It's Dai Time

Katie & Scott & Simon & Cecily.

Category: year26 (Page 45 of 92)

I posted an entry each day during my 26th year of life.

Day 189: my thoughts on the playstation 3

August 19, 2009 / / 0 Comments

Yesterday, in Germany, Sony announced the Playstation 3 Slim.  It’s a PS3, retailing for $299, that’s approximately a third lighter and smaller.  For the first time since the console was released, it feels affordable and justifiable as an entertainment purchase.

In this age of spoilers and rumors, the PS3 Slim had been rumored for quite a while and the announcement yesterday felt more like a confirmation and the attachment of a release date than an actual surprise.

Still, it gave me pause.  Up until the announcement yesterday, I had considered and rejected the idea of purchasing a PS3 in the near future.  My reasons are, to me, pretty clear cut.

  • The PS3 is expensive.  This is a bit less true now; $300 is certainly more palatable than $400, but that doesn’t include game purchases to begin a new library.  Also, I wouldn’t be able to sell my PS2 to offset those costs while retaining my PS2 game library, as the PS3 doesn’t have backwards compatibility.
  • The PS3 doesn’t have too many games that are exclusive to it that I particularly want to play.  Most next-gen games come out for the 360 as well.  Aside from LittleBigPlanet, there’s nothing I’ve actually felt like I’ve missed out on by not owning a PS3.
  • More of my friends have a 360.  This is also slowly becoming less true, as more of my friends that only had a 360 before are now picking up PS3s.  But when I had to make my initial choice between the two, a lot more of my friends had 360s, meaning that if I wanted to play online with people, it made little sense that pay more for a PS3 and get a smaller pool of friends that I could play with.
  • I don’t really want a Blu-Ray player…yet.  The built-in Blu-Ray player is a huge point in the PS3 column, but it’s not something that I really want.  My eyes are not yet that critical of the quality in our DVD collection and a new Blu-Ray player would drive me toward buying new Blu-Ray discs.  That’s not something I feel like doing just yet.

Logically, there’s very little reason for me to buy a PS3 right now.  However, I will admit that when I heard the announcement of a slimmer, sleeker PS3 combined with a $100 price cut, I did feel a little…consumer-y.  The thought, maybe I’ll actually get one of these now crossed my mind.

Maybe I’ll wait and see if there are any killer deals on Black Friday.

Oh – and the Schwan man delivered fudgesicles and they’re delicious.

Day 188: the schwan man

August 18, 2009 / / 0 Comments

Tomorrow is an exciting day.

Tomorrow, the Schwan man comes.

Has anyone ever had the Schwan man visit their house, bearing lovely frozen dinners and ice cream treats?  Katie’s family experienced this joy when she was young and we’ve decided to try it out ourselves.

The best part is that we can then place future orders online, after which a man will magically appear at our house on Wednesday evenings, as if he had taken our wish list and gone grocery shopping for us.

Katie also said that the Schwan people, when they visited during her childhood, would wear little temporary booties to prevent their shoes from dirtying the floor of your house.  We’ll see if that bit of charm is still part of their routine.

Day 187: catfight, literally

August 17, 2009 / / 0 Comments

Cats fight, or so I’m told.

Our cats certainly do.  They’ll seemingly randomly and suddenly go at each other with no real signs of aggression.  No arched backs, hissing, flattened ears.

It’s like if I was eating lunch with a friend of mine, calmly eating my sandwich, looking at him a bit curiously, then suddenly jumping over the table and tackling him.

Our cats then tend to both use the same set of moves, though Princess (using her bulk and laziness to her advantage) tends to be more defensive.  The fight will usually commence with Daisy either jumping into Princess, tapping her with an outstretched paw, or attempting to bite one of Princess’s limbs.  Princess will usually respond by swatting Daisy away.

Sometimes, though, they’ll just entangle.  Daisy will jump on top of Princess and wrap her arms around Princess’s head.  Princess will similarly attempt to put Daisy into a headlock.  The two will sit there, heads bobbing in an attempt to bite the scruff of the other cat, hind legs churning against the other cat, fur flying into the air. Then, after a few seconds, one of them will let go and they’ll separate, like boxers recovering their breath.

Princess will flop over and look suspiciously at Daisy.  Daisy will back up a few paces, still no signs of aggression and either pounce on Princess again or begin licking and grooming herself.

I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen a clear winner in these fights and I’m also unsure if attempting to startle or separate them during a fight would help.  They don’t seem to be doing any physical harm to each other and their behavior outside of the fights hasn’t changed.

Are they just having fun, like young siblings that beat each other up for the heck of it?  Female roommates solving a temporary territorial dispute?  Most of the time they tend to ignore each other, although Daisy has always been a great fan of sniffing Princess’s butt.

I think this is just normal, but what do I know about cats?

Day 186: 80s tv, or the lack thereof

August 16, 2009 / / 0 Comments

Sometimes, I wonder what I did as a child.  I mean, except for memorize multiplication tables.

I certainly didn’t indulge in television watching – I was too busy doing homework!  And chatting up babes on the Internet.  Kate rattled off a long string of 80s television shows, of which I had watched probably less than 10% of.

I don’t remember watching any episodes of classics like Who’s the Boss, Family Ties, or Charles in Charge.  I remember seeing tidbits of long-running series like Cheers or MASH.  Really, the only shows in my childhood I can lay claim to are those from the TGIF block: Step by Step, Family Matters, and Boy Meets World.

Aside from that, it seems that I missed out on a lot of television nostalgia that others in my generation have.  Katie also remembers a show about a little girl that was a robot called Small Wonder.

I had never heard of it, but I think that my position is the majority here.  Has anyone heard of Small Wonder?  Wikipedia says that it was considered by TV Guide and the BBC to be one of the worst sitcoms ever.

Taking sample SAT tests may have actually been more fun than watching that.  And believe me – I took a lot of those as a kid.

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