March 2005 Archives

It’s been nearly a month since we moved to Portland, and I’m more than alright with the decision. We’re busy practically every weeknight, hanging out with friends and having lots of fun. The only downside has been staying at the Arkos' house. There’s nothing wrong with the Arkos or their house, but it’s not like I can walk around the joint in my underwear! We’ve got a smallish room in their basement (walled off with a sheet hanging in the doorway) that contains my 19” TV and a futon mat on the floor. I’m just ready for our own place...

And in two more days we’ll get it. We’re renting a house in the Milwaukie/Gladstone area and we get to move in on Sunday. I’m pretty excited about it because then I’ll have a place to feel at home at in Portland (and I’ll get to hook my HDTV up after having it mothballed for over three months!!) The house is two blocks away from a bus stop on the #32 line that runs downtown and drops me off literally right in front of my work. I absolutely LOVE this bus to work thing. I find driving to be utterly mundane, so it’s a real treat to trade that in for daily dedicated time to read books and listen to music!

Speaking of which, (books and music that is) I’m halfway through Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and I’m wholly enjoying it. The last four were “just ok,” but this one is great! Harry is much more moody this time around, and Professor Umbridge (a power hungry teacher) is his perfect foe. His backtalk and resulting detentions sound more than a little familiar... I can finally relate to that little twerp!

And music... I finally got my iPod this last Sunday (Nate: I asked my accountant, Kara, to mail you your “$25 Tivo Spectacular Jake-bate” but she has yet to follow through... looks like 6-8 weeks, buddy ;) I’ve been ripping CDs all week, and I’ve only used 2 of 18.5 gigs! We’re talking 40 full albums, 500+ songs, and I’m only at 10% capacity! Seriously, this is TOO MUCH space!! Most of my CDs are still packed away, but I’m pretty sure that I won’t be able to fill up the iPod with all of them. It’ll be pretty sweet though, to have every CD I own (and more than a few that I don’t), available wherever I am!

How’s the new house you ask? Beats me.

We showed up at the house at 1pm yesterday to get the keys; the previous tenants weren’t moved out and the landlord was not there. We called the landlord and apparently he knew they weren’t gone, but I guess he didn’t think he needed to tell us (or meet us there as planned). He says that the people will be out tonight and that he’d pay for a hotel room for the night, but I told him no deal. It’s pretty obvious that these other people are scamming him and that they won’t be out anytime soon. He’s just too stupid to realize it (and I told him as much). He told us last week that he had done all of the eviction paperwork and that if Sunday rolled around and they weren’t out, that he’d call the cops. I asked him why he hadn’t called the cops, and he said that he had, but blah blah blah. I flat out called him a liar (which was obviously the case, since his story kept changing). On top of all of this, the house had “For Sale by Owner” signs in the front yard. Just what we want, to move in and then they sell the house out from under us (not to mention people coming in to see the place while we live there). Anyway, I told him that he can screw off because we’re walking away from the deal.

So... we went over to Cindy’s house and started the house hunt again. We called a guy that we had talked to a week ago and set up a time to see his house. The house was only ok, but since we’re in a pretty screwed up situation, we applied for it anyway. They are supposed to get back to us today and the house is supposed to be ready to move in on Wednesday. The place is small and a little outdated, but it does have a hot tub! It’s not ideal, but we sure can’t be picky now...

Last night we returned to the Arkos’ with all of our stuff. It was pretty depressing since we both were excited to finally have our own place. It felt like we were kids returning to our parents’ home after failing to make it on our own in the world. Sigh...

I met up with my dealer recently. He’s a friend from high school, hadn’t seen him for years. Funny thing, he’d never heard of BT before I told him about it. See, he messaged me one day, upset that he had missed an episode of Smallville. I told him not to fret, that he needs to try a little BT and it’d make him feel juuust fine. So he did, and apparently he’s been addicted ever since. Now he regularly misses shows just so he has an excuse to take another hit of BT. Well since I’ve been staying at a place with no cable lately, I’ve been feeling a little down about all the missed shows. But thankfully I’ve turned Scott into such a BT junkie that he had enough extra to share with me. I recently went to his BT den and he hooked me up, now everything is all goooood.

I went and picked up the U-Haul truck last night. Dave L., Dave J., and Billy were going to meet me at the house to help. The truck broke down one exit before the one we needed to take. We (me, my parents, and eventually everyone else) sat in the parking lot of Clackamas Town Center waiting for a repair guy to come and fix the truck. Seriously, could any more things go wrong with this damn move?!? I guess not, because once the truck was fixed we made it to the house and unpacked it. Note to self: don’t ever move again.

I have ‘discovered’ the most incredible album EVER. I’m sure this was only news to me (but how have I lived 26 years in this world without getting the message?) The message being “You must listen to The Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd because it will blow your mind!” Never have I heard a more cohesive album, the songs all run together and the songs/lyrics focus on a common theme. Sound effects and speaking are mixed in effectively to add depth and texture to the common feel of the album.

I listened to the album a few times at work and on the bus and became more and more impressed with it. The problem was, I wasn’t able to give my undivided attention to it at work! Last Friday, Billy went out for a run so I turned off all the lights, laid down and listened to the album in its entirety. Never has an album taken me away like this one did. The experience was so immersive that I felt as if I was watching an engrossing movie in my head.

If you somehow have never listened to this beaut, do yourself a favor and go buy it. It's as good as it gets.

Last night was our first night in the house. Most of our stuff is still in boxes or scattered around the house, but it felt great just the same. The evening was pretty surreal because I had finally arrived at the destination I’d been trying to reach for 3+ years. I took a break from unpacking to play some piano. I exercised on the stationary bike. It was the everyday stuff that made me realize that I was really here.

Remember when I said Hyperion was the best sci-fi book I’ve ever read? Well, scratch that. Fall of Hyperion is the best sci-fi book I’ve ever read! The book continues the story of Hyperion while increasing the complexity by building on the foundation of the stories of the first book. Fall of Hyperion put forth some challenging ideas that I couldn’t stop thinking about once I’d put the book down.

So, Hyperion was a Hugo award winner, but Fall of Hyperion was only a Hugo award nominee. My first thought after completing Fall was “I’ve got to read whatever book BEAT this one!” which got me looking up a list of all the Hugo award winners (something I’d never done). I discovered a few interesting things while looking over the list: I’ve read only 7 of the 53 winners, the book that beat out Fall of Hyperion is Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson, and 2 of the first 3 Uplift books are on the list.

Turns out Blue Mars is the 3rd of a trilogy of books (Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars) and both Green and Blue won Hugos. But before I start on that trilogy, I’m going to read Sundiver (the first of the Uplift books, recommended to me by Peter). I've already checked it out from the Ledding Library and it's as good as read as soon as I finish Pheonix.

Today I biked 3 miles to Billy’s, walked .3 miles to the bus stop, and bussed 7.5 miles to work. And I get to do the reverse to go home. All that bike, walk, and bus training really paid off...

One of my favorite restaurants is Benihana. The food is absolutely delicious and it’s entertaining because they cook your meal right at your table. However, it’s pretty expensive and they seat you with other people (strangers suck). So, one time a while back I decided to pay attention to how they made their yummy food and see if I could make it on my own. I succeeded, and it has long since been one of our favorite homemade meals (we call it “Benihana’s” as in “We should get the stuff for Benihana’s and make it tonight! Yaaaaay!”) Well, I thought I’d type up the recipe and let y’all experience the yummiest of homemade meals:

1 medium white onion
2 zucchini
1 container of fresh sliced mushrooms
1-1.5 lbs chicken breast
Kikkoman soy sauce (since this is the main seasoning, the quality of the sauce will probably make or break the meal)
roasted sesame seeds
vegetable oil
rice (it’s nice, but it’s just a grain)

First off, you probably want some rice to go along with the meal, so cook as much as you see fit (I think we do 1 cup of uncooked rice).

Cut onion into 1”-2” strips, cut zucchini (we cut them down the middle lengthwise and then slice the halves, I think Benihana’s cuts them into spears and then slices?). Cut the chicken breast into 1.5” cubes (kitchen scissors work great).

Heat some oil in a frying pan for the chicken. Add chicken to oil and pour some soy sauce and sesame seeds over chicken (no exact measurements, I just play it by... tongue? But, I’m pretty liberal with the sauce and I add more as the chicken cooks).

Once the chicken is fully cooked, you can start on the veggies. You’re going to need a pretty big pan (we’ve got a wok style frying pan that works well), add oil to it and heat. Add all of the cut veggies to the pan, douse with soy sauce and sesame seeds, I also add some water (probably less than 1/2 cup) to help steam the veggies and it also makes more sauce. You want the vegetables to be cooked through but still semi-firm (you don’t want to overcook the zucchini or it turns to mush, and you don’t want to undercook the onions or they have that yucky raw onion taste). Add chicken (we dump the contents of the chicken fry pan in, the drippings add flavor!) Stir all up, cook for maybe a minute longer and then you’re done!

The fact that soy sauce is the only spice might seem a little weird, but the flavor from the cooking vegetables and chicken join with it to make an INCREDIBLE flavor! BTW, this will make a ton of food. Kara and I gorge ourselves with it and then we usually still have two lunch servings left over.

Let me know if any of you make this, and how it turned out for you!

I finally got the TV and sound system all set up last night (minus cable and internet which arrives this Saturday). This means I’m all ready to start up the video game addiction again. So I examined my game collection to determine how many games I have yet to beat before I go out and start buying new ones.

Xbox:
I beat Fable last weekend which has closed out the Xbox category of “games I deem worthy to beat.” There are currently no Xbox games out that I want to buy.

PS2:
I’m at the final boss in both Final Fantasy X and Ratchet & Clank 2. It’d take a lot of boring leveling up to beat the boss in FFX, so I’m giving up and trading it off. R&C2 is still beatable though, so I’m holding on to it. I started playing Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy this morning (I got it for 10 bucks when Micah, Dave, and I teamed up on a "buy two get one free" deal) and it appears to have some promise. It’ll probably be the game that gets most of my attention in the next week(s). I’ve planned on picking up Sly Cooper 2 and Ratchet & Clank 3 since they were released. I’ll probably buy them used in the next few weeks.

Gamecube:
The only game I’ve yet to beat on GC is Pikmin 2. I played it a bunch on rainy days in Hawaii and I haven’t played it since I got back from vacation! I really enjoyed it (it made my top games of 2004 list) and I fully intend to beat it. Other than that, it looks as though the Gamecube will be a dust collector until Zelda comes out in Q4... Get it together, Nintendo... GEEZ!

Though I might be entering a golden age of sci-fi books, the realm of sci-fi TV has seen better days... Enterprise is being cancelled, and frankly I don’t blame UPN at all. The show never really seemed to find its groove, so I won’t be sad to see it go. Stargate:SG1 has gone downhill, O’Neil as General is much less fun, and the show has become WAY too self-aware for my tastes. Stargate Atlantis is barely ok, the Wraith bad guys are cartoonish and one dimensional. But wait, what’s this new show? Wasn’t that a show back in the 70’s? Yes, but it’s back and it’s spectacular!

Battlestar Galactica is the yummiest new show on TV. It has a gritty “realism” that makes all the other sci-fi shows feel like dress-up. The characters are interesting and varied and the show spends plenty of time letting them talk and work through their issues. And then when the Cylons show up, the space battle scenes are great! Oh, and dare I say, the show is sexy? Dr. Baltar’s temptress/tormentor ‘fembot’ spices up the show nicely without it feeling overtly gratuitous. SciFi channel recently announced that the show has been picked up for a second season, to start this summer. Yay!

I finished reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix a few days ago... In my opinion this book was FAR better than the previous four. The other Potter books were mildly entertaining; I read them when I had spare time, etc. However, this one was so fun that I actually made time to read it. But, it wasn’t perfect... I was pretty disappointed with the Vanilla Sky ending; I’d rather be left in the dark or have the mysteries slowly revealed to me. I definitely don’t want someone to sit me down and explain the whole thing away...

Another fun filled weekend... the highlights:

Friday evening Billy and Kalin came over for pizza and a movie. Earlier in the day, Billy had mentioned that The Goonies was his favorite movie when he was a kid. I told him that I had never seen it, and voila our evening planned itself! The movie was pretty fun, I could definitely see loving it as a kid...

Saturday morning we went out to breakfast with Micah and Karin. One of the standard things we’d do each time Kara and I would visit Portland was meet friends for breakfast at Elmer’s. Even though we’re no longer visitors, I’m pretty sure the Elmer’s breakfasts will continue. After breakfast we went back to our place and I talked Micah into trying a boardgame (he’s always been hesitant, though I really think I’ve got more than a few that he’d like). He wanted to play something simple and quick, so I pulled out The Ebay Game (it’s a stupid, fast-paced, little game that is surprisingly fun to play). I hadn’t played it in quite some time, so I only vaguely remembered the rules. We launched into the game with only a quick run-through of the rules and it was pretty rough at first. But, once Micah got the hang of it, he ended up liking it. (I think that's a safe assumption, since we played it 3 times in a row on his request!)

Once Micah and Karin left, Kara and I launched into hot tub prep mode. We went to a pool store and bought cleaning chemicals and got advice from a friendly salesperson named Victor. We went home, bailed out the rest of the water in the tub, and scrubbed it thoroughly (it needed it, ewww). Once cleaned, we stuck the hose in there and started filling it up! By then the cable guy showed up and reintroduced us to the 21st century. We signed up for HBO because the second season of Deadwood is currently airing. I’d already missed two episodes, but no worry because they were waiting for me on On Demand. Oh, and the cable box we got has a built-in two tuner DVR that can record high def programming. Heaven.

Saturday evening, Scott and Katie came over to try their hands at these German games I’m always spouting about. We, of course, pulled out the gateway drug/game that is Settlers of Catan. Kara reamed us; she got longest road and largest army while the rest of us were still just struggling to make ends meet!

Sunday was work on the hot tub day. We brought a water sample into the pool place and they told us what chemicals we’d need to use. Tons of junk needed to be added to balance the alkalinity, pH, calcium, and chlorine in the water. Because all of these chemicals need time to dissolve, I had to wait 30 minutes between small doses of chemicals. It took all day to get all of the chemicals in there, and it’s still not right. The pH is still pretty high, so I’ve been adding more and more acid (they call it “pH decreaser” which admittedly sounds more pleasant).

Sunday evening, Kara left to hang out with Lisa and Stacy but Tony, Micah, and Karin came over to keep me company. We’ve been going to Micah’s place every Sunday night lately to have Arrested Development viewing parties. But now that I can offer AD in high def with no commercials, the meeting place has been changed! Before Arrested came on (and even slightly after, to allow us to skip commercials) Micah and I played DOAU. It was so nice to see it running in high def again, and there was some pretty spectacular rumblings coming from the subwoofer as well. After DOAU and AD, I suggested we play a party videogame that we could all enjoy. I pulled out the Gamecube version of Wario Ware and we played it for quite some time. Karin was beside herself with joy over it! I’m not much into party games, but that one is tons of fun to play. A lot of the fun for me is seeing others’ reactions to this crazy game!

Eventually Micah and Karin left (Tony left earlier, but even when he was there it was like he wasn’t, since he was just playing on the computer the whole time!) Kara came home and we decided to try out the hot tub. The pH was still high but we determined that it shouldn’t be harmful to us (like, say, how low pH would be). The tub wasn’t fully heated yet either but it was still warm enough to enjoy. It was nice and relaxing, and a nice reward for all the work we put into it over the last few days!

Alright, Lynn, hold that elevator because I’m refreshed and ready for another week of work!

I spent a bunch of time last night changing this site... but good luck trying to find what I changed! You give? The images in the current media section are now hosted off my site instead of from random sites (netflix, gamerankings, allmusic, etc). I decided to make the change because I didn’t want my archives to slowly become a graveyard of broken links!

A rad byproduct to the automation that made the conversion is this webpage. A record of my media consumption that looks pretty damn cool!

Future ‘currents’ posts will now need the images copied to my server and that’s where my Movie Lookup program comes in. First off, I’ve updated it to handle games, cds, and books alongside the original movies (guess that means the program needs a new name). I also plan to add an additional button that will retrieve the image, upload it to lessthanme, and then alter the image source to point to the local location!

Here’s a screenshot of my baby showing off her new skills! Ain’t she cute?

Well, it's the end of the week, which means it's time once again for n*Link Friday!! Oh wait, that's not a Less Than Me thing... but, since it's been over a month since the last one, I'm stepping up.

• Penny Arcade is one of the funniest places on the web, but check out their Splinter Cell “training manual.” It’s hilarious!
• Kara finally updated her blog. Oh and check out the future home for her non-blogspot version of her site: spicyprincess.com
• Guess whose site is the #1 MSN Spaces result for a search for Britney Spears...
• And last but certainly not least, new Halo 2 maps have been announced!!!

Update: I guess I hit a nerve by co-opting n*Link Friday, because Brett scrambled into action with his first n*Link in over a month... See, you can get what you want on the internet, and you don’t have to sign stupid petitions!

I am hosting a Lord of the Rings viewing party this week; we are watching The Fellowship of the Ring tonight, The Two Towers on Thursday, and The Return of the King on Friday. Geeky? Yes... but wait, there’s more!

My original plan was to place the couch and loveseat side-by-side to accommodate six people. But when I discovered that the couch and loveseat wouldn’t fit side-by-side and the invitee list grew to eight, Dave’s joke of stadium seating started sounding like a viable option! So, on Saturday Dave came over to help me build a couch platform...

Dave and I are both computer geeks. We don’t know how to build things. Yet we began building a foot and a half high platform that would need to support a couch and three people! Yikes! But the crazy thing is we performed stupendously! We came up with a plan that seemed like it’d be sturdy. We went to Home Depot and picked out lumber (seriously, we had no idea what we were doing). We sawed and drilled and screwed the wood together until it looked like the 3D drawing that I had made.

Last night we got the plywood and finished it. The edges of the plywood don’t all come together perfectly, but man is the thing sturdy. I was concerned from the moment we started that we were only building an elaborate deathtrap. We constantly joked that Micah and Scott would be the ones up on the platform while we stayed safely on the floor. It was a relief to discover, once we finished it, that it is incredibly sturdy. The only concern was the couch slipping off the platform, so Kara and I added 2X4 rails around the edges of the platform.

Sitting up on it is awesome! It’s like you’re on a throne, lording over the minions on the couch below. And the view to the TV is COMPLETELY unobstructed by people’s heads. Dave (who is mighty tall) sat directly in front of me and I saw nary a spiky hair!

Check out the sweet setup!

I finished reading Sundiver last week... I’d put it in the ‘just ok’ category. I wasn’t bored while reading it, but I never felt invested in the characters or cared much about what they were doing. The main plot revolves around humans discovering sentient beings that live in the photosphere of the sun. It seems, however, that everyone on the ship (including a few aliens) has different political motivations for being there. Meh...

However, the story is set in an intriguing universe which gives me hope for the remaining books of the trilogy. The main catch of this universe: every sentient race was “uplifted” to sentience (through genetic manipulation and mentoring) by other sentient beings. Every race, that is, except human... It’s unclear whether some being started us off and then abandoned us halfway through the uplift process or whether we somehow evolved naturally to sentience (which is unheard of in the billions of years of universal history).

Anyway, this was Brin’s first book, so I’ll cut him some slack on the plot. I would be reading the 2nd book now (Startide Rising) if I weren’t a second class citizen of the Clackamas County Library system. Since I do not have an Oregon driver’s license, I am only eligible for a probationary library card which means, among other things, I can’t place holds... and the nearest available copy is in Wilsonville! So, I picked up Red Mars (which was available at Ledding) and have begun reading it. I’m about a quarter of the way into it, and it’s really good! More about it once I’ve finished it.