Oh the weather outside is... winter.

It's been a strange Christmas season. It never really felt like Christmas for me. There's a certain Christmas feeling, that of anticipation, excitement, a lovely rosy feeling connected to light displays, well-worn songs, and the smell of pine and candles, that I never had this year. I can't explain it, because I know it's deeply connected to my childhood. But it never really clicked in me this year that it's Christmas time. It's happened before, but not for awhile.

Sure, we hung lights on the house, and yes, I had the entire week off work (using nearly all of my vacation time), and hey, it sure is cold outside. But it just felt like another week, only with giving and getting of stuff and lots of unusually heavy traffic at the grocery store. Something is missing here, and I don't know why or how I missed it.

Still, Jenny and I had a much better than average Christmas holiday. Because I took the week off and The Lovely Jenny only had to work two days of my off time and didn't have to go to school, we had ample, rewarding "us" time. I have been reminded many times over why I'm so in love with her, and didn't bother to correct my nephew Nicholas today when he said he was waiting to start a video for when my wife came back to the room. She is my wife, that's how I think of her. Just not legally, not just yet.

Also, we shopped a lot, for our friends, family, and each other, and we received even more than we bought. Tomorrow we're driving out to Tipton county for her family's Christmas deal, but even now here's our swag count:

• A big, bad Black & Decker food processor
• A whole mess of socks (his and hers)
• $650 cash*
• A $150 Walmart gift card**
• Two winter shirts for me
• An autographed Dick Vitale book (sweet!)
• Season 3 of Venture Brothers on DVD (hell yeah!)
• 600 classic cartoons 6-DVD set***
• Wireless home phone w/ answering machine and call-ID***
• Box of chocolate cordial cherries
• Refillable diffusion aromatic scent kit

* Used for new 2.1 speakers for both of our PC's, clothes for Jenny, bills, etc.
** Used for a Griz fitted cap, Star Trek 2-disc DVD, make-up, etc.
*** I bought for Jenny

It more than offsets all the stuff we bought for other people this year. It was really satisfying to be able to go out and shop for gifts without worrying too much about the cost. Easily our most giving Christmas, monetarily, in years. Here's the give list:

• Framed mini-poster for an '88 rock concert
• Tinkerbell earrings
• A home bar/mixed drinks accessory set
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince 2-disc DVD
• Monty Python and the Holy Grail special edition 2-disc DVD + extras
• Jeremiah Johnson DVD
• Good Night and Good Luck DVD
• Steamboy DVD
• A custom-made bracelet (by The Lovely)
• A big wall-hanging, bronze-looking star thing
  
• A specially selected sew-on patch

After I wrapped our gifts, Jenny hand-made awesome ribbons, bows, and tags. It doesn't mean too much to the people gleefully tearing off the paper, but it means a lot to me to know how we made their gifts look so festive. I even took a picture, and this wasn't all of it:


So, no, it didn't feel like the Christmas season I remember as a kid. But it was a good Christmas nonetheless, and it reminded me over and over of why I fell in love with Jenny. Christmas is supposed to be a special time that reminds you of all the people you care about; it's about family, and it reminded me of the little family that Jenny and I will soon be starting. And I can't wait.

O.J. to Marc.

This is the greatest pass since the invention of handing things to people.

Marc is the Gasol we've been looking for.

Yes, that was a Star Wars reference. Anyway, Marc Gasol has come to play this season. If I hadn't seen him in person, not once, but twice this year, I wouldn't believe it. But the big fat kid from Lausanne has officially arrived in the NBA. Last season, he put on a great show (for a rookie), and impressed a lot of people (for a rookie). But that was then. This is now, and he has spent the entire season serving notice to the rest of the league that he is here to fuck your shit up.

Offensively, he's looked like Pau from his All-Star year; turn-and-guns, fade-aways, lefty hooks, fast break slams, the whole range. Defensively, he's doing this:

I spent hours of my life -- hours that I will never get back -- defending Pau Gasol. I never understood why I had to defend him, but I did. He's clearly the best player this franchise has ever had, and he always covered his shortcomings by being, I don't know, the best player the franchise has ever had. And now his trade to the Lakers has given us what may well turn out to be something even better: a little brother that may turn out to be the best role player in franchise history.

Yes, Marc has the ability to surpass Shane Battier in that category. You have NO IDEA how hard it was for me to write that. Shane is my favorite player ever. He's a great guy who knows his role and plays it to perfection. He's all heart and hustle, and a natural leader. He's great with fans and the media. And he wins.

You know who else fits that description? Marc Gasol. What's more, he's putting up nearly Pau-like numbers offensively while being vastly superior defensively. If the offense didn't include shot-happy players like Rudy, O.J., and Randolph, and if the Griz weren't "coached" by a hack like Hollins, Marc could easily be averaging 20+ points per game. He's that good right now.

I'm not saying Marc is "the answer" (Get it? Because A.I. was a disaster? OK, it wasn't funny). But he's a fundamental piece to a winning team, and the Griz need to recognize that any effort to build this team into something special must include Marc as the focal point. I hope someone in Heisley's ear figures that out.

KOTOR makes for a happy Jenny.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic was on sale yesterday for $2.49 as a part of Steam's five-day Thanksgiving special. I got up late, but Jenny was sick and wanted to sleep even later. So I came downstairs, let the dog out, started the obligatory Weekend Coffee, and sat down at my PC to check Steam, because I knew they were running specials every day for five days. I figured I'd find something for The Lovely before the sale ended, but KOTOR for $2.49 was beyond anything I expected. So I bought it via my Steam account on Jenny's rig and downloaded it for her. By the time I got her out of bed it was ready to play. Yeah, I'm thoughtful like that.

Anyway, she's diggin' it, as you can see. Having beaten in on XBox years ago, she insists that it's one of the best RPG's ever and that if I'm ever going to see eye-to-eye with her on this whole "RPG's are worth your time" thing that I have to play -- and beat -- this game. It's not a small request. I have a whole post on my experiences with RPG's, and if you've read it, you know how picky I am.

I started KOTOR while Jenny was at work yesterday. I downloaded it to my rig because I wanted to try it, and because I knew I could max it out in every way with my specs. It runs great, and I'm a few hours into it. It looks like the sort of action RPG I like, but it doesn't play like one. It's a story-driven tale with lots of talking and quest-hoarding, punctuated by semi-interactive fighting. So far, it's very JRPG-ish, which is not good. Being set in the Star Wars universe helps, so I'll keep playing. I have to admit that it's addictive.

Going back to that old post, I should point out that now that I have the specs to run it well, I do intend to try to get further into S.T.A.L.K.E.R. than I did before. I liked a lot about that game, but the fact that it was so goddamned ugly didn't exactly make me want to stick with it. It looks much better with my 4870, and I do want to try it again. I also have The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion now, which I haven't tried at all. It came bundled with BioShock, which is why I bought it: BioShock for me, Oblivion for Jenny.

She's still playing KOTOR, by the way. I'm looking to my left, and, yes, there's Jenny playing KOTOR. So at least she's enjoying her little gift. Now I just have to upgrade her entire computer so I can get her Spore for Christmas.

The Forum experience.

I've been a die hard Grizzlies fan since they moved here in 2001, but I've never been able to get out to the Pyramid or the Forum to see them live until this season. The lovely Jenny, love of my life, being her usual super awesome self, got me my first ever Griz tickets to their win over their former Canadian sister team, the Toronto Raptors, back on October 30th. She got me some excellent seats: top row of the lower bowl, right behind the Grizzlies bench.

The Griz absolutely schooled the Raps that night. It was perfect for my first game. I went with my dad, who like me has always rooted for the Griz but hadn't seen them in person. He raised me to love basketball. I grew up rooting for the Keith Lee-era Memphis State Tigers. He's worked at the U of M since before I was born. I went to grammar school at Campus School, an excellent "optional program" Memphis City school right on campus (hence the name). Dad put up a basketball hoop in the backyard, and I played every day for ten years. It was a sad day when I outgrew my '85 Tigers Final Four tee shirt.

Anyway, I loved the Forum. It's a beautiful facility inside and out. I've been to the Pyramid for dozens of Tiger basketball games as a member of the U of M band, and the Forum blows it away in every category but one: it's not a giant fucking pyramid sitting right by the bridge from Arkansas. For all its problems, you cannot deny that the Pyramid is striking from the outside, and it makes our skyline, sitting up on the bluff over the river, look damned impressive.

Otherwise, the Forum puts the Pyramid to shame. It fits organically into Beale Street. The concourses are open and airy, with Memphis-centric artwork everywhere you look. Near the escalators to the terrace level, for example, you'll find a gorgeous five-by-fifteen-foot hand-made ceramic tile mosaic mural of Memphis basketball that has to be seen to be believed. Concession stands are creatively named, and the food is uniformly fantastic. It's clean, tasteful, and heavily staffed by competent, helpful, friendly people. Whimsical touches are everywhere, from funny restroom signs to a double row of kiosks where you can play Memphis-themed video games like a FedEx version of Pac Man.

Tonight I attended my second Griz game in as many months, which makes me a very happy boy. My mom was my hook-up this time, having somehow stumbled upon a great promotional deal. Two tickets for the price of one, and that one heavily discounted. I got two seats on the front row of the terrace (top level) just right of center court for twenty bucks. It was very nearly the view you get on TV, only in person, and infinitely more awesome.

Again, I went with my dad. I came prepared this time, gear-wise. I wore my Shane Battier '01 throwback jersey again, but I made Dad wear my current-era Griz hoodie. You gotta represent, right? Interestingly enough, I've now been to two Griz games without seeing a single throwback jersey other than the one I was wearing. Where's the love, Memphis? We went to the playoffs for the first time in the Vancouver colours! Don't tell me you don't remember the '04 campaign, because I'll know you're lying.

Anyway, we lost the game tonight. The Bucks came in wounded, with two of their best players, Michael Redd and Andrew Bogut, out with injuries. I say "two of" and not "two best" because rookie Brandon Jennings is the real damn deal. I posted this to 3 Shades of Blue:

Just home from the Forum. A depressing end to an entertaining game. For whatever reason (iffy coaching, lack of a capable point guard, perhaps) the gameplan was scrapped and the team relied on jump shots for most of the fourth, despite fifty (FIFTY!) paint points.

Aside from that, Brandon Jennings nailed the coffin shut. That kid is terrifying to watch if you're on the opposing side. He's so quick it's just... unnatural. Every time he touches the ball you just cringe. Conley, Mayo, and Williams took turns trying to stop him in the fourth, and they all got torched repeatedly. The Bucks may have won the draft lottery after all.

That's really all I want to get into in terms of tonight's game, other than this: the Griz put on a great show, and I witnessed some truly memorable plays. My favorite was O.J. Mayo's steal and dunk when the game was all but lost in the final moments, but a close second was Marc Gasol's two monster rejections. Here's one of them:

So thanks to Jenny, my mom, the Grizzlies staff, and the Grizzlies players. It was awesome to finally see my favorite team in person after eight years of TV. Dad thanks you, too.

Sunny is weird.

Richard and/or Donny's dog Sunny has this odd habit of howling when she's excited. She usually does it when playing fetch. She lets out this triumphant howl to let us know how awesome she is as soon as she picks up whatever you threw. "I got that damn toy! Do not fuck with me!"

You have to see it for yourself.

Picture time: work edition

Here are some random pictures I've taken on the job over the last few months. So. Yeah.

Titans win; I'm right again.

It's a heavy burden, being right so often*. I'm not trying to show anyone up, I'm just constantly vindicated in the long run. I can't help it. At work, for example, whenever we're trying to figure something out down in the shop, Dale's always wrong. He just is. Not just in the shop, but out in the field as well, on a PM or a maintenance call. Whatever he decides is wrong, which is why I usually override him. Because I'm right.

In this case, I was right about the Titans benching Kerry Collins and starting Vince Young. Of course, everyone else in the United States of America was right about this as well. They were oh-fer almost half way through the season, there was just no reason at all not to throw Young in there to see what he could do. Two losses later, they finally did, and what happens? Two straight wins.

Young showed his comeback is legitimate, outplaying fellow first-round draft pick Alex Smith down the stretch. Young has been clutch twice in as many weeks, getting the Titans (2-6) in the end zone when it mattered.

So yeah, I'm right again. You're welcome, head coach Jeff Fisher. I know you read this blog.

Anyway. We cooked out on the grill this afternoon, and I stuffed myself way, way beyond any reasonable level of... um, eatingness. I still feel like I'll never have to eat again. I put eight pork chops, five cheddar-stuffed kielbasas, and a monstrous smoked sausage on the grill and burned them over fire until they tasted good. Haley and Jenny roasted some potatoes in the oven, and cooked some sweet corn in, well, in the microwave. We cheated a bit on that.

But it was all unbelievable. One of the best meals I've had in a long, long time. Jenny tweaked the grilled pork chop recipe we made up last weekend, and she absolutely nailed it. Pork perfection. The potatoes, as well, were fantastic. I love red potatoes to begin with, but they cut, seasoned, and cooked them to a state I'd characterize as perfection had I not just used that word to describe the pork chops. We ate outside on the back porch by the grill as I cooked up some extra meat for leftovers and Richard burned the shit out of some beer brats. Topped it all off with a dessert recipe of Haley's: baked bananas with brown sugar, cinnamon, and butter, served with ice cream. Addictive would be a good word for it.

We fed five tonight and still have plenty of leftovers. Best of all, we bought most of the ingredients at the local Aldi for a song. After two trips there, I'm definitely an Aldi convert. Even better, I noticed that they use industrial batteries in their pallet jacks, talked to a couple managers, and I think we can get some work there. So it was a win-win-win weekend. Because I was right. Don't doubt it, just believe it.

*My egotism in this post is generally fictional; Jenny is so smart that she routinely makes me feel like an imbecile, consistently reminding me that whatever I think I'm at expert at, someone else knows more. Except about football. And my job. And Quake.

I WANT TO LIVE IN IT

So somewhere in Tennessee (actually, it's here) there's a treehouse bigger than the block your house is on. And I will be moving my stuff into it shortly.

That shot is just a teaser. Stare with your mouth open at a bunch more pics in this extremely badly-translated article at something called ZuZu Top.

Oh, and here's an SI.com article called "Vince Young will start for Titans." My only question is, what the fuck were you waiting for? Were they considering setting an NFL record for stupidity? Maybe try to follow up a 13-3 season with a 3-13 season? I mean, there's nothing wrong with being symmetrical, but at some point you have to realize you have OCD. And you're also crazy.

Seriously, it took losing 59 to zero to get Jeff Fisher to try something different. Being oh-fer five games into the season wasn't enough. Bah, whatever. I just hope they don't fire the guy. He's been so good for so long that he's earned a pass on a terrible season or two.

The robot invasion has begun.

It's official. They have infiltrated our society. There's no other way to describe this video.

That kid clearly has tiny robot brains individually operating his hands. The wild, random head thrashing is his primary robot brain glitching out as the compute cycles that should be dedicated to his human mimicry programs are monopolized by the hand-brain music software.

Think I'm crazy? Maybe you're one of them.

Big Lots FTW (again).

Tonight I picked up yet another great game at an absurd price at Big Lots. I found Mirror's Edge for $6. You read that right. I never actively looked for this game at retail, which may explain why I've never seen it anywhere. In any case, I couldn't run it when it came out, but now that I have a new video card I've been waiting for an online sale somewhere. Not anymore.

I'll post my thoughts on the game soon. Meanwhile, let's review what Big Lots has delivered:

• Darwinia (very rare at retail)
• Psychonauts (ditto, and obscenely good)
• Driver: Parallel Lines (impulse buy at $4, very fun)
• Just Cause (underrated)
• Enemy Territory: Quake Wars ($6 or $40 online? Hmm)
• You Are EMPTY (mindless fun, emphasis on "mindless" and "fun")
• Thief: The Dark Project (very lucky find)
• The Lord of the Rings Online (in case I want to play it someday)
• Prey (already had it on Steam, but now I don't need Steam or a disc)
• Mirror's Edge

Keep in mind, all of these games cost either $4 or $6. That's ten solid titles for less than the price of a single current-gen console game. And I'm a collector; I love having the box art, manual, etc. Digital distribution is definitely a good thing, but given the choice, I'll always take a retail package.

That isn't counting two games I grabbed for Jenny on the off chance that she might like them: Viva Pinata and NeoPets Puzzle Adventure, which I'll surprise her with when she gets home from work in ten minutes. She toyed around with Viva for a while, but didn't really get into it. Which is fine for four bucks. I think she'll like the NeoPets title, and if not, Haley might want to play it. They're into NeoPets, because they're apparently ten years old. But I'm not judging.

By the way, Haley's new blog, For the love of God... and anime, is up now, and shows off her phenomenal wallpapers. Go grab some of them now, you will definitely be impressed.

The Informant! is not as funny as I think it is.

Tonight Jenny and I ventured into Midtown to see The Informant! at the Studio on the Square. I loved it. The best I can do to describe it would be to call it a true-crime-comedy, which isn't a real genre. It might not actually be that good, because several times I found myself the only person in the theater, which was at least half-full, laughing aloud at the subtler comedic moments.

Being a true-crime thing, the mystery of it is lost once you've seen the end, so it doesn't have much re-watch value. I'd see it maybe once more for the comedy, but I wouldn't buy it. So my advice is to go see it now or rent it.

The Studio was strangely slow for a Sunday afternoon, but by the time we left the lot was pretty full. The place hasn't changed at all since the first time I went there. It was the first showing on the day it opened. I saw Gladiator with Garrett and Nikkie. I wasn't intending to be at their first ever screening, it just turned out that we wanted to see Gladiator that weekend, and the Studio was the closest theater. I ordered the first ever plate of sausage, cheese, and crackers, which is still on the menu. This time, we just got a large sweet tea, a large green tea, and a small popcorn (which was large). Since I had a $25 gift card from my aunt Linda from last Xmas, the whole thing cost me $2.50. Even $27.50 isn't too bad for a movie for two, so I might try to get us to do this semi-regularly on Sundays, the only day Jenny and I are both off work.

Unapologetic history nerd.

I'm all history-geeked out about my birthday gift from my dad, D-Day June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II by Stephen Ambrose. I've just started re-reading Douglas Adams' The More Than Complete Hitchhikers's Guide for the first time in years, but I think I'll have to put it off. This book is five pounds of paperback World War II awesome, 655 pages complete with pictures, glossary, appendix, end notes, and index.

Coincidentally, yesterday I replayed the D-day level of Call of Duty 2, where you assault Pointe-du-Hoc with the U.S. Army Rangers. When I pulled my new book out of the gift bag and randomly flipped it open, the first thing that caught my eye was the phrase, "Pointe-du-Hoc." So I'll get to read about the actual event in much more detail than what I've seen about it on the Military Channel and History International.

I don't know why I find it so fascinating, but I do. Shut up. Don't judge me.

Perspective.

This is an image I saw years ago, and it always stuck with me. It's been making the rounds online lately, and I wanted to post the original shot, along with the one with Carl Sagan's thoughts.

As I remember the story, Voyager 1 was leaving the solar system, and Sagan wanted to have it turned around for a parting shot of earth. Most of the people in charge of its operation were more interested in what lay ahead, but eventually they acquiesced. It took this picture:

There's a tiny dot in the right-most band of sunlight refracted into Voyager's lens, and it's earth. Our planet. The place where every human who has ever lived was born and died. Where all of our revolutions, spiritual movements, and scientific breakthroughs occurred. On that single pixel. Carl says it better:

Can't blog, playing BioShock.

Don't read this.

Seriously, it's not worth the time. I'm up late for no reason. I'm wide awake and I don't know why. My face hurts. That's probably it. I couldn't get over this cold because I had to work. Three days doing manual labor in the sun is bad for you when you're trying to get rid of a head cold. I just found this out.

My new phone, it turns out, is a great MP3 player, but I can't put music on it yet, and even if I could, I couldn't listen to it. At work, I'm constantly having to decide what to do and take responsibility for everything, even though I've been at it for 11 months and I work with a guy approaching his eighth year. In almost all of my games I've gotten to the most irritating part and have stopped playing. I have this blog, but I never have anything to say. I take care of all the bills in my household, but I'm terrible with money. My fiancée is getting frustrated with me being tired all the time, and I'm too tired to begin to approach how to think about what I should consider doing about it.

This is turning into a world-class rant. I like it. There, I have something to write about on this blog, that's one problem solved. Now I just have to figure out how to replace all the major appliances in this house, and how to collate that decision with the one that will determine whether there's any point in doing so in the first place. I also have to figure out what the fuck I'm going to do about my truck. I have to replace it, but I can't. I can't even trade it in, because it doesn't really belong to me, and only one third of it even belongs to the person it actually belongs to (mostly). Do you see why I have a headache?

No, that's the head cold. And also all of the above. Mostly the head cold though.

Probably.

It's nearly 2:30 in the morning, so I might as well make myself go to bed, even if my insomnia is telling me it's pointless. Jenny is up there, and that will help. The only thing I can rely on with all this bullshit I don't know how to fix is that I love her, and she makes me feel at ease. Even when she's asleep.

I got some new stuff.

Mostly a new phone. It's a Sony Ericsson W760a, which I selected after approximately 10 minutes of research (wandering aimlessly around the AT&T store). It looks like this:

Only mine isn't usually floating in a black void, and there's only one of it. It's much better than my old bargain-basement-four-years-ago phone. I thought about going balls-out and getting something completely crazy that I don't need, like an iPhone, but I thought, meh. I'll probably just break it, job like mine and all. This one feels like it can take a few drops. Unfortunately, I'll have to go out of my way to buy some specific accessories: a USB cable, headphones, and Sony's proprietary M2 memory card.

What else? Oh, a camera. Ian left this little Fuji A360 digicam when he moved out. Turns out it kinda sucks, though it is small and light. The non-adjustable shutter speed is so high that it's virtually impossible to take a picture at any marginally close range without blurring. It uses a lame media card format that I thought was proprietary to Olympus: xD. Even worse, it has no on-board memory, and the xD card it came with is just 16MB. Since it's a 4.1 megapixel camera, and you can't adjust the picture size, that equals roughly four pictures. Awesome. I found exactly two xD cards at Newegg: 1GB for $11 and 2GB for $15.

That's enought random babbling for tonight. I'm jumping off to let Jenny watch TV on my computer.

Picture time.

Here's some catfish we baked a few weeks ago. Fresh garlic and parsley, dried sage and oregano, and other stuff I don't remember. We added the recipe to our cookbook, because it was so good you'd have thought one of those fish had been the reincarnation of Buddha.

This is what my cayenne pepper plant looks like now. It used to cower under the shadow of that tropical whatever-it-is on the left, and now it's practically a tree. There are too many peppers on it to count. Whatever I don't eat I'll dry and crush to make my own fresh cayenne pepper seasoning. I'm like a fucking farmer or something now.

I love this picture. I mean look at it. It was raining, and she's so cute, collecting rainwater for the plants instead of tapwater from the hose. What can you do when faced with such adorability except take a picture of it?

Geek gear incoming.

I ordered one of these tonight:

It's a Sapphire ATI Radeon 4870 1GB video card. It's a ridiculous beast of a card that grossly outclasses everything else in my PC. And I don't care. I want it.

I'm slowly rebuilding my once mighty PC into a modern gaming rig. When I put it together in early 2006, it wasn't a world-conquering monster, but it was still pretty menacing, and would beat the hell out of just about any game I wanted to play. But over time the upgrades slowed down and finally stopped. I haven't been able to play any new games that I actually want in nearly two years (aside from Half-Life 2: Episode Two and Call of Duty 4, due to their versatile game engines). I've filled the time with older games that I can run well, but that will only take you so far.

So in the last few months I started upgrading again. I bought a new case, a monolithic all-aluminum Rocketfish based on this Lian Li box. Then last week I installed a new 36" rounded EIDE cable for my hard drives (due to the size of the new case and for better cooling) and a very decent Apevia 680W power supply, which jumped from $80 when I bought it to $110 today, so I got lucky there. Now I'm adding a mid-to-high-range vidcard for an absurdly reasonable $150.

That leaves the RAM, which is still just 1GB PC3200, and my processor, a single-core AMD64 4000+. Both are still very usable, and I can upgrade them. The socket 939 is old, but can take a dual-core CPU. But the new vidcard will be downward-compated (so to speak) since I don't have PCI-e 2.0. So the next step really should be to upgrade the motherboard, CPU, and RAM all at once. That can't happen right now, or even in the foreseeable future.

That's why I bought the 4870. It will run anything I throw at it, and should make up for the CPU and RAM for a while. It opens up two to three years worth of games to me (Bioshock, Saint's Row 2, CoD: World at War, Oblivion, Fallout 3), and will make many of the games I already have much, much more enjoyable (S.T.A.L.K.E.R., CoD 4, Ghost Recon: AW, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, and more).

Oh, and I bought a Shane Battier Grizzlies replica jersey, the old 2001-2003 style. I've wanted one for eight years. It's in pristine condition and I paid less than four bucks for it. I'm wearing it right now. Pics will follow, because I think of all the stuff I bought today, this one makes me the happiest.

Starting over. Again.

I reinstalled Windows this weekend. It has been an ordeal. I'm not happy about it. Here's why:*

I never actually got around to blogging about this, but a couple months ago I bought a new case, gutted my PC, and performed transplant surgery. The procedure was only moderately successful. Due to the sheer size of the new box, I've needed a new power supply unit and a new EIDE cable ever since. It works, but until I buy the afforementioned replacement parts, I can only run one hard drive and one optical drive, and my current PSU is hanging off the motherboard instead of being solidly attached to the bottom of the box as it should be.

Meanwhile, my OS has been getting more and more unstable. I haven't reinstalled in two years, and even before that, I had severe boot issues that were never resolved. Last Thursday my video card started overheating, which, on top of everything else, was just... just super. I discovered that its fan was no longer turning properly. I can't tell if the bearings are wearing or if it's just out of lubricant, but it doesn't matter because I disassembled the entire thing and I can't fix it.

This is the point where I said, "Fuck it." Using Jenny's computer, I pulled everything I wanted to save off of my primary, 250GB hard drive and my secondary, 100GB drive (that I haven't been able to use lately), burned it to disc, installed the 100 gigger back into my PC as the main drive, and put a clean install of XP Pro on it (that I luckily happened to have lying around).

Without a proper video card, I'm back to running on my mobo's Xpress 200 chipset, but at least everything is working. I can even boot normally, which means I was right in my long-held theory that there's a bad sector somewhere on my 250 gigger that caused the boot problems that survived the system restore two years ago.

So now, after two days of updating drivers, rebooting, updating Windows, rebooting, reinstalling critical software, rebooting, updating Windows again, rebooting, and updating Windows again, all I have to do is buy and install a new 20"+ EIDE cable, a new video card, and a new ATX PSU with at least 7 auxilliary connectors. And hope that my 250GB HD isn't a piece of shit.

So, yeah. Fun three-day weekend.

*you don't care why, but I'm posting it anyway

I think I've settled on a desktop.

Completing my Boring Post Trifecta, here's what my desktop will look like for the foreseeable future:

Windowblinds theme is Rapture XP, Rainmeter configs are MKG Plus and Black and Red, and the wallpaper, I found on Deviantart. "Darkness" by Amystikal.

Anyway, Jenny just got home from school. We're watching NCIS. Or at least she is, as I'm headed off to bed. End of post starts.... now.

Roll-style updated.

Okay, so now this is how I roll:

I found that wallpaper on DeviantArt months ago, but I replaced a Deftones album cover with a pic of Jenny. I changed the Rainmeter fonts. Running WinAmp instead of Xion. Moved the two quicklaunch areas a bit. Oh, and the weather changed, apparently. It's "fair" now. Yeah, I'm bored.

Still, looks decent, no?

This is how I roll.

Now that I have a 21-inch CRT, I have acres of desktop space to play with, and numerous resolutions to choose from. So I've been playing around with some relatively advanced desktop customization to take advantage of my hardware. As of ten minutes ago, my workspace looks like this:

It's a combination of Windowblinds 5.51, Rainmeter, and Xion. An hour ago, it looked completely different; as I said, I'm still trying to settle on something I'm comfortable using all the time. I tend to waver between an austere, minimalist feel (as shown) and a much more organic, stylish, natural look (like the one I had set up a few minutes ago). I'll probably end up with a couple of configurations that I can quickly switch between.

By the way, if you're still reading this self-indulgent pointlessness, congratulations, you're me.

Chrome and PvZ are cool. I HAVE SPOKEN.

I have a new obsession, and it's called Plants vs. Zombies.

I don't know why this game is so addictive. It just is. I dare you to play the 1-hour demo and not end up with the full game. It's like Peggle for people who enjoy using anthropomorphic plants to murder strangely-dressed zombies. Which is really everyone, isn't it?

Moving on. I'm using Google's Chrome browser almost exclusively now. I'm not saying it's better, in general, than Firefox, but it suits my needs better. This is partly because I still haven't gotten the latest Flash plugin to work correctly with Firefox, forcing me to use the TabSwitch extension too often; using IE8 in any way whatsoever is unacceptible to me. Because it's fucking awful.

The only advantages Firefox still has over Chrome, at least for me, are two extensions: Sage for RSS feeds and Adblock for making the web not suck as much. Chrome is so fast, however, and has such a good blank tab page, that it doesn't really bother me that these features are missing. I still haven't tried the new Safari release, and I'm not planning to. The last version was terrible, and I don't see how it can possibly be better than Chrome anyway.

Wish I was home.

So I'm at my mom's house, watching the NBA finals while watching the dogs. My mom's in Birmingham helping out with my granddad, who had a brain tumor removed a couple weeks ago. He's doing really well, but his kids are keeping an eye on him until he fully recovers. They're taking it in turns, and unfortunately my mom's turn came up when one of her dogs, Lucy, is really sick. I don't know what's wrong with her, but just checking in on them and letting them out and feeding them and whatever has turned into a full-on dogsitting gig. I'm spending my second night here, and apparently my dog YaYa isn't taking it so well. I knew she liked me, but I didn't think she'd, you know, miss me. I love that dog.

Anyway, Lucy here has been sick for a while, but with my granddad ill and with my step-grandfather dying last week, my mom hasn't done anything about it, and now Lucy's getting worse by the day. In a sense, I don't blame my mom, but in another, more accurate sense, I really do. But there's no point in assigning blame, it's just important that she's coming back a day early (tomorrow) to take her to the vet.


Meanwhile, I'm finding it hard to sleep. I miss Jenny terribly, and I'm not used to sleeping on that little twin bed in the guest room. I slept on it last night, and all afternoon at work today my spine felt like it was going to wrench itself out of my body and strangle me for making it bend down so I could acid-adjust forklift batteries all goddamn day. So I'm wide awake at 10:30 and I think I'm going to be late to work tomorrow. If I work the full 8 hours I'm pushing overtime anyway, and god knows they don't want that to happen. Anyway the manager isn't going to be there tomorrow, so fuck it. All I have to do is make a few trips out to West Memphis to pick up some batteries.


Anyhow. I gotta try to feed Lucy again and take them out once more before I sack out. If you're reading this, Jenny, love you! See you tomorrow afternoon.

A Message for Michael Heisley

You can trust Sam Waterston.

Another snow post.

Here's a short (very short) video showing just how much Yaya enjoyed last weekend's snowfall.

It's hard to see her, but she's standing right in front of the door. Way to live life to the fullest, dog.

So it snowed here. A lot.

We never get snow here. In general, we'll get one appreciable snowfall per winter, usually less than an inch. But for some reason last weekend we got our asses handed to us (in snow form). Here in Raleigh we got around 6 inches; here's what it would have looked like if you were me and were looking through our camera at our front yard Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning:






Three days later it was sunny and 70 degrees. But it was great while it lasted. Also, someone around the block from us built a snowman right next to the street with great big boobs. Didn't get a picture, you'll have to take my word for it.

There's a wookiee hiding in there somewhere.

RPG attempt 4.0

I have a long and brief career with RPG video games. It's never been a genre I've been attracted to, it's just something I've dabbled in. So here's the rundown.


First there was Sword of Vermilion, a Genesis RPG I bought almost two decades ago for reasons I forgot almost one decade ago. I remember that the music was awesome, but at a certain point I hit a wall where I needed to level up way too many times to continue the story quests than I had the patience for. I'd already bought Sonic the Hedgehog 3, and my friend had Sonic & Knuckles, so fuck this RPG shit, it's ring-collectin' time.


I didn't play another RPG for nearly ten years, when Garrett left Panzer Dragoon Saga in my possession for a while. I loved that game, and actually played it through to completion at least three times. I didn't know at the time that it was one of the most rare and coveted US Saturn games in existence, but I understand why. It was a very linear game, but the atmosphere, exploration, and action (real-time combat) hooked me immediately. It helped that I owned (still own, actually) Panzer Dragoon 1 and 2.


Roughly eight years later, I picked up S.T.A.L.K.E.R. via Steam, a first-person RPG/shooter. I played it pretty regularly for a couple weeks, but the slow pace killed it for me. I'd spend half an hour walking around for two minutes of combat, then another hour of walking to buy an upgrade, which would let me walk for another hour to get somewhere I'd spend 20 minutes looking around for a specific item I could bring back to some lazy fuck two hours walk away, and that constitued a quest. I'm sorry, but that's not action/RPG, that's just time-killing, and I do that at work five days a week, nine hours a day already. Call me when you've got something interesting to do, OK, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. developers? Also, enough with the fucking acronyms. I played this game for weeks, and I still don't know that the title of the goddamn game even stands for.


Which brings us to today. For Valentine's, Jenny and I went out and shoveled down some Italian food, then went shopping. I bought her a nice blouse, some nice earrings, and The Sims 2: Apartment Life (which was nice). And I got Fable: The Lost Chapters. Which is not only nice, it's one of the most awesome and addictive games I've ever played. It runs great on my PC, has tons of depth and replay, looks fantastic, has an amazing score, and is accessible enough for me (still an RPG n00b) to understand everything and kick ass/take names, while still presenting enough of a challenge to keep me on my toes. If this keeps up, I may end up spending what's left of my tax refund (after bills) not on a PC upgrade, but on an XBox 360, just so I can play Fable 2. Then again, I may blow it all on booze and cheeseburgers. Either way, WIN.

Getting l33ter every day. People still say "l33t," right?

So Jenny's old PC finally died a couple weeks ago. It was a slow, agonizing death, and we're all just glad it isn't suffering anymore. This weekend we bought Haley's old computer, and we're busy setting it up for The Lovely. Anyway, it's a little mini-ATX tower, and there's no longer any room on top of Jen's rig for the little 15" LCD monitor. Therefore:


Behold! My first multi-monitor set-up ever. And I'm already addicted to it. Forget the gaming applications, I just need the extra desktop space, and this is definitely the best way to get around a monitor with a max res of just 1280x1024. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to geek out for a while.

UPDATE: Two screens! For one computer! What is this, the future?!

Gaming/blogging before a long day.

So tomorrow my job is sending me on an all-day PM (preventative maintenance) to the Winchester plant outside Oxford, MS. They have eleven forklift batteries we'll have to clean and/or repair, plus maintenance on probably half a dozen chargers. I'll have to go in an hour early and I'll probably get back an hour late, and since this is my second PM this week, I'll probably end up with some overtime for the first time since I started this god forsaken job a few months ago. So tonight I'm taking it easy. Playing HL2: Episode Two, GTA San Andreas (roaming around at random in one of my 100% saves), and maybe some Call of Duty 4 later. I'm also watching the Griz, currently down three in the third against the Wolves.

I've got a backlog of games to get to now, thanks to a small amount of disposable cash and a huge sale on Steam. At last count, I now have 55 games installed on my PC, counting expansions (two each for Quake, Quake 2, and Ghost Recon) plus nine games I've uninstalled recently because I'm running out of room on my 200GB and 100GB hard drives. The number of games I have that I haven't yet beaten has grown from five or six a few months ago to something like two dozen. And I now own three games that I can't even run effectively on my rig, at least until I upgrade, including one I can't run at all (Lost Planet, a Christmas gift from Mike that I really wish I could run).

Moving on. I managed to get Jenny's camera working, so we've been taking pictures of just about anything again. For example, here's a picture of me pretending to be Gordon Freeman at work:


Either there's a healthpack in one of those crates, or I'm about to get fired for carrying around a crowbar for no discernible reason.


This is a late-seventies International Harvester Scout II that's been parked on McLean in north Midtown for at least a year and a half. The first car I ever owned was a black '76 Scout II, and every time I see this truck I have a little flashback to 1995.


Maggie says: "I'M SO HAPPY OMG!!!1!"


My girls. This is actually an old photo, which explains the Photoshopping I had to do to get it bright enough to appreciate. I'm pretty sure Yaya was thinking, "You're using me as a photo-op, aren't you?"