Scirocco's Vroom Vroom Journal

Insidious Rock Band!

Fri, 02 May 2008 16:52:21 GMT

I've noticed a strong disposition for a lot of the radio stations I listen to these days, both on-air and network-streamed, to have a LOT of the Rock Band playlist songs in rotation. While it's good that I can practice singing them to myself, it's also mildly distracting. :)

I can't think of any other games that have influenced the radio media so much. Can anyone else remember something else that's affected playlists so much?

TEN! TEN YEARS MAN! TEN!

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 21:07:40 GMT

Wow. Happy 10-year Anniversary to my lovely bride, siercia. We're going out to burn the town down tonight, so don't bother looking for us, unless you like flames and carnage. :)

Oh, and don't ask me for advice on being married for 10 years. It just kinda happened. :P

"Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans."

State of the Rock Band News from ME

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:47:28 GMT

So, yeah, playing a surprising amount of Rock Band for someone who doesn't actually own the game. There's a bar in Davis Square, Orleans, that runs a Rock Band night every other Sunday night. They give us the huge projection TV to play on, and broadcast us on the main sound system throughout the entire bar. It's surprisingly fun, it's like Karaoke++.

New favorite song? "Simple Man", by Lynyrd Skynyrd. I can rock that song pretty hard. I'm also moving up to hard level on the drums now, which has taken me some time, but which I'm pretty happy with.

So... anyone out there around the Boston area wanna come and play some Rock Band?

You try to help....

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 20:15:01 GMT

I must be getting cranky. For three years, I've been the primary responder on my company's customer forum. Today, however, I had a customer respond to a question I attempted to answer (where my answer started with, "It's entire possible that....") with the response of, "I think that's a Cop Out. That could never happen."

Well, since the customers now have all the answers, I guess I don't need to be answering their questions anymore.

Note that I'm not trying to be petty, and I'm not being vindictive, but the tone of the forum overall in the past year has gone from "helping hands" to "bitchfest/slam the company" and I'm not real productive in a situation like that, so I'm taking some time off from the forums before I get myself in trouble. It sucks that I feel I have to do that, but I have a LOT of other things to be doing here at work aside from being the customer pinata.

Beer Part 3.

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 03:12:53 GMT

Bottled. Happy. Now to sit ANOTHER three weeks. Almost no sediment. I'm getting really good at filtration. :)

For all my currently pregnant friends and spouses

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 00:25:02 GMT

This is for whuffle and halleyscomet, gala and hoo, picture_kept and stemware. (and if I forgot anyone, I apologize)

http://www.xkcd.com/387/

BLOOP

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 18:53:22 GMT

Created by OnePlusYou - Free Online Dating

Not sure I can blame this on the caffeine

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 00:34:13 GMT

Created by OnePlusYou - Free Online Dating

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 01:06:58 GMT

I was Righteous!
I scored 80% on the

Take the 80s quizby SheGoddess: Quick Weight Loss

Funny, I never even watched this one more than a few times....

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 18:37:09 GMT

Which sci-fi crew would you best fit in with? (pics)
created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as SG-1 (Stargate)

You are versatile and diverse in your thinking. You have an open mind to that which seems highly unlikely and accept it with a bit of humor. Now if only aliens would stop trying to take over your body.

SG-1 (Stargate)

94%

Deep Space Nine (Star Trek)

88%

Moya (Farscape)

81%

Babylon 5 (Babylon 5)

81%

Nebuchadnezzar (The Matrix)

75%

Galactica (Battlestar: Galactica)

69%

Heart of Gold (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

69%

Millennium Falcon (Star Wars)

63%

FBI's X-Files Division (The X-Files)

50%

Enterprise D (Star Trek)

50%

Serenity (Firefly)

50%

Andromeda Ascendant (Andromeda)

44%

Bebop (Cowboy Bebop)

19%

Beer Part 2

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 01:12:37 GMT

Moved to glass carboy.

Spec Grav: 1.022
Flavor: Nicely bitter, with a chocolatey finish.
Color: PRETTY

Now I have to let it sit for A MONTH. OH THE HORROR

This is a pretty clever use of game sound effects.

Sun, 16 Mar 2008 20:05:01 GMT

http://www.break.com/index/song-made-from-call-of-duty-gun-shot.html

State of the snow stuff recently

Sat, 15 Mar 2008 00:35:49 GMT

My little girl can SKI! Widget and I went to Loon Mountain, to snowboard with a friend of mine who works there (and who I promptly wiped out so badly he had to stop snowboarding for the day, I suck). We did this same trip a few years ago, and Widget enjoyed their all-day ski school ($99 for the day, including like THREE HOURS of lessons, lunch, activities, and snacks, quite the bargain!). She started off today having some issues with the rope-tow (which she had never used before), and was headed inside to relax a bit when I dropped by to see her at the Bunny Hill area. We stopped by a few hours later, and I took a trip down the bunny hill following Widget, who was following her instructor. (Snowboarding on a bunny slope, even for those of us who know what we're doing, is actually remarkably DIFFICULT).

I took off for another few hours, and came back a little before 3. Pickup is 3:30, but knowing she'd been a little frustrated, I figured I'd allow her to bug out early if she wanted, and actually figured she'd be inside reading her books. The desk woman informed me that, no, she was outside and skiing again. Wow, uh, OK.

So, I walked out there, and right as I walk out, I see Widget with her instructor, heading for the CHAIR LIFT. I jog over, say HI, and she says to me, "We're going on the chair lift again! I LOVE IT!" Fine, sounds good to me, I say, go ahead.

I camp out on a fence and watch them go up... and up... and up.... Loon Mountain actually has a remarkably high, but non-steep Green-Circle train (beginner) that is NOT a bunny slope. It has turns, angle, dips, and other terrain features, and it has a REAL chair lift, not some little dinky 100-foot long one. Widget has never, ever, even done the rope -tow prior to today, so seeing her hop right on the chairlift and vanish out of sight up the slope was pretty amazing.

5 minutes later, she came down the hill, making perfect little turns behind her instructor, following every move she was making. I'm pretty sure some little kids tripped over my open jaw on the snow, as I was truly amazed. 3 months ago, she had been totally wobbly and falling all over the place. Today, she looked completely natural being on skis.

The instructor told me how Widget had pretty much figured out parallel turns for herself. After watching the instructor turning, Widget asked, "How come you don't turn in a big wedge like I do?" The instructor explained the concept of parallel turns to Widget, how
you can turn with your skis next to each other, and Widget naturally asked, "How do you do that?" Instructor explained that trying to verbally tell her how to do it would never work, that she should simply follow along behind the instructor and watch what her skis did. Apparently after one more run, Widget was able to actually make 2-3 parallel turns.

I can not actually explain how amazed and proud I am of her. She started out today in a pretty bad mood, had plenty of setbacks and fell a few times, and went from that to making parallel turns, on a real ski slope, that she got to from a real chairlift. BEST SKI LESSON EVAR.

Of course, now I can't take her to crappy cheap places to get lessons anymore, because none of those places have chairlifts to green slopes. :) Ooh, wait, Wachusett does. She could totally do Sundowner!

Before I forget....

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 13:17:31 GMT

Made Beer last night

Chocolate Cherry Porter.
Brewing Time: Slightly under 4 hours. (finished about midnight)
Specific Gravity: 1.043
Volume: ~5.5 Gallons
Mess created: Minimal
Expectations: High

It's happily bubbling today in its fermentation bucket. Yay.

Someone stole my child.

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 11:29:34 GMT

Someone apparently has stolen my cute little girl, and replaced her with an angry stomping mean little wretch. What the fuck. Where did my cute little kid go?

Ow?

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 20:04:35 GMT

Anyone feel like coming by to beat the crap out of my back tonight? I stretched at lunch (apparently inadvisedly) and received for my troubles a shooting pain in the muscles between my shoulder blades. Now any time I turn my head to an extreme angle left or right, it twinges. Damnit. I'm not OLD yet. STOP IT.

Forgotten commute sight from yesterday's commute

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 14:33:57 GMT

I forgot to mention what I saw driving to work yesterday.

A woman.

Driving a Jeep.

With a PARROT ON HER SHOULDER.

Yes, a live parrot. She turned right next to me, heading towards me, and I saw it stepping around on her shoulder. I grinned, and she grinned right back at me.

I've seen a lot of pets in cars, but I can safely say I have never seen a live parrot not in a cage in a moving vehicle. :)

RIP OFF

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 21:34:31 GMT

RIP: Gary Gygax

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 20:59:13 GMT

The Dungeon Master has passed into another realm.

Even though I don't play much anymore, I can safely say that Dungeons and Dragons had a huge effect on my life growing up. I still remember the slightly aged hippie in my afterschool program in 1980 showing us the game, asking us if we wanted to play. Sure, those dice looked kinda cool....

I played a lot. My friends and I played at least once or twice a week, and as we grew up, it became all-night overnighter games, all-weekend games over the summer, days filled with dragons, basilisks, knights, thieves, and pizza and Mountain Dew.

As I grew older, and my interests turned from Fantasy to SciFi, I played less D&D and more of other games, like Cyberpunk and ShadowRun, but without that spark, I would have a very different childhood.

Thanks for all the fun, DungeonMaster

Record Player

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 02:00:51 GMT

Record Player 001
Originally uploaded by WileyCox

Check out what I got working. Widget was prodding me, for some unknown reason, to get the record player working. I dug it out of the basement, and it indeed works, in concert with the amplifier we use for broadcasting race results. :)

Ow Owtch Owie

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 17:25:24 GMT

While snowboarding last night (actually while stopping and sliding along at about 2 mph), I managed to fall SQUARELY on my kneecap on what was essentially hardpack snow/ice. *EYEWATERING*

Yeah, that kinda stung. Luckily, I kept moving and riding for a little while so it didn't swell up. Today it's kinda sore on the surface to the touch, but internally it's fine.

I recommend against doing this.

Heheh

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 16:16:17 GMT

Which Historical Lunatic Are You?
From the fecund loins of Rum and Monkey.

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 06:47:14 GMT

Back from Rock Band night (Asgard, now Monday nights, 9:30-closing.)

Sang my heart out. Did good. Learned some new songs. PHEAR ME. :)

Sick?

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 04:03:23 GMT

Can't decide if the "head starting to feel full" feeling I'm getting is due to an oncoming cold, or that I just came back to work from 9pm until now, after having already been at work from 9-6, and drinking an enormous cup of coffee just now. Urk. Going home to bed now.

Busy Night

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 04:54:02 GMT

Decided to go snowboarding tonight, since it was supposed to be cloudy, and I figured I'd miss the eclipse. Hah. I got to the mountain, and it was CLEAR AND COLD. M and I put in 2.5 hours of runs, which was pretty good, and then high-tailed it out of there under a bite-mark moon, to get home so I could bust out the telescope and get some good looks at the moon under low-light conditions. I wasn't disappointed, by the moon, or by what siercia and I think were pieces of the spy satellite that was shot down, and beginning re-entry. There are no meteors scheduled for this time of year, and there were too many (and in too many directions) to be totally random. SO, cool.

OK, back out for a little more eclipse, and then BED *thud*.