June 2004 Archives

Kara and I planned on going down to Portland for the 3 day weekend, but instead Portland came up to us! Billy & Kalin came up late Friday night, and Chris & Angela showed up Saturday night (Ryan, Heidi & Kylie were also supposed to come up, but Kylie was puking sick…)

On Saturday, Billy, Kalin, Kara, & I went Cucina! Cucina! for lunch (yuk, never again) and then went to an arcade called Illusionz. That place is in such a sad state that I don’t think I’ll ever go back there again. TONS of machines were broken down and most of the ones that were working were crappy... gone are the good old days of arcades :( When we got back home, we watched Bend it Like Beckham, which was a fun movie. C&A arrived shortly after and we went out for dinner at Red Robin (Billy & Kalin stayed home and watched Spirited Away for the millionth time).

On Sunday we went to Idlewood Park for a little while and watched Kalin & Cooper play in the lake. Cooper seemed a little afraid of the water at first, so I threw a stick in to see what he’d do. He jumped right in, but after a few hops, he decided that was enough and turned back to shore. Later he saw some ducks that needed to be chased and he went full in. I had him on his long leash, so I felt like I had a toy boat on a string. I eventually had to pull him back in, because we were all ready to leave and he was still swimming after the ducks! That evening we did the whole barbeque thing and I was forced to participate in a few rounds of Karaoke Revolution. Everyone else wanted to do it but me, and they wouldn’t let me sit out… so I showed them by kicking their asses! After I won enough times, they finally let me say no when my turn came back around.

Everyone left fairly early on Monday, so we had some time to relax before the work week started back up again. Cooper was a nonstop ball of energy while everyone was here, so he slept practically all day on Monday.

I spent all evening setting up a new system for my ‘Currents’ on the sidebar of this site. Before, I had to go and change the html in my templates every time I wanted to change a current item. Since this was all done without Movable Type's knowledge, anything posted there in the past was lost as soon as I changed it... Not any longer. Now I've set it up so that current items are just blog posts with different categories (GBA, CD, Movie, etc) and only the most recent of each item is displayed. Also, if I want to remove an item from the list without adding another, I simply post an entry with the correct category and leave the entry body blank (this is done with a little help from the MT plugin Compare).

The really neat thing about this new setup is that the currents in the sidebar are affected appropriately on the date archive pages. So the items that show on the sidebar on June 30th will be the same shown on the June 2004 archive page months later (this already worked for the 'News' section so this aspect was free for the 'Currents').

One final thing, I changed the index.xml template so these ‘Currents’ update posts won’t show up in your RRS Aggregators. I figured the sidebar being updated wasn’t worthy enough to inform people that it had changed (I thought about this when I added the ‘News’ section as well, but figured that the news was interesting enough to syndicate).

I'm getting pretty bored of my site's "look" (or lack thereof) and I'm trying to think of ways to spruce it up. I figure it needs some art or something, but I'm not much of an artist! This kickass drawing was an idea I had and drew up in Paint in about 5 minutes. It's a visual representation of the stupid catchphrase I typed in back when Less Than Me got off the ground. It was only supposed to be a placeholder until I thought of something better, but I never got around to changing it. Now that I've drawn this, I think the phrase is here to stay. But, that doesn't solve my boring webpage problem...

In my office at work there are a few machines that are used for automated test runs. Yesterday someone kicked off a few eVC runs which just about drove me crazy. eVC makes a notification beep every time a testcase builds, so the test machines all started beeping over and over and OVER! I muted the audio on two of the machines, but the last machine had all of the audio settings grayed out. I thought maybe I could plug headphones into the sound card to shut it up, but first I had to figure out which physical machine it was. After pulling the patented eject drive move, I nailed down the machine and plugged the headphones into the jack... no luck. Apparently the sound card wasn't recognized and the beeping I heard was from the old school system speaker. After fishing around in the device manager I found the system speaker and disabled it... the beeping didn't stop. So I went on a hunt for a screwdriver... I popped open the case and yanked the speaker lead off of the motherboard. That computer don't beep no more.

I’ve been meaning to write about Comcast’s On Demand for at least a month now, but I’ve never gotten around to it… This weekend HBO upped the ante though and I can no longer stay silent. For those who might not know, On Demand is a service that lets you watch TV shows when you want to. It’s a new feature in my area, and it is “free” (as long as you have digital cable). A bunch of cable channels (A&E, History, etc) put a nice selection of shows up each month that you can select from a menu and watch at your leisure. Also, if you subscribe to any premium channels (we’re currently subscribed to HBO for The Sopranos) you get their content as well. I’ve been loving HBO On Demand because they’ve been putting up episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Every two weeks or so, they put up the next 5 episodes, and within a day or two, I’ve blasted through them. This weekend, I went into the menu to see if there was anything new, and there it was… the show that drove me to write this entry… all ten episodes of Band of Brothers. I’ve been meaning to see this mini-series since it came out on DVD, and now, here it was, in its entirety, just waiting for me to watch it. Three episodes on Friday night, four last night, and only three left to go. I ought to finish them up tonight (seeing that today is D Day + 60 years) but I’ve got the season finales of The Sopranos & Deadwood to watch tonight in beautiful High Def!

I finally saw The Last Samurai last night; it was alright… I avoided watching it for so long because it just seemed stupid that Tom Cruise would be in a movie about The Last Samurai (though I guess the main character in The Last of the Mohicans isn’t a Mohican…) Anyway, the movie had some interesting material to work with, the clash of the old way versus the new; the spiritual discipline of the samurai against the soulless brutality of machinery. If it just weren’t for the camera’s constant cuts to Cruise’s scraggly beard! I mean, at the end of the movie there is a confrontation between two Japanese men and it’s all emotional and stuff, and they kept cutting to Tom looking all teary and intense. WTF!?! He had nothing to do with the scene!! Oh well… In the movie’s favor, there IS a totally rad scene with ninjas and stuff and they are all like sword fighting the samurai and junk and then… oh yeah, Tom Cruise saves the day… lame.

I recently saw Bend It Like Beckham on DVD, and one of the special features was the director showing how to cook Aloo Gobi. Aloo Gobi just happens to be one of my favorite Indian dishes, so I gave it a watch. It didn’t seem all that hard to make, so I figured I’d try it sometime. Well, this weekend I had nothing better to do, so I searched for a recipe and decided on this one. All the spices seemed familiar except the mysterious Garam Masala… fortunately I live just down the street from an Indian food store called Mayuri. I felt pretty out of place in there (I was one of like 3 non-Indian people and I could have been imagining, but I think I got quite a number of funny looks). Anyway, cooking the dish was pretty uneventful, but it took FAR longer than I expected. I think I cut the potatoes too big, so it took a really long time for them to get soft all the way through. And then when it was done, the insides of the potatoes were pretty plain tasting. However, overall it was a fun experience and it did taste pretty darn good!

Last night I decided to try my hand at another Indian dish, so I searched and found this recipe for Chicken Tikka Masala. I had to make another trip to Mayuri today, and I found mostly everything. They didn’t have cardamom powder or pods, but they did have a bottle of cardamom extract. I had to guess on how much extract to use in place of the powder, but since we’re talking about 1/4 tsp. I don’t think it'll matter much. I created the marinade just now and popped the chicken into the fridge. Tomorrow I finish, so we’ll see how it turns out!

I have this friend (let’s call him Shmake), he and his wife Shmara have been very into Stargate SG1 and have been getting the DVDs from Netflix. Unfortunately Netflix had a shortage on Season 4 disc 4, so Shmake took matters into his own hands. Instead of waiting for the DVD to get in stock, he started illegally downloading episodes through Shareaza. Shmake didn’t feel too bad about this (since he wasn’t ever going to buy the DVDs anyway) but was aware that technically he was breaking the law (hence the fake names to protect the not so innocent). The problem he’s having is the episodes take too long to download! He was only able to get two complete episodes before the DVD finally arrived from Netflix.

Today, I (switching to first person, writing in third person is tiring… but this by no means is intended to suggest that ‘Shmake’ is I) received the final disc of Season 4, and watched it completely. I assumed that the final episode of Season 4 would be a cliffhanger (I was right) so I started downloading Season 5 episode 1 a few days ago so that it’d be all ready for us. Well it’s still downloading, and I doubt I’ll get it completely before we simply get the next DVD from Netflix! I thought downloading illegal stuff was supposed to be fun and cool, but at this speed it’s an exercise in futility.

I received a $50 gift certificate to funagain.com as a belated birthday present over the weekend (thanks Cindy!) I bought Attika (I’ve been looking for this one ever since I played it at Peter’s) and Ticket to Ride (haven’t played this one, I bought it based on the good things I’ve heard). The total came to $49.45… perfect, right? Wrong, shipping is $11.67!!!

Lucky for me, the season finale of Deadwood wasn’t last week as I had thought. Tonight marked the end of the season, and boy was it good. I really didn’t expect to like this show when I started seeing the commercials for it. I’ve never really been a fan of westerns, and Back to the Future 3 sure as hell didn’t help. Anyway, I didn’t bother watching the series premiere, but it made its way to On Demand, so I watched it before the second episode aired... and I was hooked. The show has a ton of characters and all of them seem distinct and fully realized. They all have their own agenda for staying in the illegal settlement of Deadwood, and the interaction between them all makes for a very entertaining show. I’m a little worried that HBO might not renew it for another season (there has been some flak about the vulgarity of the speech) so I sent them an email… I basically said that I only subscribe to HBO when new episodes of The Sopranos are airing, but now it’ll be when new eps of The Sopranos OR Deadwood are airing. Doubt it’ll make any difference, but I figure I might as well give them some positive feedback in case they’re looking for it. Fingers crossed for a second season!

Keith, Ritchie, Russ, Aldo, Brett and I are all wearing green shirts today! This clearly means that VSD is haunted by the ghost of St. Patrick. I mean think about it, today is exactly 3 days short of 3 months since St. Patrick's Day. And St. Patrick was famous for using the THREE leaf shamrock to demonstrate the Trinity. I fear the onslaught of ghostly pinches that is sure to ensue…

My buddy Phil dropped a bomb on me yesterday... He graduated from UW last year with a chemical engineering degree and has yet to find a job. He’s been stuck living with his parents in Kalama for the last year and he finally found a way out. He is going to China for 2 years to teach English!! All I can say is HOLY CRAP! At least he’ll get his videogames for dirt cheap since China is the software pirate capital of the world.

Last night we had a serious thunderstorm... I set my camera on burst mode and snapped around 900 pictures of it. Most were of black sky, but this one turned out pretty good.

I finally got Kara’s upgraded computer set up downstairs which turned out to be perfect timing! TJ was over today, so we played some Unreal Tourney 2k4 together, alternating between the standard Deathmatch and delectable Onslaught modes. After he left, I had UT on the brain, so I pulled out the bonus disc and watched a bunch of the VTMs (Video Training Modules) about how to design your own levels with the Unreal Editor. I’ve got a pretty good grasp on how to use the tool, so I just might try making my own level in the next few weeks. I think the one trick to pulling it off is pre-planning the level… The training shows them building a level that they already had built, so they had the sizes for all the pieces all measured out. I think I’d get into trouble quick if I tried making it up as I go along... We’ll see if I actually get motivated enough to go through with it, but I definitely plan on watching more of the VTMs.

This morning I came out to my car only to discover that a bird had poo-bombed it. I didn’t want it to bake on in the summer sun, so I grabbed the hose to spray it off. I was trying to be careful not to get splashed since I was heading straight to work after the ‘car wash.’ The spraydown went well, but as I was heading back to the facet to turn it off, I accidentally pointed the hose at the nearby garbage can. I started getting backsprayed from the can, so I panicked and dropped the hose. The hose landed, pointing straight at both of my legs and it thoroughly soaked my shins before I got the water turned off… I still didn’t want to go change, so I just went to work with wet legs. I figured it’d be easy enough to explain if someone asked (unlike, say, a good soaking in the crotch).

I've recently had correspondence with a few people that I haven't seen in a while, and I usually mention that we got a dog and send a link to this page of pics. However, I then mention that Cooper doesn't really look like that little puppy anymore... So, here are some newer pictures of the lil' feller.