nontechnical page 2 - Dave's Blog

Finished Paper Mario Games

Sarah and I have finished playing through the games "Paper Mario", "Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door", and "Super Paper Mario" last week (including the various Pits of 100 Trials). We played them all on the Wii, because even though Super Paper Mario was the only one released explicitly for that platform, Wii maintains compatibility with Game Cube games such as Thousand-Year Door and Paper Mario although originally released for the Nintendo 64 is now available as a pay for download game on the Wii's Virtual Console. So, yay for Nintendo!

I think my favorite of the three is Thousand-Year Door mostly because of the RPG attack system. In Thousand-Year Door and Paper Mario when you come into contact with an enemy you go into an RPG style attack system where you take turns selecting actions. In Super Paper Mario you still have hit points and such, but you don't go into a turn based RPG style attack system, rather you do the regular Mario jumping on bad guys thing (or hitting them with a mallet etc...). Thousand-Year Door and Paper Mario are very similar in terms of game play but Thousand-Year Door looks very pretty and has made improvements to how your party-mates are handled in battle (they have HP and can fall as you would expect) and there's an audience that cheers you on during your battles.

Even if the gameplay sucked the humor throughout the series might be tempting enough. Mario's clothing and mustache are mocked throughout and standard RPG expectations are subverted. I hate to describe any of these moments for fear of ruining anything but, for instance, an optional and very difficult enemy who may only be killed after hours of work only results in one experience point, or a very intimidating enemy who you imagine you'll have to fight actually challenges you to a quiz.

Despite how I personally rank them, all the games are great and I'd recommend any of them.

Cirque du Soleil in Marymoor Park

Sarah and I went to Cirque du Soleil's Corteo this past Wednesday. Its in Marymoor Park quite near the main Microsoft campus. They setup large circus tents in the park including a gift shop, overpriced concession stands, and long lined porta-potties. Despite all this the show was very entertaining and quite enjoyable. The show is like a circus directed by Terry Gilliam or Tim Schafer and otherwise I'm not sure how to describe it, but I do recommend it.

Finally finished Baroque Cycle Novels

I've finally finished the Baroque Cycle, a historical fiction series set in the 17th and 18th centuries by Neal Stephenson whose work I always enjoy. There were often delays where I'd forget about the books until I had to take plane somewhere, or get discouraged reading about the character's thoughts on economics, or have difficulty finding the next volume, or become more engrossed in other books, projects or video games, and leave the Baroque Cycle books untouched for many months at a time. Consequently, my reading of this series has, I'm ashamed to say, spanned years. After finishing some books which I enjoy I end up hungry for just a bit more to read. For this series I don't need a bit more to read, I'm done with that, but I do want a badge or maybe a medal. Or barring that, college credit in European History and Macro Economics. I can recommend this book to anyone who has enjoyed Neal Stephenson's other work and has a few years of free time to kill.

Visiting College Friends and Vice Versa

Last weekend after Saul and Ciera's wedding, I drove up to Pat, Grib, and Jesse's house to which I hadn't previously been. I got in late and they'd just finished a UFC party. The next day Grib had to travel for work but the rest of us met Scott and Nicole, Jesse's girlfriend at a place for breakfast. After that we went back to their place for some Rock Band which I hadn't played previously and Pat took the opportunity to show off his real life musical skills on the banjo.

This weekend, Jesse and Nicole are up visiting Seattle. On Friday, Sarah and I met up with them at the BluWater Bistro in Seattle which sits right on Lake Union. The view was nice although difficult to see from our table and overall I like the sister restaurant in Kirkland better. They were both short visits but it was fun to see people again.

Saul and Ciera's Wedding

Last weekend while Sarah was up in Canada for a spa weekend with her sister and her sister's other bridesmaids, I went to Saul and Ciera's wedding in Three Rivers, California near Sequoia National Park. I flew into Fresno picked up a rental car and my GPS device navigated me to a restaurant with the wedding location no where in sight. "No problem," I thought, "I'll just call someone with an Internet connection and..." I had no cell reception. What did people do before GPS, Internet, and cell phones?

A waitress in the restaurant pointed me down the road a bit to the wedding location which was outside overlooking a river. Their wedding cake was made up like a mountain with two backpacks at the top and rope hanging down. Ciera's father married them and the ceremony was lovely. The music after included Code Monkey to which all the nerds were forced to get up and awkwardly dance.

Besides getting to see Ciera and Saul who I hadn't seen in quite a while, I got to see Daniil and Val, Vlad, and Nathaniel. Since last I saw Daniil and Val they had a child, Katie who is very cute and in whom I can see a lot of family resemblance. The always hilarious Vlad, Daniil's brother, was there as well with his wife who I got to meet. Nathaniel, my manager from Vizolutions was there and I don't know if I've seen him since I moved to Washington. It was fun to see him and meet his girlfriend who was kind enough to donate her extra male to male mini-phono cord so I could listen to my Zune in the rental car stereo on the drive back.

Warm Weekend

It was warm and lovely out this past Saturday and Sarah I and went to a new place for lunch, then to Kelsey Creek Park, and then out for Jane's birthday. We ate at Cafe Pirouette which serves crepes and is done up with French decorations reminding me of my parent's house. We got in for just the end of lunch and saw the second to last customers, a gaggle of older ladies leaving. I felt a little out of place with my "Longhorn [heart] RSS" t-shirt on. The food was good and in larger portions that I expected.

After that we went to Kelsey Creek Park and Farm. The park is hidden at the end of a quiet neighborhood, starts out with some tables and children's jungle gym equipment, then there's a farm which includes a petting zoo, followed by many little trails going off into the forrest. There weren't too many animals out and the ones we did see didn't seem to expect or want the sun and warm weather. We followed one of the trails for a bit and turned back before getting sun burned. You can see my weekend photos mapped out on Live Maps.

That night we went out with some friends for Jane's birthday. Eric was just back from the RSA conference and we met Jane and Eric and others at Palace Kitchen in Seattle located immediately adjascent to the monorail's route. The weather was still good so they left the large windows open through twilight and every so often you'd see the monorail pass by.

Dinner with Goodwins at Icon Grill

The Goodwin family, except for Michelle who is taking a class trip to Washington DC and New York, was in Seattle this week. Sarah and I met up with them for dinner last night at the Icon Grill. I enjoy the Icon Grill in general and last night was no exception especially having dinner with the Goodwins which was a lot of fun. It was particularly cold and at one point snowed. The Goodwin's are seeing all the classic tourist attractions in Seattle some of which are depicted in the following 1962 Seattle's Worlds Fair postcard. The postcard is featured on Paleo-Future and unsurprisingly the 1962 Worlds Fair favored Seattle's Space Needle and monorail.

Excercise Bike and Tacoma Screw Products

Sarah and I got an exercise bike on sale and when attempting to put it together found that it was missing a bag of about ten different screws. The manufacturer website said we could order a replacement bag for thirty dollars (!!) but since the instructions listed the various kinds of screws we needed I figured we could just go to a hardware store and buy them.

We started at Home Depot because I didn't know better. The screws are all listed in metric sizes which is apparently uncommon and a helpful senior worker forwarded us to McLendons whose stock was better but we were again redirected this time to Tacoma Screw Products.

Tacoma Screw Products is great! See them for your hardware needs first! The store has a back area with every kind of screw ever. I felt a little out of place as as all the customers looked like contractors. The employee who helped me explained the various options I had in screws as the bike instructions weren't as explicit as they could have been. In the end I bought all my screws for only one dollar (much better than $30!) and they all fit correctly.

Old Miscellaneous Thoughts

• A History Channel program had a reenactment of a 1920's archaeologist discovering a stone tablet, sending the tablet to a warehouse, etc. all behind the voice over giving the dry facts. The reenactor hammed it up a bit and I would have rather had clips from Indiana Jones in the background. If they're already not showing me the archaeologist who discovered the tablet, they may as well show me one who will be entertaining.
• There are many parodies of the Get a Mac ads and so when I saw a UK Get a Mac ad I payed attention to see what the joke was. I was disappointed by the 'parody' because it was a conventional Get a Mac ad with different actors. Apple localized their Get a Mac ad campaign in this fashion in the UK and in Japan. I've got a playlist of the US, UK, and Japan's version of the Piechart ad. Ranking the lovable bumblingness of the PC I give the order UK, Japan, then US and ranking the sumgness of the Mac I give the order UK, US, then Japan. But don't take my word for it, view the ads for yourself.
  
• Yahoo Pipes lets users generate an RSS feed altering service that runs on Yahoo's server using a GUI. This is very different from Microsoft's Popfly which allows users to component-ize and share javascript utilities that run client side on a webbrowser. Both have the awesome power of buzzword associations like 'Web 2.0' and 'Mashup' but in my mind Yahoo Pipes is for server side RSS feed modification and Popfly is about client side javascript webpages. And neither will allow me to run an arbitrary XSLT =).

Weekend Activities

Vishu and Patent Cube

Angie and Kane Went Away

Ex College Roommate News

• Phantom Phreak is arrested and you never hear what happens to him. This is unlike Joey who is arrested but appears in the final hacking scene.
• Marc Anthony appears in the movie as a secret service agent.
• Everyone in the movie loves Coke.
• Hackers is the greatest movie of all time: it represents the pinnacle of human artistic achievement.

Guy on highway

Brief Miscellany

1. I noted that I had a new entry on the IE blog. Some comments on the IE blog have recently been rude in their request for information on future versions of IE. For example see the first two comments responding to my post. Feeling bad about that I looked at my posts entry on delicious and saw the following:

   "This is the first blog from the IE team that I have found rigorous and informative. I skipped to the bottom to find it was written by one of the TA's from my first class at Cal Poly."

   That made me feel a bit better and I was able to catch up with someone from college. Thanks Kris!
   
   
2. I previously had my GPS set with an Australian accent. When it encountered 'WA', as in the abbreviation for Washington in freeway exits, it pronounced it 'Western Australia'. Now I've got it with a British accent and WA is just 'W.A.' but when I tell it to drive to 'MS', the name of my saved location for work, it pronounces it 'Manuscript'.

Portal is fun; the cake is a lie!

Why I Feel Old

• I've attended friends weddings sorted chronologically by when I met them: Lucas from high school, followed by Carissa from college, and then Palak from Microsoft.
• I rarely get carded for alcohol.
• Jon's moving to Germany soon -- this time permanently. He's already started the process of getting rid of possessions he's not taking with him like his car and TV. However, after doing so he couldn't maintain his smug "I don't even own a TV" attitude and ended up trading me my small CRT TV (as mentioned previously) for his DDR pads and games. A good trade for both since we were each looking to dump these items. So far I've only convinced Sarah to try DDR once with me. Somehow I've gotten much worse at something I wasn't that great at to begin with.
• I have business cards.
• I still have semi-monthly nightmares in which I'm taking a Linear Algebra course for which I haven't studied or done homework in years. This differs from the more frequent nightmares I had immediately after finishing that series of classes in which I was taking the final and it was all on the one topic I didn't study. In reality, the prof. had done his PhD work on this one topic and I, correctly betting it wouldn't appear on the final, didn't study it. Apparently this was a traumatic bet for me to make given the wake of destruction left on my dreams.
• I have to remind myself that 2005 was two years ago.

GPS

Easy Come Easy Go

Dancing Yellow Robot