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Archived News starting from 03-05-2013 and earlier

Still more frequent than my previous once a year schedule, but significantly longer than my last one, my final Google check came in the mail today. No, it's not final because my RC video finally stopped drawing the internet hoards to it's glorious nonsense, but final because Google no longer sends paper checks where it offers direct deposit. Forced to sign away the delivery of my internet monies, they will now forever remain an intangible and faceless currency.

With free tickets from work, and free parking AT work, it was difficult to say no to Monster Jam. My expectation was for Lila to cry out in pain when the first loud truck made it's way around the track, ending the visit immediately. I was instead surprised to find she tolerated the ear protection and clapped every time a truck went airborne. The redneck contingent was in full force, getting as worked up over trucks as they do over wrestlers, but they were a surprising minority with most attendees there with kids for the obvious joy of big trucks. After asking Lila if she was "all done" several times and getting a strong no, she finally stopped answering and I decided an hour of Monster Jam was enough. We ended with the obligatory cop shot and so far her ears still work.

Round 3 of the SimCity beta was last night, and the Senator, his friend and I took full advantage of the opportunity. Launched at 8:00pm EST and ending at 11:00, we quickly setup a region and established our cities. I volunteered my city for the dump, and quickly had dump trucks hauling in all the crap nobody wanted and spreading it out next to my sewage outflow pipes. My hopes for radioactive zombies were dashed when the Senators friend had a zombie outbreak instead (perhaps because I didn't send enough ambulances). As 11:00 approached, I went on a mad spending spree and built an expo center, airport and nuclear power plant. 11:00 came and went and nothing happened, but around 11:30 we got bored and quit anyway. Hopefully the final release is still exciting without the time limit.

My annual health checkup was today, and amazingly I passed 4/6 screening components to get the full discount. I credit the addition of waist circumference for my passing grade. My oatmeal/stair climb regiment was in full effect during last years fail, so my ability to suck in my gut exclusively saves me $30/pay period. I'll just ignore the other numbers now that passed, and go back to fries with every meal (yes, breakfast too).

Metric	Level	Dead
Cholest:	260	> 240
HDL:	42	< 40
LDL:	178	> 160
Trigyl:	202	> 200
TC/HDL:	6.2	> 5.0
Gluc:	86	> 100
BMI:	26.4	> 25
Waist:	37.5	> 40
Press:	117/84	> 130/85

I received two letters in the mail today, one was my rebate check from American Express for $536 and the other was from the secretary of state telling me how bad a person I am. They also demand I pay $50 of my rebate to them for being a bad person. My last ticket involved a printout of my snapshot history proving I had in fact not been speeding, but the judge waved her hand and said "you have a record!" which means I'm guilty even when proven innocent. I'm most certainly not paying the $50 fee they ask for, hopefully I get a warrant out for my arrest.

With SSD prices falling to less than 40¢/GB, and my laptops 4 year anniversary approaching, I had the 2 excuses I needed to blow $200 on a 240GB SSD. The measly 5.2 the old 5200RPM drive chugged out was replaced by a more respectable 7.6. Battery life seems better as well, or so Lisa claims after commandeering the laptop shortly after I was done with the upgrade. With my raidtastic primary system and now laptop running SSDs, only my home server, web server and Xbox remain locked in a spinning platter of legacy media. All other devices embrace the solid state future.

Lilas first trip to Skyzone was a success. After some hesitation, she was soon jumping merrily and learning about awkward social encounters with other kids during "toddler time." When we got home, I introduced Lila to my 8-bit cylinder snowman which she helped me build, but was unimpressed with. I took advantage of the above-freezing weather to startup my Cougar and Motorcycle as well, rousing them from their slumber and learning how fun it would be to ride my motorcycle on snow.

With Verizon finally releasing the latest WP8 update, it was time to address my update error. I knew the easy solution was a hard reset, so my first order of business was to fling 5,000 birds and earn 100,000 coins since, for whatever reason, the cloud backup doesn't include app settings. While I worked the long grind to complete the games, I had a useless conversation with Windows Phone Support in the hopes I might avoid a hard reset. While prompt and responsive, they had no answer for me. After popping the final cheevo on both games, I took the plunge and did the reset. The restore was pretty extensive, missing only my start screen and app settings. Now able to update the phone, I got me some portico goodness which hopefully includes group MMS messaging. Comparing before/after it looks like I got some additional firmware updates as well, and hopefully something that prevents my update check from pooping out for next update.

Despite my better judgement, Senator Kelley convinced me to pre-order the new SimCity after showing me the last beta. With the second beta having now arrived, my pre-order put me in the special sucker category of eligible. Still limited to an hour of gameplay, for whatever reason (most likely to prevent boredom and then pre-order cancel). This time trains were teased with track running the north border of my city, but I was unable to build any track of my own. I protested by running 50 rail-road crossings along it, but none of my citizens seemed to mind. I learned putting a park every 4 squares will peg residential demand, and industrial areas don't care if you put a sewage outflow pipe in the center of their zone. I can't wait for final release so I can build an all-rail city and execute any citizen that complains about lack of roads.

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