Spent most of my day playing Call of Duty: World at War (aka CoD5). It’s a fun game, and I’m glad that I finally picked it up.
Kelly peeled me away from it for long enough to run over to Kennedy School to watch The Men Who Stare At Goats, which was pretty funny. Quirky and ridiculous, but fun. Jeff Bridges even channeled a bit of The Dude in his role.
However, since it’s early enough on this Sunday evening, it’s back to CoD for a little more shooting at baddies.
Returning to work after 2 weeks of time off always means a lot of catching up to do. That means, as always, I fail to post. Sheesh. So here we go with more recappy goodness of the past couple weeks…
Kelly and I have watched a few decent films; the animated film 9, Charlie Wilson’s War, and just this evening, Michael Clayton. We’ve also continued to hang out from time to time at a recently discovered bar a few blocks from my house, NePo 42. They’ve got a decent beer selection, good grub, and free pool on a table in the back. The only downside are game nights when the Portland Trailblazers are playing (the place fills up with dudes that get drunk and like to loudly holler at the TV).
And today I freed up enough hard drive space on my PC to finally pick up Call of Duty: World at War off of Steam. Since I refuse to buy Modern Warfare 2 (no dedicated servers, no lean, etc – read more if you care), and I enjoyed the demo of World at War, I dropped my $39 on it and am currently gobbling up my bandwidth waiting for it to download and install. Game on!
After two failed attempts (sold out shows), Kelly and I finally got to see Avatar last night. We went out to a small, independent theater in Northeast Portland (Roseway Theater) where it was playing in 3D, and had the bonus of being cheaper than the big chains ($9 each, as opposed to $13.50).
In short, I enjoyed the film a lot. Sure, some of the dialog was cheesy (a couple lines were downright lame), and the story wasn’t groundbreaking, but I was immersed in the world for the full 2 hours 40 minutes, and the CG was good enough that it wasn’t distracting, even the Na’vi (the blue aliens) were. The 3D in the theater helped a lot too. It’s a fun movie. Go see it big, and in 3D.
After getting home I was so curious on how it was pulled off, so I found this short video. Pretty interesting stuff. Actors were motion captured (body and face) in a big white empty room, sometimes seeing live rough digital renderings of the Avatar world while ‘filming’. Once the actors were finished, James Cameron could wander around with a virtual camera (which plays back the rough digital render), which allowed him to record at whatever angles, motion, or distance he wanted. Pretty cool technology. Spoiler warning: If ya haven’t seen the movie, you might want to avoid the video.
Kelly forwarded this gem my way: Star Wars Meets Facebook.
OK, so, I gave up for the past 3 months. Guess I lost the love. It’s not that I don’t love the 3 or 4 of you who actually read my blog, but I just lost the love for spewing out nonsense for no particular reason. It affected my Twitter-ing too. I just felt no need for it. I could barely keep up with consuming everything coming my way (outside of my work-related duties), and just didn’t care to add the burden to myself or anyone else.
But I’m back, baby. (for now)
Here’s a recap since my last post (when I was happily relaxed on the Big Island).
At the end of October I had a birthday, and I turned 25 (again), and had the good fortune of having friends and family over to celebrate. I had a great time (I think, can’t quite remember since it was so long ago). Looking at the photographic evidence there was a lot of time spent bowling on the Wii, drinking beers, and eating fondu and other delicious treats that Kelly (and others) had made. Again, let me reiterate, I turned 25. Not 35. Nosirree. Nope.
Around mid-November, my company sent the Engineering team down to Napa Valley and San Francisco for a day/night to celebrate the latest release of our software. Had a fun time, despite the fact that I don’t have any love for wine. However, some awesome coworkers had my back, and picked up some cans of Guinness and Boddingtons for me to gulp while on the bus. Thanks guys!
Shortly after the trip to Napa, I got sick with what I can only assume to be the dreaded pigmanflu (given the fever, aches, etc). It wasn’t much fun.
Guinness is back on tap on the Kegerator (yay!).
Christmas time! Kelly and I got a nice tree this year from a daycare up the street from our house (proceeds go to help the daycare, so that makes it extra festive). Our evil cat Arthur Guinness took to climbing it repeatedly. Stupid cat. We went out to my folks place on Christmas day (as is tradition) and ate too much and opened gifts. A couple days later we went to my aunts and exchanged white elephant gifts and again ate a bit too much, and got to hang out with some of my cousins.
A couple days later I got sick again, this time with a more common cold (I blame this on Kelly, since she had it first). Sniffles, cough, bleh.
The other day, out of nowhere, it snowed a bit in PDX. And this one was unexpected and caught everyone off guard. It started around 2pm or so, and by 5pm, there was a little over 2 inches of snow in our neighborhood. Watching the news of the rush-hour traffic, the roads were a mess, especially since nobody was prepared for the conditions and loads of people got stuck trying to get in or out of town. People, including my brother, spent 8 hours or more trying to get from point A to B.
That same night, Kelly and I attended a Squirrel Nut Zippers concert in Southeast Portland (at the Aladdin Theater) which she had bought for me as a Christmas gift. We weren’t sure if we were going to bother going out or not up until an hour before the show, however I’m glad we braved the roads because it was a really fun show. We hadn’t seen them in about 5 years (since their hiatus), and they put on a really good show, putting some stylistic twists some of their old songs, and performing them all with all the fun that I expected from a SNZ show.
Tonight we celebrated New Years at our good friends T & S’s place (who fortunately live just over a mile away from us) which meant for the first time in many years we didn’t host the party. This was good primarily since both Kelly and I are still recovering from our illnesses. However we came home pretty quickly after midnight, and here I am.
Here’s to hoping that 2010 will be a better year all around than 2009.
And for some Way Back Machine-ing, here’s a quote from the Counting Crows song ‘A Long December‘ (watch the video for a younger Courteney Cox, back when she dated Adam Duritz in 1997):
And it’s been a long December and there’s reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last
Happy New Years all!