Turning Japanese

gaming, medical comments edit

[Days Until Vegas: 21]

Not to sound like a whiny grandmother, but my sinuses have been acting up something awful lately. I’ve noticed it slowly getting worse over the last couple of years and I’ve turned into an antihistamine junkie, which I’m sure is damaging my liver or some other critical organ, so I’ve made a doctor’s appointment on Wednesday to get some Allegra-D or something similar that might be able to relieve this trauma.

My copy of Dance Dance Revolution came in the mail yesterday. The dance pad should be here today or tomorrow. Admittedly, I was skeptical about the idea of a dancing game. I’ve seen clips of games like PaRappa the Rapper and such, and the whole concept sounded, well, stupid. Hit the buttons with the beat of the music? Puh-leeze. But I put DDR into the PS2 and fired it up… and surprisingly, it’s a lot of fun, even with the standard game controller. I can see how it could be addictive. The music’s pretty cool, too, and I thought it was really going to suck. I’m looking forward to the dance pad now to see how much more difficult it is. Considering I was having a hard time just keeping up with the buttons I can only imagine the terror I’m going to bring into the apartment when I bust out my oh-so-coordinated dance skillz. I suppose practice makes perfect.

That all said, I am not going out to get Mr. Mosquito or any of the other “fascinating” life-fantasy games the Japanese people come up with. I have my limits.

In other news, and it’s not so much news as a general realization I’ve made and feel like sharing, I have gotten to a point in my career where I am unable to explain what I am currently working on to anyone except other application developers in my boat. That’s a little disheartening, to be honest, since I find it nice to share work-related joys and pains with others. If other folks don’t get it, the sharing becomes sort of moot; it takes the punch out of a story if you have to explain the details you figure are common knowledge (at least in your own circles). I’ve even gotten past the point where I can adequately explain what I’m doing or how it works to my boss; he’s a web developer like myself, but more into the administrative side of things, so when I get into XML and Web Services and such, I just get a blank look…

Another poor segue: I think I want a SoundBug. It’s this cool device that you can affix to any hard surface and turn that surface into a speaker. Connect two together - stereo. Apparently, it sounds a lot like notebook computer speakers, which isn’t too bad. The novelty of the whole thing is really what gets me. The only thing stopping me is they’re $50. Each. I really don’t have that kind of disposable income, especially after my DDR investment. I guess we’ll see.

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