Dallas, 11:25 PM: Don’t take this post the wrong way: I’m not going to sleep before 2010 officially arrives in Dallas. I am, however, posting early so as to not cause a rift in the space-time continuum by posting from 2010 when it would still be considered to be 2009. Sorry if you were wanting to see what would happen, but you’ll just have to wait about another 24 hours to get my first 2010 post.
On that topic, I’ve seen a bunch of places encouraging people to call the new year “twenty-ten” instead of the “two thousand and _____” format that has been in use for the past decade. The former definitely falls more in line with what everyone would expect pre-this past decade, but I’ll probably still use the long version for a while out of habit. I see it as being sort of like writing the date at the top of my paper in school right when we started the second semester. In the month of January, I probably turned in quite a few papers that indicated they had been written a year previously.
Dallas, Personal - Seattle
Dallas, 1:20 AM (12/31): At the end of the Cowboys’ season last year, they all but fell apart in a huge loss to Philadelphia that knocked them out of the playoffs. When the schedule for this year was announced and the final game was against against the Eagles, I was not exactly thrilled with what that could entail. Well, fortunately both teams have their playoff spots wrapped up, so while the title of the post is slightly misleading (both teams can potentially be playing for the #2 spot), it’ll be much less…stressful than last year. Therefore, I have virtually no reservations about going to Andrew’s BBQ at his house on Sunday to watch the game where he will be rooting for the Eagles, and I’m assuming that everyone else in attendance will be supporting the Cowboys.
I kept my Steam purchasing today down to just $2 (and even then, only at Andrew’s recommendation), but I have to say, digital distribution does make computer gaming extremely easy and, at price points like these, impulsive. I’ve bought a couple things off Live Marketplace/Wii Shop/PS Store, but the planned obsolescence of consoles has kept that in check for me. When the next generation comes our, are MS/Nintendo/Sony going to keep everything compatible and provide an easy way to migrate the data over? I guess that as long as I can redownload (as in the case with Steam), there’s nothing too big to worry about.
Dallas, Personal - Seattle
Dallas, 1:40 AM (12/30): As a part of my ongoing attempt to stay content with my iPhone until something better comes along, I unjailbroke (through finally updating) it today and wiped all of the applications off except for the couple that I really, really use. I’m still not exactly sure what my phone situation will be like once I get back to Seattle and have the option of using either my Jack or Curve instead, but both of those actually have OS updates that I need to apply to them. Even if I do stick with the iPhone, I’ll probably start carrying my Jack around with me as work as a sort of psuedo-SideShow device just to make getting information from my calendar easier than having to load up Outlook on my laptop when I’m not in my office.
I managed to avoid buying anything today, but that was more out of lack of interest than any sort of restraint on my part. I already have packages arriving in Seattle waiting for me, but fortunately they should all be relatively small. That said, I did manage to take both of my 24″ monitors (in separate boxes) up to my apartment at the same time, so let’s not underestimate my carrying capacity any.
Dallas, Personal - Seattle
Dallas, 1:20 AM (12/29): Another day down, another Steam purchase made (this time grabbing mainly things that were on sale for the entire duration and I just didn’t buy before). You have to think, or at least hope, that the inevitable increase in sales combined with the lower price nets the developers significantly more money than they would otherwise be expecting to make so that sales happen more often. If a game is $20 in a store or on Steam, I’ll probably just go ahead and get the physical copy, but when it’s only $5 on Steam, there isn’t much of a contest about what to choose.
Sherlock Holmes was a good movie, but nothing super exciting for me. I enjoyed it, but I felt it was a little long, a little slow (or perhaps ill-paced is a better term), and probably not worth a DVD purchase. I don’t know if having read the books would have pushed me more towards either extreme, but I have to rate it as just an entertaining, slightly above average movie. My score: 7/10.
Dallas, Personal - Seattle
Dallas, 1:40 AM (12/28): Wells Fargo’s servers are probably looking at my credit card transactions today and trying to figure out what in the world is going on because let’s just say I’ve been in a purchase happy mood the past 24+ hours. First, a trip to Microcenter to get a replacement video card and their thumbdrives that I love so very much. This afternoon, Amazon enticed me with $20 off on a bunch of video games I was interested in as well as a price drop on a DVD box set that had been sitting in my cart for a while, and now Woot provided a very novel item (Gyration Air Mouse) that after rebate was only $10, so I picked up a couple of those since you never know how they’ll come in handy. Rather than potentially stumble across something else that I want to buy, perhaps sleep is just my best option for right now.
Tomorrow afternoon my parents and I are going to see Sherlock Holmes at Stonebriar (because I refuse to go to the theater that is just around the corner from where we live), and then tomorrow night we’re eating at Benihana with Brandon and his mom before he travels back to Utah. With all this stuff to do, I might not be able to get any “work” in tomorrow, but it isn’t like I was planning on doing that in the first place. I guess it also keeps me from spending (my) money as opposed to having every e-commerce on the internet available at my fingertips, so all these activities can go ahead and be classified as good things for now.
Dallas, Personal - Seattle
Dallas, 1:15 AM (12/27): My Shuttle isn’t the most powerful or impressive computer I have in Dallas (that would be a toss up between the file server and the HTPC), but it runs Windows 7 surprisingly well. It will be getting both a minor RAM upgrade and a video card replacement in the coming days (the former because I felt 1 GB was a little light for running 7 before I installed it and couldn’t cancel the Amazon order; the latter because the current one freaks the hell out when I load up WoW, but not on anything else — still, it’s indicative that something is wrong), but it will still be in a solid third place as far as power goes. I can’t really do a processor upgrade, but for a computer that I had just about written off as not being useful anymore, this looks like it will be a very competent desktop whenever I come to Dallas in the future.
My grand total of money between my birthday and Christmas came out to $1127, so add on one to however many years I’ve had my $1000+ streak going. Of course, that amount of money came at the expense of virtually no presents from anyone except my aunt and grandparents from Arkansas (for Christmas, they gave me money for my birthday). Aside from Steam sales and somewhat necessary computer upgrades, I still haven’t come up with much to spend it on yet. Just give me a little bit of time; I’m sure inspiration will strike me before too long.
Dallas, Personal - Seattle
Dallas, 1:10 AM (12/26): Ah, Christmas (or to be PC, Holidays). While everyone puts on a nice face and pretends that this time of year is all about family and joy and happiness, I know that it’s really just about sales, buying stuff, and presents. Take, for example, the Steam sale going on through January 3rd. I bought one of the daily deals today that was 75% off, I have three more things lined up to buy that are on sale for the full duration, and it wouldn’t be happening at all if not for the “holidays”. So, to all the holidays around this time of year, thanks for making PC games that much cheaper for me to buy.
Today I had to head down to HP to work on a friend’s computer (to stick with my effort to name people, it was Julz), and I got a great lesson in why Apple sucks so much!! Yes, Apple, your Airport Express router is just one little rectangular prism of suckage, requiring way too much effort to get working when any Linksys, Netgear, or D-Link router could be set up in 10% of the time. Here’s a tip, from MS* to you: don’t require people to use your horrendous little configuration program when a web interface is just as (if not more) powerful and infinitely easier to access. That is all.
*The included suggestion is no way representative of Microsoft blah blah blah…
Dallas, Personal - Seattle
Dallas, 12:30 AM (12/25): As expected, today was a very, very, very, very, very long day. We also had a little mini-blizzard going on with snow and wind and more snow and ice, so coming back home from church was an hour and 15 minute adventure that had me leaping out of the car as soon as we were in the garage. Fortunately once we were inside, it was enjoyable to watch SMU absolutely dominate in its first bowl game in 25 years when they were 14 point underdogs going into it.
Aside from any presents my grandparents give me tomorrow (and additional money from my parents), I’ve received the last of my birthday and Christmas presents. Since I didn’t make up a list this year for anyone, money by far dominated my gift intake. Whether this ultimately converts into a DSi/video games or something computer hardware related or an item I haven’t even thought of wanting yet is still up in the air. I’ll probably want to think up something out of the ordinary, so my initial guess would be something that would fall under the “new gadget” category.
Dallas, Personal - Seattle
Dallas, 12:50 AM (12/24): The new Family Guy Star Wars episode came out this week (on DVD, it doesn’t air until the season finale for whatever reason), so naturally I had to resort to other ways in order to watch it before I could get it via Netflix. I don’t think I like it quite as much as “Blue Harvest”, but since The Empire Strikes Back is my least favorite of 4-6 anyway, perhaps it isn’t that surprising. Still, Family Guy did a good job with it, and if you’re a fan of either Family Guy or Star Wars, you should make a point to see it.
The next four days are definite vacation days for me since they would be official time off from work even if I was still in Seattle. Tomorrow is a busy day with family coming over here, then having to go to church, and then finally SMU’s first bowl game in 25 years (not that I have any personal investment in it, but I feel the need to support Andrew :) ). By the time Christmas Day comes around, I’m going to be glad to have an entire day where nothing at all is planned.
Dallas, Personal - Seattle
Dallas, 12:35 AM (12/23): For whatever reason, Facebook hasn’t been importing my posts until well into the morning recently, and with the timestamps at the beginning, it can look kind of weird to have a “12:30 AM” post show up in my news feed 10 or so hours later. Of course, I can’t control Facebook’s import rate, but it does seems to strangely coincide with my posts starting to come from Dallas. Conspiracy? More likely, just an overworked server (or their importer has just gotten lazier).
My grandparents arrive tomorrow, so in the evening we’ll probably watch either Star Trek or Galaxy Quest depending on the mood (and/or amount of time wanted to spend). Christmas Eve will be the busy day around here, but then Christmas Day should actually be fairly low key. Low key can border on the edge of being boring, but I think I’ll have too many options of stuff to do for it to become truly boring.
Dallas, Personal - Seattle