Retail therapy

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or: stress shopping.

Thursday I spent a part of the late morning/early afternoon listening to the Judicial Council of California’s meeting about the current budget crunch.

Not going into details, it was a bit depressing, with my co-workers and I discussing and speculating on what was said regarding layoffs and other budget reduction decisions.

I drove home rather bummed.

About a half-block away from my house, I saw the local bus turning onto the street I was coming up on, so I pulled over at a slight angle, about a quarter-block away from the house.  I looked to my left and saw ample room for the small buss to make it through.

The bus simply sat at the top of the hill, already turned, but not moving.

Perhaps the driver didn’t think he could make it through, but I’m pretty sure he could.

I looked behind me, and there was no one coming up the block.  So I backed up to about halfway down the block where I was perfectly parallel parked on the opposite side of the street, in the area that I’m sure the damn bus driver could have driven through.

After the bus passed, I was a little upset, no I was angry, that the damn bus driver couldn’t maneuver down the block.  I’ve seen plenty of other times that the drivers honked their horns to get people to move their parked cars because they thought they couldn’t make the turn down the block in front of my house.  Once a car owner actually stood and guided the bus driver through the turn using hand gestures, instead of moving his car.  It was quite amusing.

Anyways, the combination of the news at work and the stupid bus driver forced me to do something stupid.  I drove out to Best Buy and picked up one of these:

I swore I never would, but sometimes you just say, “why the hell not?”.  This was one of those times.

I got home and realized that I didn’t pick up any games for it, which was fine.  I plugged it into my existing home entertainment system, fired it up, and did the initial setup.

The Dualshock 3 controller felt very comfortable in my hands.  Felt just like the PS2 controller that I was used to using 4-5 years ago.

I installed the many video apps and tested each one.  All worked flawlessly.  I then popped in the Star Trek (2009) blu-ray, and I was impressed at how quickly it loaded compared to my older Sony blu-ray player.  Picture quality/sound was just as good as the old player.

I played around a bit in Playstation Home, first checking out my avatar’s “apartment” and then checking out the general common area.  I stumbled upon MiB Headquarters, which of course is a tie-in for the upcoming MiB 3, and my avatar appeared in THE SUIT.  All that was missing were the Ray-Bans and neuralizer, the latter I could purchase for my avatar for 99 cents.

Friday morning I played around a little more, and started to download a couple of free games, Sonic the Hedgehog(!) and Streets of Rage 2(!!).  I also purchased a couple of discounted PS3 game (Goldeneye Reloaded and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World).

I’ve been asking around about PS3 exculsive games that I may pick up later.  One co-worker recommends the Playstation Move accessories, which I may pick up for the upcoming Star Trek game for the phaser attachment.

Which, when I think about it, is probably why I decided to pick up a PS3.  Much like the original XBox, which I only picked up for the Godzilla game that had come out for it.

So yeah, some people stress eat.  I also stress shop.

I do feel much better.  No buyer’s remorse here.

Currently, I’m waiting for DC Universe Online to download onto the PS3.  I don’t think I can use my PC account/characters on it, but it is free-2-play on the console.

Any game recommendations?


Mother’s Day

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This is the first Mother’s Day in 3 years that I didn’t go out to see a movie.

* * *

After watching the amazing finish to the Premier League season, with Manchester City winning the Championship in extra time of their match vs. Queen’s Park Rangers, I went out to visit Mom for Mother’s Day.

Folks are right, it doesn’t get easier, as much as I try to convince myself that you just get better dealing with it.  I spent a few minutes sitting in the car before I was able to drive.

* * *

I then decided to pick up a few plastic storage bins from Target, and ended up getting a Keurig Carousel Tower.

I may be getting a little obsessive over this coffee maker.

* * *

I decided to take a trip down to Gator Games, mainly to browse, and I ended up picking up a game that I didn’t think I was going to pick up.

This makes 4 different games based on the Star Fleet Universe.  It’s played primarily with miniatures, of which a new line of them has been released, but I have a good number of them already, enough to create a couple of fleets of each major race in the game.

* * *

On the way home I was getting hungry, having only eaten a bowl of oatmeal and a cup of cocoa for breakfast.  I took the long way home, up El Camino Real, thinking that I would stop somewhere along the way.

After remembering that it was Mother’s Day, and all my usual stops would be packed (saw a long line outside Peter’s Cafe AND Millbrae Pancake House), I opted to just pick up a rice plate from my local hole in the wall Chinese place near my house.  I hoped they were open, with the Mexican place as my back up.

Both were closed for Mother’s Day.  Ack!

So I drove up to Piccolo Pete’s for a sandwich.  Closed on non-49ers game Sundays.  Ack!

I ended up with McDonalds.


Hello

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Nice to see you, blog.  It’s been a busy week.

* * *

Remember that Kickstarter project that I was backing?  Ogre Designer’s Edition?

It ended with 5,512 backers, and was funded $923,680 from an original goal of $20,000.

My initial pledge went up by about 34%, because of all of the swag that they kept adding as stretch goals.  In addition to the game, I’m also a bunch of extra counters, a pocket edition of the game (similar to the 1977 edition of the game), 3 t-shirts, a poster, and a large canvas bag to carry the game around.  I almost went for another t-shirt and a military-style cap.  I also passed on the polo shirt, shot glasses, and wood model of an Ogre.

Long wait until October for the game.

* * *

Uncertainty continues at work.  The Governor’s budget comes out this Monday, and the agency will begin layoffs to meet the cuts that we expect.

I find that I really don’t like talking about this outside of the office.

* * *

I picked up a new Keurig single serving coffee maker, and in the 8 days since I’ve had it, I’ve used it at least once a day, which is more than I ever used the $10 model that I got from woot.com a few years ago.

I like the iced coffee/tea that it makes.

* * *

Watched The Avengers for the second time.  It’s just as good the second time around.  My new tagline for it: The Avengers: come for the action, stay for dinner.