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My family’s love affair with Donkey Konga got off to an inauspicious start when I got home from Best Buy to find that the instruction book was printed entirely in Spanish. There simply wasn’t an english translation to be found in the packaging. At first I was concerned, but we got the hang of it after an hour or so, and that’s when the magic began.

In a movie review first, here are some actual screenshots of Erin playing Donkey Konga. The level she is playing is called ‘Oye Como Va’.

Donkey Konga comes with the game and the set of bongos you see in the picture. For those who remember Parappa the Rappa for PsOne, Konga is very similar. There are only four actions in the whole game:

1. Hit the left bongo.
2. Hit the right bongo.
3. Hit both bongos together.
4. Clap your hands.

The bongo set a has a little mocrophone in between the drums where it hears the claps. Really a cool little setup.

Nintendo also did an impressive job in paying licensing fees for various head-boppingly-good songs. The weird thing is that upon first glance you’ll see a lot of songs with names you’ve never heard of. Then you’ll actually play the level and you’ll say, “whoa, it’s THIS song.” That happened four or five times when we initially played. There’s also a good mix between Nintendo game soundtracks (Mario Bros. theme, Zelda theme, Pokemon theme), pop music (All The Small Things ‘…she left me wormballs by the stairs, the wormballs let me know she cares…’), classic songs (Oye Como Va, Louie Louie, Shining Star, Wild Thing), and, for some reason, kid’s songs (campfire medley, lullabys). Just a great collection of music to bongo to.

You can actually plug in up to four sets of bongos and have a bunch of people jam. I think I’m going to just buy a second set so me and Erin can Bongo Battle.

Speaking of which, Erin has taken to this game like none since Zuma and Doctor Mario. She was playing for about 3 hours straight yesterday morning, trying to get Gold on all of the intermediate difficulty levels. Each song has three difficulty levels (Monkey, Chimp, and Gorilla). The difference is in the number of total drum hits and claps. Monkey has very few, while Gorilla is like a waking nightmare of left,right,right,left,both,clap,clap,clap,etc.

This game gets the highest reccomendation from me. It is the quintessential Fun Nintendo game. They know how to make shit you want to play with your friends, kids, or wife.

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Just wanted to let you guys know that I started an affiliate account with pokerroom.com, which is why you see the ad on the right. If anyone’s thinking of starting an account to play online, click through the link so it shows that I referred you. If you do, thanks very much.

–whazz on

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Don’t have a ton of time right now to paste the whole thing, but it is basically a minimally-edited version of the draft I had up on Whazzmaster some time ago.

I included a list of the items that I thought were unreasonable and will upload that when I have some spare time. The bottom line was that I added up $1,423.99 in unreasonable charges (including the crazy floor estimate). If you subtract that from the $1,237.81 that Steve says we owe him, it leaves $186.18 due to us.

I sent it Priority Mail with Delivery Confirmation. I didn’t want to have him sign for it because in all likelihood he will refuse any further mailings, thinking that he is being served with a lawsuit.

So, next steps: if he pays us our money everything will be right in the world. I doubt this will happen, so the question becomes: how will he respond to the threat of litigation in small claims court. My best guess is that he will ignore the letter and send the amount to the collection agency anyways. If he thought he could win in court, he would have just threatened to sue us for the balance anyways. The fact that there was no explicit or implicit threat of court action (he instead just said that he would turn over the amount to a collection agency if we didn’t pay) means that he probably knows his bogus “estimate” wouldn’t get far in front of a judge. I’m guessing he will not respond in any way to the letter, leaving the onus on myself to initiate court action. If that is indeed the case Mr. Misrack, I’ll be seeing your fat ass in court.

As an aside, I was walking through the Oakridge Mall parking lot when I saw a cream Lexus SUV with gold trim. Steve drives a car like that. In addition, the car had a license plate that said “REALTOR”. Steve is a realtor. I was very close to kicking a large dent in it for good measure, but chose to keep on walking.

offtopic: i will be posting a video game review of Donkey Konga real soon. the short take: it is awesome as awesome can be.

–whazz on

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Our Xmas was great by all standards. Erin woke up Ultra-Early so she could attend Xmas Mass in Union City, a mysterious place where the Man-Bat patrols the alleys punishing evil-doers. I chose to sleep through everything. I awoke at 10am to find that the Ghost of Xmas Future did not have the foresight to fix our furnace while he was showing me the error of my heathenistic ways. Damn cold in that house in the morning.

I set about making a Very Special Xmas Video for our family. Due to the problems inherent with using Free Software, I still haven’t been able to burn the move to DVD. Problem 1: Microsoft Movie Maker, while easy to use, only outputs movies in WMV format. Problem 2: DVDs do not use WMV format, they use MPEG. Problem 3: I couldn’t find a converter worth shit. Problem 4: Once I have an MPEG, I don’t have any software that will take that MPEG and just make a Fucking Movie™ out of it. I refuse to use Easy CD & DVD Creator 4: Return of the Startup Folder. I downloaded some Open Source shit that doesn’t work, probably because I’m not running it on the Actual Developer’s machine.

Whatever, so now I have a 300MB movie with no way to distribute it. I’m gonna keep tryin’ though. More info when I have it.

So anyways, I made this Xmas magnum opus and then Erin got home and we opened gifts. Lots of Best Buy gift cards hidden in Boston Store boxes and such. On Sunday Erin and I strolled (with our feet!) over to the Best Buy up the block from us to use our newfound gift card-based wealth to buy a new digital camera. For those just joining us, our camera was stolen out of our room by someone at the Concourse Hotel last Xmas when we stayed there for a night. I hope those bastards are having fun with a camera that had no link cable or battery charger. So we got a new, smaller camera (see moblog for picture) that will most likely be even easier to steal. I am very dumb, but I get a boner when they make electronics small. I mean, my iPod is the size of a deck of playing cards yet has 5 times the storage capacity of my first computer (which cost me $2700 at the time).

PICTURE TIME!

I haven’t downloaded any pictures from the new camera yet, but I did find some pics from the 2004 Intuit Holiday Party. We had a dandy time, what with the free liquor and all. Our good friend, Jan Oeljeschlager, put some of his pictures up on his website and I copied them. Here you go, whazzmaster.com: me and my coworkers.

I have some other assorted pictures, but I’m anxious to re-encode the movie in Divx. I think I can shrink that bitch down to around 40 or 50 MB so I can just throw it up on the website for download.

–whazz on

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Hello everyone. Here’s an update on the Fight Against Evil. I’m awaiting a mail from Sandy Adams & Associates (the property management company) that includes all of the orginal receipts for the repair work and cleaning. In the meantime, I’ve made a first draft of the letter that I must send in order to have a right to sue Steve in small claims court. If I don’t send a letter demanding payemtn, my suit can be thrown out. So here goes, let’s see if Steve responds to my threat to play hard ball.

Suggestions on revisions for tone and rationalness are requested. I want to ensure that some of my outrage comes through, but I don’t want to harm my case by making completely outrageous statements. Please comment with any suggestions.

–fuck everything, we’re going to five blades

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ps– Cal invited only on condition that he doesn’t get into a fight with any cows or farmers.

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Through some fault of my own Erin and I received 12 martini glasses as an Xmas/Housewarming gift. For some God Konws Why reason I felt a strong urge to find out why people would order goddamned martini at a bar. No, not a Cosmopolitan, Apple-tini, Dirty Tini, or any of that other shit for people who want to drink vodka without it tasting like vodka. An honest-to-god Vodka Martini, shaken not stirred. So I set about making one last night.

The Ingredients

1 1/2 oz vodka (classic Stoli, in my case)
3/4 oz vermouth

The Method

Pour shit into a shaker over ice, shake, strain into glass, drink.

The Results

Fucking delicious. I could drink that shit all night. May end up battling The Gimlet for my drink of choice. Why, Xtian God, did I never try this before?!

Oh yeah, and mucho congratulaciones to Michael “wikrus” Wirkus and Jessica “bellgirl” Gitter on their engagement. Happy returns! Jessie, don’t lose your ring to Parker in a game of High Stakes Scrabble!

–martini on

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On Friday I stopped to pick up some packages at the post office and found a certified letter waiting for me from Steve Misrack. Inside the envelope was a letter from him re-iterating what we owed him, a copy of the “estimate” (more below), two pictures of the damaged floor, and a two-sided copy of the move-in checklist. In my first letter, I had stated that the movie-in checklist copy we had received was only one page and described only the family room and kitchen — the bedrooms, dining room, and living room were not described. In this letter, he chided me that he would “enclose another copy of the only inspection made upon [my] moving in from the leasing agent Sandy Adams. It is on two pages and maybe you did not see the reverse.” I double-checked the original copy in the Day 0 Mailing and sure enough only one side was there. This fucking asshole is trying to call me stupid as if I didn’t have the original sitting right in front of me.

The big news story of this update, though is that I finally got a chance to see a copy of the estimate for $3,300 in repairs to the damaged wood floor. I can see now why he didn’t send it originally and why he is fucking us around so much. As an aside here, I was wondering why he didn’t sue us for the money he felt was owed and instead just told us it would be sent to a collections agency if we didn’t pay. I’m thinking now that he knows his shit wouldn’t stand in small claims court so he tried to work around it via the threat of collections. Uh-uh Steve. Silly monkey, you don’t fuck with me to the tune of $1,237 and expect to get away with that shit. But back to the “estimate.”

The first line of the estimate said the following: “as per description & measurements taken by Mr. Misrak [sic] here is the estimate to replace laminate in the above jojb location.” It took me several casual readings before I realized what was being said there. I called Step Ahead Carpet & Flooring to speak with the gentleman who did the “estimate” for Steve. Edward was very nice and answered all of my questions definitively. As it turns out, no one ever went to the house and inspected the floor. No one determined that it was “not repairable damage.” No one (except for Steve) decided that to replace a 6 ft x 6 ft area of damage, at least 330 sq ft of floor would have to be replaced. Steve looked at the floor and decided himself that it couldn’t be repaired. Then Steve, himself, decided that the only way to fix it was to replace 330 sq ft. Then Steve went to Edward at Step Ahead, and asked something along the lines of, “Hey, if I were to replace 330 sq ft of hardwood floor, how much would that run me?” Edward gave him the estimate that I have now in my possession, and Steve halved it and sent us the bill with no intention of ever having the work done (by his own admission).

This will not stand. This asshole thinks he can get away with this shit? Fuck this. I’m drafting a letter which will directly tell him to give us back the money from the security deposit that he owes us, and it will go out soon. Then it’s fucking on. No abdominal stretches, no irish whips, no sleepers: just a fucking Dudley Death Drop through the Table of Small Claims Court for Steve Misrack. He ain’t gonna no-sell this one.

–fuck everything, we’re going to five blades

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