lazy-fox.net

I’ve been sick for about a week now and am still struggling with a fever, sinus infection, seemingly louder tinnitus, and just feeling generally crappy.  I think this is due to a mold or dust allergy and something in my bedroom since the house I’m currently living in was built in the late 60s/early 70s.  I’ve moved my bed into the same room as my computer and TV and seem to be doing a lot better which leads me to believe it’s an allergic reaction.

Besides trying to put up with everything as best I can at work the past week or so has consisted of going to bed really early, taking scaling hot showers to break the fever, downing ibuprofen, and watching movies and various episodes of Futurama, Arrested Development, and the Japanese version of Iron Chef (the only version as far as I’m concerned, Iron Chef America is a joke).

I’ve started up (literally just bought the domain name, installed wordpress, and copied over the theme I use on lazy-fox.net) a website called ShamanisticRage.net.  I hope for it to be similar to BigRedKitty but from an enhancement and elemental shaman point of view.  I’ll probably do a podcast soon talking about the new enhancement talents and changes coming up in the new expansion, Wrath of the Lich King when I’m feeling better.

My brother and I went to the Seattle Oktoberfest held at the Pyramid Alehouse down in Seattle today.  Despite the bad loud music, it was a lot of fun and we’re both really glad we went.  It was the first beer festival I’ve been to and, honestly, I was surprised at how calm everything was, I didn’t see one roudy person.  It was people, mostly my age, enjoying good beer and having a good time in a relaxing atmosphere.  We couldn’t have asked for more perfect weather today as well, sunny and mid 60s with a slight breeze.  I think that we decided the best beer we sampled was that of Laughing Buddha Brewing, more specifically, their Pandan Brown Ale is exceptional.  Since it’s local and not very far away, we’re thinking about going down soon and getting a couple of growlers filled.

Another one of my favorites, Mac and Jacks was there and I finally got to sample more than just their standard African Amber that’s so common here.  They had a very nice wheat ale on sample that was very refreshing and easy to drink like New Belgium‘s Mothership Wit.

Also, apparently XBLA one-upped me and changed the price of Samurai Showdown 2 to 800 points instead of the initial 400.  Curses!

As the title states, Samurai Showdown 2 is coming to Xbox Live Arcade presumably tomorrow, for 400 Microsoft Points.  Pretty good considering Braid and Castle Crashers were both 1200.  It’s hard to really put a label on a game that SNK pumped out as their “best” but the Samurai Showdown series is definitely good.  Some other things you may know SNK from (pretty much a majority of the popular arcade games of the late 80s/early 90s): Metal Slug, Fatal Fury, King of Fighters, World Heroes, Garou: Mark of the Wolves, and the Neo-Geo.

The second wireless bridge has been flashed with dd-wrt, setup to connect to my existing wireless network, placed in a location, and is working fine.  I gave it a quick test by turning on my 360, loading up the Arcade games list and cycling through the menus.  Performance is much better than the old 802.11g bridge I was using and it connects to the main router at 208mbps.

So, I’ve been doing this little experiment for a few months now where I’ve cut out as much high fructose corn syrup from my diet as possible.  This means switching to diet soda (or drinking a Jones Soda), sticking to natural juice such as Nantucket Nectars, Fuze, or SoBe, eliminating candy as much as I possibly can, checking bread, crackers, yogurt, and so on.  I’m not really sure if I’ve lost weight due to cutting HFCS, mostly because I’m not horribly active, but I do feel better and more energized.  A rather interesting read can be found over at http://www.stophfcs.com which contains some links as well as alternative foods that do not contain corn syrup.  Their forums are pretty inactive but I found the site informative.

You should take a glance at the ingredients of the stuff you buy at the store sometime, you might be surprised how much of it contains corn.

Made a new logo today, not sure if I like it or not yet but it’s better than the old one.  I might try to dig up some cool fonts I used to have and see if I can make a better one, maybe something with a saying in it!  Oooh, fancy!

You’ll notice a new “Pages” menu type thing on the right hand nav bar.  These are links to various internal pages, like Links, to the insanely uninformative About page, and so forth.  I’ll probably add some more pages later for kicks.  You will also notice that, under Pages, is a link titled “OpenDNS Block List”.  I use a lovely service called OpenDNS to handle my network’s domain name resolution requests (been using it for quite a few years now).  It has this handy feature to block domains of your chosing which comes in handy for blocking domains with insanely annoying banner/flash ads that crop up on websites.  While I do understand that people do need revinue to continue maintaining their websites, the amount of intrusion/distraction that most advertising companies has resorted to is downright obnoxious and hardly makes the website enjoyable (annoying ads will actually deter users).  One of these is videoegg.com which has, without a doubt, the most annoying ads I have ever seen aside from those flash ones with sound.  You know the ones I mean, you’re trying to listen to music, go to a site, and all of the sudden “congratulations, you’ve been selected for a free ipod!” comes blaring over your speakers.  Or the ones with the talking flash smiley faces that yell “helloooooo” at you.  Anyhow, that list is a list of the ad domains I currently block on my home network to make the internet a somewhat ad-free place.

Additionally, my second wireless bridge should be here tomorow for the 360/PS2 and whatever else I might add to the media area that needs a network connection.  It’s a Linksys WRT-150N, same as my first wireless bridge.  Slap DD-WRT onto it, configure it as a bridge, and it should work like a charm.  I’m excited to have my 360 in a proper place that’s not the middle of the floor whenever I want to conenct to Xbox Live.