Not for Children

There has been some debate in Cruft Manor about the appropriateness of Adult Swim cartoons for the girls. For a while we were watching Futurama, but now it is once again disallowed.
Tonight Zoe and I watched the end of a show around 9PM when the following scene took place:

DAD hits guide on remote, sees Aqua Teen Hunger Force on and switches to it,
hoping to see the talking french fries, ’cause talking french fries are funny.


ANNOUNCER
… and let’s seen what happens when we blow this nun’s brains out with a shotgun …


DAD switches the channel before the shotgun fires.


DAD
Um, I guess that Adult Swim really isn’t for kids…


ZOE
Ha-ha-ha-ha! They said “blow this nun’s brains out”! Ha-ha-ha-ha!


DAD
Your mother is going to be so mad at me.


ZOE runs to find MOTHER.


ZOE
Ha-ha-ha-ha! They said “blow this nun’s brains out”! Ha-ha-ha-ha!


DAD
(attempting not to laugh)
Ha-ha-ha-ha!


ZOE
Ha-ha-ha-ha!


MOTHER shoots flames from her eyes at DAD.

Lesson: Do not switch to Adult Swim while children are present.

No excuses

Some may have noticed that I have not been updating my blog reguarly. This is mainly because I have not been updating my blog regularly. No excuses, I’ve simply not been doing it.
In the latest round of ego boosting into the stratosphere, I’m quoted in Information Week blathering on about RSS and all the hard work other people did at the office that I get to take credit for. There’s even a picture of me looking serious with baggy eyes. I guess I need some sleep.
Here are few sites to read that will keep you entertained. Go, read them, blogroll them, and leave some comments, my faithful droogies.
My old friend from high school, Kirill is blogging away now. Kirill is the smartest person I’ve ever met. Through high school and college we were as tight as brothers. We’ve drifted apart over the years, but I’m happy to see he’s doing well and already retired before forty.
My co-workers Mister P. and Travis have also been posting regularly. Do be sure to check out Mister P.’s site Neoprene Wedgie about his preparation for a triathlon.
Even my friend Paul has posted a bit on his site about Terrible News.
Scott “Lum the Mad” Jennings always keeps me entertained over at Broken Toys.

Camping with pyros

Back in the days before children, Michele and I used to go camping. In fact, we got engaged on a camping trip up through Big Sur.
For whatever reason, laziness or busy-ness, we hadn’t taken the girls camping. So last weekend I took the girls up to Millard Canyon in the local hills for their first outing. I had picked up a new huge tent and a pair of air mattresses to make things a little less spartan than my old two man tent and 15 year old foam pads.
Once we arrived in camp, the girls were excited and ready to begin. They were intrigued by the campfire ring and wanted to play with the fire. They gathered a few twigs and tossed them in. Shrieks of glee filled the campground as the tinder ignited. Soon they were tossing everything not bolted down into the fire ring.


The camp host Lonny showed them a pile of old lumber that he said they could burn and they went to town, hauling and burning. Poking and prodding at the fire, they were grinning ear to ear. Of course, they burned themselves with hot poking sticks, as all children do, much to my chagrin.
They started to clamor for the marshmellows to roast. I threw a few clean burning logs in and soon set them up to cook a traditional S’more.
Giggling like the schoolgirls they are, they roasted the marshmellows while I prepared the chocolate and graham crackers. Soon enough they were chowing down on S’mores.
On the second batch, I was able to snap this quick photo before they wolfed it down.

Throughout the trip, the girls were enthralled with the fire. “Daddy, can we feed the fire?” was the most oft heard phrase of the day. Once they realized they could burn the baby wipes I brough to keep them clean, they became the most hygenic children around constantly finding excuses to wipe up and toss it into the fire.
True pyromaniacs to the core. They are truly my daughters to have such fire loving genes in their DNA.
When I asked the girls what we should on our next camping trip, their answer was, “more wood”.

Newegg Lanfest 2K5 ftw !!!1!!1

I went to the Newegg Lanfest yesterday at the Pasadena Convention Center. It was mainlining PC gaming direct to the brain, and not for the faint of heart. BTW, the acronym ‘ftw’ stands for the gaming term ‘for the win’, denoting something that leads to success.
There were three main parts of the Lanfest. First was the trade show of probably 20+ vendors of high level PC hardware. There are some truly impressive monitors out there if you are willing to part with the cash. The high end LCD screens are truly fantastic. The vendors helped contribute to the gooie bag given away to each attendee. Full of swag, and even including a t-shirt, the goodie bag was instantly put to use by the gamers.
Second was the Bring Your Own Computer (BYOC) area, where you can bring your gaming rig from home and match it your skills against others in the room. At the Lanfest, there was room for over 400 BYOC computers. When I sat down at 4PM on Saturday, it was hard to find an empty seat.


The third major part was the tournaments. Newegg was giving away over $70,000 in cash and hardware to the winners. The tourneys were run on the hardware provided by Newegg to ensure that everyone had a level playing field when it came to the computers and made sure that skill was the deciding factor.
People are damn serious about these tourneys. Teams compete in most of the tourneys and they had practiced a lot for this. I heard several heated discussions aobut performance by teams that were sitting next to me in the BYOC area.
The tourneys even had their own play-by-play provided by Inside the Game. To a gamer like me, this is just as compelling as any other sport on TV.
Turning to my experience, I had a good time, but the next Lanfest I go to, I’d like to go with friends. I did talk to many people, but it would have been nice to have a few buddies around to eat with and watch my gear when I wandered around.
I arrived at around 4PM and setup my computer. The Lanfest goes all night, so I told Michele I didn’t know when I’d be home. I started gaming with Call of Duty, just to see what it was like. It was pretty much like playing on a public server, with uber-chaos in Deathmatch.
After about a half hour, I moved over to Battlefield 2 and had a good time. People were using a little voice communications, but for the most part it felt like a very speedy public server with minimal coordination. The lack of coordination could be frustrating if the other team got a hold of most of the aircraft and rained down destruction.
In the evening, Newegg brought in pizza for everyone and it was all-you-can-eat. Watching hungry gamers wolf down free pizza is not a pretty sight. Also, thoughout the night, Newegg had scantily clad young women doing give aways of free stuff based on your wristband number. They must have given away a hundred different items. I didn’t win, 🙁 .
Around 2AM, I realized that I had been gaming for ten hours straight and was having trouble staying alert, as I nodded off while waiting to respawn. I decided to go home. I packed up my stuff, made my way through the three levels of security that made sure I was only taking my stuff.
Overall, a good time, but would have been better with a friends to squad up with. Newegg did a great job in pulling this thing off and it was well worth the entry fee.

Lanfest in LA

I’m planning to attend the Newegg LanFest 2k5 this weekend.
It looks like a lot for fun with a Bring Your Own Computer section of over 400 seats for gaming. With Battlefield 2 and Call of Duty being played, I’ll be in heaven.
So if you are a gamer, maybe I’ll see you at the Lanfest this weekend.

Pure Pwnage

Being a Pro Gamer (like me) means that I’m always up on the latest stuff on the intraweb.
Previously I have mentioned my love of Xfire, the gaming IM client. Recently, they added a downloading feature to auto-download movies and other large files. Since I’m Pro, I download the good WoW & FPS movies and watch them regularly.
The Xfire crew recently added the Pure Pwnage movies, and they OWN. Pure Pwnage is the story of Jeremy, a Pro, and his brother Kyle, a noob. Kyle like works the camera and stuff and Jeremy just basically owns noobs all the time.
Pro recommendations:
If you are an all-around Pro (like me), then start at Episode 1
If you are Pro in FPS, then start at Episode 5 (BOOM! Headshot!)
If you are Pro in WoW, then start at Episode 6
Go NOW and download the episodes at Pure Pwnage.
If you don’t play games (that means you Mom), this will be incomprehensible stuff. Mainly because you are a noob and don’t understand the joy of owning.
Seriously Mom, don’t download these movies. It will take way to long for me to explain it to you.

Chocolicious Wonkacakes

Loyal Cruft readers, I am quite vexed with you. It was only this Saturday that I stumbled across Chocolicious Wonkacakes at our local 7-Eleven. After reading my previous treatise on Sno-Balls, and knowing my love of gaily colored treats, not one of you had the decency to inform me that such a tasty new Wonka treat was on the market.
Note the freshness date is about to expire any day now. Had I not found the Wonkacakes, they might have been whisked off the shelves without any testing being possible.
Have no fear, I have done my research and can present the secrets of the Chocolicious Wonkacakes.


You simply can’t resist this packaging. I mean really, if it’s got Johnny Depp’s face on it, you have to buy it.

Looks like the standard Hostess cupcake except in purple and orange. The flavor was not different that standard chocolate & white frosting. I was eager to taste some unique Wokna flavor like a Snozzberry, but no such luck.

The true beauty of the Wonkacake is revealed once inside. Yes, a purple creme filling is at the heart of the Wonkacake. Once again, I hoped for a delightful new Wonka taste and strained my tastebuds for even a hint of berry. Alas, it tastes like the standard white creme filling.
You don’t think that Hostess is simply using the same recipe as their normal chocolate cupcake and only changing the food dye color? Naw…