More cruise thoughts... I think Eryn put it best: "People who like to _vacation_ take cruises. People who like to _travel_ don't."

I think I'm a traveller. I don't appreciate being pampered the way some people do, and I think I'd rather buy lunch at a cart by the side of the road from a local fisherman than go to a fancy restaurant. I don't really like meeting new people. I'm terrible at making smalltalk with strangers. I don't like shows with audience participation. In short, I think I'm not a cruiser. I don't mean to sound like I'm above it or anything... it's just not for me.

Me and D and Iwan and Sara saw "Brokeback Mountain" yesterday afternoon, and then they joined us for dinner at our place afterwards. Always fun to hang out. The movie was definitely above-average and worth seeing. Pretty thought provoking. Fourth-graders that we are, Iwan and I couldn't resist making various gay jokes afterwards.

The whole gay thing really fascinates me. I remember being 12 or so, and being friends with boys, yet somehow knowing that girls had some sort of magic spark about them. It wasn't a conscious choice, it was just there. I suddenly cared what they thought about me, and tried to impress them in any way I could. But clearly there are little boys who feel that spark for other little boys. How weird would that be, especially knowing that most of their peers were different? Crazy.

I so much don't buy the "being gay is a choice" theory, by the way. And that's perhaps why I think I liked the movie. It wasn't a movie about two cowboys who fall in love and spend the rest of their lives together in homosexual bliss. It's about two tough guys in a time and place when being gay could literally be a death sentence, wanting so desperately to be straight, yet finding themselves unable to resist their own needs, very much in spite of themselves. That inner struggle was really well portrayed.

Heath Ledger did a great job, too. Any award nominations that go his way are well deserved. And what a piece of ass!

:)

Cruisin'

As I posted earlier, Diana and I really wanted to get away for a little vacation. We slacked a little in terms of making plans, and eventually decided on taking a Mexican Riveria cruise, thinking that it was the right combination of cheap, easy, yet still foreign/exotic.

So, on Sunday morning (right in the middle of the Charger game) we drove up to Long Beach, found the cruise terminal, and got our first view of the ginormous boat that we'd be spending the next week on. We waited in a LONG line to get all our luggage and tickets and stuff all sorted out. (On the drive up, we were listening to Chargers on the radio, but it crapped out right at the end of the game. I was dying to know how it turned out!) Soon enough, though, we fought through the masses of people and made our way on board.

Seasickness was my primary concern. I'd read lots of reviews online, and talked with lots of people to guage how realistic a problem seasickness would be. Note that I've been on various boats dozens of times, and only gotten sick once, but it was still a concern of mine. Being seasick for a week sounded like hell. I took some Bonine the morning of embarkation, and while it didn't knock me out, I was pretty spaced out.

We got on board, found our room, and got all our stuff unpacked. Our room was nice. About half the size of a typical hotel bedroom, but certainly comfortable and not too small at all. We had a nice little deck, which was great for when we wanted to get some fresh air, or prop the door open to hear the sound of the ocean at night.

We spent most of the first afternoon exploring the ship. We didn't leave until that evening, since there was some flight that was delayed and we were waiting on that. I'd never been on a cruise ship before, and it was pretty impressive. There were lots of little bars and lounges and places to sit, both inside and out. This particular ship (the Carnival Pride) was decorated in all sorts of faux rennaisance artwork (I mean ALL over the place), which was kinda cheesy, but whatever. On the whole, I thought the people-density on the ship was about perfect. It wasn't as crowded as I expected, though there were almost always people around. But you could still find spots to be alone if you wanted.

That first night, when we started moving, Diana and I were very aware of the boat rocking and rolling. Not scared, but very aware. And then we left the breakwater of Long Beach harbor and hit the open ocean, and we REALLY started moving. We were really both surprised at how much we noticed it, seeing how big the ship was. We got pretty nervous, and both took medicine just in case, and went to bed soon after. I'm happy to say that we soon were used to the constant rocking and moving, and were completely fine through the rest of the trip, medication-free.

The next two days were spent on the open ocean, sailing down to Puerto Vallerta. We spent the time exploring the ship more, finding sunny spots on the deck for book-reading, eating, playing cards, etc. The onboard library had computers for accessing the Internet (at $.75 a minute, unless you wanted to buy minutes in bulk, which I didn't). I spent a couple bucks checking my Fantasy Football boys, since I didn't know if I'd advanced to the finals or not (I did!)

There was a cruise director who, as you can guess, was full of pep and viv, and he'd provide to us, via a nightly newsletter, all sorts of activities and so forth for the following day. Things like a "Hairy Chest" contest, "Carnival Fear Factor", bingo, trivia contests, etc. They also had some shows in the evening, like a comedian and a "Vegas-style song and dance" show. We attended two of these and left within the first 10 minutes or so. The comedian was especially horrible. His first joke was about going through airport security and having his toenail clippers taken away from him. "That's right, lady... I'm going to take over the world, one toe at a time!" Ugh.

Our fellow shipmates were mostly people around our age. Lots of parents 5-10 years older than us with children. Not very many elderly folks. Almost every evening there were parties and dances and stuff in various lounges and decks, none of which we attended. Diana and I don't particularly like dancing, and while I like hanging out in bars having a drink, that's really more of a social thing. If it's just me and D, I'd rather take a walk or sit somewhere quieter, not really party it up. We also weren't really that interested in meeting new people, which I think is a big part of cruising as well.

We only made it to the main dining room once during lunch. We sat at a group table with some other couples, and while they were nice and we made smalltalk during the lunch, I think we both would have preferred our own table. Some of the dinners required "formal attire", and we skipped those. We also had a big mess with our seating time (they have early dinner and late dinner). We were assigned late dinner, but wanted to switch to early, and it took a day or two to get that all sorted out. By the time it was, we'd found we were happy enough with the other food options that we didn't even try again.

The other food options was mainly a buffet with various stations serving different foods. Some main meat-y course with sides, or pizza or sandwiches or salads. There was a little sushi bar which we tried once (and only once). They had a self-serve soft-serve machine which I hit early and often. Breakfast could be ordered the night before and delivered to your room, and we did that every morning, which was pretty nice. All in all, the food was decent. Nothing horrible, but not the best either.

After two full days of travel, we woke up the next morning at P.V. By this time we were pretty excited to get off the boat and get back on dry land. We'd signed up for an excursion that took us to some remote beach where they served us lunch and let us run free for a few hours. So, we found our guy, waited for everyone else, and got on board a little party-boat that would take us to the cove.

On board was a very excited tour-guide kinda guy, who sang and danced for us along the way. He was pretty enthusiastic and funny to watch. Up ahead, he pointed out a group of boats, and commented that that probably meant whales were up there. And indeed they were. As we got closer, we came up on a group of three whales (I think...) Two adult and a baby/juvenile. Or maybe three adults and a kid? In any case, they were jumping out of the water, and slapping their big pectoral fins on the surface and generally being really active. I'd only seen whales a few times before, and that was always just a little hump arching on the surface, and a fluke if we were lucky. This was one of the most incredible things I'd seen in my life. I got as many pictures as I could get, as well as some video. We stayed and watched for a bit, and then continued on. Along the way, we also came right by a giant manta ray, which was awesome to see. I tried to get a picture of it, but you can only barely make it out.

The rest of the day was nice. We pulled up to a beautiful beach, had a buffet lunch, tried snorkling (cold water, not very nice snorkling), and hung out on the beach. They had parrots and a monkey there, which Diana let climb on her. It didn't groom or play with her hair the way that we hoped, but it was still neat to see. On the way back to the ship, there were dolphins jumping and riding in our wake. Very, very cool day in terms of the wildlife we saw. Went to dinner that night at some reccomended restaurant, which was decent but pretty expensive. I had shrimp wrapped in bacon. Yum!

That night we departed, and woke up the next morning in Mazatlan. We did a very similar excursion, where we boarded a boat that took us on a little tour of the bay, and then to another beach for some free-time. The beach was next to a little village, and there were vendors everywhere. We walked a bit and found a nice spot in the shade and napped and read our books. Diana practiced her spanish with various folks which was fun to watch. We found some weird tracks on the beach (I was hoping they were scorpian tracks), and I asked Diana to ask someone what they were. She asked the next vendor who came up to us, and he said "shell" in english, as well as "camina" (walking) and "piqueno" (small). So we figured hermit crab from that. Cute! Soon enough, it was back to the boat (earlier in the afternoon, this time), and off to Cabo.

We didn't have any excursions planned in Cabo, so we spent the morning wandering around the town, eventually making it to the beach and finding some chairs under an umbrella. The chairs belonged to a beachfront restaurant who wanted us to buy something, so we got some juice and an omlette and enjoyed the sun and people watching. There were TONS of vendors selling silver jewelry, wraps and blankets, woven bracelets, hats, pottery, etc. Diana and I tried to decide which would be the worse thing to be selling, and figured it was blankets. The guy was carrying around like 30 of 'em, walking on sand on a blazing hot day.

We eventually departed, walked around for a bit more (we found an internet cafe that was $3 for 30 minutes!) and I got my boys all ready for the following days games. We got some lunch at a shrimp restaurant that we'd been to before with Norm and Teri a few years back. Then, back to the boat for the voyage home.

I think, all in all, our outings were kind of dissapointing. I think both Diana and I prefer closer contact with the natives, staying at a local hotel and going to markets on our own, etc, and not being shuttled around like cattle. I really don't feel that I actually *saw* any real Mexico, which is too bad. But completely expected.

The ride back was REALLY bumpy. We'd heard from someone who'd been on this cruise that the wind and current are all coming from the north, and we were hitting waves head on. I'm not sure if we hit the bit waves that are hitting SoCal these days, but standing out on our porch looking forward, I could definitely watch the front of the boat rise and fall over really big swells. We didn't get sick or take any more medicine, but it was pretty weird.

That motion has stuck with me, even after a full day of being off the boat. When I turn my head or move around, I still feel my body compensating for motion that doesn't exist, kind of throwing me off balance. It's pretty weird, but not too bad.

We spent a full day at sea, and woke up the following morning back at Long Beach, eager to get off the boat and head home. Debarkation was a slow process as we waited for our number to be called, and the drive home was made longer by getting a little lost on our way back. But we finally made it, stopped by home and called my parents, got cleaned up, and spent the evening at Diana's parents house for a nice Christmas dinner and celebration.

That that is the story of our cruise. It was decent. We had fun (mostly spending time and reconnecting with each other, without the distractions of work and life), but I'm not sure we'll take another cruise.

Questions? Comments?

I'll put up the pictures shortly.

Hi everyone!

At my work, we're given a "floating holiday" that must be used between Thanksgiving and New Years (approx). There wasn't really a good day that Diana had off when I could use it, so I'm taking it today! I'm in my comfy clothes, playing some chess and Nethack... I took a nice bath and read my book. Good stuff.

My birthday was on the 6th. Diana and I went out to a nice dinner at Rancho Valencia that night, and we're getting together with my family on Sunday for lunch and the Charger game. I don't feel very needy when it comes to birthdays, but it's nice when my friends and family and coworkers through a "happy birthday" my way. I felt loved.

Speaking of birthdays and presents and things. A coworker asked what I was going to get for Diana for Christmas. I never really know how to explain that Diana and I don't really get each other gifts for occasions like that. Or rather, if we do, it's not a Big Thing, but something small like a game we can play together, or a nice dinner out, or a play or concert or something. Something that isn't very exciting for other people to hear abuot. So I explained about the cruise, and that seemed to be a good enough answer.

I don't think I posted about the cruise yet. We were looking for somewhere to get away for Christmas, since we're not going to Montana this year, and Diana needs some R&R. One thought was Costa Rica, but we were kind of late making plans, and it was pretty expensive. Staying at some all-inclusive Carribean resort was also looked into, but we decided against it. Instead, we're taking a Mexican cruise to places that I've only heard of on the Love Boat (Mazatlan, Peurto Vallerta, etc). I'm looking forward to seeing if I enjoy it. I'm hoping I do, but I also wonder what it will be like. I don't think either of us like the idea of being totally touristy, and that seems to be exactly what cruises are all about. But on the other hand, sometimes it's nice to be a tourist and let someone else take care of everything. I'm also a little worried about sea-sickness, but have read and heard multiple accounts that it's not a problem. Still, I'm taking plenty of remedies, medicinal, herbal, and placebo. :)

In other news, my boy Norm came into a couple Chargers tickets that he couldn't use, so on late notice, I rounded up Iwan and Little Buhr and we hit up the Raiders game. It was a good time, and great to see the Chargers win (and the Raiders lose!). There were a ton of Raider fans there, and I spent a lot of time avoiding eye contact and ready to apoligize profusely for any incidental contact, but there weren't many problems. The only bummer about the event was that we were at Field Level and were forced to stand for the entire game (because everyone else was standing). A minor complaint, though, and thanks again to Norm for the tix. I'm excited every week for the Charger games, hoping not only that they win, but that LT carries my fantasy football boys closer to the coveted Crown of Tinfoil. I just made the playoffs in our league. Very exciting.

Ok, lunch is calling. Smell you all later.

I have a new favorite TV commercial. It's for Adelphia cable DVR service.

There is a dad watching football on TV. His little boy runs up to him eagerly. "Dad, can you read me a story?" A look for horror and dissapointment crosses the dad's face. ("Busted. You're mother sent you in here, didn't she?" he seems to say). The boy notices his hesitation, and sees the TV. "Oh. Football," he says, his dissappointment palpable.

The dad thinks fast. Lord knows he doesn't want to miss the big game! "That's ok. I can *pause live TV!*" He clicks a button, and the action in the TV pauses! The boys eyes light up.

Now, at this point you're supposed to see the father reading his boy a story, putting him to bed, and watching the rest of the game, satisfied that he's had his cake and can eat it to.

Instead, he and his boy spend the evening starting and stopping TV, as if by magic, storytime long forgotten. Who needs storytime when there's football on TV!

Good stuff.

Diana and I just spent an hour or two playing "Indigo Prophecy", a PC adventure game. It's pretty fun. It's mostly classic adventure stuff, but with fun little action sequence mini-games thrown in. We're enjoying it.

Chargers won a close one, and the Birdmen are beating up on the Rat Pack in fantasy football. This pleases me.

Yesterday Diana and I did a bit of work around the house, including putting up closet doors that were taken down a long time ago. Hard work, but they're up. We also bought and hung a tapestry in our living room which improves the looks a bit.

And tommorrow, back to work!

Best chess game ever. I'm rated about 1300. This guy was rated 1429. He took advantage of some early mistakes by me, and was taking me apart piece by piece (literally, I suppose). But I saw a really interesting combination, and was able to win the game!

Here is the game, posted here for future posterity. The interesting bits start around move 20.

So, buttons.

Not so much news to report, but thought I'd update the ol' blog on this Thanksgiving. Diana has two weeks off for Christmas, and I just scheduled a week off, and we're looking for somewhere to travel. Costa Rica was on the list, but now we're looking at the Bahamas, which appears to be a lot cheaper, and might be a bit more accessible around Christmastime. I decided to play Mike Vick for my fantasy boys, so I've got an eye on him in the background. Pretty soon we're going to head over to Diana's parents house for an afternoon of feasting and fun.

I've been doing a bit of fun computer work. I was given access to a hard drive that contained what I understand to be a complete library of Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, Atari 2600, and coin-op arcade games, as well as emulators to run the whole bunch on your PC. I got this copied to my machine, as well as for some friends (particularly Norm, who's planning on building his own arcade cabinet). I've played a lot of Dragon's Lair lately. Crazy for me to think of how many quarters were spent on that game.

We've watched some good Netflix's recently. "Harold and Maude" (MAUDE, eh?) is a classic. We also saw "12 Angry Men", which we both really enjoyed. It's a little forced and predictable, but solidly enjoyable, I thought. Next up is "Modern Times" with Charlie Chaplin.

I recently was in our local Blockbuster renting the last disc of Lost (because Netflix doesn't deliver on Sundays and we *needed* that last disc!), and I couldn't believe how repulsed I was to be in there. I hate video stores. I've spent too many hours of my life wandering around looking for a movie to watch (though I haven't in many years). Netflix rules. Video stores suck.

That's about it for now. My game-programming project has been all but abandoned (but the code is there and can always be returned to). I've been playing Nethack (the ol' standby), as well as "The Movies", which Eryn lent me. I'm having a lot of fun with the latter. There's an adventure game called "Indigo Prophecy" that Diana and I were interested in checking out as well.

Time to get ready for dinner. Hope everyone has a great day!

So... I picked up the cold that Diana had, and have been pretty much shut down for the past few days. I've blown my nose so much it's all raw and cracking. Gross.

Speaking of gross: last night, Diana and I made some dinner (good mac and cheese with broccoli), and were settling down to watch the last Losts we have on DVD. I noticed that my eyes were itchy a little, and I rubbed 'em a bit. All of a sudden, I noticed that my right eye was totally swelling up. Fast. Within a few minutes, my lower eyelid (only) was totally swollen. Like a bullfrog's throat before it croaks. Crazh.

I took a picture. I was going to post it, but it's pretty nasty.

I talked to my pops and took some Benedryl last night, which knocked me out pretty quick. This morning, it was still swollen, but the swelling is slowly spreading down my cheek and decreasing, and I think by tonight it will be all back to normal.

It clearly smacks of a very localized allergic reaction, but I'm totally at a loss as to what caused it. I must have rubbed something into my eye, but I can't think of anything out of the ordinary. Who knows.

Anyhoo, just thought I'd share. I'm feeling better from my cold, which is nice, and am looking forward to the weekend, the Chargers whooping up on the Bills, and the Fightin' Birdmen winning their fantasy game.

I sometimes wonder how life would be different if farts had color.

Discuss.

Hullo everyone!

This weekend, I finally put a backup strategy into place. I bought a
second hard drive (I can't believe how cheaply hard drives can be
aquired these days. I got a 160gig SATA for $50 (after mail-in rebate,
which I've yet to do)), and I bought Norton Ghost 10. Installing the
hard drive was a breeze, and Norton Ghost seems really easy to use. If
everything is working like I'm assuming, then every other evening, I'm
taking a full image of my hard drive, and storing it on my new hard
drive. (Actually, the first image is huge... the subsequent images are
just what's changed since the last backup). So, if my hard drive fails,
restoring should just be a matter of buying a new drive, using Ghost to
write the latest image to it, and rebooting. That's the theory, at
least. I'd REALLY like to test it out, but I'd need a third hard drive
(anyone have a spare SATA hard drive I can borrow?)

Sunday, we watched the Chargers try their hardest to lose to the Jets,
but they made a huge defensive stand on their own 3 yard line.
Unbelievable. I'm pretty sure I would have gone fetal for the rest of
the day if they'd lost. My cousin Mike and his family are in town
visiting, and we met them over at my parents house for dinner. They
have two kids (2'ish and 4'ish) who are unspeakably cute. I spent much
of the night on my knees playing with them. They have big plans of
hitting the Zoo, Wild Animal Park, Sea World, and LegoLand over the
course of 4 or 5 days. Should be fun.

Not a whole lot else going on. Diana has time off from teaching for
both Thanksgiving and Christmas, and we're both ansy to get away for a
vacation, but we haven't nailed anything down yet. Diana just had lunch
with a friend who went on a safari in Kenya, so that has been thrown
into the mix. So many possibilities!

Gotta run...

As frequent readers might remember, I sometimes listen to Christian AM radio. I'm not quite sure why, but I sometimes find it interesting to hear things from a different perspective.

My favorite times, by far, to listen to Christian radio is a) when the latest Harry Potter book comes out, and b) Halloween. Lots of hanky-wringing and "won't someone think of the children" and so forth. It's great.

Last night, on my drive home, the host was inviting callers to call in and discuss whether celebrating Halloween was a good or bad idea. One lady called up and said that lots of Christians have problems with Halloween, citing it's pagan roots. She then went on to list a number of examples of other pagan rituals that are practiced all the time by Christians (particularly wedding rituals: wearing white, flowers, carrying the bride across the threshold, etc... I don't know the veracity of these claims, but she sounded like she knew what she was talking about). Pretty interesting.

The next caller was awesome. I was in tears, laughing. He called up, saying his parents never celebrated Halloween, and he'd never celebrated Halloween, but his 7 year old son really wanted to trick or treat. Not only that, but he wanted to dress up as Jesus. The host, who wasn't against trick-or-treating by any means, thought this sounded like an ok thing, and could even be used as an evangilizing tool. The caller continued: "Well, he doesn't want to go as only Jesus..." The host asked what he meant. "I'm a little embarrassed to say... he wants to go as... Evil Jesus. In, like, black robes and stuff..." He kind of trailed off, ashamed.

There's no possible way I can adequately describe the perfect moment of silence that followed.

The host reacted with aghast horror, shock, and disgust: "No! NO! I... That's... Where.... How did he come up with this idea?!"

They then discussed the possibility of where the kid got the idea that Jesus could be evil, how he heard it from a friend at school, and how that friend was probably part of a cult, or had parents were were really messed up. I kind of stopped listening at this point. It was priceless.

Switching gears... when I was in high school, and my mom was teaching a health-living class for elementary school kids, she felt guilty about giving away candy for Halloween, and decided to give out pencils. I strongly protested (mostly for protection of our house against eggs), and we compromised on a choice of pencils or candy. I wouldn't have believed how those pencils flew into their bags.

This year and last year, Diana and I have done sort of the same thing, giving a choice of either candy or tangerines. I wouldn't have believed it if I didn't see it myself, but at least half the kids took the tangerines over perfectly respectable candy.

Kids these days. Go figure.

Third ascension, first wizard!

I rule.

--------------------------

You offer the Amulet of Yendor to Anhur...--More--
An invisible choir sings, and you are bathed in radiance...--More--
The voice of Anhur booms out: "Congratulations, mortal!"--More--
"In return for thy service, I grant thee the gift of Immortality!"--More--
You ascend to the status of Demigoddess...--More--


DianaFury, chaotic female elven Wizard

            -----                                             -----
             ...|                                             |... 3    3
     ---------..--   ----                             ----   --..---------5
     |.......|...-- --                                   -- --...|.......|
     |.......|$...---                                  %%%---....|A......|5
     |..._.$%-.[[.%($   %                             %%VA&)@%D@.%..A@@..|
     |.......|)...---    %                         $  % %%---5..$|.......| 4
     |.......|..*-- --   %                          %%   -- --...|.......|
     ---------..--   ----|---                     ---%----   --..---------
             ...|      |   -------           -------   |      |...
            -----      |         |           |    $    |      -----
                       -------   --          -   -------
                             |% % --       -- % %|
                             ---%%%----|----   ---
                               | %  %%%        |
                                -------------

DianaFury the Necromancer  St:25 Dx:18 Co:16 In:21 Wi:23 Ch:9  Chaotic
Astral Plane $:0  HP:218(285) Pw:83(322) AC:-32 Exp:22 T:40833

Your inventory
Amulets
o - an uncursed amulet of life saving (being worn)
E - the blessed Eye of the Aethiopica
Weapons
w - the rustproof +5 Frost Brand (weapon in hand)
W - the rustproof +0 Magicbane
Armor
b - an uncursed thoroughly burnt +4 cloak of magic resistance (being worn)
g - an uncursed fireproof +4 pair of speed boots
r - a blessed rusty +5 helm of brilliance (being worn)
J - a blessed +5 silver dragon scale mail (being worn)
L - a blessed +5 Hawaiian shirt (being worn)
M - an uncursed thoroughly burnt +0 pair of levitation boots (being worn)
X - an uncursed rustproof +5 pair of gauntlets of power (being worn)
Comestibles
R - an uncursed lizard corpse
Spellbooks
m - the uncursed Book of the Dead
Potions
Y - an uncursed potion of water
Rings
e - an uncursed ring of slow digestion (on right hand)
V - an uncursed ring of free action
Z - an uncursed ring of conflict (on left hand)
Wands
d - a cursed wand of teleportation (0:2)
j - a wand of death (0:3)
q - a wand of wishing (1:2)
s - a wand of cancellation (0:1)
G - a wand of death (0:1)
K - a wand of cold (0:0)
Q - a wand of digging (0:7)
T - a wand of digging (0:8)
Tools
a - a blessed +0 unicorn horn
h - a blessed bag of holding
l - an uncursed pair of lenses (being worn)
t - a magic marker (1:21)
z - the uncursed Candelabrum of Invocation (no candles attached)
A - an uncursed magic lamp (lit)
F - the Bell of Opening (0:1)
Gems
C - an uncursed luckstone

Contents of the bag of holding:
565 gold pieces
an uncursed amulet of ESP
an uncursed amulet of life saving
an uncursed amulet of life saving
an uncursed amulet of life saving
8 uncursed lembas wafers
an uncursed lizard corpse
15 uncursed scrolls of blank paper
a blessed scroll of blank paper
3 uncursed scrolls of enchant weapon
2 uncursed scrolls of teleportation
an uncursed spellbook of cancellation
an uncursed spellbook of cause fear
an uncursed spellbook of clairvoyance
an uncursed spellbook of create monster
an uncursed spellbook of detect treasure
an uncursed spellbook of drain life
a blessed spellbook of finger of death
a blessed spellbook of identify
an uncursed spellbook of light
an uncursed spellbook of magic mapping
an uncursed spellbook of magic missile
an uncursed spellbook of magic missile
an uncursed spellbook of protection
an uncursed spellbook of restore ability
an uncursed spellbook of sleep
an uncursed spellbook of slow monster
a blessed spellbook of teleport away
2 uncursed diluted potions of full healing
an uncursed potion of confusion
7 uncursed potions of fruit juice
3 uncursed potions of full healing
an uncursed potion of gain energy
3 potions of holy water
an uncursed potion of monster detection
2 blessed potions of object detection
a cursed potion of object detection
an uncursed ring of cold resistance
an uncursed ring of fire resistance
an uncursed ring of poison resistance
an uncursed ring of polymorph
an uncursed ring of regeneration
an uncursed ring of shock resistance
an uncursed ring of stealth
an uncursed ring of sustain ability
an uncursed ring of teleport control
a wand of digging (0:5)
a wand of polymorph (0:0)
a wand of sleep (0:4)
a wand of speed monster (0:5)
an uncursed blindfold
a crystal ball (0:3)
an uncursed magic whistle
an uncursed oil lamp
a +0 pick-axe
a +0 unicorn horn
a +0 unicorn horn
a +0 unicorn horn

Final attributes
You were piously aligned
You were fire resistant
You were cold resistant
You were sleep resistant
You were shock resistant
You were poison resistant
You were magic-protected
You saw invisible
You were telepathic
You were warned
You had infravision
You caused conflict
You had teleport control
You were levitating
You had slower digestion
You were protected
You had reflection
Your life would have been saved
You were extremely lucky (13)
You had extra luck
Bad luck did not time out for you
Good luck did not time out for you
You survived

Spells known in the end
Name Level Category Fail
a - force bolt 1* attack 3%
b - slow monster 2* enchantment 3%
c - cancellation 7 matter 100%
d - sleep 1 enchantment 3%
e - clairvoyance 3 divination 3%
f - create monster 2 clerical 3%
g - cause fear 3* enchantment 3%
h - restore ability 4* healing 72%
i - magic mapping 5 divination 3%
j - protection 1 clerical 3%
k - magic missile 2 attack 0%
l - detect treasure 4 divination 3%
m - drain life 2 attack 3%
n - identify 3 divination 3%
o - knock 1 matter 3%
p - wizard lock 2 matter 3%
q - healing 1 healing 3%
r - invisibility 4 escape 72%
s - finger of death 7 attack 4%
t - dig 5 matter 90%

Vanquished creatures
Asmodeus
Baalzebub
Orcus
Juiblex
The Wizard of Yendor (9 times)
Pestilence (thrice)
Famine (thrice)
a high priest (4 created)
a mastodon
Medusa
6 iron golems (7 created)
2 master liches
2 titans (3 created)
a glass golem (5 created)
3 balrogs (5 created)
6 purple worms (9 created)
a gray dragon
2 silver dragons
7 red dragons (14 created)
3 white dragons (8 created)
3 orange dragons (4 created)
5 black dragons
a blue dragon (4 created)
13 green dragons (15 created)
3 yellow dragons (4 created)
11 minotaurs (22 created)
5 jabberwocks (9 created)
The Dark One
8 baluchitheria
15 Angels (30 created)
5 demiliches (4 created)
Vlad the Impaler
7 stone golems (11 created)
4 master mind flayers
19 Olog-hai (12 created)
4 pit fiends (11 created)
a sandestin
2 hell hounds (10 created)
3 titanotheres
2 trappers (6 created)
7 disenchanters (9 created)
34 vampire lords (33 created)
3 skeletons (5 created)
3 shopkeepers (8 created)
28 aligned priests (41 created)
11 captains (12 created)
6 shades
7 liches (8 created)
3 clay golems
7 nurses (31 created)
6 ice devils (8 created)
3 nalfeshnees
6 lurkers above
3 Aleaxes (4 created)
3 frost giants (4 created)
8 ettins (9 created)
2 golden nagas (4 created)
7 black puddings (10 created)
22 vampires (30 created)
7 lieutenants (10 created)
34 ghosts (39 created)
a healer
a monk
a ranger
a rogue
3 queen bees
7 winged gargoyles (9 created)
9 giant mimics (17 created)
8 zruties (12 created)
7 fire giants (14 created)
8 ogre kings (13 created)
3 ice trolls (1 created)
15 rock trolls (13 created)
9 umber hulks (11 created)
6 flesh golems
6 Elvenkings (8 created)
a doppelganger (2 created)
13 hezrous (16 created)
2 bone devils (7 created)
a large mimic (4 created)
2 wumpuses (5 created)
a fire vortex (7 created)
a baby long worm
a baby purple worm
7 long worms (8 created)
10 couatls (11 created)
12 stalkers (21 created)
18 air elementals (20 created)
15 fire elementals (30 created)
3 earth elementals (27 created)
44 water elementals (49 created)
2 hill giants (5 created)
7 giant mummies (12 created)
a black naga
10 xorns (11 created)
12 giant zombies (16 created)
12 elf-lords (17 created)
15 sergeants (16 created)
3 water demons
12 barbed devils (18 created)
3 vrocks (6 created)
3 salamanders (9 created)
5 wargs (9 created)
6 winter wolves (7 created)
3 hell hound pups
13 small mimics (23 created)
5 glass piercers (6 created)
a warhorse (2 created)
8 steam vortices (10 created)
17 xans (23 created)
3 ettin mummies (4 created)
2 ogre lords (4 created)
9 quantum mechanics (16 created)
6 trolls (8 created)
3 sasquatches
3 wood golems
3 erinyes
4 mariliths
2 djinn (3 created)
6 electric eels
7 gelatinous cubes (10 created)
3 pyrolisks (6 created)
2 large dogs
5 freezing spheres
2 flaming spheres (5 created)
6 shocking spheres (10 created)
4 large cats (5 created)
5 tigers (11 created)
7 gargoyles
4 dwarf kings
17 tengu (19 created)
9 ochre jellies (13 created)
13 leocrottas (18 created)
9 energy vortices (11 created)
6 mountain centaurs (8 created)
6 stone giants (11 created)
3 elf mummies (5 created)
2 human mummies (3 created)
4 red nagas (5 created)
5 green slimes (8 created)
31 pit vipers (39 created)
2 pythons (3 created)
27 cobras (34 created)
50 wraiths (52 created)
5 carnivorous apes (6 created)
15 ettin zombies (18 created)
7 leather golems
6 Grey-elves (14 created)
44 soldiers
9 horned devils
6 succubi (8 created)
8 incubi (9 created)
6 chameleons (7 created)
3 crocodiles (4 created)
24 giant beetles (27 created)
3 quivering blobs (5 created)
21 cockatrices (29 created)
12 wolves (15 created)
6 lynxes (8 created)
6 panthers (7 created)
10 gremlins (11 created)
3 spotted jellies (5 created)
53 leprechauns (56 created)
4 orc-captains (7 created)
4 iron piercers (8 created)
2 mumakil
9 giant spiders (12 created)
3 scorpions (9 created)
6 horses (9 created)
5 ice vortices
6 black lights (9 created)
53 vampire bats (62 created)
2 forest centaurs (4 created)
5 gnome kings (6 created)
2 orc mummies (3 created)
3 dwarf mummies (4 created)
8 ogres (15 created)
2 brown puddings
9 rust monsters (13 created)
15 owlbears (19 created)
5 yetis (7 created)
2 gold golems (3 created)
4 werewolves (5 created)
2 Green-elves (7 created)
3 giant eels
12 lizards (13 created)
14 chickatrices (16 created)
4 dogs (6 created)
2 dingos
a housecat (2 created)
6 jaguars
4 dwarf lords
a blue jelly (5 created)
4 white unicorns (5 created)
3 gray unicorns (4 created)
a black unicorn (3 created)
4 dust vortices (5 created)
15 ravens
3 plains centaurs (4 created)
3 gnome mummies (4 created)
6 snakes (7 created)
4 water moccasins
20 apes (22 created)
22 human zombies (23 created)
6 rope golems
4 Woodland-elves (7 created)
33 soldier ants (36 created)
8 fire ants
6 bugbears
an imp (2 created)
a lemure (6 created)
11 quasits (13 created)
5 wood nymphs
3 water nymphs
a mountain nymph (4 created)
12 Mordor orcs (13 created)
14 Uruk-hai
4 orc shamans (5 created)
4 rock piercers (8 created)
5 rock moles (6 created)
3 ponies (5 created)
6 fog clouds (16 created)
11 yellow lights (14 created)
2 shriekers (5 created)
a violet fungus (3 created)
24 gnome lords
6 gnomish wizards (8 created)
3 kobold mummies (4 created)
a red naga hatchling
a black naga hatchling
a golden naga hatchling
8 gray oozes (11 created)
5 barrow wights (7 created)
18 elf zombies
11 ghouls (12 created)
4 straw golems (5 created)
3 paper golems (4 created)
3 jellyfish
34 giant ants (35 created)
3 little dogs
10 floating eyes (12 created)
21 dwarves (25 created)
6 homunculi (8 created)
3 kobold lords
2 kobold shamans (3 created)
18 hill orcs
24 rothes (25 created)
a rabid rat
4 centipedes
9 giant bats (10 created)
3 monkeys
7 orc zombies (8 created)
11 dwarf zombies
4 wererats
2 werejackals
7 iguanas
76 killer bees (80 created)
2 acid blobs (3 created)
5 gas spores
8 hobbits
5 manes (6 created)
3 large kobolds (4 created)
6 hobgoblins
5 giant rats
13 cave spiders (16 created)
2 brown molds (4 created)
2 yellow molds (5 created)
2 green molds (4 created)
4 red molds (5 created)
68 gnomes (71 created)
9 garter snakes
21 gnome zombies (22 created)
11 geckos
11 jackals
a fox
4 kobolds
7 goblins
14 grid bugs
9 bats
10 lichens (11 created)
17 kobold zombies
14 newts
2259 creatures vanquished.

Genocided or extincted species:
hobbits
dwarves
bugbears
dwarf lords
dwarf kings
mind flayers
master mind flayers
liches
demiliches
master liches
arch-liches
erinyes (extinct)
jellyfish
piranhas
sharks
giant eels
electric eels
krakens
17 species genocided.
1 species extincted.

Voluntary challenges
You genocided 17 types of monsters
You polymorphed 579 items
You never changed form
You used 4 wishes

Your skills at the end
Fighting Skills
bare handed combat [Basic]
Weapon Skills
dagger [Expert]
quarterstaff [Basic]
Spellcasting Skills
attack spells [Expert]
divination spells [Expert]
enchantment spells [Basic]
clerical spells [Skilled]

Goodbye DianaFury the Demigoddess...
You went to your reward with 2942122 points,
The Book of the Dead (worth 10000 zorkmids and 25000 points)
Frost Brand (worth 3000 zorkmids and 7500 points)
The Candelabrum of Invocation (worth 5000 zorkmids and 12500 points)
The Eye of the Aethiopica (worth 4000 zorkmids and 10000 points)
The Bell of Opening (worth 5000 zorkmids and 12500 points)
Magicbane (worth 3500 zorkmids and 8750 points)
4 amulets of life saving (worth 600 zorkmids),
1 amulet of ESP (worth 150 zorkmids),
and 565 pieces of gold, after 40833 moves.
Killer: ascended
You were level 22 with a maximum of 285 hit points when you ascended.

You made the top ten list!

No Points Name Hp [max]
1 5135492 DianaFury-Val-Hum-Fem-Neu ascended to
demigoddess-hood. 270 [307]
2 4442942 DianaFury-Val-Hum-Fem-Law ascended to
demigoddess-hood. 187 [212]
* 3 2942122 DianaFury-Wiz-Elf-Fem-Cha ascended to
demigoddess-hood. 218 [285]
4 1003813 DianaFury-Wiz-Elf-Fem-Cha choked on her food in
Gehennom on level 40 [max 46]. Choked on a wraith
corpse. 280 [282]
5 454987 DianaFury-Wiz-Elf-Fem-Cha quit in The Quest on level
17 [max 25]. 193 [235]

What's up, yo?

I had a bit of fun this weekend. On Friday night, I got a call from a fired up Miami Kyle. He said that he and Kristy where looking for something to do, and were going to head up to Oceans 11 to play some poker, and did we want to join them? Diana was pretty much already crashed out, but I joined up and we hit the road. I hadn't been to O11 in forever, and my previous times had left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. But in spite of that, I found myself excited to head back.

The popularity of poker has certainly not hurt business. They had a fancy new computerized reservation system (no more whiteboard for them!), and they had packed as many tables as the fire marshall would allow in their low-limit room. Unfortuantely, they had about 20 tables of no-limit and about 6 tables of limit. After waiting about 20 minutes for a limit table, and the line not moving at all, I signed up for no-limit ($40 max buyin, two $1 blinds) and was seated almost instantly.

No Limit is a scary freakin' game! And $40 isn't very much when people are making $5 and $10 raises (which I guess is the point... make it expensive for people with drawing hands to stay in). I played for a while, winning some and steadily losing little bits as I saw flops that didn't hit. I ended up losing the last half of my stack when my pocket king's got busted by pocket 9's that hit a 9 on the flop. So it goes. I wandered over to see how Kristy and Kyle were doing. The former was down a little at a limit table, while the latter had a huge stack of chips in front of him! Kyle had quickly parlayed $40 into $140 at another no limit table. Nice work that guy. I want to go back sometime with Diana. I think she'd have fun and could do pretty well.

Saturday, I golfed it up with Iwan, which was fun as usual. We hit up LSM, and had the place to ourselves. We played 18 in about 2.5 hours, which was cool. I shot ok, and Iwan beat my by his usual 5-6 strokes. Nice to hang out with that guy.

Saturday night, Diana and I met up with Eryn and Liz and Pete and saw the new Wallace and Grommit movie. It was pretty good, but might have lasted just a touch too long. Afterwards we got some food at a nearby Thai place. Good times with fun peeps.

Sunday morning, Eryn came over and joined us for the Charger game. I don't want to talk much about it, but after the game, and after Eryn left, I spent about 20 minutes lying on the floor, unmoving. Ugh. I worked some more on my programming, and took a little field trip to the bookstore while Diana did some work.

Interspersed through the weekend was our viewing of "Prime Suspect", a British crime drama that we've enjoyed via Netflix. Coming soon: Connections disc 2, Lost disc 1, and.... another British mystery? Can't wait!

Last night, we met up with the Hamson's after work for dinner and punkin carving. We never got around to the carving, but dinner and hanging out and yapping is always a good time. We were joined with some other friends of Norm and Teri, who also have babies the same age, so there were lots of little people crawling around. Fun to watch and play with.

And there it is. Weekend a la Adman.

I caught a little bit of an interview on TV with the producer of a violent football game coming out for various gaming systems. I thought the game's executive producer did a really good job answering the questions.

"Hard Hitting Reporter": This game features graphic violence and other adult elements, like steroid use. Players can even have prostitutes visit their hotel room! Don’t you think this is innappropriate for children?

Game Producer: Well, yes. This game has an "M" rating, which is equivalent to an "R" rating for movies. It's not intended for children under 17.

HHR: Oh, come on now, don't you think children are going to get their hands on this game?

[Adam, shouting at the TV: THAT'S NOT HIS JOB OR RESPONSIBILITY!]

GP: The software ratings board works very much like the movie rating system. It's really up to the parents to monitor what their children are doing. Further, it's a misconception that most gamers are teenagers. That was true 10 years ago, but the average gamer these days is in his late 20's.

HHR: Ok, well, forget about the children. Don't you think that this game has themes that most adults would find reprehensible?

GP: Again, it's not much different than the material found in "R" rated movies and late-night TV shows. Some people will like it, and some people will not. We leave it up to the consumer to make that decision.

HHR: [still searching for some sticking point] Isn't true that the your game has not been endorsed by the NFL? What do you make of that?

GP: Well, first of all, another game company, Electronic Arts, owns exclusive rights to use the NFL brand. Regardless, before that EA deal was made, we made the decision not to approach the NFL about our game. It didn't seem like an appropriate match.

HHR: Ok, well, thank you for your time.

Electronic entertainment, like heavy metal, Dungeons and Dragons, rap music, is the latest media target. I just hope it blows over before anything drastic happens.

Oh yeah, by the way... While gaming has grown to record proportions, crime has fallen to a 30 year low. Kinda makes you think...

I'm such a geek...

Yesterday afternoon, not wanting to be late for an appointment with our landscaper, I wrote a little program that connects to the CalTrans website and parses their "average freeway speed" data. (The same data that creates those pretty maps on various news/traffic sites). Since the exits are not equally distributed, I allowed for a weighted distribution (which I'll refine as I go).

I can't wait to test it out tonight! :)

Ferris Beuller style...

Sick days at work are use-'em-or-lose-'em. It's also not frowned upon to take "mental sick days", which is using a sick day just to take a day off and relax. That said, I've taken the day off!

I'm in my comfies. I just made some apple cider, added in a little vanilla, then feeling crazy, added in half a cap of vanilla vodka. Good stuff. It's cold and rainy outside.

I've spent most of the day working on programming. Norm and I have done a few tests of our game over the network, and it only showed a glimmer of success in an otherwise sea of failure. I've redone the networking bit, and it works well on my own machine. Hopefully it will work a bit better online.

I've spent a bit of the day pouring over Fantasy Football information. My team did quite well this week, which was reassuring, especially given some previous performances.

I played some chess online. I played a guy rated about 100 points below me in a 5 minute game, and he kicked my ass. We played again, and again, he really steamrolled over me. He then told me not to worry, he was just better than me. I thought this was sort of rude. He revealed after a few games (my rating spiraling down the toilet) that he's actually a high-ranked player, and just created a low-ranked player for fun, because he was bored. I let him know that, from my point of view, this was a little discouraging. He offered to artificially inflate my rating (presumeably by starting games and resigning to me), but I declined. That guy must have been pretty damn bored.

Speaking of which, I have some chess games on my desktop, which I may as well upload: Game 1
Game 2
Game 3

I thought this was pretty silly.....

Please continue holding. All of our representitives are still busy. If you hang up, it may delay your call. We answer all calls in the order received. Thank you!

So...

Diana and I hit up downtown on Friday night. I'd gotten her tickets to go see SuperDiamond, a Neil Diamond cover band, playing at the House of Blues. We went there for dinner, walked around downtown a little, and saw a pretty fun show. The opening band was called "Stung", a Police/Sting cover band, and I actually thought they rocked the house. I figure if you can do a halfway decent Sting, you're waaaay ahead of the game. SuperDiamond was cheese-tastic and fun, but a li'l more subdued than Stung. All in all, a fun night out, though.

Saturday was a great, lazy day. Diana worked for most of the day. I hung out with her, did a good bit of programming, ate a lot of ice cream, got cold, and took a bath. I haven't taken a bath in years. It ruled. That night we played poker with some of Diana's work peeps. Diana won enough to cover my losses. We make a pretty good team that way.

Yesterday we chilled, and visited with Diana's parents for a bit, and tonight, we hit up the Hamson's for the Charger Monday Night Football game. Really weird game to watch, and heartbreaking to lose in the last seconds, but nice to see the Hammy's and Eryn. And nice to win my Fantasy Football game by .04 points!

My new programming project has been a lot of fun to work on. Me and Norm and Marc got all fired up about a game idea, and I've been toying around with coding it. Since the eventual goal would be to have it be able to be playing online against an opponent, I've been screwing around with network programming stuff, which is a BIG paradigm shift from normal, single-player programming. Fun to learn and do.

And now, I'm tired, so it's off to bed.

The other day, I was picking up dinner from Pellysmyfavoritefishplace. I had about 10 minutes to wait, so I stopped by the grocery store to pick up some items that I'd recently run out of.

It wasn't until I had them both up on the little conveyer belt that I thought it was a funny combination. Apparently, by the looks of the checker and the lady behind me, they thought it was pretty strange too.

I was buying a big bottle of vanilla vodka and a big bottle of orange Listerine.

I smiled and promised 'em I had a big night ahead of me, and took off. Good stuff.

Iwan, Sara, Adam, Diana, and Eryn hit Vegas. Click the picture for more...

So, what's new with Adman?

Big news is that we got a new car (well, new to us). Diana's sister moved to Sweded for the forseeable future, and sold us her Prius. So we're officially tree-hugging, clean-air-loving, gas conservationists, or something. I've only driven the car around the neighborhood, but it seems pretty nice. I believe Diana's in the midst of selling her car to Sara, so there's been a good bit of time spent on the DMV website, figuring out how to transfer ownerships.

Me and Diana and Eryn banzai'd out to Vegas, where Iwan and Sara we're celebrating his 30th birthday. Diana's dad called earlier in the week and said he had credit with Southwest that was going to expire, and did we want it? Yay for free plane tickets! We stayed at the Stratosphere, which isn't the fanciest place, but isn't terrible either. Gambling-wise, the trip was pretty successful for almost everyone. I got a full house playing "Let It Ride", which won me $130 and basically covered my gambling expenses for the rest of the trip. Eryn, as far as I can tell, cleaned up at blackjack multiple times. The five of us played in a $30 poker tournament, and Iwan ended up taking second place! We were all very proud of him. As it happens, ZJ's bachelor party was in Vegas that weekend as well, so we met up with Gabe and all three Reynolds boys for a Benihana dinner and night out. Good times.

The only dissapointing part of the trip is that there doesn't seem to be a casino that is both 1) elegant and sophisticated and 2) offers cheap gambling. We spent both nights at "Slots-A-Fun", which, while cheap, is pretty slummy. When we were in the cab line, and admitted our destination publically, people actually LAUGHED OUT LOUD at us. I'm hardly an aristocrat, but Slots falls on the wrong side of some internal line. But, I guess I'd rather go there than spend $15 per hand on Blackjack. As I said, I just wish there was room for both.

In the cab ride back to the airport, I talked with the cabbie a little. He said he'd been in Vegas for something like 25 years. I commented that it must have changed a lot, and he said "Yeah, massive changes", and indicated somehow that the old days were better. I asked why. "It was classy back then," he said with a lingering New York accent. "When you went out, guys wore jackets and sportcoats, women wore evening dresses. You could go to a lounge and catch a show. There were no rugrats running around...." He sounded truly sad. I think I would have liked to have seen Old Vegas, if only for a night.

In other news, we recently watched the movie "What the Bleep Do We Know?". I'm a little lost on how to describe it. It's a movie that is a series of interviews with various scholars and "mystics" who talk about quantam physics, the power of positive thinking, and various new-agey kind of stuff. Intercut with this is a dramatization of a woman who goes from anxiety-pill popping grumpy-pants to clean, happy, and free-thinking. While I agreed with some of the themes of the movie, for the most part it was completely laughable. Still, it was thought-provoking and interesting to watch. The most interesting part to me was the hypnotic themes that were employed. There were lots of shots from a first person point of view of descending through a tunnel at fast speed, and lots of suggestive language about opening our minds and accepting these ideas. I could only picture my work-boy, who is both highly suggestable and also (probably not coincidentally) recommended the movie to me.

That's the big news. Diana is still working hard with school. I let myself get sucked back into World of Warcraft, but I'm unsure how long that will last. My game-programming has stagnated somewhat, but I hope to get back on track with that soon. This weekend we're going to a memorial service for the mother of a friend of Diana's who died recently after an incredibly long fight with various cancers, so that will be kind of a downer. I've never been to a funeral service, if you can believe it.

That's all I got.

Can you name this movie?

Norm forwarded this to me, and I thought I'd share it with you all. Click on the picture to download an Excel file with pictures from various movies. The actors have been digitally removed. Type in your guess below each movie, and see how many you can get right!

On my first pass I got 39... My work boys and I collectively got all but 12 and 57.

Good luck! Thanks Norm for passing this on!

Are you ready for some football?!

I sure am. I watched more football in the past 48 hours than I have in any previous 48 hour timespan in my entire life. Good times. I normally root for my home team, and while other games interest me for their own sake (good plays and whatnot), I'm not really personally involved in them. Fantasy football has changed that. Now I'm flipping back and forth between games watching for my guys to make big plays. Diana also entered a survivor pick'em with other teachers at her work, and was one of the unlucky few (actually, 1/3) to get booted on week one. Pre-game, we checked out the latest Vegas lines. Top favorites were New England, Minnesota, and Tampa Bay I believe. NE was a 7.5 favorite, and Minnesota was a 6 point favorite, so we chose Minnesota. Bad move. Oh well.

However, tonight's Monday Night Football game sealed the deal for the Fightin' Birdmen over the lackluster Morms. Next week, bring on the surly Commish himself, Discostup... *YAWN* :)

Diana's been busy with school, but we found some time to visit her parents this weekend for a late birthday celebration. That was nice. Dawn powered through the first "Game of Thrones" book in a few days. She really seemed to enjoy it, and I'm glad I could make the recommendation.



I've been doing more programming side-project stuff, taking a little break from my game to do some "special effect" type programming using particle systems. Pretty fun stuff, with neat effects.

Work is pretty slow. I'm kind of between projects right now while People More Important Than Me (I know, mom, "...Than I", but that sounds so formal!) make decisions on what projects are most important, and who should work on what.

S'about all for now. Smell ya later.

Yesterday, I discovered I'd cut my thumb on something. I didn’t noticed until I was eating lunch, playing chess with my workboy, and saw blood on my lunchbag. Then my thumb. Then all over my pants. I expected the pants to be ruined, but a damp paper towel got it all off. My pants must be stain resistant or something. It ruled. Never figured out how I cut my thumb, though.

In other news... A while back, I had a discussion about violence in videogames with Diana's sister (who just completed her graduate study in psychology). I don't think we communicated very well, but I was (and am) staunchly opposed to the school of thought that violence in videogames causes or is even a significant factor in violent behavior (a la the Columbine shootings). My only basis for this notion is my own gaming education, and witnessing the game/violence habits of nearly all of my friends.

Alicia did a big project or something on the subject of violence in television and gaming, and said she had a number of studies to support her claims that there indeed WAS a correlation between witnessing "violence" (in quotes, because we're talking about fantasy violence in TV shows and computer games) and aggressive behavior. I was very interested in seeing the research myself, and was able to borrow and peruse through it the other night.

Even after skimming through the research (it was very helpful that Alicia had marked notable passages with underlines, highlights and stars during her own research for her presentation), I still remain unconvinced that there is any significant or immediate harm in fantasy violence.

First of all, my wife's skepticism (for lack of a better word) of scientific research has rubbed off on me. To explain: I think when a layperson hears of a scientific study, they immediately jump to the conclusion, and accept that as gospel truth. Diana, I've noticed, immediately questions the methods of the research, and accepts the results based on how acceptable the actual test was.

With the psychological experiments I read, this was laughable. For example, there was a study where they wanted groups of people to play basically equivalent video games, where one was violent and other was not. They wanted violence to be the only significant differing factor, while things like "frustration level", "excitement level", "realism", etc were similar. The games they chose were "Myst" and "Wolf3D". I'm sorry, I can't continue reading a study that rates Myst as "exciting" as Wolf3D. Apple, meet Orange!

In some others, they'd have players play games, and then do some other test to test their level of aggression. The problem I had with some of these is that it seems so hard to isolate exactly what they want to test. In other words, the test might not be as much about violence as it is about the frustration level of the games, or physical side effects some people get from playing games, or any other number of factors that difficult to isolate.

So while I remain skeptical, the real reason really is because of my own experience and my own thoughts on gaming. (I'm even open to the idea that I'm so desensitized to violence that my viewpoint is totally skewed. However, I remain one of the least violent people you'll ever meet).

I really believe that gaming to so highly symbolic that people don't even realize it while they're playing. A game, in a general sense, is a set of Rules, Objectives, and Obstacles that the player must traverse through to reach some sort of Winning Condition. Every game shares these (well, maybe not EXACTLY these, but concepts like these) things in common. Yet what appears on the surface is vastly different from game to game.

I've always compared Counterstrike against chess. Both teams start from predefined starting points. Each team has a variety (but limited) attack ability. Once the game begins, however, there are almost infinite possibilities as to who goes where. A big difference is that combat in CS is highly based on the physical skill of the player (like armwrestling every time you moved your knight to attack a bishop!).

CS is also graphically violent. But you know what? I don't honestly believe that anyone with any non-trivial gaming experience even notices. And not because they SHOULD notice but are media-bred zombies. I believe that gamers implicitly understand the Game under the surface, and are playing THAT. Everything else is only a paint-job. Which isn't to say that paint-jobs aren't important, but the games that sell well, and are critically acclaimed uniformly have something more going for them than a nice paint job.

I played a lot of World of Warcraft. There's a huge amount of fantasy violence in the game (killing monsters to save the princess, that sort of thing). But to any gamer, it's simply an Obstacle of a different color. Same with Grand Theft Auto. In one game, I might get a quest from a wizard to enter a cave, kill the monsters, retrieve his spellbook, and return it to him. In return, he'll give me 50 gold pieces and a key that let's me get into the haunted castle. In the the other game, I might have to go to a rival gang's territory, fight my way inside to kill their leader, and return to my own gang, where I'm rewarded with an uzi and a phone number of someone else who might have a job for me.

I submit that for all intents and purposes, those elements of the game are identical. I use previously gained Skills to overcome an Obstacle, and get a Reward which allows me further access to the game. And I further submit that those game elements are more similar than different to capturing an enemy knight with my rook, giving me control to a critical open file and positioning myself better for the end game.

But the critics of gaming don't seem to understand the underlying structure. They see (or more likely, hear about) a game where you can actually SHOOT someone else (*gasp!*), probably forgetting that they used to play Cops and Robbers when they were kids. Or that in Minesweeper, if you take a wrong move, you get blown up. To a gamer, it's the same thing.

If you can't tell, it really amps me up.

What's really disappointing is that more people don't understand the benefits of good games (even contraversial ones like Grand Theft Auto). Inherent in the game is juggling priorities, financial responsibility and decision making, stuff like that. I know it sounds silly, but the decision of buying a new weapon (making you a more efficient killer, therefore getting more money faster, and therefore allowing you to buy more stuff) vs buying a new car (allowing you to get from place to place faster, as well as run away faster, or whatever) is a Big Decision when you look at it from the point of view in the underlying game. It's as critical as an important chess move.

That's all I got. My final note is a reference to an article I read in the Economist where the author notes that violent crime rates have been falling for years. With the huge influx of violent games, shouldn't they be skyrocketing? (I suppose they could be even lower, but I don't buy it). That seems important. He also notes the cyclic nature of this kind of thing. Rock and Roll, hippies, DnD, gaming. The new generation knows it's not bad. The old generation has a hard time accepting this (but dies sooner than the new generation).

PS: In spite of the above, I do agree with ratings and age-limits for games. I'm not suggesting that 8 year olds should play GTA.

A beautiful thing just happened...




I'm working on my game, and was getting to the point where I wanted to work on making more rooms. I decided I'd better take a closer look at the "source material", so I fired up Applewin, my trustly Apple ][+ emulator, and launched Beyond Castle Wolfenstein.

That's a damn fun game. I played a little bit of it, showing my pass to unsuspecting Nazi guards and then shooting them in the back as they turned away. When rooms were quiet, I'd copy the layout into my own game.

At some point I was switching back and forth between the games, and my mind got a little confused, because when I moved into the next room in MY game, my mind said "Ok, be ready to shoot any bad guys you see." Which is silly, since I don't even have the concept of an enemy in my game yet. The fact that I kind of tricked my brain I guess means that my game doesn't completely suck. It was neat. We'll see how it turns out, but I'm making good progress every day.

In other news, we've got a packed weekend and it's only Wednesday! Dinner and hopefully going out with people on Friday night. Saturday, we're going to help my boy Baditude move into his new pad. Saturday night we're going to dinner and a play with my parents. Sunday we're going to a workboy BBQ, and then ANOTHER BBQ hosted by friends of Diana family. Lookin' forward to it.

Diana's school started. It's exciting to hear about all the new kids and stuff. She's going to have a ton of work, but she seems really fired up so far on how she's been reaching her kids. I'm proud of her. Just hope she doesn't flame out...

Within the past week, I think I've heard 3 or 4 references to "Soylent Green". I didn't know what it was until recently, but http://en.wikipedia.com hooked me up with the info. I'm becoming a big fan of that site. For those you haven't heard of it, it's an on online reference, like an encyclopedia, but the content is generated by users. If you browse an article and find something that is incorrect or missing, you can add it yourself (it somehow gets reviewed by peers, I'm assuming). Pretty neat.

It's a good example of a concept that was written about in Wired magazine recently. The article was basically about the birth of the web. At the beginning, it was a big question of who was going to basically be "in charge" of presenting information to the consumer-based audience. The existing paradigm was that of cable television, and the thought was the the internet was going to be like a cable company, with a fat provider on one end, feeding thousands of channels to users. But with the advent of browsers, it turned the public from consumers of television to producers of information, which is really a huge leap. All of a sudden, we have people writing down and posting all sorts of information collectively, for no other reason than to be helpful to others. If you can look past the spam and adware and porn and viruses and hackers, the Internet is really a good thing.

Anyhoo.

The other night, I was making myself a drink of vanilla vodka on the rocks. I filled my glass with ice, and then filled it most of the way with vodka. I noticed there was only a tiny bit of vodka left, so I poured the rest of it in. I guess there was more than I thought, 'cause I found myself with a glass filled all the way to the brim, so I ended up dumping some out. When Diana asked what I was doing, I explained that because I drink it slow, I didn't want the ice to melt and cause my drink to overflow. She immediately laughed a little laugh and reminded me why I need not worry about it. THIS is why I love her.

I've been working on some game-programming stuff lately. It's been a ton of fun. The driving force is re-creating the original Castle Wolfenstein (not the 3D one, but the original for the Apple ][), but I'm going to add my own twists to it, if possible. Right now, I have an animated character running around a (randomly generated) maze of rooms (each room is one full screen, and exiting north, south, east, or west loads a new room). Not much, but I've spent a lot of time cleaning up the code so that it's a good foundation to be added to.

The hardest part of game-programming for me personally isn't learning new technology, but just having the patience to spend months on a single project. I recently checked out my old hard drive and found about half-a-dozen started projects (including the Wolfenstein one). So, we'll see how it goes.

SYL

Somehow, as Diana is working on my computer, I've found myself watching "Tommy Lee Goest to College" for the last hour. It's a show about Tommy Lee going and living the college life at the University of Nebraska.

On the one hand, it's kind of entertaining. Tommy seems like a really nice, honest, relatively likeable guy (wife-beating notwithstanding, I suppose). So on the one hand, it's kind of fun to watch him struggle through the same things we had to struggle through when we were going through college.

On the other hand, and I'm just realizing this now, it's really, really sad. Poor Tommy has had a pretty solid life of drugs and booze, and watching him struggle through some pretty basic concepts (I'm sorry, but atomic number and weight, protons and neutrons, etc, is really only one step up from 1+1 after it's been explained once) is pretty sad.

He's also trying out for the drumline, and failing miserably (I guess the 4-drum marching thing isn't the same as a kit), and showing a little of his rage. And I realized just how much he's being set up for failure. It's really just not fair, and at some point, it just must get humiliating (since he really seems to be trying, and eager to learn).

Poor guy.

Maybe only slightly less pathetic than me watching it for the last hour, I spose.

While I love the performance of my cable provider (Adelphia), I'm a little disappointed that they only provide 10 megs of webspace (which you can get for free from geocities and other free hosting sites). Also, in spite of never using my adelphia email address, I get a ton of spam on it. I wonder if they do any spam blocking at all.

In any case, I found the last three chess games I emailed to myself, and watched through 'em. I think they all end in really weird checkmates. So I offer them here for your review:

Game1

Game2

Game3


Not a whole lot of news. I put bigger Kauai pictures up (at the expense of the Montana pictures). They are here. Some of the full sized ones are missing because Adelphia seems to cut off my FTP sessions intermittently and the transfers fail. Or maybe it's an XP SP2 thing. Anyhoo.

Work is going well. Diana is gearing up for school, having pre-school meetings and stuff all week. We're back in the market for landscapers, if anyone out there knows one, or even someone who had landscaping done. The first draft of plans we got done by our ex-landscape designer were a joke. Maybe I'll take a picture and post 'em. The short story is that we gave her over a month to draw up plans for us, so that we'd have 'em by the time we went on vacation so we could review them then. She promised over and over that they'd be done. But then flaked on a number of things, like measuring the property, and by the time our deadline rolled around, she gave us plans that were clearly drawn up in half an hour before the meeting. Not only were there big blank white places in the design ("What goes here?" asked Diana. "Well, you could put some bushes or a tree or something," she said, drawing some scribbles in the white space), but what was there were things that we really didn't like (like a low gate across our driveway that opened and closed when you drove in and out.

So, back to the drawing board. Diana nor I really know how to even get started hiring people to do stuff like that for us, so if you have any ideas, please let me know. One good idea we got was to go to model homes and pick up pamphlets from the landscapers that worked there. That seemed like a good idea. I guess other than that, it's find friends with recommendations, or let our fingers do the walking or something.

Work calls.

Two points of note.

Remember I posted about the young lady who veered into my lane and got really pissed at me? I wrote an email to the San Diego transit people. I never got a response back from them, but when I drove to work this morning, I noticed there is a fresh, fat white line running the length of the turn, clearly defining the lanes all the way through the turn. I'll go ahead and take credit for it. I rule!

On the way back from Hawaii, very early on Tuesday morning (like, 4am), we were closing in on California when the captain came on. He apoligized for waking us up, but wanted to point out that out the right side of the plane, you could see the space shuttle re-entering the atmosphere. The fucking Space Shuttle! Diana and I were on the left side of the plane, and since I'd previously woken up the lady on the aisle to go to the bathroom, for some reason I didn't want to bother her again to get up and go to the other side of the plane. So we didn't see it.

Want to guess what the biggest regret in my life is? That.

Shitballs.

So, back from Kauai.

All in all, we had a really good time. We had a couple of days doing active stuff, like hiking, tubing, zip-lining and site-seeing, and the rest of the days were spent on various beaches, snorkling and book-reading and napping. It was all really great.

Some highlights for me were swimming with sea turtles. We overheard some people saying they were out feeding, and we headed out. Soon enough, we came upon a group of about 10 turtles, ranging in size from two to five feet long (pretty big!) They looked so old and peaceful as they munched on the seagrass.

One of the first days there we did a tubing adventure. There are old aquaducts that have been dug down the gentle slope of the mountains that feed water to fields below. We joined a big group of people in an adventure tour thing, and got driven up to the top, hopped in our tubes, and lazed our way down. The waterway passed through a series of tunnels, the smallest being a few hundred yards, the longest was 0.6 miles. Each tunnel was about 10 feet wide, and the roof was probably only 3-5 feet overhead, so it was pretty cramped. It was fun.

The latter part of the trip we shared a house rented by Diana's family on the north shore, walking distance from a nice beach and snorkling spot. It was fun to be on vacation with her family, and I'm especially happy to hang out a little more with Alicia's boyfriend David before he heads back to Sweden.

I took a lot of pictures, and will get those online soon.

Some points of note:

I love my new camera! It's so small that it was no problem to take anywhere. I'm glad I bought a 1 gig card, as I could go for a week taking lots of high-res, high-quality (compression wise, not artistic wise :) pictures, and not worry about filling up the card. Lots of people get upset when they buy something that doesn't work well. I find myself getting oppositely happy when I buy something that works well for me. And here I am.

Now that I'm taking more pictures, I'm looking for webspace. With Yahoo and Google throwing me email storage like it's free, I expected to find somewhere I could host files for free. There are some picture-sharing sites, but I was hoping for a little more general purpose area. I haven't found any good free online options. I don’t think I'm interested in doing my own hosting on my home computer for a variety of reasons. Paying for webspace might be the best option. Still searching for a happy place.

I read "Under the Banner of Heaven" over my vacation. As the afterword notes, the book began as a look into religious fundamentalism and fanaticism in general, but morphed into a looking into specifically Mormon fundamentalism, with specific note as to how this has been a key factor in some high-profile crimes (the Elizabeth Smart abduction, as well as the Lafferty brothers murders), as well as reconciling Joseph Smith's (and/or God's) view of polygamy vs. the United States governments view (which seems to be a major reason for the split of many fundamentalists from the main faith). In order to get a better view into the orgins of Mormon fundamentalist factions, some history of the Mormon church and it's early leaders is presented (which was then hotly debated in the eplilogue, where the author prints an official Church reaction to the book before (the first revision) came out, as well as the authors response to the Church response). I was pretty enthralled by the book, especially knowing a few Mormons. I wish I'd read it before driving from Page to Las Vegas, as that road winds through some sort of hotbed of polygamist country.

From my limited view of Mormonism (which consists solely of anecdotes and urban legends, a very brief perusal of the Book of Mormon, reading "Under the Banner of Heaven", and years of friendship and aquantainceship with a few Mormans), I've come to the conclusion that I'm *highly* skeptical of the revelations of Joseph Smith and the basis of the religion. I don’t see how anyone buys into it (or many other religions/beliefs, for that matter).

HOWEVER, I'm certainly not prepared to argue meaningfully against it, considering its current popularity, it's obviously exploding growth and my own lack or knowledge. In addition, I suppose there are things that I believe in my own version of Faith, and far be it from me to deny others their beliefs what I certainly can't explain my own. I do know that, without exception, all the Mormons I've ever known have been Good People: honest, friendly, hard working and dependable. To paraphrase some quote in Under the Banner, I think the world would be a much better place with more Mormons.... just without the Mormonism. :)

And that's all I have to say about that.

With that book finished, I started re-reading the "Song of Fire and Ice" series with book one, "A Game of Thrones". It's my second reading, and I am so damn fired up on this book it's silly. I absolutely love it. For those not in the know, it's a story about political power struggles in a land and time of kings and knights and legends. There are some elements of Tolkein-esque magic and monsters, but the vast bulk of the story is about families and alliances, backstabbing, power-struggles and so forth. As I said, I'm enjoying it more my second time reading through it, simply because there are so many characters and interweaving plotlines... the first time through was great, but a little overwhelming. Each chapter is told from the point of view of one of eight major characters, who share their own points of view on multiple story arcs, with dozens of other major and minor characters. It sounds a little mind-boggling, and it is, to a certain degree, but it also is skillfully done and works well. Book four (of a reported six or seven total volumes) is coming out soon, so I'm going to try to power through one-three as fast as I can.

I don’t remember what else I wanted to write about, so I'm done.

Montana pics!

Not much time to tell stories, but a good time was had by all. Baby Ben is VERY cute and good natured and babbles almost constantly. We hiked, floated, fished, saw bears (my car was my cage), and bonded with the fam.

Today is unpacking from Montana and re-packing for Hawaii. Life is rough.

Smell ya later!

I'm leaving for Montana tomorrow for the week. Stories and pictures to follow!

A young woman just got very upset with me, and it wasn't my fault.

I was driving back to work from my lunch break. I'm in a left hand only lane (marked "ME"). She's to my right, also in a left hand only lane (marked HER)

After turning, her only choice of lanes is Z (which goes straight), while I get my choice of W or X (both left hand turn lanes), or Y (straight). Y takes me to work. I take this lane every morning.

  
   w x y z
  |<|<|^|^|
  | | | | |
  | | | | |
  \ | | | |
   \ _  | | 
      \ | | 
      | | |
------/ | | 
ME      / |
-------/  /
HER      /
--------/

This charming young woman, though, starts out in HER lane, and thinks somehow that she's supposed to end up in X. Note that a path between Z and X lanes requires crossing through Y. Which is where I am.

So while we're turning, I hear a horn blare, and look to my right, and see that she's almost hit me because she's turning into my lane. I kind of gesture that THAT lane is her lane, and THIS lane is my lane, and keep going. She cuts in behind me, then passes me on my left to get to X. I come up along side her in Y and glance over, and she is full on screaming at me and enthusiastically flipping me off. Flipping me off so HARD that she's actually leaning forward, as if getting her finger closer to me will magnify it's effect.

If I had ANY doubt as to who was right or wrong in this situation, I'd give her the benefit of the doubt. However, I've driven this same goddamn route for the last seven years, and I can claim with 100% sureness that I am right, and she was wrong. Yet she's getting pissed at me? The injustice of it all is astounding.

I understand that people are going to make mistakes. But there's something really distressing about someone making a mistake and then blaming ME for it when they are so CLEARLY wrong. And not just blaming, but really verbally assaulting me. When I see people getting really mad, I get sort of a weird unsettled feeling in my stomach. If it's directed at me (justly or not), it makes that feeling all the worse. I'm just an Adman... no need to get all angry.

I wish there was some way that I could explain my position or defend myself, but it's too late. The best I can hope for is that she drives the same intersection again (seems likely), and realizes her mistake, and apologizes to me from afar (probably not as likely, but let's just pretend).

So, apology accepted. I feel better.

In other news, I had a good weekend. Friday night, Diana and I took my pops out for sushi after work. We hit up the little place in the Del Mar plaza. It was good to see him, and we powered through a ton of sushi, which was all really good.

Saturday, Diana and I were pumped to try out our new snorks and masks, so we joined up with Iwan and S'martin and went to La Jolla Cove. The visibility was really poor, but we swam for a bit and saw some fish and had some fun. The new equipment worked well, so we're ready for Hawaii. Afterwards, we met up with Eryn for some seafood (always fun after seeing live seafood), and saw "March of the Penguins". My joke is that it was the best damn penguin movie I've ever seen. It was pretty good. Perhaps a little sappy and contrived, but edutaining nonetheless. My favorite part was the Baditude got so annoyed by the two year old sitting behind him that he actually stormed out of the theater and walked home. That's good stuff. I really detest seeing movies with the General Public. That's a rant for a different day, though.

While he was still in his seat, Baditude said that he could get me into the Comicon for free (which turned out to be a lie). However, that didn't stop us from dominating said Con all day Sunday. It was fun to see the sights and watch the peeps, and as usual, Eryn is a lot of fun to hang out with and talk to. I'm glad he's my boy.

That's about it for now. Diana and I have been watching the HBO production of "Angels in America", which is pretty good, but reminds me of the musical in "Team America" ("Aids, aids, aids, aids, AIDS!"). We also bought the new Harry Potter book, and have a commitment to read it together, and have worked out how to get around the pesky "falling asleep" problem when one person is reading to t'other.

And our new camera came today! Can't wait to try it out!

Smell ya later, blog.

I love stuff like this. I forwarded this on to most of my readers already, so this is really more of a post for Future Adam to see what Past Adam (currently Now Adam) thought was funny.

'Cause I'm pro-active like that.

---------------------
If WWII Was Played Online
*Hitler[AoE] has joined the game.*
*Eisenhower has joined the game.*
*paTTon has joined the game.*
*Churchill has joined the game.*
*benny-tow has joined the game.*
*T0J0 has joined the game.*
*Roosevelt has joined the game.*
*Stalin has joined the game.*
*deGaulle has joined the game.*
Roosevelt: hey sup
T0J0: y0
Stalin: hi
Churchill: hi
Hitler[AoE]: cool, i start with panzer tanks!
paTTon: lol more like panzy tanks
T0JO: lol
Roosevelt: o this fockin sucks i got a depression!
benny-tow: haha america sux
Stalin: hey hitler you dont fight me i dont fight u, cool?
Hitler[AoE]; sure whatever
Stalin: cool
deGaulle: **** Hitler rushed some1 help
Hitler[AoE]: lol byebye frenchy
Roosevelt: i dont got crap to help, sry
Churchill: wtf the luftwaffle is attacking me
Roosevelt: get antiair guns
Churchill: i cant afford them
benny-tow: u n00bs know what team talk is?
paTTon: stfu
Roosevelt: o yah hit the navajo button guys
deGaulle: eisenhower ur worthless come help me quick
Eisenhower: i cant do **** til rosevelt gives me an army
paTTon: yah hurry the fock up
Churchill: d00d im gettin pounded
deGaulle: this is fockin weak u guys suck
*deGaulle has left the game.*
Roosevelt: im gonna attack the axis k?
benny-tow: with what? ur wheelchair?
benny-tow: lol did u mess up ur legs AND ur head?
Hitler[AoE]: ROFLMAO
T0J0: lol o no america im comin 4 u
Roosevelt: wtf! thats bullsh1t u fags im gunna kick ur asses
T0JO: not without ur harbors u wont! lol
Roosevelt: u little biotch ill get u
Hitler[AoE]: wtf
Hitler[AoE]: america hax, u had depression and now u got a huge fockin army
Hitler[AoE]: thats bullsh1t u hacker
Churchill: lol no more france for u hitler
Hitler[AoE]: tojo help me!
T0J0: wtf u want me to do, im on the other side of the world retard
Hitler[AoE]: fine ill clear you a path
Stalin: WTF u arsshoel! WE HAD A FoCKIN TRUCE
Hitler[AoE]: i changed my mind lol
benny-tow: haha
benny-tow: hey ur losing ur guys in africa im gonna need help in italy soon sum1
T0J0: o **** i cant help u i got my hands full
Hitler[AoE]: im 2 busy 2 help
Roosevelt: yah thats right biznitch im comin for ya
Stalin: church help me
Churchill: like u helped me before? sure ill just sit here
Stalin: dont be an arss
Churchill: dont be a commie. oops too late
Eisenhower: LOL
benny-tow: hahahh oh sh1t help
Hitler: o man ur focked
paTTon: oh what now biotch
Roosevelt: whos the cripple now lol
*benny-tow has been eliminated.*
benny-tow: lame
Roosevelt: gj patton
paTTon: thnx
Hitler[AoE]: WTF eisenhower hax hes killing all my sh1t
Hitler[AoE]: quit u hacker so u dont ruin my record
Eisenhower: Nuts!
benny~tow: wtf that mean?
Eisenhower: meant to say nutsack lol finger slipped
paTTon: coming to get u hitler u paper hanging hun cocksocker
Stalin: rofl
T0J0: HAHAHHAA
Hitler[AoE]: u guys are fockin gay
Hitler[AoE]: ur never getting in my city
*Hitler[AoE] has been eliminated.*
benny~tow: OMG u noob you killed yourself
Eisenhower: ROFLOLOLOL
Stalin: OMG LMAO!
Hitler[AoE]: WTF i didnt click there omg this game blows
*Hitler[AoE] has left the game*
paTTon: hahahhah
T0J0: WTF my teammates are n00bs
benny~tow: shut up noob
Roosevelt: haha wut a moron
paTTon: wtf am i gunna do now?
Eisenhower: yah me too
T0J0: why dont u attack me o thats right u dont got no ships lololol
Eisenhower: fock u
paTTon: lemme go thru ur base commie
Stalin: go to hell lol
paTTon: fock this sh1t im goin afk
Eisenhower: yah this is gay
*Roosevelt has left the game.*
Hitler[AoE]: wtf?
Eisenhower: sh1t now we need some1 to join
*tru_m4n has joined the game.*
tru_m4n: hi all
T0J0: hey
Stalin: sup
Churchill: hi
tru_m4n: OMG OMG OMG i got all his stuff!
tru_m4n: NUKES! HOLY **** I GOT NUKES
Stalin: d00d gimmie some plz
tru_m4n: no way i only got like a couple
Stalin: omg dont be gay gimmie nuculer secrets
T0J0: wtf is nukes?
T0J0: holy shitholyshithoylshti!!!111
*T0J0 has been eliminated.*
*The Allied team has won the game!*
Eisenhower: awesome!
Churchill: gg noobs no re
T0J0: thats bullshit u fockin suck
*T0J0 has left the game.*
*Eisenhower has left the game.*
Stalin: next game im not going to be on ur team, u guys didnt help me for ****
Churchill: wutever, we didnt need ur help neway dumbarss
tru_m4n: l8r all
benny~tow: bye
Churchill: l8r
Stalin: fock u all
tru_m4n: shut up commie lol
*tru_m4n has left the game.*
benny~tow: lololol u commie
Churchill: ROFL
Churchill: bye commie
*Churchill has left the game.*
*benny~tow has left the game.*
Stalin: i hate u all fags
*Stalin has left the game.*
paTTon: lol no1 is left
paTTon: weeeee i got a jeep
*paTTon has been eliminated.*
paTTon: o sh1t!
*paTTon has left the game.*

Friday afternoon Iwan and I golfed after work at Lomas. We didn’t finish a full 18, but I think I played pretty well. I remember making a long putt or two, which is always fun.

Saturday afternoon I headed over to Baditude's pad with Norm and Iwan to check out his new MAME machine. For those not in the know, MAME is an arcade emulator -- a PC program that takes raw data grabbed from arcade machine ROM chips and recreates the game on your computer. Since it's using the original data, you get the EXACT same game as in the coin-op machines of yore. It's awesome. Particularly enterprising folks have even built big stand-up arcade machines (called "cabinets"), complete with a panel for joysticks and buttons, and a TV or monitor, with a PC tucked inside driving the whole thing. One of Eryn's workboys built one a while ago, and sold it to Eryn.

It rocks.

We got there around 3pm, and kicked things off with a little Gauntlet. Gauntlet is good, but when you're not pumping quarters into the thing, and hitpoints are "free", any challenge is removed from the game, and it becomes a little tedious. We played some Track 'n Field, which is a really solid game with good replay value. Norm and I played Rampart while Eryn and Iwan got food. That's a fun two-player game. At some point Norm left, and we played some three player games, like Dungeons and Dragons, and Final Fight (which we beat). Iwan and Eryn busted out some Burger Time. The three of us played a good bit of Dragon's Lair, which I'd like to devote some more attention to. We also rotated through old school Super Mario Bros, which I never played much of as a kid.

All in all, it was a great time. I was a kid in a candy store, but at the same time was a little dissapointed in the lack of replay-ability of some games. When "lives" or "health" comes for free, it changes the perspective of the player, sometimes ruining the game. Dragon's Lair was also particularly fun to toy with. I remember back in the day that game cost at least $.50 (and sometimes $1) to play. You get 5 lives in that game, and you can seriously go through all of them in about 30 seconds. However, the game does have a certain progression that, with trial-and-error, you can get further and further than last time, so there's a certain addictive quality to it.

So, good times. I'm looking forward to spending some more quality time with it (er, with Eryn...)

In other news, Diana and I did some relatively serious thinking about my sabbatical, which I'm eligible for this summer, but we'll use next summer. We started with a map of the world, which is always a good place to start. The combination of me wanting to re-visit Vienna (where we lived for 6 months when I was a lad), Discostup being in Germany, potentially Eryn and Iwan in Germany (any news on that, guys?), and Diana's sister in Norway or Sweden, we figured that was enough motivation to concentrate our thoughts on Europe (second on my list was Tahiti/New Zealand/Japan, I think). Current thoughts include visiting all of the above, as well as some relaxing countryside in Austria and/or Italy, as well as a cruise in the Mediterranean (either France/Italy/Greece or Italy/Greece/Turkey, most likely). It's all very preliminary at this point, but it's fun to think about.

Last night my softball team had a double header. In both games, we came back in the last inning from being down to tying the first game, and winning the second against a very strong team. In the second game, I played really well. I had a nice diving catch, and threw someone out at third from right field, as well as getting a TON of fly balls in my direction. It was a hard-fought game, and just one that you feel really emotionally drained after winning. Good times.

That's about it for me. Latest Netflix: Prime Suspect (yet another British crime drama, which we're enjoying). We also got sucked into Farenheit 9/11 which was on cable, which is a pretty crazy movie. It's certainly thought-provoking, but also smacks of wacky conspiracy theory. Hard to know what's true and what's stretched a little.

Out.