[Days Until Vegas: 18]

I got my dance pad in the mail on Tuesday and tried ol’ DDR out using that instead of the standard controller.

Man, have I got the mad dancin’ skillz!

Actually, to be totally honest, I barely made it through the tutorial. I’m able to do a couple of the songs, but I really need to practice in order to get, well, coordinated. While “dancing” (and I put “dancing” in quotes because that’s pretty much what I’m doing), I noticed a couple of things:

• You pay extra money for a hard dance pad for a reason. The soft ones, while affordable, do slide around a bit. I may have to make a more solid base for mine and somehow anchor it down.
• I am so out of shape, it’s utterly pathetic. I break a sweat doing a simple two-step. Just pathetic.

It’s a lot of fun, though. I can see how I could get addicted to it pretty quickly. I should probably finish up Grand Theft Auto 3 and Rez before going too far with DDR.

In other news…

The Alias site on ABC.com has some cool new wallpapers you can download for your computer. I’m stoked they finally have one with Jennifer Garner in the blue rubber dress she wore in the episode she went to Russia. I think that’s my favorite outfit she’s worn on that show, though I can’t really complain about anything else she’s worn. She’s a hottie, regardless. This one just makes me feel like rubber dresses should be a more commonly worn item of apparel.

Then again, there are lots of folks who definitely don’t need to be wearing anything rubber.

I went to the doctor yesterday and got some samples of Allegra. You only take one a day, and I’m still on my first one that I took yesterday around noon. So far, it’s okay… I suppose I was hoping to be totally cleared up, but what I’ve got going now is more of a “not-really-congested-but-still-a-tad-runny” situation. I go to an allergy specialist next Wednesday to see if I can get something better. I like the idea of the allergy shot, but I’m deathly afraid of needles. Also, I remember my dad having to give himself shots, so that’s totally out of the question for me. I don’t like receiving shots, so there’s no way I’m giving it to myself. Unless it’s, like, an injection gun of some nature. I’m not worried so much about the pain as I am about the needle part.

Finally, tomorrow is (what they bill as) the series finale of Lexx. I’m sorry to see it go, but better go out at the height of the show than wait for it to get lame. This will also free up some TV watching time that I can allocate to something else.

Cold coffee (not iced, just plain cold) has to be one of the grossest things ever. I see now why they sell those mug warmer things that you can plug in to keep your coffee hot.

I tried to schedule an oil change for my car this weekend, but the dealership is all booked up so I gotta wait until next weekend. Figures. They do have little things of touch-up paint, though, for $5, so I will probably pick one of those up this weekend so I can fix a couple little rock chips I’ve got on the rear of the car.

[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.

Fucking Lattice Semiconductor took a nosedive today, closing down $4.31. Normally I don’t care a whole lot about that, but Lattice happens to be one of the two companies I hold stock in. I was hoping they’d come out of the slump so my purchase of my stock options might not be in utter vain, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Instead, I will probably have to write these assholes off as a loss, which means I’m totally screwed since I don’t have a house and don’t have enough stuff to deduct to really make any use of losses.

The long and the short of it is, these bitches won’t come out of donkey-suck land any time soon, I’m thinking, since I sold half my stupid options to buy the other half of my stupid options back when they were at $29. What the hell am I supposed to do with it at fucking $12?

[Days Until Vegas: 25]

I decided the other day that I’m not as active as I should be. What I mean by that is, since I’m not actually required to get up during the day except to use the restroom, I should probably do something about my physical health before I atrophy into nonexistence.

I have tried several different exercise methods, but none of them work. More to the point, none of them are interesting enough to keep my attention, convenient enough to do when I have time, and terribly cost-effective. I considered the whole Rollerblade thing, since I do like skating, but not only do the skates themselves cost a lot, the weather around here is dubious enough to never really allow you to go outside on a regular basis. I can’t run or do anything too repetitive involving feet or legs - I have flat feet, and even with orthotics, it’s not a recommended course of action (besides, it’s boring as hell). I like swimming, but getting the time to go to the gym/club, get ready to swim (shower, etc.), go swimming for an hour or so, get out, shower, and finally return home is just not in the cards. Plus, joining one of those clubs is not the cheapest proposition in the world. Tried the Tae Bo thing and quickly found out that there just isn’t enough room in the apartment for that sort of activity.

You see where I’m going with this.

So I started looking around for something that fits the qualifications I require for exercise.

I found… Dance Dance Revolution! It’s this Playstation game that is apparently very popular in arcades in Japan and Europe. The game plays a song and shows you various moves on the screen that occur in time with the music. You have to push the buttons on the controller that match the moves in order to score points. Sort of a “dance simulation.” Doesn’t sound at all like exercise, right? Well, once you get a dance pad controller, it is. What the pad does is allow you to stand up and step on the buttons instead of just pushing them with your thumbs, effectively making you dance along with the game. Brilliance, huh? Now it’s not exercise, it’s a video game, something my mind can handle a lot easier.

The game even has a “workout mode” that allows you to get an aerobic workout. Now that’s entertainment.

I ordered my copy of the game and a pad yesterday. Got the notice they were shipped today, so next week I should be dancing my way to freedom and leisure. I’m stoked. I hear it’s exceptionally addictive, which is fine by me. It’s probably healthier to be addicted to a dancing game than it is to sit on your ass all day long. Which is what I’m doing right now.