October 2012

NYC was fun as usual.  Who else but a magician spends >$70 on decks of cards? They're all quite lovely. Shifters, Arch Angels, Rebels, White Lions... Cool, baby, cool.

Vegas was wonderful. I score a 93.8% on the ACMT hardware test.
One of my best friends, Spencer, was in Vegas performing in the America's Got Talent live show, so I got to see that show twice, on the house. ;-)  Spencer and I got to hang out a few nights. One of my other best friends, Steve, flew out to Vegas for the end of the week-weekend and so the three of us got to hang out a bunch together. =)  Also went and saw Penn & Teller's show, which has been on my to-do list for many years. Pics are on my G+ profile.

This weekend is my cousin Joe's wedding, in Williamsburg VA. I'm a groomsman. The thing I'm most looking forward to actually, is seeing Joe's older brother Steve. We used to be close until he moved to the other side of the country. I haven't seen him in years now! =(

The next weekend my sister and bro-in-law and I are doing our annual Fall tradition, taking a trip up to Lancaster PA for the outlet malls. Need a new watch? Need a new leather jacket?

Actually, in Vegas I bought myself a Nike Fuelband. It's pretty nifty. I love it as a watch. But I'm fascinated to see how many steps (thus miles) I walk in a day, and how many calories [rougly] I burn because of it.

The next version of Ubuntu (12.10) is released tomorrow. Has lots of neat new features, and cool integrations.  If only it would play WoW, Photoshop+Wacom tablet, and most PC games naively  I might never use Windows again. ;-)

World of Warcraft Mists of Pandaria is great. I took the release day off of work (with my manager's full knowledge of why!) so I could go to bed early, get up at 2:30am for the 3am (midnight PST) release. That was exciting.  This expansion itself has lots to do, looks beautiful, and has a good flow to it. I'm enjoying it. =)

XCOM was release last Tuesday. Of course I bought it and have sunk more than a few hours into it, as time has allowed.  It's very modernized compared to the original, but in a very good way. The overall game and gameplay is faithful to the original. Two thumbs up!
I need to apply the update to my BIOS on computer, as it currently stutters the game a bit and won't let me crank up the gfx like it should. But the BOIS patch file says it's for 32-bit Windows (and of course I'm running 64-bit). I don't have the time (won't for a while?) to mess around with making a bootable drive to apply it the old-school method. Sigh.

Fall weather has hit DC for a couple of weeks now and I love it. I love Fall. You know that. ;-)