FuzzyCouch

The annual hat draw ultimate tournament I help organize — Jax Hat –  is coming up in a couple weeks. This will be its sixth year.

There is a Jax Hat 2010 event page on Facebook with most of the details.

Mel and I had a little meeting today and the details seem to be coming together. We’ve got fields reserved. We have a lot of people signed up. We still have a good deal to do, but some things are best done in the last couple weeks.

Today, I went around to a bunch of  local restaurants — a few are offering specials or discounts for attendees.

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Recently, I was in Lincoln and was getting gas on Fifth Street near the old Postville Courthouse pretty late at night when a guy approached asking directions to an apartment complex. I didn’t recognize the name of it, but he said it was near Lincoln College.

I didn’t know enough of the street names to give him directions, but I told him it was pretty far across town. But he’d already walked a long way in the wrong direction after getting to town on the train.

I got to mom and dad’s, dropped off our stuff and Julie and decided to see if I could get the guy close to where he was trying to get to.

I caught up with him near College and drove him to Lincoln College. Turns out that the place he was going was way down by Hardees, though. He pointed the way and I did get him there.

I’m not sure how long he’d have been meandering around town at night on foot. I know I would have been pretty frustrated.

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Julie’s school is out for summer as of last week, so we decided to go to Madison, Wis., for my days off to watch some of the UPA College Nationals there. We had two really good meals at Great Dane Pub and at an Afghan restaurant called Kabul. We listened to the unabridged, book-on-CD version of “Horns” by Joe Hill on the drive up and back, though we still have two discs to listen to. We were only gone two days, but we were so busy that it seemed longer.

FLORIDA

I haven’t posted about my trip to the Orlando area yet. I had a family reunion down there. We had a couple rental houses in the Kissimmee St. Cloud area.

Besides catching up with family, we got to do some swimming in the pools, jet skiing, water skiing, video game playing, and my cousin and I played in a pickup ultimate game. A group of us went to the Orlando art museum. Mom and I went to “Star Wars: In Concert” at the Amway Center, where the Orlando Magic play.

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We’ve been enjoying our extended weekend.

On Friday night Jantina and I joined Rob and Sarah and several friends for a cookout at their place. There was a good turnout, about 15 or so folks. We each brought a dish, and relaxed in the back yard enjoying the weather as we ate. We had a great time meeting new friends and visiting. We are looking forward to the next get-together!

Our air-conditioning at home has been out for a week now. We’ve been spending more time in our basement as the repair men keep guessing what the problem could be. The current theory is that the internal coil needs to be replaced. So, I moved the PS3 and TV from my office downstairs so now we’re able to stream Hulu, Netflix, and watch DVDs that way (and it gives me an excuse to play my oft-neglected PS3 games).

Sunday after church we had  lunch at mom & dad’s with the family, then Jantina and I went to Bloomington for a date. We first stopped by World Gourmet to pick up a few things, and while we were there I picked up a dark chocolate bar with almonds and sea salt and Jantina bought an orange passion fruit drink. She didn’t care much for her drink, but the chocolate was awesome! I was surprised when I realized that I had finished the whole thing while watching the movie… we went to the Palace to see Prince of Persia. So many scenes were lifted straight from the video games, and it totally worked! It was fun, I’d recommend seeing it. After the movie we tried a new place for dinner, Baxter’s American Grille. The service was “meh”, but the food was pretty good, we’ll try it again for sure.

Now we are looking forward to having Monday off. I probably stay up late tonight playing games and tomorrow we are heading over to mom & dad’s for a cookout with the family!

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I’ve been working on my BMX bike lately, so these two were taken while riding:

http://flickr.com/photos/utini/4559447611/

http://flickr.com/photos/utini/4560077078/

Kickball game — This is from the  game in Lincoln recently. It got rained on a little, but was fun.

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Julie and I spent the day in St. Louis and went to the Yeasayer concert Monday.

We had lunch at a local coffee shop near Grand and walked around that neighborhood, then went over to The Loop area of Delmar and looked around there and grabbed a bubble tea. We then went looking for the concert venue on the Washinton University campus. On the way there, we spotted Julian Casablancas crossing the street in front of us. I don’t know if I said it out loud or not, but I at least thought to myself, “Hey, that guy looks like Julian Casablancas. Oh, it is Julian Casablancas.” He had a show later that night at The Pageant.

We then went back to Delmar for Thai pizza. The Thai pizza — we had Pad Thai and Tom Yum versions — was strange. I thought it tasted like quiche, even though it didn’t have eggs in it.

We ate slowly, killing some time before the concert. We weren’t sure where to park at Wash U, but we eventually found a spot. We had already purchased our tickets, but there was some major confusion about if there were tickets available still, and the venue organizers hadn’t be especially clear about the matter.

The Riverfront Times story gets into that a little bit. They also have a slide show of photos — one of which I found myself in, I think.

Julie and I were about seven or eight people from the stage. The sound setup was great. There was a point at which I found myself stuck behind a 6’7″ guy and seeing the band got a little difficult. That was probably only for one song. Most of the time, I was behind a girl who was a little shorter than me and I could see fine. She spent a lot of the show bumping into me while dancing, but it was only slightly annoying. Julie got warm towards the end of the show and headed for the back of the room where it was cooler. She said the sound and view was great back there, too.

I added this show to my list of concerts and realized we hadn’t been to a show in quite a while.

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Arguably the biggest thing in gaming this week was the iPad launch. No, I didn't purchase one, I do think it would be wise to wait for the 2nd generation. Apple will probably add some feature (like a camera), but even in the worst case scenario where the next version includes some insignificant change, then the original will be cheaper! So either way, I'm waiting for now.

So I've been living vicariously through others as they get their gaming on with the new device. The first thing I noticed was the Twitter phenomenon. Maybe it is just the circle of people I follow, but this was the first time I've witnessed an entire product launch unfold from pre-launch lineup, un-boxing, new user experiences, impromptu peer user groups, troubleshooting, and recommendations all springing forth in real time as the product became available to the masses. It was incredible to see all sorts of people posting pics, describing which applications they like best, collaborating about charging and wi-fi problems, it was really incredible to witness the power of Twitter.

The latest CO-OP show brought new concerns to the table. As the hosts expounded on how wonderful the device is and demoed some very cool games (that I admit, made me a bit envious), I kept noticing how poorly ergonomic playing games on the device looked. Watching them play all hunched over gave me a sympathy neck-ache of my own. Maybe placing the device on a table would help a little, but I'm just not sure how much that would help. I would love to see a mock-up of those single-colored iPod ads with a silhouette of a guy hunched over playing on his iPad! If you have the talent, let's see it! :-)

The excitement only built as the details of the new iPhone OS 4.0 were announced. Now we'll get a lot of overdue features (like multi-tasking) but also the equivalent of XBOX Live for the iPhone/iPod/iPad games! Achievements, Leaderboards, Friend Lists, Matchmaking, all will be a part of the platform, YAY! I think the combination of this, and the new iAd platform unveiled is really going to take marketshare from the Facebook gaming scene as well as make a pretty tough road for Nintendos 3DS... friend codes anyone?

If the rumors are true, and a new iPhone is to be launched this summer, I'm likely to upgrade to that and continue holding off on the iPad. But as I spend this evening playing through a $5 copy of ESPGALUDA II (normally an $80 import!) on my 3GS I can't help but maintain my enthusiasm for the Apple platform!

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Troy,

I’m, totally, buying coffee stock in your next vacation!

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