Friday ruled… After work I went to the Mendon Drive-In with , Audra (from SNFC), and . Audra, Corinna, and I have been trying to go to the drive-in for about a year now, but either something always got in the way or they were just showing awful crap. We finally decided to go this weekend, and I invited members of my posse, but only Matt was interested. The drive-in has two screens, and does double-features. We saw Van Helsing and Hellboy. We really expected Van Helsing to suck, and boy were we right… I can’t even believe that movie was made.. But we went into it planning on ripping it apart, and we did, with “snarky” comments (Audra’s term). Hellboy, on the other hand, we expected to be good… I’d say that it was good, but it didn’t really feel like a whole movie… It had this “laying out the mythos” feel, but when it ended it didn’t really feel like it paid off. I think a sequel could be much better. I guess what I am saying is that I don’t think it was as “awesome” as some of my friends made it out to be. Anyway, the whole drive-in experience was rad.
There were all kinds of crazy plans for yesterday, including the Boston Full-House, Mario Kart Double Dash, and alcohol. I was starving by 1pm and decided to give Matt (who was planning on doing some slack lining with in the morning) a call. I was informed that not only had they already ate, but that our plans for the night changed entirely. They were now going to Foxwoods for some Poker action. I was kinda pissed that all our carefully laid plans for the weekend were shot to shit, but to be honest I have been jonesin for some real poker, so I didn’t complain too loudly. We got to Foxwoods around 5:30pm and left at 3:30am. It was that good. I love their poker room, the tables are always full and there are plenty of them. I was playing \$2/4 Limit Hold ’em, and actually was able to sit down at a table with Matt. Todd was also on \$2/4, Adam was playing \$4/8, and was on \$5/10, but they were all scattered around the room.
I played really well, honestly I believe that after the first 45 minutes I was there I was playing the best poker of my life. Convieniently, the best play of my poker “career” came at the same time as an AMAZING string of cards. I know “everybody plays good with good cards”, but in this case I think I really did, extracting maximal value from my tablemates. I sat down with \$120 and left the day with \$205. I was up closer to \$300 at one point, but just was blinded down over 4 hours or so. One of the things that newbies don’t realize when then start playing poker is that if you are playing right it should be excruciatingly boring about 95% of the time. You just have to fold hand after hand, waiting for a good hand, and then make your move and take down a pot. This is especially true at low limits like 2/4, where you have no real chance of bluffing because mostly people don’t know how to play, and some idiot will call you down. Anyway, so my near-\$300 was brought down to \$205 through blinds and a few “unlucky” hands (good hands that just didn’t pay out for whatever reason, like another player sucking out, etc.)… But regardless, it was still a very profitable and fun night.
I know this is really geeky, unnecessarily nostalgic request, but I would really like a 5¼" write protect cutting tool (to turn a floppy into a flippy) on my desk. I can’t justify this request, it is completely irrational. Anyone know where I can find one of these doohickeys anymore? I haven’t had a use for one in approximately 15 years.
It was hot as rat balls last night in the apartment, but it finally started cooling off a bit around midnight so I could sleep (with the fan in the window). ’s party last night was OK, but neither of us seemed to really fit in socially. I can be a social guy, but last night I just really wasn’t up for it I guess. Not to mention that it seemed everyone there was talking shop, and I don’t know much about being a librarian. :)
I installed Mono (a free-source implementation of .NET) last night and started hacking out some C# code… Seems pretty straightforward so far, although I can’t really play with any of the GUI stuff yet, as there are no native Mac widgets yet.. I guess I could if I used the GTK# gui code under X on the Mac, but that seems like a bit of a pain. If I get into the language, though, I might fuck around with it.
Tonight Corinna and I are going to Audra’s house for a breakfast dinner and to watch Ginger Snaps: Unleashed which should be fantastically awful.
While I’ve been writing code for a long time, it’s been awhile since I did anything that’s felt particularly Computer Science-y. Today, I wrote a bunch of code that was nice and algorithmic, somewhat challenging, and it compiled and worked perfectly (and efficiently) the first time. That was a good feeling.
Tonight I am skipping the weekly poker game with the people from work to go to some school function with . I think it is an “end of year” party, but I’m not entirely sure.
I haven’t updated in a week, and I don’t really have any excuse for that whatsoever.
This weekend I went back to NJ (and ultimately PA) for ’s graduation. I drove down Friday night, stayed overnight, then drove to PA for the day. I drove back to NJ Saturday night and back to Boston on Sunday…. Quite a bit of driving, but worth it to spend time with my family. I also got to see and a subset of the Shaw clan (who I haven’t seen in over 8 years). Aimee’s graduation was pretty typical, although the speaker was the CEO of PBS who gave some corporate shill speech about how downloading was bad and how we needed to be selective in our media consumption. She even threw in a little beg-a-thon action. It was awful.
I also got to see the new kitchen, finally… It’s so awesome, I wish it was there when I was living there (queue mom telling me I can always move back). ’s graduation is in a few weeks, but on a Wednesday, which sucks… It was the same way last time (for her Bachelors), so I feel like I am perpetually missing her graduations… Although I think I went to her Associate’s graduation, though.
Last night the movie club caught Super Size Me, which was fantastic, although I really felt like a fatass after watching it. I don’t think I am going to be eating as much fast food anymore.
Not only is there a hour long Good Eats special, but Alton made Salt Potatoes! For the Tivo’ed among us, this special is not caught by your average Good Eats season pass, but if you search for “Good Eats” you will see the title “Good Eats: Eat This Rock” in the listing. For the Upstate New York among us, Alton gives props to Onondaga. He also explains the Salt Evaporators outside of SF.
Work moved to Chelmsford over the weekend, and just about everything made it to my cube. My garbage can was missing, but I just stole one from one of the co-ops. :) The new office is soooooo much nicer than the old one, although I liked the fact that in the old cube the overhead lighting above my cube was busted. :) My computer still seems to be in order, and I seem to have gotten a nicer keyboard along the way.
This weekend I seriously overextended my days… Friday I had a half-day because of the move, so I met up with in Alewife to go to Lanes & Games to check out their arcade room. It was pretty small, but they had a great Ms. Pac-Man machine, as well as a good selection of Pinball (Monopoly, Elvira, Twilight Zone, and a few others). They also had one of the nicest air hockey tables I have ever played on. Matt apparently played alot of Air Hockey while he was in NZ, so he trounced me at first, but once I broke the rust out it was pretty evenly matched. We also played table hockey (or whatever that foozball-like hockey game is called) and Matt completely owned me. After getting gamed out we bowled (10-pin, not candlepin, although L&G has both). I haven’t bowled in years, but I managed to do about as well as I always do (95 & 106, winning both games).
Matt and I also pulled off the Boston Full House on Friday, hitting up Krispy Kreme, Kelly’s Roast Beef, and Jamba Juice (Kings full of Jacks, KKKJJ) all in one trip. We also learned that KK and Kelly’s are way closer than we had ever imagined, so that was truly enlightening. That night we grabbed the Gamecube from my apartment and headed over to hang out with . It was decided that we had waited far too long to play Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles, so we made a last-minute run to EB for Rory and Matt to buy new Gameboy Advance SP’s (even though they both already had “old school” GBAs), FF: CC, and the cables necessary to hook up the GBA to the GC. Then we stopped by the apartment again so I could get my GBA, and I looked like a huge dork to , who never really experienced my full-on video-game dorkiness. She was working on her final school assignment, so I had carte blanche to be a total dork.
Matt had to pick up his parents after we retrieved my GBA, so Rory and I played heads up NLHE for awhile so I could get my game back in gear. It took a little bit, but I was pretty happy with my play after a little while. Once Matt got back from Logan we started playing the game. Let’s just say that we played from midnight to 5am. Obviously, I slept alot of the day off on Saturday, but by the time Corinna got back from class I was awake. We went shopping and hung out all day. When Coco decided she was ready for bed, I decided to go over and Rory’s again to play CC. We played poker until 3am when Adam got back from his business trip and we played CC for an hour or so until the sun rose. Total freaking dork, am I.
Sunday night was the movie club, and we checked out Mayor of the Sunset Strip, which was really way cool.
I was in the car with my coworker sometime recently and we began talking about the subject of movies. Someone began talking about the upcoming film Aliens vs. Predator, and I commented that I really expected it to suck. Then I began thinking about it, and it really is completely doomed to suck:
It’s a sequel to TWO films that have already had awful sequels. I mean Aliens 4 and Predator 2 are some of the worst films ever, who would even think about Captain Planeting them up?
Not only is this film based on a Comic Book, but there is also a Video Game. And as we know, movies based on video games just suck. They always do. I don’t even need to list them here, because they ALL suck.
So there you have it. AvP is going to BLOW. It is a doomed film, and the more I think about it the more doomed it gets.
Björk is working on her next album. While that page is in Icelandic, I have been told it roughly translates to:
Björk’s next album won’t have any instruments on it, instead the beats and music will be provided by her assistants, such as Mike Patton from Fantomas and Rahzel from The Roots.