Sleep

Ever since we stopped crunching  at work, I can't get back to a normal sleep schedule. Getting Skyrim done this year took a toll on my sleep (as you can imagine). When we wrapped, I thought I would go to bed early for a week to catch up on my sleep and help detox the stress from my body. I went to bed between 9 and 10 PM for an entire week.

Since then, I fall asleep at 10 PM every night now. I used to stay up until midnight.

I imagine my age has something to do with it. I'm getting close to 40. Having the boy wake up every morning between 5 and 6 doesn't help either.

My wife often comes to bed later and ends up putting my Kindle aside, taking my glasses, and turning my light off as I fall asleep reading.

Forget about any kind of gaming. I tried to play Uncharted 3, and I kept wondering why Nathan Drake insisted on running into walls. (It's not him, I just kept falling asleep).

I'll give it until after the holidays. Next year, I'll start weaning my body back to staying up late with the grownups.

Never going to give you up

I dress pretty much like my Xbox Live avatar every day - t shirt, jeans and slip on shoes. (I refuse to tie shoes anymore)

Big shout out to the sushi chef at the Potomac Harris Teeter, my go to for dinner on late work nights heading back to the office.

My wife can bake a damn good cookie. Even gluten free ones. (She is on a limited diet right now due to breastfeeding).

I miss football. This is one of my favorite weekends of the year.

In the next year, my house will probably be filled with tablets from Amazon and Apple, fighting over domination.

The Slate Political Gabfest is the only podcast I listen to regularly anymore. I bank Planet Money podcasts for long road trips.

MacBook Air is best computer I've ever had. SSD is wicked fast. Windows 7 (vmware) runs faster than on my work computer. Need to get my wife one of these; she is still using an old 6 year old Dell M700 laptop that is overdue to kick the bucket any day now.

Nice headline

Nazis and Clowns

Went out on a movie date a few weeks ago. I wanted to see Super 8 but it wasn't showing in any theaters anymore. Instead, we hit the latest Hollywood comic blockbuster of the month, Captain America. I haven't seen any of the other Marvel movies this year, though I really wanted to see X-Men: First Class.

I loved Captain America. Great, mindless fun and the Avengers teaser was interesting. I even thought there was some extra depth that typically isn't in blockbusters like this -- there was a particular line that, for some reason, has just stayed with me for all these weeks.

Stanley Tucci's german doctor character gives Steve Rogers a fatherly talk the night before the big day that he will become Captain America. BTW, how awesome is Tucci? He is brilliant and makes every movie better. Tucci says (and I'm paraphrasing), the first country the Nazi's invaded was their own. Great line.

Will this be what we say about the Tea Party in 50 years when they've turned the world into a dystopian oligarchy run by the descendants of Rupert Murdoch?

Scott Kurtz writes about that line, too, with a personal, interesting take.

Which reminds me of an old game developer joke:
What are the two things you can add to a game that instantly make it more fun?
Nazis and Clowns.

Though I think today, the answer would be: Nazis and Zombies.

New Grill

My old Kenmore $120 cheapy gas grill has been put out to pasture. The new hotness is a Char Broil Red. It features a large cast iron plate above the flames, to prevent flare ups and promote even cooking. It's fantastic. Broke it in with steaks from Harris Teeter. They turned out wonderfully, nice grill marks and a nice medium to medium rare inside.

Saw this awesome blog post about grilling burgers, especially this tip:

put a dimple in the middle of your patty. Just press your thumb about a quarter of the way into the top of your burgers and reshape as necessary. This will keep your burgers from ending up like little UFOs as they cook

Winner

It's an honor to be nominated but you want to win. The E3 game critics gave us the Best Console and Best RPG of show. The fact that we lost Game of Show to Bioshock Infinite, which looks fracking incredible, well, I can't really complain about that. Our last game, Fallout 3, was a Game of Show (and Best RPG) winner in 2008.

Good times.

Game of Thrones Companion App

This app is slick! Besides listing all the characters, places and having full maps, you can also adjust the level of spoiler. I've already pre ordered the next book, A Dance with Dragons. I started re-reading the books. With so many characters to keep track of, I've found this app to be invaluable. It's also good bathroom reading.