Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Aaron Bolner's LiveJournal:

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Tuesday, October 25th, 2011
8:31 pm	Trip to Michigan - Andrea's mom's 70th birthday / Greenfield Village ( Friday 10/21 ) ( Saturday 10/22 ) ( Sunday 10/23 and Monday 10/24 ) Good thing I finished Kartia before we left last weekend; I'm not sure how well I'd be absorbed in the story if I hadn't. Still haven't decided what to play next. I still have four PS1 games left on the backlog; Vanguard Bandits, Alundra, Brigandine, and in theory, Vandal Hearts II. I have been on a PS1 kick of Saiyuki, Threads of Fate, SaGa Frontier 2, and Kartia, but I do have a Gamecube game (Baten Kaitos), two PS2 games (Grandia III, Suikoden V) and two PS3 games (Heavy Rain, Star Ocean 4) to play as well. Any input on what to play next is appreciated. Current Mood: awake (Comment on this)
Tuesday, October 4th, 2011
7:22 pm	Kelsay Farms v.5 / SaGa Frontier II / Baseball Playoffs / etc. Had a pretty great weekend, and it would be a shame if I didn't take the opportunity to write some of it down, even if I'm awfully tired today and may not be as lucid as normal. (Insert ranting about 8:37 first pitches for a team who easily averages 3:20 for a 9 inning game here.) Friday, September 30 Had an impromptu supper at Yats on Friday night, which was tasty as usual. My only hope is that the Greenwood location starts experimenting with some of the home base location's recipes sometime. I do like several of the staples of the Yats menu, but their chorizo dishes intrigue me and I'd like to try one at some point. Maybe we'll stop by the home base on Massachusetts when we go to the Wait Wait Don't Tell Me show on Butler's campus in a few weeks. (That was a happy thing that popped up in the last week; we were afraid that WWDTM would never come to Indianapolis. Now we don't have to schedule around that when we head to Chicago next year, which simplifies things.) Anyway, after Yats, we headed home and settled in to watch game 1 of the Tigers/Yankees series. Unfortunately, that lasted about half an hour before the rains came and washed away the Verlander/Sabathia duel. With that off the docket, we split up for a while and killed a little time on video games, me with SaGa Frontier 2 and her with a Mystery PI game that we picked up at Granny Bea's the previous week. ( SaGa Frontier 2 - Impressions so long they might as well be a review ) Saturday, October 1 After last week's disappointing trip to Columbus, we headed down again hoping that the going-out-of-business scrapbook store would actually be open this time, and lo! it was. I took along my PSP (Disgaea 2) and DS (Animal Crossing) so I'd have stuff to do, and turned her loose. I did take a look around inside the store before I busied myself on the handhelds, and I was impressed with how big the scrapbook store was. I believe the sign on the front of the building said it was between 1300 and 1400 square feet, and that felt accurate. Even "the back" was open to shopping, as they had it set up for more display areas. When I first heard about this scrapbook store going out of business, then heard of its location, I couldn't figure out why I had never heard of it despite living in Columbus for 4+ years. You'd figure that with a girlfriend/wife who scrapbooked and its position near the intersection of two of the five most traveled roads in the city, I'd have noticed it at some point. (It's also only a few blocks away from my Columbus-based dentist, whom I still visit to this day.) Our first visit to the location confirmed why I'd never seen it; it's on the back side of a double-width strip mall, and this side of the mall is visible from neither of the two major roads that pass by. Kinda hard to find a new store when you're driving around if you can't see it. In my brief couple of minutes in the store with Andrea, I heard a conversation to this effect between a customer and a store employee. The employee seemed exasperated with the subject, as if she'd heard the 'boy, if I only knew the store was here!' angle 50 times since the liquidation started on Thursday. After a few minutes of looking around, I left and sat in my truck while Andrea shopped for a solid hour. She found quite a bit of good stuff; paper, embellishments, paints, you name it. I can't quite remember it all, but a set of metal plates shaped like baseball home plates stands out in my memory as one neat thing she found. Once she was done, we headed over to Panera to meet Mom and Dad for lunch. October is my favorite month of the year to eat at Panera; the seasonal cranberry vanilla bagels are quite good. I decided to just go for soup and a bagel, as the last couple times I've had sandwiches, I wasn't that impressed with what I got for the money. The French onion soup is great, though, and the only French onion soup I've found so far that doesn't give me headaches. Learned from Mom while we were there that my cousin Andy's wedding was that day - I knew it was coming up soon, just couldn't remember when. Good for him. From there, it was a quick jaunt to Big Lots (thanks, Mom, for the tip on the Progresso price drop), then back home to scrapbook inventory and SaGa Frontier 2 (where I finally learned Soul Hymn and was able to resume plot progression). Had a homemade pizza, then settled in to watch the Tigers play the rest of game 1 after the rainout from Friday night. Unfortunately, the game was a blowout in favor of the Yankees. Doubly unfortunate was a scare we had during the middle of the game, wherein a sound much like breaking glass came up. Andrea and I agreed that the noise came from inside the house, we just couldn't figure out where. I assumed first that since the noise was soft, it had come from downstairs, and figured that a glass had tipped over in the sink. Both glasses in the sink were intact, however, as were all the windows and lightbulbs. Andrea and I split up and checked the upstairs windows, which were all intact, as were all the lightbulbs and standing glass elsewhere. Finally, we figured that maybe some of our neighbor's friends who were over having a party got drunk and broke a bottle or something. So soothed, we went to bed after the Tigers went down 8-1. (They eventually lost game 1, 9-3.) Sunday, October 2 Sunday morning is grocery shopping morning in my world, so I prepared to do just that. Before I started, however, Andrea made a discovery that further eased our minds about the previous night. See, those eyelets I mentioned that she picked up at the scrapbook store on Saturday? They fell out of their bag... and when they clink together, they sound an awful lot like two pieces of glass that touch. And when twelve of them fall all at once, some of them into a very solid paper rack... well, you get the idea. So, the scary noise wasn't so scary after all. When I got back from the grocery, we discussed doing our yearly trip to Kelsay Farms, a local dairy farm. Every year since we got married, we've gone down there - it's only a couple miles from our house, and we never fail to have a good time between the maze, the hay bale mountain, and the baby cows. We checked into the weather before leaving, and found that it was going to be calm, dry, and in the mid to high 60s. Much better than the previous three years (one too hot, one too cold, and one too wet). We packed up our camera and jackets and drove down to the farm, coupon in hand. (The price went up by $1 this year, but they sent out a $1 coupon in a local mailer, so it was the same as always for us.) We got there about half an hour after they opened, so there weren't a whole lot of people there yet. Our first stop was the 'petting zoo', which was stocked with four baby boy cows who were 9 days old. (Typically, we go a little later in the season, when the babies are 15-20 days old.) The four of them were all curled up sleeping when we got there, though, so we decided to go off and do other stuff while they napped. From there, we moved to the hay bale mountain, which was laid out slightly differently this year, but was in roughly the same spot at the front of the farm. This year, they had a few extra bales of hay sticking out one end that were laid out in the rough shape of a tractor, complete with red paint on the front bales, two actual tractor tires stuck between some hay bales, and a steering wheel stuck into the bale above the tires. I saw a couple little boys having fun up in the 'driver's seat'. Meanwhile, Andrea and I climbed and crawled all over and under the mountain, taking pictures in and from various spots. I particularly liked when she decided to lounge in one of the tractor tires, and got a nice picture there. On to the corn maze, then, which was significantly simpler than the last couple years, but also more fun because the corn was actually green this year. No skipping through barriers because you can see scavenger hunt points through waves of brown stems! The shape this year included a cow with a party hat, a birthday cake with a 5-shaped candle on top, and the Kelsay Farms logo. Simple, but effective. Back to the babies after that, three of whom were up and about when we got there. (The fourth was still curled up on the ground, but was at least out of their little plastic igloo.) I got the camera out while Andrea started petting the babies. Three of them came over to her and stood in a row patiently while she reached out to them in turn. The one on the right was pretty calm the whole time. The one in the middle mooed once, which took me by surprise - I never thought about when baby cows would start to moo. The one on the left was crazy, and as Andrea put it, "kept sticking out his Gene Simmons tongue to try to lick me" as she scratched his head. I don't know if he thought there was food, or if he just wanted a taste of human flesh with his huge round teeth, or what. Once she was done petting the cows, she took the camera and made sure to get face pictures of each cow, as they all had name tags. (Well, one just had a number - they haven't named him yet.) While she was taking pictures, the fourth baby finally got up, walked back toward the igloo, then turned around and mooed repeatedly at us. We're not sure what he was trying to commoonicate, but she parlayed his talkative nature into a great idea for her scrapbook pages to commemoorate the event. (I'll stop now.) From there it was off to home, where we sat down to eat. I was the only one who actually got to eat, however, as the phone rang as soon as I sat down. As our friend Ruth Ann had just commented to Andrea's cow-related status on Facebook, and Ruth Ann had failed to reach us by phone the previous weekend, Andrea asked, "I wonder if that's her on the phone?" Indeed it was, and Andrea did not eat lunch; the next hour and a half was phone time. (I took her a peanut butter ball during the call so at least she got SOME food in her.) She really enjoyed her time, though. When the phone call was over, I noted that the Tigers/Yankees game 2 had already started, so I got that fired up on the TV. For a 3:30 game, it was interminable, as the Tigers kept nearly blowing the lead they picked up early in the game, and the rains came back to give yet another delay (and cause a Tigers player to blow a game-clinching catch because he slipped on the on-deck circle). But, in the end, they held on to tie the series 1-1. We had a quick supper after that, and retreated upstairs for more video games. I played SaGa Frontier 2 up to the final boss (not knowing how long the credits / ending would be, I played it safe), then we headed to bed at roughly the normal time. Monday, October 3 Neither of us felt well enough to go to work on Monday, so we didn't. What little activity I had that wasn't finishing SaGa Frontier II or starting Kartia (the next game on the PS1 chopping block) was spent cooking up some tasty food. I tried a salmon loaf recipe from a loaf pan recipe book, but modified it to use tuna instead. It didn't work as well as I'd hoped, but a necessary alteration probably made the difference. (I didn't have enough dry bread crumbs, so had to use some actual bread instead; that's probably why the final product was too soft. I think it'll work when I try it again.) I also made the adventurous trek out to the mailbox when the postal employee drove through. Part of why I wanted to get there ASAP is because our next door neighbor was getting siding put on his house, and I wasn't sure we'd GET our mail because the contractor had the mailbox blocked. Luckily, our postal worker did stop and get out of the truck to give us our mail. This was actually important because our Wait Wait tickets were in the mail! (Usually, Monday is nothing but refinancing spam.) Beyond that, we relaxed and recovered until 8:30, when the Tigers and Yankees played again. 3+ hours later, we gleefully collapsed after the Tigers pulled one out, 5-4, to take a 2-1 lead in the series. (I just hope they win in a blowout tonight; I don't think Valverde can pitch again after throwing 60+ pitches total between the last two nights, and I'm afraid he'd blow up if Leyland used Benoit to close instead of him.) And that was the weekend. Good stuff all around. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, July 2nd, 2011
6:03 pm	Teleconference on Hold / Back on the bike / Redecorating I really wish I'd had more time to spare the past few days; some interesting stuff has happened. I'll try to cover at least some amusing and/or important stuff that's happened lately. Amusing My boss sent me to a teleconference Thursday. He was scheduled to have meetings from 1:00 - 2:00, 2:00 to 3:30, and 3:00 to 4:00. Conflict! I got drafted to go to the 2:00 - 3:30 meeting, as it was less "here is stuff that is going on now", and more "here is stuff that we're looking at for the future". So, I headed off to the 3rd floor conference room at 2:00. The topic was a (currently in beta) new way to input information to a national information management system. That, in and of itself, wasn't really anything to write home about. The run-up, however, was hilarious. We dialed in to the conference call's line and got some music that was quite different than the usual smooth jazz; more of a salsa / Latin type song. Soon, a voice kicked in with a message about public pool safety. Okay, sure, it's summer, and we're calling a public health organization, so that makes sense. Then the message repeated in Spanish. We were a little confused, as the call was from Washington DC and was being presented in English. After a brief pause, another message came through in English that specifically mentioned Texas public health; it was immediately followed by the same message in Spanish. At this point, we figured it out; a Texas lab had called in, not muted their phone, and put the teleconference host on hold. After ten minutes of repeated messages and salsa music, someone from the host agency yelled over the hold message, "WE HAVE A NEW NUMBER AND ACCESS CODE. PLEASE WRITE THIS DOWN", and gave us the new number. Once everyone (except Texas) switched over to the new number, we had a nice, informative, quiet teleconference. Important As I've covered previously, I've done quite well for myself by creating an exercise plan ("start walking or you don't go home") and sticking to it. (As an update, I'm down to about 250. In another month or two, I'll finally get to see what the Wii Fit 'overweight' model looks like.) Spurred by a program at work, Andrea has started in on a program of her own. The program is called "get back on your bike", though Andrea thinks it should be more like "get off your butt and move". Same idea, not quite as good of sales potential. The program started this week, and has a goal of 200 miles in 8 weeks. Initially, she seemed daunted, but so far she's doing quite well. For $23, you get a digital odometer for your bike, as well as the opportunity to take a couple of bike-related classes (safety, riding in traffic, that kind of thing), as well as access to group rides on each Thursday night. (Unfortunately, these are primarily on the north side of town.) Seems that in the past, the breakdown of people signing up for this program is something like 55% finish the 200 miles, 6% try to bike the 200 but don't get there, and the remainder essentially say "ooo, an odometer", pay the fee for that, and never bother reporting their mileage. I assured her that it would be OK if she was in the 6%. For the first few days, she stuck around the neighborhood as she got back into biking around. Last night, we headed over to a local park that advertised a bike trail. She really seemed to like the trail; she reported two not-terribly-busy road crossings in a 3+ mile stretch, well-groomed pathways, and some nice things to look at along the trail - and that wasn't even the whole trail. I think we'll be headed over there quite a bit during this program. (The parking lot for the park is right next to a basketball court; I think that if I don't end up trying to walk some of the trail, I should buy a basketball and shoot around. That would be a fun way to get out and do stuff instead of, y'know, MORE WALKING.) I'm very proud of her for keeping up with it so far, and I look forward to keeping it up the rest of the summer. (I don't think she'll be part of the 6%.) ( Gaming ) That's a good update for now. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, April 22nd, 2011
12:21 pm	Jessica (10/5/2006 - 4/22/2011) We lost the bunny today after a brief fight with GI stasis and kidney failure. Thankfully, she held on long enough for us to go say goodbye. I'm going to miss my bunny. Current Mood: sad (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, September 16th, 2010
6:54 am	Ys Seven Been working my way through Ys 7 lately - I'm in what appears to be the final dungeon (given that my inventory is mostly full). One item of note from the soundtrack that I figured at least hikarugenji might be interested in if he hasn't played this already: a remix of "Don't Go So Smoothly!" from Ys II shows up partway through the game. Appropriately used, though there are lots of songs from that OST I like more. Current Mood: sleepy (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, November 29th, 2009
8:27 pm	Adventures in bunnies and "Black Friday" shopping Friday, November 20 Ended up coming down Emerson to get home that day - I think there were traffic problems, plus a Pacers game that wasn't helping - but the point is that as we were passing the intersection where Ted's Feed Store is, Andrea saw a sign that read "STORE CLOSING SALE". (Ted's is the store where we get big boxes of hay for Jessica.) We decided to turn around to see if it was Ted's... and sadly, it was. Now where will we get hay for the bunny? :( Monday, November 23 Not a whole lot going on Monday, though I did have an adventure with Jessica. I decided to team up with Andrea to give her a nail trim. I actually got Jess picked up pretty easily; I let her into the library, then followed her around on the floor for a while until I got her to hold still. I put my hand over her eyes, then scooped her up and sat her in my lap as I sat cross-legged. Andrea got the clippers and went to work. Surrender-bun was cute and floppy as her back feet and front left foot were clipped... but she had her head pinned up against her front right foot. I decided to jostle her a bit to get her to move her head, and that's when the fun and games ended. As soon as she felt ground (i.e. my leg) underneath her back right foot, she kicked. Her back right foot hit my leg; no problem. Her back LEFT foot, complete with freshly ragged nails, caught my bare arm on the way down. I held her tight and Andrea finished off the pedicure, but as soon as I let Jess go, I saw I had to go clean up; she left two cuts about 4 inches long on my arm, with a couple scrapes about 2 inches long for good measure. Ow. Tuesday, November 24 Again, not a whole lot interesting from a work or gaming standpoint. We did, however, get Black Friday ads, which raised our eyebrows. JoAnn Fabrics had the Cricut paper-cutting machine, normally $200, advertised for $75. The cartridges for the Cricut, normally $80-$90, were advertised at $29. Andrea's been vaguely thinking about one of those machines for a while, so we talked about it, and decided we might be up for a campout the night before. Wednesday, November 25 On the way home from work, the two of us decided that we should stake out JoAnn to see if we could figure out where all the Cricut stuff was. We easily found the cartridges, then I saw a cart stacked with 15 boxes that read "CRICUT MACHINE". We decided to stay until we saw where those ended up. A pallet in the corner of the store was the final destination, and from the looks of it, they were going to have a whole lot more than 15 of the suckers. Confident that we'd be able to snag the machine, we left and went on to grocery shopping at Meijer, then had a restful evening at home. Thursday, November 26 Went down to Mom and Dad's for Thanksgiving lunch on Thursday. On the way, we listened to a mix CD that we threw together. We've been talking about making a mix CD of stuff that was popular/meaningful from our high school days, and we finally put it all together over the course of Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday evenings. Here's the tracklist. Tracks are in chronological order of release except the last two, which were sort of my class song and her class song: ( We were in high school in the late '90's, in case that wasn't painfully obvious. ) We got to Columbus around 11:15. The visit was fairly straightforward for a while; watch parade, prepare for lunch, eat lunch. Max, Mom and Dad's cocker spaniel, broke up the monotony a bit by being a racing puppy all around the wooden floors. I don't know how he controls where he's going with any degree of accuracy. Andrea and I both chased him around (and led him around) for a few minutes. After lunch, we played Trivial Pursuit. It took quite a long time, but Andrea won. During the game, Max fell asleep rather adorably in a chair. I wish we'd had a camera; he was curled up on his back with one ear flopped out over the edge of the chair. Two highlights from the game: one, we swore up and down that the category "Sports and Leisure" should be called "Sports and Liquor", because that's about the only 'leisure' subject we ever got. Two, Andrea nailed a trick hockey question. "What Red Wings coach broke Scotty Bowman's record for most wins in a season in 1995-96?" As Andrea noted, Scotty Bowman was the only relevant coach of the Wings in the '90s, and she got that one right. --- While we were there, Andrea spied the JoAnn ad for Columbus and took a look. She found that the Columbus JoAnn had the two Cricut-based deals on separate days; the machine on Friday, the carts on Saturday. When we got home, we confirmed that the Greenwood JoAnn had the same setup. This was kinda depressing, and we thought that maybe it wasn't quite going to be worth two separate trips. A few minutes later, I remembered that Michael's had a sale on Cricut carts as well, and asked Andrea to look into it. This was at about 6 PM. Lo and behold, the 60% off Cricut carts sale at Michael's was all weekend... and they opened at 5 PM on Thursday. Within ten minutes, we were out the door to head up to Michael's. The parking lot looked full, but the inside of the store wasn't too crazy. There were two rotating displays of Cricut carts at the front of the store, with a larger display in between them. About 15-20 people were looking through the displays. Andrea and I split up and looked for carts; between the two of us, we found two of the five she was looking for. While she was looking at one display, I noticed that the large display had the cutting machine, which wasn't advertised in the flyer... and the price was $5 better than JoAnn. Score! They had about a dozen of the suckers left in the display, so I picked one up and carried it around while we scoured for more carts. Eventually, we made our way back to the normal Cricut display near the back of the store, and found one more of the carts that she was looking for. Three out of five ain't bad, and this definitely removed all possibility of us going out on Friday for Cricut-related shopping, so this mission was a complete success. We went home and Andrea delightedly unboxed her new toy while I played Bejeweled 2 on the 360. Fun times for all. Friday, November 27 Andrea decided to look into the eBay market for the two Cricut carts she was still looking for. She found that the maximum price on both of them was roughly what she'd pay on doorbuster sale price at JoAnn, so she decided to try to win a couple auctions instead. She got one of the carts in the morning, and set up a watch on the other one she wanted. That auction was set to end around 2:30. I hadn't planned on shopping on Black Friday, but I ended up going out around 11 for two reasons: one, it was likely my last shot at going to Ted's before they closed, and I wanted to see what they had left. Two, Target had Rock Band Unplugged for $7, which is pretty much as cheap as it's ever going to get. So. I went out to Target on 135 via back roads; Worthsville to Stones Crossing to 135. Parked on the side of the building, had very little foot traffic on the way in, and managed to snag the last copy of RB Unplugged. Checked out in electronics dept. for optimum efficiency. In and out in five minutes. :) From there, I went up 31 to Troy, and used Troy to cut across to Emerson. Troy was clear as a bell, so it was probably faster than any normal route I could have taken. On the way up 31, I saw that the JoAnn complex was totally jammed, so it's a good thing we didn't end up doing the JoAnn trip after all. Got to Ted's a bit later, and it was a sad sight. The small animal department had nothing left but salt licks, water crocks, and some random small treats, mostly for gerbils and hamsters. There were two bunny treats left; I got a bag of the papaya/banana yogurt balls. Goodbye, Ted's. We'll miss you. On my way home, I took back roads again to avoid Emerson & Southport. That intersection sucks NORMALLY. I took Five Points Road south to Main, then cut across Main to get home. Five Points was an adventure; it wasn't busy, but I did have to pull off the road to make room for a combine that was moving from field to field. Once I got home, I found that Andrea's final auction was still about an hour away. We sorted some paperwork for her job, then we went upstairs, where I hung around while she waited for the auction to end... and she won again! There was sleep at night for everyone, for there would be no camping out at JoAnn Fabrics. Mission complete! Saturday, November 28 Lazed around the house quite a bit in the morning. Around noon (after lunch), we decided to head out to our respective banks to make deposits. On the way back, we decided to stop at the Blockbuster on 31 and County Line to see if they had anything interesting. We ended up spending upward of two hours(!) in there. Most of that time was spent going through all their movie backing cards. Y'know, the ones that are there as placeholders on the shelf when a movie is out of stock? They were selling those 5 for $1.00. We spent two hour-long stretches flipping through all of them, eventually coming away with 59 potential buys, which we whittled down to 40. Not bad for some neat decorations, some of which will be given away come Christmastime. I'd list them all, but then some people might know something that they're getting. :p Came home and played Undertow on the 360 for a while, then had to deal with a cranky bunny in the evening. Poor thing's gassy again. I think. Hard to tell what's wrong with her sometimes. --- And hooray, the Colts clinched the division today. That was fast. I guess they've got the second tiebreaker over Jacksonville no matter what, given that they've got a 5 game lead with 5 to play, and they haven't played Jax twice yet. Current Mood: pleased (Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 4th, 2009
7:34 am	9/28/1931 - 11/2/2009 My maternal grandfather died on Monday night after a battle with throat cancer. It's sad, but it helps to know that it was his decision and that he was in control to the end (unlike my other grandfather, who died of ALS 13 years ago). We'll miss you, grandpa. As long as I have a desk at work, the stained glass nameplate you made me will be on it. Current Mood: sad (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, June 10th, 2009
9:10 pm	Catching up, part 1: Billy Joel / Elton John concert, 5/19/09 I have a lot of catch-up to do that I've been steadily working on... I'll be starting with the Billy Joel / Elton John concert from May 19, which deserves its own entry. --- ( Concert-going ) Current Mood: bored (Comment on this)
Thursday, May 14th, 2009
12:01 pm	Name... that... movie song! Been trying to get notes done for last weekend (a visit from the in-laws), but it's been a little insane; one of my coworkers is filling out retirement papers out of the blue, which has thrown our department into a bit of a tizzy. Instead, for today, I will leave you with a quiz. When I went to see the new "Star Trek" movie with my father-in-law on Monday, I heard three Rock Band songs during the previews and the actual movie itself. The breakdown of which song went where, however, was weird. So, I present the following quiz: --- Which Rock Band songs are in the following movies? The Movies: 1) A film adaptation of "Land of the Lost" starring Will Ferrell. 2) "9", featuring sentient rag dolls exploring a post-apocalyptic Earth 3) "Star Trek" '09 The Songs: a) Coheed and Cambria - "Welcome Home" b) The Who - "Won't Get Fooled Again" c) Beastie Boys - "Sabotage" --- Can you match the movies to the songs? (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, April 17th, 2009
7:52 am	Indians Opening Weekend / Battling the Worm / VP:CP Time to catch up on the previous weekend, as well as some other stuff... First off, from the DSi weekend, I forgot to mention the two traffic incidents we witnessed. As we were coming up on I-65 to go north toward Plainfield, the traffic on I-65 south on the Main Street bridge was at a virtual standstill: falcon815: Wow. I wonder what the deal is. aquahaute: There are red flags on some of the cars... is that a funeral? falcon815: Oh, right; Louisville was playing HERE today. They did say there were at least 20,000 Louisville fans at Lucas Oil for the game... In a way, it was a funeral - the death march to Louisville for the end of their basketball season, complete with red and black Angry Cardinal Logo flags. The traffic had probably jammed largely because I-65 compresses from three lanes to two just south of that bridge. The other incident we ran across was a bit more conventional, though still not what we expected. As we approached 465, one of the electronic signs over the highway flashed a warning: "LEFT LANE CLOSED / I-465 MILE MARKER 7 / ACCIDENT CLEANUP" We had to stay on 465 just past that marker, so when we got to mile marker 5, I moved over from the fast lane to the center lane to be safe. When we got to mile marker 6, we noticed a LOT of flashing lights: at least two cops and at least two wreckers, but no ambulances. There were an awful lot of people scurrying about, as well. The story became clear when we got closer: a double-length UPS trailer had come apart. The back trailer had careened off to the left, hit something, and tipped over, spilling packages all over the place. The 'cleanup', then, was a few guys running around picking up lost packages, and putting them on the backup UPS box truck that had driven to the scene. Anyway. On to last weekend, featuring an Indians game, a new book, and a battle with a worm. ( April 10 - April 12 ) This week's been kind of slow. I spent one day in the Metals lab, learning the lead-in-soils procedure from one of their chemists. Pretty simple, if time-consuming (like many chemistry procedures, really). Spent another day cleaning up the lab, which had kind of gone by the wayside with the mass of metals samples I worked on through February and March. The hoods are looking pretty good now. It looks like the biggest part of the metals project is over; I got a thank-you letter last week that implied the study was over. We're still receiving samples from that area, just in more routine batches that don't require total devotion to that test. --- Gaming-wise... DS: Finished Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume with each ending, in a total of just over 20 hours. Very, very short game. Final boss of A ending was irritating, moreso when I figured out on my second attempt that if I'd just [spoiler spoiler], I would have won easily on the first try. Bah. I dunno. I felt like the game wouldn't have been anywhere near as much fun if I hadn't already been a fan of the series. The plot is pretty good, and seeing it from multiple perspectives is nice, but I felt the same way about VPCP as I did about Ogre Battle - with no background as to the world and how it works, the plot and its impact would be severely diminished. tl;dr: If you're going to play a Valkyrie Profile game, start with VP: Lenneth. It's still the best starting point despite the fact that both the other games are prequels. At least they brought back "Mission to Deep Space", which was not in VP2 and is somehow not on the Star Ocean 4 soundtrack. Seriously, what? Anyway. I haven't spent much time in VPCP Seraphic Gate yet, but I'm sure I will eventually. I started in on Advance Wars DS after finishing VPCP, and I don't like it very much so far. I'm having a hard time figuring out which units are good against which other units; the tutorial information is not sticking with me at all. I feel like they tried to dump way too much information on me way too quickly, as opposed to, say, Fire Emblem (another game in a similar vein by the same developers). I'll try to play it some more and learn more about what's going on with all the different units, but eight battles in, I am confused as hell. PSP: Breath of Fire syndrome is setting in with Breath of Fire III. I'm only about 4 hours in (just got to Wyndia), and I've had a really hard time staying interested. The only game in this series that's kept my interest the whole way through was Dragon Quarter. (I finished BOF after over a year of letting it languish; I never finished BOF 2.) I don't get it. I like RPGs, and I've stuck with games that felt actively worse (Hoshigami, Arc the Lad III) or slower (Legend of Heroes, Phantasy Star II), but something about this series just doesn't click with me. Part of my problem with III is that it has been very bad about telling me what to do. I don't need [blue highlighted text] every three seconds, but give me some clue. I've been having much more fun on the PSP with the demo for Phantasy Star Portable, though it still doesn't play as well as the original PSO. Guys, your lock-on system still sucks, and was better on the freaking Dreamcast. Fix it. You're on what, the third iteration of the game since then? And working on the fourth (PS Zero for DS)? Then again, I'm not sure why I would be expecting improvements in a Sonic Team game at this point. 360: Peggle addiction waning a bit. Basically all that's left to do, achievement-wise, is full-clearing each board. Up to 28 or 29 out of 55 on that. A couple of them will be hard, but it's still fun to try. Rock Band 2 progress was finally made... still have a couple more things to do with challenges, but that's about it. I know we'll never be able to do Endless Setlist on Expert - love how I can full clear "Panic Attack" on bass on Hard, but can't even pass it on Expert - but we'll be able to do it on Hard if we pass bass back and forth some weekend. PS3: Haven't played LittleBigPlanet for a couple weekends. It'd be nice if we could get a decent second controller for less than $40. I'm considering researching PS2-PS3 adapters so we can do some multiplayer without breaking the bank. Current Mood: calm (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, March 30th, 2009
4:51 pm	In which we are invited to an exclusive preview Had a pretty good weekend. I should write about it before I forget too much! Friday night, we had a nice night out at Applebee's, where we watched Michigan State take out Kansas. Slept in on Saturday, where by "slept in" I mean "slept until 8". We let Jess out and watched her run for a while, then showered and took off on the hunt for yard sales! Sadly, we couldn't find much advertised, largely due to the impending afternoon rain, but we did find one yard sale along Averitt that had a Mustang model for aquahaute. There wasn't much else there but knives, saw blades, and NASCAR paraphernalia, though. Oh well, yard sale season isn't quite in full swing yet. :p We went from Averitt over to Target, partially to return the abysmal bike pump she'd picked up the weekend before (read the reviews on that sucker, they're highly informative) and partially to pick up my new glasses. I'm reasonably pleased with the new glasses (my first in almost 10 years), though I think the nose pads are a bit too thick and rigid. Maybe I can swap those out soon. They're not a new prescription, but I guess it was about time to retire the others, even if they're still fully functional. Ended up picking up a rather eclectic mix of stuff at Target: - Rock Revolution for PS3 ($5 on clearance, shut up, I knew it was going to suck but at least it was cheap) - a jar of green salsa - a large plastic ball for Jessica to (hopefully) play with - a four-pack of 100 ml bottles of Baileys Irish Cream (our third attempt at some kind of alcohol, after a cherry wine and a Sam Adams both failed pretty hard) I bet the cashier was scratching his head afterward. From there, we went home. I forget what we did for a while... probably Peggle and VP: Covenant of the Plume, since those were our two main games of the weekend. I went back out around 3 to head to Wal-Mart to do some grocery shopping. In the late afternoon, she started LittleBigPlanet (I picked up the EU version for $20), which had some great tutorials. She played the first world and then put it away. We also tried Rock Revolution, which was indeed terrible. The most disorienting thing wasn't even the straight-up-and-down note chart; it was the five-line, four-gap chart with the lines being what the notes followed, rather than the gaps. Do not want. Back to Rock Band now. I made grilled cheese sandwiches for the first time ever (believe it or not!). They were pretty good for a first attempt. Then again, I guess they're kinda hard to screw up? In the evening, after we watched the rabbit for a while, we each had a mug of hot cocoa with half a bottle of Baileys mixed in. Stunningly, amazingly, finally, we both found a liquor that doesn't completely kill our throats. Both of us quite enjoyed the mix, and we will be doing that again sometime. On Sunday, we slept in again, and watched Jess for a while. At 9:30, I went to Aldi... whoops, they don't open until 10. At 10, I went back to Aldi, and did my grocery shopping in peace. More Peggle, more Covenant of the Plume (which I finished my first run-through of that day), and more Michigan State ownage in the afternoon. At 5, we left for Plainfield, since we had an invitation to the DSi preview event at a Gamestop out there. It was OK, I guess - I'd never pay $170 for a DS, but the cameras had surprising quality for something so small. There were also a lot of filters and options to play with on the cameras (turning pictures into kaleidoscopes, mirroring half the image against the other half, etc.) We had our picture taken with one, and the Nintendo rep printed it out for us and gave us some DSi-themed magnets to stick it to our fridge with. After coming back home, we watched the bunny some more, then had supper and went to bed pretty early. --- Sadly, that didn't help Monday start any better; both of us woke up at 5:15 with headaches, though for different reasons (mine food-related, hers unknown). Since she's caught up at work anyway, it was worth her while to call in sick, and I have 10ish sick days that I won't get paid for unless I use them, so... we both called in. My Excedrin finally fully kicked in around 10, at which point I decided to head out for a bit. Target was kind of fail, though - the headphones we've been watching on the clearance rack hadn't dropped any further. We spent quite a bit of time playing Peggle in the afternoon, and had a tasty lunch (Aldi's Southwest eggrolls are a good buy at $2.50). She's been playing Chrono Trigger for a while, as I've been writing this. No idea what I'm cooking for supper yet. Yeah, it's been a lazy day, but both of us felt like crap, so I'm not feeling very guilty. :p Maybe I'll organize my music some more... (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, March 19th, 2009
11:15 am	NCAA '09 Finally almost done with the big work project, so it should get a little less crazy around here. Also have stories to tell about Andrea's truck. However, for today, it's tournament time. ( My NCAA picks for this year. ) Not going out on much of a limb with the final four, or even the eight, but hey. I've got some double-digits wreaking havoc, it's just probably the wrong ones. :p We got permission to run the Butler/LSU game on one of the 47" LG LCDs in a conference room, so from 12:30-1:30, it's go time. :D [Edit 2:00 - Dear Memphis: Are you somehow not skilled/athletic enough to run Cal-State Northridge off the court? Why are you jacking up 15 three-pointers in the first half? And why is anyone else shooting 3s when one guy is 5/7 and the rest of you are 0/10?] (Comment on this)
Tuesday, February 24th, 2009
12:14 pm	Tuna Pasta a la Falc I am hungry, and I promised a recipe, so here's one that I've been making for aquahaute and myself for quite a while. It's heavily modified from original recipe in my little Italian cookbook (largely because I usually don't keep anchovies or fresh cream in the house), but I feel like I've worked the kinks out. So, I present to you: Tuna Pasta One 3 5 oz. can of tuna in water (do not use tuna in oil!) 1/3 c. olive oil 1/2 c. 2% milk 1 packet of basil pesto sauce mix (Simply Organic, which can be found at Target, is good, but there are others) 1 1/2 - 2 c. dry pasta black olives (garnish) - Drain the can of tuna. Put the tuna in a food processor, and add the 1/3 c. olive oil. Blend together thoroughly. - Add the 1/2 c. milk and pesto mix to the tuna/oil mixture, and blend thoroughly. (I also like adding 1/4 - 1/2 tsp. black pepper, or a clove of garlic, at this step - feel free to add any herbs/spices at this time to let the flavors mix. Red pepper flakes would probably be good additions here too.) - Cook the dry pasta to your preferred taste. When finished, reduce heat to low, drain water, and return pasta to pot. - Pour the blended sauce mixture over the pasta, and stir. Allow the sauce to thicken. When sauce is no longer runny, remove from heat and serve. Add sliced or whole black olives to taste. This recipe goes well with toast, or crusty bread. The Usual at our house is to butter some slices of bread and sprinkle chives and garlic salt on them before toasting them lightly in our toaster oven. Let me know if you end up trying this. Current Mood: hungry (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 4th, 2009
4:29 pm	Other unrelated stuff Catching up on gaming stuff: DS - Mostly Animal Crossing. Today, I finally got the last regular Nook item. Wasn't from his shop, though; it was from a present I shot down at 11:34 today. Up yours, Nook. That's what you get for not stocking a radiator when it's cold outside; you lose business. :P PSP - Finally finished Wild ARMs XF yesterday. Word of warning: this game isn't just long, it's Arc the Lad 2-caliber long; it took me 39 hours. I really liked the varied win conditions as opposed to normal TRPGs, and I also liked the variety in class abilities. What I didn't like was the railroading that some battles did (i.e. "use X class or you're basically screwed"). It doesn't leave a whole lot of room for variation in strategy, particularly in the larger maps. Music wasn't terrible, but only one track made me say "wow, I need to get that track" (the pre-battle formation music). Voice acting was bad. Plot was just kinda there, but had a couple nice moments. That, and battle 2-4 can go die in a fire. The playtesters either didn't get that far in the game or had selective memory when giving their feedback, because that battle is straight-up unfair. Ridiculous win condition, stupefying loss conditions, AND a time limit? Choose any two and the battle would be annoying enough, but all three? Ugh. It's no wonder that at least 3 hours of my gameplay was JP-building by stomping Hayokontons Hyulkontons Creeping Chaoses until I'd mastered some broken skill combos (a finite, but potent, speed setup that tended to give my party about 20-30 consecutive actions). I did not try to fight Ye Standarde Wild ARMs Optional Boss. When I started the battle, the turn order was Ragu - Ragu - Ragu - Ragu - Ragu - Levin - Ragu - Ragu. Uh... yeah. I'm not trying a battle that I can't even get a turn in without putting together the next best thing to The Quickening. 360 - Finished Lost Odyssey right before my 360 red-ringed. Better than Blue Dragon in just about every way. Not a stellar game, but it was worth playing. The load times for random battles really sucked, but the plot had some nice moments. PS3 - Gaming? I've been running Folding@Home on the sucker... I saw Fallout 3 Collector's Edition for $40 at Meijer a couple days ago and thought about it. If anyone has thoughts, let me know. (360 version's still $80, so no go on that.) Wii - I keep getting stuck at the final boss of Castle Shikigami III. At least, I think it's the final boss. Also, finished Ys I&II and Phantasy Star IV from Virtual Console. Tasty goodness on both. The only VC game I haven't finished now is Mario RPG. On PSIV (c/p'ed from an earlier, locked entry): Wow. I knew it was short, but damn. My total playtime was 9:20, and that includes a loss in the Air Castle (at least 10-15 minutes getting back to the midpoint) and a little bit of unnecessary sidequesting. I'm really surprised there's no speedrun of this game up on SpeedDemosArchive. I really need to update my List-o'-RPGs... it's been at least a year and a half. --- In Real Life stuff - sort of - I signed up for Facebook and have had some communications regarding my upcoming 10-year high school reunion; looks like it'll be in early May. I know I could cover more, but I'm kind of burned out on writing right at the moment. Current Mood: sleepy (Comment on this)
Monday, January 19th, 2009
2:00 pm	Quick weekend breakdown: Saturday: Awesome. More detail later. Sunday: Awesome. More detail later. Monday: $400 alternator / etc. repair job on my truck, and the 360 red ringed when I turned it on after getting home from the truck repair place. Welcome to the internet, little PS3 - you'll be the one hooked up for a while. Current Mood: uncomfortable (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, January 8th, 2009
11:31 am	News of the Weird: Hitting Home Edition I don't think this is the kind of news my old church/school wants to be making. [ETA: Found it on MSNBC and the AP, but this one seems to be the most robust article.] There are other things to post about, of course. The path looks clear for that this afternoon. Current Mood: weird (Comment on this)
Thursday, December 4th, 2008
12:45 pm	In which my thought process quickly devolves into Rock Band 2 grumblings I've got some notes down for Thanksgiving weekend, but I (mostly) haven't had the time and (sometimes) haven't had the desire to fill them out. Last night made me a little sad that I'm not as good at keeping this up as I used to be. There was a pretty fantastic weekend that aquahaute and I read both our entries on last night, and it reminded me of how fun this used to be. I'll try to nudge the chatterboxes away as much as I can to get back to writing. Spent some time on the 360 last night. I'm close to the lifetime achievement award on Gin, and finished off a couple of challenges in Rock Band 2. The more I play RB2, the more I miss RB1 - it's like Harmonix forgot how to pick songs that are fun to listen to or play in 2. I can pick out at least ten songs in 2 that I dislike more than any non-indie song in 1, and I'm not even through half the tracklist yet. Part of the problem is that they're succumbing to Neversoft syndrome. This was evident in some of the DLC for Rock Band 1; see, for example, "Snow ((Hey Oh))". You couldn't throw in some hammer-ons in the Expert Guitar line to make it, y'know, playable? The "making things overly difficult" problem is showing through a bit in the second game, both in song selection (see: "Panic Attack", "Pinball Wizard") and in charting (see: "Ramblin' Man"). "Ramblin' Man" is probably the best exhibit for me. See, Harmonix used to match up the Expert chart beat-for-beat with what was happening in the music. Play along with something in RB1, GH1, etc, and you'll see. Now, boot up RB2, and play "Ramblin' Man" on Hard Guitar. You'll note that the solo is dumbed down a bit, but the verses seem to be note-for-note what goes on on the lead guitar. Now crank it up to Expert. The solos? Pretty fun, actually! But where did all that extra stuff in the verses come from? I sure as hell can't hear it in the guitar line no matter how I go over it, and it is not fun to play - my wrist starts hurting even when double-strumming, and I don't have any joint problems. Guys, seriously. Don't succumb to the robots who worship GH3, or the Youtube Dragonforce armies. Keep going after songs that were at least fun to listen to ("Dani California", "Green Grass and High Tides", "Don't Fear The Reaper") or play ("Gimme Shelter", "Won't Get Fooled Again", "Reptilia"). GH1 and RB1 were both home run tracklists. RB2 is trying very hard to stretch a single into a double, but I'm afraid a Delmon Young-caliber arm is waiting in right field to throw it out. Current Mood: cold (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 19th, 2008
10:38 am	From the election to picture printing - 11/3 - 11/16 Ugh, I was doing pretty well for a while, but now I have to get some catchup done again. Thing is, I'm not sure how much has really happened over the past couple of weeks... I'll see what I can come up with as I go along. ( November 3 - November 16 ) There. That turned out longer than I expected, and pretty much takes care of things for now. (Comment on this)
Monday, November 17th, 2008
3:26 pm	Trip to Detroit - 10/31 - 11/2: The Quest for the Peanut Butter-filled Hershey Bars So... catching up. As a prelude and side note, we both picked up copies of Clubhouse Games for DS after the recent reprint. Fun little collection, and if anyone else has it, let us know. Wireless is something we do, and you can play games with us. On to catching up with the weekend we spent up in Detroit (10/31 - 11/2). ( October 31 - November 2 ) --- To be followed up later... Current Mood: bored (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, October 23rd, 2008
6:45 pm	We're Open 'Til We Close / Baby Cows Are Fuzzy Time to catch up on the weekend! Skip this post at your own risk, as this is the most robust picture-post I've made in quite a while, and most of them are cute and/or hilarious. ( Friday 10/17 - Sunday 10/19 ) --- End of weekend writeup! I'll try to finish off the catchup soon. Current Mood: pleased (1 Comment |Comment on this)