Odds and ends II

I'm preparing what might amount to a long post for later in the week. Just some more random thoughts while I remember them.

• It's been a little hard to post lately, thanks to our Internet service being down at home. Thanks a lot, Comcast! I'd entertain the thought of getting a different ISP, however, Comcast is the only service available to me at my current address. God, you would think that living in what's called "Silicon Valley" I would have a multitude of services to choose from. Hell, back at my home in Tampa I could get FiOS if I wanted! Fiber right to my fucking house! Here, I'm stuck with what's turning out to be a shitty cable service.
• When I got my California Driver's License, did I miss the notice that said I should seriously consider getting personalized license plates? Because I think I have seen more people driving around with personalized plates in the past 7 months living in California than I have seen in about 29 years living in Florida.
• Made some ceviche to snack on while watching the Super Bowl this past Sunday. Thanks to X for providing me with his recipe! The ceviche turned out rather well, and everyone has complimented me on it. Of course, I had one minor issue in making it. In chopping up the serrano peppers I didn't properly wash my hand afterwards (mainly just rinsed it quickly under running water) before finishing off the rest of the ingredients. The oil from the peppers got all in to my right hand, and it went bad. It felt like it got under my nails, in the pores of my hand, and generally caused it to "burn with the fire of a thousand suns" (stole the quote from one of the webcomics I regularly read; linked to it as a way of giving credit where credit is due). I tried washing it, dunking it in the ocean, burying it in a bag full of sugar, even pouring milk over it. Nothing worked, and I swear I hallucinated about some drunk Mexican fisherman walking by and questioning me, "¿Eres un hombre?" (only X will get this reference, but it's still worth it)
• Speaking of the Super Bowl, congratulations to the New York Giants for beating the heavily favored New England Patriots! It was an incredible game to watch, and one of the best Super Bowl games I have seen in recent memory.
• I've realized I keep track of a lot of different sites. I started using the Google Reader site, which is an RSS aggregator ... I guess. Anyway, I have 15 different sites that I keep track of, with more that I need to add. Currently, my Google Reader makeup is as follows:
• 7 related to gaming
• 3 related to anime
• 3 related to pop culture/craziness
• 1 for national news
• 1 for tech news

• I've also realized that I want to go to do a lot this year. Mainly what I am talking about are trips/conventions/etc. For example, I am signed up to attend the Game Developer's Conference next week. My roommates have some tentative plans to go to Lake Tahoe for a weekend sometime this month, and I plan on tagging along. Might go to Japan in Spring. Have to make it back to Tampa sometime, at the latest in early Summer for a friend's birthday if not before. Planning on going to PAX 2008. And, of course, Las Vegas in October.
  
• I started this post yesterday afternoon, before I got home from work. Happily, my ISP has restored my service to the Internet. Still doesn't mean I am happy with Comcast but it's at least nice to be able to do some work while at home (not to mention work on some games).
• Some of you may have noticed that I've been including at least one image at the top of every post I make recently. I'm not sure why I started doing this, but I've ended up enjoying trying to find a different image/screen capture for each post. I'm not even sure I make the image match the subject matter of my posts half the time. But it's fun, so I'll probably keep on doing it.
• Mentioned the nice gifts I got for assisting Capcom as a game tester a couple of weeks ago. Here are some pictures I took of the haul.