DarqByte

Whatever could PHOF stand for? I think it stands for Pinball Hall of Fame.

Man, this place is awesome. I’ve gone twice now, both times with my coworker Jordan. They’ve got tons of pinball machines from pretty much every era covering all sorts of pop culture stuff. Some are easy, some are hard, and they’re pretty much all fun. They even have the Twilight Zone machine that they had in Clovis, the small town I partly grew up in before moving here to Vegas.

They’ve got Pinbot, Bride of Pinbot, Dr. Who… Terminator… Star Wars… It just goes on and on. They’ve also got probably the best-kept air hockey table I’ve ever played on. Seriously, that thing is as slick as it gets. Better than GameWorks by miles!

Today Randy, our boss, joined us. We had mini-tournaments on different machines and ultimately, I’m not anywhere near as good as the two of them. But it was fun, kinda nice to get in some fun stuff with your boss, who usually sees you in a work-only environment.

Well, let’s not get into 2 Fridays ago regarding my boss, shall we?

In any case, I urge you to head out to the PHOF at your earliest convenience. Much much fun, guaranteed.

As you may have read on Laura’s blog… We gots ourselves some iPhones this last weekend. We’d been a bit stumped for what to do for Christmas and we’ve both really been wanting iPhones, so we decided we’d pony up the dough (and monthly dough, too) and get them. We were up on our contract and we’d saved a decent amount of money through side jobs from myself, etc.

They’re totally absolutely awesome! Man, I’m already addicted to my iPhone. I’ve downloaded some apps here and there and customized my home screens (and I’ve got a little bit more to go). I’ve been trying to get my contacts list all setup and in-order as well.

It’s just such a neat device, and I think the App Store that you can use with the phone really makes it a viable portable computing platform. It’s also a good gaming machine, as I’ve downloaded Fieldrunners and love it. One of the better tower defense games I’ve played, and I’ve played quite a few. The App Store just makes the iPhone so usable and I think this is the beginning of true mobile computing somewhat in the same manner that older sci-fi shows and movies thought it would be like.

Good times! [goes back to his iPhone now]

Sorry I haven’t written in awhile. My Mom was in town for a little over a week and my Linux computer’s been disabled, so I’ve been busy. But here I am!

So in reference to my Mom being in town, it was awesome. I haven’t gotten to see her as much as I’d have liked, so it was really nice to spend some time with her. Thanks to her, chaos did erupt in our household. She suggested for us to get a new water softener the weekend she was here, and we also got a new addition to our family: our new black fluffy cat Samantha. I’ll get to her in a later post.

We ate out, we hung out and watched movies, it was really great. It sucked having to take her to the airport on Wednesday morning, where her flight left at 6am no less. I slept in my car at my work’s parking lot from 4:30-6:45 because it wasn’t viable to go home. 1/2 hour each way whereas work is about 5-10 minutes from the airport. You do the math: more sleep.

I promise I’ll get to the Halloween pics sometime soon, really.

Oh, a couple more things. I’m finally on Twitter, but I have my account configured to only alloy people I know to follow my updates. Hop on there and look for me! That, and I heard Wal-Mart is having some huge, absolutely huge Black Friday deals. Two of them that I’d love to do: a 50″ Samsung plasma HDTV for under $800 and a Magnavox Blu-Ray player for under $130. Crazy! An HD setup for less than $1,000? The only thing missing from that combination, really, is an audio receiver that can handle HD signals. Oy! I want $1K now.

I’m going to see if I can integrate a Twitter updater here into WP…

And I want to post about Obama soon…

And my Linux computer woes… Man… I’ve got a lot to talk about soon.

[Update]

Scratch that, my Twitter is publicly viewable instead… And you’ll see my tweets on the side of my blog now.

Last night, Laura and I were just kinda hanging out and checking stuff online. My neighbor, David, came by and asked if we wanted to see Zack and Miri Make a Porno. I asked Laura and yeah, she was fine with it. So we went.

Turns out, practically our entire cul-de-sac went. Both of our next door neighbors went, as well as Kristen from across the street and one of her next-door neighbors. The only one left out was John, and he’s barely ever home.

Joe and David had been drinking a bit during the day at David’s place while watching football, so they were a little sloshed for the trip. Kristen had to go without her boyfriend because he was out at a house they’ve got up for rent, trying to meet up with a potential tenant (who never showed up, the jerk). Joe was hilarious before the movie, I thought.

It was interesting to have pretty much our entire neighborhood out there, and it was cool. After the movie they all headed out to The Yardhouse, which is a good beer & food place right by the theater. I’ve been sick for almost a week and Laura’s just gotten it, so we didn’t go, but it was neat that the neighborhood started hanging out.

Hell, they even hung out outside a bit on Halloween. We would have if we hadn’t started watching Hulk for something to do when the kiddies weren’t coming by for candy.

In any case, Zack & Miri was pretty funny. Plenty of gross-out humor as you might expect, and there was a good romantic comedy buried in there. Good stuff. Laura didn’t enjoy it as much as me, but I’m a guy. Gross-out humor almost always works with me, haha.

Oh, I hope to post Halloween pictures of us soon, but we didn’t take any ourselves so I’ve got to scour our friends for some.

My Christmas list is too big. And it’s too expensive too.

Awhile back I built a website where you could create a wish list for whatever occasion you wanted to. It’s not bad, but I never ended up with the time or drive to really take it as far as it could have gone. That, and places like Amazon can do it much better if they integrate with their own site.

So I decided to get my 2008 Christmas list up on the site so I could at least record the items I wanted, then to invite people to it so they could see what I wanted. After I added everything I could think of, it occurred to me that my list is… well, it’s way too big.

I’ve got a lot of items on it given the number of people that are likely to buy me a Christmas gift. And not only that, quite a few of the items are expensive. Such as 2 HDTVs that are on the list. Yeah, just a little out of most people’s price ranges.

But in any case, at least I’ve got some things to shoot for. I’ve got 4 Xbox 360 games on the list, but with my 360 sent away for repair work, I can’t use it anyway. — Addendum: I just checked the repair process and it was delivered to my porch today… Last time they required signature. Oh well.

So yeah, if you want to be added my my Christmas list because you’re going to buy me either of the 2 HDTVs, let me know! Haha.

So Laura and I got a Wii Fit the other day… Last week, to be exact. I headed on down to Fry’s to get Julia’s birthday gift, which is season 1 of Gossip Girl (hey, I didn’t decide on the gift; she asked for it by name). I shouldn’t have, but decided to go check out the videog game department, despite knowing what games were already out…

Lo and behold… As I’m getting closer to it, I see some Wii Fit accessories sitting in a palette in the aisle. I start glancing them over seeing that they’ve still got the Yoga mat thing and whatnot. Then it strikes me: is that a Wii Fit in there? Sure enough, there was a stack of Wii Fits inside the shell of accessories.

I immediately called Laura up and told her the news. It was irritating to me that the Wii Fit was finally in stock somewhere and we’ve been in this mode of saving money for a couple months now. Damn the Wii Fit, finally becoming available when we’re trying to be fiscally responsible!

I didn’t pick it up at the time. After getting off the phone with her, I continued to poke around and see what was out. $90 for a Wii Fit, while not necessarily expensive given the hardware involved, was a chunk of change. I was nearly ready to leave the video game department in the state I had found it when Laura texted me that she kinda wanted it. Oy. I picked one up and purchased it, along with Gossip Girl.

So now the Wii Fit is sitting at home. The board itself is propped up against our main living room wall, awaiting use with the game. I’ve only used it twice since getting it a week ago, once the day I got it to test it out and another time.. Saturday, I believe. It’s pretty fun, actually. There are aerobic exercises in there, strength training, yoga, balance training… All sorts of goodies. There are 2-player modes a well, which I’m looking forward to testing out with my lovely wife.

She hasn’t had the chance to use it yet, but I have a feeling that will change tonight. I’ll make her get on the damn thing this evening. I really want to use it much more often, since I want to get into better shape. Believe it or not, it can actually help with that.

In the coming future, I’ll also talk about the dog gate my father and I are building, as well as Halloween — we’re preparing to batten down the hatches this year!