Boy, I take the day off from work and it just disappears on me. Of course I did do some reading for a while, but the biggest time eater had to be a certain couple first person shooter demos…

Got to see a new G4 first hand yesterday. My friend Steve’s dad picked it up as a little Christmas gift for himself. Very nice refined machine. I definitely prefer the graphite gray of the case to the G3′s blueberry.

Fast Company gives their analysis of five major web news sites (Slashdot.org, wired.com, RedHerring.com, and The Industry Standard) in concise table form . I only read two of the five regulary myself.

Another day, another weblog entry…

My friend Steve is in town so it’s time for some network computer gaming! He’s been talking up the Mac release of Heroes of Might & Magic III and based on Inside Mac Gaming’s preview it looks fairly appealing to me.

Tycho and Gabriel, two fellow Spokane-ites best known for Penny-Arcade, have a new take on Dickens’ Christmas Carol over at Gamespy. Amusing reading for the computer inclined as usual!

It’s looking like we’re going to miss out on the classic white Christmas here in Spokane based on all the weather forecasts I’ve been hearing and seeing online. For some reason I was expecting quite a bit of snow this year during the winter months, but it certainly hasn’t happened yet.

One interesting thing I noticed about Mozilla Build 12 for the Macintosh yesterday is that it seems to render font point sizes at the same size most Windows machines see things. I’m not sure if that’s a bug or a feature. It does make reading a surprising number of sites easier, Eatonweb being the first that pops into my head.

It’s completely crazy in Seattle right now. My friend Steve works in downtown Seattle and he mentioned seeing a cloud of tear gas waft by where he works this afternoon.

The sad thing is all the violence and rioting that broke out today completely undermine any legitimate protests. What a mess. I wonder how long it’s going to take downtown Seattle to recover once the conference is over?

Hmmm. Looks like Nedstat is broken right now. I tried to check the hits for my weblog and it told me I didn’t have an account with them. Since I knew Lake Effect used this service as well I tried its link and came up with the same result. Lame.

I ate at Thai Tom’s on the Ave for the first time and it was really good. I definitely got plenty of good Thai food this week.

Afterward we headed back to Steve’s apartment for some cutthroat UNO. Holly ripped (accurately) on my card dealing skills and Mary was kicking all of our butts until she had to leave to pick up her brother at the airport.

We took a brief ice cream break at that point and went to MixUp. Jesse and I indulged ourselves in some Decadence (a raspberry, chocolate ice cream, and brownies mix).

I finished up the night with my friends by watching Better Off Dead”. I enjoyed the movie, but I was pretty tired and it didn’t seem quite as good as it used to.

Today is the day of Mary’s big presentation in Chicago.

Mary reports that her presentation went really well!

It’s kind of a weird hazy day in Spokane today. It’s definitely not as nice as it has been the last few days. It was still pretty sunny and warm on my bike ride home though.

Looks like I’m going to be headed out for a little lake action this weekend with Steve. Jet skis, computers, and friends- what more could you ask for in a weekend? Mary being back from Chicago of course! LOL

I successfully completed all the Human levels on Starcraft last night. Now I get to try my hand at being a Zerg. As Steve says, It’s a whole new paradigm.

It’s early Saturday morning and it’s actually raining! At least it was after I left Steve’s parents house.

I’m hoping that Kristen and I can go to The Matrix this afternoon.

Steve is in town for the weekend so we tried our hand at multiplayer StarCraft this evening with mixed results. Basically the computer would either completely gang up on us or be really whimpy.

Steve’s dad had a multibutton mouse, and I think I may have to pick up a multi-button usb mouse tomorrow because they’re definitely handy.

I was actually in Seattle again for most of the weekend!

Today is my good friend Steve Wilhelm’s birthday!

Weekend recap: A couple week’s back Steve’s most excellent girlfriend Holly and his sister Robyn hatched a plan to throw a surprise birthday party for him Saturday evening. I thought it over briefly and decided to fly into town for the event since I’d driven over the previous weekend.

Jesse picked me up at the airport Friday and dropped me off at Holly’s apartment. I hung out there and ate lots of chips until Holly had to go in to work at the Market Theatre. I went with her and got to see Unexpected Productions Theatre Sports. That was completely awesome.

Saturday I slept in and hung out with Holly until she had to take off for UW On Cue, a drama program she’s involved with. I ended up reading and snacking until Robyn came to pick me up and smuggle me into her apartment which is in the same building as Steve and Jesse’s apartment actually.

Once we got to her place, Robyn and I went into a decorating frenzy, inflating (and popping) helium balloons, hanging crazy streamers, and finally placing stars and planets all over the ceiling.

In the end Steve was surprised, the party was a success, and a fun time was had by all. The highlight of the night was of course Holly’s dance with the Han Solo cut out!

It’s time to head back to Spokane pretty soon here.

Jesse got back last night right after I finished working on yesterday’s update so we got to hang out and catch up a bit.

When Steve and Holly returned we rented a strange movie called Lawn Dogs. It was okay. The moral of the story in my estimation would have to be don’t chase dogs with trucks.

The drive home to Spokane was uneventful. The pass was clear and I made good time.