Let the madness beegin
08/22/05 07:00 PM |
General
Yes kiddies it's that time of year again. Time to
strap on those backpacks and trudge 20 miles uphill
(both ways) to school. Oh who am I kidding, half the
kids these days get dropped off in the Hummer and
their backpacks have wheels. I know I'm not the first
to say it, but I think it bears repeating. We are
raising a generation of pansies. And I'll admit that
it began with my generation and that it's my
generation that is raising today's pansies. I realize
that every parent wants more for their children then
they had, but there has to be a limit to that. I
think my generation had it pretty good. Perhaps maybe
we should try to make the next generation better by
try to instill some of our parents' values into the
next generation.
Oh don't mind me, I always get this way at the beginning, middle and end of the school year. But I'll get off the soap box for a little bit, at least regarding that topic anyway.
Well Rocky has fully recovered from his trip to the vet and is up to his old tricks. He's been set free from his bathroom prison and is enjoying the ability to attack at any hour. Although I think he has mellowed slightly. I deduce that from his 4am purring sessions. You cannot imagine how annoying it is to be awoke at 4am because there is a cat on you purring and trying to force you to pet him. As I'm writing this I have no new photos of the Rockster, but I'll try to take a couple before I upload this to the server. And I'll try to see if he'll hold still long enough to do a size comparison photo. I know he's only 4 months old but he's almost the size of Piccolo and will easily be Daimao sized before he's done growing.
In other news, I've redone the living room furniture. Well that's not exactly accurate. I tossed the 12 ton hide-a-bed couch and replaced it with a couch and a futon from my cousin Angie's house. It's nice to have furniture that is light and easy to move for vacuuming. If I tried to move the hide-a-bed, the casters fell off. But it was a good couch in it's time and survived for quite a long time considering I was its fourth owner. All you previous owners may want to pour out a 40 in honor of its demise.
So that may have sounded like a simple proposition right? Just move some furniture. For most people, maybe. But for me everything seems to turn into a production. As such, allow me to set the scene for you. We'd loaded the treadmill and futon into my truck and made it successfully to my house. First we unloaded the futon and were about to unload the treadmill. Well I walk down the stairs to move the dehumidifier and the box the keeps the dog out of the workout room. Well as I was moving the box I noticed an unusual number of bugs on the floor. Bugs are not uncommon in the basement and I usually have my share of box elder bugs and those mock lady bug things. However these were something different, these were yellow-jackets. And the exercise room was just the tip of the iceberg as the guest bedroom had a large number of these stinging insects in various stages of life and death. After vacuuming up the majority of them I noticed the source of the infestation, a hole in the wall by the self ledge that sits in the foundation block. "Neat.", I thought. Well actually I thought a different four letter word. Well to conclude this tale of woe, the yellow-jackets have been climbing up under the bottom piece of siding on the outside of the house and in an effort to expand, chewed through the sheetrock wall and into the guest room. Currently the hole has been covered with duct tape. Although if sheetrock didn't stop them, the tape doesn't instill much confidence in me. I checked earlier and it's still holding though. Since that time a can of wasp killer and a can of great stuff have been purchased by early to mid week this problem will be sealed off permanently. Well at least until new siding happens which should prevent situations like this all together. Stupid wood siding.
On a happier note, I noticed this week that "Dead Like Me" and "Star Trek Enterprise" have released their second seasons on DVD. So I'll be breaking in the new couch soon. That's it for DVDs for a while. Other than my Netflix that is. I think I'm almost to the point in my queue that contains season 1 of "Newsradio" and the complete series of "Are You Being Served? Again". And I can't wait to get to season 1 of "Thundercats" in my queue. And now I notice that season 1 of "The Muppet Show" is out on DVD. Oh my, hours and hours of fond childhood memories.
In more serious news, I received a new demo disc the other day with the latest issue of "Computer Games Magazine". Low and behold it contained a demo of the Lego Star Wars game. I tried an early demo of this game a couple of months ago and thought it sucked. But I figured perhaps they had managed to fix the issues I had with the game since then. Boy was I disappointed. Let's clear something up right now, in my opinion, play control is the most important part of a game. Hands down, no question. You could have the greatest game in the world (and Lego Star Wars has potential) but if the play control sucks (and it does in Lego Star Wars) then the game sucks. There is nothing more frustrating than poor play control. I don't care if the game looks like crap. If I can move my character in an easy and intuitive fashion, I'm happy. If I can't easily move around the odds of me enjoying the experience is pretty slim.
On a brighter note, the disc also included a demo of Worms 4 Mayhem. This game is a decent 3D take on the classic 2D version of Worms. If I had one complaint it would be about the view system. The camera angles are always the best and it's more difficult to judge range than it was in the old 2D version. But overall a decent game if you've been itching for some arcade style action.
Well I'll try to get some photos up of Rocky and the new furniture. Maybe even some of Rocky on the new furniture. And if time permits, perhaps a few pictures of the killer bees...
Oh don't mind me, I always get this way at the beginning, middle and end of the school year. But I'll get off the soap box for a little bit, at least regarding that topic anyway.
Well Rocky has fully recovered from his trip to the vet and is up to his old tricks. He's been set free from his bathroom prison and is enjoying the ability to attack at any hour. Although I think he has mellowed slightly. I deduce that from his 4am purring sessions. You cannot imagine how annoying it is to be awoke at 4am because there is a cat on you purring and trying to force you to pet him. As I'm writing this I have no new photos of the Rockster, but I'll try to take a couple before I upload this to the server. And I'll try to see if he'll hold still long enough to do a size comparison photo. I know he's only 4 months old but he's almost the size of Piccolo and will easily be Daimao sized before he's done growing.
In other news, I've redone the living room furniture. Well that's not exactly accurate. I tossed the 12 ton hide-a-bed couch and replaced it with a couch and a futon from my cousin Angie's house. It's nice to have furniture that is light and easy to move for vacuuming. If I tried to move the hide-a-bed, the casters fell off. But it was a good couch in it's time and survived for quite a long time considering I was its fourth owner. All you previous owners may want to pour out a 40 in honor of its demise.
So that may have sounded like a simple proposition right? Just move some furniture. For most people, maybe. But for me everything seems to turn into a production. As such, allow me to set the scene for you. We'd loaded the treadmill and futon into my truck and made it successfully to my house. First we unloaded the futon and were about to unload the treadmill. Well I walk down the stairs to move the dehumidifier and the box the keeps the dog out of the workout room. Well as I was moving the box I noticed an unusual number of bugs on the floor. Bugs are not uncommon in the basement and I usually have my share of box elder bugs and those mock lady bug things. However these were something different, these were yellow-jackets. And the exercise room was just the tip of the iceberg as the guest bedroom had a large number of these stinging insects in various stages of life and death. After vacuuming up the majority of them I noticed the source of the infestation, a hole in the wall by the self ledge that sits in the foundation block. "Neat.", I thought. Well actually I thought a different four letter word. Well to conclude this tale of woe, the yellow-jackets have been climbing up under the bottom piece of siding on the outside of the house and in an effort to expand, chewed through the sheetrock wall and into the guest room. Currently the hole has been covered with duct tape. Although if sheetrock didn't stop them, the tape doesn't instill much confidence in me. I checked earlier and it's still holding though. Since that time a can of wasp killer and a can of great stuff have been purchased by early to mid week this problem will be sealed off permanently. Well at least until new siding happens which should prevent situations like this all together. Stupid wood siding.
On a happier note, I noticed this week that "Dead Like Me" and "Star Trek Enterprise" have released their second seasons on DVD. So I'll be breaking in the new couch soon. That's it for DVDs for a while. Other than my Netflix that is. I think I'm almost to the point in my queue that contains season 1 of "Newsradio" and the complete series of "Are You Being Served? Again". And I can't wait to get to season 1 of "Thundercats" in my queue. And now I notice that season 1 of "The Muppet Show" is out on DVD. Oh my, hours and hours of fond childhood memories.
In more serious news, I received a new demo disc the other day with the latest issue of "Computer Games Magazine". Low and behold it contained a demo of the Lego Star Wars game. I tried an early demo of this game a couple of months ago and thought it sucked. But I figured perhaps they had managed to fix the issues I had with the game since then. Boy was I disappointed. Let's clear something up right now, in my opinion, play control is the most important part of a game. Hands down, no question. You could have the greatest game in the world (and Lego Star Wars has potential) but if the play control sucks (and it does in Lego Star Wars) then the game sucks. There is nothing more frustrating than poor play control. I don't care if the game looks like crap. If I can move my character in an easy and intuitive fashion, I'm happy. If I can't easily move around the odds of me enjoying the experience is pretty slim.
On a brighter note, the disc also included a demo of Worms 4 Mayhem. This game is a decent 3D take on the classic 2D version of Worms. If I had one complaint it would be about the view system. The camera angles are always the best and it's more difficult to judge range than it was in the old 2D version. But overall a decent game if you've been itching for some arcade style action.
Well I'll try to get some photos up of Rocky and the new furniture. Maybe even some of Rocky on the new furniture. And if time permits, perhaps a few pictures of the killer bees...
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