haven’t written anything in a long time due to busy-ness and not caring so much, and also laziness.
thanksgiving -
i went back to michigan for thanksgiving, which was pretty fun, except for sunday which may have been the most boring day ever.
besides that, we showed my brother’s gf the wonder of Bronner’s CHRISTmas WONDERLAND, a year round Christmas store that has become ever more religious, tacky, whitetrash, etc. as the years have gone by. My mom tells me that when she first went 20-some years ago, Bronners was just a nice little Christmas store with Santa stuff all over, and reindeers and whatnot. Now it’s a CHRISTmas store (yes, they actually write it that way), with jesus and angels and a whole lot of tacky decorations. Not to mention all the super white trash things like personalized ornament balls for your: paperboy, secretary, nail technician. It’s a terrible place!
I went to my old middle school to visit my friend Jeff who now teaches there. it’s pretty funny seeing a guy a year younger than you being called “Mr. Knaus” and also 8th graders pretty much love anyone who comes to visit them and disrupts class, especially when they’re awesome and work on the Xbox.
saw the Wings vs. Canucks game on Wed. which was fun, but we lost, so that was no good.
Thanksgiving dinner had a couple issues in that our oven does not apparently heat as well as it used to, and the turkey took 2 hours longer to cook than it was supposed to. But it was a delicious turkey, not dry at all. My mom makes good turkey.
Concerts?
i saw the Decemberists at the Paramount with jim, kelly, marion, and anne. they were pretty good, not so much my usual concert, but it was a good show nonetheless. I thought i didn’t know any of their music, but turns out I had totally forgotten that i saw them at Bumbershoot last year.
I’m goign to see Wolfmother on Sunday, that’ll be fun. Tomorrow night I might see Menomena, a band from portland that is supposed to be good, but i have never heard anything of theirs so we shall see. Also, Simon Dawes, the band opening for Wolfmother, is going to be at Zune team’s building on Monday playing and signing autographs and hanging out, if they’re good i’ll go check them out again.
Games!
Gears of war is good. really nice graphics, and the game is fun too. I still don’t think it’ll ever do as well as Halo, but it’s already sold over a million copies and it hasn’t been out a month, so that’s pretty promising. my main complaint is the complete lack of story in the game. If you got the special edition which came with an artbook you can find out a little more about what’s going on, but the main character is in jail, but you don’t know why. His buddy is “looking for someone” but you don’t know who or why. Main character’s dad is somehow related to why he’s in jail, maybe? but nothing is answered. Pretty much you get dropped into the middle of something going on, you go through the campaign, and then you are pulled out, without knowing what’s going on. It’s still really good though, and the multiplayer is fun, especially with a group of friends.
The Wii is really fun, although i’m not sure if i’m going to get one just yet. Luckily a friend got one so i can play over there pretty much any time. Wii Sports is a fantastic game, it’s the perfect type of game for a system like that. I haven’t been able to play Zelda as the copy they picked up has disc read errors 10 minutes in, before you even really start playing. Super Monkey Ball something or other seems kinda fun, but it’s not a game i would buy. Regarding the considerably weaker specs of the wii compared to the 360 and ps3, it’s not that bad, since the games tend to be pretty simple and don’t require super detailed graphics, but it could use more video memory to use higher res textures. Even if you have a low polygon count, you can have some mighty fine looking models if you use pretty textures. World of Warcraft is the perfect example of that. Blizzard excels at simple models that look good because of nice textures.
I finally got my own copy of Viva Pinata so i’ll be playing that soon, although i’m going to be out of town next week so i won’t really be able to play much until after i get back.
Mexico:
I’m going to mexico next saturday! woo! i will be gone for 17 days, 5 of which will be lying on a beach in Ixtapa while veryone else is enjoying rain and snow (maybe). It’s been a couple years since i went to see my family, and i hadn’t really had a relaxing vacation all year, so i figured i’d combine the two. I’ll be in mexico city with my family until the 27th, so i’ll be back in Seattle for New Years.
Another thing about Mexico - their presidential election is getting crazy. Essentially Felipe Calderon won by a very small margin against Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador who is essentially inciting people to demonstrate “peacfully” in order to force Calderon out. He was just sworn in before congress officially today in a quick and dirty ceremony, amid fistfights between members of the political parties that have been going on for 3 days. Obrador is also calling himself the “legitimate president,” which technicaclly means nothing, but will cause more people to be in an uproar. For a man who said he would be gracious in defeat, he’s not keeping to his word very well.
Work stuff.
work has been pretty busy - we shipped the Fall System Update a month ago, and then released a December System Update yesterday to make a few changes, plus we released the Video Marketplace the wednesday before thanksgiving. Lots of exciting stuff, and it’s still pretty hectic here. Now we’re figuring out what will be done for the next update, none of which i will tell anyone, especially not on mah blog.
hope you all had a good thanksgiving!
