Smart car

After doing some research, I went to a SMART car event, and got to test drive a SMART car. I must say, it was pretty fun to drive, lots of space. I fit comfortably in the car, and it handled very well. The odd thing? No power steering. It's so small and light, it doesn't really need it. I only noticed the lack when making very sharp turns. Other than that, it's a zippy little car that was fun to drive,and handled very well. I'll be putting down a deposit for one once they're released next year. :)

Smart USA for anyone interested in seeing this car.

A beautiful Sunday morning...

So we went fishing! I caught the first fish, which was a ray of some sort (no pictures of that one, as we didn't think to take pictures until after we sent it back). My daughter had the record for the day for the most caught, at 3.

This is the first one she caught (after just, 30 seconds before, claiming she wouldn't catch any fish)
And here's the second fish, which managed to jump off it's hook before I could take a picture of her with it, so I just took a picture of it on the ground.
And, finally, her third fish of the day.
My oldest son caught 1 fish, before the second fish he caught ripped his pole out of the holder in the railing, and took the pole with it to the briny deep.
My youngest had a good time running around the pier, and didn't complain or anything, he was very, very good. Later that afternoon I took the kids to Sport Chalet, and bought each of the boys a new pole. My youngest had a good time practicing his casting in the back yard (no hooks, only weights!)

slow day...sorta

well, I was all set to say "it was a slow evening, I sat around, watched TV, watched MOST of Real Genius (had to go to bed before it was over)", but then I realized what event occured yesterday.

My eldest son declared, in the middle of the playground at school, that my daughter still wets the bed. Which she does, but there's no need for him to be advertising that to the world.

I explained to him the ramifications of what he'd done. How I still remembered a girl who peed while making a speech in front of the class -- in 4TH GRADE! That that was the sort of memory and torture he was bringing to his sister.

I didn't spank him. I barely yelled at him. I didn't ground him, or take away any of his weekend priveleges (TV and computer/Wii playing). What I *did* do (and I like this idea, in an evil sort of way) is tell him that he is now in charge of all the chores, and we'd be adding new ones. Scrubbing the toilets and sinks in the bathroom. Scrubbing all the floors that need to be scrubbed (dining room, kitchen, bathrooms) by hand. And he'd be doing it until we said we he was done, so that he'd live (for a while) with the indefinate horror of having to do these chores, as his sister would have to live with the indefinate fear of someone bringing up her most secret of shames for the rest of her life.

Thinking about it, I'm still angry with him. Still.

mouse?

So, while at a pet store a couple of days ago, my 3 year old son decides he wants a mouse. My wife repeatedly tells him no, but he's got this idea so completely stuck in his head that he was wandering around the house telling anyone and everyone about HIS mouse, and how he was going to name it after his best friend from pre-school, and how he'd pet it, and hold it.

For my older sons 9th birthday he got 2 mice, both of whom died within a few months, I believe from sheer terror. The cats would sit and stare all day long.

I remember one time walking down the hall and both cats (we had 2 at the time) were sitting next to my sons dresser, just staring. Figuring they found a bug or something, I pulled the dresser away from the wall. Our huntress, Cinnamon, dashed in, struggled for half a second, and came out, with a little pink tail dangling from her mouth. I was able to rescue the mouse, and put it back in its cage (my son had decided he didn't like part of the cage, so he threw the part away -- leaving a gaping hole in the cage).

Now, that was a 9 year old. My *3* year old wants one, and to top it all off, we now have 3 cats. The answer was an adamant NO. I sat him down and explained why he couldn't have a mouse, and he seemed okay with it.

We got him sea monkeys instead, and he seems pretty happy with them :)

sprout!

About a week ago I had my kids plant some seeds. My daughter had picked out some California poppies, and my youngest son picked out sunflowers, which he and the oldest son planted. My daughter noticed yesterday that they had sprouted -- the sunflowers much more than her poppies, but her poppies HAD sprouted. They were all very excited, and they all watered their little sprouts.

THIS is what being a parent is about. These moments of learning, of joy, of appreciating the little things. I truly enjoyed those 10 minutes of gardening with my kids.

weekend fun

I helped my brother in law move this weekend. It went rather well (except for some drama from my other brother in law's girlfriend, who was all sorts of bitchy), and except for a couple of clashes (and a few rips in my shirt), was a fun weekend. After moving on Saturday, on Sunday we picked all the dogs (their 2, our 1) from the kennel we had left them at the day before and headed to the dog beach in San Diego (right where the 8 ends at the beach). It was a fun afternoon, and Murphy had a blast. He's still sleeping off all the fun he had :).

We headed home after that (about 1pm), and had a nice afternoon to recover from the weekends activities. I'm sore all over, and although my knee did hurt on Saturday and most of Sunday, once I was able to just sit and not have to go anywhere or do anything, the pain let up.

No gaming this weekend; I'll try to get some in during the week (probably on Thursday when my wife is in class).

Zelda made me do it!

Okay, it's a fun game. Really fun. But frustrating. Frustrating to the point where I was cussing at the TV.

It really wasn't made for someone like me, who only gets an hour or so to game. If you're in a dungeon and save your game, then exit, when you come back to the game you have to start over at the beginning of the dungeon. Sucks ass!!! I don't have time for that, just save where I was, and move on!

War, war, war

yes, I know it's been a while (over a month!) since my last post. So sue me. Things have been crazy, but not in real life. Online!

I joined a few free online game sites, notably www.cybernations.net and www.lunarwars.net. Full of political intrigue, and just plain head bashing (mine, unfortunately, not theirs), it's a pretty much full time gig, if you let it be. The game itself takes probably 5-10 minutes of your day (CN at least...LW takes maybe 20-30 minutes), but all the political stuff (both intra and inter alliance politics, reading forums, chatting on IRC) can take significantly more time, and it's been a blast.

I'm in an alliance based off of one of my favorite "not news" sites, Fark.com. I originally joined CN based on a greenlight on Fark.com. Not known to me then was that the Fark alliance (Farkistan) was under attack from a rival alliance, the GOONS (Goon Order Of Neutral Shoving), who are based from a Fark.com rival website somethingawful.com. GOONS is 30x more powerful than Farkistan, and was just pounding on them. Still are. It's a complicated situation (that I'm not going to outline here), needless to say, in the midst of it, some of us found a NEW game called LunarWars, where we could start Fark (LunarFark) from the beginning, sans GOONS, and quite a few people jumped to Lunarwars (though most of us still play both).

Ah, LunarWars. Due to the new conditions, (and much more hope for a future of growth there, instead of being chased by and pounded on by GOONS and their cohorts in the Initiative), I got much more active in the politics of the Lunar Fark alliance, even gaining a seat on the TotalFark council, where I get to make decisions on Non-Aggression Pacts (NAP's), Mutual Defense Pact's (MDP's) and other sorts of foreign affairs work, as well as voting on local alliance policies.

In other words, I've been busy :)

In real life news, I got my garden going this past Sunday, with 4 tomato plants, 2 jalapeno plants, and 1 anaheim chili plant, after having tilled the whole area (I love the Garden Claw!). After planting the last jalapeno, I stood up, blacked out, and passed out.

After waking up on the ground, I got up (almost blacking out again), stumbled towards the house, where my wife saw me, said I looked half asleep. I told her I had just passed out. She took me to our bedroom, and laid me on the bed. Took my blood pressure: 96/54 pulse 105. She got me some water, and I drank some. About 20 minutes later, we retested my blood pressure: 80/64 pulse 95. I stayed on the bed for about an hour. We figured out that there were 2 (well, 3 really) causes: I hadn't had enough liquids that day (dehydration), and I hadn't eaten since early that morning (this was around 2pm), so I had a low blood sugar (we wanted to test that too, but we didn't have any test strips for my wife's old blood sugar monitor from when she had gestational diabetes).

In the future, when I'm going to be doing some strenuous labor, I'm going to make sure I eat and drink a bit right before (something healthy, not junk!)

Since that episode though, I have to be really careful about getting up too quickly, or I get dizzy and or start to black out. To be honest, I've had that problem for as long as I can remember, it just seems to have gotten really bad this past week.

The life of a gamer's SO

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1329362959167995041

Anyone who is an SO of a gamer will find this funny.

Here's the band's home page, if anyone's interested.
http://www.3pod.com.au/podhome/main.htm

A state of alarm

Our old alarm clock was dieing. It kept crackling every 5-10 seconds, even when it wasn't on, and it didn't go off one day last week, according to my wife (who has been known to sleep through her alarm, so I take that with a grain of salt). So we bought a new one. It doesn't have a CD-player like the old one, but it still has 3 alarms, with a bonus of a 7-5-2 setting, meaning I can set up each alarm, then tell it to go off 5 days a week, 2 days a week (the weekend) or every day of the week. Pretty sweet. My wife has the "nature sounds" alarm, which will go off M-F, I have the radio, which goes off M-F, then we set up the buzzer for the weekends.

The problem comes in my nervousness with new alarms. When I traveled a lot, I often woke up 10-30 minutes before my alarm, because I wasn't 100% sure the alarm would actually go off on time. Damn my accurate biological clock. I had that same problem this morning, plus a bladder that needed to be emptied. I woke up, decided I wasn't going to be able to hold my bladder, and got up. I can't see my alarm clock (no glasses or contacts on at the time), so I stopped at my cell phone and took a look. 5:17. I'm supposed to wake up at 4:45, and be out of the HOUSE at 5:15. DAMN! I decide to skip the shower (I had showered at about 2:30pm the previous day, and hadn't done anything too strenuous afterwards...I'd be fine till the next day), and I head back to my room to get my glasses and get ready for work (very, very quickly). I put my glasses on and look at the alarm clock. 4:14. What?!

Daylight savings time wasn't for another month, so wtf? I went back and looked at my cell phone. the 5:17 time was still there. Except, being more awake, I looked a little harder at it. 5:17PM, from a missed call I had yesterday, and never cleared. I cleared the missed call, and my phone read 4:14. *sigh* All that panic, because I didn't clear a missed call.

Oh well, lessons for the future!

From A to Zelda

I started playing Zelda this past weekend, and, so far, I'm both impressed and depressed.

The game play is great. I love being able to swing my sword, and do all sorts of combos with it. The story is mediocre, and seems rather forced at times, but is workable. The puzzles and quests, however, leave much to be desired. I shouldn't have to go online to figure out what the hell I need to do after the first 30 minutes of playing, yet I did. Twice. The "intro" level didn't explain how to do things, or what you needed to do to complete the quest. It was very vague, and, IMHO, a horrible "walk-thru" of possibilities of the game.

After that, I'm having fun though.

I finished Rayman!

Okay, so I only played through story mode, so sue me. Everything I can read about it online says that it's impossible to unlock everything in score mode, so I'm not going to even try. I just wanted to unlock a game for my daughter, that it turns out wasn't even IN Rayman. *sigh*

I had fun. Lots of fun. Too much fun, and I continue to enjoy it. The games were entertaining, and even the cut scenes were funny. This is a good one for kids, at least 5+, as it needs quite a bit of hand-eye coordination. None of my kids (or my wife, for that matter) do well on the dancing games, but they still have a lot of fun, and that's what really matters.

Rayman Quick Notes

Okay, I haven't played this all the way through yet, so here are some quick impressions:

I'm left handed. In Wii sports, this wasn't an issue, as you were able to define your handedness on your Mii, and everything worked fine. In Rayman, there is no definition available. So far, this has only caused me problems with one of the mini-games, but it's one that runs during every "day" of game time: the dancing. The bunnies come at you from the left side and the right side, and you have to shake the controller on the correct side. So, for this game, you MUST hold the remote in your right hand, which, for me, requires switching hands. It's a minor issue, but one that should have been easily worked around.

The kids aren't quite up to this yet. They'll have fun with it once I unlock multiplayer (another gripe), but in a lot of cases (the dancing), even the older kids don't have the hand-eye coordination set. I'm positive they'll get much better with practice, but even after 3 tries my daughter was not able to finish the first dancing game, got frustrated, and quit.

Multiplayer? You have to play through the single player first. WEAK! I'm the only one that can pass the single player relatively quickly (especially considering the kids aren't allowed to play during the week), so, before they can play this game on their own (and just play the mini-games they want to play, not the whole story mode), I have to finish the whole single player game. I've run through about 27% so far, with a total of about 1 hour of game play. 3 more hours to go, and my kids can finally have fun with it. *sigh*

I still think it's a *very* fun game, and I'm having a blast when I play.

Where's the danger?!

Okay, I completely forgot to write about the dangers. We initially played the Wii at my parents house, which is not exactly set up in the best way for someone flailing about with a controller. Only 3 accidents were had to date, all of them at my parents house.

The first was my fault. When swinging the remote to bowl, I accidentally hit my dads little fan. The remote never left my hand, and my hand hit the fan just as much as the remote did. No damage to anything, just a little embarassing.

The second was all my daughter. In her fun and excitement of playing her older brother in tennis, she accidentally let go of the remote during a down swing (imagine a tennis swing, with her hand down and behind her, coming forward). She managed to smack her brother in the calf, then smack herself in the head with the remote. After a few minutes of stunned silence and almost weeping, the kids continued with the game. Thank god for that strap, otherwise that remote would have gone flying.

The third accident was caused by someone (the 3 year old) entering the field of flinging remotes during a game. My youngest got up to go to the kitchen, and had to walk in front of his siblings as they were playing. His older brother, intent on the game, swung, and thwacked the youngest upside the head. Lots of crying and soothing ensued; but there was no realy damage, and after a few minutes of drama, all was well. Thankfully, this won't be a problem at my house, as the playing field doesn't require anyone to walk through it.

Wii Sports: the fun, the danger

Even though I bought 2 other games when I bought my Wii (Zelda and Rayman), Wii sports is by far the most played in my house (okay, Zelda hasn't even touched the Wii yet. I am ashamed to say, but I just haven't had time to devote to it. I've played Rayman, but maybe a total of 45 minutes -- hardly enough time to review it). It's multi-player, and, so far, most games only require a remote, and no nunchuck (which is good, because I only have one nunchuck!). We haven't tried boxing yet (no one is really interested), but the kids adore the other games.

Tennis: My daughter has a mean serve. It's not even funny. We recently bought real life tennis rackets so that we could play as a family at the local park, so when she saw this game she was all over it. All the kids had fun with the game, except my youngest (3 years); the tennis game requires too much timing and hand-eye coordination for him. My older 2 kids love it, and I enjoyed it as well. It's doubles tennis, and, if there are only 2 players, you control both the forward and rear positions. The Wii will swing with whichever position is closest to the ball. I assume that with 3 or more players you'll be able to play all the positions independently; when I get more controllers I'll re-review it. Downsides: I can't find any obvious way to make your on-screen character go a particular direction, or make the ball go where you want it to. It doesn't help that I haven't read the instructions, but there are no in-game instructions, and it's not obvious from just playing. I also have no idea how my daughter does her power serve; she's the only one that can pull it off.

Bowling: My youngest sons favorite game. You can turn your character, change the left-right orientation of where you're standing in the lane, and can affect the spin of the ball by twisting the control while you toss the ball. A very fun family game, the only downside (as in real life) is having to wait your turn while everyone else plays.

Golf: Another of my youngest sons favorites. He doesn't pay attention to any of the golf details, he just swings. He has a blast through the entire game; for him, it's all about getting the ball in the hole. The few times I've played with him, I'm amazed by how the remote picks up the strength of the swings, and all the aiming options. Very fun, fluid game. My youngest beat my oldest the first time they played (came in like 10 strokes under), so there's already some bitterness involved.

Baseball: My boys played this, although I wasn't even in the room at the time. My oldest seemed to enjoy it, but I'm not sure if it's the game, or that he was able to win against his brother, who was totally confused by the whole thing. A little beyond the league of a 3 year old. I'll have to spend more time on this.

Boxing: Haven't tried it yet. From commercials, it looks like you need 2 nunchucks for 2 players, and since we only have one nunchuck right now, it doesn't look like we'll be playing this as a group game any time soon.

All in all, lots of fun for everyone. Tennis is by far the family favorite, with even the wife enjoying playing a couple games with all our kids. I'll see about doing a Rayman review tomorrow.

I have to go Wii!!

So, over the weekend, I was hunting for a Wii. I found out that there would be a big release on Sunday by all the major retailers (Best Buy, Target, Circuit City, etc). On Saturday I visited a GameStop at the local mall. They said they'd have Wii's on Sunday. Deciding, with my wife, that we'd give up on the Wii till next year, we went to purchase two DS's instead, with a bunch of games. They didn't have any DS's either, and when a guy went back to check on stock, they weren't going to have any on Sunday, either. Damn.

Sunday morning hit. My wife, daughter, and mother-in-law were going to a quilt show all day. None of the stores opened till 11, so me and the boys would go Wii hunting. Stopped at Best Buy first, since it's on the way to the GameStop. They were already open at 10:30, with a line coming out the door. I decided to stop, and talk to the security guy. He said they got 40 units, and there were already more than 40 people there. I thanked him, and moved on to GameStop.

We were about 18th in line, and at about 10:45, the GameStop guy came out, and announced they had 9 Wii's. Oh well, we'd already decided to go the DS route anyway, so I stopped back at Best Buy to get 2...except they didn't have any. Sheesh! It's a Nintendo hardware shortage!

We went home to pick up the dog and head over to my parents house for the day. I thought about it, and there was a Best Buy in Long Beach, just off the freeway. It was brand new, just opening up in the past year, so I decided to check that out on my way to my parents. I left the dog and the boys in the car, and walked in.

On impulse, I asked someone if they had any Wii's. They didn't know, and pointed me in the direction of the computer people. Someone from customer service overheard, and came over, asked "Are you looking for a Wii?", to which I replied "Yeah". He then said "We have *one* left, are you interested", which got an emphatic "YES!". In the end, I walked out with a Wii, one extra Wiimote (no extra nun chuck though, I was bummed about that), and a copy of Zelda.

All in all, a good day. All 3 of my kids are loving it, especially Wii sports. I'll go over that in a later post.

Wii have a problem here

Okay, there HAS to be a better way to distribute these game systems. I'm not just talking about the Wii (although that's the hardware I'm interested in), all of them have issues.

The whole "trickle" effect is annoying. Yes, I want a game system. No, I'm not willing to stalk a store (or every store within a 5-10 mile radius) for a game system. Why can't I just put my name on some sort of list, and when the store gets one (and gets to my name), they call or e-mail me, and I have 24 hours to pick it up? I wouldn't be running around town, causing problems and annoying store clerks with "Hey, got any Wii's?".

One of these retailers really needs to just step up and change how they're operating. Once it becomes a convenience, rather than an inconvenience, you're pretty much guaranteed the customers.

Here and now

The original name of my blog, but it was denied (someone else already had it). Dammit.

Look here for what's going on in my brain. I'll try to keep it clean :)