April 4th, 2006

Tuesday April 4th, 2006

(note: html-lite version. Updates/improvements as the day progresseth)

20K Miles
Saturday night I went to some party out in the deepwoods of Redmond, and the log cabin home of a fellow couple of puzzle-hunters. On the way back, my car rolled-over 20,000 miles. Woot. I bought the thing two half years ago, so I feel good about the mileage I’m not putting on it. The commute helps (bedroom to office is about 30 feet) and now that the GF lives so close, I’ll be putting even fewer miles on it.

The log cabin where the party was is worth a mentioning. 4100 square feet. Big beautiful kitchen, couple of climate-controlled wine racks. Enormous stone-work fireplace. Too bad the kids who own it are going to sell and move to a condo in Kirkland, or, as they put it, a view with a condo attached. 7 acres of land is alot of upkeep, I guess. Glad I saw their domicile while I got the chance.

Razor Phone
Didn’t mention in the big update last week that I am the "proud" owner of a Razor Phone. I had the one flip-phone with the full keyboard, but I need to change my rate plan since I was getting rid of the house phone and would be making more conference calls. Well, Cingular didn’t support that phone at a new rate, since my rate was a legacy rate from when they bought AT&T. Buncha crap if you ask me, but who am I to make them change their robber-baron tactics? So I got a Blackberry, and then dropped a barstool on it. Then I got the cheapest phone I could find with Bluetooth, but good God it sucked. So I “upgraded” to the Razor Phone… and then got told that they where going to stop making them as they dropped calls too often. I have the worst cell phone luck on the plant. And it did drop lots of calls, at first, but hasn’t for a month now. So we’ll see.

Anna Nalick
The writer/singer of “2 am (Breathe)” will be at the Tractor Tavern this Thursday. And we have tickets. And why not. Should be a buncha lesbians and hippies there. I am not disparaging anyone when I describe them thus. I’ll let you know if it’s everything I expect and more.

David Mitchell
Forgot to mention last week that I just finished this man’s novel Cloud Atlas. It’s a series of concentric stories—the first one stops halfway through, followed by half of the second, followed by half the third, and so on through seven layers or so, before giving us the latter halves again in reverse order, so that you end with the second half of the first story. Each story finds a way to mention the previous one in some manuscript form… the first one is a journal, the second a series of letters, the third a story submitted for publication to the main character in the movie of the fourth, etc. as a device, or even a gimmick, this concentric maneuvering is not anything to crow about. But Mitchell’s style is superb, moving smoothly and easily from genre to genre and voice to voice. It was so good, I went and picked up his Number 9 Dream, which I am enjoying very much right now.

World of Warcraft
Waiting for the PvP Rankings to come up. I expect to have been promoted to Knight-Captain this week. Now I have to figure out how to maintain that rank, since rank slips if you don’t keep up participation. I just don’t feel like grinding this week, but I don’t want to lose ground, even inasmuch as I don’t feel like trying to gain any. Well, we’ll see.

The Office
Netflixed and watched the American version of The Office. Funny. Should be called “Akward!” as almost all of the comedy comes from situations that make people feel a bit weird… the British version was much the same. The GF didn’t like the British one as much, chiefly because she couldn’t understand them. I liked it more, but I saw it first, so maybe I am biased. At any rate, it was worth a watch, though horribly short—there’s only the one disc to be had so far, and only 6 episodes. Alas.

Word Wars
Also watched a documentary about tournament Scrabbled players called Word Wars. Had some moments in it with author of Word Freaks, who covered much of the same material, though from a slightly more personal or “gonzo-journalist” perspective. I watched the entirety of it at the gym, walking on the treadmill at 3 MPGH and a 3% grade. Legs felt a bit wobbly when I was done, and I was dizzy for heaving stared at a bouncing screen for 90 minutes.

I like watching documentaries. I didn’t know I liked it, because before watching them was always about something historical. But these “modern” documentaries are fairly compelling. I’ve seen documentaries about the Amish rite-of-passage, Christian-run haunted houses, Bingo, Scrabble, a club-kid murderer, and a contest in Texas where the last person to keep his hands on a pick-up truck wins it. Frankly, they’re more interesting than the block-buster schlock that’s being pumped out these days. And cheaper.

Grand Theft Auto
Picked up Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories for the PSP the other day. Things have been so busy I have not had any real time to play it. I’ve only done some taxi missions so far, about 20, with 80 to go. That’s always the first thing one should do in the GTA games: taxi missions. That wasn’t really an option in San Andreas (which I never finished, dag nabbit). But this one is set in good old LC, where GTA3 was set. I avoided this title for a long timer because I thought it was going to be nothing but mini-game set in GTA3 land. But no, it is a complete title, so I’ll be playing it during idle moments. Cause that’s what the PSP is for.

Time
I have had two notifications this morning that at a few minutes past 1 am on Wednesday morning the time/date will be 1:02:03 04/05/06. Whoa, huh?