Uncle Stu

I’ve been keeping quiet for a few on some big news, but recently got the OK to share it publicly. I’m going to be an uncle before the end of the year….that rocks!  I’m totally psyched about it and want to extend my warmest congratulations and blessings to Ellie and Peter.  She’s already three months along, and had her first scan just a few days ago.  Thanks to the wonders of the Internet I was able to see the pictures within a few hours, despite being several thousand miles away.  I can’t wait to see my family when they visit in August.  My sister will be six months along at that point, which is about the upper threshold of where they are still happy to have you fly, and it will be great to get the chance to see her and congratulate her and Peter in person.

Until then…

Congratulations Ellie and Peter. That’s awesome!

Halo 2 on 360

Travio and I played Halo 2 with his Dad last night across XBox Live!  It was the first time we’d played an original XBox game over Live on Trav’s new 360, so we were curious to see how it would work.  After some initial downloading of patches and map packs, and a bit of futzing with the interface, we were in.  It was actually a pretty smooth process when you consider everything that’s going on from a tech standpoint.

Once we were in, we played for hours.  I haven’t had that much fun in a while, and hearing Trav’s Dad screaming over the headset after a sniper rifle shot from him had rag dolled my guy twenty yards backwards, was hilarious.  I didn’t think I was going to stop laughing.  We played until gone midnight, running through several different modes and maps.  My favorites were the Rockets-only and Snipers-only matches, because the melee that causes in a small map is simply ridiculous!  It was a great night, and something I hope we do again sometime soon.

Board Games

Headed over to see Trav and Jenn for some pizza and board gaming.  It’s been a while since we’ve played parlor games together, and it was a really nice escape from a typical Friday night.  The pizza was from a new joint in town that claimed to be the best pizza you’ll ever have, or some similarly lofty assertion.  It was good pizza, and the sausage hunks on there were of appropriately hunky size.  It was a little greasy, requiring either a fork or an entire pack of napkins to consume adequately.  I wouldn’t say the “best” pizza ever, but I think a place dooms themself to that whenever they claim to be; it just becomes an obstinate challenge!

Gaming was a ton of fun, and we ended up sitting around and laughing about how certain eighties horror movie flicks look more laughable and terrible now than they ever did before.  Back then, they were just crap.  You watched them because in a more innocent time, they could be somewhat suspenseful.  There were a few good examples of the genre done right, usually independant or lower budget flicks that nobody else had heard of.  But in general, they were just a really good way to get rid of a few dollars on either a movie ticket or rental fee.

It was fun laughing about them and and we soon migrated to the more general topic of simply movies that we had grown up with.  Trav suggested that ET would have been infinetely better if at the end he’d used his fire finger to immolate the cops chasing him right before taking off; “war of the worlds” style.

New Phone – TMobile MDA

I got a new phone last weekend, to replace the vastly underfeatured Nokia 6010 that I’ve been using up to now.  I’ve been waiting for the right device to come out for a while, and up until now I’ve been tempted by several but sold on none.  However, the TMobile MDA just sold me.  It has a hide-away thumbboard without too many moving parts to break or snap, and has enough integration with the applications I use most to be useful to me.  I took Travis with me to check it out before buying.  He has a pocket PC style device that he’s used for a while, and I can always trust him to be an honest judge of gadgetry.  I’ve spent about a week setting up various features, integration with Outlook, hotmail, gmail, etc… as well as configuring (think uninstalling) most of the “value add” applications that TMobile stuffed on there.  I’m getting used to the right-click menu paradigm of holding the stylus down on the screen for a couple of seconds, and the interface is beginning to make sense.  I can tell that this isn’t the first iteration of the Windows Mobile operating system software, but there are clearly still a few rough edges to be smoothed out, especially where consistency is concerned.  On the whole though, I’m happily wearing my thumbs into early carpal tunnel and messaging up a storm with everyone around me.  It’s cool factor is still high, for now, and it’s been a while since I had a new piece of gadgetry to show around to people.  I’ll give an update in a couple of months to provide a more weather-worn opinion of how it has fared over time.  I still haven’t played with the theming engine yet, and I’m still working out some of the features such as “email photo” or how to customize the contacts list to be most useful in various applications.  I’m sure I’ll figure all of that out in the coming weeks.

TMobile MDA

Corillian Farewell Photograph

I got my latest roll of film developed yesterday.  On it was the photograph taken at my farewell lunch with my friends from Corillian Corporation.  In order from left to right, is: Bob Uva, Jithendra Ramasetty, Doug Eden, Stuart Celarier, Nanda Baluchamy, Travis Illig, Me, Eric Landes, Michael Cowan, Dustin Woodhouse, Amarnath Viswanath, Vibha Velhal, Wayne Allen.  It was a great lunch at a restaurant named Swaggath by Orenco Station in Hillsboro.  If you like Indian buffet and you haven’t been then I highly recommend planning a lunch there.

Corillian Crew