Ty’s Weblog

GameSpy follows up yesterday’s, KHII preview with a preview of Chain of Memories.

GameSpy has up a quick preview of Kingdom Hearts II. It gives brief descriptions of two demo levels they got to play recently.

Sadly, it’s still not due out till Winter 2005. Chain of Memories for the GBA should be out some time this year.

Mira has started signing banana now also. Not perfectly, but it is clearly what she is doing. Kate says she has been doing it for a little while. My first experience with it was last night.

We were sitting at the table having dinner. Kate, Xander and I were having cheeseburgers. Mira was having some turkey pieces and some cheese. She wasn’t very happy with that after a few bites. She was looking at something on the table and signing more.

I looked at her and said, “More what?” She made a sign that I though was a sloppy more. She took her left hand in the more shape and kind of moved it over her right hand and down her arm a bit. I replied, “Yes, more.” I started pointing at things on the table. Hamburger, no reaction. Crunchies, no reaction. Banana, she signed more. “Oh, you want some banana, ok,” I smiled. She smiled back at me. I decided this would be a good chance to teach her a sign.

“Mira, this is the sign for banana,” I said, showing her the sign. She quickly repeated the sign she had done earler, which I now clearly saw as banana. “Mira, I’m sorry, you were telling me what you wanted the whole time. Good girl.”

I was quite impressed.

Apple now has up a trailer for Farscape: The PeaceKeeper Wars. Watch and enjoy.

Kate and I really need to get caught up on all the Farscape that we have sitting on the TiVo.

Events I’ve enjoyed the most so far in no particular order:

Table Tennis
Volleyball
Diving
Swimming
Archery
Fencing

It’s been a very good Olympics this year, even with NBC involved. The TiVo has made a huge difference in what I’ve been able to watch and how much I’ve been able to enjoy it.

My new computer arrived today.

3.2 GHz Intel P4 w/1MB cache
1GB PC3200 DDR Memory
Asus P4C800-E Deluxe Motherboard
eVGA GeForce 6800 GT 256MB DDR3 8X
Creative Lab SB Audigy 2 ZS 7.1

Doom3 plays great on it!

AOL is letting members vote on the paint scheme for the 30 car in the Nov 11th race in Phoenix. You have to have a screenname to vote. All 3 of them look pretty sweet to me, but I like the one with the running man guy on the hood the best.

“This way lies pizza,” Kate said.

At least that’s what we always told Mira when we were feeding her some gelatinous mass of what ever baby food was on the menu for her that day.

She’s up to 10 teeth now, two lower incisors. The four teeth above it, and a molar in each corner.

So today for lunch we had, at Xander’s request, cheese pizza. We gave Mira a small piece of it to try and she loved it. So we’ve followed through on the promise for her.

Ahmed Almaktoum picked up the first metal ever in any Olympics for the United Arab Emirates yesterday by getting the gold in Men’s Double Trap. I just thought that was pretty cool, and worthy of note.

I’m a little bit pissed off at NBC at the moment.

Kate and I spent a bit of time yesterday watching the Women’s Individual Sabre Semi-finals yesterday. I was very happy at the coverage that was being given to it on Bravo. We watched the two semi-final matches and the bronze metal match. They said that the gold metal match would be shown that night in prime time on NBC. Fair enough, show the gold metal stuff in prime time on the primary network.

When the time came for them to show it, the wonderful coverage that had been shown on Bravo was replaced by a quick showing of 5 maybe 6 passes of the match. They spent longer showing the metal ceremony for the event then they spent showing the gold metal round for it!

I think they could have dropped the several minute “story” they had on the Olympic Village later in the evening and shown me the damn match. Or, if they didn’t want to take time in prime time to show the match, fine. They could have shown it with the other fencing that they showed on Bravo.

Good lord I wish ABC has the Olympics.

We got DirecTiVo number 3 up and running today. They are only $80 now, and we decided to get a “spare” in case our primary one ever gives up the ghost.

We actually bought it yesterday, but we got it home and the second tuner didn’t work, so after work today, I ran it back to Best Buy and swapped it and this one works great.

We’re currently using it as the Olympics TiVo. After that’s all done, we’ll most likely use it as the kid’s stuff TiVo.

Starting next weekend Jeff Burton will be driving the 30 car. While I kinda hate it for Dave Blaney, who I’ve always liked, I’ve also always liked Jeff Burton. Hopefully the 30 team will be able to get some good finished out of this. He’s signed for a 3 year contract and is starting up next weekend, so they can get some time together before the full season next year. I’m looking forward to seeing what they can do together.

We’re back home.

We had a great time on vacation.

We left on the 6th to Charlotte, NC for my sister’s baby shower on the 7th. We had a great time there.

Sunday we headed to Clinton to visit my grandparents. While we were there we watched the Brickyard 400, so my parents got to see Xander watch a race after all the talking I’d done about it.

Then Monday we headed to the beach. We had a wonderful time there. Xander and Mira both had a great time playing in the water. Xander was amazing, he was willing to walk all the way out to armpit depth in the sound. We were so proud of him. Mira headed right in the water also all by herself and seemed to have a great time.

They both had a good time over at the ocean as well. They loved having us hold them while we jumped in the waves for a while.

The food was also wonderful. Joey provided us some flounder and black bass to eat on Monday night and Wed night we had boiled shrimp. It was all great!

It was great to get to see everyone so close together, even if Neya and Dene couldn’t make it to the beach this time.

We headed back a few days early (namely today) since TS Bonnie and Hurricane Charlie were headed our way. They hopefully won’t be too bad, but it seemed better to avoid traveling through them if we could.

We had a great time and Xander, like the rest of us, was sad that we had to leave. We’re looking forward to getting back down there next year.

Mira was signing “more” on Monday. Today though, she really got the hang of it. On Monday is was clear that that was what she was trying to do. Today she stared doing it repeatedly and nearly perfectly.

Xander was a proud as any of us.

She was quite funny at the dinner table tonight eating her bananas. She’d get the last piece she had in her mouth, and her hands would quickly start signing for more. She’s growing up on us.

Mira started signing more today when she wanted more crackers to eat. We’ve been working with her on signing for a while, and this is the first real progress, so it’s great encouragement for us. We’re quite proud of her.