With a Cold Sense of Recognition

• ‘Twas not a good weekend for movies, it seems. We watched March of the Penguins—a film lavished with priase by one and all—and came away from it going, “meh.” I mean, it was a nice nature show and all, but why it was a feature film and not a regular Animal Planet special escapes me.
• We also tried to watch The Break-Up as it was Nikki’s turn to pick a theater experience. I understand her choice in a way, she likes Jennifer Aniston, she likes comedies and she enjoys romance stories. You might infer from the title that this isn’t that romantic of a movie but then again it was advertised and billed as a romantic comedy. It isn’t. What it is most closely resembles a 105-minute torture session for humans claiming legitimate ownership to more than four brain cells. It isn’t exactly the worst movie I’ve ever seen, but it is quite high up there among the most unpleasant movies I’ve had the displeasure to experience. Among the movie’s primary sins was that it was ostensibly a comedy that utterly failed at any point to be amusing (let alone actually funny) and the one part that could have been comedic was stretched on for ten times longer than the joke had steam to push through. Sad.
• Got the DS Lite Sunday. After all my yammering about trade-ins and what not, I ended up trading in nothing except some recycled cans for about $25 and then GameStop had a “Buy 2 Used Games, Get 1 Used Game Free” promotion. Since they had Mario Kart DS, Advance Wars Dual Strike and Metroid Prime Hunters used, I got those.
• Never did get a case or any screen protectors, but I’m ordering the screen protectors online and I’ll probably just do without a case. That’s roughly typical.
• I like all the games but I have a hard time with the control scheme in Metroid because it involves the stylus, the D-Pad and several of the buttons and triggers and whatnot. It probably takes some practice is all, which I haven’t put in because I’ve been too preoccupied pwning Black Hole forces in Advance Wars.
• As for the hardware I’m impressed with the unit as a whole. Good battery life, brilliant screens that make good-looking games (Mario Kart DS) remarkable and okay-looking games (Advance Wars) good, and reasonably comfortable. I must confess that I avoid the touchscreen business when possible, perhaps because I lack screen protectors and I don’t wish to tarnish a handsome new electronic device, but more likely because I just don’t dig on it as an improvement in terms of control over regular ol’ D-Pad and buttons. Also the DS Lite is heavier than I expected; it’s far lighter than the brick that was the original DS, but compared to the featherweight GBA SP it’s a beast. I suppose that’s the price to pay for sweet 3D graphics and WiFi capability.
• My backpack that I carried my work laptop around in ripped last week. It was a really ugly carrying device but I liked it because it had a spot for my little fold-up umbrella, it would (in a pinch) accommodate two laptops, plus it had room for all my random do-dads, a book, a spare floppy drive for the laptop, the laptop’s bulky AC adpater plus my CD case. But it was cheaply made and the zippers were a huge pain to get to work right. Anyway now I’m back down to my old Samsonite laptop case that I originally got for the iBook which holds practically nothing except the laptop, my namebadge/key card and a pack of gum. But it is solid as a rock and I’ve never had any problems zipping it up.
• Except that time I zipped my favorite shirt into it first thing in the morning and ended up with a big snaggy rip thing across my stomach all day. That was weak.
• Speaking of weak, I’ve seen people (aside from my brother that is) using the phrase “Weak sauce” quite a lot lately. It even makes an appearance as a catch phrase for one of the (more annoying) characters in Advance Wars. Weird. I kind of assumed my brother had made that up. Unless he invented a meme… Gasp! Scott is Internet Famous!
• Not really.
• After much fiddling I think I got my IMAP email working from DreamHost. I love the new hosting company and they have some stellar features but sometimes it seems like getting things to work they way you expect them to is just a few centimeters short of being Really Totally Easy. I’ve noticed this a lot with computing tasks: No matter how good it is, it’s not like working a Microwave. The chasm between, say, a clever bit of software or a clean user interface and RTE is theoretically minute, but it seems like in practice it might as well be the Grand Canyon because no one (not even Apple a lot of the time) can get to that point where you have to want to do something quite unusual before you have to ask for some help.
• Case in point: I was trying to set up the DS to use my home’s WiFi connection. I was able to do so after a couple of hours’ frustration (also time when I was not actually playing with my new game console so frustration falls a little short, description-wise) and the solution I came up with was to change the type of WEP encryption I was using. This worked great for the DS but of course immediately kicked all other wireless devices off the network. It was a temporary panic moment before I realized how to change the other devices’ settings to reflect the updated environment. My point is that I use Macs at home and it should have been like, “Oh, you want to get your DS on this network? Plink! There you go.”
• I suppose if that were the case I (and half the people I know and call friends or loved ones) would be out of a job. Viva job security through ineptitude!
• There is something wrong with me. My stomach starts to hurt and gurgle and get a general bathroom-y feeling after I eat dinner and occasionally after I eat other meals as well, if I eat too much or the wrong thing. I’m seeing a doctor about it, but it’s starting to (ahem) cramp my style.
• We went up last week to see Beans graduate from eighth grade. I know I graduated from Jr. High with a similar level of pomp and circumstance (Ha! I kill me!), but I remember thinking it was a little overdone considering what our relative accomplishment level was and I had a thought-deja-vu in witnessing the proceedings at Beans’ event. Still, he was class president and got to give the opening speech and his girlfriend was Valedictorian (with something ridiculous like a 4.36 GPA… something I didn’t know was possible since that would mean getting straight A+’s and something else, like—I don’t know—saving twelve drowning people between classes or something). So it was at least quasi-entertaining. There were a couple of musical numbers, and while I don’t recall my mother actually ever telling me that if I didn’t have anything nice to say not to say anything at all, it sounds like a solid policy. One which I will employ at this time.
• Seriously. Nothing nice to say.
• I would like to submit, for the records, a few facts. It is June. I live in California. In an area widely regarded for mild weather. It is overcast and cold today. With a chance of rain. What?
• Stupid non-summer.
• I keep meaning to watch the World Cup. I actually like watching Futbol, but I think it’s usually on at freaky hours like 7:45 am. I suppose watching World Cup soccer beats working, but I doubt my boss would be thrilled with the “Ole Ole” chant while people are conducting business.
• Plus he might take back the bonus he told me about yesterday. All things considered it was a lot better than I thought it would be, especially since the targets I and various parts of the company (such as our team, our division, etc) were supposed to meet were graded stuff like “Pretty good, but not great.” If this is what I get for “Pretty good,” I’m fairly intrigued to see what I get for “Great.”

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