SameOldSchmidt

Tina & I have been looking at houses here in Lincoln. We’ve seen a few dumps but have also seen a few really nice joints. We’ve got a couple at the top of our list right now.

It’s too bad that some of the areas close to the capitol are so crummy because I’d love to live in that part of town. I walked by a couple of houses for sale in the area and I thought “Wow, it would be great if this neighborhood could be cleaned up and revitalized!” and I simultaneously thought “…but I’m not going to be the one to do it!”

I was looking at a particular house on D St that had interested me when I saw it listed on a realty website. It was a cute, older home with plenty of space and a 5-stall garage in back. Not that I need 5 stalls by any means, but it’s a pretty amazing feature. So I went to see it in person and there’s graffiti all over the garage. I don’t know if it’s gang-related (Is it quaint of me to be worried about gangs in Lincoln? Cut me some slack, I’ve only been here a year.) or maybe just some stupid kids screwing around and tagging buildings. Either way, I just don’t think I want to have my wife and daughter in that area.

I picked up a 500GB external hard drive over the weekend so I can back up my stuff and be protected when the next crash goes down. Going through my digital junk, I found some old MGU mp3s. This one is going to be my new hard drive backing-up anthem.

My primary hard drive crashed yesterday. It happened while I was at work; my brother Nate got on my PC to check his e-mail and it just locked up on him. I trust that he didn’t pour Mountain Dew in it or anything, it was probably going to happen anyway and Nate was just the poor schmoe who was using the ‘puter when it died. No hard feelings, bro.

I installed an nLite‘d version of XP on a spare 200GB drive I had on-hand. So I’ve at least still got a computer but all my apps and data are gone. I’ve learned my lesson! I’m gonna go buy an external drive and start doing weekly back-ups.

Tina and Genny are in Illinois for a few day to visit Tina’s sister, so I’ve been left to my own devices over the weekend. I’ve gone to Knickerbockers two days in a row to see The Favors; I think that technically qualifies me as a groupie. The fellas are going to the Zoo Bar for a 40/20 show tonight but I pussied out because I’m supposed to record an episode of Dead Politics with Mat & Deejay later tonight. Maybe I’ll swing in there if I’m done with the podcast early enough.

I’ve just started playing Professor Layton and the Curious Village on my DS. It’s a really cool game, a perfect fit for the system. I love the comic Penny Arcade did on Layton. Play the game for a few minutes, you’ll get it.

The Splatcademy Awards went really well, the contributions from our fellow podcasters were amazing. My only concern is that people will see how much funnier than us some of those dudes are, and will quit listening to our show

I went to The Ross yesterday to see The Orphanage with some pals. It was a good time, I hadn’t been to that theater for several years. I think the last time was back in ‘99 or 2000 to see Princess Mononoke. Reactions to The Orphanage varied across our group, but I think most of us thought it was pretty decent. You can hear our thoughts in Splattercast #66.

Before The Orphanage, we saw a trailer for Persepolis. It’s an animated movie based on a well-liked graphic novel. I don’t know if I’ll make time to see Persepolis at the theater, but this trailer was very cool. It had a garagey cover of Eye of the Tiger playing and it was just really rockin’.

And lastly, I read about this music/radio site called Pandora over on The Stygian Hollows. I’m having a lot of fun with Pandora, it’s great because I like hearing new (new to me, at least) music but I don’t have the gumption or inclination to learn about music on my own. Pandora takes a single recommendation from you, a single band or song that you like, and produces a string of music that it thinks you will like based on that one piece of information.

One of my favorite sites, Hardcore Gaming 101, has a new article up on a bizarre Japanese indie game from the Super Famicom era: Hong Kong 97. It’s some wacky protest/commentary game about the Chinese takeover of Hong Kong in 1997.

Check out episode #8, it’s super.

I finished Breakdown for Xbox this weekend. I got it used a couple years ago when I first got my Xbox, and it just sat on the shelf until now. HG101 has a great write-up on the game. It does a few things really well and there are a handful of very cool moments, but the overall package is less than stellar - which is kind of a shame, since there are those little nuggets of greatness in there. You can get it for $6 or $7 bucks used and I think it’s definitely worth that, just be sure to set the difficulty to “easy” otherwise the frustration-to-reward ratio will be way out of wack.

I also got the new Advance Wars DS game tonight at one of the Gamestop stores in town. Of course it was about 15% cheaper at the Wal-Mart that was a few yards away, but I had a gift card for Gamestop. The dude working the register told me the game was “totally awesome” and I trust his professional opinion.

I wholeheartedly recommend any of the Advance Wars games for either the GBA or DS. All of them are great and you’ll get tons of playtime out of them.

I’ve taken tomorrow off of work to take Tina to the hospital for some outpatient surgery. She’s having her gallbladder removed because it’s been causing her some serious discomfort. Apparently it’s something that can happen to women after they start having children. She’s nervous (who wouldn’t be?) and we’re hoping everything goes smoothly.

I’ve charged up both my DS and my GBA micro, and I loaded some new podcasts onto my iPod so I should be good to go for the long wait in the hospital.

Speaking of podcasts, if you like listening to me as much as I like listening to myself, then you should check out these podcasts that I co-host…