Monster Mash!

Since today was Halloween yesterday my bowling class/school league was a fun day. We were allowed to wear costumes (which only two girls did and my partner won the contest!) and we had Cosmic Bowling. I sucked. Yeah… it was terrible, but only because I couldn’t see the lane very well. Luckily the scores won’t count on the league play so I’m good. It’s not like we are in the top ranked teams, there’s 12 teams and last week we were in 8th, it’s not bad but definitely not great.

Tonight Mrs Fireshaper and me had three trick-or-treaters! I don’t even know if they count though — it was my cousins. We then dresed up in the costumes we wore last year and headed out to one of my grandmother’s friend’s house to help hand out candy and just hang out with my cousins. It was fun, we sat and talked most of the night, and then came back home.

Right now the cat is eating the cowtail that Mrs Fireshaper WAS eating. Anyway, a couple more hours and NaNoWriMo 08 starts. I got an email for a write in tomorrow night but I probably won’t go, just because I got things to do tonight and I’m hoping that I get my 1667 words in right after midnight.

Do not pass go, do not collect free taco.

Oh, I meant to add this to my previous post, but I’ll just do another post.

Yesterday was Free Taco Day at Taco Bell and I had intended on getting a free taco but I couldn’t. Not becuase the lines were too long or I arrived after the time period (between 2-4 pm), nope for an entirely different reason. What was that reason? Well the power was out. Yup, a whole 3-mile stretch of road, and the businesses along that road, was without power yesterday. I’m not sure how long they were without power but when I was leaving work a coworker said something about it and 20 minutes later, when I got to that part of town, the power was still out and police officers were directing traffic at the 8 or so traffic lights along that stretch of road. So, no free taco for me.

NaNoWriMo 08

So I guess the only way to get people to read my blog would be to actually write on it periodically. I’ve been doing most of my blogging on Plurk, which is kind of like Twitter and IM mixed together and on a timeline, on a small scale as I haven’t had much to say of late. Looking back, I used to blog at least 2-3 times a week, I’d like to get back into that and maybe one day get to blogging every day. We’ll just have to see.

Onto real topics though. I’m going to do NaNoWriMo this year. I’ve already got a title chosen (thanks Mrs Fireshaper!) and have a storyline sorta fleshed out. The story revolves around two brothers who lead a group of outlaws in an alternate history/steampunk version of the American wild west. The outlaws show up in a town and the older brother, Grant, has the idea that a kidnapping would generate some income for them. The group pulls off the kidnapping but Grant gets caught after and put in jail — a train that circles the town every day. Now the younger brother, Trey, and the rest of the group have to break Grant out and the only way to do that is to break him out from the inside. I would link to my NaNo page but it’s going so slow right now. Writing starts in 3 days and you can believe I’ll begin my writing Nov 1, 12:00 AM. I started on a prequel to my story but I won’t have it done before I begin the novel on November 1st, I’ll definitely put it up on hayst.org for anyone who would like to read what I had though.

In other news, the Fireshaper House of Haunts and Evils that Mrs Fireshaper and I put together a few weekends ago is destroyed. We put up spiderwebs on the bushes out front and I dug some shallow holes that look like freshly dug graves and we put some skeletons half buried in them with headstones. Well the weekend after we get lots of rain and wind and the weather is getting worse, it seems. The headstones aren’t standing anymore, I think one is in the bushes somewhere, and the spiderwebs are strung out bad. I’ll have to try and fix it up some more before Friday night but I don’t even know how many kids will show up. Last year, in the apartment, we didn’t have any kids show up and we had bought a big bowl full of candy, so hopefully there will be more this year in the house.

Ipod Touch post

Okay, so I am posting this from my iPod Touch and I’m finding everything about this gadget is just great! I’m using the WordPress app and it is very intuitive, you just add your blogs and it downloads your feed, then you can add and edit posts from the app.

I really like the Touch, not only is it an mp3 player but it’s also a PDA, basically. All the apps out there for it make the iPhone a closer contender in my next choice for a phone. With the Verizon/Alltel merger on the horizon and the possibility that I will have to switch to AT&T I may be getting an iPhone in the future.

Anyway, I’m watching a movie so I should get back to it.

Fedex

I bit the bullet last weekend and bought an iPod Touch (refurb) from the Apple Store. Mrs Fireshaper wanted an MP3 player so I gave her my Nano and bought the Touch after much thinking and talking with other Touch users. The price was a major factor, being just $20 more than the 30GB Classic, and I don’t have anywhere close to 30GB of music, along with the fact that I wanted apps. But right now I’m dying of anticipation, I bought the iPod on Aug. 30 and it still hasn’t showed up. The FedEx tracking number says it should be here tomorrow but the information says it is still “In Transit” from Sacramento, CA to Reno, NV, and has been since Sept. 4.

I did some snooping around the interwebs and found out that FedEx doesn’t update their tracking numbers very often, why I don’t know. What I don’t understand is what happens when the package doesn’t show up and the last information they have on it is that it had just left its origin? How do they find the package then?

I guess I’m just paranoid. Others online say that FedEx 99% of the time delivers when they predict, but I’m pretty sure I’l be the exception to that rule. I just seem to have that kind of luck.

Movies!

Apparently there’s a new internet meme going around that was started up by Avitable, where one has to take the EW list of the top 100 movies in the past 25 years and mark which movies you’ve seen (in bold) and which you liked (with an asterisk). Some movies I may have seen and didn’t mark and some movies I may have liked but didn’t mark, this isn’t because I’m an Elitist and think I should let on that I’ve seen some movies it’s because I’m a forgetist and I don’t remember if I’ve seen a movie sometimes or if I liked it. Here’s the list:

1. Pulp Fiction (1994)*
2. The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001-03)*
3. Titanic (1997)
4. Blue Velvet (1986)
5. Toy Story (1995)*
6. Saving Private Ryan (1998)
7. Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)
8. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)*
9. Die Hard (1988)
10. Moulin Rouge (2001)
11. This Is Spinal Tap (1984)*
12. The Matrix (1999)*
13. GoodFellas (1990)
14. Crumb (1995)
15. Edward Scissorhands (1990)*
16. Boogie Nights (1997)
17. Jerry Maguire (1996)
18. Do the Right Thing (1989)
19. Casino Royale (2006)
20. The Lion King (1994)*
21. Schindler’s List (1993)
22. Rushmore (1998)
23. Memento (2001)
24. A Room With a View (1986)
25. Shrek (2001)*
26. Hoop Dreams (1994)
27. Aliens (1986)*
28. Wings of Desire (1988)
29. The Bourne Supremacy (2004)
30. When Harry Met Sally… (1989)
31. Brokeback Mountain (2005)
32. Fight Club (1999)*
33. The Breakfast Club (1985)*
34. Fargo (1996)*
35. The Incredibles (2004)
36. Spider-Man 2 (2004)*
37. Pretty Woman (1990)
38. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
39. The Sixth Sense (1999)*
40. Speed (1994)*
41. Dazed and Confused (1993)*
42. Clueless (1995)*
43. Gladiator (2000)*
44. The Player (1992)
45. Rain Man (1988)
46. Children of Men (2006)
47. Men in Black (1997)*
48. Scarface (1983)
49. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)
50. The Piano (1993)
51. There Will Be Blood (2007)*
52. The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad (1988)
53. The Truman Show (1998)*
54. Fatal Attraction (1987)*
55. Risky Business (1983)
56. The Lives of Others (2006)
57. There’s Something About Mary (1998)*
58. Ghostbusters (1984)*
59. L.A. Confidential (1997)
60. Scream (1996)
61. Beverly Hills Cop (1984)
62. sex, lies and videotape (1989)
63. Big (1988)*
64. No Country For Old Men (2007)
65. Dirty Dancing (1987)
66. Natural Born Killers (1994)
67. Donnie Brasco (1997)
68. Witness (1985)
69. All About My Mother (1999)
70. Broadcast News (1987)
71. Unforgiven (1992)
72. Thelma & Louise (1991)
73. Office Space (1999)*
74. Drugstore Cowboy (1989)
75. Out of Africa (1985)
76. The Departed (2006)
77. Sid and Nancy (1986)*
78. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)*
79. Waiting for Guffman (1996)
80. Michael Clayton (2007)
81. Moonstruck (1987)
82. Lost in Translation (2003)
83. Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn (1987)
84. Sideways (2004)
85. The 40 Year-Old Virgin (2005)*
86. Y Tu Mamá También (2002)
87. Swingers (1996)
88. Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997)*
89. Breaking the Waves (1996)
90. Napoleon Dynamite (2004)*
91. Back to the Future (1985)*
92. Menace II Society (1993)
93. Ed Wood (1994)*
94. Full Metal Jacket (1987)
95. In the Mood for Love (2001)
96. Far From Heaven (2002)
97. Glory (1989)
98. The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)*
99. The Blair Witch Project (1999)
100. South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut (1999)

Wow… only 39/100 I’ve seen, but MOST of them I’ve liked.

Our House, in the Middle of our Street

Mrs Fireshaper and I finally finished the house and we have moved in. It took a few months (a lot longer than we had planned), and just a little bit more money than we had expected in the beginning, but now we are in our own house and have plenty of yard space for the dogs. Yes, you heard that correctly, dogs! We got a playmate for Amadeus and he loves him. He’s a puppy still, just under a year, and his name is Chico, he’s a mix and the mother’s owner wasn’t sure who the mother had puppies with so we really have no way of tellig what his breed is.

The house is a three-bedroom, one and a half bath, single story, and we live on family land, which used to be a dairy farm, so we have lots of yard space. We fenced in a backyard and painted and demolished and built back up, and all we have left is the blinds (which are becoming a lot more trouble than they are worth). I have an office now, I got an old desk from my dad that has lots of drawer space and I set up my two-monitor setup for my PC and have my Macbook beside it on its stand. Mrs Fireshaper and I have a large master bedroom, a lot larger than the room in the apartment, and she did an AWESOME job putting our master bathroom together, she’s such a great designer. The third bedroom, at the moment, houses most of our possessions, still boxed up, that we rummage through whenever we think of something we need.

So for the past couple of months I’ve been up to my ears in house-related stuff, I guess I didn’t get back to posting a bit more regularly like I had envisioned myself doing. But maybe now I can get on a more regular schedule.

Our House

Soon Mrs Fireshaper and I will be moving out of the apartment and into a house. YAY! We are moving more out of the city so we will be further from a lot of the stores we like to shop at but we will also be away from the noise and constant lights. We are actually moving not far from my parents.

The house needs a lot of work though, we are going to rip out all the carpet, tear out a wall, and then re-do everything. The paint job the last tenant decided on is horrible and we are going to have to get a professional painter come in and put down some commercial grade white paint before we can do anything else. It’s not going to be easy, definitely not going to be easy.

The dog will get more room though. Hehe.

Email me back to my inbox

Ack! Again I spend way too much time not blogging and doing other things, I can explain this time though, really! Um… I’ve been busy doing stuff. Yeah, that’s it stuff. I need to get back into the habit of blogging every other day (when did I do that???).

So I signed up at Viddler.com after listening to Leo Laporte (along with the lovely Amber Mac) do an interview with the founder. It’s a real interesting twist on commenting on videos, letting you set your comment to a certain spot in the video stream. I thought I was safe from spammers in a startup as I haven’t had spam from any other startup web company yet, but apparently there are a few people out there who can’t help themselves. I got a message from “Rita”, well that’s what she calls herself, saying that she thinks we can “click” and she said “email me back to my inbox so that i can send you my picture for you to know who i am through my email address ” (sic). I don’t know where this can go, I usually don’t “click” with people who don’t have a firm grasp of the English language, which is why “she” will be getting an email from a throwaway address, hooray for Gmail!

I’m still really enjoying my new phone, it’s just so cool! I’m glad I finally decided to get a PDA phone, there’s just so much that I wish I had a long time ago in theis phone.

I used Bold!

I’d like to call the period from my last post to now a hiatus, it wasn’t really that though, it was more of me forgetting to post anything and when I did think about it I rarely had anything to say. I still have little to say but I’ll try anyway, for you *points from his side of the screen*.

MacApper.com - I recently became a contributor for MacApper.com and have written a few reviews already, as well as setting up two giveaways (which are still active until the end of this week) — Galder and HoudahGEO. If you are a Mac-whore, like me, then you should definitely check out MacApper.com for great reviews of Mac apps.

HTC Touch – Mrs Fireshaper still had an Ohio phone number, after almost 5 months of being down here in Georgia, so we decided to go to Alltel, have her put on my account and get her a new number. While we were there we had the chance to browse the phones and the rep let me know that he could give me an early upgrade if I was interested in a new phone, so Mrs Fireshaper picked out an HTC Mogul (PPC6800) and I grabbed an HTC Touch for myself. I really like the Touch, it’s not an iPhone (that’s for sure) but it is a solid phone with great features (sans Wi-Fi), not to mention it isn’t locked as to what I can load on it. If I want MP3 ringtones I got them, if I want to watch videos that’s okay too!

Podcasts – I finally fell into the podcast stream that everyone else was seeming to enjoy without me. MacApper did a post on the contributors’ favorite podcasts and I felt left out since I was one of the few who didn’t listen to them, so I grabbed my towel and began subscribing to podcasts without abandon! Here’s what’s on my iPod now:

• 1UP Yours
• Ask a Ninja
• Diggnation
• MacBreak Tech
• MacBreak Weekly
• Net @ Nite

If you have any other suggestions, let me know. I’m always open for them!

You’ll also notice I did some changing of the sidebar to your right. There’s a MeeboMe widget I added and a link to my shared news stories on Google Reader.