Archived News starting from 11-10-2013 and earlier
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With so many babies popping out lately, I thought it was high time to have a fucking baby party. Sadly, none of these babies could show up on the same day, so it wound up being more
of two baby gatherings instead of a party. On the plus side, I bought way too much meat and cheeses so I could handily eat myself out of the depression from the whole debacle.
In both gatherings, Lucy alternated between sleep and crying, while Lila promptly became hyper and over emotional alternating between joy and tantrums.
This worked to confuse and distract the other babies and kept the chaos relatively controlled. I'd like to say I trained my daughters to perform the extremes, but in my heart I know
it's genetics.
Lisa awoke this morning with the unwavering desire to visit
Bronners. Since it didn't involve sitting in front of the TV all day, I was all for it.
As it was Lila and Lucys first visit, I made sure to take everything slow so they could fully soak in the madness that is a store dedicated to Christmas. Lila had no problem gawking at
everything for the better part of an hour, and surprisingly only touched a few things. I credit the shock of the experience overriding her toddler need to destroy.
Way back in April 2012, I stole Lisas phone upgrade to get my hands on the Lumia 900.
Apparently 19 months is the eligibility length for a new device, because my
1520 lust just got a dose of
pre-order medicine.
I'm also saving $30/month now with the contract renewal which I won't be complaining about either. After confirming several times Lisa has no desire for a more modern phone, I stole her upgrade yet again
and plan to ultimately eBay it yet again to finance the slightly smaller
Lumia 929.
I justify this technolust with the knowledge that the monthly phone bill has device subsidy built-in, and by not upgrading a device when eligible I'm simply giving free money to AT&T.
The chance to play with an absurdly large 6" phone is just a side benefit I'm forced to endure while maximizing my savings.
After deciding an 8 hour round trip to Chicago for the
area one tour was outside of my fanboy dedication level, I was pleased to hear
previews at Microsoft stores for the Xbox One was now a thing. After deciding I would bring Lila with me tomorrow with no carpool,
I immediately changed my mind and coerced TomTom to go with me after work today. Expecting a huge crowd, I raced through I-75 traffic and arrived to find nobody. The Xbox One was wide open for me to violate freely.
After taking all the obligatory
photos, I sat down to actually play Killer Instinct and Forza 5. While Killer Instinct was the typical button smasher fighter
I was expecting, Forza had a surprise use for the trigger rumblers. I knew immediately when I lost traction due to acceleration or braking because the rumble kicked in and almost forced me to back off. Combine the trigger rumblers, lighter
weight and better feel and I can fully get on board with the new Xbox One controller. The graphics were somewhat disappointing, but for now I'll attribute it to the lower quality TV it looked to be connected to
and the beta state of the Xbox One. TWO MORE WEEKS!
The combination of Lisa going to Pennsylvania for the weekend, and a
double xp bonus from my Gamestop pre-order were the only
ingredients needed for a 32 hour Battlefield 4 blowout. Aside from a short break cleaning my server room and finding
buried treasure, every waking
minute was spent playing the game or taking care of fluid input/output needs. I even took the precaution of doing jumping jacks between rounds to avoid the dreaded
deep vein thrombosis. At the end of the ordeal, I was having trouble sleeping from the feeling of motion but had
ranked up to level 40. My list of verified issues continue to grow.
While Lucy slept through her first Halloween, Lila actually understood what was happening. Equipped with a Microsoft bag, I instructed her in the two important phrases to know:
"trick or treat" and "thank you." The Senators house was our headquarters again this year, but the weather was less than ideal. As I waited for the group to get ready, I did a few trial runs with
the neighbors across the street. Lila was fascinated people were handing out candy for free, and I could see the excitement grow. After the two trial houses, she had the two phrases down pat. After 4 more houses
she remembered to leave the porch after getting the candy instead of expecting continuous candy deposits. This left 5 houses of almost perfect execution of which I could not have been more proud.
Eventually the cold weather overcame her amazement, and she informed me she was done. I made sure to ask her 3 times on the way back if she wanted to do one more house but she assured me she was done. It was
tough to cut this annual tradition short, but the look on her face after the first few houses was more than enough to last me till next year.
After arriving at Gamestop and securing my copy of Battlefield 4, I began my epic 36 hour adventure. After the mandatory 2GB install, I was off in multiplayer learning how
bad I suck when I'm unfamiliar with the map till 4am. I awoke at 9:00am ready to
plow through single player which I finished around 3:00pm. I can
confidently say I enjoyed the plot, and without a single quick time event, enjoyed the gameplay as well. I rounded out the adventure with a full 5-person squad
and commander in our party, who would assign us an objective and have a supply crate and UAV waiting to greet us. We subsequently mopped up and most likely
made a number of people rage-quit. Thankfully, the graphics were amazing compared to
the beta.
We also learned collectively that installing the game to the hard drive was the best defense against lockups.
My annual health checkup was today, and amazingly I passed 4/6 screening components to get the full discount.
This was after 3 weeks of a 75-80% Soylent diet, which lowered my cholesterol to the lowest point I've seen, but seems to have jacked up my triglycerides and sent my HDL into the toilet.
I'm not sure if these numbers are overall better or worse than my
last screening, but I know I need to eat more fish pills and less sugar.
| Metric |
Level |
Dead |
| Cholest: |
207 |
> 240 |
| HDL: |
20 |
< 40 |
| LDL: |
114 |
> 160 |
| Trigyl: |
361 |
> 200 |
| TC/HDL: |
10.2 |
> 5.0 |
| Gluc: |
81 |
> 100 |
| Waist: |
38 |
> 40 |
| Press: |
118/78 |
> 130/85 |
After selling both my
Surface RT and Surface Pro due to lack of use, it only makes sense I would buy a
Surface 2.
Tempted with the
Tegra 4 quad-core and increased memory, I used Lila as an excuse to get yet another sure to be seldom used tablet. As long as I keep enough kid apps pasted to the start menu, I can
convince myself I dropped the cash for Lilas education and not my sick need to buy the latest gadget on the market. I'm proud to have resisted the temptation of the Surface Pro 2, but it's
higher price, greater heat generation and cooling fans are not child-friendly. Hopefully Lila won't be proficient at Visual Studio or Photoshop for another few years and can make do with the Windows 8 apps for the life of it.
Oh who am I kidding, I'll have this thing sold before Surface 3 is out and post yet another lame attempt at justifying my technolust.
With Lisa due for an upgrade on her AT&T account, I've been biding my time for the phone I lust for the most.
After confirming several times her refusal to upgrade to a new phone of ANY kind, I purchased a
$50 Lumia 520 as her backup, thus absolving me
of any guilt over taking her upgrade. At fist I thought the
Lumia 1020 was my lovechild, but then I began hearing rumors of the just announced
Lumia 1520 and knew I had to wait. My hope is it shares at least 3G bands with Verizon and I can pop my SIM card into it and have a new phone.
The more likely scenario is I'll use it as yet another tablet until the crippled (and probably smaller) Verizon version of the 1520 arrives to take my money.
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