The Annoyance of Sucking.

So today, I felt what it was like to truly, and completely SUCK at something. Namely, Halo 3. My friends and I got together to play Halo 3 on Xbox Live tonight, while the women of our lives were else-where. Namely, Celeste was in SLC (well, supposed to be anyway, traffic had it's own thing to say about that), and his wife was in Hawaii. (For work, don't you wish that was you? I do.) Any who, we got together, and as previously mentioned played some wicked rounds of social slayer. But tonight was a first to me. I truly and completely sucked.

We were playing 5-on-5 first team to 50 takes all. If any of you have played Halo with me, you know I LOVE it, and that if you put me in front of Halo 1, I'll school you. Halo 2, and we'll have an even match. (I don't know the boards, but I know the weapons.) However, as tonight was evidenced, put me in front of Halo 3, and if your worth anything, you'll school me.

It wasn't a completely pointless exercise, however. There were a few bright sides that I feel are worth mentioning. First, it was fun. It was nice to hang out with the fella's again, and to get to play a favorite game of mine. Second, it allowed me to relate to my beautiful bride (who has refused to play Halo with me for a while now.) In that, when every 30 seconds someone is killing you (and you have no-clue how) it gets incredibly frustrating. I was SOOOOOOOOO Annoyed. It seemed like the game was stacked against me. I could come up behind someone, drill them in the head, and it would do nothing. They would turn around, and seemingly touch me with the finger of death, and that was it for me. I didn't get it, and I still don't. But alas, thankfully it was just a game, and I am quite sure that with some practice I could become equally adept with the 3rd installment in the Halo quest as I am at the first.

So to all other people who also suck at something ... well ... do as I did. Find something else to do, and maybe you won't suck quite as bad at it. But you never know, maybe with a little perseverance, you will no-longer suck, and will instead be the one to school me. But until that moment, let's stick to the original Halo.

Zune Up for Grabs

Well, since I get to write about what ever I feel like, I am going to do a bit of a sales pitch today. Due to the whole iPod fiasco, I am left with nothing but my Zune... Which most unfortunately, I personally do not enjoy using. I miss my scroll-wheel terribly. So I have decided to offer my Zune for sale. It is nearly new, and only has a few scratches on the screen. They are not noticable when using the device, but are viewable when the device is turned off. It is a black 30 GB Zune, and I still have all of the cables, boxes, and connections that it came with. It retails for $200 (according to Circuit City), and I am offering mine for $125. So you can save $75, and get it used!! If anyone is interested, please contact me, or leave a comment below and we'll see if we can come to an accord.

A Standards Compliant Microsoft?

Wow, this has got to be some of the nerdiest and most exciting news I have heard of in a long-time. Unfortunately (and possibly fortunately) most people shouldn't ever notice any of this, but we coders have beat our head against the walls so many times because of this, that news like this can nearly make us giddy with excitement.

Drum Roll Please....
Internet Explorer will be set to standards compliance mode by DEFAULT! ARS Technica posted an article earlier today about this, which is quite an interesting read, and provides much more of an in-detail look than I will be providing here. But in a nut-shell, what I am hoping that we will see with such a change from Microsoft, is a greater accountability to the industry as a whole to be compliant to standards, and easier to work with. For anyone who has developed anything for the Internet before, they have dealt with the nightmare that is balancing a page between FireFox and Internet Explorer. FireFox often leans toward the standards side (ish) and Internet Explorer tends to... well... they just like doing their own thing. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those "Microsoft is Evil" kind of guys. In fact I congratulate them on their success, and am trying to find a way that I can emulate such wide-spread success within my own life. But that is a whole separate topic.

The thing that I am most eager to follow, and see the outcome from, is how this effects developing a consistent user experience across the main two browsers. One interesting curve that we could see also come into play, is the currently-in-beta FireFox 3. I personally have not tried it yet but I have read some promising reviews.

The numb joke

So last night my sweet wife decides that she is going to be super nice to me. I am studying for a Math test that I have to take today, and just working along, when she sneaks-up behind me, and leans up close to sneak a kiss. I was pretty excited, I mean who doesn't like a surprise nice little kiss. Well, as she kisses me, I smell piña colada, and just assume that it is her chapstick, as her lips feel pretty slick. Then the smell starts to bring back memories of being stuck with a needle at the dentist's office, and it hits me... It wasn't any chapstick she was using, it was topical anesthetic... I hurry and pull away as she has a wicked grin on her face. But then her smile starts to fade, as she too starts going numb. I start laughing, and ask her if she remembered to put Vaseline on her lips first (knowing that we don't have any). She says no, and grabs a tissue, desperately trying to wipe it off. I laughed for ages, as her practical joke to make my lips numb back-fired, and made her more numb than me... Ahhh, so to any-would be practical jokers out there, remember to take steps to prevent the joke from getting you worse than your intended target.