Andrew and I have been considering upgrading monitors for a while, so we’ve been monitoring (no pun intended) the various deal sites online waiting to find a good price on a 24” monitor. Well, after being tempted many times, we both finally bought some today since we were each able to get two (a requirement for both of us) for under $400 shipped. To top it off, the model we went with was actually even decently reviewed (a Dell 2409W), so it wasn’t like we were having to go with the lowest end possible in order to get those prices. It may take some adjusting to go from a triple monitor setup down to just a dual (since my other monitors will get repurposed in other locations, including one down in Dallas), but if I can’t be happy with two monitors larger than any of the ones I have right now, then I just can’t be pleased by anything.
Since I had my rant to go on yesterday, I left out my review of my newest Netflix movie: The Forbidden Kingdom. It’s one that I wouldn’t have gotten if Netflix hadn’t shown it to me as one that it recommended based on my ratings, and ultimately I made the right decision by not going to see it when it came out last year. The fighting was cool, but there was just a little bit too much wire jumping going on in order to tilt it towards believable. My score: 6/10.
Personal - Seattle
For the most part, I’m a fairly passive aggressive person, and it takes quite a bit to push me over the edge. I’ll even cut my friends a ton of slack on asking me stupid computer questions because, hey, if they’ve never run into it before, maybe it just doesn’t seem obvious to them. However, the newest Facebook “fad” might just make me have to murder a couple dozen people, so I’m posting my reasoning behind it for the whole world to see (and decide if I’m justified). If Facebook were ever to implement a “dislike” button (as a counterpart to their existing “like” one), you are NOT going to have to do things like follow the Twitter account twitter.com/guinnessrecord nor are you going to have to copy some cryptic Javascript statement into your address bar that does nothing except spam all of your friends to join this sham of a group (which claims that if you follow all the steps, you’ll get the new feature!!) that shows you use absolutely no ****ing common sense and just blindly follow instructions if you think you’ll end up getting something that you want. In my Facebook status, I even call these idiots out on being the people who are likely the main cause of the virus problem in the world, and you know what? I’m probably fairly accurate with that accusation.
In the world of less ranting, today was my first semi-work from home day of the week, and I was probably more productive today than I would have been just sitting at some random table around my building. Tomorrow the time I have to be up at my building is even less than today, and we’ll just have to see if this productivity will carry on throughout the rest of the week. If it can be fueled by my anger towards my stupid Facebook friends, then that shouldn’t be a problem at all.
Personal - Seattle
Andrew and I played a couple TDs in Warcraft 3 earlier tonight (after watching the Cowboys beat the Eagles, of course), and for a 6 year old game, it still has quite the online following. Andrew and I have played some of the maps enough that they’re almost not a challenge for us to beat anymore, but the ones with difficulty levels get near impossible if we put them up at the hard settings. The one bad part about playing is that using Alt-Tab to do other things during any downtime freaks out the game slightly, but it typically doesn’t end up being that big of an issue.
Tomorrow I have to be in my new building from about 9:30-12:00, so tomorrow afternoon I’ll be back here rather than sitting at some random table. By the end of next week I’ll probably be ready to have an office once again just because of the amount of time I’ll have spent here. Of course, I have no idea how long my second move is going to take, so I might be working from home for the start of Thanksgiving week also. If nothing else, it’ll mean that I’m already here Wednesday afternoon when I’m going to use the bus to get to the airport again.
Personal - Seattle
I beat Ratchet and Clank this morning (and I was right, I was fairly close to the end), and rather than go through and collect everything possible in the game to unlock all the bonus/extra stuff, I put it in the completed pile (note: there is no actual pile) and started back on Mass Effect. This time through I’m making sure to save quite often, and that’s already saved me more than a couple times. I’d definitely put my progress in it as much slower than Ratchet and Clank, but hey, they’re two totally different types of games.
Tomorrow nothing interesting happens until the Cowboys-Eagles game at like 5:30, so I’m not entirely sure how I’m going to entertain myself in the morning and afternoon. There will be some game playing obviously, but beyond that, I’m open for suggestions. So, you know, if you care about my mental health and happiness, let me know what you got. Trust me, I’ll be here waiting to hear what you have to say.
Personal - Seattle
So, I think I’m getting relatively close to finishing Ratchet and Clank: A Crack in Time, but the fact that it’s so new means that there aren’t any full walkthroughs up on GameFAQs yet, so I can’t exactly gauge what point of the game I’m at. Considering the unconventional approach to progression this game has taken as opposed to the rest of the series, I can’t really even go off guesstimating that way. Well, at least I won’t be getting Assassin’s Creed 2 next week, so my backlog of games won’t continue to grow if I’m farther from the end than I think.
I packed my pathetically empty box of stuff at work this afternoon, and now I’m officially officeless until the 16th. Then, I actually get to move again on the 20th (yeah, I know), so I probably won’t even bother “unpacking”. As of right now, Wednesday would be my only day to work completely from home, but every other day except Thursday I do have pretty much the entire morning or afternoon free. Considering I’m done writing both of my documents for this cycle of development, finding a place to sit in my new building to do nothing but email would be an extremely boring thing to do.
Personal - Seattle
So, Eagle Eye was a movie that I saw last year, and by all accounts, I should have gotten it on DVD. I rated it an 8.5, well above my purchasing threshold (7-7.5), but apparently when it came out on Amazon, I forgot to add it to my cart and it just went unremembered by me. Well, upon looking back through my reviews and seeing this, I added it to my Netflix queue so I could watch it again in an attempt to figure out why I rated it so high but never got it. Honestly, I don’t have a good answer for that one. I enjoyed it just as much as I apparently did the first time (and also benefited from being able to understand things when they occurred in the movie since I remembered parts as it went along), and I really can’t think of a good reason to not include it with my next Amazon purchase. Being able to rent it on demand from Netflix does not count as a “good reason” because by those standards, I’d never buy another DVD again.
One thing that I’ve noticed on Amazon is that after the release of a movie, the price on the two disc version jumps significantly up while the standard version remains fairly low. Actually, both end up being discounted quite little, but before a movie comes out, the special edition is discounted much more heavily to only make it a few dollars more expensive. If there’s a copy of a movie for $15-20 and another for $30-35, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out which one I’m going to buy. Please note that this logic only applies to movies; video games fall under an entirely different set of guidelines.
Personal - Seattle
Ok, this title is a stretch, but I just had a flash of Shrek in my mind. Specifically, the conversation that goes like this:
Shrek: (to Donkey) WHY…are you following me?
Donkey: Oh, I’ll tell you why. (singing) ‘Cause I’m all alone, there’s no one here beside me! My problems have all gone, there’s no one to deride me! But you gotta have friends–
Shrek: Stop singing! Well, it’s no wonder you don’t have any friends.
A fitting part of the movie to remember considering today was yet another boring day of sitting in my office in a deserted building, but because I had a meeting in the afternoon (and needed a program only on my desktop), I went in at my usual morning time. Next week I won’t be doing such a thing and really will just be going up for any meetings, but at least right now everything seems to be relatively close together each day so I won’t have to make multiple trips back and forth or entertain myself sitting out in the open somewhere.
Personal - Seattle
Lets just say that working from home is a concept that I could really begin to buy into. I get to stay in bed an extra hour, have four screens to spread my work across, and I can stay in communication with everyone just as well as I could sitting at my desk. Aside from all that, when it was lunch time, I decided that instead of going around the corner to a teriyaki place like I had been thinking I would do, I’d drive down the street and go watch a movie. So I did.
Yep, I went and saw Astro Boy today mainly just because I could. Apparently, no one else felt like going to see it during lunch today because I was the only one in the theater. As expected, it was aiming for a little bit more of a kid audience, so that was probably a big contributor to the lack of attendance at 12:20 in the afternoon. I’d classify it best as sort of a cross between Iron Man and Robots, and while I didn’t absolutely love it, it was good. My score: 7/10.
Personal - Seattle
Since my calendar tomorrow is just one big slate of emptiness, I figure that it’s a good a day as any to test out just what working from home will be like. Hopefully it will be an awesome experience that doesn’t cause me to get too distracted, but since the alternative is to sit in an empty building with very little to do all day and just an underpowered computer and the internet to keep me company, I think home is the much better option. Of course, if I get told that I have to go fill out the information for my move tomorrow, then I guess I will be going to my building for a little while.
My Zune HD arrived today (complete with a Bioshock engraving on the back), and I’m definitely a fan. When Microsoft makes products that rock this much, I have no issue supporting them over the competition. Windows Mobile, unfortunately, just isn’t up to that level yet though. Since Zune and Windows Mobile 7 are supposed to be coming together next year, it might make jumping away from the iPhone that much easier (and if it fails, hopefully AT&T will have a good Android phone for me to try out).
Personal - Seattle
So last night I was home right after I had set me post to be published, but I figured that updating it was just unnecessary work when I didn’t really have anything new to add into the mix. Since I wanted to be able to go to sleep and wake up to see the Cowboys this morning (assisted by the extra hour of sleep last night), I held off watching my newest Netflix movie until tonight. Stargate, which came out in 1994, has what I consider to be fairly unimpressive special effects, but I completely realize that I need to give it some slack since the special effects world has come a long, long way in 15 years. I’d heard of but never seen the TV series, so that’s what led me to put it into my queue to begin with. The TV series will probably stay about where they are on my radar right now, which is that I might get to them eventually, but I have higher priorities on things that I want to watch first. My score: 7/10.
Rather than being unbearably loud from a bunch of stuff being moved around on Friday, it was almost completely silent. If that stays the case, then I shouldn’t have any problem staying in my office all week long until it is time for me to pack all of my stuff up to move. My calendar (at this point) is fairly open for the week, so I wouldn’t actually mind needing to work from home in order to concentrate on stuff because when I get bored, the options for entertainment are infinitely more entertaining here.
Personal - Seattle