After saying I would write three times a week, it’s been over five days with nothing. Old habits do die hard. My habit of doing nothing except what I have to (and by ‘have to’ I mean wait to make sure it’s noticed that I haven’t done it, then do it at penalty because I am just that lazy) is really making this very difficult. That and I’ve been sick. Well, I wouldn’t completely say sick, but I would say scratchy throat, occasionally runny nose, and maybe a sneeze or cough a day due to one of those two things. Ugh. Hopefully I will feel more organized in thought to write something better tomorrow.
In the meantime, I just feel like going over what’s happened recently.
For Casey’s birthday, we spent my ‘Christmas bonus’ (no bonus, but an envelope thanking team members for a job well done with a pair of movie tickets and $10 gift certificate) to go see “James Cameron’s Avatar”. If you haven’t seen it yet, stop reading now. Stop reading and go to the theater now. Seriously. Go watch it. I will wait.
The immersion factor of this movie is well worth it. Even if you hear “Fern Gully in SPACE!” (which is a fairly good description) or any other trope-ish description, you will still want to spend the $10 to go see this in theaters and experience it in full immersion. Even better, there is still time to see it in 3D. Casey has already gone to see the movie again and we both are going to see it in 3D on Thursday.
On New Year’s Day, Casey decided he needed a computer game controller. Since we both had gift certificates and I wanted an excuse to go to Best Buy anyways, we went. They had the sorriest selection of gamepads and controllers I have ever seen. I hope that they were merely still wiped out from Christmas. Needless to say neither of us found what we thought we would buy.
Looking around we discovered a $129 set of headphones. That is not a typo. The Logitech G35 Surround Sound Gaming Headset boasts 7.1 surround, noise-canceling mic, and on ear controls in a set of headphones. Fairly tall order I say. The deciding factor for giving them a try is a) return policy and b) if Casey didn’t like them for comfort reasons, but they sounded good, I would buy them off of him. So I haven’t talked to him in a few days outside of skype because he absolutely loves them. They don’t even sit on the ears, but rather around them. The cushions are directly on your head, leaving your ears room to wiggle. They sound good, and Casey swears by them, although I haven’t borrowed them to test surround.
I bought the Wacom Bamboo Pen & touch tablet. This is one neat gadget. It sports a pressure sensitive pad that you can work with either with the provided pen or with your finger. The touch part works like a laptop touchpad (but with gestures and flicks ability). The roughly 5×8 area is big enough I don’t feel cramped and small enough I don’t have to lift my hand much to work with it. I have always wanted to use a tablet, and I really want to get (back) into photoshop type stuff. Now I just need software and inspiration.
Since then, I’ve played some with my tablet (this made “Crayon Physics Deluxe” much easier). On WoW, my shammy reached 79 and also finally got the gold together for epic flying training/mount (ironically I chose him over my pally for who gets epic first). I’ve reread a couple books, made teh best chili evar (keep a lookout on my food journal for more info there), watched Naruto discs 1&2 (I never watched it before, thanks NetFlix), and overall not doing a whole lot. Speaking of not doing a whole lot, I think I’ll stop this here.