Saturday, January 27, 2007

Geekin' and Chillin'

Well, the last of the holiday gifts was finally gotten this weekend. The stars finally aligned and a little bit of geeky-goodness finally was restocked at the local Wal-Mart (restocked for all of 6 hours maybe).

When dropping Denita off at work on Wednesday, a small section of the electronics section was still sitting all lonely and empty, as it has been since November. After running around getting some needed supplies, Zane and I swung back through the toy section to say goodbye to Denita and while walking away noticed the shelf in electronics was no longer empty.

Six, small, elegant white boxes were sitting on the shelf, beckoning me like the sirens to Odysseus. Not being strapped to the mast of my shopping cart, I was pulled towards them, having just enough willpower to pull away to get an employee to open up the display case and grab one.

Cackling madly, I scrambled home... to play with my Wii!

None of the other Wiis lasted on the shelf longer than Denita's shift...

Fast forward a few hours...

Already, I am suffering from Wii-shoulder. The silly little Wii Sports games really will give you a bit of a workout. Even though you don't have to move the controller a lot, you will swing the bugger like you were Casey, trying to make up for your arrogance in Mudville. Watching your little Mii hopping around the bases after a home run (like the guys from VeggieTales), is so funny and satisfying.

On a proud (and also ashamed) note, I must announce that Zane, at the tender age of 4 years, beat his dear old dad at Wii Bowling today 153 to 147 (little bugger got 4 strikes in a row in his first frames). He has turned into the Wii Personal Trainer for the household, telling us what Wii Sports game we should play next.

This thing is all the fun (and then some) that they advertise. Even if you are barely even a casual gamer, you might just want to think about getting one of these little gems, if you can find one.

Sunday, January 21, 2007

Quick request from our readers.

We are currently looking into ways to telling our local phone provider to go play in heavy traffic, but currently do not know anyone who is using a VOIP carrier (our only other option) instead of a standard telephone carrier.

Our local cable company does not yet offer VOIP service in our town, Skype is el cheapo, but sound quality seems to leave much to be desired when calling standard phones, so we must turn to you for advice on VOIP carriers.

If you have used/are currently using a VOIP carrier, please let us know what the quality of service is like (sound transmission, support, billing issues, etc.). Also, if you could let us know what upstream speed you have with your broadband service, that would help as well (we currently max at 128kb upstream and I would appreciate being able to compare sound quality by upstream speed).

Thanks.

Friday, January 12, 2007

I AM TWITCHING UP A STORM RIGHT NOW...

...in a good way.

Seems that the other week, our dispenser of the Elixir of Life™ (espresso maker) decided that it no longer needed any of the handles that originally came with it. So it was decided to retire the dispenser (since using an armless espresso maker is a pain) and get another one (*playing Taps*).

Seeing that Denita and I do not drink enough coffee to warrant just switching over to the standard coffee maker the previous owners of the house left for us (plus the strength we prefer would take too much coffee for a standard coffee maker), I started cruising the internet to find a replacement.

I finally settled on a "real" espresso maker (pump-driven, not steam), instead of just getting another Mr. Coffee one (Mr. Coffee worked well, but is a bit too flimsy).

Mr. FedEx was kind enough to deliver the new espresso maker today and I am now on my fourth cup and I am in java induced nirvana. This sucker makes some tasty Elixir of Life™.

Then on top of it, I fire up the ol' newsreader and find out that I've been linked by Neatorama for my E.S. Posthumus post. *WHOOT!* Seeing that Denita has been spending her posting time over at Neatorama (their newest contributor) instead of posting here, I though it was kinda cool to get something of mine linked to by the guy that runs the site.

Now, everyone start giving Denita a hard time for not posting here at her home blog!

 

BTW: Here's what I'm like on four cups of the almighty Elixir of Life™ :

Thursday, January 11, 2007

And this is considered an Accomplishment?

While TTtSNB (where I work... The Thing that Should Not Be) treats most workers like mindless slaves, creatures only there to jump to the latest whim of management, apparently there is one group that thinks that it is a great place to work. TTtSNB was recently rated as one of the best workplaces by the HRC on behalf of GLBT.

Before anyone jumps all over me for being a horrible, evil bigot, anyone who knows me can attest to the fact that I am one of the most non-bigoted people on this planet. I just am sick of all of the divisions people insist on creating. I could not give a flying shit about your religion, skin color, sexual preference, shoe size, underwear preference, etc. I boil everyone down to Human or Not-Human. You treat others decently, you get a thumbs up in my book.

Instead of working on creating a workplace where all employees think it's one of the best places to work, TTtSNB is apparently bending over backwards to make one group feel special, while treating others like the proverbial re-headed step-child. I wish I could smuggle in a video camera on my shift to have proof of how poorly those not within a "special group" are treated.

Monday, January 08, 2007

The Soundtrack Body Double

You probably haven't heard of these guys, but you probably have heard them. Their work has been featured as the soundtrack stand-in for several movies (ie., the music you hear on a lot of movie trailers that you WISH was actually in the movie).

Crank up your speakers, and head on over to E. S. Posthumus' site and bathe in the aural bliss that awaits you (they stream most of their work from the site).

Thanks to the ol' wife for finding this one (she's got a post hidden up her sleeve somewhere about how she found them).

Monday, January 01, 2007

Happy New Year!

Here's hoping this year proves to be a richer and more fulfilling year for all of you than 2006 was.

To start off this new year, I'd like to call for some reader participation with this post. Let's have a bit of fun by airing some dirty laundry between all of us.

The rules are simple:

In the comments let us know what one of your "guilty pleasures" happens to be (please keep this one relatively clean folks). For every 5 guilty pleasures added to the comments by readers, I'll add another one of my own.

Here's the starter:

I find Goth music to be insanely entertaining (not for the normal reasons though...) and actually have a decent sized Goth music collection.

This stuff is some of the funniest shit you'll ever listen to, if you remember to keep in mind that people actually take the lyrics seriously! The whole "life is but a torturous existence" theme that permeates Goth music will get me laughing on even my worst depressed days. Just try to get through reading these lyrics, without starting to laugh a little.

The truly scary thing is that a lot of Goth music is actually very impressive and technically difficulty to play, (then they add the lyrics, and I cannot stop laughing).

Help continue the mirth by adding your guilty pleasures in the comments (we will need the laughs soon...reason to follow shortly).