Now we’re cooking with gas.

Our housemate was kind enough to wreck shop in the kitchen, and rip out the idiotic stove peninsula that destroyed the continuity of the space in the kitchen. Now that he’s done that, and I paid through the nose to get a gas line installed… we’re getting a gas stove on Saturday. It’s a GE JGBP30XXXX, where XXXX are numbers I don’t recall (hell, I don’t even know if the first numbers are right) – but it’s a 30″ black gas stove, with burners ranging frok 6K BTUs to 15K. Not too shabby. Sure, it’s no Wolf, say, but it’s a hell of a lot cheaper, and good enough for the cooking we’ll be doing. Hell, if we need more heat, we can just use the turkey fryer burner and the wok. That thing turns the wok white hot, and makes it almost unhandleable. I doubt if we’ll ever need more heat than that.

Still, it’ll be *great* to finally have a gas stove. A stove that’ll consistently boil water, and not get progressively colder as time passes.

Also picked up an All-Clad MC2 12″ omelette pan, as sort of a general workhorse pan, to go with the stove. Next up’s an 8″ Global chef’s knife, and a double-burner Lodge griddle/grill pan. Whee! Consumerlicious! But all that’s getting put off, at least temporarily, as bill paying has kicked my ass six ways from Sunday. Slowly, though, we shall acquire the appropriate kitchen armaments. The gas stove is gonna be such a huge step in the right direction, and fortunately, now that work’ s slower, I’ll even have some time to cook, I hope.

Pirate walks into a bar, right, and he’s got this giant steering wheel sticking out of his pants. The kind they have on ships – a helm. The bartender asks him, “Hey. What’s with the helm in the pants?” Pirate sez, “Yarr! It’s driving me nuts.”

Best joke ever.

Hm. What’s up? Went to DC for the first time in a couple decades. Kinda weird saying that, but I think the last time I was there, I was seven. Was in town for a friend’s wedding, which was great. Got to see the Lincoln Memorial, and stand where MLKJr. stood when he gave his “I Have a Dream,” speech. Powerful.

It was a great weekend, spent hanging out with great friends, revelling in our friend’s happiness, and hanging out with each other. What could be better?

Ah, there was watching one of my friends getting beat up by his giant, misanthropic neanderthal of a girlfriend. I know it’s sort of weird, seeing that written, but this insane psychotic idiot, who has somehow attached herself to an otherwise pretty reasonable guy needs to be forcibly separated from him, forever. It’s strange – the two of them have been dating for a couple years now, and I doubt if past the first week or two, if I’ve ever seen them in a state of anything other than abject misery. But until this weekend, that was sort of beside the point. If he was happy, even if she was a manic depressive, miserable shit, it was their business, and his horrible judgement that was keeping them together. Far be it for me to say, hey, stop hanging out with someone who’s perpetually in a horrible mood, who’s painful to hang out with, and who basically ruins any situation they get anywhere near. It’s his choice, he can do what he wants.

But this weekend changed that. At the wedding, in a side room where I suspect they didn’t expect anyone would see them, through a window, a few of us happened to see her flip out and start chasing him around the room. The next morning, he showed up to hang out with scratches on his face. When asked what had happened, he said that the GF got mad, but they, “worked it out.” Bullshit, and we all know it.

What strikes me as odd about the whole situation is that there have been many times in my life where action has been required. Immediate action. I’ve saved a few people as a lifeguard, I helped keep a house from burning down last year. These were situations were something was wrong, and immediately, without thinking, I did what I thought needed to be done. In this situation, the same trigger popped, when I saw what was going on, but nothing happened. I just stood there, dumbfounded. In some weird retrospect, I wanted to have run into the room, and told the psycho bitch that I would call the cops and have her arrested if she didn’t leave, on foot, right that instant. But I didn’t. I suppose maybe I hoped it would work out, or something? But it never will.

What do you do in a situation like this? Where you *know* what is going on, but for some reason, it doesn’t feel right to say anything? How do you approach a situation like this? What do you say?

 

Definitely a weird feeling. I dunno. Still frustrated about the whole intern->designer, me->not designer business, but at least got to talk it through with Ei-Nyung this morning. It still doesn’t say, make a whole lot more *sense*, but at least I guess I’m more or less kind of okay with it. And if that sounds dodgy, it is. But fuck, what am I gonna do about it? I’ve got a thing I’m working on, and it’ll either work out or it won’t, but I want it to stand on its own two feet, and not be potentially compromised by me feeling like a schmuck about this. Hell, maybe I’m missing something important, and it’s all well and good. I have no fucking clue. But it does … well, it makes me fucking livid that this person, whose got about 4-5 months of relevant experience, now has my dream job. Fuck that. Gah.

*sigh*

Ok, so I’m not at all ok with it. But I guess in a professional capacity, I just suck it up and deal. Hope other opportunities come along, and aren’t given to underqualified kissasses instead. Not that that’s fair to her, but fuck that, this is my blog.

It’s 3am, and I just got home from work. Turns out, one of the production interns got hired on for next year as a designer. My work satisfaction took a nose dive hearing that. Why? Do I think she doesn’t deserve it? I have no idea. She’s a hard worker, but more so than anyone else? Not really. Does she know the ins and outs of the system, and the way that the game systems work? Certainly not as well as say, I do. I guess I’ve never been at a company where there are people actually vying for positions, and maybe that’s where I’ve made a mistake. I talk to the people I work with, I do my job as well as I can, but I’m not really social outside of work, and I don’t hang around work after the job’s done. Do I feel like that’s why I wouldn’t have gotten a design position, and she did? Yeah, I think that’s more or less it. And that pisses me off. Whether it should or not, I don’t know.

I’ve got a concept for a game I’ve been working on since my first day at Maxis, and I’m gonna be spending the time after the game ships, when it’s normally down time, trying to implement that design to the best of my ability, and see if it’s interesting. But I guess it’s another year as a straight OE. Maybe I’ll just have to kiss more ass, or something. *sigh*

Got Sims 2, Silent Hill 3, and Gradius V on Friday & Saturday, for a grand total of … $45. SH3 was $10 at EB, Gradius V retails for $30, and Sims 2 was free, ’cause we get a free copy of any games released by our studio. Which is cool. Next week, Def Jam: Fight for NY comes out, and I can grab that for another $20, so I might do that – looks like an interesting game. Stared at the Futurama Vol. 2 box set this afternoon, but realized I’d rather save the money & spend it on a good frying pan, to use when we get our gas stove, which should be sometime in the next month or so.

Ah, the diary ‘o capitalism.

On another expensive note, jumping back into the home repair thing again. Whee. Our neighbors across the street had a guy looking at their roof the other day. Is a friend of our neighbor across the street named Rod. Kurt (our neighbor) recommended him, and he’s a good friend, so I asked him if he knows anything about windows. Our front windows are still leaking, and though Jose & Co. spent some time patching up the cracks in the stucco, it became clear within five minutes of talking to Rod that Jose & Co., though nice, and quite reliable for interior work, really didn’t know fully well what they were talking about when they did the original “re-seal” on the front of the house. Rod pointed out a couple things that had been done wrong, such as the “weep holes” in the window being plugged up – this is likely the original stucco guys’ fault, as the original stucco is what’s covering up said holes, but Jose & Co. didn’t fix that, and made it actively worse by caulking them shut, if the water even had any way out to begin with.

So, anyway, Rod estimated $700 to tear out some of the stucco, and try to see whether the windows were flashed right, clearing out the weep holes on all the windows, and guaranteed the workmanship for 3 years. He wrote up a contract, which is more than any of the previous contractors did, and I gave him a down payment of $200. If it works, it’ll be totally worth it. If it doesn’t, it’ll be at least good to know what’s right, and what’s wrong. And that’s cheaper than the $810 I just paid to get the gas line to the kitchen installed.

Yeesh.

So… yeah. Money money money. Crazy stuff.

Ok. Between now & the end of the year, according to EBGames’ “Coming Soon” page:

• Gungrave: Overdose
• Guilty Gear X2#Reload
• The Sims 2
• Fable
• Gradius V
• Sly 2: Band of Thieves
• Kingdom Under Fire: The Crusaders
• Star Wars: Battlefront
• Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War
• Def Jam: Fight for NY
• Syberia II
• Dance Dance Revolution Extreme
• Donkey Konga
• Colin McRae 05
• SVC Chaos: SNK vs. Capcom
• Evil Genius
• Midway Arcade Treasures 2
• Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door
• Fifa 2005
• Tribes: Vengeance
• Get on Da Mic
• Alien Hominid
• Otogi 2
• Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
• Taiko Drum Master
• Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal
• The Bard’s Tale
• Halo 2
• The Urbz: Sims in the City
• Metroid Prime 2
• Karaoke Revolution 3
• Eye Toy: Antigrav

And that’s *just* ’till 11/9.

Crazy.

Man. My eyes are sore from tiredness. I can’t really explain why – I thought I slept pretty well last night. Supposedly, tonight we burn our first Beta candidate. I kind of doubt this one’ll hit, but I suppose it’s getting close – only a fistful of bugs came in today, and I expect we’ll have a release candidate on time without too much chaos. We’ll see. So far, it’s been a walk in the park – and for that, I’m quite grateful.

Otherwise, things haven’t changed much in the last week or so. The gas line installation is taking *forever* because the plumber’s truck is apparently broken, or something. Hard to say, exactly, when things’ll finally go in, but the suspicion is tomorrow’s the day. Fun.

In case you’re not following the release dates of games – this is definitely the most insane holiday season in recent memory, game-wise. Just yesterday, Sims 2 and Fable came out. Last week it was Burnout 3. November 9th is The Urbz and Halo 2 – head to head. There’s also Kingdom Under Fire: Crusaders, Guilty Gear X2#reload, Gradius V, Sly 2: Band of Thieves… and that’s really just the tip of the iceberg. It’s crazy.

Went kite flying with Ei-Nyung & a friend of ours. Fun stuff. Ended up, though, with some pretty severe rope burn around my leg, from being dumb, and wrapping Mobius’ leash around my leg while I was screwing in the ground stake we tie him to when we’re at the Marina. He took off after a kite, and the extendable leash just tore up my skin. Ow. So, hopefully Neosporin will make sure it doesn’t get infected. Whee!

Been playing a lot of Burnout 3: Takedown for the xbox. Holy crap is it fast. That, coupled with the crash mechanics, and the variety of event types makes it one of the best, most addictive arcade racers I’ve seen. And there’s a lot more substance than in Burnout 2. I’ve been playing for at least eight hours so far, and am only about 48% of the way through the game, according to the stats page. Awesome stuff. Beautiful, too.

Getting a gas line installed to the kitchen on Monday. This enables the purchase of a gas stove, but is expensive as hell. $625-800 bucks is the estimate. Crazy stuff. We’ll see on Monday what the cost actually ends up as. Going to work for part of tomorrow, but gonna try to make some yakisoba beforehand.

Now, to sleep… but before I do, look online somewhere for Wanda and the Colossus – apparently, the next project by the SCEA group that made Ico, my favorite videogame ever. They’ve released several images from the game, and it looks like they’re sticking with the same art style, which is a huge, huge plus.

Had a weird hour or so this afternoon, where I couldn’t figure out what to do. Didn’t feel like a movie, didn’t feel like a videogame, had gone kiting earlier in the day, read all the usual websites, and the WoW server was down. Just felt sort of aimless. Didn’t feel like drawing/painting/whatever, reading, watching TV. Just sort of wanted to nothing, but also wanted to do something. Ended up … largely doing nothing. I think I took a nap there, for a bit. Maybe that was this morning. Day was sort of strange – ended up waking up relatively early, and taking Mobi and my new Prism Nexus kite out to the Berkeley Marina. Mobi got to run around a bit, I got to fly a kite. Fun. Chill, but fun.

Came home and fell asleep, which was nice – ended up falling asleep on the floor reading the chapter on breadmaking in Shirley O. Corriher’s Cookwise – quite an interesting book, sleep notwithstanding. Basically really covers in detail how to make bread (in the bread chapter) in explicit detail, from what each ingredient does, to the difference the order of operations can have. Unfortunately, if you were to follow her directions to the tee, it would take about … five hours to make a loaf of bread. Since I’m not really say, and industrial baker, nor am I home for a solid five hours where I can cook, most days, this pretty much makes the book academic. Still, it’s interesting reading, and I’m hoping when I get to later parts of the book, there will be recipes that are … faster. Most aren’t – meats get a lot of pre-treatment, whether brining or preparing a marinade or rub, the breads take hours to rise, and rise again… maybe veggies will be quick. Who knows.

Oh – and if you haven’t been to Angelfish, in Alameda, and you have the means to get there, by all means, go as soon as possible. Used to be a restaurant in SF called Kantaro, that was the best sushi I’d ever had, in or out of Japan. Angelfish is noticeably *better*. More expensive, too, but once a month or so? Definitely worth it. The quality of the fish is *sublime*.

Mobius is sleeping on the couch. He is one beautiful dog.