Author: Michael

Friday Night

I moved the beer from the primary fermenter to the secondary fermenter. I measured the specific gravity and the rough calculation is 4% beer. Not bad. A few more days to eek out the last bit of fermentation and I’ll bottle it.
Tivo News:
Tivo announced several new options today at CES. They are all great. I don’t knwo which one to get…
You can get a Tivo with a DVD player built-in.
You can get a Tivo with broadand access that you can access from the internet and move clips to other Tivos in your house.
You can get a Tivo that records and plays HDTV.
Health Update:
Will all you stop worrying about me? Sheesh it’s not like I’m gunna keel over.

Kickstart

Ready? Here we go.
After a several day posting hiatus, I am back. I’m not quite back in the groove, but I’m back.
Thanksgiving was fun. We enjoyed the traditional roasted turkey and a smoked turkey as well. I brined the turkey and Martin smoked it. It was kind of fun to start smoking the turkey the night before. Martin, Casey, & I drank a few beers and poked at the fire for a while. It was nice for me since I went home and went to sleep. Poor Martin was up tending the smoker all night.
My father loved the smoked turkey, so I expect we’ll be smoking another one next year.
I finished reading Vanishing Act last week. I really enjoyed it. It was a solid read with a good story arc and plenty of surprises that kept me guessing as to what would happen next. Thomas Perry’s writing about the underworld is fantastic. I still think Metzger’s Dog is his best story, but this one ranks up with Butcher’s Boy and Sleeping Dogs.
On the linkage front, go read this Being Daddy. It’s funny ’cause it’s true.
Geocaching front: We went geocaching on Sunday. Here’s the story of the Where the Wild Things Are cache. I did another geocache today, but I haven’t written it up yet.
Children front: As a Hanukah present, we took the girls on a trip to Build-a-Bear. People without children may find this strange.
Technology front: I picked a new toy for Michele. One of the drawbacks of the MSN Companion we have in the kitchen is that it does not play audio. I bought a modded Virgin Webplayer as a replacement. It has a hard drive and Windows 98 installed and is a full computer. After a few minutes of fiddling, I had it playing MP3s and streaming audio. Michele is happy.


Television front: In the last 3 days, I have watched 5 episodes of the Sopranos. I had let them build up in the Tivo and to the point that I was way out of date. I am super-saturated with Sopranos at this point. I think they are going to leave us hanging in the finally and not wrap up any loose ends. All I can say is that Paulie Walnuts is crazy.
Over the last several days, there were several other things that I considered post-worthy, but right now, I am too tired to remember them. More later.

Yes, I am a turbo-geek

It’s 12:30AM and I’ve got Warcraft 3.

I got to Fry’s about 11:30 and was amazed to see a parking lot full of cars. Wow, I guess there will be a few people here.

I went inside and there were Fry’s drones greeting people and handing them flyers about special midnight deals on crap. I ignored the tempting model rocket kits and George Foreman grills and walked over to the software section.

Sitting there was a displa with only a few copies of Warcraft left. Not many people around. I grabbed a copy and thought, “Boy, that was easy and it’s not even Midnight yet.”

The fry’s drones began to restock the displays with more copies and then I moved up to the front of the stores and saw what was going on. I could hold the game before Midnight, but I was not allowed to buy it yet.

Alot of people were buying the big Collector’s Edition verison with a bunch of dumb ass stuff inside. Fuck that shit. I only pay extra for the id Software tins…

I waited for a half hour for the clock to hit Midnight. In line was the a expected clumps of 20-something guys with the occasional girlfriend tagging along. People were loudly discussing their experience in the Beta. What suprised me was the number of mothers there. There was at least a half dozen moms there with their young teen sons buying them Warcraft. Now that’s love.

Just before H-hour, all 30+ front cashregisters were manned by Fry’s staff. Since I had time to kill, I made the rough estimate that there was 200+ people in line to buy the game.

The watch on the lead Fry’s drone hit 12:00Am and the selling began. I was in the first wave of 30 to hit the registers. Three minutes later I was walking by the Fry’s Door Nazis with a smirk on my face as they asked me to show my receipt. Continued walking right out the door much to there chagrin.

Time to load the game…

Warcraft ]|[

It’s 10:52PM. Warcraft 3 is released in 68 minutes at Fry’s in Burbank.

I’m thinking about going, but if I go it will be a moment of uber-geekdom.

I wonder if they’ll have beers? Will I be the only one?

Two things

ONE
If my wife had a weblog, it would be something like lifewithageek.com, except there’d be more about quilting…

TWO
I have been a bit jealous of my younger brother and the Washington, DC area weblogger get-togethers he attends. He tells me they are great fun and involve much beer drinking.

In my search for a similar meeting place in Southern California, I stumbled upon meetup.com. A site devoted to enabling just this kind of gatherings.

If you check out this particular Meetup you will find it only has 3 people involved. This is where YOU come in. YOU sign up and attend and then it will be a big rollicking par-tay!