cyclochip

1. Deltron 3030 – Things You Can Do
2. Pantera – Walk
3. Curve – No Escape From Heaven
4. Lupe Fiasco – The Cool

It was only a 15 or so minute walk, on my break at work.  The iPod was on shuffle and I laughed when the Pantera song came on.  How did it know what I was doing?

After re-reading and posting all those old Diaryland entries, I think the ones I enjoyed most were the ones where I just talked about what I’d done that day or that weekend… I guess entries like those can help bring back memories – I thought about trips and good times I hadn’t thought of in years re-reading all that old stuff. So, in order to maybe give myself something to read 10 years from now, here’s what I did last weekend.

Friday:
Friday I worked all day, which is ALWAYS FUN, people from my work who might be reading this. My car was in the shop, having a mystery problem diagnosed, so I was relying on Kelley for transportation. She gets off at 3pm on Fridays, where I get off at my normal 5:30pm. So, she had to find something to do until I got off work. I mentioned to our mutual friend Kobi (whom I work with) that Kelley was considering going to get her nails done. This sparked Kobi’s imagination, and soon enough they had a Girl’s Night Out planned. So, after a short but funny visit with Kelley in my work’s parking lot, she and Kobi left in Kobi’s car for their GNO. I was left with Kelley’s van to get home with. I had plans to photograph a hockey game that night, so I was happy Kelley was going to have some fun with a friend instead of sitting at home.
The hockey game I photographed was pretty lousy. I have developed a strong loyalty to the team I cover, and it wasn’t any fun watching them stink up the ice. Allen is one of the better teams in the league, but every once in a while, all teams have a bad game. This one was theirs. They lost to Rapid City 6-1. And on top of that, after the 1st period, I got locked out of my regular photo taking places. I had to shoot from my ‘last resort’ location, and I was pretty disappointed with my pictures from that night.

This kind of sums up the game for Allen: A knee to the nuts.

One of my favorites from this game - Too bad the play was called offside.

Saturday:
Damn. I can’t really remember what we did Saturday during the day. I know we went to the Allen Public Library – I wanted some new music and that’s a good place to get it for free. I checked out the newest Morrissey and Death Cab For Cutie CDs along with several others. The rest of the afternoon is still in question.
That evening, however, is not. I skipped shooting the hockey game that night in favor of spending some time with friends. Hockey is awfully fun, but we don’t go to big get-togethers very often, so I figured I could take the night off from photography. Kobi and her husband J had a few couples over for dinner and some games. It was a lot of fun – One of the couples we hadn’t really spent time with before, but they were pretty nice and pretty funny. After we all ate dinner, we started playing a game called ‘Apples To Apples.’ I won’t go into detail describing it, but it’s a fun game to play, and even better with several people playing. Highly recommended. The second game we played I could not recommend. ‘ The New Yorker Cartoon Caption’ game wasn’t that much fun to me. Basically you have to make up a caption for a New Yorker cartoon and the judge tries to figure out who wrote what and which is best. It might have been more fun with just a few people playing. By this time, people were getting a little tired, but Kobi was relentless and we all ended up playing a third game, which turned out to be pretty fun. It’s called ‘Dirty Minds’ and that’s me in a nutshell, so of course I liked it. Each person gets up to three very dirty sounding clues that describe a very normal object.  An example of the clues might be:

1. I’m a four letter word
2. I’m a name for a woman.
3. I end in u-n-t.

The answer is ‘aunt.’

So yeah, that was a pretty fun game.

We rolled out of there a little after 1am, so it was a bit of a late night, but plenty of fun.

Sunday:
We slept in a bit (I rarely can these days, thanks to my gimpy shoulder) and got up and got dressed to go get some lunch. We went to our favorite local place for breakfast, the Allen Café. Great food and it’s pretty cheap. And locally owned, so that’s good, too. After breakfast we ran a few errands, dropping things off at Goodwill, a little grocery shopping, going back to the library to pay the remainder of our fines in canned goods (hurray for food drives!) and finally picking up my car from the shop, where they could find absolutely nothing wrong with it. Amazing. Wouldn’t run at all no matter what at home. Pay to have it towed to them and it starts up right off the bat. Over and over and over again. Ugh.
The rest of Sunday consisted of video game playing, some football watching, internet surfing and laundry. Nothing too exciting.

So, that’s my weekend. Hopefully when I go back and read this in 10 or so years, I’ll think this sounded like a pretty good couple of days.

If you’ve been reading this blog for over one second, you probably have figured out I like playing video games. Some of the most fun times I’ve spent with friends have included video games, playing both with and against friends on the PS2 and Dreamcast, crowded around whatever TV I had at the time.

When I moved to Dallas, I lost all my ‘in-person’ friends, and consequently, video game opponents. Shortly after, however, I bought a Xbox360, which really opened me up to the world of online gaming. The ability to find someone REAL to play against at almost any time just sounded too good to be true.

It was.

Xbox Live is full of idiots. It’s mostly young kids who are just goofing off, but it’s annoying to an adult gamer like myself. When you’re trying to play a game of hockey, it’s no fun to have some kid use an exploit in the game to score goal after goal on you. It’s no fun to have a kid drive you off the road when you’re trying to race cleanly. And no fun to have some kid climb up atop a building with a sniper rifle and pick everyone off for a whole round.

So, a few weeks back I went in search of some adult gamers. I stumbled upon the website 2old2play.com and I think I’ve found a home. The whole website is a meeting ground for gamers over 25 to meet and be able to play against one another. The forums there have ‘clans,’ which I’d never really explored before. Basically, it’s a bunch of people who like to play the same game. There was a clan for my favorite game, Forza Motorsport 3, so I joined it.

2Old4Forza is my new playground. I haven’t been a member for all that long, but everyone is very nice and extremely friendly. I’m looking forward to being a part of this community for a long time. You can tell the guys in it love the game and they take care of each other when someone needs something in the game.

They hold several races each week and I’ve participated in a couple. The coolest one has been the Spec Racing series. Each month a different car is selected and then a parts list is given for it. You go into the game and build the car exactly as stated. The only thing that’s different amongst everyone’s car is they way they have adjusted the gear ratios, ride height, tire pressure, etc… The idea is that everyone is somewhat on the same playing field.

Of course, that isn’t quite the case for me. I’m the first to admit I’m not that good at this game. In fact, compared to everyone I’ve raced against so far, I really suck. I always end up getting lapped over the course of our 20 lap races, and obviously I get last place. But I always have a lot of fun. And that’s all that’s really important to me.

I mentioned above how the clan guys take care of each other as far as in-game stuff goes… Everyone is more than willing to share their artwork designs or car tuning setups with everyone else. For example, one of the members created a fairly labor intensive design for the January Spec Race car, the Ferrari F430. After going to all the trouble to make such a cool design, he could have kept it to himself and had one of the coolest looking cars on the track. But no, he not only offered to share it with everyone, but also offered to customize it for each person that wanted one. You could pick your two colors, your favorite number and even have your gamertag put on it. He had a ton of requests but got them all done in time for the first race. I can’t imagine how much time that took – not only from actually playing the game, but from ‘real life,’ too. Very cool of the guy. Here’s my car:

Yes, it's pink and baby blue. And yes, I chose that.

You already know I like fooling around with the video output capabilities of the game. But there are a couple of guys in the clan that take it to another level. Like, a bunch of other levels. Each race, they will make a recap video showing all the crashes, passes and tight racing that goes on. They make sure everyone gets a little screen time, even slowpokes like me.  Since anything with my racing in it would be like watching paint dry, here’s a pretty exciting video from our last race course. It’s a great example of the neat stuff these guys put out several times each week.

Anyway, I’m really stoked to have found good people to race against, even if they are all a zillion times better than I am. I don’t mind coming in last all the time. I’m just happy to be there.

Here’s another Forza 3 video.  This time it’s a pretty spectacular crash in my 1976 VW Golf.  I kind of wish I’d had on simulation damage for this one.

I’ve had this replay saved for a long time, but it took a bout of sleeplessness this morning at 6am to get me to put it all together.

A long time ago I was at work and it was towards the end of the day.  Lie, 15 minutes or so left.  I’d finished up whatever I was working on and it was too late to start something new.  So I decided to try and list all the mountain bike trails I’ve ever ridden.  I’m just now getting around to posting it.

Considering how many trails are in the DFW area, this is a pretty piss-poor list.  Once I get back up to speed with this gimpy shoulder, I can start adding to it.

Tour de Wolf – Memphis TN
Stanky Creek – Bartlett TN
Wolf River Trails – Memphis TN
Herb Parsons Lake – Fisherville TN
Clear Creek – Oxford MS
Chickasaw Trace County Park – Columbia TN
Devil’s Den State Park – Devil’s Den AR
Rowlett Creek Preserve – Garland TX
Arbor Hills Nature Preserve – Plano TX
L.B. Houston – Dallas TX
Boulder Park – Dallas TX
Northshore – Grapevile TX
Knob Hill – Flower Mound TX
Horseshoe – Flower Mound TX
Tyler State Park – Tyler TX
Sister Grove – Princeton TX
Erwin Park – McKinney TX
Oak Cliff Nature Preserve – Dallas TX

1. Ice Cube – AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted
2. Boards Of Canada – Trans Canadian Highway
3. Massive Attack – Blue Lines
4. Phoenix – United
5. Morningwood – Diamonds & Studs
6. Yeah Yeah Yeahs – It’s Blitz!
7. Goldfrapp – Black Cherry
8. Goldfrapp – Supernature
9. Celldweller – Celldweller
10. Wolfmother – Cosmic Egg
11. Mastadon – Crack The Skye

Taken somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico on our last cruise.

My buddy Kermit added this link in the comments for the Handjob commercial below…  His was the first mention of it I’d heard, but now it’s everywhere.

The only thing that could top that is 3 sweaty guys using the Shake Weight while making suggestive facial expressions.

“In 30 seconds I was covered in sweat.” Obviously, this guy has no stamina.

I can’t decide which one is more ridiculous. I think I’d have to say the Shake Weight – The Handjob is really just a joke, although you can order them. The Shake Weight is just plain silly.

I stumbled upon Monina Velarde’s New Year’s Resolution Generator somehow this morning (actually it was via Stevil) and had an idea.

I’m not the kind to make resolutions, but I thought “Let’s click the button 10 times and see if we can’t find something to do.”  As luck would have it, I think I can stick to a few of these.

#1

#1 – Oh, come on.  Do I need to remind anyone of my penchant for making video game movies?  Piece o’ cake.

#2

#2 – This one is a harder one.  Sad to say, but I’m not very good at it.  Things like Facebook and Twitter make it easier, but I’m still pretty lame about it most of the time.  All I can say is I’ll try harder.

#3

#3 – We just don’t make cupcakes that often.

#4

#4 – Another I can pull off.  Wait, ‘cafe’ is the same as ‘restaurant,’ right?  At least in Texas?

#5

#5 – Something I’d really like to do more often.  It’s not really feasible for going to work, but when we can, we ride the DART rail system instead of driving.  It’s very convenient when going to the Dallas Zoo.

#6

#6 – It’s a nice thing to think, but I just don’t feel it.  That dude wearing pajama pants and talking to himself in the toothpaste aisle in Wal-Mart at 3am?  He’s a stranger to me, and that’s the way I want to keep it.

#7

#7 – Again, it sounds nice…  But you gotta have the TV on to play video games.  And to make YouTube videos of them.

#8

#8 – This will just make keeping #2 all that much harder.  Just kidding…  Seriously, I have made wonderful friends in 2009 and look forward to making more in 2010.

#9

#9 – This one I like the idea of.  Thing is, I don’t know that many people I could hug every day.  One, for sure…  Maybe another.  Then it drops off dramatically.  Guys usually aren’t too fond of getting hugs from other guys, so that rules out a good chunk of the people I see every day.  I’ll go ahead and do this one, though.  So what if it’s hugging the same person everyday?

#10

#10 – OK, but only when I have to be.

OK, so that’s 4 I’ve committed to, and 2 I’ve halfway committed to.  For pretty much pulling these out of the air, I think I can do pretty well in keeping them.

Who wants a hug?