Monthly Archives: July 2008

Wii Fit Day 1: Getting it from a store/finding one in stock

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Yes, it actually exists. It’s not a myth.

First off, getting Wii Fit takes some effort and some teamwork. Our credits include:

  1. Danjo, for being an expert in all things Red Circle and keeping me text-company at 5:15 in the morning, and clueing us in to the weekly ad in the first place
  2. giPIG for watching the kids during the changing of the guard
  3. J for setting up my bass, especially since I was 10 minutes late to worship team
  4. and most importantly, My Beautiful Wife for tag teaming the line, being excited for the game, and being supportive in the face of wild rantings and general obsessive behavior

How to get a Wii Fit
If you don’t have a Colleen or you don’t have a pregnant wife (remember my first list of research?), the way that we found success was showing up early on a Sunday morning. Watch the weekly ads for Target (ignore Buy n Large …er, Wal-Mart…). Every store must have at least one if it is in the ad. So…Show up early. Ours open at 8 am. I figure if I’m going to be inconvenienced, and its worth doing, go all out. Nothing compares to the time spent in line at Episode II. You call me crazy.
Have you been to Disneyland?
Sometime that morning a Target associate will come out and hand out tickets to the people in line. This avoids the rushing and elbowing and soccer-momming to the electronics department.
I made myself very visible on security cameras so people would know I had been there. But I had to tag out with my wife taking my place since I had to get to worship team.
I guess too visible. As my wife was buying WiiFit, the associates were saying, “There was this big, hairy guy pacing around real early this morning.”

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When you first boot up Wii Fit, you may have to do a system update. You’ll also have to synchronize the board. Run the game disc and it will walk you through the process.
My Goals
I know that not everyone is interested in my fitness, so I promise to include other interesting stuff alongside the stats. This is kind of an experiment for me.
You do a body test before you play anything. You also create a user profile complete with height. Yes, it does go to 6’9″ if any other readers are of a superior height. The weight max is 330lbs., so sorry Big Cactus, Fezzik, and Optimus Prime.
Alongside calculating your weight and BMI, it also tests your balance:
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This is where my goals come in. I would like to blame it all on my torn right foot fascist ligament, but because of my general lack of balance (I did mention 6’9″, right?) I tore my ligament. So improving my balance is my goal. This looks like a decent route.

The Stats for 7/20/08
Height: 6’9″ (2,057.4 mm)
Wii Fit Age: 43 (as a reference, I am not 43)
Weight: 267 lbs (0.12 metric tons)
BMI: 28.56
Enthusiasm: 5 out of 5 Miyamotos

Balance: Leaning heavily to the right. I will put percentages up starting tomorrow.

Glendale Has Made It! Idol Auditions July 25th!

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On July 25th American Idol will be rolling into my home town of Glendale, Arizona for part of this year’s auditions.  It’s very fitting since 2007 winner Jordin Sparks also calls Glendale her home.  It’s also a signal that Glendale has made it!  What better way to say “you’re #1, Glendale, AZ!” then by having American Idol auditions here.  Forget the Superbowl.  AMERICAN IDOL!  Yeah, I’m disappointed too.   In fact, I have no clue who won American Idol last year.  In fact, I stopped watching the “auditions” (arguably the best part of the show) after the Ruben and Clay did their thing.

The only reason I care this year, is because one of my former students is auditioning.  This is actually her second time.  She auditioned last summer in California.  She gave me the dirt on how these auditions work.  It turns out that if they are running out of time and still have people left to audition, they pick the people according to how they are dressed.  Why?  Because they want the freaks.

You complete me.

So while you’re all laughing it up when Jimmy the eccentric gay man is crying because he doesn’t realize how bad he really is, remember those who are very talented and won’t get a shot because Simon and Company ran out of time auditioning the freaks.

Dr. Horrible – Far from final thoughts about Act III

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So, what do you think? He won’t feel a thing and that’s the ending?

The credits are pretty fun. Check the names of the villains (Professor Normal. That’s funny.). Also, Joss and Jed Whedon did the lyrics and composing and all that music stuff. Impressive. And Jed was Bad Horse Chorus #2. Pretty fun.

And the Special Thanks is an all star cast. Most recognizable for me is Ben Edlund (yay, Tick! And yes, Slade and Mike, your Venture Whosits…).

9/22/08 is coming slowly. As I type this a trailer for Level 5/Heroes/Villains plays. I think I’ll be disappointed at the lack of singing, Joss, and side notes (“It’s with two ‘R’s…”).

Midnight Dark Knight CineCapri

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I promise to keep this as spoiler-free as I can.
We saw the 12:01am showing with Mike and his wife. The experience (and movie) was great.
Thanks in part to some staples of nerd-dom:
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Thanks to my wife for the Dots and Mike for the RockStar. Add that to the Harkins cup full of Dr. Pepper and the three Diet Cokes I consumed at Elephant Bar and I had consumed more pajunk in one night than in the previous month. I’m a lot older now. The last midnight showing I went to was Episode II. (I think. There was some minor memory less last night.)
We sat really close to the giant curved screen, but that’s okay. We were closer to the pre-pre-show entertainment:
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I am convinced that whenever fanboys get together in large crowds, two will try to do a handstand race.
There were some dressed up, but definitely not as much as a Star Wars premiere. We had one row of Robin, Penguin, Poison Ivy, Joker, Catwoman, and Pancho. And a beach ball. Can’t be a midnight show without a beach ball. But the funniest were guys in matching ill-fitting Batman pajamas.

Oh, yeah. Lots of white faces with lipstick smeared. Thankfully only a few didn’t realize that when the Joker is laughing, you probably shouldn’t be.

We did see the Watchmen trailer. There was also some movie with DiCaprio and Crowe that most of the crowd gave a collective, “Huh?”. But other trailers, like Quantum of Solace, got large applause and cheers. No Terminator trailer, though.

The actual Dark Knight movie? Awesome. But I cannot stress enough to not take kids to it. I knew going in that this was going to be a deranged Joker (instead of a dapper chap with a thing for playing cards) but there are some pretty intense “smile-inducing” scenes. Instead of nerve toxin substitute in large knives.

But the balance between Chaos and Rule is amazing (insert Chance with Harvey Dent and you have a winner). I think this is part of why I dig Batman so much. There’s all these freaks goin’ crazy and he still holds to his rule set. He doesn’t have to steal a Cloak of Invisibility to break curfew at Hogwart’s…every single time. If Batman were to cross the line it would be that more dramatic. There’s a part where Bruce Wayne busts up some clown grins and steals a shotgun. As he walks methodically he dismantles it part by part. Christopher Nolan understands the nuances of Batman.

The baddies are so realistic, which is crazy for a series that popularized biffs and pows in the 60s. The Joker could really happen. He’s got motivation. His crimes seem plausible. My wife and I had this discussion on the 3 am way home. The only difference is that all of the violence is compounded into a short amount of time. He’s not patient. We had a prison hostage situation that lasted 15 days. That and the sniper cases stand out as large crimes. The thing stopping us from having a Joker is that he’s not patient enough.

That and not every single government worker/police officer/lunch lady is corrupt, which I guess is a major difference between our world and Dark Knight/24.

I liked the movie a lot. Dinner was awesome, too, if you care for sweet and sour chicken. (If not, go try the veal. Mike the Lambslayer can give you some recommendations.)

Go see the movie. Enjoy it. Don’t take your kids. And if you sit in the front left at CineCapri, look away during the Mummy trailer. Lots of explosions, skeletons, crashing planes, and more than enough to slosh your high fructose corn syrup-influenced coma.

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At least we weren’t at the 3am showing. (And a 6am showing? Wow.)

Who watches the Watchmen trailer? You do.

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The internet is all abuzz- the first trailer for the long-awaited, much-argued Watchmen is out.

So, what do you think? Myself, I still remain skeptical. Watchmen isn’t just any graphic novel, it is nearly the epitome of the format- when people think of what a graphic novel is, a lot of them think of Watchmen. If you haven’t read it, by the by, I recommend it. It does a lot of things that other comics are doing now, story-wise, except it did it 20 years ago, and it did them better. Alan Moore is excellent at using the medium of comic books to enhance and tell his story.

That is precisely why I’m skeptical, though. Can this story be told as well without the medium? Is the magic of Watchmen just the story, or the way it was told? Honestly, I’m not sure. There’s certain aspects to the story that I don’t know how they’re going to translate to the screen- Tales of the Black Freighter, specifically. Actually, scratch that- reading at Wikipedia tells me that the Tales of the Black Freighter has been cut from the story entirely. I do find that disappointing.

It looks like there’s going to be some good visuals, but what else would you expect from Zack Snyder? I guess we’ll wait until March to find out how it holds up, story-wise.

If all else fails, I’ll just watch Dr. Horrible again.

Saw Wall-E, Going to See Dark Knight

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Mike and I with our women. CineCapri. Midnight showing.
My wife and I saw Batman Begins with the Concrete Pathways people. I remember some vigilante justice at Famous Dave’s Pig Extinction. I predict more caped-ness of the same degree. I’ve been training since then.

Wall-E reminded me of A.I. (imagine that) where part of the movie felt like arthouse and then the remainder felt like cliche Hollywood. The part that hit me was the spork. No words, just Wall-E trying to classify between the fork pile and the spoon pile and eventually getting frustrated. No words were needed, we were connected with the character. And then the humans came. Rejected Robots (a la Toy Story and Rudolph’s Singing Elf Dentist) and comedic calamity. I enjoyed it, but definitely liked discovering the world through Wal-E’s eyes.

And it has Fred Willard. What else do you need? Did you like M-O, the cleaning robot? Ben Burtt, foley genius.
But did Ben Burtt really work on Ryan vs. Dorkman 2? Or is it just because they ganked the sound effects. Oh, well. Their stuff is always fun to watch.
And yes, Mike, I’ll mention Grayson.

Wii Sports Sequel, Wii MotionPlus, and 1,000 Posts

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E3 (big conference/expo) had Nintendo in the Kodak Theater (American Idol Finale place). Here’s what was announced:
There’s going to be a new Wiimote add-on for greater sensitivity to motion. Its goal is to be closer to a 1:1 motion experience. Here’s what that means:

  1. Closer to the virtual reality we saw in movies in the late 90s
  2. Lightsaber moves where your gloved prosthetic hand moves
  3. A lot more options for games, like a new Wii Sports

Wii Sports Resort. It’s a whole bunch of beach-themed games, like jet skis and frisbee tossing (see, the new MotionPlus is cool?)
Wii Sports Resort ScreenshotSee More Wii Sports Resort Screenshot at IGN.com
But the coolest part of Wii Sports Resort?
1:1 saber duels
Wii Sports Resort ScreenshotSee More Wii Sports Resort Screenshot at IGN.com
Look at the dueling sticks.
Blue? Red? Are these Jungian archetypes or was it just Miyamoto saying, “Dude! Lucasarts! Do we have to do it ourselves? Fine, then!”

WiiMusic

I’ve been waiting for this game. Like Guitar Hero/Rock Band, but with 50+ instruments! Woo, orchestra mode! And you can record music videos. Remotes mixed with balance boards, with four people rocking out. The nice thing is the remotes you already have, so no need for a peripheral. And the add-on balance board is just to enhance the drum pedals.

And a WiiSpeak voice chat microphone was announced. Meh, except that this means a greater focus on online multiplayer than previous outings. A new Animal Crossing sounds fun (like The Sims but where everyone is constantly connected in an anime world).

We’re at 1,000 posts. Expect some fun celebrations coming up.

“The status is not…quo”

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Update:
I guess we are all on the same wavelength. I’m going to keep up my post, even though Devin (who, in all fairness, introduced Dr. Horrible to the site while I was on vacation) schooled me. And Mike, with his text updates. Awesomeness!

Thanks to Mike’s keen sense of time zones, I was able to watch Act I of Dr. Horrible IN THE FUTURE!

“Muaha ha..Haaa. I’m working with a vocal coach.”
It’s on the main site but you can also download it to iTunes for all of your Apple TV needs (or iPod or new iPhone or whichever trendy friend of mine you are).
“Dude, you’re not my nemesis.”

Serial fiction is my prediction (borrowed from Stackpole and Gaiman (and Doctorow and Lessig)) for the new trend in entertainment as the Internet becomes even more intertwined in our lives. Do you remember dialing in to one of 8 phone lines to the CHHS BBS to play Wilderlands, VGA Planets, or Legend of the Red Dragon? Or am I just that old? (And nerdy?)

Well, I remember standing in line with my dad and uncle to watch Ghostbusters.

Create a Nation Facebook Application

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Okay, so the “How Many 5 Year-olds Can you Beat Up” was kinda funny but also disturbing.
I found the Create a Nation game on Devin’s profile and started Barbarian’s Realm:

Any citizen who owns land may participate in this country’s electoral process. Three ton computing systems are the crowning achievement of this country’s technological advancements. Advancement in medical practices has produced efficient health care practices, but only the privileged can afford the rising costs.

The citizens of Barbarians Realm follow a general rule to only pick fights with weaker individuals and stay out of the way of stronger individuals. Military in Barbarians Realm is completely voluntary and is made up primarily of boy and girl scouts seeking leadership badges. Religious practice and public observances are allowed, but no policies may be created to advance any given expression of religious thought. All children in Barbarians Realm ages five to thirteen are eligible for free placement testing to determine their proper schooling placement.

This country is beginning to adopt many environmentally responsible practices, although any company with enough money can buy the right to disregard any practice they deem appropriate. Privatization of corporations and free market are new concepts developing in this country, and citizens are free to demonstrate for increase of social freedoms, but government officials are instructed to only pay lip service, and no actual changes will be made.

The whole “own land to participate” thing we’re still working out the kinks on, but we should soon be able to pursue life, liberty, and estate.

D’oh! We’re not John Locke! I meant happiness, I swear.

Fishing and the Hoover Dam

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Although it’s not as cool as Frog-Mania, I guess, I went fishing yesterday with my brother and my dad. We caught my thumb, some kelp-type things, and a whole lot of nasty glares from some schools of fish. It was cool to be reeling in the lure (which looked so much like a tiny fish I forgot sometimes) and then see these silhouettes emerge from the murk that is Lake Pleasant. One even got so annoyed at the lure that it zipped up, flailed and thrashed, and then disappeared.

Even though I was on the shoreline, I still jumped back. We had previously seen some giant yellow-orange fish’s mouth slash out of the water and disappear quickly. My brother guesses megalodon. I’m guessing a Tagruato creature. My dad thinks bass.

While we didn’t fish at Hoover Dam, here are some pictures from the last day of our road trip.
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They know how to party at The Dam.
Here’s where we waited for a criminal to be apprehended while the entire dam was shut down:
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Winged Figures of the Republic. Here’s what the artist has to say about it:

Hansen said the 30-foot bronzed statues represented “that eternal vigilance which is the price of liberty.” Perched on six-foot-tall cues of gleaming black diorite, Hansen’s figures flank a 142-foot flagpole. In front of this array he placed a terrazzo star map depicting the celestial alignment from that site on the evening of September 30, 1935, the day President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated what was then called Boulder Dam.

Hansen also created the nearby bronze plaque memorializing the 96 workers who died during construction of the dam. An inscription proclaims, “They died to make the desert bloom.”

I wonder if there’s more to the story…