjoyed a hearty meal before heading down to the first day of the con.



When we arrived, the lines were as insane as ever. We met up with John, Scott and their friend Mike who had gotten there just ahead of us and started playing a little Mario Kart DS with insane lag.



Later, Jason, Montine and Shawn showed up and joined us in line. We waited for about 3 hours before the line started moving. Once inside, John went to the console tourney lines and found out that Halo signups weren't until Saturday (a good thing), while Ryan and I went to the Bungie booth to try to line up for the Recon challenge. It wasn't started yet, but they were demonstrating the new Halo map, which we got in line to play several times.



I spent a little time walking around the Expo hall on Friday, but mostly gravitated towards the Bungie booth trying to get into that Recon challenge with Ryan. At about 4pm, they decided to start it up, and a line instantly formed. We ended up waiting 2 hours and being the last two people to challenge the Bungie employees for a chance to win Recon armor. We lost 15-5.



After that was over, we had some dinner over at Pacific Place with John, Jason and Montine and then came back to try a little Rock Band. Our regular band did some practicing while Ryan played some Guitar Hero and challenged people to Smash Brothers (a game he doesn't have but is somehow good at). Eventually, our band entered our best score to qualify for the Rock Band tournament the next day. I took a peek at the signup sheet...and it appeared that we'd have a good chance at making the top 32 teams (that was the cut off). Unless there was another page somewhere, I figured we were good to go.

After Rock Band, we all walked over to the concert hall, but it was so packed that Ryan and I decided to take off and get some rest for Saturday instead. The rest of the group stayed to rock on through the night....

Next up, Day Two of PAX, which I'll do in a separate post later.

A Weird Weekend

This Saturday morning, Heather and I got up and headed to Vancouver for the Weird Al concert at the Boulevard Casino in BC. The drive up was nice and quick, with a stop at Arby's and only 10-15 minute wait at the border. It was tough to find the hotel, because apparently, Canadians do not believe in road signs. We could never tell which road we were on, which highway we were about to enter, or what the directions we had from google actually corresponded to in real life. We ended up finding our way to the hotel not using our directions, but by a combination of instinct and blind luck.



We got to our hotel, and had a nap (we were both tired from John's birthday party the night before) and then got up for the show. Once again, the directions to the casino weren't any help at all. They got us to the right freeway, but once we exited, we had absolutely no idea where we were. The directions called out streets we couldn't find signs for and mentioned places we didn't see. We ended up finding the casino using the black and white map on the Google directions and intuision for directions. That got us to the general area, and then there were a couple of 1 foot tall signs that said "Casino" with an arrow on them. Those helped.



The Casino is a lot bigger than I had imagined it would be, and had a more "Vegas" feel to it than some of those tribal and domestic casinos I've seen in the past. It was big, with lots of slot machines, gaming tables and a huge 6 story concrete parking garage. We ate dinner at their little food court, Heather had pasta and I had some sort of shrimp noodle soup.


The theater itself is housed in a separate two story building. You enter through a lobby, where there is a bar, the merch booth and two staircases on either side of the lobby. You take the staircases up to the second floor, where there are more bars and two entrances to the theater itself. The seating was ampitheater style, and the front row seats Heather and I had gotten required walking all the way down the stairs to the bottom of the venue. Two in house monitors were on the left and right of the stage, and then the band had the three hanging monitors above them on stage.


As usual, Al came out into the audience during "Wanna B Ur Lovr"and climbed the stairs towards the top of the theater.




They said at the door that cameras were not allowed, but I saw several people using them during the show, I was really bummed that I didn't try to sneak mine in. I did get several pictures with my camera phone. They aren't the best, but I'll share them just the same.


This next one was taken right after Al sang the "Bomb" verse to Heather. She was happy, as this was the second time he's come down into the audience and sang to her during a show.


People seemed to be really into the TV clips (you could tell lots of folks were seeing them for the first time). They particularly liked the Canadian themed ones (Celine Dion and Avril Lavigne got big laughs and cheers). Halfway through the show, there was one glitch, which actually made things more intersting. During the opening of The Saga Begins, Reuben lost keyboard audio, and Al was singing it acapella. I wondered for a minute if he'd just keep going, but they managed to fix the sound before it was time for the band to come in. No Stormtroopers at this stop, and Yoda had that new part of the chant I don't know how to do yet...but this was still my favorite part of the show up to that point.


During the part of Amish Paradise where most people swing their arms from side to side, the guys next to us weren't doing it, so Al leaned down and waved his hands at them until they started. I thought that was hilarious. Near the end of "Smells like Nirvana", our section got soaked by the cup of water. I remembered about 2 seconds beforehand and put my phone into my pocket. I forgot to warn my wife. :D



Fat was a great finale, and afterwards, no one got up to leave. There was a real standing ovation, which was cool because the crowd wasn't as rowdy as other shows I've been to in the past. Cell phones had everyone on their feet, and then it was followed by the best performance of Albuquerque I have ever seen.


There was lots of singing along, the part with the donuts was REALLY extended, and he kept asking about "Nanaimo Bars", something I had never heard him do before in concert. During this song, some fan went right up to the stage to take a picture of Al with his camera phone. Security was on him right away and was about to move him away, but Al grabbed the security guy and sang directly to him while the fan took the picture.



It was hilarious and people cheered, but the down side was, Al's kindness inspired a few other morons to try and do the same thing...and they ended up being ejected by security for it. The guy sitting next to me was filming this with his camera, so it'll probably end up on youtube.

During the "Lost my train of thought" part of the song, the band ended up starting all over again, which I loved. I'm not sure if this is a part of the tour now...but I thought it was hilarious. Albuquerque is one of my favorite Al songs of all time...so that just made it even better.

Overall...it was a great show. Best seats I've ever had for an Al concert (I've gotten front row many times, but it's never been that close in an indoor venue). I wish I would have had the foresight to try and sneak my camera in (using it would not have been a problem, since they didn't seem to care). Still..it was awesome, and if he ever plays there again, I'll definitely go back. My only gripe was that we didn't leave earlier yesterday. We were watching TV and by the time we got breakfast and got on the road, it was about noon. We ended up stuck at the Canada/US border for 3 hours, and then spent 3 more in traffic back to Seattle. Worst. Commute. Ever.



Still a great weekend though! It was worth that horrible, horrible drive. Bring on the fair tomorrow!

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The saga of the Dare

I've been after a new phone since my 3rd Motorola Q9m went out on me. The Windows software on it was ok, but I broke three of those darn devices doing nothing more than simply using them for what they were intended to do (email and phone calls).

Sometime around February I shut mine down for the final time, and went back to my RAZR. I sold the Q on Ebay and hit the Verizon store. My upgrade date was in three months and I wanted to find out what the new hotness was so I could be ready to order it first thing in July. I zeroed in on the Samsung Glyde sometime in June, and started counting down the days.

A week before my upgrade was available, I went to the Verizon store in Factoria to do one last demo of the phone I wanted, when the salesman offered to show me the LG Dare. Instantly, this was my new favorite phone ever. They weren't going to go on sale until a few days later, but my upgrade date wasn't for a week anyway, so I was golden. This would be my new phone.

I started reading forum posts, early reviews and watching youtube videos. Through these, I realized the Glyde was nowhere near as good as the Dare, and the Dare rivaled the iPhone in features. I got even more excited about it. A (very slow) week went by while I waited for my upgrade date. When that glorious day finally came, I was ready...cash in hand, but the phone was not available for my upgrade yet. I waited some more.

On July 25th, I headed down to Zach and Amy's wedding. Turns out my younger sister Juniper had the Dare. She had just upgraded a week earlier and while she "wasn't sure whether to get this one or not", she liked it so far. I proceeded to be jealous of her for having my awesome phone and not even appreciating how awesome it was. When I got back from California, I started calling Verizon stores all over the area. None of them had a Dare I could buy for my upgrade. Either they were only selling them to new contracts or they were out. I searched Craigslist, but the only people selling the Dare on that site wanted way over retail for it. I finally found an "authorized reseller" that was willing to sell me one for the full purchase price (409.99) and drove down there. This was July 30th....a full 18 days after my upgrade date.

I bought the phone, verified that I could return it if there was ever a problem (even though they're not officially Verizon) and walked out to my car. I opened it up, right there in the car...too excited to wait until I got home. To my dismay, it was a used phone. Fingerprints all over the screen and opened plastic packaging inside told the tale. I went in and returned it. I wanted the phone bad, but not bad enough to use one someone else returned for God-knows-why.

The next day...Heather sent me the following picture message on my phone with the text: "You owe me big!"



She had apparently gone to one of the stores I'd already tried and used her charms to get me the phone I'd been after for a month. She had purchased it for me already, so by the time I met her for lunch, she had it ready for me to pick up. It was even activated. Needless to say, it's awesome...and my RAZR has finally been retired from active duty.

I finally have a phone that does email properly (work and home), browses the web well, takes pretty nice pictures and actually works well as a phone. I'm sure something else will come out in a month that I'm going to want more (Blackberry Thunder is the current one I'm curious about) but for now...this is the best phone I've ever used.