So I got Grand Theft Auto IV, kind of on a whim (gift cards will do that to ya). It's decent as such things go so far (I'm partway through the second of five chapters) but I would really like to play the version of the game that all the reviewers got, because I'm somewhat convinced I'm not playing the same thing.

( Read more... )

I don't have much to say today but I felt like posting today, if for no other reason than to make sure nobody mistook me for some crazy dramatic boycotting type person. "Oh NOES, Livejournal doesn't want to subsidize my IMPORTANT Harry Potter/ROM slashfic community!"

Also, incidentally, I'm on that Facebook thing now, if you want to find and "friend" me or whatnot.

Passing of Gary Gygax Reaction Table:

01-15	I feel very... [rolls dice] ... saddened by this news.
16-30	The announcement took me by surprise...so it gets an extra attack and my dexterity bonus doesn't count.
31-45	I disbelieve!
46-60	Let's all observe a moment of Silence, 15' Radius.
61-75	What, NOBODY had the right cure spell memorized?
76-85	I hear that his will stipulates that he leaves behind Treasure Type M, to be guarded by a gelatinous cube and a chessboard-themed trap...
86-99	...and that he's only going to need one pallbearer, because nobody pays attention to the encumbrance rules.
00	Let's go beat this "natural causes" thing. It's gotta be worth a ton of XP by now.

Rest in peace, sir! Thanks for the memories!
- Ayaan/Liam/Killian/Davyn/Razhio

We just got back from Distant Worlds, the orchestral performance of selected music from the Final Fantasy games. I hadn't realized until looking at that Wikipedia link that this was the only US stop after the tour's beginning in Stockholm a few months back, so I guess we're lucky that we live here!

Anyway, it was pretty cool, especially if you're like Dana and you remember tons of stuff from all the games. Me, I can basically remember three songs (and they played two of them!) and I still had quite a good time. They've got screens above the stage showing clips from the games and such -- mostly cut scenes, clips from Advent Children, that kind of thing, but there was some pretty amusing 8- and 16-bit stuff as well. My one complaint was that the video for the two multi-game montages (one for games 1-3, one for the whole series) used some of the same footage as the individual songs, but oh well.

The ultimate message of The Nightmare Before Christmas is this: Even if your whole life centers around waiting all year for the one night you get to participate in a musical number by singing two lines introducing yourself to nobody in particular, by no means should you try to break out of the routine or change things in any way, because if you do, you'll just mess it up horribly.

No wonder the emo kids like it so much.

There's this bit in Four Weddings and a Funeral where the old Scots guy declares that people get married becase they've run out of things to talk about. I suppose, had the movie come out in more recent years, he might have opined it was because they'd run out of things to post to LiveJournal about.

So yeah, my wild hedonistic bachelor days are officially over. The ceremony and reception seemed to go by very fast, much as I'd been told they would. I wish I'd had a bit more time to spend with some family & friends, but I was happy to see them as much as I did nonetheless.

For the honeymoon, as you may know, we did a road trip involving a handful of Civil War sites, capped off by a couple of days in Niagara Falls.

( Road trip summary, and bits of wisdom acquired on the way )

Borrowed from slyon and other assorted people:

( Career meme thingie )

Okay, so I've got a few songs I want to burn to a CD. A few of them are bought from the iTunes store, so that means I'm pretty much stuck with using iTunes to burn them.

I'd like to insert some extra space between the third and fourth tracks. iTunes prefs have a setting that lets me add a few seconds between every track, but it's not really what I need. Does anybody know an easy way to get, say, 30 seconds of dead air between tracks?

Or, failing that, anybody got a program that can make me a 30-second silent mp3?

Fortune cookie fortune, taped to the cash register at Panda Express:
"Fortune not found. Abort, Retry, Fail?"

Bumper sticker at Best Buy:
"My gamer fragged your honor student"

I was a little less than a month away from being born when the original Star Wars premiered. I'm not sure if my parents went to see it or not -- I would guess they didn't, but it was the seventies and who knows what kind of crazy stuff was going on -- but I can only imagine that my in utero exposure to SW-mania had some kind of lasting effect on me.

( Nerdstalgia ahead! )

Batman Sighting Puts Schools on Lockdown
[via]

It seems likely that I'll want to get a next-gen video game console at some point. I mean, I'm a card-carrying nerd, it's inevitable.

The PS3 is ridiculously expensive, so that's right out.

The Xbox 360 is nice. It's got some good games, and some interesting stuff via the Marketplace. And I yearn to play HALO, just because. But I don't know if I'm really into online play (it's fun with friends, less so with strangers) and that whole business with Dead Rising having unreadable text on standard-definition TVs left a bad taste in my mouth. I don't have an HDTV set, and I don't plan to have one unless my current TV breaks at a time when the price of a high-def set is way down. I'm also not crazy about the seemingly increasing reliance on micropayments, particularly to unlock content that's already on the disc.

Which leaves the Wii, which has several things in its favor, mostly the price and the cool control scheme that emphasizes new kinds of game play and yadda yadda. I hear Wii Sports and Zelda are addictively fun. But I'm just not sure I want to put all my eggs in that basket. I mean, that Nunchuck looks like a horrible kludge to me, and you know, I'm just fairly certain that SSX is not meant to involve drawing hearts on the screen. I fear that only Nintendo and a couple other companies will really get the hang out of developing for the Wiimote, and everybody else will just try to tack the control scheme onto games that aren't designed for it.

I dunno. Maybe I should just see how much life I can still suck out of my PS2 and my DS and convince myself I'm old-school.

Anybody bought any of this stuff yet? Any thoughts/advice?

Happy New Year, peeps! Currently it is the no-year's-land between midnight Eastern (when the ball drops) and midnight Central (when all the clocks in my apartment decide it's 2007). We opted to observe the occasion at midnight Eastern for whatever reason.

How did I do on my resolutions for 2006? Let's see...

I want to lose another...oh, let's say fifty pounds. A bit optimistic, I guess, but I still have a net weight loss for the year (I'm probably about 30 pounds down from my all-time high) and though I kind of let things go for the last month or two, I expect/hope to get back on track to be at a nice healthy weight (whatever that might be) by the fall.

Invest some money, including keeping a better eye on my 401(k) funds. I did keep better watch over the 401(k), but I haven't done a whole lot else on this front. 2007 will probably be a bit better in this area.

Find an interesting hobby or something. This year I was introduced to the wonders of archery. High on my to-do list is to buy a nice starter bow and get some practice in, perhaps joining the local club.

Maybe set a wedding date. 9/22/07 is the date. Yeah, we can now say we're getting married this year. Anyway, as they say, "a small family wedding is planned". (Although it's not entirely "family" and not at all "planned" right now, but it's definitely small. And a wedding.)

Hey, that wasn't too bad. I don't think I'm going to come up with as many for 2007, I'm just gonna make weight loss my big priority (well, that, and planning this wedding thing) for the time being. Go me!

It doesn't look as blue in this picture as in real life, but here's my new Saturn VUE!

( Pic below the cut )

[22:44] dana: you don't sound very enthusiastic about my goal of unfolding into a giant robot
[22:44] steve: can i unfold into a giant robot too?
[22:45] dana: when i set a goal about unfolding into a giant robot, i think it would be nice to get a little support from my fiance as i embark on that goal
[22:45] dana: i think it's the least I should be able to expect
[22:45] steve: can i be a giant robot too?
[22:45] dana: sure
[22:45] steve: then for our wedding we can join together to be a bigger giant robot

Phil Plait vs. Katie Couric and anybody else who whines about spending money on NASA when there are problems in the world that we haven't fixed yet.

I love Bad Astronomy.

Fall TV picks
(all times Central, just to confuse you)

Monday:
8pm: Heroes (NBC) is a show about people who get super-powers and stuff, and as such, I am required by law to watch it.
9pm: Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (NBC) is by Aaron Sorkin, and as such, will probably pop up at #1 on my TiVo list the moment it actually shows up in TiVo listings.

Tuesday:
7pm: Standoff (Fox) is about hostage negotiators or something; all I know is that it has Ron Livingston and Gina Torres, and that is all I need to know.
8pm: House (Fox) because I'm pretty sure Sela Ward is still gone, and therefore I can stand to watch the show.

Wednesday:
7pm: Three-way tossup between Jericho (CBS) which sounds vaguely interesting, Bones (Fox) which is terribly silly but is watchable enough when it's not on opposite whatever else I was watching for the second half of last season, and in the 7:30 slot, NBC's 30 Rock, which I'm sure nobody will ever ever confuse with Studio 60.
8pm: Lost (ABC) - Perhaps you've heard of it. Maybe that's what I was watching instead of Bones.
9pm: I'll give The Nine (ABC) a try, because Tim Daly was still the best Superman.

Thursday:
7pm: NBC's duo of My Name is Earl and The Office when they're doing new episodes, and CW's Smallville when they're not.

The weekend remains something of a wasteland, but there's always Venture Bros. on Adult Swim, right?

Midseason: Scrubs will be back (hopefully not competing with another show I like this time) and the latest edition of the Andy Richter Dead Pool is called Andy Barker, P.I..