Still laughing...

People are looking at me funny at work.  Here's why.  5 days until my mom and my "new dad" go home.



Posted by Smallwoody @ 10:22 am EDT | Permalink | 1 Comments

When did Paris hilton go to jail!?

Apparently I'm way out of the loop and it took an all night-er at work to stumble on something that apparently every new organization on the planet has been reporting.  Maybe I should cut back the Guitar Hero II time at home and actually watch the news where I can keep abreast of important world events like this.

I have yet to purchase Shadowrun and am debating upgrading the old XPS with Vista where i can start playing some of the vast library of games that are exclusive to that OS like the 2 year old Halo 2 which I beat on the old Xbox and.. um...  Shadowrun.  I hope I'm not the only one feeling like they're being held hostage by M$.

Kitten is doing fine if you read the previous blog.  Opened its eyes today and the kids when berzerk which is always nice.

Here's a neato fact I'll wrap up with.  I just recently reloaded my XPS laptop from scratch with a copy of XP pro.  One of the limiting factors on a gaming lappy is the lack of HD space.  I know that 60 Gigs 4 years ago would be frikkin Huge but now WoW takes up over 15% of that space.  I'd always labored under the impression that games needed to be on the fastest HD you could get though so I would delete older games as new ones came out...  though sometimes choices would come within a month of installing the game.  Sooo, I installed NTFS on a 300 Gig USB2 HD that I had sitting around and installed a couple games on there after I started from scratch.  You know what!?  It works great!  I have not tried putting and FPS games on there but Total War II, WoW and a couple others work great running through the USB2 cable.  I also have 2 gigs of memory which probably helps a lot as well but still a big surprise.

-sw

Posted by Smallwoody @ 4:38 am EDT | Permalink | 0 Comments

My mom is in town...

She brought my almost "new dad" with her.  We went fishing all day yesterday and I've never fished with anyone louder in my life.  From the sneezing and snorting to the loud obvious statements such as "There's a fish!" and "That tree fell in the water" we managed to scare every fish in a 2 mile radius.  He's a nice dude but his I swear if he had a super power he'd be most like the The Grand Galactic Inquisitor from Venture Brothers shouting obvious statements through his voice box.   IGNORE ME!

We dodged a bullet the other night.  We have two "unfixed" female cats that got out a couple months ago for less than 6 hours.  Both came back preggers... which was just awesome.  Well, 3 weeks ago, the Black one went into heat again after displaying signs of being pregnant for almost 2 months.  Sweet!  I looked it up and the all knowing internet says sometimes cats will have a fake pregnancy after getting it on or if there's another cat in the house that is pregnant.   So... 2 nights ago I get to midwife the frikkin grey cat at 2 am cause the wife couldn't stay up any longer.  I go in and find the first is still born in the corner and the second is mewing furiously while mom is chowing down on some afterbirth.  Those of you who say through childbirth will know the smell... it's the same.  Anyway, one good, one not.  I stay up for a while longer then head back to bed when she starts labor on the last one... the wife has gotten up at this point.  3 hours later the wife comes back to bed saying she's still at it and the tail is sticking out.  I read up a bit on what to expect and knew that it should only last 90 minutes or so and that something was wrong.  Of course, being a man, the first thing I think is "How much would emergency services at the Vet cost."  Anyway, I'm a little upset about the first one that I carried off and kinda pissed that I'm the duty vet for th evening.  I get up though and head on it... sure enough there is the tail.  I wait until the next good contraction and pull a bit.  Do this twice more and out it pops...  mutant kitten.  I won't go into details but when the wife yells "Throw it Away!" you know something went a little wrong.  That wore on me most of the day yesterday as it ain't something you see a lot but like the good daddy I think I am it wasn't there when the chirren woke up.  We called the one who made it "Lucky".  Mommy brought him into bed with us last night.  It's gonna be a great 6 to 8 weeks.

Anyway, they're off the the vet in 2 weeks to get fixed.  I use to think those fuckers wanted $600 for the pair of them for the "well visit", extra shots and the surgery.  The fact that I could have had 10 - 12 kittens and only wound up with one makes me think $600 would be well worth it... of course if someone has a coupon for a free snip and tie, please let me know.

WoW and maybe some Xbox tonight though after 2 days fishing I think the wife will want some "me" time.

-sw


Posted by Smallwoody @ 5:01 pm EDT | Permalink | 2 Comments

Say you had this idea...

and it has been bouncing around in your head for months.  You sit in front of your computer every day clicking the buttons you click every day but in the back of your mind visions of doing something completely different keep popping into view...  and in retrospect is seems like I'm just going insane.

The idea:  Open a Hawaiian BBQ joint in Huntsville, Alabama.

Yeah, I know.  I fail at Life.  But hear me out!  Some of you have probably been to one of these places on the west coast and know sweet and sticky coated BBQ goodness that comes out of these places.  I visited several franchises as well as independent stores in Cali while working in San Jose

There are three things that make a Hawaiian BBQ plate.  The first is the meat, usually fish, chicken, beef short ribs or pork cutlet (sometimes even SPAM but that is truly Hawaiian).  It's marinated in a Pineapple teriyaki sauce which is also applied to the meat during cooking.  There's also a decanter of the sauce looking like an Ice-tea dispenser for people who need extra sauce. The second is white rice, two scoops usually.  Lastly and most importantly is a scoop of macaroni salad.  This ain't no normal macaroni salad from the grocery store though.  This stuff has a rich cream base, perfectly cooked elbow macaroni and is served in the same shape as the rice. 

This is the only mystery at this point though... coming up with a recipe for the frikkin salad!  As well as the money to gut an old restaurant here in town in the right spot and make it my own.  No more clicky clicky unless it's ordering more chicken.  No more meetings unless it's to bitch slap some teenager in an Aloha shirt for talking back to a customer.  My own boss, just need to pay the bills.

Ahhh... back to work.  now that I've read my own idea I'm going to go crawl back into our test system here and plan yet another weekend activity.

-sw

Posted by Smallwoody @ 4:12 pm EDT | Permalink | 2 Comments

So I found a new home?

I've been playing games since my dad bought a Radio Shaft Pong game in 1978 and haven't looked back.  The last 4 years I spend babysitting the 18 and under crowd in a really enormous clan that can be found at www.warriornation.net.  This last week though set the straw so to speak and I washed my hands of it to find more mature pastures.  The quote "I'm cool with you in game but..." kinda set the entire tone for where that place was going and it wasn't up.  I mean, why the hell even have a place for gamers to meet and talk smack to each other if you can be civil anywhere but in game?  Why even have the forum?

Anyway, I'm 34, have 3 kids, work for NASA and play a ton of Xbox 360 (Guitar Hero II and GoW) at the moment as well as play even more PC games (WoW, C&C3, Total War games, Silent Hunter 4, Company of Heroes, etc.)  I enjoy going to NASCAR but not watching it, camping and fishing.  My xfire and xbox gamer tags are the same "smallwoody" so feel free to add me.

I also enjoy writing reviews from time to time and will probably post them here. 

Game on!

Posted by Smallwoody @ 2:59 pm EDT | Permalink | 5 Comments