Video games have gotten weird

Really? A table tennis game? I guess it makes sense. Who has room for a real ping pong table these days? Perhaps surprisingly, this game is actually fun. My only worry is that it’s probably going to lead us to watching “Balls of Fury” and I’m not sure that’s acceptable, Christopher Walken notwithstanding.

The Sixies has a venue!

For some reason stuff is just really complicated and planning the Sixies has been rough this year. Luckily, I have a great bunch of friends. Myyaonline, Adam, Alex and Adamn have graciously offered to let us host the party at their house! So mark your calendars, Saturday, May 10th, 1PM we’re having a 606 BBQ! If you read this site you are invited. Even the silent lurking big brother-ers amongst you, you know who you are. Come into the light and meet some people. They have a pool too so don’t forget your swimsuit.

So send an email, give a phone call, or leave a comment if you plan on coming. If you don’t know where the party is, ask someone. I don’t want to go posting addresses on the website. Manduh, geeeek, myyaonline, Adam and myself (Todd) are all good places to start for info. Stay away from Alex and Adamn though. They can be surly and/or uncooperative sometimes and there’s no telling what kind of answers you’d get.

A Physicist…no really

Imagine our surprise when watching “The Universe” on the History Channel and this woman, Amy Mainzer shows up. And starts talking astrophysics. It was a very weird experience. She’s actually a scientist too. Not some model or spokesperson. It now makes me have to me rethink my complete disbelief that someone cast Denise Richards and Jessica Alba as scientists…OK not really. They couldn’t sell it at all. I thought it was because they were too pretty but now I realize it’s because they’re just not very good actresses.

“You should show your boobs”

That subject line is a direct quote and what led to the look in the picture. Taking pictures of Jessi is always such a crap shoot. If I’m the one holding the camera. This is, of course, the second shot. I’m begging for some mad video editing skillz today. It never ceases to astound me to watch Jessi at the video editing console. She’s a wizard in a tube top. I think you’ll all be very happy with the result.

Aaah The Office

This show has been off for too long. Recent conversations have led me to believe that this show may soon be for the “jumped the shark” bin but I’m not so sure. It may be true but it still makes me laugh every week so I still like it even though there is almost nothing resembling an overall story week to week. As long as it’s intelligently done, that’s not such a bad thing.

This is going to be fun

Digital SLR cameras finally came down enough in price that it’s not a complete extravagance to own one if you aren’t a professional photographer. One of my evilogical co-workers just bought this same camera and, once I saw it, I had to have one too. It’s been one of those things I’ve been putting off forever, waiting for them to get better and cheaper, which they always do. Since Olympus has a new model coming out in May, however, this is a good time to get this particular model. There are an awful lot of buttons on this damn thing though. I have a feeling I have a pretty heinous learning curve ahead of me. There was a slight fly in the ointment (which I’ll explain below) but I didn’t let it poison the entire camera experience for me.

Caveat Emptor: This is a brief story of what it actually took to get the camera. I have since discovered that you take your life into your own hands buying camera equipment on the Internet. Evidently the old “bait and switch” routine is alive and well in the online camera retailer community. All I wanted was the Olympus E-410 without a lens. I was planning on buying a lens separately. I found a great price on this camera, ordered it, waited for it to show up. Imagine my surprise when they called me the next day and started asking me which battery I wanted and quoted me an outrageous price for both of them and the charger. They indicated that the camera I purchased online was the camera body only. No battery, no charger, no cables, documentation or software. Olympus, by the by, doesn’t actually sell this camera that way, anywhere. Or, they helpfully informed me, I could purchase the “kit” with all that stuff for a mere $190 more than the price I saw for that kit, on their website. I said he could ram it and he needed to cancel my order. He then knocked $40 off the order and said that that was “wholesale” and if I canceled my order I wasn’t going to find it at a better price anywhere else anyway. Staying strong, I repeated my request to ram it and cancel my order, which he did. After a 2 second search on Amazon I found the camera I ordered for $75 less than his “wholesale” price…WITH A LENS! Let this be a lesson to anyone reading this

1) Be careful when buying camera stuff online. There are some disreputable places out there. I’ve found that Amazon and its affiliates are generally quite reputable and if you want to get the absolute best, most reliable service, B&H Camera has one of the best reputations around.
2) Under no circumstances should you buy ANYTHING from bestpricecameras.com

Books are cool

I read the first “Culture” book last week and it was really enjoyable. It’s not too often that I come across a really good, epic sci-fi universe I haven’t heard of before. Luckily people keep writing them, people keep reading them and people keep recommending them to me so it keeps the cycle going. It is apparently organized in one of my favorite ways where the entire “Culture” universe is extremely vast and detailed in the authors mind but the books aren’t really connected in any tight fashion. The universe is the same, the players are different in each novel. Not too many people do this kind of writing which is too bad because I -love- it.