Live From Value City Arena, 2008 Edition

It's OSU move-in day again, and I'm set-up on the floor of the Schott once more. I've lost track of how many times I've worked this event now. It's definitely been awhile - going back to when it used to be at the French Field House.

Things are going pretty well so far this morning - for the first time everything I needed was already set-up at the table and waiting for me - so THAT'S a good start. Plus I'm actually feeling human and not like the three-times dead zombie I was last year, so again, I've got that going.

A flawless start just makes the day so much better...

Live From Value City Arena

Another OSU move-in day, and another day working the morning at the Schott. I wasn't sure I was going to be able to make it at first, because I woke up this morning and my cold (or maybe the weather change?) led to me feeling slightly worse than death warmed over. It also doesn't help that I got sunburned pretty badly yesterday while at the neighborhood tailgate party. It wasn't even that sunny - wtf? Definitely snuck up on me.

Thankfully as the morning has gone on, I've been feeling quite a bit better. Which is good, since I'm here until noon... Things are fairly slow today, which is nice. Apparently with the away game yesterday lots of folks moved-in early this year.

Which is fine, because it makes for a slow morning with downtime for recovering and the Intarwebs.

Solid Footing

So our deck is done! (Well, the CONSTRUCTION of the deck is done).

We went ahead and loaded it all up last night with our brand new outdoor furniture (including Evie's own little picnic table Grandpa got her) and our old grill. Take a look:



I think it's great! And done in time for a Memorial Day cookout even! Too bad it's supposed to rain this weekend... We'll also have to UNLOAD the entire thing within a week or two and seal/stain it, but for now we're living it up!

If it does rain, then at least I won't have to regret missing the great weather if we wind up seeing PotC: At World's End (which I definitely hope to do). Can't wait, should be a good one! (Though the threequels haven't been working out so well for other franchises... but I have hope.)

Gotta run - but I also wanted to share this PG edit of 300:

Close, But No Cigar

I'm still here. Things are going pretty well in Maxville. VERY busy at work lately, but that's a good thing - keeps things focused, yet busy means it's not all one thing and doesn't get boring. It also helps the time fly by very quickly.

Outside of work, our deck is almost done! It LOOKS done, but there are a few minor details I'm assuming should be polished off tomorrow. I'll get some pics up once it's all finished. (Of course, the "finish" (sealing/staining, etc.) won't be for another week or two). Not exactly looking forward to that, but you do what you gotta do. I AM looking forward to the deck itself - it looks awesome.

The title up there would be tonight's Cavs game. The boys put up a tough fight up in D-town, but fell JUST short at the end. The upside to the loss (if there is one) is that they went for the WIN instead of the tie at the end, LeBron driving the lane before kicking out to Donyell Marshall for a nice open look at a game-winning 3 that was JUST off... If they can take one of the games in the Palace before coming home to Cleveland, they'll be in GREAT shape. I believe.

Been having fun Yelping it up too, throwing up several more reviews tonight, and getting the beginnings of my favorite restaurants list together. I'll fill it out as I get more places reviewed. Hopefully soon. I threw a link to my Yelp Reviews over in the sidebar there. Still only have ONE friend there so far (thanks Irene~!)...

Last but not least, this week I FINALLY got around to checking out 24 Hours, the Kleptones double-album that came out LAST YEAR. It's not as thoroughly awesome as A Night At The Hip-Hopera, but it's still some solid Kleptones goodness... well-executed mashuposity that is definitely worth your time.

That Post-Marathon Glow

Well, that's been here and gone by this point. Still, I had a great time. I posted by full review on a couple different forums, including the Sci-Fi Marathon forum and Columbus Underground. Not that it's really all that in-depth, but go there for a longer recap. For the short version - attending (in our extended group): me, Dad, Gary, Hutch, Randy, Jeff, Angel, two of Jeff's friends I don't really know, and Mike F. Always a blast hanging out with everyone, and this was no different. One of the best get togethers of the year, IMO. Best & Worst:

• Best Movie I'd Already Seen: Flash Gordon. MAN, I love that movie. It's a CRIME it's out of print.
• Worst Movie I'd Already Seen: Star Trek: The Motion Picture *yawn* pan-pan-pan "here's the outside of the Enterprise" pan-pan-pan "here's the outside of VGER" pan-pan-pan "here's the audience napping" pan-pan-pan
  
• Best Movie I Saw For the 1st Time: Fido. A fun new take on zombie movies.
• Worst Movie I Saw For the 1st Time: Automatons. SWEET MERCIFUL JEBUS MAKE THE BAD MEN STOP. Someone hand me a knife - even the MEMORY of this movie makes me want to gouge my eyes out. I'm not sure, but I think they may have been trying to make some political statement? Maybe?
  
• Best Food: Fully Loaded Gateway Fries. YUM!
• Worst Food: Greek Wrap. My fault for not paying closer attention, but it contained no meat. Not bad as much as just not what I wanted.

So yeah, the Marathon's over for another year. Back to normal life. In which I STILL haven't ditched the damn cough that's been nagging at me for a couple weeks now. It got better for a bit, and most all the other symptoms are gone, but this shit is getting old, man.

Take your mind off the doldrums with some fun games:

• IndestructoTank
  
• Desktop Tower Defense
  

And if Flash games aren't your speed, see Emily Short's Interactive Fiction games. The only ones I've played at length are Galatea and Glass, but they're both very well done, immersive interactive fiction (that's a fancy way of saying "all text") games.

No Coffee

So I've been at work since 8am this morning. "Just in case" there was any DST-change related chaos. You know - like planes crashing into buildings, servers spontaneously bursting into flames because their clocks are an hour off, that kind of thing.

Well, the other person who was supposed to be in @ 8 is MIA.

I made myself a half-pot of coffee around 10 to keep the energy up, had a cup. Went back to get another cup a bit later, and the pot was nigh-empty. The student who came in at 10:30 had hit it up.

And the sad thing is... I can't be mad at the guy - he's here working outside our normal hours to help us cover.

But I'm sad that I have no more coffee.

News Flash: Still Winter

This just in: Though it may be March, and we may have had some nice mild temperatures last week, it is in fact still Winter in Ohio. Nice heavy flurries coming down outside ATM - though only an inch is expected to accumulate last I heard.

The Meltdown, The Showdown,, The Good TV

For the 2nd day in a row the weather's been decently above freezing, which means all the snow is melting away. Nowhere near all gone yet, but it's going fast, and it's made things wet and nasty. Personally, as long as the roads are relatively clear and safe, I'd rather it stay nice and white off the road - a nice coating of snow just makes Winter feel like... well Winter. Though I have to admit it sure is nice to open the door & let the dogs out without feeling like I need to put on a coat.

Good news in the College BBall world tonight, as Michigan State upset Wisconsin (who was either #1 or #2 depending on which poll you look at). This leaves OSU a half-game ahead in the conference standings, with the opportunity to pull a full game ahead assuming we can get the job done against Penn State tomorrow night. It also both adds and subtracts a little sizzle from the big Wisconsin-OSU rematch coming up this weekend... on one hand, though the polls won't refresh before then, it's not really #1 vs. #2 anymore... but on the other hand, Wisconsin will be looking to get out some frustrations. OSU will still be looking for payback for the loss in Madison. Should be a good time - hopefully the team stays focused and plays strong!

Drew Nietzel, SUPER SPARTY!

In unrelated news, it's worth mentioning that Heroes is f-ing AWESOME. Not that it ever fell all that far, but this week's episode has flung it right back into position as possibly the best show currently on television. I mean seriously, that ROCKS. And next week's episode looks really promising. At the same time 24 remains excellent as well. The formula/repetitive nature of things is beginning to bog things down a bit, but the surprise reveal/appearance at the end of this week's ep is more than enough to leave me wanting more. And of course, there's LOST - which before the midseason extended hiatus had been on quite the slide in my opinion - just treading water/churning gears without moving forward at all - no character development, no mystery progress, no nothing. Just a little soap opera-action. Since the return, both episodes have been MUCH better, with this past week's Desmond-centric episode REALLY getting things back to what I love about the show. A lot of fun stuff there, and yes, still more mysteries introduced, but enough of a teaser-answer there and some really intriguing new questions.

Oh, and finally - in a bit of good news, they finally put the remainder of Day Break on the ABC web site. Go watch it while you still can!

Snowmageddon, Rock Star, V-Day

Believe it or not, I've actually got a ton of stuff to blog about - but a combination of lots of being busy and increased laziness (due to lots of being busy) have just let it pile up. I'll hit on a couple things here, but will hopefully have more for later too.

It's nasty as heck outside today, as we're currently in the middle of the worst winter storm of the season here in C-town. Snow and yuck started around 4 or 5 this morning and is supposed to continue through tomorrow -- including a possible shift to "wintry mix" for awhile - AKA ice and sludge, then back to snow. The roads were a complete mess coming in (due to the timing of when things began, they hadn't gotten a chance to clear at all), and are only getting worse.

At least the view is purty, right?

In other news, Rock Star: Supernova (the band made by the show, that had to add the "Rock Star" bit thanks to the other band that had the name first) has so far fared about as well as I expected -- for many of the reasons I outlined in my Why Rock Star: Supernova Fails blog from last year.

This interview with Gilby Clarke touches briefly on the show in general, including how it quickly spun into "Tommy Lee's new band":

antiMUSIC: Did the TV show end up being different once it got going from what you were presented?

Gilby: Oh, it was definitely different from what I was presented. When I sat down in those meetings I was under the understanding that it really was, you know, a new band between myself, Tommy and Jason, you know. And it certainly was represented more like Tommy Lee's new band. I definitely didn't sign up for that. You know, I respect Tommy, as a guy in the band, of course, but I was kinda disappointed with the way they were advertising that. But you know, we got the right winner in the end. There's definitely a lot of things I don't agree about with television, you know. Television is editing and all kinds of things. I think most people who went to the tapings of show but then saw the show actually on TV, saw two different shows, but I'm sure, you know, look this is my first shot at doing something on television. And I definitely learned a little bit from doing it.

While this New York Post article does a great job of highlighting the problems as far as what went wrong. I don't fully agree with all his suggestions for what to avoid doing wrong next time, but he definitely makes some good points.

Cheers! Maybe I can drink the total lameness away!

Finally, in other news, it is of course Valentine's Day tomorrow. Amy & I already had our nice dinner out, when we went to M last Wednesday. It was phenomenal, and I had the best sushi roll I've ever had there - the Surf-and-Turf Roll - a jumbo tempura prawn rolled inside-out with cream cheese, scallions and a bit of daikon, with filet mignon beef carpaccio layered across the outside/top. It was AWESOME. Extremely decadent, but wow it was good. The rest of the meal was excellent as well - I love that place. Tomorrow we've got our Broadway Series tickets (convenient timing, not planned), to see All Shook Up. Yeah... I don't know about all that. We'll see I guess. Hoorah for Elvis.

For those last-minute planners out there, if you're still looking for somewhere to take your sweetie out for dinner tomorrow night, LOOK NO FURTHER - White Castle has your back. Make your Valentine's Day STEAMY! Yes, seriously.

Make your Valentine’s day STEAMY! Take your Valentine to White Castle on Wednesday, February 14 between 5 and 8 p.m. and enjoy hostess seating, candlelit dining and your own server. Reservations are required, so check the list below for participating Castles near you!

Special this year, you can also treat your honey to a romantic White Castle dinner in your home! Cupid’s Crave Kits include eight cheeseburgers, one sack of fries, two regular soft drinks, coupons and keepsake items to heat up your homespun romance. Now, ain’t that sweet?

For more information or to make a Cupid’s Crave Kit reservation, call the phone number listed for the your city of choice below.*

* Cupid’s Crave Kits are not available at all locations. Reservations are required.

Is that not 8 trillion kinds of AWESOME?

You know it is.

Holy Ridiculous Freezeosity

So it's around 11 degrees outside at the moment -- up from a whopping 1 degree this morning (pre-windchill!!). It's so cold most of the area schools are canceled today. I'd say I wished OSU was closed as well, but since we're considered a critical service, we'd still have to be at work anyway, so OSU might as well be open. It's so cold out that the car (which was in the parking garage all day) radio display was noticeably slow in refreshing when changing stations/volume/etc.

Not that I would've minded a day off today - even though it wasn't a late game, it'd still be nice to have a day off to relax and recover after the Super Bowl. Not as bad as working the day after Christmas (by a longshot), but hey, I wouldn't be upset if this guy gets his wish. (He actually got on the radio at least twice last week in Columbus, and I'm sure he got other gigs elsewhere too - hope those web page ads pay well).

Speaking of the Super Bowl, I did watch the whole game. My parents came over, we cooked up some "football snacks" (fondue, lit'l smokies in BBQ sauce, meats, cheeses, etc. - tasty!), and just hung out. I'm surprised no one I know had (or at least invited me to) a Super Bowl party, but I guess I could've taken the initiative there too, and I know a lot of folks were just done with football for the year after the National Championship traveshamockery. The ads were pretty disappointing overall - not really bad, but nothing really GREAT either. I guess the Blockbuster ad with the mouse was probably my favorite, and the Budweiser Rock-Paper-Scissors thing. The halftime show wasn't bad either - I thought Prince did a good enough job. Very showy, especially for the rain. My big complaint there is I really didn't like his "All Along The Watchtower"... that just sounded bad.

And now enters the long drought that is known as the football off-season. At least Buckeye Basketball is doing well this year, picking up a big win at MSU Saturday. Mike Conley Jr. is just scary-good. And of course that Oden guy makes a few plays here and there too. The Cavs...well they're not BAD, but they've stumbled quite a bit from having a East-leading record a month or so ago. Hopefully they turn things back around firm-back-up on the winning ways.

Not much else going on at the moment... have to take Amy's car into the shop AGAIN today, as the ABS warning light is on, and this is a bad time of year for her ABS to not be working properly. Hopefully it's a warranty-covered fix... but it'd be even better if our cars would just WORK...

Busy Sunday, Poor Car, Poor Animals

Happy Monday... or something. I actually had a pretty good weekend. Saturday was largely a lazy. Hung out with the fam, went out for a tasty lunch at Amy's favorite (Texas Roadhouse), etc. Nothing really of note. Contrast with Sunday, which actually wound up being pretty busy. Didn't go to church because of the horrible weather, but we did hang out with Amy's mom & cousin and watched X-Men 3 instead, so that was fun. After that I got to play beast of burden/photographer at Evie's first swim lesson . I had a blast watching and taking pictures - the class is all people we know (Evie, Allison, Katie, Audry, and Glenn), so that was funny too. Be sure to read Amy's writeup for all the details (and of course, pics).

After swim-time I shoveled the drive/walk (first snow of the year and it's ~3 inches + a bit o' ice!) and then watched some football. I was rooting for the Saints, so it's a bummer that they went down so hard to Chicago, but I don't really have a beef with the Bears. I mostly just can't believe how lopsided it was - LOTS of mistakes by the Saints. I think the poor weather (and poor field condition especially) definitely played a role. I was definitely very happy to see the Indy/New England game - it was a really well-played game, with a nicely orchestrated comeback on the Colts' part. Peyton finally gets over the hump by beating the nemesis Patriots and making it to the Super Bowl. Now can he win the big one? I guess we'll see in two weeks. I'm actually pretty bummed out that the Super Bowl's only two weeks away, because that means that two weeks from today begins the months-long sad span that is known as the football off-season. I just can't get into other sports at anywhere NEAR the same interest level.

In other news, been having some car issues lately. To begin with, I'm well overdue for an oil change and just need to make the time to get that done. Not easy with Evie around, but my laziness is also playing a role here too - I hate taking my car to the shop, even for an oil change, as something else always winds up being wrong. Last week/weekend during the endless downpour I noticed my speakers warbling a bit. They've been fine since, but I'm wondering if I got a wet wire somewhere which was causing things to not do well... And finally, this morning as I turned on the car I noticed that one of my headlights is out. Fun fun. So I guess I'll be taking it in sooner rather than later. (Oh, and of course my a/c is still broken, but it being winter that doesn't really matter at the moment). My poor car just needs some TLC.

Last but not least, I got a huge kick out of this this morning - check out this breed of goats that go stiff-legged when they get exited:



Then there's this poor dog with narcolepsy. I feel bad, but it's so funny it's hard not to laugh:



There's a longer video here about a different dog with narcolepsy (a news story about a poodle with the condition) - with the full story it's more sad than funny, but there are still some pretty entertaining zonk-out moments from the poor dog...

Yeah Toast

Or maybe it should be "Yeah, Toasta". Check this out:


I need one of these! A ceramic toaster that pulls the bread through this little stand-up thingy and spits toast out onto a nice forked-catching rack on the other side. This design won first prize at a "Ceramics for Breakfast" competition over at DesignBoom. According to the designer, "This toaster is designed to engage the user, re-invigorating the social context of toasting by questioning everything about what we toast with today." Read more about it.

I really could've used one of those last week and earlier this week while in the grips of la grippe. I'm well on the road to recovery at this point, but I believe that was one of the worst colds I've had in recent memory - perhaps ever. Holy crap that was no good....

In other good news, I read on BoingBoing today that they're going to be turning one of my favorite books into a SciFi Channel Miniseries. George Clooney is executive producing a miniseries based on Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age. (see SciFi news blurbs here).

The book is set in a pretty distant-future type setting with a society based around the wonders of nanotechnology. It's a big departure from my favorite Stephenson book (Snow Crash, which is a gritty pure-cyberpunk type book - in fact, IMO it's one of THE definitive cyberpunk stories. I'd LOVE to see an adaptation of that), but I still really enjoyed it. I'd say I'm definitely excited to see the miniseries here, but I'm also pretty skeptical on how well they can pull it off - all the nanotechnology effects in the book are going to make for some pretty hardcore special effects and CGI-work, and the book's immersive interactive storybook/illustrated primer (as mentioned in the subtitle) leads the book on some pretty odd tangents which, while interesting, could have a hard time translating to a TV audience. Since it was only just announced, it'll be a long time before it makes it on the air, and there's always the possibility it'll die on the production shelf and the project will never see the light of day... I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Is it Friday yet?

To say I'm having a bad week would be an understatement.

I started coming down with a cold sometime over the weekend. A coworker was showing symptoms on Thursday, so I suspect he's to blame for this particular infection. It started out slow enough that I thought I was going to get by without any major symptoms, but the decline continued and I hit condition critical last night. I'm NyQuil/DayQuilling through the day today - hopefully it's a short one.

Then there was the OSU football debacle Monday night. Yeah, that's pretty much all I have to say about that. At least it was a good time hanging out with everyone BEFORE the game massacre started. Chris has some pics up over at his site.

Unfortunately OSU sports let-downs weren't through yet, as last night the men's basketball team dropped a tough one to Wisconsin. This SHOULD'VE been a blowout as well, but the team managed a rally near the end... which fell a bit short. So far the basketball team has only beaten people we're "supposed" to beat. For a team sporting the supposed greatest college basketball player in all creation and even some fictional worlds, that's not that impressive. Hopefully as Oden continues to get healthy, they'll continue to refine the game around him and everyone will settle into the proper roles.

Coach Matta can't believe the week I'm having either!

So that brings us to last night - my cold is on full-bore and I can't get to sleep worth crap, so I take a shot of the good ol' big Fing Q, original green death flavor. It does it's job and I finally get to sleep - only to get woken up at ~1:50 or so by work. (I'm on call this week). I pursue the issue for the next hour or so and end up getting BACK to sleep shortly after 3. Alarm goes off at 5:30, I zombie-walk through the motions, discover WINTER HAS FINALLY ARRIVED (the first noticeable snow of the year on January 10th? Are you kidding me? Well, at least it looked thin enough to not bother shoveling the drive.

I've been fighting off dozing through the morning. Wish me luck.

The Darkside: Not Quite So Dark?

Playing around with different blogger templates to try and find something a bit easier on the eyes (for folks out there who don't dig the white-on-black -- I know you're out there).

Hopefully this one works a little better. I wish there were an easier way to make it more...interesting... but their fancy new template-system doesn't play too nicely with major hackage. I'd really like to at least get an image up sharing the title bar or something - we'll see. I can't imagine getting a wealth of time to poke at it any time soon.

The Shadowbox Shindig was a blast. Amy & I were talking it out and we're pretty sure it was our 5th straight year, which is awesome. This year we had a table (from the Fireball) AND one extra, so a total of nine in the group! Amy & I both got all fancied-up for the night out:


I will say the difference between expectations here is a bit unfair. Me getting fancied up involves a t-shirt, jeans, and a non-tucked in dress shirt, combined with messing up my hair with some gel. Conversely, Amy spent quite some time mastering the look - and she looked good! See for yourself:



One fun side-effect of this look for me is how easily it slips into greaser-mode, as can be seen at the left. I don't know what the hell was going on in this pic - I think I was talking or something.

Anyway, we had a blast - BillWho? put on a great show, as always. Added bonuses this year were a complete lack of Christmas music (it's good and all, but by New Years especially it's time to move on), Carrie Lynn getting back into action, Gabe back in action, a few preview songs from the upcoming Sex, Lies and Shadowbox, and of course, favorites from the past couple years worth of shows. Mary doing "Space Truckin'" just owns.

For more recap of the night, including a great pic of me making good use of the party favors, see Laurie's recap. Inexplicably, she's also got a picture of Amy's abandoned uncomfy shoes (they made it about 20 mins in). Because hey, why not?

Hope everyone's having a great new year so far. Less than a week 'till the OSU-Florida National Championship Game (woot!) and the end of the college football season (un-woot :( ). Enjoy the games while you still can!

Exeunt 2006

Well, I'd have to say it's been a heck of a year. Though my blogging has suffered mightily this year, in most other aspects of my life, things are going pretty damn well. Highlighted, of course, by the arrival and first 8 months of Evie! It's been a wild time, and things won't be settling down any time soon.

Aside from that most awesome of awesomeness, some other stuff of note from the Year In Max:

• Got what I believe to be the best birthday present ever, from my wife, who is awesome beyond words.
• Played my first "real" full game of golf. ("Real" is in quotes mainly because of a) how poorly I did and b) I don't believe anyone was bothering to keep score - except perhaps my uncle).
• Guitar Hero I & II
• Got introduced to another great series of books by Randy: George R.R. Martin's A Song Of Fire and Ice. Of course, this marks the second series he's introduced me to which I've gotten REALLY into, and then been faced with waiting many years for the conclusion of the series.
• Finally visted my uncle & his family at their new (swank) home in North Carolina.
• An AWESOME undefeated regular season for the OSU Buckeyes - and holding out hope to bring home the National Championship in another week or so.
• Attended a Daily Show taping.
• Saw a great rock show in Cleveland: Kamelot & Epica
• Took my Dad to a Browns game (we won!) and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. We also hit up the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Good times.
  
• I'm sure there's a lot more stuff in there my brain is leaving out - especially closer to the beginning of the year...

Anyway, good times.

Tonight we're hitting up the Shadowbox Shindig for the 5th (or 6th??) year in a row. Promises to be a great time - we've got the group back up to NINE this year (from a low of just Amy & I the past two years).

Hope everyone has a great one! See you in 2007!