Psychotomy

So, I decided to go ahead and sign up for Gamefly recently. 20$/mo, two games at a time. Even if I play only one game at a time, that’s 3 months I have to beat the game before it would have been cheaper to buy it.

And with two games at a time, I can switch back and forth or something. Or pick up smoething for DK. Like this first round I picked up the WALL*E game for Xbox, since he enjoys swiping my controller so much.

Signed up for a 30-day trial on Monday evening (holidays, weekends, etc, didn’t want to waste a day of free!), they shipped the top two on the list Tuesday morning. They arrived today. In comparison, Netflix is 99% next day (Tuesday would arrive Wednesday), most shipping from the East Coast gets here 1-2 days.

The return envelope has the PA sticker on it, but I don’t know if that’s where it shipped from or if that’s just the nearest return. But since both shipped same day and arrived together, they probably shipped together.

3 days is better than the 7-10 days that I’d seen online for some folks mid-west when there was a single distribution in CA, and if turnaround is decent (not sure what I mean by that) it should be OK. With the two games I can return one and finish the other while I wait or something.

The second game this time was the Star Wars Lightsaber Duels game for Wii. And it sucks. So I’m gonna toss it right back in the bin tomorrow, so we’ll see how that turnaround is in pt 2! :)

Posted in: games, general by attriel /
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So, since we got the amber necklaces back … 5? 6? months ago, my headaches receded from daily to just a few times a month. Unfortunately, those few times are the heavy duty ones that I can’t really do anything about.

For instance, I’ve had this headache for … 48 hours by now, a little more. Last night at one point it shifted and my left eye was throbbing and pulsing with the ehadache centralized right behind it rather than crushing my whole skull … and my comment was “well, thats better!”

We’re fairly sure it’s a pressure system moving in or through or whatever. Because it went from teens and twenties this week to 50 today. So I’m thinking there’s some collosal front moving in or something. I heard something about snow Monday, so maybe there’s more than one front.

But the pressure headaches … I can’t do jack about them. The month before the amber I was popping six to eight extra strength excedrin dairly to deal with my headaches. Now it does nothing. Tylenol, nothing. Advil. Aleve. Tylenol Sinus Pressure seems to help the tiniest smidge so I’m using up our small stack of that right now. I’m wondering if real aspirin would help, with the whole blood thinning thing. But we don’t have any because the Acetemenophin and Ibuprofen do the trick for everything and she can’t take aspirin pregnant, so we’ve simply not bothered to restock any of that since it ran out whenever.

I call them migraines, but I’m not 100% sure that they always are. I don’t have the “curl up in a ball” or “put a cold compress over your eyes and hide in a dark room” reflexes, generally. I mean, I’ve had them before, at times. I think the amber helped pare those back some too. But the pressure headaches just make me feel most of the way there without getting all the way there. Which is just as well, since I can’t do anything about it :/

alt.my.head.hurts … throwback gag :o

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So, I have some kind of rash exczema thing (excema? exzema? whatever) on my legs.

Started off as my legs itched, but they do that in winter with the dry skin and the heat drying out the house and the freezing cold outside.

Then we started going to the pool. And they started itching more. So I started putting lotion on, and they burn when I do. And now they burn when I get in the pool, and there’re red splotchy dry areas on my legs …

I called a dermatologist last week for an appointment. The first one wanted to give me March, around when baby girl is due. I said I’d call them back if I couldn’t find anything better. Second one gave me an appointment for next week when I had to stay home for Kiir’s dr’s appt anyway. Yay!

Hopefully she’ll give me some kind of nifty creme to put on my legs and make it go away. Hopefully it’s just some rash that went terribly bad because of conditions and it’s easy to clear an avoid. Because what I really need is more random damned restrictions!

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So, last week at one point when we were going to the store I saw a shape dart out from the woods.

This time, it was a red fox. Looked like it might be about K’s size. I should probably quit taking him out without his leash if there’s foxes roaming around. It’s hard enough getting him to come back when he goes haring off after a rabbit …

But it’s still cool!

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So, I was folding laundry and DK was wandering around upstairs playing around and climbing on the futon we just moved up there. When I went to collect some stuff from his room to take it to the dirty laundry, he was standing there.

Then he turns, runs over to the nursery door and points to the strip we have running along the middle of the wall. One finger on Tigger, and one on Pooh. And then he says “Tigger!”

He was having trouble with “Pooh” though, and “Eeyore”, who was next to Pooh, I think he was trying to say but was just coming up short on consonants to work with :o

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So, the review team came to let me know that thye’d be done reviewing some material of mine by tomorrow …

Then the guy tells me that if there’s no errors it can publish, but if there are errors I’ll have to look them up in their error reporting system.

THEN he goes on to say “I mean, he HAS to find something wrong” …

Thanks for the vote of confidence, man!

Posted in: general, work by attriel /
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So, when I played the demo for Mirror’s Edge, it was really cool. It’s supposed to be an FPS without the S. “First Person Runner” it was described.

A lot of people were lamenting the fact that it only had ~6hours of game and then boom you’re done. Like it was supposed to be the first chapter of a long game. Then there was news that they were looking at a trilogy. Which would be like 18hours and reasonably lengthed. But I went ahead and paid full price for the game, because I liked the ideas of the game.

I started playing in November. I’m /almost/ done. I’ve spent more than 6 hours on this chapter. Heck, I may be close to 6 hours in this room what with all the dying. Obviously the people who finished this game in 6 hours are WAY BETTER than me :o

OTOH, this FPR “avoid combat” game? The last three chapters involve, largely, running INTO firefights. The demo suggested that you were generally looking for ways around the people shooting at you. The end of the game is more like finding a way through them. Some of it, again, is that I’m not that good. But when there’s a massive killzone laid out between you and the goal …

I’m keeping with the non-lethal option, however. I have not yet shot anyone in the game. And since I’m on the last chapter (possibly last room) I’m certainly not changing that now! I’ve even managed to get a strategy that gets me 90% through the room. Of course, it involves running in circles and drawing the opponents out one by one to knock out every last one of them. But I’ve discovered that there’s one in the middle with a chest mounted CHAIN GUN. I can’t survive long enough in his line of fire to disarm anyone.

Of course, now my problem is that I still need to run down a walkway up to deal with the guy holding the chaingun. And when he kills me, I have to start over with everyone else again :o But at least I can semi-consistently get to him now. I just have to deal with the 30s talkover intro every death b/c they miscoded it. If you skip it, the level immediately begins without lining people up to where they’re supposed to be at the end of the talkover. Meaning that things are all out of whack. Then of course, I run up to the first guy, miss my timing and die.

Really I have a 3minute intro, counting the repetitions and how fast I die. As in, 30s talkover, 20s to die, do that a few times until I hit it right … *sigh*

But, I’ve certainly gotten more than 6 hours out of it? …

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So, I’ve been thinking lately …

I just finished Lego Batman last night, almost done with Mirror’s Edge. That means I’m up to Tomb Raider and Rock Band as my available games. So I’m looking at getting Prince of Persia or Fallout 3.

And, with playing for him evenings and weekends, and after he goes to bed … I’m going through games every month or so for the most part. And trading them in generally isn’t coming up with that much money. Even with waiting until I have three to trade in at once with some special or deal to get an extra 20%. Like Mass Effect traded for <5$, plus bonuses. Frankly, if I’d realized how low that was going to be I might have kept the damned thing :o

But since the tradein values aren’t that great, it kindof makes sense to just start renting my games and just buying the ones that I really like or such. Also, then I could try out games that don’t have demos without actually buying them first. Gears of War, for instance, would be something that would benefit from such a feature. Given that I bought it and turned out I couldn’t play it worth shit. Never did make it out of the tutorial. Couldn’t manage the final fight :o

So I’m looking at Gamefly again. Last time I looked I was taking 6+ months to get through Lego Star Wars, and at that point 20$/mo comes out to more than the game would cost. But at 1-2 months, then it’s 40 vs 60, and I think that’s 2 at a time for that price (and I’d basically be finishing 2 games every 3, so 60$ for two games). Bonus with the previews etc that I toss back in a week. And extra feature of being able to play back-catalog games some. Like I’ve been thinking about the older Tomb Raider games on teh X360. Yeah, those I might be able to find for 20$ apiece somewhere, if I dug hard enough, but since I doubt I’d care to keep them long term, I’d still be out that 20$, and they’d be traded in for 5$ or less again :o

So, just thinking about it right now. Gonna check with some folks, see what they think of gamefly, or some alternative.

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So, on the train this evening …

I generally sit in the “quiet car”, no talking no calls etc. And at the front of the car this evening, a group of 3 or 4 folks sat down signing. Now, I’m thinking “well, they won’t have a problem in the silent car. They can keep on talking with no problem!”

A few minutes later one of the regulars got up and went over and signed at them for a while. She was telling them that they were in the quiet car and needed to quiet down. Apparently they were laughing. Out loud. And I guess, like many deaf folks I’ve met, they weren’t aware of how loud they were laughing.

It’s just amusing that she had to ask the deaf people who were signing to quiet down :o

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So, Tiffany at Electric Boogaloo has made a couple posts recently about the CPSIA as she reads up on it for her own shop …

Today, she laments the fact that apparently something went terribly wrong with this legislative idea. ..

CPSIA bad. Poisoned kids, bad. Worse, even. But how many kids get lead poisoning from the hand-carved toys made by a woodcutter in Maine as opposed to those that get a big package of GHP-dots from china multinationals? Now, seriously, which of these two companies is this legislation going to cost anything to?

I’ll give you a hint — it’s not the one that can add a dollar to each item and reap a profit from the “enhanced protections” …

Posted in: general by attriel / Tags: CPSIA

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