Archive for March, 2006
25th March 2006
…And just because I am a geek.
Some of you may have seen screenshots of Vista, just the desktop with general apps open. Well, I decided to try some of the games today, holy cow do they look a lot cooler, and I had pretty good luck, I won both games I played.
So I am posting screenshots in the design section for all of those who are at least curious what the next gen Operating System Windows Vista looks like.
Updated: Design
24th March 2006
Yesterday was a quick, productive, but hard day of work. I didn’t get home until after 7 and then I headed over to the gym to get in my workout that I didn’t feel like doing this morning at 6:30.
It was a short session, and then I headed over to the Durkin’s for some fun. Sarah and Mary already had made it back from the party on the northside that they were at, so they were all waiting on me surprisingly. I brought the wine and beer from last weekend, and we played one game of skip-bo and a whole bunch of Sequence and had a great time until about 1 am. They are a lot of fun, and John is hilarious, you have to be on your game to keep up with him and even then you never will.
23rd March 2006
Drumroll. Again. I got Vista loaded! Oh yeah.
I have seen screenshots of Microsoft’s new operating system and I thought it didn’t look that much better. But let me tell you, this takes the best of what Apple has done with their interface and pushes it to a new level visually and on the back end. I couldn’t stop drinking around with it until I had to go to bed. This week we were able to get into the Messenger Live Beta as well, so seeing Internet Explorer 7 and messenger in Vista brings a whole new depth visually to those programs as well.
I cannot wait for the final release! It is too bad that it is looking to be early 2007 now, but it definitely makes you want to start upgrading your system now to get the best performance possible. Supposedly it takes at least 800 MB of RAM just to run the OS. I am safe there, but way below par on the processor speed for sure if not my graphic card. Probably a good thing I have to wait, Vista is going to run me dry.
Oh, and on not such a small note, Christine came by and dropped off Lady, so we have our favorite puppy to have fun with for the next couple of days.
22nd March 2006
When I haven’t been doing freelance this week, I have been researching and trying to find sources to either build, buy, or adjust my own arcade game. I think it would be really awesome to have a Mrs. Pacman arcade game here, with other games loaded to play, it would be a huge nostalgic thing for me, and it would be so easy to do building from scratch or buying one, they are pretty easy to come by, you just have to determine a price you want to spend and that is what I am trying to figure right now.
I have figured out that the artwork on the game is one of the most important things, so whether I replicate that, or adjust one that doesn’t work with my own parts, I don’t know. But there are some cool auctions on Ebay and there is a live Auction coming the last part of April here in Indy that I think I am going to try to attend. If nothing else it is something else to do, dream, and keep my interest.
19th March 2006
Sunday was fun, we got to say hi to a lot of people, I got to meet Eric’s parents who were in town visiting, they seem like great people. Then after church we headed up to the northside to watch Lauren play and return the computer to Kevin. We stopped by the church on the way home to see if there were still pews that needed to be taken out of the old sanctuary. We are re-finishing that floor as part of the remodeling process, but I guess the 85 or so people (so we heard later) just wiped that job right out.
When we got back we finished watching “Prime” and then I worked on freelance stuff and the computer, and talked online with Justin for the rest of the night.
Sundays are always a good relaxing end to the weekend.
P-R Movies
Prime (2005)
Who’s in it
Meryl Streep, Uma Thurman, Bryan Greensburg, Jon Abrahams
What was good
The humor, there was a good amount of it. You’ve seen the commercials for this, the handsome Jewish kid who’s new non Jewish girlfriend is his mother’s patient. What you don’t see is his best friend doing ding dong pie throws at random or ex-girlfriends, it is pretty hilarious. Plus there are plenty of scenes that Uma Thurman pulls off singly in the therapy sessions that will make you laugh, sometimes painfully.
What sucked
It didn’t stand out to me. It ended up being very mediocre without a great ending, I was left wanting more. I never really got pulled into the emotions of their turmoil, whether I could empathize or not.
Who should go see this
Girls that live love stories might see this, but it isn’t a great one. Both of the main characters are easy on the eyes, so if you like either one of those, Uma is eye candy for the men. But otherwise, the concept was good, it just never worked out into a whole solid movie and I wouldn’t recommend renting this one for more than a dollar.
18th March 2006
Today wasn’t quite as busy, but it still flew by. After I made it out of bed at 10, we got ready and headed up to the north side. Kevin Gagnon was in town for a team that Lauren was subbing on for soccer in Carmel. We went up and met them for lunch at Uno’s and I grabbed the Chapman’s computer from Kevin. Just recently it had crashed yet again, which made me feel terrible for them since I worked so hard to get them a nice system up and running at Christmas and it just wasn’t stable apparently.
Soon after I got home Chris stopped by and we took a look at it, and also, drumroll, downloaded Windows Vista Beta to try to install.
That was the most of the rest of the night. He left for a little while to go to church, but I determined after some fussing that I needed to reload Chapman’s system so I had that going, and then I was having major issues trying to get Vista to run on a third hard drive that I put into my computer.
At about 8 pm or so, Chris and I were getting loopy, we had even started to take apart Sarah’s computer to put it into a nicer case that I had. They girls were snuggled up watching movies, so we broke out some drinks and things got really fun. Nothing like working on machine that requires fine motor skills when you are silly.
Chapman’s computer finally reloaded, but Vista never did, and then Christine popped in just after 10 so we took a break and I just remember the three of us laughing alot, talking really loud, and hanging a great time in the kitchen. Christine eventually had to leave, she had enough laughing at Chris and I since she had to drive back home, so we turned on the back light and jogged around throwing the football. That didn’t last too long before the girls wanted to go to bed, so I crashed downstairs watching “Prime” until Sunday morning.
17th March 2006
Last Friday, and Thursday for that matter were a lot of fun, and were quick days. At work, we had a great client come in and work with us for those two days, so they went by really quick and I was really excited to meet them so it was equally fun for me.
After a hard day of work on Friday, I met Sarah, Kenny, and Lori downtown at Loughlin’s on Maryland and Meridian. Being St. Patty’s day, we thought it may be a little more festive then it actually was, oh well. But it was a good food, and there was a some celebration there because Kenny just got a new job as a teacher the previous day, so I got a shot and we celebrated. The girls got some fun drinks too, and after dinner we even stuck around in the bar for a short while and ordered another round.
Just before 9 we headed out and immersed ourselves in the atmosphere, the downtown was hopping. The streets were full of people and there were beer tents all around on Delaware south of Maryland. We found an ATM in one of the bars, which was cool to get out and walk around and see all the people dressed up, some more trashy than others.
We then headed down to South street and Illinois to the Slippery Noodle, which I have only heard great things about and have wanted to visit forever. It was so much cooler than I expected, the ambiance of this building, which has been around forever, two stories, that later on looks like it bought out the building next to it and connected the two together. All sorts of weird little hallways and open rooms, angles of the roofs, just a really loud, sensory experience. It’s a Blues Bar, so there are multiple bands playing at any given time on multiple little stages, mostly little local bands from what I gather, but they get some bigger names there that elude me at the moment.
The only problem with a place like that, even though I love the frat type atmosphere, the college throwback, is the noise. You can’t carry on a conversation, and I suppose that is not why you would go there. So we stayed for about an hour and a half before we all left and headed back to Kenny and Lori’s place.
Getting out of the parking down there was a damn blast. It was like three parking lots came together at one axis, and all of them were parking on different angles so the isles that were left, if you headed down the wrong one, you had to back out. We found an exit where we stepped on the chain to even make our escape, we felt sprung from the slammer.
On the way back to their place Sarah and I decided to get some more beer and wine, and the party store we pull into, five minutes after we are inside Kenny pops in, they had the same idea. Gotta love them.
Back at their place it was the “Welcome to our Pad” tour which is cool, they have an awesome party type basement, pool table, lots of space, and then cards, music and food. We just had a lot of fun out with them, again, kind of like the first time when they were over for dinner.
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