From my Google Reader shares

• Your dreams come true: ESRB rates FFVII for PS3/PSP:
• Nier – E3 09: Debut Trailer:

So I hate touchscreen keyboards.  I don’t even have fat fingers, but I can certainly see how larger hands would lead to a larger hatred of such devices.  So here’s my free million dollar idea to better mankind.

3×3 wide grid of keys.  Each key has 3+ letters.  It can be QWERTY or alphabetical setup.  Pressing the button will type the middle letter in the key.  Pressing and swiping left will press the left key and similarly for the right key.  Pressing and swiping up will caps the letter.  If you want left/right you do press+left/right+up.  If you mistype swiping down will cancel your selection.

Please someone invent this.

From my Google Reader shares

• Failoc-alypse bursts onto the scene!:
• Why The Hell Are Gasoline Prices Going Up When Global Usage Is Down?:
• Download-only PSP Redesign Confirmed via Leak: Ok, it actually looks kind of retarded.
• EGM sold to original founder, resumes publication this year:

From my Google Reader shares

• DJ Hero info-splosion: Gameplay footage, platforms, additional instrument support revealed:
• Mega Man In Partial 3-D: Mega Man 2.5D!:
• The Matrix Online Going Offline:
• Is Hulu Coming to Xbox 360? [Rumor]:
• Alienware's New M17x: Most Powerful Notebook Ever? – PC Magazine:
• Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 – E3 09: Exclusive Villains Trailer HD:
• And Now Rape Games Are Not Banned in Japan [Rapelay]:
• Nice Work If You Can Get It: EA’s Riccitiello, Moore Earn Big Bucks in Bad Year:
• MMOUI Minion beta released:
• DJ Hero First Screenshots and Details:
• See the first (French) trailer for Lego Rock Band:
• Xbox To Get Live TV and Massive VOD Update:
• Supreme Commander 2 – E3 09: Exclusive Reveal Trailer HD:
• Wikipedia Bans Church of Scientology:
• ‘Page’s Law’ Is Google Founder’s Next-Best Shot at Immortality:
• Google Chrome 3: Incremental changes along the road to Extensions:

To celebrate 1 year with WordPress, I figured I’d punch up a new theme and call it a day.  However, pouring through all the WP themes leaves something to be desired.  It seems like many of the themes are created with half purposes and the artwork used is simply too specific to fit in general use.  Instead of a generic sort of theme they create a very niche theme.  Ah well.

The main problems I want to tackle are highlighting my Twitter feed and showcasing the Reader news.  If I can do the latter then I feel like I can move away from daily update autoposts to weekly wrap ups.  Additionally for anyone subscribed to all the RSS feeds, you run into a problem of data overlap where my Twitter is telling you I posted a new article and then if you’re part of the reader shares then you get it twice when the site publishes them.  It’s all very annoying.  Hopefully a new version will spawn by August though and I can clean up some of these issues.

From my Google Reader shares

• Drop everything and watch this Droplitz video: Seems addicting
• The Worst And Saddest Of Yahoo! Answers:
• Zune HD Hands On: Photos and Video Tour [Zune]:
• Japanese Organization To Ban Sale of Rape Games: Uh wow, the Japanese sure have crazy games which require crazy laws.
• Google Wave Is a Frothy Collaborative Mix of Chat, IM, Twitter and Google Docs in Real-Time [Google]:
• U.S. VAT Tax Would Affect Games, Systems, Online Fees (and everything else):
• Fansite Q&A 5: SC2A:
• Google Wave unveiled, new live chat medium for browsers, iPhone and Android: Didn’t ICQ have this?
• Cupcake Adds Camcorder, Touchscreen Keyboard, and More to Android [Screenshot Tour]:
• Google shows off Android 2.0:
• Palm Pre to Sync with iTunes on Macs?:
• “Mole” says UMD-less PSP-Go! is on for E3, slimmer PS3 to follow:
• Today, Guitar Hero, You Have The Touch (And The Power) [Transformers]:

I realized recently that the bulk of my wardrobe hasn’t really changed since my high schools days.  When I do get new clothes it’s always gifts from relatives so ultimately I’m at the mercy of what other people think looks good on me.  Thinking about this conundrum I realize that my entire closet is comprised basically of what everyone else’s appearance of me should look like.  It’s a strange revelation I think.

While I’m not one to go clothes shopping I suspect I should be doing it more frequently than I have been and I need to start phasing out fashion trends from the 90’s.  I dunno though, how often do/should people be doing such a thing?  Maybe it’s totally normal.

Ready set go!

Potato Salad

5 ½ pounds Idaho potatoes
¾ pound (about 2 medium) yellow onions, chopped
¾ pound (about 6 ribsstalks) celery, chopped
16 ounces Kraft Dill Pickle Relish
1 ½ pounds (24 ounces) sour cream
12 ounces Kraft Mayonnaise (see Note)
2 heaping tablespoons coarse black pepper
1 heaping teaspoon garlic salt
1 heaping teaspoon celery salt
1 tablespoon salt, or to taste

GARNISH:
Sprinkling of paprika
Sprig of parsley

Put unpeeled potatoes in a large pot of salted cold water; bring to a boil and cook until tender throughout, about 25 minutes. Test by inserting a knife into a potato. Refrigerate 30 minutes to allow potatoes to cool. Carefully peel potatoes and cut into 1-inch cubes; set aside.

In large mixing bowl, blend together onions, celery, relish, sour cream, mayonnaise, pepper, garlic salt, celery salt and salt. Add cubes of potato and mix gently.

Cover and place in refrigerator until ready to serve.

For Garnish: Dust with paprika and garnish with a sprig of parsley.

Note: County Line uses Kraft Extra Heavy Mayonnaise. The recipe was tested with Kraft Real Mayonnaise with excellent results.

Recipe can be halved, if desired.

From my Google Reader shares

• Beware CircuitCity.com's Return Policies – PC Magazine:
• Google Ion hands-on and unboxing:
• NVIDIA Is Out At Dell&#63:
• The9 sues Blizzard:
• Pre-E3 2009: Guitar Hero 5 Confirmed for September 1st:
• Pre-E3 2009: New Mario, Zelda and Wii Fit to Debut at E3:
• Touchscreen Zune touches down:
• Vista Service Pack 2 Available for Download [Windows]:
• Additional beta details:
• StarCraft 2, Blizzard Fansite Summit in China:

In the past 7 days I’ve done tons of crazy things.  Well, they aren’t so crazy I guess, but here’s the rundown of what I’ve been up to.

Since around about the Fall of 2005 I’ve been the raid leader of a WoW guild which I occasionally talk about here and there.  In February of 2007 I became the guild master as well.  I decided last December that I needed a break and that I should focus on school for this Spring semester but that got bumped due to random politics at the time.  During the middle of the semester a new patch hit and I was again on the fence about stepping down.  Ultimately I pushed it off again.  Around 2 weeks ago I finally decided no matter what I’m going to have to step down from WoW and move on and last week I finally did.  It coincided with my annual birthday bash trip to San Antonio.

It’s a really hard thing to sort of let go of.  One, I’m a control freak so it’s tough to now think that it’s possible that if I’m in conflict with an issue, it might just stay that way.  It’s yet to happen and I doubt anything crazy will happen, but you never know!  This is going to sound really crazy but I knew the ins and outs of the guild and accessory items to the guild so well that I can’t yet comfortably take weeks off yet.  It’s still somewhat transitory.  There were mods we used in game custom built for us as well as very quirky systems we used for our web site that I feel like maybe only 2-3 people know how they fully work and interact with the guild.

This all sounds like I quit WoW though and really, I’m just taking a backseat to the next generation.  I’m still around but my login time will not consist of 80% dealing with other people and 20% doing random things for myself.  But it’s time for the guild to take the next step.  You can’t be the parent forever, so it’s time to see what the kids have learned and how they cope with things.  It’ll be interesting to see what happens after the summer when we have a new batch of recruits and maybe I’m just some mystery dude.

So May is birthday month, with me, my older younger sister, and my little brother all having birthdays within a timespan of about 13 days.  I originally planned to go 18th-22nd but work cropped up, which is the only busy time of year for me between sessions, and I had to push it off to 21st-26th.  Hammeron demanded I go to Whole Foods and I had pushed off seeing Star Trek to see it in IMAX.

So I get to San Antonio and my Mom usually makes a huge cake for us.  This time however, due to the request of her friends from work, she bought a cake from this cafe waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay downtown.  So job 1 for me was go fetch the cake.  My mom wanted to get a grand marnier cake but my sister went with the black forest chocolate cake instead.  There’s a picture of a slice on the sidebar on my flickr feed.  It was good.  Mom didn’t like it, she’s picky, but I suspect it’s because she wanted the grand marnier.  All of my sister’s friends liked it though so it’s no big deal.

If you’ve been following my twitter, I broke my Rock Band drum set foot pedal.  Despite owning the super great mega pedal, it broke where the mega pedal doesn’t connect, at the very base where it has a pin connected to pivot.  My initial plan was to super glue it back together.  I was stuffing my face with chicken while I let my sister do it.  So after letting it set overnight I started a song up and after about 3 notes it breaks again cleanly.  I said screw it, we’re going to Gamestop.  We head over and buy the replacement pedal with the double bass module.  I get home and plug in the new one and it’s great.  However, I have this new nagging annoyance that I have double bass and one broken pedal.  So I try the super glue again.  I went crazy with the stuff.  I let it set and sure enough, it has yet to break.  However I have been using the new pedal as the dominant pedal and the broken one as the secondary one.  Regardless, it has yet to break after a few songs.  As a sidenote, double bass is incredibly difficult to learn to use once you’ve gotten single bass working.

Afterwards we headed out to see Star Trek.  I really wanted to see it in IMAX but apparently the theater only shows the newest releases of the week or something crazy in IMAX so I had to see it regular style.  Overall it was cool.  I won’t spoil it but my brother/sister got an earful when it was done.  There are things I didn’t like but the good things outweigh that stuff so overall I enjoyed it.

Sunday felt like a lost day to me.  I borrowed Crisis Core from Ashley before I left so I wouldn’t die of boredom and I put about 5 hours into it overall.  It’s pretty neat but really easy at the same time.  Though I can’t really tell if games are easier because I’m older and wiser or if they are in fact, just easy in general now.  There’s some random hard stuff in there and I actually really hate how the level up system works, but the main story of the game hasn’t caused any problems yet.  The battle system is entertaining enough. I need to finish it soon.

Monday we went out to Whole Foods which was a really crazy store.  95% of it is organic and everything smelled so fresh.  It was pretty great.  I got a Mix1 for me and my brother and he got a Dagobah chocolate bar just for novelty sake.  Though it was a pretty good chunk of chocolate anyway.  They had Brain Toniq there as well and I tried a sample.  I would say in the general category of energy drinks, it was better than most and it wasn’t carbonated which is a plus for me, but the taste wasn’t there for me.  The only problem with Whole Foods is that it’s so far away, it would be impossible to buy anything that needs refrigeration since the trip back home is so far and it was around 100 degrees in the car.  After that we shipped out to the mall for some new threads and hit up all the stores at La Cantera.

As usual when I visit I like to go out to eat with my brother and sisters somewhere that I don’t have in Lubbock.  However it being Memorial Day I wanted to head to the County Line for some killer BBQ.  I think my new favorite there is the pork ribs.  They’re so great fallin off the bone style and succulent.  The potato salad is king as usual and we had ordered 2 loaves of bread to take home.

My Mom also went on a spree of buying suits for me recently, none of which fit.  However she has a friend that is a tailor, which is a crazy profession for some reason to me, but I forgot I went there on Sunday to get 2 of these suits fitted.  I picked them up on Monday and man they look great.  This year is like a marathon of weddings so now I should look pretty dapper.

Ok lastly, while I don’t actually ask for much on my birthday, I walked home with the new fitted suits, a crazy hand blender with chopper, Gurren Lagann disc 1, and I got myself the second season of Shin Chan.

Now that Summer is upon me and lots of freed up time due to lack of WoW, I’m gonna start plowing through these mountains of games/movies/anime that I’ve neglected all these years.  It’s certain I won’t be finished by the end of the Summer, but hopefully I make a dent.