The Long Wiikend

The BluPnutMM couple came over this weekend to celebrate a few birthdays. The weather forcast called for massive amounts of rain along with possible tornado like conditions and as such, the plan was to stay indoors and play Wii the whole time.

Wii played a bunch of Wii sports and this other party game pack with Duck Hunt and some Tank game. The highlight of the session was Wii Tennis. I seriously think the doubles matchup is broken because whoever serves, loses (unless they get that power serve in). Even though the characters don't have arms, they all have the return prowess of Andre Agassi. As soon as a person serves, you can just swing and pull a forehand smash to the inside service corner, making it impossible to return. The fact that you can't actually move your avatar around the court adds to this annoyance. On many matches, it was better to actually not serve. Overall, Wii had a lot of fun playing the party games. However, that doesn't really change my overall perception of the system as a whole.

While I can see why it can be so great as a party console, I really don't see it as a personal entertainment console. Most of the games are really simple to pick up, but all of the titles, except maybe a select few (Mario Galaxy/Metroid/Link) really lack the depth of play to make the experience memorable. This is not to say that playing with a group of friends isn't fun, it's just that without that group of friends, the system and most of the game library feel way too shallow.

Toss in some chickens and you have a deal..

Apparently, Mao was negotiating for 10 million Chinese women to be sent to the US as some kinda barter deal or something...This totally reminds me of MOO2 where you used your high population growth planets as colonist farms and just kept shipping them off to other slower populating planets.

Knifing 101

If you are like me, and don't particularly excel at knife usage, here are 3 very helpful movies to improve your ability to kill your opponent in knife duels:

CQC
Not so CQC
VERY CQC

And for some REAL tips...

The Ultimate Wiping Machine

I didn't know this beforehand, but apparently the BMW has these rain sensing windshield wipers that adjust speeds based on how fast the rain is hitting the windshield. Now I totally see why it's ultimate....

and That is my Final Answer

After much debate and a heavy dose of M-power. I finally decided to go with the BMW. It's a black 2004 BMW 325i. M immediately suggested I should take the Camry to work because umm, the "sun" would be bad for the BMW. Yes...

No more House =(

Because of the writer's strike, there probably won't be any new episodes of House MD for a prolonged period of time. This makes me so sad as the new cast members were just starting to grow on me, especially Kutner. At first, he seemed totally messed up and reckless , but now...he's still messed up and reckless but I can now see that he totally fits in with the team.

I seriously hope they get some new episodes soon as I am really curious as to the backgrounds of the new ducklings.

Happy Chinese New Year!

Welcome the Year of the rat. When I conquer the world one day, I am totally making this an international holiday. I mean, if even car dealerships revere this day with a giant Chinese New Year sale, the rest of the nation should too!

Veg Out IV set!

Much thanks to Lemon for finding out about kayak.com. They had super cheap tickets and at almost the perfect times that I was looking for!

Tailored to Your Liking

I had mentioned the vultures before when I asked for some information on Hondas. This strange person with a wierd accent had tried to call me yesterday about buying a car. He was super pushy and even after telling him I was at the gym, he kept trying to ask me what model I wanted. I pretty much just told him to send me an email and hung up. Today, I open my email and receive this:

2008 CHINESE YEAR END CLEARANCE SALE!!!
Now is the time of the year that everyone has been waiting for. Get the best deals of the year during the Honda Chinese year end clearance event. (CUNG-HY-PHAT-CHOI)

I totally wasn't aware there was a "year end" close out for Chinese New Year so I checked out their website to see if this deal was true or not. Apparently, this is a special deal that only Chinese people qualify for as it totally didn't appear on their front page. You would think something as momentous as Chinese year end which EVERYONE has been waiting for would be front page material. The page is full of annoying popups though.

United300

Tonight we dine in Cleveland!

Ultimate Driving Machine

Yesterday, I went to test drive some vehicles. There were many to choose from so I am pretty sure I need to go back and try out the others, especially the Titan. From all the commercials I see about it, it's gotta be some monster juggernaunt. Not so sure about the fuel mileage or warranty though.

The first vehicle felt a bit sluggish and didn't really have very good acceleration because of the treads. However, it's handling was incredible. I was able to rotate this thing in almost a full circle inside a tiny little place without hitting any of the other nearby parked vehicles. It also had fairly decent stopping power.

The second vehicle was super sporty. It was fast and even had some jet boosters for that additional burst of speed. I wonder if jihad futuristic jeep is still a viable tactic with this thing.

The third vehicle could actually fly. Didn't really test drive it too much as I accidentally crashed it into the Titan and then forgot to respawn on the Titan.

The big event though was test driving the Ultimate Driving Machine. The BMW felt much tighter than the camry. The acceleration was better since it was a V6 vs the V4 on the Camry. It would have been nice to drive it for longer periods of time at a high speed to get the true experience.

Technology: 1 Deer: 0

I know, all of you have wondered this: In a showdown of epic proportions, who would win in a ramming contest to the death? The fancy-smancy race car? or the deer? Judge for yourself! Visited again just for kicks!

New Car Blues

Recently found a buyer for the old Maxima so now it's time to get a new car. Since I am obviously not a car type person and really just want something that's fuel efficient and doesn't look like a box, I wouldn't mind some advice on the subject matter. Preferably nothing ludicrously expensive, but nothing super cheap either. Added bonus would be if it had a super awesome HUD and could shoot guided missiles.

Man, these car salesman are like vultures. I had JUST sent an inquiry about a car through edmunds and the dealership called me within 5 minutes of the email.

Only a Total Geek

Rated 33.13609% - Total Geek on this quiz. Probably because I didn't like to read or watch any of the Star Trek movies.

Those puppy dog eyes..

BlupnutMM couple came over on the weekend and they brought their dog. My mom had been vehemently opposed to letting dogs into the house. However, after much negotiation, she relented but only if the dog would not go into her room. After some initial apprehension, my mom soon fell prey to doggy charm. She started talking to it, playing with it, and even taking it out for a walk. If the dog were here any longer, I swear she would have become his slave.

New Phone

My old ancient phone broke during the trip to Austin. I had been with Sprint for so long, but I found their coverage kinda lacking so I decided to switch it up to AT&T. Best part was I was able to get 16% off monthly fee with company discount.
Trying to get my account information from Sprint was very difficult though. They must have spent about 20 minutes telling me how valuable a customer I was and how they had all these plans. Everytime I tried to get the account number, they seemed to magically come up with an even better deal than the last. Finally, after just flat out telling them that I didn't want to stay with them, they finally relinquished the account number.
I got a Samsung SGH-A747 phone with the plan. The phone is nice and thin and supposedly scratch resistant. We shall see.

Makeover.....for my wallet

In keeping with the makeover theme of things, Citicard has decided to mark my account as fraudulent and basically forced me to close my account and get a new one. Apparently, through their advanced fraud detection algorithm, they discovered that buying semi-expensive clothing was totally against my nature and flagged those Austin purchases at GAP and Express as being fraudulent. While this makes me relatively pissed off since I now have to switch all of my automatic bill pay to the new card, I feel as if this is somewhat of an ironic twist. I think maybe I should shop at these stores more often so that my occasional visits to Austin will not result in the closing of future accounts.

Austin

Trip to Austin was very good. Got to go golfing and kayaking, two things I had never done before. Because most of us had never played golf before, we just elected to go to a driving range. A friend there let me borrow his golf club and off I went to attempt to hit golf balls. I first intimidated them several times by swinging menacingly and hitting mostly dirt and grass, and after several of these with the ball quivering in fear, I managed to hit it about 3 feet. Sweet! As the day progressed, I actually hit the ball about 9 out of 10 times for an average yardage of something like 30 feet maybe? I should have taking Kira's advice about the golf gloves as I had a couple of blisters after the session. Tiger Woods really has nothing to fear from me...

Kayaking was pretty fun as well, if a bit cold. We had 4 people so we got 2 2-person kayaks. Before we started, an eccentric lady there gave us a tip about the water guards on the paddles that prevent water from getting down our sleeves. It totally didn't work as my sleeves and half my sweater were absolutely drenched after the row. The wind and not so calm waters also contributed greatly to the overall misery. It was simply too cold to keep rowing after about 1 hour on the waters. Despite the cold, the overall experience was great.

I was able to reacquaint myself with cornbread obsession as we went to Z-Tejas the first night. Second day for lunch was this awesome local pizzeria called The Home Slice. For dinner, we went to another local BBQ placed called Rudy's. These mom/pop places were totally awesome and I really hope we get to eat at more of these local places for Veg Out 4.

For some reason, every time I go to Austin, I get volunteered for some kinda makeover; be it haircut/clothing/shoes/etc. This time, I was mislead into going to a local mall instead of heading home to watch the Patriots/Jaguars game. While I was pretty reluctant to go at first, I must say the end result was pretty good. Got a nice jacket, some nice polo shirts, a pair of jeans, and 2 pairs of loafers. I was also signed up for Match.com and some other similar online dating site. How this will go is anyones guess but at least I should get some good blog posts from this.

Again, much thanks to BluPnutMM couple for letting me crash at their place and to their lovable pet, Teddy, who was forced to watch me eat cornbread in front of him without given any. Sorry Teddy, but cornbread addiction > puppy dog eyes. Did I mention I like to drink cornbread and that the cornbread can cure cancer?

I R 71G3R VV00D5

For a change of pace, gonna try golfing this weekend over at Austin. This is gonna be my first time ever golfing but I expect it won't be as bad as skiing. Afterall, in skiing I am more liable to hurt myself, while in golf, it's all about hitting others! Much thanks to the BluPnutMM couple for letting me crash at their place.

Veg Out III: Day 7-Homeward Bound

Woke up early and headed out to the airport. While BlueBerry had already left the night before, his spirit was still with us as it mentioned that Google was an awesome place to work because of the free food they provided and how he loved to drink blueberries because they were the best berry. He also mentioned that there was no point of going out to eat because the food was worse than the food Google offered and he had an amazing DS that did everything but cure cancer.

We made it to the airport at around 6 am with about 1 hour left before my flight departed. As we entered, I saw that the Continental line to check in wrapped all the way around the lobby. Upon further investigation, I learned that about 30 of these people in line also had 7 am flights out. The Continental representative was totally not helpful as he insisted that everyone just wait in line. When 6:40 rolled around, I basically thought I wouldn’t get home today because the next couple of flights out were all fully booked. Just as it looked like I was going to spend some more quality time at the airport, a senior Continental representation started organizing the crowd and rushed the 7 am flight passengers through baggage check in. I finally got my boarding pass at around 6:55 and sprinted all the way through security and arrived at the gate JUST in time to catch the flight.

At the end of the day, we had all reached our respective destinations safely. This Veg Out was certainly the most adventurous one to date and a lot of fond memories were created.

Veg Out III: Day 6-Winter Park

Having had one day taken away by the weather, we wanted to make the best of the time we had left by taking an extra day of skiing at Winter Park. This ended up being a great decision as the weather was perfect for skiing.

On the way to Winter Park, BlueBerry mentioned that Google was an awesome place to work because of the free food they provided and how he loved to drink blueberries because they were the best berry. He also mentioned that there was no point of going out to eat because the food was worse than the food Google offered and he had an amazing DS that did everything but cure cancer.

As we got closer and closer to Winter Park, the thermometer in the car kept dropping until at one point, it had reached a temperature of -19 degrees Fahrenheit. At Winter Park though, it didn't feel nearly as cold. Catnipped and I again split off to do the green trails while BlueBerry and jOrange went to tackle something more difficult. Perhaps it was the time spent at Frisco mansion, perhaps it was the lack of sleep, or maybe I had just run out of my quota of falls but Winter Park was totally awesome. I only fell once as Catnipped and I ran many of the lower green trails. We actually did the trails in less than 10 minutes and had time to explore almost every green trail available to us at the base of the mountain before lunch. I had finally learned the art of turning and put it to good use.

After lunch, we all decided that all four of us should do a run together as a final hoorah for our last day of skiing. We took several lifts and green trails all the way to near the summit of the mountain. Once there, we all took one giant trail (Village Way) all the way down to the base of the mountain. The run took over 2 hours, but it was really fun. I only fell about 3 times the whole trail. jOrange was taking pictures and movies the whole time.

The trip home from Winter Park was uneventful. Upon getting back, we finished up the leftovers, cleaned the linens, and packed in preparation for our flights out of Denver the next day. BlueBerry was the first to take off as he had a 12 am flight. Returning from the airport after sending off BlueBerry, we finished up the remainder of the laundry and went to bed.

Veg Out III: Day 5-The Long Trek Home

After a restless night, we decided to head out at around 6 am for some breakfast at a place I think was called “The Log Cabin.” The food tasted so good after a long tiring night and we even learned what grits were. The latest news from the road authority was that the roads should be open by late morning so we decided to explore Frisco a bit to pass the time.

While exploring Frisco, BlueBerry mentioned that Google was an awesome place to work because of the free food they provided and how he loved to drink blueberries because they were the best berry. He also mentioned that there was no point of going out to eat because the food was worse than the food Google offered and he had an amazing DS that did everything but cure cancer, but lamented the fact that he had forgotten to bring the DS with him.

After some shopping at a local Safeway, we decided to sit at a local Starbucks and wait for the roads to open. While there, we met a friendly trucker by the name of Roy Williams who entertained us with his trucking tales. I never knew that Swift was the company responsible for over 95% of all trucking traffic. Around noon, the roads were still not open while the opening time was pushed to late afternoon. It was at this point that we decided to head out of Frisco by going south to Colorado Springs, then taking I25 north all the way to Boulder.

The crossing required a very treacherous drive through the mountains and taking Hoosier pass across the summit. There was tremendous wind and drifting snow everywhere. BlueBerry did a great job of controlling the vehicle and after a very tense climb, we finally crossed the pass. The temperature outside registered at a nice -3 degrees Fahrenheit. The weather outside totally changed as we came down the mountain. Gone was the wind and snow as the sun came shining through the clouds. The view was incredible as we saw snow-capped mountains under the blue sky. We started to pass through a small town when we noticed a shining bastion of civilization, a Pizza Hut!

The pizza was awesome despite being served by a rather masculine looking man with a very feminine sounding voice. After stuffing ourselves, we hit the road again in hopes of getting to Boulder in time to celebrate the New Year.

The entire time during our ordeal, we had not heard from Kira, who because of illness, we had left behind in Boulder. Because of the lack of communication, we had postulated all these different scenarios of what could have happened to him and what our actions should be. Most of them involved Kira being on his deathbed and our having to call 911 once we finally got back. Kira himself had also been worried about where we were and had also devised several scenarios of what had happened to us. He was afraid that we had gotten trapped in the snow and resorted to cannibalism in order to survive.

We finally reached Boulder after about 6 hours on the road. Along the way, we saw some snow-covered fields filled with cattle and horses as well as several more mountains covered with trees and snow. Once back, we glady discovered that both scenarios didn’t play out. Kira was alive and well and had even gotten in some quality Xbox360 time with Halo3, Assassin’s Creed, and Mass Effect. I think Kira was glad that we also hadn’t eaten each other…

The original plan was to find some nice restaurant to eat at in order to celebrate the New Year. Unfortunately, we were all exhausted by the time we finally got to Boulder and all promptly passed out after surviving until the ball dropped in Times Square.

Veg Out III: Day 4-Vail

Because we had heard so many good things about Vail, we were all very excited to be heading out. We made a pretty small mistake of not checking on weather conditions before heading out in the early morning hours, a mistake that would definitely come back to bite us.

The drive was through fairly mountainous terrain and as we winded up towards the top, the wind and snow started to pick up. During the drive, BlueBerry mentioned that Google was an awesome place to work because of the free food they provided and how he loved to drink blueberries because they were the best berry. He also mentioned that there was no point of going out to eat because the food was worse than the food Google offered and he had an amazing DS that did everything but cure cancer. BUT, he left his omnipotent DS at home instead of taking it with him, a decision that would haunt him for the rest of our Vail trip.

The actual skiing at Vail was awesome. The resort easily lived up to its reputation as the most popular resort in Colorado. The powder was fresh, the hills were fast, and for me, the falls are plentiful. While Blueberry and jOrange were off doing the bowls, Catnipped and I stuck to the “greens” or so we were lead to believe. I am pretty sure I fell about a billion times.

Swingsville was the first trail we took. It looked like a relatively harmless green trail, but I ended up falling just about at every turn, managing to hit my head once and slightly twisting my neck. Towards the bottom, I had a very brief moment of competency where I managed to go down a whole hill without killing myself. This trail took about 1.5 hours to go down and at the bottom, Catnipped asked if maybe I should head inside to sit down a bit. Stupidly, I suggested that since we still had a good hour or so until lunch, we should try to do another less deadly green trail.

Ramshorn obviously sounded tamer than Swingsville so we took that trail. What I didn’t know about Ramshorn was that the trail inexplicably had blue AND BLACK sections inconspicuously mixed in throughout the trail. These sections of the trail were particularly enjoyable to me as the fresh snow made my falls look rather spectacular, with snow, skies, poles, and my vertebrae flying everywhere. At this one turn, Catnipped was able to turn right and reach the side of a nice little hill. I on the other hand, couldn’t turn worth crap and went straight down this ultra steep hill, quickly wiping out while losing both skis in the process of hitting my head and twisting my neck again. A nice lady going down the same hill helped me get my skis on, a process that easily took 10 minutes. She then gave me some advice to try to go to the right a bit to get off the steep part. Before she could even finish, I was off going down the same hill again because of my awesome stopping abilities. Again, I wiped out and she had to help me again with my skis. It was at this point that she told me this particular part was a black diamond trail (South Look Ma). Eventually after a long time and many bruises, I managed to make it down the hill, a process that only took about 2 hours. Who knows how long it would have taken if I hadn’t tumbled through about 3/4^th of the trail.

On the other side, jOrange wasn’t having as great a time either. He had managed to lose one of his skis on the second trail and spent over 2 hours in the freezing wind and snow looking for it to no avail, even bending one of his ski poles in the process. Finally, with no other options left, he called the ski patrol which promptly found the ski in less than 2 minutes!

After lunch, I was pretty beat up, jOrange was super tired from digging in the snow, and Catnipped was also very tired from the “green” trails. We three stayed to recover in the lodge while Blueberry went off and did some more trails. At the end of the day, we three took the lift down the mountain while Blueberry skied down the hill, easily beating us down.

On the way back to Boulder, we started running low on gas and decided to stop at Frisco for gas. It was in the gas station that we learned that the road authority had CLOSED the tunnel back to Denver, effectively trapping us in Frisco. We went to a local Wendy’s for some dinner and to strategize our next move. With jOrange’s custom iPhone’s web capabilities (his sister) helping us, we basically found out that every possible road back to Boulder was closed. The only option left was to spend the night at an emergency mansion set up by the police. This would have been the perfect time for some DS action, but alas, BlueBerry had left it in Boulder. The one time it could have served a good purpose, ruined.

The mansion was indeed palatial. It had a huge reception area, room for over 300, and even served breakfast! Okay, it wasn’t quite that luxurious. The emergency shelter was at the local Summit Middle School. The reception area was the cafeteria, we had to sleep on the freezing cold gym floor, and the breakfast was basically cold cereal bars and pop tarts.

Before we left, my mom had given me some emergency survival gear. This included matches, some chocolate, and an emergency blanket. This emergency blanket was basically a specially designed piece of tin foil that insulated the body while providing a reflective surface for increased visibility. We decided Blueberry should be the recipient of this device since he would be driving the next day. Catnipped displayed her awesome culinary skills as I am sure that was the best turkey wrapping job that anyone could have come up with. We just needed some potatoes and carrots to complete our centerpiece. The blanket apparently worked quite well as Blueberry slept through the night. The rest of us were not lucky as both Catnipped and jOrange were freezing to death, while I wasn’t able to sleep because of neck pain. We all hoped that the highway would open in the morning and we could be on our way back to Boulder again.

Veg Out III: Day 3-Eldora

First day of skiing! jOrange’s skis finally arrived around midnight so we took it as a good sign of things to come. We all woke up pretty early in order to make it there in time for the first lifts. The drive was again uneventful. On the way there, BlueBerry mentioned that Google was an awesome place to work because of the free food they provided and how he loved to drink blueberries because they were the best berry. He also mentioned that there was no point of going out to eat because the food was worse than the food Google offered and he had an amazing DS that did everything but cure cancer.

Since this was my first time ever skiing, Eldora seemed like a very cool place. To the seasoned veterans such as jOrange and Blueberry, Eldora was like a children’s playground in terms of difficulty.

With helpful advice from Catnipped, jOrange, and Blueberry, I was able to master the art of stopping. The trick was “falling down.” I fell so many times today as I had no idea how to do anything. I couldn’t control my speed, I couldn’t turn, and I couldn’t stop. I was like a machine. Towards the end of the day, I was able to learn how to turn left. This made the hills a lot safer for others.

Kira’s myriad of ailments was joined by elevation sickness through the mix of high altitude and cold air. This was pretty much the first and last day that Kira was able to join us on the slopes as the trio of illnesses knocked him out of commission for the rest of the trip. Not even the potent 3-hit home remedy attack of Vitamin C, Ginger, and orange juice could help him.

After a day of face plants for me and skiing for others, we dropped the stricken Kira off at the house and had dinner at California Pizza Kitchen. Vail was lined up for the next day and from all we heard, it was an amazing place to ski. We were definitely in for an experience….

Veg Out III: Day 2-Boulder Preparations

Woke up early in the morning and headed out to Boulder to pick up our ski rentals. We had a relatively uneventful drive to Boulder and proceeded to first settle down into our Boulder “Mansion” The house we rented was a relatively antiquated house. The design was pretty standard with 2 floors as well as a basement. Unfortunately, the centralized heating was pretty craptacular and so the house always felt pretty cold. The owner was very artsy and had strange paintings and pictures of nude women hanging from the walls. There was ample space in there though. I doubt we would have any trouble fitting 8 people in there.

The next order of business was picking up our ski rentals and buying lunch for the next day of skiing. On the way there, BlueBerry mentioned that Google was an awesome place to work because of the free food they provided and how he loved to drink blueberries because they were the best berry. He also mentioned that there was no point of going out to eat because the food was worse than the food Google offered and he had an amazing DS that did everything but cure cancer.

The ski rentals went very smoothly. While Kira and I got our gear from Christy’s, Catnipped had to get her equipment from Crystals because Christy’s didn’t have shoes in her size. After the rental we picked up some sandwiches from Safeway and headed back home.

For dinner, we decided on getting delivery from a Thai placed called the Siamese Plate (The Best Thai place in Boulder for 18 years in a row and sanctioned by the Thai Government). Most of the food there was pretty decent, but Kira and I made the wrong decision on what to order. We both ordered their special, the “Three Taste Chicken.” The description reads: “Sauteed crispy chicken, tofu, shrimp or fish with three-taste sauce (sweet, sour, or spicy) and sesame seeds.” Sounds tasty right? Well, it just ended up being deep fried, dough around tiny pieces of overcooked chicken. Apparently the three tastes in the description were all “acquired” tastes since the food itself tasted absolutely terrible.

Unfortuately for Kira, the combination of the cold, lack of sleep because of my buzz saw-like snoring, and the “Three Tastes” was too much for his immune system and he started developing both flu and stomach flu like symptoms.

Veg Out III: Day 1-Denver

Today, everyone flew in. Lemon was unfortunately unable to attend this Veg Out because of some family issues. This Veg Out started out not so auspiciously with my flight being delayed and jOrange’s first flight being cancelled.

National Rent-a-car apparently has very low standards for their vehicles, as the first vehicle we got had tire pressure problems, as well as a constant “no fuse” display where the odometer was supposed to be. The power windows did not work on this vehicle and there was a constant smell of something being carbonized.

Kira, BlueBerry, and I drove this vehicle to the hotel. On the way there, BlueBerry mentioned that Google was an awesome place to work because of the free food they provided and how he loved to drink blueberries because they were the best berry. He also mentioned that there was no point of going out to eat because the food was worse than the food Google offered and he had an amazing DS that did everything but cure cancer.

Check-in at the hotel went very well and after we had settled down a bit, Kira did some research about the problems plaguing our rental vehicle and we decided to exchange the vehicle (ended up with a Black Chevy Tahoe) as well as pick up some water/oranges.

The plan for the day was to settle in, and then jOrange, Kira, and I were to attend a hockey game between the Colorado Avalanche and Detroit Red Wings. However, because of the rental car exchange, Kira and I didn’t make it to the game until the start of the second period. jOrange was able to bypass the hotel shuttle by getting a ride with some other people also going to the game. He was able to make it at the start of the third period, but unfortunately, Air Canada decided that people going on ski vacations to Colorado really didn’t need skis and forgot to load skis for about 30 people on jOrange’s flight. The free hotdogs that were supposed to come with the tickets were also a LIE!!!! =( Just for the sake of getting the entire “Pepsi Center” experience, we foolishly took the wrong path to and from the stadium and had to walk in -9999999999999999999 degree weather.

Catnipped got in towards midnight and after a couple of hours of playing BANG! We called it a night.

There is joy in beantown...finally...

Seems like despite Mighty Sumo's customer service striking out on the order, Sumo Lounge's bean bags are of good quality. The Midnight Blue one finally came in yesterday, and after a thorough testing out by watching "The Two Towers: Spanish Extended Edition", (El Senor de los Anillos: Las Dos Torres FTW). I give the beanbag an A+ for comfort. I have yet to perfect the many shapes you can fold it into, but barring a catastrophic failure, the beanbag was worth the $129.

Hurry up and wait

Had an eye exam this morning to take a look at this annoying stye I keep getting near my left eye. Turns out I have some genetic condition in which the pores around my eyes tend to get clogged easily and so it's easier for me to get styes. Also, the stye kinda got infected so now I have to use this antibiotic ointment as well as an antibacterial eye drop. Whether or not these will enable me to shoot laser beams out of my eyes is still yet to be determined.
The most annoying thing was that I had the first appointment of the day, and I still had to wait 30 minute in an empty waiting room before someone told me that the doctor I was supposed to see had some problems or something or other and that I would need to see another doctor there. But on the bright side, I now know from CNN that a human stomach can hold up to 3 pints of food and that only 5-10% of sore throats are caused by bacteria.

P in a cup

Had to get a drug test yesterday as part of the hiring process. I never knew these things were so complicated. First I had to remove all the loose stuff from my pockets. I even had to remove my badge. The cup they give you also contains a thermometer to make sure the P is between certain temperatures so you can't just bring in a bottle of P and pour it in. You aren't allowed to flush the toilet afterwards either, not sure behind the reasoning...maybe it's to intimidate you with the smell or something..

Okay, Seriously, WTF Sumo Lounge???!!

So Sumo Lounge shipped me a RED bean bag chair when I specifically ordered the midnight BLUE bean bag. Apparently, not only are they incompetent, but also colorblind. I am tempted to send a bobcat to them instead of sending this thing back.

Addendum: Mindi has said they will ship out the new Midnight Blue bean bag and have FedEx pick up the old bean bag free of charge. Let's see how this works out.

Arrival and Departure?

Beanbag was delivered this morning. Too bad I won't get a chance to try it until later today.

In other news, Company A is contracted to Company B to provide IT support. Now Company B wants to bring all IT support inhouse and is offering everyone in Company A same position but as Company B employee. Company A is huge global consulting firm represented by Tiger Woods. Company B is a fast growing energy generation company that is currently ranked as the 3rd largest independent power generation company in US. Oh yeah, I have a week to decide...

Back in the Dark Ages

Yes yes, we all know barbarians invented Banking/ATM fees/Early Closing/etc etc. But Wells Fargo must have invented lines. This morning, the nice folks at Wells Fargo decided to give out free tacos to the people in the building. Sounds like a great move, but they only had ONE station that was giving out the food. The building easily houses 2,000 people and I would say about 400 of them all came down at once for the free food. The line wound all the way past the lobby and around to the other side of the elevator. Oddly enough, the Wells Fargo people didn't seem to care that there was a massive traffic jam in their lobby and didn't open another serving station until the line was almost blocking people from getting into the building.

Retraction of previous statement

Previously, I had said that Sumo lounge didn't suck, only their tracking system. Well, seems like I made a big mistake. Sumo lounge DOES SUCK and sucks big time. We had left off on Wednesday with Mindy, the "manager" promising me that the package had already shipped and that I should receive an email confirmation by email. Well, no confirmation. When I called again to inquire today, no one could find my order...again. When I asked Mindy about why this was the case, she informed me that it's a "new system" and sometimes this happens. So she says she will find the tracking number for me and comes back with this tracking number. Well, I put it into FedEx tracking and it doesn't show up. When asked why it didn't show up, she told me she would find out and get back to me. 5 hours later, I call back to see what the deal is, but conveniently, Mindy is "on the phone" and cannot talk to me. Then when pressed further about what the hold up is, the rep tells me that "FedEx hasn't gotten back to us yet and so you will have to wait"
I decided to actually call FedEx with the tracking number they provided and it turns out the package is FedEx Ground and hasn't even been shipped out yet! I think this Mindy person needs to level her Charm up some more or maybe run for president.

Quest for beans

I have always wanted a beanbag chair. The trip to PAX earlier this year just further cemented that desire. On a whim, I decided to finally order a nice beanbag chair from the people over at sumolounge, the same people who provided the beanbags at PAX. However, after not hearing anything from them for 4 days (not even a confirmation email), I decided to call in to check the status of my order. Apparently, they "never" received my order. When I wondered why my credit card had already been charged, the representative vehemently told me that "it's not possible" because they only run my credit card when the product is shipped.
Now, I used to work at a less than scrupulous computer parts dealer and know all about these tricks of the trade they use. So I pointed out that the charge was made on 11/24 which is the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Of course, I know these people are so hardworking that they even ship during public holidays when the shipping companies aren't even open. When confronted with this fact, he decided to tell me that I best contact Mindy tomorrow during normal business hours of 9-5 EST. I found this very strange because the company is located in California which is on PDT...Oh well, we shall see tomorrow.

Addendum: Sumo Lounge doesn't suck, but their whole order tracking system does. After finally getting into contact with Mindy, I was notified that the bag was conveniently shipping today. To her credit, she was courteous throughout the entire call so that's a plus.

Mass Effect

With much thanks to Catnipped, I was able to get Mass Effect free of charge on the first day of release. I am about 30 hours into the game and so far, it has definitely been a very positive experience. Bioware is really great at telling a grand story. Here are my thoughts:

Things I liked:
The graphics are very good. While I am not sure why they couldn’t do some kind of caching on the HD as having to load textures on the fly generates some annoying pauses in the action, when everything is in, the game looks gorgeous. You can see the facial expressions of the NPCs and the battles feel very frantic with bullets whizzing by your head as you desperately look for cover.

The voice acting is superb. All the intonations sound right and the facial expressions usually match the mood of the discussion as well. No blank stares as the fate of the world hangs in the balance. The conversations add a lot of depth to the game and I actually look forward to finding the next NPC just to see what they have to say.

The storyline has always been a strong point of most Bioware games, and this one is no exception. It really makes the player want to keep going just to see where the next plot twist will be and what other new information will be revealed.

The Combat system borrows heavily from Gears of War. Cover is the name of the game here as most enemies are pretty good shots and enemy snipers often times will 1 shot you if you are out in the open. The biotics (magic) of the game is weaved very well into the flow of combat.

Each pitched battle can also happen in many ways depending on what class you are. I decided to play as an Engineer my first time through so in most of the combat missions, I rely on grenades and my other squad mates to do most of the damage while I hide in the back disabling enemy weapons with sabotage and healing my party.

The achievements actually mean something! While all Xbox games have achievements, most of the time, they are merely trophies you hang on your gamer card wall to increase your own E-peen. The achievements in Mass Effect actually have an effect on the game. Unlock the rifle expert achievement, and you can add the rifle talent to your starting character your next time through, regardless of class. Rack up a million credits and you gain access to special weapons and armor only available to Spectres. Heal your party 150 times and you can add First Aid talent to your next character. I think nearly every achievement unlocks something else you can use in a new game

The game also comes in 4 difficulty modes, with Insanity being unlocked once you have beaten the game once. There is also a new game+ mode. All of the above make for an immense amount of replay value. After completing this first playthrough, I seriously think I will play through the game again on the insanity mode with a female character just to hear the dialogue from the other side.

Things I didn’t like:
Bad case of Consolelitis. The inventory management system is pretty lame. It’s essentially a huge long badly sorted list that you have to scroll through. It organizes the items by their item level which is represented by a Roman numeral (so a banshee rifle VI is more powerful than a banshee rifle IV). This isn’t so bad if you are trying to breakdown stuff into omnigel since you can go to the equip screen which auto sorts the items by type as well, but it’s absolutely horrible when you try to sell stuff since it’s just one giant list in the sell window. So if you find out that you happened to have a higher level of an assault rifle and wanted to sell the lower level one, you have to scroll all the way to those items of the same level, often times, this can mean scrolling through 20 or more items, 1 at a time. Add this to the fact that there is a 150 item limit and it just compounds the problem.

The hotkeys are also very annoying as you can only have 1 hotkey mapped to a skill and only your main character gets this hotkey. To issue commands to squad members to use their powers requires you to pause the game and bring up the powers menu then activate. The pauses can lead to some serious breakages of action in a firefight and take away from the overall effect. I am pretty sure this game will eventually be ported to a PC and that should fix most of these interface issues.

Mass Effect really doesn’t give a very good explanation about how to effectively play the game. The manual offers some basic information, but it basically tosses you into the water and expects you to swim. You don't really know the ranges of the weapons and how to take cover, plus the enemies start out WAY higher than your characters do when you first start out and leads to a lot of difficult battles at the beginning. As your equipment and levels start to catch up, it gets much better.

The AI can use a little work. While your squad mates generally do a good job of adhering to your commands and finding cover, sometimes, they make inexplicably retarded decisions like running out into the open to reach a piece of cover that’s just around the corner but out of LoS.

As mentioned before, there is no caching in this game and so everything needs to be loaded on the fly from the DVD. This leads to some annoying load times between zones and I assume leads to why they didn’t include a minimap in the UI. The lack of a minimap usually isn’t a problem though as the zones aren’t too convoluted and simply traversing a path a couple of times will commit it to memory. When you are just totally lost, you can always open up the main large scale map from the menu (very detailed and helpful).

Holiday Cheer

The Thanksgiving grill off went very well. Despite the cold temperatures and rain, everything came off without a hitch. I would like to thank Caxiya for the wonderful job she did of cleaning the floors and hope that she will come clean visit more often. I decided to go with some pre-marinated fajita beef and fajita chicken meat. It was a great idea as the cooking time on those meats were less than 20 minutes and they tasted totally awesome. The BluPnutMM couple provided a delectable chocolate fondue for dessert. People started to invite their friends and we went from a party of 9 or so to more than 15. We ended up playing Mafia for quite a long time and surprisingly, the villagers won the majority of the games. As people started to leave, the remaining people chatted about...very..."interesting" topics all the way until 3am!

Maid on Demand plus a TV

Woke up early this morning to BlupnutMM couple calling me up to let me know they would be coming to my house soon. Not exactly of how sure "soon" would be, I quickly got dressed and was walking down the stairs to get some breakfast when they arrived. Apparently, Caxiya had come with them and they hadn't had any sleep for over 24 hours. They left at 12 midnight to catch some of the deals at San Marcos. Supposedly, the line off the highway to the parking lot was a 1 hour wait. The BBQ is a potluck of sorts and everyone was instructed to bring something to share with the rest. Unfortunately, Caxiya didn't bring anything so she volunteered to clean the floor....sweeeeet! My cleaning equipment at the house wasn't even of magical quality so we had to go to Walmart to pick up one of those Legendary space age mops. It JUST so happened that they had LCD TVs for sale. 42'' LCDs for $798! Couldn't pass up this chance. So now I have a new TV to play around with and the mop was so 1337 that Caxiya even included the restrooms at no extra charge!! So Awesome!

Time to grill

Last Sunday, while just making random conversation, SourTom mentioned that he hadn't grilled in a while and would love to do some BBQing. Seeing as how I still had the "borrowed" grill from Veg Out 2, I just decided on the spot to have a post Thanksgiving grilling thingie. Unfortunately, lots of preparation work this time round as the grill appears to be in pretty bad shape. Since I am totally the workaholic when it comes to chores, the grill has basically sat out there for the past 10 months, soaking up nature's goodness. The general grill appears okay, except the actual racks have a healthy amount of rust on them. I remember the propane tank was also getting low at the time. While everyone can always use a bit more iron in their diets, I fear that the rust may give the meat an unpleasant taste. So the plan is to scrap the racks, fill the tank, and give it a test go on thursday to make sure it still works. Weather is supposed to be pretty crappy on friday though, with wind and rain and temperatures in the mid 40s.

Brought to you by Gillette

BlupnutMM's wedding is fast approaching and I got the sudden news last Saturday that I was going to be the Best Man. While the prospect of writting a speech is exciting and annoying to a slight degree, I am less enthusiastic about being under the fashion policing of a certain demanding bride to be. I think the first things that were mentioned was "okay, friday, I want all of you to go try out tuxes. I want them all to match with cumberbuns and cufflinks and yada yada yada yada." To be fair though, this is the most important day of their lives, so I suppose it's normal....right?

Hellgate Weapon Modifications

From this post, it seems like there are two types of attacks for the same element. Damage and Special effect strength. The post does a good job of explaining, but in summary.

Elements add both damage, and ability to proc special effect:
Physical - Stun
Toxic - Poison
Fire - Ignite
Electric - Shock
Spectral - Phase

Assume you have a sword that does 100 Physical damage with 100 Physical Attack Strength.

If it has 4 mod slots and you put in:
+10% Toxic
+10% Fire
+10% Electric
+10% Spectral, you now have a sword that does:

100 Physical damage, 100 Physical Attack Strength
10 Toxic damage, 0 Toxic Attack Strength
10 Fire damage, 0 Fire Attack Strength
10 Electrical damage, 0 Electric Attack Strength
10 Spectral Damage, 0 Spectral Attack Strength

So basically, against some monster with 100 resistance to all elements. You have a decent chance to stun, and basically 0 chance to poison, shock, ignite, or phase. But you still do the elemental damage.

But what if you add a mod that increased Elemental Attack Strength but the weapon doesn't actually do Elemental Damage of the same category?

Like If I put a +100 Fire Attack Strength mod into the base sword, will it have a decent chance to both stun and ignite? Or do you have to actually do fire damage as well to proc the special effect?

Hellgate Mechanics

Being a stats freak, I had been very curious about the mechanics of partying in Hellgate.

So far from this post, it seems as if the level difference between party members does not affect the experience in any way. Only the player level vs. Monster level is checked.

So Monster A is level 2 and gives 10 exp.
Player 1 is lvl 2
Player 2 is lvl 2
Player 3 is lvl 45

Not in group:
P1 solo kill A -> P1 gets 10 exp
P2 solo kill A -> P2 gets 10 exp
P3 solo kill A -> P3 gets 0 exp (level too high)

P1 and P2 are now in a group:
P1 kill A -> P1 gets 20 exp, P2 gets 10 exp
P2 kill A -> P1 gets 10 exp, P2 gets 20 exp

P1 and P3 are now in a group:
P1 kill A -> P1 gets 20 exp, P3 gets 0 exp
P3 kill A -> P1 gets 10 exp, P3 gets 0 exp

P1, P2, P3 are now in a group:
Extrapolating exp?:
P1 kill A -> P1 gets 30 exp, P2 gets 10 exp, P3 gets 0 exp
P2 kill A -> P1 gets 10 exp, P2 gets 30 exp, P3 gets 0 exp
P3 kill A -> P1 gets 10 exp, P2 gets 10 exp, P3 gets 0 exp

Now, I am interested in doing some testing as to if the party member actually needs to be in the zone for these changes to occur or simply being in the party will do. If this is the case, then just partying with people even while soloing will yield greater exp than just soloing. Of course monsters will have more hp and take slightly longer to kill.

Also, a more indepth look into the augmenatrix is featured here.
So in order to try to get the mods listed, you have to pay for that level of the mod

White Mod -> Pay for Normal Mod
Blue Mod -> Pay for Rare Mod
Orange Mod -> Pay for Legendary Mod

Dave and Busters

Today, Accenture is hosting a community meeting at Dave and Busters. They have these events 4 times a year. Supposedly, there is going to be around 500 Houston based employees invited. I have never actually been to a Dave and Buster's before and research/commercials seem to indicate it's like a grown up version of Chucky Cheese. I totally hope they have a grown-up ball pit!

I need Bao Zi!!! STAT!!!

So tomorrow is our annual Thanksgiving potluck lunch at the office. It's supposed to be this giant event where people stuff themselves with food and coma it up the rest of the day at the office. What a fantastic tradition!! Anyways, I signed up to bring some Bao Zi (Chinese buns) to the event. I figured, 40 should be enough to give most people a sample. I checked on Saturday at the local Shan Dong Mian Guan (山东面馆)and they had these wonderful rows upon rows of baozi in batches of 6. I SHOULD have bought them then, but I decided I should wait until Monday so they would be more fresh for tomorrow.

I get there today after work....and IT'S CLOSED!!!! I am so screwed! But wait!! George to the rescue! Now, George is the owner of a huge chinese supermarket but is an elusive person to track down as he changes cell numbers almost every week. After much sleuthing around on the cellphone while driving recklessly, I finally was able to contact him. Emergency order of 40 baozi STAT!!!! He asked me when I needed them by, and I told him tonight as it's a matter of life and death. He said he would talk to his people about it and 10 minutes later, I got the phone call! They would be ready by 8pm he said..come alone, bring cash. I R SAVED!!

TeH WINNAR!!

First place:

Those of you who are lawyers or are in any sort of tech related job should know how annoying SOX compliance is, so I can totally see why it won.

Second Place:

Nothing says spirit of Halloween like being mugged while Trick'or'treating.

Third Place:

I have no clue what the heck the pumpkin is supposed to depict. Supposedly it is a portrait of the CEO...ummmm right...

Halloween Party

Ahh, Halloween, the day of ghouls and ghosts. The holiday obviously invented by Dentists to keep their wallets full. Entire company is hosting a Pumpkin Carving/Costume party on wednesday to celebrate this day. Supposedly, some of the designs are awesome so it should be a good show. Hopefully can get some pictures of uber pumpkins. I am so tempted to enter just so I can carve a =VGI= pumpkin.

See you in Hell...gate?

Anyone know insider information on how this game will play out? From what I have read so far, it seems like a freelancer type game but with a big coop storyline instead of just random missions. Could be fun to try.

Required Training

Accenture requires all new hires to take these core "training" courses within 60 days of hiring date. Work and "work" had kept me pretty busy and so I had basically forgotten about them until this week. With the deadline already past, I had to take them all or be in non-compliance. These training courses were mostly on stuff like harassment and ethics. It's like learning what I already knew but over 3 hours of painfully bad acting with choice nuggets like "There is a form of harassment that workers feel can create a hostile work environment, we call it 'Hostile Work Environment Harassment." OMGWTFBBQ, I totally didn't see that one coming, that's oscar caliber screenwriting right there. Later on, there was "Wow, Allison looks really down today, I'll cheer her up with this awesome sex joke I heard this morning." Wow, great idea! When someone is feeling down, obviously that's the most logical way to cheer them up.

But, thanks to this training. I now know that I shouldn't harass anyone and that Robin Hood was actuallly violating the ancient code of Ethics. After all, how much did he REALLY give to the poor huh?? How was he able to fund his merry band of men when he was giving it all to the poor?

Buttons and Barndoors!

Even though Grapes has been vehemently warning me about NWN2 and the horrible UI/Camera issues it had, I just could not resist that craving for a good D&D based rpg. Gave in and bought NWN2 and the Expansion for $45. Guess we will see if this is just more self torture, or if this game will turn out alright.

BF3?

Possible leak for BF3? I think this game will be awesome by 2011 when all the patching is completed.

VarChair(2)

Ever since starting work, I have noticed that the office chairs here are so much more comfortable and relaxing to sit in. They are ultra adjustable, built extremely well, and just feel sturdy when sat in. I have been trying to get one to use at home since I spend the majority of my time in front of the computer.

I went to OfficeMax over the weekend to try some chairs, but all of them were made of cheap plastic and didn't feel all that comfortable. Asking a attendant there, I was given a recommendation to visit Hon to find my ideal chair and come back since OfficeMax can get me a 40% to 70% discount off the price of a Hon chair. So far, I think this one looks to be pretty good. Any suggestions on other places to look?

Too bad BF2 doesn't have plasma grenades...

Catnipped sent me this awesome video of the BEST plasma grenade stick evah in Halo 3. BF2 would be so cool if you could stick C4 to enemy soldiers. I could totally see sticking a squad leader, waiting for his squad members to spawn, then BOOM!

All Hallow's Eve

Had a interesting discussion here at work concerning Halloween and dispersal of candy. While I generally always give out candy to the trick'or'treaters, many people around the office don't give out candy at all. What do you all do? Keep the Dentists of America paid? or do you deprive little kids of the joy of getting candy...those poor children, someone please think of the children (note, demon myspace hellspawn do not count as I don't think they technically count as human!)

Forward, down, down-forward, + punch

Had a small open house at the office today to celebrate the team's acquisition of...a table. Really it was just an excuse to have a small office party. Somehow, the conversation went to kungfu. Apparently, all asian people know kungfu. I was actually asked "So, what style of kungfu do you know? Praying Mantis? Monkey? Drunken Monkey?" Well, since I didn't know any of them, I was asked what were my top ten kungfu movies. Hmmmm, need some help here!!!

E. Olah Virus

I tried to resist it as much as I could, even sleeping for 12 hours on friday night hoping to fight off it's unwavering hold. Too bad all that sleep was just setting me up for the all nighter that was to follow. My friend Norm was back in Houston for a couple days attending his 10 year HS reunion...(Has it been THAT long already???!!!!!). He had some spare time on saturday and much like old times, we decided to spend that time catching up. I brought the E. Olah virus along, thinking maybe we can just spend a little bit of time playing it before his reunion. Well....the virus was much more infectious that I thought and even with reunion time coming around, Norm only took a brief moment to get dressed...before coming back for more. It didn't end there, as after his reunion, he came over at 2 am in the morning, and Catnipped, he, and I tried a couple of more rounds. Catnipped couldn't handle it and had to sleep. This would have been a good time to stop, but we kept going until 7:30 am....then I woke up at 11:30 and kept going. Damn you Bungie and MS!!!!

Almost as good

While the winners of the tailgate contest got these nice shiny trophies, I got something infinitely more practical. The CIO was so impressed by our performance, that he decided to buy all team members a $15 Starbucks certificate... Seeing as how I don't drink coffee, I am not particularly sure what I will get. Even if I did drink it, I don't think $15 is enough to get a cup of coffee at Starbucks. What's it at now? Your left kidney for a coffee?

Tired? Sleepy? Grab yourself some PowerMax®

Today was the tailgating contest and Team PowerMax totally dominated.



Our food menu consisted of steak fajitas, chicken taquitos, and cream cheese tortilla rolls. The gimic was the meat and tortillas were all red in color to match our theme. Our secret weapon was PowerMax® brand drink. It was this awesome mysterious red drink which we claimed "Gives you energy for the whole day." We used plastic shot glasses with the selling slogan being "Here, Give it a Shot!" Some common questions asked when approached to try out PowerMax®.

Q: What is this stuff?
A: It's PowerMax®

Q: What is in it?
A: Power to the Max

Q: No really, what's in it?
A: Some Brazillian stuff.

At this point, usually they get curious and take a drink. I was manning the PowerMax® station and noticed several people sneaking multiple shots. Alas, we did not win. We lost the food contest to this team that had shrimp cocktail and a chocolate fountain. Who the heck brings a chocolate fountain to a TAILGATING party!!!?? On the plus side, they did have this really cute asian girl in a referee costume... We lost the theme contest to people dressed like pirates. Well, the costumes really weren't pirate costumes. They basically wore something more like linen with cutlass props. They didn't EVEN talk like pirates. But today being National Talk like a Pirate Day, I suppose it was destiny or something.

I think next year, our theme will be ninjas, and we will just eliminate all the other teams before the competition begins. We can claim it was merely "following our theme" Our food can consist of rice balls that poison people, leading to easy stealth kills.

Tech discussion?

Had a Tech discussion session today as a part of some requirement. I thought it was one of these serious talks where someone actually has a presentation about data security or some stuff like that. I was about to take my portfolio, since it was padded and could masquerade as a pillow in that darkened room. When I got there, there wasn't a discussion at all... Just a bunch of ice cream lying around for people to eat. So everyone just grabbed some ice cream, chatted about the Texans/life/kids/etc etc, and went back to their offices. Dang, why can't all meetings just turn out to be excuses for everyone to eat ice cream.

Team PowerMax

Next Wednesday, the company is having a Tailgating competition. While traditionally, this is an activity conducted outdoors involving numerous BBQ pits, the tailgating for this event will be done indoors. Our team was "voluntarily" signed up by the new team lead who believes this is an excellent teambuilding event. Apparently, he and some other team members agnonized for weeks to come up with a name and appropriate theme. One especially interesting one was team Hurricane. We planned to have giant fans and mist machines to simulate a small hurricane at our booth. Someone also suggested we all dress up like Katrina refugees....Luckily, that idea fell through in favor of a more politically correct, yet equally as "interesting" concept. Our new team name?? Team PowerMax. I should have suggest Team: Solarixx or something...Did I mention that our official decal is going to be this tachometer displaying the needle in the red section with a motto : To The Max!!!

Our theme color is Red because it's totally to the max. I mockingly suggested I should bring in some pig's blood with tofu since it's also red, but they took me seriously!! After convincing them that I actually had no clue how to make it, I was given the task of buying enough red tortillas to feed 300 people. Totally to the max.

Upgrading

While I wish I could have just awakened my old computer to make it more powerful, the prospect of its wanting to eat human guts outweighed the benefits. So, I got a new computer. Most of you already know, but for those who don't, here are the specs:

CPU:Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz: Pretty good CPU, not the top of the line, but it's pretty close.

Motherboard: EVGA 122-CK-NF67-A1 LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 680i LT SLI: Originally, I had chosen an Intel board, but it does not support SLI (does support crossfire).

Memory: Crucial Ballistix 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800: My previous machine only had 1 gig of ram. It took forever to "verify client data' during BF2 matches, easily meaning the difference between successfully taking airfield and being farmed by J-10s. This deal was too good to pass up, 2 gigs of ram for $71.00 ($40 mail in rebate)!!

Video Cards: 2x MSI NX8600GTS-T2D256E-OC GeForce 8600GTS 256MB: This is probably going overboard, but I just wanted to try out SLI. Ever since I heard about it, I was curious as to how much better it was over 1 card. Time to find out!

Hard Drive: SAMSUNG SpinPoint 400GB 7200RPM SATA: 400 gigs should be more than enough for whatever I need.

Case: Thermaltake Tsunami VA3000BWA Black Aluminum ATX: I originally had chosen a Lian-Li case but Lemon had some doubts as to if there was enough room in it to fit 2 video cards so I upgraded. I really like this case, it comes with screwless drive rails, and backplates. Almost every part detaches for ease of installation. On nitpick is that the motherboard tray doesn't come out but it didn't make the installation any tougher.

Power Supply: OCZ GameXStream OCZ700GXSSLI ATX12V 700W PS: With SLI, I was pretty sure I needed something greater than 500. This one wasn't as expensive as the other power supplies, but it received very favorable reviews.

Monitors: 2x ViewSonic Optiquest Series Q20WB Black 20" 5ms DVI Widescreen LCD: While I may have had a semi-legitimate reason for SLI, these 2 monitors were just completely frivolous. I really have no excuse as to why I got 2, other than the fact that I like 2 monitors.

Other random stuff: Generic Floppy, Black NEC DVDR

The total price tag including shipping came out to be just a bit under $1,700. Assuming I get all my mail in rebates ($200), the total price is: $1,500. I probably could have gotten some items cheaper if I shopped around a bit more, but I think it's not too bad. My hope is that this computer will last another 4 years or so like my last one.

Wanna buy a JSF?

Fire Sale of USMC goods!! Get your JSF today!

The only truly effective weapon against Chopperwhores

SRAW? Stinger? IGLA? These are merely distracts for the dedicated BF2 chopperwhore. How can these fiendish beings be stopped? Is there no hope for the ground-pounders? Our wishes have come true!!

Only you can prevent maximo fires

To the smart aleck who designed Maximo and made the field sizes non-editable without some use of an expensive tool. I hope you spend an eternity in hell trying to resize a stupid window from 8 to 15 characters!!!

Take me out to the Ballgame

Take me out to the fire? Today was supposed to be the company Astros game. Dynegy bought out this huge section of tickets and we were all supposed to leave at 12 noon to go to the game. We did a password change on our main production server last night, simple right? Nope, some morons who wrote the reports decided to hardcode in the passwords because apparently, passwords NEVER change. Long story short, about 90% of the reports (~320) stopped working and our team has to spend rest of day removing all of the hardcoded passwords while the rest of the office heads out to the game. Woot!

Veg Out 2 Final

Day 5: Monday
Relaxed for the first half of the day and ate the leftovers from SiChuan and Purple Dot for lunch. We then went out to the Locks to observe some of the history of Seattle, however, we also learned some intimate details about the migratory habits of salmon. Normally, salmon have to jump out of the water upstream in order to reach their spawning grounds. Apparently, these domesticated salmon have grown lazy and are now spoiled by a series of fish ladders that serve as an escalator of sorts to help the salmon reach the top.
After a dinner of Korean BBQ with Snoopy, our newly dubbed "Asian Persuasion" team participated in Trivia night at a local Irish/Cajun Pub. The categories ranged form Tom Hanks to animals that start with "I" (I'll never forget Night of the Iguana for sure...). I swear "Who killed Grandma" is just a synonym for "The Ladykillers!!!" They even had a question about the song "Me and Bobby McGee," a song that we NEVER EVER sang but just so happened to be on Karaoke Revolution. I remember BluPnuMM making some snide remark when she got that song for her random last performance during a knockout round. Can't believe that came back to haunt us. Asian Persuasion sadly came in second to last. Some guy played a one man team and got last place JUST to deny us of our $1 pitcher of beer.

Overall Veg Out II was an awesome experience. We even managed to plan out Veg Out III. A New Years rendezvous in Whistler, BC, CAN for some skiing. This time round, Grapes, mysteriously absent from Veg Outs I and II, will be joining us as well as Catnipped's friend Snoopy.

Veg Out 2 Cont.

Day 3: Saturday
Saturday started with our going on the Experience Music Project (EMP). They had special stations where you could learn to play different instruments, mix in your own effects, and even create your own music CD. My awesome hip-hop version of Chopsticks will surely live forever in the annals of music history. They also had this exhibit where you pretend that you are a band and played on stage in front of a huge audience. Our song of choice was Wild Thing. I feel we roxxored their boxxors and made the $60 admission fee well worth it for the audience. After a quick lunch of mostly fish and chips, we made our way back to PAX for Lemon's Guitar Hero 2 tournament. Apparently, this tournament was huge as they probably had 225 people signed up to play in it. Lemon had to wait in a huge long line just to play. While Lemon waited, the rest of us decided to check out some more of the booths in the exhibition hall. I had a small run-in with a lady at the American Army booth, so we decided to wait in the Rock Band line to get a shot at playing on stage. We were almost at the end of the line when we got a call from Lemon saying he was knocked out of the tournament. This ended up being a good thing, as without Lemon, our performance would have been lackluster at best. Our rendition of Wanted: Dead or Alive was so awesome that we got the entire crowd singing along! This is mostly because Lemon was totally awesome and carried the whole band with his singing!! After our second performance of the day, they Veggie crew took in some random PC free-play (World in Conflict seems really fun) and also learned that the BF2 team that had beaten us the previous night came in second place. After Lemon owned us all at Castle Crashers and took our Axes AND the Princess, we retired from PAX to have dinner at Z'Tejas. This place has the best corn bread and I think our entire dinner consisted of 3 appetizers and about 4 whole cornbread cakes. I actually ordered a fifth one just to take home! I think there was also some wailing to Karaoke Revolution afterwards, leading to no sleep for the neighbors, I am sure.

Day 4: Sunday
Today was a relax day. In the morning, we played some 2v3 tennis. Lemon seemed to have a strange affinity for the tennis ball as no matter where he stood, the ball just had a knack of finding him. Afterwards, we had lunch at a SiChuan Chinese place specializing in spicy cuisine. We ordered 4 spicy dishes at medium spice, and 1 non-spicy vegetable dish. Even at medium, the food still required the consumption of massive amounts of rice to drown out the spiciness. The food was very good although we ended up with a lot of leftovers again. After lunch, there was a visit to Sees Candies where jOrange picked up some boxed chocolates, and both Catnipped and Kira joined the "Dark Side." jOrange had to leave to go back home later in the afternoon.
Later that night, we hosted a poker night since Lemon had brought a nice poker set with real ceramic chips and all. Catnipped invited 3 of her friends to join but one of them had to work because deadlines were coming up. Min's friend, Snoopy, was incredibly lucky thanks to a fortune cookie that said something like "Good fortune will find you, a promotion will follow." She was absolutely ruthless and after proclaiming to Catnipped that she "helped her with everything," she took all of Catnipped's chips! Yes...helped myself to her chips is more like it! It was just downhill from there as the Veggies were knocked out one after another with Lemon making a valiant last stand.

Veg Out 2

Veg Out 2 was awesome. We did a smorgasbord of different activities and had a great time.

Day 1: Thursday
Today, Kira and I flew into Seattle. Lemon and Jorange went camping earlier and so were already at Catnipped's house. After a conveyor sushi lunch, we proceeded to the Underground Tour and Pike's Fish Market. It didn't really seem like many people were actually buying fish; rather, they were all doing touristy things. One rogue crawfish managed to give his own rendition of Homeward Bound, but he was quickly snatched up by a worker and returned to the holding pen. Dinner was at Saltys, a pretty upscale seafood restaurant with an awesome view. The waiter there seemed not so attentive and tried to mask his ineptitude by giving a long, bloated description of what they had on the menu even though by this time, we had all made our choices. I also almost choked to death on a seed in the lemonade. Good times!

Day 2: Friday
First day of PAX! Catnipped had to drop off M at the airport. M was evicted by Catnipped for the weekend so there would be enough space around the house for us to board. Afterwards, we hurried to PAX. We caught a quick lunch at Subway and picked up our PAX gift bags. Our first order of duty afterwards was to sign up for the two tournaments we would partake in: 6v6 Battlefield 2 and Guitar Hero 2 solo play. Guitar Hero 2 was done very easily as they started the console sign-ups about 15 min before they opened the doors to the public. The PC sign-up proved much more difficult because for some reason, we had to gain entrance to PAX first before we could sign up. We eventually had to wait in the LONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG line of about 30,000 people to get into PAX. The theme of PAX seemed to be waiting in line as most of the good booths/panels had huge long lines. The sign-up for the BF2 tournament required full 6-member teams but we only had 4. Luckily, we found two people who were also looking to participate (Thank you Mike and Brian!) and signed up with them as Team Um... We were able to sign up for our tournament, take in a bit of the exhibition hall, check out the keynote speaker, and take in the Tycho/Gabe panel. The keynote speaker was Wil Wheaton and he had an amazing speech that got the whole crowd of about 8,000 people cheering. We wanted to get some pizza for dinner, but because of the vast amount of people, the restaurant had no pizza left by the time we were in line. Luckily, there was a little cafe around the corner with some fresh sandwiches. The time for the BF2 tournament came around and after a delay of about 1.5 hours to get everyone situated and Ventrilo working, the tournament finally started. The first map up was 16-player Dragon Valley After an intense first battle with our first opponent (W17-0), we completely steamrolled them the second game (W81-0). Second map was 16-player Dalian plant. This totally sucked for us as we ran into the team that had won the event the past 2 years AND we had no reliable chopper team. We lost both games rather embarrassingly without even pushing them the slightest bit. However, we can extrapolate and say that since we made the semi-quarter finals, we were at least better than half the people in the whole world at BF2!!
The day ended with our dining at a Chinese restaurant called Purple Dot. Catnipped referred to this place as having a picture of "Yoshi" on the front although it looked nothing like it. They gave out rather large portions, and we had a huge amount of leftovers. All in all, a great day!

Claypedia

Lots of cool information on Claymore on wiki. There are some spoilers revealed on what happens during the northern expedition and stuff as well as background on the abyssal ones.

Best Place Evah!!!

Today saw the demonstration of Accenture's 6 core values. The presenters today were a lot more energetic than the ones yesterday, and there were many more group activities which made the day pass by much faster. The first presenter set the stage by going over One Global Network and explained how he has worked at many places including Da Lian. Ahh, the joys of Dalian Plant in BF2. So many tanks, annoying jets, helicopters...a great place for infantry. That set the tone for the rest of the day.

Accenture is the Best Place

Today was the first day of Accenture Orientation. I went in with the sense that perhaps there would be some corporate coercion afoot but I wasn't fully prepared for it all. First sign was that all the books and periodicals available for reading in the waiting room were all Accenturefied. They had the annotated history of Accenture, Accenture stock reports, and some other magazines. I finally see a copy of Newsweek, ah, something pure. But I notice that the cover is conveniently covered up by a special Accenture cover featuring Tiger Woods. I flip through it and every other page was an ad for Accenture. The orientation lady came in and I halfway expected her to ask "So, How Awesome is Accenture??"

We went into the conference room and they started going over all the important stuff like the history of Accenture and how awesome the founders were followed by a description of Accenture's Vision and Mission. It would have been all over for me, except I noticed the presenter's name was Hyman! Instantly I started thinking about BF2 and assaulting the TV station on Sharqi Peninsula with the overpowered MEC chopper. Ahh, good old BF2, you came through again!

The rest of the day passed by with various presentations on benefits/PTO/401K/Business Ethics. The ethics part was the best as they presented us with several ludicrously easy scenarios to discuss. I suggested taking the bribe, double charging the plane ticket, and making illegal stock transactions but was shouted down by my fellow coworkers. Obviously, they need to play more BF2!!!!

Overall, Accenture seems like a very good company to work at and despite the sarcastic post, I think it's a good fit.

Resistance is Futile

So, checked out Facebook today out of curiosity. Big mistake....

The world is doomed

I AM
92%
OPTIMUS PRIME

I don't get it, I even farted on the plane!

Politics

At my old company, there was no such thing as office politics or office drama because well...there were only 5 people there in total. My team here already has 8 people and another 5 or 6 supporting people. Recently, we got two new people. The first one is a ex-marine who tells all kinds of stories about his time travelling in multiple different countries. For instance, he told us about his travels in Nigeria with his own roving band of bodyguards.

These Nigerian bodyguards were merciless. Supposedly, once when he was stuck in traffic, his bodyguards got out, ran to the front to see what the problem was, and very soon after, traffic was moving quickly again. How did they get the traffic moving? According to the marine, they had went to the front, found out who was causing it, shot the people responsible, then directed the traffic to get it moving again. Also, arguments don't end until one of the parties is dead. That's how they settled things in Nigeria. He was also showing us videos of this minigun mount on the back of a suburban. Just imagine how much less annoying morning rush hour would be.

The second guy is totally different. He's just this normal guy, mostly an intellectual and not at all as outspoken as the ex-marine. These two have basically by jostling all week and sizing each other up. Office drama, here we come!!

Office Birthdays Part: 2

Today was the monthly birthday celebration here. Remember that last time, it was pretty cheesy with only a handful of people showing up to get some pretzels. Well, this time, the head HR person decided that instead of providing the food, they would hold a dessert taste-off. Basically, anyone who wanted to enter would bring their favorite dessert to share while 3 mysterious judges would decide on who wins. The first thought in my mind was, dang, they are so cheap, instead of providing the food for the birthday, they will just make the office people bring in food in the disguise of some contest.

2 o'clock rolled around and I head to the room not really expecting to be surprised. Well...I was totally surprised. There were SOOOO many yummy dessert things on display. From bite-sized chocolates, to custard pie, to strawberry cheesecake, to this strange cottage cheese mix, everything was home made! There were enough desserts to fill up an entire conference table. HR provided some default chocolate cake and some rice crispies squares just in case no one brought anything. My personal favorite has to be the bite sized pretzels. They had a little bit of caramel used to hold a chocolate covered pecan in place on the pretzel. The biggest question running through my head was, how would Faalena's cookies stack up to these others?? I have tasted the rest, but the taste of the cookies seem to be fading from my mind. I think I need a refresher!! Shameless attempt to extort some cookies!!!

Update: Seems like the chocolate cheesecake was the winner. The pretzel things (known as Poor man's Turtle) was a runner up.

Back to China

Dropped Mom off at airport this morning. She's off to China for a while then probably back to the US to go job hunting again. Yesterday evening, we went to eat at the local Razoo's Cajun kitchen. The food was good, but nothing specifically extraordinary until dessert. Normally, I never order dessert, but this time, I had to try their "Zydeco Dancer." This thing was possibly the most awesome dessert I have ever tried. It's like strawberry cheesecake, but served on a graham cracker/walnut bedding. It wasn't thick cheesecake filling either, it was fairly light and fluffy. Except for the fact that it was probably about 1000000000000000000000000 calories, It was perfect.

In other random news, I read an article this morning about this Spanish bank robber who thinks of himself like Robin Hood. He's fighting back against the evil corporate institution that is banking and was about to start attacking insurance agencies too. Sounds good? Well the little footnote at the end says "Citing police, Spanish media reported he kept the money he stole, depositing it in several different bank accounts." Ummm, so he's stealing money from banks, just to redeposit them into banks?...It's like stealing friendly engineer's mines and placing them in the exact same spot just so you get the kills instead of the other engineer!!! So Noble.

I can totally see Eastwood with this!!

Just imagine Clint pointing a pistol at some bandit, pulling the trigger, then puffing on his electronic nicotine atomizer. What's amusing is this thing even has a red LED at the end to give the illusion that the person is actually smoking. What's next? E-drinking maybe?

New BF2 Map

EA has just announced a new expansion map for BF2. Set in the African savanna, this map features all 3 factions battling for dominance: Battle at Kruger. The US War machine, having righteous cause, has thundered it's way down to Africa to liberate the oil fields of Nigeria. Unfortunately, because South Africa had the word Africa, Bush sent the USMC advance force there. MEC and PLA have no idea how they ended up there, but thanks to large bags of "laundry" from EA, they have decided to stay and fight. This map also features all new artwork done with facelifts to all three original factions.

Lion: USMC
Water Buffalo: PLA
Crocodile: MEC

Why Spec Ops rule!

Ahh, Spec Ops, those sneaky, annoying, beret-wearing, little bundles of death and destruction. They get an amazing gun, grenades, anti-armor capabilities all in 1 package!! But what makes them unique is C4. Sure, they can use it to blow up stuff, but there are far more important usages of C4. For instance: "Because C-4 burns slowly if simply ignited with a flame, rather than detonated with a primary explosive, soldiers would sometimes use small amounts of C-4 as a fuel for heating rations "

This is totally awesome, airfield going down, but hunger pangs getting to ya? Just whip out some C4, shoot down a few coconuts and have a BBQ.

Have you ever had one of those days where you JUST don't want to go to work? Well, never fear because: "a soldier would occasionally ingest C-4 ... in order to be sent on sick leave." Everyone would have C4 around just for doing this.

Why.....

Why Hollywood...WHY THE HELL ARE YOU MESSING WITH THE CLASSICS!!!! Before they totally destroy the legacy that is this movie, watch it here on Youtube.

The Growing VGI Family

Our nightly adventures of BF2 have attracted the interest of another lost soul in search of ruthlessly slaughter! Lemon's roommate recently ordered the Deluxe version of BF2 and will hopefully join us soon on the fields of battle. Lemon is tremendously awesome at coming up with names. He can now add TheDragOnfruitS to his list of creations along with eLemonator and jOrange. Pspmator will be in Guyana for a year so DOS's arrival is at an opportune time.

A minor Skirmish

After surviving a fierce barrage of Myspace and Runescape, I have managed to reclaim the computer. Scans only revealed 2 tracking cookies so my computer has survived relatively unscathed from this experience. While I would like to claim that I fiercely defeated the oppressors and freed my machine at the end, what really happened was they simply left...to go home to Nigeria. Kinda like in BF2 when you shoot at a plane with IGLAs and claim victory as it flies away....it actually left because it was out of ammo.

Well, I was a little bit too hasty in my assessment that my computer was unscathed. It seems something DID get on it although it didn't really infect my system. Friday night, my Norton started detecting this program: w32.sillyfdc, that was trying to execute a .exe in one of my temporary internet file directories. With Catnipped's help, I went through a whole long list of instructions on how to remove this worm. After 3 hours, I finally figured out that the virus hadn't actually infected my system yet. It was just that temporary file that needed to be deleted. A quick restart in safe mode, a quick delete, and my computer is healthy again. +2 revive points, with +1 assist to Catnipped.

Chipotle 2: Burrito Combat

After many months of hearing how amazing this Chipotle place was, I finally had a chance to go today. There were many previous failed attempts caused mostly by the unwillingness of my coworkers to walk about 1/2 mile to the location. I had heard many stories about the fabled "Chipotle Burrito" and was quite eager to see how my encounter with it would go. I went with the chicken fajita burrito with no beans. This burrito truly is massive in size, and tasted pretty good. Next time, I think I will skip out on the guacamole as the taste of it was a bit too strong. Overall, Chipotle was a great experience. While the burrito there is definitely good, it didn't really present itself as unique outside of it's size. It could be the fact that good Mexican restaurants are in ample supply in Houston.

They won the battle, I won the war..sorta

After surviving a fierce barrage of Myspace and Runescape, I have managed to reclaim the computer. Scans only revealed 2 tracking cookies so my computer has survived relatively unscathed from this experience. While I would like to claim that I fiercely defeated the oppressors and freed my machine at the end, what really happened was they simply left...to go home to Nigeria. Kinda like in BF2 when you shoot at a plane with IGLAs and claim victory as it flies away....it actually left because it was out of ammo.

The only sure thing in life

The house guests are finally leaving today, thereby leaving my computer in peace. While this is a semi-joyous occasion, there is also a great bit of sadness mixed in.

Last night, I received a phone call from my uncle in China telling me that my grandmother had passed away that morning. She went peacefully and without much suffering so there is solace in that. She was actually the one who raised me until I was 2 and 1/2 years old in Shanghai. Even though because of medical malpractice she was confined to a walker/wheelchair for almost half her life, she remained a very strong and kind woman, never becoming one of those old, bitter, grouchy hags. Because of the time differences, she actually passed away on the morning of 8/1 which is a bit chilling as this is exactly around the same time my father passed away.