I’ve been lax in updating again, but mostly for lack of time to post. Several interesting things have happened in the last few weeks, but in the interest of brevity (and time) They are all only going to get a brief mention.

I’m spending every Wednesday and Thursday in San Francisco for the next month or so. This is a –huge- project that I’ve been working on since November of last year. And it looks like I’ll be working on it for some time to come. I’m actually getting tired of being “stuck” on the same project, but it is paying my salary and is making a bucket-full of money for W&K… some of which is actually trickling down to me.

We went to Tahoe for the weekend of the 4th (thanks Kyle!) and had a great time. We went on several hikes that never made it all the way to intended destination, but were still a lot of fun. We ended up meeting two women on the trail, one of which was a proverbial “cougar” who seemed to take a real shine to Kyle, and lives in Seattle. We got a business card and will probably be pushing Kyle to see if he can hook up with her when we’re in the Seattle area for PAX.

WAR beta is in swing again. The difference this time is that Karen has a slot (Thanks to Larian!) so we are both playing alongside one another again. After a false start, she is having fun with her second character – a DPS caster/healer hybrid. I seem to be settling on a melee/healer hybrid. This is weird for me, but the combination is quite deadly. If enemies go for me, she heals, and if they go for her, I heal. Between the two of us, we stay up for a long time.

Tri 4 REAL #2 happened a couple weeks ago, but we didn’t race. The smoke here has been very thick and it’s been very difficult to get outside. So our training really has been mostly non-existent. When race day came, it was amazingly clear and we probably could have raced, but since we had fallen off on the training we decided not to participate. I have high hopes that we will make it to Tri 4 REAL #3 in two weeks and I –am- training for it now, but we’ll see how things turn out in the next 10 days.

Well, there you have it. A one-page summary of my last four weeks.

So I got a call today from my doctor.

1. The x-rays came back "negative". That is to say, the infection had not affected any bone, so the only thing I have to deal with the is the infection itself.

2. The infection is a not anti-biotic resistant. There is apparantly a strain of staph virus "out there" that is resistant to anti-biotics and there was some concern that this might be the case. As it turns out, the pills I've been taking for the last week should knock it out in a couple more days.

All in all, good news!

This is a difficult blog entry to write. I have good news and bad news. Let's start with the good.

I'm becoming more and more happy with the PSP purchase every time I download something new. I recently downloaded Jeanne D'Arc - a single player RPG. I've only played it a little bit, but it is very reminiscent of the old-school dungeon romps I grew up with.

I really like the story thus far (and not just because it features a anime-style french girl either!) and I'm excited to see where it goes.

I also downloaded the third X-Men movie. After watching it on the PSP I'm -very- glad I did not waste the time to go see it in the theater. I actually bought a print copy of the Dark Phoenix saga for Karen to read before seeing it. I don't think she ever did, and I'm actually glad for that. If she had read it, I would have wanted to see the movie, and the movie was a train wreck in slow motion. I'd like think that I'm not one of those fanbois that isn't willing to let a filmmaker take "creative license" with the source material, but COME ON!!! They killed off (or neutralized) pretty much all of the main characters of the entire X-Men storyline. They aren't called the X-Men for nothing, you know? When you kill the "X" (i.e. Xavier) you pretty much kill the X-Men; and yet, the writers and director felt it was okay to do just that. And then, once they did this, they figured it would be just peachy to completely remove all mutant powers from the leader of the "bad" mutants. The "hook" (if you can call it that) at the end of the movie was that Magneto _might_ be regaining his former powers. Who the f--- cares!?! You've already taken a giant shit on the franchise, why bother trying to make it look like "it might be okay in the end." Too late!

Anyway, despite being a god-awful movie that made me angry at the filmmakers, it was cool watching it on the PSP. I'm currently downloaing Spiderman 3 and UltraViolet. I don't have high hopes for either of those, but they will be nice time wasters over the next couple of weeks.

Finally, I downloaded a game called PataPon. The game defies description, but it is both annoyingly difficult and amazingly easy at the same time. It's a little puzzle-y, and a little music-y, and a little RPG-y. (I told you it defied description!) It's been the game that I've been playing whenever I have a spare five minutes. Although I find myself "stuck" at a certain level currently, I'm working my way back out of the hole I dug for myself.

In other news, I finally got beta access to WAR for Karen. The beta is currently closed, but should be reopening sometime after the holiday weekend. Finally Karen and I will be able to play an online game together again. And we may have a lot of time to do just that because of the Bad News (tm).

A couple of weeks ago, I reported on this blog that we had done a training ride of the Vineman loop with some friends. What I didn't mention was that just prior to embarking on this ride I stepped on a tack or nail or something. My left foot was punctured in some way. It seemed trivial at the time, but it was sore for a couple of day afterwards. That was over two weeks ago.

Last Friday my foot started hurting. A lot.

I'm not talking about, "oh that's a bit sore" kind of hurt. Nor the "Ouch!" kind of hurt. I'm referring more to the "OHMYGODITHURTSMAKEITSTOP" kind of pain. I couldn't walk. It was difficult to even -move- without crying out in pain. And of course, it started hurting at 4:55PM and my doctor closed at 5. I tried calling but got the answering service. I looked at my foot and it had a red spot about the size of a silver dollar with a tiny white spec in the center. I know enough to know that is a pretty telling sign of infection. Luckily I did not see the telltale black streaks that indicated a SERIOUS infection. I considered going to the emergency Room, but I already knew what they were going to do - tetnus shot, anitbiotics, and bed rest.

And a $1000 fee, which my insurance would only pay 80%.

So I let it be. Over the weekend it oscillated between mind-numbing pain and a mere annoyance. On Saturday I barely got out of bed. Going downstairs was unthinkable. Yet, on Sunday I went for a 30 mile ride - my foot wasn't hurting at all.

Today I went to my doctor. A $20 co-pay later I got what I expected: a tetnus shot and a presciption for a sulfur based anti-biotic. But I also got something I didn't expect. She told me to get an X-Ray of my foot. I wasn't sure why I would need an X-Ray for what was obviously just a simple infection. So she told me.

Because of the time involved (two weeks) there is a possibility that the infection may have reached bone. (Thus the X-Ray.) If it turns out that the bad stuff has gotten into the bone, the only solution is to remove the affected bone(s). That is to say, there is a distinct possibility that part of my foot may need to be removed/amputated.

Yep. That's right. They might need to cut part of my foot off. Great, huh?

I'll know more later this week. I'm just hoping that the X-Rays come back clean.

So after plinking around with the PSP a bit, I posted an advert on craigslist looking for someone to mod my PSP to use “homebrew”. As luck would have it, I got a response almost instantly form some guy in Santa Rosa. After a bit of back and forth, we finally met in the parking lot of Taco Bell on Wednesday. It felt so “shady” to meet some strange guy in a Taco Bell parking lot – almost like we were doing a drug deal, but with high tech goods.

Anyway, he popped the battery and memory stick out of my PSP, put in the Pandora battery and memstick and while we chatted the PSP downgraded itself. It took maybe 3 minutes, tops. After that, he put my battery back in, changed to a different memory stick and installed what is essentially the exact same firmware that I had - version 3.90 – but in “homebrew” style. That took another 3 minutes. I handed him a $20 bill and that was it.

When I got home, I copied three ISO files onto the PSP. I had already downloaded a couple of games just to see how they worked. I have ISOs for God of War, Puzzle quest, Syphon Filter, Wipeout Pulse, and Crisis Core.

OMG

I’ve been playing Puzzle quest for the last two nights. The PSP is small and light so I can play it while I’m laying in bed. The screen is bright, but not as bright as a decent booklight and it has a headphone jack. Karen reads for a bit before sleeping and I play and then she turns off her booklight and I keep playing. This thing is super addictive. It has an internet connection so I can even play online multiplayer while reclining in bed. The game is pretty cool, it’s basically a little puzzle-y combat game similar to Puzzle Pirates. It has a multiplayer component, but I haven’t really explored that much. I don’t think there is a matchmaking server; even if there were, I’m pretty sure that there aren’t people just waiting to play.

I played a few acts of Crisis Core. It seems typical, albeit simplistic fighting game. I found it amusing that some of the cutscenes are rendered with voiceovers and other cutscenes are dynamic with text “voices” in the game engine. I suck beyond words in Wipeout. Racing games just aren’t my thang, apparently. (I plan on downloading the PSP version of Burnout to see the trend continues.) I haven’t moved the God of War or Syphon Filter ISOs to the PSP yet. I only have a 4G memstick and the ISO files are really big. The God of War ISO is nearly 2G all by itself. (UMD, the optical media that PSP games are distributed on, can hold up to 1.8G!)

I may have to buy another few memsticks just to carry different games around on. They’re very small though, so the chances of them getting lost are great. It would also be nice to have one memstick dedicated to just MPS3 and other media. That stick could be inserted into the PSP when we’re on long trips and want to listen to music (the stereo in the Rav4 has a iPod input).

Overall, my excitement level about the PSP has increased dramatically since I can now use it for a ton more things and not just commercial games that cost $30 to $50 each. There are homebrew emulators that allow the PSP to play a wide variety of games from –other- systems. For example, the PSP can play games for the NES, SNES, N64, Gameboy, Genesis, Atari VCS, C64 and NeoGeo. Tired of having a separate remote for your DVD player, TV, cable box, receiver, etc? There is homebrew software that lets you use the PSP as a universal IR remote control! There is even a homebrew httpd so you could run a website, not just host a page or two but actually host an entire site, from your PSP! The PSP homebrew community is very creative and has a ton of very smart people working on really cool things.

There is even a homebrew PSP GPS device. Why buy an expensive GPS when you can use the PSP?

Getting my PSP hacked was the best $20 I’ve spent in a long time!

So last weekend we gave what is most definitely the biggest gift we’ve ever done. Not the most expensive, because we’ve spent more on smaller items, but the surely the largest physically. We bought a car for Kyle.

It was his 33rd birthday. He’s been without a car for about a year now. He’s been bicycle commuting to work and when he had longer trips (or on the weekends) he would get a ride from Kelly. Well, Kyle broke up with Kelly about two weeks ago so getting around was difficult. He was going to make the trip from Mountain View to Santa Rosa using only public transit, but that was going to take about 4-1/2 hours. It wasn’t terribly costly, but it was annoying and very time consuming. Not to mention difficult to bring luggage or his bike along.

We really like when Kyle visits and he needed a way to move his stuff around. A car was the right answer. So we started car shopping. We had a maximum amount that we wanted to spend and started looking in that range. Karen found one that was more than I wanted to spend and it looked to me like a real piece of crap, but she was excited about it so we went and did a test drive. As expected, it WAS a piece of crap. But, as it turned out, it was being sold by a charity and they had a whole yard full of used cars. We told them what we were looking for (a –reliable- car that wouldn’t require much maintenance and was inexpensive) and they pointed us at a 1990 Honda Civic DX. We test drove that one and it seemed pretty decent. The only real flaw was that it had an aftermarket sunroof – those ALWAYS leak – and that it had some mysterious damage on the driver’s side. Not like car-type damage. It didn’t look like it had been in a crash. It was like the driver’s side door was really really OLD. The plastic was brittle and the rubber parts were all powdery. But the passenger side looked almost brand new. The same thing was on the outside. The plastic lens on the drivers side running lights was all white and pock marked like it was really really old and left in the sun too long, but the passenger side was fine. Even the paint on the driver’s side exterior was obviously oxidized and discolored, while the rest of the car looked decent.

As it turned out, the car had been parked next to a house that burned down in a fire. The driver’s side of the car was “cooked” in the heat. We had to replace the driver’s side seatbelt (it had melted), and did some work on the sunroof to try and get it to seal (unsuccessfully). We also spent a full day washing it completely, inside and out, vacuuming the whole thing and fixing little miscellaneous issues.

When Kyle came up for the weekend, we asked him to bring his bike. Not to ride, just because we wanted him to put it into the new car for the drive home.

Karen did a great job wrapping it too. She took a medium sized box and wrapped it. Inside that was some little trinket that she had bought with Kyle. That was good for a laugh. Kyle was like: but you bought this with me there!! Also inside the box was a smaller wrapped box. Inside that was another little toy (magnetic stix in this case) and a smaller wrapped gift box. Kyle opened the toy and we played with it for a moment before opening the next box. And inside THAT was a little toy car and a Starbucks envelope. Kyle was mystified by this one. So we told him we bought him a car. It really didn’t sink in since he was –holding- a toy car. I think he thought we meant we bought him a toy car. So he set it down and opened the envelope and a key dropped out. He was enev more confused by this. So we told him again. “We bought you a car.” And then it sank in.

Priceless.