A vision of the future.

I saw this on Jeff Green's blog, and I thought it was pretty interesting. Slightly funny and a little sad, actually.



I also noticed that the Minneapolis Star Tribune was on the train since the early days.

It's late and I'm tired.

It's nearly 2 am. I just got home from work. And in a few short hours, I'll be back in my place with a bright smiling face.

I don't have anything to talk about today. I went to work at 9. I ate some food at my desk around 1 or 2. I worked until 5:30. I took a near 30 minute break, then I worked until now.

I guess I should go to bed. I kind of wish I could play Fable 2 or Far Cry 2 or the Resident Evil 5 demo or something.

The new Final Fantasy XIII trailer doesn't do anything to make me think I'll like it. So there.

Working for the man and such.

Last night and tonight I had to work on a project after work. I did make sure to get a chance last night to play the Resident Evil 5 demo that hit Xbox LIVE. Hot shit.

I can see people's problems with it being slightly awkward to control, and that it's just Resident Evil 4 with nicer graphics. That's all more than OK with me. RE4 )was and still is) one of my favorite games of all time, and I got right back into the swing of things with RE5.

I didn't even get to beat the short demo, but it was awesome nonetheless.

We're really bust at work. It kind of sucks, but at least I'm still working, right? Right.

After work I was meeting a client who was flying back from Paris. The plane was slightly late, but it worked out. I went to Yum! and met up with Lindsay, Becky and Chris C. I got some food and soon enough I was on my way.

I worked until about 9:00, then came home and worked some more. Tomorrow looks like it will be more of the same.

Weee....eee....e...

Sick weekend.

I haven't been feeling well, lately. I am recovering, though.

On Friday I ran to the gym before going home. When I got home, I quickly helped finish cooking and decorating cupcakes. We took the cupcakes to a friend's art opening, were we met up with few other friends. We hung out for a while, then Chris C, Ryan, Adam, Lindsay and I some of us headed to Sakura for some food. It was good, and I think they might have been closed and too polite to tell us to leave by the time we finally headed out.

We went back to our place for a while, but both Lindsay and i were totally exhausted. So everyone went home, but we agreed to meet up online for some Call of Duty 4. My friend Adam just got an Xbox, and he was on, too, so we rolled deep.

Saturday Lindsay went to meet Becky and work, but I'm doing a project that's very scanner-intensive, so I hung around and worked on that, as well as doing some laundry and playing Valkyria Chronicles.

I went grocery shopping before Lindsay came home and we made a pretty good dinner. I wasn't feeling too well and I thought about going to bed, but then I saw Jesse and Adam playing CoD4 online, so I joined in. It started out ok, but I got worse and worse until I finally decided I was just too tired to bother.

Today was more of the same. Except, despite feeling better each day since I got sick, today I felt absolutely terrible. Lindsay left to work, and I've been cleaning, doing laundry, working and playing Valkyria Chronicles. And coughing myself sore. Not too exciting.

I am out of yeti puns.

I didn't go to work today. I was pretty sick, and we're waiting to hear feedback from the big meeting we had the other day.

Wednesday I was given the assignment mid-day to come up with concepts for two new lines, and visually flush them up enough to present them the next day. So I did one that afternoon, and one last night. I was working until about 2 am, so I don't feel too bad taking the day off.

Actually, once I sent my designs in at 2 am, I cracked open my new copy of TMNT for the Xbox 360 and played an hours' worth. It was one of the two games I picked up yesterday just because they were so ridiculously cheap.

TMNT is a game I've wanted since it came out, even though I knew it wasn't the pinnacle of technology or gameplay. But I love the NInja Turtles and I liked the new movie a lot, so I figured I would enjoy it despite it's flaws. But I didn't want to pay full price for it, or even 1/2 price since I knew it couldn't be very good. But when I saw it in a bin for 12 bucks, I knew it was time.

And it's not terrible. It like enough about it that I'll probably play it all the way through (it helps that it's only supposed to be a few hours long, and it's a very easy 1000 achievement points).

The other game that I picked up was Lost Planet: Extreme Condition for the PS3. I bought it even though I knew it was inferior to the Xbox 360 version. It's got muddy textures, slowdown and worse controls, and i knew this going in. But it was also 8 dollars. And you can't argue with that...

...unless your argument is "but Chris, you weren't going to buy it at all, so why would you buy it just because it's cheap?" Good point. Shut up, fathead.

Today I didn't wake up until noon. I cleaned and did laundry for a bit, and slowly got ready. Lindsay and I went to Uptown. Lindsay had an appointment, and I ate at the Uptown diner alone. And do you know what? I like to eat alone. There, I said it. It's nice.

I met a client across the street at the Tea Garden when I was finished. I got a load of work dumped on me. Lindsay showed up and we've been working here since.

It gave me the time to finish my Yeti Spaghetti piece for the the Super Awesome Art Challenge.

Mega Prez.

I have a soft spot for Dead Prez. I also have a soft spot in my heart for videogame music. So obviously, Dead Prez + Mega Man = A good time.



You can find more here.

World of Flu.

Today we had a big presentation at work. I've been working some late nights to get it finished, thanks Hawaii, but it all went smoothly. 4 hours of presentation, weee. We finished up right after 5, so I helped pack everything up and I took off.

By the time I got home, I felt a scratch in my throat. I knew my body was holding out for that meeting, and it was giving in. Lindsay has been sick since we got home and I had managed to avoid it until now.

But it wasn't bad. We went out to eat with Chris C, and I was having a gay old time. But suddenly I went stone faced and I couldn't concentrate. I felt terrible, and thought I might vomit. So I apologized for cutting it short and I left.

But I was alright after a while. I worked a couple hours on a project for fun and then played Fable 2. I'm trying to get a lot of the more obscure achievements like having a Ménage à trois and getting 5 people drunk at once. Good old fashioned, wholesome stuff.

I've also been playing World of Goo which I picked up on WiiWare a while back after ignoring it for far too long. It's a really, really good game. Everyone's been saying so since it came out, but I had my doubts. I didn't think it would be bad, I just thought it would be difficult (which I've heard it is) in a way that wouldn't fully engage me. But I was wrong. It's great.

Also right now you can grab the World of Goo Soundtrack for free. Maybe it doesn't mean anything if you haven't played the game, but there it is. One thing I have noticed every time I play World of Goo is the music is pretty unexpected. It doesn't match what I thought it would sound like, but that's a good thing. The music adds a ton to the atmosphere of the game, and changes the entire mood. It looks silly, but sometimes it feels almost sad.

Anyway, I have to go to bed. Despite being sick, I have a lot of work to do tomorrow.

Dear Mr. President.

Now that Obama is finally in office, I wish I could just shut my eyes and sleep until everything is better.

Since I can't, and maybe it won't, I guess I'll just keep on hoping.

Man Beast Resolved.

This weekend I downloaded the Knothole Island expansion for Fable 2. Knowing this expansion was on the immediate horizon, I started playing Fable 2 a few days ago just to get back up to speed. And like I said in a post a couple days ago, I still like it. More than ever, actually.

I'm totally happy with the content included in the expansion. The location is pretty unique, and there's multiple versions of the same space depending on the weather (which is explained in the story). There's a blizzard, a drought-ravaged and a flooded version of the island, and not only do they look drastically different but each one limits and grants access to different parts of the environment.

The new quests are pretty basic dungeon crawls, but they are pretty involved and have some puzzles to solve and loot to grab. I've already finished the quest content in the expansion (as far as I can tell), but I still feel like there's some stuff to do. Mainly thanks to a new type of store that uses a bartering system (money is basically worthless in Fable 2 since you accumulate it even when you're not playing).

But the reason I might be most excited about Knothole Island is that it solved one of my main gripes with Fable 2...

I've said it before, possibly many times, girls in Fable 2 are ugly. Really ugly. I stand by my previous statement where I called my character Helga, the super-chuck feminine man-beast.

It's not just that she's ugly, though. It's that she's not purposefully ugly in a fun way. I think it's just bad design. I almost think they designed the entire game around a male protagonist, and at the last minute said "Holy crap! We forgot girls!" and threw a female skin over the imposing, bodybuilder-esque male character model.

I don't want her to look thin and sexy. I just want her to not look like a man-child with a steroid addiction. Up until now, the terrible clothes don't help at all. The the options seem as bulky and cumbersome as the futuristic styro-clothes from the beginning of Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey (sorry, I tried to find an image, but you if you've seen the movie, you know).

I was ready to start a new character when I picked Fable back up, just so I wouldn't have to look at this monstrosity any longer. But that would have meant having to replay a whole lot of game.

Thankfully, on Knothole Island you can find an the Knothole Knight armor, piece by piece. And it looks totally awesome! It makes me look like a normally proportioned bad ass. So now I actually love how my character looks (I just ignore the hideous mess that I know is lurking beneath the armor). And that's a special thing.

Brotherly bonding.

Tonight my brother Justin finally played Xbox with me online. I gave him a console about 5 months ago and it's taken this long to get a chance to sit down and play it. And after all this time, there were a few minutes before we got going where we thought his Xbox was broken.

He could hear sound, but had no picture. He disconnected and re-assembled the set up over and over. On the fifth (would-be final) time, it worked. Magically. We never figured out what was wrong. It's almost more annoying to have it work suddenly with no explanation than to just have it be broken. Now there will be the shadow of a doubt every time he turns it on... "will it work this time?"


hmmm, i look huge here...

Anyway, it worked and that's what mattered. He and I, along with Jesse and Chris C (and Ryan for a minute) played Call of Duty 4. I am good at CoD4. Jesse is not bad. Chris C is amazing. And it must have been frustrating for Justin to play with us, or even online at all. There's a learning curve to every game, and even more so when you've not been playing any games at all. So he didn't get many kills, even when we were supposed to be going easy on each other. But people can be dicks, and sometimes we were.

We started out in a private match with just the 4 of us, but eventually jumped into a full-on match with 12 people, and he did alright. Better than when it was a private match. It's also slightly easier with more people, because you (kind of) become less of a target. It was fun.So here's hoping he'll be back to play again.

TMNT Power.

Fable 2: still damn good.

Yesterday I had to work late, because we have a huge presentation coming up at work. I was out by 6:45 or so, and I picked up Lindsay and Chris S and met Adam at Yum!.

We all went back to our place and played Little Big Planet and Super Street Fighter 2 HD Remix. At around midnight we took Chris S home. I was really tired and had planned to go to bed, but instead I put in Fable 2 and got really into it.

3 hours later, it was very late and I had completed a couple quests and bought the Cemetery Mansion.

I almost started a new game, because I don't like my character. Girls in Fable 2 (which I am) get the shaft. If you are powerful, your appearance reflect that, so I look like a huge linebacker. Not only that, but I'm butt-ugly all over, not just proportionally.

But found some armor that made me took tolerable (unlike my super-powered but super-gimpy Will Users Robe) so I took a tiny hit to my stats, just so I wouldn't have to look at Helga, the super-chuck feminine man-beast.

Fable 2 is awesome, and ever tough I "beat" it, there was still a lot left to do. I got distracted by new releases like Fallout 3 and Gears of War 2, but I'm finally back.

So I'm having a great time finish up some quests and buying lots of property. I plan to download the new Knothole Island content soon, too. But I wanted to take care of a few loose ends, first.

I pointless post about my music buying habits.

I used to never really use iTunes for anything other than file management.I didn't like the strict Digital Rights Management (DRM), because I didn't really realize it was there until it bit me in the tushie.

I burn a fair amount of mix cds, for car trips, dance parties, weekend excursions... not really to give other people, just for myself. But that didn't' sit too well with Apple's DRM.

So I pretty much avoided buying anything once I ran into the problem for the first time. I saw that Apple had the new iTunes Plus, which is DRM free and at a higher quality to boot. Great, but I was still sour from the crap I already bought.

But a while back there was a message on iTunes telling me I had all these songs with DRM, and asking if I'd like to upgrade them to iTunes Plus. For a price. But the price was worth it to me.

So the point of the story is now it's cool with me. I definitely won't buy all my music on iTunes, because I still like to own a physical copy of my media. However, for the times when I just want one song, or it's something I don't care enough to go to the store to get, I'm alright with it now.

That's all.

Aloha, dude.

doing Hawaii my way.

I'm back from Hawaii. I wrote a little each day, so when I get through these photos, I'll post a day by day of the trip, and I'll back-date each post so it lines up with the day it actually happens. So watch out! It will be appearing BENEATH this post shortly....

Aloha Hawaii, Part Six

The last day in Hawaii...

We had sort of an odd situation, because we didn't leave until Midnight. So we didn't have a place to stay from noon onwards. No problem, right? Just check your bags and hang out.

Except we were going on a 3 hour hike through a rain forest, which means we'd probably end up dirty, sweat, and unit for a 10 hour plane ride.

And first we had to go to the zoo. But we had a plan all worked out.


this picture is not from the rain forest, it's from the zoo.


begin rain forest pictures... now.


we started the hike on a old abandoned highway from the 1920's.


dense.


slightly less dense.


tiny path for a tiny person.


the walking sticks were provided for us. i thought they were lame, but they came in damn handy.


all that hiking makes a dude hungry.


the most stylish hiking boots you'll ever see.


the Mr. and Mrs. in our new stick home.


watch out, lindsay! there's falling water behind you!


a lush vista.


the same vista, with 100% more lindsay.


repeat that last caption, but replace lindsay's name with mine.


we look steady, but we are precariously balanced on a couple rocks in the middle of the stream.


weren't you afraid of the wildlife, you ask? not with these guns for protection.


sometimes there was no path.


danger!


peligro (i think that spanish for "danger")!


a peek through the canopy.

We went on the hike in our swimsuits. When we got back, we jumped under the outside showers along the beach, and found a restroom to dress in. We went out for some Japanese food and bought some presents for the people who watched out house and picked us up from the airport.

We hoped a shuttle and were at the airport by 9:15, with a few hours left to wait for a plane. Clean, packed and ready for some sleep.


the end.

Aloha Hawaii, Part Five

Today we went surfing (sorry, no pictures. I don't know how to hold a camera and surf at the same time yet...). The first thing we did was head straight down to a Surf Shop to rent some boards. We tried to just grab a board and go, but it came to light that we had never been, and they strongly recommended we take a lesson. So we did. And it's a good thing we did.

Out guide was named Winnie, and he was a really nice dude. We got right down to business, going over some positions on the beach. It took about 2 minutes, and then we started paddling out. Within about two waves, we were standing and riding waves. Within 5, we could both ride them to their end, probably 100 feet or so. Not every time, but we were totally doing it.

It was awesome. We'd get up on a wave, fall (or once in a while, manage to get back down on the board), paddle back out to our instructor and do it again. Over and over. It was a big work out, because we were going as fast as possible, no breaks, no rest, just go go go. It was a blast.

After that we were pretty tired. We got some food on a roof-top restaurant, and then got a HUGE bubble tea. We walked down the beach to a local aquarium that was near our hotel. We passed through an area with some big, crazy ass trees...


the roots drop down from the branches as the tree expands outwards.


hey you big, crazy tree!


i'm sure the tree loves this...


finally, emerging at the aquarium.


emerging with less awe.


We went to an Aquarium that was just a walk down the beach. It was small, but they had some cool stuff. We took a lot of photos, but I will just post one, since this isn't a biology lesson.


whoa! a peanut butter fish! j/k. it's a jellyfish.

We were so tired by the end we just went straight back to take a nap. After this week, we were painfully tired.

When we woke up we walked for a long time. Lindsay bought some stuff, and we got some awesome, awesome Thai food. Then we had a long walk home. We walked along the beach because we were looking for a certain ship, but couldn't find it. It might sound romantic to walk along a moon-lit Hawaiian beach with your fiance, but Lindsay was pretty unhappy to have to empty the sand out of her shoe every 5 minutes...

Aloha Hawaii : Part Four

This morning I got up at 8:30 and went running. I ran along the beach until I hit the bottom of Diamond Head Crater, which we climbed a few days ago.

It was pretty picturesque, and almost like a scene from a movie. Except by the end I was doubled over and sweating balls. I ran one direction for too long, which made the run back a little longer than need be.

Lindsay and I went to a little Japanese place for an early lunch. They had donburi, which is something I got on a daily basis when I stayed in Japan. But it's hard to find in America, so I ate the shit out of it. Lindsay got classic, Japanese-style Ramen by my request. It was awesome.

Then we got a ride to Hanauma Bay, which is gorgeous. It is amazing. Don't believe me?


crap, one of the only pictures of both of us, and i look like a goon.


we are pretty high up.


the beach.


right side.


left side.


once again, F-yes.

We went snorkeling for hours, even though it was actually kind of cold. The water here is colder than I thought, probably because it's really in the middle of the ocean and not in a gulf.


it's cold but awesome.


those masks are pretty tight.


at this point, the water is warm and the air seems frigid.


lindsay says hello to the fishes.


snorkel gear in hand.

It was a really good time. It felt more "free" then when we took a snorkel tour in Mexico.

There they dropped us off and said "go to it" but we were in a big reef, that was like a large bowl, so we were kind of contained. Here we were on our own from the outset, and the water was much more shallow, so you would skirt over the top of the coral, just inches away in some cases, and you could go in and out and over the crevices and stuff. It was amazing.

But by 4:30 our ride came back, and were were ready to go. By then we were freezing, hungry and tired.

We hopped off the shuttle earlier than out stop, because it went right past Coconut Cafe, which officially has the best Bubble Tea ever (specifically the Milk Tea). So you can imagine how many times we've been there since the trip began (hint: once or twice a day since we found it). But it is good.

That night we headed to the other side of Waikiki Beach to look around. We took a trolley.


outside our hotel at night.


on the trolley.

Lindsay found a Japanese market and bought way more Japanese candy than one person would ever want and/or need.


too much cute japanese (and one austratlian) candy.

I'm not sure if she'll ever eat any of it. I think she just wants to look at it.

Aloha Hawaii : Part Three

Working out in Hawaii is a sweaty affair. Every morning so far I've done some exercising, and each time it seems hotter and hotter. Maybe it's only been twice so far...

Today we spent all day at the Polynesian Cultural Center. We left at about noon and it's an hour away. The trip there was gorgeous:


fuck. yes.

The place was pretty fun. It's basically like Epcot center for the Polynesian Islands, but maybe slightly more authentic. Maybe. You walk around from "Village" to "Village" and get presentations and participate in activities. Not my #1 idea of a good time, but it's also pretty interesting.


lindsay loves coconuts.


this dude was more of a comedian than anything else.


this is a 12 year old.


king of the (highly manicured) jungle.


me, standing with signage directing adventurous souls to the traditional hawaiian imax theater.

The sun was brutal mid-day, but it got a lot nicer after a while. At the end of the day there was a luau, which was huge. There was a butt ton of food. We were seated randomly, but we ended up with a table of all newly-weds or newly engaged people. Weird. Well, one couple had been married for 12 years, but my must have gotten married at like, 15, because they weren't that much older than us...

The chances of being seated with 6 other young, normal people seems slim, considering how many old people were there. And non-english-speaking Japanese people. Either way, we wouldn't have had much to talk about. So that wasn't bad.

There was a show afterward that ranged from totally cheesy to death defying-ly awesome.

It was pretty fun. Maybe not the awesome-est thing in the world, but it could have been a whole lot worse.


she's a looker.


he's a looker, too.