Wednesday, May 31st, 2006 | 11:23 am
Just a quick post to recap our trip to Destin for Memorial Day Weekend.
This has been the third year in a row we’ve been, and it’s gotten crazier and crazier down there. The beach was completely packed with people drinking and partying (far more than we were on both accounts). It truly is “white-collar spring break”.
I ran into several people I know, including my old boss from my last job, and some guy I swam by about 20ft into the Gulf of Mexico who said “Hey, don’t you work for [my company]?” Yeah, in the ocean. It’s a small world.
Wednesday, May 24th, 2006 | 11:43 am
We saw The Da Vinci Code on Saturday, in a rare visit to the cinema that we are usually so loath to undertake. (I think this was the first time we’d been to the movies at all since we got our HDTV)
All in all, it was not a terrible movie, in my opinion. I was happy that it was fairly faithful to the book, and that the cast didn’t screw any of the characters up in a major way. In all, it was still a little disappointing because I felt like the movie lacked the spirit of the book, the breathless puzzle-solving and conspiracy-uncovering. It felt more like the cast was going through the motions. I’m not even going to bring up “the controversy” because that’s just stupid.
Tuesday, May 23rd, 2006 | 10:57 am
In my excitement to finally get back to the video games last night, I haven’t watched the season finale of 24 yet. So many people on the radio, internet, and at work have been talking about it, I’d better watch it tonight if I want anything to be a surprise.
So… Please, no spoilers. If I’m going to be as disappointed as I was with the Prison Break finale, I want to find out myself.
Update: I did finally see the season finale last night. I give it a B+, only for the last 7 minutes. Up until then, it was great.
Tuesday, May 23rd, 2006 | 12:10 am
Seeing the Halo 3 Teaser Trailer–a piece with the maximum possible coefficient of excitement to substance–was a painful reminder to me that I, er, never finished Halo 2. I mean, I have the Warthog Light Reconaissance Vehicle (pride of the UNSC) action figure with twin Battle Rifles sitting on my desk at this very moment. (Yes, egregious cringing when passing coworkers remark “Love the G.I. Joes, man!”)
Anyway, suffice it to say that I am a fan.
So I sat back down to Halo 2, and have put in a not-small amount of time playing it again. Matt and I played the cooperative mode this evening, which is really the way to do it. The good news is that the game really holds its own on the Xbox 360. It’s not a next-gen title by any stretch of the imagination, but especially as a co-op team, it has an epic feel to it. The much-criticized level design is a little repetitive, but I’ll forgive it.
I’m experimenting with Yahoo! Widgets, which I still want to call Konfabulator Widgets, even though I never actually used it when it was called Konfabulator. The weather one is the only useful one so far, but I’ll keep trying.
I would call the Google Calendar an unqualified success. Previously, I had tried very hard to use Planzo, which is very nice, but the Gmail integration is a very compelling feature. Only time will tell if I actually stick to it and keep my dates in there, but I sure am trying…
Thursday, May 18th, 2006 | 9:41 am
We have two photosets up from our trip to Italy.
The Highlights are some of the best, in case anyone wants to see some photos from the trip without being subjected to the morass of 400-odd shots we brought back.
I was pretty pleased with the results of the new camera. Our old camera, bless its heart, exemplified everything that was difficult about first-generation multi-megapixel digital cameras, and the Exilim is a breath of fresh air by comparison.
I’m still working on tagging and describing the photos, because Flickr’s latest release really screwed up the way I used to write my tags and descriptions. The photos of the beautiful sites we visited speak for themselves, but I still like to organize them.
Friday, May 5th, 2006 | 3:27 pm
We’re in Rome, it’s 9:27pm, and we’re going to bed.
Gotta meet Matt and Liisa at 7am at the train station tomorrow! Anyway, we’ve had tons of fun so far. We saw St. Peter’s, the Vatican Museums, the Sistine Chapel, the Trevi Fountain, the Spanish Steps, the Forum, and the Colliseum today. Fun, fun, fun. Now we’re tired and finished our gelato, so we’re going to sleep.
Will post photos when we return.
Ciao!
Tuesday, May 2nd, 2006 | 10:13 pm
Heather and I were in Jacksonville for the weekend, as you may have noticed from the fun photos to your left. My sister graduated from college (congrats, Christine!) and we all met to celebrate.
Tomorrow, we leave for Italy. My buddy Matt made the decision to have his wedding in Florence, and we decided to make a weeklong vacation out of it. We fly into Milan, take the train to Rome and Florence, and fly out of Milan a week later. I’ll have a recap and photos as soon as I can. Have a good week, everyone!
