So yeah, we’re from Wisconsin. Laura’s from Green Bay. Most of her family still lives there. We joke that Laura and both of her sisters married into packer season tickets, and its even funnier that its true. We subscribe to DirecTV just to watch Packer games. I wear Packers or Brewers or Badgers stuff almost every day in one way or another (hats mostly!) We have a freakin shrine to Brett Favre in our kitchen. I’m not shxting you!

I came across these two videos at the bottom of a story at kirotv.com, a local tv channel’s news website.

If we could combine these two stories into one, which problem would be solved?

Cougar Prowling Streets Of Olympia

The hunt is on for a cougar seen prowling the city streets of Olympia. More Details

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Park Officials Try New Approach To Stop Graffiti

A graffiti spree over the holiday weekend is prompting the Seattle Parks Department to try a new approach to stop the vandals. More Details

John Gruber at Daring Fireball:

Back when i wrote the post about building a pantry, i said that i thought i had used every tool i owned for that project…well… for this project, i used every major tool i own except one: my miter saw. I would have used the miter saw if it had a sharper/newer blade. And if i had a better place to use it than on the floor. And if I had a better one. For the closet doors project, I even bought some new tools that i didn’t have before!

Before:

After:

For more details and more pictures, follow the jump!

For Valentine’s day (weekend), Laura and I had dinner at The Herbfarm restaurant. It definitely gets into the “Top 3” of meals I’ve ever eaten, but does not get the top spots. It was the most elegant, well prepared, fanciest, and most gourmet meal we’ve ever had, though.

For reference, #1 is Steak for lunch in a tiny little family restaurant in Porvoo, Finland, #2 was J P’s in Cannon Beach, OR, the dinner the night before we got engaged. Interestingly, the herbfarm is #1 of the “non-steak” dinners.

I think most of Laura’s 20% came from actually knowing the answer to the Firefly question: she remembered going to the movie! Attagirl!

So i bought some fancy electronic ear protection from cabela’s to use at the range. I had searched some places and this “Impact” model fit my real requirements: has to muffle sounds, have to fit into the range bag. They also met my optional requirements: electronic ones that boost normal range sounds, so you can still hear people talking while you’re wearing them.

Howard Leight Impactâ„¢ Sport Earmuff @ Cabela’s

An open letter to my computer controlled squad-mates in Call of Duty 4.

So in the last 3 days we’ve had 6" of snow, rain, then hail, then snow-hail (“snail”) and then it even thundered and lightninged while snailing! hence, my newly coined weather-phenomenon “thundersnail”:

Put some more CF stuff on this week. One ebay, one MY.IS marketplace item.

License plate garnish from AAC (via a MY.IS member)

Before

After

And some mirror covers:

The CF + GGP color is perfect, at least to me. If you aren’t looking for the CF, you don’t even notice it!

For the rest of the pics, go to the carbon fiber madness # photoset at flickr.

For the first time in a long time (portal is a close second: portal better ending, mass effect better story), this game actually made me want to to watch cut scenes. It felt kindof like a movie, kindof like a “choose your own adventure”. Being able to choose the direction things were going was cool, while the game was “on rails”, at least there were some switches along the way to push the story in a direction. The voice acting was great, and included some big names, which was really cool. I saw probably 100 people in the “other voices” section alone. The little interactions between the crew when out moving around, or overhearing conversations as you walk through a bar was very immersive. The main story line was really good, with a few twists now and then to keep it interesting. A couple of the little details in the story really made it feel plausible. All of the main characters had backstories and somewhat interesting conversations. It would have been nice if the side missions that you do would affect the story more. I spent time doing some of them because i hoped they might.

My mini-2 year review of my Marvel Precision .22LR 1911 conversion. This is a continuation of my adventures with it, continued from the original post, and my 1 year followup!

I’ve been keeping religious track of range time in a Numbers spreadsheet for about 9 months now, so I can give exact numbers and ammo used and everything. in the last 9 months i’ve fired:

Follow the jump for the rest of the details and some pics.

I’d heard of TripIt from people at work, but hadn’t used it. We’re going to AZ for Spring Training, and i needed to be able to print out all the itineraries and confirmation numbers and all that, but can’t from work because gmail is blocked. So i was going to just forward all the emails to work, but instead decided to forward them to plans@TripIt.com instead and see how well it worked.

Even more fitting the week when Gary Gygax died. So sad! Although technically, this would be an AD&D character, as the original D&D didn’t have “classes”, it just had races, didn’t it? Anyway, here are my results:

You are a: Lawful Neutral Human Wizard (4th Level)

Ability Scores:
Strength-12
Dexterity-15
Constitution-12
Intelligence-16
Wisdom-13
Charisma-12

Alignment:
Lawful Neutral A lawful neutral character acts as law, tradition, or a personal code directs him. Order and organization are paramount to him. He may believe in personal order and live by a code or standard, or he may believe in order for all and favor a strong, organized government. Lawful neutral is the best alignment you can be because it means you are reliable and honorable without being a zealot. However, lawful neutral can be a dangerous alignment because it seeks to eliminate all freedom, choice, and diversity in society.

Race:
Humans are the most adaptable of the common races. Short generations and a penchant for migration and conquest have made them physically diverse as well. Humans are often unorthodox in their dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, and the like.

Class:
Wizards are arcane spellcasters who depend on intensive study to create their magic. To wizards, magic is not a talent but a difficult, rewarding art. When they are prepared for battle, wizards can use their spells to devastating effect. When caught by surprise, they are vulnerable. The wizard’s strength is her spells, everything else is secondary. She learns new spells as she experiments and grows in experience, and she can also learn them from other wizards. In addition, over time a wizard learns to manipulate her spells so they go farther, work better, or are improved in some other way. A wizard can call a familiar- a small, magical, animal companion that serves her. With a high Intelligence, wizards are capable of casting very high levels of spells.

Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus (e-mail)

Brett Favre retires. A sad day in the NFL. The best reflection of my feelings is from Making Peace With Favre’s Final Days, from Jeff Bercovici@Deadspin:

This should be a sad face, not a happy face, you TiVo jerkface.

And you thought it took a long time for a TiVo to restart on a normal day.

We’re watching live TV through the 360 via media center. Thanks a lot, TiVo.

If not the overlord, maybe he is batman?

Ultrasound

Batman/boy?

As gizmodo says:

Step one: Strap Mattel’s Wayne Tech Mega Cape on him from the day he can walk. The wings spring out with a single touch, instantly readying him to fly down a staircase and into the ER. $40, June. Health insurance sold separately.

Ultrasound	Overlord

I’m not the only one that sees it, am I? And this is NOT photoshopped in anyway, the image is just resized and mirrored to match the box art. If you go to the flickr page you can see the original!

Ultrasounds are awesome, i have to say that much. I cannot believe how detailed information you can get by firing sound waves through someone!

There’s a whole bunch more ultrasound and pre-baby pics up in this flickr group, and the ultrasound video is up here on youtube.

So my brother got me Call of Duty 4 for Xbox360 for xmas. he also got me hooked on CoD4 during xmas. While home in WI, i downloaded my xbox live profile to his xbox so i could get my own ranks and stuff on live.

Now i’m home, and xbox live is all messed up, so i cannot recover my profile back to my own xbox. So i can’t use any of my saves on any games, i can’t play multiplayer anything, i cannot really do anything without starting over from scratch in any game, knowing that once i do get my profile back, i’d lose whatever progress i get offline. I understand that a lot of people might have gotten xboxen for christmas, but they should have had much worse during the halo3 launch.

I review the year’s best (imo!) TV shows, and Games! Follow the jump for the whole thing. Its a little long!