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Month: November, 2006

An Evening with My Wii

20 November, 2006 (10:08) | General | No comments

So Jess and I spent most of Sunday (after some recovery from the wait in line) playing with our new Wii.

Oddly enough, the game reviewers were right about Wii Sports (included with the bundle). Namely, the Tennis game is really really fun. The non-training games are always played as doubles for some reason. As Penny-Arcade nailed, the game got a lot easier when we stood up to play. It looks like the controller knows when it’s tilted for a back-hand or not. It also looks like you can put spin on the ball, but doing so is a little tricky. You can also apparently do super-fast serves, but it’s not obvious how to do that. Yes, we tried swinging really fast.

Baseball is a ton of fun. It has more of a learning curve than tennis when it comes to batting. Pitching is really easy and can be done subtly enough that the other player won’t know what’s going on. Standing up to bat isn’t required, but does make timing a bit easier.

Golf is also a lot more fun than I expected. Not being any kind of golfer, or any kind of golf-gamer I didn’t really have any expectations aside from “hit the ball in the cup”. Luckily, that’s exactly what you get out of this game! After about 9 holes (and about 100 strokes each) we started to get pretty good and could put the ball where we wanted, using the wind or working against it. Very fun.

The boxing game requires two controllers with nunchuks. Since we don’t have a second nunchuck yet we didn’t play this one at all.

The bowling game is just as slow and complicated as real bowling. The Wiimote detects any subtle spin on the ball and applies it accordingly making all those interesting shots possible, but difficult. Since its so slow paced we didn’t really give this one very much time.

So, for a bundled game this one is great. It gets you used to working with the controllers and it’s pretty fun too! We also spent a little bit of time with the Rayman game, but not nearly enough. It’s apparently nothing but minigames. Tons, of fun. The first challenge we took was a really fun Ditty Kong & Dance Dance Revolution mix-up. Basically, you drum bunnies. It’s fun. It also requires a nunchuck, so we didn’t spend too much time on it — it’s really a 2+ player game to have as much fun as possible.

So, I’m really glad we waited in line for this thing. So is Jess. I’m also glad we didn’t wait a whole week like some PS3 fans did.

Wiii!!

19 November, 2006 (17:16) | General | No comments

Thursday I called around all the likely places to have Wii for sale. Game Stop was all out, all they had were reserved. Target wouldn’t answer their phone. Wal-Mart would sell at midnight but they didn’t know how many they were going to get. Best Buy expected to get 90-100 per store. Best Buy also wouldn’t let people line up until less than 24 hrs before they went on sale.

Friday night we decided to just wait and order one on-line. Then after the movie we decided to drive by Best Buy in Mission Valley. Well, the quick drive by (around 10:45 PM) showed at most 60 - 70 people. Given the way this tends to work that meant that there would probably be somewhere between half and two thirds of that number of consoles going. Thus, there was hope and a plan was hatched.

First we sped over to Wal Mart and found that all 27 (27?!?!) that they got were accounted for by the people that had been in line. Pictures had been taken and wrist bands handed out. OK, off to Best Buy we go!

So around 11 PM we plopped down in line at Best Buy. The night was cold, and long, and uncomfortable (even with sleeping bags) but it was fun. There were about 120 video game fans, it’s hard to have a bad time with them around. There were games of catch (one went short when a baseball rolled into a storm drain), lots of DS’s around, and even some Texas Hold ‘em! I don’t think anybody got more than a few hours sleep overall, between excitement and the Trolley going by. Finally, around 8 AM a guy from the store came by with tickets good for 1 console. We got ticket #74 out of 102. Nice.

Around 9 AM some kid got dropped off by his parents at the end of the line. His mom look horrified at the scene for some reason. Most of us quietly chuckled, knowing the kid didn’t have a chance unless he had at least an extra $200 on him to buy somebody else’s ticket. He didn’t even try.

Around 11 AM we finally got into the store! They had:

Zelda, and misc other games
Consoles
Memory Cards
Extra Controllers

. They did not have:

Nunchucku to match the controllers
Elebits
component cables

So we grabbed our loot (Console, the new Rayman game (Jess likes the bunnies), a memory card, and an extra controller). After that we headed to Game Stop to pick up our reserved copy of Zelda, and headed home.

Review: Casino Royale

19 November, 2006 (16:58) | Pretentious Criticism | No comments

Casino-Royale Last night we saw Casino Royale, the latest James Bond movie. When we got to the theater there was a line coming out of front doors for our showing. Great. Turns out there were actually two lines! One for internet purchases (us!) and one for the rest (the really really long line). Yaaay intartubes!

The movie has one of the loveliest James Bond intros evar. The first chase scene is intense and very athletic. The story is slightly complicated, with more than one double-cross. The new Bond does a terrific job being rougher than the previous Bonds. Since this is supposed to be immediately post 00 assignment, he’s not supposed to be refined yet. Wonderful.

The cinematography is wonderful with good use of color and significant events that aren’t front and center. There are some very good chase scenes and, of course, a beautiful car. Overall the movie is pretty well paced and quite enjoyable. It was just a smidge long. Just a smidge though.

Dry suit resolved?

5 November, 2006 (12:16) | Diving | No comments

Today I was looking at my dry suit’s zipper and noticed something funny. The way the zipper is attached to the suit is with some glue and a strip of neoprene. Comparing Jess’ suit to my own I noticed that that neoprene strip on mine was much wider than on hers. A test zip without anybody inside revealed that part of this strip was getting caught in the zipper! No wonder I was getting wet; the zipper wasn’t totally sealed all the way through!

Dry suit zippers don’t work like regular zippers. You can read more about them at New Jersy SCUBA. I believe this took care of the problem, but won’t know until our next dive.

Dive #59: La Jolla Shores

4 November, 2006 (13:37) | Dive Reports | No comments

Date & Time	2006-11-04 @ 9:30 AM
Visibility	5 - 10 ft.
Max. Depth	54 ft.
Min. Temp	60° F
Bottom Time	37 min.
Air Info	HP 80: 3,130 - 1,150 psi = 20.3 psi/min

We finally made it back into the water! There were lots of surfers out north of the Life Guard station. Jess wanted to just go back home but I pushed her forward. On the way into the water we ran into Justin with a few students who were having a hard time getting their fins on in the surf zone. That’s probably why Jess and I wait until we’re past the surf zone to put our fins on.

We swam out a bit further to get a little water underneath us, and descended. Since it had been so long we did some drills. We each did a full mask drill a few times, complete with water up the nose. We also did a few out-of-air (OOA) drills for good measure. Once we were done with that we headed out for the canyon.

Nearly immediately we came across some very juvenile senioritas in some eel grass. Near the canyon rim we found a giant octopus and a giant school of juvenile damsels that were orange and pretty. There were of course the requisite catalina gobies as well.

Just as we’d made it into the canyon I started getting really cold and we came back up. Back at the car I was very careful when taking off my drysuit. My arms were fine. My torso was fine. But my waist was soaked! Damn leaks. I’m guessing one of the seals or part of the zipper was a little dirty and didn’t seal correctly.

We’re planning a night dive on Wednesday, it’ll go better!

So long, Bongo

4 November, 2006 (00:23) | Aquarium | 1 comment

Bongo So long Bongo, you were an awesome fish. Why you decided to go exploring on the floor behind the tank I’ll never understand. I hope you found what you were looking for.

To know Bongo, was to like Bongo. Everybody commented on him. Everybody. He had more personality in his little fishy eyebrows than some people have in their whole bodies.

When we first got him he knew how to eat algae off of rocks. We thought “Cool, he’s vegetarian like us!” Eventually he learned to pick the food pellets we fed off the ground and rocks. He wasn’t coordinated enough to catch them out of the water column just yet. Not too long later he learned how to do that too.

I think that’s part of what people liked about him. Watching him eat. He looked just like Homer Simpson eating potato chips in space.

He also learned to dance. There was a point where he would come up to the glass and wiggle back and forth really fast if somebody was watching him. It was awesome. I think people also liked his eye brows. There was a tang that liked them a lot. A little too much — he kept trying to eat them!

He was a good fish, and he’ll be missed.

November 2006
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Month: November, 2006

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