First test...passed!

Yup, Mecca did it's best to tempt me into breaking my 3 day old promise not to buy any video games this month - Resident Evil 4 for the Cube for $14.99. Great price, but I didn't bite. Of course, there is still a chance I could weaken before Wednesday. ;)

Looking Ahead...

Here it is, the last 1/2 hour of January 2006 and I haven't commited to anything yet....so I better get a move on.

1. First off, I need tools to do anything constructive. To that end, I have 2 books on making computer games that I want to get through this year.

2. I want to try to make at least a few games this year. Prime canidates are a version of Melee, Happy Life, and Sub Search, but I also want to try to make some games that don't fit any particular mold. Just quick mini-games are good too.

3. With the exception of thrift store runs, I want to make every other month a game buying free time.

4. I want to do the thrift stores at least every other week, with an eye for old out of print titles.

I guess those are the main points. Some other stuff like collecting patches, can be done when ever. Some of the things I plan seem rather AR, but that's nothing new.

Ok, let's see how it goes. First up is the books. I'll update during the month and sum up at the end of Febuary.

Thrifty Thursday

I finally got back to something I haven't done for months - visited the Poway thrift stores. While this used to be a source for my Chessasaur's Game Fossils eBay sales, its become more of an archeological expedition for old PC games. People are dumping old games there and because a number of the game companies have closed over the years, there are things there you won't find anywhere else (well, except for eBay of course). I got three today - one for Sarah, one because I couldn't let it stay there (the MS 3D Moviemaker for .50 cents) and one old Sierra On-Line game. My criteria for these games is that they be on CDROM (as that denotes they are at least around the time of Windows 95) and not be horribly scratched up. Actually, most discs I find at the thrift stores are in remarkably good shape. I guess I collect these old games almost the way a stamp collector does - I keep them in CaseLogic books, mostly for viewing but I also think of them as little portals to other worlds. Sort of like that old Star Trek episode with the library of teleport discs.

Ironic Moment of the Day: I had to wait for a Mercedes sedan to pull out and leave before the Jaguar in front of me could park - at the Salvation Army thrift store. :P

And to think I hesitated...

Yep, one of my favorite lines from Hellraiser II, but very appropriate at times. This time it's for my recent purchase of a subscription to a new newsgroup server, Easynews. I have given up on the Cox news service - they never have complete articles anymore and (compared to Easynews) they are slow as shit. I haven't seen speed like this since the glory days of @Home. I honestly didn't think that an outside group could be as fast as one that was provided by my ISP (some stupid assumption that the systems were on a part of the Cox network), but that is way wrong. I got an audiobook off the groups last night that was about 2000 posts in something like 10 or 15 minutes! On Cox, even if they had all the files, it would have been something in the hours range. Question is will I go over the 20gb a month? Well, if I do, it will be money well spent.

Weakend

Not a great weekend. I was sick Friday and Saturday, and then Ghost was sick on Sunday. Not sure what it is about my luck but when I get sick, it always seems to be either a holiday or a weekend. Well, I use less PTO that way, I guess.

The way viruses spread always scares me. Ghost got sick from her parents who got sick from visiting Di's grandmother in a nursing home where several other people had it. If we ever have a real pandemic, the word chaos won't even begin to describe what an infected area will be like. Businesses would lose billions of dollars as no one in a society that is already health conscious (did I mention seeing a cart sanitizer at the grocery store the other day?) will risk exposing themselves or loved ones to any but the briefest human contact. Worse, we've become a culture that is so reliant on being provided for (fast food, grocery stores, etc) that to quarantine an area the size of a major city would require a supply chain of biblical proportions. It will be like New Orleans, but on a larger scale. (I still can't get those images of desperate people clutching water bottles out of my head.) And trying to actually contain people in an infected 'hot' zone sounds easy on paper (or in the movies) but if you have a population that knows its territory, they will find a way of escaping. Not to mention the inevitable problems of infected people leaving an area before even realizing that they have something.

Hmm...bleak stuff. Must be Monday.

Jury Out-of-Service

Jury duty yesterday that involved nothing more than sitting and waiting. Thanks to the 1-day/1-trail system, I'm done for another year.

Sat next to a middle school English teacher (poor soul). She was grading papers that looked like ransom notes. I asked why they weren't in script and she said some students can't even read script handwriting, much less write it. How times have changed!

Next to her was a guy who got involved in the conversation after I mentioned that our daughter was autistic. After I mention that she's doing well in school, but isn't going to be able to live on her own, can't hold a conversation, etc., he asks me if she is doing ABA training. I say I haven't heard of it and then he goes all Rimland on me, talking about the special training his kid is getting, the social interaction he is getting (play dates, etc), the special diet he is one (no dairy or wheat), and that they tested him for heavy metals (his tin is very high, I'm told). He says his son tests positive in 7 of the 15 (current) autism characteristics (Sarah was 11 out of 13, but that was years ago). Then I ask how old his son is. "Four and a half," he says. Um...yeah. Glad I didn't get on a panel with this guy. (He also said that ADHD was now on the autistic spectrum. I don't think so, fella.)

Finally getting an all-in-one MP130 before all the new systems require expensive cartridges. Thank you OfficeMax for being the only retailier that still had some (and free shipping too).

Video Clip Heaven Times 2

Been up late the last two nights on some video websites. YouTube.com and Google's video section both have a collection of video clips that will keep you clicking and watching for hours. Some of my favorites were some crazy cats, a Japanese shiba inu commercial, a WoW video of a funny song from a musical called Avenue Q, and an amazing video of a little girl at a machine gun show. Oh, and let's not forget Matrix ping pong.

All these videos got me thinking about me making something with that camcorder that's been on ice of all these months. I at least got it out and found that I can record directly to the memory stick for up to 44 minutes, which is cool as I can just stick the stick into the computer and read the videos without trying to capture from the firewire port. The quality isn't as good (the MPEG resolution is too small for TV purposes) but the convienence is too tempting. A new digital camcorder would be much more than I would be willing to spend at this point. And it's not like I'm tripping over good stuff to make video's of. (I noticed that for a lot of these clips having friends was very beneficial.)

Anyhow, I do need to look into seeing if someon makes a webcam that can focus up close. I've always wondered about making a mini-studio for making animation clips with.

Also on my list of To-Do's is making a web page that summarizes all the projects I've thought of making. If someone steals one off the list, no problem. At least the idea might see the light of day.

Jury duty tomorrow. :P