I’m not quite sure how many people I’ve shared this with… for some reason I’m a bit embarrassed by it, even though I should probably be somewhat proud I suppose.

About 2 years ago, I had the opportunity to try my hand at writing when I penned the screenplay for a video game called Painkiller – a dark and bloody game about a guy stranded in purgatory who has been tasked by God to destroy the armies of Lucifer. Sounds like pure gold, no? Well if it wasn’t obvious, the embarrassing thing is that the final product was cheesy, cliched, wordy, and unoriginal.

Sure, it was my first attempt at writing something slightly more substantial than an email, but looking back on it, I’m thinking I should have considered a second draft before submitting it for review. Regardless, the game actually sold quite well, and if I’m not mistaken, the only substantial complaints were actually about the writing – booya!

Putting my involvement aside, it came as quite a surprise last Sunday when Jess and I were flipping through the channels and stumbled onto 60 Minutes. Featured in one of their segments was a “Cyber Athlete” named Fatal1ty (“Fatal1ty”? I can’t make this shit up), who is considered the best professional video game player in the world. And the next tournament he was training for was, you guessed it, a Painkiller tournament.

They (thankfully) didn’t mention anything about the stellar cinematic writing, but they definitely made mention of the game. It’s fast, bloody, addictive, and apparently far more popular than I realized! $150,000 prize for winning a video game tournament? I need to dust off my PlayStation2.

We don’t care about Charlie’s past as a musician. We don’t care that his brother sold his piano. We don’t care about the love-triagle between Charlie, Claire and Locke.

What do the numbers mean? What is the black smoke? Why are the others on the island? What’s with the button? Where’s Walt? What are the hatches for? What is the Dharma Initiative? What is the island really about? How did they survive the crash? Where is the island? Who are the Others?

Stop with the lame character-developing episodes. They’re boring and no one gives a shit.

Signed,
A Fan of Season One.

That’s right ladies and gentlemen, I am now licensed to drive a motorcycle in the state of California. I finished my third day of training classes today, and am now officially capable of driving a two-wheeled vehicle.

The training course I took was extremely educational, and I highly recommend that all interested riders take one as well. It involved 1 day of in-class, and 2 days of on-bike training. The classwork wasn’t all that challenging… more commonsense than anything else, with a straightforward multiple-choice test at the end. Riding the actual bike though – that was a bit more challenging.

Admittedly, I was a bit intimidated by the overtly modern 1998 Suzuki Marauder 125. I’d never even sat on one before, so I wasn’t quite sure what to expect… Granted, it was clearly a piece of junk and with a displacement of 125cc, it sits about 1 notch above a scooter with a total of 12 horsepower. Regardless, I got on it and off I went. 2 days later I’ve passed the practical driving test with a perfect score (thankyouverumuch!). So, with my training days behind me and nothing but the open road ahead (oh, how clichéd is that?!), I’ve learned a few things about riding a motorcycle that I thought I’d share:

1. Motocycles are manual transmission vehicles (which I knew going in), what I didn’t know is that the gearbox goes 1, N, 2, 3, 4, 5. Neutral is a “half click” in between 1^st and 2^nd gear, and unless it was just my aging bike (or just me), getting into neutral is a pain in the ass.
2. At speed, you have to “countersteer” to actually steer the bike. I had heard about this beforehand and thought it would be awkward in practice… but it actually comes quite naturally.
3. Maneuvering obstacles at slow speeds is far more challenging than it appears. Who knew that it would be so difficult to do 2 u-turns in a small space?
4. At any given time, the amount of traction you have on the ground is comparable to the size of 2 quarters.
5. Even as an onlooker, it hurts to see someone else bail off their motorcycle and kiss the pavement. And, unsurprisingly, doing so is a mighty strong reminder that you don’t want to do the same (even though, statistically, you will fall at least once).
6. 125cc motorcycles have plenty of power for a beginner. I don’t know about getting on the highway with one, but as a learning bike, it goes fast enough.
7. The motorcycle helmet I have is a XXL, and it’s still too small for my head. I now have a lovely red friction burn on the top of my forehead. Sweet.

Mom, you can stop worrying now – I’m not sure when I’ll actually get a motorcyle… I might not get one at all. I definitely don’t have any plans of giving up my current daily driver, but I can say I’ve actually driven a motorcycle, and doing so was a hell of a lot of fun.

Oh, one last thing. Don’t I look ridiculously serious in that photo? Jess thinks I look like I’m “going to defcon 9”… I just think it’s funny.

I’ve been a fan of John Gruber for quite some time. Mac Nerdery, Etc. – just my style.

In a recent article reflecting on the 2006 Macworld Expo, John spoke of the common argument that “PCs cost less than Macs”. While there is obviously some legitimacy to that statement (Macs usually are more expensive than PCs!), I think the majority of people simply don’t understand how superior OS X is, or appreciate how superior the hardware design is, or how superior the overall experience is – they look at the price tag, and then promptly purchase a virus + spyware + Windows ridden PC. My heart goes out to you.

Anyway, I digress. In a single sentence, John sums it up for everyone who doesn’t understand the premium a Mac bears:

PCs typically cost less than Macs because they’re pieces of crap, not because Intel CPUs are less expensive than IBM’s or Freescale’s.

Amen John. Amen.

Ok, so the title is uninspired… but whatever, it’s still early. Anyway, I hooked up Jess’ Sirius satellite radio on Sunday and I have to admit, I’m actually quite impressed.

While she seems to be ashamed to admit it, Jess has become a fan of Howard Stern. Being that he has moved over to Sirius, I thought it was an obvious Chrismukkah gift for her. She was a bit hung up on the $12.95 monthly fee, and so was I to some degree, but after using the service for almost a week now, I’m completely sold. Beyond the 2 Stern channels, there are 118 channels of music, sports, news and entertainment stations . And to my surprise, we also get CBC Radio One and CBC Radio 3 – Being that they’re obviously not available over terrestrial radio in California, that little reminder of home is worth the monthly fee alone.

It was somewhat of a pain to get installed and ready to go, and everything was admittedly thrown together at the last minute as a makeshift test to see if we were going to keep it or not. I’ve got a long wire running along the floor of the bedroom to the antenna just beyond the back door, a huge box suction-cupped to my windshield with a wire running to the antenna in the back seat, and am paying $12.95 a month. But hearing my wife laugh out loud every morning makes it all worthwhile.

Bah. I had to switch the site to the default theme because apparently my new styles are broken in Internet Explorer.

Being that I’m on a Mac, I wasn’t really able to test the site on IE. It’s tested on Safari and Firefox, and it works like a champ – but she’s as gimp as a one-legged chip in IE (gimp as a… did I just say that?) In any event, I need to go back and continue my tweaking until she works in IE. In the meantime, you get to enjoy the lovely default theme.

Thanks to everyone who gave me the heads up… I’ll get it back up and running as soon as I can.

Also, for those on a PC - do yourself a favor and download Firefox. Or better yet, get a Mac

Update
As you can see… everything is back to normal. For those of you unfortunate enough to be stuck using IE, everything should be in order as well. My apologies for the neglect.

Long nights, too much alcohol, a bit of gambling, and a lot of gadgets – Welcome to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Las Vegas was exactly as I expected – completely over the top. The whole city is geared around mass consumption; be it food, smoking, alcohol, sex, drugs, gambling or shopping. If you can spend money on it, it’s available. Each hotel is a completely self-contained oasis of adult entertainment; complete with a range or restaurants, shopping malls, performance theaters, casinos, roller-coasters, etc. The idea is that you stay there and never leave. Of course I didn’t stay put, and I ended up checking out a variety of them. I’d say my personal favorite was The Venetian – it was the only one I walked into and actually said “holy shit”… A technical form of measurement indeed.

I suppose the highlight of each night was dinner. I honestly never considered the culinary options in Vegas – I just assumed you ate foot-long hot dogs while wondering from casino to casino. Oh, how wrong I was. My culinary adventures unfolded as such:

1. Bouchon at The Venetian on Wednesday
2. Postrio at The Venetian on Thrusday
3. SW Steakhouse on Friday at the Wynn
4. Emeril’s New Orleans Fish House on Saturday at the MGM.

Beyond the excesses of Vegas itself, I spent the rest of my time at CES. For those who aren’t aware, CES is the Consumer Electronics Show that takes place every year in which 150,000 people descend upon Las Vegas. TVs, cellphones, mobile video players, mp3 players, videogame consoles, DVD players and car stereos. Microsoft, Sony, Motorola, Intel, Samsung and Pioneer. It’s a geek paradise. Every gadget from every company in the electronics space was there – with the exception of Apple. We have to wait until tomorrow morning to see what new stuff they’ve got for us.

I suppose I should have expected this, but I just spent 5 days in Las Vegas taking in everything the electronics industry has to offer, and all I really want to do is sit at my desk tomorrow morning and watch the webcast following Steve Job’s Keynote

We have ants! And I have no idea where they came from!

What exactly attracts ants? Where do they come from? Why do we have them??? At the moment, I have no idea and I haven’t exactly had a chance to hit up Google for the answer. What I do know is that we came home this evening to find a swarm of ants in our pantry. In our pantry AHHHH!! It looked as though the peanut butter was the culprit, but I can’t really be certain – I was in the car and on my want to get something to deal with this before Jess was finished screaming. Of course I didn’t just buy some ant traps. Oh no, I got 2 different Raid Colony Killer® ant traps, Raid “Kills On Contact®” Liquid Spray (let me tell you, it most certainly does), and the mother of all killers – The Raid Fumigator®. It’s basically a small metal smoke grenade that devastates all insect life within a 30 foot radius… Just pull the tab, toss and run.

While I didn’t need to drop the bomb, I think I emptied half the can of Liquid Spray in the kitchen, and the rest down in our bathroom. I’m not sure where they originated, but the ants were congregating around the PB and were walking in a nice line down the wall and emerging down in our bathroom. Regardless of their destination, they’re all dead. The area throughly sprayed, the carcasses removed, and traps placed to catch the survivors. If need be, I’ve got the Fumigators® ready for deployment. There will be no prisoners of war.

Now, before you get the wrong idea – Jess and I aren’t dirty people, and it’s quite upsetting that this has happened. Sure, we may leave some clothes on the floor (that may be me), or the dishes on the counter overnight (umm, me again), but the majority of the time our house is clean (that’s Jess). The sheets are changed every 2 weeks, the kitchen is cleaned regularly, and we have a cleaning staff that comes every 3 weeks. Jesus, Jess suffers from some sort of “must-clean-the-floor” ailment where she regularly freaks out about a seemingly clean floor and proceeds to vacuum or Swiffer the offending surface throughly. We’re clean, I swear! AHHHH!! I don’t think we’re dirty, but after seeing all those ants, I’ll be damned if I don’t feel itchy.

Stupid ants.