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Not So Terrible Twos

Erin is well into the terrible phase of her Twos… she loves putting up fights now in going to bed, getting her diaper changed, eating, and just about anything she thinks she doesn’t agree with. I’m not going to lie, its frustrating.

Last night though, let me realise how worthwhile putting up with the crap is.  Erin decided to not take a nap yesterday so by the time 7pm rolled around, she was really tired. I brought her up to her room (which she started whining about), brushed her teeth (which she screamed about), then sat her on my lap and read her two books. She’s getting to the point where she remembers the content in the books and “reads” along, so thats cool in and of itself.

Then, I asked her if she wanted me to sing her a song. She said she did and flipped over so she was facing me with her head in the crook of my elbow. I performed a sleepy rendition of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” and her eyelids started fluttering and eyes started rolling back in her head. So I rocked her a little more in the chair, sang the sequel to TTLS (”Twinkle Twinkle Little Lump”) and that basically put her over the edge. Her eyes closed and she was out cold.

It was the first time she’s fallen asleep on me in over a year and a half. It made me very happy.

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Game Excitement

This is strange for me to write, but I’m actually getting excited about PC games again. Recently, I’ve been playing quite a bit of Titan Quest and its expansion pack Immortal Throne. Its basically Diablo 2 with better graphics and sound… which is just fine by me.  At the beginning of this week however, Blizzard.com started up with a bit of a teaser for SOMETHING that will be revealed this weekend and all the sudden I felt a tinge of nostalgia and longing for days past. Now that I’ve got a PC that can handle modern games without much issue… well, looks like my old mistress may be waking up again.

Lets see here: Starcraft 2 will most likely be out later this year, I’m semi-interested in Spore, Left 4 Dead is out in November, I want to pick up Sins of the Solar Empire and Warhammer Dawn of War Platinum…. and God help me, Warhammer: Age of Reckoning looks incredibly fun (and is by my good friends Mythic).

Of course, this doesn’t mean that I’m not looking forward to anything on the 360… Gears 2, Too Human, and (unbelievable) Madden 09 are just to name a few… could this year possibly be better for gaming than 2007 was? I’m shivering with antici……

….pation.

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Movies

Hairspray (2007 remake)

More entertaining that I thought it’d be. The lead girl really looks like Ricki Lake by the end of the movie… and I think we’ve found the new Divine.

Ocean’s Thirteen

So now we’re like this O11 > O13 > O12. Movie moved a bit too quick and disjointed, and due to the sheer number of things they needed to do to pull off the job, some were not explained very well (I must have completely missed why they needed the Mexican plastics factory in business). Still, it was fairly clever and not bad.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

I went in with low expectations and came out pleasently surprised. Not as good as the older ones at all, but still a good sequel. The beginning of the movie just felt… weird, but after it got going I was happy. Oh, and I didn’t care for Cate Blanchett’s character, she’s clearly no Ilsa (She Wolf of the SS). I was hoping for Atlantis, got Sitchin instead, but I can’t complain at it’s popcorn entertainment.

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Quick Demo Impressions

Bourne Conspiracy

Where’s Matt Damon? Too much shaky camera, too much attempt-fail-retry gameplay with longish load times and unskippable mid-action cutscenes, too little excitement, poor fighting system.

Battlefield Bad Company

There’s something that doesn’t feel quite right about this game. Not really sure what specifically, it just doesn’t feel right. Also, vehicle controls so far are not intuitive. Why is the left trigger gas, and the right brake? That pretty much goes against the grain of every other driving control in games. Also, the right trigger will not engage a reverse. Overall, I was feeling a bit meh after the demo.

Civilization Revolution

I haven’t played Civ in a very long time, but didn’t really think the game played very well or translated nicely to the console. Controls felt odd, graphics looks meh.

Ninja Gaiden 2

MASH MASH MASH THE BUTTONS. Its pretty, its violent, but its too fast for you to care how violent or how pretty.

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Modeps vs CL&P pt 2

I just received my billing statement from CL&P for this month’s usage. Of course, there was an additional email address copied on my statement, except this time it was an email address that I’ve never, ever used… located at some Japanese website! Awesome. I have contacted the DPUC and hopefully they will help resolve this issue.

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Connecticut Light and Power (Northeast Utilities) keeps your old email address, and sends statements to it.

Several months ago, I had decided to let my primary domain (Kerneldump.com) expire and therefore change all my email addresses to a new, more permanent location at gmail. While the expiration was pending, I setup a forward for all my email at my old address (@kerneldump.com) to be sent to my new address (@gmail.com) and if I had missed updating any accounts I had, I would go in and make the updates.

All of my normal bills that I paid electronically I had successfully updated to use the new email address. However earlier this week, when I received a statement from Connecticut Light and Power (the folks that take care of my electricity), I noticed something very odd. It seems for the past several months where I no longer owned Kerneldump.com (and someone else had purchased it), Connecticut Light and Power was sending my statements to both my new email address (@gmail.com), as well as my old address (@kerneldump.com).

What does this mean? It means whoever purchased my old domain name could have setup a catch all email box and have been intercepting all of my statements from Connecticut Light and Power.

I quickly logged into their online payment system and could not locate any sort of record of the old email address in my contact information. It had my updated email address in there without a problem, but absolutely no record of the previous email address… yet, here were emails being sent to it.

I contacted CL&P after discovering this, informing them of my concerns, and what I received was a rather terse, and uncaring email which read as follows:

“Connecticut Light & Power.

Thank you for your recent e-mail.

The old online account has been cancelled. We have corrected the e-mail address for your bill notifications to REMOVED@gmail.com.

If you need any further assistance please contact our Customer Service Center toll-free @ 1-800-286-2000 or @ 860-947-2000 within the local Hartford calling area.

vec/4026″

As you can see, apparently they still maintained the old “account” somewhere unknown on their system and have canceled it (spelled incorrectly by some random lackey in their email). Users of CL&P (or anyone in the Northeast Utilities system) who have updated their information through the website, may want contact them to assure that there have been no leftover artifacts.

And people wonder why identity theft is running rampant…

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Juno

I saw Juno. It was pretty good but not super duper. I give it a B.

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6 Years

When my PC died just about 2 weeks ago, I came to the realization that it has been six years since I had really done anything to it. That’s pretty darn good if you ask me. Since it’s demise, I’ve been spec’ing out what I want to do, how much I want to pay. First, I felt that I’d just go the pre-built route… possibly something from Dell or HP, but when I looked at prices and what you actually got for your money, I dropped back into geek mode and started looking at building it myself.

So, the total price, after rebates come back will be $605. I placed my order about an hour ago and with three day shipping, and the notification that my CC has already been charged, I hope everything will be here before next weekend so I’ll be able to muck around with it.

It’ll be able to run office applications with ease, hit up the Internets plenty fast, and of course if the desire so hits me, I’ll be able to play some newer games. Here are the specs:

• Intel Pentium 2.2Ghz Dual-Core Processor, E2200
• 4Gb Patriot DDR2 800 RAM
• PALiT NVidia Geforce 9600GT 512Mb
• Hitachi 500Gb SATA HDD
• Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L Motherboard
• Antec Sonata III Case
• Lite-On 20x DVD Burner

I also ordered a cheap IDE to USB adapter to facilitate transfer of some old data for the 2 drives I wont be able to plop into this machine. I’m kind of giddy… and here I figured I would only buy Apple.

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Last Generation

(2/26/2007)
http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3157501

“I believe that the Sixaxis controller offers game designers and developers far more opportunity for future innovation than rumble ever did. Now, rumble I think was the last generation feature; it’s not the next-generation feature. I think motion sensitivity is. And we don’t see the need to do that. Having said that, there will be specific game function controllers, potentially like steering wheels that do include vibration or feedback function — not from us but from third parties.” - Phil Harrison

(4/02/2008)
http://blog.us.playstation.com/2008/04/02/feel-the-shock-next-week/

Rumble is back with the DUALSHOCK 3 wireless controller for PLAYSTATION 3. These are shipping to store shelves as we speak, so be on the lookout for them next week. Now I know that the list of compatible games is the most important thing to you, so we’re including that at the bottom of this post. The titles with an asterisk in the list below will require a patch in order to activate the rumble feature. The patch will automatically download to your PS3 if your console is connected online. If you are not connected online, check our PlayStation Knowledge Center for more information.

(4/02/2008)
http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/….shocker-sixaxis-discontinued/

Sony rep tells me that the Sixaxis is indeed on the way out: “Sixaxis will no longer be offered after it’s completely sold through at retail (likely by the summer timeframe).”

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Entertaining Children

Last evening was quite enjoyable. I got home from work and was greeted with a nice big hug from my daughter. I changed my clothes and sat down for a bit, then got to work on dinner.  Erin was being a little whiny at that point, so I asked her if she wanted to help me make food. She said “Ok!”

First I had her open the taco kit box, which took her a little while. Then I picked her up and showed her how I was cooking the meat. She immediately started saying “Yum yum!” so I showed her how to flip the meat over so it cooked nicely. She took the spatula (while I held her hand and her) and carefully scooped and flipped the ground meat several times.

I got the measured water ready in a cup, and cut off the top of the taco seasoning packet, then showed her how to pour the water carefully into the pan. She did at first, but then dumped it all in quickly, splashing a little. She laughed, no big deal.  Then I gave her the seasoning packet and similarly, we ended up with a little powder on the stove but most in the pan.

At that point, food was just about ready so I had her put the taco shells into a container for the table, and also put the salsa in a container. Both went well, and she started sampling the taco shells so I asked if she wanted to taste the meat. She said “Yeah!” so I took a little bit from the pan, cooled it of, and let her eat it.  Before, she never liked taco meat, but now she couldn’t get enough. “YUM!” was exclaimed, over and over.

Dinner went well with her basically eating tacos although she separated the meat, salsa and soft shells to eat individually. Then I decided I’d take her for a walk as it was still fairly comfortable out and bright.  We basically walked around our entire block and she was awestruck at the sight of the real moon in the sky, so much so that she almost fell over backwards staring at it. We heard a wind chime, which she put her hand to her ear and said “Listen! Bells!” We also heard and saw some birds and some cars, to which she tried chasing saying “Hurry CAR!”

Then we got in, got warm under a blanket with our milk, and then went to sleep. It was a great evening.

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