This Sunday at 6:30PM at my house, tasting/voting to hopefully begin at 7PM. If you want to bring something that claims to be deadly chocolate here is a good place to look.
Mar 302007
Mar 292007
My boss, who is about to leave, used to develop video games and he wanted to see the Wii, so I brought it in this morning so he could try it out.
He was having fun with tennis and then he wanted me to demonstrate bowling. I was careful to avoid the conference room table, but in the third frame my hand hit my badge that was hanging from my right hip in its hard plastic case. It didn’t hurt much so I didn’t bother with it, but then I happened to see blood on it a few minutes later. My knuckle took abou t15 minutes sto stop bleeding from the slice.
I know it’s minor compared to what you see on wiihaveaproblem, but I had to share.
Mar 282007
Five people, including my boss, are moving on to other things this week. One of the others is the guy who wrote the server component for a small “demo” program that we wrote in December. It was a program that everyone who saw it wanted it, it will never find its way to a consumer. If it had another month to clean it up and treat it like a real product, it could easily have paid for its development. If it could have been turned into a real product that server engineer would have stayed.
It feels like we’re almost at the borderline fo critical mass for keeping everything running.
I was talking to a contractor who is disappointed because instead of working on doing something new for this new project she’s just reshuffling the old stuff into new piles to look new. I know what it’s like to have the excitement when working on something new. I had it briefly this past December for the demo. I’ve been lucky in my career in that I’ve been able to work on three satisfying from scratch projects. Being able to work on a project like that shows you how monotonous the rest of it is. So yeah, this new project is going to start and it’s a from scratch client, except for all the baggage of how the server will feed the client which makes the new client a lot like the old client.
I’m ready for something else.
Mar 272007
The crazy cold wind
Makes scooter rides angular
But my hair looks good
Mar 272007
Premonition was…. not so good. After awhile you’re wishing for some progress and when you get some progress you’re like “uh huh, sure.” I’m going to go into a few spoilers here….
The moment where it completely lost it for me is when, seeing that she needed to consult someone about premonitions, goes to the local priest. He happens to have a book of premonitions (and other psychic phenomenon?) handy with all the premonition stories and how they ended bookmarked. Then you get the out of place speech about faith. I’m guessing there used to be a lot more with that character, really they should have cut that out completely. While they were at it they could have jumped right to the end.
After seeing how much I was enjoying playing Excite Truck at Julie & Fish’s house Nicole got me a copy. It’s a fun arcade racer with a good feeling of speed like you get in the Burnout series, but it doesn’t have good crashes and it’s all off-road. It lets you go fairly far off-track before you are told you’re going the wrong way or hitting a boundary which lets you do things like fall a hundred feet off a cliff and climb the 70 degree incline back into the race.
It makes you take 5 minutes to run through a very basic tutorial before racing which is probably a good thing but for the impatient it might be a little frustrating. With the basics down you pick up the rest pretty quickly while racing. After 20 minutes of play I picked up everything that was in the later lessons except for the mid-air truck spins. Why do you want to do truck spins? For points. Everything has points associated with it and in head to head races it’s points that determine the winner. Finishing first gives you a bigger bonus though so there’s still incentive to race better. Anyway, totally fun arcade racer!
Mar 262007
My main goal this past weekend was to finally re-claim the tv room. That didn’t quite happen, but I got a lot of stuff put away so the majority of floor space is available again and I’ll be able to vacuum it tonight to start on the last of the cleaning.
I was also able to repair almost all the damage to the irrigation system so most of the plants should be getting water again. There is still more work beyond the repairs, mainly in setting up drip rings for the trees and drip lines for the bamboo so they start getting enough water. After that I can evaluate whether I need to split the system for different watering needs.
I also chose the two “deadly” chocolate recipes I’m going to make for Mortal Chocolate. The Chantico Death Cake and Carol’s Chocolate Death Cookies.
Mar 202007
All caught up on everyone’s pages. Not everyone in the world, just the ones I normally read.
Mar 202007
Tami was visiting and she likes horror movies and thrillers and movies about serial killers and such. So we ended up seeing those types of movies while she was here. I like just about anything so that was fine with me.
The Number 23 I wanted to see because 23 is my favorite number, but not for any connection to the movie. The efforts the main character goes through to come up with the number 23 get more rediculous as the movie goes on and I wasn’t caring about any of the characters by the time the end came around. I liked the visual separation of the story within the story, and I liked Virginia Madsen, but overall it was disappointing.
Black Snake Moan we saw even though it isn’t a horror movie because Tami likes Samuel L Jackson. The music was good and the scene with title song that the movie was built around was a joy to watch. The Aside from that the movie kind of meanders but stays entertaining all the way though.
Zodiac was easily the best movie we saw all week. We say a 9:30 showing and even though it is 2 hours 40 minutes is was engaging until the end. Definitely see this one.
Dead Silence was the only real horror movie we saw but I didn’t find it scary or tense. It’s a pretty decent ghost story and the effects were good. I really enjoyed the travelling scene changes and Donnie Wahlberg as the detective. The ending was well done too I thought. The scares for me at least weren’t there. The jump scares were in predictable places.
Nicole and I wanted to see Wild Hogs because the trailer was funny. The movie was funny too except for the sappy buddy buddy part towards the end, but I saw it coming so it wasn’t so bad. John Travolta lots some weight and is looking pretty good again too.
Mar 192007
Tami arrived back home yesterday, and I returned to work today. That makes for a more structured, but less entertaining day. In more exciting news, I had a hard drive failure on my desktop machine at home and with a little time here and there during Tami’s visit, and a little consultation with Eli, Anne, and Ben, I was able to get a new drive and get all but a few e-mail messages salvaged.
I was most concerned about Opera’s data since that’s also my e-mail reader and note keeper. I didn’t realize how much I had in there. Quicken was the easiest to restore and Trillian was a little tricky, but not too bad.
Next up is installing the sound card drivers, the extra IDE drivers, and catching up on everyone’s pages so I know what’s going on in everyone’s lives.
I wish I had graphics skills or a chocolate themed version of the Mortal Kombat theme, but oh well…
Date: Sunday, April 1, the day before Passover starts
Time: 6:30PM
Making something is not a requirement for attending, but if you feel inclined, I would like for people to make a recipe found here and bring it for all to judge its deadliness. Previous winners have the round they won next to them and items italicized are not deadly enough. If you see a recipe you would like to make, please let me know so I can put your name next to it to help avoid duplicates.
This time I’d like all recipes there by 7PM to start the tasting. Last time late entries didn’t get tasted as much since people were chocolated out.