November 26, 2005
Thanksgiving Break
I spent my Thanksgiving break hanging out with my cousin Candice, who flew out here from Maryland to visit this past week. On Tuesday we did all the necessary shopping for Thanksgiving dinner and then went to see Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire with Andrew and Ricci. I really enjoyed the movie (and it was my favorite of the books), but even though it clocked in at 2 and half hours, I still thought it felt rushed in a lot of parts. After the movie we went to Chevys since it was right by the theater. I had never been there before. The food was pretty good and I had quite a large strawberry margarita which was tasty.
On Wednesday Candice and I headed up to San Francisco to take a tour of Alcatraz after stopping at Pier 39 for a quick bite to eat. The tour of the prison itself was a self guided audio tour (about 30 minutes) and was fairly well done. And of course you were free to pause the recording and wander around and take pictures. In addition to the audio tour there was a short video talking about some of the history of the island and the prison. If you're ever touring San Francisco, I'd recommend checking out the Alcatraz tour, it's a nice way to spend a couple hours. After the tour, Candice picked up a few gifts at some of the shops at Pier 39. Then after getting back to the car she said she wanted to see Lombard Street which was right nearby. After driving in circles a bit we made it to Lombard Street and I drove down while Candice took pictures. It was a great view and a fun drive.
Thursday of course was Thanksgiving and Candice took over cooking pretty much all the food. She cooked up a fine meal with the traditional turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, veggies with cheese and saltine crackers, and a pumpkin and apple pie for dessert. It was all delicious. Ricci joined us for dinner and provided the wine. The one thing missing from the meal was Cope's Dried Corn, which is apparently only available is small areas of the east coast. But my grandmother has promised she'll have some for us at Christmas. After dinner we played a few hands of Rummikub, another tradition for the Marr and Shaw families. Later that night we started watching the new Charlie in the Chocolate Factory which I had gotten from NetFlix and had high hopes for. Sadly we were bored by the time they made it to the factory, so we ended up turning it off. I did like the visual style of the film, but that was about it. If you've seen it and can tell me that it does get better, please let me know. Otherwise I recommend staying away from this movie.
Friday morning Andrew and Candice got up at 4 am to go shopping. After they got back and each took a long nap, we headed out to run a few more errands and then picked up Ricci to go wine tasting. We went to the Picchetti Winery, which is just up the Santa Cruz Mountains in Cupertino. I'm not much of a wine drinker, but I've been wanting to go wine tasting out here for a while (yes, even before seeing Sideways). The wines we tasted were Viognier, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Sangiovese (I think), and Cabernet Sauvignon. The Viognier was definitely my favorite of the wines (in my limited experience with wine, I do tend to prefer white wine). I also really enjoyed the Pinot Noir. The Cabernet was too dry for my liking, but I can see maybe getting used to it.
I'm really glad Candice could come out and visit and it worked out really well that I ended up having the whole week off of work. And now I still have a couple days left to just relax.
November 15, 2005
Mario Kart DS
Picked up Mario Kart DS today and played a few games online with Jeff (while connected to a video iChat for all the necessary taunting). I was getting my ass handed to me when I was Mario or Luigi, though I did muster a tie or two. Eventually I switched to Yoshi which is who Jeff was using and the matches were much closer and I even managed to win one. It's a really fun game and if you have a DS you definitely need to pick it up.
There are a couple annoyances when playing online. When you are trying to play a match against friends, there's no way to just start a match you have to wait about a minute while the DS waits to see if other friends are joining. Then it displays a message saying you might not be able to find four people, but it keeps searching a little longer. Then finally it starts game. But that's really just a minor annoyance, the big disappointment is that you can't play Battle mode over the internet seeing as Battle mode is the best part of any Mario Kart game.
Also it took a while to get started because my DS wouldn't cooperate with the WEP on my Airport Extreme. Eventually I resorted to just turning off WEP so we could play. I'll have to figure out what's going on with it. I swear wireless networking is the bane of my existence.
If you've got the game, let me know and we can play. My friend code is: 416 671 313 392
Update: Finally got connected to my network with WEP turned on. I made my password 13 characters (based on advice from this KB article) and then found an ASCII to HEX converter to get the HEX password to enter on the DS. This morning I saw Erik's post and he discovered if you click the password toolbar item in the Airport Admin Utility, it will give you the HEX version of your password.