Generally, most video game spoofs are pretty lame. But for some reason, I laughed a lot at this Legend of Zelda spoof (start from Season 1 Episode 1 down at the bottom):

http://www.atom.com/channel/channel_legend_of_neil/

It's a bit not work-safe... so be warned (language and suggestive scenes). There are definitely moments where I laughed out loud. Perhaps it's because I'm so sleep deprived today but I laughed quite a bit. It has Felicia Day too (from the Guild and Dr. Horrible).

Check out the fun puzzle here:
http://www.futilitycloset.com/2009/06/03/a-curious-conversation/

I think I have it figured out, but wanted to let you guys look at it first before I posted it. I'll post in comments what I think the answer is and why.

Rock Band Party - June 20th
For those who read the blog, we are having a Rock Band party the 20th of this month. Like the last 2, it will be held at my co-worker Sara's house.

We will have a costume contest again. The costume can impersonate a famous musician or you can make your own unique costume. I will be sending out the official Socializr invite sometime in the next week or so when we have the details figured out.

For those of you in the Portland area that didn't get an invite the last 2 parties, just let me know at ophidiann At gmail d0t com. :)

Monkey Island
Two awesome announcements regarding Monkey Island have been made! First, they are bringing the first Monkey Island game to the PC and 360 back with updated graphics.

http://www.lucasarts.com/games/monkeyisland/

Then, Telltale games (who have been doing the Sam & Max games, the new Wallace and Gromit games, and StrongBad adventure games) are doing a new series of Monkey Island games!

http://www.telltalegames.com/monkeyisland

I've always loved the Monkey Island series and I believe Telltale has done a good job with the Sam & Max games (which I have). There are so few companies that do good adventure games nowadays... that it's always fun to see the old Lucasart adventure games comeback. Now they need to start a new set of Space Quest games!

I just need a place to vent and I don't want to make this sound like a "poor me" post because overall I do know that I'm a very lucky guy.

Work has just been crap the last 6 months or so. I can never seem to get close to catching up. As soon as I feel like I'm turning the corner and heading into a somewhat maintainable schedule some new emergency crops up that sucks up all my productive hours for the next few weeks and puts me further behind. I don't think I would mind as much if I knew that I could come in at a certain time and just leave at a certain time. But my schedule fluctuates from day to day. And it has been this way for the last 6 months. I feel like I can't really take a real vacation because it would just put be behind even more. I purposely try to cut myself off on the weekends but even then don't succeed.

The hard thing is, I know compared to what many people are going through right now in this economy I should feel lucky to be employed, to have a decent wage, to have mostly decent co-workers, and to be happy that I'm not shoveling crap. And despite this logical bit of information, I'm just sick of so many things:

- Big company politics
- Unnecessary and wasteful processes
- The pervasive attitude that IT can do nothing right
- The few morons that make life difficult for everyone
- Constrained resources to do everything that we were doing before and more
- The boring culture that comes with an engineering company

I think another major issue is, I just know I'm not passionate about most of the stuff I'm working on. I'm fine doing it, it's better than a LOT of jobs out there but it doesn't excite me. So generally, I just tell myself to shut up and just do it. At least I'm not doing tech support work. Or many other "office" jobs that would suck the living soul from me.

What makes it worse is that Jen is kind of going through the same thing right now. Her work is hard to predict with her schedule as well. And we both come home exhausted and never knowing if our weekends will involve us having to work or not. And we're both questioning what it is we really want to do professionally. Planning for the wedding is fun but also just another big thing on our plates to work through on top of the never-predictable onslaught of work.

I don't know what is right for Jen or myself. And given the economy, I'm very hesitant to move into anything new as my job is fairly secure. Same with Jen. But realistically speaking, I know I just need to sit down and figure it out. I think consulting or owning my own business sounds interesting but both of those have several big drawbacks. How does one figure what they want to do? I'm 28. Shouldn't I know my goals by now? I'm wasting valuable time not answering these questions sooner than later.

When I think about these things, and then eventually having kids and all, it makes me question myself too. If I can't handle the pressures of work now, what happens when I have work and kids? It is very strange because I think about all the good things going for me and I can't seem to get my mind to stop focusing on what I perceive as the crappy portions of work.

I don't want to make it sound like I'm depressed all the time or unhappy all the time. Overall, I'm happy. I just wish I could really figure out what to do about work. What to do about my future life and work. What to do about the crap that comes with every job. Perhaps I just need a new challenge... and I'm just bored with the same crap. Perhaps I am at the wrong company. Perhaps I'm in the wrong field completely. Perhaps... just perhaps... I should look into other career choices... like construction worker. Fuckin A!

Last blog entry of the day...

My younger brother got married this weekend.

For those that don't know the whole story... my younger brother and his girlfriend of 2 months found out that she was pregnant a couple weeks ago. They decided they were going to keep the baby and get married in December (around when the baby was due). Then last week they found out she miscarried. :( And so they went to Redmond (near Bend) to see her family this weekend and while they were down there, they got married.

Yes, so Benjamin is now married and I have a new sister-in-law Sarah. I wish them all the best and all I have to say is just... wow.

Everyone remember the game "Telephone" you would play in elementary school? One person whispers to the next person, who whispers to the next person, and so on... until the last person has to tell everyone what the first person said? Well imagine playing that with pictures involved over the Internet! That's what BrokenPictureTelephone is all about.

How is it played? Simply it starts with one person having to write a concept down like, "Adam feints at the sight of a spider and convulses." The next person in the queue will be required to draw a picture from those words. The next person in the queue will be required to describe the picture that was drawn without seeing the original description and so on. It continues like this until we reach the end of the rounds (15 by default although you can set more rounds if you wish). At the end, everyone can see all of the actual pictures, descriptions, etc. It's super-quick to respond to a drawing or description. I believe we don't all have to be on at the same time to play. You just play when it's your turn (which I believe you can be notified by email for). I haven't played a private game, so not 100% sure how it works.

I think it would be fun to play with this group. I want to setup a private game for the people who are interested... so basically I need those who are interested to sign up for an account. Once you have your account created and verified, please post in the comments what your username is and I'll setup a game after a few people have replied. My username is "Ophidiann".

Also, under the Account Settings (after you setup your account)... you can specify a few settings (most notably un-checking the "mature" content category so you don't get phallic drawings in your public games you might play. I'll check back in the comments later today for anyone who wants to join. :)

Also, just a quick couple examples of what completed games look like:
- Game 1
- Game 2
- Game 3

Moving sucks. It just sucks. We're still moving stuff over because we only had the UHaul for 6 hours on Saturday and wasn't able to finish it all. So now it's just car/truck trips to get the rest. Plus, unpacking has proven that we have TOO MUCH STUFF!!! But on a happier note, we love our new place and the weather has been awesome for us to move so far. That's a huge plus. We've taken a couple short walks around the neighborhood and overall I'm just happy about living in our place. I'm so sore and beaten up from all the moving... and I vow next time... WE ARE GETTING MOVERS. Blah.

Either way, tentatively we are planning for a house-warming/engagement party on the weekend April 25 & 26th. It won't be a Magic Fruit party like we originally planned as we need to coordinate more for that. But we'll have a party nonetheless. :) Once it's all done... I'm going to LOVE our new place.

I always suck at real-time strategy games... but that doesn't stop my fascination with them. The idea of controlling an entire army and wreaking havoc is always fun. In any case, here is a new twist on real-time strategy games:

http://achrongame.com/

It's hard to describe the game. It's a real-time strategy game that involves time travel. The strategies you can use in this make my head hurt but it's fascinating nonetheless. The game in its current form looks horrible graphics wise... but very interesting gameplay mechanics. I'll be watching this one.

Last week was quite an eventful week:

• As most of you know, last Sunday started with me proposing to Jen. It went perfectly and was a very nice day for both of us. I'll write up a full description later with pictures.
  
  
• Then, we started the process of finding a new place... found a wonderful townhouse at the Waterfront (RiverPlace Square) that we got a great deal on... and we have closed on and submitted our applications for it. We are signing our lease papers this weekend and our move in date is April 1st (which was the max amount of time we could hold it for). We both have about 2 weeks to move all of our stuff out of our places after that.
  
  
• Vincent, my family's first dog, was put down this week. Apparently, he had re-opened a wound on his back and my mom found him struggling to move at home. They couldn't stop the bleeding so they took him to the vet and after discussing options... the call was made to put him to sleep. He was 17 years old... so he was definitely an old dog... but it sucks nonetheless.
  
  I remember when we first got him. Our parakeet had died and my parents told us that they were going to go get another parakeet. My older brother watched us while my parents were out. Several hours later, my parents bring in Vincent. We were so excited to finally have a dog (we had one when I was REALLY little... but he was so big that he trampled us and my parents had to get rid of him). Vincent was always a super-energetic dog. While he was small... he was exceptionally strong. He would actually swing a wheelbarrow around with his mouth in the backyard.
  
  He also was deathly afraid of Frodo (our Beagle) when we first got him. It took him a while to warm up to Frodo and then it became a dominance battle all the time. Frodo was always super-happy to see and play with Vincent... and Vincent was almost 9 at this point so he would play his grumpy old man routine and keep him at a distance. Eventually, Vincent and Frodo would be at each other's side all the time. They would still fight over food but overall they definitely became best buds.
  
  I still don't know how Frodo is going to deal with it. Now because there aren't two dogs to mess with the cat... they FINALLY are letting Damien (Dale's cat) out of Dale's room and roaming the house. When it was Frodo and Vincent together... they would gang up on the cat and Vincent would sometimes get mean because he would not want Frodo near the cat.
  
  In remembrance, here are a set of pictures of Vincent: Vincent Pictures
  
  
• My younger brother had interesting news this week. Apparently his new girlfriend (of about 2 months) is pregnant and they are planning on not only keeping the kid but getting married in December I believe. Despite many reservations I have about Benjamin's responsibility level (he seems to lack the capacity to keep a job)... I'm happy for him and just hope that he realizes he really needs to grow up now. He's been a lot better these past couple years but still I worry. I don't really know his girlfriend at all (I met her only once)... so I can't say whether she will be a good influence or not in that regard. She seemed nice, smart, and responsible. So I do hope that all works out. I guess it's weird that I will be an uncle by the end of the year.

So the week has been quite eventful. Look forward to seeing people at Poker night tomorrow night.

Someone at work sent me this and thought it was pretty cool. It's a Flash puzzle game that for those of us who did programming of any kind... will basically use many of the principles we used in programming to solve issues. It uses the idea of loops and recursion... but makes it fun. I only played it for 5 minutes... but it seemed like it had a lot of interesting puzzles.

Enjoy:

http://robozzle.com/

Because work is shitty right now... this site was very appropriate and made me laugh:

http://www.fmylife.com/

Speaking of work, this last month at work has been never-ending hell. We had a massive re-org of our organization... and on top of the things that I was doing before, I got new responsibilities and I'm over allocated by a long shot. On top of the fact that I'm over-loaded... I hate what I'm working on. It's just boring but extremely tedious work. But I guess I'm employed... and it's not a warehouse, fast food, or other shittier job. So I'm going to focus on the positive and say... in this economy, with my education and experience... life is pretty damn good.

Also, let's vote on an "argument" Jen and I have been having:

Is it proper to call Pioneer Courthouse Square... "Pioneer Square"?

A.) While technically it's called, "Pioneer Courthouse Square" it is fine to use Pioneer Square as it's a socially acceptable norm in Portland.

B.) It's Pioneer Courthouse Square and everyone who says Pioneer Square is wrong.

Because I know everyone is biased against me and towards Jen's opinion... I'm not going to say which side of the argument I'm on and which one she is on.

I love random humor. And this definitely counts as something in the totally random humor category.

TNG Re-Cuts

I especially couldn't stop laughing at Episode 10, 14 and 15.

I don't know why, but this made me laugh a LOT (warning lots of bad language):
http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2009/02/09/sony-releases-new-ns.html

But funny in a disturbing way. What would happen if you took the Fresh Prince of Bel Air theme song and made it into a gangster rap song. Warning... the video has lots of cussing and generally a very not work safe video:

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1896273

Consider your childhood memories defiled. :P