11.26.2009

Miles [s]

VA
Two weekends ago was a trip out east to the Commonwealth. Justin and I co-opped Army of Two, ODST, and New Mario, start to finish on consecutive days. Monday featured some epic Halo firefight scenarios. Of course we mixed it up with some MST, Always Sunny, and a trip to the Dulles air museum. Mandy was awesome throughout, and filled me in on some of the great new J-isms that I've missed.



Mario provides some nostalgic sidescrolling action, with a few new motion control elements that tend to be very challenging. The game resurrects the Mario 1, 3, and 4 formula but adds three more simultaneous players. Two at a time provided some helpful bootstrapping and agonizing coordination, I await and fear the day Kevin, Cheryl, and Ty come over.



LV

I finally made it to the annual Friendsgiving event at Bret and Courtney's place in Vegas. After a lengthy drive everybody met up to hang out at the MGM. I think everyone did well after leaving the craps tables.



Dawn broke shortly after we finished our Del Taco and *bertos, and it was much like old times.



Many a ping pong ball was thrown, with the fantasy-inspired keeping of statistics and awarding of trophies.



Out back, Kaffey got along splendidly with Buddy and Chunko. The dogs spent most of the weekend flopped on the ground.



Saturday night was all business as every capable chef prepared their dish, and the chef de chefs deep fried the seasonal entree. Of course the meal was top notch.



Sleeping followed. With fantasy matchups and wiffle the next day.



LA
Proper Thanksgiving for me was courtesy of Jessica's family. Again, an excellent meal with novel variations such as sausage stuffing and chocolate bourbon pecan pie.

I had a fun experience on the return trip. The v1 was getting two very strong signals on my tail, and I was soon passed by a chip. The clutchness of the device was demonstrated as the two signals indicated now in front and behind, encouraging me to let the second cop speed past and nab the guy following the first. I'm not sure why they had radar on, but it was a fun procedure to watch.

SD, at last
Today I saw my house in daylight for the first time in weeks. So I put up some Christmas lights and researched appetizers for Connie's thing.



Scott and I went to see The Road. It was very faithful to the book, I almost pined for a few new scenes since I knew how each would play out. While McCarthy's prose does not lack visual descriptiveness, seeing his world is a great way to experience the story. I'm not sure the sense of despair comes across quite as well, but I don't know how it could have been achieved without excessive monotony.



I downloaded Dragon Age since it's Bioware and got killer reviews. I have a long way to go, but it doesn't strike me as much of an improvement on Mass Effect. Of course, anytime EA's involved...

And lastly, a message from Kafka's nose: n chyt6

Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

12.05.2008

Time lapse blogography [s]



So the ol' 1.6 Athlon setup finally choked. Hard to say what it was, I've failed to diagnose the problem hardware having independently swapped everything out. I'll revisit when I'm setting the box up as a terminal in the garage.

The new stuff:
  • ASUS M3N78 Pro mobo. $100. Supports all the nice things, particularly sli and 1066 ram.
  • AMD Phenom X3 2.3. $110. Three core, their second tier.
  • PNY GeForce 9800GT. $160. Listed for a whole lot more. The gig of video memory should help with photo editing.
Of course, Fry's gave me the X3 2.1 and I didn't realize it until they'd closed. I had to stop by the following day and recover the 200,000,000 hz they owed me.

The near-term purchases include a sata disk, another two cheap gigs of ram, and maybe a new display.

And, well, I'm borrowing Curt's monitor, the power supply is sitting on the case, and there are boards sprawled about my desk area. But at least everything is functional.

The hiatus is explained, now rewind.



Thanksgiving was good. The new house accommodates well.



I snagged Madden '09 for entertainment purposes. My dad picked it right up and Jon wouldn't be separated from the game, save for by real football. There's not much to say about it - being an EA franchise - except it's generally enjoyable, graphically unimpressive, and Cris Collinsworth follows Madden's act very closely.



Taboo was a riot, particularly the last round where Mom, Connie, and I netted several points from Mark, Jon, and Erik.





The hallway floor went in fine. 'How did you overcome the itis?', you might ask. Well I peered in the fridge and made a glorious connection:
  1. Red Bull
  2. Orange juice
Iced and stirred together, pure genius. It's like Sunny D with stimulants.



The stairs are the only remaing hardwood to be done. You've come a long way, baby. The constructon tiredom led to my second genius (derived re-)invention: post-Thanksgiving pizza.
  1. A fresh pizza from Round Table: the canvas.
  2. Leftover turkey piled on top.
  3. Mashed potatoes piled on top.
Delightful.

Thanksgiving weekend also saw d'Chris's d'Brickapult claw its way from the grave to a winning record and fourth seed in the Medieval Gridiron playoffs. Similarly, Santos surmounted the impossible and overcame a large point differential to knock James out of contention. It's been a white knuckle end to a unimpressive season.

This weekend I'm up against Potats' team, which is predicted to beat mine by 25 points even after his tight end netted zero on Thursday.

Sunday also featured the long-awaited return to the water. It was pretty good-sized, but rides were characterized by straight drop-bottom turn-close, so not exactly elegant. It's phenomenal how life on land maintains absolutely zero of the muscles required for paddling.

A few quotables:
  • Schooled three little college guys. They seemed not happy to lose to a girl.
  • Go Raiders! ... We're horrible. Marty! Marty! Marty!
  • I heard you put Rob and Dave against the glass.
  • I am ridiculously addicted to yr blog. Will you please update it more often?


Epilogue:
I'm a firm believer in giving the people what they want, so I'll break you off one more piece of culinary revelation.
  1. Sirloin burger with ample Dorchestershire sauce. You probably don't have that, so you can substitute Worchestershire sauce instead.
  2. Leftover turkey.
  3. Fried onions.
  4. Sourdough.

Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,