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Keno's Saga - LiveJournal.com
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Yesterday, while driving home from work, Aeris told me that a remaking of FF7 is coming soon. Exactly what she was doing in my car I don't know...
Little Red Riding Goldilocks and the three little piggies
As Told by Haley:
"Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Goldilocks Hood. Her mom asked her to take a basket of cookies to the three little pigs. When she got to Joe's house, she gave him a chocolate chip cookie, but then PapaLarryMamaCarolJustin (the big bad wolf) came and blew the house down and took the cookie. Next she went to Moe's house, and gave him a chocolate chip cookie, but then PapaLarryMamaCarolJustin came and blew the house down and took the cookie. This made Joe and Moe sad, so they went to Curly's house. Curly was smart and built his house out of bricks. PapaLarryMamaCarolJustin knocked on the door and said, "Hey Joe. Hey Moe. Hey Curly. Let me in." But the three little piggies said, "Not by the hair on our chinny chin chins!"
So the three little piggies and little red riding goldilocks ate the cookies while PapaLarryMamaCarolJustin had soup with the the three bears. The end. I don't like soup."
Child Book Critics
I saw this on CNN today and it reminded me of a discussion Justin and I had about "Johny Tractor's New Friend" last night.
On one of the pages, JT is baling hay with a round baler. Justin looks at it, and immediately points out that for the amount of hay in the rows, the round bales are too close together. He then begins obsessing about it, and wondering what we can do to fix it. I suggested that he could write a letter to the publisher. He said he would do that today, although I suspect he's totally forgotten about it and is actually out farming.
The mid point
The year is half over now, more or less, which seems a bit odd, considering yesterday was January 1st.
I meant to post this Friday
But I think I got distracted by Handlebars, or some junk. Anyhow....
Happy Anniversary, ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) pikamyst and perimyndith!
No Handlebars
I heard this song on the radio this morning, by a band called The Flobots (or possibly just "Flobots"). At first I thought it might of been Eminem, but I wasn't sure. Turns out it wasn't, which is good, because if it was, I think hell might have frozen over.... Of course, considering Matt Bamsey described his Wednesday lunch as "fantastic" is a pretty good indicator that hell might have indeed frozen over, but I digress.
The album with No Handlebars on it went on sale back in May, so now I'm going to have to go buy it.
The curse of the wierd beep
I spent 25 minutes this morning trying to locate the source of an occasional beeping noise. I thought at first it might be coming from one of the smoke/co detectors. I thought the sound was coming from Haley's room, because at first I thought it was coming over the baby monitor. (Yes, Haley tends not to leave her room, so we still use the monitor so we know if she wakes up.)
I finally located the beeping as Jill's cell phone telling her she had missed a call....
****************************************
And now, a far more important question:
At what point in our culture did Chuck Norris attain god-hood?
You can spare a $1 for some lemonade, surely
Lemonade Stand for Life, benefiting Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation (ALSF).
All is calm
All is quiet.
Good night.
It's all positional
Justin played first base on his tee-ball team, but for the all-star team I thought they might move him to outfield or shortstop/third base. More on that in a minute.
When playing pitch and catch, Justin has taken up the mannerisms of pitchers. He'll lean forward like he's studying the signs, occasionally he'll shake his head, all the while holding the ball behind his back and shaking it (he hasn't quite picked up on the rotational aspects of hiding your pitch yet). He does this because he says he wants to be a pitcher, and so he needs to start practicing. When reminded that the coach pitches in tee ball and the next age group up uses a pitching machine, he'll answer with "it's never too early to start practicing."
Which brings us to the current situation. Since the tee ball all-star games use a pitching machine, somebody has to play catcher, in full gear. Justin has been nominated for this position, although he doesn't know it yet. Tonight they're going to try to convince him that he wants to do it. I really don't know how he'll react, but if he realizes that the catcher is the only person in baseball who gets to participate in full contact collisions, he's likely to take to it with gusto.
Which means I'll be buying more baseball gear....
birthday shopping
Friday night Jill and I went to the Bats game, then wandered around 4th Street Live for a while before calling it a night.
Saturday we had several errands to run, so we decided we would include "looking for gifts for Justin for his birthday" on that list. On that count, we struck out. Sure, we found lots of things that we think he would like, at least for a minute or two, but there seemed to be a lot of problems with a lot of the things. We're not quite sure if he's really ready for the toy/game, we fear that She Who Chews on Everything would eat it, he has way too many things that clutter the floor already, or some other random concern.
Sigh.
Good bye, Brood XIV
The cicada's have been missing around work for the last couple days now, and at home the deafening crescendo of insectiod mating calls has dropped off considerably. I figure they'll be gone within 48 hours.
k is for
kangaroo!
I've never had a blog subject that started with the letter k before. I think I've covered every other letter of the alphabet, but not k. I bet it feels lonely.
So... k is really for my knee. I think I tore something in it the other day. It started as a sharp pain that lasted about 5 minutes, then faded to a dull ache that still persists today, 48 hours later. It doesn't hurt to walk on or anything else, its just a dull ache that won't go away.
HDTV Comments
"I can count the blades of grass!" - Justin, while watching the U.S. Open golf tournament
"The people in the stands look more 3D." - Jill's Dad, while watching the College World Series.
"I was watching the Day after Tomorrow, and I felt like I was in a theater." - Me
"I was watching Animal Planet earlier, and there was a forest guide talking about bears, and there were flies flying around his head, and I could tell they were flies, rather than black motes." - Me
"I don't know, I can't really tell any difference." - Jill
4e
I finished reading through the Player's Handbook yesterday, and I'm about a 1/3 or so through the Dungeon Master's Guide.
Overall, I like the changes presented in the Player's Handbook, although I question the motivation for some of them. There are several that seem to be of the type, "We're changing everything else, might as well change this too!"
The proof is, of course, in the pudding, so I'm hoping to get a chance to play some 4e games this week(end). We'll see.
Cicada Love Machine 2000
Jill got me a new weed eater for Father's Day (yeah, I know, but at least the kids got me something that doesn't require more work.)
Saturday, I got it out of the box to use after we'd finished mowing, started it up, and was immediately swarmed by cicada's. I'm guessing they must've somehow thought I (or the weed eater) was a giant cicada. Stupid things.
Runnerups
Justin's team lost last night, (5-3) after an hour rain delay. Considering the other team had more players and all but two of them played last year as well, I felt it was a rather good showing. We hit well, but had trouble fielding, especially after the rain delay slicked everything up.
On the bright side, we were told last night that Justin has been nominated for the All-Star team and will have the opportunity to try out for it in a week or two. Okay, that's the bright side for him, for us we're like "what? The season is still NOT over?"
To the Championship!
(Or the flyboat, if we're the WonderPets!)
Justin's tee-ball team won their game last night, so now they get to play in the championship game of the league tonight. They played surprisingly well last night, and it was the first time in over a month that all the players have been there at the same time. Which always helps. It'll be hard for them to win tonight, because the team they play is all bigger kids (luck of the draw). The last time they played Justin's team got crushed. But they've played better lately than I expected them to, so maybe they'll surprise me again tonight.
(Have some celery!)
4E
My 4e books came on Friday, as promised.
And my weekend and week so far have been so busy that I've not even managed to reach page 50 of the Player's Handbook yet. How depressing.
First off, the presentation in the books is very flashy. But flashy in a good way. I really like the page and half illustrations, and the text is broken up nicely, so that it doesn't feel like a chore to read. Several pages are spent explaining the game mechanics in a way that should make it easier for someone to pick up "how" to play the game.
Of course, there are some things that seem "wierd" too. Like the EXP table. It's not a set pattern like 3.5, but instead increases in fits and starts, with some sets of levels taking the nearly the same amount to reach, and others having enormous jumps. Altogether it will take a million EXP to reach level 30, but only 20,500 total to reach level 10. Retraining is built into the rules now (you can retrain one thing, everytime you level up, and some levels grant a bonus retrain). A big change is in ability score bonus. Every 4th level of a tier (4, 8, 14, 18, 24, 28) grants you 1 point to two abilities, while reaching a new tier (11th, 21st) grants you 1 point to all abilities. Also, I haven't read the details on every race yet (just Dragonborn, Dwarf, Eladrin, Elf, Halfling, Half-Elf, and Human), but it appears that most races grant a +2 bonus to two abilities, and no penalties. Starting hit points include your entire constitution score, not just the modifier and there are some other changes I've noticed that result in initially higher values for different stats, etc.
I'll admit I don't have a complete picture yet, but all these stat increases look suspiciously like higher numbers for higher numbers sake. Maybe it was necessary to balance things out, but it feels like when Final Fantasy went from 999 to 9,999 to 99,999. Bigger numbers look cooler, after all.
I'll write a full review for the Saving Throw once I've finished all three books.
The never ending baseball season
Justin's tee-ball was supposed to end last Friday.
At that game we find out they have a game on Saturday.
After winning on Saturday (4-3), they have a game on Monday.
After winning last night (3-2), they have a game on Wednesday. If they win on Wednesday, they play on Thursday. Supposedly, even if they win on Thursday, the season will be truly over, but we've heard rumors that might not be the case.
I find it amusing.
One of the kids on the opposing team last night started crying after they lost. I felt sorry for him, because either a.) he really loves baseball and didn't want his season to end; or b.) someone has been putting way too much pressure on him.
Saturday's game should have been 4-0, and last night's game could have been 3-0, 8-0, or 3-8. Justin's team plays exactly like the Reds!
4e
4E is out, so I guess there'll be a lot of "reviews" posted over the next few days, and a lot of people griping and complaining about the changes. I find it amusing, ot some extent.
I'm supposed to receive my copy of the core books today, which is good because the kids are going to be gone for about 24 hours, giving me some time to at least give it a quick read... what's that? Jill and I are supposed to have a "belated" anniversary outing tonight... oh, right, yeah, that's what I was talking about, right?
Well, at the latest I'm supposed to get the books by Monday, so they might not even arrive today....
Of course, now that 4E is out, DNDInsider is up and running. Or at least it's supposed to be. When I go to the site all I get is information stuff, not actual access. Oh well, I guess they'll have it up and going soon....
The Presidential Race
Now that Hillary has officially announced that she's going to endorse Obama, we can finally get down to business.
Right now I would have to say that I'm slightly leaning towards Obama in the general election. I'm interested in seeing who the VP choices are going to be, because McCain's age worries me a little, and I fear that Obama will cave to political pressure and have Hillary has his VP.
But at least we're in the final stages of the campaign now. Too bad it will last another 5 months....
HD
Since we're back from vacation, we decided to switch satellite providers and upgrade to HD service.
Jill called Monday, expecting that we would have a delay of a week or so before someone could come out and setup all the new systems. Imagine our surprise when we didn't have to wait even 24 hours!
After Justin's Tee Ball game we came home and I turned the TV on and flipped to the first program that said it was in HD (which happened to be Jeopardy). It wasn't in HD, so I moved on. ESPNHD was showing a classic Lakers-Celtics game that wasn't in HD either. So I moved on. Spike HD had CSI:Miami in HD, but it was going off, and CSI was getting ready to come on, so I left it there and went about doing some other stuff. I had my back turned to the TV when I heard a strange sound. I turned around and realized what I was hearing was the intro music for CSI. It seemed so much more crisp, vibrant and LOUD.
So that was the first thing I learned about our HD service. The audio is much louder on the HD channels than on the SD channels. After I had all the chores done (taking out the trash, pruning and watering some flowers, bringing the Jelly in from the van, changing clothes, etc) I sat down and watched The Day After Tomorrow in HD. It was nice.
I'm looking forward to watching some baseball in HD, but right now I'm just trying to figure out where all the channels are ;)
Now if only I could get high speed internet
Our sattellite service is supposed to be upgraded to HD today. Considering we just ordered it yesterday, I'm kind of impressed with the speed. But then, I remember the promises about DSL, and well, I'll be surprised if it happens today.
Haley 5 - extra magic Hours 2
Yesterday we got back from our Disney Vacation. The third in 18 months... I'm Disney'd out for a while, and then Jill goes and tells me that her mom and brother are looking at moving our Disney cruise up from 2010/2011 to fall 2009. Even then I think I'll won't be ready for it ;)
Surprisingly, Haley managed to last longer than we thought she would, staying up 5 of the seven nights we were there, only falling asleep at the park twice. The weather was good, not nearly as hot as the last time we were there. Of course, I ate way too much, and even walking around in the parks every day I still managed to gain 5 lbs while we were on vacation.
Of course, that wasn't the worst thing. On our way down, I got bit by an ant, and ended up with whelps about the size of my pinky finger nail on two of my toes. They really didn't hurt (once the initial sting passed), but they sure looked nasty.
I really think this was one of the best vacations I've had in a while. At least when I got home I didn't feel like I needed a vacation from my vacation ;)
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