Christmas Holiday

Went back to work today.
Had a few days off while Maria was here.
Christmas season means 4 days to me.
24th - Christmas Eve
25th - Christmas Day
26th - Frickin' Birthday
31st - New Year's Day

BAM! All done in one month. No pressure though! Don't try to milk it for all it's worth. Just be chill - it'll all come around again next year... if you live that long!

Had Christmas dinner with Maria and Edward. Edward was extremely proud of his mashed potatoes. I made rainbow jello. "A" made tofurkey.

Went to Moss Beach and tide pools on my birthday. It was cloudy but not raining. We saw sea lions pretty close and star fish and... other stuff too. Y'know tide pool stuff.

Now I'm 35
YAY.

Going to commence with experiment and cut calorie intake down. In half maybe? This could double my lifespan from 72 years to 144. (Or more possibly.) It happens in rats, but they say it won't work for humans. I guess the rats who don't get enough food stop reproducing, so the energy spent on that can be saved for living longer. Well, I haven't done any reproducing yet, so I might as well try to force my body into living longer than it thinks it should!

The truth is, they don't know if it will work because no one has ever tried it to the fullest extent... or have they? There seems to be an organization that promotes CR (calorie reduction) but if the pictures are any indication of how I might turn out in the end, I think I'll quit before I start.

I need to read up on this more... if I live long enough.

HELLBOY!

Today I took Maria over to see the office. (She came to visit for Christmas - Drove from Arizona!)
On the way out we ran into Craig who said Tower Records had Hellboy figures on sale. We ran over there and sure enough they had 'em for 50% off! WOO!
I got the large 18" Hellboy, the small 12" of Hellboy and a 12" of Lobster Johnson. All for under $50!
HOT.

Corn sock

Tonight I made a corn sock for "A". She often gets these migraines that knock her out for a whole day. However, the rice sock was retired after a few years since the rice couldn't hold heat very well any more. We decided to use dry corn instead. This site goes into detail. I didn't bother grinding the corn up - I just picked out corn from some "critter feed" we got for the squirrels (live kitty entertainment) and tossed it in the sock. We'll see how it works.

Chronicles of Narnia

We actually got out of the house to see this movie today. The weather is awful. It's been raining for the last 3 days straight. It's overcast and dreary. We needed to get out and do something even if it was just being inside watching a movie.

Well, the movie itself was great. They remained pretty true to the book. The pacing was nice and slow. Not forced, rushed or disorderly. Some say that this makes it a kids movie; I say it made for a good movie. But I am a kid at heart.

The only drawback to the movie was that it was in a theater. A crappy theater, with other people. People who were rude, loud and SEAT KICKERS! WTF is up with seat kickers!?!?!? Do they think that people can't feel their bumping, knocking, tapping and shifting through a thin metal chair?!?! The idiot behind "A" was the worst ever. No amount of glaring helped, I had to actually turn around and say, "C'mon, watch your feet." before he would stop. But even after that I had to repeatedly turn and glare, cuz he decided he'd rest his foot on MY chair and shift around every ten minutes. Obviously he had it out for me then. Pretty pitiful.

This is on top of the theater being full of people eating. And drinking. Never go to a movie around lunch. You will only hear bags crinkling and straws squeaking in the plastic cover. You know that noise? Yeah. I don't mind that so much - especially at a kid oriented/safe movie. Kids are forgiven. Parents? Never.

Don't go to the theater in Redwood City. Ever. The screens are small, curved in an effort to make up for their smallness and seating is sparse. I think there were fifteen rows. And you HAD to be in the back 6 or you were right under the screen! (Did I mention it was small?) The only screen I have EVER seen that was smaller was in Japan. I'm not going into that here.

We made a pact today never to go see a movie in the theater again. It's not worth $10 (nor even a matinee price of $6.75) to sit with a bunch of inconsiderate buffoons and not actually enjoy the experience. I'd rather stay home.

TOFU CABIN!

Yesterday we went over to Chu & Grace's house. We drove the van (which did quite well) and after making Bryan cry a bit, left for dinner. We had asked them if they would take us to the veggie-dim sum they knew, but it turns out it doesn't do dim sum anymore.

SO - we went to a Korean place they know called "Myung Dong Tofu Cabin". Well, they had us at "tofu cabin". We would have liked it in any event. But it was gooooood. I got seafood tofu stew. "A" got seafood bim bim ba. Basically it's piping hot tofu stew with an egg cracked on top and mixed in. (If you don't do it, the server will insist that you do... or she will do it FOR you.) I got mine spicy! Everyone looked at me like "Are you sure?!?!" Let me tell you... order mild... or maybe medium. Spicy will sear your stomach. Not to mention your lips, throat, nostrils and eyes. It was awesome! We took the leftovers back with us and hung out at Chu & Grace's place for a good while after dinner.

Bryan doesn't like us so much. We invaded his comfort zone and we probably look pretty damn weird to him. Especially "A". Every time she tried to talk to him he bust out crying. Who would have thought that blond hair could be so scary?!? It makes newborns scream bloody murder! I keep trying to tell her it's unnatural. Even babies can tell!

Go get some Korean Tofu!

Myung Dong Tofu Cabin
1484 Halford Avenue (at El Camino near Lawrence Expressway)
Santa Clara, California 95051
(408) 246-1484 (map)

Animal Crossing: Wild World

Animal Crossing is the only game I can get "A" to play.
It's ultra-cute and super easy to pick up. It's wholesome and inoffensive. "What's left to make it fun?" you ask? Catch fish, dig for fossils, create constellations, talk to animals, write letters, collect furniture & even pay bills. It's funny how a game can turn into work... at least it's cute - better than looking at my coworkers all day! LOL

Like money in the bank

I went shopping for A's Christmas presents last night. I was pleasantly surprised at the customer service at our local "box stores". Maybe it was because they weren't slammed, but people were pleasant and helpful.

I'm amused by the "suggestive sell" tables lined up by the checkout counters. Maybe you'd call them "impulse buy" tables... I seem to be a sucker for Christmas things... I got the Charlie Brown music. :) Ya gotta love Charlie Brown. Good Stuff.

Tookie

Stanley "Tookie" Williams is the co-founder of the CRIPS.
He is on death row and scheduled to be executed tonight.
At 12 midnight.

That's in about 30 minutes.

Many people think that Governor Schwarzenegger should grant him clemency, but "The governor rejected pleas from Hollywood stars and petitions from more than 50,000 people. Supporters say Williams redeemed himself during more than 20 years in prison by writing a memoir and a series of children's books about the dangers of gangs. "

I don't know what to say about the death penalty. Obviously it doesn't stop people from doing stuff. I don't know what's up with letting this guy sit in prison for 20 years and THEN killing him. I don't know what kind of message it will send people when you kill a guy who "tried" to make amends. Maybe he is just trying to fool everyone. He can't be that dumb if he started a nationwide craze along the lines of a religion in and of itself. I think I'm glad that this isn't my responsibility. I think I would vote against the death penalty if came up. I think my opinion only matters to me and isn't going to change anything in my lifetime.

Thus the ranting ends.

Farming in WOW

This will only be amusing if you play World of Warcraft.
Farming Talent Tree
If you don't play WOW just keep moving along.
Nothing to see here but us geeks.
But remember, Blizzard will kill your account if you whore-farm.

Buy the rights to publish a game...

Acclaim went bankrupt.
They need money.
They auctioned all their office furniture.
Now they are auctioning the rights to publish all their games.
Go check it out - see what you could make for around $5,000 - $75,000.
Some tempting games on that list!

SUPAMONK!

Here's a silly CG animation to watch.

SUPAMONK!

I like the pseudo-game art at the end - makes me want to make an old school SNES game! Pixel pushing must be my calling... Now if I could only finish these bloody schedules so I could push some pixels around. sigh~

Christmas Tree!

Today we went out and got a tree. We went to a street-side vendor, but they wanted my left arm in exchange for a tree. So we went to Target instead, they only wanted my pinky finger. We paid $10 less for a better tree in NY last year.

We asked Chu & Grace if to come over and decorate the tree with us. We had some pizza and hot eggnog. Soynog. It's good!

No pictures of Bryan this time because the camera's still in limbo.

The Japanese have outdone themselves...

Here's a link to a really weird game that's coming out... probably only in Japan.
Basically it's a fighting game. But only girls. And you're supposed to take pictures of your opponent's underwear.

Brilliant.

If you don't believe me - here's a video.

The author says it best: "The Japanese are done. They can now return to planet Japania, leaving all the people of Earth horribly confused and scarred for life."

Pandora's Music Box

If you've ever felt like you've hit the wall on musical inspiration, here's a site for you to mess with.

Pandora
Just enter the name of a band or song and it'll suggest some stuff that you might also like... and play it for you! Sure it's all a marketing deal, but hey, you might get something out of it.

XBOX 360 advert

This advert is pretty funny. Interesting to me is the voice over in the background near the beginning. It's Japanese! The voice is saying: "Momentarily, on track number 2..." and then we can't make out any more. Anyways, the ad is neat.

Cool Flash animations

They're short, but cool.

Insanely Twisted

Turn your sound on too. Don't be afraid!

That IGDA moderator was a joke.

We went to an IGDA meeting after work today. They were having a panel discussion between EA & Activision on whether they think it's a good idea to have centrally located tech that all subsidiary companies share and contribute to or not. Sounds good, right? But isn't that partially stifling to creative types? Or are the limitations worth the time savings? It was an eye opener to what our bosses are dealing with. So - it was interesting.

BUT

I had to work REALLY HARD to get past the fricking moderator to get that much out of it. He talked more than the panel, interrupted them and rambled often on tangents. Maybe he was nervous. Then I feel bad for him.

At least I got to see the EA campus. It's huge. And really really nice. They have too much money methinks.

Chainfire

I just finished reading this book "Chainfire" by Terry Goodkind. It's a fantasy novel. It's part of a series. (Part 10) I really enjoyed the first novel. "Wizard's First Rule." So I read the rest as they came out. Some were better than others. I was losing interest until "Faith of the Fallen". Then I was back into it.

But it's gone lame again as a series and this last book was the worst. The entire book was a set up for the next 2 books. (I guess it's supposed to be a trilogy that ends the entire series.) I thought it was sooooo lame when I got to the end of the book and the characters were like: "OK now the adventure starts! Let's go!" Sure stuff happened along the way in this book, but it was mostly a recap of the first 9 fricking books in the series, all the people involved and what they think/feel about the state of things in this fantasy world.

Maybe I shouldn't be so harsh. Lord of the Rings was written this way, right? People still love it today. Everyone is at the end of "Fellowship" going "Wait! You can't stop there!!" But they had to wait until the next book came out.

Here's a link to an interview with Terry Goodkind from a while ago. He gets into his philosophy on life a bit. It's interesting to hear straight from him and then compare to how he's expressed it through the book's characters. I could see how he was writing some timeless stuff but directly correlating it with current events. War on Terror, that kind of stuff.

It might put you to sleep, though. Be careful.

Turducken

Before Thanksgiving weekend goes by I have to comment on the current bastardization of the holiday... Turducken.

Sorry Chu, it's just plain wrong. LOL

Gone is the good feeling of pilgrims meeting with Indians and feasting off the land still plentiful and ripe. Gone is the adventure of hunting down a turkey in the wild or even today, sifting through the piles of turkeys in the grocery store looking for the right size for your family.

No, today we order our feasts online. They come the next day. They come stuffed with... get this - a duck AND a chicken. That's 3 birds, people. AND you can get different varieties that also include pork or seafood in addition to the duck and chicken. That's a feast for sure! Four animals all crammed together into ONE dish. No courses here, just stuff 'em all together and EAT! It's almost like those silly Comcast commercials where people order coffee and then ask "Where's my coffee?" 2 seconds later. Instead of people needing to slow down a bit, this commercial encourages them to speed up! Bah! Even if I ate meat I think this over indulgence - NAY! over-KILL - would be slightly disturbing... Maybe not. Excessiveness DOES have its appeal!

I noticed: The first word in Turducken is... "TURD."

I love America! Bigger is better. You know Americans are #1 at being big!

Here's the site, order one for Christmas!

Mars & a big telescope

Today we went over to the East Bay area to see how far it would be to drive from home if A. gets a job she applied for recently. We got lost a couple times, but figure it'll take about 30-45 minutes given that traffic will certainly be heavier during the week.

Then we went to the Chabot Space & Science Center up near Oakland. We saw it on some show and they allow visitors to take a look through their big telescopes! We liked the museum displays and the planetarium show... OK that was weird what with Harrison Ford narrating and it being a full on CG movie with the worst camera ever. We were both dizzy afterwards. Anyways, we went up to look through the two telescopes and waited in line for the small one 20 minutes and the large one for an hour and 15 minutes. The small one was pointed at two clusters of stars. Kind of a let down. The big telescope was pointed at Mars. When we finally got up there to view it, it turned out to be a blurry red disk. I could make out the polar ice cap, but only barely. (That's frozen CO2, dude. Dry ice.) It was pretty disappointing after waiting so long.

We did learn that the human eye is very sensitive to blue-white lights, but likes reddish lights much more. We asked why all the lights inside the telescope domes were red and they said that they use red because it doesn't interfere with the eye's night vision capabilities. This guy explains it in a little detail. Basically your eye sees with cones and rods. Cones see color and rods see at night. Rods take a while to turn on, so you are blind for a while when you flick off the lights. Red doesn't interfere with your rods.

I'm going to get some red cellophane and put it on our flashlights. I was amazed at how much better we could see compared to a normal "white" flash light.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hey! Hope your day went well. We just got back from Craig & Jess's place. It was fun and we ate a ton. They even made Tofurkey and vegetarian stuffing for us. That's thoughtful! We met Craig's old coworker Dan and his wife Diana. We played Balderdash. It made me think of Brian and Kerri Sox. They love that game like no one else.

I'm thankful that we had a place to go today and people to be with.
I'm thankful I have a job that I can support myself and my wife with.
I'm thankful that I like my job.

Hope you have stuff to be thankful for. Look around. You'll find something.

Watch this TV ad for beer. It'll make you laugh. Then be thankful you have something to laugh about.

Random stuff

Here are a bunch of random links and junk.

1) My southpark self-portrait. Make your own here. Thanks Jim!

2) Some info/sneak peak at the Hellboy animated series coming up.

3) A clip of twisted Japanese fun. This girl is some new celebrity in Japan - I don't know who she is, but they talked her into putting a stuffed baby seal doll on her head and teasing a polar bear. Please ignore the various links to porn on every available inch of this site.

Pictures from Germany

Last month we took a short trip to Germany. We stayed in Amsterdam for a couple days and then went to see family Schwarz. It was fun to see the them again. We got to see Sabine's children Lisa and Mara and meet Tanya. Carsten and Tanya announced that they will get married in May of next year, so now we have an excuse to go back soon! I put some pictures on spacejase.com.

Week of Meetings

I've been at the East coast office all week. BLEH.

I had a bunch of errands to run in NY. I actually had to go to the NY DMV. It went well though!

Hopefully I will get the duplicate title for the van in a couple weeks. I bought a new water-proof jacket at EMS. (Thanks Kaan for the gift card!)

I turned in the camera to Best Buy to replace the LCD screen. (It still worked fine, BTU I couldn't see a damn thing on the screen. :( Luckily, we had decided in this ONE instance to buy the extra insurance that Best Buy pushes on everything they sell.) The geek squad guy was perhaps the single decent employee at the Albany Best Buy. Every other employee that I had to deal with was either a "pusher" or just plain mean. (Although I think I'd be mean too if I had to deal with the Albany public every day...

We ate a lot of food, drank a lot of beer and had fun in the evenings though. Guitar Hero is actually pretty damn fun. Especially with two guitars!

I got to hang out with Jonathan one evening, and Sean the next. Though a mishap of communication (classic - "Why didn't YOU call?!?!") I missed Cynthia and now I fear that I will never hear the end of it. Ah well, I guess I probably deserve it - can't seem to get my head on straight.

Best picture EVER

From some guy's blog.

I think I need to take more pictures of animals so I can composite in little animal-sized lightsabers. But how do I make them do kung-fu?

Star Wars will never die!

I found a couple crazy links related to Star Wars today.

This one is a guy who does models for fun. He models Star Wars ships and lights them with fiber optics. It's way too cool! - 2 foot Star Destroyer!
The bigger one.
He's also done an X-wing and millennium Falcon.
SO tasty!

This was on Jim's blog: The Star Wars Kid. Nice editing... sort of.

What Jesus Wouldn't Do...

Woospace linked to Urban Outfitters because they are selling a replica of Charlie Brown's sad little Christmas tree from the holiday special. While I was looking for it I found this alcohol flask also on their site. It's got an engraving of Jesus with the inscription: "What wouldn't Jesus Do?"
I think I'll get it for Murphy... or maybe Herrmann. LOL

Smog Test in CA

I took the bus in to the Shell station for a pre-smog-test. The bus did really well except for noxious gas emissions. The bus weighed in at about 4 times the average car in noxiousness... But they seemed to think that with the right adjustments, the bus would do just fine because of the rebuilt engine. Gotta go back to Tassi and fix it up for a re-test.

Supersize-me!

My wife came across this article today. I found one statement particularly interesting. Apparently Nestle was concerned with how their product might adversely affect people's weight, so they did a study and found this: "And, as Nestle notes, the American weight spike in the late 1970s exactly corresponded with the invention of supersizing in fast-food marketing."

I guess they aren't worried about being blamed anymore. They have a study to prove they aren't at fault.

If you haven't seen supersize me, go find it.

Tante Hanna

I got an email from Carsten last night. He wrote to tell me that Tante Hanna died. She was the great aunt of my host family. Well, just the regular aunt of my host mother. Mutti is pretty sad about losing Tante Hanna.

Tante Hanna was 99 years old. She had gone blind and lived in a nursing home for the last 10 or 15 years. All of Tante Hanna's siblings died 25 years ago. No one knows how she lived so long.

The last time I saw Tante Hanna was about 10 years ago. She actually remembered me from my short one year exchange with the Schwarz's. She lived through the 2 world wars. I was hoping she'd live to see 100.

We'll miss you Tante Hanna.

I KNEW they were real!

Thanks for providing the proof, Chu. The best part is the claim that the shiny skin is highly absorptive making them susceptible to noxious gases. Um... It's a phong. No, Wait. A blinn. Nope. Definitely a phong.

Chu, Grace and Aliens

Chu and Grace came over today and had a late lunch. (Tempura always takes so long to make...) They brought Brian! He's super-cute. I got to feed him and burp him. He was good and didn't barf at all. We talked about all kinds of things and unfortunately Alicia showed them a bunch of picture books. One of the only embarrassing things about Jason's past is... mullets. It makes me fear what will soon be fashionable since we are headed into a revival of the '80s.

It's only November!

-but the Christmas music has started in a store near you. :(
Nothing takes away the fun of a holiday then capitalism.
Americans are cattle.
(And they're fat. The fattest in the world.)

VW bus @ the shop

This morning we got up early and took the bus to Tassi Inc. in Colma. That's a 1/2 hour drive on 280, but since the van has a new engine that I'm breaking in, I can't take the highway and I had to take El Camino Real. At 35mph, it took more than 60 minutes. Sometimes there's a nicer van at Tassi's, but today mine was the best. Shiny and new looking, Bruce said it looked similar to the one his buddy just sold in England for $10,000. Now if I could only find myself a buyer and get the State of New York to send me the title...

Flipbook!

Jim had this site on his blog: Flipbook
It's great! Draw a picture, draw another - POOF! You've got an animation! Here's the one I did. (My head hurt at the time...) Make one and post the link in your comment!

Fungi and Schedules

Yeah it's mostly scheduling at work. Ooh the fun. But when it gets done then maybe there will be time to actually make some art in a game! I can only hope.

As for the fungi. I've had this weird fungus growing at the root of my fingernails that I can't get rid of. The doctor's don't really have a cure for it. They just give me a cream that helps for a while but never for long. It doesn't really hurt, it just itches a lot and the skin flakes off. It's started to migrate up to the knuckles of my fingers... It's mostly annoying because it's on my drawing hand. Anyways, I'm going to the doctor tomorrow to see if he knows something the other doctors didn't.

Halloween

Well, Halloween was kind of a bust this year. Sure we made cookies, but there were no specials on TV, no Halloween movies at the library, no one wore costumes at work (except Craig), there was no party to go to, and no trick-or-treaters at our door. Ah well, I hate being reminded of trick-or-treating anyways.

Harlow Street...

Not much happened today. We did our regular Sunday shopping at the farmer's market, Trader Joe's and Whole Food's. I think I'm about to shake this flu off. I think it was the extra hour of sleep from turning the clocks back. Probably the only time it has worked to my advantage.

A while ago we went to Height & Ashbury and on the way, I saw Harlow street. I stopped, jumped out and took a couple pictures. I've never seen a Harlow street before this one. The funny thing was that it was basically just a culdesac. There's barely room to turn around.

Gold Rush Electronics

I had been warned of Fry's Electronics. But I had to go and see if they could repair my HP printer. When I discovered how much they would charge, I figured I'd be better off getting a new one. When I stepped inside Fry's I thought I was in an amusement park ride. One from the old west. See, they made it out so it looked like it was a mining camp from the gold rush era. There were tracks painted on the floor and mining cars lined up in rows. They were using the tops of the mining cars as display shelves. It was weird. But it got weirder. There was a life-size wax guy panning for gold at the end of one of the aisles.

Overall it was hilariously creepy. The only really sucky thing is that the sales people work on a slight commission and they have to print up a receipt for you to get credit - so they invariably steer you toward more expensive stuff.

Anyways, the new printer I got from Fry's is a step above our old printer, but is refurbished, so it was about 1/2 price. Now we'll see where we can donate the old one.

Not the Avian Flu

Today I got my wife's cold. I should have stayed home sick, but we just got back from Germany and there's too much work to be done. I'll post some pics from the trip later. For now look at this optical illusion. It's freaky! I got it from Drew - he's pretty freaky too.

Pink & green dots

The Beginning

Start!

I thought I'd join the masses and start a blog with google.

I blame Eric DeSantis and Jamie Ravenscraft. Eric because he updates regularly and I wanna be cool like that and Jamie because you have to register to comment on her blog.

Oh AND it's too damn easy.

I'll link to this blog from my personal website. (www.spacejase.com) Maybe this way I'll actually post more regularly. Won't that be nice Mom? :)