Dallas, 12:50 AM (1/6): I bet that if I didn’t point it out, no one would notice. However, by not pointing it out, then I can’t reference it in my title and make up witty comments concerning it. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, then obviously you don’t read my posts closely enough because this post should have come 8-12 hours ago. As it turns out, I am on a flight tomorrow, I got paid $400 to be on said flight, and all is well with the world since I’m able to make this post just fine.
So, tomorrow will be just like today, but with everything shifted a tiny bit earlier. Instead of a 6:45 flight I’m on a 4:30 flight, so that means that I actually get into Seattle at a more reasonable time. All that really does is allow me to have more time at my apartment unpacking before I feel the urge to fall asleep, but I’ll gladly take more over less.
Dallas, Personal - Seattle
Dallas, 1:45 AM (1/5): Two things are for sure tomorrow: 1) I’ll be making a post in the afternoon before I go to the airport just to stay on the total safe side as far as schedules go, and 2) I’ll be going to DFW tomorrow with a slight uncertainty as to whether my destination will be Seattle, Dallas, or some other location. Ok, so let me explain exactly how I could go to DFW and have Dallas as my destination. I promise that I’m not going insane from lack of sleep or being on drugs or anything.
Apparently my flight tomorrow is yet again overbooked, and when I checked in online earlier, I was asked if I wanted to volunteer to possibly take a later flight (as was the case in Vegas). I went ahead and said sure, and then I decided to go ahead and check what the alternatives would be. There is a Dallas-Portland flight that would take off after my current Seattle flight, but I would be left in Oregon overnight with no way to get to Seattle until Wednesday morning. I would think they would rather have me stay overnight here rather than in Portland, so that’s how I could conceivably see myself going to DFW but staying in Dallas an additional night. Of course, if I were to stay in Dallas, I’d get my parents to bring me back home instead of staying at a hotel at/near the airport.
Dallas, Personal - Seattle
Dallas, 1:50 AM (1/4): The BBQ at Andrew’s was fun (helped quite a bit by a 24-0 Cowboys victory), and then we watched movies and DVDs once it was over. When I’m back in Seattle next weekend in hopefully somewhat nice weather, apparently there will be a repeat since the Eagles and Cowboys play again next Saturday, again in Dallas, for the wild card round. Fortunately since all games now are playoff games I can see them all in Seattle, but if I was going to be around, I would definitely join everyone for another version of today.
Tomorrow I’m officially back at work, but at the same time I’m still on vacation. Confusing? Think of it as a vacation + having to respond to emails, but as long as those emails get responded to in a timely manner, I can do as many vacation-like activities as I want. Granted, I have no such activities planned for tomorrow (or Tuesday) at the present time, but if my schedule was that planned out in advance, it would border on not being a vacation at all.
Dallas, Personal - Seattle
Dallas, 1:45 AM (1/3): Ok, so tonight wasn’t really a “party” in the sense that Andrew’s BBQ tomorrow could be considered one, but I’s say going over to Jess’s house, having about 10 people there at it’s most populated point, and watching Star Trek counts as at least an informal one. I’ve also become addicted to a Scrabble-esque iPhone game that can be played multiplayer against someone else, so I have games going on with Jess and Crayton in that (apparently I’m a little late to this party). As a result of that, I’ve finally found a use for notifications on the iPhone even though I wish there were some way to say “don’t notify me in the middle of the night when the noise/light will inevitably wake me up”.
I’m curious to see what Monday will be like as far as “working from home” goes since people will actually be around the office for a change. Granted, I still won’t have much to do beyond answer emails, but I’m anticipating the volume to be slightly higher than it was when I got here right before (or just as) everyone was going on vacation in December. While emails are fun and all, one nice thing about getting back to Seattle will be the fact that I at least will have more to do during the day.
Dallas, Personal - Seattle
Dallas, 1:40 AM (1/2): For the first day of 2010, I went to go see Avatar, and it was fairly like what I expected both in good and bad ways. There’s absolutely no argument that the CG is extremely impressive, there was plenty of action, and the story was fine. Every time I saw the trailer though, there was just something that seemed off about the movie, and I had a feeling that it wouldn’t be one at the top of my list. That turned out to be right also, and it’s going to be one that takes some more thought to if I want to get it on DVD or not. My score: 8/10.
I have four nights left in Dallas, and then I no longer have to entertain myself with my limited options that I’ve had here for the past couple of weeks. My 360 will definitely be seeing some play time next week as will many of my Steam purchases that I didn’t want to download and start here. The holiday sale only runs through the weekend, so barring any additional extreme discounts that just can’t be passed up, hopefully I’m done spending money on games for the near future so that I actually get a chance to play them all.
Dallas, Personal - Seattle
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