Coop Crawfish Hunt

Attempting to host a crawfish boil this coming weekend. The plan is 50lbs of crawfish, giant propane boiling thing, and hopefully minimal explosions. Should be fun.

Ode to McMuffin

Much sadness in World
Egg McMuffin so tasty
the heart is crunchy

Rest well Herb, your legacy will live on in the drive-thrus throughout the US.

It helps you live longer!

Moral of the story: fight more! Make it a Mortal Kombat type of tournament for best results.

Expert Advice

Hamachi is cool and stuff, but we were having a heck of a time trying to get it to work with R6. Though we had made some progress, things were looking pretty bleak and we were on the verge of giving up when suddenly....*cue Huang Fei Hong music*..Catnipped, a member of the Canton Veggies and master of the No Shadow Click showed up. With some precision typing in google, Catnipped soon found the Ultimate Hamachi Gaming guide (I would link it, but I can't find it....) which proceeded to solve all our problems.
Catnipped had not acquired Rainbow 6 yet, so Kira and I celebrated for her by shooting some Tangos. I suffered from a bad bout of Grape-itis and kept chucking grenades at Kira...luckily, they were smoke grenades.

A Trip Down Memory Lane

Ahhh....this brings back fond memories...okay, good memories....maybe just decent memories....memories.....oh who am I kidding!! Nights wrought with frustration, anger, pillage, raze, obliterate.....WHAT DO YOU MEAN THE PRIEST HAS TO "WORK" TOMORROW!!!?? RAGS IS RIGHT AROUND THE CORNER!!!

Frog Eggs...Yum

My boss here at work is really cool and today, we convinced him to take the entire team to Chinatown for lunch. Surprisingly, NONE of my workers had ever been to Chinatown before so we obviously decided to go to one of the landmarks of chinese cuisine...House of Bowls!! My boss and a coworker both ordered the Chao Fen Singapore style (#41) and I had my usual (#104). They also ordered 2 orders of chicken wings, even though I warned them it was way too much food. They loved the food and afterwards, I suggested we try some Tapioca milk tea.

I was surprised that none of them had ever even heard of tapioca milk tea. This time, I did not make the mistake of referring to the awesome tapioca balls as frog eggs....Much apologies to RegiBlue. Most people I know find the somewhat slimy texture of the tapioca disturbing, but to my surprise, most of my coworkers loved it as well. All in all, I would say today was a totally unproductive day as the carb bombardment left us all in comas.

A Long Long Time ago.....

I was born!!! DUnnnnnnnnnnnn *insert Star Wars theme* Much thanks to BluPnutMM couple for hosting us in Austin this weekend. It was great fun as we played plenty of Bang! and Wii while also taking in some kayaking and even a bit of culture with a constipation concert.

Even our friend, a member of the Austin Symphony thought that this concert wasn't a very good program. He kept telling us that this concert felt like it was composed by some guy while he was sitting on the toilet. While the orchestra itself played beautifully, the pieces did leave much to be desired. The first and fourth pieces were particularly coma inducing while the "toilet" piece was actually one of the more interesting sounding ones. The third piece was actually pretty good as there was a fantastic piano soloist who kept us entertained because we could watch his fingers. We all agreed that if he so chose, the pianist could totally kick all of our butts at Smash Brothers.

The coolest part of the whole weekend was the birthday card that they got for me. It was totally Star Wars themed and on the front, it said "A Long long time ago...." When you open it, it says "You were born!" and starts playing the opening theme to Star Wars. Totally cool.

Austin for the weekend

It's off to Austin to spread the germs and get everyone sick! This weekend should be fun, as promises of Smash Bros. Brawl, and good food have been made. However, I feel this is just another trap to lure me there and get another credit card cancelled....

Sick..

Haven't gotten sick in a long time, but I can't say I have missed the runny nose, congestion, and annoying morning coughing fits. Best part is that since I can't actually smell anything, everything tastes like cardboard...mmmmm

Houston Pilum-AVRs

The Rockets have been awesome of late, winning their first 20 games of 60 in a row enroute to the championship. While I can lie and say that I always had faith in them and that my confidence in them never wavered, I must admit that I am seriously a bandwagon jumper. I totally rode them off as being doomed when Yao went down for the year.

MalapertMango however, has always had faith in the rockets. Of course, much of the Rockets' success can directly be contributed to her. Why is McGrady so awesome all of a sudden? Rafer Alston becoming Rafer All-star? Dikembe Mutumbo and his inspirational speeches? Let's just say these would all not be possible without Mrs. Mango.

This sunday presents a rather unique challenge though. While Mrs. Mango totally loves the Rockets, she also refers to a certain KB from the Lakers as her "husband." Will Mango resist the charms of KB and lead the Rockets to victory? Or will she go back to the arms of her former and leave the Rockets devastated? Tune in this sunday for this exciting episodes of All My Vegetables.

Armstrong Hotel

While training in Colorado, we are staying at the Armstrong Hotel. This hotel is totally awesome. It's got that historic feel (been around for over 100 years) but it has modern amenities. It's also rather cheap, about $115 a night for a suite which comes with a living room area, kitchenette set, and even a microwave. They also have this really cool 4 year old cat named Oreo who basically just wanders wherever he wants. He's not allowed inside the rooms for fear of people with allergies though. Often times, he is just curled up on the sofa in the lobby. He even took an elevator ride with me this morning.

The entire town of Fort Collins in general is a super awesome place. There are very few chain stores but there are many many mom and pop eateries, bars, breweries, etc. The whole town just has a homely feel to it. I almost feel as if this would be a wonderful place to live.

Three Kingdoms Comic

For those of you who enjoy anything Three Kingdoms related, here's a pretty amusing comic.

Lost Odyssey

Recently finished up Lost Odyssey. I loved the way the story was told and how they made the Dream sequences so enjoyable even though they were nothing more than text. The combat system felt really simplistic and because of that, only had rudimentary elements of strategy. Towards the end of the game, it basically boiled down to selecting the same sets of actions every battle. Perhaps I am judging it a bit harshly on the combat system since the last real RPG I played was Mass Effect which had real time combat. The character development was awesome though. You really got to know each and every one of the 9 characters you have with details going into their background and why they are who they are. Jansen in particular was probably the most enjoyable character in an RPG I have experienced. Each character was backed up with superb voice acting. The game difficulty started out pretty high, but as your immortals got more and more skills, the difficulty quickly became trivial. By the 3rd disc, they were basically unstoppable, immune to all statuses and elemental attacks.
Overall, Lost Odyssey is a great game. Its pace may be a little slow for people who want immediate satisfaction, but the end result is definitly worth the wait. Much thanks to Catnipped for acquiring a copy of Lost Odyssey! Hopefully, there will be many more free games to come =p

A Message of Hope and Inspiration

Today, went to some chinese restaurant for lunch with a former co-worker. The entire thing went pretty well and there was good catching up. Towards the end of the meal, they served the obligatory run-of-mill fortune cookies. Usually these fortunes were nice little nuggets of encouragement, but today, two of my co-workers got the following fortunes:

"It's over your head now. Time to get some professional help."
and
"Cut your losses. You waited long enough."

Must have been a rough day in heaven for Confucius.

A-Merican Idol

Not be confused with that other Idol show. Today was supposed to be an IT all hands meeting. Instead of the usual boring blahblah, the whole event was revolved around the other Idol contest theme. Apparently, the planners had been part of a Fantasy Football pool and had lost, as a result, they had to sing two songs (Material Girl, and some song from High School Musical II) in front of the entire company and have the video posted on Youtube. Instead of going at it alone, they decided to take as many people with them as possible so they organized people from the company to all do pretend auditions for A-Merican Idol and editted in the judges from that other Idol and their comments. The whole thing was incredibly hilarious with the most memorable being some lady singing "Umbrella" while bringing in an umbrella prop and not knowing any of the words except "Under my Um-brella, ella, ella."

How does =VGI= measure up?

xkcd does an excellent job of comparing different fruits, but how do The Veggies stack up? Well, Lemon did an excellent job on this and came up with the above plot. I think it's right on the money.

Terminated..

I am so glad I switched TS servers as today, when I inquired to whether my service had been cancelled, I suddenly get this reply:

This is an automated reply to your message to Caribe Hosting Support.

We are sorry but Caribe Hosting is closing effective immediately. All
recent payments will be refunded. TeamSpeak service will cease within
the next few days.

We apologize for the frustration and inconvenience this will cause.

Ummmm.....thanks for the heads up...The last hamster powering their servers probably died so they had to shut everything down. That and their website hadn't been updated since 2005.

Colorado Part 2: Revenge

I am heading back to Colorado from March 4th to 8th for some Datasplice training. The first trip to Colorado was wrought with danger and problems. This time, I shall have my vengence...on what exactly, I don't know (perhaps the darkness!), but I will have it.

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.