Hm. Sort of … pensive. Don’t really know why. Was going to spend the day drywalling downstairs, but due to still needing the wiring properly inspected, I can’t close up the walls just yet. So, no drywalling. Bought shelving for the new room’s closet, which was pricey, but not particuarly, say, fulfilling, because we don’t have a studfinder, and don’t know precisely where the studs are, because we’re twits, and never marked the boards.

Other’n that? Not a whole lot going on. Checked out the GF’s Civic to figure out why it’s rattling when the engine’s hot, but due to my inability to find anything super-obvious, the car’s headed to the shop this Friday. Still, sorta fun examining stuff, but nothing fruitful. The Mini’s in need of some rust repairs, which I should do soon – maybe this weekend, I’ll at least strip the rust, and hit with some primer, in some inconspicuous place (probably the inside of the driver’s side door, where it’s really unnoticable if I completely screw it up). Got the tool for it, just not the stones to actually do it, never having done any bodywork before. Still, ought to be fun, or screwed up, or both. Hopefully not horrifically tragic.

Almost trashed the Mini today, actually. The rear end broke loose on a turn, and though that wasn’t actually a problem, the problem was that it regained traction in a really odd spot. A quick correction and all was well, but definitely need to remember this is a car with absolutely zero traction control, ABS, or anything of the sort. Right after I get new tires, but before they’re mounted, I’ll be taking a trip to a parking lot, in the wee hours to practice dealing with the car in more … unexpected situations. Should be fun, so long as I make sure things are clear enough to be safe for all involved.

Hm. So much to do, so little I can actually *do* right now. Waiting on parts for the Mini. Waiting on inspection on the house. I started the Neverwinter Mod that I’ve never mentioned before, but it’s coming along nicely. Got a couple areas set up, and basically just making sure I’ve got stuff in place to start working on for scripting & characters and the like. Also, should be a good time, and a project I can work on more or less whenever.

Whoo. Yeah, so that’s really about the swing of things. This weekend, what to do? Probably will hack & slash the front yard, and Round Up ™ the whole thing to kill all the weeds and … everything, because we really have to just nuke it from orbit. After all, it’s the only way to be sure.

Man, I need no job. Gotta free up time for all this STUFF!

So, my poor little Mitsubishi’s gone. I know it’s sorta silly to get sentimental over a car, but so what? This was the first car I’ve ever owned, and it did a *lot* of work shuttling me back and forth to San Jose when my girlfriend lived an hour away. Drove that car a lot while I had it, and though it’s not working anymore, it was still sad to see it go. Donated it to the National Cancer Research Institute, somewhat in honor of my grandfather, who died from cancer when I was in high school.

To replace the old car, though, I got an Austin Mini – pictures can be found here. It’s a neat little go-kart like car, and tons of fun to drive. Nowhere near as fast as the GT, but it feels faster, because it’s not anywhere near as stable. But, should be a good complement to the uber reliable Honda Civic that the GF’s got.

Hm. Anything else happening? Not really, I guess. Starting to work on the house again, since we got a drywall lifter that’ll help drywall the basement (first sheet went up last week). Games I’m playing now: Midtown Madness 3, Robot Alchemic Drive. Will likely be playing THPS4, Phantom Crash, and Return to Castle Wolfenstein soon, as well as WC3: The Frozen Throne, which comes out in a couple days. Also toying around with the Shadows of Undrentide editor, but time’s been tight. Looking forward to the four day weekend (got a day off work on the 3rd).

Hm. Guess that’s about it. Oh – go see The Italian Job. Fun movie, for sure. Way better than I’d have expected. Also, contary to mainstream opinion (apparently) I really liked The Hulk. Great stuff. Some of the comic visuals seem gratuitous, but I thought they were actually quite in line with Manga conventions, as well as traditional Western comic conventions. It was a neat mix of the two types of storytelling, and I thought the story was handled pretty well. Could have been shorter, and tighter, but still an enjoyable experience.

Right. Take it easy.

Midnight Club II’s a pretty darned fun game. I got it really warily, because Midtown Madness 3 is coming out shortly, but dang, it’s good stuff regardless. Large, complex environments, and cars that handle really well. The motorcycles, in my opinion, are complete crap, but that’s really secondary to the main game anyway. Had lotsa fun in cruise mode, just tooling around Paris playing tag with friends online.

In other news? What other news? The drywall lifter’s shipped from Amazon, so I’ll be starting that shortly, and I’ve taken up a Dance Dance Revolution workout, to try to lose some of the weight I gained during the downtime from knee surgery. Yay ha. Other than that, really not a whole lot going on, to be honest. Cleaning up the house a bit, chilling, mostly – the GF’s outta town, but this weekend, things go nuts. Friends from LA coming up Sat & Sun, then Sun night, a roomie from college that I’ve missed greatly’s coming out for most of the week, then Monday night, the GF returns. Seriously, sounds like it’s gonna be @#*%&@ing great.

So, this week? Just chillin.

Grass allergies suck. Particularly when your back yard is a giant grassy hill, with grass on it as tall as you are, spewing grass pollen into the air. I am reminded, this fine evening, that when you have allergic reactions to grass, sitting on a hammock in the afternoon, surrounded by grass that’s clearly pollenating, and is taller than you are, is a horrifically bad idea. Really. I’m not kidding.

In other news? Not sure there really IS other news. Haven’t done any work on the house since the last post, and nothing much else has happened. Some friends are in from Boston for three months, which is great, and I hung out (this afternoon, surrounded by grass) with my friend Pete, one of my best friends, who’s in town before heading off to grad school. So, apart from the wanting to die due to horrendous allergic reaction bit, not a bad day. Still have that cough, and not sure whether I’ll make it to work tomorrow, because of it.

Remember: Grass allergies + grass = allergies. I know it’s not traditional arithmatic, but believe me, it’s true.

Oog. Haven’t updated in a bit, but that’s ’cause … I’m lazy, I dunno. E3 was fun – I’ll probably write more about it in a bit – the short version: best games – Half Life 2, Halo 2, and Full Spectrum Warrior. Following closely behind, Nintendo’s version of Pac Man for the Gamecube, and Wario Ware: Mega Microgame$ (for the GBA). The graphical bar is raised high enough that virtually everything looked good – the games that separated themselves were all extremely detail-oriented, and pushed the envelope in ways other than just stellar graphics. It’s a good thing to see.

The one room is more or less done, and I’ll try to post some before/after pictures, so you can see the difference. It’s pretty crazy. I spent this evening installing the mirror closet door, which turned out remarkably level – something I was really, quite surprised about. I ended up going to Home Depot on my scooter ’cause I needed to cut down the rail just a bit, and that required a miter box and hacksaw. I ended up getting a “Home Cutting Kit” which strangely, included a nice utility knife, a nice hacksaw (sturdier than your usual $5 hacksaw) and a nice 25′ measuring tape, all for $19. Not too bad. Disassembling the hacksaw, it even fit in my scooter’s “trunk”. Also picked up Donnie Darko on DVD, which is something I’ve been meaning to get for a good long while now.

Been a really productive couple days. Also saw The Matrix Reloaded, at Mann’s Chinese Theater, in LA – easily the best sounding theater I’ve ever heard, and one of the biggest theaters I’ve ever been in, if not the largest. still, not substantially better than the Grand Lake experience, which is nice. How’d I like the movie? In terms of the action, a friend said it best when he said it was like The Matrix, but Uber. It lacked some of the freshness of the first one, but frankly, that’s ok – we’re talking about a sequel to an established world now – if they changed it up too much, it’d be really weird. I liked the Burly Brawl, and the scene with the Architect. Agent Smith may be the best villain to come around in decades. I thought it was a great “middle” movie, full of setup for the next movie, it deepens the universe, and develops the characters, and their motivations. On top of that, it even had a subplot that was self-contained, which provides some much needed satisfaction, for a middle movie.

Whoo. Other’n that? Not a lot going on.

Odd week last week. Went to Montreal, for a business trip, got to visit my little old dog, my cousin, and aunts & uncle. Fun stuff. Worked the week, totalled one of my bosses’ cars on Thursday, by rear ending another car trying to find where I was supposed to be going in Pointe-Claire. No serious injuries, but I feel like a schmuck. *sigh* Trying to finish up the room so that when our renter moves in, it’s actually at least mostly done. Probably won’t have the closet door up in time, but hopefully, it’ll be painted… 😛

Busy busy busy. Gotta sand & paint the room tonight, before going to see X2, then heading to E3 Wednesday night.

whooo! Got tixxx to go see The Matrix Reloaded on opening night at Mann’s Chinese with a bunch of friends. So, Roscoes for a chicken & waffle dinner, then off to the theater for the 10:40 show, then up in the morning for the last day of E3. Sounds like a freakin’ BLAST.

Crap. So the home appraiser came today to check out the house, and reappraise it for the refininance for the new loan. The problem, naturally, is that the house is still under construction. While basically the only work left is drywalling, this appears to be a potential stumbling block, since there are exposed electrical wires, despite the fact they’re all insulated.

Could be bad news, maybe not – I don’t know. It would really suck to get held up at this point because of exposed wires, considering they could be drywalled over in a manner of minutes.

Ugh. Stressful, though.

Hrm. So what’s up? Things are sort of up and about next month – I’ll start off the month in Montreal, for work, learning how to use the wafer reactors there, so that when I have to write the software for the reactor we’re building for work, I’ll have some idea of what’s come before. Fun stuff. Hopefully, the “colder than hell” will be passed by then.

My PS2 kicked the can last night, officially refusing to play more DVD’s than not. After contemplating swapping the system at Walmart, I decided to actually call Sony’s tech support, and see about getting this system fixed. Though they say “no prob” and that they’ll waive the repair fee, I wonder what their response will be when they notice the warranty sticker has been removed. Sad thing is, that sticker was taken off because I just wanted to see if cleaning the lens would fix things. *sigh* Hopefully, I won’t be out too much $$. Or it won’t take forever and a day.

Ah, well. Until then, I guess I’ve got PSO and the other xbox games to tide me over, and since I’ll be out and about through the middle of May, it’ll probably be back and repaired by the time I’m ready to use it again.

Still, that means that every Sony console I’ve ever had has failed, except the last PSX I bought, which still works.

*shrugs*

Gotta love the Republicans. I wonder how people can really get behind an organization that makes it part of their culture to want to police private activities in the bedroom and discriminate based on race. Oh, and what’s up with the comparison of homosexuality to bestiality that Rick Santorum’s engaging in? Seem a little over the top to you? Apparently, not to him.

Whoo! Drywall on one room is done! Some mistakes here and there from learning the ropes – seams lined up when they should have been staggered, and some gaps that I couldn’t quite figure out how to fix, due to trying to mesh with drywall that had been done by contractors when the outer walls re-done due to the window swap. The gaps were in the corners, where the spaces were too small to put a screw through the drywall without breaking it. But hopefully, they can just be spackled in, or something. Nothing too horrible. Took about 15 hours total, just learning the ropes and figuring out what the hell we were doing. Probably 25-30 hours with the destruction of the old walls and such. Ended up taking about a calendar month to do, but largely because we weren’t working “full-time”. Satisfying, for certain, and it’s good to know that it’s as easy as it is. Spackling/taping is going to be left to the pros on this room, due to time constraints (roomie moving in in early May, nominally May 1), but future rooms will be up to us. Next up? Probably the downstairs.

Should be fun.

What have I been up to, you ask? Phantasy Star Online, mostly. My character’s name is ‘sinj’ and I’ve been playing on Epdote-7-1. If that doesn’t make sense, don’t worry about it. It’s a weird little game – really simplistic, when it comes down to it, and a horrible single-player game. But remarkably entertaining as a multiplayer game, and I’ve racked up 23 hours on it already, which is pretty insane given that I got the game last Wednesday, and have spent a couple days in between working on the house, and other things. Other games in the queue are Shenmue 2, Xenosaga, Zelda: TWW and Grandia 2, primarily, not in that order. But since the Xbox Live games are such social experiences, they basically take priority over anything else. Meeting a couple of the guys from TGF (see ad to your right) at E3 this year, so that should be a blast.