Their selection included a couple cans of Sprite, some big bags of Fritos and Cheetos that were already opened (this somehow makes it more adorable, like they’d have to pour out rations for us in a styrofoam bowl), some individual bags of chips, and a box of cookies that was mostly depleted. I get the feeling they had raided one of their mothers’ pantries for their supplies. Jessi and I each bought a cookie (which were 50¢ each, as written on their handmade sign in marker) and thanked them. One of them must have gone inside to get her mom because some blonde lady came out, tickled there were customers. She told us we had just “made their day” and that it was so sweet of us to have stopped. Jessi heard one of the girls say “our first buck,” so I think we were their first customers. I’m so glad we stopped; I can imagine how that would suck for them to have set up and sat around all evening with no one stopping.

It turned out to be one of the best films I’ve seen all year (it would be the best, but I’ve also seen Wall-E and The Incredible Hulk, and it’s a toss-up), and I enjoyed it so much that I went back to see it a second time with Jessica. I found out when buying tickets with her that she hasn’t seen Batman Begins, so now that’s next in line on our Netflix queue. She thoroughly enjoyed the movie as well, and we both agreed that Heath Ledger makes a surprisingly good Joker. He was my favorite character in the film because he was like sadistic-charismatic, however that works. I remember when I first heard Ledger had died that I was surprised and thought it was sucky, of course, but I wasn’t too upset about it. I hadn’t seen enough of his movies to be a big fan of him at the time. However, after seeing his performance in The Dark Knight, I got to feeling glum about the fact that, in subsequent Batman movies, he’ll never be the Joker again. He was so ridiculously good at being creepy, seeming unhinged, and doing evil things but still somehow making me laugh. I loved the part when the gangsters first meet with the Joker, and he does his “disappearing pencil” trick; I laughed my ass off, along with the rest of the theater, at that.

The other day, I ended up part of a very funny and impromptu mailing list. I got to work and checked my Gmail, as always, and saw I had a message about a Ruby on Rails position from a Pradipta Archiputra. I’ve gotten word about RoR job offerings before, most likely due to my Working with Rails profile, but this was something else, because in addition to the initial email (which simply said “I have a couple of Ruby on Rails position, wanted to know if you are interested?”), there were hundreds of responses. Wondering what the devil was going on, I checked the email headers and, sure enough, the “To” field was massive, and many people who had received the email had hit Reply All to give a response. One Mark Coates said “this is fun. it’s like a message thread i did not subscribe to. please no more ‘reply all’s. thanks,” and David Gibbons said “Mr Pradipa needs to learn how to BCC,” and Anders Combere said “Please KEEP ME ON THIS CRAZY LIST!!!”. I read through many of the responses and got a kick out of them. So many people responded, introducing themselves and joking about the craziness of a social network starting because of some nerdy recruiter copy-pasting to “To” instead of “Bcc”.

This craziness extended so far as to inspire the creation of a Google Group titled Pradipta’s Rolodex. I got another email from ol’ Pradipta, this time issuing an apology:

First of all I just wanted to say I apologize for the emails I sent. As of today I promise to stop the Email marketing campaigns. And I do believe it was a very…very..stupid mistake, this is the result of working late.

Also, I am deeply amazed of how talented you guys are. I mean seriously all this happened in less than 24 hours. I hope this mishap would create a benefit for all of us.

…

P.S: this time I used BCC. :)

Yay, so according to Nintendo’s web site, my Wii has been shipped back to me. I checked its tracking and yesterday it was in New York. I don’t know why it made a pit stop in New York on the way to Kentucky from Washington state, but there you are. It’s supposed to arrive Monday, which kind of sucks because I’ll be at work, and UPS always tries to deliver packages during the day when both me and Jessica are working. I have yet to receive a UPS package, even stupid rinky-dink things that ought not require an in-person signature, that I haven’t had to drive across town to pick up myself. They should just save me the trouble of calling to have it held for pickup and ship it to their place to begin with.

I just noticed that I’m really bad about starting new paragraphs with word-comma, so now for something completely different! (Didja catch the Monty Python quote?) Guess who got a Wii Fit the other day? Just guess! No, it wasn’t the pope, at least not that I’m aware. No, it wasn’t Jack Nicholson, though he could certainly use one nowadays. It was me! Well, me and Jess: we went halfsies (halvsies? halvesies?) on one. I never expected to find one this early because they’re always sold out. A coworker of Jessica’s had somehow put his name down to get one in Target’s next shipment, and then that shipment was delayed a day, so they emailed him to let him know he could pick his up. He told Jess and Jess told me and I called Target and, lo and behold, they still had some so I reserved one myself. When I picked it up that afternoon (for $89 + tax, much better than the $140+ they’re going for on eBay), I asked the clerk if they had been selling them pretty fast: “Oh yeah.” I asked if they had any left besides the reserved ones: “Oh no.”

So I got my Wii Fit and the sad condition is that I have a Wii Fit but no Wii, at least not till Monday, or probably even Tuesday after UPS has tried to deliver once, failed because no one was home and Nintendo’s bound to require a signature, and I’ve called to have them hold the stupid thing and stop trying to deliver it to an empty household. Honestly, I don’t know how that works for anyone, since most people work in the 8-4 or 9-5 range when UPS delivers. Anyway, I tried out the Wii Fit at Todd’s place that afternoon since his Wii has yet to die due to a lightning storm. My first Body Test, which tests your balance, had the little Balance Board on the TV asking me if I tripped much while I walk. No I don’t, thank you very much Mr. Balanc–whoop! Did anyone else see that lump in the sidewalk? Jeez, you could break an ankle around here… Ahem, right, so I also tried hula hooping and got 2 out of 4 stars, then yoga and got 3 stars, then lunges and got 4 stars, which really had me feeling good, but that was all laid to rest when I tried the ski slalom and got 1 star. Man, do I suck at balancing, apparently!

The Wii Fit also told me I was fat, which I already knew, and oh how sad it was to see my little skinny Mii go to having a ring of belly fat when it calculated my weight and BMI. I do have much hope of slimming down again, though, what with my better diet, 5-day-a-week elliptical machine bouts, and Wii Fit to keep me entertained while I exercise at home. Todd gave me the added incentive that when I get down to my goal weight, he’ll take me out and buy me a nice dress to show off my they’d-damn-well-better-be-skinny-by-then legs.

I didn’t mention it last time, but I sent my Wii off to Nintendo on Monday because its disc drive doesn’t work. It’ll either not load a disc at all, or it’ll load but then crap out with an error message in the middle of a game. It did this for Wii and Gamecube discs, and I think it was due to a recent thunderstorm because my cable modem also got wiped out at the same time. The Wii is still under warranty, so it’s getting repaired free of charge; Nintendo even covered the shipping with UPS by mailing me a shipping label. The DS Lite has been very nice because I’d probably be going through withdrawal symptoms without some form of Mario in my life. :P I’m still chugging away at Mario and Luigi: Partners in Time (I’ve progressed a lot in it, actually) and Super Princess Peach, but then yesterday I bought The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass.

I had read on IGN that Phantom Hourglass is an awesome game, and so far I’ve really enjoyed it. This is only the second Zelda game I’ve ever played, the first being Twilight Princess on the Wii, and so I’m not used to seeing Link as a little boy, instead of sexy!Link in Twilight Princess. It’s neat because I get a ship that I get to route around the ocean, avoiding traps and docking at islands. One really cool DS-specific feature that’s used is the touchscreen, not just for ordinary movement and combat, but also to make notes on my maps. For example, I’ll go into a dungeon and I’ll make notes on my map about where a treasure chest is, or where I entered the dungeon, or where I’m supposed to take some key. Another cool use of the DS is with the microphone:

• There was a lady behind a door, and to get her to open the door, I had to call out to her via the mic.
• There were some candles and to solve a puzzle, I had to blow them out by blowing into the mic. That caused Link to blow them out in the game.
• I got a dusty sea map and had to blow the dust off.

I just find it really clever when a game causes me to interact like that, translating my real-life actions exactly into the game.

While I do enjoy the swordfighting in Phantom Hourglass, all this stylus waving is making me miss the Wii’s Twilight Princess because, with that, I got to wave around the Wiimote and it felt more like I was waving an actual sword. I just need to restart that game because it’s been so long since I played through the majority of it (seriously: I got down to the last area where I was going to fight the boss soon, and just got tired of playing; enough frustrating timing puzzles and discovering the Magic Armor at the very end, after I’d already absorbed all the bug-money, will do that to you). I still have my friend Chris’s copy and he’d probably like that back at some point…

So I have a job for the fall, huzzah. I’ll be working [again] at Lexmark, this time back in my old department in the commercial division. I’m excited because 1) I’ll be working in Linux again and 2) I’ll be programming in Ruby again. This new area I’ve worked in this summer has been okay, but I’ve had to work in Windows, programming Windows applications, and I’ve had to do it in Visual Studio. Gag me, please. My absolute detest of Windows and Microsoft hasn’t reduced any, and I’m anxious to get back to an operating system that doesn’t piss me off just by its existence.

This fall, I’ll be working as an AYPT student: Academic Year Part Time. That means I’ll work 15-20 hours (probably 16 for me: two eight-hour days) per week while taking a full load of classes. I’m taking a couple of non-major classes, though, so I’m hoping the class load won’t be that rough. The two non-majors are Asian philosophy (counts for a Cross Cultural requirement) and astronomy (counts for Natural Sciences).

After this fall, I’ll be left with a requirement of 7 more hours to meet the minimum number required to graduate, and of that 7, I need only one particular class: senior design for computer science. I’ll finish off my undergraduate career in spring of ‘09, probably taking more than 7 hours just to get in a few more enjoyable classes before I graduate. Then it’s on to a career for me, and repayment of my ever-increasing student loans.

Super Princess Peach is also enjoyable. It’s like an old-school Mario sidescroller, but Peach doesn’t die upon being touched by an enemy, which I always thought was more frustrating than enjoyable; instead, she has three hearts that diminish when she gets hit. She has different moods you can invoke that trigger different things. For example, you can make her angry and she gets so mad that a fire starts, allowing you to burn obstacles and enemies. You can make her really happy such that she flies, allowing you to gather extra goodies in the air. It’s a ridiculously girly game, what with Peach squealing and running around with her yellow parasol Percy (or is it Perry?). Percy-Perry is tougher than he looks, though: if you’re holding an enemy and duck under the parasol, the parasol “absorbs” the enemy to refuel Peach. “Absorbs,” my ass! I see Percy licking his lips after Peach stands back up; I hope she never gets on his bad side.

Once again, iTunes is hardly putting up a fight. I can get the album for $10.99 there and it’s not iTunes Plus, so it’s DRMed AAC’s. Whereas Amazon MP3 has it for $8.99 in DRM-free 256 kbps MP3’s. There’s an obvious choice here, and Apple needs to wise up about this competitor.

Let’s see, let’s see… I went home this past weekend (as in, to my parents’ house) and got to visit with the kittens again. They’ve grown a bit but are still small enough to melt your heart at 50 paces. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding picture:

There! Are you more appeased about me not blogging in… 2 weeks?!… because I posted kitten photos? They apparently like salty things, because that’s the only reason I can think of that they all were so keen on licking/nibbling my fingers. Or maybe my fingertips remind them of their mother’s nipples, though those are some pretty giant cat nipples…

Work has been interesting this time around. I’m doing another internship at Lexmark but I’m in a different area this time. I was initially hired to work on a project involving Google Gadgets, which was cool, but then I got switched off of that to working on a Lexmark Firefox toolbar (the new version with my changes isn’t up yet), which I also enjoyed. Then I wrapped up work on that and got put on another project, which is my current one, and it’s hairy. The code itself is in XML, XSL, CSS, Javascript, and C++, and somehow, these things talk amongst each other. For the first few days of this project, I was doing nothing but reading hundred-page-plus specification files, which was boring as all get out and, I felt, didn’t do much good. Now I’ve gotten into actually programming it and I’m enjoying it, after a few setbacks where I felt things weren’t working just to spite me.

I finished Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman and, while I liked it, I didn’t think it was Pratchett’s best work¹. I haven’t finished American Gods by Gaiman yet because he just hasn’t kept me spellbound, so I don’t know as how he’s that great of an author to begin with. I’m currently reading The Color of Magic by Pratchett because it’s the first Discworld novel and, omigosh *fangirl squee*, it has The Luggage. After that, I’ll probably reread Reaper Man because Death is an awesome Pratchett character.

Now, that’s about enough blog posting—Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door on Nintendo Gamecube (as played on my Wii) beckons.

¹ In my opinion, Reaper Man is his best work, and this is because it’s my favorite book of his. Sourcery is also good.

Two shadowy figures, one hunched and squat, the other lean and menacing, both of them Olympic-grade lurkers. If Bruce Springsteen had ever recorded “Born to Lurk,” these two would have been on the album cover. They had been lurking in the fog for an hour now, but they had been pacing themselves and could lurk for the rest of the night if necessary, with still enough sullen menace left for a final burst of lurking around dawn.

I have been pretty surprised by an instance of “wouldn’t of” instead of “wouldn’t have” (page 114) and “could of” earlier on in the book instead of “could have.” Honestly, I wouldn’t expect that from two excellent writers.

* Even though what I’ve read of Neil Gaiman’s is good, too, this quotation is very Pratchett-esque; I just know he was responsible for it.