I know, I know, more pictures. But we're excited! Click the picture for more before and after pics.

So I go to the bookstore to buy a book for our upcoming vacation. While walking by the magazine section, and noticed a girl (young teen, probably 14 or 15) reading a magazine. I happen to glance down and see the bold print title of what she's reading: "62 Ways to Blow His Mind in the Bedroom" Awesome. I can't help but make the comparison: somehow this seems more dangerous to me than a 14 or 15 year old boy playing a violent computer game.

I bought "Tai Pan", apparently the next book in the Asian Saga (following "Shogun") by James Clavell. I can't wait to read it. I'm halfway through "Planiverse", and in spite of hearing good things about it, it's just boring me to hell. It's about a professor and his students who happen to make contact with a two dimensional universe (the humans view the universe from the side). It has some interesting bits about how life and society might work in a 2D universe, but is high on minutia and low on "cool". In my opinion, at least.

So why did I buy "Tai Pan"? We're leaving for the first of many journeys on Saturday!

Here's the rough schedule:
San Diego to Maryland to visit Dave, Elaine, and Ben.
Maryland to Sweden to visit Diana's sister and boyfriend.
Sweden to Norway to see the sights. We're taking some train across Norway which is supposed to be incredible.
Back to Sweden for more visiting.
Home July 8th.

Then a few days later, off to Tahiti for about a week. That's going to be some wacky time changes, Sweden to SD to Tahiti.

Then, home for another four days or so, and off to Montana for a week. Then back to San Diego, off for a few more days, then back to work!

It's going to be pretty crazy, but should be lots of fun. I might try to add some vacation time to the end, just to have some time at home to recover before going back to work. We'll see.

And we're leaving just as landscaping is getting all tied up. Today they are putting in lights and grass, which I believe is the final step, aside from planting a few more bushes and stuff. I can't wait to see it when I get home.

So, that's about the size of things. I'm not sure what my net access will be over the coming weeks, but I'll be taking lots of pictures and will post something up when I can. Smell ya all later!

Oh, by the way... Someone hit the fire hydrant right outside our building the other day. It created a five storey high geyser, a TON of water, and ended up flooding out the bottom of the underground parking garage. Here are some pics:

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So I've been watching a fair amount of World Cup, and while I really enjoy watching soccer, I really dislike one particular aspect.

Cheating. Intentionally breaking the rules and trying to get away with it.

The games I've seen are chock-full of players playing a weird sort of meta-game against the ref, where they try to get away with anything they can. Any replay will show players grabbing the hell out of each other. If someone is barely nudged, they'll take a flying leap and roll around grabbing their ankle. And everyone knows they're doing it. It's pathetic, and somehow it's an accepted part of the game. The fact that there is a penalty against taking a dive just proves my point. It's out of control.

Another prime example is when the player is awarded a penalty kick at some random spot in the field. Almost invariably, the player will grab the ball, and when they bend down to place the ball, they actually throw it forward with backspin so that they get it an extra five or ten feet up the field. But what's the point? In 99.9% of situations, an extra couple feet on a penalty kick will make no difference. But yet that kinda of cheating mentally seems to be so ingrained that it's just natural. (Now that I think about it, maybe I should start doing that when placing my ball to putt in golf. Just toss it forward a few feet and hope no one notices).

I'm probably an idealist, but it really bugs me.

There's a popular phrase "if you're not cheating, you're not trying", but I think that's BS. Games, by definition, need rules and structure. I agree that a third party (read: referee) is almost always needed for impartial judgement, but players in any game need to have some sort of self-control.

Otherwise, it just turns into chaos.

I was playing CounterStrike last night, and we had an obvious wall-hacker on. For those not familiar, a wall-hacker is someone who cheats by using software that allows him to see through solid walls. Because you can jump into the head of any player and see everything from their point of view, I was able to observe him looking into a blank wall, track sideways to the corner of the wall, and then shoot the player as soon as he appeared at the corner. Stuff like that. His record was like 28 kills to 5 deaths, which certainly isn't unheard of, but is pretty damn good.

Just makes me sad.

Statistics crack me up... During the Ghana/Italy world cup game today, after Italy scored the first goal, they talked about how they've previously lost games where they were the first goal scorer. They also said that "only 14% of teams that score the first goal go on to lose, so it just shows you how important getting that first goal really is." The commentator was all into this critical stat.

But they made it sound like getting the first goal was more like a random choice, like flipping a coin to choose sides, and whoever got it had a big advantage. But what I think is more likely is that there is a strong correlation between "getting the first goal" and "the team with the better players".

There was a recently a Slashdot article written about how a random phone poll was conducted, and those polled were not that concerned about the recent reports that phone companies had turned over all their call records to the NSA. Someone made a very insightful comment that there is probably a correlation between [people who don't care much about their privacy] and [people who respond to telephone polls]. To put it another way, people who DO care about privacy probably don't participate in telephone polls. To put it even ANOTHER way, 100% of the people polled said that they participate in telelphone polls. Get the idea?

Diana was really the person who opened my eyes to not just reading statistics, but really understanding and questioning the entire issue. Statistics can seem really cut and dry, but often deserve a closer look.

In other news, the progressive-thinkers in Oklahoma have passed a low to make "inappropriate" video games akin to pornography, with regard to displaying and sales to minors. Inappropriate games are ones that "feature glamorized or gratuitous violence" (uh, that's like, half the games right there), and "trivializes the serious nature of realistic violence" (oops, there goes Counterstrike, or any FPS that allows you to reload your game when you die), and "uses brutal weapons designed to inflict the maximum amount of pain and damage" (I guess Doom's chainsaw wasn't a big hit), "or depicts lead characters who resort to violence freely" (So, World of Warcraft will apparently have to include some sort of diplomatic, non-combat solutions to solving quests and getting rewards). Awesome.

I'm certainly not saying that all games are appropriate for all ages. But I AM saying that we already have a non-governmental group, the ESRB, who issues ratings for games, just like the MPAA does for movies. I don't want to get all Big Brother here, but do we really want the government to start rating our movies for us? What about TV shows? Books? News broadcasts?

Luckily, I believe I read that the case isn't over, and since games may or may not be protected by the First Amendment, then states don't have the right to override that. So, we'll see what happens.

Sorry. I guess I had that all bottled up and needed to get it out.

In case you missed it, here's another magic video!.

Also, I figured out how to do another one that is REALLY cool. I'm currently practicing it, and hopefully will video-ize it soon!

PS: Iwan, I want Sara's comments, please! :)

Diana apparently has a magician in her class, and she showed him my previous YouTube magic videos. He wrote me a little message on YouTube, and I got inspired to make another movie.

So, digital camera films the movie. Got it. Picasa grabs it and sorts it. Check. Windows Movie Maker, which I've never used much before, was a breeze. Download the "Dating Game" theme, which should be a pre-requisite for ANY magic video, says me. Upload the whole deal to YouTube.com. I notice a little "Embed" tag, which I just cut and paste below to get the video embedded into my blog.

Easy peasy. I'm pretty much in love with technology right now.

UPDATE:

So, it turns out that if I embed a YouTube video in my blog, then my blog address is visible on my YouTube page. And since one of Diana's students is aware of my YouTube presense, and she really doesn't want students to be in here, I've removed the video.

Yesterday, while waiting on something at work, I wrote a program to track keyboard and mouse usage. Why? I have absolutely no idea. But it seemed like a fun thing to do. I'd never writing something that lives in the System Tray before (down by your clock in the lower right), and the technology that allows it to intercept keyboard and mouse action even while in the background (keyboard and mouse hooking) is interesting and useful. So, it was a fun little exercise.

Today is 06/06/06, and news heads are all yammering about it. But they're not yammering about anything useful or relevant. They're all making a big deal about people making a big deal about it. Dumb. As if the antichrist were really stupid enough to show up on 06/06/06... In related news, the previews of the new "Omen" movie REALLY freak me out. I don't like scary movies.

In even other news, Netflix is about to ship "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure". I can't wait!

Sooo, buttons.

The weather is getting pretty nice out, and luckily I've had some opportunities to take advantage of it. My work peeps had our quarterly "team building" event, where we went to see a Padres game last Wednesday. The first cool thing was that we sat in one of the suites in the Western Metal Supply building out in left field, which was pretty cool. Nice box seats (in the shade!), with free dogs and stuff. Good times. The other cool thing was, in spite of a relatively boring game, we pulled out to a lead, and in the top of the 9th, the bells started tolling and Hoffman made his sloowww jog from the bullpen in center field, all by himself, out to the mound, while the crowd was going crazy. 10 or 11 pitches later, the game was over. That guy rocks.

Yesterday Diana and I headed over to our boy Andy's apartment, where we met up with Eryn and some other peeps for a little frisbee golf and BBQ'ing. That was a really good time. I think frisbee golf is pretty fun, in spite of the frustration of missing little 10 foot "putts". All in all, a good time with good peeps. My frisbee throwing muscles are a bit sore today!

The house is still coming along. It's now a different color! We painted it a medium green color, with white trim. It looks pretty good. I don't think it's EXACTLY right, but it's certainly not awful enough that we'll have it redone. I'm a little concerned with how the new stone facing looks against it. The stone looked awesome with the warm-y peach color, but it's not quite as good up against the cool green color. But, it'll probably have to do, but it's just not quite right. With the painting done, and the hardscape/tiling mostly done, I think that just leaves planting and final landscaping, and it'll all be done! Woot.

My latest invention in Second Life, which allows players to create and speak their own languages and which I thought was going to be a huge hit hasn't sold many copies at all. I'm disappointed. I need to get in the game and try to generate some buzz. I bought a workboys PS2 and a copy of Guitar Hero, and Diana and I have both been jamming out. It's really fun to watch her get better and better.

So, there's the state of my life in a nutshell. :)