Weekend with the boys
My good friend James invited myself and Pete up to his place this weekend for our quarterly get together where we stay up late playing arcade games, pinball, watching This Old Pinball videos and shooting the shit. This time we added a new collector to mix by the name of Richard. Richard’s from Illinois and for only being into the hobby since ‘04, he has managed to acquire a collection of 43 games! His collection includes some rare cabs such as Q-bert Qubes and Food Fight. I’d say he’s off to a good start.
I brought my Wii over so James could get a chance to check it out. We had alot of fun playing each other in the various Wii Sports games. I stayed up until about 3:30am Saturday night playing Twilight Princess. It’s getting really interesting now and you never know what’s going to happen next.
Speaking of the Wii, the first official modchip, called Wiinja, has been released that allows you to play Wii & Gamecube backups along with Gamecube imports. It requires you to open up your Wii and solder 5 wires to it. I’ll definitely be waiting awhile before using any mod chips on my Wii, especially since there is no way to update the Wiinja. Seeing as updates for the Wii are released frequently, it’s very possible that Nintendo might start blacklisting Wii’s who have modchips connected to them. That’s not something I’m willing to risk.
I was hoping to do my taxes this weekend but then realized that my bank still hasn’t sent me my 1098 yet. The plan this year with our return is to pay off the credit cards and then use the rest to put towards materials for finishing the basement, starting with the gameroom and the full bath off from it. We’ll be starting with the bathroom which needs a shower insert, drywall for the ceiling and for boxing off the return air vents, wall coverings and floor tile. I need all the help I can get…
Ethan has been doing the cutest thing lately which is he wraps his arms around your neck and gives you the biggest hug. I’ll be holding him and he’ll just give me 3 hugs in a row. The first time he did it I about had tears in my eyes. It was too damn tender. Tonight he managed to slam his fingers into our bedroom door. He cried for 5 minutes straight and kept shaking his hand but was fine after that. Poor guy.
Wii’ing
I gotta say, the Wii was worth the fuss! I’ve put 4+ hours on it so far and it’s been alot of fun. It comes with Wii Sports, a collection of 5 different games - Tennis, Bowling, Baseball, Golf & Boxing. The games do a great job of getting you accustomed to using the motion-sensing wireless controller. My father-in-law was over tonight and I had him try it out. He ended up playing it for half an hour and had a riot. I’ve got it hooked up to my wireless network which allows you to send email, surf the web with the Opera browser and purchase games to play on your Wii from the NES, SNES, N64, Sega Genesis & TurboGraphix 16. At $5-$10/game, I won’t be buying them anytime soon.
The Wii uses a SD memory card slot which allows you to save games, pictures and downloads. I did a little Google searching and there are instructions for running homebrew code on the Wii off an SD card. Will have to check that out soon.
If you get an opportunity to pickup a Wii, I highly recommend it. If you do, send me your Wii code and I’ll add you to my list.
Wii mania
I’ve been on the lookout for a Nintendo Wii for the past couple weeks. Those controllers and the Legend of Zelda - Twilight Princess have got me hooked! Last weekend Marie & I were out and about and I went to three stores on Alpine (Circuit City, Best Buy & Target). None of them have had Wii’s for the past couple weeks. In making some phone calls this week, a guy at Target told me that it was going to be in this Sunday’s ad and they should have a few on hand. So I decided I would wake up early Sunday morning and hit up Target on Alpine 1/2 hour before they open at 8am. Unfortunately, when I walked up at 7:30am, the guy handing out vouchers just gave out the last one. Argh! He said that the Target on Clyde Park didn’t have any lines the last time he talked to someone over there. So I jumped on the highway and made my way there as fast as I could. Again, I walk up at almost 8am and the women had already handed out the last voucher. Both Targets only got 15 units.
So I jump back on 131 and decide to head over to Best Buy on Alpine and see what kind of line was there. They don’t open until 11am on Sunday so I thought I might still have a chance, if they actually had some. When I pulled in, there were about a dozen people standing by the front door. I started chatting with the guy in front of me and he said the Sunday ad stated they would have a minimum of 20 units. Yes! My persistence paid off.
Unfortunately it was only 8:30am and they didn’t open until 11am. The guy that was in line behind me said his son worked at this Best Buy and that they had 36 units. They have had them for a couple of days but were holding them for Sunday’s ad. As it was only about 16 degrees, we were hoping an employee would come and hand out vouchers - and at 9am they did. I was tenth in line.
So I drove back home, took a hot shower and now here I am, waiting until 11am to go pick up my Wii. Let’s just hope it’s worth all the fuss.
GVAC swap meet
Yesterday I went to the Grand Valley Aquarium Club swap meet. Marie saw an ad for it in the newspaper earlier in the week and I thought I would be interested in checking it out. Apparently the club does an auction a couple times a year and has been doing that for quite some time now but this was the first swap meet. I totally felt like I was at a computer club swap meet from the 80’s. It was setup in one room and each dealer had a table displaying their warez, which consisted of many many bags with various fish and plants in them.
I went with the thought of not buying any fish but I couldn’t resist - there were so many great deals! I ended up getting 3 German Blue Ram’s for $10. These normally sell for $15/each locally. I put these in my 10g tank with my 3 platies and male betta. So far everyone seems to be getting along fine. The breeder I bought them from said they were about 7 months old and very non-aggressive for a cichlid. I also picked up 2 really nice plumetail platies and a small piece of driftwood with some kind of anubius plant attached to it. I put these in my 5g tank at work. Snook also met up with me and bought a few plants. He called me later that night and said the piece of driftwood/plant that he got had snails on it. I didn’t see any on mine when I put it in the tank, tho I didn’t look at it all that closely as I was in a rush to get home so I could acclimate my rams. Snails multiple like crazy and can be all over your tank in no time. They eat algae but will also eat live plants. I guess I’ll find out tomorrow if I’ll be dealing with a snail problem.
Speaking of fish, 3 of the swordtails in Ethan’s tank are pregnant. One of them looked like she was ready to give birth any time now so I moved her to the breeder trap and put it in my 10g tank as it won’t fit in Ethan’s tank. When she has the babies, they fall to the bottom where the mother can’t get to them as livebearers will eat their young. I thought it would be fun to raise the fry and when they are old enough, turn them into VI Pets for store credit.
After using my MacBook Pro for the past month, I have to say I’m very happy with it. I love the fact that everything works just like it should. Simple things like being able to create a PDF from any app without having to install any software is great. Being able to run OS X, Windows XP & FreeBSD, all at the same time via Parallels is just awesome and works much better than I thought it would. And since I’m a gamer, I just had to try out a few games to put this machine to the test. I’ve played Call of Duty 2 a bit and it just screams on this laptop. I thought about trying World of Warcraft but I’m afraid if I start playing that game, it will consume all my life. Best to just stay away from it…
One thing I’ve been having issues with is the wireless connection. I’ve been using an ActionTec DSL wireless router at home since I switched to TDS and my Dell laptop never had any issues with it. For some reason the airport card in my MacBook Pro would constantly drop the connection and wouldn’t reconnect or even see the SSID, even tho my Dell laptop would be connected with no problems. I moved back to my Linksys wireless router and the connection has been much better with the MacBook Pro but I did have one occasion where I lost the signal for no reason. I upgraded the firmware to the latest version on the router and all the software is up to date on the Mac so I’m not sure what’s going on. I guess if I continue to have problems I’ll have to look into it more.
And since I’m now a Mac user, I watched the MacWorld keynote last week. My new obsession is the iPhone. When these hit the market in June, I WILL be getting one. I’ve been holding out on getting a PDA/phone unit for quite some time now since I couldn’t find one I like but it looks like the iPhone is just what I’m looking for.
Welcome to ‘07
Being sick really sucks, especially during the holidays. Shortly before Christmas, the Minch/Braun residence got ‘the sickness’. It started out as a cold - runny nose, coughing, phlegm, all that good stuff - and then progressed to the flu. The flu bug hit me Saturday night around 3am. I woke up out of a dead sleep with that horrible feeling that I’m going to throw up and nothing is going to stop it. After that lovely experience (I’ll spare you the details), I hit the sack only to wake up again about an hour and a half later with the exact same feeling. This happened a total of 4 times throughout the night. Needless to say, I spent all of Saturday in bed feeling like absolute shit. My lower back was killing me and I couldn’t get comfortable no matter what I did. About mid day I tried to eat some toast and orange juice, which was a mistake as it came right back out about an hour later.
Ethan had the same thing too as he threw up a few times on two different days. It’s such a sad sight to see your kid sick. There’s not a whole lot you can do other than comfort him and wait it out. Marie was lucky and just had a cold, which was good as she doesn’t deal with throwing up very well. Marie’s parents got it really bad also and were out of commission for a few days. I think the worst is finally behind us tho.
Ethan had a riot this Christmas opening his presents. He’s so much fun to watch as he really gets into things and wants to know how everything works. We got him a keyboard and he really gets a kick out of it. The whole month of December he was fascinated with the Christmas tree. We would just stare at it for minutes at a time, grab a candy cane and manage to get the wrapper off enough so that he could suck on it. The sound he would make was hilarious. One of the best gifts he got was from my dad and his wife Sue. It’s a rocking horse that my dad custom made and then Sue painted it. It looks awesome and Ethan just loves it.
I spent some time tonight looking thru his pictures from birth to now and it’s amazing how much he has changed in the past 15 months. He runs around the house and chats up a storm, tho only he knows what he’s really saying most of the time. He’s starting to understand certain words like when you say bath, he knows it’s bath time and goes to the bathtub. He’s also answers ‘yeah’ when you ask him certain questions like ‘Are you hungry’? It’s too damn cute.
I think this Christmas was my one of my best years for getting great gifts for Marie. I got her a robe, pajamas and some lingerie from Victoria’s Secret (grrrrr), various bath stuff like bubble bath and salts, a couple sweaters, a bottle of her signature scent Vivid which is no longer made and an iPod shuffle. I also got her a new rug for the dining room but she picked that out so it doesn’t count. I got some much need clothes (pants, boxers, socks, shirts), an Atari Flashback2 system, a pen that plays Asteroids (tho it’s closer to Space Invaders than Asteroids) and Castlevania - Portrait of Ruin for the DS.
I just finished watching Real Genius in HD. I haven’t seen that movie in years and it’s still as good as I remember it.
“Was it a dream where you see yourself standing in sort of sun-god robes on a pyramid with a thousand naked women screaming and throwing little pickles at you?”