Shut Ins

Snow continues, spousal illness continues and so does a bit of virtual skateboarding and trying to defend 19th century Japan from an assault of demons.

Care-Giver Mode

The Wife is a bit flue-sy so it’s time to look out for her in that ham-fisted way that males do when it comes time to be nurturing with no apparent idea on how to do this.

Quiet

Sunday was pretty much just about gaming and writing.

The Wedding

We finally got the actual physical, snail mail wedding invitation from The Tactician.  I am both happy and mildly dismayed.  Happy because this is a good thing, without a doubt, dismayed because this will be my first wedding to attend in Canada since I got back… and it’s STILL going to be a traditional Chinese wedding like the ones I’ve been going to in Singapore for the last few years.  So more bizarre, long winded, yodeling toasts and the whole giving of red envelopes (or I forget exactly what color it is for weddings) but there ya’ go.

New Toy

We picked up a new laptop today (Yay) that has Windows Vista already pre-loaded (Boo).  It was about time.  We have an old hand-me-down from friend back in Singapore, and while it was probably a top of the line model years ago when it was first released, it’s showing its age.  The fact that the battery refuses to work at all (and, when we bought a replacement battery in Singapore, it somehow burned that out and made it equally useless so this thing won’t function for more than 30 seconds when not plugged into an AC outlet) and is pretty slow has pretty much sealed the deal.  We needed a new one anyway for the purposes of travel since the Wife occasionally bounces around to other destinations, and I myself wil be likely be finally going to Europe for the First Time Ever for reasons I can’t disclose.

I’m definitely getting old.  I took one look at Vista and how everything was completely different from XP, and immediately thought, “I don’t like this one bit.”

Night Of Nerdcore

It’s too bad there weren’t more get togethers like this in my younger days.  It would have helped alleviate a lot of the whole “youthful alienattion and lack of sense of belonging” that plagued so much of my youth.  The wife and I spent the evening with “my tribe” that is to say, gamers.  A gathering of Indie Gamers in one ring leader’s home occurred, to which I had the good fortune to be invited despite not being an indie game developer, thanks to my game journalism “street cred.”  The end result being a lot of LittleBigPlanet , Mirror’s Edge and other games being played with the topics of discussion being almost entirely about games.  It was nerdy, there were D&D references aplenty, and I didn’t feel the least bit out of place.

My God, I’ve found my people.

Possible Trip?

We’ll have to see whether it can be worked out or not, but IGN is at least broaching the possibility of sending me to the Canadian Game Developer’s Conference in Vancouver.  It would be cool to go, particularly since it would make for an unusual birthday present (the conference runs May 12th and 13th, my birthday is on the 13th) but there’s still the little matter of cost to be worked out.  I think IGN mistakenly worked under the assumption that everything in Canada is a half hour trip by car, so when I mentioned that I’d be happy to, but transportation and accommodation is essentially the same as flying me out from New York to Los Angeles, that may have given them pause for thought.

Oh well, we’ll see…

Saturday Sameness

Writing.  Gaming.  You know the drill.

Yup, Still Playing

The plot for this game is at times amazingly interesting and amazingly hilarious.  I’m still quite impressed with how good the story is.

Oh. Right.

I completely forgot it was Good Friday.