Category Archives: Fun

The July Hiatus

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Treetops

Has it really been an entire month since I’ve posted here?  it honestly doesn’t seem like it.  I’ve visited the blog frequently (every day), and though I’ve had a lot of ideas for things I’ve wanted to post, and have even written a fair amount of half-finished articles, I never got around to posting much of it all.

I guess I’ve been a bit busy.  Not enough to completely excuse me from my absence here, but pretty busy.  Since I feel like I owe an explanation to anyone who’s been visiting the site and wondering what happened to me, I’ll briefly run through everything I’ve been up to.

To kick things off, I got myself a new bike a little over a month ago.  My girlfriend and I have enjoyed going for walks on the roads and trails near our apartment since we moved here, and we both thought it would be fun to have bikes to better take advantage of the bike paths, as well as for a simple form of local transportation.  So far, it’s been a lot of fun to be able to hop on a bike and jet around the area for a bit, and it’s also been a good amount of exercise.  So long as the weather stays reasonable, I’m sure we’ll be doing this for many months to come this year (if not the entire year).

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The Father’s Day Blitz

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Electronic Junk

With less than a week to go until Father’s Day, the ridiculous parade of allegedly dad-focused marketing is already well upon us.  On the way to work this morning, I heard a countless number of commercials trying to convince me to buy my dad a new cell phone.  On TV, I’ve survived a constant barrage of pleas to pick up new flat-screen sets, stereo equipment, and various implementations of carpentry hardware.  Online, it’s been cameras, camcorders, USB memory sticks, hard drives, and all sorts of other computer gadgetry.

Each holiday it gets worse.

I’m not against the idea of getting someone a thoughtful gift, either.  I think that if your dad has been pining for something for a while and you’ve got the means to get it for him, then maybe you should.  But isn’t the whole idea of the holiday lost when you’re stuck in some infinite loop of trying to one-up last year’s gift with something more and more expensive and outrageous?

The idea of buying someone a cell phone as a gift is utterly absurd to me.  A cell phone is a personal thing that you should shop for yourself, since you’re the one who’s going to be using it most of the time.  Not only that, but if the gift receiver doesn’t have a cell phone already, he / she’s going to be stuck with a new monthly bill, thanks to your thoughtfulness.

The notion of gifting a new television is just as bad.  As if people need another $1,000+ added to their burgeoning credit debt.

Since when did the idea of showing your appreciation for someone include buying them a menagerie of electronic gizmos?

While retail world is busy buzzing in peoples’ ears about its newest pile of shiny garbage, I’ll be taking a quiet trip up to the country to my parents’ house.  I’ll probably end up wrestling with some technology anyway; I hear my dad’s been having some computer problems.  But I think that he’ll appreciate the help a lot more than being saddled with an unwanted new cell phone.

Unfortunately, the balance of the entire universe will be thrown off anyway – because for Mother’s Day, I only sent a card this year.  Sorry mom!

Image courtesy of Creative Recycling

BlizzCon 2009 is Go!

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BlizzCon 2009

After missing out on the first round of tickets a few weeks ago, I’m happy to report that I was able to swoop in and grab a pair of BlizzCon tickets this past weekend!

My brother, Spencer, and I had been planning on attending BlizzCon this year, but during the first round of ticket sales, neither of us was able to get to a computer in time to get some tickets.  I had just returned from a short vacation in Arizona, and was on the road the same day for another short trip to Lake Tahoe.  I had a lot of fun that weekend.  Spencer had to go to work in the morning.

To fill in for our absence, we armed my dad with my brother’s credit card and all the relevant information needed to make the purchase, but demand was high, and by the time he got in the ticket queue, he was about 25,000 people behind.  When he got to the front of the line, the tickets were sold out.

This last weekend, Spencer was again not able to stand by for ticket-buying, but I was, so I set my alarm for 9:00 AM, got up and played around a bit, and then logged into the Blizzard Store and waited patiently for the clock to strike 10.  At 10:58 I began refreshing the page every 10-15 seconds, and at exactly 10 o’clock, the drop-down box appeared for ticket purchase.  I fumbled for a second, selected the wrong number of tickets, backed out and fixed the error, and proceeded to get in line.  I was approximately number 250 in line.

A few seconds later, I was in front.  I proceeded with the purchase, and it all went very smoothly.  Much more smoothly than last year, where the store continually broke, and left a lot of unhappy people out there.  I was pleased that I had remembered to log into the Blizzard Store the night before and update my credit card / contact information, so I didn’t have to worry about changing it at purchase time.

Directly after I finished with everything, a friend of mine who had gotten tickets during the first round logged in just to see how long the line was; in about a minute’s time, the line had grown to over 31,000 people!

So I guess I am pretty lucky to have been able to get BlizzCon tickets again.  I expected things to be a bit slower this year, with the economy and all, but I guess it’s true that during hard financial times, people are always looking for entertainment – a way to escape from the troubles of life for a while.

Hopefully this year’s show is just as much fun as the last.  It’s not until August, but If it’s anything like last year, it should be worth the wait.

Team Fortress 2 Update – Sniper… and Spy?

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Man, I go away for a small vacation and I miss the next big TF2 announcement from Valve!  Not a big deal, really – I did have quite a good time on my trip, so a TF2 update kinda takes a back seat in terms of awesomeness…  but more on that later.  Valve’s got a new update page set up for the next TF2 update, and it looks like it’s going to be another sweet addition to the game.

So far, they’ve announced The Huntsman, a bow and arrow for the Sniper that can stick enemies to walls, Payload Race, a new game mode that’s kind of like a two-way Gold Rush, and another item for the Sniper, The Razorback; a back-mounted shield that keeps the Spy from stabbing him.  Oh, and speaking of the Spy, he’s also snuck in for some update goodness; he’ll be getting The “Dead Ringer” Spy Watch and The “Cloak and Dagger” Spy Watch, which will let him fake death and stay cloaked forever respectively.

Like the other updates Valve has brought to TF2, these will change play considerably, but also seem very well thought out, so hope fully balance will not be hurt too much.  I haven’t played TF2 in a month or two and I’m pretty excited about all this…  hopefully this will be the push I need to come back to the game, as it is one of the more fun experiences I’ve had in online gaming.

Anyway, maybe I’ll see you there – and hopefully I’ll see you back here soon as well, as I write a bit about my recent vacation.  Thanks for reading!

Apologies for the Absence

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Time

Has it really been over a week since I’ve posted here?  Well, my apologies for the delay – it’s been a busy time for me over the last week, and I just haven’t been able to find the time to write anything.  I’ve meant to though, so hopefully I’ll be getting back on track with this post.  In the interest of everyone’s time, here’s a quick list of everything I’ve been up to over the last couple of weeks that has contributed, in one way or another, to my lag in blog posts:

  • Met my brother at a bar and watched my dad play music for a few hours; I also saw a woman drop a cake straight onto the floor of a bar
  • Took a trip to San Francisco for my work, got halfway there, and then realized my boss had texted me the night before to tell me the trip was off
  • Worked on a game that you might just see on TV someday (hopefully!)
  • Took another trip to San Francisco for my work, and was nearly late to the meeting because I followed my own directions wrong
  • Worked on a redesign for my blog, scrapped it, then started working on it again
  • Fixed a long-standing server bug in the Reflect system (thanks for the help, Matt!)
  • Worked on a redesign for Reflect Games, scrapped it, then started working on it again
  • Watched the two hour long season premiere for Lost, and the hour long preview before it
  • Finished Fallout 3 (goody-two-shoes style)
  • Went home to see my dad before he had to have a minor procedure done at the hospital (he’s doing fine now, thankfully)
  • Played some quality Team Fortress 2 with Yourself (alltalk servers are basically Skype on steroids, eh?)
  • Finished Prince of Persia (need to play it again for achievements)
  • Got my previous landlord to drop a bogus move-out bill after catching their cheating, and exposing it to them
  • Released a Windows Vista / Windows 7 compatible version of Linked
  • Began learning Visual Basic all over again
  • Watched a few classic episodes of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia with my mom
  • Rediscovered my love for Joe Frank (an awesome radio show)
  • Bought World of Goo on Steam
  • Almost finished reading Lord of the Rings (I’m on page 947 now!)
  • And probably a lot more stuff that I can’t remember right now, due to the ever-growing fatigue I’m feeling from writing such a long list!

Anyway, you probably get the idea – I’ve been a bit busy.  I’ll try to get back on th blog a bit more this week though…  I’ve got a lot of stuff I want to talk about, but which I just haven’t had the time to organize into coherent sentences yet.

Thanks to everyone who continues to read my sparse posts – I appreciate it!

Image courtesy of Time.com