Putting the mental in Fundamentalist

I took the family camping again last weekend. It worked out quite a bit better than last time, the kids were behaving and I was able to get my drink on. Of course we at least had stuff to do this time. Cambria has a little schindig called Park Days at the end of July. For a tiny village of 600 it's not too bad, Friday night is 'Mexican Night' (for lack of a better word). They serve some authentic tacos and burritos, etc. and those by themselves are awesome. There's also either a live Mexican band or DJ. Why Mexican night? Well, the one main industry in Cambria is vegetable canning, you do the math.

There's also a slow pitch softball tournament that goes from Friday to Monday that's hilarious to watch too. Mostly it's funny just because these guys show up in $60 cleats and toting 3-4 $100 bats and their $50 glove...just to hit lobbed softballs. On top of that most of them are drunk as hell by the end of the day so that's always funny too.

Of course it ended up being a late night so I had to set up the tent by the light of the car headlights while Pam got a fire going (which turned out pretty well). The kids got their s'mores, I got my b'eers and much fun was had.

Saturday, they have a parade which is pretty decent, and then more fun and games down by the park. They usually have some decent juggler performing down there. While waiting for the act to start the kids saw a tent for facepainting and wanted to do that. On the tent there's also a thing for "Wordless storytelling". Yeah, I said "what the fuck?" too. We go in and they won't paint the kids until they hear the story. Warning bells are now going off in my head, but we're sucked in now. I'll look like an asshole if I take the kids out now, so we sit down and listen to the story.

The girl presenting it was maybe all of 13 or 14 but she already had that glazed over zealot look in her eyes. You know the one where they're trying to look excited about what they are saying but they're looking a little too excited. She has a book with several colors, and I shit you not it went a little something like this:

This color's gold, that's what the streets in heaven are made of. That's where god is and god is awesome. She then pulls out the bible and reads off a verse about how awesome heaven is (wordless storytelling my ass).

This color is black. It represents sin. Everyone wants to do sin and sin is bad. If you sin, you get sent to hell forever to suffer.

Red. Jesus is cool, he died for you

White. Ask for forgiveness and always go to a "bible-believing" church

Green. Continue to grow by following the word of God.

They had my kids pray with her....of course saying they don't have to do "anything they don't want to." Of course, I'm not going to be that big of an asshole and start flailing about, but doesn't that seems like she's pressuring a little? Then the story was over and the kids got their painting done.

First of all let me say that I'm a mehtheist. In other words, I really don't give a fuck if there is a god one way or another. I lean toward there not being a god but I just don't care. It doesn't make me a bad person, but I'd rather my morality come from doing what feels right rather than out of fear of some invisible guy in the sky ready to knock me down if I do wrong. Secondly, I am generally respectful of other people's rights to practice whatever religion they choose even if privately I may mock parts of said religion. All that I ask is that you keep your fucking religion to yourself. I do not need to be saved or otherwise converted. My respect for your religious preference ends when you stick it in my face. I am comfortable in my spiritual viewpoints and when my kids grow up they can do whatever they want.

However, in this case, there are several things that just piss me off about the whole thing. First of all they misrepresented who they were and what really is happening inside the tent. Secondly, talking about going to hell and Jesus dying is a bit much for a 3 and 5 year old, even if they were regular Sunday Schoolers it would be too much (although I get the impression that it was directed at my wife and I). Thirdly, targeting kids is just bullshit. If it's bad for the tobacco companies it's bad for religion. Let them grow up and be able to make their own decisions.

The fallout of this is that on the way back to the campsite, Genna (our oldest) was talking about it but got the message a little garbled. She thinks she's supposed to be good or God/Jesus are going to kill her. Good job you fundamentalist whack job. Now I have to fix my kid's perception of your bullshit religion :( Why do the fundies have to believe their ticket to heaven can be bought with converts? Shouldn't they just worry about being good little followers? Why would they want non-believers to convert anyways? If they don't believe already why would you want to share an afterlife with them?

Anyways, rant over. The rest of the weekend was great and much fun was had by all.

Dog days of summer

It's been a while since I've blogged about my personal life. I guess it's probably because it's a bunch of the same old shit happening and when something different does happen, I'm to indifferent to blogging about it. A few things that have happened are that I've got a netbook now. All that plasma donation has finally paid off. It's nice having a (almost) full sized computer to play with. Also....uh....ah...I can't really think of anything major that's happened since my last post :(

We're getting into the busy part of summer now, so that every other weekend when Pam's not working we've got some big event going on. Last weekend was our first week camping. It went pretty well, considering I'm not an outdoorsy person. We're still streamlining our camping approach, however we still managed to forget a few things (more firewood, seasonings for chicken, etc) but I was able to McGyver a few things together. It also reminded us that it would be nice to have a list in order make sure we have what we need.

The place we were at was Kilby Lake campground, just outside of Montello. This one became our favorite right from the start because all they did was carve out each campsite from the forest, leaving natural barriers between you and your neighbors so that it feels a little more private. However, the first thing Genna did was investigate the site next door and found another 5 year old girl to play with. That normally would have been OK, except that if Genna wasn't over at the neighbor's campsite, their kid was over by us. It got to the point where we literally had to tell Genna that she needs some family time without her friend hanging out.

My favorite part about camping is just sitting by the fire drinking beer and talking about nothing. I didn't get to do too much of that because we didn't take enough wood for the first night, and the second we were too exhausted. It didn't help that the kids just cannot seem to settle down at night, in fact the later it gets the wilder they semm. I don't know how to fix that at all.

Anyways, there was a lot of fun had by all with the berry picking and hayrides and what not. They had a pig roast on the day we were there and that was some good stuff too. The campground has decent wifi up by the office, and I was able to get a better EDGE signal on my cell phone than when I'm at home (that's funny). The game room was mostly filled with broke ass games, but Genna and I managed to get the high score on 1942 (her shooting and me steering).

I don't know why I like camping so much but I'm glad I do and I'm glad we're taking the kids. I didn't get much of that experience when I was a kid so it's new to me too :) It's also nice to like camping because we're doing it 2-3 more times this year.

Belated Game Reviews: Godfather II

Godfather II is a successful followup to the first Godfather game which puts you in the shoes of Dominic, an Underboss in the Corlone family.  The story takes place after Michael Corleone takes over the family and it starts in Cuba with a meeting of five Mafia family in Cuba in an attempt to consolidate their business influence down there.  There's one little problem: Some guy named Fidel Castro decided to pick THAT day as the day to start his little revolution against the government.  Some timing huh?

Of course, once you fight your way out of Cuba and make it back to New York, some other family has to start some shit and then it's on.  The game follows Dominic from his promotion to Don, building an army and then taking out the other 5 families to make the Corleone's the only family in town.

The gameplay is a blend of Monopoly, Risk,  and Grand Theft Auto.  You can view a map that lists all the available businesses you can take over.  If you have enough made men, you can send your boys on their own to take it out for yourself, or bomb it to take it out of the picture for a while.  Most times though, you'll be doing it yourself.  You can add up to three made men to your crew and pay a visit to your rivals businesses.   Ideally, you'll want to take out all the guards before "convincing" the owner of the business to start giving you money. 

Unfortunately, it's not as easy as just taking over businesses.  You have to stock your owned locations with your own paid goons because the rival families are not going to sit idly by while you take over their rackets.  They'll actively send their own made men to take back what was theirs.  You can pull off hits on their made men by doing favors for random pedestrians on the streets.  Yeah it sounds weird but it's the only way to take out rival made men.

Once you take over a family's businesses you can attack their compound and blow it up to take out the entire family and put you one step closer to being the Don of Dons.

The game has taken hits in the media for it's excessive violence, swearing, and nudity but come on it's a game about mobsters.  Name me one mafia movie that doesn't have all the above.  It does get a little repetitive at times but it's still a damn good game in my opinion.

There is an online mode as well which I didn't play but it looks like standard fare (i,e. A CTF variant, Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch)

Final Verdict: 7.5/10

Trophy Whores: This ones a pretty easy trophy game, there's several trophies that you have to get before finishing the game because they have to be performed on mobsters and once you're done with the game there's no more mobsters.  Every other trophy is either a storyline trophy or can be easily gotten during gameplay.  2/10 for trophy difficulty

Father's Day Belated Game Review: Tomb Raider:Underworld

I had a pretty decent Father's Day. I got to sleep in, got breakfast in bed, had the kids behave for most of the day, and I also got to play Playstation all freaking day. The game I was playing was Tomb Raider:Underworld. In this one Lara Croft and her sizable assets :) are traveling across the world to find a way into Avalon which is where her thought-to-be-dead mother may be. Through out her quest she comes across many afterlife locales or ancient cultures (primarily Norse) such as Helheim, Xibalba, and Bhogovati.

The story also seems to be a continuation from the last Tomb Raider game, so it's helpful if you have played it, but not required at all (I haven't played it myself)

Graphically speaking, the game is impressive. The ruins are dark and forboding as they should be, it's raining hard in the jungle which has a very realistic look to it. There's different fluid effects for when you're underwater and above water. And Lara's, uh, assets are nicely rounded instead of the pointy boobs of yore :-P

Her character animations are nice and smooth. You can jump to a grabbable ledge, jump to a column, stand on top, turn and jump to a pole which you can shimmy or balance walk over, drop down and swing and jump to another ledge. Navigating the puzzles is very intuitive as long as you can see all the things you can jump to. Combat is fairly nice too. She has her trademark 45's and then has a choice per level of a secondary gun. Targeting is automatic and there usually never too many people to deal with at any one time that it becomes too hard.

Camera control is still a problem as with many 3rd person platformers. Tomb Raider is still very much a 3rd person platformer which means you need precise camera control to make jumps and stuff. Unfortunately this doesn't always happen. Many times you can't get behind Lara when she's on a ledge which means you can't really see what's in front of her, you can move to a top down view, but I don't think it would have killed them to give a 1st person view. When you consider how small some of the platforms are it is really necessary to see what you are doing. Also your actions are determined by the camera. That is to say if there's a wall on your charater's left but you have the camera so that it's on your right, you have to hold right on the controller and then jump. You get the hang of it but it still force you to think about it.

Trophies: As far as trophies go, they're all pretty easy, provided you have a guide for all the treasures and relics. You have to play through on the hardest difficulty but it's so easy in combat and generous with the health pack that you won't die from getting shot at but more often from missing jumps which obviously doesn't change per difficulty level. The Platinum can be had in about 16 hours.

Rating: 7/10

Belated Game Review: Terminator Salvation

This review is not so belated as the game's only a month old :)

Something interesting to note with this game is that the same parent company produced both the game and the movie. You would think that the game would be much better then because they could work with the concepts that the movie side is coming up with without really having to wait until the movie is finished. However, that promise is unfulfilled much like this game. That's not to say Terminator is necessarily a BAD game, but that it could have used another month or two of development time.

You play as John Connor (naturally) and the game story takes place before the movie. In the game, John Connor is just a solidier in the resistance who is doubting his place in the world and in the army. While in the midst of a battle he gets a distress call from a team deep in Skynet territory and against orders goes to save them, picking up people along the way and learning what it means to be a leader.

The game studio was able to get every character's likeness and voice from the movie except for Christian Bale (who just happens to be the lead freakin' character). So in his place is a non-descript created lookalike who doesn't look real at all (it's always the eyes, they can never get them right).

Essentially the game consists of 2 parts, urban fighting where you are trying to find cover amongst the rubble and take out the various terminators that are sent and rail shooting, where you ride a set path and try to destroy the terminators that are chasing you.

The urban part is fairly decent, the big mechanic of the game is that while under cover, if you sneak to the edge of cover and hold the Left stick toward another piece of cover, you will get a pop up of the points you can run to. When you press X John will sprint to the next piece of cover. You can use this to get behind the enemies. The movements look really fluid and natural so that's at least one thing they did right. I would like to see that used more in other games.

You need to be able to get behind the terminators, because for a lot of them that's where the weak spot is. The AI in this game is semi decent as well because you can keep a terminator occupied and they will actually shoot it in the back. The other nice thing is that you can also play co-op if you want another person to help getting to the backside.

Rail shooting is frustrating though, there are too many machines and it's damn near impossible to center on them long enough to shoot. You will be able to make it through but it's tough.

That's realy all there is to the game. You can tell it's lacking as there's only 8 different weapons and 7 different terminators. The game can be knocked out in hard mode in 6 hours and as far as trophies go there's only 12, but they can all be gotten in 1 playthrough on hard and they are all gold.

Final Verdict: An otherwise promising game cut short by having to release on the same day as the movie. It's worth a rent, but not much more than that. I give it a 5.5/10



PS3 Trophies

Belated Game Reviews: Burnout Paradise

PS3 Trophies

I've been having issues with the ps3trophycard site, so I created an account over at Playfire which isn't blocked at work. The results of that are up at the top of the post here.

The next game in my series of overdue game reviews is Burnout Paradise, which is the 7th game in the Burnout series. This version of the game has an open world concept like Midnight Club. You can drive around at your leisure. There are 95 different events set up at intersections. When you are at one you want to start, you hit L2 + R2 and then you'll be given the parameters of the race. There are several different modes of racing:

-Race: Obviously, you are to go from Point A to Point B and come in 1st place
-Burning Route: There is one for each car you can find. All you have to do it go from Point A to Point B under a certain time. You're rewarded with an upgraded version of the car you are driving
-Road Rage: My personal favorite, you have to run a certain number of your competitors off the road in under 2 minutes (although you get +10 seconds per wreck)
-Stunt Run: Pull off chains of stunts to beat a given score
-Marked Man: Get from Point A to Point B, except everyone is trying to run you off the road. This one is frustrating because even if you are driving a truck you will still have cars run you off the road.

Additionally there are 2 scores per road to beat, the 1st is a time score. It starts when you hit the beginning of the street and ends at the end (duh). The second is a showtime score. You can hit L1+R1 to go into showtime mode where you deliberately crash into cars for points and boost, you can use the boost to propel the car down the road. It's graded on the number of cars you hit and how far you go, with buses added +1 to your multiplier.

To progress in the game you need to complete events to raise your license level up from D to Criterion Elite (SSS) [You only need to get Class S for the trophies]. Going from one license to the next will reward you with a new car and after a certain # of events you will be notified that a certain model of car is driving around. If you crash it you get to keep it. There are technically 35 cars in the game but each one has a souped up varient that you can get by winning a Burning Route

Graphically, the game is impressive (although I'd expect no less from the series) Car crashes look very realistic. There is a very nice selection of cars which are modeled on a wide variety of real cars. When you're boosting with the last car you get everything is just a blur.

Musically the game has 40 licensed tracks, with the theme being "Paradise City" by Guns n' Roses naturally. There are also another 40 previous Burnout songs and Classical Music. You might want to turn down the engine noises in the settings because even though they sound nice, they can be annoying after a while (just ask my wife).

I found the game to be extremely fun and replayable, especially because I'm not much of a racing person. It's like GTA in the sense that you can just fire up the game and drive around without worrying about the game. It's also nice because the game is still being updated (in fact the 1.9 update came out last night). Some of the DLC is free such as the motorcycle pack and Online pack. However, other's must be bought, such as the Cops and Robbers, Additional Car Packs, and Big Surf Island.

As far as trophies go, there are a shitload of them but the following apply to the main game only

37 Bronze / 10 Silver / 2 Gold / 1 Platinum

You only have to get all the original trophies for the Platinum, so when you get it your overall % will be around 47. The only hard one I found was getting all 8 people into the baseball stadium. What you can do is start your own online game and then tool around until you have 8 people (took me about 20 minutes). Then start Freeburn Challenge 2, which is for everyone to meet at the stadium and then as long as everyone participates (there are some asshats our there), then you'll get the trophy. Also 1 Bronze trophy requires a compatible USB camera for the PS3.

The Online Pack adds 4 Bronze, 1 Silver, and 1 Gold.
The Bike Pack adds 5 Bronze, 1 Silver, adn 1 Gold.
The Party Pack adds 3 Bronze and 4 Silver (USB camera needed)
The Car Packs add 4 Bronze and 4 Silver (You need all the cars pack though)
Cops and Robbers add 3 Bronze and 5 Silver
Finally, Big Surf adds 7 Bronze and 3 Silver

Wooo, that's a lot. However, it only took around 20 hours of playing to get the main trophies (although there's a lot of stuff in the game to do), the add on packs (if you choose) will keep you busy for a while)

Final Verdict: Burnout is part of Greatest Hits collection (and rightly so), so a new copy can be had for $30 and used is around $15-30. I'd say buy it used and you'll get 65 trophies easy and maybe more if you choose. If you buy all the DLC, it'll be around the price of a new game but with a lot to keep you busy.

Score 9.5 of 10

Belated Game Reviews - Alone in the Dark: Inferno

Now that I'm going through some of these older games for trophies, I may as well tell all y'all what I think about them and the prospects of getting trophies in the games. I'm hoping to try and make this a regular feature here.

Anywho. Alone in the Dark is credited as the first survival horror game, with Resident Evil coming after it. Alone in the Dark: Inferno is the 5th game in the series and some of the ways I've been able to describe it is a smarter Resident Evil and the best bad game I've played.

You play as Edward Carnby, a private dectective/paranormal researcher who is suffering from amnesia. You wake up in the beginning being held at gunpoint in a New York City hotel by two thugs who keep talking about handing over a stone. As the story progresses, you find that not all is what it seems in New York City. Large fissures at random keep opening up in floors and walls, etc. swallowing people whole or corrupting them into the "zombies" of the game, Humanz. The fissures seem to be radiating out from Central Park, which is where you eventually end up and discover the secret of.

Without giving too much away, the story involves the occult and gateways to the afterlife, and is very good. The voice actors do a very good job at conveying the story and what's going on without going too over the top which is something Resident Evil has had issues with in the past. The story is also broken up into 8 episodes. A nice touch is that each episode ends in a cliffhanger and then goes to credits. You can then choose to continue to the next episode or quit out. If you quit a selection of cutscene from the next chapter is shown, similar to a teaser trailer you may see at the end of a TV show. Additionally when you start a chapter from a saved game you get a recap of what's happened which I think is a nice touch. [Trophy note: there are at least 19 trophies from just progressing through the story and not killing a thing, except when you need to]

The graphics are good but not spectacular. I guess the thing is that I've never really seen a bad graphical game on the PS3 so it's hard to say how good they are. If we are comparing to Resident Evil 5 then I would say they definitely not as good as RE5.

Evironmental interaction is where AITD really shines. To start, you're inventory is limited to what you can carry in your jacket. When you access the inventory screen your character actually opens his jacket and looks down into it, which is a nice touch. You only have 1 of two guns during the game, a 9mm and a Magnum, but you have so many other options for destruction. You'll find all sorts of flammable bottles scattered across Central Park (apparently everyone drinks gasoline or Everclear there). The bottles come in glass and plastic varieties and it affects how they work. Glass obviously will smash, soaking the area in gas and making things flammable. Plastic doesn't. You can also find aeresol canisters that can be used as impromptu flamethrowers when used with your lighter, you can even pour gas on your bullets to make them fire bullets [Trophy note: There are 5 trophies for killing creatures in inventive ways]

The combinations of items are quite numerous. Sure you could just use bottles as bombs, throwing them and shooting when they are close to the creatures. You can also wrap the bottles in doublesided tape so they stick to the enemies and then shoot the bottles at the right time to take out more at one time. You can combine a handkerchief with a bottle to make a Molotov Cocktail. You can tape a flare to a bottle for a time bomb or a box of bullets to make a spread bomb. Flares and glowsticks can be taped to walls to add light to a dark hallway. [Trophy note: there are 8 trophies associated with item combinations]

The smartness of the game also extends to the cars, if you come up against a locked car, you can smash out a window and unlock it. Once inside you can check the glove compartment for items, and then check the sun visor for the key or hotwire it. You can also shoot out the gas tank to make it explode, or punch it with a knife to drain the gas into an empty bottle. [There are another 6 trophies related to cars, 4 of which can be had on the 1st car you see]

So by now you're wondering why I say it's also a bad game. Weeeeeellllll, to start the method of killing creatures sucks balls. They have these cracks on their bodies that have to be set on fire or they'll never go away. There's (usually) no shortage of flammable materials but it literally make your aerosol + lighter combo the most deadly in the game and not your gun. Actually unless your gun has fire bullets it's pretty worthless, and even then it's not incredibly useful as you have to shoot 2-3 fissures with fire bullets to kill the humanz and that's hard unless you've knocked them out already.

Secondly, you can only shoot in 1st person view and do melee attacks in 3rd person. Also the 3rd person view isn't all that great (although it's better than the XBox version)

Next, driving sucks and is a pain in the ass. If you hit the smallest bump, you'll fly out of control. Also with some ramps, you can't hit them straight on or it registers as a crash

If you quit in the middle of the chapter, even though you can save you still have to start from the beginning of the chapter with none of the in-chapter progress saved. This is especially a pain in the ass on Chapter 8. Speaking of, in Chapter 8 you have to take on a stupid quest to destroy certain targets which magically popped up in areas you already were in. Of course you need to destroy them all if you want the trophies.

AI characters are kind of dumb, but at least you're not tasked with keeping them alive as the humanz are programmed to go after you only.

You can take quite a beating, but if you touch fire for more than 3 seconds, you're toast.

Also I had the game freeze up on me twice during play, and if you try jumping on a car as a stepping stone the game sometimes recognizes that as getting hit.

The game has it's issues, however, it's still pretty playable....for about 12 hours, because that's all it takes to finish it, and you could probably do it quicker than me. The game has 50 trophies and you can get them with a single playthrough (no difficulty level BS) The breakdown is like this:
-43 Bronze
-3 Silver
-3 Gold
-1 Platinum

Final Verdict: Even though it's about $15-20 now, I'd still say this one is a renter. It shows flashes of brillance but is saddled with some questionable bugs/design choices. I'd definitely pick it up if you're looking for some cheap trophies because there aren't too many games easier than this for the # of trophies. I give it a 6/10

As promised....

Here is a link to my photostream where all the photos are.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cycoivan/3594426771/in/set-72157619158276159/

What in the hell happened to spring?

I've been lazy and haven't blogged for 2 weeks :( There's also just been a shitload of stuff going on. To start, Pam and I had quite the active Memorial Day weekend. Between her and I we got some of the outside trim painted, the garden planted, and a bunch of other little chores done that we've been sitting on for a while now. It's also been insanely busy at work (where I usually blog from). We have a large computer upgrade project right now and guess who get to deal with the computers that come back? That's right, it's me!

The other big part is that Pam and I went to Indianapolis this weekend for the NIN/JA tour show there. That was quite the adventure. I decided to go through Chicago, but I severely underestimated the traffic there. It took almost 2 hours to get from where Hwy 41 merges into I-94 to where I-94 meets I-65 in Indiana. On top of that, there was construction on I-65 so we were delayed by another half hour in addition to the hour lost to the Eastern Time Zone. Essentially we left at 11am CST and didn't get to the hotel until 8:30 PM EST. That meant our original plan of catching a dinner and movie was scrapped and we just got dinner instead. It was a very nice dinner though.

We went to Joe's Crab Shack and I liked it very much. We ordered 2 of their steampots which had quite a bit of food for the price. Pam got 2 bunches of crab legs, a pound of clams, sausage, corn, and potatoes. I got the Bean Town Bake which is 2 whole lobsters, 1 pound of clams, with shrimp sausage, corn, and potatoes. All of that ran about $55 which isn't bad considering the amount of food you get. For two lobsters (which were about 1 to 1 1/2 pounds) you would pay 35-50 dollars alone. Also the atmosphere was very nice and I do have a picture of me in my Joe's bib

Our hotel was a sweet deal through Hotwire. It was a single room, king size bed, with fridge, decent TV, free breakfast, etc. for about $40 a night. The breakfast was relatively decent, however the only hot food was biscuits and gravy and you could make your own waffles. Something about the food didn't really sit well with either of us (I think it was the gravy) Other than that, I can't complain.

I took Pam to go see Star Trek which was just fucking awesome. The best thing is that you don't really have to be a Star Trek nerd to enjoy it because it's a reintroduction to the cast and story (although you do have to kind of like sci fi a little bit). Even Pam had to begrudingly admit that it was pretty good. It's also kind of funny to take her to anything Star Trek because our first date some 14 years ago was to go see Star Trek: Generations. It's a wonder there was a 2nd date, let alone a marraige and kids.

After Star Trek went to the venue after that. It's really weird, there's nothing out there but the venue, some businesses and a upscale outdoor mall, which we killed some time at. As an aside, I got 3 new games from Gamestop (more on that later). The Verizon Music Center is a larger Indoor/outdoor ampitheater a la Alpine Valley so obviously there was quite a line when we got there. Even though we had preordered and got to go in before the rest of the general public, we still stood around for quite a while because they were late with sound check. It took about 30 minutes to get inside the outside gate and then we still had to stand in line for another 30 minutes to get inside the seating area, and another 45 minutes still to showtime. It amazes me how much these places fuck you in the ass for food and drinks. $9 for a 16 Oz glass of Busch? Gross. We did end up buying a little merchandise and actually the one thing they had at a decent price was a full size messenger bag which I needed anyways. It's canvas with plenty of pockets and it feels pretty sturdy for only $55 bucks. That's a lot of money you say? Well it's a steal when baseball hats and t-shirts are going for $30-40, $55 isn't all that bad. Anyways, here's what it looks like.

Our tickets were for the pit, and of course the "pit" is only 1000 square feet that they're trying to cram 500 (according to staff, I think there were more) people into. Pam and I have learned our lesson from before about getting too close to the stage so we sat by the back railing all night Still I was no more that 75 feet from the stage at all times so that was cool.

The show was pretty sweet but kind of disappointing at the same time. Street Sweeper Social Club was the opener. The band is a collaboration between Boots Riley of The Coup and Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine and they tore it up on stage. It's probably more funkier than Rage but still politically minded. They also did an awesome cover of Paper plates by MIA and I wish they would put that out somewhere but as of yet, I haven't found it.

Nine Inch Nails played next, which I thought was kind of bullshit considering this is a farewell tour (of sorts) for Trent Reznor, they should be closing. Maybe we've gotten spoiled from the Lights in the Sky tour but they didn't really do anything with stage effects. Yeah there was lights and stuff, but no video screen, no projections or anything of that sort. They also had a very mixed bag of music for the setlist, playing no more than 2 or 3 songs off of all their major released, and also doing their cover of "Metal" by Gary Numan. I like the song but I don't think it fit into their set.

Jane's Addiction closed and I'm not the biggest fan of them, but they put on a pretty decent show. It was mostly songs from Nothing's Shocking and Riual de lo Habitual but not too bad. The acoustic rendition of 'Jane Says' they played for an encore was pretty sweet.

Sunday we went on the most boring drive ever to get home. I-65 to Bloomington, IL then I 39/I90 to Madison and then US 151 home. Despite it being boring we still got home in only 7 hours (accounting for the time difference). I definitely am going to go that route if I ever need to go South of I-90 again. Well, it's either that or leave at 4 in the morning and then we don't have to worry about traffic.

We had a great time but it just makes me sad the with baby #3 on the way that vacations are going to be even fewer and farther in between because of the logistics of getting people to watch all 3 kids. Oh well, that's the price of admission for the parent ride. Besides it won't be too long before we'll be taking the kids on large scale vacations and if I keep them glued to a TV set in the car, it'll almost be like not having them there :)

The iPhone came in quite handy on our trip, helping us find all the places we needed without having to drive all over the place. We were able to stay connected fairly well. However, one thing that pisses me off is the coverage by AT&T. I had 3G outside the gates at the music venue, but when I went in it was Edge only and not good coverage at that. Spots on the Interstate were completely dead and it's still dead in Juneau where Pam works. Strangely enough when you are 1 mile east of there it's a perfect signal. I swear if the iPhone was on a different provider I'd be all over that. In the meantime I just hope that they continue to improve their infrastructure.

On the gaming front, I've been going pretty nuts with games. A week and a half ago I got Buzz for $20 at Walmart (buzzers and game) I'm almost to the Platinum trophy there (1 more to go). The games I bought at Gamestop were Bad Company, Burnout Paradise, and Alone in the Dark. It was a buy 2 get 1 free sale and all were 18.99. With my Gamestop card, I got all three games for $35 bucks, so that's pretty sweet. I had a day off Monday and managed to get my trophies for the Endless setlist on Rock Band 2 on Expert. That finally made me able to reformat my PS3 hard drive (I couldn't copy the RB2 save game). Now I can actually put more than one game's data on the hard drive :) Soooo, I'll be pretty busy for the next few months.

Well, I'm all typed out. I'll be posting photos of the concert later when I get home, but for now use your imagination :)

Getting back on the diet that threw ya

One of my resolutions for this year was to lose some weight and get down to 275 pounds. Being me, unfortunately, I had been slacking off hardcore and have actually started gaining weight again. So, I have started working on the weightloss again. Let me tell ya, it sucks ass trying to get back into a workout routine. I had been comfortable with it until I broke my leg last year and now just walking a few miles kills my legs and feet. Also there is no bike seat in the world that can really support 340 lbs. so my ass is killing me too. I'm just trying to lose enough weight so I can get on the Wii Fit so I can see if it's worth the money :)

In other news my daughter Genna is 'graduating' from Pre-Kindergarten this month. I think it's pretty cool, especially because I think she's really looking forward to both the graduation and to going to the "big school". On the other hand, I kind of freak out about it because I don't know where all the fucking time is going. Seems like yesterday that I myself was graduating from high school. Now, there's a wife, a house, 1 kid going to kindergarten, 1 going to pre-k, and another on the way. It's like Ferris Bueller says, "Life moves pretty fast. You don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. " Truer words were never spoken.

I've been getting busy in Singstar. It is fucking hard trying to get all the trophies. First of all, it's impossible to get 9000 points on hard on 95% of the songs, which require you to buy more to get the right ones. Also if you don't have a camera, it's impossible to get people to view your stuff unless you beg them or do something really stupid, like dance around in a dress. I don't know if I'm really going to be able to get them all. I'll probably give it a few more weeks and then give up if it doesn't happen and move to some other games.

I've also been playing around with the iPhone more and venturing into the paid Apps section. I've found several to be useful in my Fitness work. The Daily Plate is a website where you can get healthy advice through Livestrong (Lance Armstrong's foundation) and also track stuff like what are you eating, how much you can eat in a day calorie-wise, how many calories you are burning by exercising, etc. The website itself is free, but the iPhone app is $2.99. I really don't know why they just didn't make a free ad-supported one. It seems to be the case for a lot of apps (I suppose because selling ads doesn't really pay for shit.) The other app is Trails. Trails is kind of sweet because you can take GPS readings of your runs, cycling, hiking, etc. then you can upload it to a website or e-mail it to someone else where they can download it and follow your trail. It's mostly for hiking and geocaching, but I'm using it to get accurate times and distances for my walking and cycling runs.

One last thing. How bout dem Brewers, eh? I thought it was going to be a shitty year after losing Sabathia and Sheets, but they've won 8 of their last 10 games and sit in a 3 way tie atop the NL Central. As I write this they are up 3-1 over the Marlins which, if it holds, will put them in 1st....at least until the Reds and Cardinals play their games. I know we're barely through a fifth of the season, but there is cause for some hope that not all is lost. I'd like to see another big aquisition by the trading deadline to help put us over the hump and back into the playoffs again. If the cards fall right maybe I'll find a way to see them play in the postseason. If not, I'm sure I'll make it to a game this year. Nothing beats the experience of actually being at the ballpark.

*ring* *ring* Hello, Josh...this is reality calling. You need to go to a meeting now so stop blogging *click*

Well, I can't deny reality, so I will take my leave now. :)

Jaaaaaaaaaaail-break

It's been a busy past few days. Spring is now upon us so I spent most of my weekend doing yard and garden work. I expanded the garden and we're actually planning it this year instead of just throwing whatever in it. I'm hoping for better results. Last year we got way too many cucumbers and no peppers. We got one bunch of peas and no tomatoes, etc. I'm not really an outdoorsy guy but I really don't mind gardening...at least not when it's 70 degrees out.

I've also been busy dicking around with AT&T this time. Pam's data use got shut down because they were saying that her number used 115 MB's of data in a week. The problem with that is that on her phone, you'd have to be on the Internet 24/7 to get that kind of data use. I looked at the usage and found that during the day they had our phone numbers switched that they assigned all my data use to her number. What the fuck? Can't they tell which model of phone is making the request? Especially because 80% of my use in those 2 days we to Apple's app store which obviously her Samsung can't reach. On top of that, she didn't use her phone for the first day because of problems with porting her number. Anyways, AT&T is going to fix the billing problem, but they can't until we actually get a bill....which doesn't make sense, but I suppose that they don't want to credit us the $1200, then we quit their service and they owe us that money....even though if we quit right now it would still have us at 115 MB of usage that are unpaid.

Essentially, it boils down to change sucks. When doing major changes like this there's going to be fuckups, but once you take care of those then usually theres's never another problem.

Soooo, the whole point of this post was to say that I jailbroke my iPhone. It's as freaking easy as advertised. Essentially you download either Pwnagetool or Quickpwn, and make sure you're getting the one for your OS Version (2.2.1 for me). Install it on your computer and follow the instructions. It's just that easy.

Once it's done, you'll have a program called Cydia on the phone. Think of that as an app store for non-approved apps. The main reason I wanted it was for the ability to put groups of icons into folders so I don't have to swipe 5-6 times to get the app I want. I got that functionality from the Categories app. There's also apps to turn your 4 column layout for apps into 5, giving you up to 20 apps on a page. There's "Poof!" which you can use to remove the links to useless apps such as Stocks, Weather, and iTunes. Winterboard is used to apply themes to your display, such as changing the lock screen and keyboard color etc. I was also able to change the unlock action from having to slide your finger across the iPhone to just hitting a button.

What's stupid is that all these features are not necessarily illegal. You could technically put your phone on another cell network or put a bittorrent client on the iPhone, but all I'm doing is changing the way it looks. I just don't get why Apple didn't include any options for different themes or colors for the display. Isn't Apple the "Think different" company? Well how can I think different when my phone LOOKS LIKE EVERYONE ELSE'S! Not to mention, I paid out all this money to use the damn thing, I should get to decide what's on it, not Apple.

Rant aside, I really do dig the new look and I'm glad that someone made it so easy that even an Apple user could do it (sick burn!)

Anyways, since I'm apparently the only one here taking calls (grrrr) I gotta get back to work

I'm king of the nerds!!!!!

So I've actually gotten to play with my iphone for a day now and I'm really impressed. I'm not really a fan of all things Apple and I'm sure there are certain things that work a little better on other phone (the virtual keyboard and camera come to mind). However it's the abundace of apps that makes the iphone experience so great. Ive listed 10 of my faves at time:

1. Twittedfon- a lightweight Twitter client that integrates Twitpic, GPS tagging, profile viewing, etc.
2. Facebook - this ones obvious. The only things that seem to be missing is chatting and viewing notes (I haven't been able to view mine at least)
3. Remember the Milk - I've been using RTM as an effective tool for Getting Things Done and maintaining lists of future stuff to do and get. The iPhone frontend works really well. My only gripe so far is that you can't ADD locations, you have to do that from a computer. RTM also requires a premium account to use the iPhone service which is $25/yr.
4. Evernote - Evernote saves pictures, notes, and other things and syncs it between your mobile device, PC, or can be accessed from the website. I'm going to TRY to use it to take pictures of the receipts I incur instead of wadding them up in my pocket. The sweet thing about evernote is that it recognizes text inside pictures so you can search by that as well.
5. Mint - This is a front end for Mint.com so you can see how much money you have in the bank at a given time. This is a good tool if you are with a bank that isn't big enough to have it's own iPhone frontend, but is supported by Mint.com
6. eBay - Another obvious one. A frontend for ebay that you can search auctions, place bid, and watch what you're selling
7. Yelp / AroundMe - These two do almost the same thing. Find restaurants, gas stations, etc. realative to your current location. Yelp brings up less results but has user reviews. Aroundme just brings you the names and addresses.
8 Pandora.fm - Pandora is really sweet. You put in the name of a band that you like and it creates a radio station that plays that artist and other similar bands. Best of all it streams perfectly even on EDGE so I can listen to it on the way to work.
9. SnapTell - This appears to be the only free price comparison app that I could find. It is really sweet though. You take a picture of a CD, DVD, or game and it recognizes it and searchs online and locally for the best price. This way you can see if you're getting a good price.
10. Midori / Shazam - Ever hear a song and want to know who is playing? These tools are right for you then. Both do the same thing, i.e put the iphone to a speaker, record 10 secs. and search the database. Midori adds the ability to hum or sing the song. I personally haven't gotten that to work but the recording part is usually spot on.

So yeah, I am having mad fun with the iPhone. I will be attempting to jailbreak it, possibly this weekend. Mostly I just want to change the color scheme and remove the iTunes and Stocks buttons (you cannot remove the default buttons) but right now I am so glad I went with AT&T. They too had problems porting the numbers, but they hooked us up within a day AND waived our activation fees. Pretty sweet.

Now if you'll excuse me, a metric ton of shitty work just popped up



A

I love it when a plan comes together

(StreamOfConsciousness == True) So a funny thing happened during my struggles with Sprint. I got sick of waiting on my number port without any calls or status updates about what was going on. For shits and giggles I went to the AT&T website and what's this? A refurbished 16GB iPhone is $150? (Insert high squeaky voice) Really? That is the phone I wanted all along! But wait a second, I can't go with AT&T because there's no coverage where Pam works...well let's look at the map. O.O They have coverage!!!! (StreamOfConsciousness == False)

I was going to do that last bit with HTML tags, but I'm too lazy to put the & codes in so that the browser doesn't ignore the < & > signs....of course I just did it to show the signs I was talking about and then typing to explain it. #irony :)

I was able to get a refurbed iPhone and a refurbed Samsung Propel for 100 dollars less upfront than the amount I paid for the Blackberry Pearl and Samsung Rant, so that's cool. I got it with the same plan amount as Sprint, so that's double cool. The only hitch was once again they had issues with number porting, so I had to call several times to straighten things out and they actually sent us the phones with free overnight shipping (they are arriving today).

What's funny is that I called Sprint to tell them to shove it up their ass and 10 minutes after that call, my number port magically went through and I was able to use the phone for calling. How's that for service? :) I still couldn't use it for data because I had to request the data plan that should have been offered in the first place on the website. So that sucks. I will say I do like a lot of features about the Pearl and if Sprint hadn't sucked so hard, I would have stuck with it.

The whole thing is laughable because I'm now with the phone and the plan I wanted 6 months ago. It wasn't laughable as I struggled with getting the money, ultimately giving up and going with another provider. It's just another case where everything in life just works out. The downside is that I can never believe that it's going to turn out OK or it never does. It really does make a person into a pessimist.

On a side note, I also took the kids to Chuck E. Cheese's this weekend. We had a pretty good time, but I get so exhausted with all of the naughty freaking kids around. Why doesn't anyone teach kids manners or even the simple rule that you shouldn't steal from people or sit there begging. I literally had kids coming up to me trying to tear off my tickets or beg for tokens from me. What the fuck? Of course there are misbehaved adults too. I was trying to play a game with my daughter and she wandered off back toward her mom. I continued to play the game (which I had to get on my knees for) and some cuntrag comes up and says "You know, when you have to get on your knees for a game that's usually an indicator that you shouldn't be playing it." I asked her if she could see the sign on my back. What sign? The one that says 'Please feel free to intrude in my business'. She took off in a huff probably thinking that I'M the asshole. I'm sorry but if you are going to be an asshole to me, I will return the favor.

By her account then ALL the games, save for basketball shooting, are kids only. The funny thing is that in the one game in particular, it was too tall for my kids. :) Also if it were up to them to spend all the 200 tokens we had it would take forever (as it was we were there for 4 hours). So once again to all nosy Madisonians, please go fuck yourselves if you want to get in my business.

A few more things of note:
-I'm pretty excited about the Packer's draft. The addressed every need they had (Defense and Offensive lines). I hope that the new rookies work out for them. It could be an interesting season.

-The Brewers seem to have righted the ship with the starters putting together quality outings all week and the bats getting hot at the right time. They've won 5 of 6 (The only loss was by 1 run) and are playing an injury depleted Pirates again tonight at home.

-Singstar for PS3 has gone live with trophy support now. Some of them are really hard though. You have to have an upload viewed 200 times in one week, have 8000 total views of all media, and get over 9000 on Hard on 5 different songs. That's going to take a while, especially because I've got to see if I can find a cheap webcam to work for the PS3 ( I don't really want to drop $40 on the PS3 one)

-Still got trophies to get for Rock Band, Resistance 2, and multiplayer Resident Evil 5. I'm going to have to recruit Pam to play for me when I'm at work :)

Anyways, time to get back to work and daydream about my new iPhone. It's out for delivery right now. I wish I were home right now, it's like Christmas in April :)

The sad thing is that I'm getting used to this

So I got my new shiny Blackberry on Friday and tried to activate it only to find out that there was no line listed on my account due to the fact that I didn't get the required $30/month Blackberry Data Plan. I guess I wasn't THAT surprised as I figured that $15/month for data was too good to be true. Either way, that was more than I wanted to pay per month so after stewing for a while (and what a fun person I was for THOSE few hours). I decided that I would keep the plan but return the Blackberry Pearl for a Samsung Rant (the phone I got Pam).

So I called Sprint and they said that I could return it but I'd have to wait 1-2 billing cycles to get my money back and then I'd have to pay cash to get a new phone or I could take it to a store to exchange it. Great! We have a Sprint store in Beaver Dam. He failed to mention that it had to be a 'corporate' store and not a 3rd party vendor. The nearest corp stores are 40 miles away. So then Pam and I got into it as to whether she even wants to go with Sprint anymore and then whether she needs a cell phone. So I pretty much said "OK, I'm getting an iPhone then". Then she was all like "Weeeeellll, maybe we'll pay the $30/month" for the data plan :) Figures. Anything to deny me something new and shiny (I keed, I keed ;-D )

So great, I have a Blackberry now, but Sprint is having all types of problems porting the numbers and activating the phones. Because of the porting process my fucking Verizon phone doesn't work so I'm SOL right now. Actually I'm typing this whole thing while on hold w/ Sprint while they see what they can do right now. I'm hoping we can get this done NOW because I want to get the rest of the cool shit on the Blackberry like the Google apps and Remember the Milk. Currently I'm being transferred to a supervisor....yay progress!

Other than that I had a great weekend. Of course by great I mean that I had to do a shitload of yardwork, had the horseshit go on with Sprint, have a cranky post-op kid screaming about her throat and keeping us up at all hours of the night and driving us nuts, and it was cold and rainy. So yeah, not really that great. The only good thing I did of note was finish Superhuman difficulty on Resistance 2...which will be nothing compared to the "get 10000 kills" in Competitive mode (I'm at 95 kills right now and averaging about 5 per match :( )

This whole thing with Sprint gets me to another point. What the fuck happened to customer service? I don't mean with individuals in general because all the people I've dealt with at Sprint have been decent, but I mean as a company as a whole. We've had fuckups with Westbury Bank, FNBO, and now Sprint in the last few months. Like I said with Sprint the main problem is that it didn't even mention the Blackberry plan on the site and I think that's the root of all the problems here. On top of that, with other places you get the feeling that most people couldn't give a shit about whether you're happy with a particular company's service. With this economy you'd think people would give more of a shit because it would be so easy to replace them. You'd think companies would be falling all over themselves to give you awesome service because they're competing for less dollars. However, they don't.

Of course a lot of the problem is endemic of the industry. For cell phones in particular I've been with 4 different providers (PrimeCo, US Cell, Verizon, and now Sprint) and have not had a particularly great time with any of them. The only other national provider in the area is AT&T and if I go to them after my Sprint contract I guarantee that the service will still suck. Why should any one company do a good job at customer service when they all suck?

Update: My phone still doesn't work. They've escalated it to another team. However, they did get Pam's working so that's kind of cool. Hopefully they can get me up and running soon.

One sick little monkey

So my youngest daughter has had quite a week. She had gotten a bladder infection and so was already feeling crappy and then we she had to get a tonsilectomy, an adenoidectomy and tubes put in her ears. I stayed home from work for a few days to help her and my wife out, but she's still pretty cranky. We also found out yesterday that the infection she had is penicillin resistant. So they prescribed the only resistant antibiotic that comes in a liquid form, Cipro. Soooo, being that it comes in 100 mL bottle and they have to make the whole bottle and my daughter only need 6mL of that the insurance had to fight us on that, so it took a whole day of the the doctors and pharmacists wrangling with the insurance company to justify that she needed it. Good thing too, because a full 100 mL bottle of Cipro is $121.

1st of all that's just crazy expensive. I get that the resistant ones aren't prescribed a lot, but still over $1 per mL for an antibiotic? What the fuck? 2nd the insurance has NEVER fought with us on anything in 5 years. Through 2 pregnacies and deliveries, 1 extended hospital stay for an infant, multiple doctor and ER visits, Badgercare has paid it all and now they want to be dicks about it. Maybe it's just the economy problem, but still it's not like we were getting her Viagra or something :)

Another odd thing is that my daughter wanted me to comfort her most of the day. Usually the kids don't really seem to care about me that much (maybe because I'm gone 10.5 hours a day), but that was really weird. I suppose that's a good thing because I generally can have more patience when I need to, whereas my wife lately (since becoming pregnant for the 3rd time) does not now. Of course I don't blame her for that, your emotions get all flaky when you're pregnant. Nonetheless, it's pretty cool for me that she wanted to be with me and I was able to provide for her without blowing up.

The nice thing about being at home for that long is that I did manage to get some stuff done. I've been on an organizing and cleaning frenzy lately. I don't know why, I'm not a neat freak but the basement has been pissing me off for a while. Also just the fact that we have so much shit in the house that we don't use/need that I just want to get rid of it. I've done a lot with the stuff that I have getting rid of old tech books and cables and toys and junk and stuff. Now I'm trying to convince Pam to go through the basement and get rid of what we don't need. She's waiting until we know the sex of the baby but even if it's a girl we have 2 girls worth of clothing stored and surely we can get rid of some now and the rest later if it's a boy. Oh well, as long as it gets done or until my clutterbug crawls out of my ass.

Another thing is that I got to play games for a while. As you can see below I got a few more trophies from Resistance 2. I'm finally starting a game on superhuman and I'm doing alright (probably not much worse than on Veteran). I'm also playing with my clan on co-op although I wish they'd stop trying co-op on superhuman. I also tried ranked competitive multiplayer and I hate fucking playing with other people. Even in team games, no one plays as a team and I always seem to be on the team with retards. Either way, I'll have to do a lot of grinding for those trophies. I'm also going to try the Endless Setlist on Expert this weekend, but I'm going to split it in 2 parts so I'm not up until 4am again. After all that, I'll have to either find a new game to play or hope that the Singstar trophies are available. Woot! :)

Holy crap, it's almost noon. Time flies when you miss 2 days of "work". Work in this case meaning catching up on e-mails, blogs, Twitter, etc. :)

It's gonna be a nail biter all season

Caught almost all of the Brewers game yesterday over the computer, radio, and TV. They won a squeaker against the Cubs 4-3 by scoring 2 runs in the bottom of the ninth. It was close too, with Rickie Weeks scoring on a close play at the plate. If anyone actually watched the game, most people should know that Ryan Theriot fucked up. If you have a shot at a DP to end the inning you go for the DP, especially if you throw home on the wrong side of the plate. I'm glad to see we didn't waste a start by our new guy Braden Looper. He pitched pretty well despite throwing a lot of balls. He would have picked up the win if not for Seth McClung, who got McClunged for another homer (by a backup catcher no less) putting the Cubs ahead by 1.

Last night I also went through and did the Endless Setlist and Bladder of Steel challenges on Rock Band 2. The final stats:
Difficulty: Medium
6 hours spent singing
5 Diet Mt. Dews drunk
4 Rushed pee breaks (during Round and Round, Battery, Deluxe, and The Trees)
3 Songs not 5 starred
2 Trophies earned
1 Tired Josh (I didn't get to bed until 4am)
0 times having to pee in a bucket (I've heard of people having to do this)

So now I have do it again on Expert but this time I don't have to worry about failing or hitting Pause....which is good because there's like 5 songs that I'm not too good at. Then I have to finish the Drum Trainer, 100% guitar, and 4 player Band challenges and then I'm done. Easy right?

Anyways, break's over. Time to get the kids ready for pictures today and then clean the basement and house, etc. Got freakin Easter tomorrow and then I have to get up early Monday for Laney's surgery. She's getting her tonsils out. I'm hoping this makes her more understandable. It's so frustrating because she can't hear us and we can't understand her. Maybe she'll be better behaved when she can hear right.

Vacationing in 140 characters or less

So the family and I went to Wisconsin Dells for the kids birthday's. The bulk of the money was given to us by Pam's mom and let me say, just finding something to eat is pretty expensive. We went through almost $200 on food alone for 2 days. It was some good stuff but day-um it's expensive. We did find that by going with just water to drink and only one meal split between the kids we were able to stretch the money a bit. Still there were a few meals where we were eating cold cut sammiches.

Needless to say we didn't really partake in any attractions (most weren't even open, and while the hotel waterpark was nice for the price, the slides freaked out the kids and we spent most of the days at the pool. I'm not complaining though as the pool was within Wi-Fi range and I found that if you direct the PSP to the mobile versions of sites, it works much better. So I was able to check mail, be on the web, check my eBay auctions and yes, even twitter. So I made a bunch of tweets and found that you can get a pretty good record of what I thought and what caught my eye.

cycoivan Posted at 10:42am, Apr 05, 2009 from TweetDeck

Why is getting ready for a vacation so much work? If we weren't going I could relax today :) What the fuck? #irony

cycoivan Posted at 11:28am, Apr 05, 2009 from TweetDeck

Just about ready to go for 2 days away from everything. I'll be able to tweet from my cell but not receive, so don't expect a reply unti l8r

cycoivan Posted at 2:13pm, Apr 05, 2009 from txt

Made it to the Dells. Watching Monsters vs. Aliens with the kids to kill time before checkin.

cycoivan Posted at 2:55pm, Apr 05, 2009 from txt

Loving Monsters vs. Aliens so far. Wish I had the money for 3D though

cycoivan Posted at 3:47pm, Apr 05, 2009 from txt

Monsters vs Aliens was fucking awesome! You should go see it if you get the chance.

cycoivan Posted at 4:40pm, Apr 05, 2009 from TwitPic

http://twitpic.com/2vxvc - Happy girls ready to swim at the Polyneasian!

cycoivan Posted at 4:45pm, Apr 05, 2009 from TwitPic

http://twitpic.com/2vy2n - This is pretty fucking sweet for 80 bucks a night!

cycoivan Posted at 7:32pm, Apr 05, 2009 from TwitPic

http://twitpic.com/2w89w - Time for some eats with Jake and Elwood at a classic Dennys

cycoivan Posted at 9:42pm, Apr 05, 2009 from mobile web

hey forgot about m.twitter.com now i can get my fix :)

cycoivan Posted at 9:50pm, Apr 05, 2009 from TwitPic

http://twitpic.com/2wfdq - Why do fucking Hummers have to be so big? Whats the point? I think someones got penis issues

cycoivan Posted at 10:42pm, Apr 05, 2009 from mobile web

heh i finally get to do what i want and thats tweeting on the interwebs from the sauna :)

cycoivan Posted at 10:44pm, Apr 05, 2009 from mobile web

then if its not too late im going to hit the gym and get my workout on. i gotta impress the laideez :)

cycoivan Posted at 10:57pm, Apr 05, 2009 from mobile web

woo its fucking hot in here (whoda thunk it?)

cycoivan Posted at 11:28pm, Apr 05, 2009 from mobile web

its been a good day heres hoping that tomorrows even better. good night y'all.

cycoivan Posted at 8:45am, Apr 06, 2009 from TwitPic

http://twitpic.com/2ww29 - Paul Bunyan is friggin huge! I bet I could outeat him :)

cycoivan Posted at 9:02am, Apr 06, 2009 from TwitPic

http://twitpic.com/2wwpe - Mmm...my breakfast. Still waiting on the rest of the family's :)

cycoivan Posted at 11:18am, Apr 06, 2009 from mobile web

@mainemonty oh yeah the sausages were damn tasty. i love me pork ;]

At this point my Twitter client is missing a whole day's worth of tweet's so I'm going to try and pull them from my memory :)

-Oh my God. I am so fucking full. Paul Bunyan wins again
-Getting my tweet on by the pool on a Monday. So glad I'm not working today
-Just checked my auctions on m.ebay.com. C'mon people! Bid, bid, bid! I needs mah money.
-Going to hop in the kiddy pool with the kids. I'm taller than the pool even lying down :)
-I tell you what. AYCE at Paul Bunyan's is good for two meals. It's a good deal for $30
-Tired, tired, tired. Lying down for a nap. Hopefully the kids will follow suit
-Where should we go eat now. I'd love to go to a fancy place, but the kids aren't fancy peeps :)
-Stopped at Marley's, a Jamaican restaurant. I love this place, especially the gator bites.
-Yeah, so they're probably chicken but they're so good that it's fun to pretend you're eating gator
-Having a Cuban sammich, Pam's having the Coconut chicken. It is so freakin good
-Back at the hotel. Laney's getting sick. Marvelous.
-Of course, when I say she can't go in the pool, she got well quick
-Texting from the hot tub on my PSP. What could go wrong :)
-Hot chick sat down in the sauna near me. Boooing :)
-Kids are an excellent conversation starter. They got me talking with the hot chick
-Now her and my wife are talking each other's ears off, leaving me in the hot tub. alone. :(
-In the sauna, there's a big fat sweaty guy in here (other than me) awk-ward.
-I don't know why I like these things. I'm not one for sweating and being hot
-On the elliptical. I wish to hell I had one of these at home. You get a workout but your joints don't hurt
-Exhausted. I don't want to go home tomorrow :( G'night.
-Chilling out in the morning, getting everything packed to go home.
-Laney really is getting sick, that sucks. Wish we could do something for her.
-Took the kids to the pool, but no one really feels like swimming.
-Eating at Pizza Pub. They got Wi-Fi here too. The buffet is a good deal, about $30 for family of 4
-Forgot it was opening day today. The Giants are going down! Well probably not. Suppan's pitching today. :(
-Stopped for some fudge on the way home. They let me pack it myself :)
-Finally home. It's good to be here, but sucks that I have to go back to reality.

So that's my twittercation. I had a lot of fun, but I wish the kids were feeling better and wanted to be more adventureous but oh well. One thing's for sure, next time we are bringing more money.

Speaking of the Brewers, they aren't doing too well so far. They lost 2 of the 1st 3 games through shitty pitching. That's not shocking. Our "ace" is Jeff Suppan, not a guy who batters are afraid of. I will say this, if Yovani Gallardo stays healthy, he's got a good chance to win the Cy Young. He looked really good on Wednesday, holding them to 1 run and cranking a 3 run homer off of Randy Johnson. So that's good. They play the Cubs today, so I'm hoping everything comes together for them.

You might notice a new thing on my posts. It's a Trophy card from PS3 Trophy card They link your Playstation account to the widget that shows what you're playing and where you're at for trophies. I'm still working on Resistance 2 and I swear I'm going to get Rock Band 2 one of these days too. I've got to buy the Resident Evil 5 multiplayer to finish those out too. I also read that Singstar is going to have trophies, but they look damn hard and many require that you shoot a video. I'll have to see if a cheap web cam works or if you need the PS3 one. Either way, I will be busy :)

Some people are just dicks

So to set the stage, our 9 year old pug Wilma is officially blind. She despises going potty on a leash or stake out and cannot be trusted to roam around outside. We can't afford to fence in the yard and don't want to banish her outside. Plus with all of the other animals and stuff roaming around and knocking her head on everything, you can tell she's genuinely miserable and we just don't have the time to devote to her care. So instead of being bastards and putting her to sleep or dumping her in a field somewhere, we tried to find a new home for her on Craigslist.

Let me tell you, don't ever post anything semi-controversial in the Madison group because you have a bunch of hating motherfuckers in there. Almost immediately our post got flamed because we're heartless bastards for getting rid of our dog now that she's "inconvinient" and "would you want your kids to do that to you?" First of all, no we're doing the compassionate thing by finding our dog another good home to go to. Secondly, yes if I'm pissing and shitting everywhere, can't see and am a general hazard to myself and others then YES put me in a home where I can get the care I need. My only hope is that the kids screen the home and don't cheap out on it. Thirdly, if you're going to flame someone, do it face-to-face (or as face-to-face as the Internet will allow) and not through some cowardly post with no contact infomation. There's a lot more to this story but suffice to say an all out flame war popped up in the postings section (many of whom were partially or completely on our side) but still it was a nightmare.

The point is, I don't recall asking anyone on Craigslist for their opinion, so if you're not inquiring about meeting us and our dog then SHUT. THE. FUCK. UP! Apparently it's quite a problem in Madison (IRL and Craigslist both). Everybody is so militant about their opinions here WHERE THEY WILL SHOUT THEM LOUDLY IN THE STREETS AND FUCK EVERYONE WHO DOESN'T AGREE. Being a college town, all these groups are gaining influence by the ranks of confused teens/twentysomethings joining. PETA, ALF, Political Parties, religions, etc. If you can't respect the other side's opinion then go fuck yourself. I wish to fuck these people would get hit by a bus. In Madison the only way to express your view is to shout down the opposition.

On top of that there's extended family drama going on that I really can't comment on here yet, but suffice it to say I have a bunch of dicks in my extended family too.

Anyways, on a happier note, the kids had a nice birthday party but it was just a nasty day for weather. I think everyone at the party was ready for a nap by 2pm and most people were gone by then, it was just one of those days. The kids got (and have already broken) some nice stuff.

Also, I found that despite my bitching about it, the Platinum trophy in RE5 is unlocked after getting all original 50 trophies, which I got last night so that's cool. I made it through the 1st chapter on Resistance 2 and it's shaping up really nicely. Hopefully, I'll be able to score all the trophies on that too before I have to give it back :) I also will have FEAR 2 in the pipe soon as my co-worker is done with it. The Platinum on Rock Band 2 is looking pretty distant as I suck complete ass on guitar and I'm supposed to get a 100% on Expert on a song and a 100% guitar solo on expert. I guess I'm just going to have to practice my ass off. I might take a crack at the endless setlist this weekend but I still have to practice singing a few songs yet before I can do it without failing.

So to sum it up, I have a lot of games to play and don't be a dick :)

What in the bloody hell?

So, for an RE5 update. I HAD 2 trophies left to get and then Capcom adds 10 more in their 1.02 update (which you don't have the option of turning down). Apparently they are putting in more online content PvP and coop Mercenaries, etc. However, it remains to be seen if these will be free or paid content. Either way it's bullshit. If you add trophies for the DLC then the trophies should be added when you actually get the DLC not before.

I was hoping to get done with the trophies because I'm borrowing Resistance 2 from a friend and right now my PS3 is so loaded with stuff that I can't keep game data from 2 seperate games at the same time on the system. Once I get all the Rock Band 2 trophies I can finally reformat the drive.

We've been complaining to doctors for about a year about our youngest daughter's swollen tonsils. Each time they kept placating us about it saying that they're not a problem, maybe she has another infection, etc. So Monday we took her into our new family doctor who says that they are a problem but doesn't think that they are that big of a deal. Nevertheless he did refer us to an ENT doc (due to our insurance we need a referral for them to cover it). So when we took her to the ENT he was surpised she could even hear, which she technically can't. Both ears and tubes are blocked up. So we've got her scheduled to get her tonsils and adenoids removed and the doc also wants to get tubes in her ears which is going to be a massive pain in the ass. Hopefully, it'll be worth it and when she can actually hear maybe she'll listen to us and then everyone will be happy.

What I wonder with all this horseshit is, is all this runaround due to the fact that we're on state insurance or what? I mean it's not like we're just subjecting our kids to frivolous procedures for the hell of it. Yet, 4 General Practitioners looked at our daughters tonsils and all 4 thought it wasn't a big deal and only 1 was willing to refer us to an expert. So what's the story here? Is the policy not to cut on little kids? To fuck with people who don't have decent insurance? Who knows. 1 thing I did learn is that even if you're not a doctor, you know your kids. You owe it to them to push the issue and to get multiple opinions when you think there is something wrong.

What also pisses me off is when people just can't admit that they do not know something. I know that you need to be seen as knowledgeable in your line of work, but if you don't know just say so. I won't think any less of you, in fact I'll probably think more because I know you're not going to feed me a line of bullshit to cover your lack of knowledge. I see that everywhere. Doctors, mechanics, computer tech, stock gurus. Just admit that you don't fucking know everything. Seriously, I must say "I don't know" probably 20-30 times in a given day. I'll speculate, but I'll tell the customers that this is what I THINK happened not what I KNOW happened.

Anyways, that's enough bitching for today. Happy Friday, y'all

Making Albert Wesker my Bitch

So I finished Resident Evil 5 last night (this morning). I stayed up until 3am playing it. It ends on a good note with all the plot points resolved and everybody happy. The nice thing is that even though all the conflict going all the way back to RE1 is now over, there's still plenty of stories that can be written about bioweapons and terrorism. Of course, you won't have too much in dramatic reveals in RE6 (unless one of the good guys goes bad) but the series will just keep on chugging on. Now I just have to get the rest of the trophies (about 13 more) and then I'll be done-done. Of course, one of the trophies is to beat it on Professional which is one step above where I was. For that it's mostly one hit kills from everything....I was swearing profusely on Hard, I just might have a heart attack on Professional.

As promised here are some pics of my reflooring of the coat room. I couldn't find a picture of the floor before I started (and I didn't have my camera when I started).

If there wasn't that section on the right (I suspect that's where the old basement stairs were before the addition), we almost could have kept the original hardwood.

Halfway there

Woo hoo. I still have to put in trim, but that's not too hard. It would be even easier if I didn't have to make beveled cuts. :(

So it's alllll good so far. Just gotta finish the trim in both rooms this weekend, and clean the garage and basement. After all that, I may just be able to get the endless setlist done in. So yeah, it's busy, busy, busy again.

Dude, where's my weekend?

I spent the bulk of Saturday and Sunday working on the damn coat room floor. Trying to do the edges takes forever, especially because ceramic tile is such a pain in the ass to cut through. Nevertheless, I worked my ass off and now the floors themselves are done. Now we just need to mop a few times, I have to put the trim in and it is FINISHED!!!! I'll be posting pics once I get them off the camera.

Speaking of pictures, Pam and I took the girls to a St. Patricks day parade in Fox Lake Sunday. Fox Lake has about only 1000 people in it so it's a big event for them. The kids liked it but I was pretty meh about the whole thing. I'm not Irish, not Catholic, and I don't like getting drunk in public :) Seriously, the parade is nothing more than an excuse to get shitfaced for most people, which happened to include most of those standing by me. Oh well, fun was had by most and that's what matters.

I did manage to go through some more on Resident Evil 5 and Rock Band 2. I got all of the bass trophies and am now working on the guitar. We're going to have to have some people over eventually so I can get the actual band ones (8X multiplier, etc)

As far as RE5 goes, it looks like I was right. Chris Redfield's dead former partner does figure into the story (and I've got a good idea who she is in the game). The infection agent is the Las Plagas parasite from RE4 but the samples that were stolen by Ada Wong and Albert Wesker were apparently modified by Tricell (the new Umbrella) and tested out on the population of a small African village. You do get to fight some tribals later in the game so that's fun. I'm doing pretty well as far as the trophy's go. I'll have to go through a few more times to find all the secrets and also score Rank S on every chapter, but it's keeping me busy :)

First Thoughts: Resident Evil 5

So after much wailing and gnashing of teeth I was able to come up with a plan to buy Resident Evil 5. I hit Gamestop last night for their midnight release and played it until 3 in the morning. A few thoughts on the game:

-Would it be freakin possible to break the game data that needs to be installed into smaller chapter sized chunks, ala Metal Gear Solid or run the install concurrently with the introductory cutscene? The 1GB data install before you can play the game took 15 minutes to install. I understand it's necessary for the proper running of the game but c'mon. 15 minutes is 14 and a half too long.

-I have a love/hate relationship with the new parter system. For those who don't know, your main character Chris Redfield (from RE:1 and Code:Veronica) has a partner in the field that can be controlled via AI or an online or offline human partner. I love it because it adds a new dyanmic to the game which is much more in depth than the partner stuff from RE4 (mainly because Sheva is also a highly trained agent and can hold her own). I hate it however because you have limited control options over her. You can tell her to either go on the offensive or cover you. In either case you have to control her inventory because she won't always pick up ammo for herself. Also with her around it makes it hard to accomplish certain trophies/achievements such as 'kill 5 enemies with your knife'. Well, I can't do that if my partner is popping shots into the zombie I'm trying to stab. You literally have to disarm her to do it.

-Speaking of trophies, they are all fairly acheiveable and the counter ones (kill x zombies with y) add up whether or not you die after doing it. Most of the harder ones are ones where you have to get all the weapons fully upgraded and that's just hard because of the game time involved. You also have to play through at least twice, once on Easy/Medium/Hard to unlock Extreme difficulty and then beat the game on that. I've found no word if beating it on hard will satisfy the beat it on easy or medium trophies.

-The graphic and lighting effect are top notch (as they should be). The first part of the game is played in an African village with blazing sun beating down on you. When you go from shadow to light you are momentarily blinded as your "eyes" adjust.

-The new zombies, dubbed the Manjini, are similar in speed to the Ganados of RE4 but with even more erratic movement making them harder to hit. Their "zombie" biological agent appears to be some sort of worm. Later you have to fight a sub-boss composed of nothing but worms. It's a very interesting fight.

-Many of the improvements from RE4 are still there. Over the shoulder camera, context specific button presses (i.e. near a window, press square to jump out. Near a fence press square to jump over). The big change is that inventory management is done in real time like RE: Outbreak (the online one). Also like RE: Outbreak, your inventory is limited to 9 different things which you can switch from a larger inventory between chapters or when continuing.

-One thing that continues to vex me is there is no dodge or 'jump back' feature (to my knowledge, I've yet to look at the instruction manual). If there really isn't one, seriously why not? You have a Special Ops. trained agent and the best he can do for evasion is to do a quick turn and run? Also, WHY IN THE HELL CAN'T HE WALK WHEN HIS KNIFE OR GUN IS DRAWN!!! Capcom, if you're going to move more toward realism then please, please remove this last gameplay mechanism tie to the 1st Resident Evil.

-The story so far is really good, with one minor gripe. They revealed that a major character from games past is now dead. I have two thoughts. If it relates to nothing, then it was way too early. My other thought is that it may relate to this mysterious hooded figure you see in the beginning who is apparently working for the bad guy, and yes Wesker shows up again. Maybe you'll finally be able to kill his smug sunglass wearing ass?

So yeah, all that in two hours of playing :) I can't wait for the rest, too bad I have to finish all my 'projects' this weekend :(

Drama and Dramamine

So anyways, I got my camera yesterday and it's working pretty nice. I took some pics of the work I did in the living room

Gotta paint the wire guard yet, but it looks infinitely better than the mess that was there before.

There's still some trim to install yet and Pam wants to change the ceiling tiles (we have a drop ceiling) but the living room is practically done. Now the only other room in the house that needs work is the coat room (install tile) and the kitchen (install recessed lights and sink)

I put $10 down on the Collector's Edition of Resident Evil 5 as well so I have that to look forward to on my birthday

However, it's not all whipped cream and nipple clamps. We were informed that our house payment would not change. So even though the Escrow is now taking an extra $100 out of our income, they don't see that as a reason to lower the payment. It's not the end of the world but it's complete bullshit I think.

On top of that we had to fight with our new bank for 3 weeks to get our debit cards and checks (which we finally got last night)

Both of our kids keep acting out too, which is driving us crazy because we don't know how to get them to listen. If you seperate them, they're usually fine, but together they are a handful. We'd like to have a 3rd, but definitely not while these issues are still happening.

I suppose it's not really as bad as it sounds. Pam's mom is giving us a little help to offset some of the price increases we're seeing, which is only fair because we provide a lot of help to them in other ways (computer repair, etc.) The kids will eventually grow out of it and the house payment will go down eventually or our wages will go up. It just seems like with all this recession bullshit, everything is stressful.

What pisses me off more is that the government (from what I've heard on the news) is now going to be buying out 5 million home loans and working with lenders to restructure 4 million more of homeowners in risk of foreclosure. What I want to know is do these people deserve it? I understand that keeping people in homes is good long term, but it continues to send the message that if you fuck up, Uncle Sam will fix it.

Are they helping out the people who spent beyond their means and now can't afford their homes? Are they helping people who shouldn't have qualified for a loan in the first place? Are they helping people trying to make a quick buck and got stuck with a toxic loan? I sure hope not. Those people should lose their homes as even a buyout won't cure the root of the problem which is greed both on the lenders and the buyers. The people who should be getting the help are responsible people with bad luck (losing a job, etc.). They should also be helping those who needs a little help like *COUGH* *COUGH* us *COUGH*. It's not like we are asking USDA to pay for our house completely, we just need a little bit to compensate for the rise in taxes and insurance. But no they cockblock us. What. the. Fuck?

OK, I'm all worked up now. Time to take a break.

Things are hopefully a little better now

So the living room is 98% done for now. I still have to lay Quarter round around the room to hide the gap for the laminate floor. Other than replacing the drop ceiling tiles (and upgrading the electronics *nudge* *wink*) that room is D-O-N-E, done. After that, there's replacing the ceiling tile in the office and installing a closet door, putting ceramic tile in the coat room and then putting in recessed lighting in the kitchen and then I think the entire 1st floor is complete.

It was a bit of a pain in the ass and took up all my weekend, but the new living room it fucking sweet. I'll admit I didn't think it would turn out well but that's because I couldn't imagine the wall color on the non-brick walls. With the color it used to be, a brick wall would have looked stupid. But I guess I have a failure to visualize the whole room. Guys don't operate like that, and I suppose Pam will never let me forget that I was vehemently oppoosed to a brick wall in there. Oh well, at least it looks nice.

I would be posting pictures, but our camera has been broken for weeks now. The lens mechanism for going in and out is broken. I just purchased a new one for $89 with 2 day shipping with the funds from selling my external hard drive. That's kind of irritating because in a perfect world, I would have been using that money for either an internal 1TB drive for the computer or the collector's Edition of Resident Evil 5. With the money I have left and money from other places, I still have a shot at getting it but I'll have to see. I guess it depends if I can get Pam to 'loan' me $40 which I'll put back into checking later. Considering I didn't get paid for my 16 hours of work, that should be a fair deal :)

I did manage to get some Rock Band in. I'm making pretty good progress on the trophies. I've gotten the "All venues played" and "1,000,000" fans trophies. I'm hoping to find time for the 'iron bladder' trophy. That's where you go through all 85 songs without pausing or failing. Hopefully if you can do it on Medium that shouldn't be a problem, I just hope my voice and/or arms hold out for 3.5-4 hours of straight playing.

I would have done more last night but I had to get my "24" fix in. I'm all about suspending disbelief for TV, but seriously, a underwater passageway from the Potomac into the White House, really? Oh well, it'll be fun to see Candyman (General Juma) go up against Jack Bauer. It's too bad that David Palmer isn't still the President on the show. I wonder what Jobu would make of the Candyman?

Anyways, gotta go, these calls won't answer themselves

Jesus tittyfucking Christ!!!

So, the plasma place really isn't working out. I never considered that there'd be a problem with me giving whole blood 3 weeks ago, but I got deferred until April because of it, so there's no shot of getting the collector's version of RE5 (or just the game for that matter). So that sucks

Because of the economy, Pam's mom has given us a choice:

-Get less money from her for our birthdays and Xmas, we normally get around $800 between the 3 so I'm thinking somewhere around $200-400.

-Give us $400 to take the kids to Chula Vista or somewhere in Wisconsin Dells

Obviously we took option 2, because we at least get to use the money, whereas with option 1 it all goes towards bills. I don't really get why she made us choose at all, yeah she's laid off, but she VOLUNTEERED for it. Whatever, it's her money and her decision, I just don't understand it. It still sucks because we really do need the bill money.

A little background before this next part: We had a 55 gallon aquarium in the living room and noticed Friday that the wood in the stand is warping and the carpet is soaked. We had no idea where the water was coming from so I emptied the tank, relocated the fish, and moved everything so that the carpet would dry.

Anyways, I come home yesterday, pissed off because I wasted 3 vacation hours for no fucking money from the plasma place and Pam wants me to tear up the carpet in living room because the wet spot (see paragraph above) appears to be growing. So I have to tear apart the AV Center, couch, etc and move everything else out of the room. We were planning on putting laminate in there anyways, so that's not a huge deal I would just rather do it when it's warmer out.

Then we end up going to Menards to buy the stuff to build a brick veneer wall in the living room because Pam has been talking about it non-stop and I am a whipped pussy. She also wanted to repaint and get new blinds. So the short version of the story is that Menards didn't have the flooring in stock so we couldn't buy the one thing that really needed to be done and then maxed out the Menard's card on the stuff for the wall that technically could have waited. At least we had a little tax money left so we could pay the $600 off right away when we got home but we still need the flooring and I can't really move anything back in until that gets done....the walls I could have done with all the furniture in there :-<

Anyways. I peeled out the carpeting and padding and that carpeting is fucking wrecked. Massive stains from our kids/pets and the former owner's are all over. It's pretty fucking stupid because the hardwood underneath is in very good shape.....except for where all the moisture bonded the padding to the wood. I had to bring out a driveway ice scraper to scrape it off. Anyways where the wet spot was the wood is soaked and warped so I'm not even sure if it was the fish tank because it seems like too much or if somehow it's coming up from the crawl space, so now I have to dig out the fucking crawl space and take a look in there. When I got up this morning it did appear a little dryer so I'm not really sure what's going on any more. Either way I'll probably have to replace that section of the floor and then still have to lay down laminate whenever we can afford it.

On top of that we found out that the USDA got our letter, they admitted that they made a mistake (they thought Pam was getting paid 2x a month and not the once that we reported). However they wouldn't indicate how much they would take off of the mortgage or even if we are in line for a reduction.

I can't find my PSP games anywhere because I've completed LocoRoco and I need something new to play at work. On top of that we get the Wii Fit today, but my fucking living room is in shamble and I don't know when we'll be able to use it. I need a fucking new digital camera because the kids broke the old one. There's still the recessed lights to install and the coat room to refloor. I also couldn't watch House, 24, or Monday Night Raw and I'm expecting to be without TV for a while yet..

THIS IS TOO MUCH FOR ME TO TAKE!!! I don't even know where to begin and it's depressing the hell out of me.

Other than that, everything's going great *sigh*