Majcher.com

We're getting closer to homeownership. It's probably too late now for all but the most evil and resourceful of my many adversaries to thwart our plans, so I suppose it's safe to reveal the full glory of our new house. Of course, it's not our house yet, but it will be. Oh yes, it will be mine. Er, ours. Or something.

Anyway, on Saturday afternoon, we did an official walk-through of the place with Sasha. She helped us give the place a more thorough look-over, and pointed out a few things that we missed. A few cracks here and there, a small leak or two, a stuck window here and there, but nothing major, and nothing that changed our mind about the place. There will be many trips to Home Depot in the first year or two, of course, but that's all part of the fun, right? So, after satisfying ourselves that this was what we wanted, Bernie and I headed over to a greek deli/cafe down the street to fill out and sign the contract. Sasha made sure all the paperwork was in order, and submitted it to the seller's agent. Woo! And the game is afoot! Apparently, the husband half of the family that currently occupies the house is out of town until Monday, but we'll be hearing back from them directly.

So, with the real estate shenanigans taken care of for the day, and with no other pressing business to attend to, I came home and plunked myself in front of Mark of Kri, which I had on loan from Dave. Ten hours later, I was finishing up my second run through the game, completing all the challenges and unlocking all the secret stuff. Quick game - only six levels, but it's very well put together, and plays pretty darn fun. The animation and character design is excellent, done by the studio of Don Bluth, of Dragon's Lair fame. Plus, lots of decapitation, dismemberment, stabbing, thwacking, neck breaking and torso splitting action. Sure, there's no hookers to beat up, but it's still pretty brutish, nasty, and short. Just like I like 'em.

So, finally got to bed around 7 or 8 in the morning, and woke up around 4pm on Sunday afternoon. Returned a call from dad, talked about the house and the folks a bit. Found out that my sister broke up with her girlfriend, which sucks all around - plus, we liked her pretty well, but, you know, we didn't have to live with her, so. Well, maybe Kate will be able to get herself down here a bit easier now - I'm pretty sure that Kat was having none of the whole move to Texas plan. I think there's some sort of plan to go back to school somewhere, too, but who can tell? Crazy chicks.

Bernie and I were supposed to take my aunt Dineen and uncle Larry out to dinner at this kind of nice Indian restaurant tonight. ("Contemporary Indian Cuisine" == "overpriced, kind of snooty, and not really as good as the cheap place in the strip mall".) They took us to this great interior Mexican place just after christmas, so we wanted to return the favor; I also thought it might also be a good time to put out some feelers, and see if they knew anyone who could use someone with my kind of mad skillz, you know, for work and stuff. (Yep, it's getting to be that time again.) Unfortunately, Dineen came down with a sinus infection or something, so we're postponing until Friday evening. Oh, rearranging my busy, busy social calendar is so trying. *cough* So, movies tonight! Woohoo!

(Also, I've been having trouble getting to sleep at a human hour, and my morning gym attendance has been slipping badly. I tried the melatonin again, and although it put me right to sleep, now I wake up with a headache, and I feel all groggy and disoriented for the first half of the day. So, if there are any spelling errors here, I blame the drugs. Or jay. The confusion and lack of coordination is a condition that we refer to, for various reasons, as "huff fingers".)

In other news, some millionaires from out of town apparently lost some ball game to some other bunch of millionaires, and now Oakland is in flames. Normally, I'm all for burning stuff and beating up cops, but this time, I'm pretty much of the opinion that tear gas and rubber bullets are too good for these degenerates. All's I know is that if I was a property owner in the affected area, there's be a bunch of bodies on my front lawn wearing silver, black, and exit wounds.

For some reason, I find myself strangely enthralled with sumo wrestling. Maybe one of these day's I'll make it over there for a tournament.

Marc's quick trailer-based capsule movie reviews: Anything based on a comic book is going to suck. Anything with kung fu in it is going to rule.

And finally, apparently, there's been some kind of nasty "Slammer" worm going around, screwing up networks all over the place. I haven't really felt much of it, but a lot of people I know have been severely impacted. I heard rumors that it knocked most of Bank of America's ATMs offline for a day. And North Korea. For those of you keeping score at home, this was apparently yet another stupid bug in yet another crappy piece of Microsoft software. So, what I'm wondering is, why are they not getting the living shit sued out of them? I mean, if a company produced, say, hot water heaters that could be caused to overheat and explode or something, causing untold damage to homes and businesses around the world, don't you think there would be some sort of class action suit against them or something? How is software - Microsoft software, in particular - any different? (Take note that I am, of course, a highly trained legal expert, so my opinion should be taken with only the highest of regard.)

Enough ranting. Time to shut it.