Attacked by a 2 year old

Well, I wounded my foot as a result of things magically appearing where I would not expect them. One of those hair holder things (sorry don't know the name as I am lacking in hair and it is generally worn by females) was laying on the ground pokey side up. Suffice to say, that is magically got embedded into my heel. Which hurt. A lot.

Sigh.

New Direction in Life

Today I am here to announce that I am taking on some new endeavors. When I look at the state of the world today and what Miranda is going to have to live through, how can I not decide to start my own company which has the sole goal of creating a better future and world for our kids.

The real crux of our problems stem from our heavy reliance on energy. We need energy for our TVs, vehicles, refrigerators, and everything in our lives. Now you may be thinking that I will be spending time working on a solution to cheap, safe fusion energy, but that really doesn't hit to the heart of the matter. It still leaves us with a dependence on energy.

So what I propose is to create an army of individuals that will rise up around the world to cut the power. It is easy to start, but I won't say that it is not without some danger. We are currently looking for people with experience with bolt cutters, chainsaws, and cutting torches. We need to bring that power grid down. We need to free up our time from mindless pursuits of video games, music, and TV. Then we will be free to spend our time doing what we were meant to do which is live from the land by raising crops and animals. No more wasted time and our personal fulfillment levels will be higher.

Join with me and remember that only you can truly hate April Fool's Day.

Book Review: You Suck

Recently read You Suck: A Love Story on the advice from Ish and I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. This book is definitely not high brow literature. It doesn't fall into the traditional vampire (or vampyre) tales. Instead it weaves a really nice story about two naive vampires just learning what it means to be that. What you give up, and what you gain when dealing with people around you.

The main characters consist of Jody and Tommy but that book is able to create a great supporting cast. The Animals which are Tommy's friends before he turned are just fun and really add to the story (especially for someone who used to work in the grocery business). Also you have the Cheddar princess turned stripper and hocker who really just is about the only purely nasty person in the book. You get treated to the 800 year old vampire Elijah as well and his more subdued view of being pissed on while trying to feed on a drunk. But really the most delightful character is that of Abby who is trying so hard to be goth, but really is just a bubbly, hello kitty type girl.

The story is simple and short, but the characters really bring the fun into it. Recommended.

Misc Notes

So I thought I would drop off a couple quick notes / rants / whatever.

1. Miranda has now used the potty a couple of times. Woo hoo!
2. Miranda still hates hair washing.
3. Miranda now says happy, bubbles, and a few other words and phrases.
4. Work is good. Tiring but good.
5. Coffee is good and not so tiring.
6. The parking garage at the train station should really try to be open in the morning. There really isn't any place to park otherwise.
7. The Rescuers is a pretty fun movie, but it is weird to feel the different pacing of the show from a by gone era. Very slow and methodical.
8. Burnout: Paradise City is fun.
9. Godiva Chocolate Liquor + Chai + Soy Milk = Yummy goodness.

My little rockstar.

Co-operative gamer bill of rights

I saw a post on this in a couple of different places and took a stab at what I thought it should be on my gaming clan's blog.

Miranda is not impressed

Lions release Kenoy Kennedy

This one I am pretty surprised by. I really thought that Kenoy had produced good numbers and positively impacted play on the field. I can only guess this is cap related, but otherwise it doesn't make much sense. I can only hope that at 30 he will get a chance to start somewhere and make an impact like he did with the Lions.

The only other Lion thing to note, is I saw that Harrington got re-signed by the Atlanta Falcons. Hmmmmmm. Not sure what is up with that, but Atlanta is a weird place.

Detroit Lions releases....

Detroit recently release Kevin Jones and Kalimba Edwards. To be honest, I agree with Tom's assessment on Kevin. I think he is a great player but the moneyed owed for a player that has been frequently injured is something the Lions can't pay for especially on the final year of a contract. I agree that Kevin will be a phenomenal player. I really hope that the Lions can resign him with a back loaded contract that would bring him back with money to match the amount of games he will be available for this year.

As for Kalimba, best of luck, but I am not sad to see that position get freed up for a replacement. Maybe a move to OLB in a 3-4 will be a better move for him.

Update on life

Well, it seems we are mostly back to healthy in the household. The time change made it a little more difficult to get better as it totally screwed with sleep. Plus I think I broken my NyQuil addiction as well. Seems every time I get a cold, I turn to NyQuil to make sure I get my rest just cause it does a good job opening the airways and then making me drowsy. However, after I feel the cold has run it's course, I have to somehow back down from it, which means the first few nights off tend to be me laying in bed till midnight waiting for sleep. Usually I try to go off of the stuff on a weekend, but this time it wasn't possible. Either way, I survived the low sleep and now and back to good.

Thanks for all the birthday wishes. I hear that 30 is one of the special birthdays that you should celebrate. I guess I missed it. We'll try again in 10 years. But the cold was a mixed blessing, it gave me the chance to spend more time with parents who were in town to see us as I didn't lose the commute, just spent part of the holed up working from home.

Book Review: Time Enough for Love

I recently completed Time Enough for Love by Robert A. Heinlein. Time Enough for Love tells the furthering stories of Lazarus Long aka Woodrow Wilson Smith and his continuing life. At this point in the story (4700 AD), Lazarus has been alive 2700 years and done just about everything. As such he wants to end it gracefully in a run down hotel across town. Things don't go so well as the Howard families refuse to let their key piece of genetics and information die and have resolved to try and find things in life to get Lazarus interested again in living, but the real underlying theme is around love is what makes life worth living.

This book is broken into 4 sections that have their own distinctive feel. Part 1 seems to be a lot of pontification by Heinlein as the members of the Howard families attempt to get something new for Lazarus. Here you are introduced to a planet leader who can be as manipulative as they come, a computer in love with said leader, as well as a couple of lonely rejuvenators. They worry about Lazarus. They talk of manipulating him. They speak with him, trying to get him to share many of his stories from his long life.

Part 2 has involves Lazarus telling two stories to the computer, Minerva, about his past loves and trying to explain what love is. I found these sections to be much more enjoyable than his random pontifications. Heinlein is able to create interesting characters in very interesting scenes when he actually sits to tell a story.

Part 3 suddenly appears and takes you forward 5 or 10 years. Here again we find ourselves subject to Heinlein's discussions of group marriages and love again. We hear his ideas on raising children and creating happy healthy family units.

Finally in Part 4, we take a look at Lazarus' past through the eyes of an aged Lazarus and how he gets to meet his first family again but as another person via ways of time travel. This he is able to paint another good story of a person really looking out for his skin so much that he again forgets that life is about living and loving and that he has to rediscover that through his family and the ones he cares about most.

Overall a good book, but dreadfully long and over tedious in places. Recommended to the die hard RAH fan. Everyone else need not apply.

The Magical Age

I think we have reached a very neat age for Miranda. She seems to be comprehending more of what is going on. Cause and effect understanding seems to be getting better (very crucial in making sure that bad behavior is curbed). Plus she is starting to talk. Her language is not easily translated to english so I have lots of trouble understanding her.

So in the last month, we have had a potty use, which is good, but now she doesn't even want to go near it. Our bath times are getting a little easier. She still doesn't like to get her hair wash, but now it is more of anger as opposed to the straight out screaming her head off. She is not kicking the cat now, which I count as a huge win.

Some of the bad is that she has figured out how the TV works (at least turning it on). She still throws food on the floor and we can't take the food away yet as we are still trying to get some more weight on her. We go through daily tantrums over nap and bed. Cleaning is hard as she still won't put things away and loves to haul out what we put away.

So overall, nothing terrible and many things very cool so she is progressing well and we as parents are a little bit calmer than we were before.

Happy Valentines Day

And no, I didn't buy the flowers.

Download the songs of Rock Band

Since I have been playing Rock Band for the xbox 360, I have wanted to download the MP3's so that I can listen to the music and figure out the pitch of the singing or even just learn the songs so it is easier to play. I figured others would care about my work.

But here is the complete list of the ones I could find on Amazon.

• Rolling Stones "Gimme Shelter"
• "Train Kept a Rollin'™" (Album only download)
• "Won't Get Fooled Again" (not The Who)
• Boston "Foreplay/Long Time"
• Mountain "Mississippi Queen"
• The Police "Next to You"
• David Bowie "Suffragette City"
• Black Sabbath "Paranoid"
• Blue Oyster Cult "Don't Fear the Reaper"
• The Ramones "Blitzkrieg Bop"
• Deep Purple "Highway Star"
• KISS "Detroit Rock City"
• Molly Hatchet "Flirtin'™ With Disaster"
• The Outlaws "Green Grass and High Tides"
• Sweet "Ballroom Blitz"
• Rush "Tom Sawyer"
• Bon Jovi "Wanted Dead or Alive"
• The Clash "Should I Stay or Should I Go"
• Faith No More "Epic"
• Pixies "Wave of Mutilation"
• R.E.M. "Orange Crush"
• Iron Maiden "Run to the Hills"
• Foo Fighters "Learn to Fly"
• Metallica "Enter Sandman"
• Nirvana "In Bloom"
• Stone Temple Pilots "Vasoline"
• Weezer "Say It Ain't So"
• Smashing Pumpkins "Cherub Rock"
• Radiohead "Creep"
• Beastie Boys "Sabotage"
• Hole "Celebrity Skin"
• Garbage "I Think I'm Paranoid"
• Soundgarden "Black Hole Sun"
• The Hives "Main Offender"
• Queens of the Stone Age "Go With the Flow"
• The Strokes "Reptilia"
• JET "Are You Going To Be My Girl"
• Ok Go! "Here It Goes Again"
• Nine Inch Nails "The Hand That Feeds"
• Yeah Yeah Yeahs "Maps"
• Red Hot Chilli Peppers "Dani California"
• Coheed & Cambria "Welcome Home"
• Fallout Boy "Dead on Arrival"
• The Killers "When You Were Young "
• New Pornographers "Electric Version"
• Bang Camaro "Pleasure (Pleasure)"

Update: I had a link to the Amazon Listmania list, but that list just doesn't work. Must be a bug with Amazon Digital orders and Listmania pages or something on that line. Very, very annoying.

Review: Assassin's Creed

Finished Assassin's Creed today, and I am impressed. This is the first of the games that I have played from Ubisoft Montreal. I skipped the Prince of Persia's (at least the semi-recent ones), so I think this is my first introduction to the Havoc engine and other miscellaneous bouncing off the walls that the character is able to do. In Assassin's Creed, you play two roles. First off you play as Miles, the descendant of a famed Assassin clan from during the Crusades. You have limited interaction while playing as Miles and must glide around the room frequently to see if you can interact with anything. It would be nice here if it would highlight so you could see you could interact from a distance. The second character you play as is Altaïr, Miles' ancestor. Basically the game story centers around the fact that Miles is captured and must relive his ancestor's life through some sort of DNA memory. While this is a little hokie, but if you can suspend your beliefs past that part, you are in for a treat. The story is filled with conspiracy theories, alien technology, and ancient battles, not to mention getting to play as an assassin in a critical time in human history.

The graphics and sounds are executed well and give you a very immersive environment. You get the sounds of battles, plus the sounds of merchants hawking their wares. You get to see swirling dust and flying insects along with copious amounts of blood. The cities are beautifully rendered with tons of space to explore and tons of stupid flags to find.

The gameplay suffers from a few things. Many popular reviewers found this game to be repetitive and I can see where they are coming from. Your bare minimum mission consists of:

1. Arrive at city
2. Visit bureau
3. Do 2 of 6 investigations
4. Visit bureau
5. Kill target
6. Visit bureau

But that is the bare minimum. If you want there are high places to explore, and citizens to save. There are also 6 total investigations to do which all lend to the story and enrich it. Plus if you really would like to get into the role it is helpful to do all the investigations so you can see marked guard placements and good routes to the site. For me the most monotonous part was flag hunting. I got it into my head that I should find all the flags, but after trying to do so in Damascus for 3+ hours, I decided I would just collect the ones I could find (as they are save points) and that would be all.

Another clunky combat / gameplay point is that sometimes it can be a tad grabby. If you are running away from the guards sometimes your character will do very non-elite assassin sort of things like just grab onto a wall or accidentally fall into the water. These end up being very bad things.

But bad things aside, they really didn't detract much from the game and I still had a fun time playing it. In fact I recommend it just to watch the story.

Back to healthy

Well everyone is mostly healthy now. Miranda completely healthy and her parents, well, they are recovering. She is eating again and the vocabulary is increasing, we just don't always understand. But that is alright. Now I just need to take more pictures so my parents stay happy :)

Lions part ways with Shaun Rogers

Reports: Lions decide to part ways with Rogers

It's really hard to say letting go of a pro bowl player is a good thing. But there was also the frustration of seeing nothing produced out of him for 7 of the 16 games this season. See you Shaun, may your next team work out better for you, and may your replacement show up 16 games.

Sick kid

Miranda has her first real cold with fever. We have been lucky before this with 1 other light cold, but this one looks to be a big one. So yesterday I spent an hour and a half in Walgreen's waiting for the prescription that was supposed to be faxed in earlier. Either way, that sucked at I would have got home at 5:30, but instead got home around 7pm.

Add that in with Miranda not sleeping well and we aren't sleeping well and you have a barely functioning household.

But the prognosis is ear infection with a secondary infection that seems to be the flu. Antibiotics for the ear infection and lots of fighting to get her to take the meds, take the tylenol, and just eat or get fluids.

Bad parent addendum

Well, puking didn't end the day. I ended up getting pooped on to. Sigh.


But it looks like Miranda has the flu. Hopefully get her into the doc today and make sure we can do all we can do for her.

Yup. Awful parent award winner for this year too

Sigh.


Who the hell says timeout works? I would really like to know so that I could throw up on them. So my daughter is 20 months. We have been working with her to help understand things and also some of the things that are acceptable and not. So this morning she dumped food all over the floor. Fine. So I ask her to pick up the food and put it back in the bowl. She refuses. So I put her in her chair for a while.

Next I go to clean up the mess and she comes over. She helps a bit. Then when it is back full, she grabs and dumps it. So back in time out, but this time in her room all alone, for 20 seconds. I come in. I try to calm her down so we can talk. She throws up on me. Every time I do timeout with her, I get thrown up on. So how the hell do you do corrective actions when you are doing all you can to get fucking calories and nutrients to her and then have her regurgitate it?

Video Game Review: Open Season

I recently picked up Xbox 360 Holiday Bundle from Amazon for the low price of $20 (although it has gone up) for the reason that it was a great deal. I wasn't sure if the games would be good or not, but I figured that Miranda would appreciate the bright colors and hopefully easy game play of these games. So I finally decided to try Open Season first and what I found surprised me.

I am used to most movie tie-in games and whatnot to be atrocious, but what I found here was something simplistic but at the same point very entertaining. Now this game is used by many "hardcore" gamers to gain achievements or "nerd-cred", but I went in with that as secondary. The basic plot follows that of the movie where you play as both the bear (Boog) and the deer sidekick (can't remember) and Boog transformation from pet to wild animal. The majority of the missions are played as Boog and basically put you "on rails" running through the forest scaring off hunters and loggers. There are a couple of missions that are out of control "river runs" where you attempt to not run into too many things in your path. The controls are good. The camera is not annoying. And in the end, I found that I had fun.

About the only thing that bothered me was what felt like uninspired voice acting. I would hope that they wanted to do this in addition to just picking up a paycheck. But the general storytelling was well laid out and the writing was good and lead to a few chuckles.

In addition to the game, which is 3-5 hours to beat and very, very easy, you also get a number of multiplayer mini-games, as well as slideshows from the movie and various nature trivia facts.