Shouzer

Uh huh. That’s right. I went to play laser tag last weekend, and it was awesome. I don’t think I’ve played since about junior high. I used to go to that place in the mall in Carbondale for you local kids. Then they shut it down, and I was pretty bummed. Luckily for me, I live in a big city…er suburb now, and they loads of cool stuff like that.

One of my meetup groups went last Saturday, and I kinda screwed it up. I bought three game. Everyone else bought 1 game of laser tag, 1 game of go karts, and 1 game of put-put golf. I considered switching, but honestly, the go karts looked incredibly lame. And who plays put-put golf? Boring. Some kinds souls switched their go karts and played the 2nd game with me, but the third game, I was all alone.

By all alone, I mean I was the only one from our group. There were 4-5 massive parties with loads of kids there. So yeah, I ended up playing the third game with a bunch of kids at birthday parties. There were a few adult supervisors in there, but wow, I felt creepy. I was running around this dark room with a bunch of little kids, and to make matters worse, I was wearing a long, black coat. It was cold outside, and there was no where to put it in the place. I had to keep it on. I actually had a really good time though. Once we started playing, I didn’t think about the creepiness, and it was all good. And since Barney did it, I think I can feel ok about myself.

Megan and I caught Coraline last weekend with a few people from work.  From a visual perspective, it was great, but the story really didn’t do much for me.  I don’t really mind children’s movies, but this was just predictable.

It really made me appreciate the work that Pixar does.  Granted, Coraline isn’t necessarily targeting the same audience as Pixar and it’s not really trying to be the same thing, but I think a comparison is still fair.  What amazes me about Pixar is that they consistently put out movies with stories that are easy to get into and care about.  Obviously their animation is superb, as well, but so was TMNT’s.  That didn’t make it a good movie.

Steve Jobs owned 50.1% of Pixar at the time they were bought by Disney.  If nothing else, the man definitely knows a good thing when he sees it.

I bought a Netbook about a week ago, and I’ve gotta say that I love it so far.  For $300, there’s not much better you can do than an Asus Eee PC 900HA in my mind.  The next step is to install Win7 on it, but for the time being here’s a pic comparing it to my 15″ Macbook Pro.

Click the image to check a few more photos if you’re interested.

This makes me feel a little better as well: story. It’s nice to see that money actually being put the use for which is was intended. My bank called me a few days ago and offered a line of credit to me, trying to sell me on the idea of taking out a loan. I’ve never had that happen before. It seemed like a good sign that the credit market is starting to thaw.

[Update:] Maybe that wasn’t such good news: story

I certainly wouldn’t go so far as to say the Steelers got lucky, but they did get the majority of the calls, including a “we’re not going to review this” call from the refs on the last play of the game.  Sure, the Cards would have had no choice but to throw a hail mary, but who would you rather have trying to bring that down than Larry Fitzgerald.  Oh well, it was a great game nonetheless.

Anyway, I just read a quick editorial by James Carville, in which he basically puts it to Rush Limbaugh.  Honestly, I guess that’s probably not very tough, given Rush has a history of saying moronic, racist, painkiller-induced, small-minded comments.  Still, it’s worth a read.  Check it here.

If you played the Auditorium demo before, the full version appears to be up now still isn’t up.  Good stuff.  I found another quick game, again courtesy of Penny Arcade, called Grow Tower that’s worth messing around with a bit.  It’s not as deep as Auditorium (not that either of them would really be categorized as deep), but it’s good for 20-30 minutes.

[Update:] So, I was wrong.  Auditorium is still just a demo at this point…  My bad. 

As I mentioned before, I’ve been rolling through an embracing the winter series up here in D-town. I’ll be honest. It’s keeping me sane. Last weekend was my birthday weekend, and it was also MLK day on Monday. I love getting a 3 day weekend every year on my birthday. It pretty much rocks the house. For my 3 day weekend, I headed over to Chicago and then on to Madison for some skiing with Al. That meant about 5 hours in my car after work on Friday and then another 2.5 on Sat morning in the backseat of another car with 2 other dudes. And you know what? It was absolutely, 100%, totally worth it. It was hands down the best weekend of skiing in my life. Mostly, because I only fell about 3-4x per day. Moved up to doing a decent job on the black diamond as well. I was proud of the progress.

Moving on to last Tuesday, I went out for a belated birthday dinner. I went to a Brazilian steakhouse called Gaucho’s here in Northville. The fifteen cuts of the all you can eat meat are so delicious you just can’t stop eating. It’s pretty much the best meal you can ever have. My favorite meat was the Parmesan encrusted pork tenderloin, and I don’t even like pork that much.

My sister came up to visit on Wednesday and just left this afternoon. I had a pretty good time with her here. We went to see The Killers on Thursday night. I hadn’t been to a concert in several years, and I had forgotten how cool the atmosphere is. The Killers are probably one of my favorite bands as well, so it was pretty sweet.

Saturday night, we headed down to Ann Arbor to see a stand-up comic. He was pretty good, though I’d never heard of him. The star of the evening was the Ethiopian food though. It was my second all you can eat meal of the week, though this one was much, much healthier. They bring out a bunch of entrees and some bread-like stuff. You use the bread-like stuff to scoop up the entrees. Pretty sweet.

Yesterday was tobogganing. I thought it was going to be like sledding, but it was more like a slide, covered with ice. They put the toboggan on the slide, you jump on, they kick you off, and blam, you fly down the hill at 30mph. It’s pretty fun.

On Saturday, I played this game called Whirlyball with my outdoors group. It wasn’t outdoors though. It is played on bumper cars, 5 on 5. Each person has a scoop, and the object of the game is to get the ball in the goal. I just did a terrible job of explaining that so here’s a picture:

It snowed all day too. I was out running errands after Whirlyball, and every time I went to my car, there was a good inch of snow on it. So I decided to take advantage of it. I went snowshoeing on Sunday afternoon. In hindsight, there really wasn’t enough snow to justify the snowshoes. Although, if there were more of it, it would have been crazy hard. So I guess it’s a bit of a paradox. The snowshoes really didn’t keep on top of the snow all that well. I sunk about 80% into the the 8 inches. I did go through some drifts though, and the seemed pretty helpful there. They sunk in a lot, but they kept the snow out of your shoes, making the walk bearable.

On a side note, I think one of the keys to happiness is taking advantage of what the area has to offer. That’s why I’ve kicked off my Embrace the Winter series. So far, I’ve done cross country skiing, downhill skiing, and now snowshoeing. I still really want to go snowmobiling, and a guy at work today made a list of other stuff I need to try. It included ice fishing, pond hockey, and dog sledding. I think I’d rather be waterboared than go ice fishing, but dog sledding peaked my interest a bit.

In other news, I was utterly shocked that the Cardinals upset the Panthers last weekend. I guess it’s a bit redundant to say that though as pretty much everyone feels that way. I’m jumping on the Cardinals bandwagon now though. Like most people, I like a good underdog story, even if they are division rivals of the Rams.

I was just reading a quick article on ESPN that says Wade Phillips and Jason Garrett’s jobs with the Cowboys are safe, according to Jerry Jones.  Now, you could certainly argue that Phillips has done a less than stellar job with the Cowboys and that Garrett’s offense wasn’t has high-powered as it was last year.  But my question is should one bad year even warrant questions on whether their jobs are safe?

Seriously, Bill Cowher coached in Pittsburgh for 15 years before winning a Super Bowl.  Granted, he’d made it there before and had other successful teams, but shit, it’s not like his team was always dominant.  When was the last time the Titans won a Super Bowl?  Um, never?  Yet, Jeff Fisher has been their coach since ’94.  This year they’re one of the best teams in the league.

My point is that sometimes it takes a while to get the right pieces in place for your team.  Sometimes injuries really do wreck a season (the Broncos have had 6 RBs put on IR this year).  Sometimes another team in your division is just having a great year.  None of that means you’re doing a bad job.  None of that means you should lose your job.  But nowadays, if you don’t start 4-0, you’re on the hot seat.  If you have two 8-8 years in a row, you’re probably getting fired.  If you don’t win the Super Bowl, you don’t get an extension.  WTF is wrong with people?

We are quickly approaching the end of the year and the end of an era. 2009 will see a new president, and I think everyone here at Shouzer is pretty excited about that. My question is, how excited are you? How much is Barack’s presidency worth? Let’s play a little game of what if.

What if John Kerry had defeated George Bush in the 2004 election? We would have been saved from the last four years of destruction, replacing them with a period of blandness. Now, when the 2008 election came along, Kerry, as the incumbent, would have been on the Democratic ticket. Some other Republican would have been flying the “Change we can believe in” banner, and Barack would have been a nobody.

The incumbent has a strong advantage so Kerry probably would have pulled off reelection. So let’s look now at the 2012 election. Kerry’s VP, Edwards, would hold a strong advantage in the Democratic primaries, though he probably would be fought by HR Clinton and Obama. Obama, by this point, would have been a senator for around 10 years part of the Washington establishment, no longer seen as an agent of change. Though it is obviously still plausible that he would come out on top here.

I could go on to list other scenarios, but I think you see my point. No George Bush for the last four years means no Barack Obama now. So is he worth it?

Last year, when I built my computer and got a new TV, I invested in a few surge suppressors from CyberPower for the house (namely, I got two of the 1090′s and one 895). Since I started using them, I haven’t had any real opportunities to see them in action. We’ve had plenty of power outages, but no surges … until tonight. We had two consecutive surges within about 5 seconds of each other. The surge suppressors did exactly what they were designed to do (all my of electronics kept power, while the rest of the house flickered), but it was just extremely cool to see it happen. I will never, ever go back to the generic 6-outlet power strips.

Last year we only had a single day of snow, and it was limited to about an inch, maybe two.  Personally, I really liked it.  I don’t care for either temperate extreme, and obviously snow means cold.

This year, on the other hand, we’ve already gotten probably about a foot, and even though I didn’t think I would, I’ve gotta say I’ve enjoyed it.  It just does something to add to the season, and it’s been fun seeing Athena mess around in it for the first time.

Anyway, there’s definitely a lesson to be learned from driving around in the snow here:  people who aren’t used to driving in the snow don’t know what the fuck they’re doing.  The ratio of SUVs to cars on the road has at least tripled, and I’ve seen more chains on tires than I’ve ever seen in my life.  That doesn’t stop them from driving 10mph though.  Oh no, you could almost walk faster than most of these bums drive.

Let’s not forget the morons who just slam on the gas when their tires slip.  “Well, if a little gas doesn’t work, I’m sure flooring it will!”  Wish us luck…

We here in Detroit got bombarded last night and this morning with snow. We got around 10”. It was coming down during rush hour, so I decided to work for home. Incidentally, it’s also my last day before Christmas vacation. Hurray! I’m off for the next two weeks straight. Booyakasha.

The snow day was an eventful one. First of all, Bush finally announced that he is giving an auto bailout. That’s a huge relief for me, personally. It essentially means I get to keep my job. I was honestly pretty worried about that for the last month or so.

So I’m sitting there on my couch in the afternoon, getting a little work done. I’m on my last task for the year, and feeling pretty good. And then, the power cuts out. How annoying. I take it in stride though. Nothing can ruin this most awesome of days. I’m feeling a little stir crazy anyway, and the snow has stopped. So I decide to go out and catch a movie. There were 3 trucks from the energy company there at the apartments so I figured I’d be ok.

The parking lot at my apartment was plowed, and they do a pretty good job keeping the roads clear so I figure I’m ok. The road right in front of my apartment was clear, but then I pulled out on 8 mile into massive ruts of snow. I did actually make it to the movie theater ok, though I almost got stuck trying to turn left into the theater.

But I digress. I ended up watching the new Will Smith movie, Seven Pounds. I can’t tell you whether it’s any good or not though. In the middle of the movie, they had to evacuate the theater. Apparently, a snow plow hit a gas line. I can tell you that I was very engrossed in the movie. I definitely want to see the end of it to find out what happens.

I got home, and the power was still out. There was a sign saying that it would be back on by midnight. I’m a little worried at this point because it’s cold. The heat obviously doesn’t work without electricity. I started trying to find a place to stay for the night because I didn’t want to freeze. Plus, it was like 6 o’clock and I had nothing to do until bedtime. Talk about boredom. As soon as I got a friend on the phone, though, the electricity kicked back on. I finished up my work, and now I’m on Christmas break until January 4th. Can’t beat that.

Apparently, the RIAA is going to stop suing individual consumers for illegally downloading/uploading music from their computers, and instead go solely after the service providers. Would this be considered a sign of the apocalypse?

Engadget via WSJ