Today, the only thing we had planned was a trip to the Polynesian Cultural Center. A co-worker kindly bought us tickets to the place, ’cause it was something he’d done when he was in Oahu that he really liked. Which is great, ’cause that’s exactly the kind of assistance that works great on a trip to a new place.

So, we were just at a loss for what to do in the morning. So we ran errands. Ha. Got a new belt, to replace the one that was stolen, and Ei-Nyung got some new underwear to replace the underwear that was… yeah. Stolen. Fun. On the way back from Macy’s (yeah, shaddap – it was close, adn we knew they’d have what we were looking for), we stopped off at Island Snow, a skate/surf gear shop/shave ice place. Got a bag (to replace… yeah, you get it) and a shave ice. The shave ice was good – not much more or less than expected, though the flavors the guy behind the counter recommended were surprisingly tasty.

Oh! Forgot to mention – before going to Macy’s, we went to lunch. LUNCH WAS AWESOME.

We ate at “The Alley,” which is the restaurant inside Aiea Bowl, a bowling alley about 20 minutes from where we were staying. Yes, we drove 20 minutes to eat at a bowling alley. It’d been recommended on Chowhound. We got the “Tasty Chicken” (foreground), the garlic fries (background), a bowl of ochazuke, and another bown of yakisoba. It was all pretty surprisingly awesome. I’d definitely go back – the best things, IMO, were the ochazuke and the Tasty Chicken, though both the garlic fries and yakisoba were well above average.

So, anyway – after that was the shopping, and the shave ice. Then off to the PCC*.

It was about a 40 minute drive – and while it’s a gorgeous drive, the problem for me was that it was exactly the drive to the North Shore, where we got robbed, so the whole time I kept thinking of that. Which sucked – there’s nothing to be done about it, but it’s difficult to just not think about it, even if I really, really want to just let it go and get on with things.

When we arrived at the PCC, there was a show already underway, so we scurried along to check it out. The PCC’s basically got five branches – Tonga, Samoa, New Zealand, Tahiti, and Fiji. Each was represented by some traditional dance on a boat as they made their way down the little manufactured river. The highlight was the Haka, a Maori dance that we first saw on the Korean show Dream Team, which I’ve really grown to enjoy watching. It’s a powerful, intimidating, and strange dance, full of chest-slapping, tongue-sticking-out, eye-bulging, and stomping. I LOVE it.

So that was nice.

We then went and watched an IMAX movie on coral reefs, walked around to tht little villages, and watched some demonstrations of stuff. Taken as an authentic experience, the place is sort of ridiculous, but as a little Polynesian tourist EPCOT center, it’s pretty entertaining.

After walking around and checking out the villages, we were off to the Luau, where we got our lei’s and sat down for dinner. The show was entertaining – the MC was pretty sharp – strangely, did a really good Louis Armstrong impression, among other things. The food was good – the poke was surprisngly good, and I had enough of it that it was at least a little unreasonable. 🙂

After the Luau, we went to watch “Ha – The Breath of Life,” which was the big show of the evening. Didn’t really know what to expect. Started off with a strange narrative that was a little hard to follow, and ended up basically following a guy’s life story as he grows up, falls in love, gets married, etc., while transitioning between the various cultures at the PCC. It was good – lots of people, very energetic performances… then it got INSANE. The fire show at the end was pretty freaking epic, and in the end, we left with big smiles on our faces, grateful to the friend that got us tickets, and tired from a fun day.

* The only negative thing about the experience was that a couple days prior, someone had mentioned that the PCC was heavily tied to the branch of BYU that’s adjacent to it, and that it’s a Mormon-run establishment. Given the Mormons’ involvement in Prop 8 in CA, I’m not exactly happy with their involvement in our culture. How that extends to the cultures represented at the PCC, I honestly can’t say. But would like to find out.

And if one day, I can go see a Haka done with experienced Maori tribesmen, it would BLOW MY MIND.

All in all, though – good day. Full of good food, lots of new experiences. Now I’m beat.

Excited after an awesome 1st day in Hawaii, we took up some of our friends’ suggestions, and tooled around the island. Started the day at Boots & Kinos, whose macadamia nut pancakes are *ridiculous*. Their fried rice was also spectacular.

Went back to the pad for a couple minutes, then off to officially check in at the property rental spot. Once all the bureaucracy was taken care of, off to Three Tables on the north shore!

On the way there, we stopped at Giovanni’s Shrimp Truck, which was tasty, though honestly, not super remarkable.

Then we headed to Three Tables, which was awesome. Had a great couple hours snorkeling, swimming with the fishies, and otherwise lounging around and getting mad sunburned.

And there’s where the fun ended.

We got back to our car, popped the trunk, and found our bag was gone. Our bag. With our camera, our e-readers, our phones, our sunglasses, my prescription glasses, and my wallet. And probably more stuff, but that was all I could remember. My pants. My only good belt. Ei-Nyung’s clothes.

Motherfuckers stole my fucking prescription glasses, those worthless fucks. Christ.

It’s times like this where I’m glad there are laws to protect the criminals, because if I’d seen one of these worthless meatbags with my stuff, I wouldn’t have hesitated in running them over, then backing up, and then getting out of the car and kicking their mangled fucking corpse.

I know you’ll never see this, but: fuck you. I hope my phone battery explodes and you and your whole family die in a fucking fire.

That said, we handled it alright. Called the cops on a kind stranger’s phone, filed a report, went back to the pad, canceled our cards, suspended our phones, and that was that. I’ve got a piece of paper that I can supposedly use to get on the flight home next week as well.

I’m trying not to be like, “Great. That’s that. Fuck this place, I’m outta here.” Because this IS our last vacation before the kid. Everyone ELSE here has been spectacular. The place is freaking paradise. I don’t want this to ruin the vacation, and I think it won’t, but it’s not going to ever have that same idyllic feeling that the trip to Tulum had.

We swung by the local AT&T store a town away and got new phones, ’cause frankly, those were the things whose (aside from my wallet) utility we were going to miss the most.

So… yeah. Tomorrow, we start again. Maybe go to the beach, ignore the mad sunburn on my back from snorkeling, and try not to think thoughts of strangling worthless thieves in the beautiful ocean.

Got in late last night after an unremarkable flight. Grabbed the rental car, drove to the place to pick up the rental stuff, then to the cottage. Played some Word Ace and then crashed.

Woke up this morning, and we were immediately off to the beach. It was as close, and as amazing as expected. Wow. Bobbed around in the waves, walked down toward Lanikai, grabbed lunch at a little convenience store (good sandwich), then crashed for a bit.

Got up, went out to get some food – tried a couple places, but ended up at Teddy’s Bigger Burgers, which Ayyana had recommended. I had a burger. It was bigger than I should have eaten. 😀

Then we went back to the pad, snoozed for a bit, went back out to bob around in the waves (literally, that’s almost all we’re doing), then got ready to go to LK’s family’s for dinner.

AMAZING dinner. Smoked pork, some beautifully done steak & brisket, some Okinawan sweet potato, salad, home-grown cucumber kimchi, and then a bunch of fruit, and chocolate chip cookies.

Spent some time with the K’s, and had a really good time. Invited to come back the next week, which we’ll definitely do.

Day 1? Big success. Tomorrow? Turtles. Maybe Macadamia nut pancakes.

Word Ace launched on Thursday! I’m pretty excited, as I think this is probably the best game I’ve ever had the pleasure of working on. Oh, sure – other games were crazier, or weirder, or whatever – but this one’s got that “pop” – that addictive, “gotta play just a little more” thing that’s hard to consciously chase down.

Of course, that’s when we’ve got a trip to Hawaii scheduled. Now, I’ve been trying to get my sorry as to Hawaii for 15 years, and this looks to be my first time actually succeeding at the endeavor, so we’re GOING, DAMMIT – but I’ll definitely end up being a little more plugged-in than I would have otherwise maybe hoped for.

Still, it’s not a bad thing. I’m excited to see how the game does, and talk to people who’ve had the chance to play it. I LOVE playing with new people, and seeing the kind of craziness that ensues from having 10,000 people playing a game that earlier this week, only maybe 20 people had ever laid their eyes on. I’m hoping that by the time we get back from the trip, we’ll have 100,000 downloads. We’ll see. 🙂

But yeah – a week+ of chilling out. Definitely looking forward to it. And it’s a week of relatively low-design work at work (other than the more PR/marketing-like stuff I flail away at), so things should be alright. I’m just antsy, is all.

Looking forward to lying on the beach, exploring the island, eating the local food, and spending some time with Ei-Nyung somewhere new. Our last trip alone for the forseeable future. It’s strange how quickly life is about to change. For the last what, eleven years, it’s been the two of us. We make a great little team. 🙂 Hopefully the new intern will do alright, too.

1.) District 9? Awesome. Will definitely see it again, and the Blu-Ray’s a no-brainer.

2.) It’s a great situation when your biggest stresses at work are that you have too many awesome opportunities, and not enough time.

3.) Big things soon. Can’t wait.

4.) Impending parenthood is… wow.

So, we got an estimate for taking a comprehensive look at fixing the water leak. $40K. Ridiculous, but finally, enough I guess to re-motivate me to do the fundamental testing to try to get a better assessment of what’s going on, I guess. And enough to wake me up at 3 in the morning in such a way that I can’t get back to sleep. Fun!

So, I know where the source for one of the leaks is. At least, I know where I can shoot the hose to guarantee the window leaks there. The second part of that is to make sure that if I shoot somewhere else, it *doesn’t* leak. So I’ll probably start there, ’cause that’s the easiest thing to do.

Second thing to do is to route the backyard hose through the house, and out the dining room window to test both above the window, the window, and the little ledge roof under it, because I know there’s some water coming in there – I can see it in the edge of the floor.

After that, I need to get up onto the roof. This might mean borrowing a ladder from a neighbor (if anyone has an extend-able ladder that’ll be tall enough to get me on the roof) and hosing down the roof for a bit.

Then I need to somehow get water above the living room window. This is tricky because it’s really high up, but maybe the backyard hose through the house, out the window, then just stick an arm out see what I can do holding the hose.

It all sucks, because if it leaks, it’ll damage the new drywall. But I guess we should have ripped off this part of the drywall when we had the chance and didn’t. Gargh.

Oh, well. Live and don’t learn then maybe learn. That’s me.

So, we took Seth to the airport, and sent him back home. It was fun having him come hang out. Had soup dumplings before he left, which is always a nice plus. 😀

Weird to think that while he was here, we got a new car, and Michael Jackson, Ed McMahon, Farah Fawcett, Walter Cronkite, and Karl Malden all died. Not that those are the big markers of time passing, but it was like a whole suite of recognizable characters from my childhood passed away in the last month.

After dropping him off, we headed down to Laguna Seca. A coworker/friend races his Honda S2000, and he’d offered to take people for rides around the track.

It was something I’ve always wanted to do – well, I suppose realistically, I’ve wanted to drive – but I’ve always wanted to go around a racetrack at the speeds one would actually go around it while racing (or as close as a street car will go). Sure, I’ve driven around Laguna Seca hundreds of times in videogames over the years, but it’s MUCH crazier in person, without question.

The Corkscrew? Bonkers. The speed going into the sharp corner at the end of the first straight? Craziness. Also spectacular.

Definitely awesome. I’d love to do that again, or get a chance to drive on the track myself. Went down to Cannery Row in Monterey – I don’t know why I hadn’t imagined it’d just be Pier 39, but it was. Bleh.

Drove back, and am exhausted. Big fun.

The various iPhone games I have right now. Recommended in bold.

must.eat.birds
Fieldrunners
Dr. Awesome
Monkey Ball
Word Warp
Tris
de Blob
Morocco
Enigmo
Mazefinger
Uniwar – close
Top Gun
Peggle
Blimp – close
Eliss
Textropolis
iShift
Azkend
The Last Cannon – close
Real Racing
Rolando
Topple
iDracula
Tap Tap Revenge 2
Galcon
GeoDefense
Scramble
Pocket God
Flight Control
iSR
Lemonade Tycoon
Underworlds
The Creeps!
Car Jack Streets
Apple’s Texas Hold ‘Em
Zynga’s Live Poker
Trixel
Pew Pew (It’s FREE!)
cs.one
Star Defense
Hero of Sparta
Knights Onrush
Let’s Golf
Mass Effect Galaxy
Warpack Grunts
Doom Resurrection
Zombies & Me

While I’d say most people could get the bolded titles and have some fun, there are a couple others that are close, and some that are well done but I still can’t really recommend without substantial reservations. (Uniwar, iSR, etc.)

Some are clearly well-put-together, but for whatever reason, totally failed to grab me. Underworlds and Car Jack Streets are both more “involved” games, and one’s basically a Diablo clone, which I thought would have been a sure recipe for success, but I can’t bring myself to be bothered to play them. I think it’s that I don’t feel like there’s any reasonable return on the time I put in, unless I sit down with it for longer than I’d want.

Some that I’d actively anti-recommend:

I *hate* Mass Effect Galaxy. Mostly because I really enjoyed the console game, and ME:G is *so* bad that I find it offensive. The combat sections are boring, unremarkable, and the loading in between every section is inexcusable. Worse than all that, the story sucks. The writing is horrible, the interactive dialog is really poorly done, and it’s an insult to the franchise. I want to like it, but I can’t.

Warpack Grunts, on the other hand, is just a bad game. The control scheme is incredibly poorly thought out, and despite some charming humor, and really nice explosions, the game is actively awful to play. Clicking on the screen to move and double-tapping to shoot means that when you’re panicking, it’s impossible to either more or shoot reliably. Since screwing up basically means instant death, and there’s no save system, the game’s just a constant “fuck you.” Easily one of the worst game I’ve played on the system.

I also wish EA’s Zombies & Me was more fun. I like the concept, but the execution is really sloppy. When you die, there’s no “game over,” or death animation – the game just abruptly switches to the “Game Over” screen – it’s incredibly jarring, and really feels more like the game has just arbitrarily stopped you, and not that you lost. The game could be a LOT better with a 1.1 update, but as it is, even at a buck, it’s not worth getting.

Also, cs.one seems to be really highly acclaimed, but I hate it. Maybe it’s just the “thrust” genre (think Asteroids’ control scheme), but the game basically kills you with poor controls, then insults you when you’re dead. While it’s got a really neat aesthetic, the overall game structure isn’t very compelling, the controls are incredibly difficult to use well, and overall, I find it more tedious than fun.

Of course, all of these games took a lot of people a lot of time to make, and some of them are clearly ambitious and challenging. But some of ’em just aren’t worth the money. :\

Of all of them, if I had to recommend only one other game, it’d have to be Real Racing. Firemint’s gone way, way beyond anything else on the iPhone so far, and it’s an incredibly compelling racing game, even with the simplified controls.

Second would probably be Doom: Resurrection. Yes, it’s a rail shooter. But it’s a rail shooter that’s so appropriate for the platform that you really don’t even feel the lack of control over the movement.

Yeah, they’re expensive at $10 each. But I’d take either of those over 90%+ of any 10 $1 games.

So, a handful of years ago, Klay & I had a bit of a competition, to see who could lose the weight we’d put on over the previous few years. While I won the competition, Klay kept up the habits, and achieved his actual goals. I didn’t.

I’d lay some of the blame at changing jobs, which radically shook up the habits I’d been developing before they had a chance to “set,” but realistically, it’s that I just let it fall apart.

The thing is, it was simple while I was doing it. Don’t eat to excess. Let yourself stay hungry – you’re not going to starve to death. Don’t eat garbage – soda, unrecognizable non-foods, etc.

The simple fact of competition was enough to keep me adhering to good behaviour, and the end result – looking and feeling better – was reward beyond anything the competition had set up.

Why didn’t it stick? Food’s delicious, and there’s definitely something pleasurable about eating whatever it is you enjoy, and however much of it you want.

I’d hit a plateau at 213 – I couldn’t get below that. Now, I’m at 218ish, and while that’s only 5 lbs, it’s a really critical and really difficult 5 lbs for me – makes the difference between being “chubby” and being “okay,” to me. Realistically, I’m still ~30 lbs more than I should be, but I’m willing to make this a long-term project.

The key, I think, is to develop simple, easy rules. If I put half a meal in a takeaway box up front, it takes a little “activation energy” to bother to eat it later. It’s also cold, having been in the fridge, so it’s a little less appealing. If I’m genuinely hungry, I’ll eat it, but I won’t eat it “because it’s there.”

No more soda. Work makes soda really accessible, and I end up drinking a Diet Coke almost every day. I don’t even *enjoy* it, it’s just a habit I’ve developed for some ridiculous reason.

So, those are the first two things. No soda, and eat less. If I focus on rebuilding those habits, they’ll build the foundation for the rest.

So, we had some left over Black Truffle Explosion centers from the Alinea dinner, and we were up for BBQ this week (we do BBQ every Wednesday at work). Given that we had a bit of short notice to put the lunch together, we had to do something interesting, but quick.

So, using the gelatinized truffle/butter “centers,” we stuffed ’em into the burgers.

HOLY CRAP THEY WERE GOOD.

I mean, the first bite was good, but the second bite got into the truffl-y center, where it was like the burger equivalent of the BTE. Amazing.

I don’t know that I’d ever want a non-truffle burger again!