Update on our ongoing flooded-room snafu: The contractor says he’s “still putting a bid together.” He also says he told Heritage to send people out to “suck the water out of the carpet.” Heritage denied this, but arranged for a carpet-cleaning service to come out tomorrow morning. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me; why clean the carpets when the source of the leak still hasn’t been fixed? Won’t they just get wet all over again? Well, whatever. At least these Castle Carpet Cleaning people seem to have their act together. They return calls quickly, make appointments for specific times (10:30 vs. “sometime today”), verify addresses, etc.

The apartment is extremely crowded at the moment… I think you would be surprised at how sardined things get here when one’s forced to condense five rooms of furniture into four rooms. But at least it’s a tidy clutter — I’ve been on a cleaning spree lately. Did all the dishes, took out a lot of garbage, vacuumed, etc. It’s probably fueled by guilt… I haven’t even started my Christmas shopping yet. Plans for tomorrow: Get haircut, complete at least 30% of shopping, clean out trunk of car, use up that last pound of hamburger in the fridge.

Brett made egg foo young tonight. He used leeks, broccoli, celery, and barbecued pork and made an almond sauce to go over the top. It was really good. Better than the egg foo young I’ve had at any restaurant. Here’s a pic:

BTW, have you tried Arby’s cheesecake poppers? We got some last week because of a blurb in The Stranger. Ridiculously tasty. They’re less sweet than you’d expect, but it works.

Played a lot of Super Mario Galaxy today. I think I’ve collected 19 stars so far.

You know what’s an awesome song? Combustible Edison - Vertigogo. Very Henry Mancini-ish. Anyway, someone mentioned it on MetaFilter and I got hooked. I’d never heard the whole thing before, only snippets in commercials.

Yeesh, it’s been a whole week now and Heritage Realty (and/or the lazy contractor they hired) still hasn’t done a damn thing about our flooded room. I call them every day and they politely blow me off (”Oh, really? No repairs? I’ll call them.”). Meanwhile, the moldy smell in there is becoming unbearable… Do they not realize that the problem gets more expensive the longer they wait? I’d find other ways to get the repairs done, but there’s no way I’m spending a red cent to fix something I have no equity in. At least next month’s rent will be prorated.

Anyway, I saw I am Legend on Saturday. (I also went to see it on Friday, but it was sold out.) The post-apocalyptic New York landscapes were awesome and I really got into its quiet-last-man-on-Earth-isolation vibe. The ending was a little unsatisfying though. And the CG, esp. for the “darkseeker” leader, wasn’t as good as I expected. But other than those issues, I enjoyed it. All the scenes with the German Sheperd worked really well.

GURPS Transhuman Space: Shell-Tech came out last week (edit) two weeks ago. I was kind of leery about spending eight bucks on a 32-page PDF, but eventually I gave in. I don’t regret it — great read. Could’ve used more cybershells and fewer aquatic bioshells IMHO but whatever.

Miscellaneous: Getting ready to head home in a few days for Christmas and clinic stuff. Been eating a ton of oranges lately. Adult Swim is airing new Shin Chan episodes, so that’s nice. Re-watched the whole Planetes series. Been playing Puzzle Quest on the DS (I’m up to level 49). Have a lot of Christmas shopping to do. Made spaghetti yesterday.

Welp, I’m back in Pullman. Seattle was fun. The Automatic Data Processing seminar was about as exciting as one might expect, but I did learn some useful stuff. For instance, did you know it’s your responsibility to verify your SIT-EIN, SUI-EIN, MISC-EIN, EVPDI-EIN, and unemployment experience rates for every quarterly tax verification letter you receive? Or that you can’t submit out-of-sequence payrolls after January 9th (whereupon they must be filed as “amendments” because they result in updated Wage and Tax registers, quarterly reports, and W-2 forms)? Oh, how I could regale you with fascinating trivia about 1099-R forms.

Anyway, we had dinner at I Love Sushi in Bellevue. It was a 40-minute wait, but worth it. I tried geoduck sushi for the first time and discovered I’m not a fan (the flavor’s acceptable but the texture makes me queasy). I’m liking scallops more and more, OTOH. The day after the seminar, we drove up to downtown Seattle and had lunch at Boulangerie Nantaise (the French bakery next door to my old apartment building). Then we walked to Pike Place Market where Brett bought some political pins for his collection and we picked up two dozen Daily Dozen doughnuts (which are delicious even cold). Wish I’d had more time up there — I really wanted to visit Charlie, Anthony, and the rest of the Fed Way gang.

The pass was excellent. Stopped in the Tri-Cities for an hour to visit with my parents and pick up Looker. When we arrived in Pullman, we found the floor of the back bedroom soaked — looks like there’s a leak of some kind in the southeast corner. Heritage Realty sent out a contractor who’s not exactly a paragon of professionalism. The guy looked at the wall, felt it, looked at the window outside, and left without saying anything five hours ago. Hopefully he’ll come back at some point and actually fix something…

As promised, my thumbnail reviews of the board games I played in Pasco:

• Weinhändler — A simple game that seems complicated because of its awkwardly written rules. (A poor translation, maybe?) Basically, you bid on bottles of wine and use them to build “cellars” that give you points based on the quality of the wine and the arrangement of the bottles. The bidding strategy is a little tricky in the beginning, but everyone’ll figure it out by the second game. I was very fond of this one, but Logan and Jones seemed less enamored.

  

• Gheos — We played this the most. It’s vaguely like Carcassonne with triangular tiles, Alhambra-style scoring, and meeple that anyone can claim. You play these gods that create civilizations and manipulate the geography of the world to bring about war and migration. Success in most games seems to require diversifying your follower pool and temporarily allying with other players. The most valuable continents tend to split up quickly. I enjoy it, but it’s hard to master. Even having won a couple games, I still don’t feel like I’ve developed a cohesive strategy.

  

I was going to mention Power Grid too, but I don’t think I’ve played it enough to form a fair opinion. It’s very difficult to learn (without an experienced player) and requires the players to keep track of a lot of details to make sure they’re operating in the proper step. On the upside, it has really cool systems for fuel supply/demand and buying power plants in a way that mimics real world advances.

Random stuff:

• Did you know James Lipton is 81? I thought he was like 60!
• A bunch of awesome statistics for Team Fortress 2. (E.g. average damage per hit per weapon, total time played per class, average lifespan per class, etc.)

I got my 2 GB microSD card from Newegg recently, so I’ve been playing a bunch of DS games. Updated my R4 kernel while I was at it. Phantom Hourglass is good. Geometry Wars is a little better, though the controls tick me off; I wish games wouldn’t force you to use a stylus for something designed for a joystick, mouse, or dial. Drawn to Life is okay till the novelty wears off, Scrabble Interactive is decent, Picross is surprisingly fun (I hate sudoku, but for some reason love nonograms), Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney is amusing for a little while, and The Wild West sucks big time.

Unrelated quick junk: Planning to get Chinese for dinner tonight. Want to see I am Legend on the 14th. Made Brett watch Reefer Madness with me last night. Successfully lynched a mafia member in my Newbie 497 game. Prolly returning to Pasco around the 20th.

I’m not dead. Just haven’t posted lately because I’ve been busier than usual. Plus I don’t quite have the easy online access I’m accustomed to, what with being out of town and my notebook’s wifi getting half-borked. I’ve stayed on in Pasco for an extra ten days or so to take care of my parents’ animals while they’re at a symposium in Florida but I’m leaving for Seattle tomorrow morning so I can attend a seminar on year-end payroll processing. Brett’s meeting me up there.

Been hanging out with Jones, Logan, et al. a lot. When the Futurama movie came out on the 27th we got a bunch of people together at Adventures Underground after closing. I borrowed an LCD projector from the clinic, Logan and Amanda ordered a ton of pizza. It was awesome. Great movie, even though the two musical numbers were kinda lame. I really like the updated theme song. Can’t wait for The Beast with a Billion Backs (rumored to be released in April or May of 2008).

Other movies seen lately: Beowulf (last night w/ Jones) and Reefer Madness (a couple nights ago at Logan and Amanda’s). Both were pretty awesome. Beowulf had more than its fair share of kitsch, but it worked. Vikings are supposed to be kinda crude and dumb, so the cheesy dialogue didn’t seem too out of place; plus it’s easier to accept the ridiculous boasting and bravado when it’s coming from a CG character. I don’t think I would’ve liked the movie if it’d been made with real actors. In fact, I wish Angelina Jolie’s character hadn’t looked like her — it temporarily ruined my suspension of disbelief.

Reefer Madness is a terrific musical. Ana Gasteyer has a flinty face, but boy can she sing. Logan’d been talking this thing up for a while, but I was reluctant to see it because I was afraid it’d be a cheap, Troma-esque collection of pot humor with Shock Treatment-like music/choreography. Fortunately, my preconceptions were all wrong. It’s definitely not a “Dave’s not here, man” parade of idiocy. The message is heavy-handed and wrapped in as much (sarcastic) hyperbole as the original film, but the great production values and catchy music more than make up for it. When I got home, I immediately ordered a copy of the DVD.

What else? Got my studded tires put on, bought a new corduroy sport jacket, met up with Steve Tate (an old LAN party acquaintance), played a bunch of games (including some new ones: Gheos, Weinhandler, and Power Grid — will talk about them later), got sucked back into M:tG, and stayed up way too late shooting zombies in Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles on Jones’s Wii.

GTG. Here’s an awesome acappella performance of Movin’ Out I found on YouTube.

Mike Huckabee’s not my preferred candidate, but this ad he did with Chuck Norris is fantastic. It’s a tired meme, sure, but it’s pretty funny given the context. Like I said on MetaFilter: Will Ferrell telling an off-color lightbulb joke? Not funny. The pope telling the same joke? Hilarious.

I pre-ordered Super Mario Galaxy on Amazon quite a while back. Should’ve shelled out the extra $3.97 for standard shipping instead of the free “super saver” kind. It came out on the 12th but won’t get here till the 23rd, by which time I’ll be in Pasco for Thanksgiving and payroll stuff. Probably won’t even get to play it till the 28th. At least it appears to be terrifically wonderful, if the general gamer consensus is to be trusted.

Been messing with VectorMagic/Inkscape some more. Here’re a couple things I vectorized recently:

On the left, Slick from Sinfest. On the right, a bit of the header for this site — I had it printed on a 3/4 sleeve raglan tee via Zazzle (I was really happy with the Laugh-Out-Loud Cats “Coming and going” shirt I got there, so I used the same archetype). Whatever printing method they use is fantastic — it washes well, breathes, and has a texture that’s almost indistinguishable from the untouched fabric.

I saw Bee Movie like two weeks ago. Forgot to mention it. It was watchable. One thing really bugged me about the animation; the way they modeled/colored the eyelashes made the light-skinned characters look like they had rings of grime around their eyes, especially on the lower eyelids. I did like how the story spiraled into ever-wackier situations though. There were a few times I thought they were going to pull the “it was just a daydream” thing, but they just kept on with it.

Next two movies I really want to see: Beowulf and The Darjeeling Limited. The latter was actually playing here a little bit ago, but it was only in the theater for five days. WTH is that? Looks like I’ll have to wait for the DVD unless it pops up in Moscow soon.

We had sushi at Tokyo Seoul again last Friday. It was really good. The chef even brought us complimentary shiso salads. I took this picture of the spread (minus the tuna nigiri) with my phone:

Some food stuff:

Left to right: Tonight’s dinner of amazingly tasty Safeway-brand tomato bisque (with onions and basil), grilled cheese sandwiches, and cottage cheese; last week’s New York strip steaks and monster baked potatoes; and my first attempt at baking bread.

I used this guide to do the bread. It was going really well until I made the mistake of letting it cool a bit after the second rising-in-a-warm-place process. It sort of collapsed and the top got all ugly as you can see in the photo above. It tasted good though; made really phenomenal toast. Notes for next time: More humidity during rising, do not remove from oven before cranking up the temperature, try baking at 375 F instead of 400.

Finished reading Luminous and The Dark Side of the Sun. TDSotS was mostly meh/cheap Star Wars-meets-Hitchhiker’s Guide fare. Luminous was good, but not as good as Egan’s first collection (Axiomatic). One story really stood out though: Reasons to be Cheerful. It’s kinda like Flowers for Algernon, but deeper. Has a similar beautifully-bittersweet ending. Anyway, tonight I’m going to start The Duplicators by Murray Leinster. It’s extremely short — only 144 pages. I’ve wanted to read it ever since I saw a fascinating excerpt on Atomic Rockets.

Hey, check out this awesome steampunk-y, Upsidaisium-related LEGO sculpture. (Found via The Brothers Brick.)

You know what’s a brilliant product? The Slanket. I’m going to have to get myself one of those (or maybe ask for one for Christmas).

Oh yeah, me, Brett, and my parents I went to the Doobie Brothers concert they had here last weekend. It was good. I tried to take some pics with my phone but they didn’t turn out.

Next time: Playing with Garry’s Mod, Man Stroke Woman (a British sketch comedy show with Nick Frost), and TF2 sprays and posters.

Blerg, I’m so tired.

Have you seen VectorMagic? It was on Digg, reddit, etc. like a week or two ago. It’s a pretty cool webapp; turns raster images into vector graphics, like Illustrator’s Live Trace. I’ve been messing with Inkscape a bit lately, so it caught my eye. (I prefer Illustrator, but I only have the Mac version and I didn’t want to haul my iMac out of its box just to use a single application.) Inkscape has a sort of similar “Trace Bitmap” function, but it sucks. Anyway, I used VectorMagic on an image of Squigley (from Sinfest — this comic, specifically) and, with a little palette tweaking, got this:

Threw the SVG into Inkscape, cleaned up the background, corrected a few details VectorMagic mis-guessed on, and came up with something pretty nice looking (IMHO). I left some parts “chunky” cuz I thought it looked neater that way. Now I’m using it as my Steam avatar and desktop. Check it out:

BTW, had dinner at this new sushi restaurant over by the Nendels Inn on Main. “Tokyo Seoul.” It got a really good review in the Daily Evergreen, so Brett and I went this evening. We had salmon, tuna, snapper, yellowtail, and eel nigiri and three rolls: Spider, Ichiro (deep-fried California roll), and rattlesnake (like caterpillar, but with shrimp inside and eel on top with the avocado). Oh, and a little green tea ice cream for dessert. The food was excellent, but the service was really slow. This place is way, way better than Sakura. They have hibachi tables too (is that the right term?) — we’re going to try those next time.

I figured out how to import sprays in Team Fortress 2 without resorting to the HL2DM trick. Just use VTFEdit to convert your JPG (or whatever) to VTF (File > Import, File > Save As), then stick the VTF in these two directories (you might have to create some folders):

Steam\steamapps\[steam ID]\team fortress 2\tf\materials\VGUI\logos
Steam\steamapps\[steam ID]\team fortress 2\tf\materials\VGUI\logos\UI

(Substitute your Steam ID for the [steam ID] part, of course.) Then, in TF2, go Options > Multiplayer > Import and select the VTF in the logos folder. Voila, no more “cannot locate vtex.dll” errors!

I’ve got cooking/baking crap to talk about, but I wanna keep this short. Next post.