For those with too much time

A few time wasters for your consideration:

Rock Paper Scissors Deathmatch = The Ultimate Ro Sham Bo...OF DEATH!

For a wider variety of time wasters - Kongregate.com

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

And now for something completely different, I present Crappy Cat.

I really can't tell you what to expect, except psycho cats and exploding spider-Darth-vaders.

Enjoy...

From the Road

This last week I was in Michigan so that in-laws can meet the new kiddo. Sounds fun right? I was going to post daily about the trip, but that became a bit...tedious. instead I decided to sum it all up in one post. Aren't you excited?

Day One: After sleeping till 11 (Aunt watched Beemer in the morning), read the XKCD comics (500+ of the frakking things) and had marshmallow and pistachio pudding pie (Why? Right now I have no idea)

Day Two: Spent an hour and a half on the "Denver pop culture" thread at Boingboing. Started to read Penny Arcade.

Day Three: Finished Penny Arcade (they've been doing webcomics for 10 frakking years!) then found the Oddtodd has new stuff!

Day Four: Lost in the virtual wasteland that is Youtube. Then drove to Grand Rapids.

Day Five: Toured my father-in-law's slot machine factory - pretty damn cool. I realized that I need a computer controlled 10000 watt laser cutter. Took a nap.

Day Six: Last Day! Thanks to a friend, read some of the Ctrl+Alt+Del comics. I Then played online poker for a few hours. Most of the day was spent dealing with a fussy child, I think he's ready to go home now too. Or it could be the Oreo blizzard he tried last night. Finished off the day watching Unskippable.

Thank the gods for the internet, and broadband, and being home...

UnfullFEARing

Needing a new gaming fix, I picked up FEAR 2: Project Origin. It was a close draw between getting it and Call of Duty: World at War (how can you go wrong with zombie Nazis?) Anyway, I decided I was looking for something more creepy and scary-fun than greatest generation fun.

Fortunately I wasn't looking for anything really new in game play. There's not a lot of difference between F2:PO and FEAR, it's basically the same game - dark hallways, bad guys, time slowing powers. The only real difference is that this time you can capture a mech! This sounded really cool at first, but ended being slightly disappointing since it's incredibly unchallenging and repetitive. Now, I was expecting to be able to blow apart thousands of replicants, yet still have to worry about the occasional rocket and EMP grenade. What I got was a barely perceptible increase of enemies, and exactly ONE lone rocket launcher that lasted about 23 milliseconds before become ground-replicant. As far as I can actually tell, it's impossible to die while in the mech suit. I actually went and sat in one and walked away to make a sammich.

This isn't to say that the game is difficult outside of the suit. While I have died, it's been more because of the mood lighting - i.e. "make it scary by endarkening". Granted I'm, on "normal" difficulty, but still - there should be some challenge even then right?

Despite all this, the game is still a hell of a lot of fun. I make light of the "endarkening" (pun intended), but it does a lot for the overall feeling of the game. I've actually been nervous to go down a hallway lit only by a sole swinging light. The scares that come are occasionally of the "BOO!" variety, but more often are preceded by uneasy sounds and an overall sense of doom. The sound ads a ton to the atmosphere of this game. Although, there are times I feel I missed something. You'll here a spooky sound and not see anything, which could be the intention. however, some of the ghosts are so subtle that's they're easy to miss - I'm sure I have at times. That being said though, there were plenty of times the game casued me to physically jump.

In the end it's basically like spending $50 for a decent horror movie. I'm on the fence as to whether this is worth it or not. If you love FPS games, and aren't looking for anything new, the game gets a recommendation. If you're looking for simply a horror experience - rent The Ring.

Baby Tales

Last week I was running out the door and as I grabbed the kid, I noticed he needed a diaper change badly. Since I was already late (imagine that), I changed his dirty diaper in world record time.

Since I had done such a good job of changing him quickly, it would have been a shame to waste time washing my hands. Instead I grabbed a sani-wipe and wiped my hands clean and minutes later we were pulling out of the garage, a little late, but full of pride at my achievement.

About 5 miles down the road, it smelled like Beemer had made another dirty diaper. Sigh. However, after giving it more thought I realized that I was wrong. He wasn't the dirty one. In my haste I had gotten quite a lot of baby poo on my right hand and in my delight I had missed wiping it away.

Of course the only wipes I have are in the diaper bag, in the back. Do I have any napkins? Nope. Kleenex? Nope. Even if I did, I would just wipe the obvious stuff off, not really clean my hand. I shrugged and drove on, planning on cleaning my hands as soon as I could (being careful of what I touched - my Pepsi for one).

It's about here I realized what a mental shift parenthood brings. Before Beemer, I'm pretty sure I would have pulled over immediately and used whatever was at hand to wipe it off; grass, the car registration, my soon-to-be-roadside-trash tee shirt, ANYTHING. Of course, before Beemer I'm fairly certain I wouldn't have had poop on my hands at all, probably.

It's truly a magical time...

Oddtodd explains

I've always been a fan of Oddtodd. However, I didn't know that he had done some animating for NPR. He has a series with Robert Krulwich about how carbon is causing global warming (my favorite moments are in part 4). It's actually entertaining, whether you believe it or not. But while browsing them, I found this...



22 miles east of Kit Carson huh? Hmmmm.....

Don't touch that tree!

Anyone who grew up in Denver should remember such classics like Blinky the Clown, the Shane company's commercial and maybe even Celebrity Sports center.

I only bring it up because I just spent an hour or so on this thread at Boingboing.net.

Ah memories of being able to smell what kind of Jolly Ranchers factory was making that day, or spending a weekend day at Cin City, or dinner at the Organ Grinder.

And bonus points for those that can identify the image to the left...

Go in back - we DARE ya

These dolls are at a bar downtown.

They sit next to a dark stairway that leads upstairs to the back bar and patio, like little demonic guardians. I tell you, no beer is worth that.

Insert firewire here, or how I learned to turn floppy disks to hard drives.

I've seen some pretty cool PC case mods, some of which i might even want to try. This one, however, just makes me say W....T....F...

Yep, In a mere 29 steps you too can own a compubeaver. Why you'd want to, I have no idea.

Ah, so many innuendos to use, so little space.