whazzmaster.com

UPDATE: Got some pictures posted on Flickr

My good friend Tim H. (known round these parts as SushiPowered) took me into Berkeley for a good time pizza crawl and sightseeing festival today. We ate at Zachary’s Pizza (also known as the inspiration for my own well-loved Patxi’s Pizza in Palo Alto) and then moseyed through town to the gourmet ghetto where we were prevented from eating Cheeseboard Pizza by their cursed ‘closed-on-Sundays’ rule.

Zachary’s was really, really good deep dish pizza and I endorse it with my highest recommendation.  We got the Zachary’s Special: sausage, green pepper, onion, and mushroom.  Terrific in every way.

Once presented with the forlorn closed sign at Cheeseboard, we ambled up a block and hit up the Original Peet’s Coffee & Tea.  There’s a small museum in the back with lots of historical Peet’s stuff, and I snapped a few phone pics of the joint.  Definitely cool, since I like Peet’s so much.

On the way out of town Tim showed me Indian Rock Park, from where you can see most of the bridges in the bay area (from san mateo up to golden gate).  It was super fun, and I got some pictures there too, but without a polarizing lens they will all be shit.  Once Tim gets his photos up on Flickr I can try to link them.

Finally, we took the long way out of town due to road construction in the hills, and came back down Claremont Canyon on a way twisty road.  Tim told me about some dudes that rode out of the canyon on longboards and suggested I find the video on YouTube/Vimeo.  Well holy shit, you’ve gotta see this video:

Adam Kimmel presents: Claremont HD from adam kimmel on Vimeo.

That is some pretty cool shit right there, son.  And I can say that I went down that hill in a CAR and it was a rush.

So, good pizza times, great vistas, and I even got firsthand knowledge of a traditional daredevil hangout.  not bad for a Sunday afternoon.  Oh, and all the interesting software talk I could ever want.  I need to make this a priority every time I’m out in the Bay Area.

Here’s a couple of interesting things I found on Google Maps today.  I was looking at it because I saw Mat Gamel was at Knapp School to do an assembly and I couldn’t remember whether the school by my old house was Knapp or Fratt (always get them mixed up).  Turns out he was at the school by the old place.  Then I saw that Google Maps had street view pictures of my old neighborhood so I dropped in on the old girl.  I think I can embed it…

View Larger Map

The preview seems to work, we’ll go with it. Extra bonus points if you can navigate from there to Scientist’s old house (unless you’re the Scientist, but maybe even then). And I’ll give $5 to anyone who can send me a link to the corner my old paper route started on (again, Scientist excluded since I lifted the route off of him.)

Let’s find another cool little intersection… here’s the high school we all went to:

View Larger Map

Fun time!

I’ve slowly moved all my other websites to my new hosting provider, and now all that’s left is whazzmaster.  I’ll be prepping for it over the next few days (exporting the data from this server, setting everything up over there, and then importing everything).  Once it seems all set to go I’ll throw the switch and update the DNS records.  There may be some problems as we switch, and some of your most-up-to-date comments may not make it over there, but I’m gonna try to get as much as possible.

Also, got the new Punchout for the Wii; it’s pretty cool so far but I’ll update once I’ve played it a bit more.

I am going to talk about a video game that enraged me this morning– if you don’t like it then (jerks thumb) screw.

I had heard vaguely good things about a game called Puzzle Quest before, and I have enjoyed puzzle games in the past (Chuzzle, Zuma, Bookworm, etc.) so when I saw a featured game on Xbox Live Arcade called Puzzle Quest: Galactrix I bought it.  What appeals to me is the ‘gather strength and weapons’ aspect of RPGs mixed with the puzzling action.  I won’t get into exactly how Puzzle Quest mixes weapons and tetris, but if you even care you’re probably the type of person that can imagine how it works.

My progression was fine until this morning.  As you defeat stronger enemy ships in combat you get money, cargo (which you can sell for money), and plans (which you can use to create new weapons and ships).  You have the choice of purchasing new weapons and ships, or you can combine plans and cargo to create your own.  I was content to purchase the weapons I wanted, or sometimes I crafted them.  However, at a certain point in the game you face increasingly tough enemies who can wipe your little ship out in two turns.  At this point all the weapons in the world can’t help you– you need a bigger damn ship.

So, as I mentioned above, the ships are obtainable in three ways: buying, finding, and crafting.  You hardly ever find a ship, but that is how I moved from the small version to the medium version.  I kept hoping to ‘find’ a big ship but so far no luck.  I did, however, get plans for building a huge ship.  It had lots of preconditions (an immense amount of cargo, and you have to solve an incredibly hard puzzle) but I spent all morning cruising around the galaxy, mining asteroids and running errands for asshole aliens.  Finally, I have assembled all the ingredients to make my huge ship which will propel me to victory against the Borg– er, ‘Soulless’ (I see what you did there, developers).

Here I should explain how the cargo, or ingredients, work.  Your ship can only hold so much.  You can have up to three ships at a time.  This becomes important later, but for some reason even though you fly and fight in only one of your three ships, your total available cargo room is calculated by adding up all three ships’ cargo capacity.

Ok, I got the ingredients, I got the plans, let’s craft ourselves a Voltragg Battlecruiser! Er, no.  “You already have three ships in your fleet.”  Hmm, ok, I’ll sell my smallest ship that I never use.  Then I’ll have room in my fleet for my Voltragg Fucking Battlecruiser.  (sell item) “You can’t do that because you have too much cargo.”  So I can’t sell my smallest ship because my cargo would then exceed the combined capacity of all my ships– I already had a feeling of dread.  I sold off all my excess cargo, the stuff that wasn’t necessary to build my battlecruiser; not enough.  So I sold more, and more until I was able to sell the small ship.  And now? I don’t have enough capacity to hold the ingredients to make my fucking battlecruiser.

My only option now is to sell all my cargo, and my second ship. Then buy a new second ship that I have no intention of using but that has a large capacity so I can put enough fucking cargo in it so I can have a third slot open so I can build a motherfucking Voltragg Battlecruiser.  pant, pant.  Fuck.

I should not have to buy a second (very expensive) ship (let’s call it the Stor-N-Save) just so I have somewhere to put the materials I’ll use to build my Eradicator of Worlds.  Fuck you, game-makers.

Quite a full weekend.  Friday night Spacebee’s parents dropped by on their way into town and we watched the first half of the Brewers/Cubs game.  We headed out to try and meet our nieghbors at The Brink but couldn’t find them, and headed back to the Depot just as the heavens opened up.

Saturday was a full day: farmer’s market in the morning, then we had breakfast at Marigold with Spacebee’s mom and grandmom for mom’s day.  Quick nap, then we hopped in the car to drive to Milwaukee to have dinner with my family for mom’s day as well.  We shot back to my brother’s house to watch the end of the Brewers/Cubs game two.

Sunday morning, we figured that since we had to drive back through Milwaukee to Madison anyways we might as well see if we could wrangle some tickets to the game.  A Long Wong’s Wagon ride and two Standing Room-only tickets later we were watching Rickie Weeks sky a homer to left-field from the right-field foul pole.  It was nice to have standing room tickets as we just ambled around the stadium the entire game and saw lots of cool stuff.  Bad thing: the built a canopy over the FSN desk in right-field so you can’t hang over the fence and jaw at Craig and Davey anymore.  Good thing: the new store is ok, but the renovated store in left field is pretty cool.

I bought a pink bat.  See?

We also stopped off at Eastgate Cinema on our way back into Madison to see Star Trek.  I’ll bottom-line it for you: great movie.  I’m no die-hard Trek fan but I watched it when I was younger and was uncertain how they would shoehorn the new dudes, villains, etc. into the existing framework.  They did a great job, and with the exception of the groan-inducing (to me, but drew cheers from others in the theater) shouting of catchphrases by the characters I had a great time.  Go see it, it’s good.

My cat has developed a habit of winking at me.

Cah-razy weekend: Friday “80 Degreez” Night we walked over to the Stadium Bar and had fun onna bun with wwhazz, belly, and the ILL Connection.  Woke up a tad under the weather on Saturday morning for Cah-razylegs to a bit of thunderstormin’ and rainin’.  Instead of doing a 5K walk, we found ourselves back in the Stadium Bar for Bloody Marys and a gigantic plate of nachos.

Saturday afternoon: nap time and a DVD viewing of the Rescuers Down Under.

Saturday night was the 80s Party at Spacebee’s coworker’s house.  It was a really fun time: wwhazz and his coterie were there, they had High Life on tap, and we rolled craps in a dusty garage for almost the duration.  I think I ended up owing wwhazz some skrills, but I can’t remember how much at this time.  We alkso spent the early portion of the party eagerly following the Brewers/Astros game via an iPhone screen.  Once Timmer arrived with his Premium service we were also able to catch Uecker’s call of the game ending out.  Hurray, Brewers went 5-4 on the road!  Wwhazz left at the end of the night with Spyder’s right-hand man in tow.  I think he has the guy chained in his basement to extract info now.  Spacebee has pictures, and once they’re on her computer I’ll throw a few on Flickr.

Sunday was just your average Hungover Day: made homemade hashed brown potatoes and scrambled easies and watched the Brewers lay an egg in the Asrtos finale, but it was fun all around.  My friend Jay came over with Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection for the Xbox 360.  It was great: Golden Axe 1, 2, and 3, Streets of Rage 1, 2, and 3, Altered Beast, and tons more (Phantasy Star 2, 3, and 4!)  I’m definitely picking this game up: $30 for tons of nostalgia.  Fuck, it even has Ecco the Dolphin for you weirdos that like that stuff.

HOLLLARIT!

The initial excitement at posting on the new site wore off after a fortnight, and the Brewers lackluster play has lept me away from cheering them on, virtually.  But here we go again: UFC is at Brothers this weekend and we may get a run-in from Whitehouse. Nice. Scientist, you down to fly back for UFC on Saturday night?  SWAMPWATERS!  I’ll cook you home made pancakes, I promise.  Just don’t bring any models with you.

Meanwhile Spacebee and her coterie will be visiting all the most fabulous dress shops in Madison this weekend to find the perfect gown in which to be married to a doofus like myself.  She may be in for a lifetime of doffishness from her husband, but at least she’ll look like a million bucks on Day One.

Brewers kick off their series against the Mets tonight– aim your cheering thought waves at New York for maximum effectiveness.  I hope Willie Randolph has an illegal copy of the clubhouse key that he made that one time when the fire alarms went off and he had to break the emergency glass .  I further hope that somehow the same clubhouse lock made its way to the new stadium.  I further hope that he takes a dump in Carlos Beltran’s hat and covers the manager’ office in peanut butter.  That’ll show ‘em.

The Brewer game ended in exciting fashion yesterday, with Weeks sliding in under the tag to walk-off in style in front of thousands of baby bear fans.  As is expected, my text messages, Facebook, and Twitter blew up afterwards as the revelry began in earnest.

I don’t like what I’ve seen from Seth McClung so far this year, but he is a good pitcher and hopefully he’ll settle down in time.  We’re at .500 ball so far, folks, and taking the first of the season-long series from the cubs is a great start to division play.

Tonight’s game starts at 6:05p central.  Don’t get used to daily Brewers updates from me– start of the season + Cubs = lots of excitement.

Today is chores day and then bike trip.  Lazy spring dayz.

Well, the pitching was pretty much as bad as we all feared and we got the season-long apology started early by Suppan and Macha– Brewers fell to the San Francisco Giants 10-6 yesterday in the season opener.  The flip side is that we saw some really good hitting against a solid (if off-night) performance by Lincecum.  It suggests that if our pitchers can limit the home runs and triples they give up we’ve got a good chance to put some runs on the board.  Other items, in random order…

• I want Bill Hall to do good every time he’s up, and he mostly disappoints
• The FSN guy running the on-screen scoreboard was fucking drunk or crazy.  Several times when a team scored a run they lost points on the scoreboard.
• The Main Depot was not a prticularly exciting place to watch the game– pretty much me and the bartender were the only people really excited about the beginning of the season.
• Suppan would have gotten a gold star for his RBI/run scored had he not lost the game for us on the mound.
• Watching Hart and Braun strike out consecutively with runners in scoring position to end the inning was disheartening to say the least.

Wwhazz and I are retreating to a secret location to watc tonight’s game.  Let’s put Suppan behind us and see what Yovanni can do with the ball…