Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Tuesday Lunch Fun With Anagrams

This week: The News and Observer :D

Bad Never Worsens

Bad Verses Renown

New Snore Adverbs

Brave News Drones

Ow, Never Send Bras

Owns A Verb Sender

Never Warned Boss

Never Adorns Webs

Never Bored Swans

Never Browned Ass

Sends One Verb War

Adverse Newborns

Bored News Ravens

Warns Bee Vendors

Red New Snobs Rave

but my personal favorite:

Rewoven Drabness

Saturday, September 26, 2009

Hot Shit Of The Week - Wake Me Up When September Ends 2009 Edition

So I'm sitting at home, trying to save a bit of money when it occurs to me there are probably a lot of people out there doing the same thing. Being the considerate person I am, it seemed only logical to share the best things I found this week before going off and playing Champions Online.

First up: Droplitz on PSN (for PS3) temporary price cut to $4.99

For the price of two slices of pizza, you could be enjoying a NON-FATTENING game. Droplitz is YATLG (Yet Another Tetris Like Game) where you spin tubes to conserve water. You have to connect downward facing water sources at the top of the screen with upward facing receptacles. As time passes your water supply depletes, as you progress the depletion happens faster. When connections are made, more water is earned. Extra points and additional water are rewarded for making multiple connections.

The game debuted on the Play Station 3 this summer, and while it may be worth the regular price of $9.99 it is most definitely a bargain while this deal lasts. The only complaint I have with this title is the disappointing lack of any multi-player. It does lack a sense of purpose, but then again it is YATLG. Kind of goes with the territory.

Next Up: 8 Bit PWNY Club

This is shaping up to be a rather amusing nugget from the fertile grounds of Weebl's Stuff. There are two episodes now, and assuming Hot Shit Of The Week takes off you'll see more posts of this show in the future. Pixelated characters are all the rage right now, and this show is hosted by 3: Daze, Spader, and Cookie. The first episode explores Toilets in Gaming History, the Top 5 to be exact. Sadly, as with everything these days when they say "Gaming" they mean only Video Games. That oversight aside it is a very amusing show and I look forward to future episodes.

Moving Along: The Guild

Is heating up in its 3rd season. While I am a little disappointed that Microsoft appears to be a sponsor, the show is none-the-less amusing and has evolved quite nicely from the rockier first season to a very well done second season. The episodes are short, in the time it takes to watch a whole commercial laden TV comedy show, you could be watching a whole season of The Guild.

Codex, AKA Cid, is a socially-challenged MMO player with strong ties to an equally challenged Guild of fellow players, Knights of The Good. Drama runs rife in this band of geeks. It's quirky, amusing, and an odd mixture of professionally produced entertainment with a non-traditional format.

And Before I Forget: Old School Hot Shit


Each week, I'll also be sure to include something Old School. This week it's MANNERS. Now, we live in an incresingly multi-cultural world. With that in mind it is extremely important to not jump to conclusions with interacting with other people.

I am not aware of any cultures where it is considered appropriate to DIG IN YOUR PANTS while someone is trying to have a conversation with you, most specifically in the professional setting. I think that it is great for people to be themselves, but there has got to be some line drawn somewhere. Please take a moment to reflect on your interactions with other people. We all have room to grow.

It is also important to overlook things. We all make mistakes, and it can be hard to see our own shortcomings. If you want the people around you to have better manners the best you can do is set a good example. That and leave fun passive aggressive notes.

Finally: My Crooked Smile

This week's music suggestion is Samm Neiland's My Crooked Smile. I especially like Superhuman and Crooked Smiles, but overall there is a lot of promise in his music. It is a little edgy, and not pretentious. There isn't much to go on with just four songs and certainly has room to grow, but let's hope there is more from this artist to enjoy in the future. It is really refreshing to be able to find genuine talent outside the force-fed commercial sources. Yay Internet.

Until Net Week:

If you find anything HOT, please share. Comment here, or send a Twitter D-or-@ message to YouAreTruth on twitter.

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Exploring the ZEN LIKE DETACHMENT to my life.

So,

I renewed my paid live journal account for another year. I'd like to think that eventually I will find a way to justify the cost. I've been using another blog place for more work/discipline related entries. Posting there is also sporadic, but more consistent than at Live Journal. Part of the issue is again spreading myself too thin (multiple blogs), but also not having a clear idea of what I want to accomplish with that blog.

So, among other things, the reason I'm posting today is I went to visit my uncle in the hospital this weekend. He had an aneurism almost two weeks ago. No one bothered to tell me, until I called a couple of days ago to let my parents know I was going to visit this weekend. I made as minimal a deal as minimal a deal as I could about the lack of communication. I think that this clearly illustrates where I get my challenges in being a thoughtful and proactive communicator from. (That would be my family).

We go to the hospital last night and the parking deck at Duke has the FULL sign up. My dad didn't see the less than obvious signs directing us to overflow parking so I had to try and point those out and convince him that might be the way to go. It didn't help that some jerk in a Taxi was sitting in the only unblocked-off entrance. Had he not been there we might have discovered that we actually could have gotten in, and allowed my dad to drive around hunting for a spot as he is so fond of doing.

After some frustration I managed to direct him to follow the signs, but the overflow parking involved a little too much walking for his taste, so he apparently decided visiting my uncle was unattainable at that point and proceeded to take us to dinner instead.

Now my parents know that I don't like Barbeque all that much, and by "know" I mean they have a completely inadequate understanding of the complex nature of my like-dislike relationship with pork. My dad is someone with very polar likes and dislikes, and my mom has dealt with that for so long that she has forgotten that not everyone is such a picky eater. It doesn't help that my brother too is a bit more like our dad than he likes to admit. I have been working to improve my relationship with food for a while now. I try new things unapprehensively for the most part. I liked food a little too much for a while actually. I am at the point were it is hard for me to have a true love-hate relationship with anything because that would require caring more than is neccesary, and I've learned not to do that so much these days.

I actually do like non-pork Barbeque, and in the past year I have even been known to like Eastern North Carolina style pork Barbeque if it is fixed right. My parents don't really get this concept and since communication isn't a forte in our family I am not going to even attempt to explain to them the complexity of my preference, since the preference is highly inconsequential. My mom was worried that I wouldn't want to eat where dad was taking us and I figured it would suffice to say that it was 'fine'.

So we got to this place, which is actually a highly reputable Barbecue hole-in-the-wall that many Durham, if not North Carolina natives will be very familiar with. There was a bit of a line to get in, but nothing outrageous. We sat down and I couldn't find an option on the menu that included their Barbeque with other things I wanted to eat, (I am still not fond of most North Carolina "Slaw", which is a popular side with Barbeque) which I thought would be a good way to demonstrate that I will eat Barbeque/pork to my parents. I got a different combination plate, and I will say that the food was sufficiently mediocre to put me off. Apparently my parent's dinner wasn't up to par either.

But it was edible, so I ate it.

We went back to the hospital and had better luck with parking, much better. The signs were still up, but no morons blocking the entrance. Of course, we arrived just as Duke was having their "Quiet Time" by the time we got back. I had brought my laptop to get some work done while my parents drove over and in the even there was waiting. My step-aunt was holding out pretty well. On the up-side I got nearly a full hours worth of work in and I got to scoff at the content of a "Wed Development Professional" magazine that was there in the lobby.

My uncle was doing well considering. He wasn't completely lucid, and couldn't respond to introspective questions. He did recognize people. This is where my Zen like attachment kicked in. I realized how much more I look like my dad's side of the family when I am clean shaven. Normally I attribute my appearance mostly to my mom's family. I could totally see myself in the future, laying in that hospital bed after having a stroke, or aneurism, or something similarly severe. I'm totally OK with that. It is going to happen, assuming I don't die from what sent me to the hospital to begin with.

This isn't the first time this uncle has been in the hospital. He had a heart-attack several years ago. We'll just have to see how he recovers.

Of course last night I had an odd dream, the only part I remember clearly about it was the part where I was looking at this large grid of squares. Some were empty and some were things I had done, or were things I am apparently supposed to do in my life.

For the rest of the weekend I get to try and ignore the Nascar my dad has going on the TV, and try to figure out the best way to use live journal to who knows what ends. All while I work on other things, which are progressing slowly, but well I suppose.