I need a new Mac so I can get OS X and iTunes 4. I dunno if anyone else has tried this new iTunes Music Service, but goddamn is it cool. They could use a lot more music, but for a start it's not too bad. And it's soooo pretty. I can see how it could become quite addicting to use and spend crazy amounts of money on.

It'd just be nice to actually get decent versions of all the songs I've downloaded, instead of the crappy Limewire copies, as well as all the singles I've been looking for but either couldn't find, or have been meaning to find forever.

I've only been able to use it here at work, but I've been really impressed, and the new AAC format absolutely kills MP3. I even made sure I sent feedback to Apple to tell them there needs to be a way to get indy artists on with Apple. You know, so I can download the latest Droids Attack CD whenever I want. ;)

Ahh, I finally finished my website. It's been pretty much done now for a while, but I had to just add the finishing touches. One more thing to cross off my list of shit to do.

Yeah, it's all video games. Mostly boring, but I needed to put all this info somewhere so I didn't forget it. ;) Enjoy.

Annette and I went up to her Grandpa's place this weekend. It was very relaxing. He lives on a lake in northern MN, and there're literally nobody around him. I realized when walking outside w/ Annette that I really do want to have something like that someday. Even if it's just a cabin, or it isn't until I retire, it doesn't matter. I just know I was very relaxed all weekend and it felt good. Getting away from the hustle and bustle of the city will do that. But I also enjoyed watching the birds eating and the water rippling on the lake. I could sit and watch that for days and not be bored.

It was interesting talking to her grandpa. I love hearing stories of thing that happened a long time ago. As a kid I never cared much about that stuff, but as an adult I think I have a better appreciation for it. Hearing him talk about WWII, and how he would diagnose German's as well as American's, and teach the German's things (he was a Lab Tech), was really interesting. Seeing old pictures of *his* father when he was a kid was interesting as well. Something about a 100 year old photo is rather awe inspiring.

But while we were up there I couldn't help but feel a little sad for her grandpa. Her grandma passed a few months ago, and that's just gotta be hard. For as little time as Annette and I have been together, the thought of losing her would devistate me. I can only imagine what her grandpa must be going through. Perhaps when you're older it's a little easier to deal with, but I can't imagine that losing someone you've been with and loved your whole life can ever be easy.

I like vacations like these because it puts things for me in perspective. It is very easy to get caught up in work and daily routines, that you often forget what's important. While I really never take Annette for granted, it's weekends like these that prove to me what a great person she is, and how lucky I am to have her in my life. She makes me so happy, I just can't imagine being with anyone else. And for that, I am very thankful.

Well I realized I don't need to spend 20 hours unlocking Prototype mode in Ikaruga to add my net ranking. And I was able to get almost 500k on the Challenge mode. Problem is the net rankings only go up to 100th place, which is around 1mil right now. I doubt I'll get that, and when I do, you know the scores will be higher anyway. I'm not sure why they don't have your ranking vs everyone. Even if I'm ranking 502nd, I'd like to know it.

Also, someone tipped me off on how to figure out which MAME ROMs I have extra clones of. See, most clones are merged w/ their parent set, but you can still have separate clone files in your ROMs folder. Problem is, MAME won't tell you there are two files, it just counts it as one. There's an easy trick in MacMAME to tell which clones aren't merged (hide virtual clones, but show physical clones). It's so easy it makes me feel like an idiot, but at least I was able to trim some fat from my collection.

So I picked up Ikaruga today for the Cube. Holy fuck is that game hard. I can only get to the begining of the second stage w/out using a continue. If I use all my continues I can get to the second boss, but fuck that dude, he's super hard. I can't even imagine what the rest of the stages are like. I know there's only 5 stages, but this game will take a while to beat. I'll definitely need more than 3 continutes.

There's a worldwide ranking system for the game, but I have to aparently put 20 hours into it before I can register at all, which is kinda lame. Though I guess that's what makes not just anyone register. Still some dude on the high score list has 32,000,000. My best: 500,000. The game has a demo mode showing some dude (in slow speed) play basically a perfect game. It's just crazy. Everything goes so damn fast I just can't see this being possible. But it's like any shooter. Memorize the patterns.

Excellent game though. Now I need to calm down so I can go to bed. This thing definitely gets the heart pumpin.

I just got out of a staff meeting here at work. Looks like the Walker is in trouble financially. There have been a lot of cuts to our funding and we can't raise enough money. Unless the economy picks up, we'll be in really rough shape. Even if it does, we'll still be in debt, which is why they've decided to cut some jobs here. They haven't decided which jobs they're going to cut, but we'll know within a month. Thus my boss just told us to keep us in the loop and let us know it's possible one of us may lose our jobs in the near future.

Now, I don't see how they can cut anyone in my dept, simply because we all bring something to the table that nobody else does and we need everyone to get the job done well, but that's not kept top management from making bad decisions at other companies so I don't see why it can't happen here as well. I'm not particularly worried about losing my job, and I've been through this before at B-Swing so I know how it goes, but I am worried about things changing.

Even if they take someone else in our group, things won't really be the same. I really like the people I work with. Changing that will make my job less fun, and this is probably the first job I feel really comfortable with. I know things are going to change in the future anyway, as one of our developers is going to be leaving in 6 months, and once our new building is built and we have to move we we'll be thrown in w/ all the other depts instead of being segrigated like we are now. I guess either way things will change and I'll have to accept that at some point.

And if I am one of the ones to get axed, I guess there's nothing to stop me from moving to Florida then.

I watched a bunch of shows tonight on the Discovery Channel about building shit. One was about building pumpkin launchers, and one was about building motorcycles. Two pretty different things but they intrigued me. I guess I've always liked to build things. I think this goes back to playing w/ Lego's, Tinker Toys, etc, as a kid. I think this is also why I like my job doing web design. I get to build websites.

I also think this is why I can't strictly get into the design realm of things. I do like some creative, and a lot of the problem solving that goes with it, but to soley do that wouldn't make me happy. It's the art of building something that really gets me going.

Which is why I like shows like these. It makes me realize that yes, this is what I like doing. I think I get it from my dad, who's a carpenter. I've always been around someone building something, making something. Part of me wants to get into making something more physical. Everything I've pretty much made has been virtual, software, websites, that sort of thing. There just seems to be something romantic about putting some real blood, sweat, and tears into something you build yourself. I don't think it's something you can get sitting in a cubicle.

My MAME cabinet is one of these projects. So far it's really just a fantasy, as I don't really have everything I'd need to even get started yet (let alone the room to do it). But I think I definitely need things like these in my life. Some people need thier sports, or their books, or whatever to get them going. I just need to be able to build shit.

I rocked the Mario Party last night. We did end up getting two more controllers, and it was quite a bit of fun playing 4 player. Lots of trash talking going on. Great game to play over some beers and burgers.

We went on a mission to find a grill for summer, and so we could all grill last night. The only grill we could find that we really wanted was a Weber, but it was $350. After a long time of going back and forth, we just got a small charcoal grill for $17. Hey, it worked. And it saved us a couple hundred bucks.

Ahh, got my latest shipment of ROMs last night. 8 1/2 Gigs worth. The majority of it being NES, SNES, Genesis and Gameboy. Also a few systems I don't really collect (TI-99 for example). All I really need now is N64 and GBA and I'll be all done collecting (well, except for MAME of course).

Annette and I rented Mario Party 4 last night, and stayed up till 1am playing it. I wish controllers weren't so expensive, otherwise I'd buy two more for when we have people come over. As a party game, it's pretty damn fun.

I got my new monitor at work today. Now I'm sporting dual 19" LCD's. The new Samsung has about 5 times more contrast and sharpness, which is nice. The only bad thing about it is that when I sit up straight the colors on the bottom of the screen are a tad lighter than the top. Usually I slouch so this is no problem, but my old crappy Radius doesn't do this. I bet 99% of people wouldn't notice this but I think it's enough for me not to buy this monitor when I get my new Mac in about 6 months. I may just splurge and get the Apple widescreen display. It's almost twice as much, but it's larger and is by far the best LCD available. That is, unless a better LCD comes out between now and then.

Taxes are all done. I'm getting $156 back from Fed, which is pretty damn good considering I was on unemployment for 3 months and didn't pay any taxes on that money.

I have to pay in $23 to MN, but I get a renters rebate of $22, so it all evens out! :)

Our townhouse is finally all cleaned up and moved in. It was quite the chore, but it's looking really nice! I'm pretty happy with it. It's becoming "home" more and more every day.

Last night Annette and I went to a work party. Well, more like a department party as a thank you for all the work we did on Latitudes. I had a good time, though it was one of those things where if you didn't work with us, it was probably boring. Lots of work talk and the like. It was fun nonetheless.

I think Annette is now addicted to Pikmin. She's been playing it quite a bit lately. Which is good. I'm always happy when she can get into stuff that I like. In fact she's probably further than I got in the game. Now if I can just get her to like Red Dwarf... ;)

Well, I guess it's time to do my taxes. Wish me luck.

Still have a few minor issues w/ the new router. The only real one is that now Eudora doesn't seem to be able to connect to the mail server at launch. But after the first failure then it works fine. Seems to be a TCP thing. Oh well, it's the only decent email client for OS 9 so I'll just have to live w/ it.

Got my new Mac at work today, and it's pretty nice, though I really haven't had a chance to use it all that much. I still need to put all the software on it and such, but that's for tomorrow. That'll probably take most of the day. ;)

Went to a meeting we started last night at the Walker for New Media artists in the metro. We had about 18 people show up and a couple showed work, and we had some converstations about various topics. I didn't think it'd be all that great, but it turned out to be pretty cool. Pretty diverse group and much less "arty" than I thought it'd be. I guess we're doing these monthly so hopefully it won't be a one hit wonder.