Weekend Update: 2008-01-06

Dunno what my last journal entry covered, so let me start at the top – we rang in 2008 at the traditional party at Dan and Doug’s, which is always fun and pretty low-key, and thankfully a few blocks away so we don’t have to risk life and limb. I got really toasted, but managed to not have a hangover the next day; pretty excellent. I seem to have made a dozen different resolutions lately; I’ll work on them if I remember them all. The books resolution is firmly cemented and I’m sure I’ll do well on it.

I have a new niece as of January 2nd at 3:42 a.m. My sister Stacy had her baby, named Annabelle. I’m suffering from “Twitter is killing my blogging” or I would have mentioned it before now.

Stacy's baby Annabelle

So I’m an aunt, again. Yay! Stephanie and I decided we’d get the kid started right, so we set up an ING savings account and automated it to deposit $20 ever month. After a couple of years, we’ll look at investing it. Stephanie’s Dad invested the money her family gave to her when she was a baby and she has a nice nest egg because of it, so I thought it would be good to do something similar for my niece.

This weekend we had a really full To Do list, and we managed to get a lot of it done. We put away all the Christmas decorations and finally cleaned up after all the Christmas baking and the tons of cooking we’ve done at home lately. We’ve done really well about making meals at home rather than dining out, but it does have a tendency to trash the kitchen. We got other vacuuming and cleaning done, and I managed to finally package up and get ready to mail some gifts we’ve had around the house since this summer. I completely failed to do my crime watch block leader stuff; I’ll have to get to it soon.

I had a full-blown cold after Christmas that went away, but left some sort of sinus thing in it’s wake that I can’t seem to shake. Dunno what that’s about. On January 18th, I’m going to be getting laser surgery on my eyes to correct my vision. I’ll take a few days off, but I’m not too worried about it. I have a pretty high pain threshold these days. If it doesn’t involve I giant hole in my chest, I’m not bothered.

I’m going to keep track of the movies we watch in 2008, in addition to the books I read. I’ve never really kept track before, but in reconstructing this past year’s list, it’s apparent movies aren’t really a high priority in our house. I can recall seeing 24 movies, and only 6 of them were in the theater. The bulk of our movie watching was on Netflix. I’ll reconstruct the list in another post.

This weekend we got the movie Madeline from Netflix and watched it. It’s a live-action version of the children’s book that Stephanie adored as a kid, so it’s been in our queue. It was cute but the story didn’t flow well, and we spent the whole movie analyzing what plot points came from the books. However I have had the Carly Simon theme song stuck in my head all morning, so it made some sort of impression.

I’m currently in the middle of reading The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books by J. Peder Zane (a present from Stephanie’s Mom) and The Dangerous Book for Boys by Conn Iggulden and Hal Iggulden, which was a present from my friend Jen.

I’ve also been playing several different video games from bigfishgames.com. We had a coupon for free downloads with a Barnes and Noble purchase, and after playing their version of Mahjongg, I started looking at some of their other games, including Madame Fate, Mystery Case Files – Huntsville, and Mystery Case Files – Ravenhurst. They’re basically scavenger hunt-like games, where you poke around rooms and find missing items. I find them a lot more fun than war games and blowing up crap, though.

Continue ReadingWeekend Update: 2008-01-06

Rumor: Katamari for Wii?

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The rumor is flying on all the gaming sites out there on the interweb tubes, but the article has been pulled from the original source:
Beautiful Katamari is set to be released in the USA on October 17th for $39.99 on the PS3 (with SIXAXIS support) and XBOX 360. The Wii version will arrive shortly after on November 14th on the Wii for $29.99.
God, I hope that’s true – that would tip me off of my current “which platform to get next?” dilemma over into getting a Wii.

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Interoffice Games

A list of games to play at work, shamelessly cribbed from Jane McGonigal’s gaming blog, but she received it in e-mail from her mom, so fair sharing must apply. I recognize some of these from some of my other lists of pranks you can play.

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ONE-POINT OFFICE DARES

1) Run one lap around the office at top speed.
2) Ignore the first five people who say ‘good morning’ to you.
3) Phone someone in the office you barely know, leave your name and say, “Just called to say I can’t talk right now. Bye.”
4) To signal the end of a conversation, clamp your hands over your ears and grimace.
5) Leave your zipper open for one hour. If anyone points it out, say, “Sorry, I really prefer it this way.”
6) Walk sideways to the photocopier.
7) While riding in an elevator, gasp dramatically every time the doors open.

THREE-POINT DARES

1) Say to your boss, “I like your style” and shoot him with double-barreled fingers.
2) Babble incoherently at a fellow employee then ask, “Did you get all that, I don’t want to have to repeat it.”
3) Page yourself over the intercom (do not disguise your voice).
4) Kneel in front of the water cooler and drink directly from the nozzle(there must be a ‘non-player’ within sight).
5) Shout random numbers while someone is counting.

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FIVE POINT DARES

1) At the end of a meeting, suggest that, for once, it would be nice to conclude with the singing of the national anthem (5 extra points if you actually launch into it yourself).
2) Walk into a very busy person’s office and while they watch you with growing irritation, turn the light switch on/off 10 times.
3) For an hour, refer to everyone you speak to as “Bob.”
4) Announce to everyone in a meeting that you “really have to go do a number two.”
5) After every sentence, say ‘Mon’ in a really bad Jamaican accent. As in “The report’s on your desk, Mon.” Keep this up for 1 hour.
6) While an office mate is out, move their chair into the elevator.
7) In a meeting or crowded situation, slap your forehead repeatedly and mutter, “Shut up, all of you just shut up!”
8) At lunchtime, get down on your knees and announce, “As God as my witness, I’ll never go hungry again.”
9) In a colleague’s DAY PLANNER, write in the 10am slot: “See how I look in tights.” (5 Extra points if it is a male, 5 more if he is your boss)
10) Carry your keyboard over to your colleague and ask, “You wanna trade?”
11) Repeat the following conversation 10 times to the same person: “Do you hear that?” “What?” “Never mind, it’s gone now.”
12) Come to work in army fatigues and when asked why, say, “I can’t talk about it.”
13) Posing as a maitre d’, call a colleague and tell him he’s won a lunch for four at a local restaurant. Let him go.
14) Speak with an accent (French, German, Porky Pig, etc) during a very important conference call.
15) Find the vacuum and start vacuuming around your desk.
16) Hang a 2′ long piece of toilet roll from the back of your pants and act genuinely surprised when someone points it out.
17) Present meeting attendees with a cup of coffee and biscuits, smashing each biscuit with your fist.
18) During the course of a meeting, slowly edge your chair towards the door.
19) Arrange toy figures on the table to represent each meeting attendee, move them according to the movements of their real-life counterparts.

TEN POINT DARES

And if that wasn’t enough for you… How to keep a healthy level of insanity:
1) At lunchtime, sit in your parked car with sunglasses on and point a hair dryer at passing cars. See if they slow down.
2) Tell your children over dinner. “Due to the economy, we are going to have to let one of you go.”
3) Every time someone asks you to do something, ask if they want fries with that.
4) Put your waste basket on your desk and label it “IN”.
5) Put decaf in the coffee maker for 3 weeks. Once everyone has gotten over his or her caffeine addictions, switch to espresso.
6) Finish all your sentences with “In accordance with the prophecy.”

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Video Games I’d Love to Play

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I’ve picked these up several times in the store, but they’re PC games, and I have a Mac, so I haven’t bought ’em. I wish they made more games like this for the Xbox — I tend to not be interested in the “kill kill kill, die die die” shooting games, but that’s most of what you find for Xbox players. In retrospect, I think one of the other gaming consoles would have been a better choice for me. PC owners can play W888 games instead. Visit levelupcasino.com if you would like to give casino gaming a try. And if you want to win exciting prizes, check out slot gacor today! Stephanie’s offered several times to let me play games on her PC, but I hate to monopolize her machine for something as frivolous as video games. Check out slot gacor games here.

Agatha Christie: And Then There Were None
Agatha Christie’s world-famous novel, And Then There Were None, is brought to the PC with all of its original baffling suspense! Ten people, strangers to each other, are invited to a lavish estate on an island. Through a recording, their mysterious host accuses each of his “guests” of murder and proceeds to exact “justice.” The tension mounts as, one-by-one, the number of people are reduced through the ingenious plotting of the unseen killer. Prepare to play the video game based on the best-selling murder mystery of all time! This game includes the original book.

Nancy Drew: The Creature of Kapu Cave
In Nancy Drew: The Creature Of Kapu Cave, Nancy travels to Hawaii as a research assistant for Dr. Quigley Kim to determine why the population of native caterpillars has exploded. The Hardy Boys, on a separate covert operation, are also visiting — and both stumble across the mystery of the Hilihili research compound and its evil vibes. Some believe it’s linked to the legend of Kane ?Okala. Local legend has it that a long time ago, a man was sacrificed to the hungry volcano to appease it. Kane ?Okala, or “the rough-skinned man,” later escaped from the volcano, but he was scarred for life with a rough-skinned and frightening appearance. When Nancy arrives at Camp Quigley, she sees a monster ravaging the camp, and soon discovers that Dr. Quigley is missing! Could the monster she saw be Kane ?Okala? She’ll have to team up with the Hardy Boys to find out!

Mystery Case Files: Huntsville
Crime spree baffles Huntsville police! Do you have a keen eye for details? See if you can locate enough hidden clues to solve the crimes and become a Master Detective! For more immersive games similar to this, you can click links like 해외배팅사이트.

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Video Game encouraging killing gay people

A description of the new “Left Behind” video game, based on the series of books, the game will be release in October 0f 2006, just in time for Christmas. The synopsis is from the “Talk to Action” website. The game has been previewed at video game exhibitions.

Imagine: you are a foot soldier in a paramilitary group whose purpose is to remake America as a Christian theocracy, and establish its worldly vision of the dominion of Christ over all aspects of life. You are issued high-tech military weaponry, and instructed to engage the infidel on the streets of New York City. You are on a mission – both a religious mission and a military mission — to convert or kill Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, gays, and anyone who advocates the separation of church and state – especially moderate, mainstream Christians. Your mission is “to conduct physical and spiritual warfare”; all who resist must be taken out with extreme prejudice. You have never felt so powerful, so driven by a purpose: you are 13 years old. You are playing a real-time strategy video game whose creators are linked to the empire of mega-church pastor Rick Warren, best selling author of The Purpose Driven Life.

If the purpose of your life is to kill or convert me, you’re in for a very short and unhappy existence, people.

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2006 ICAAN Scavenger Hunt

I’m going to write an article about this for IndyScribe, but I thought I’d do a short blog post about it here, first. Yesterday, Stephanie and I and our friends Jen and Lori were on a scavenger hunt team to benefit ICAAN, a local organization that trains helper dogs and at the same time helps troubled youth by having them train dogs.
Among the wacky things we did for charity — Stephanie and I both ate dog biscuits to get 250 points. They were pretty yummy, actually; they came from the Three Dog Bakery.
2006 ICAAN Scavenger Hunt
Here’s a photo of our team… #9: Acting out the “Sharks Vs. Jets” dance scene from West Side Story in front of a local theatre. (200 points)
See all of our pictures from the event in this Flickr photoset.
Our team, “The Escalator Accident” finished pretty respectably out of the 39 teams — in the top ten.

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Destroy All Humans

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EB Games finally had the Xbox game “Destroy All Humans” on sale used when I went in there this weekend, so I got it. It’s loads of fun. You’re an alien tasked with invading the planet earth and gathering human DNA, which contains the pure DNA pattern for your alien race, which has degraded over the years. You start by invading a farm (It’s a first-person shooter game) — the Turnipseed Farm — and using brain scans, telekinetic powers, a zapping gun and a few anal probes, you knock off the humans and steal their brain stems. And you throw a few cows around, too. Then you move on to knocking over the state fair and luring the fair queen to your saucer to get “probed.” Its a lot of fun so far; easy to figure out and play, and follows control conventions of other games I’ve played, with a lot of creative flair. Definitely a keeper.

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Pillow Fight Club

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More public game ideas — Pillow fight Club is where strangers arrange to get together and have a giant pillow fight, with some specific rules:

  1. Tell everyone about Pillow Fight Club.
  2. Tell everyone about Pillow Fight Club.
  3. Turn up at the arranged Pillow Fight Club venue with pillow hidden in a bag.
  4. At the exact given time pull out pillow and fight.
  5. You cannot fight anyone without a pillow (unless they want it).

Pillow Fight Clubs meet spontaneously, connected by an idea and with a loosely shared objective. Their aim is to turn a regular public space into a pillow fight zone and a group of strangers into a community for the duration of the fight. They also aim to provide commuters amusement and bewilderment. Together with Flash Mobbing events, like Mobile Clubbing, their intention is to re-invent the way people view the use of public spaces.

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World of Warcraft and GLBT Guilds

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Interesting… Blizzard Entertainment, the company that produces the World of Warcraft MMORPG is penalizing players for identifying themselves as gay in the game, saying that they are doing it for the “protection” of gay players:

While we appreciate and understand your point of view, we do feel that the advertisement of a ‘GLBT friendly’ guild is very likely to result in harassment for players that may not have existed otherwise.

So rather than deal with the people who do the harassing, they’re just not letting gay people be openly gay inside the game.

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Graphic Artist Ian Albert

Ian Albert is an awesome graphic artist who has some interesting hobbies – like constructing huge maps of game worlds by grabbing screen captures. I was fascinated by Super Mario world, which I played with my old roommate back in 1993.
He also has some other colossal images, like and enormous map of the world, that if printed, would be something like six feet tall.
He’s also recreated online versions of all the US Government’s Hazmat Placards.

Continue ReadingGraphic Artist Ian Albert