Archived News starting from 06-21-2011 and earlier
BlogBy combining my neighbors recent love of absinthe and
Yoostar 2 we were able to create what I consider to be
genuine comedy. There's still a good chance it's not legitimately funny and the hallucinogenic properties of absinthe just left a permanent brain alteration, but it's worth a view. Eventually we decided two drunks were not enough and wisely included my infant daughter to create
Babyzilla and
baby candidate. Fortunately, no infants were physically hurt during filming, but the mental trauma I'm sure will be lifelong.
It began like any other trip to the toilet; the belt buckle was undone and the throne presentation was in mid swing. Like a skilled ski jumper, my belt clip slid off my unbuckled belt and bounced right into the crapper, phone tucked inside. It was pure instinct that allowed me to fetch it out before the event actually sunk in. By that time I had the cover off and the battery out. An evening snuggled in rice apparently did the trick as the phone amazingly works, with the bonus of a tie-dye screen and fogged up camera lens. I decided to go for the Asurion replacement anyway since they take more than enough money from me and both new features aren't yet on my wish list. Here's a
sweet photo effect I get to enjoy until the replacement arrives.

My
first father's day was an epic journey to Muskegon for some sailing and a cookout. Lisa was initially hesitant about my daughter boarding a sailboat, but after invoking father's day and downing 4 beers she was good to go. A few more beers later she was driving the boat and singing while I took advantage of the situation and posed Lila in various locations on the boat sober Lisa would have vetoed.
After seeing a
garage door opener deal my plan was to replace my primary opener with the deal, and move the old one to the barn, which has been sans-opener for over 3 years now. My neighbor had
other plans however, and wound up buying it off me for $100, leaving me with a $50 upgrade of an opener and a still barren barn.
Lila helped install the new one, which has battery backup and temperate sensors and lockouts and all these other fancy features I guess new openers come standard with now. Having verified the most important feature: opening the garage door, I'm now left with deciding if the barn is worth a brand new opener.
E3 was definitely a unique experience. While I didn't have a press badge and couldn't get into the press briefings, the show floor was pretty amazing. Aside from hands-on demos though, everything I saw was already online before I saw it. Any game that was decent had at least an hour wait, with Battlefield 3 taking 6 hours for 15 minutes of gameplay (which was worth it) so it wasn't really a VIP-style event either. If I had a press pass it may have been more epic but I'm not planning on making the trip next year, I think one trip a lifetime is sufficient. Despite my best efforts, I was unable to touch MajorNelson or any other ranking Xbox official, but I did manage to break the Forza 4 demo machine and took an excessive amount of booth babe photos in my 3 day adventure. I was disappointed with the Wii U (as are investors apparently as Nintendo stock dropped 10% after the reveal) but everything else was sufficiently amazing to make the trip worth it. I highly recommend anyone making the trip locate and avoid "loserville" though, usually off in a corner it's where the tiny companies are sectioned off into and they tend to attack anyone that gets near them in a desperate attempt to seem relevant.
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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.
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