Quite a day for “stuff” yesterday. Got some foam interlocking tile mats for what used to be our bedroom, and will soon be a home gym. Put about 2/3rds of it together last night, then finished the rest this morning, after waking up at 5-freakin’-am.

Also got a Dyson DC14 off of woot.com, which arrived yesterday. Man, it’s awesome. It totally sucks (har har), but more than that, it’s just really well designed. Ei-Nyung pointed out that all the parts you’re supposed to switch or grab to use the vac are yellow – the carpet/hard floor switch, the on/off switch, the carrying handle, while all the disassembly switches are white. Small detail, but really quite clever.

The thing’s really clever in other ways as well – the “wand” stores inside the flexi-hose, and the whole thing snaps together in a way that feels very unified – it doesn’t feel like an arbitrary weird bit, like our old Panasonic vacuum, whose flexi-hose just sort of sat there, slung over the top of the vacuum. The various bits and bobs click nicely into place, to empty the vacuum you just disconnect the cannister, walk over to your trash, and hit a button. I hated the fact that on vacs with bags, after you’ve taken out the bag you’ve got to wash the vacuum, ’cause all the fine dust “poofed” out of the bag and got everywhere, then once you put the new bag in, you’ve gotta vacuum *again* because again, there’s dust everywhere.

I think the reason people become Dyson evangelists in the same way that people become Apple evangelists is that this thing works the way I *want* a vacuum to work. Consumer Reports didn’t think it was worth the price, and that you could get your house equally clean for ~1/2 the price, but I’ve never seen a vacuum that was as well designed as the Dyson, and where the user experience was as refined.

That, and it got so much more fine dirt out of the places we regularly vacuum than our old vacuum that it was *shocking*. The dog hair, I expected. The fine dust not so much.

Also picked up Prince of Persia Classic on Live Arcade. As many gaming sites have already said, this is what a classic remake should be. It looks great, the new animations make it feel really contemporary, and the gameplay is still relevant and fun. If I had to choose between this an Pac Man CE, though, personally, I’d go with Pac Man.

So, had a pretty laid-back but productive weekend. Friday night after work, Ei-Nyung & I moved into the room that Joe moved out of. We ended up hanging up a curtain, and moving the large furnitures around to try to find some sort of optimal layout.

We ended up going with a sort of oddball arrangement, but I think it works pretty well – the room’s sort of divided into two parts – an “office-lite” arrangement and the bed. I’ll post a picture at some point or another. Saturday, we got some stuff to “round out” the room – Ei-Nyung got an end-table for her side of the bed – something she’s been wanting in forever, and we got another curtain for the small window on the side. Ended up merging all the curtains in a bit J-shaped arrangement, which is sort of weird because one window’s only bordered on one side by a curtain, but it actually works out for the best. If that window was symmetric, the curtain would hang behind the bed and be a giant pain in the butt.

Okay, I’ll just take a picture now. Sheesh.

Anyway, also got some shadow-boxes to put the various games I’ve worked on in, as a little weird thematic thing for the walls, but I’ve been thinking about getting some really tall, narrow canvases and doing a sort of Mark Rothko rip-off thing for the area above the ottoman.

That was the better part of Friday night and Saturday, and Sunday was spent just hanging out with friends, playing games, and going food shopping. It’s been a while since I’ve done any cooking, ’cause I get home from work a little on the late-ish side. So, I ended up getting some salmon, and making salmon with a lemon-cranberry relish for dinner.

Gotta go back to IKEA to get some longer curtain rods, Ei-Nyung’s cut and is hemming some curtains for the narrow downstairs window, and that should take care of things.

Oh – I’m cleaning out the garage slowly – probably cleared out about eight square feet (Lame, I know. Shut up.) in an effort to be able to get the Mini into the garage. Why? ’cause of this. I figure I have to repair one small rust spot on the roof, then roller-ing the paint on the roof seems like a relatively straightforward thing to do. I mean, you couldn’t really ask for a more featureless, flat expanse of sheetmetal than the roof of a Mini. Why not give it a go?

We also bought some interlocking foam tiles online to temporarily re-floor the room that was our bedroom, and use it as an exercise area. Basically we can bring up the rowing machine, the treadmill and the weights, and use it as a workout room – it’s already got a great mirror, and the room gets a lot of sun.

It’s actually sort of weird, now that our one housemate’s moved out – we’ve got more space than we reasonably know what to do with. I’ve spent most of the evening in one room, but we have essentially five that I could have just casually hung out in. It’s weird. I suppose I can’t complain – we got a good place at a good time for a good price. Though the remodeling process has been incredibly stressful at times, there’s no way we’d have been able to get a place this nice in a neighborhood this nice (and friendly) any other way. Thanks in large part to my parents. Don’t think I’ve forgotten. 😉

Anyway. It was a really good weekend.

One more thing: (and no, that’s not a nod to the impending WWDC, though I suppose now it is) Anyone out there in the tubes play Arkham Horror? I’ve heard good things from various ex-coworkers, and was talking with a friend a couple nights ago about how we miss the days of long-assed games where you’d get a bunch of people together in the *real world* and spend a day gaming. I keep teetering on the edge of getting it, but not pulling the trigger. For those who have played it – worth it? If not, can you recommend something else? For the locals – any interest?

Put this up last night, while unable to sleep.

Finally managed sleep at about 2am, but then woke up at 5:30, and didn’t really get back to sleep again ’till about 7:30.

“Fun.”

This happened to me earlier this week, when I went to get a new router from Best Buy. After looking around for a while, we decided on getting an Apple AirPort Extreme. Best Buy had them for $161, when they were $179 everywhere else. I went to the Emeryville Best Buy (yes, I know, I’ve sworn them off before. Shoot me.), and got in line. At the register, it rang up at $179. I said, “No, your website has it at $161.” The woman at the cash register said, “Okay, you have to go to customer service to get a price match.” So, I went and stood in line. 20 minutes later, I get to the front of the line, and say, “This was $161. Please check, and match the price. Thx.” She looks it up, and sure enough, $179. I realize at this moment that telling her that the intranet posts incorrect prices, and that she’d have to look it up on a different computer sounds absolutely *ludicrous*, unless you actually know what’s happening.

After a few minutes of trying to explain to her that the price on her system is wrong, I throw my hands up and give up. As I’m leaving, I realize I have my laptop in the car, and Best Buy probably has some sort of WiFi. Sure enough, they do. I go back to the customer service line, wait *another* 20 minutes, and then get to the front. I show the woman the price on my laptop, and how it’s different than the price in her computer. She looks sort of befuddled, but eventually gives in, and gives me the price. So, 40 minutes later, I’ve saved $20. Whoop-de-do. But at least those fuckers didn’t get away with their bullshit.

I certainly couldn’t have said it better.

At what point can you fire the entire government?

Call your congressperson and demand they vote NO on the current bill, and its betrayal of the American people. This should not stand. I, for one, will not vote for anyone who supports this travesty.

Reid, Pelosi – you should be ashamed.

I know I certainly am.

This is one of the more interesting articles I’ve read recently. It’s pretty much a takedown of a specialty chocolatier that trades, essentially, in fraud.

It’s an interesting read if you’re interested in chocolate, or basically how someone can pull the wool over someone’s eyes to the tune of almost a 7,000% markup over the retail price of their source materials, with essentially no added “craft.” Hell, you could probably make a good argument that what NoKA provides is actually that they actively make the product *worse*.

This fascinates me, in large part because one of the companies I’ve worked with in the recent past was essentially also in the business of pulling the wool over people’s eyes. It interested me how this guy – a real salesman’s salesman – could dupe relatively intelligent people by exploiting their insecurities, and their perception of value or quality.

It all basically comes down to exploiting perception. In the case of my personal experience with fraud, it had to do with the notion of experience, and knowledge. In NoKA’s case, it has to do with source ingredients and process.

This probably has some tie-in to a discussion last night about renovating the house, and the concept of paying $300/sqft for renovations, when that’s more than normal estimated *initial construction* costs, though while those numbers make my jaw hang open, I didn’t get the impression that the person we talked to was a fraud – this is more just a statement on what people are willing to pay in the Bay Area for something of perceived value.

I dunno.

Not long after we got the house, I bought a hammock and stand. I loved lying out in that thing on cool summer evenings, or reading a book in the middle of the day… man. Good stuff. We were lying out on the hammock the night I proposed to Ei-Nyung. There’s just something calming about sitting there, hanging just above the ground, gently swaying in the breeze.

About a week after we got engaged, that hammock broke. I hadn’t taken it in in bad weather, and the rope can only take so much before it snaps. I replaced in a little bit later with a cheapo hammock from IKEA, but it broke quite quickly (someone else broke it – sort of irritated me that they never even offered to replace it).

Anyway, the hammock stand stood there, hammock-less for the better part of two years. The blackberry vines had grown over part of it, and I’d just never had the time to deal with it. Today, we went to Target to get a bathroom organizer for the downstairs (damned tension rod thing had rusted, and fell over on me the other day, so I threw it out). While we were there, they had a cheapo hammock for $20. For $20, I couldn’t pass it up. Brought it home, got some chain to run to the stand (the hammock was too short), and spent the afternoon lounging.

There are really few things that are better than lying on a hammock, your dog lying at your side on the ground, on a beautiful warm summer evening.

You know, I wish I had something more interesting to say, but I really don’t. Took Mobius with me to work today. It was sorta tricky, ’cause it was his first day in a new environment, so he was really skittish. But everyone at work seemed to like him, which was cool, and frankly, it’s pretty awesome that dogs are welcome at work. I just wish I had more to actually *do*. It’s just one of those weird things – you come on at the end of a project, and everyone’s so focused on wrapping that up, but there’s really not much I can do, so I spend a lot of time writing, or doing busywork. I just wish there was something more substantial to do.

Playing the Halo 3 Beta – it’s good, but already some people are *so* good that the game’s getting a little frustrating. I guess maybe people aren’t working, or have taken time off work or something, because there are people who are insane already, and the thing’s only been out for a day. I suppose if you were good at Halo 2, your skills transfer pretty well intact. Alas.

Other than that, basically swimming in games right now – stuff for the Wii, stuff for the 360, and even a couple games I really want to spend more time with on the PS2, like The Red Star and God of War 2. Battlestations Midway is one of those games on the 360 that I’m really itching to try – it’s a combination action/strategy game. A friend of mine was picking up some copies of C&C3 – I’m looking forward to that as well. I liked BFME2, but not many people I knew got it. I doubt more of my friends will pick up C&C, but I know Klay will, so at least we’ll be able to hit up some multiplayer…

The house is in a bit of a state of flux – Joe’s moving downstairs, Colin & Jess are officially out, and we’re interviewing architects for the upstairs renovations. It’s pretty zany. No real “progress” progress yet, but yeah. It’s a start.

Also kinda weird – there have been seven muggings in something like four weeks in the neighborhood, one of which was only a couple houses down from us. Pretty scary. There was a neighborhood-wide meeting on it tonight, and so it was sort of interesting, meeting some of my neighbors, and actually interacting with them. Good to know there are a lot of people in the area who care enough to meet and take some sort of action.

Yeah. Wacky stuff.

So, a game I recently worked on’s first review just came out, and it’s less than stellar – averaged about a 50%. Seems fair, to be honest. Yeah, it’s the worst review score I’ve seen on a game I worked on, but while on other games, I thought those review scores were low, and they tended to be outliers, I wouldn’t be surprised if this is about what the game ends up getting.

So, it’s not really that the review score is a letdown – it’s about what I expected. It’s that the game is a letdown. I put a lot of effort into it, but knew that ~50-60% was the best we could hope for. Games are about both structure and content. You could have great level design in a FPS, for instance, but if the mechanic of shooting didn’t work, no one will care how good the level design was. Similarly, a great mechanic can’t make up for bland or boring content.

The game simply has weak mechanics in every respect, and the original content was also incredibly poor. While I had time to bring the content up to what I think was a decent level, for the characters I worked on, that was only maybe 1/4 of the content of one part of the game, and it still rested on weak mechanics.

*sigh*

Oh, well. It’s not like I didn’t know it was coming.