20Dec2008 1310: After
They laughed at me when I moved into a retirement condo. They laughed at me when they saw my twin bed, and when they saw it was perfectly centered in an empty room. Well, who's laughing now? Probably still them, when they see my absolutely retarded amount of bed.
You can still see the white boxspring under all that glorious brown. Apparently I'm supposed to spend even more money on something called a "bed skirt"? Screw that, I'm a guy. I want a bed kilt. Yeah, a tasteful tartan in wool, with utility pockets for beer and condoms and power tools. This idea is a gold mine and nobody's selling one yet? To the point that the #1 Google is for a fetish shop and #2 is a frickin' tweet? Capitalism has failed me!
17Dec2008 1910: Breaking News
This just in: carols.
But first: Furniture Outlet finally called me and said my bed is in! Yes, the bed I bought over Labor Day. Listen, if I had seen even one bed in this entire city that I liked as much, I might have been put out. The point is, it's coming in Saturday morning and I need to put up the all-important "before" picture. HAHAHA so awesome.
Now back to carols. There are two of them and nothing else on the iTunes store this week. Out of curiousity I downloaded [Enya - O Come O Come Emmanuel]; I recall this being one of the slowest and most boring carols to begin with, so what could Enya bring to the tune? Never bet against Enya. Her barely-there vocal beginning and backup-choir stings perfectly complement the spirit of a carol I've hated since I was five.
12Dec2008 1955: New Experiences
The New Xbox Experience landed last month, and aside from the wonderful Party Chat channel I hadn't really played with any of the major features. In fact, I had completely forgotten that you can now install an entire game to the hard drive to speed things up.
This comes with a caveat: if the game already knows how to handle streaming from a DVD, you won't see many improvements. And in the case of Halo 3, it's already caching so much data on the hard drive that performance actually takes a huge hit. But what if the game isn't so technically adept? What if the developer's reach hugely exceeded their grasp?
Well in the case of Earth Defense Force 2017 (a game you should be playing anyway), it cuts the loading time by about 70%. EDF has some ridiculous load times (showcased here), even between cutscenes. But installing to the hard drive wipes them away! You barely get to see one weapon or vehicle slide by in the slideshow, and the loading-loading ant screen takes a second at most. There is nothing between me and kicking some giant spider ass.
10Dec2008 2015: Fine Transylvanian Dining
Before I forget again, my mom told me what the deal is with all the spoons-with-holes-in-the-middle I have. Turns out they're a set with my vampire forks. The idea is that they slot together to give non-Italians a chance at twirling up their pasta. I wish I was kidding. What kind of probably-Scandanavian twit ruins the mighty spoon just so Uncle Svedberjeorg can spin up a forkful? Apparently the Romans needed to conquer the world a little harder than they did.
Think happy thoughts, happy thoughts. Oh hey, here's some happy thoughts! Scribblenauts looks like a dream come true; you solve puzzles by writing any non-vulgar, non-copyrighted object noun, and then your little guy knows how to interact with it. Here are a bunch of people going "no way". In that thread pay special attention to a poster named "Jackson". He is on the development team and is getting mighty tired of saying "Yes that word's in the game". I mean, shit:
Towelette, Doorknob, Bark, Headset, Floppy, Picture Frame, Rubberband, and Toenail confirmed
And get this: to unlock a puzzle level for freeplay sandbox mode, you have to beat it three times. And each time you can't use a word you used before. One of the screenshots has a vampire: I can do "sun" and then "stake", but how do you kill a vampire three times?
Somewhere, as we speak, there is a team of programmers and/or data-entry clerks doing nothing but slotting words into their data hierarchy.
After all that gushing the iTunes singles aren't even worth spending time on. Two of them are inferior carols, while the Spanish-speaking world is still resisting the lure of...wait, I just listened to [Jadiel - Pretty Girl]. It is also shit. THE END.
03Dec2008 2000: Secret Tunnel!
Oh man I have the perfect door for this in my living room. My ceiling is still damaged and in two weeks I probably won't even remember I wanted this, but right now my house project is to find a 7-foot bookcase on the cheap. It's also worth noting that I am about as handy as I am chefy and even with a step-by-step pictorial guide I'll probably end up with an ashtray and fifteen holes in my wall.
iTunes is going about the carols a little better than they did last year. Starting with having a non-carol in [Eric Bobo - Muevelo]. It's not good -- the usual group rap about having awesome parties and sex and stuff -- but it's also not [Pussycat Dolls - Santa Baby]. Which I don't think actually exists and should not be taken as a suggestion.
The Christmasy songs are split, with [The Boxmasters - Slower Than Christmas] failing on their trite I-hate-Christmas country rant and [Melissa Ethridge - Christmas in America] hitting that sweet spot right between the holidays and high-school nostalgia.