Ty’s Weblog

I’ve got a new online comic I’ve started reading today. It’s called Stark Reality. It’s part of a gaming web site done by some game developers in Australia.

One strip in particular reminded me of myself a bit.

Yeti Sports now has Yeti Sports 4: Albatros Overload out.

This time you throw a penguin up to an albatros, then flap the albatros’ wings to keep it above the ground.

My best single attempt so far is 1377.01.

It’s not the coverage that Pat Tillman got, but it’s a start.

Slashdot has an article up regarding an official Commodore 64 30-in-1 TV game, much like the Atari and Activision games that are currently out.

I cut my gameing teeth on the Atari, Coleco and the Commodore 64. 30 games from my youth I never thought I’d see again? I’d put down the cash for that pretty quick.

I was pretty disappointed with the way the race on Sunday ended.

No, it wasn’t the fact that the race ended under caution (I’ll talk about that in a minute though). It wasn’t the fact that Dale Jr. didn’t win (I think that Gordon was ahead when the caution came out). It was the horrible behavior of the fans after the race that has me disappointed.

There were rougly 160,000 people at the race, and it was most likely a small percentage of those people who were acting like children. But it makes the sport look bad when the fans act like that. I take it back, they weren’t acting like children. Xander could even tell that what they were doing was wrong, and commented on it. So apparently, children are act better than those fans did.

As far as ended the race under caution goes. I think the other NASCAR series should take a cue from the Craftsman Truck Series and get a green, white, checker rule in place. There is no reason for the fans to not see a race finish under green. They do it in the truck races, and it works great. There is always a 2 lap shootout to end the race, no matter what happens. I think it would make the Cup and Busch races much better if they were to have it also.

I have my shiny new iPod sitting next to me charging at the moment. I’ve only synced the music on my desktop at this point, which is a small portion of what I’ve got ripped. Most of it is on my laptop at the moment. I’ve used it for a bit though, and it is quite wonderful.

Kate and I have been planning to get one for a while, and today just ended up being the right day for it. I was home from work on a vacation day, so we ran out and picked it up while Xander was in school.

It really is a nice little piece of hardware. I’m looking forward to getting a lot of good use out of it. Now I just have to restrain myself in the iTunes store.

I’m sad that Pat Tillman died.

However, I think his death is getting way too much media attention. How many people have died in the military in the last month? Most of them don’t even get their names mentioned, much less a front page story on every web site in the free world. Just because a man gave up a multi-million dollar football contract to join the military doesn’t make him more of a hero than the rest of the people who have died protecting our country. He didn’t give up any more than any other person who has died for our country, they all gave up everything they had.

I’m not saying what Tillman did wasn’t an amazing thing. It was. It was worth covering when he made the decision. But I don’t think the fact that he died deservers any more attention than any of the other brave men and women who have lost their lives in the last few years protecting us.

If Tillman gets 5 minutes on the news tonight, so should the man who leaves his wife and three kids and his $30,000 a year job to go to Iraq. So should the woman who left her husband and son behind. So should the single man who now has parents that don’t have a son anymore.

Every death that occurs in this war lessens us all, and it pisses me off that this one death is being treated as so much more important than all the others.

We got our new cell phones yesterday. Only took AT&T 3 days to get everything transfered over. For them, I consider that good.

I got the Sony Ericsson T226, which seems to suit most of my needs nicely.

Kate got the Motorola V400 Camera Phone which has a speaker phone and, of course, the camera. I think she’ll get some good use out of the camera when she’s out with the kids but doesn’t have the digital camera on her. They seem to be working great.

The best news is that mine works great inside the building at work, which the AT&T phone could never claim. Look like we made a good move here.

Finshed up Beyond Good and Evil tonight. What am amazing game. It’s too bad that it didn’t sell better, since that means a sequel is unlikely.

The game just flowed. It had lots of different types of game play, but they all flowed together wonderfuly to make a beautiful whole.

The plot was wonderful. Deep, but not too hard to follow. The combat was great, but simple enough to be fun without being a burden. The graphics were beautiful. It was a truly outstanding game.

I’m kinda sorry I’m done with it.

We had a family outting to Wegmans today. It’s a new grocery store that opened up around here not too long ago. Kate loves it. She’s talked about it so much I just had to see it.

So we went there and ate lunch. (Yes, there is a pretty much a whole restaurant in the place.) We had a pizza this time, but I’m gonna indulge in their Asia buffet next time I think.

The place is really amazing. They have a good selection of loose teas. Lots of good fruits and vegetables. They have a cheese shop, and and amazing seafood section.

Overall, most of their regular prices seem better than other places regular prices. They don’t beat the sales other places, but for a general shopping trip, it’s quite worth it. This might become part of our weekly routine, we’ll have to see.

Xander and Mira seemed to enjoy it as well.

We took Xander to a birthday party today for one of his friends at Little Gym. He had a great time. I’ve got some pics and video I need to get uploaded. His favorite thing appeared to be the zip line, but he had a great time overall as well.

After that we went to the Cingular store and picked out new phones. We’re getting out numbers transfered over to Cingular. My AT&T phone finally died on my after over 4 years of rough use, and I’m so tired of their horrible service that we are going to try someone else. Hopefully the phones will be ready for pickup on Monday after the phone number get transfered over.

Today I feature an article I can only assumed was commisionsed by the Howard Hughes Society.
It starts out great.

I’ve often thought that would improve productivity.

My favorite quote from the article?

Other memorable moments?

I’ll get right on that.

What exactly do they want me to apply it to then?

I don’t think Dana Knight’s journalism career is really going in the direction she intended.

Turns out I had Fifth Disease back when I was so sick last month. Xander was sick after that and he broke out in the rash yesterday. I had the same rash after I got sick. Kate talked to the doctor about it while we had Mira in to be looked at yesterday and sure enough, that’s what we had. Hopefully Kate had it when she was a kid and won’t get it. We are keeping a close eye on Mira to make sure she gets taken good care of if she comes down with it now.

Xander does a great job dropping off at school in the mornings. I’m very proud of him for it. However, sometimes it’s a little hard on me because he does so well. This morning was a good example. We talk about a lot of different things on the way in to school in the mornings. As soon as we walked in the door to the classroom though, he will hardly pay any attention to me at all. He’s so excited to be at school and so ready to get on with his day, that all thoughts of me pretty much drift away.

Given all the problems I had with being at school when I was a kid, I can’t help but be proud of his ability to handle it so much better than me. But at the same time, it is a little sad to see that he doesn’t need me all the time anymore and that there are even things that he’d rather do than spend time with me. I know it’s just part of him growing up and I’ll get used to it. It’s just a little hard to handle sometimes.

We had a very nice Easter weekend.

Saturday morning Xander and I went off to Home Depot to get stuff to deal with the lawn, which I’ve not been very good about in years past. I’m trying to do a better job of it this year. So we got some mulch and fertilizer for the trees and plants, some turf builder for the lawn. Xander was very good for me while we were there, so I let him pick out a couple of flowers for us to plant.

We got all the work done that morning and then we went out to eat at Big Bowl, which Xander loves.

Easter Sunday was also great. Xander lover hunting for eggs in the morning and we got the Busch race from this weekend and the Cup race from last weekend watched.

Mira has developed a love for maraca this weekend. She say there for nearly two hours just holding one in each hand and shaking them.

She is also saying things like, “ada da” and “ma ma” and “ana ana”, which seem to have some relationship to “Daddy”, “Mommy” and “Xander”. She’s growing up so fast.