judyonthenet

I’ve been meaning to start something like this to keep tracking my gaming spending.

Video games and related goods purchased:
1600 Xbox Marketplace points card – $17.99 from Amazon
1600 Xbox Marketplace points card & $20 PSN card – $32 from forum trader
Battery pack for pink 360 controller – $5.99 from Amazon
13 month Xbox Live Subscription card – $29.99 + tax from buy.com
Rome: Total War Gold Edition (PC) – $6.50 from forum trader
The Simpsons Game (360) – $9.99 + tax from NewEgg
Lumines II (PSP) – $9.99 + tax from NewEgg
Guild Wars Trilogy + Eye of the North Expansion (PC) – $39.98 from Amazon
Total cost: $156.05

I would take a picture of my stash, but since I did most of my orders at the end of the month, I don’t have most of them. All I physically have are two cards and battery pack, and two cards were codes given to me online. Expect increased spending towards PC games the next couple months because of the new computer. I still need to get a headset… but I’m trying to find a decent one that’s cheap. And I don’t know how I’m going to find the latest PC games for less than retail. I think an up-to-date computer isn’t the most optimal gift for a bargain gamer.

Games completed:
Rock Band 2 (360)
Fallout 3 (360)
World of Goo (PC)

Started a bunch of PC games at the end of the month. Most of the first half of the month, I still wasted time on Fallout, despite beating it. I was pretty sure I was going to buy the new downloadable content for Fallout 3, but I held off despite buying points for it. Good for me.

Our honeymoon itinerary had us leaving for Fiji late Sunday evening, and the only flight to Fiji from the continental US is through Los Angeles. With a free Saturday and Sunday, we decided to fly in to LA and stay with Sandra for the weekend. Sandra and Owen were very nice in accommodating us: letting us stay over, taking us shopping, and taking us out to eat. I didn’t want to get all vacationed out before the honeymoon, so we kept it chill in LA.

Sean the Sheep hanging out in SJC

Hanging out at Sandra’s place after arriving in LA

I didn’t feel I had enough resort apparel, so Sandra and Owen took us to some shopping centers to find more beach clothes. Unfortunately, due to it being November, cute beach clothing was NOWHERE to be found, even in LA (or at least the shopping centers we went to). We did snag some last minute supplies at the local Target and Rite-Aid (or Walgreens? can’t remember), and I found a cute pair of Roxy shorts at a sports shop. In the meantime, Sandra took us to some yummy places to eat.

Sandra takes us to places

First, we had some incredibly, awesomely buttery pancakes (along with other food) at Du-par’s in the Farmer’s Market at… The Grove? It’s some shopping center that for some reason has terrible parking in this huge-ass parking structure, yet not that many stores. The Pacific Sunwear store there had ZERO “sunwear”, but plenty of ski wear :P I bought a New Zealand guidebook from the Barnes & Noble for airplane reading. Farmer’s Market had a lot of yummy looking stuff. Sandra also got me a slice of blueberry pie from Dupar’s pie shop, which was basically a delicious block of sweetened blueberries.

Those pancakes? Golden. Literally. It
even comes with a cup of melted butter.

Du-par’s magnificent pie display

Something was going down by The Grove.
There was even a helicopter!

For dinner, Sandra took us to meet up with Jack at some random Korean BBQ place that I can’t remember the name of. I’m used to a different kind of Korean BBQ, but this was pretty good, too. Very fatty and meaty. The nice thing about LA is that there are SO many dining options past 10PM at night. I wish we had as many choices up here.

Blurry pic of Sandra and Jack

The grill

An urban Old Faithful via broken fire hydrant, seen on the way back from K-town.
It created a mini-river along the sidewalk for several blocks. Man, LA is so exciting!

The next day, Sandra and Owen took us to Little Tokyo, where we had Daikokuya ramen for lunch. Their broth is very heavy and meaty, which is great. I think their fried rice is fried in leftover meat fat or something, because their fried rice is exceptionally delicious.

Ashes on the car in the morning from the wildfires.

Signs near Little Tokyo

Sandra and Owen at Daikokuya. Aren’t they cute? Did you
know they got engaged about a week after this pic??

Kelvin and his ramen

We did some more last minute shopping and made it to the airport later in the evening for our 10PM flight. For some reason, I can not at all remember what we had for dinner before leaving. Our flight from LAX to NAN (Nadi, Fiji) was 10 hours of smooth flying; I think there were only two short spurts of turbulence, which is really good when flying over the Pacific for that long. Food was decent for airplane food, and we even got free toothbrushes and toothpaste. The only lame thing about the flight is that we were seated next to no window.

LAX under construction. Looking at the non-under-construction parts
of LAX, the airport is in desperate need of the renovation. (SO old.)

Kelvin’s “window” seat

Our flight left LAX around 10PM November 16th, but we arrived in Fiji at 5AM on the 18th because we crossed the international date line. Monday the 17th was pretty much a nonexistent day for us, but it’s alright… I didn’t miss it :P

On to the REAL honeymoon…

New thing I learned today: “Kotteri” is Japanese is for “thick” or “rich”.

Daikokuya has a special “kotteri” ramen that’s richer and made from pork back fat. I tried to order that day, but they had already run out of the special fat juice or something. That’s alright, cuz their regular ramen is already pretty food coma-inducing!

Thanks to whoever gave me that :P For my 27th, I went work all snotty and gross (no doubt spreading my germs everywhere), then I had dinner and cake with my mom and my husband, and then I spent the rest of night partying having a lot of drinks… of Sunny D… sitting in front of my new computer with the hardcore specs… surfing internet…

Dinner at Tofu House

I did manage some pre-cold birthday celebration tho. This past weekend, Kimi took Kelvin and me to House of Prime Rib in SF for birthday meat along with her boyfriend Clay, who is also a January baby. The next morning we had Sunday brunch with Rodney at Lori’s Diner (originally planned to go to Canteen but they were randomly closed) before driving back home.

Kelvin’s plate of prime rib

Group pic on a soon-to-be-extinct Polaroid

New thing I learned today: Yorkshire pudding isn’t a dessert, but a bread/pancake-like appetizer served with meat. Back in olden days, it was baked underneath roasting meat to catch all the dripping juices. These days it’s usually cooked to the side, but still used as a meat juice sponge.

One of our guests gave us a Magic Bullet as a wedding gift. I never heard of this thing before, but apparently it’s one of those products that have infomercials late at night. If you haven’t seen the infomercial before, you can check it out (along with a detailed review of the infomercial that’s totally accurate) at Ridiculous Infomercial Reviews. To be frank, if I had seen these commercials before we had gotten this, I might have been slightly appalled upon its receipt.

If you ignore the infomercial, which advertises the Magic Bullet as some sort of life-changing party machine that can make everything in existence in under 10 seconds, it works fine for what it is. And what it is is a small blender that makes single servings. It’s convenient for making things for one person, like smoothies. Instead of a giant glass pitcher, there’s a small plastic blender cup that you can immediately drink out of. All you clean are a small set of blades and the cup you make your concoction in. Muffins and spaghetti aren’t going to magically pop out of it in 10 seconds, which is just the blending time; you still have to clean, prep, and cook all your ingredients. It’s just as loud as any other blender, so you’re probably not going to be chatting to your hungover buddies over the blending like in the commercials. It’s great for making a milkshake as often as you want, which is unfortunate since this is the main reason Kelvin wanted a blender. We’ve been consuming milkshakes much too often as a result :(

Me enjoying a mint chip milkshake in a “party mug”

I feel like the product would do better commercially without its corniness and white-trashiness. I mean, the thing is neither a bullet nor magical. It’s a freaking mini-blender, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Are people really that stupid that they fall for these commercials? Do you really want to eat an omelet with all the fixin’s blended in? Mmm mmm! Powderized Ham & cheese!

A great example of how delusional the makers of Magic Bullet are is in the Magic Bullet 10-Second Recipes book that comes with the blender. There’s an entire section on baby food, which makes sense since babies mainly consume mushy, blended stuff. They have 3 things under here: Carrot Baby Food (carrots, water, blend.), Chicken and Rice Baby Food (chicken, rice, water, blend.), and “Leftover Special”. The first two are fairly intuitive, but what is a “Leftover Special”?

Wow, ANY leftovers? How about leftover California Rolls with a clump of wasabi and ginger? Baby will love it! Spicy Szechuan pork drenched in chilis and chili oil? Baby will love it! Week-old steak fajitas from our last trip to Chevy’s that probably has stuff growing on it? Baby will love it! Hawaiian kimchi and Trader Joe’s tomato sauce? Shove it all in, baby will love it, yay! And how can they put the “fat-free” symbol next to this recipe? I’m pretty sure if I stuck a stick of butter into a Magic Bullet, the end result would not be fat free. But if you love your baby enough to make them a Leftover Special, fat content of your baby food is probably the least of your problems.

New thing I learned today: A person has a “food baby” when they eat so much they look pregnant.

I think Kelvin got tired of me saying I don’t have a decent enough computer to run anything, because he decided to give me a gaming rig for my birthday, which is coming up in a few days. He’d been teasing me about my super-secret present, because I’m insanely curious and need to know things. When Kelvin came home this evening, this giant black and yellow thing magically appeared on our dining room table.

I personally find it kind of scary looking (it looks more hardcore than how hardcore of a PC gamer I am, and I keep thinking it’s gonna transform into Bumblebee), but that’s just the case, and apparently the insides are supposed to be pretty current. It’s some combination of AMD stuff called “Dragon”? From quick Google searching, it seems to be some brand new (like, just came out last week) AMD product that’s supposed to help make up for some sort of tech lameness they’ve had the last year or so. (Kelvin also disclosed he is an AMD shareholder.) I’m very behind on computer technology so it’s all gibberish to me, but here are the specs from Kelvin for anyone who’s curious:

AMD Phenom II X4 940 45nm Deneb
3.0GHz Quad-Core Black Edition
4x 512KB L2 Cache
6MB L3 Cache
758M transistors
125W TDP

Biostar TForce TA790GX AM2+ Mainboard
AMD 790GX North Bridge
AMD SB750 South Bridge
ATI Radeon HD 3300 Integrated Graphics
Realtek ALC888 7.1 Audio
Realtek 8111C Gigabit Ethernet

G.Skill RAM
4GB (2x2GB)
DDR2 1066 Dual Channel SDRAM

HIS Hightech H487F512P Radeon HD 4870 512MB
256-bit GDDR5
PCI Express 2.0 x16
LED light up screwdriver/bubble level combo

Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3750330AS
750GB
7200 RPM
32MB Cache
SATA 3.0Gb/s

Raidmax Hybrid 2 RX-530SS Power supply
530W
Stupid Blue LED fan

Raidmax Tornado ATX-238WY ATX Mid Tower Case
ZOMG 10 Drivebays!

Kelvin didn’t realize the case had a large window on the side; he got it because it was the cheapest case with USB ports on the front. One of the fans also glows blue, and with large window and air holes on the back, I think the light coming from this machine might drive Kelvin insane when he goes to bed. We’ll see how he handles it. The case also didn’t handle the trip from NewEgg too well, since it got cracked on the way here. (Good thing it will be oriented in a manner where I’ll hardly ever see it… it’s oriented in a way where it hides the scary window.) He did know I wouldn’t be too happy if he spent a lot of money (I was already pissed when he said his present cost more than mine… more on that in a later post), so he assured me he got this for under $750. I’d say that’s pretty good for a guy who’s never been particularly frugal before and for a gaming machine that’s up to date with current technology.

Now you’ll have a current computer… for like 3 weeks!

I haven’t had a chance to stress it since I’ve been working all evening, but it runs really smooth just doing my regular web browsing and remote computing. I’ll probably try some Steam games this weekend; I never finished Portal because it wasn’t smooth on my other computer, which had a barely-better-than-integrated-graphics video card. I’m stoked I’m going to be ready for StarCraft 2 now (whenever that comes out)! Yay! Thank you super thoughtful husband!

My new computer running some test called 3DMark06

I also have to give a bunch of thanks to Geoff. Apparently, he did most of the work of putting it together, since Kelvin never put a PC together. The computer was also stored at his place most of the time, hidden away from me. Kelvin had named him as a co-conspirator a few days ago, so I almost went and harassed him for hints on what my present was, but lucky for him I remained civil. Anyways, THANKS GEOFF!

New thing I learned today: The AMD “Dragon” technology consists of the AMD Phenom II processor, ATI Radeon HD 4800 series graphics, and the AMD 7-series chipsets.