January 2004 Archives

So I'm just sitting there at the left turn light on State Street to turn west onto 9000 S and this guy is drivin along and bam-- his wheel has, er, broken off? I'm an idiot when it comes to car parts, if you hadn't guessed. Does suck to be him, though!

(times like this I wish I had a better camera that was easy to access. I've stopped carrying my powershot s40 for the time being...)

So yeah, been over a week again since I updated-- shameful. I could go off about why my blog sucks but that doesn't really matter-- I just need to find the time and motivation to change it.

Heeble updated his site-- I love the way he retells stories, always gets some funny lines in there. This one was pretty good, from his most recent entry -- even more so when taken out of context, heh.

"There were others much more scantily clad than I was, which was both good and bad. The hot girls in the short shorts looked good, the old man in the jungle-patterned spandex pants-- pretty horrifying."

So yes, Super Bowl Sunday is fast approaching. Whether you even like football or not, usually the commercials alone are entertaining enough! And who doesn't like an excuse to throw a party virtually dedicated to eating unhealthy foods? Hehe... so yeah, what's on the menu for your Super Bowl Sunday?

Ok so I don't know what that word is I used in the title. But what I want to ask is, what are your favorite phonetically spelled out sound effects or reaction words? They can often convey much more easily one's feeling or intent. I was chatting with a friend the other day and they spelled out "blaarrghh!" Definitely a sound or expression of disgust... somewhere between blah and a barfing sound effect.

Another favorite was when Llew used "erlack!" in the retelling of an experience via her blog. Maybe I'm just easily amused but I got a kick out of that one.

Any other good ones?

Just imagine Strong Bad saying subject line as he did "404'd!" or "MSG'd!"

Shame on you for resorting to shady material to attract visitors to your web site, Mar!

Ehehehe... Mar's web site just got blocked by our work's Websense proxy server for the S word. Well, not that she had it on her site-- only the word b .ikini (sorry, have to mutilate it so that I don't get blocked too). At least I think that's the only shady thing on her site... and she didn't even post it. She wrote about an experience getting her hair cut by a ditzy stylist-- didn't even use that word. But of course, Heeble commented to ask if she was by chance getting her hair cut at b. ikini cuts and some discussion ensued about that... and then her site got blocked, hehe. Who knows, maybe she's got another section of her web site that I don't know about, heh.

I guess that's the risk you run for having open comments, huh? I've gotten some really shady comments lately (and not just viagra ads). Guess I'll have to look into some better security for the web site. It'd be a shame to get rid of comments... I may even be a fool for putting the idea in people's heads to post stuff to get my site blocked.

Suddenly I'm in emulator mode again and looking at several different systems. Turns out there are Pocket PC emulators for Atari 2600, C64, NES, Gameboy, Gameboy Advance, and SuperNES (how the extra buttons on those systems are handled I have no idea). I'm stoked for the C64, Atari, and NES emulators. Though there isn't a Pocket PC version, I found an Intellivision emulator for PC.

So the question is-- what are your favorite old-school system games? I think Joel has voted for Tecmo Bowl on NES... others?

Off the top of my head:

Intellivision:
Tron: Deadly Discs
Triple Action
Advanced Dungeons and Dragons

Atari 2600:
Adventure
Pitfall
Star Wars
Frogger (can you believe they wanted to call it "highway crossing frog?"); California Games (one of the earliest available "extreme sports" titles, I'm sure)

Commodore 64:
Lazy Jones
Toy Bizzare
Pitfall 2
Winter Games

NES: (there's probably a ton here)
Super Mario Bros. 2
Ninja Gaiden
River City Ransom
Super Dodge Ball
Tecmo Bowl / Tecmo Super Bowl
Bionic Commando
and the list could go on... what are your favorites?

Man! My web host, Dreamhost, sent this along to me as a part of their monthly newsletter. It was a link to a TI-99/4A emulator for Windows. Perhaps only Heeble will appreciate this, but oh well!

Let me explain-- from my earliest days I can remember playing video games. My dad had an Atari 2600 as well as an Intelivision, and I grew up on those systems. Classic games like Adventure, Tron: Deadly Discs, etc. When I'd go over to Jeff's house, he had an old TI computer as well as a Commodore 64 (not sure if I spelled that right), and we mostly played games on the 64. However, there was one game I remember we loved on the TI, and that was Hunt the Wumpus. Now that I play it again, it reminds me a little of something like mine sweeper-- but mine sweeper was never this cool! Who cares if you get blown up... it's scarier to try to aviod getting eaten by the Wumpus or falling into a pit! Perhaps this game was a good part of why we liked drawing stick figure drawings of little guys trying to avoid deadly pits, traps, and monsters. Good times...

Anyways, if you wish to try Hunt the Wumpus, it's included in that emulator. Just download the file, unzip, run the setup program, then run the emulator. From the "Cart" menu, select "Insert Cartridge" and then select "Hunt the Wumpus". There seem to be a bunch of other old school games-- I just spent a minute playing Donkey Kong:

They sure don't make them like they used to!

He looks like he's crying... awww... he misses his mommy... either that or he really doesn't like Shawn holding him, hehe.

Oh yes, this dog will be chewing some things up, I can tell already. He's starting with Dan's finger...

So I guess certain siblings have been trying for some time to coerce my mother into getting a new dog for the family since Molly passed away. Dad was missing Molly a lot for various reasons... and I guess they wanted to get him a new buddy to walk with and stuff.

So today I find out that yesterday Mel and Mom had gone to look at puppies, and that today they were going get one. Viola-- an adorable little yellow lab puppy.

Now Dad is talking about getting another dog from the person we got this one from-- a chocolate lab puppy. Two big dogs?! The back yard isn't so big at this house and I'm sure 2 labs would be a serious poop factory... goodbye grass... hehe.

On another note... when I saw this puppy my heart went out to it, I feel sad for it. It was just taken away from his mommy and he's lost and bewildered right now, poor little guy. I can't imagine what it'd be like... but I guess that's life for dogs.

Anyways, thought I'd post some pics-- I've been meaning to update but I've been quite distracted lately with miscellaneous things. This was pic worthy so I am posting, yay!

Any thoughts on names? It's a boy, btw...

Oh, and here's a short clip-- it was hard to get a good pic of it so I shot a short video too. I shot a longer, better one but this will have to suffice for bandwidth's sake.

So we left St. George Saturday morning around 10:30ish. Man, the roads were hell from 10-15 miles north of St. George until past Cedar City, maybe even till Beaver-- I don't remember. What I do remember is driving extremely slowly and extremely carefully in my 2WD Maxima, in pretty constant fear. Visibility was limited, it was snowing like mad, and cars were sliding off everywhere (4WD vehicles, even) from the slick, slush/snow covered roads. If I strayed even a little outside the tracks in front of me I'd start to slip. It was a rather hellish 2 hours of driving and my hands / knuckles were sore afterwards from having gripped the steering wheel so tight.

Now, I'd gotten my oil change and with that a free car wash, the day I left to go down to St. George. So my car, though not spotless by the time I left to go back to Sandy, was relatively clean, and certainly free from any ice that might have built up previously. When I got out of the car at home after my non-stop trip from St. George, I found my car had grown and icicle beard and chops, or something. It was so funky looking, these round icicle things from dirty water/slush, pointing towards the front of the car. Funky, I tell you! It was so cold out that that water had literally frozen to my car while driving. Crazy stuff...

Well, on December 30th a bunch of the fam headed down to St. George for a little break from the mad weather we were having up here in Sandy. Though it wasn't terribly warm there, 50's feels pretty warm compared to the 20s and teens we've been in up here lately!

We spent Tuesday evening through Saturday morning there and it was a good time-- fun, relaxing, and nice to not drive around in sludge. Spent some time driving go-karts at Fiesta Fun, went swimming and hot tubbing, watched plenty of football and some movies, had some good (and some mediocre) food... good times.