I joined Xbox Live since the Silver membership is free and they give you a free month of the Gold membership, just to try it out. Added my gamercard to the site over in the navigation section, and I even already have a Friend. I realize I’m like a week late and several dollars short on this, but I have to hand it to Microsoft - they did a pretty snazzy job getting the network thing set up. I don’t anticipate I’ll be entering into any online tournaments, but just so I can play against folks I know I’ll probably chip in the $50 a year for the Gold.

I noticed that Xbox 360 shows your wireless controller battery level on the dashboard and mine’s already getting low. It’s looking like you can get about 12 hours or so of play from a set of double-A batteries. (I haven’t actually run out of juice yet, but given the rate it’s going, that’s the amount of time I’m guessing I have.) As such, I cashed in some gift certificates that have been piling up and got the quick charge kit, a second rechargeable battery (the charge kit comes with one), and, while I was at it, Tomb Raider: Legend. That should be here shortly. In the meantime, I’ll probably have to pop some new batteries in so I can continue riding the walls around the track in Project Gotham Racing 3. (I totally suck at that game. I think I might have beaten one or two things on “normal” mode, but the rest? Easy mode, baby.)

I joined Jenn up to Xbox Live, too, at the Silver level, so she can go buy little games and stuff from the Xbox Live Marketplace. She’s addicted to those damn Pop Cap games, and what better way to play them than in high definition, right?

Easter’s come and gone in a massive storm of nonevent. Not that I was really expecting much to happen, so I suppose my expectations were entirely valid.

Stu’s last day at Corillian was Friday, so a small group of us went to Newport Bay for happy hour where we got cheap food and crappy service for an hour or so to celebrate Stu’s liberation. Jenn and Tif got together for a girls’ movie night, so Stu and I played some Paper Mario.

Saturday was a clean-up-around-the-house day where Jenn and I finally got to a lot of the errands and things we’d been putting on “the list” for the last couple of weeks. Random stuff - shopping, cleaning things, putting things away, etc. Nothing too exciting there, but it was good closure on things that needed to be done. After we finished with the chores, Jenn and I spent some time playing Project Gotham Racing 3, where I thoroughly determined that I’m pretty much no good at it but still have fun playing.

Sunday was a pretty lazy day, and I suppose that’s how it should be on Easter. Jenn and I went to breakfast at Biscuits Cafe, which is really good. I had sweet potato pancakes, heavy on the “cake,” light on the “pan.” So tasty, yet heavy - like eating a gold brick baked in spice. Also had some eggs, hashbrowns, and bacon. Just doesn’t get better than that. Fell into a food coma about 10 minutes after leaving.

I spent a couple of hours reading comic books that I’d purchased but never quite got around to reading, then Stu came over and we finally finished Paper Mario (clocking in at about 40 full hours of play). Jenn whipped up some Indian food - chicken in a spicy ginger sauce - and we all sat and watched SNL: The Best of Phil Hartman, where Stu was given a lot of US pop culture reference in one big dose.

Now it’s Monday, and frankly, I’m bored. Stu’s no longer over the cube wall from me, and while it’s not a showstopper or anything, he did sort of keep me sane around here.

The new version has some pretty major restructuring and does lots of stuff better to allow for a more peaceful coexistence with other scripts:

Converted to “object oriented” JavaScript to avoid name clashes.

Fixed minor bug with positioning in newer browsers.

Safely attaching to all events (thanks to Phil Haack for this).

Updated so script is placed in HEAD of document.

Go get it!

Went to Target at lunch yesterday and saw they had, not one, but three of the Xbox 360 premium boxes in stock. Decided to wait until the next Tomb Raider came out before I picked it up.

Promptly returned after work and purchased it. Also got a second controller and Project Gotham Racing 3.

Hooked that bad boy up to the ol’ LCD TV when I got home and fired it up.

It’s awesome.

Jenn and I raced for quite some time and determined that it’s hella fun, but neither of us are really any good at that game. It doesn’t make it less fun, we’re just used to games like Burnout where the driving is vastly more arcade-oriented. It’ll just take a bit of practice, is all. The cool thing is that the two player [on the same screen] is so clear - it’s not like the other times we’re playing where you struggle to see where you’re going. The benefits of higher resolution, eh?

I didn’t join Xbox Live yet because I need to get the wireless network adapter (no network drop in that room), but once that happens, I’ll be in business.

I’m also looking forward to checking out some of the media capabilities. I’ve heard a lot about it; time to try it out firsthand.

Now I need to convince Stu and my dad to get one and we can all play together.

A minor follow-up to my JavaScript and Unicode Character Validation entry (and sort of a reminder to myself):

Sometimes when working with characters in regular expressions it’s nice to be able to dump one or more characters as a line of Unicode hex escape sequences. For example, abc becomes \u0061\u0062\u0063.

Here’s a quick snippet for a console app that will let you input a series of characters and will dump out the list of characters entered as Unicode hex:

using System;
public class DumpHexChars{
  public static void Main(){
    Console.Write("Enter chars to convert to Unicode hex: ");
    string chars = Console.ReadLine();
    string output = "";
    for(int i = 0; i < chars.Length; i++){
      output += String.Format("\\u{0:x4}", Convert.ToInt16(chars[i]));
    }
    Console.WriteLine(output);
    Console.ReadLine();
  }
}