Parenthetical

Since When Did Teh Internetz Get Funny?

2009-01-29T09:00:00.001-05:00

I am rarely amused by 99.9% of the "funny" videos online. Yet all the sudden, three in one week. So I thought I'd share:

ONE

TWO

AAAAAAND THREE:

What Do Pumpkins and Washcloths Have In Common?

2008-12-09T08:44:00.001-05:00

Nothing. Duh.

Except that you may see both in this post. I have uploaded two new albums since my last post. Here are some pictures from Halloween (he was a monkey in case you can't tell). And the album has some good ones of him sitting in a pumpkin patch.

From Halloween, Pumpkin Patch, Mom's Visit

Here is another album I uploaded slightly before Halloween, so it's just a bunch of random candids; he only has two teeth on his bottom jaw, you can sort of see them here:

From 10-20-08

Lastly, a super duper exciting video of him crawling around. But the funny thing that cracks me up about it, and why I hit Record in the first place, is he's crawling around with a washcloth in his mouth and shaking his head back and forth. He does the head-shaking when he's really happy, so we think it's his version of dancing. You be the judge...

Washcloth from Brian Palmer on Vimeo.

As always, go to vimeo to watch the video in HD.

That's it for now. Only one set of parentheses. This blogger must be rusty.

Wait, wait.

(((((((((())))))))))

OK I feel better. Post is good now.

Redbox

2008-10-20T11:03:00.002-04:00

I rented a movie for the first time in a long time this weekend, and decided to use Redbox, a kiosk at my local grocery store. I've never used one of these things before. It was stupidly easy. I reserved the movie online in less than 2 minutes (including registration), went to the store and picked it up in about two touch-screen presses and a credit card swipe. All movies are $1/day (only new releases though), and you can just keep it as long as you need to, though if you start going more than 4-5 days you'd have been better off getting it at Blockbuster or such. Returning it involved one touch-screen press and slide the case into the kiosk. Done.

Just thought I'd share. I usually totally ignore all that kind of crap in grocery stores (well except for the coin counting machines, those are pretty cool, especially now that you can use them with Amazon for no fee). In fact I didn't even know it was there until a few weeks ago, and I've been going to that store for a year now.

The movie I rented was Forgetting Sarah Marshall. It was...meh. Funny in spots. It dragged on in others. Important to note that Apatow did not write this one, only produced it. It was written by Jason Segel (of How I Met Your Mother), which probably explains all the gratuitous dong.

The Annual "Whatcha Watchin'?" Post

2008-10-08T10:08:00.002-04:00

In response to Dung, here are my top five currently-running shows (i.e. still airing new stuff), in order:

The Office
Big Bang Theory
Psych
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Heroes

The Office continues to be my favorite show, hands-down. I also really liked the British version, and you can't go wrong with either one. This is one show that I require that Ash pay attention to, because I love all the subtle looks and innuendos and such, and I get sick of her asking "what'd I miss?" all the time when I just burst out laughing for no audible reason. She's been cooperating quite well this year; it's been a struggle to make her put down the DS.

Big Bang Theory is one show where I find myself LOL'ing more than any other show. The Office is great, but a lot of its charm isn't in pure, raw humor. I can see how BBT is a niche show, being more for the nerd crowd or people who can at least appreciate nerd humor. But for me it's great and I hope the networks continue this trend (which also includes Chuck).

Psych was one of my favorite shows before, but this year they must have brought on some new writer(s) or something, because it was significantly and noticably more funnier than the first couple seasons. Yeah, that's right, that just happened. More funnier. And I have added Maggie Lawson, who plays Juliet, to my top five "Adultery-Pardon" watch-list.

Sunny is just as hilariously wrong as ever. I find myself not exactly craving to watch each week's new episode(s), but when I do watch them I laugh my politically-incorrect ass off.

Heroes has been getting some bad geezer press this year, what with all the schizophrenic plot lines and new characters and time travel and... While I do feel like they are missing the boat from a general plot perspective (what TV was really lacking at the time Heroes came out was just a great sci-fi show where genetically supercharged heroes kick ass, a la Buffy or Angel or Dark Angel, or even a TV-version of X-Men or Fantastic Four), instead of focusing more on great characters with great powers, they are turning more into Alias/X-Files with these season+ long story archs that never go anywhere and rarely answer questions. It's a mess. But I love it. Ash hates Sylar, but every time he comes on screen I'm like a kid at Christmas. He's the best...villain...EVAR! I love his scenes. But don't worry, Sylar's not taking Maggie Lawson's place on The List.

Honorable mentions go to Eureka (sweet show), Biggest Loser (though they need to drop this whole couples format, I think it's stupid and unfair...if you're going to start a competition as a couple, you should finish it as a couple), and the 2008 WSOP (shuffle up and deal!). We watched the first episode of Fringe and haven't seen another one yet. And if Reaper ever comes back (did it get canceled?), that show definitely deserves honorable mention if not in the top 5 somewhere.

It's My Birthday, My Birthday...

2008-10-07T11:16:00.003-04:00

It was my birthday this past Sunday, and it was nice. Got to just hang out with Ash and Emmett, and we went to Outback for dinner and I finally satisfied my irrational, yet surprisingly consistent, semi-annual craving for a bloomin' onion. Unfortunately they make those things for like 4 people, so after about a third I start to get nauseous. Why do they always ask you if you want a box for it? Sorry, but no one is taking home a bloomin' onion. That's gross. Try warming that up tomorrow and let me know how that works out for ya.

I also splurged and got a glass of sweat tea. A glass and a half in, and I take a sip and my mouth feels like when I dive into Crystal Lake and graze the bottom with my mouth open. I look at the glass, and there's a quarter-inch of sugar at the bottom. I have never seen that before. Oddly enough, it wasn't even good sweat tea.

All day I couldn't get this out of my head:

Little Man Crawling

2008-09-26T21:32:00.001-04:00

He crawls! Time to babyproof...

Crawlin' from Brian Palmer on Vimeo.

More Crawlin' from Brian Palmer on Vimeo.

Anal Annihilation

2008-09-24T21:13:00.002-04:00

I finally got a chance to use the jogging stroller today for the first time. Just jogged for a few minutes in the neighborhood. There's an ever-so-slight incline for a bit, but regardless just having to push and manage the stroller was enough to not just kick my ass, but utterly and completely annihilate it.

Emmett slept through the whole ordeal. Typical.

Speaking of Emmett, he's doing well, thanks for asking. Sitting up on his own, pulling himself up (and then laughing as he lets go and plops back on his butt), and even crawling a little bit. It started as a bit of army-crawl, kind of swinging his hip around to the side, spinning himself 90 degrees into a sitting position, then reversing the whole process. Now he's cutting out the sitting-back-up-thing and actually crawling a little. I wish I had video but there hasn't been a good opportunity to do some filming lately.

For now here are some pics:

From 08-22-08

From 08-25-08

Giggling Virii - Caught on Film

2008-08-18T08:26:00.001-04:00

Here are couple more HD home videos (click through for HD, embedded videos will only be in SD). I really like this camera, it's a Canon HG10 (no tapes or media, records movies in HD right onto a hard drive, which oddly enough, is also typically abbreviated as HD, making it HD-on-HD Lovin').

First up...remote-flippage. (Why does that come up on spell-checker? "flippage" is totally a word...what the shit, there it goes again! Stoopid computers)

Remote-Flipping Giggles from Brian Palmer on Vimeo.

Next up...fuzzy block poundage. (Oh...but "poundage" is a word?)

Fuzzy Block Giggles from Brian Palmer on Vimeo.

Parentheses FTW!

Speaking of Old Crap

2008-07-21T00:37:00.001-04:00

As a follow-up to my last post full of photos, some over a month old now. Here is an updated "horsey ride" video in HD. I forgot to post that as well.

Mah bad.

Fun While It Lasts from Brian Palmer on Vimeo.

Yeah, I know. Same video. How lame of me to blogurgitate. Is that a word? Is now...

Edit: to view it in HD, you have to go to the video on vimeo's site apparently - clicky clicky. It does not come across in HD when embedded.

A Few Older Albums

2008-07-21T00:30:00.001-04:00

I have been meaning to post these photo albums for a couple weeks and just never got around to it. Believe it or not, I was actually busy at work. Yeah. I know.

All of these are with our new camera, a Sony SLR I bought a month or so ago.

6/10/08 sample:

7/3/08 sample:

7/11/08 sample:

I will have pictures uploaded and posted of our vacation to Michigan hopefully this week.

For Kim and Jeff: "individual and social responsibility" first appears on page 2.

Horsey Rides for a Quarter

2008-06-12T11:23:00.001-04:00

It's all fun and games until someone gets hurt. OK, well no one got hurt, but this video was kind of cute that I took of Emmett bouncing on Ash's leg.

I need to play around with some settings on the way I create and/or upload the video, so I need some more practice, and this seemed like a good one to start with.

Shelves. Yeah...boring, I know.

2008-06-12T11:19:00.001-04:00

Ash is turning me into an Elfa® fanboy. These shelves are sold at The Container Store, which we used to shop at a lot when we were living in GA. They are custom-cut for your measurements and completely modular/customizable, meaning you can hang up some shelves, then move them up or down as you need to.

The first project in our new home that we did using Elfa® shelves was the laundry room, which just had one long shelf over the washer/dryer. We converted this to three shelves, which added a ton of storage space in our tiny laundry room. This was my first Elfa® install, and I understood then what Ash saw in these shelves. They were wicked easy to put up.

So then we decided to do our master closet, which is not really a walk-in, but yeah you can walk around in there a little. Basically what we did was split the long wall into two shirt-length hangers and a single hanger for pants, with shelves on top. Before it was just your typical one shelf with a hanger below it across the whole wall, which is just so much wasted space.

To be fair, I should mention I think you can buy this kind of customizable and easy-to-hang shelving at Lowe's/Home Depot, but when we went there to get something for our laundry space, they weren't able to cut the shelves to fit our dimensions.

Materialism (a.k..a. Gadget Pr0n, a.k.a. Bring on the HD!)

2008-05-20T14:08:00.006-04:00

I admit. I'm very materialistic. Being a boy, I specifically like gadgets (as opposed to material goods such as...oh...clothes or furniture or furnishings and such).

With our tax return in hand, I guess you could say we've gone on a bit of a tear here in the last month or so. It started with the entertainment center. Well, the entertainment center didn't arrive until 7pm one night. Ash was gone, so I had to deal with these nimrods for the next two hours by myself. Needless to say I saw enough plumber's crack to last a lifetime, and their solution to when something doesn't fit right: kick it or push it until it fits ("that's what she said" - Michael Scott). They didn't install the back panel of the left tower right (the cords go up instead of down), and the whole right tower needs to be replaced. Awesome.

But anyway, it's not like you take it down to Target and go up to customer service. It took 2 months just to get it delivered, so I expect it'll be another two before they actually fix what was messed up from the first time. And you better believe Ash'll be there when they come back!

So anyway, once the crack-heads left, I measured the TV opening and went to Circuit City and bought the largest HDTV I could fit into that space. To give you some perspective, we replaced an old standard definition 26" Sony Trinitron that was about 12 or 13 years old. So we went from that old P.O.S. to a 46" Samsung LCD.

The next day, we brought out a DirecTV installer to get a dual-tuner HD DVR. Holy sh'pocky! HD channels rule (girls drool). And being able to record in HD is obviously a must. We have a Tivo and have always been huge Tivo fans, but a) it wasn't dual-tuner because you need a 2nd satellite line coming into the house which DirecTV had to install, and b) we would have had to buy a whole new HD Tivo anyway.

Since we are doing away with the whole receiver/cd player/speaker setup from before (we just never used all that stuff), I did buy Ash a Bose iPod docking station that is the bomb. Not a real bomb, that would suck. Just the bomb. You can see the unit in the top of the left tower in the picture above.

Hearing music stream forth from the iPod out of some real speakers prompted me to purchase a new stereo for my car yesterday, one with an iPod/iPhone connecter built in. So I can control the music from the actual stereo. Anyone with an iPod Touch or an iPhone knows how impossibly and horrifyingly dangerous it is to do anything with the device while you drive. So this will make it more safer and better sound quality. The FM transmitter I was using before was definitely not the bomb. Having to change stations every 5 miles was so idiotarded I can't begin to fathom how people actually use those on a daily basis.

So, you see how this works right. Ash wants an entertainment center...I get a TV. We get a new TV...gotta get an HD DVR. Want to get rid of the receiver and the CD player and the speakers? Well we need a docking station then. You don't want me getting into a wreck do you? Well then I need a new car stereo. It's all justified. Paperwork's all there, look it over...

p.s. Count the parentheses in this post and you can understand why the blog is called Parenthetical. Hell I even get past the title without dropping a pair in there.

Flickr

2008-04-08T14:50:00.000-04:00

So I'm trying out Flickr for uploading my photos to instead of Picasa-slash-Google; linking to photos in Google and placing photos in the blog is a PITA, so I wanted to see if Flickr would be easier. Seems odd that blogger and Google photos would be integrated so poorly, seeing as they are both Google tools. Here is the link to my new Flickr account.

For starters, I uploaded two albums. The first is when a couple of ex-co-workers visited. Ooh, neat, I just put the picture right there (click the pic to go to the full album). OK putting pics in the blog is much easier than Picasa. That's insane. It's your own tools, Google! Can't they play nice?

The second album is of Teh Emm3tt, of course (click the pic for the full album). There's some good shots of him and Xander laying next to each other on the bed, some shots of him sleeping, me sleeping, me and him sleeping, him playing Super Baby, and ... mom playing Wii. To calm him down one night, we did a sing-a-long to Fountains of Wayne which we streamed through the Tivo. Technology's swell. When it works.

But now its time to say
What I forgot to say
Baby baby baby
Come on, what's wrong
Its a radiation vibe I'm groovin' on

Captain Fussypants

2008-03-23T17:43:00.004-04:00

So what kind of 2-month old doesn't calm down in the car? Our kind. He's gone on two car rides today. The first one it took him about 20 minutes to calm down. The second one he was happy and smiling as I put him in the car seat, after 10 minutes (on my way back from Blockbuster returning Dan in Real Life and Into the Wild), he cried his poor little eyes out.

Our usual trick is to bounce him while holding him in a sling, which is convenient because it frees my hands up to type this.

Here are some updated pics. We had a pediatric appointment on Friday, and Em is 101/2 pounds! So he's put on almost 4 pounds which, and I really have no frame of reference but, I think is a good thing. And he's outgrowing some of his newborn clothes already. Doc says we can expect about another month of The Fuss though. Yay.

...

I started this blog 6 hours ago. It is now 9:20 and he finally went down for the night. I so look forward to the day when I don't put him in his crib, slink away, and then have a desire to celebrate when I don't immediately hear him start to fuss.

Resurrection

2008-02-28T19:08:00.002-05:00

OK, OK. I give. If the fans want more blog, well then, I guess I can prolong the death of this one at least a little longer.

Next, they'll want cake. Anarchy!

Here are some updated pics of Emmett. For the prior albums, you can always click on the "Brian's Public Gallery" link at the top. Feel free to explore, Dora.

So, here's some of the highlights of what's been happening in the PalmerRaineyan house:

I watched Em by myself quite a bit this weekend. I survived. The long-lasting impact on Emmett's life remains to be seen. He is being monitored for laziness, fast-food cravings, and twitch reflexes that will tell if he has been over-exposed.
We finally closed on the house in Columbus. Rawk.
We watched the movie Once, and liked it. I bought Ash the soundtrack.
We got crap reception with Verizon, so we switched to AT&T. I got an iPhone, and I'm loving it so far. When we decide we are keeping AT&T for real, we'll send out new digits.
Ash is addicted to nonograms, after I bought her Picross for the DS for Christmas. You can try a few yourself here.
I am still addicted to oGame.

We need ideas for good movies to rent. The writer's strike couldn't have come at a worse time. With Emmett here are watching more TV than ever, and even with Tivo suggestions that are recorded, we are running out of stuff to watch at 3 in the morning while one of us is up with the little man, bouncing on an exercise ball, trying to get him to go to sleeeeeeeep.

Almost Home

2007-11-08T21:35:00.000-05:00

A lot's happened since Oct. 11th (last post). I started my new job on the 15th (love it). It's mostly been spent shaking my head back and forth going "eeb-adee-eeb-adee-eeb-adee" like that one robot (Lost in Space?). Bit that's normal.

I've been traveling back and forth to Charlotte about once a week. Charlotte's a decent town, unless you're craving some takeout hibachi, in which case you have to settle for mediocre kung pao chicken. I did get to have the best burger-and-fries I've ever had though, at a chain joint called Five Guys. Holy sh'pocky. Good burgers and they literally give you a bag of fries. Remember the large size brown paper bags used for lunches - not the small ones, the larger ones - now fill that about 2/3rds the way to the top with awesome tasting fries. O' Snap.

We found a house in Gastonia, here are some pictures. We close on the house Wednesday and move Friday. Going to be a craaaazy week next week. But we are very much looking forward to getting moved and settled and to have this all behind us.

That's about it for this week. The hypnotic din of the heating unit here at the Marriott Courtyard is putting me to sleep.

Fall TV

2007-10-11T08:59:00.000-04:00

Quick post on what we are watching:

First off, my favorite new show is Reaper, hands down. This show is very funny and what I like about it is that unlike in most shows where one character is there for comedy, in Reaper pretty much all of them are. And I guess it's just one of my guilty pleasures that I'm always drawn to slacker shows. Could it be...oh...maybe...because I'm a slacker?

Honorable mention goes to Big Bang Theory. I guess it's another truth that I am drawn to nerds. Could it be...oh...maybe...because I'm a nerd? But I do find myself laughing out loud at some of the lines in this show.

Chuck is a good show, not great. We still have a season pass for it and so long as we have the time to keep watching it, we'll keep recording it. But if we ever run low on TV time then I could see this getting cut.

The only other new show we added is Pushing Daisies, which we haven't watched yet. But the only reason I added it was because I couldn't remember which show about death was the funny one, when I was setting up the season passes. Turns out the show I wanted was Reaper, so I don't expect we'll keep this one. I haven't heard good things about it anyway.

Other than that, a lot of our favorite shows returned: Office, It's Always Sunny, How I Met Your Mother, and Biggest Loser to name a few. Yes, I like to watch Biggest Loser. I can't explain it. There is something innately impressive about what they accomplish. The guy that got voted off this week lost something like 130 pounds. On the contrary, I can't stand shows like Extreme Makeover, where not only do the people do very little themselves, but then they end up all looking the same (same nose, same teeth, same hairstyle, same boobs...).

Other than that, two of our other favorites are just finished up - Psych and Eureka. Look forward to those coming back.

I'm probably forgetting a few shows without the TV in front of me.

Sudoku-Masochism

2007-10-06T15:36:00.001-04:00

I heart Sudoku. I got hooked on it back in 2004, and I bought book after book of sudoku and would do about 2 hours a day as Ash and I watched TV. After a while I started doing harder and harder puzzles.

When I moved to Columbus I often found myself bored at work, so I would take a 3x5 index card and draw lines on it to make a sudoku grid, then go to websudoku.com, pull up an Evil puzzle, and copy the starting numbers onto the index card. I would hunker over the index card on my desk and as someone would come up behind me, I would just slide it under my keyboard. The index card was folded in half so I could do two puzzles on one card, and also so I could put it in my pocket and take it with me places (yes, I took them to meetings and also the bathroom). Those evil puzzles would take somewhere between :30 and 1:00 to do, every now and then I could do one without pencil marks.

This latest book I bought is called The Ultimate Sudoku Challenge, subtitled "Warning: This book contains 200 of the toughest puzzles!" Riiiigghhhtt. Easy. But anyway at the end of the book are 10 "megasudokus", 25 by 25 grids with numbers. I started one and quickly realized I was in way over my head. Holy crap are they hard. Not only are they 25x25, but I think they are also a very hard level to boot.

The one on the left above (you should be able to click on it for a larger image), I have been working on for over a month, generally about an hour or so a day. They don't give you very much room on the page, so it's almost impossible to do pencil marks (especially since more than half of the numbers are two digits). Instead I look at possible numbers in each column, row, and box. Possible columns go at the top, rows to the right, boxes at the bottom of the page.

This is my fifth one and I was only able to finish the fourth. The first three I messed up so badly that I scrapped them. I since learned to look in the back before I place a number just to make sure it is right. I don't consider that cheating because the puzzles are just too hard not to. It saves me from screwing up the puzzle. I don't look at any other numbers and if I do, I don't place a number until I figured out why it goes there. I only look at the solution to make sure I'm right. Doesn't do any good if you screw up a number then 10 hours later realize it; it's not like you can just erase everything and start over.

I have gone 2-3 hour sessions without placing a single number. But I love it. I love a good challenge. Ash thinks I'm bonkers. I can't disagree.

If anyone wants to try their hand, let me know; I can try and scan in a grid and send you the image. But good frigging luck.

Amazon Offering Non-Protected MP3 Downloads

2007-09-26T20:48:00.000-04:00

I'm not exactly mp3-savvy, but my forays into the music download space have been frustrating; ever since the heyday of Napster's (albeit illegal) peer-to-peer application, in fact, digital music has quite gone to shite. Yahoo's music player = teh suck! MTV's Urge (now Rhapsody) = slow. Napster = slow. iTunes = don't know because I don't have an iPod, nor am I interested in downloading a media player when I already have one on my machine. It's one thing to have users install a plug-in for a media player that they already have on their machine, but to have people install your own player is ballsy...that player better be really freaking amazing (yeah...I'm looking at you Yahoo and MusicMatch). So I'm always on the lookout for better alternatives or open to suggestions.

Amazon is now offering non-DRM MP3 downloads at or below the industry standard .99/9.99 price point. I like this for several reasons. 1) First off, I've always been a fan of their website...fast and easy to use, and I'm already a member with one-click payments on file and everything. I even go to their website and listen to their 30 second song snippets to sample new music, instead of whatever WMP plug-in I happen to be using at the moment; searching for music is generally faster than within WMP. 2) I like the burnable & transferrable non-DRM format that doesn't come with any usage restrictions (e.g. 3 burns or 3 sync devices). But 3) (and this is my favorite) I like that it doesn't come with their own p.o.s. Windows Media plug-in. They do have a download manager applet that sits outside of WMP, but it's a small download and un-intrusive program.

Obviously my ultimate, ideal, perfect-world dream would be if there were an affordable subscription service with non-DRM downloads, but since that is not realistic, I'll take what I can get. I canceled my Urge membership a few weeks ago because I was never actually using it. I don't have the time, patience, or interest to just sit and listen to new music and sync up my mp3 player all day. Once in a blue moon I want to listen to an album before paying for it, so I thought the subscription route would be cool. Instead I just ended up paying $15 a month for music I never listened to.

I just bought a mess of songs by The Decemberists, mostly singles and compilation tracks. Now, I don't normally shop for or buy CD singles, but the ability to d/l a non-DRM mp3 of songs of a band that I already know I like, is pretty damn awesome. From what I've read, Amazon's library is not the most extensive, but they had several tracks that either were not on Urge or were not easily find-able on Urge; either way gives Amazon the edge.

Ultimately I guess what I'm doing is getting away from subscription-based DRM files, to just buying music that I hope I will like in a burnable format that is cheaper than, say, going to Best Buy. If you actually want to possess an actual retail CD, then I still highly recommend LaLa, especially if you were like me and had a library full of embarrassing CDs that I never listened to anymore, that I could then "trade-up" for just $1.79. When I first started using LaLa, I had several hundred CDs, but over 100 of which I never listened to anymore (and I could always rip them to my computer if I wanted to keep them anyway); now I have several hundred CDs that I actually like. Then to help in discovering new music, I have been a subscriber of Yahoo's Launchcast for a couple of years now and I'll keep that going for like $4 a month, I think it is. I was disappointed when Yahoo's music purchase system turned out to suck, because I was already a member and I like their radio station functionality, the way it recommends new music. But they made you download a whole new player, not just some WMP plug-in, and it ended up being quite painful and it had very basic functionality at that. I remember I submitted a bug on it through their website, never got a good response nor did they ever fix it; so I lost interest in it.

I've gone on quite long, but as you can tell, I like me some music. I just don't know how to really manage it all. I'm fixing to go uninstall Urge. The fact that it scans my library constantly to come up with Auto Playlists while hogging my CPU the whole time, with no easy means to disable said functionality, irritates me to no end. Shame on you MTV, didn't you learn that lesson from Sony? I want digital music, not a virus.

Knock Knock Who's There Trick or Treat...Sex

2007-09-24T22:40:00.000-04:00

If you don't know what that refers to...then you must see this:

LOLz. That's just funny, I don't care who you are. I know.

In other comedy news, we saw the movie Superbad on Sunday. Pretty damn funny. It's along the same vein as American Pie, filled with the raunchy antics of sex-crazed drunken teens, but in my humble opinion I think it does in a way that is more respectable. I can't think of a better word, but that is close. The movie isn't about sex and getting drunk. I mean yes, the funny bits of the movie are about sex and drinking, but the movie does have a deeper meaning, and it doesn't make fun of it like others in the genre. It's hard to explain. I just walked away thinking I liked it more and brought across to teens a better message than the American Pies. I recommend it.

In gaming news, Halo 3 came out last night. I went to the midnight launch at the local game store, and after waiting for an hour and putting up with high school kids yelling and throwing things, it was totally worth it when I got to take the game home. Played it all night, and went to bed about 5:30am this morning. Woke up at 10am and finished the campaign, what a riot. I don't know if Halo 3 will quite have the life-changing effect that Halo 2 had, which basically put online console gaming on the map. Halo 3 fixed a lot of the online bugs and such of Halo 2, but since it's still such a similar game I don't know as it'll have the "wow" effect for as long as Halo 2 dominated the Xbox Live charts. Nonetheless, I'll be playing it every night until I get sick of it; hopefully, they'll release maps, playlists, and tweaks enough to keep it fresh for years.

Offer...Accepted

2007-09-18T07:40:00.001-04:00

Huge news in the PalmerRaineyan house. I got an offer Friday on my way to Charlotte for my 2nd interview with Hewitt. Yesterday I got the offer from them, and I immediately accepted. Not much to debate about or re-negotiate. Hmmm....great pay, bonus, benefits, work anywhere I want or they will pay to move me to Charlotte. Gee...let me think. OK. So yesterday within a span of an hour, I got an offer, accepted it, quit my job, and turned down the other offer. So it was a day full of rejoicing and rejection all around. A little bit bitter, a lot sweet. I will start my new job 10/15, more than likely working from the farm for a couple months until we find someplace permanent.

I celebrated by taking the wife out for calzones. Because that's how we do it. Ash and I have this running argument about the merits of pizza. She seems to think that you can have (brace yourself) too much pizza. WTH is that? And also I have never been able to take her to an actual pizza place for dinner, probably because she just doesn't loooove pizza like she, clearly, should. I had been wanting to go to Mellow Mushroom for years when we were in Athens and then Columbus, and I could never get her excited about it, so last night was a bit of a small victory. Baby steps.

A Page from Dung

2007-09-13T08:14:00.000-04:00

I'm going to take a page from my pal Jeff's blog, which probably has the best...title...ever. Dung!

What I'm listening to: I have a 64-cd case in my car but usually only about 3 or 4 of those ever make it to the show. New stuff by The Starting Line (emo), Silverstein (screamo), and my new favorite band Placebo (sort of rhymes with emo), are all in the rotation. I generally alternate music with audiobooks, currently I'm on book 6 of the Wheel of Time, Lord of Chaos by Robert Jordan. I haven't done much LaLa lately since all my CDs are in storage, but before I moved up to the farm, the last two LaLa CDs I got were by Led Zepellin. I can't really explain it, it was just something I wanted to hear. I canceled my Urge membership because I wasn't using it, and I have been passing over Launchcast at work in favor of podcasts.

What I'm reading: The second Halo novel (The Flood) which is the companion to the original xbox game. Oh, after Harry Potter #7 of course. That book, once it got going, was impossible to put down. I think I read the last 200 pages in one day, which is pretty much unheard of for me. I'm going to keep it rolling with the Halo novels, since there are four of them with a fifth to release in October, basically because I'm so jacked for Halo 3 to come out Sep. 25th.

What I'm watching: the last two weeks, it's been mostly US Open. Ash and I haven't seen any movies lately except Harry Potter #5 at the theater, but I want to see Superbad and Brothers Solomon. I keep trying to watch Shaun of the Dead; I've started it once, got about 45 minutes in and was laughing my ass off so I stopped because I wanted Ash to see it. We tried watching it one night, but it really is a movie you have to watch and catch all the funniest bits and she just couldn't make that kind of commitment at the time. Oh we did watch Fantastic Four the other day (well it actually two several attempts to finish it). The 2007 WSOP main event is also running right now, which is still addicting to watch as it ever was, and I even know who won. Well, not personally, just his name. I learned a lesson about Tivo last night - if you move and switch cable companies, check your season passes.

What I'm playing: Mostly Two Worlds with a hint of Call of Duty 4 beta. Two Worlds is a good game after the first few hours of slogging through it and getting used to the menus and shtuff. Halo 3: 12 days and counting. Still really looking forward to Rock Band. They keep announcing new tracks for it and Guitar Hero III both, looks to be a good winter for gaming. Not to mention the Wii we just bought.

I have a 2nd interview tomorrow for a job I really want to get. The interview is in Charlotte, NC, so I'll be on the road pretty much all day tomorrow. Hoping to get one offer in today or tomorrow, and hope to hear something from this job maybe early next week. That would be sweet and I can have both in-hand at the same time.

Our Baby has a Wii-Wii

2007-09-11T19:16:00.000-04:00

Camera One (6/29):

Camera Two (9/6):

Camera one, camera two... Here are a few more pics. It's been a few days, and Ash is still recovering and coping with the fact that it is now a he, but at least there's still only one in there, right?. Still nothing better than a baby's heartbeat during an ultrasound. Well that and the fact that there will be a higher likelihood of having someone to play co-op with and to increase my gamerscore for me while I'm at work. I can now unabashedly rent and/or buy kids games (for the achievements, of course, but he won't know that). I don't know what I'd do if my child didn't play some sort of games, I'll take jigsaw puzzles, but give me something to work with. I'm in deep sh'pocky if he wants to play baseball or basketball or something. Ash is going to do her best to get him into horses, but if he's anything like me as a child, he'll be interested for about a month and then move on to the next thing.

Speaking of video games, Ash and I went over to a friend-slash-co-worker-slash-my-idol Oosik's house last weekend, where for the first time we got to play a Nintendo Wii. Ash totally got hooked and after a couple of hours later as I was dragging her away, she was just raving about how much fun it was. So, to make up for the fact that our baby has a peepee instead of a feefee, I looked all over the interwebs until I found one. It'll be shipped this week. Isn't it great when I can buy my wife a new game console to make amends? That's...

wait for it...

awesome.

On Diapers

2007-08-27T22:04:00.000-04:00

Oh, poop. This is sort of an interesting conversation we've had in our house lately. Cloth vs. Disposable? Is there such a thing as an eco-friendly diaper?

There are a lot of different options out there. Cloth. 7th Generation and Tushies diapers are chlorine-free. gDiapers are flushable. Or we could just start potty training at 7 months.

We're not really leaning one way or the other, just weighing our options. They all look crappy. Ba-dum-bum. There's no secret that Ash and I try and do our part for the environment and all. Nothing too outrageous. I don't drive a Crisco car or anything. I can't even affort a hybrid, but I'd like to get one someday. We just do little things like recycle what we can, and take canvas bags to the sto'. It's fun watching the dipshit teens fumble with the canvas bags and go all 12 Monkeys Brad Pitt trying to fill them.

I am leaning towards regular Pampers or Huggies or whatever works best. Neat-and-tidy is more of a priority to me than environment when it comes to cleaning up yellow stanky diarrhea. Ash is leaning more towards cloth, or maybe a mix of cloth and disposable, whatever makes sense at the time. Curious to hear if any of my dear readers have some experience with anything out of the ordinary.