Served, old school

Well, Carol said she was pretty good at Ms. Pac man and Galaga. She's an honest one that Carol. We played many games of both on Sunday and as Carol got her chops back rapidly made me look like I'd only just picked up a controller for the first time that day. Currently she has about twice my top score in both games and is still improving faster than I am.

I'm very, very impressed.

Damn those bug alien assholes...

Classic games

Just discovered my lovely girlfriend was a bit of a video game nerd back in the day. As if she didn't have enough going for her already, the icing on this cake is miles deep at this point.

http://www.amazon.com/Jakks-Ms-Pac-Man-TV-Game/dp/B0008JIM3U

I'm going to check around a bit and see if I can buy it outright at any local stores to avoid waiting for shipping .

Asus eee PC

I'm thinking of splurging. My laptop, while functional, is aging rapidly and very bulky. With a 15 inch screen the thing is a beast. When I got it I was using it as my primary PC. The large size was preferable then, it was nice to have a larger screen when spending hours in front of it. Now though I have a dedicated box and monitor, the laptops primary use is as a (surprise!) travel computer. The computer weighs 8 pounds, which gets awful heavy in my backpack after awhile. The dimensions of the thing are more of an issue than the weight really. 14.5 x 11.5 x 1.8 inches is awfully big in a bag and even more unwieldy to carry by hand.

So, what I'm getting at is my laptop is too big for my needs and I'm thinking about a smaller one. The smaller one in question is the Asus eee pc, one of the hotter gadgets that were released in 07. The asus measures a tinsy wincy 8.9 x 6.5 x 1.4 inches which will almost fit in a pocket and practically disappear in a bag. The device is pretty stripped down technically. The processor is just under a Gh with 512mb ram and either 2 or 4Gb of flash hard drive space. It comes with a in house linux OS that is designed to be as user friendly as possible. It boots quick, loads apps faster and is designed to get users on line as simply as possible. It's also possible to strip off the kids gloves and use the KDE environ running under the surface which is a comfort to people like me who like to tweak the OS a bit.

The thing runs from $300 - $450 depending on hard drive space and the presence or absence of a webcam. Right now I'm thinking about the eee surf.
http://www.laptopmag.com/review/laptops/asus-eee-pc-4g-surf.aspx
4Gb of drive space and no webcam. The lack of HD space is a little troubling but with almost all my media now being hosted online on mp3tunes/flicker/googledocs I really only need so much room for apps. I think it'll work nicely.

Now the issue is convincing myself to acutally cough up the cash. More research is needed.

http://www.amazon.com/Screen-Celeron-Processor-Preloaded-Galaxy/dp/B000ZLSXJO/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1207418370&sr=8-1

BHIP - erac fo memsys demrofni na!

Hail Satan

Birthdays at DHS make me sick

I'm sure this isn't just the case at the dept. of human services and sub-agencies but DHS is surely a leader in the practice of culturally making its employees fat. Store bought birthday cakes make me feel like I imagine I would feel had I just eaten some wax fruit. Unwell.

Yes I had more later that day and you would have too.

Medical Porn!

While rooting around the abandoned wing of the hospital today one of my co-workers made an interesting discovery in an old slide projector case. I first caught wind that an interesting discovery had been made when several of my co-workers began breaking into giggles and cries in sequence down the hall. Upon investigating I was handed a couple of old slides with the warning that I may be scarred. I only looked at the first one long enough to see what it was, to avoid looking like a pervert. It was a frame of a man and a woman having sex. Nothing too exotic. I made what felt like an appropriate face with what seemed an appropriate accompanying sound and handed it back amidst more giggles. I guess the idea was to use the slides to get an idea of what sexually aroused sex offenders. I imagine this test was based around asking the offenders what aroused them rather than looking for a more... physical response. Who knows though?

Enrique is a comic nerd!

I love learning little tidbits about co-workers, especially characters like Enrique. Turns out he's a honest to god comic nerd. Some comics turned up in the abandoned wing of the hospital today and Enrique was able to give a synopsis of all the story arcs involved in the comics as well as the background goings on in the industry and collectors circles at the time of their respective publications. I got the impression he was into it but ultimately not very savy as far as the collection market is concerned. He thought the death of superman series was a collectable. Yea, "snort", maybe in like, "snort", 1000 years! "Heh, snort".

Now who's the geek.

All circuits are busy now?

Trying to make a call today around 5pm. No ringing just a authoratative voice saying, "We're sorry, all circuits are currently busy. Please try again at a later time. Error code blahbitty blah blah...". Or some such. Tried a couple of times in a row and got the same message. After a couple of minutes the third attempt went through as normal. What was that all about?

New Girlfriend

I'm dating a woman named Carol Pelton. I met her through the hospital replacement project although she no longer works with me. She works as the Trust Manager for the Oregon Cultural Trust, is 43, has a 13 year old daughter and is great in all the ways that I consider important in a partner. I'm very happy.

Car Wreck

I drove my car into the back of a woman's honda doing about 30mph. I was merging onto the mission overpass and didn't see the cars parked up ahead. I was looking over my shoulder checking for cars in the lane I was merging into when I hit her. Surprisingly violent, airbag went off, I yelled "fuck" and it was over. Smoke or powder willed the air inside the car. I bailed out into the street after grabbing a couple things and activating the hazard lights, trying not to breath the air.

By the time I was out the woman I had hit was out too. I said something about getting off to the side of the road. After that it's more or less a blur of phone calls, authorities arriving, information swapping and ultimately my car getting towed away. My dad gave me a ride home.

After the fact I got my DMV, AAA, and towing arrangements made, filled out the necessary forms and eventually went to work.

I declared the car totaled and sold it to a scrap yard for $250. That may have been a mistake as it wasn't really in that bad of shape but I just really didn't want to deal with it at the time.

I wound up spending around 4 hours in court just to pay $40 less. Didn't even cover the time I missed at work. Still, interesting to see the court proceedings.

Shitty, but I haven't really missed my car, it's mainly the waste and the inconvenience to the other person that gets me now.