Archived News starting from 06-03-2011 and earlier
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It's been
over two years since my last visit to Myrn Halaraiaous McBagaltoff Bagalay so I was long overdue in the sex bed. Upon arrival, I was
accosted by a hooded Myrn and the Ninja, who then immediately delivered me to the nearest In-And-Out as the California visitors handbook dictates. Filled with west coast exclusive greasy goodness, we settled into a routine of landmark visits including the Winchester Mystery House, Frys Electronics and Jollibee in San Jose (so now I DO
know the way to San Jose). Next up was a
San Francisco trip to Pier 39 utilizing the abundant public transportation. A stop at the seals convinced us we needed to explore the docked submarine and liberty ship nearby, after which Myrn mentioned Castro street causing me to immediately board the first train out of San Francisco. Shockingly, Idiocracy was never played in the house of Myrn so after correcting that mistake it was off to LA for E3.
With Verizon finally
releasing a Windows Phone 7 last week, I'm now officially a WP7 user rather than a wannabe wifi-only owner.
Joseph, the only other WP7 user in the world, was pleased to hear it and sent me a virtual high-five to celebrate. I'm holding on to the old phone until WP7 gets angry birds (the last OS to get it) so Lisa has a dedicated device to earn me achievements, and not surprisingly both devices have almost
identical performance as they're both the minimum required for the OS.

A mysterious clown appeared on my lawn today, and upon further inspection it seems to be a rare carnival game clown. How it arrived on my lawn I'm not sure, but I already feel more secure just knowing it's there, ever vigilant against the coming zombie apocalypse. After all; if your brain is wired to eat brains, seeing this clown might trigger a less violent memory and confuse you just long enough for me to end you with a baseball bat (while wearing plastic of course).
After nobody bought
Brink, an awesome team game in my opinion (assuming you have a team to play with), I decided to go all in on
Dirt 3. While the game reeked of Dirt 2, they did add a Gymkhana mode and slicked up the menus significantly while also de-clowning the events. The most significant feature I've found so far is uploading replays to YouTube which was immediately used to capture my
luckiest save yet. Also of note: I suck at Gymkhana.
After finding
$200 Klipsch HD 300 speakers and a
$200 Yamaha RX-V467 receiver I received
Tigerbombs blessing and ordered both. While I didn't really need a new sound system, the $500 combined savings forced my hand. Of course Lisa was asleep/watching TV when they were delivered, and the UPS guy instead delivered them to Robbies house. That very instant I received an excited phone call demanding he perform the install and calibration, a request I dared not defy. Unbeknownst to me, my new receiver featured a
YPAO mic that automatically calibrates speaker size, distance and sound pressure level. Once we finished replacing my pitiful 23 gauge speaker wire with new 14 gauge the mic did it's magic and now I apparently possess a
pro audio system. Unfortunately for me I'm not an audiophile so I couldn't tell any difference other than it gets louder, a feature Lisa is particularly thrilled with.

Today being
rapture eve, we decided to celebrate with a
taco night at the Kelleys. It was an unusually beautiful day before the rapture, so we also decided to take one last walk around the block before retiring to Xbox and a movie. Steve also had the idea of selling his Trans Am since he wouldn't need it after being saved, jokes was on him though; the guy didn't bring any money and said he'd come back next week. Well played.

Now entering week 4, the Playtation Network outage warms the cockles of my heart more and more each day that it remains down. A particularly good cockle warmer is news of
PS3 trade in programs kicking in at major retailers. I'm sure the die hard fanboys have no intention of trading in for a working online network, but if we can get our claws deep into the doubters we can grow our army significantly. The dream of a Playstation free world is looking like more of a possibility, and the day the overlords of Xbox will finally reveal their true plan is coming closer. I can only hope my wasted life of achievements will finally come to mean something.

I'm officially official for
E3 this year. Having never attended before (and probably never again) I'm quite excited. I plan to get kicked out by the second day after harassing every major Xbox representative at which point I'll just loiter around the entrance screaming Xbox to everyone that walks by. I'm hoping for an announcement for the next Xbox (Nintendo already confirmed they are announcing) but I'm not holding my breath, they're making too much money on the current one. I'm pretty sure native 3D support will be announced, but that's not nearly as exciting. At least I'll be able to touch Major Nelson at some point, and that's worth a trip right there.
Lila was
baptized today by her grandfather, and for once I did not burst into flame upon entering the church. I can only assume Lisa made some deal for me before entering, or wearing a full suit successfully camoflauged me. Either way she is now saved, so she'll be with her mother after the rapture. That means I can dedicate 100% of my time to post-rapture Xbox until the end of days.
For the last month, backups from all computers except two have been extremely slow, taking multiple days to complete (over a gigabit network).
Netflix on my Media Center PC has also been exceptionally slow but the backup for that computer was normal speed. After reloading my home server and upgrading all NIC drivers I finally coorelated the fact that the two fast computers and the home server were on the same
Netgear GS608 Switch. The switch was able to talk to every computer connected to it at full speed, but my new Cisco router baffled it. A temporary change to the 16 port
LAN party switch fixed the problem, and a new
Cisco switch is already on order. Let this be a lesson: the GS608 is racist.
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