Oh goody. The Nomad 3 has been delayed by another 2 weeks. May 13th is now the expected shipping date. Urge to kill… rising… rising…

I’ve been looking for a coding project to work on for a while now, and it looks like I’ve finally got one but it may be too much of a project. Dana, Neal, and I are talking about working together on a game, just an old school side scroller Metroid style. We got together and talked about it for several hours tonight, and while I think we could pull it off, I’m still kind of skeptical that anything will come out of it though. Neal and I are both pretty sharp code monkeys, and Dana can pump out some graphics but its still a lot of work for just the three of us. Maybe I should open it up as a project on Sourceforge. Actually, as long as I can get familiar with DirectX programming out of this I think I’ll consider it a success. Anything extra will just be a bonus. Hopefully that’s not too pessimistic, but at this point all we’ve really got is an idea and not a lot of experience.

Absolutely horrifying. They’re spreading. What is it with squirrels and college campuses? I guess taking over OSU wasn’t enough for the little furry bastards. You know, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the squirrels were actually behind the latest wave of OSU riots. Sure, you could try to blame it on total idiots full of booze all you want, but I think its more than obvious that the real culprit here is the fuzzy gray menace.

Mirah’s “Cold, Cold Water” has been on near constant repeat in my playlist the past few days. Its just that unbelievably good. This is easily going to be one of my favorite songs of the year, no contest. The night I downloaded it I must have listened to it at least 10 times. Its the greatest thing when a spur of the moment random download ends up being just way more incredible than you were expecting. I really need to pick up her Advisory Committee cd, because if the rest of it is even half as good as that one song it’ll be a great album. Phil Elvrum, who’s done some pretty amazing stuff with the Microphones, coproduced and the results are impressive. On “Cold, Cold Water” the effect of the huge, expansive, spaghetti western movie score style production meeting up with Mirah’s wonderfully sweet, intimate vocals is just about perfect. Beyond the great production though, its really Mirah’s voice and lyrics that make this song so great. When she sings, “I’m so number one that its a shame, that you let other numbers in the game”, I believe it. Wow.

The job search is still going ahead here, but with only a month and a half until I become unemployed I haven’t come across anything especially promising. I just recently sent my resume out to Veritas, Lucent, and even AOL but who knows if I’ll hear back from them. Last week I got a message from some “recruiter” for a company that had found my resume on monster.com. I was more than a little skeptical, I mean I know I’m a hot job prospect and all but a company randomly calling still seemed a little questionable. I did some quick googling, but couldn’t dig up anything on them. Fortunately, Dave did some super-sleuthing of his own after also being contacted by these people and turned up what looks like a potential pyramid scheme. Not too surprising.

I’m sore. Lots of sore going on here. Just one big pile of aching, out of shape muscles. Monday night I went to my first ever kung fu lesson. No, seriously. I am now an elite kung fu warrior of death, and just a few lessons away from being a ninja, which would be totally sweet. A while ago my friend Jolayne mentioned that she’d been wanting to try kung fu, and since I’ve always wanted to turn my body into an unstoppable weapon of destruction I decided to join in. Our teacher was Master Matt, who seems like the sort of really nice guy who, it just so happens, could easily smash your face in before you could blink. I had a good time at the lesson though, and I think I’m going to sign up for lessons once a week. I’m not so much interested in learning to fight actually, I figure that’s pretty useless for me. What I do like though are all the forms and stances, the control and discipline. I think that they’re really interesting to learn and since I’m generally a pretty uncoordinated person, I’m hoping this might help offset that. Maybe. So far all I’ve learned is how out of shape I am. Still, everyone had better watch out because soon Jolayne and I will be destroying people’s souls with our kung fu technique. As soon as we can move our legs again.

Are there any two more beautiful words in the English language than “free food”? I think not. Last night I hit the free food jackpot thanks to my friend Dana. The Pizza Hut where his wife Kristin is a manager just completed remodeling and had a free food celebration for friends and family of its employees. Everything on the menu, free. Dana, Neal, Brett, and I decided we had no choice but to take them up on their kind offer. I mean, hey, free food. Our waiter kept suggesting more food items that what we ordered, and let me tell you, its not hard to pull off a pressure sell when everything is free. I think this must have been his first time waiting tables, since we got our drinks refilled about five times and checked on every two minutes. At first it was nice, but then started to border on creepy and obsessive. Also around the fifth Pepsi, my stomach ruptured and I died. It was worth it though, on account of the free food. I even ended up taking half a dessert pizza home which was, did I mention, free.

Not being a student at OSU anymore, I don’t really keep up with all the goings on around campus or even read the Lantern that much anymore, despite being on campus just about every day for work. Still, I was surprised today to see that Mirror Lake, that venerable campus landmark, had been replaced with a big dirt hole. Somebody stole Mirror Lake! Naturally, my first instict was to call Morrissey. I just figure if anyone would know what to do in a situation like this, he would. On closer inspection though I decided that all the construction workers in and around the lake probably meant that everything was on the level. I guess they’re renovating it. The least they could have done is given me some notice. Now what am I going to tell Morrissey when he gets here?

So here’s the thing: Last week I preordered a Nomad3 jukebox from Dell, taking advantage of a couple of special offers and getting a pretty good deal on it. It was supposed to arrive today. Instead I got the next best thing, and by next best I meant worst thing imaginable. I got an email informing me that the shipping would be delayed until the 30th. Nooooooooo! After I stopped hyperventilating and abandoned the idea of trying to make my own jukebox by taking out my computer’s hard drive and jamming a headphone jack into it, I realized I’d just have to make the best of it. And by make the best of it, I mean whine and pout like a 5 year old.

I guess Google finally started indexing my page again, because as of right now I’m currently the top search result for “poo poo platter“. Wow. The thing is, I can’t believe how many hits I’ve gotten from people looking for that. Seriously. Also, this poo is cold. Look out! Monkeys flinging poo! I don’t know if I’ve ever been prouder.