Oddball Update

We’re back from Orlando, and I’m back to work. It was a great few days off, everything went swimmingly (with a minor exception or two) and I’m feeling envigorated and ready to tackle some new tasks at work. Many thanks to my parents for sparing some extra Vacation Club points to let us stay at the resort this week.

Of all the things we’d planned to do in Disney World, the only thing we didn’t get to do was eat dinner at Epcot Center’s Canadian restaurant. For whatever reason, almost all the restaurants at Epcot were completely booked for the entire time we were there. I figure it was because of the upcoming Easter holiday, spring break and all that — but strangely, the park itself didn’t seem terribly busy. Oh well, we’ll get there next time.

Speaking of next time, we’ve already got the park entry paid for, whenever that occurs — as Florida residents, we get a killer deal on a 3-day ticket, and we only used two of the three days. So I bought the “No Expiration” option, so we can come back anytime and get in one day for free.

So, now that we’re home, in order to make up for the days I took off, I’m working all this weekend. Truth be told, I like working on the weekend. Because there’s usually no one else working — and if they are, they don’t bother me — I can easily get deep into some project and push forward on it without fear of outside distraction. I didn’t have much catching up to do after we got back from Orlando, so I’m spending this weekend designing some new icons for our company’s icon library product. It’s fun stuff.

The next few months are likely to be a whirlwind of travel and activity for us. In addition to visiting my company’s headquarters in the midwest, Apple and I have also booked our tickets for our next trip to Thailand. We found a great deal on airfare, and were even able to use some frequent flier miles to pay for a night’s stay in Bangkok during the trip to Apple’s hometown.

Since medical care is so affordable in Thailand, we’re going to take this opportunity to get ourselves “checked out” to make sure there aren’t any physiological obstacles standing in the way of our having a baby. Since that’s likely to be a somewhat ongoing process, we might stay in Thailand a little longer than we are initially planning. Since we get to stay at Apple’s parents’ new home, and I’ll have everything I need to work, we can pretty much schedule our return trip as we please.

By the way, I wanted to mention just how useful my iPhone proved itself to be during our Orlando trip, particularly the unlimited mobile web access. On the way, we ran into some traffic, and I was able to access the FHP traffic page and find out what was going on, where the incident was, and how long we’d have to wait before things picked up again. At Disney World, browsing the web became a useful standby while waiting in long lines or for shows to start. And it was useful enough to ensure I didn’t even need to bring my computer with me — just my iPhone and a book was all I needed. Traveling light is awesome. (Wish I could do all my work on my iPhone, too…I’m going to have to lug a bunch of computer equipment back to Thailand pretty soon!)

Tomorrow I’ll be continuing my icon design work, hopefully finishing it up. Apple’s going back to work tomorrow evening, so I’ll probably finish working around dinner time and then try to clear out some of the backlog of stuff on my TiVo by watching it. The Matrix in HD is recording right now, plus there’s Apollo 13, some Deep Space Nine, Dexter and other stuff I forgot about already. I’ll probably also get back to gaming if I’m in the mood.

Speaking of gaming, I picked up Condemned 2: Bloodshot for the Xbox 360, and am happy to say it’s everything I hoped it would be. An absolutely riveting sequel to the first game, and another entry in Monolith’s long list of truly memorable gaming experiences (to add to the NOLF series, F.E.A.R. and their other hits). I’m not going to turn this post into an in-depth review of Bloodshot, but suffice it to say, it’s spine-tingling, horrifying and even more fun than the original. I haven’t finished it yet, but I figure I’m about 2/3rds of the way through. I even stayed up late one night last week and played it until 3 a.m. Now that kind of gaming atmosphere creates instant memories you’ll never forget.

On the weekends of late, my friend Reaper and I have been playing Gears of War cooperatively over Xbox Live. Having finished the game once on Hardcore difficulty, we started a new game on Insane — the highest difficulty possible. With two players working together, it’s actually not too bad. I found the level of challenge was pretty much perfect. Prior to this, I hadn’t played Gears in almost a year and a half, and I was reminded of what a great game it is.

Additionally, Reaper and I were both reminded of what a great soundtrack Gears of War has, so after our last session, I went in search of a copy. Turns out that iTunes has the whole album on sale for $10. I’ve been listening to it pretty much nonstop for the last couple of days — totally awesome stuff.

Looks like I’ll also have some work ahead of me here on the Oddball Update pretty soon. A major new milestone release of Wordpress (the blog system I use here) is due soon, and it looks like it packs some pretty major changes. Hopefully it won’t break my theme or my plugins. That’d be trouble.

Oh — and before I forget: Happy Easter to you Oddball readers out there!

Tagged as iPhone, Life, Work, Xbox + Categorized as Life