A close shave
Mood: bouncy
Posted on 2010-03-10 13:32:00
Tags: health palmpre projects house
Words: 728

Yesterday, we were driving home from work as usual on the onramp to North Mopac just south of Duval when the car in front of me started slowing down and then came to a complete stop. On the onramp.

Luckily, I was watching and was able to stop in time. Even more luckily, the car behind me was barely able to stop in time as well. (David says he could hear them slam on their brakes, but I was focused on stuff in front of me) Then the crazy honking began, both from the car behind me and me, and the car pulled off into the shoulder. I'm guessing they stopped because the sun was just at the right angle so that you couldn't see anything in the side view mirror, which made getting on the freeway from a dead stop rather challenging. Luckily no one hit me.

I was pretty amped up from this and my heart was definitely beating faster than normal. Unfortunately, this continued for quite a while. Apparently reflux can present this way, and taking some antacids seemed to help for a while, but it made me jumpy all evening and made it hard to sleep...

I worked on a new WebOS app last night - this one's a quick interface to BoardGameGeek. To submit it, I had to make the decision again about where to put it. To review:
- To put it on the App Catalog costs $50 (one time fee)
- Not doing that is free, but then it's a lot harder to find without a direct link
I prefer putting my apps on the App Catalog for the widest exposure, but then I feel like I have to charge something to make my $50 back. (and it's not that I really begrudge the $50, I understand it takes Palm time to review the apps, etc.) So I did that and am charging .99, the lowest allowable. We'll see what happens1

Good lost episode last night: At this point my favorite episodes are Locke, Ben, and Sawyer ones. Michael Emerson (actor who plays Ben) is amazing and really sold me on the whole Machiavellian teacher bit. Lots of sweetness when he says "Because no one else will have me" and Ilana replies "I'll have you". Awww!

The excessive "winking" at the audience is getting to be a bit much. I'm fine with Hurley acting as a fan of the show and asking a question about something every once and a while, but asking if Richard was a cyborg seemed kinda silly.


A Lost encyclopedia is coming out in August! I know it makes sense to release it after the end of the show since then it can be "complete", but it would have been helpful earlier. Still, I'll probably pick it up.

Random note: Like Greek food? Try Pars Deli at the corner of 183 and Burnet. Delicious gyros, and it's clearly a family run place. They left the door open today and it was soooo nice :-)

House stuff: We had solar screens installed by Josh Hobbs a few weeks ago. The process was pretty easy (we didn't have to be there any of the time), the prices were reasonable and the screens look nice. (need to take a picture at some point) Haven't really been able to measure their effectiveness yet, but it's definitely darker, so presumably that will keep out heat too.

Next week we're getting a high efficiency A/C unit put in, as well as making it "multi-zone" so we can control the upstairs and downstairs temperature independently. After crunching the numbers it's not going to quite pay for itself in reduced electricity bills, but it will get pretty close and we get a new unit out of the deal. (we spend a fortune on cooling in the summer!) The $1500 tax credit helps, and Austin Energy has some nice rebates too.

Bought the Heavy Rain soundtrack from iTunes. (yay for DRM-free music!) I might try to transcribe the really pretty piano music (Painful Memories), if I feel inspired enough.

Final Fantasy 13 was bought and played yesterday. Even after just playing Heavy Rain, whose visuals were pretty impressive, it looks fantastic - definitely using the PS3 to its full potential. Also, does anyone know if the characters have such ridiculous names in Japanese too, or is that just a translation thing?


3 comments

Comment from mathjoker:
2010-03-10T15:05:11+00:00

I have promised myself that I will purchase a PS3 and FFXIII as soon as I finish my initial draft of the dissertation. Pages are getting churned out at a ridiculous rate right now.

Comment from copperwolf:
2010-03-10T16:41:29+00:00

http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Final_Fantasy_XIII
It looks like Japanese character names are a transliteration of English character names, except for Lightning.

Aside from pretty graphics, how's the game? We will probably buy it used several months from now -- I use my PS3 time for Dragon Age, and aristeros still loves Modern Warfare 2.

Comment from gregstoll:
2010-03-10T16:44:03+00:00

It seems pretty good so far. We're only a few hours in and I'm not interested enough to actually play it, just kinda watch while I'm doing something else. (I do this with a lot of games)

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