My friend Chris is letting me borrow his boxed set of Season One of Arrested Development. I must say, this is one of the funniest shows ever. The plot twists are very creative, the acting is great, and the pacing is really good. I find myself lauging out loud at a lot of the jokes and funny situations, which is rare for me. Jason Bateman does a great job at being the straight man, and the other actors are so off-the-wall and hilarious that I can only imagine there are hours and hours of bloopers and cut scenes of them breaking character and laughing at eachother. My favorite character so far is Jeffrey Tambor is great as the patriarch of the family. He has been around forever; I think I first saw him in Three’s Company. I am having a blast watching this series, although I stayed up watching til 2am the other night, and it killed me the next day.

At Zilker Gardens

At Zilker Gardens

At Zilker Gardens

I found that my iPod was too difficult to use because I couldn’t distinguish where the center button was without having to look at it. I added a soft Afroken sticker to it, and it works great. Plus it looks silly!

This past weekend I was working in the yard planting a small tree, a blackberry plant, and some jasmine. It was pretty hot and I was getting really thirsty. I looked down at the garden hose I was using to water the jasmine, and that water coming out looked so cold, clear and inviting that I had to partake. It was like I was eight years old again, sneaking a drink from the hose while playing in the front yard. The taste was not good, but not bad either. Just tasted the same as it did ~25 years ago, and it was just as satisfying as I remembered it to be.

So, we are keeping a landline at the house since our security system requires it, but that thing has been ringing off the hook like crazy! No one should be using that # except the security company. But they will only call if the alarm is tripped. I just signed up at the Do Not Call Registry, so hopefully the ringing will stop… BTW, I hate SBC.

A couple of us downloaded Silk Road Online for the PC and tried it out, and it is surprisingly good! It’s a typical RPG, but it is set in Asia (Silk Road, get it?) and the model sets are all Chinese. You can choose from about 25 different character models, and then in the game there are different combat skills and magic skills you can learn. Of course, you gain XP by killing monsters and collecting their loot. One of the best things about the game is that it is totally free!!! The ~500MB client is downloadable from their website, or fileplanet, and there is no subscription fee. I don’t know what their business model is, but I’m not gonna spend too much time worrying about it.

The graphics are very well done, the overall atmosphere is immersive and the animation is for the most part smooth. I chose to use the “Zombie” character model above. She’s pretty cool because she floats around instead of running. She reminds me of my favorite HK actress [url=%%dir[1″>%%20060302_joeywong.jpg>Joey Wong in “A Chinese Ghost Story”. The game does get a bit laggy at times, especially at the start point, which is where the game begins and where your character is resurrected after he dies. Naturally, there are tons of people at that location, and many player vendors have set up shop there. The sound effects are pretty repetitive, and the volume controls are buggy, so I turned off the bg music. Overall, I am pretty impressed with this game. Oh, did I mention that it is free? 🙂