In Living Color

Continuing with the overhaul of our house, PP and I have decided to add a little color to the walls with different pain schemes. So far, we have decided on the colors for the living area, bedroom, and guest bedrooms. The computer room however, continues to elude us. What would be a good color for a computer room? We are thinking rice colored on black furniture so far.

Your IKEA furniture crafting skill went up 100 points!

PP and I had been shopping for a new bed and finally decided on a SULTAN sleep set from IKEA. I really wanted to try a memory foam mattress but the $5000 price tag for the Tempur-pedic was not exactly a thrifty proposition. By chance, we went to IKEA to look for some other furniture and they had this SULTAN memory foam mattress. I tried it out for around 30 minutes and it felt just as comfortable as the Tempur-pedic. The best part was the price tag was $4000 lower!

The nice part about IKEA stuff is that most of it is designed to be space-saving and this bed set was no different. The box frame/stand for the mattress also served as a storage unit for blankets and other stuff as well, thereby freeing up a lot of closet space. The only thing annoying about IKEA furniture is that most of it requires assembly. While they provide all the necessary components, most of it is not very ergonomically designed..actually I would go so far as to say most of it was designed by a band of evil geniuses to ensure the maximum amount of non-life threatening injuries while putting together the furniture.

First, the tools they give are way too small and concentrates all the pressure on a very small area of the hand. This is fine for a few odd screws on and off, but when you have to use the same old double-L shaped crank to put in 200 screws, your hands start to cramp up like crazy. I also have quite a few bruises where the L was pressing against the palm of my hand. The most masochistic part of the design was putting Velcro RIGHT next to a bunch of places where you have to use the double L tool to tighten a bunch of screws. What happens when you use a lot of force at an odd angle you ask? The tool slips off the screw! And what happens when the tool slips? My hand goes sliding across the Velcro at super speed, leading to many many scrapes and burns caused by the Velcro.

Even through all the blood and sweat, the finished product is definitely a marvel to behold because of the obvious superior craftsmanship...though elvish wood-crafters will probably not be giving me any awards.

The Cure for Cancer..

Apparently lies in sleeping on Tempur-pedic mattresses from the wild amount of advertising online, but really how comfortable are they? Always been curious about them and two of my coworkers who have slept in them claim that they live up to the billing. Experience is always the best guide, so time to go sleeping around!

We need to get production going...

Straight from PP:

"I really hate the sun starring at me when I drive that makes me blind."

I think this is ample evidence to say we need to get those SuperVisors and Solarixx rolling off the assembly line. Now if we just knew where to build the factory...

Return of PP

PP got back from China a couple of days ago and despite the horrible jet-lag is going in for her first day of work today! Exciting times.

Suspended Animation

This article is pretty fascinating. Basically using hydrogen sulfide, a scientist is able to put a rat into essentially suspended animation for almost an hour, then bring it back with no problems. The medical implications of this are pretty awesome since people with deadly diseases could be suspended until a cure can be found. Too late for Ted "The Iceman" Williams, but could potentially save millions of lives in the future.

Fellowship

Recently, I discovered this little Facebook app/game called Fellowship. While it is not the most sophisticated RPG out there, it has a certain charm to it that's certainly endearing it to my heart. You start off creating your fellowship of 6 party members, then you go out and do quests/get loot. That's about as simple as it is yet it is still incredibly amusing and addictive at the same time. Your play time is limited by a stamina stat that regens 1 point per 10 minutes so it's not a time hog. The combat is actually pretty hard with each encounter being rather challenging and requiring a certain degree of planning. The payoff feels pretty good though when you survive a Very Hard encounter with everyone having a sliver of life.
Mages are overpowered!

Giving Up the Ghost

My Xbox360 and I have been through quite a lot. From Veg Outs to Vegas, BF2 to BF2142, Viva Pinata to Dynasty Warriors, Bachelor to Groom, the Xbox360 has seen its fair share of Cucumber history. However, this weekend, the dreaded RROD finally popped up, ending our brief but torrid affair. I noticed strange green tint on powering up Dynasty Warriors 6: Empires and confirmed the GPU was fried when ODST presented many many purplish lines across the screen. On trying to power it up one more time to save stuff to the memory card, it finally RRODed. I pawned off a bunch of old games at pennies on the dollar to get a new 360 from gamespot, but today, it dawned on me that it might still be under warranty! According to my blog, I purchased this console in December of 2006. Since Microsoft extended the warranty to 3 years on RROD, this potentially means I can return my 360 for repairs! Perhaps I will take back the new 360 and get a PS3 instead...