MyVirtualLife.net

Last week we bought a new (used) car that we've been looking into for awhile.  It's a fully loaded, AWD 2009 Volkwagen Tiguan that will be our new family car.  Unfortunately this means that I'll have to sell my BMW coupe and drive Steph's truck for a while, but it's ok. The coupe isn't ideal for a baby seat and stroller.

 

 

 

It's a cool little car and it drives really nicely.  The sales process was easy too but there we almost had a disaster.  We bought it from a dealer in San Diego but there were some door dings that the agreed to repair for free.  We went back down there this Friday and they fixed everything and it looked great.  

On the way home, I'm pretty sure we got another ding (of course) and then we were almost hit by a drunk driver!  We just passed the border check point on the 5 and this guy almost hit us from behind when changing lanes wildly.  After he passed us, I told Steph that something was really wrong with that guy.  He was going relatively straight but then he'd swerve like crazy.  I was saying, "I think we're supposed to call 911" and seconds later he crashed.  The freeway turned to the right, but he went straight until he hit the median.  He then swerved across 4 lanes, hit the side of a big rig, spun around backwards across all 4 lanes until he crashed into the median again.  The amazing thing is that he didn't hit anyone other than the big rig and he didn't crash into anything that hard.  Thankfully we're all ok but it could've been a costly trip for a couple of door dings. 

I spent the rest of the 3-day weekend detailing 3 cars and putting up some shelves in the garage.  I have to go back to work tomorrow so I can relax and take it easy!  At least physically, that is.

 

 

Life, Ian

 

A few weeks ago, I bought a 2011 hi-res 15” Macbook Pro. I was thinking about it for months and finally ordered it when the back to school special came around. Good thing Steph is taking a sewing class! My pants my still not be fixed, but her class has paid for itself in student discounts.

Of course, I couldn’t leave it stock and the first thing I did was pull it apart and put in a SATA III 6G SSD and 8GB of RAM and it’s so fast! It boots OSX in 8 seconds and Windows 7 via bootcamp takes about 15 seconds. Almost everything about it is designed so well and so much thought has been put into it.  it’s easily the best computer I’ve ever used. I was a little reluctant to finally move off my home desktop, but the laptop can handle anything I do with the exception on Bluray burning.



I thought I’d use OSX for basic web stuff, Apperture and Final Cut and use Windows for everything else. However, I’m already finding that I want to do as little as possible in Windows 7 (which I like and think is very good). So now, I just use Windows to play games and occasionally do some of my work stuff, but that’s about it. The Mac software seems to be the best of both worlds since it’s built on UNIX but it also has the amazing applications and UIs that UNIX/Linux lack. It's made me even consider getting into Objective-C development even though I've made a living doing Oracle and Microsoft development.



I used Macs from elementary school to the early part of college, but I switched over to PCs when I went into MIS which was all PC and UNIX based. I then became anti-Apple because they made things so proprietary and were almost dead, but I still had to develop for and/or support them. And then they just came out with a color case for an iMac and that brought them back enough to eventually make the iPod, iPhone, and iPad. I’m sure I’ll pick up a new iPhone 5 in September since I still have the 3G and Steph wants and an iPad, so we’ll soon become an Apple household again. I would’ve never guessed I'd say that 10 years ago.

I also happened to watch, "Welcome to the Macintosh" on Netflix the other evening.  It's pretty good and makes you wonder how much Steve Jobs changed the world and what Apple is going to do once he's gone.

Life, Tech, Blog

Some politicians (California, of course) want to label some video games as hazardous to your health and want a skull and crossbones label placed on them. I won't even go into how stupid this bill is and how many other things we should be spending money on. However, I had a somewhat related incident recently....

About a month ago, I bought a new game (Dead Space 2) and decided to play it while Steph was taking a nap. I played it for about an hour while snacking on some chips. A few minutes later, I felt like I had something in my eye but I didn't think anything of it. A half an hour later, my eye was still bothering me and Steph woke up, so I paused the game and went to wash out my eye.

Now, it should be noted that I'm not normally one to get excited about things. I've seen a lot of bad things go down and I've seen multiple people die and my demeanor really didn't change much. But what I saw completely freaked me out! When I went to wash out my eye, it was so swollen and it didn't look round anymore. It actually looked like my eye was collapsing! So, I panicked and made Steph drive me to urgent care. On a side note, we went to two "urgent care" places but they were closed since it was Sunday evening. I'm not sure it should be called urgent care if it ever closes, but I digress. After I got mad at Steph for driving so slow, we ended up at the emergency room. Again, I've broken bones and have had a large third degree burn, but I've never been to the ER before.

Anyhow, after half an hour waiting for a doctor, one took a look at me and kind of chuckled and said I was ok. I said, "but, my eye wasn't even round" and I think that made her laugh some more and she assured me it was. What happened is that the white part of my eye got swollen (unevenly at that) but the brown part didn't, so it made it look the brown part was sinking in. So, after a rinse of saline and $300 dollars later I was able to go home.

So, what does all this have to do with video games? Well, I just finished the game this weekend (minor spoiler alert) and toward the end, there are two scenes where one lady gets her eye pulled out with a screw driver and another where another long needle is stuck in the main guy's eye. Maybe I'm a little squeamish when it comes to eyes, but after my experience and these two scenes, all I could say is WTF!!! And of course, I started having that feeling that something was in my eye again, so maybe video games are hazardous to your health, lol.

Life, Tech, Blog

I finally got around to making some shelves for one of our closets. It's not the coolest thing I ever made, but it's very functional. This closet is actually pretty big, but the unusual shape made it hard to use the space. Now we can walk into it and still fill it up with a bunch of junk.

Life, Stuff I Made, Blog

Steph bought some crabs at Ranch 99 (or is it 99 Ranch?) this week and they were delicious as always! We just steamed them this time, but it reminded me of another type of crab I made last month.

My aunt makes a crab dinner over Christmas and this is one of her recipies with black beans and ground pork. I think it's a Chinese style, even though Steph doesn't think so. It may not look so good in the picture, but it's very tasty!

We also met some interesting people on our recent trip to Kauai. One of them was kind enough to give us a crab that they caught and cooked. They call this one a 7-11 crab because of the number of red spots on it. The shell was so thick that they said you have to smash it with a hammer. We told him that we didn't have anything to crack the shell and that we weren't going to be able to eat it, but he still wanted to give it to us anyway. The Hawaiian people are just so welcoming and so generous. Good thing crab season is coming to end because my cholesterol can't handle anymore!

Food, Life, Cooking, Stuff I Made, Blog, Travel

I don't know about the holidays, but I think it's crab season or at least close enough! I feel like I have to redeem myself from my previous McRib and Spam post, so here's something I made over the weekend. Although, it's probably not any better health wise!

Garlic Roasted Crab





This is probably the best thing I can make and it's really not hard either. You just have to buy live crabs for it to be good and you can't just throw them in the pot because they need to be cut and cleaned (for people who don't eat that horrendous yellow stuff that most asian people love). I used to have them kill it at Ranch 99, but I don't have any problems with doing it anymore.

Although, I'll admint that I was like Homer and his "pet" Pinchy at first!

Food, Life, Cooking, Blog crab, garlic, roasted, recipies, cooking, dungeness

I usually don't eat too bad, but I definitely have my moments of weakness. Actually, that's pretty much every day when it comes to sweets!

Anyhow, if I've seen you lately, you probably had me ask you about my latest fascination, the McRib. I've never had one before since the shape of the formed bones confused me and made it unappealing. I mean really, why is it shaped in the form of a bone sandwich? That doesn't make any sense.

But for some reason, I was determined to try one this year. Maybe it was Steven Colbert talking about them all the time or maybe it was the stories I hear of people driving an hour to get one and eating 5 of them. I figured it'd be like a Jack 'N the Box taco: disgusting in every way imaginable, yet somehow delicious!

So now that they're out again, I made a trip to get one and... I still don't get it. I thought it was like a bland version of the breakfast sausage but on a roll. Honestly, I was expecting to like it but it just didn't do it for me. I know, I must be a bad person for saying that since people seem to have a personal connection with this bone sandwich.

I also recently tried something else equally as bad. Hot & Spicy SPAM. My official reviews are as follows:


McRib - Not worth the McRuns.


Hot & Spicy SPAM - Pretty much exactly like it sounds.


I think I need to watch Food, Inc. so I won't eat these things anymore!

Food, Life, Blog McRib, Hot & Spicy SPAM, review, fast food

Here are some planters I made about a year and half ago. I made the long thin first since I wanted to plant some bamboo and have it run along the patio, but I didn't want to take up much space. It's about 6 feet long and maybe 8 inches wide.



Here's a recent picture of it with the bamboo grown in:


It starts out green like the culm in the background and gradually darkens until it's nearly black in a year or so.

I took this picture of Boba sunbathing, but you can also see one of the square planters I made for a couple of red Japanese Maples in the background. I'll have to take better pictures when they bloom in the spring.


I think I found out why this one lost its leaves earlier than normal...


Steph and I went shopping at South Coast Plaza earlier this year and it happened to be the same weekend of the garden show when it's full of Orchids and other plants. I saw a planter that I really liked and it's inspired me to make one like it. I also want to make some other things too, so I guess a mitre saw is next on the list of things to buy.

Life, Boba, Stuff I Made, Blog

Continuing with the stuff I made category, here's a picture of a dog house I made for Steph about 3 1/2 years ago. She kept saying she wanted to get a dog and wanted me to make one like a barn, so this is what I came up with.



We ended up getting a dog later, but she's never even seen it since it's too big for my place. I think it's currently at her brother's and it's probably full of dirty socks for now. I think this is also the only picture I have of it too. I'll have to take a better picture of it sometime, without the shoes and socks.

Life, Stuff I Made, Blog dog house, barn

So, I've been using Blog Engine for this blog and it was overdue for an upgrade. I chose this program since it fit my needs the best and I liked the simplicity of it. So far, I like the idea of open source software more than the realities of it. It's free and available, but the documentation is always lacking and there's no real easy way to keep the individual components up to date with the latest patches.

I used to run a site with a bunch of different PHP programs. They were pretty easy to get running, a little harder to customize, and then impossible to keep up with the patches. Maybe it'd be different if I maintained them for a living, but it's hardly something I want to do outside of work. So, I'd neglect them and I think almost everyone of them got hacked or overloaded with spam.

Maybe I just don't have the driving interest I used to either. I'm all for things like Windows Update that just take of these things for you.

Life, Tech, Blog blog engine coding open source