Category: Weblog

Ok, so what’s been going on around here. It’s Sunday morning and I’m sitting outside with one eye on the girls in the spa and one eye on this. I keep having to stop and help them put the face masks on for diving. I’m trying to get them used to swim gear early so they hopefully will get into snorkling and scuba diving when they get older. Zoe can snorkle already.
It’s my parents 39th anniversary today and we’ll be heading over to see them this afternoon. 39 years. That’s a long time. Happy anniversary Mom & Dad. For the life of me, I can’t figure out what to ge them. Over the last few years we’ve run the technological gamut with new TVs, DVD players, and even a Tivo. There’s nothing new to get them…
I’ve been doing a little more gaming recently, much to Michele’s chagrin. She went out on Friday night with Jenny and was suprised that when she got home post midnight I was still up ‘killing Nazis’. It was actually nice to have quiet chat at 1 AM. To bad we realized in 5 short hours the children would stir and one of us had to get up with them. Life is short, stay up late.
Last week I had spent some time downloading and patching Neocron. Yoshi at work suggested I give it a try. After downloading over 1 gig I booted the game it patched over night. The next day I tried to play and was completely clueless. It’s first person shooter style, but the controls use the arrow keys instead. After trying to understand what’s going on, I realized there was too steep of a learning curve. I read the FAQ and found out there was a single player tutorial version. After a quick 100 meg d/l, I was in tutorial mode and it all made sense. I went back and played a bit of the multiplayer and it appears to me that it’s kinda like Deus Ex online. Lots of running back and forth figuring out how to solve things. The combat is simple and unrewarding. It doesn’t appear that traditional FPS skills are of benefit in Neocron. It’s a lot of ‘aim in the general direction of the enemy and shoot with your biggest weapon’. I’m minimizing it a bit and I’m sure rabid Neocron fanboys would jump down my throat. The game does look cool as a MMORPG, but it’s not competitive with Quake & Unreal level FPS games. I’m sure a ton of people will play the game, but I’m not sure I want to spend a bunch of time in the resource gathering mode.
While I was on Fileplanet, saw a game called Battlefield 1942 as a demo download. I had seen mention of the game on the genmay.com message boards earlier but wasn’t sure what it was. I d/led and installed the game. All I can say is Wow! It’s a multiplayer team based FPS but in the tradition of Team Fortress and Wolfenstein, but this game takes it to a new level. Perhaps it could be called ‘WWII Online, done right’.
The game rocks because besides being able play the foot soliders gunning down the enemy with small arms, you can take over any gear in the game. Any gear. You can drive the aircraft carrier, the tanks, the APCs, aim and fire the gun emplacements, AA guns, landing craft, etc.
It’s a blast. It ships in 15 days on September 10th, and I’m all over it. Give it a try.
OK, I was going to try to update about geocaching and my toe nail, but I need to go do some work outside. More later as I find time.

I went out last night with Brad & Martin to have some beers. In my brilliance, I walked two blocks and bought some cigars for us to smoke out in the bar’s ‘garden’ section. Nicotine & alcohol. By the end of the night I was in full control of the jukebox and subject the bar to 7 songs from a Grateful Dead album, including Space. Finally, as our conversation dropped to a minimum and we all started staring into the distance and/or eyelids, it was time to go home.
This morning I’m a bit rough around the edges. I went to the supermarket to pick up a few thigns and could tell that most of the other shoppers had not been out late the night before. I was struggling with explicitly commanded my body. “Legs, MOVE. Arms, MOVE.” Others there were bright, cheery, and clean, discussing the merits of the various apples on display. I grabbed a cup of coffee, the needed items and headed out.
So while I have stories about geocaching, gaming, toenails, and what not, they will have to wait until I get my shit together.

It’s Friday morning here in lovely South Pasadena, and that can only mean one thing, It’s Trash Day. The town has decided that we are so upscale, that we do not bring our trash out to the curb like other reasonable communites. We pay extra so the trash hauling people drive onto our driveway and empty the barrels where they sit. I don’t agree, but the Keep South Pasadena Unsightly contingent is strong.
What this means to your hero is that every Friday morning I need to get up and move Michele’s truck out of the driveway before 7AM. 7AM is when the trash haulers begin to arrive. I also tend to uncover the barrels to make it a little easier on the guys.
Today I moved Michele’s truck and went open the barrels when I saw a big mess. Some woodland creature had pulled a bag out of the trash barrel ripped it open to get to the contents. As I walked up, I saw this:

Rather than simple wait like corn in the field for my contacts to arrive, I decided to do something about it. I called CibaVision, makers of the special SoftPerm lenses I need to see. I called the general information number, determined to get the answers I needed.
Rather than use the tough, but effective, ‘man-who-won’t-take-no-for-an-answer‘ method, I opted for the ‘quiet-and-pleasant-but-persistant‘ method instead. After repeating the phrase, “Good afternoon, I’d like to speak to someone about your SoftPerm contact lenses.” to five different people and enduring lengthy wait times while on hold, I finally reached a woman who told me she could answer my questions. After explaining the situation and asking how long the contact lenses should take to make, she said words I have not heard in a while from a customer support person. She said, “Mr. Pusateri, let me try to help you out.” She asked the name and number of my eye doctor and called his office.
She called back and said that unfortunately my specific lens was unavailable anywhere in the world, but that there was a set of tolerance lenses in Canada. A tolerance lens is a lens that would fit my eye correct and be comfortable, but would not correct my vision entirely. It would be something that would let me look at a computer or find things in a room. She had requested them be shipped to my eye doctor and said they shoudl arrive mid-next week.
Viola! Ask and ye shall receive. I can only hope the new Rx for the the shape of these lenses works. More news as it happens.
Speaking of corn fields, here’s the scene from the backyard.

I had yet another appointment to see the eye doctor today. Still no new contacts. He assured me that my right eye was fine and that I could continue wearing a lens in it, even though it was causing me some pain.
In all the time I had trouble with my eyes, I’ve never asked what my vision is in the 20/xx style. I knew the power in diopters of my lenses, but not the more traditional rating. I asked abou this today. My left eye, the better one, has a vision greater than 20/2000. Yes, twenty – slash – two thousand. The doctor says it’s actually worse than that, but that is high as the quick measurement with a chart in an office goes. My right eye is worse than that.
Lovely…

One last thing…
I put up a link to Important Quotes on the left hand side. Enjoy.

Scumbag congressman Bob Barr, has been ‘bounced out of Congress‘ by a fellow Republican. I can only hope this sounds the death knell of Newt ‘Where Are You Now’ Gingrich’s ’94 GOP landslide.
Important Tip: If you bring home a turkey sandwich from work on Monday do not wait until Tuesday night to open your briefcase and find it. The sandwich will be stinky at this point.
Lastly, this the the pinnacle of home computing.

I wrote up a review for Rebecca Blood’s book on weblogs, The Weblog Handbook. Rebecca linked to my review, but people seemed more interested in my theory that weblogs started with .plan files.
Virulent Memezilla discussed the idea a bit. Graham of VM brings up the good point that signatures also were a form of personal expression that changed regularly. He also linked to a post by Anthony Hicks that discusses the role of .plan files as the precursor to weblogs.
Plep thought it was a good enough insight to rate linkage.
Radio Free Blogistan wasn’t so much interested in .plan files, but seems to have gotten quite enthused about tracking the term ‘navel gazing’ I used in the review.
I was also surprised to see links from two places I had never heard of before, Weblog Bookwatch and All Consuming. Both sites appears to scan weblogs looking for links about specific books. In this case, I think it was the fact that I linked to both Rebecca Blood’s book, The Weblog Handbook and Matt Haughey’s book, We Blog: Publishing Online with Weblogs, that I popped up on those site.
It’s an interesting concept to have meta-blogs that automatically scan for various bits of data and synthesize an analysis of what people are posting. After many false starts, perhaps the age of intelligent agents is upon us.

I had to take the day off from work today due to my eyes. I’m still just wearing the contact in my right eye. Yesterday it was hurting all day. I had to give it a rest. Unfortunately without my contacts I can’t see. Even if I tried to wear my glasses at work, I wouldn’t be able to drive the freeway with my glasses on. Overall suckage…
Right now I’m squinting at the screen from about 8 inches away.
Michele asked me to help put up the border wallpaper in the kids room with her. She had also shanghaied her cousin James into the wallpaper effort earlier and decided to add me to her crew since I was home. I put on my glasses and we spent a couple hours spashing the walls with wallpaper glue. It’s done now and the border looks good. Pictures to come when I get the chance. Michele was so please with the outcome she went out and got In ‘n Out burgers for lunch.
More later…

We got back a few minutes ago from a small party at our friends house. They recently moved into a new house. They moved only a block, but the new house is bigger and has more land. It’s the first time we’ve visited since they moved and they really put a lot of work into fixing it up. The kids all had a great time and it was good to hang out and talk with friends.
Last night, I went and saw XXX with Martin and Len. We debated on whether to see Goldmember or Pluto Nash, but we ended up seeing XXX since it’s the kind of movie to see on the big screen. It’s not a bad movie. I enjoyed it and had some good laughs. A couple night ago I finally watched Pitch Black on DirecTV and understood why people thought Vin Diesel was going to be a big action star. I had seen him in Fast & Furious and Boiler Room and was unimpressed. He was good in Pitch Black and I look forward to those sequels.
XXX is just a modern version of James Bond, right down to the specific characters. Samuel Jackson plays the M role and a geeky dude plays the Q role. Everything was typical Bond hyperbole and over the top stunt action. I was hoping for a new twist on the spy thriller, but there wasn’t much out of the ordinary. Nevertheless, it was fun.
Lastly, I recently finished the book on Salt I had been reading. The book was long and took me about two months to get through. Everyone around me at work and home has had to endure my stroies about salt while I’ve been reading the book. The writer, Mark Kurlansky, definitely did his research and it shows. There is nothing left for me to learn about salt, I now know it all. If you like reading history, you’ll probably enjoy this book. If you are looking for action and adventure, this ain’t your book.
The funny thing is that as long as it took to read this book and the chore that it was to finish it, I find myself interested in his book on cod. Evidently, the cod fish drove much of the economic development of North America and the eventually collapse of the fishing banks. Someone stop me before I buy another 300 page history book…