A Steaming Pile of Success

Wait, What Just Happened?

2009-10-11T07:23:00.000-07:00

I'm a little confused. Yesterday I saw a good deal on a 1 TB hard drive in the newspaper ad from Fry's Electronics. I've been keeping an eye out for deals on hard drives. 300 hours of recorded television on my MythTV box just isn't cutting it. I suppose I could just get around to watching the last 4 seasons of 24... Someday. But taking thousands of 10 mega-pixel pictures in a month is also creating a need for more disk space.

So, I went to Fry's and of course they were out of the drive in their ad. That part made sense to me. I've never gone to Fry's to buy something in their ad and actually fond it. Come to think of it, I never really buy anything at Fry's anymore. I go there, spend a few hours looking at everything, and then go home and start ordering stuff online. The last time I can remember buying something substantial at Fry's was around 1998, back when the Interwebs were just getting established and I had to listen to 30 seconds of strange beeps and squeals coming from my modem every time I connected. All for a glorious 7kB/s! Shudder.

But yesterday, I went to Fry's, asked a sales associate for help, and actually received it. He told me they had sold out of their special, but had another drive, a better drive, for only $10 more (still a reasonable price). We went to the shelf and didn't find any (also not surprising). He said "I'll go check the back" and emerged a minute later with a drive marked $20 more than he had just quoted me. He went to the register and printed a form for me that reduced the price on that drive to what he had quoted me. What?!?!

I was very confused. I asked someone at Fry's for hep and less than 5 minutes later I was holding (almost) what I asked for. And I actually bought it. And it was a good deal. And it wasn't broken when I took it out of the box.

In the days of reliable online vendors like NewEgg and bargain basement vendors like Meritline, ComputerGeeks and DealExtreme coupled with a plethora of deal-sleuthing websites, I was beginning to think that the days of brick and mortar stores like Fry's were numbered. And they probably are. But perhaps they will be around slightly longer than I thought.

Dude...

2009-04-07T20:22:00.000-07:00

I have a baby son!!! On a scale of 1 to10, he's CRAZY AWESOME!!!

Quality vs. Quantity

2008-02-22T18:03:00.001-08:00

I sporadically watch a lot of movies. Sometimes I skip a week or two, but sometimes I average one a day. I accomplish this through my Blockbuster subscriptions which affords me 3 movies at a time and allows me to exchange my mailed movies in the store for new movies. Since I pay a flat monthly fee, I'm compelled to maximize the return on my investment. I'd say it's rarely less than 10 in a month.

Sadly, there just aren't that many great movies these days, or if there are, I'm not looking in the right places. When you take all the big name releases and eliminate all of the sappy romance movies, tearjerkers, Larry the Cable Guy movies, movies with musicians-turned-actors, and movies starring Martin Lawrence, I've probably seen most of the rest.

So I watch B movies, movies that might be good, but that I would never pay $7 to watch in the theater. Usually they are about as good (or bad) as I expect. But occasionally, I am pleasantly surprised.

This month's movie pick: Shoot 'Em Up. I passed this movie on the shelves several times. The wife actually picked this one out. I can see why this movie was relatively undetected, but I think it's great. It stars Clive Owen of Sin City fame, and Paul Giamatti, who has always been one of my favorite actors. This gritty, fast-paced, action-packed movie has the perfect balance of relentless shooting, crazy action sequences, and dry, witty humor. It's not at all a family movie, but it was just fun to watch. This movie even breaks the "90-minute rule" by 4 minutes, but it's still great.

So throw this one on your Blockbuster or Net Flix list. And if you don't have a Net Flix of Blockbuster subscription, then this probably doesn't apply to you. I don't think this movie made it onto VHS! :-)

NaNoWriWhat?

2007-12-17T08:59:00.000-08:00

OK, so my attempt at writing a novel in a month was a little less stellar than what I had expected. I only made it to about 18K instead of 50K. But I was on track for the first two weeks, then I just stopped writing. So what are my lame excuses for not finishing?

Passing my entrepreneurship class seemed more important, and less expensive.
Despite what Chris Baty says, plot doesn't happen, at least not for me.
During the Thanksgiving break, my last chance to catch up, I was clinically addicted to several seasons of 24 recorded on my mythbox.
Tryptophan.
I'm kinda lazy. I have a tendency for starting things and then not fi

I convinced someone at work to participate and they started a week late and finished a week early, so in a sense, I won by proxy, right? Right?

I did enjoy the time I spent writing, and I had some funny things happen in my book. Maybe it worth finishing. Well, probably not.

Bar Maid Final Update...

2007-11-13T19:27:00.000-08:00

As you may know, Jae ran a 5K dressed as a barmaid on Halloween. We collected over $700 for charity: the Toys For Tots and Teens program that is run by volunteers at work to directly benefit needy children in the local community. Today we went to purchase toys for the children. We filled three shopping carts and also bought two bikes! The pictures of our shopping spree have been added to the photo collection.

Good thing we had at least a couple of women come help us shop, otherwise needy girls would be getting Lincoln Logs and LEGOs for the holidays!

Falling Behind...

2007-11-13T06:32:00.000-08:00

I'm falling further and further behind in my novel. At this point, I'm about 6,000 words behind schedule. Between school, being tired, and lack of motivation, I'm having a hard time continuing... Hopefully I can break the trend and power through some content in the next couple of days.

I should know better than to read manuals by now...

2007-11-07T16:47:00.001-08:00

Mark has a copy of Chris Beaty's book "No Plot? No Problem! A Low-stress, High-velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days". First of all, Chris gets points for having such a length title, although he hyphenated words, sacrificing word count for the sake of grammar. This must not be his first draft. :-)

When I skim through his book, I see topics that distract me. Getting to know my characters by asking them questions? Subplots? I barely even have a plot! Skimming his book makes me realize just how much I may be leaving out - or at least how much work I am leaving for future drafts.

So why am I really doing this? Two words. Strong Bad. "Yeah, I wrote a children's boook. Who hasn't? I mean, kids can barely read as it is so how hard can it be to write for them?"

Is this getting easier, or harder?

2007-11-06T22:47:00.000-08:00

I'm now at 12080 words - 24%. I'm not sure if this is getting harder or easier now - maybe a little of both. I am having an easier time understanding my character and knowing how he reacts to things. But I am having a hard time figuring out what and where the major plot elements are going to be. I'm almost a quarter in, and I don't have a major conflict in the story yet. But I do know what it is. I think. Maybe.

I need to move things along a bit. Still, this is kind of fun.

NaNoWriMo In Full Swing

2007-11-05T06:04:00.000-08:00

Well, it's hard to believe it's been only four days of NaNoWriMo so far. In those four days I've written 9146 words of mediocrity at its finest. Do the labels for chapter divisions count? If not, then deduct 6 words for my three chapter headings. It hasn't been too difficult but it has taken a bit more time than I expected. I'd say I'm averaging about 1000 words an hour.

To help keep me honest, here are the minimum word count quotas for every day in the month.

Day	Word Quota	Word Count
1	1667	1752
2	3334	3345
3	5001	6104
4	6668	9146
5	8335	9146
6	10002	12080

---
I moved the word count table to the side bar so it stays visible.

NaNoWriMo Begins...

2007-10-31T23:58:00.000-07:00

Well, I started tonight, or technically this morning. I've got 1,747 words under my belt. First thoughts: This might be harder than I thought. But we'll see. It's also kinda fun.

It's not too late to sign up!

Bar Maid a Success...

2007-10-31T21:04:00.000-07:00

Well, today was the day. Jae ran the 5K as a bar maid. He did pretty well, finishing in under 28 minutes - 6 less than he had guessed. Kevin and I followed in a chase car and shot some good pics. We even mounted a camera on a small hand-held mount for some "Survivor Man"-style footage. Jae collected the footage from three different video cameras and is editing it together. Hopefully it will grace the pages of You Tube soon.

Jae collected a total of $700 in sponsorships all of which will go to Toys For Tots. It's amazing what can result from some web surfing and a little dare. Thanks dealnews for posting the costume link in the first place! :-)

Check out the pics on PicasaWeb.
Watch the video on You Tube.

NaNoWriMo - the insanity begins soon!

2007-10-28T23:16:00.000-07:00

I've been convinced against my better judgment to participate in NaNoWriMo - a frenzied attempt to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. Why? Why not? What else is there to do in November?

The goal here is quantity, not quality. The math breaks down like this: 50,000 words / 30 days = 1,667 words a day. If you type 60 words per minute, that's about 28 minutes of typing per day. Of course that assumes that you spend the whole time typing and not trying to figure out what to type.

There are also several tricks to help increase your word counts. Some of my personal favorites are:

A character with temporary hearing loss - characters have to keep repeating themselves.
A character that sings out loud all the time
Quoting literature
A character that talks in his sleep, even if it is gibberish

So join in the fun! This will be your best first novel ever!

Bar Maid. A new charity event evolves, and K-Mart still sux...

2007-10-28T19:23:00.000-07:00

I have a small addiction to the deal websites. I spend perhaps more time than I should checking these sites to see if an irresistible deal exists on, well, anything really. On Monday I saw that K-Mart was selling Halloween costumes at a deep discount. I was surprised to learn that K-Mart was still in business. :-)

On Wednesday, I was talking to Jae. He was trying to convince me to run in the 5K run that was being held at work. When I realized that it was on Halloween, I suggested that Jae run it in a costume. I was particularly fond of the inflatable bar maid costume which was on sale for $11.99. It turned out that the sale had expired, so I was less willing to buy it. Then Jae said, "Well, if you bought it, I would wear it for the run." Sounded like a challenge to me! I quickly found 6 people to chip in for the costume. Jae started to regret his word choice, but agreed he would wear it.

After some thought, Jae decided to run for Toys for Tots, that way people wouldn't think he was as strange. He modified our ELFK sponsor sheet and went around collecting sponsors. It had a picture of the costume at the top. He quickly collected almost $300 of sponsorships.

At this point, I decided I had better order the costume quickly. I went to the KMart website and clicked "Add to Cart." Nothing happened. I noticed that beneath the button, there was a page or more of javascript code. The site was clearly broken. I checked other items on the site. Every item had the same broken button. I wished that I knew someone who owned stock in K-Mart so I could suggest that they sell it immediately.

I decided that it would be worth a trip into Dallas to buy the costume. I did a search for stores within 100 miles of my house. None. Fine. 500 miles. There were about 5. Only two of them were in my state. The nearest one was in Longview.

My coworker Daniel drives to Longview every weekend to visit his lady friend. I asked him to ask her to go buy the costuime. I called the store to see if they have it in stock. Afer 5 minutes of hold music, I got the "Halloween Costumes Representative." I described what I was looking for. After another minute of hold music, he returned and said "Sir, we do not have many customs. I searched through them and did not find, um, the uh, custom that you specified. You might want to come in and look." Wow that inspired confidence. I'm sure this employee really looked through all of his customs and didn't just put me on hold for a minute while pretending to look for, um, whatever it was that I wanted. Right.

I called my wife at home and asked her to try adding the item to her cart at K-Mart's website. She was successful. Sweet! I told her to buy it. To be sure it arrived in time, we would need the express shipping. Fine. Select shipping method. Express. Next. Enter shipping address. Next. Enter shipping address? Again? OK... Next. Enter shipping address. Oh great. There is an error code in the corner of the screen.

Well, with so many sponsors that had seen the costume at the top of the form, it had to be this one. I called K-Mart's 1-800 number. I read them the item number. They asked for my shipping address. Then the lady recited the same error code to herself and put me on hold to try ordering through another system. She came back with "Our site is currently down, but if you try again in 30-45 minutes, I'm sure it will be up again." Right. Or at least your shift will be over by then.

Defeated, I suggested we try to find a similar costume. The brand that maid this costume seemed to be exclusive to K-Mart. It turned out that "bar maid costume" was not a safe-for-work search term. We considered the inflatable sumo wrestler - not as funny.

Then my wife called. "It's on eBay! $50." Sold! I handed Jae the cash and he ordered it on his credit card. He emailed the seller to ensure it would arrive in time for the run.

Two days later, K-Mart's site was still broken and they responded to my initial feedback e-mail.
"Dear Eric, Thank you for contacting Sears. We appreciate you taking the time to contact us about this technical issue. A portion of our site is down, and the technical staff is diligently working on a resolution. Thank you for your patience."

Great! They misspelled my name, and they are now owned by Sears. I liked Sears, but it's new gangrenous appendage will probably lead to eventual total system failure. :(

Jae has now raised almost $500 in sponsorships for the event. The local newspaper said the were sending a reporter and a photographer. I decided not to run so it would be easier for me to video tape. The event organizer has been informed and thinks it's an awesome idea.

Jae received the costume on Friday. His dog got to the box and chewed it up a bit. The wig is a bit damaged, but the rest is in tact. Not exactly the same as the picture, but close enough. Jae's goatee really ties the costume together.

So on Halloween, there will be a bar maid with facial hair running along the side of the highway with me videotaping. But don't worry, it's for the children.

ELFK: Wrapping Up...

2007-10-14T18:48:00.000-07:00

Well, the three of us made it all 36 hours. We are just wrapping up now. Kevin and I played some Starcraft against computers for the last couple hours.

Overall, we had a fun time. Some of us are taking the day off tomorrow for recovery, while others are going to work. I feel sorry for them. :-)

Thanks to all my sponsors. I'll be coming to collect soon! ;-)

ELFK: Hour 32...

2007-10-14T14:30:00.000-07:00

We're down from our five initial people to 3 players: Kevin, Patrick, and me. Jen was feeling pretty bad between her ankle and the lack of sleep. She made it 25.5 hours before calling it a day. Brandon left a few hours later.

For a while I was feeling really tired. I was actually almost drifting to sleep in front of my Xbox. But now I feel like the last 4.5 hours should be a piece of cake.

I've played everything from PC games to retro arcade games like Centipede. Good times all around. I've spent most of my time playing either Warcraft III or Evil Dead. Optimus Prime may have made a few phone calls from our event too. :-) I think I'll mix it up for the rest of the day. I don't have the attention span for anything major.

Patrick bought the Orange Box for this event (for XBox 360). He finished Portal in expert mode already, but it still looks like a pretty cool game. Team Fortress 2 looks good too, but I haven't played it yet.

ELFK: 24 Hours and going...

2007-10-14T07:03:00.000-07:00

Well, we're 2/3 done now. I was getting pretty tired, but sure enough, when the sun came up and the breakfast tacos arrived, I found myself with a little bit of a second wind. 12 hours left. Time for some Full Tilt...

Sodas consumed: 4+
Pizzas consumed: About 1
Energy drinks consumed: 1 Jones Energy drink, 1 Red Bull
Candy consumed: Too much

The Jones Energy drinks say that you can only have two a day. But it's OK to pile those on top of other brand energy drinks, and soda, right?!? :-/

ELFK: Hour 20

2007-10-14T02:21:00.000-07:00

I'm tired, it'd dark out, and all of my games suddenly seem to be more difficult than they were before. The veterans tell me this is the hard part and that it gets easier when after sunrise. Somehow, my body is supposed to "forget" that I forgot to sleep. But I'm wondering if that will work out. I do know that with the morning come some tasty breakfast burritos. Perhaps they will revitalize me.

Over the last hour, I have downgraded from Warcraft III, to Hitchhiker's Guide and now to Rez - an interesting Dreamcast game. I promise that I don't have the optional "Trance Vibrator"... :-)

ELFK: Hour 14

2007-10-13T21:09:00.000-07:00

Still going... But getting sleepy. Played enough Evil Dead to get to the fun part - the part where you get Sam, your deadite dwarf sidekick. He is already dead, so you use him by kicking him into deadly obstacles, which usually cause him some form of torture. He then respawns back to life, berates you for hurting him, and you do it again. I particularly liked putting him through the wood chipper. :-)

Now to take a "break" with some classic Warcraft III.

Pizza eaten: 7 slices
Caffeine consumed: 2 sodas, one Jones energy drink
Candy consumed: plenty...
Getting tired, but my eyes don't hurt yet.

I suddenly remembered the story about the Korean guy who died from playing Starcraft. Hmm....

ELFK: Hour 10+

2007-10-13T17:36:00.000-07:00

Kevin is lame. Totally pwned me at Starcraft. But then again, it's been almost 40 years since I played Starcraft... Ok, maybe less. Time to play some Warcraft III. Or maybe some Team Fortess 2.

Jen was feeling sleepy, but now that it's night time, she's waking up. Go figure.

ELFK: Hour 2

2007-10-13T09:07:00.000-07:00

Well, we're all set up and 2 hours in. Already feeling a little sleepy. The sugar-induced coma from donuts is setting in. Luckily we brought an LD-50 dose of caffeine. Evil Dead and Crazy Taxi lead the way for me while the other play Halo and WoW. Jen sprained her ankle this morning, but it is apparently not required for WoW'ing... :-)

ELFK - Night Before

2007-10-12T19:11:00.000-07:00

I'm having some doubts about making it for 36 hours. But I'm certainly bringing enough junk to keep me busy. There's no way I will be able to play all of these games, but I'm keeping my options open.

We went shopping for snacks and went a bit overboard. We've got enough sugar and caffeine to induce at least one heart attack. But we plan to share.

Well, time to finish packing up and get to bed early.

Extra Life 4 Kids - Getting Ready

2007-10-11T20:46:00.001-07:00

After a few days of convincing from friends at work, I've decided to play in a charity event called Extra Life 4 Kids. It's a 36-hour gaming marathon that benefits the Children's Miracle Network starting at 9 AM this Saturday. I don't know if I will make it 36 hours, but I plan to try. It sounds like there will be 6 participants in our area this year. I've already got quite a few sponsors, but it's not too late for you to sponsor me with either a fixed or hourly donation! :-)

I'm getting ready by taking inventory of the games I will bring to play.

Xbox (Original)

Evil Dead!!!

Crazy Taxi 3
Psychonauts
Voodo Vince
Splinter Cell(s)

Dreamcast

Crazy Taxi 1 & 2
Frogger 2
Rez
Worms Armageddon

Warcraft III
Diablo II
Starcraft
Pazaak
Oblivion
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (online version)
Miscellaneous Web Games

Non-Electronic

Cards (for poker, or other)
Mastermind
Sudoku

Hopefully that will do it. I also imagine I will not escape without playing some Halo 3 on one of the plethora of Xbox 360s that will be there. A few friends from work are planning to stop by and visit for a bit and may join in some poker. Let me know if you have any ideas!