right on bro!

I went to Fry’s today bought a cheap ($100) surround sound system. Onkyo GXW5.1, with five speakers and a sub/amp (the sub has the amp built into it). This is to work with my Playstation 2 and Panasonic flatscreen TV.

It’s pretty cool, but I’m not used to surround sound at all. Am not used to having this much sound, especially bass, even though the subwoofer is kinda weak overall. Not sure I’m going to hold onto this set - without having seriously tweaked yet, I think the sound is a little too dull. I mean, I can hear a lot more detail in these speakers than with the regular TV speakers (probably because I’ve got satellites about two feet on either side of me, as opposed to a stereo pair on the TV that is six feet away), but the speakers themselves aren’t too hot.

SOCOM plays way better though, because you can hear people shooting relative to where you’re located, in three dimensions.

Speaking of three dimensions…I watched Cube 2: Hypercube last night. I liked the first one a lot, and I liked this one just as much. Let’s hope they make Cube 3: Revenge of the Cube or something like that.

So much for jamming out of town this weekend…but it’s all good, I guess.

What I’ve Been Reading When I Haven’t Been Playing SOCOM

Teeth of the Tiger, Tom Clancy. I’ve been reading Clancy novels since I was in high school. I get made fun of for reading Clancy because they’re not perceived to be literary works that you can chalk up as having read, and then show off to your friends at your next social circle gathering. But let’s face it: After a long day of jeetering at your day job, sometimes you just want to come home and be entertained for a few hours. So…bust.

I almost didn’t buy this one because Red Rabbit wasn’t so good. Ever since Rainbox Six, I started to wonder whether Clancy was writing his books just so he could sell film rights - shorter, simplified stories without the depth and intrigue of, say, Executive Orders, which is one of my favorite Clancy novels of all time.

Teeth of the Tiger does nothing to break this mold, but it’s more entertaining than the last three. Characters do not deviate that much from previous works. The good guys are generally well-adjusted people who have no personal issues except that there’s evil out there that needs to be dealt with. I’d like to see, like, one of the good guys get denied on a 2nd mortgage, or develop a coke habit, or something, and then see how that affects the course of the story. The bad guys are pretty straightforward anti-American angry Arabs who drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes and then go commit some terrorism. You might not like this book if you’ve dedicated your life to protesting stereotypes and moving towards new paradigms of race relations, or something like that. Or you could just say, “Hey, this is just a story, the action moves along pretty fast, and it’s entertaining.” And wonder, the next time some white dude calls you a chink or raghead, whether maybe or not that person’s gotten that idea from a book like this.

Semi-spoiler: I’m really, really hoping that the next book isn’t called “Brain of the Tiger.” That’d be lame.

This book is rated: “You’d like it if you’re a fan of Clancy’s earlier work, but it’s probably not worth paying full price for it if you’re killing time in an airport and see it in the bookstore there.”

Telling Lies and Getting Paid, Michael Konik. Konik’s earlier book, The Man with the $100,000 Breasts was recommended to me by a co-worker who happens to be a semi-professional no-limit Texas Hold ‘Em player (you may have actually seen him on the World Poker Tour show on the Travel Channel). This one isn’t quite as good, probably because I don’t know or care that much about sports betting, gin rummy, or backgammon, which is three of the stories. The theme story (which is about 1/2 of the book) is a rather drawn-out description of the author’s repeated attempts to win (and his obsession with winning) the World Series of Poker. It’s somewhat similar to Positively Fifth Street by James McManus, in that I didn’t really like either one.

This book is rated: “You should probably try to borrow this from your local public library, or if you haven’t read Konik before, get the other book mentioned above. If that’s not available, go rent Rounders instead.”

Oh, I Also Saw a Movie Too
I bought the DVD of Hero a couple of weeks ago off of Ebay, shipped from Shanghai. Had really high expectations for this one - directed by Zhang Yimou, cinematography by Christopher Doyle, starring Jet Li, Maggie Cheung, Tony Leung, and Zhang Ziyi. Expectations were too high. Visually this is an absolutely stunning film - like, really, really, REALLY stunning. But fight scenes progress without a real sense of urgency, and the story is kind of like a cross between your typical “you killed my master so I’m out for revenge” kung-fu flick and the plot twists of The Usual Suspects or The Sixth Sense. Kinda cool, I guess.

It looks like this movie ain’t gonna get released in the U.S. like it was supposed to. So your only resort might be to watch it on DVD. Note: the Guangdong Face version that I have, it wouldn’t read the DVD title menu on my Playstation 2, so I just had to make it play the movie only. And about 2/3 the way through the movie, it stopped with an “Unable to read disc” error. Had to switch to my laptop to watch the rest (a.k.a. my $3,000 DVD player that was supposed to be a portable recording setup). YMMV.

Oh, and…
I just remembered that the 2nd season of CSI is coming out on DVD next week. Yes!

The weekend’s here. Dope. Happy hour steez with some friends, and then came home to chill out. Slept in.

One note about shit I write here: I’m actually not as bored or have nothing to do as you might think, by reading these writings. Just wanted to clarify that a little bit.

Webcam’s still off. I’ll probably plug it back in this weekend - gonna try to get the lens hooked up to it.

This week has been full of jeetering. I’m glad it’ll be over soon. But I think I actually am starting to convince people at work that if they let their design team (i.e. me) have enough time to think through designs, with an actual development process, they might actually get better applications. Perhaps I’m speaking too soon.

Reviewing weekend options:

• Going to Vegas, again. Rooms are fairly cheap for Labor Day weekend. I might just end up getting in the car and driving out there myself, out of sheer fucking boredom.
• Buying a copy of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 and a joystick. The screenshots look awesome. Although, if I bought it and it was too hard to play, I’d get pissed after the first 20 minutes and have to find something else to do.
• General hanging out at home…although home, even though it’s clean, is starting to feel like a dark cave.

Ugh.

webcam’s off today…unplugged it. so that’s why you’re not seeing an image.

anyone have a soldering iron?

Okay, so I received my Computar TG0412AFCS-3 lens that I bought off of Ebay, for use with the webcam. It requires soldering the lens wires to an 8-pin mini-DIN plug. Not mentioned in the manual. (Well, it was implied, but I don’t know shit about electronics - it would take a sentence in the manual that says “YOU NEED TO SOLDER A CONNECTION” for me to understand.) Bleah.

So the Webcam will be pointing at completely boring indoor shit until I get this hooked up. I’m afraid of damaging the CCD lens.

Axis gets negative points for usability today.

After a retarded week of having to deal with general wackness on all levels, I cancelled all plans and jammed out Vegas this weekend with some friends. It was a straight bust. Breaking out of the work-apartment-work cycle with a short trip really helped in putting some things back in perspective. Of course, having the world’s greatest place to gamble (even if it’s only low-minimum blackjack) only 3-4 hours away doesn’t hurt.

The vegetation was in semi-bloom all along the Mojave, probably because of last week’s desert rains. I think it’s the Mojave. Whatever it is that I-15 runs though. Anyway, it was cool, I’ve never seen it like that before. Flowers on cactuses and stuff. Here and there, you could also see mini-ponds of standing water. And, as the sun went down and we were nearing Stateline, you could see huge streaks of lightning off to the east. Sweet.

On both the trip out and the return trip, one dude sneezed in the car, and you could smell it. It was really weird, being able to smell someone else’s sneeze. I can smell my own sneezes, sometimes. But never someone else’s, and not to that extent. Yuck. I mean, whatever - everyone has little tics that other people are like, yuck, but whatever, that’s just people and you’re friends. But…yuck.

Came up with a title for my next album, or song, or whatever it’s going to be when I actually start working on it. Whatever Delusions You Have of Being Whatever You Think You Are.

Other than that, slept all day today, cooked dinner, and watched Men in Black II.

Labor Day’s coming up, and I just realized I have a three-day holiday. Not sure what I’m going to do yet.

God, what a fucked up week. If you believe that temporal designations (such as weeks, or months, or birthdays) signal changes in circumstance, then I sure hope next week is much better.

One of my co-workers was arrested this week. The worst kind of trouble. I hardly ever talked to him. Weird.

There’s all kinds of shit going on this weekend but I don’t feel like doing any of it.

Same jeetering, different day. I think I’m coming down with a cold though. Great.

Last night I was awakened at about 1:30 in the morning by an ambulance and a fire truck screaming up to my apartment. I popped on a shirt and went out in the hallway, and six firemen were walking down the hall on my floor. One of ‘em was carrying a stretcher. They were walking the other direction.

I didn’t find out what happened.

Today was Operation Clean Almost the Entire Apartment. Mission accomplished. Down on hands and knees cleaning kitchen floor, vaccuming along the sides of the walls, cleaning five-year-old dust and dirt off the mini-blinds, cleaning what window screens I have. I think it already breathes way better in here.

You’ll note that the Webcam image looks a little better because I cleaned 1/2 of the window that it faces out of. Can’t clean the rest, ‘cos I can’t reach it.

Yay.