B.G. Willers

10.30.11

Productive Day

One of the things I need to get back to with the blog, is just writing about the small stuff.  It’s been a good day by most accounts.

I had to work a remote today.  I think I’ve written this before, but remotes are one of those things that I dread right up until the first break on the air, after that it’s really fun.  So I don’t know why I dread them so much.  But today’s remote started at 12:00.  Ample time to dread it, but also a nice amount of time to sleep in and ease into the day.  I got up and let the dog out.  Fired up the coffee, and made some rice in my rice-maker.  Kind of an odd breakfast dish, I know, but the cupboards are getting bare and we haven’t gotten to the store yet.  But a little sugar, an a nice breakfast it was.

Tossed some clothes in the wash and folded what was left in the dryer.  Even had a little time to peruse  my regular sites.  So before I even got out of my PJ’s, I felt like I’d already got a good start on a Sunday.

So I headed in to work listening to one of my new favorite podcasts, the GoNintendo.com podcast.  I know you’re not supposed to drive with headphones in, but heck… it was rural blacktop, and it’s no worse than the people that drive around with their stereo’s so loud all you can hear is their license plate rattling on the trunk.  It’s a fun group of people to listen to, and they do a great job of aggregating all the Nintendo news of the week that I haven’t been able to keep up with.

So I get to work in a pretty good mood and get loaded up and ready to go.  As I turned on the station van to head to the remote, I noticed the station I was supposed to be doing the remote on was off the air!  (I might have noticed sooner if I hadn’t been listening to a podcast on the way in!)  So I called the engineer and he was heading out there, but hadn’t quite left yet, so that pretty much meant that it wasn’t going to be back on the air before the remote started.  Luckily the client was agreeable to moving the broadcast to another one of our stations, and luckily a co-worker was back at the station to facilitate things on that end.  So all worked out well!

I stuck around at work a little bit after the remote to get a jump on Monday’s work.  It’s gonna be crazy next week as we have to produce out spots for two sports teams in about 24 hours, that with less than full staff as people are on vacation.  But sometimes it’s easier to get everyone motivated at work when the deadline is looming, rather than having plenty of time to get it done.  Heck, that’s EVERYthing around there.  Ha ha.  We definitely do some of our best work under pressure.  Be that as it may, I’m still hoping for a somewhat manageable pace to the day.

When we decided that Andrea was going to be a stay at home Mom, we put ourselves on a budget (which we should have done LONG ago).  So after work I was pretty hungry, but with the food budget already over for the month, and the cupboards bare, I had to get creative.  See here’s the thing.  When we’re “out of food” we aren’t really out of food.  We’re out of things you can pop into the microwave or oven and eat.  I had some leftover rice, and hot links that were about to expire.  Not a conventional combination, but adding some cheese and tobasco for a little more kick, a couple spices, and one heck of a decent dish.

And look at this!  I got to write a healthy blog post!  Here’s to a fruitful week ahead!

10.27.11

Lucas James

Here’s  some pics of Luke from the past couple of days. Here’s our little geek!

10.26.11

Holy Haven’t Posted!

Wow, I never anticipated how hard it would be to keep up with the blog after Luke got here. I can’t really blame it all on him though. It’s not like I was making regular updates before!  But it’s been a while so figured I should do a general update.

First off, Luke is doing great.  That’s always the first question everyone asks, so I should get it out of the way.  Ha ha.  Really though, he’s healthy, he smiles a lot.  I don’t think we could have realistically got any better of a kid.  Andrea says she still is enjoying being a stay at home Mom.  At least it hasn’t been bad enough yet to complain about.

Work has been really busy.  Lots of remotes and just got back from the Kansas Association of Broadcasters’ convention.  I won a second place award for our station website khokfm.com.  It’s nothing special though.  And actually the website will be going away here in the next few months as we merge all the station websites into one.  Anyway, rather than recognition for the award, I mostly went to see some other folks from our company.  It was funny though.  I’m such a boring person.  The first night of the convention after the banquet I went up to our very nice hotel room.

I mean here ya go.  I started writing this one hour ago and this is as far as I’ve gotten.  Where was I?  Maybe I should keep track of the interruptions?

Okay, so I finish eating and head up to the hotel room.  I kick back and relax a bit and turn on the World Series.  My roommate for the night decided that he was going to go for a run on the

Sorry interrupted again.

He was going on a run on the KU campus and go see some of the landmarks.  I’m more of a walker than a runner, and didn’t bring anything besides my dress shoes anyway.  So I watched some football and figured if anyone is going out they’ll text me.  So I watch about an inning and a half of baseball and the big supper is really starting to kick in.  The comfy bed is feeling better every moment.  So I decide that if anyone was heading out, they’d already done so by now, and I wasn’t missed so I was gonna settle in and enjoy a little solitary time.  I get the PJ’s on and almost immediately thereafter, I get a

Sorry about that.

I got my pj’s on and right away

Dang it.

PJ’s were on and THEN I get the message to come down and hang out… Sorry guys.  That ship sailed.  I’m anchored to the bed now.  Haha!  So I finished out the game while playing a little Zelda: Oracle of Sea

Back.

Oracle of Seasons.  I did make some progress!  Then I finished up listening to a podcast I downloaded over the weekend and drifted off to sleep.

The funniest part of the trip was the drive home though.  I was driving the station van and we got off the turnpike in Topeka and immediately after the toll booth, the road was closed.  (We later found out someone had attempted suicide on the interstate and that’s why the closed the road).

Okay, hold on.  I have to make a small aside here.  I think suicide is the most selfish act a person can commit.  I understand there’s disorders and mental conditions that can lead to tragic suicide.  But I have little compassion for someone who uses it as a way to escape what they choose not to deal with by committing an act that only effects those around them and not themselves (they’re dead).  Take this guy.  Forget any family and friends who have to clean up the mess of finances, family, and are emotionally scared.  But closed down the busiest road in the state for hours and collectively wasted hours of people’s time.  So forgive me if I don’t think of a suicide as tragic.  I just makes me think that person was an irresponsible asshole.  But with that said…

We were guided off the highway to some north bound four lane and I said, “Well I’ll just follow the detour signs”.  But after about 5 miles it became apparent that there were no detour signs.  So we jog west a bit

Back.

We went west and then headed back towards I-70 again.  Got on, but noticed that the hiway was pretty desolate.  Sure enough, next exit, they had another road block set up.  So we got off there and were in pretty desparate need of gas as we’d planned on stopping in Topeka to get gas, and couldn’t really afford to be running all over town just trying to get from one side to the other.  So I pulled in to a Phillips 66 station, but what seemed like a decent neighborhood at a glance started

Sorry.

We pulled in and slowly started noticing bars on the windows and the sketchy nature of the clientele.  Well, too late, we’d already committed.  They card reader at the pump didn’t work.  Infact pre-pay was the only option.  The gal at the counter said too many people were driving off so it was pre-pay only (go figure).  So after several swipes and two different gas pumps we finally got 3/4 of a tank of gas which was enough to get home and we got the hell out of there.

We headed south until we found something… anything that looked like a major through road that headed west in Topeka so we could get around the dang road blocks.  We found Topeka Blvd. which was the only street that sounded familiar to all three of us in the Van.  Of course road construction had this down to 1 lane a lot of the way.  Basically by the time it was all said and done it took us an hour to get through Topeka.

Once on the interstate the rest of the trip was really pretty uneventful.

I’ve been doing a lot of gaming lately.  I’ve found that now that my free time is divided up a lot more, it’s a lot easier to play console games and just hit pause when needed and come back whenever I can.  Maybe even the next day.  Guild Wars you can do that to an extent if you’re not playing with anyone, but if you’re going to be gone for an extended period, you have to stay logged in then hope that you haven’t got disconnected by the time you come back.  So console gaming is just easier.

And even better beyond that, I’ve found that

Hold up… baby is getting grumpy.

I’ve found that portable gaming is really awesome.  If Luke is hanging out upstairs and Andrea is on the laptop, I can grab the DS or Game Boy and go hang out with them and if something comes up with Luke I can just pause and help out, or if Andrea and I start talking, it’s easy to just put it down and come back to it later, no matter where we happen to be in the house.

So that’s got me on eBay now looking at a lot of old Game Boy stuff trying to figure out if I can fill out my portable gaming collection any more.  Because unlike my console game collection, I’ve actually beaten and completed most of my handheld games.  The only one I haven’t, Zelda: Oracle of Seasons

Poor kid…getting squirmy.

I’ve gotten pretty far in that Zelda game this time around.  Farther than

Well I walked him around for a while, I think he’s hungry, but momma doesn’t think so.  She’s probably right.

Anyway, I’ve gotten farther than I ever have before on that game.  Thanks so much to backloggery.com for bringing to light this great game I still had and never beaten.

Hey, what do you know, he was hungry!

Well it’s been three hours since I started this… I’d better get to bed.  Work tomorrow!

 

10.11.11

Luke’s first real laugh!

He’s cooed and grinned alot.  But Andrea got a cell phone video of Luke’s first real laugh! The good part is about 30 seconds in!

[youtube=http://youtu.be/fv8ukQdTVI8]

09.26.11

Luke’s First Trip

Well we just got back last night from Wichita.  Luke’s first real road trip.  It’s about a 2 hour drive to Wichita, and he slept (like a baby) all the way down there UNTIL we got off the interstate.  We had to pull off for a detour for road construction and he just cut loose for the last 10 minutes of the drive until we got to Andrea’s sisters’ house.

He just has no tolerance for slowing down, haha.  On the way home, Andrea was driving and I sat in the back seat next to his car seat.  He would zonk out… until we hit a red light.  He’d bawl and bawl, then once we started going again he’d calm down.  Hit another red light, same thing!  It was so funny.  Once we got on the interstate doing 70mph he was out for good.

All in all he traveled pretty well.  We had to stop once on the way back so Andrea could feed him, and after he had a full tummy, he again slept great all the way home.

It was nice to see everybody.  Always seems like so much running to see everybody when we just go back for a weekend, whether it to Wichita, or Cimarron.  But it’s always worth it.

09.22.11

Through the years

Here’s my gaming setup through the years.  Luke has so much catching up to do!

 

 

09.19.11

Bad Ball Joints

We took Andrea’s car in to get an alignment, and they said they couldn’t align it because one of the ball joints were bad.  Ball joints aren’t too expensive ($25 each), so I told ’em I’d fix them myself and bring it back.  Instead of just doing one, I figure you might as well do ’em all.  After all, all four are 24 years old and if one is wore out, you can bet the others are close.

Basically the ball joints are the two points your front wheel pivots on when it turns, but also pivots when the wheel goes up and down over a bump.  It’s a lot like your hip or shoulder with a ball and socket design.  The job isn’t too hard to do, but it does require some special tools.

[youtube=http://youtu.be/FfKdphaV-uU]

So with all the tools at my disposal I set off to get the job done.  I started out by using the pickle fork to pop the ball joint apart from the steering knuckle (the part where the wheel is).

 

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09.11.11

A Look Back: Perfect Dark

The wait for this game was excruciating.  Perfect Dark was the true sequel to GoldenEye 007 on the Nintendo 64.  Most of my readers already know how much time I spend playing GoldenEye, and probably even attended one of the eight GoldenEye Fests.  007 came out in August 1997 and it would be (after numerous delays) three long years before Perfect Dark would see the light of day.

I’d had this game pre-ordered for quite some time I recall.  And as release day would creep closer and closer… inevitably it would be announced that development was behind schedule and the game would be delayed yet again.  As I patiently waited and followed insider impressions and reviews… it was becoming clear that the Nintendo 64 was aging and now closer to the end of its prime than the beginning.  In 1998 Sega released its next generation Dreamcast system.  That same year Nintendo announced the successor to the N64, codename “Dolphin” later known as the Gamecube.

Finally, on May 22, 2000 I finally was able to get to the store to be one of the first to pick up my copy of Perfect Dark!  The game had finally materialized and instead of reading about it I was going to PLAY the game!  Was it going to be a worthy sequel to GoldenEye or would the departure from the James Bond universe kill the game?  All these thoughts were running through my mind as I rode home from the store.  In these days game releases were big deals for me.  I made sure I had a couple days off of work, and my good friend Paul was coming over that following weekend for some good old multiplayer action.

One of my favorite parts of getting a new game is watching the opening sequence.  Perfect Dark’s is great.  It’s simple and only 30 seconds long, but watching it after waiting three years to play the game… it’s enough to make you positively amped.  I don’t remember much of my initial impressions of the game, though I assume they were glowing.  What I do vividly remember is Paul coming over to play and we played absolutely nothing but multiplayer Pistols matches until the sun came up.

The coming of Perfect Dark meant the end of the GoldenEye Fests.  Though just like PD carried on the spirit of GoldenEye, so the Perfect Dark Events carried on the spirit of the GoldenEye Fest.  Though nostalgia can color GoldenEye the better game, in reality Perfect Dark was better in every way.  There were so many more options to customize multi-player matches.  More characters to choose from, you could mix and match the heads and bodies.  But probably the coolest addition to multi-player was the addition of profiles.  Where it would track your stats and allow you to name yourself something other than “Player X”.  These additions brought everything I always wanted to GoldenEye’s multiplayer and more.  If only I could have ALL the classic GoldenEye maps available with such great flexability!  That alas I suppose I’ll never see.

So here it is, 11 years later.  I dusted off the cart for the next re-review.  Without recalling being too attached to any data on the cart I wiped it clean so it was just like pulling it out of the box in 2000.  I’ve been playing a lot of N64 recently so adjusting to the blurry graphics wasn’t too difficult… but one thing I couldn’t handle, was Hi-Res mode.  The visual improvement was marginal, but the decrease in framerate was too much to handle.    I just couldn’t deal with the choppiness of hi-res mode and decided to play normal mode.

I played clear through the Single player campaign, and enjoyed the varied level design, though the story still seems pretty goofy.  Introducing aliens though did open up the possibility for some pretty interesting weapons, and I’m almost convinced that’s the sole reason the developers went that route.  Story aside the gameplay is solid.  All the mission objectives make sense.  You get to use cool gadgets and devices in addition to just shooting things up.  Occasionally it’s not quite clear what you have to do to progress to the next objective, but truthfully that makes it a little more interesting.

After the N64, I really never continued playing First Person Shooters.  Interfaces and controls have evolved greatly since Perfect Dark, but one of the things I always wondered why it didn’t stick around, was Perfect Dark’s weapon select.  In the heat of battle if you wanted to switch to a different weapon, instead of tapping ‘A’ until your weapon pops up, you simple hold the ‘A’ button and a quick menu pops up, then just tilt the control stick the direction of the weapon you want.

Multi-player is where it’s at though and I could seriously play this forever.  There are so many options and the gameplay is so refined.  This is as good as it gets on the N64 when it comes to multi-player.  Of course I don’t have anyone to enjoy the game WITH anymore… luckily Perfect Dark give you the option to add Simulants.  You can play against computer players of varying skill level from “Meat” all the way up to “Perfect”.  You can have sims that prefer using shields and defensive abilities to stay alive.  Frantic seek and destroy.  Or just balanced all around sims.  It makes not having any friends a little easier!

My feelings about Perfect Dark today are probably quite different from most others who are fans of the FPS genre.  After this I shied away from them because I pretty much got my butt kicked.  And after doing a whole lot of butt kicking in GoldenEye and Perfect Dark… I didn’t take it too well.  Therefore I look at Perfect Dark as a highly polished shooter that just makes a ton of sense on every level.  There’s not much I’d change about it.  GoldenEye is still my favorite… just because of the nostalgia… but when I’m ready for some multi-player, it’s Perfect Dark all the way.

09.10.11

3DS

Well I dunno what to say about this one.  Sometimes people just do extraordinary things for no reason.  A buddy of mine, got ahold of me a few days ago and said, check your mail in the next few days.  I sent you something.  Turns out it was a brand new Nintendo 3DS!  I’d seen these in the store and thought they looked pretty friggin amazing, but they were out of my price range.  So for him to just send me one is… baffling for one… and totally awesome.  I hope someday soon I can return the favor.

So basically it’s the standard DS, but with some very siginifcant enhancements.  Most obviously the upper screen is in true 3D.  It takes a little getting used to, but after a while you adjust to it and it is pretty amazing how well it all works.  And no glasses required!

Another welcome addition is the analogue thumbstick.  It’s like a compact joystick that really works rather well.  Nothing against the ole D-pad, but this is what’s kept me from enjoying some of my old N64 stuff in portable form on the DS.  Speaking of which, they’ve already remade a few N64 titles in true 3D.  Zelda, and coming out soon… Star Fox 64.  Gonna have to sock away some cash for those now!

The 3DS borrows a lot from the Wii.  You can make Miis, and there’s an online store where you can buy (or find free) software.  They have a virtual console where there’s all sorts of retro Nintendo titles available.  And you can get online and play multiplayer with friends.

Of course right now the only other person I know that has a 3DS is the one that gave me this one!  But after spending some solid time with it and playing PilotWings Resort.. I HIGHLY recommend the 3DS to anyone, especially since they just had an $80 price drop!

09.8.11

New Shoes

Got new tires for the Cutlass. You know me… I dig whitewalls… but it’s not my car. Haha.

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