You've only begun to shine

I know, two posts in a month? I'm as shocked as you are.

First I must start off by mentioning a completely evil but wonderful game that has entered my life, Audiosurf (http://www.audio-surf.com). This game takes a song you pick, generates a track that bends, climbs, twists, and dives all based on the soft and intense moments of that song. That's pretty cool as it is, but then they added a sort of bejeweled type game with it where you match colored blocks. And to top that off, there are many types of 'cars' each playing the game a different way. Its great for a casual game where you want to listen to your music, and its good for those more intense people too at the harder difficulty levels.

So why did I say evil?

Well, after my first 'ride' through the game to a Genesis song, I saw my score. It then showed me the scores of everyone else who had played this song. The software doesn't use randomness, so for a song, you'll have the same generated track as everyone else. That person had a higher score than me, on a Genesis song. This could not be. So I went back in there and crushed him.

That's not evil, that's just mildly addicting (and a bit of pride as well).

What's evil is 2 days later I got an email stating that someone had beaten on of my scores.

That's just evil.

So if you do pick this game up ($10 on steam and comes with the Orange Box soundtrack), keep an eye out on the scoreboard for Genesis songs. The name at the top of the list should be Darkthorn. That's me. Pick your favorite band and dominate!

I'm not going to go into why my gaming screen name is Darkthorn, that's for a different post hopefully I won't be writing for a while.

That'll make sense eventually, trust me.

Gavin is progressing in his potty training. We're putting him in underwear, and he's doing pretty well. He's much better after 11am than he is before that. For him its not a matter of knowing, its just if he's busy, he doesn't care if he goes potty in his pants. Focus is a good thing I guess, but I'd like him to get this down before the baby comes.

Speaking of the baby, its my turn to pick the first name. So I'm digging through tons of Scottish names right now. I've got a couple I like, but none I've settled on. For the middle name I'm leaning towards Raguel. Look it up, and learn something. I know I give M crap for picking Gabriel for his son, but Raguel is more complementary to Gavin's middle name Raphael. Again, look it up, knowledge is good for you.

Don't ask me why an agnostic like myself is picking angel names for his kid's middle names. It is just one of those things OK?

On the reading front, I finished Stephen Colbert's I Am America (and so can you!), which I found amusing. I'm now working on Terry Goodkind's final book in his series. I have to admire this guy, he's managed to write an 11 book series that well paces the overarching storyline, while giving detailed individual subplots. He writes great characters, and does a fantastic job of keeping you on your toes. Its not a perfect series, but I highly recommend it. Warning the first book will shock your sensibilities about 2/3 of the way in, push through it and you will be rewarded. He decided to end this series with a sub-trilogy, that started very very slowly, but once it got moving its hard to stop turning the pages.

On the music front....Anna, Anna, Anna.....This is very disappointing. Those of you who actually remember what I post remember that I highly regarded Anna Nalick's first album "Wreck Of The Day". That came out in 2005, then re-released with more tracks in 2006. You might also remember my post about prolific album releasing vs non, and my worries about what the record companies would do this this artist since it had been about 3 years. Well, apparently after 3 years all that's coming out is an EP with 2 new songs, and 3 old songs acoustic versions.

Now I have nothing against EPs, Charlotte Martin has shown what good outlets they can be. But after 3 years I would hope there'd be something more. Anna's mentioned a new album in a couple of her posts (though she seems unsure when it will be released herself), so I assume the material is there. Her new song "Shine" is quite good, so she's not out of talent (I hope). So what's the deal? I know this isn't a huge deal to people, I just hate what seems to be stifling of good talent by the record company. I could be wrong, but after seeing what has happened to Vanessa Carlton, Sophie B. Hawkins, and others I doubt it.

So this post wasn't as deep as the last one, I never said I would be consistent.

Can I have better days? Let them come

Wow it's been a while. Not that you've missed too much since I've been working quite a bit. And I don't blog about work, though I have been very very tempted. But rules are rules.

We enjoyed the last snowfall we had, and Gavin and I built his first snowman. Got some decent pictures though we had to reverse the snowman's face to the other side because the sun was constantly in his eyes when attempting to take said pictures. The snowman ended up falling over while attempting to fix one of his arms, but that's ok, because a fallen snowman is just the first step in a new snow fort! Gavin was so happy with the concept, I ended up ripping half the snow in the back yard to build it, it looked like a white fort in a sea of green.

On a quick side note and non-humble moment, if there's proof of mutations in our gene's its in my brother's and my ability as snow engineers. Both my parents have tried to claim credit, and have been refuted by their respective parents. So in this case we're mutants. Its not much of a mutation, but it did serve my brother and I well in the long snowy winters in Pittsburgh. No snow fort was complete without a couple of entry tunnels. I'll be interested to see if Gavin inherits it...

Anyway, Gavin and I had a great deal of fun sledding, and pelting each other with snowballs. I'd only hit him when he was outside his fort (gently, he's just almost 3), so he got the concept of the fort pretty quickly.

Its strange how fast the year has gone so far, Gavin will turn 3 in less than a month. Which isn't good news for me since the DVD I do yearly usually gets started in January. Whoops. Luckily I've already got some of the soundtrack picked out, which I'll admit is what I end up spending a lot of time on (wow, that's a surprise).

Pam got me the 2nd Genesis CD/DVD box set for x-mas, 1985 to present day, and Gavin and I have been enjoying dancing to it. Gavin definitely has taken to "Home By The Sea" (which sounds incredible in surround) which shows his good musical taste :). However at a song clocking over 10 mins, dancing to it turns into quite a workout. Speaking of music, Amanda (you're name's on the comment relating to this sentence, fair game) left me some comments for some artists to check out, I need to get to that...

My string of bad luck has continued as my computer's power supply blew up last week. Literally blew up, pops, sparks, and smoke! Which is what I told the tech support guy when he said "be more specific" when I told him it blew up. Apparently people tell them that figuratively. They replaced it and it worked fine. The next morning my car died. Specifically the battery which needed to be replaced. Can't really get too mad about that, the battery has lasted over 5 years, which is pretty damn good.

Surprisingly I didn't vote in the primaries this year. When I was thinking about going and doing it, I realized on the Republican side, that McCain was going to end up as the nominee, and on Democrat side I was happy either way.

I know I'm going to regret posting that last sentence, it seems a lot of my friend's are Obama fans. I feel kinda bad for not sharing in their enthusiasm, but while I like the guy I just can't get that enthusiastic yet. I think its just the fact that I'm more cynical politically, and there's a just a bit too much idealism in what I'm hearing to make me comfortable. Our Congress just isn't that responsive, and as much as Presidents like to ignore it, they make the laws. We'll see how I feel as we start leaving the primaries behind us if he wins.

I know Clinton has that love/hate thing going on with her, a lot of people don't like her because she's hard nosed, a bit too crafty, and will play dirty at times. I guess it says a lot about me that those are the reasons that I like her :).

In the end I'm split pretty evenly between the two, which is a good thing for the Democratic party, though the media thinks that's a bad thing for some reason. I'm looking forward to a convention showdown. I think its the kick in the pants the party needs, maybe it will wake up some of their congressman contenders as well, one can only hope.

On the Republican side, I have a problem. McCain is probably going to win the nomination, which puts me in a quandary. You see, though I'm not a Democrat or Republican, I was fully intending on voting Democrat for the President since the Republicans have done their best to piss me off during the last 8 years. This is now a problem, because I have a great deal of respect for McCain. I'm not saying that I agreed with him on everything, but I realized early on that voting on someone just because they agree with you on the issues of the day is slightly wacked out because
1) I could be wrong
2) They could be lying
3) What about the handling of the issues of tommorow?

So my level of respect for someone plays a major factor. Again, you're seeing my problem here.

What the Bush campaign did to McCain 8 years ago seriously pissed me off, and I've wondered how much better off we'd be today if McCain was President during the aftermath of 9/11.

In the end, this means I'm actually going to have to think about my vote this year. Frankly, I haven't had to think about my vote for President ever, they've been all no-brainers.

Damnit.