Ad Infinitum

Tragedy brought Marissa home for the weekend last, driving in from Arizona late Friday night to attend a close friend’s funeral on Saturday. She picked up a take-and-bake pizza from Spinatos, that delightful pizzeria she works at, and it was quite delicious despite being a post-midnight meal; Brent came over and we hung out for a few hours before everyone crawled off to sleep. I wasn’t in the right mood to go out to dinner with them all the following night, as I’ve had such a busy schedule lately; that Sunday, my only wish in the world was to spend the day sleeping in various positions around the house.

 

This week was a whirlwind! I had this post open and sitting all week and hardly noticed. Monday and Tuesday night were jam-backed with writing and collaborating with Val friends, and I had to make up the sleep on Wednesday night by going to bed at an–unusually early–hour before midnight. This is surprisingly easy when you’ve spent the previous nights staying up until well after the sun crept over the Anaheim Hills. I honestly felt like Thursday was “lost”, in that I came to the realization that today was Friday and somehow this wasn’t a four-day work week. I had spent time with my Aunt and her daughters, going to eat at Tommy’s before receiving a haircut in exchange for looking at her computer. Realistically, Wednesday was where all of the time was lost, but I seemed to have a big problem recalling Thursday at all. Perhaps this is due to how strange this morning itself was.

 

Currently, I am at our new cabin, an idyllic getaway that many refer to as Lloydhalla. We are to get a rainstorm of respectable size this night which, given the temperature outside, will undoubtedly turn into snow. This fact meant I couldn’t travel up in my car, for its paltry four-cylinders could not handle the treacherous and icy road home; keeping myself awake as in earlier in the week, I went into work for only a few hours before noon came and, with it, my ride on the caravan heading up before the storm landed. The building has a few new features, namely some webcams for “weather watching” (they look inside at night) and an entirely new deck on the front porch. After we stopped scratching our heads on how some of the mirrors had such high smudge-marks on them (it is like a really shitty episode of Twlight Zone up in here), we unpacked and got to starting a fire while keeping our gaze to the west with a scrupulous stare. It doesn’t feel like there’s anything coming, but several weather sites suggest otherwise even this late into the night. I will keep my faith in old reliable Technology, whose tithe is bandwidth and whose sermons come in .PDF format.

 

The plan for this weekend was to celebrate some relative’s birthdays, but that doesn’t necessarily imply specific activities. For the most part, I will be drinking a lot of tea and doing a lot of writing in between powerful bouts of sleep which will rival that of folk lore and scientific study. Oh, and if it does snow, I suspect you will find some pictures of me goofing off quite soon.

Over the weekend, my mom headed out to Palm Desert for her annual birthday celebration, which usually involves her two sisters and a nice spa-hotel getaway with some shopping and fine dining mixed in. I got a call earlier in the week from her older sister, my aunt Marlyn, letting me know that she was in the hospital for heart murmurs. I had a feeling everything was okay just from the tone of her voice, though I could tell she was a bit worried herself This isn’t the first time someone has had to usher my mom to an ER; back in 2007 or so, Garrett and I drove to the nearest medical building and they got her in to find she was dehydrated by quite a bit. A strange problem to have for someone who awash in liquids, but an hour of medical fluid and she was ready for home. This time, her stay was a bit lengthier, as they had to run all sorts of scans and monitor her blood every three hours. This was against her preference, of course, but the ER doctor recommended it as the soonest appointment with a cardiologist was two weeks out and if she were to go home early, she could have another (and this time potentially fatal) issue crop up. All turned out to be well, though, and she was home in time for us to take her out to Benjie’s for some chow. I guess her cholesterol levels were high, something about blood pressure, yatta yatta… I’m just glad she’s alright and that it wasn’t a heart attack or stroke.

 

Garrett, Austin, and Remy have a class that meets twice a week, Tuesday and Thursday nights at 6:30, and so I have been seeing a lot more of the latter two than I have in the longest time. While Austin struggles to find any worth from the class, and Garrett’s sleep schedule is overly prohibitive to the learning process, Remy is kept busy with the tempting option of hanging out and eating dinner, or going to class alone. Last night, while Garrett slept and Austin also slept, Remy decided to come hang out and show off some of his recent WoW gear, which fits his character quite well. We tried out the apartment complex’s jacuzzi, and met a neighbor who knew how to operate the jets (we have those?!), so that was kinda cool. Austin and Remy seem to be on good terms with my new roommate, though it isn’t exactly hard to do when you have a lot of common interests (video games). He has a reputation now for being somewhat of a ninja, that Miles, due to his small footprint and low key activities. You know things are comfortable when people are yelling about dying in Demon Souls (Guess how they died? GO ON, GUESS!) and this is just another one of those accepted things. These are our ways.

 

As February draws to a close, I find myself yearning for this week to be over. I have a final check-up with the dentist’s office on Friday before I am in the clear for a good long while, and then I have a birthday party to attend. My mother’s friend’s son took a shining to Garrett and I, so much so that we were invited to his birthday party. I wanted to perpetuate the cool nerd image that I have with him, but I don’t know his tastes well enough to select an ironic gift for him. Microsoft points will have to do in its stead. On Sunday, I celebrate my Grandmother’s birthday as well, at some Italian food place in Southcoast Plaza. That mall always seemed too ritzy for my tastes, though its location lends itself well to the “out of reach” image that conjures in my head every time its brought up. After March begins, we have a cabin trip for another family birthday and then the annual company conference to look forward to. 2010 is pressing forward with great speed.

 

P.S. Let there be no doubt in your mind that my fears are well-founded.

An angry man flew his tiny plane into an IRS building in Austin, Texas this morning, managing to bring great attention to a letter he penned just before he committed the crime. His life’s story, while obviously biased and leaving out important details (like how he fucked up his first marriage), is hauntingly familiar when it comes to describing his interaction with government bodies; the time and energy spent trying to bring to attention the gross imbalance of justice between jackoffs like he and the wealthier elite is ultimately wasted, and that’s true no matter what kind of law or rule-set you’re rallying against. It’s unfortunate that things had to come to that, and I heard rumors that he torched his house with family inside before setting off to make his final point, but I laughed when a co-worker said the IRS might change its procedures in dealing with people after this. Oh, the unlikelihood of it all. Here is a man who claimed no income in a year, because he made no appreciable income, and the government charged him $10,000 for the oversight. I wonder how much they will take from Garrett when they realize his submission was in error. Even now, I hear they are returning to my company next week to look for more ways to fault us over expenses and what-not. It’s a mad world when we’ve got such a desperate institution looking for funding, and even more desperate folks willing to give it all up in hopes of getting the word out.

 

I think the saddest part is that he will be labeled a Liberal or a Conservative, and then partisan politics will ebb away at any message he had hoped to spread. One cannot stand for or against anything without being called a tea bagger or a bleeding heart in today’s America.

 

I picked up Miles at the airport the other day and drove him home, commenting on the tight-packed manner in which cities are kept in Orange County. Fifteen minutes from the airport will get you in one of a dozen cities, and I don’t know what to compare that to, honestly. So far his thoughts have been that it is very open here, and he was initially impressed with palm trees. They really are cosmopolitan here, brought in pre-grown and kept as a fashion statement than anything related to our natural climate. As for that, well, it’s currently snowing in New Jersey so he’s constantly remarking on how warm it is at night; personally, these last few nights have been somewhat cold leading into the rain we’re expecting to get this weekend. We went to Lucille’s later that night, Remy and Austin in attendance as well, and the place was as empty as it was two years ago on Mardi Gras; for whatever reason, people do not think of southern food for the occasion, and the business doesn’t make any effort in turning it into a marketing pitch. Miles’ appetite is different than our own, though that goes without saying for someone of such a smaller frame, but I can’t be too mad at myself for not finishing the gumbo; any man that can eat an entire serving of the stuff is a beast unto himself, with a cast-iron stomach better used as a dark prison for strange and terrifying things.

 

I hope to visit my dad this weekend, with my mom out of town for her birthday. We took her to the Cannery again, something I thought of last year and is therefore treading lightly upon the repeat-standard that I wouldn’t want to commit to for very long; she turns 50 next year, and birthdays are pretty much the only time of the year we can show our appreciation for her, so it’s something I want to switch up each time. If I don’t make a big deal out of celebrating it next year, I will have committed some unspoken crime against parental milestones, to be written up and frittered away in my permanent file. It’s shameful that we let it get so close to her birthday before making any reservations, but I was stuck between wanting to celebrate and wanting my brothers to actually put something together for once. Brent made me quite mad when he said he opts for his own, smaller gifts in lieu of chipping in for my more expensive gifts that “only work half the time”. Wow, what a shit bag. I suppose mom only gets mail three days out of the week, as well, what with the horrid nature of my gifted mailbox. Anywho, this is the sort of thing that siblings ultimately quarrel about when we reach adulthood. I once looked on at my mother’s squabbling with her sisters, content in the fact that my brothers and I would never reach that level of pettiness. Oh dear.

In a forty-eight hour period late last week, I saw the dentist three times; first for a crown pre-operation, then for a routine cleaning and, finally, Friday morning at 8:30, they set upon the carved out remains of my molar a new tooth made of porcelain. The entire process, from root canal to final tooth capping sometime next week, represents one of the more enjoyable visits to a health institute in my history book. I think the only thing easier than this, even above a normal doctor’s physical, is getting my teeth cleaned with a high powered water gun. I absolutely hate the little scraping tool they use to clean the grit off of your teeth, so when my specialist pulled out this gun-looking tool I was elated to find out they discovered a new method of getting that crap off of my pearly yellows, by means of water-pressure. It didn’t hurt nearly as bad, with the pain more situated in the deadlands known as my gums instead of the space between my teeth.

 

Working out more often, I aim for an hour-long session wherein I spend fifty minutes on the elliptical stair machine and lose about 550 calories before moving on to ten minutes of weight training on their various machines. I find I can only go for as long as I have water to drink and tunes to listen to. Music being what it is to me, I can barely get enough angry, energetic music before I tire from the lack of new thoughts. It is extremely productive from a creativity standpoint, to get a solid idea for a campaign or work out an older piece of lore on our Valikorlia setting, just by listening to a single song. Usually it’s one for one, with many songs tying directly to a thought or scenario which makes it easier for remembering in the future. A song may have a thought tied to it that I conjured up three years ago, and revisiting it in my head is a strange and frightening phenomenon when you consider just how bad I am at memory in general; I am constantly forgetting details about things, so to be able to tie it so a song seems quite limiting given the brevity of my playlist. So, if you have any song ideas that fire you up or put you in a good mood (not necessarily a relaxed one), let me know. Video game music works quite well, I’ve found, but sometimes the more obscure the better. In my case, pop hits may end up being as unknown as some Nintendo chiptune is to the normal person.

 

My friend Miles arrives on Tuesday, as I’ve mentioned, so I have been scurrying to fix up the place. You wouldn’t believe the kinds of weird crap that gets caked on tiny, hidden ledges whose only purpose is for the collection of said muck. Thankfully, I am well armed to face this threat, and so the battle wages on. Garrett purchased a vacuum for on the cheap when he was at Target the other night, which was nice because we hadn’t run such a device since moving in back in December. Apparently, he was visiting to look for some fighting game that he, Remy, and Austin enjoyed long into Thursday night. I shouldn’t say “some game” because I know exactly what it is, but mixing Mega Man and Frank West to fight the main boss from Okami is like some sort of horrible (gutsman ultimate) fanfiction, and I just don’t know where to stand on it.

 

Remy stopped by after attending a class with both Garrett and Austin, trying his hand at Bioshock 2 (which looks cool despite obvious whale-related dangers) and I got the opportunity to share with him the footage I took of our party games at the cabin. I don’t know how he will use it, but there are some classic moments on there as far as audio is concerned. I am looking forward to his final product only slightly less than Marissa, who has been badgering him for weeks now, I’m sure.

I’ve spoken about this on Facebook a bit, but I can’t let it pass me by without fishing it out of the lifestream and posting it here too. Here’s some background information, therefore, on what I am about to rant away at.

 

“Some months ago when I still visited /b/, I came across some videos of some old guy, around his 80’s that posted videos on youtube, of the most simple things, and finding fun and positive sides of anything. His name was edarem.

Some days ago, I remembered this old guy and decided to check for some new videos and enjoy simple things of life. I was horrified with what I found. He was sent to jail for 5 years, due to posting videos on youtube, something that wasn’t allowed for his probation. Letter from edarem. Proof he is jail.”

 

Enter Edward Muscare. A slightly crazy, unsightly old man who went through his later days of life making little videos about everything from jerry-rigging his car to making pasta with really bad Italian accents. While I don’t condone the behavior that got him where he is today, I cannot believe the legal system’s handling in all of this. Five years in prison for a parole violation as minor as this is unforgivable and I can hardly stand it. My natural pessimism disallowed me from donating to the Haiti crisis in any meaningful way, but I sent fifty bucks this man’s way even if I know it’s mostly a moot point with the way lawyers fleece you on stuff like this. If it helps him to know that there are people who enjoyed his videos and support his cause, then I will be happy enough. You may be turned off by his singing videos, but there are a few, like these here, that just make me smile. It’s sort of like that Ronald Jenkees fellow, who is just happy to be doing what he loves doing and that cheer somehow seeps through the video right into your room. To see this all (including the video linked above with him crying in the courtroom) really unsettles me and diminishes my faith in humanity’s ability to grasp common sense. Obviously I have some bias with my father’s prison scenario, but hopefully you’ll agree with my sentiment when I say this is a load of HORSESHIT.

 

My friend comes to live with me on the 16th of February, Mardi Gras, so I’ve been cleaning up the garage a bit and taking some photos for him to see. He’s not one for needing much, which is a great attitude to have when you’re moving from New Jersey into an online friend’s garage. You can see the evidence of some of this on my flickr account over on the right there; I updated our floor-plan to represent the changes we’ve made now that we’re actually moved in and settled. I don’t know if he’ll have a bed in his room (not a big sleeper), but my mother has been adamant about getting rid of our old shit in her quest to revise the rooms as I mentioned in my last post, so there’s a spare in there right now. If your house ever burns down, feel confident that I have at least two spare beds to sleep on here and plenty of space elsewhere if need be. You can snuggle up with Garrett, he doesn’t notice anything when he’s asleep (believe me).

 

So you know the 16th is Mardi Gras, but did you remember Valentine’s Day on the 14th? My mother’s birthday is on the 15th, so I have a busy weekend ahead of me. Good thing I get that Monday off for President’s Day. I have a dental cleaning on the 11th and a follow-up procedure for my root canal on the 12th (only 15 hours later, at that!), so February is slated to be a busy month for having less days than the others. I think I’m okay with that. Hell, I wish other months were like that at times. Get it all in and over with. March, you could learn something here.

 

There is new music there. —->

Ron Paul! Oh… wait. Well, if you thought January went by quick, 28 days later will show you February is going to be even quicker.

 

Garrett and I checked out our apartment community’s workout area the other night and it is easily the bomb dot com. I would place it only slightly lower than the one at Marissa’s complex simply because it doesn’t have that hilarious wall-ball-grab-lift exercising unit thing that I loved. We went around 9PM on a Sunday night, so it was nice and deserted, a trend I hope continues should we visit on a more frequent basis. This apartment complex will ultimately house 300 units and while only about 30 have been made and half of that filled with tenets, I feel as if there’s always a good chance of bumping into someone as I try to use some of the neat features we have. It’s not that I am entirely against sharing a pool with a neighbor, maybe I am when it comes to the spa? Regardless, my primary concern is always with image: my layers of fat jigglin’ all about as I sweat all over the equipment is not a sight intended for anyone, especially someone that may live near me. In conclusion, our workout area is sweet and I look forward to using it more often than the current amount of absolutely never.

 

A few days back, I think it was a week ago at this point, we were invited over to Cory’s house to celebrate his birthday with some friends and BBQ sauce. I’d never been to his house since he moved from the sleepy avenues of Tustin, and I found his new digs quite nice indeed. He served up some tasty burgers and hotdogs, and I enjoyed some of Nick’s baked goods while people watched reality television and tried their hand at the alchemical process of mixing three or four types of alcohol. Though we were the first ones there, Garrett and I cut out early and there isn’t much reason for that besides I was well-fed and didn’t see myself playing Rock Band. Whoops! Oh well, at least I am honest. I will also go on to admit disappointment in my gift selection; a coat, which was meant more to outfit him for our cabin trip, and an old projector which very well may not come in use. I was finally able to find out that an unfortunate schedule conflict got in the way of him attending the vacation thing, and not some drama between he and Marissa as I had earlier believed. As I told him at the party, there’s always next year.

 

“Back in the day” D&D was known for its alluring modules and “boxed” sets, with the classic Red Box being a distant favorite of many old-time game players. In their never ending search for more capital, Wizards of the Coast decided to recreate this phenomenon for D&D 4.0, a notion I am both offended by and enthusiastic for. Even though my campaign is on a bit of a hiatus, and well past the first five levels, I wont lie that I would buy a starter box set as described in their announcement article. The idea of releasing box sets for beginnings and DMs is a move they probably should have done from the get-go, since the amount of new-comers to this edition of D&D at this point in the game is much slimmer than it was this time last year; still, to get it rolling now may set them up for a few more years of similar product releases. I feel bad for WoTC because they are pressured to sell products: their adventure modules switched halfway through the Paragon tier to tile-based maps in a big push to get people to buy their tile products instead of ripping their map images or drawing one’s own. They’ve done a good job of re-branding their miniature line, and hopefully these box sets will give the same feeling. I’ll always feel a tad bitter because they’re coming out now and not during the time I was in highschool. The opportunities for me to play with tiles, minis, and old-school character sheets are sadly over.

 

When not banning their own players for working through new content, Blizzard was working on setting up their Armory webspace to allow for RSS feeds wherever you damn well please. This has paved the way for a somewhat catchy looking Facebook app, and gave Remy a good push in the right direction to update his blog! Coincidentally, I had just finished a weekend’s worth of FTP housekeeping, ending in the trimming of my blog links on the right there; if you hadn’t posted in like 6+ months, I cut you for the sake of cleanliness. In light of this, I am glad to pin him back on there until next year when I do this all over again (fuck). Austin went the other direction, deleting his posts in the few days since I’ve done all of this, so I guess I had to take him out too. This is good timing, as I wrote about an amazing and rare activity sighting on his blog this time last year. Oy! Now look, I don’t mean to begrudge anyone for not blogging on this here Table Del Shaky, and my bitching doesn’t limit itself to just the handful of you; I set up several blogs for Valikorlia and the only one to really put it to use is Wind in his never ending quest to comic it up. In other website news, I have spent some time helping Austin’s talented friend Marty with a slice of my bandwidth, and I’m glad to see him plugging along on Roomland.

 

Let’s talk gaming. I’ve been putting some time into Global Agenda, an online shooter with some neat features that puts it in a grade above similar titles in the genre. It’s a game where skill is fairly persistent through leveling, so you don’t have that much of an advantage over a new player even at max level. I think the big seller for a lot of players is AVA mode, where agencies (guilds) compete against one another for hexes on a big grid map. Personally, I’ve just been participating in the PVE missions and enjoying what is more or less a polished re-imagining of Starsiege Tribes. As for other PC games, I did note that Fallout 3 is coming out with a New Vegas chapter in what may be the greatest (and last) of their planned DLC before serious work begins on a sequel. And speaking of Vegas, Sega announced that their secret new game, Project “Needlemouse”, was actually a new 2D Sonic game this whole time! What a surprise, right? I don’t know how much of a secret it was, though, considering I’d never even heard of that project until just now and I think anyone with a brain could have figured it out. Then again, after so many let-downs, I wonder if people didn’t just shrug it off as another bullshit 3D Sonic game where he has a new weapon, a new side-kick, and an all new reason for working together with Dr. Robotnik. Will this new game manage to please so many jaded fans after so long? I dunno. I’m still waiting for the next Crash Bandicoot! No? Spyro the Dragon, then.

I’ve never had a root canal before, but this was truly a simple experience. Not unlike in Mega Man, the hardest part was the journey to the final challenge; I was only tasked with sitting in a chair for an hour and a half and man, I do that shit all day. Though being as it was a morning appointment, I was very tired and the three shots of Novocaine to my gums slowly crept up to my left eye so I could barely keep it open. If I ever need to go as the Hunchback of Notre Dame for Halloween, I definitely know how to get the whole bug-eyed look down.

 

When I moved into this apartment, I went through beforehand and threw out a lot of the junk that had been collecting in my room. As the move-in day came and went, I still had much to pack up at the old house and I’ve finally reached a point where I can safely say that the rooms Garrett and I had at Rocky Road have been relinquished to my mother, who has now had them re-painted and planned out for new use. While I was there for my aunt’s birthday party the other night, I got to see the reconstruction and I have to say I am pleased with it. New baseboards, furniture, and the paint isn’t too ugly either. Up until the last moment, though, I still had shelves hanging with books and toys and other things I refused to let go of but never really paid any attention to. Tonight, I spent some more time working on unpacking and actually dealing with more of that stuff. I have dozens of books that I will never read again, but hate to throw away; I just know there’s a local library out there that would love to take these, if even to sell them in a bargain bin for half a buck.

 

In particular, I want to talk about two problem areas I have with collecting kitsch: namely, that of calendars and birthday cards. I’ve kept every wall calendar I’ve owned since 2002, for reasons largely unexplainable other than I wanted to be able to go back and look at any scribbles I may have left myself to denote what was going on in my life at the time. This is an inherently flawed plan, as I do very little notations on physical calendars, instead looking to digital copies for appointments and other information. Still, sorting through the years I was glad to see small messages about Garrett’s 18th birthday or when my job at Petco started. I hadn’t realized it was in 2004, nor do I have much in the way of activity-evidence for that period of time, so it was worth keeping them for that reason alone. And while I have them in a stack here, by the trash can, I can’t help but think I could just keep growing my collection with Jeff’s fanciful gift after 2010 is over and done with. And then there are birthday cards, whose warm wishes make me feel incredibly and unjustifiable guilt whenever I throw one away. Someone took the time to write me a card, sometimes even more than the usual “love, NAME” with tiny sketches or jokes. I reflected on them all one last time, though, and chalked it up to doing more than what most people with theirs. I was able to gleam a few addresses off of old envelopes for my contact list, which was nice, but beyond that they are off to fill some valley-sized hole. Like a time capsule the world wants to forget about.

 

February already, huh? Living with Garrett for an uninterrupted month has been a lot of fun, but I am looking forward to my friend moving in sometime in the middle of next month. If for no other good reason than it gives me a definite date on when I need to have everything looking the way it should. You don’t even want to know the status of hanging my drapes or pictures. I think somewhere there’s an original drawing by one very talented Andrew Hussie just waiting to adorn my stairway wall, and I have a litter of family photos that need to be framed and placed on tables or windowsills. Got plenty of rugs, though. God damn.

I thought what I’d do was, I’d pretend I was a halfway decent writer.

 

J.D. Salinger died the other day, and as the biggest little bitch in modern American writing, I wish him well in whatever afterlife he’s off to. I remember reading Catcher in the Rye and absolutely loathing the man, he who wrote this spectacular pile of horseshit and then cut himself off from the rest of the world like some damned hermit-genius. And instead of becoming a pariah, the man’s work was shoveled into the mouths of hundreds of thousands of teenagers throughout the country, told to find the deeper, hidden meaning behind one young man’s tale of crying and bitching through a few days of his miserable life. The fact that Catcher in the Rye remains our most beloved coming of age story in America is probably contributing to the downfall of society. Or to the sales of screamo music, anyways.

 

I awoke Monday morning with the most painful toothache I’ve ever experienced, and the fact that it was sustained indefinitely made things worse by a magnitude you can’t even imagine. Further was my agony increased when I discovered we had no pain meds, not a meager tablet amongst the stock of band-aids and cough-drops. I searched online in the minutes before work started, reading up on all sorts of hokey folk cures for tooth ache. The results were mostly horrible; having no actual garlic, I swapped my tooth with garlic powder– It didn’t work, and the taste was awful. I read that hot water and baking soda was a sure fix, so I tired it out with the only stuff we had on hand: the kind you leave in your fridge to absorb the odors. So not only did it not work to cure my pain, but it tasted like burning ass and pizza. By the time work rolled around, I was swapping vanilla extract for the alcohol content on my tooth, all in a vain and pathetic attempt at curtailing my self-imposed torture. I finally gave up and resigned myself to chewing on ice until the tooth numbed itself away; this respite lasted two minutes at a time, so I went through a lot of ice on Monday. After work, I called up the dentist and the earliest I could get in was Friday, so in the meantime I have had a steady amount of vicodin to get me through the week. It makes me somewhat tired and loopy, but it does its job well. I figure it’s time I had my first root canal. I’ve earned it.

 

I found the demo for Dark Void entirely dissatisfying, the type of experience so poorly ported over to the PC that the control tips still mentioned a controller “stick” instead of the mouse. Maybe it was just the choice of having their demo include a flying section of gameplay, but I wasn’t impressed by it at all. I started the fourth episode of Strong Bad, but got distracted about twenty minutes in and haven’t checked back. Amo mentioned he was playing Dungeon Fighter, so I hopped on to try it out with him. It seems like a lot of fun, and the price is right. I’m trying a gunner out and I need to find my USB gamepad, since its keyboard layout is just begging to be replaced with a more genuine control scheme. I fail when it comes to the built-in combo system, but I still manage to get by well enough. Any game that reminds you of the old D&D arcade stands is a winner in my book.

 

So, the Apple iPad. I admit, it’s a really neat looking gadget, but there’s no way it’s going to “change the face” of anything. It will definitely rock the boat when it comes to the realm of ebooks, however. But while it’s a convincing enough PDA, its limitations shut out too many demographics: business men wont use it because it can’t take phone calls, artists wont use it because its multi-touch doesn’t offer intricate drawing capabilities, , and gamers will never be able to get over sparse library of games and questionable motion controls. Still, the price point puts me in an odd place in this tug-of-war between too expensive and trivial; 30 dollars a month for internet anywhere is better than any 3G laptop or phone offering, even if you’re confined to running everything through Safari in a lame attempt at multitasking IM clients, Facebook, Youtube, et al. I opted for a simple cellphone solution for my home line because I didn’t want to spend some unfortunate amount, but 30 is nearing a sweet spot. The iPad, if nothing else, will be the king of mobile internet surfing. Begrudging aside, I cannot wait to get my hands on one for testing our software’s mobile incarnation.

How about this weather we’re having, eh? In what is surely the first ( and hopefully the last ) time in our lives, this little slice of American life got itself an ominous tornado warning when our normally warm-feeling winds hooked up with the frigid cold-front of the north. I’ve been told this is the kind of weather that the pacific northwest, a la Seattle, is used to getting and that we’re experiencing it now thanks to a donkey-punch from another storm pushing it south. Who’da thunk it? Anyways: it’s rainy, windy, and I’m inside watching it all happen with the smug satisfaction of a mad scientist, my maniacal laughter drowned out only by the occasional boom of thunder and an angry shout from Garrett over his latest Demon Souls mishap.

 

It’s been with a renewed interest that I’ve been pouring over my D&D notes and plans, organizing them a bit clearer now that I’ve been made to physically do so with all of the materials in my garage. After I had put away the last box of plastic and pewter figurines, I realized that we wouldn’t really be able to host any games in the near future. Marissa’s absence aside, I wasn’t sure how a mounted projector was going to work with the roof in our garage, and the problem of a missing table has yet to be solved. I think that, with everyone’s mixed schedules, it would be more prudent to host online games through maptools. Now I just have to get over being disappointed with people not watching my randomly-updated FB group page and straight out invite people to sessions. Oh, commitment.

 

An update on the list I gave awhile ago: when people told me the port for Bully to the PC was bad, I didn’t know it was “unplayable” bad. I can even forgive half of the first level not rendering, but when the loading-bar screen finished doing its thing after a cut-scene but didn’t bother to start up the camera so that I could see the game world instead of its looping, three-picture nightmare… well, needless to say I’ve uninstalled that wasted potential. Out of the five Strongbad games, I’ve finished three, oftentimes with the help of Garrett who, after hearing the delightful sounds of Strong, makes haste to my bed where he lounges in observation. I’ve filled the “void” in my heart for… Hitman. I heard the Dark Void game was horrible, but haven’t tried it out yet. Tower defense games are a last resort, so I’ll work on that other stuff later. Dragon Age still deserves my time, but in a way that would require far more time than I am comfortable with right now. Oh, commitment. (again)

 

I got my tax information from work the other day and was finished with my the whole thing in under ten minutes. I’m not getting as much back from Uncle Sam as Garrett is, but any amount back is good for me considering the huge amount that some folks end up shelling out. I wont begin to pretend to understand the way that tax brackets work, so I wont get into any talks of fairness or anything like that. I’m just glad they make it easy for a single man who owns no property, has no dependents and no liabilities, to file his taxes with nothing more than a W2 and an internet connection. And seriously, who’s going to miss mailing their taxes in, anyhow?

 

Well that’s all for now. The coldest push of this storm is yet to come, but I’ve got a nice coat waiting for me in the morning.

 

Martin Luther King Jr. is my homeboy, and I am so happy to have a three-day weekend in his honor. Not as happy as Garrett, mind you, who’s said on multiple occasions that he needs a “vacation from vacationing” to just sit around and do whatever he damn well pleases. Personally, I feel as if I squander the time unless I have something to specifically commit to, so I’ve already gone and spent one of my three days out with my mom, Austin, and Garrett shopping and the like. Last night, we stopped in after work to help break down beds and pack up the remainder of our belongings; Garrett somehow managed to pull his back out while picking up a box, so he’s been hobbling about ever since.

 

We visited Marukai, which is a fun little Asian market in Costa Mesa that I’ve heard of several times but never had a chance to visit until now; it is neat to go, because it feels like a store ripped right of Japan. I don’t know if that’s necessarily a good thing, but it was fun to see all the sorts of things that a Japanese expatriate might enjoy. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bigger display case for Pocky in my life, and English was definitely not the preferred written language for the products they sold. We fished out some real-sugar Coca Cola for my aunt’s birthday at the end of the month, and I was surprised to see them come in bottles so large. They are apparently the size that every Coke used to come in, back in the 60’s and 70’s before everything turned to Hi-Fructose Corn Syrup and the only time you ever saw the beverage in a glass was in those small novelty bottles. Garrett found some tempura ingredients, and scored a small amount of raw tuna for his own enjoyment later. I don’t know what the infatuation is with Boba, but it’s definitely not an Asian-American only thing. Or a Star Wars thing.

 

Before we made it to the market, the ominous ultra-warehouse Ikea was just off the freeway and demanded a visit. We paid tribute to the Swedes by purchasing some wine glasses (guess who) and some other knick-knacks. I admit, for all of my scrupulous eying of Ikea and its wares, its outlets remain near the top of my “places you would hide out during a zombie apocalypse” list. The multi-level, comfortable living with added food kitchen is too appealing in a setting where a finale fight through their warehouse level holds surprise at every Ektorp. If Valve decided to make it into a L4D campaign, you’d be sure to kept at the edge of your POÄNG.

 

After all of that fun, I dropped by Costco on the way home to sign up for a membership so now I can buy all of life’s essentials in a bulk pack of 20 units or more. You wouldn’t believe the essentials that get forgotten during a move-in, and no list is ever complete when you pen one in the planning stages. Some day, I hope you all experience the agony that is not having a cheese grater on hand for quesadillas, or no toilet plunger after jambalaya night. In other news, scented candles are my new best friend.

 

Here’s a list: Bully (Scholarship Edition), Episodes 2-5 of Strong Bad’s CGFP, Defense Grid: The Awakening, Dragon Age Origins, Hitman: Bloodmoney, WoW, and the demo for Dark Void on the PC. All of these are things in my possession that I would like to play through and enjoy, but I’m clogging the tubes with too many a game to get any sweet experience in. I’ve got three episodes left of Clone High, a few movies here and there, and some Venture Brothers to catch up on as well. Oh, but I’m not nearly done yet: shopping, exercising, and completing the garage (to look something like it did at Rocky Rd.) are all so far back on the list that they’re secluded on the second page. What a happy little content machine January is.