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Category: General

10 Things This Blogger IS Telling You

4 April, 2007 (15:25) | General | 2 comments

I saw a story on digg titled “10 things bloggers don’t tell you”. I found it retarded enough that I had to write about it.

“Hardly anybody reads me.” Duh. I’ve got Google Analytics show up, I’m lucky if I get 60 page hits a day. Part of what I like about this blog is that nobody reads it.
“The more companies pay me, the more I like their stuff.” Companies don’t pay me anything to review anything, which is why I don’t. If you want a product review go to Amazon.
“Did I mention I’m not a real reporter?” I’m not even close to a reporter. Duh.
“I might infect your computer with a virus.” There will never be anything even close to a virus here. What would the point of that be?
“I’m revealing company secrets.” I never blog about work. Ever. I’ve wanted to, a lot, but it seems like a really bad idea. Hell, I don’t even mention when I change jobs!
“Just because my name’s on it doesn’t mean I wrote it.” I write absolutely everything that’s not quoted. Either Jess or I took every single photo that appears on this site. I’ve got the masters in Aperture.
“My blog is just a stepping stone to bigger and better things.” There’s nothing bigger or better than a blog. Especially this blog. Duh.
“I can control what you see on the Internet.” I can’t control anything you see on the internet. I don’t have mystical voodoo control over your mouse or your keyboard.
“Blogging just about ruined my life.” NOT posting has almost ruined my life. Jess gets on my case about that.
“I’m already obsolete.” I was obsolete before I even started. See #1 above.

Moving!

1 March, 2007 (14:15) | General |

I haven’t been posting because Jessica and I have been busy getting things together for a big move!

We found a place in the College Area that suits us pretty well. It’s got a nice big garage, decent back yard, and is a pretty good size. The landlord spent some time upgrading the house and it’s very nice. We’ll be able to build stuff here very easily. We’ve already got a list of things to build (TV Stand, dive locker, etc.) The landlord is also not interested in selling any time soon. That’s very important since our last two landlords have tried to sell out from underneath us.

We’re moving in Saturday, March 3^rd if all goes according to plan. We’ll move the aquarium the following Saturday (March 10^th). I’ll see about getting a time-lapse of the move.

If you’ve got nothing better to do on Saturday and would like to give us a hand, leave a comment! I’m sure there will at least be pizza involved

Its Christmas Time

15 December, 2006 (08:44) | General |

… and that appears to be bringing out the worst in people.

About an hour ago, just before Jess and I headed out to work there was a knock on the door. A woman told me that she’d seen a package with some car visors in it and our address on it a few blocks away. As she took me to it she mentioned that she thought somebody had been “relocating” items. She also mentioned that a friend of hers had ordered some side mirrors and had them stolen, to the tune of ~ $300.

As I approached the package I saw it had been opened and the visors were sitting on top. It was in some ice plant with the label facing down. Picking it up I could see both visors were still there. Jess bought these from eBay a week or so ago. I noticed the seller had written the address on the box, and UPS had the address printed on the label. We’ll check the tracking information later to see where and when it was delivered.

This incident leads me to understand just how hard Christmas can be on some people. You look around your neighborhood and see packages being delivered every day. You expect some will be presents, some will even be valuable and so you decide to take them. Luckily the package of ours they took had something with relatively little value. At the same time we have items being delivered next week that will have much higher monetary and sentimental value.

Jess is going to talk with the post office and UPS today. In the future we’re going to have packages shipped to our respective offices. I’ll probably call the cops later today or tomorrow and file a report. Part of me wants to plant a decoy and hide in the bushes with a baseball bat. The bleeding-heart side of me feels bad that people will stoop to that level.

It’s sad all around and I don’t like it.

An Evening with My Wii

20 November, 2006 (10:08) | General |

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 |

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.

So long, Miranda

6 September, 2006 (08:03) | General |

Today is shaping up to be one of the sadder in a while. Today we decided that ½ of our kitty-assassin-ninja-squad needed to retire to that big grassy field in the sky. At this point Miranda:

is blind
is senile
can’t really walk
can’t use the box
can barely eat
is constantly dizzy
can’t play with Hannah, at all
can’t jump onto soft things like couches
when she manages to get up on soft things, can’t get back down because she doesn’t know how high up she is
roams the house at night howling for no known reason
is generally miserable

On the one hand we probably could have done this a bit earlier and ended her life on a higher note. On the other hand we’re still killing her

The people that knew Miranda will miss her. She was a pretty good kitty, even when she jumped straight onto your balls. Here’s a few photos of her, she’ll be missed

Housing bubble burstation — part deux

5 September, 2006 (09:16) | General |

I cannot believe the timing of this. This seriously sucks.

11 months ago, our landlord Mark told us he wanted to sell the house we were living in. Friday morning (the first) we got a call form our current landlord (Mike) saying he wants to sell the house we’re living in.

This time, we’ll be doing things a bit differently. For starters, we’re staying put. We live on a large lot with two houses on it. Mike wants to sell the whole thing for $750,000 → $800,000. It’s a nice lot with two decent houses on it, but I don’t know if it’s that nice. Looking just at our house I can tell you that it’s not.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice place, but it just doesn’t feel right. Looking around the house with errant screws in the middle of the wall and such, it doesn’t look like the price is justified. But that’s my perspective. Obviously I don’t own any real estate, so what could I possibly know?

So while I don’t think Mike is over-pricing for the area (like Mark did) I do think he’s over-pricing for the market. Between people leaving and activity acting funny I don’t think it’ll sell in the 2-3 month span Mike is looking for. I can’t help but think that if you’re a non-investor (some schmoe looking for a place to live) with $800k to spend, you wouldn’t buy this place. Further, if you are an investor with $800k to spend, you can probably get more bang for the buck someplace else.

So we’ll stay put. We’ll deal with the real estate agent taking pictures and having an open house. If all goes well this will blow over and we can continue saving so we can buy our own place.

If all goes well.

Sunday Fun

27 August, 2006 (23:19) | General |

So Brahm is in town this week to celebrate the birth of his nephew. He’s also down to hit up the aquarium wholesalers and get some stuff for the tank. He and Jess are heading up Tuesday, hopefully she won’t break the bank.

In the mean time it was Sunday and we were bored. We dropped by Brahm’s parents house and played with his puppies. The little white one is Olaf and the big brown one is Kenada. Kenada has this odd temperament — she’ll let humans do anything to her, other dogs are nearly eaten on sight. I’m not exaggerating, she has nearly killed a dog or two since Brahm’s had her. She has killed at least one dog in the past.

Since Jess and I happened to have a Frisbee in the car, we decided to toss it around and see what’d happen. It turns out the dogs love chasing it, but will let it hit them in the face before they try to catch it. They know to bite it and try to take it away though. Dogs can be kinda dumb. Luckily, dogs that are good at chasing but bad at chasing turn in to sleepy dogs quickly. tAnywho, she’s a sweetie and really likes Olaf. So, naturally, we took loads of pictures. I’ll shut up now and let the pictures speak.

After screwing around for a while longer, Charles showed up. After much debate we decided to try out the driving range in Sorrento Valley. Since none of us know how to play golf this was bound to be fun. As it turns out, Charles has a bit of a natural gift and did a pretty decent job. Brahm and I spent a lot of time trying to hit the balls hard while Charles worked on actually hitting them. Funny how that works out.

Either way, we went through about 200 balls between the four of us and had a blast. Driving is a much more physical endeavor than I had expected. It’s also terribly fun when you get it right, and rather painful when you get it wrong. Since there’s a driving range near my office, I may have a lunchtime activity when it cools down a bit!

Wedding Photos

16 August, 2006 (23:04) | General |

Now that Jess has finally finished editing her picks from Eamonn & Megan’s wedding from almost two weeks ago (8/5/2006), I have something to post!

Here you can see Bryan and I holding our Man-Bouquets during the ceremony. As co-best-men it was vital that we hold these silly bundles of bamboo. The florist was very specific that we not try to kill each other with them, too bad. What you can’t quite see in this shot are the all white canvas slip-on Vans that Eamonn decided we had to wear to go with the suits. They were … not the most comfortable things ever made.

Julia and I, nearly immediately post ceremony. drinks = 1, 0.

Bryan, Jess, myself. drinks = 0, 0, 0.

Bryan, Julia, Jess, myself, drinks = 1, 1, 0.5, 0. Julia bet me that I couldn’t get a good self-shot of the 4 of us with her camera. As always it’s the person holding the camera, not the camera itself!

The four of us again. You can’t quite see Bryan grabbing my crotch. Lucky you. drinks = 2, 2, 1, 1.

Bryan and Julia. Another photographic bet — that I could only get a horribly washed out photo. Walking backwards and zooming in to the rescue!

Jess and I. drinks = enough, enough – 1

Julia and I. drinks = enough + 1, enough.

Jess, me, Julia, Bryan, Eamonn & Megan! The couple looks surprisingly rested given how late it was when I dropped them off at their hotel room. Good jorb!

I think I got the ears on Bryan perfectly. Eamonn looks as proud as he should.

In short, we had a blast, I think I need to lose some weight (and fast!) and Bryan’s probably going to be next in the wedding line

Waring Pro’s Belgian Waffle Base Recipe

12 August, 2006 (18:07) | General |

Being put up for posterity’s sake.

Ingredients

1½ cups all purpose flour
1 ounce nuts (optional)
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground ginger
¼ teaspoon nutmeg
¾ cup pumpkin puree (or misc)
2 large egg yolks
1 cup whole milk
¼ cup maple syrup
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted/mushy
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 large egg whites

Destructions

$waffleIron->setHeatIndex(4);

$dry = mix( qw(flour nuts cornstarch bakingPowder salt cinnamon ginger nutmeg) );
$dry->setAside();

$wet = mix( qw(puree yolks milk syrup butter vanilla) );

$wet->mixInto( $dry )->blendWith( $whisk );

$whites->mixUntil( “stiff peaks” );

$whites->foldInto( $wet );

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