Nestings

9/28/1931 - 11/2/2009

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 12:43:22 GMT

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.

Catching up, part 1: Billy Joel / Elton John concert, 5/19/09

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 01:13:58 GMT

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.

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The experience started a bit before getting to Conseco Fieldhouse (the Pacers' arena downtown where the concert was). Pennsylvania Street was a logjam, so it took almost 20 minutes just to get from my job (1600 N, 500 W) to the parking lot I was going to use for the concert (300 S, 300 E) I could have walked to downtown almost as fast using the canal, but whatever.

We were entertained on Pennsylvania Street, at least. I was caught in a backup because of an accident in front of the Indy Star's building, when I looked into my rearview mirror and saw a gigantic yellow chicken head. I deliberately went slow to allow it to pass me, and we saw the Chicken Limo in its full glory. If only Art were still around.

After cruising side-by-side with the Chicken Limo for a few blocks, we finally got near the fieldhouse and got to park. It was only about 5:30, and the concert wasn't scheduled to start until 7:30 (doors open at 6:30), so we decided to head down a couple blocks to South St. to hit up the Subway for supper.

On the way, we overheard a man exclaim something about grey squirrels out of the blue. I think that covered the "random small animal references" portion of our evening quite well.

Subway was DEAD empty. Half the speakers in the place were dead, too, though the mono-output-from-stereo-music actually improved two of the songs we listened to while we were there ("Ramblin' Man" and "Magic Man" - the latter especially).

About half an hour after we got there, we worked our way back up to the fieldhouse, where we stood in line and waited for the doors to open. There were quite a few people - at least a couple hundred - waiting when we got there. Many were having their last smokes. Most were older than we were, many significantly so, though I guess 60 and 62 year old musicians tend not to play well with the younger crowd.

The doors opened a tick late, but we still had tons of time. We scanned our tickets, went in, and immediately went up toward our second-deck seats to check out the "obstructed view". On the way, we saw merchandising going on; I decided not to buy anything, as the prices were insane ($35-$40 for T-shirts? $20 for a fabric bag?).

We got to our seats around 6:45 and took a look around. The obstructed view wasn't anywhere near as bad as we thought it would be. Conseco Fieldhouse is primarily a basketball arena, so the floor is rectangular, about twice as long as it is wide. The stage was set up in one of the long ends, like this:

--------------------
|xxx
|xxx
|xxx
|xxx
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...where the X marks indicate the stage.

We were sitting on a diagonal, pretty much at a 45 degree angle from the lower left corner. The only blockages were from a couple of the hanging speakers and from the monitor they had set up to face us, showing off the camerawork. All in all, we could see a good 90% of the stage, and the only bad part of the view was not being able to see much of the backup bands, as they were in the obstructed part of the stage for us.

When we approached our seats, I had a little trouble gauging one of the steps and half-tripped on it. During the course of the evening, I saw at least ten other people trip on the exact same step, one nearly sending his beer flying in the process. Note to Conseco Fieldhouse: might want to look at that step in section 229, row 6. It's a doozy.

Andrea and I sat and talked for a while as the place filled up. By 7:30, about 90% of the arena was full; by 7:40, when the concert actually started, there didn't appear to be an empty seat in the house.

As for the concert itself, it went like this...

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Concert, part 1 - Piano Duets pt. 1

There were two large musical notes on the stage that slid open to reveal hydraulic lifts for the two pianos. John and Joel came up from backstage, played to the crowd a bit, then took their places (John on our side of the stage, Joel on the other), and began playing.

John was decked out in a black suit coat that was heavily studded with what I assume were rhinestones. The back of his coat read "MUSIC MAGIC" and included some artwork that I couldn't quite make out. His signature tinted glasses had an "EJ" in something shiny just below his right eye (the one facing the crowd), and the shoulders of his jacket were adorned with musical notes. Joel was in a simple black suit.

Their first two songs were nothing but the two singers trading verses and choruses as they played on piano:

John's "Your Song" (which drew a grimace from Andrea)
Joel's "She's Always a Woman"

After that, the backup bands came up to play along with the next two songs, while the singers traded verses again:

John's "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me" (I was disappointed this came up so early, but glad to hear Joel do a take on it)
Joel's "Just The Way You Are" (Joel's saxophone players got to show off here)

With those songs done, Joel left to let John do his solo stuff.

Concert, part 2 - Elton John solo

I don't remember the exact order of the songs John and his backup band played, but this is close to it.

*something I didn't recognize*
"Burn Down the Mission" (which I had never heard before)
"Rocket Man" (super-extended dance remix)
"Levon" (extended dance remix)
"Crocodile Rock" (I-can't-sing-that-high-anymore-so-you-guys-do-the-la-la mix)
"Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting"
"Goodbye Yellow Brick Road"
"Tiny Dancer"

Some general thoughts and notes from this section:

- My opinion, and the general sense I got from the crowd, is that people were getting kind of impatient by the end of Rocket Man. The crowd clapped at what they thought was the end twice, but John and his backup band kept on jamming. The first time, it was fine. The second time, it was a little too much. The song ended up running 12-13 minutes. At the beginning of "Levon", the next song, I turned to Andrea and said "at least he can't turn this into an extended dance mix, right?" I was wrong - it ran at least 8 minutes. (It was more tolerable than the original recording, and I actually kind of enjoyed it. I've always had an irrational hatred of the album cut of "Levon", though after listening to it live, I'm not sure it's so irrational anymore. I think it's the squeakiness John gets in the choruses as he sings Levon's name - since he doesn't have that kind of range now, the song is much less irritating.)

Anyway, the point is that after two songs that hardly anyone seemed to know, followed by an obnoxiously long jam session at the end of Rocket Man, the crowd was getting impatient and it seemed like John needed to do some work to get them back in.

- John never introduced his backup band, but I had a lot of fun watching two of them. The drummer constantly had a huge smile on his face, and looked like he was having the time of his life. I bet that if he'd been introduced by himself (as Joel did with his backups), the crowd would have gone nuts. I also enjoyed watching the guitarist; not so much for his mannerisms, but because he changed guitars in five consecutive songs. One was a guitar adorned with "Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy" art, one was a double-neck, one was a flying V, etc. It was neat to see him switch up so much.

- John did spend a little bit of time talking between two of his songs. He mentioned being glad to be in Indianapolis, which "helped set me on the straight and narrow", and gave a shout out to his friends Dario [Franchitti] and Scott [Dixon], both IndyCar drivers, as well as Franchitti's wife, Ashley [Judd], who were in the second row. He told the two of them he'd be watching the 500 from Toronto, the tour stop at that time.

I didn't quite get the "straight and narrow" portion of the program, but the Indy Star article on the concert was phenomenally useful for translating it into English from Mumble. I'd forgotten that John was heavily involved in the Ryan White situation from when I was a kid (essentially using his profile to pound home the point that hey, AIDS doesn't just happen to "people like me"), to the point that he was a pallbearer at White's funeral. Apparently that situation helped John get away from his addictions to drugs / alcohol / whatever.

- I hate "Crocodile Rock", but I liked how John didn't even try to hit the "laaaaaaaa la-la-la-la-la" portions, and just let the crowd handle it. The crowd wasn't great in handling that portion (it was probably out of a lot of people's ranges, really), but it was the first time that happened in the concert, so I thought it was neat.

After a good 70+ minutes, John left the stage and allowed Joel to do his solo portion.

Concert part 3: Billy Joel solo

Again, I don't remember the exact order, but this is close to it:

"Angry Young Man" (definitely the opener - I'd never heard it before)
"Movin' Out"
"Zanzibar"
"Scenes From an Italian Restaurant"
"Allentown"
"River of Dreams"
"You May Be Right"
"Only the Good Die Young"
"We Didn't Start the Fire"
"It's Still Rock and Roll To Me"

Notes and thoughts on Billy Joel's performance:

- "Angry Young Man" was pretty good. I should track it down and listen to it again sometime.

- Joel stopped between every song and did a little talking to the audience, including taking the time to introduce his backup band one at a time. Highlights included the multi-instrumentalist young black lady from northern Indiana and the other backup player (sax?) from Muncie.

- Joel also tried to be a funnyman, which didn't work in some instances:

Joel: "Hey everybody, thanks for coming out here tonight!"
Crowd: *cheer* *whistle*
Joel: "I'm sorry, Billy couldn't be here tonight... he's getting his hair done."
Crowd: *chuckle*
Joel: "I'm his uncle [something], and I know all his shit anyway, so we'll still have a pretty good show, OK?"
Crowd: *headtilt*

...but worked well in others:

Joel: *turns to seats behind stage* "I assume you all paid a reduced rate for those seats... 'obstructed view' or some shit?"
Crowd: "Yeah."
Joel: "Ain't as bad as you thought, is it?"
Crowd: *cheer*
Joel: "I think you got a better deal than all those guys back in Valparaiso." *turns to far end of stadium* *cups hands and shouts through them* "HELLO OUT THERE. THANK YOU FOR COMING. I HOPE YOU ARE ENJOYING THE SHOW!"
Crowd: *laugh*

- Joel introduced most of his songs before performing them - the exceptions were the last two. But, for every song he was actually sitting at the piano for, he took a minute to name what he was about to play and give a little information on it (or, in the case of Zanzibar, explain why he was playing it, since no one knew it).

- "Movin' Out" also involved audience participation that was pretty bold on Joel's part. If you've heard the song, you're familiar with the repeated syllables at a couple points, i.e. "workin' too hard can give you a heart attack-ack-ack-ack-ack-ack". When Joel came up to that point in the song, he dropped out after singing "heart attack" and let the audience take the rest - and I was astonished at how many people were singing along. He gave a wry smile before he came back in with the chorus, and the audience was even louder on the other two repeated syllables, now that they knew it was coming. The audience was really into this song.

- "Zanzibar" was probably played to let the trumpet backup guy show off. It was decent, but not that memorable.

- Andrea was kinda lost after "Zanzibar" and "Scenes...", but got excited when Joel played "Allentown" next. She even started singing along.

- The performance of "River of Dreams" was underwhelming. This is where I started to really notice the bass being way too loud on the hanging speakers.

- After "Only the Good Die Young", Joel ditched the piano for a guitar for "We Didn't Start the Fire". Unsurprisingly, the backup singers had a monitor with the lyrics on this one. Can't say I blame them.

- For "It's Still Rock and Roll To Me", Joel traded back and forth with the audience, which worked great except for the "you could really be a Beau Brummel baby if you just give it half a chance" line, which the audience totally bombed. Still, a great performance, and the Joel spent the whole song running around the stage doing tricks with the mic stand. I want that kind of hand-eye coordination and energy when I'm 60.

- All in all, I thought Joel was a much better event host than John. I think John was still on a Vegas hangover - he'd just finished a 70-something show contract with a Vegas hotel, so he was probably still in a particular mode of performance.

At this point, John, who was decked out in a completely different outfit, came back up from offstage to renew the duets...

Concert, part 4: Duets w/backup bands

I believe this is the right order. Once again, they were trading verses and such.

John's "The Bitch is Back" (I didn't recognize it, but that's a fantastic way for him to re-enter the show)
Joel's "My Life"
John's "Bennie and the Jets"
Joel's "Uptown Girl"
John's "I Guess That's Why They Call It The Blues" (Andrea, by this point, was afraid they weren't going to play it)

- In general, these went really well. The sound mix was off, though, and it was really hard to understand any of the singing. :\

- John's new outfit had artwork mainly consisting of a caricature of himself riding a dragon.

The singers looked to the backup bands and "asked them if they wanted to play anything", which led to the following portion of the concert, which may or may not have been a hallucination:

Concert part 5: ???

The Beatles - "Birthday"
The Beatles - "Back in the USSR"

I have no idea what was going on in this portion of the concert, and frankly, I didn't enjoy it at all. The concert had run well past 3 hours already, I had no interest in these songs, the balance of the audio was getting worse, and I kinda wanted them to just get to the last two songs. After "Back in the USSR", the backup bands went away, leading to the finale:

Concert part 6: Piano duets pt. 2

John's "Candle in the Wind"
Joel's "Piano Man"

Pretty much what everyone expected. "Candle" was OK; "Piano Man" brought the house down. I was surprised that Joel didn't even have a backup band member come back up for the harmonica part; he had a neck-mounted bar similar to tooth-aligning headgear, and played the harmonica himself. John changed the lyrics a bit ("It's a pretty good crowd for a Tuesday", which it was), and the two of them dropped out entirely to let the crowd take the second to last chorus.

There was a long standing ovation after "Piano Man" ended; Joel and John both took their bows and left. The ovation continued until the house lights came back up, signaling that there would be no encore. Considering that it was already 11:15 by the time the concert ended - a full 3:30 after it had begun - it was quite all right that they didn't have one.

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We made a beeline for the restroom, which Andrea navigated before all of the women's restrooms mysteriously sprouted 30-person lines. We took a few minutes to get to the nearest staircase, but once we did, it was smooth sailing out of the arena... except for the part where the drunk 5'10"-ish woman tripped over herself and fell down a few stairs despite the best efforts of her shorter male escort to catch her. We managed to avoid tripping over her, and were able to get to our truck quickly.

The drive home was uneventful. It took us about 10 minutes to get out of the parking lot, but once we were able to turn south, the traffic disappeared. I stopped at Rally's and got us a chocolate shake to split (we were both really thirsty), then we zipped home to feed our rather hungry and distraught rabbit. Finally rolled into bed around 1, after Jess had some run time.

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The tickets were a birthday present from Andrea - thanks, sweetheart. I wouldn't have gone without you, and it wouldn't have been the same experience without you.

Name... that... movie song!

Thu, 14 May 2009 16:02:26 GMT

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:

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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"

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Can you match the movies to the songs?

Indians Opening Weekend / Battling the Worm / VP:CP

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 11:56:09 GMT

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.

Friday, April 10 - I had the day off (Good Friday); aquahaute had to go in to work. I ended up spending basically the whole morning doing essential shopping; groceries at Meijer, and a little grocery shopping and some softener salt at Wal-Mart. Ended up getting the runaround at Wal-Mart a bit; the usual spot for softener salt was taken up by the H&R Block outlet, so they'd moved the salt to Lawn & Garden. Problem: I was checking out at the express lanes all the way across the store. Whoops.

I went home and had lunch, then played Peggle for a while. We've been trying to run through Adventure mode using each character for the entirety. We've done three of them so far; we split Tula (a favorite of both of ours), then she called dibs on Renfield while I took Claude. I spent a couple hours working on the Claude run-through in the early afternoon, then did some chores (mostly simple stuff like laundry and dishes).

In the late afternoon, aquahaute came home, then we went to the Indians game. It was our third time out there together, and probably the least fun of our trips, mostly because of the weather. It was about 38-40 degrees and windy the whole time - add that to the fact that we were directly in the crosswind on the second deck, and it was a very cold experience. We did three laps around the stadium before the game just to try to keep warm.

The game wasn't terribly interesting until about the fifth inning; both teams had no hits in the first three innings. Thing was, the first three innings still took well over an hour; in fact, the first half-inning took half an hour. The sequence: walk; walk; 3-1 count on the third batter; pitcher removed; no one was warming up, so the pitching change took 10 minutes; three quick outs.

After the bottom of the third, we caught the eye of one of the "T-shirt tossers" who chuck "I caught this T-shirt at an Indianapolis Indians game" shirts into the crowd. We were the only two people in the second deck from third base on out, so we kinda stuck out. Anyway, this guy winged a shirt up to us without a tool to assist, which was a pretty nice throw. Andrea got it, so yay.

You'd figure we'd have a decent shot at a foul ball, given that we were the only two people up there, but only two got hit in our direction; one went straight into a suite, and the other was so far down into the outfield area that someone ran up from downstairs and got to it before we did. Bah. At least the shirt had a $10 gas card in it.

The announced attendance at the game was 3,000+; this is Total Crap. We were almost able to do a full headcount from where we were sitting, and I would not believe any number over 600.

The Mud Hens ended up winning the game, despite the fact that until the 8th inning, they had more runs than hits (2 to 1). The final score was 4 to 2.

We got home super-late, which made Jessica a hungry bunny when we gave her dinner at 11 PM, but she lived. And she was still up at 6:30 asking for breakfast. >_>

Saturday, April 11 - There weren't very many yard sales in the area, so we went on a little shopping trip instead. We traded in some stuff at Gamestop, but didn't see anything in the Game Days sale that was terribly interesting (other than Valkyria Chronicles, which I'd already picked up on Monday when I went with ruelz). Off to Half-Price Books after that, where we picked up four books for $7: The Cider House Rules was one; I honestly can't remember any of the other three.

We also stopped at Goodwill, which didn't have much neat. I bet they were saving the good stuff for the new one at County Line and Emerson that just opened on the 14th.

Pretty much the rest of my day revolved around trying to fix my computer. I found out on Friday afternoon just before Andrea got home that it was infected with the Conficker worm. I knew something was wrong when it sat there grinding away when I knew I wasn't doing anything... some digging into the registry confirmed what was wrong. I hardly use the thing; as those who have seen my updates on Facebook may attest, I frequently update from my 'mobile device' (read: PSP) even when my desktop is perfectly accessible. So, with the amount I actually use it - basically just for loading and unloading my Zune - it's no wonder I let things lapse and it got infected.

I tried manually removing the worm based on instructions for version B of the worm on Microsoft's website; it didn't work, and the .dll regenerated itself in less than 15 seconds. A little more digging showed that I had version D, which apparently doesn't have a quick-fix yet. Once I found out that version D was known not to spread via USB devices, I said "screw it" and hooked up the 320 GB hard drive, dumped everything I didn't want to lose on that, and reformatted (which actually took place on Sunday).

Mowed the yard in the early evening as well; it was still too wet to do safely, but the temperature wasn't going to get any better for the next 3-4 days, so it was worth it.

Sunday, April 12 - Um... computer... Andrea started Peggle with the cat character... following some of the baseball scores... that was pretty much it, aside from starting A Widow for One Year, at Andrea's recommendation.

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.

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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.

In which we are invited to an exclusive preview

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 20:52:39 GMT

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...

NCAA '09

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 15:17:55 GMT

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.

MW:

(1) Louisville d. (16) Morehead State
(9) Siena d. (8) Ohio State
(5) Utah d. (12) Arizona
(4) Wake Forest d. (13) Cleveland State
(6) West Virginia d. (11) Dayton
(14) North Dakota State d. (3) Kansas
(7) Boston College d. (10) USC
(2) Michigan State d. (15) Robert Morris

(1) Louisville d. (9) Siena
(4) Wake Forest d. (5) Utah
(6) West Virginia d. (14) North Dakota State
(7) Boston College d. (2) Michigan State

(1) Louisville d. (4) Wake Forest
(6) West Virginia d. (7) Boston College

(1) Louisville d. (6) West Virginia

W:
(1) Connecticut d. (16) UT-Chattanooga
(9) Texas A&M d. (8) BYU
(5) Purdue d. (12) Northern Iowa
(13) Mississippi State d. (4) Washington
(11) Utah State d. (6) Marquette
(3) Missouri d. (14) Cornell
(10) Maryland d. (7) California-Berkeley
(2) Memphis d. (15) Cal St.-Northridge

(1) UConn d. (9) Texas A&M
(5) Purdue d. (13) Mississippi State
(3) Missouri d. (11) Utah State
(2) Memphis d. (10) Maryland

(5) Purdue d. (1) UConn
(2) Memphis d. (3) Missouri

(2) Memphis d. (5) Purdue

E:

(1) Pittsburgh d. (16) East Tennessee State
(8) Oklahoma State d. (9) Tennessee
(5) Florida State d. (12) Wisconsin
(4) Xavier d. (13) Portland State
(11) Virginia Commonwealth d. (6) UCLA
(3) Villanova d. (14) American
(10) Minnesota d. (7) Texas
(2) Duke d. (15) Binghamton

(8) Oklahoma State d. (1) Pittsburgh
(5) Florida State d. (4) Xavier
(3) Villanova d. (11) Virginia Commonwealth
(2) Duke d. (10) Minnesota

(5) Florida State d. (8) Oklahoma State
(2) Duke d. (3) Villanova

(2) Duke d. (5) Florida State

S:

(1) North Carolina d. (16) Radford
(8) Louisiana State d. (9) Butler
(5) Illinois d. (12) Western Kentucky
(4) Gonzaga d. (13) Akron
(6) Arizona State d. (11) Temple
(3) Syracuse d. (14) Stephen F. Austin
(7) Clemson d. (10) Michigan
(2) Oklahoma d. (15) Morgan State

(1) North Carolina d. (8) Louisiana State
(4) Gonzaga d. (5) Illinois
(3) Syracuse d. (6) Arizona State
(2) Oklahoma d. (7) Clemson

(1) North Carolina d. (4) Gonzaga
(3) Syracuse d. (2) Oklahoma

(1) North Carolina d. (3) Syracuse

Four:

(2) Duke d. (1) North Carolina
(2) Memphis d. (1) Louisville

(2) Memphis d. (2) Duke

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?]

Tuna Pasta a la Falc

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 17:15:44 GMT

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.

Other unrelated stuff

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 21:35:16 GMT

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.

Quick weekend breakdown:

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 19:02:21 GMT

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.

News of the Weird: Hitting Home Edition

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 16:33:01 GMT

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.

In which my thought process quickly devolves into Rock Band 2 grumblings

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 17:53:45 GMT

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.

From the election to picture printing - 11/3 - 11/16

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 15:40:54 GMT

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.

Monday, November 3

I really don't remember anything about this day. Given that November 4 was Election Day (a holiday for me), I couldn't really get anything started at work without the samples spoiling in the fridge over the layoff, so I didn't get a whole lot done but cleanup.

Tuesday, November 4

We got up around the normal time on Election Day, and left the house around 7 to head to the polls. Around 7:15, we approached the polling place (the community center), and noticed two things: there was nowhere to park, and there was a line of about 30 people coming out of the building. I found a spot next to the baseball field, and we walked over to the building. I supposed that the problem might be people not knowing which of the three precincts covered by this building they lived in... uh, not so much:

Poll worker: "Excuse me, sir - what precinct do you live in?"
falcon815: "40."
Poll worker: *winces* "Sorry. That's the line that's coming out of the building."

We ended up having to wait for an hour to vote. I ended up only voting in the presidential election and a handful of local things; I refused to cast a ballot for a candidate when there was no opposition, and most of the state/county-level positions from our district / county were incumbents running unopposed.

[ELECTION STUFF HERE - FEEL FREE TO SKIP IF YOU DON'T CARE]

I voted for Obama. I'd feel a lot more comfortable with the 'Democrats in control of legislative + executive branches' thing if the House majority leader were a bit more sane, and I'm really not keen on the redistribution-speak or the idea of mandatory community service, but the election came down to something entirely different for me.

Issues aside, if you give me the choice between a candidate that gives the impression of applying careful thought to what he says and does, and a candidate that looks at the situation and immediately tells you what he'd do, I'll take the one that'll sit back and think a little first. I don't think he can come through on even half of the things he campaigned on (and he admitted as much in his election day speech - "we may not get there in one year, or even one term" isn't the kind of language he was using on the campaign trail), but if he just uses his brain and considers the consequences of potential decisions, that's enough for me after the last few years.

[Note to Republicans: I realize it didn't matter in the grand scheme of the election, but I think you could learn a lot from what happened in Indiana. There are two critical reasons why you did not win this state, and considering the vote difference (~13,000, last I checked), either one of them could have easily swung the state - normally a Republican stronghold - to your side.

First off, pay attention to us. I realize this may seem petty, but people in 'flyover country' love it when you act like you give a damn about them. The fact that Obama was trying and you weren't said a lot about what you thought about the people of this state. Keep in mind that we're not exactly straight-ticket kind of people; this has been a Republican rock in presidential elections, but we're not shy about voting in Democrats for House seats, Senate seats, and governorships around here. But we do have to feel like you care first.

Secondly, run a campaign that's worth something. For example, a lot of people are unhappy with our current governor, Mitch Daniels. His rash of privatization has put the state in good financial shape for the moment, but a lot of people are concerned as to what's going to happen down the road. He's also strongarmed some other unpopular legislation through (DST, etc.) Funny, then, that he won re-election by 20%, isn't it? It's not that he ran a great campaign (he didn't), or that he is popular (he isn't), it's that his opponent ran a campaign that was so obviously empty of value that even some people who hated Mitch couldn't bring themselves to vote for her. Negativity isn't necessarily a bad thing in campaigning, but no matter which party you are, you've got to demonstrate some sort of reasoning behind your negativity. Show your own alternative plan to get your message across. Otherwise, you'll just turn people off.]

[YOU ARE NOW ENTERING AN ELECTION-FREE ZONE. HAVE A NICE WHATEVER.]

Anyway. Once we were finished voting, I drove aquahaute up to work, and proceeded to run some errands around town. It wasn't much of a Blockbuster type of day, so I went over to Fry's for the first time in a few months. Ended up spending most of my time in the HD-DVD/Blu-ray section, checking out what was on sale and what I'd be interested in picking up. Found a cheapish Blu-ray for my father-in-law, but not much else. It was a fun hour of looking around, though.

From there... I forget what I did next. I don't think I went to Lafayette Square at that point, but maybe I did. The Sears is going out of business there, so I wanted to see what was up with the pricing. Everything was 20% off, so most everything was still sitting on the shelf, untouched, especially in the video game section. I imagine once it hits 40 or 50%, that stuff will be gone - we'll probably have to go there soon.

Steve and Barry's was still around, though they had signs up that indicated that their franchise is closing 100 or so stores. That'd be a killer for Lafayette Square - S&B's is right next to Sears, and there would be nothing left on that side of the mall but the food court if they went out.

Next up, I went back up to the northwest side to pick up aquahaute for lunch. I think we went to Panera on 86th by 465. Tasty, though my bread bowl was a bit overdone. I dropped her back off at work 45 minutes later... and I really don't remember what I did in the afternoon. With no more real goals in mind for shopping and the like, I think I just went to a couple more places and looked around - I just don't know where.

Picked her up at 4:30 and went home. We ended up lazing around and staying up late, waiting for election returns. I know I played some Rock Band for a little bit, and I think I poked at Penny Arcade Episode 2, but most of the evening was focused around watching Indiana's results come in (since the national results were never really in question). That was fun, even if we didn't get enough sleep. ^_^

Wednesday, November 5

I remember little about this day - pretty much the entire morning at work was election discussion, and the afternoon was a blur of work.

At home, I got a random package on my doorstep. Back in August, I took a day off work to build up some Gamestop/Blockbuster credit (mostly using the Wii games DBZ Budokai Tenkaichi 3, Code Lyoko: Quest for Infinity, and Bust-A-Move Bash). At that time, Blockbuster was running a contest; spend $25 in a single purchase, and be entered to win a Wii (one per store), with the chance of a couple of lesser prizes as well. I made a handful of qualifying purchases that day, including our little USB video camera. Anyway, the random box on my doorstep that day was a second prize - a 17-piece set of DS Lite accessories. Not something I need, but since we got a DS Lite for my brother-in-law for Christmas, it was nice to get; I'll just wrap it up and give it to him. ^_^_v

Thursday, November 6 and Friday, November 7

Not recalling much. The only thing I can remember is that on Thursday, while leaving work, Ken told me, "there was a phone call for you from some woman; she tried to call twice, but Mira didn't say who it was." Very helpful. I asked aquahaute; wasn't her. I called my mother (the only other woman I could think of who'd be trying to reach me at work); wasn't her either. I decided that if it was important enough, the person would call back.

Luckily, they did the next day around 8 AM; it was the dentist's office. I'd scheduled my appointment for Columbus Day (which didn't work out), and asked them to watch for an appointment on Veteran's Day when I canceled. A 4:00 appointment opened up, and I got it. Whee for not going 10 months between cleanings!

(Mira finally remembered around 10:30 AM on Friday to tell me someone had tried to call on Thursday. But, again, she only told me it was "some woman". I guarantee you that if I hadn't taken at least the name of someone who'd tried to call her, she would have jumped down my throat. I let it go; there was no point in bringing that up.)

Saturday, November 8

aquahaute and I went down to Columbus to visit my parents and my grandmother, who was in town; also, we visited pawnshops, of course.

We visited Mom and Grandma first; Dad was out at the Visitor's Center giving an architectural tour. I finally got to meet Max, Mom and Dad's new dog, while I was there. He's awfully cute; a black-and-white cocker spaniel that kinda looks like an English Springer spaniel. He is very energetic, and quite spoiled already. Grandma's dog, Bitsy, a Westie, was there too. She was quite polite and well-behaved, especially when compared to Max.

We chatted for a bit, and played with the dogs, then headed off to the Visitor's Center to pick up Dad. Found a gift for my mother-in-law while we were there (though we're full up on gifts for her for Christmas, it was too good to pass up). Once Dad got done with his tour, the five of us went to Johnny Carino's for lunch. A quick stop and visit at Mom and Dad's place later, we were off to the pawnshops.

Von's didn't have a whole lot to speak of, and for that matter, Granny Bea's wasn't terribly interesting either. However, there was one nifty thing at Granny Bea's; a guitar-and-game bundle of Guitar Hero: World Tour for 360 for $50. That's a really good price for just the guitar, and that's pretty much the only reason we bought it. After checking into the achievements and tracklist of World Tour, we decided it wasn't worth hacking through Neversoft overcharting to get to the one or two songs we actually cared about, and traded the game in to Gamestop for $35 in credit. But hey, $15 for a pretty good wireless guitar? Sure!

I also bought a copy of A Christmas Story on HD-DVD for $10 at Granny Bea's. Not a bad price.

Sunday, November 9

Um... I watched a good chunk of Colts/Steelers...

Monday, November 10

See also: Monday, November 3. Day before holiday is also holiday.

Tuesday, November 11

I went out and did some shopping in the morning after aquahaute took off for work. Meijer yielded tasties, Gamestop yielded store credit and a new discount card, and Target yielded... pretty much nothing interesting. I did some cleaning around the house, had my dental appointment at 4, then beat feet back home after being detained longer than I expected both at the dentist's and at my Mom's place. Didn't get home 'til 7 or so; can't remember much after that.

Wednesday, November 12

Work was a blur. I went back out as soon as we got home; we needed some supplies for supper. When I got back, I asked if anything good had come in the mail. The answer was a definitive yes, as I got news that I'd won a Wii from the Blockbuster contest. ^_^_v That pretty much made the night.

Thursday, November 13 - Friday, November 14

Not remembering a whole lot. I scanned and e-mailed in my affidavit of eligibility for winning the Blockbuster contest, and ordered some stuff from Amazon (some for aquahaute, some for my mother).

At one point on Friday, the temperature of the air blowing out of the vents over my desk was 52 degrees. I like it cold, but that was a little overboard.

Friday was a pretty bad day for her, but I'll let her cover that. Things are getting, ah, interesting where she is, including a delicious slice of irony.

Saturday, November 15

We spent the early afternoon shopping after eating lunch at Panera. She found some cozy pants at Kohl's for $2 after a coupon, and I got something for Dad at Hallmark. We spent a good chunk of the afternoon cleaning; I was mostly downstairs, she was mostly upstairs. greenphoenix217 called in the late afternoon / early evening, and we chatted for a while. It was good to hear from her again.

In the evening, aquahaute hurried through uploading wedding pictures to Walgreens' website; they had a promotion going where you could get up to 250 4"x6" prints for 10 cents a print. After some initial worry about whether or not they'd refuse to print our pictures due to copyright issues (since some were clearly taken by a professional photographer), she remembered that she had a copy of the contract that they signed with our photographer. It states clearly in the contract that we have the rights to reproduce the pictures, so we submitted our order (246 prints) online, then immediately headed up to Walgreens to discuss with the photo clerk. When we got there...

aquahaute and falcon815: *waits at photo counter*
Photo clerk: *comes back from doing something at the front of the store* "How can I help you?"
aquahaute: "I just submitted an order online for 246 prints of pictures from our wedding. Some of them were taken by a professional photographer."
Clerk: "Mmhmm." *checks computer* "Last name of Robinson?"
aquahaute: "Yeah." *takes out contract* "I have a copy of our contract with the photographer."
Clerk: *eyes widen*
aquahaute: "Here's the relevant paragraph, where it says we have the rights to print the pictures."
Clerk: *nods vigorously*
aquahaute: "And I wrote the order number and other relevant information here at the top of the first page."
Clerk: *continues nodding excitedly* "Great! Thanks a lot. If you ever need to print other stuff from your wedding, just tell us that we have this on file."

So, after some initial worry, that turned out to be incredibly painless. ^_^

Sunday, November 16

In the morning, aquahaute went to pick up her pictures. The same photo clerk was there at 9 AM, which was surprising, but she remembered Andrea; "Hey, I remember you, you were awesome!" :D

Since dextersdad canceled on me, I spent most of the afternoon either watching football or spending time in the craft room while aquahaute worked on the wedding scrapbook. Colts game was fun; watching some of her ideas and work was also fun. She spent most of the day in the craft room - I spent some time cooking and playing Crisis Core on my PSP.

There. That turned out longer than I expected, and pretty much takes care of things for now.

Trip to Detroit - 10/31 - 11/2: The Quest for the Peanut Butter-filled Hershey Bars

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 20:28:17 GMT

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).

Friday, October 31

On the 31st, aquahaute and I went up to Detroit to visit her family. Since she's only got two vacation days for the rest of this year, she decided to just take a couple of unpaid hours on Friday the 31st, such that we could leave town around 3 and get up to Michigan around 9. I took a couple hours at the end of my day, too, and took a bus up to her area of town so we could leave together.

Everything with the timing worked out pretty well, and we were able to meet up at 92nd and Michigan around 2:35. I started with the driving after we stopped at a local bakery for a not-as-tasty-as-it-should-have-been snack, and also stopped at the bank for her to cash her paycheck.

The drive up was pretty uneventful. We didn't stop 'til we got to Fort Wayne, at which we took a quick diversion down Coldwater to get to Borders. (We are uncreative and gave her brother a Borders gift card for his birthday - but we have something better planned for Christmas.)

I resumed driving and planned to swap places with her after crossing the border into Michigan, but she ended up talking to her parents on the phone for a while as we drove from 69 to 94. Eventually, around mile marker 134, I had to stop for gas anyway, and we switched places then.

(Aside: While she was on the phone, I'd been keeping my eyes out for a BP or somesuch on the north side of 94, just off the exit. See, last year when we went up to visit her people at some point, we stopped at a gas station near the 69/94 junction and found some awesome peanut butter-filled Hershey bars in addition to a walk-in "Beer Cave". We have not seen the candy bars anywhere else. So, I was on the lookout for this particular joint. Didn't find it. :\ )

Anyway, we ended up getting to her parents' place around 9. Her dad whipped up a Freschetta pizza for us, which we chowed down mightily upon, and we gave over the Mother's Day / Father's Day / her dad's birthday presents that we'd been sitting on. They seemed pleased with the lot: Endless Ocean for Wii, And Then There Were None for Wii, and Invincible on blu-ray. Her father immediately popped Invincible into the PS3, and we watched the entirety of it (though I believe aquahaute and her mother chatted through some of it to avoid boredom), with a slight break in the middle for her father to take a phone call from his sons.

By the time the movie (which was at least somewhat grounded in reality) was over, it was late and we were tired, so off to bed it was.

Saturday, November 1

The morning is hazy. I had some Special K with craisins for breakfast, and helped rearrange cars in the driveway such that people who needed to get out could get out. I also took a look at the re-done garage while aquahaute worked on morning-routine stuff. Once everyone was ready to go, we headed out.

First stop was a scrapbooking store that aquahaute wanted to go to. I knew it would be a while, so I brought along Star Ocean on PSP and worked on that for a while, eventually getting to the final dungeon. (I picked it up on release day after doing some Gamestop/Blockbuster trading around - most of our credit is at Gamestop now.) Once she came back, we drove out to the Lake Erie Metropark, where we got engaged.

We couldn't find the exact spot along the shore where we sat and talked before I asked her - the shoreline had been tossed about due to the high water levels from back in June. We narrowed it down to a couple places, though, and took some pictures while we walked around.
Next, we looked for the "tot lot", a place where kids have space to ride Big Wheels and stuff around, and a general play area. aquahaute had a lot of fun playing around on the playground equiment and climbing through the miniature houses. I particularly liked the "Metro Petro" miniature gas station, and the swings (which were so big that even I could use them!) I took a few pictures in this area, too.

Once we were done at the park, we went back to Lincoln Park and stopped at Tijuana's, which was very tasty. I like that place and endorse visiting it whenever we go up. From there, it was off to a Gamestop, which didn't have a whole lot that was interesting. At that point, we were kind of tired, and went back to her parents' place.

I forget what we did for a while. I know I finished the plot of Star Ocean, but other than that, it was kind of unmemorable until the siblings-in-law started showing up for the dual birthday party (my brother-in-law and mother-in-law's birthdays were both close).

We chowed down on some wings from BW3 - first time I've had those since college - and some assorted other stuff. Veggie tray, ham and cream cheese roll-ups, etc. Tasty stuff all around, though I had to dodge a lot due to MSG concerns. Once everyone was done eating, it was present time.

Jeff mostly got gift cards (including a JoAnn Fabrics gift card that brought a round of ribbing from even his little sister!), but Jerrie Lynn got some cool stuff, most notably our gift to her. Well, it's only "our" gift in the sense that I put up half the money - aquahaute did all the work.

See, there's this collection of Sizzix brand paper die cuts that retailed around $80 when it first came out; it includes 14 dies that are all "seasonal", with most representing a month in some form or shape (March = shamrock, April = rabbit, November = cornucopia, etc.) The set isn't really all that great as a set, but it's got a couple of neat dies, most notably the open book, that are discontinued and hard to find. The book, as an example, is generally only obtainable by spending $10-$20 just for that die.

Well, aquahaute had been watching seasonal collections on eBay while watching some other stuff, and there was one day back in October when two of them ended on the same night. Most of the time, they were ending with total costs (w/shipping) around $30-$35. The first one that night was no exception, with a mild bidding war at the end pushing it to that level. The second one, however, had only one bid on it - for $6.25 + $9ish shipping - with just 15 minutes to go. aquahaute put out a snipe on it with about 30 seconds left, and no one else bid, so she got the whole thing for $19.50 after shipping. Awesome work on her part, and the gift delivered the happy, so it was even more worth it. ^_^

Once gifts were done, there was tasty cherry cake and raisin cake for dessert, which was delightfully consumed, then it was off to bed.

Sunday, November 2

Most of the morning was spend showering and packing. I chatted a bit with my father-in-law as well. He insisted that we take "gas money" despite the fact that gas is cheap now; I gave in and accepted $20 and decided to put it toward frozen food at Meijer instead. He approved that message, as did aquahaute.

The drive home was uneventful except for the part where we pulled off at exit 110 on 94 westbound and lo, when we entered the building for the IGA/gas station, there was the Beer Cave. We quickly made our way over to the candy bars, and there were the PB-filled Hershey's. Andrea did a stellar job of not eating the entire box on the spot. We picked up four of those (buy 3 get 1 free), as well as some other snacks, and continued our journey home. But really, there's nothing more worth discussing than the noting of where we need to stop on every trip up there to pick up the tasty candy.

By the time we got home, she was dead tired, which I don't blame her for. I took off immediately and went out to Meijer to buy the previously mentioned frozen food (a couple pizzas and some pizza rolls). We had quick stuff like that for supper - I think I had some soup? - and dragged ourselves to bed, since we had to work on Monday.

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To be followed up later...

We're Open 'Til We Close / Baby Cows Are Fuzzy

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 22:58:21 GMT

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, October 17

Most of the day at work was taken up with a big hubbub over the new insurance rates. I'm actually considering the 'Health Savings Account' this year, since the employer contributions are front-loaded (50% up-front, the rest in diminished contributions). I think pretty much everyone was wary of what would happen if, say, someone broke an ankle on icy ground in January immediately after signing up for a plan with an $8000 out-of-pocket maximum for a year, but with nothing in the account to start. At least it helps in getting a safety net established.

Can't remember much of what we did that evening. I think we finished off Get Smart season 5 - or was that on Saturday? - but I can't think of anything major.

One fun thing we did was a particular online survey from e-rewards. Yes, you too can be paid $7 for a 20 minute opinion study on commercial soap dispensers! Is this model 'warm' or 'cold'? 'Beautiful' or 'ugly'? Is this model "friendly"? Or are this one and this one the cream of the crop? Your opinion matters!

Seriously, that was a weird survey, but it put me over the top for a $25 Gamestop gift card, so I'm not exactly complaining. Not sure what I'll put it toward - I ended up picking up Star Ocean on PSP in the week of the 20th, so... hm. Anyway.

Saturday, October 18

Since we'd made plans to have Chad over in the afternoon, we decided to take a trip in the morning so we weren't cooped up all day. Didn't quite get to all our stops (I miss Fry's), but we had a good time.

We took off up I-65 around 10, and our first stop was the Goodwill up by aquahaute's work, since she was having trouble coexisting with the Goodwill donations we had in the front seat of the truck. It was nice to get rid of the extra yard-sale cows, and some other garage sale leftovers we had from our own attempts. We didn't actually go in and shop, though.

Next up, Petco in the same general area. They had a bunny there that we looked at for a bit, then we cruised around looking at other stuff. Nothing terribly notable that I recall, though I was a little mystified at the "take a picture of your pet and we'll turn it into a throw rug" display.

We wanted to check her workplace to see if it was open, since she had some buy 1 get 1 coupons in her cubicle. We drove up to the entrance, and passed a Shred-It truck on our way in. The entrance was wide open, so hey, no problem, right? We got to the offices, and they were locked. Oh well.

Then we tried to drive away, and saw that the gate to the outside was closing. It wasn't going to stay open long enough for me to get out, so I just stopped. We briefly panicked, but within a minute, another truck drove up to the outside of the gate. The drive hopped out and pressed a couple buttons, and the gate obliged by opening. Thankful, we sped out of there before the gate was even done opening. >_>

Big Lots was our next target, where we once again cleaned up on food. $1 for Campbell's Select soup boxes? Yes, please. I was impressed by their stack of Guitar Hero III wireless PS2 bundles for $50, but... PS2. If I could use that guitar on some other platform, it'd be worth it just for the guitar - which is probably why these bundles ended up at Big Lots.

We went to Trader's Mill for lunch after that. We weren't sure if they were open at 11:30 or not, so the first thing we looked for was their sign. Here is what it read:

"TRADER'S MILL BAR AND GRILL"
"OPEN MON-SAT 11 AM TO CLOSE"
"OPEN SUNDAYS [hours here]"

Trader's Mill - we're open 'til we close!

The food was pretty good - my 'pizza burger' was very tasty, and so was aquahaute's chicken quesadilla. I had a little trouble with the bill-paying, though, since I had two disputes with the waitress. The first time, she'd missed the "burgers include a side of cottage cheese or potato chips" line in the menu and charged me $2.50 for my cottage cheese. Uh, no? She got that taken care of with the manager, but then the next bill came back with a $2.50 charge for fries, despite the fact that the menu says "Get french fries on the side for $1.75 with any burger". I brought it up:

Manager: "That's only if you don't get the side of cottage cheese or chips."
falcon815: "That's fine if that's your actual policy, but that's not what the menu says. It doesn't say 'or get french fries on the side for $1.75', it says 'get french fries on the side for $1.75'."

I didn't feel like fighting over 75 cents, so I just made that comment, paid, and left. It wasn't a bad experience, but they really need to update the menu. Also, the manager needs to get off his cell phone and, y'know, manage.

I noticed when we left that we didn't have enough time to go to Fry's, so we made our way across town and hit up the Petco at 72nd and Keystone to see if they had any of the Indiana House Rabbit Society adopt-a-rabbits there. No luck - Emily was nowhere to be found, which made us sad. For that matter, they didn't have any rabbits. :\

We went home after that - got back around 2:15. Just as aquahaute was unlocking the door, Chad called to confirm that 3:00 was OK. No problem. We cleaned a little downstairs, then picked up the mail at 3. The mail contained an eBay package for Andrea, so she went upstairs to leave feedback for the seller. Just then, Chad showed up.

The three of us sat around and chatted for about an hour, then we decided on what food we were going to have for supper, and aquahaute volunteered to go pick up some stuff we needed. While she was out, Chad watched me play a couple stages of Mega Man 9 to see how that was, and we caught up on the Virtual Console / WiiWare releases.

We split the next hour or so between Rock Band and cooking. Since I still haven't received my replacement Stratocaster from EA, I was stuck on vocals, which was fine, since we were playing RB1. Mostly, Chad played bass and aquahaute drummed, though they swapped for one song at the end of our three-person set. I quit to go cook for a couple songs, wherein Chad took over on vocals and Andrea swapped to bass. It was a lot more fun with Chad than it was with Andy, largely because Chad can hold his own on medium bass and vocals and doesn't fail out every 2 minutes. Sorry, Andy. >_>

Food (tasty turkey pot pie filling over biscuits / garlic bread) was next, then we played a round of Scene It on the 360, which I won by running the table on the Blue Lagoon-themed questions at the end.

Chad had to go at that point - it was roughly 8:45 - and by then, the remaining two of us were pretty z-ful after our long day. We briefly considered watching the Get Smart movie that doesn't suck, but decided against it, opting to follow Red Sox / Rays on the internets instead.

Sunday, October 19

On Sunday, we got up significantly later than our usual, and ended up relaxing for a bit even after that. It was about 10 when we decided to finally go visit Kelsay Farms, a local dairy farm that has a corn maze and various other activities every October. We drove over (taking the back roads this time, after learning last year that we lived significantly closer to the farm than we'd realized), but they weren't going to open 'til 12. Whoops.

We decided to head over to Ace Hardware instead (they just opened one at 31 and Worthsville, right by Blockbuster). Some of our pepper plants are getting too tall for their roots, and have been tipping, so we figured we'd pick up some dowel rods or yardsticks or something to tie them to. Dowel rods were the cheaper (and easier) option, so we decided to do that once we finally found them practically hiding in the back corner of the store. They weren't labeled with prices yet, so we asked an employee to check them for us. While we waited, we spied an amusingly labeled toilet-in-a-box.

Once we had our dowel rods, we took them home. I broke them by wearing down the center with wire cutters, then snapping them with my thumbs; once I was done, aquahaute tied the plants to their new stakes.

A little after noon, we headed over to Kelsay. Our first stop after buying our tickets and facepalming at the cow-themed cornhole sets was to see the adorable little baby cows. They were 20 days old this year - a whole 3 days older than last year's batch. One of them was having a snack when we walked up, while the other one had a nap. Andrea took a little video of them with our 'new' Flip video camera while I snapped some pictures, then we headed off to the corn maze.

The maze was a lot more complex than last year's; rather than just being a gigantic cow shape, it was a set of smaller items: a fence, barn, silo, and cow. It was a lot harder to navigate than last year's, though it wasn't hard - they give you a map to go along with. It was still fun, though!

We made another stop by the baby cows before we left. Andrea took another video, I took some more pictures, and one of the babies let us scritch it. So fuzzy and soft! I didn't expect the little guy (or girl) to be so fuzzy.

After that, we decided it was time to go. On the way out, we were floored by the number of cars that were at the farm, so Andrea decided to count them while I went to my truck and drove back to pick her up. There were 54 cars in the lot when we left; 55 if you count the one that left and one that came in to snipe my spot when I drove away. That's a lot of people going to a farm on a Sunday afternoon. I wonder if Denny's noticed the drop in business. >_>

We had a late lunch when we got back home around 2:15. Over lunch, and afterward, we watched the Get Smart movie that doesn't suck. In fact, it was pretty good, for an extended episode of the show. Despite the fact that it resembled the Nadesico movie in the fact that it spent half the movie reassembling the ol' gang, it did so in a much more entertaining manner. And no, it wasn't just because I missed Hymie being around, though his return was very welcome.

Once the movie was over, I watched some of the disastrous Colts game, then got bored and plowed through to the end of Etrian Odyssey II. Or at least the end of the pathetic, whimpering excuse for a "plot". Come on, guys, you can do better than that, you showed it in EO1. The game was pretty fun, I guess, if a little more borked than the previous game. Borked in the player's favor, I might add. They may have nerfed Protectors and Medics to the depths of hell, but in their place, the Ronin is a walking God. I swear, I made a party including three of the four "worst" classes in the game, and it was still mostly a cakewalk just because one of my other two was a Ronin. tl;dr - if you play Etrian Odyssey II, take a Ronin if you would like a world-destroying force; do not take a Ronin if you want to reset a lot.

I forget what happened after that. We were mostly kind of "wah, no want the weekend to be over", supper was lazy (tasty Campbell's soup from Saturday), and we were quite sleepy. So we went to bed early, as I recall.

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End of weekend writeup! I'll try to finish off the catchup soon.

Massive catch-up, act 2 (10/5 - 10/10)

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 16:46:43 GMT

And now, for more catch-up - though I doubt I'll be able to cover some of this stuff as fully as I would have been at the time.

Sunday, October 5

On the 5th, I went out to try to do some Christmas shopping for aquahaute. I did get a couple things picked up, though I was disappointed in my attempt to shop at Michael's.

The afternoon and evening were dominated by computer stuff. Andrea's computer started acting funny in a way Shinji used to all the time; when the AC adapter got moved around, it would lose power. Since her laptop is 3+ years old, it's not hard to envision how long the battery lasts nowadays. This was rather problematic, and resulted in her using my computer for her online endeavors for the evening. I know we spent a lot of time on eBay that night, but it's hard to remember what items came up when.

Monday, October 6

Monday was a really long, really tiring day. I was overloaded with metals samples at work, and was busy pretty much all day working on them. When we got home, I relaxed a bit by flailing at Mega Man 9, then we got lazy and had a frozen pizza for supper.

Once supper was over, aquahaute had an idea: busting out the PS2 with Guitar Hero while we observed an eBay auction she was looking at. That was fun. Once I finally got through the 12% mark of "Cowboys From Hell" on expert, I beat it, and then I took down "Bark at the Moon" to finally finish off expert. ^_^_v

She won an ornament die on eBay late in the evening, and we went to sleep soon after.

Tuesday, October 7

All I remember about this day is that we were so tired after spending the previous two nights staying up 'til 11 or later on eBay auctions, that we went to bed at 9 PM. zzz...

Wednesday, October 8

Work: metals, metals, metals. Andrea got off work early, which helped us get home about half an hour earlier than normal (beating the normal traffic flow = yes please). We sat quietly for a while, talking and attempting to relax - this was the beginning of what was basically the Worst Work Week Ever for her - then decided no one wanted to cook, so we went out to Denny's.

It was kinda late by the time we got home, so I don't think we did much else before bed.

Thursday, October 9

Metals, metals, metals. aquahaute came home sad again. I think this was the night we stopped at Panera to pick up soup for me and tasty stuff for her, but it's hard to remember. If so, that was an interesting juxtaposition: me with my soup in a bread bowl and half sandwich; her with her gigantic mug of comfort cocoa, muffin top, and bagel.

Friday, October 10

The labs threw a picnic on the 10th, with burgers, hot dogs, and vegetable alternatives for all. I sat with Mark the instrument guy, whom I hadn't seen for a while, and chatted him up a bit. I had a burger, some baked beans, and a slice o' cake. Tasty.

I also picked up a ticket to a local theater show from "free night of theater", though it wasn't for me - it was for Mira. It was far more worth my while to get rid of her for half a day than it was for me to go to a "contemporary Hamlet remix" with aquahaute. (She wants to go to the IU acapella group's concert on the 25th anyway.)

It was another sad day for aquahaute at work, so I tried to comfort her when we got home. Can't remember what else happened; the evening was kind of consumed with the sadface.

Saturday the 11th will take more time to cover than I have right now, but that and the 12th are pretty much all that's left for me to catch up on. I have this past weekend written up, but I need to tool with some pictures I took first.

Massive catch-up, act 1 (9/23 - 10/4)

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 16:25:55 GMT

OK, it's catch-up time. Not quite all the way finished yet, but this is very tl;dr as it is, so I'll go ahead and get this segment posted.

9/19 through 9/21 are covered in locked form.

---

Tuesday, September 23

I had a personal day that I needed to burn, so I took the day off. After aquahaute left at 7 in the morning, I got out a radio and got to work upstairs with my usual style of cleaning (i.e. choose a room, and focus on it until satisfied).

Before I got started, I turned on the 360 and began auto-leveling in Blue Dragon. Kind of silly that so many of the achievements are 'max out all skills'-based, but hey, if it can be done passively, I'll take an effortless 400G for completion's sake.

Once enemies were killing themselves hopelessly as my characters sat around in the Laser Field, I flipped on ESPN radio and began cleaning my closet and bathroom - spent about an hour between the two of them, largely folding laundry. Then, I picked up stuff in our bedroom and gave it a good vacuuming. From there, it was on to vacuuming the rest of the upstairs, and to picking up stuff in the library and the game room. By the time I finished all that, it was around noon. Break time!

I did some EXP leveling in Blue Dragon for a while, then set up autoleveling again as I had lunch and called my mother. Talked to Mom for about 45 minutes, catching up on a bunch of stuff with her. (From my end, largely work - from her end, largely concerning family and their new dog.)

Once I was done with Mom, it was about 2:00; I went back to cleaning. Worked on the kitchen, then picked up and vacuumed the living room. Started a Jennie-O turkey loaf around 3 so it'd be ready when aquahaute got home, then cleaned a little more. Around 4, I quit, satisfied with what I'd accomplished. ^_^ I made a quick trip out to fill up my truck, then sat down and leveled in Blue Dragon for another 45 minutes or so. When the turkey finished at 5:15, I got it out and sliced it up in preparation for a turkey pot pie-esque filling to be poured over Jiffy biscuits. Mmm.

That was our tasty supper, which I believe we watched some Get Smart over.

Just as aquahaute got home, I finished off all the Blue Dragon leveling. I think I worked a little bit on the final dungeon after supper, but it's hard to remember - the cleaning was very satisfying, and a nice break from the routine.

---

Wednesday, 9/24

One consumer complaint sample came in, but otherwise, work was quiet - mostly progression on the metals sample that came in on 9/19.

Can't remember much about the evening, either.

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Thursday, 9/25

Consumer complaints ahoy! Six samples came in, four of which are the most amusing set we've had in quite a while. See, these were "consumers", but not in the usual sense. While the items were purchased, they weren't purchased from, say, Kroger or 7-11 - they were purchased from the ISDH snack bar. Whoops! Luckily, they were milk cartons, so it was blindingly obvious which one of the four they sent us had issues.

A bit of background information: when we get a consumer complaint sample, the first thing we do is open it up, look at it, and smell it to see if the appearance and odor are acceptable for the product. We do this in groups of 2-4 people, and we're supposed to keep our answers to ourselves so as not to give others a bias on what they think they're smelling / looking at. With that out of the way...

I went down to the second floor of our building to take the samples to the dairy lab. Both of us had tests requested on these samples, so I figured it'd be easiest to open them up and do the smell test downstairs, and I'd take what I needed off the top into a sealed vial, leaving them the rest. So, Brian the dairy lab guy did the appearance and odor panel with me. Here's a rough estimate of how it went:

falcon815: *opens sample 1* *sniffsniffsniff* *hands to Brian*
Brian: *sniffsniff*
falcon815 and Brian: "Smells like milk."

falcon815: *opens sample 2* *sniffsniffsniff* *hands to Brian*
Brian: *sniffsniff*
falcon815 and Brian: "Smells like milk."

falcon815: *opens sample 3* *sni-* "Ugh!" *hands to Brian* "Sorry to give it away, but-"
Brian: *sniff* "Ew!"
falcon815: "...yeah. Odor unsatisfactory."

falcon815: *opens sample 4* *sniffsniffsniff* *hands to Brian*
Brian: *sniffsniff*
falcon815 and Brian: "Smells like milk."

I then poured (or, in sample 3's case, glopped) some of each sample into a 40 mL vial for volatile organic compound (VOC) analysis, then left Brian to deal with the rest.

The milk samples came in around 10 AM. Around 2 PM, we got another call from receiving saying there was a locked box from Food Protection. "Again?", I thought. Yet this was not a mistake - once again, it was for us. This time, it was a Bertolli meal-in-a-bag. Smelled fine to me. Pradip didn't like the smell, and neither did Ken, though Ken said it was only due to a personal distaste for the odor of garlic (which was within the first five ingredients on this particular product). I ran that one through the food processor and plopped it into a 40 mL vial for VOC analysis as well.

I also worked with the consumer complaint from the previous day; they'd requested a pH reading on it, and my pH calibration buffers had expired, so I needed to wait until I could get some more from the water lab. I did so on the 25th, and ran the pH analysis, which came out as it should have (3.2, since citric acid is high on the ingredient list).

In the evening, I finished the main story of Blue Dragon. In short - the last hour of the game was really good, it's just a shame that the leadup was kind of dull. I might be interested in playing Blue Dragon DS if it comes out over here, but I won't be playing this one again. Just need to figure out what I'm doing with it.

Friday, September 26

I have no recollection of what happened that day. I'm sure most of the work day involved paperwork, since it was a Friday, but beyond that...

Saturday, September 27

All I can definitely remember is that I spent an hour and a half or so buzzing through the first disc of Blue Dragon on a replay to pick up the last missable items I didn't get in my first run-through of the game. (I was in a completionist mood, since I had 975/1000 and all I needed were those items.) It was then that I realized that I would have to finish the game to get the last item, as it is picked up in the ending and does not carry over into New Game +. Bah! Oh well, it was only another 3-4 hours of gameplay on a replay, so I figured I'd zip through it on the weekend as well.

I think I worked some on disc 2 that day as well, maybe overnight when I had trouble sleeping? Hard to remember. I'm sure we did other stuff, too, in the 'head out and go shopping' way, but nothing neat that I can recall.

Sunday, September 28

We had Andy over on Sunday. I spent some time before he showed up working on more of Blue Dragon, then when he came over, we chatted for a bit before I tried a challenge in Rock Band 2. I picked up the Strat and started in on "Aqualung", the first song of my chosen four-song challenge. About two minutes into the song, strumming down stopped working; about 30 seconds later, strumming up stopped working, too. I disconnected the guitar and finished the challenge with the GH3 Les Paul, then we went upstairs for a bit so I could write up a return notice to EA and get the replacement process started.

aquahaute came back while we were upstairs (I forget where she'd gone), then I split time cooking and watching him play Mega Man 9, which I downloaded earlier that day. Penny Arcade's comic on the subject was pretty accurate; it felt like we were in junior high again. I'm glad I didn't know much about the game going in, as it made the discoveries of what abilities were available (or, rather, not available) that much more shocking. I let him do most of the playing, then we had lunch (mmm, pasta with tasty garlic bread from Big Lots).

We had trouble coming up with stuff we wanted to do in the afternoon. We tried Rock Band, but without the Strat, we could only go with aquahaute on drums and me on vocals. Andy's more of a liability than an asset on Rock Band - he failed out of all the songs we tried, despite playing bass on Medium - and no one was particularly motivated to continue after we failed out of "Enter Sandman" at something like 93%. :\

aquahaute wasn't motivated to do much of anything for the rest of the day, and I wasn't too creative either; once Andy left, I finished off my Blue Dragon replay, cutting out as soon as I picked up the last item in the postgame. After that, it was time for bed.

Monday, September 29

I got seven metals samples in at work, this time from an old source - a Mexican grocery in Daviess County. The candy samples were a nice break from all the other metals samples I've had recently, despite the high rank of "Mexican candy" in the annals of "oh God, not again" reactions from the metals lab. That was pretty much the highlight of the day; Mondays aren't usually meat days unless we're overloaded.

Just before I left work, I used some of my hour-long break between work time and leavin' time to build up enough tickets on MSN Live Search Club to potentially order Scene It for 360. I decided not to order just in case another way of getting it came up.

After work, aquahaute and I went to Target. It had been a while since we'd been to Smith Valley and 135, so we went to that particular branch. It was, as Sacha Baron Cohen would say, "great success". I found Lost Odyssey for $15 on the standard clearance endcap, then we found Scene It for $15 in the locked case. Bought both. $15 for Scene It is absolutely amazing, considering it has four controllers and batteries for them on top of the game itself. We played one short game of Scene It that evening, which I barely won, largely due to recognizing one of the scenes from The Big Lebowski.

Tuesday, September 30

I have no recollection of this day apart from starting work on my metals samples.

Wednesday, October 1

aquahaute had her "3-month" performance review after 3 months and a week - however, the delay was not an indicator of negativity, as she was given permanent status and a raise! To celebrate, we went out to Johnny Carino's, which had a pretty good 'night out for two' deal going on.

Work-wise, I got a large batch of metals samples from Ft. Wayne again. Nothing super-special, just more of what has become the usual.

Thursday, October 2

I got another batch of metals samples from Ft. Wayne, this one marked up with "STAT" on each side of the box they shipped 'em in. This ain't ER, guys, but I got the idea, and started work on those before the box I got on 10/1.

Can't remember much about the rest of that day or the 3rd - work-wise, both were totally consumed by metals samples, and I have little recollection of the other events of those days.

Oh, right, I picked up two of those Xbox Live Vision packs that I mentioned before.

So...

Saturday, October 4

We woke up a little late, finally getting up around 8:30 or 9. Both of us decided that cleaning was a good idea, so we spent the morning doing so. Largely, this involved taking down the garage sale stuff from the garage, sorting it, repacking some of it, and placing the rest in a box or two to go to Goodwill. Then, there was food.

After lunch, we had intentions to do something different, then took care of some other stuff with a nice, long shopping trip. Well, most of it was shopping. Our first stop was actually AutoZone, to dump off the old oil from her truck's last oil change. From there, we went up to Border's, where she had some credit from e-rewards to use. We'd intended for her to pick up a CD there, but it was out of stock. Oh well. Instead, she bought the first Phoenix Wright manga, and we spent about an hour cruising around the store after that. I spent a lot of time in the sports section, while she spent some time in the cooking section, and both of us looked through music, DVDs, and board games. It was a relaxing visit, and we should go back there again sometime. Maybe I'll cash in some of my e-rewards credit for Borders cards after I get a Gamestop card to pick up Star Ocean 1 for PSP.

Next up, we went out Southport Road to head to Kohl's. I dumped her off there while I went to the two Gamestops on the corner of Southport and Emerson, to trade in the Live Vision cameras and headsets from those bundles I bought. (For the two cameras and two headsets, I got a total of $35 in Gamestop credit; not bad, considering I sold off the years of Live on eBay for a net [after eBay and PayPal fees] of $64. Essentially, I've got my money back from the Best Buy purchases, and I still have 400 MS points and two copies each of UNO and Robotron 2084 to sell off, so hooray for building up Best Buy rewards points for no charge! ^_^_v)

I went to Kohl's to find aquahaute, and did so fairly quickly. She couldn't decide what to use her $10 gift card on, so we randomly went back to the kitchen section to see if we could find anything neat. We looked at the clearance rack, and she found some neat little blue glasses for about $4. Not bad, we thought, so we considered buying three sets of them to use the gift card on. But that was not to be, as we then went through the following sequence:

aquahaute: "Hey, there's a full set of those glasses over there." *looks* "Neat. I wonder how much they are."
falcon815: "Is there a price tag?"
aquahaute: "Not visible... let me look at the bottom." *lifts up glass set* "$24.00".
falcon815: "Hmm... not bad, but we have plenty of glasses."
aquahaute: "I know." *looks around* "Hey, this shelf is 50% off! If the gift card comes off after the 50%..."
falcon815: "...then the whole set of 18 glasses is going to be $2 plus tax."

Ding ding ding! That's exactly how it went down. The cashier was impressed with our great deal when she saw the pre-gift card price; afterward, it was practically robbery. ^_^_v

It was getting kinda late when we left Kohl's, so we went home. When we got there, there was a phone message from greenphoenix217, so I called her back and caught up with her for about half an hour. We had quick eats after that, and went off to a satisfying sleep after the long, productive day. ^_^

---

Not bad for now. I'll do my best to work on more today. Given the fact that Mira will be out to the movies from 4:00 to 5:00, I think I'll forego the usual DS gaming to get more catch-up done.

Refrigerator: Death and Rebirth

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 20:11:25 GMT

I've been working on a catch-up entry, and it's been going fairly well. Was going to get more on it done this morning, but I got bogged down in paperwork and had a nasty headache. The headache finally cleared at 12:30, and the paperwork is done, so now it's time to do some writing.

Not doing the catch-up entry right now, though - instead, I'll go with yesterday, since it was a rather interesting day.

---

Monday, October 13

I got up with Andrea around 6, despite the fact that I had the day off. I had a lot of stuff to take care of, and had a rough plan for doing so; I'd go out early to change the oil in my truck and do some early-bird shopping at Target, Borders, and Michael's, then head down to Columbus in the afternoon for my 1:30 dentist appointment.

A wrench got thrown into that as soon as we walked downstairs to leave around 6:50, however:

aquahaute: "What's that noise?"
falcon815: "What noise?" *pause*
Noise: *click* [two second pause] *click*
falcon815: "Did I leave the water running last night when I came down to rinse a glass...?" *check* "Nope."
Noise: *click* [two second pause] *click*
falcon815: "Oh. It's coming from over here [behind the refrigerator]."

Something - I couldn't tell what - in the back of the refrigerator was making the noise. I opened up both sides of the appliance, and could tell that both had failed. Great. Frustrated, I decided to go ahead and go do some of my morning stuff to clear my head before I dove into the problem.

We both left the house around 7:10. I turned left on Main as she turned right, then I went to Wal-Mart. They've changed how they do the tire and lube center at the Emerson and Co. Line store; now, you just drive up to the line-o'-cars instead of walking inside to wait for a rep to show up. I did so, requested the oil change as usual, then went off to do some grocery shopping (for non-cold items only, considering the issues at home).

I combed the clearance racks first, and found a two-pack of LED night lights for cheap. This is a Happy Thing, and one that's been something aquahaute has wanted upstairs for a while. Cruised over to the grocery section after that, then went back to automotive to pick up an upper brake light replacement for my truck. Sat around playing Etrian Odyssey II for a little bit after that, then was informed that my truck was ready to go, so off I went.

I got out of there around 8:15, and decided to head over to Smith Valley and 135 to hit up Target. Sadly, there wasn't anything interesting, so I went back home to dump off my Wal-Mart stuff and to see what I could do about the refrigerator. I copied down the model number and serial number from a sticker on the inside, and punched "GE refrigerator [model number]" into Google.

The first page that came up was a do-it-yourself site with an entire topic dedicated to this particular model number of GE refrigerator. Apparently they were manufactured with low-quality motherboards (why does a refrigerator need a motherboard?), which prompted a class-action lawsuit similar to the bad PS2 laser thing from a few years back. In reading the thread for more detail, I found that if the fridge were under 3 years old, the repair would be free; if 3-5 years old, it would be $100 (where the cost of the motherboard alone is $140, let alone the service call charge); and if 5+ years old, no discount would be given. I was a little miffed that my fridge's motherboard had died at the 3 year, 4 month mark, but eh, $100 is a lot better than the $320 or so it would have been otherwise.

So, I made the call to GE service. Got a guy in South Carolina - he was friendly enough, but we had some issues understanding each other despite the fact that we were speaking the same language. Eventually, I verified all the relevant information, and he informed me that I could have a service appointment made "sometime between 1 PM and 5 PM". I was ecstatic that it was possible to be done the same day. I made the appointment at the expense of the dentist appointment - the fridge is kind of important, y'know? I called up the dentist and couldn't get back in 'til February, but oh well.

It was about 9:30 by this point. I decided that since I'd be stuck in the house - potentially, anyway - from 1 to 5, it was a good idea to get my shopping out of the way in the morning, like I'd planned. So, off to Borders first! Looked around a little bit there, but eventually used the 30% off coupon on [spoiler]. Then, it was back a little bit south to Michael's, where I used my 50% off coupon on an extended spacer platform for aquahaute's Sizzix die-cut machine. Finally, I dumped off some recycling at Madison and Edgewood.

Hit up Taco Bell on the way home for quick eats, then took said eats home to have over an episode of The Price is Right. That's always fun to catch once in a while; it's not quite the same without Bob Barker, but it's still just as entertaining to yell at the shopping-challenged now as it was when I was a kid. ^_^

At 12, I left it on channel 8 to watch the noon news while I did some basic cleaning downstairs. When the news ended at 12:30, I popped UHF into the PS3 and played it over some more heavy cleaning and rearranging. About 1:30, I got an automated phone call from GE saying that I was next on the serviceman's schedule. Did some vacuuming and throwing-out-of-stuff in the next 15 minutes, then the phone rang again. It was the actual service guy this time:

falcon815: "Hello?"
Service Guy: "Your address is [Street Name], right?"
falcon815: "Yeah."
Service Guy: "Well, I'm over here on [Street Name That Shares One Word But Isn't Quite Right]. I'm just off of Stop 18."
falcon815: "Oh, okay, you're in Barton Lakes. You need to turn east on Stop 18 and come across 31... [more detailed directions, etc.]"
Service Guy: "Well, at least this thing put me in the right area. I'll be right over."

A couple minutes later, I saw a white van zoom by the house, then fly back in reverse until it could see my house number. The service guy brought in his laptop, chatted with me for a minute, listened to the sound the fridge was making, and immediately knew what the problem was. Five minutes later, after a quick trip out to his van to pick up the right part, the problem was fixed and my fridge was humming along as if nothing had happened. Thankfully, the information I'd found on the internet was correct, and he only charged me $100. Considering that would have barely covered the cost of the service call by itself, I was pretty happy to pay that.

I finished watching UHF over a little more cleaning and fixing our storm door, then decided to relax for a bit with Beautiful Katamari, which I hadn't played since about March. Found a couple presents that I'd missed before (cruising slowly through Eternals was a good way to do it), then went off to Aldi for some cold-stuff grocery shopping. Came back, played some more Katamari, and found the rest of the presents, snagging the last one (Achievement unlocked - 80G - All Presents) just after aquahaute got home.

We chatted a bit, checked up on our usual Internet bookmarks, then I finished the last of the eight bosses of Mega Man 9 (something else I need to cover) before we had some tasty Papa Murphy's pizza (I was lazy and didn't feel like cooking after all the work I'd done during the day). Then, we played some Rock Band. Since we still don't have our replacement Stratocaster yet (something I'll cover in the catch-up entry), I played drums on medium while aquahaute played Bass on Hard/Expert. I can play drums on medium pretty well IF I can get my brain turned off, which is harder than it sounds. I have trouble braining three things at once (left hand, right hand, right foot), so usually my foot pedal 'skillz' suffer the most.

After that, it was off to relax, or so we thought - instead, we got distracted for a good half-hour by "Cake Wrecks", which was good for a ton of laughs.

And such was my day 'off'; Sunday was the only day of the weekend that I really sat back and relaxed.

---

Time to go home!

Actually, my good man, I am not quite ready to rock.

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 20:12:05 GMT

Busy day at work, though most of it was busywork. An unfortunate side effect of the lead analysis is the dirtying up of a ton of glassware; knowing that I had enough dishes to do all of my samples, I saved all the cleanup for today. So, that was an effective and useful timekiller. Got the results back from run 1 at about 3:00 PM (i.e. too late for me to do anything useful with the numbers); reporting those will be my project for tomorrow. It's not my turn to grind meat samples anyway.

Carlos Zambrano finally threw a no-hitter last night. I wish I'd checked the baseball scores when I woke up at 1 AM instead of checking the football scores - that's really neat. It's the first no-hitter for the Cubs in my lifetime. I'm glad it was from a career guy like Big Z, and doubly glad that it was him in particular. He's had lots of flirtations with the no-hit game, but has usually been derailed by throwing way too many pitches; he walks too many people to throw many complete games. In conclusion, woo!

Also from the realm of baseball: WTF Milwaukee? Firing your manager now? Seriously? Then again, with the Mets collapsing and the Phillies primed to take that division away, Milwaukee still has the best shot at the wild card...

A quick summary of yesterday:

Went out to pick up drum pad covers and Rock Band 2 from Gamestop a little after 11. Also stopped at Half-Price Books and bought the eighth book of 'Sword of Truth' (hey, it was $2), and a $1 copy of part 1 of The Tale of Genji. I forget who did the translation; I'll post it when I get to reading it. I've got a bit of a book backlog thanks to the clearance rack at Half-Price. Now that I'm done with John Irving's Until I Find You (ugh), I'll probably work through it pretty quickly.

I watched the first half of the Colts game, then listened on the radio for most of the rest. I started watching again when Bob Lamey (the radio play-by-play guy) nearly had a heart attack on the air when Anthony Gonzalez lateraled to Reggie Wayne after a 58-yard gain. Desperation play, but they needed it; the Colts had done nothing on offense up to then. Ugly win, but a win, and it puts them in good position for now.

We played Rock Band 2 for a little bit. My initial impression is kind of meh. Haven't had much fun with the new tracklist so far, but we're not that far in yet. I loathe the opening song (Cheap Trick's "Hello There"), both as an opening song and as a song to play. And what happened to solo tour? I guess that's too 'old school'. On the plus side, Band World Tour no longer has the millstone of 'one player must play this instrument for all songs' that Rock Band 1 did, which forgives quite a bit. Haven't tried any "challenges" yet - maybe those will be an acceptable substitute for solo tour.

Time to get out of here. I'll try to write more soon.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 19:47:16 GMT

Got some slowdown today on two fronts: the lead samples are in a limbo stage today, and Mira called in sick. Thus, I should definitely post.

Work

It's been pretty steady since I got my promotion. Last week's lead samples came in just after we'd cleared out the meat samples from the freezer, and now that the lead is drying up (sans paperwork, which will be taken care of next week for all 16 of them), we're getting more meat samples. Works for me! I know that there will be down time even with both of these formerly-separate job descriptions on my plate, but for the most part, it looks like it'll be steady.

I am reminded by the entry title that I never shared a story from the day my promotion went into effect. Let's hop into the Wayback Machine and set the dial to August 25...

---

falcon815: *arrives at work at 7:30, sits down at desk*
*time-lapse photography of clock takes us to 8:00*
Phone: *ring ring*
falcon815: "This is the laboratory, how can I help you?"
Woman: "Hi, this is Alice from personnel. Is this Aaron?"
falcon815: "Yep. What's up?"
Alice: "First off, congratulations on your promotion."
falcon815: "Thanks!"
Alice: "I wanted to let you know about something you should do since this got fast-tracked. Normally, we have a two-week lag time between the approval of the promotion and when it goes into effect, to let people give their two weeks' notice. You should have your old supervisor, Ken, fill out a waiver to go into your fact file that says he waives his right to the two weeks' notice. It's just a cover-yourself kind of thing."
falcon815: "But I'm still reporting to Ken."
Alice: *pause* "Oh. Never mind, then."

---

That amused me. I haven't actually seen a paycheck from the new position yet, due to the 3.5 week long pay cycle we've got going on here. (I get paid every two weeks; as an example, the pay from August 25-September 5 arrives on Wednesday, September 17.) However, whatever the actual amount I end up taking home comes out as, I will be happy.

Not a whole lot interesting to report re: work other than that, though we do have an awkward situation going on today. Mira called in sick - Robin, the new big boss, came by and told me that around 7:45. Okay, no big deal, right? Well, our phone's been ringing off the hook today because Andrew's looking for her. Apparently she didn't tell him he was taking the day off, and he needs someone to pick him up at school for some reason? Whatever it is, it's a safe bet that she'll be mad about it. I just hope she's "sick" tomorrow, too, so I can put that particular rant off 'til Monday.

Reality

As aquahaute has already posted, we have baby peppers now! The first one's getting pretty big - it's bigger than a jalapeno now. One of our other plants has two peppers on the way now too, and there are tons of buds going on. We are very pleased.

I'm dumping some stuff on eBay. Got to get the electronics and books sold before October, when eBay's fees will become worse than Amazon's. They're cranking the final value fees for fixed price books/electronics to 15% (same as Amazon), AND requiring PayPal for all transactions (i.e. can't dodge that 3% fee by taking money orders anymore). Oh, and they're capping shipping values for video games and video game accessories, too, in a blatant play for more cut of the final value fee on stuff like Wii Fit, Guitar Hero, etc (because let's face it, you ain't shipping Wii Fit or GH or Rock Band peripherals for under $6).

I understand what eBay's doing from a profit perspective, but I just don't get why a company like this would actively go out of its way to make its fees equal to or worse than a major competitor. You're asking to lose sellers, guys. Tack on the inability to say anything but gushy praise about buyers, and you're begging sellers to go.

---

Andy came over for Labor Day. He finished up the Penny Arcade game, and we played a positively awful round of Scattergories. I think the card we used needs to be banned - the highest total score we had for the three-round game was something around 16. A horrible performance for all of us.

While Andy was around, we booted up the Wii to show him the crap that's been slung around on WiiWare for the past month or so. To our great surprise, Mario RPG was up - we bought it on the spot. I love how that got through with no fanfare or hype whatsoever; that's hard to do nowadays. I never gave that game the shot it deserved, but I'll try to rectify that now that we've picked it up.

Oh, and we made some tasty new pasta sauce while Andy was over, but aquahaute already covered that.

Gaming

- Finished Tales of the World. Ugh. It had potential, but having to spend 4-6 hours grinding just to beat the final boss after cruising through the rest of the game totally turned me off.

- Finished Tales of the Abyss. Liked it quite a bit, though it suffered from the same problem as Symphonia - it felt a few hours too long. Abyss was a little more blatant about it, though, as the dungeons were painfully short in the final third of the game, in favor of PLOT PLOT VIGNETTE VIGNETTE PLOT VIGNETTE etc. It's not that the story was bad, it just took forever (and there were way too many vignettes).

I'd make a music post about Abyss, but only two songs are sticking with me: the first battle theme and the opening movie song ("Karma"), both of which I like a lot. I really wish I could find a non-vocal version of "Karma" like the one that plays in the US intro - it sounds so much better with a guitar instead of a vocalist.

In conclusion, <3 Jade. Consistently good for a smile.

- Have been playing Blue Dragon. It's vanilla, but I like messing around with the skill system. I absolutely loathe the boss music. It'd be OK if it didn't have lyrics, but the fact that it has words makes the song infinitely more embarrassing to listen to. In addition, we found out last night that the singer was the lead singer from Deep Purple. Huh?! Apparently Uematsu is a not-so-closet Deep Purple fanboy.

- Will probably play Etrian Odyssey II next on DS. I tried to get back into Breath of Fire III (PSP) yesterday, but the 'sneaking through McNeil Manor' sequence saps my will to play.

Sports

- Congratulations to Chad Johnson! By legally changing your name, sir, you now have what is quite possibly the stupidest name on the planet. At least, for example, Moon Unit Zappa did not choose to be called Moon Unit.

---

And now, time to 'leave'. Can't wait for the weekend...

Bullet Point Mania

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 20:09:46 GMT

I really wanted to cover last weekend well, but I've been wrapped up in rewriting some of the meat methods manual and taking care of all the meat tests this week as Mira worked on the quarterly vitamin samples. Last weekend deserves to be told, and told well, so I'll try to give it the writeup it deserves.

For now, instead, you get little bullets.

- From the world of politics - Mira came up to me today and wondered how I'd guessed that McCain would pick Sarah Palin as his VP (I told her this a week or so ago). It's very simple: picking Palin was the only way to generate significant news coverage in the wake of the Democratic National Convention. In the constant fight for free advertising via the media, picking a relative unknown will work wonders; viewers will have questions about her that the media will need to answer to maintain their ratings. Beyond that, it's a blindingly obvious ploy for additional votes from disaffected Hillary supporters. Sure, most of them will have the brain cells to rub together to go ahead and vote for Obama, since his views are far more in line with Hillary's, but there are some quite shallow people out there that it might win over. I think it's a remarkably savvy pick, especially for one that smacks of desperation.

The one thing I'm sick of already, just 4 hours in, is the whole "lol McCain can't use the inexperience card anymore" argument. Um, Palin's not running for president, guys. Besides, it's not worth getting worked up over; Biden will destroy her in the VP debate anyway, so let him take care of it for you.

- From the world of sports - Good news / Bad news. Good news: The Cubs are virtually guaranteed a playoff spot, and might win 100 games doing it. Bad news: They'll probably have to play Arizona, the team that swept them out in the first round last year, again in the first round this year. Great. At least the games will be in Chicago this time, which means they won't start at freaking 10 PM every night.

- From the world of gaming - Repeat after me: 'ambiguity in writing does not equal depth'. I finished Braid last night, and it was a wonderful combination of visuals, gameplay mechanics, and puzzles. (Between the two of us, we got all the puzzle pieces without help.) However, the writing is on the same plane of pretentious ambiguity as Evangelion, which is not a good realm to be in. I found a great thread on this on Gamespot (of all places) that I might link to if the discussion doesn't devolve in the next couple of days. In any case. Well worth playing, if you have MS points to spare, but don't bother paying attention to the "plot" - it's not worth the effort.

- Also from the world of gaming - I hate the final boss of Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology. Hate hate hate. I might finally be able to beat him this afternoon, given the new equipment I just harvested, but the very fact that I had to undo the first 16 hours of gameplay to powerlevel as a different class to get this equipment is irritating. Dear Namco: a little more balance in your job system, please.

Time to head off to a baseball game with aquahaute. Enjoy the long weekend, everybody who can.

State Fair, e, birthdays

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 15:43:30 GMT

Now, for more weekend.

---

Saturday 8/9, continued

After I finished off working on her oil, we just kinda bummed around for the rest of the day. More Olympics were watched, more Puzzle Quest was played, really tasty tuna pasta was eaten, etc.

-

Sunday 8/10

We had another early lunch around 10-10:30, then she signed up for Facebook to help reconnect with her roommate from the IWU summer program we met at 10 years ago. She ended up being glued to the computer 'til about 1, tracking down other Summer Honors people, as well as high school and college classmates.

Once I was able to drag her away ( aquahaute: :p ), we went up to the State Fair. Had to do a little running around to find a decent parking spot, but I think I did OK - I finally decided to go up College to 42nd and park in a free lot by the school there. Sure, we had to walk a couple blocks down the Monon Trail to get to the fairgrounds, but at least walking on the Monon can be leisurely.

The weather was *perfect* - around 77, a little breezy. The first building we ducked into was one of the ones we desperately wanted to visit; the rabbits! There were chickens and ducks there as well, but rabbits! She fawned very much over the Netherlands Dwarf bunny that was there. (Not that I blame her; it was super cute.) I took a bunch of pictures of the rabbits, and tried to take some pictures of the baby fowl in the center cages, but most of them didn't turn out. A shame; the baby quail that kept flapping its little wing nubs ineffectively and jumping up and down was adorable.

Once done with the fowl, we moved on to the next couple of buildings, focusing on horses and cows. The most memorable portion of this, for me, was the 6'6"+ guy standing next to a Clydesdale while his family asked him if he felt short. Those suckers are HUGE. Should have taken a picture of that sequence.

We walked around outside for a while after that, not really knowing where we were going. Unfortunately, the only way to get a program is at the gate, and we didn't see them. So, we walked around the infield oval until we found a map that directed us toward the livestock nursery, which we eventually found.

We spent a few minutes at the livestock nursery fawning over the baby cows and taking pictures. (I really need to take the SD card out of the Wii so I can upload some of those.)

From there, it was on to two 4H-centric buildings on the west side of the fairgrounds. In particular, I enjoyed the photography panels and the domestic clothing section. The best in show for formalwear sewing was nothing short of amazing. I also had fun finding bugs from Animal Crossing in the bug collections. Nerd, right here.

After 4H, it was time to leave. Went home, did some more Puzzle Quest and reading, more Olympic watching, etc. I also downloaded the trial for Braid from XBLA to give it a shot. Very interesting; I ended up buying it when I found out that Target had 1600 MS point cards on sale this week. Haven't played the full version yet, though.

-

I've read two books in the past two weeks; one was a recommendation from Andrea, the other was one I picked up when we scoured the clearance racks at Half-Price books a couple Thursdays back. Here are some brief thoughts.

- The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro - Interesting, if a little depressing, story of personal reflection with just a hint of change. The writing style niggled at me a few times; the main character rambles and skips around in time a lot. That aside, it was an enjoyable read.

- e, Matt Beaumont - I only picked up this book from the clearance rack to look at it because of its title. Turns out it was well worth the dollar. It's a pretty trashy epistolary novel, but it had its share of laugh-out-loud moments and a unique style that made it worthwhile to read.

-

Today is her birthday. Happy birthday, sweetheart! We'll be heading out to eat tonight... not sure where yet. I imagine it'll probably be Buca di Beppo, though; it sounds really good, and I've got a $10 off $30 coupon to use.

"Horrible oil filter location."

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 20:13:21 GMT

There's a lot I should catch up on, though aquahaute took care of the awesome weekend in an earlier post.

Since I have some extra time after being pulled to the desks from the lab to be the microbiology secretary du jour, I figure I'll get caught up on some stuff.

---

Friday 8/8

As previously noted, we watched bits and pieces of the pageantry of the Olympic opening ceremonies, but tuned in for good once the parade of nations started up. That was interesting. Two notes:

- Gag me with a spoon regarding the American outfits. This is 2008, not 1928.

- I would love to see the 400 pound judo man in action. (Wish I could remember what country he was from; I'm pretty sure he was a Pacific Islander.) I bet he could break people in half, even in his weight class.

The story about the little boy they sent around with Yao in front of the Chinese athlete contingent was sad in spite of his bravery. I can't imagine being 9 years old and watching 20 of my classmates die in a collapsing building, but after he got out he went back? That's one resilient kid.

We were super tired by the time Li Ning was doing the run-around to light the torch, and a few minutes later, we were sound asleep.

---

Saturday 8/9

Watched more Olympic activity in the morning over some Taco Bell (I went over right after they opened - both of us were really hungry). After 'lunch', we headed out to find some yard sales, without much success. Shame, really, because the weather was perfect, as opposed to the previous weekend's godawful heat. One sale we did stop at gave us a potential reason for the lack of sales: the state fair.

I'd totally forgotten about the fair, largely because State Employee day is this coming Thursday, and we've been getting e-mail reminders about it at work. So, in my head, "state fair = 8/14". Once back in the truck from that sale, the two of us decided that Sunday would be a good time to head to the fair.

We gave up on sales, and went to Goodwill, where she shopped for clothes. We had an amusing moment there:

aquahaute: *approaches middle of three women's dressing rooms* *attempts to open*
aquahaute: "Anyone in there?" *pause*
Crickets: *chirp chirp chirp*
aquahaute: *bends over and checks for feet*
Latino woman behind us: "No one in there?"
aquahaute: "No, but it's locked."
Woman: "Carlos!"
Woman's son, previously unseen by us because he was lying down on the base of the cart: "Yeah?"
Woman: "Go crawl underneath that door and unlock it."
Carlos: "Uh... okay." *crawl* *click* *open*
aquahaute: "Thank you!"
Carlos: *returns to base of shopping cart, still confused at being told to crawl under the door of a women's dressing room door*

Once admitted to the dressing room, aquahaute tried on some stuff and came away with two tops suitable for work. Yay.

From there, we went to Dollar Star, home of not just dollar-store lube and prophylactics, but closeout dollar-store lube and prophylactics. It was amusing, yet saddening, to note that multiple boxes of the latter had been sold. *shudder* I told my friend Mark here at work about those, and he said, "What's the failure rate on those, 40%?"

We also made a quick stop at Aldi to sate my renewed carrots and onion dip obsession. It's so nice to finally have an onion soup mix that I can eat without triggering a migraine.

Spent some time watching the Olympics after that, then worked on her truck (a 1998 GMC Sonoma) for a while. It desperately needed an oil change, so we'd purchased the necessary products during the week for me to do it myself. I've changed my own oil quite a few times, so I figured hey, it's another small truck, how hard can it be? So, first off, I changed the air filter, 'cause that was out in the open and needed to be changed as well. Boom, done, a 2-3 minute job at most, and that's only because some of the wingnuts were having trouble catching the threads. Then, on to the oil!

Let me tell you, it's kind of hard to change the oil in a vehicle if you can't find the filter. I felt like a complete moron crawling around under the truck, unable to find the oil filter. The pan? Easy, though it took me a minute to realize that the outlet for it was on the passenger side. Still, I needed to find the filter. I sent Andrea off to get her newly-speedy laptop to check out what the Internets had to say on the matter. After a little digging, she started laughing, and read me the following: "Horrible oil filter location." That made me feel quite a bit better. Using some descriptions from the 'net and by following the tubing from the oil inlet, we finally found the stupid thing, and I was able to extract it with only a little difficulty. Getting the new one on was another matter entirely until I figured out which tubes I could safely move out of my way.

All in all, it took over an hour, but now that I know where everything is, it'll only take 15-20 minutes. You know, like it should.

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It's past time for me to ~~get out of here~~ get back to the book I'm reading, so I'll get the rest of the weekend later.

This was most enlightening.

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 13:55:14 GMT

So, we were watching the opening ceremonies last night. Mostly, what we focused on was the parade of nations, 'cause it's cool to hear the stories about how particular people got to the Olympics, and to catch up on the outdated geography in our heads. During the parade, one particular sequence got our attention.

Bob Costas: "In a quadrennial tradition, it's time to remind you that the Central African Republic is a republic in central Africa."

Matt Lauer: *pause* "Thank you."

As miggy would say, "I see Dr. Lolcats was on the committee."

Return to the art museum

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 12:37:53 GMT

Couldn't quite finish this yesterday, so here we go.

Sunday
------

Much like our trip to the Indians game a couple weeks ago, Sunday was also built around something we hadn't done in ten years; visit the Indianapolis Museum of Art. After showing her the best way to drop me off at work in the morning, then re-enter the highway to get to her job, the two of us headed up MLK/Michigan to get to the museum around 12:30.

I barely remember how the entrance looked ten years ago, but the place is huge and expansive now. When we walked into the first floor of the building and met one of the guides, he pointed out where the old building's surface area ended... and in all our walking around the foyer, we hadn't set foot in it yet. Yeesh.

So. We spent about an hour and a half walking around the first floor, easily the most expansive of the museum's collections. Mostly, the first floor focuses on classical European art, with a little non-European stuff in the same styles mixed in. The general collection is sorted by time period, and there are a couple of side wings sorted by other factors (collections donated by a particular person, collections based on a particular theme, etc). A couple of things made an impression on me on this floor.

1) Of all the styles/phases/eras European art went through, the one I can get behind the most is Neo-Impressionism. Something about the way the applied dots get meshed together by the eyes appeals to me.

2) The wall full of 'Madonna and child' replicas, including the paneling explaining that image's popularity in art schooling, was interesting. I liked the part where they showed scans of different layers of some of the paintings, pointing out the pencil sketches beneath the painting. (It was very much like a segment of an Apollo Justice case, one which looks a lot more realistic now!)

Also on the first floor: for the first 20 minutes or so we were walking around, there was a family of three (parents with a little girl about 7-8 years old) near us. The little girl was very cute and enthusiastic about being there. Further, we found some statements in the description placards for a couple pictures that we vehemently disagree with. Hooray art.

Once we were done with the first floor, we went up to the third. That's the floor for 'modern art', which had the most memorable piece in the museum when we were there 10 years ago. Due to the rearrangement of the building, we didn't quite know where to go to find it, so we just wandered a bit.

The first thing off the elevator was the display for the "On the Road" scroll that the Colts owner bought a few years back. They had the thing unrolled in a display case spanning the length of the building, and it still looked like it was only about a third to halfway unrolled.

We walked around a bit more, and found two rooms that were a complete waste of space. The first was a room that was... hm. About 20'x20'? Maybe bigger, and the ceiling was at least 15 feet high. The whole thing was wooden flooring, white walls, and 11 or 12 colored panels circling the room. Uh... no? Condescending and pretentious as that display and its description placard was, it wasn't the worst thing in the area, as the next room went something like this:

falcon815 and aquahaute: *walk in*
falcon815: *looks around, sees nothing but a few strings of yarn* "Is this room under construction or something?"
aquahaute: *shrug* *turns to leave*
falcon815: "Wait, there's a placard." *reads* "What."

I can understand the orange yarn coming in like a sunbeam from the window, being pulled taut between the window and the floor, but the random |_ and |_| shapes on one wall with five pieces of yellow and gray string? Sorry, guys, too "deep" for me.

Finally, we found what we were looking for - a display of about a dozen stools and small bookcases, attached to the floor, walls, and ceiling of a small area. All the walls were black, and there was a small black podium oriented toward all the furniture. Inside the podium? A tape recorder, playing back a loop of scary-voiced sounds, sequences of alliteration, and other wordplays. Not only was it just as awesome as I remembered it from 10 years ago, but it scared the crap out of a little kid that was walking by.

Next, we saw two memorable 'pieces'. One was a 'tree' of 30ish 13" televisions constantly playing a psychedelic mushroom-ified loop of Indiana-based images, which was painful to look at. The other was a great optical illusion, where from a short distance (~15 feet), it appears that there's a gray panel on the wall in front of you... you walk closer, and there's still a panel... and all of a sudden, when you get to about 2 feet away, you realize the gray panel is set back into the wall at least 6 inches. Mostly a trick of the tungsten lighting in the room, but it was still pretty neat.

The rest of the contemporary art was both stupid and boring, except for the random legs sticking out of a cloth egg, like Sheldon from U.S. Acres.

We took a quick look at some stuff on the second floor, but outside of a wood-carved bunny in the Africa section, not a whole lot of it appealed to me or was memorable. Maybe if we went back and did that floor first, it would be better - by the time we got to the second floor, we'd been there nearly three hours, and it was getting to be time for a break.

Went to the gift shop before we left. Outside of the ugly furniture, the only interesting things we found were a couple of books and some lucky cats. We bought a lucky cat. ^_^ I was very amused reading the lucky cat description panel, as it explained where to place things for proper feng shui:

falcon815: " 'Place yellow items in the west for good luck with money.' Wait. Isn't that how you get villagers to give you more money for deliveries in Animal Crossing?"

I had no idea how 'correct' AC's feng shui mechanics were. ^_^

-

We went to Big Lots after we left the museum; both of us picked up some lunch-related materials. We also found that they had three of the Animal Crossing plushes with little stamps on the bottom. Shame we didn't know any of the characters they had sealed up (though they did have a Margie/Sally that was opened - she's in the movie).

From there, it was on to Meijer (fail) and Culver's, where we used one of our coupons from the Indians game. Mmm. Tasty ice cream.

By the time we got home, it was already past 5, and we were tired, so we basically wasted the rest of the day playing games. Except when I made a homemade pizza for supper, which was really good.

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There, weekend is caught up. Yay.

Falc in High-Tech World

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 20:04:09 GMT

Fairly eventful weekend in my neck of the woods.

Saturday
--------

Got my hair cut at 9 when Great Clips opened. I let it go far too long this time - as soon as I stepped out of the hairdresser's, I felt like it was about 15 degrees cooler outside than it was when I went in. Note to self: don't go longer than 6 weeks in the summer next year.

Once I was done with the hair, I took off for Columbus. I was pleased to hear ZZ Top's "Sharp Dressed Man" as soon as I turned on the radio, but when I heard "Ready, Steve?" (for the start of Sweet's "Ballroom Blitz") next, I just put on a CD for a while. >_>

I got to Columbus around 11. Had to forcibly remove myself from autopilot when I got to the edge of town, since Mom and Dad have finished the move since the last time I was there. I was disappointed when I saw that the only car in the driveway was Dad's; Grandpa was supposed to be visiting. :\ Apparently he and his wife got into town a couple hours before they said they would, and left proportionally early, not sticking around long enough for me to meet up with them. Oh well.

The three of us went over to get the millstone from my other grandparents' restaurant, the second-to-last holdover at the old house. (The last? Dad's GTO. I couldn't exactly help move that.) The millstone was a lot easier to handle than I thought it would be; we were able to roll it further than I realized we could.

Once that was taken care of, the three of us all went out to Granny Bea's new location in Walesboro. Normally, we were in and out of their old location in about 20-25 minutes at most. This time, we were in there for a solid hour. I love the new look of the place... rather than a hole-in-the-wall shop, they've got an old IGA building to work with. The move accomplished two good things for everyone involved:

1) The move allowed Jerry and the gang to organize the DVDs a bit more than they already were, and consolidate the different media types. For example, all the CDs are now in one place, rather than scattered throughout the store.

2) The larger store space allows everything they have in stock to actually be visible. No more huge stacks of PS2/GC/PS1 games that aren't available for viewing 'cause they're in the staff-only room!

I bought quite a bit of stuff this time around. I wonder how much of it was hidden in the background in the old store, 'cause I would have jumped on most of it ASAP if I'd seen it previously. The list:

Zelda Collector's Edition for Gamecube (complete)
Kirby: Canvas Curse for DS (complete)
Alex Kidd in High-Tech World for Master System (cart only)
Ys for Master System (cart only)
Star Ocean 2 for PS1 (complete)
Wild ARMs 2 for PS1 (complete)

All of that for a total of $66.

I also picked up the complete box set of His and Her Circumstances for $20. Don't know much about it, but it's kind of hard to go wrong for $20. I figure if we hate it, we can probably get most of that back.

Also, there was a guy who came in and sold Contra and Super C (both NES) to the store for $3 total and argh I wanted them. But alas, the game reservation book had names previously down for both titles, and I was denied.

Hm. I guess this run is about on par with the last good one. I'm definitely satisfied. ^_^

-

While I was out, aquahaute did some clothes shopping and was happy to find some shoes that were both comfortable and fit the 'business casual' dress 'code' for her job.

We spent some time FFTA/Tales of the Abyss playing, then both nodded off for a two-hourish nap at 7. That kind of killed time for the evening; it wasn't our intent, but it was needed rest.

---

I'll get to Sunday tomorrow - no time to finish now.