Summertime and the...
House is calling
The mortgage has been pending full approval for a little while now and I need to give Adam a call to see what's up. I'm probably overthinking things but I'd feel so much better with the full approval in my hand before we go away (see below). That will be the last thing on the 'to-do' list before we close on the house and can move in. I seriously can't wait - the more I look at the photos, the more ideas come into my head for how I want to plan out the room. That's right - room singular because I only have free reign in the basement, elsewhere The Mighty Kibber is Queen. Thanks to the other Adam I already know what projector I want. I just need to figure out if I'm going to buy a screen or paint one on the wall with this special paint you can get. Perhaps if you're spending so much money anyway one should go the whole hog and invest in a real screen, on the other hand, if you can save a couple of grand that can go on the couch and the picture is still fantastic, why the hell not? Besides, goo sounds a lot like fun to me. Fun things to research :)
Weather is killing me
Riding in DC in the summer is something of a lottery. The weather forecast will undoubtedly be baking hot, with the occasional thunderstorm rolling through. Riding without gear is clearly nuts - best example I've heard is to take a flying leap onto your belly in a t-shirt and shorts, then imagine the same at 40 mph. So riding in mesh is the only option to try and remain cool while staying at least moderately safe. My mesh of choice is the Teknic (pronounced technique) supervent jacket, which is great as it's super-ventilated and you can almost feel the air fold around your body as you accelerate. It's also got armour on the elbows and shoulders / back where you'll need it most. Let's be honest though, when it comes to my morning post-gym commute to work when the sun's already out, my rucksack is full of gym gear, the air temp's around 90 degrees, the bike oil's at 225 degrees Fahrenheit, and the humidity is ridiculous, mesh ain't gonna stop you sweating. Everywhere. I'm talking arms, back, crack, ankles, full-on, no bullshit sweat. Sometimes I wonder if it's even worth showering after the gym as I know I'm gonna be sweating again as soon as I step foot out of the door. Monkey butt / swamp ass like you wouldn't believe. I have to believe this in turn leads to bad riding as you're always looking for that little gap in traffic you can burst into, just for a moment, to feel the refreshing tug of wind and the momentary oasis of cool in the ragged highway to hell that is the parking-lot commute to work.
I'll still ride. Beats the shit out of ice.
Party's looming
We're off to England next week to party it up with all the folk who couldn't make the Caribbean wedding (and some who did!), so we're pretty excited. It's put on by my parents (read: free), so it should he a hell of a do. It's about time we got out of here for a bit anyway, work has been quite stressful as of late. This is expected when you work on maintenance / hotfix type releases as everything deals with pissed off customers, still it will be nice to get out and hit the pubs for a week with all my old friends from Chester. It's a great city for shopping, hanging out, or walking around the Roman walls that still stand. The architecture is great and even though it's a fairly hip city, you see these antiquated touches everywhere that are very nicely done. We'll take pics and put them up when we get back. In the interim you're in Sub-J's hands again :)
Games are nonexistent
Brandon isn't kidding. There is absolutely nothing available right now that I have the slightest bit of interest in. I would get back into PC gaming in a big way, but Kim's almost snowed under with freelance right now so kicking off the computer would not be a good idea. Promises, rumours, delayed game release dates, that's all I'm hearing right now. I ended up having to go retro last week and dig out Moto GP 2 again, and it's still the greatest ever game made for the xbox. After a happy hour or so spent screaming at my tv, crashing, and generally putting in the suckiest lap ever, the lines started to come back to me to the point where I was beating my previous best scores (and these scores were when I used to play it every day!). The biggest change I made was finally jacking in the manual gears which allowed me to focus on much improved lines and powerslides. An unintentioned side effect is that my hands get a lot less battered when I play. I used to come out of games with bleeding lips, cramped up hands from furiously mashing the gears, sweating and hyped up. Now it's just the same, but I can use my hands for other things afterwards :) Dallas, Wifey and Booster played 1/2 the tracks last night and had some great rides, but that fucking annoying bug arose where two of the people in the room (dallas and wife) couldn't see or hear each other. I had thought this particular manifestation of weird network code only presented itself in Ubisoft games (Rainbow 6, Ghost Recon), but was unhappily proved wrong last night. In Moto, it wasn't even like they couldn't hear each other but their bikes didn't appear on each other's laps / screen either. So bizarre. I hate networking, stuff should just WORK. As far as I'm concerned or care, Cisco is something you use to cook with.
The mortgage has been pending full approval for a little while now and I need to give Adam a call to see what's up. I'm probably overthinking things but I'd feel so much better with the full approval in my hand before we go away (see below). That will be the last thing on the 'to-do' list before we close on the house and can move in. I seriously can't wait - the more I look at the photos, the more ideas come into my head for how I want to plan out the room. That's right - room singular because I only have free reign in the basement, elsewhere The Mighty Kibber is Queen. Thanks to the other Adam I already know what projector I want. I just need to figure out if I'm going to buy a screen or paint one on the wall with this special paint you can get. Perhaps if you're spending so much money anyway one should go the whole hog and invest in a real screen, on the other hand, if you can save a couple of grand that can go on the couch and the picture is still fantastic, why the hell not? Besides, goo sounds a lot like fun to me. Fun things to research :)
Weather is killing me
Riding in DC in the summer is something of a lottery. The weather forecast will undoubtedly be baking hot, with the occasional thunderstorm rolling through. Riding without gear is clearly nuts - best example I've heard is to take a flying leap onto your belly in a t-shirt and shorts, then imagine the same at 40 mph. So riding in mesh is the only option to try and remain cool while staying at least moderately safe. My mesh of choice is the Teknic (pronounced technique) supervent jacket, which is great as it's super-ventilated and you can almost feel the air fold around your body as you accelerate. It's also got armour on the elbows and shoulders / back where you'll need it most. Let's be honest though, when it comes to my morning post-gym commute to work when the sun's already out, my rucksack is full of gym gear, the air temp's around 90 degrees, the bike oil's at 225 degrees Fahrenheit, and the humidity is ridiculous, mesh ain't gonna stop you sweating. Everywhere. I'm talking arms, back, crack, ankles, full-on, no bullshit sweat. Sometimes I wonder if it's even worth showering after the gym as I know I'm gonna be sweating again as soon as I step foot out of the door. Monkey butt / swamp ass like you wouldn't believe. I have to believe this in turn leads to bad riding as you're always looking for that little gap in traffic you can burst into, just for a moment, to feel the refreshing tug of wind and the momentary oasis of cool in the ragged highway to hell that is the parking-lot commute to work.
I'll still ride. Beats the shit out of ice.
Party's looming
We're off to England next week to party it up with all the folk who couldn't make the Caribbean wedding (and some who did!), so we're pretty excited. It's put on by my parents (read: free), so it should he a hell of a do. It's about time we got out of here for a bit anyway, work has been quite stressful as of late. This is expected when you work on maintenance / hotfix type releases as everything deals with pissed off customers, still it will be nice to get out and hit the pubs for a week with all my old friends from Chester. It's a great city for shopping, hanging out, or walking around the Roman walls that still stand. The architecture is great and even though it's a fairly hip city, you see these antiquated touches everywhere that are very nicely done. We'll take pics and put them up when we get back. In the interim you're in Sub-J's hands again :)
Games are nonexistent
Brandon isn't kidding. There is absolutely nothing available right now that I have the slightest bit of interest in. I would get back into PC gaming in a big way, but Kim's almost snowed under with freelance right now so kicking off the computer would not be a good idea. Promises, rumours, delayed game release dates, that's all I'm hearing right now. I ended up having to go retro last week and dig out Moto GP 2 again, and it's still the greatest ever game made for the xbox. After a happy hour or so spent screaming at my tv, crashing, and generally putting in the suckiest lap ever, the lines started to come back to me to the point where I was beating my previous best scores (and these scores were when I used to play it every day!). The biggest change I made was finally jacking in the manual gears which allowed me to focus on much improved lines and powerslides. An unintentioned side effect is that my hands get a lot less battered when I play. I used to come out of games with bleeding lips, cramped up hands from furiously mashing the gears, sweating and hyped up. Now it's just the same, but I can use my hands for other things afterwards :) Dallas, Wifey and Booster played 1/2 the tracks last night and had some great rides, but that fucking annoying bug arose where two of the people in the room (dallas and wife) couldn't see or hear each other. I had thought this particular manifestation of weird network code only presented itself in Ubisoft games (Rainbow 6, Ghost Recon), but was unhappily proved wrong last night. In Moto, it wasn't even like they couldn't hear each other but their bikes didn't appear on each other's laps / screen either. So bizarre. I hate networking, stuff should just WORK. As far as I'm concerned or care, Cisco is something you use to cook with.
posted by CatSpit at
11:47 AM
