Finishing, Twitter and Peppers

Wood Finishing
Wednesday night was my second class at Woodcraft since I decided to add yet another hobby to my list of many. The last class was how to build a basic box, it was very hands on and the result of my labor was tangible. My choice for a follow up was a finishing course. I figured it made sense to at least learn how to sand, stain, seal and clear coat my first project. It felt a little less satisfying to not walk away with something, but getting a crash course in a topic I knew zero about prior to attending was equally great. Hopefully I will have new pictures of the finished box on the site sooner than later.

Twitter
Now that I have a new phone, text plan and the same amount of thoughts and life experiences, I have awakened my twitter account (@wreck36) from it's seven month slumber. Finally getting it synced up with my Facebook and Tumblr was the push I needed too. Posting to twitter from my desktop previously just seemed like I was doing it wrong. So now it is on to even more social media. Look out should I be successful in getting my employer setup to tweet as well.

Stuffed Peppers
On the menu at the Tabib's Tuesday night was stuffed bell peppers. A meal I have made once before that turned out tasty enough to warrant a second pass. This time it went faster, cleaner and tastier. They are simple enough to make: brown beef, cook rice and combine the two with tomato sauce, garlic powder, Worcestershire sauce, onion powder and salt/pepper to taste. Stuff the mix in the peppers and cover the tops with a mix of tomato sauce, Italian seasoning and fresh parmesan. Bake at 350 for one hour and the result is what you see to the right. Basting it every 15 minutes with the tomato sauce mix will keep them moist. Supah Tasty.

Comics & Books
Long neglected my "what am I reading" list on the right hand side of the bee-log has been updated and bumped up above the links sections. Nothing special, but why have it if it is not up to date.

Thanksgiving Days

Images of cornucopias filled to the brim with harvest treats and religious separatists with more belt buckles than maize, dance in my head in the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving. When day dream meets reality though, I eat too much, watch a lot of football and go without sleep on Black Friday. This year was no different, I'm happy to say. We started Thursday morning with a trip to my parent's house for a pancake breakfast. Given the large meals we planned to eat later in the day it was probably ill advised, but pancakes are super tasty.

Our first feast was had at Crystal's grandparents and was host to a crowd of 16, including three great grandchildren (Rowan, Kaden and Landon). The food was tasty as always and football was watched, but as a side show to three little ones running, walking and crawling all over creation. I felt like napping post meal, but instead we went outside for pictures galore. The boys played in and tried to eat the leaves and all together had a great time. It will be fun to see them get together each year and see how much they have grown.

Round two was back to my parent's, where we Kaden went to bed for the night prior to us eating a later than normal feast. The food was equally as tasty as our lunch and equally filling. Following dinner we did some Black Friday ad planning. A dessert that put me beyond full was next and then we were off sans Kaden to our home. That's right, our little boy spent his first night away from home at my parent's. It was a little tough passing his room and not seeing him through out the night. Crystal couldn't sleep upstairs without the white noise of his baby monitor humming away, so she slept in our first floor spare bedroom.

Sleep in preparation for waking up at 2:45am that is. Crystal and her mom are seasoned Black Friday shoppers who get out the door at 3:30am and don't come home till 4pm later that day. I normally head out with my brother for some door buster deal or another around 4am, but this year I could not seem to find one thing I wanted. So I stayed up to see what deals Amazon might have and to my disappointment there was nothing on the web I wanted either. So it was off to bed for the most sleep I have had since Kaden was born.

Saturday morning we packed up and drove to Crewe, VA to see Crystal's other set of grandparents. We showed off Kaden's new crawling, standing and clapping skills in their family room and then headed to Walmart, because that is what there is to do in Crewe. After Walmart we ate lunch at a sub and pizza joint and bid the grandparents far well. Sunday Kaden and I were sick all day. It sucked. The end.

The rest of the pictures are here.

Cold Rides Cometh

Every year I look forward to riding in the cold weather of late autumn. The leaves have left the trees, the temperature drops and it is the perfect time to bundle up and spin. My first ride of this lovely season was on Riverside early Sunday morning with Mike. We took what has become our new standard loop for a 19ish mile warm up to this coming weekends World AIDS Day ride. More on that later, but the rest is in the pictures...

Mehtul muffinsMmm!

Mike and me

"S" turns on the side

Train bridge in autumn

The check

Christmas in November

It has a been a long while since I actually wrote about photography here. Yesterday my Christmas present arrived however and now it is all I can think about. The photo above was taken with the new camera. It is nothing special, but demonstrates one of the many advantages of the Canon s90 over my old jam. It has a faster lens speed (f2), which means better pictures indoors without the need for a flash. Previously a shot a night with only the lights from our house would have resulted in a blurry mess. We have ditched many a good shot of Kaden because it looked like someone smeared vaseline on the lens.

Of course I am not satisfied with just having a better camera now. I want lighting, not expensive stuff mind you, DIY stuff. LED's seem like the cheapest option, but ring lights and modified halogen work lights seem like worthy pursuits as well. There are a number of sites that I have been picking through in anticipation of my new toy. DIYPhotography, Strobist (which I have linked to previously) and Photojojo.

The photo to the right was taken with even less light (ceiling fan) than the one above and also demonstrates Kaden's favorite new hobby. Standing up on his own. We would have never gotten this shot before with the old camera. Considering we take probably three times more pictures this year than we did last, getting this camera makes it even easier to capture every stage of his development. If you can't tell I'm happy with our purchase. A few more shots are available at my gallery.

Dragon Warfare 2

Modern Warfare 2
The PC community has been up in arms for the past month about the sequel to COD4:MW. There are no dedicated servers, the multiplayer cap is 18 players and my dear God in heaven you can't lean! Lets see, I don't play competitively or obese over realism, check. Anything over 18 players gets unruly and just ask begs for spawn camping, check. I don't camp and therefore have no need to lean wit it, check. How about is it fun? Um, yes, very, check! All of this protesting seems like calorie burning that could be focused on a better cause. The single player, while not as good as COD4, is still over the top fun. The multiplayer is better than COD4, in that it offers more kit options and balances game play. Get over yourself and get this game on the PC.

Uncharted 2
I picked up my PS3 less than month before Uncharted 2 dropped and choose to forgo new titles for at least 4-5 months while I played the back log of games I had missed. I had a spreadsheet even. Well after being blown away by the original Uncharted and being lukewarm on MGS4 I threw that plan out the door. Uncharted 2 is a knock you socks off action movie that damn hard to put down. Like the game before it I chugged through it in less than a week and enjoyed every minute of it. The locations you visit are far more varied and the game play feels even more polished. While the ending is a bit of burnt toast on an otherwise tasty egg sandwich, it does a better job of wrapping things up than the original.

Dragon Age: 2 Origins
After logging nearly 40+ coop hours in Borderlands I think it was probably a bad idea to pick up another long run RPG. While Dragon Age seems to be a fantastic game and easily deserving of it's 91, it suffered the same fate as Mass Effect on my first attempt to play it. I just didn't have the time given the hectic fall game release schedule. I did try to let it hook me at least. Think of me as a suicidal fish, swimming up to various lures placing my mouth on them and waiting a pull on the line. Nothing. The ": Origins" part of the title does seem to be the most interesting part of the game I saw. Depending on the class and race you choose at the start you get a different 1-2 hour intro to you "origin". The rest of the game is peppered with dialogue references to your beginning, so it all feels meaningful throughout. Maybe next summer I'll actually play it.

Kaden in Autumn

Say goodbye to the heat of summer and hello to the cool breeze of fall. Kaden has not had a post specific to him in sometime. Even though pictures of him still flow like wine, words are always good for a growing boy. Pay no attention to the Dad behind the curtain who hasn't posted a video since July. I will right wrongs, fear not.

Back to the topic at hand, Kaden is on the move. He is rolling from stomach to sitting up like it is the greatest thing since a knife met baked, leavened and kneaded dough. His crawl is getting coordinated, as knees and hands become aware of each other, he is getting from one side of the floor to the next. Apparently unsatisfied with just sitting and crawling he has started to stand. We have found him on numerous occasions holding on to the rails of the crib to keep his balance in a wobbly, but confirmed case of standing up.

He recently found his voice. Mind you he isn't reciting Walt Whitman at the dinner table, but none the less he is vocal. "Da da da da" and "ma ma ma ma" are his favorites, but he goes from hard to reproduce clicking noises to shouting for joy in restaurants. In other mouth related news, we have teeth! As previously mentioned, but now there are five. They are razor sharp too. Don't have a pacifier, think your hands are clean and want to sooth him with a digit? Think again, those things hurt like the dickens.

Being a Dad was fun already, but now that he is starting to get a personality it is just getting better.

P.S. New video is forth coming, Tabib scouts honor.

Uncharted Zombie Gear

Metal Gear Solid 4
Some how despite not liking the story or game play in MGS4 I played through twenty hours of it to beat it. The same complaints I had about Metal Gear 3 still hold true. The story is long winded and convoluted to no purpose. Characters speak in monologue instead of addressing each other directly and go off on wild philosophical tangents that do not move the story forward or make sense given the context. The game play feels dated and gives the sense that I am "doing it wrong" when simple mechanics like stealth attacks feel clunky and unusable. The majority of my time was spent treating it like a shooter. The game does shine in the graphics department, the models, textures and animations are some of the best I have seen to date. Yes, it is pretty, but how the hell did this game garner a 94 on metacritic?

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune
Though this game was very short (I finished it in one night) it was concentrated goodness from start to finish. Think interactive action film, there is no shortage of big explosion, daring escapes and hair raising leaps of faith. The dialogue is very well written and always appropriate to the current situation unfolding. The characters are believable, funny and easy to root for. Gameplay is everything that MGS4 is not, the controls are crisp, the melee feels brutal and the cover mechanic works as you would expect. Though the levels are very narrow the graphics don't make the experience feel like a single path. The jungles feel alive and interact as such. Drake, the main character has what seems like a million different animations and they all blend together smoothly. Not that it is meaningful, but some how this game got an 88 on metacritic. Both scores are good, but Uncharted is markedly better than MGS4.

Zombieland
The trailers for this film do not do it justice. I was expecting to be mildly entertained by a film we choose as the lesser of October movie release evils and was slapped in the face by a comedy that was crazy good. Though opening with a little more gore than Crystal is comfortable with, the humor that juxtaposes the blood makes for a good balance. The plot is simple enough, zombie outbreak leaves survivors surviving in a United States that is a shadow of it's former self. Where the film really takes off is it's small cast and their ability to bring humor to horrific situations. Jesse Eisenberg stars as a shut in college gamer (WoW cameo) who through his already loner life style and list of rules has managed to survive. The list keeps reappearing through out the film as he meets the rest of the cast and they come across different zombie related scenarios together. I won't go into to much more, because you really should see it for yourself.

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Bill Murray as himself in this film is simply amazing.

How I Roll

In the vein of embracing my inner geek and getting fix to what has become a D&D addiction I hosted my first Virtual Tabletop (VTT) game on Monday night. The live and in color game that I have been a player in since late spring has run into scheduling problems. Problems easy enough to foresee when trying to get five adult males with varying responsibilities, spouses and children together regularly on a Friday night. Though the live group will continue I have taken the role of DM in the virtual space to quench my thirst.

Being the dungeon master, while being a super geeky title, essentially means playing the narrator and referee for our game/story. So, I started out by putting together a world that I could tell stories in. Mind you it could have been easier to use one of the canned realms that are readily available, but that would require knowing the ins and outs of the lore and history. I'd rather I write my own and know it like the back of my hand. Next was finding and orienting myself with a set of tools that would make a tabletop game possible on the internet. Thankfully there are literally a ton of tools available for VTT. I ended up going with RPTools as it was free, updated regularly and well documented.

Knowing I had two local players interested made finding my ideal number of four to six players seem a little less daunting. I was hoping to at the very least get four, so when I had eleven respond with interest I was at a loss as to how I would manage that many players. I came to the conclusion that it was impossible to do so and ended up letting things play out for another week. Players who took an active role and interest in joining the game were in and the ones who did not went on the waiting list. In the end I wound up with six players and a relatively balanced group.

So this past Monday I took my players through a flashback/prologue/tutorial game to get them acquainted with the software and D&D's play mechanics. It went really well and helped me figure out a few things I could do differently once the actual game starts. The first being make slightly more detailed story notes. NPC dialogue felt a little like I was staggering in the dark to find a light switch. When I had a DC to move the story forward near the end of the evening I didn't know what skill to check it against. I read advice prior to the game that said I should just make a call and check it later to keep the game moving, but of course I went right to my rulebook the second I couldn't come up with it. Somethings to work on for sure.

Basic Box Building

In a time where my heir has just surpassed the six month mark, the last thing I need is a new hobby. Despite better judgment, I have taken on two in this month alone. A Dungeons and Dragons post is forth coming, but today is a time for wood working.

I have wanted to work with wood ever since I was knee high to a drill press. My grandfather carved carousel horses as a hobby in retirement and every time we traveled north of the mason-dixon I got to hang out in his shop. It instilled an interest in the craft at a very young age. Wanting to do something with an interest that has been building for 20 plus years and actually doing something are two different things though.

So last night I did something about it. My local Woodcraft recently moved to less than a mile down the road from us. Living a stones throw from an organization that not only sells all things wood, but also teaches it was too enticing. I signed up for Basic Box Building as the introduction course to woodworking was an entire weekend commitment. It is not in the cards this year, but I hope to take it sometime in 2010. As a complete novice the box building class was very straight forward. The instructor walked us through every step and not only explained how to do it, but why we were doing it. The result was the box pictured here, that still needs to be sanded and finished, but is complete in construction.

I am already looking at what class I will take next, at least one in 2009 and looking at the next power tool to add to my workshop, probably an orbital sander. As an aside the next house we get will have to have a workshop if I want to get into serious furniture making.

La-Li-Lu-Le-Lame

After much birthday deliberation and hand wringing I purchased a PS3 over the weekend. I must be living a pretty swanky lifestyle to complain about not wanting anything for my birthday, but such is the case. As an adult (a.k.a. grown ass man) I pretty much buy whatever I want when I want it. So when my birthday comes along once a year and I'm asked "what do you want" my mind draws a blank. This year it was a toss up between a Ps3 and an assortment of bike parts and clothing. I didn't really need either, but I guess you strike while the birthday iron is hot.

I ultimately decided to get the PS3 because at $299 it is less of an impulse buy the other 364 days I was not born. If I get a wild hair to buy a new rear rack in November, I'll just order it that day. The back catalog of games on the PS3 that I can get dirt cheap is really nice. So far I have I finished the first Uncharted and started Metal Gear Solid 4 (hence the title reference). Full reviews (as full as they get on this blog) are forth coming, but I will say that I enjoyed Uncharted and I'm enjoying MSG4.

The built in Blu-ray player is a nice addition as well. I always thought unscaled DVDs looked particularly crappy when viewed next to HDTV movies. So getting a notch above HDTV and 10 stories up from DVDs with Blu-ray is a breath of fresh air in a cloud of sulfur. We rented Push as our first dip into high def disk based movie watching. It looked great and actually turned out to be a decent enough film. Now for surround sound? Maybe my next birthday.