April was here on vacation this week, and (inspired by bloodyp), we decided to carve some pumpkins. I’ve never really done it before, but the hardest part ended up being deciding what to do. We ended up going with these:

The Red Ring of Death pumpkin has been getting a lot of attention. It was linked on DVICE, and then picked up by Gizmodo. It’s got a blinking red light inside. I want to fix it to make the middle part of it green, like it’s supposed to be, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to do it. I think the funniest part of this whole thing is that a few people on Giz think they’re not real, that they’re photoshopped images. The others are an emoticon (“Bob!”), the Obama logo, and yes, the Ubuntu logo.

I also got an email from a reporter at a news service who wanted to write an article about them. I wonder if anything will ever happen with that.

I don’t think they’ll last quite until Halloween. I will have to make more. I have big plans in store for that, but I’m not sure I can pull it off. Stay tuned…*

*this is not a guarantee that I will ever write any more about this

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Last weekend, I went up to Chumash both Friday and Sunday night. Did pretty well, though Sunday night I was up a lot more than I finished with. I went back again Friday, and would have Saturday if I wasn’t at a wedding… I think I’m hooked again. My most recent trip I actually felt like I was starting to play pretty well, again, too. Only got my money in bad once, and that was with set under set. He turned the case king, so the last 7 on the river woulda given us a jackpot. Sadly, it didn’t happen. Later in the night, we were again a one-outer away from a jackpot (though I wasn’t in the hand). Someone had KJs, flopped AT3 of clubs. All in against AT. An ace on the turn. No queen of clubs on the river. Shame. I will very likely head up there again this weekend. I’m actually enjoying it again, and not getting bored so quickly.

The Mets lost two of three to the Phillies, but by winning the third game and not getting swept, managed to hold on to a 2 game lead in the division. The next three weeks are gonna be stressful. Wagner is now out for the season, too. Hopefully, the Mets bullpen can continue their solid stretch the last couple of weeks. Evan went to his first Mets game yesterday, the day game of the doubleheader. Brad’s comment on the game: Evan lasted longer than Pedro! There are pictures if you follow that link…

Rock Band 2 comes out on Sunday. I’ll probably be getting the game right away, and then dealing with new instruments (if I want them) later. The old ones are decent enough, anyway. I’ll wait to see what happens with accessories (cymbals) on the drum kit first, I guess. Gears of War 2 comes out next month. I’m looking forward to that one. I haven’t played much other than Rock Band or a Guitar Hero game in a while. Amazon has a GoW2 Lancer that I might have a hard time not buying. I have absolutely zero use for it, but… It’s a Gears lancer! A gun, with a chainsaw. Seriously. How can I not get it?

I guess that’s it. I’ll leave you with… McCain getting BarackRoll’d:

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Well, I guess it’s not here yet. At least it’s been announced.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_songs_in_Rock_Band#Future_downloads

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At around 10:00pm Jonathan took the stage. A bunch of us crowded up front, because we frankly have a bit of a man crush on him, and watched him run through his setlist. Right towards the end he announced he had only one left…

“I’d like to invite a couple of my friends up here to help me with my last song.”

That is when we jumped on-stage and pulled out our Rock Band equipment piece by piece. Dan Teasdale (one of our senior designers) started picking a three person band with Jonathan and Alex Rigopulos (co-founder of Harmonix and head honcho). When they got to the song list they scrolled through an almost infinite amount of DLC until eventually they stopped on one-

“Still Alive” by GLaDOS

http://www.rockband.com/rockers_blog_entry/hmxsean/216671

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How did I miss this last week?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_songs_in_Rock_Band#Downloadable_songs

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I want one of these…

Unfortunately, the chances of it ever being made are pretty much as close to zero as you can get.

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My foot pedal from the Rock Band drum kit broke in less than a month. EA has a fairly good system setup to get a replacement, but the pedal is just cheap plastic and I’m sure will break again. The first one broke long before I even got to any songs that used the pedal a whole lot. I ordered a pedal from WoodRock Pedals to hopefully make sure it doesn’t break again.

My broken pedal:

Ordering on the website was nice and easy, assuming you have Paypal all set up. It shipped fast, during the holidays, and arrived over a week before my replacement pedal from EA. I went with the basic model, instead of the painted one, because I didn’t need to spend an extra $3, and actually like the way the basic one looks.

Installing the new pedal wasn’t too hard, following their instructions, but there are a few things to mention about it.

First, taking the original apart: Getting the glued-in rubber bumpers out of my original pedal was much more difficult than I was expecting. It took a lot of prying it with a screwdriver, and pulling really hard with pliers. They didn’t end up in great shape, but still good enough to work on the wooden pedal. Also, the magnet on my pedal was glued in; I had to push it out by pushing a screwdriver through the top of the plastic pedal.

Second, putting it back together: The hole for the magnet is a little big. The plastic piece that gets screwed on keeps it in place, but it banged against it from time to time. I will probably eventually glue it in place, but for now I’ve put a small piece of tape over the hole. The screws (from the original pedal) to reattach the retainer to the pedal wouldn’t work for me at all. The holes in the wood were way too small, and they’re not wood screws. I had some appropriately sized wood screws lying around at home, and used those instead. My suggestion would be to do that, and I feel like the WoodRock Pedal should have come with them. UPDATE: I got an email from Chris at Woodrock letting me know that screws are now being included with the pedals they’re sending out. Nice!

So it wasn’t too bad to take the original apart, and put the new one back together. The real test is playing it, and it seems to be holding up very well. It’s also much easier to use, at least for me. It feels much more solid, instead of just some cheap plastic. Overall, I’m very pleased with the purchase and would make it again.

Now, a video, because I felt like using my new toys (camera) and starting to figure out how to do some simple video editing in Linux. 🙂

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