So my radio crapped out awhile ago, probably at least a month ago, and I just today brought it in to be fixed. When I dropped it off, the technician sait it would be ready this afternoon. Around 2 PM, he called to tell me that he couldn’t fix it, couldn’t find a replacement and had to send it out to be fixed. He had no ETA as to when it would be back, so he said to come pick up the car. Well, I have the car, but no radio or CD player!

Sonics Dance Team: Click on Tricia; Last night, Mark Jen tried picking her up at Tap House in Bellevue. They talked for a little while, then Tricia and her friend left.

So, by now you have probably heard that Nintendo’s next handheld will have two screens and be called the DS (D = Dual/Double S = Screen). Take a look at this mockup posted to Gizmodo. The angled design immediately screams to me “This is better because it is different!”, but just think about the ergnomics. Hold your hands in front of you as if you were trying to hold something a bit smaller than a paperback book, lengthways. You don’t curl your wrists outward and your fingers upward, as you would have to with this design. I can see a large number of young gamers developing carpal tunnel if this design got the green light. (I’m going to refrain from jokes about other causes of carpal tunnel in young male gamers.)



A common question about the Pocket PC Phone that I carry around is “Can it play games?” Well, the answer is yes, but why bother? The overall form factor is wrong, requiring you to interlace your fingers to hold the device with two hands. Additionally, there is a directional pad and four buttons, but the pad only supports the four cardinal directions (not diagonals) and two of the buttons are toward the top of the screen. Basically, I wouldn’t even try playing pong on this thing. Hell, I have nethack install on it and even that is impossible to play.

“2 + 2 = 5 for large values of 2.”, why do I find that so humorous?

Penny Arcade!: By far, the best description of those self-cleaning litter boxes. Quotes of Note: “the tiny pot roasts my cat leaves behind”, “sometimes it is flung out, as through by catapult, toward imaginary foes”, and “It is the sort of thing you would design if you had only a vague description of a cat and you didn’t really give a fuck if it worked or not.”

In response to my away message: “Why do all girls have the crazy?”:



Lee (11:35:43 PM): i think girls impact male productivity more than disease


Jenn (8:34:51 AM): you sure know how to pick ’em


Meg (6:36:39 AM): I’ll admit to having the crazy 🙂


Krista’s away message: I like Mike’s away message “why do all girls have the crazy”

Woohoo, go Markko! He only one a single stage of the entire rally, but “slow and steady wins the race”. Ok, in all actuality, having your strongest competitor get slapped with a 5 minute penalty wins the race. If you don’t want to read the link, basically Petter Solberg had some electrical issues before the start of a stage. He and his codriver tried to push the car uphill to make it to the starting line in time. There were already 4 minutes late, giving them a 40 second penalty when the officials realized they received help from the spectators to reach the starting line. That tacked on an additional 5 minute penalty eventhough neither the driver nor codriver asked for the help. With a final time difference of 3 minutes and 14.7 seconds from Markko Martin, Solberg would have won. As Russ said, he probably wouldn’t have pushed so hard if it wasn’t for that 5 minute and 40 second penalty.

Setting: A Gameworks or some sort of gaming facility. Lots of old people, dimly lit, similar to a casino in that respect. Basically, it had the feel of a Gameworks, casino and bowling alley combined.



First scene: I’m sitting down and playing some sort of matching game, seems like Mastermind, with quarters. An older lady approaches from nowhere and demands to know where my gamer card is (If you have been to Gameworks or Dave & Busters, you know that instead of using quarters, you get a credit card of sorts that you can put money on. I show a pocket full of quarters, implying that I’m just playing with quarters and she storms off. She returns about 5 minutes later and hands me a large stack of gamer chips (4 $25, 2 $10, 2 $5, 4 $1) and a fist fill of Twizzlers. The look she gives me as she walks off was, “I’ve been in your place before, kid. Have some fun and enjoy the sugar!”. Possibly she thought I was poor since I only showed about 5 dollars with in quarters. I vaguely remember winning a lot of money on the Mastermind game and then being given a tour of the facility. The man in charge was giving the tour and reminded me of Tom Poston from the Newhart show, but with a suit that Rod Roddy would wear. Well, a suit he would have worn, since he died of breast cancer. During the tour, I remember passing by a small room in the back with mirrors on the walls and a rainbow motif adorning the ceiling. He said that was in case anyone felt like dancing and could also be rented out. Oddly enough, it was empty and the lights were off. I can only imagine how those rainbows would look with the full house lights! I know I would want to shake my groove thang, and probably go suck on a popsicle or eat some sausage.



Second scene: The dream gets fuzzy for a bit, but I remember after the tour there was this one counter way in the back with no one around it. The person running it is none other than Beth Manoongian, an “acquaintance” from school. This game was a trivia game with a twist. The questions are extremely difficult but the prize for answering a single question runs in the millions of dollars. I decide to give it a shot, hoping that Beth will help me out a little bit. As she pulls the question from a long box of cards, she places it on ledge face down in front of me, then gets a phone call. While she isn’t watching, I try to see what the answer is, but can’t quite make it out. It looks like “Yeh” to me backwards. The question was something like “What is the beach on Jo Beach?”. Sort of a trick question, but I thought I already had the answer. I hem and haw for a bit, then exclaim “Yeh!”. The answer was actually “Lev”, which doesn’t make sense to me in the dream or in the waking world. Since playing the game is free, I have her pull out another card. By this time, someone else has joined me at the counter. This person seemed to be between 18-22 years old, male, dark hair, reminded me of a frat boy. The next question wasn’t even a question, it was something along the lines of “(SomeForeignName) is furious.” I think the riddle was that you had to figure out the country that would give out a name like that then give the translation for “furious”. The random guy and I looked at each other trying to figure it out and then I woke up.



I should rent out my brain for studies into the abnormal.

So the first inline hockey game was yesterday! Lee and I got there 1.5 hours early so that we could sign up for the league, meet the team and do a little bit of practicing. The facility is fairly ghetto, located in what looks like an old warehouse. It is seperated into a little practice field for soccer, the inline rink, then a larger soccer field. The rink itself is in good condition with an interesting plastic flooring that reminds me of the plastic used for milk crates or toddlers blocks (not the shiny kind). We only got about 20 minutes of practice in, but it was tiring. I know that when I got off the rink at the start of the game, I was drenched in sweat.



We ended up losing 5-4, but I scored twice and Lee scored as well! We both received praise during and after the game which made us both feel a bit better about playing. Everyone seems very nice and laid back which is exactly what I was hoping for. Our first practice is tomorrow (yes, we had a game before we practiced) so hopefully my sore knee and arm feel better!

New Scientist: Does anyone else find it completely asinine that tobacco is the number one killer in the United States, accounting for 18.1% of all deaths in 2000? Does anyone else find it completely asinine that obesity is about to overtake tobacco as the number one killer? Also, 64% of Americans are overweight or obese. Pathetic. Ironic that I’m posting this to the web while sitting on my ass, but I’m not overweight, you pudgy MFs!