Wow – what a month

Well geez, you blink and it’s a month since I last posted. Unbelievable. I blame work, as usual. Being super busy during the day and sometimes at night causes me to reject the computer in the evening, hence a lack of blog posting or online participation of any sort, or even video games (gasp!).

Either way, it’s been real busy.

Since I last posted, I mentioned the boss-man was moving on, so now we all have more work to do. I have taken over administration of the server-side of our medical records system, and we’re planning a big upgrade to take place in May.

I just got our release environment ugpraded over the last couple of weeks and it’s been a big learning experience. Luckily I’d already been to some training and the boss-man was kind enough to point out some things before he left, so it’s really been fine. I’ve taken a liking to it because it’s fun to figure out something that was always something of an enigma, and then change it around and make it better.

In non-work related activities, I finally purchased a Wii! Yes, I believe it was Sunday January 6 when I snagged one. The prior Thursday, ash alerted me to the Walmart circular that advertised one effective Sunday. I called the store on Saturday to verify that the Wiis were indeed in stock (they were) and when the line starts forming outside. Apparently the information I was given was more applicable to the pre-Christmas shopping season as the clerk told me the line starts forming at about 3am.

Choking down that piece of information, I made plans to wake at 2:45am Sunday morning and head over to the Grandville Walmart. I did so, arriving shortly after 3, to find the parking lot absolutely deserted with only a few empty cars. Horrible.

After sitting there for half an hour with nothing to do but listen to my iPod and wish I had something to read, I decided to head over to the Grandville Meijer to see if I could snag a book or a magazine or something, and maybe get a Dew. I did so picking up the January issue of Wired magazine, a diet Dew, and two (2) [DLF-style] Slim-Jims. I went back over to Walmart and saw one car now with people sitting in it waiting for the store to open. This was about 4:15. There was also a dude driving a street-sweeper around cleaning up the parking lot, and then running a leaf-blower to get trash out of the cart corrals and other places.

About 5am or so, some other folks started showing up and some even had the terrible idea to get out of their cars and go stand by the door. Now the store opens at 7am you see, so if no one else is standing by the door, why start it? Just stay in your car! So I watched those 2 people stand there, and then around 5:45 some other people started showing up and since they saw people standing by the door, they figured they should stand up there too. So not wanting to get a crappy place in line, I had to bail out of my warm car and go stand in line with the 4 other people. As soon as I got out, the folks who got to Walmart while I was at Meijer got out too and came to stand in line.

So we stood in line until 7, the line steadily growing to about 35-40 people. Plenty of folks showed up between 6:30 and 7 and I privately hoped they wouldn’t get a Wii because clearly they didn’t deserve one like I did, because I put forth more effort and got there earlier!

A store manager came out to tell us they had a pretty good supply, “better than normal” but not all that many, but they would open promptly at 7 and would have them at the service desk, instead of all the way back in electronics. This pleased us because we were worried that folks at the end of the line would sprint past those of us at the front while on the way to electronics and beat us to it. But the dude said no running and they’d be at the service desk so it all worked out.

I ended up being 3rd or 4th in line to purchase one, they looked like they had at least 10 if not more Wiis stacked behind the counter. I only bought the system which comes with Wii sports, a nunchuck and a remote. I brought it home and got in bed around 7:30.

The rest of the day was a blur, but I think I slept an hour or so and then went to church, then went over to Ash’s house and set it up to try it out.

It’s awesome.

I’ve since brought it over there again on another sunday after having purchased another remote with best buy gift cards, and buying a couple games: Metroid Prime – Corruption and Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games (Beijing 2008).

It’s a lot of fun. Metroid Prime is a fantastic game using the remote and nunchuck together to navigate and shoot aliens. The Olympic games one is decent but the events are pretty hard to do well in. I need to spend some more time playing it.

I rented Tony Hawk from Movie Gallery but it majorly sucked so when they called me the next day to verify my phone number (I signed up when I rented it), I told them it sucked and they told me that 6 times a year I can bring it back and get a different free, part of a customer service program. So I did that and got the Simpsons game instead. That’s pretty funny but I don’t think it’s worth buying.

So I’m looking at gamestop and ebay for cheap wii/gamecube games and very happy with my investment. I even bought Mario Kart 64 through the Wii Shop channel which has tons of old games for consoles of the past for decent prices. Mario Kart was 5 bucks. They have games for Sega Genesis, Ninendo, Super Nintendo, N64, and some other random consoles that weren’t very popular. Plus they’re adding new games all the time, so that’s awesome.

Moving over to family life, ash had a brief scare when her doctor told her to go to the hospital because of the round ligament pain she was experiencing in her side, and while there, they noticed she was having regularly contractions, 4-5 per hour. They put her on an IV and they subsided in intensity and frequency, so it turns out she was a bit dehydrated. She has been drinking water like a champ now and doing pretty well. The baby is due March 12 I think, so another March birthday to add to the family. She has got the baby’s room (Jaden’s old room) all set up nice and neat and Jaden has been moved downstairs to what used to be my office. No stress on his part for the move, so that’s great.

Going back to electronics, I moved the TV antenna I bought over the summer for our HDTV up to the bedroom, putting it on a splitter with the TV up there, to send the signal back in to the wall outlet to the rest of the wall outlets, then splitting it out down at the Dish Network HD-DVR to its antenna input. So now we don’t have the antenna sitting on top of the lamp in the living room and it looks better! Some loss of signal though, but I still want to put something on the roof when the weather is warmer.

Enough for now, come back in a month and I’ll catch you up again!!

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