July 31, 2004

Some weekend highlights

Posted by Scott at 09:32 PM

Weekend - Rather than go on at length, I wanted to just jot down some highlights of the weekend so far.

  • Last night after dinner we took all the kids to Santos Dumont for some ice cream. Afterwards they played on a toy airplane S-D has outside.
  • This morning we took the kids to Target to do the annual back-to-school shopping. The boys were amazingly patient considering it's just shopping.
  • While there we also picked up two GameBoy games I'd had my eye on: Mario Golf: Advance Tour and Mario vs Donkey Kong. Who-hoo!
  • We opted not to cut the lawn this afternoon because it was rather hot and humid in the early afternoon. Instead we took the kids to the Milford pool at Keyes field. It was my first time there this summer. How lame is that! The pool is only open for another month!
  • For dinner we ordered take out from Besta One: pizza, meatball sub, and chicken strips.
  • Claire and I watched The Complete Mr. Bean, volume 3 this weekend. The whole family has also been watching a few VeggieTales this past week. The more we watch them, the more they grow on us.

All in all, nothing too exciting.

Birthday - Happy birthday to my goddaughter, Suzy. We look forward to seeing you and the rest of the gang next weekend! Have a safe drive. Chris, if you come, bring your GameBoy and cartridges.

Tungsten - I've been eyeing the Palm Tungsten C for some time because of its integrated keyboard and wireless networking. What amazed me was that there was no means to synchronize the Palm using that wireless connection, at least for the Macs we have (perhaps a Windows solution exists). But now there is a wireless synchronization solution provided by Missing Sync.

I still think I'll hold off on the Tungsten C, but only because I think a newer model is just around the corner. The C is almost a year and a half old. Palm is either going to come out with some new products in the lineup, or shrivel up and die. On the other hand for the same money, one could get an iPod, which has a few limited PDA like features, plus gigabytes of space.

Comments

While cleaning out my Dad's house Friday Alyssa found my original Atari. Along with it were the games Asteroids, Pac Man, Combat and Donkey Kong. The kids are on my case to get the adapter and hook it up and see if it still works.
Tom

Posted by: Tom at August 1, 2004 06:07 PM

Hi Tom,

You had an Atari! I'm jealous! The only exposure we had to Atari was from our cousins. It was also our first exposure to a VCR. If my memory serves right, we were probably among the last in River Grove to get cable.

I'm sure somewhere in there I could work up a reference to walking miles to school in a snowstorm uphill both ways without shoes. ;-)

In retrospect, it was probably healthy for me not to have more reasons to sit in front of a television screen. With the humid weather we had this past weekend, I feel like I've seen too much TV as it is.

I played some of "Mario vs DK" with Abby today. She catches on fast. It's a pretty fun little game. The animation of GameBoy stuff is getting surprisingly better than it was on the first few games we purchased. Perhaps they are giving their developers more tools to extract that last bit of performance from that portable little gaming platform. Or perhaps developers are just putting more memory in those cartridges to hold more scenes and sound clips.

Don't forget to have TJ bring his piano music with him next weekend. I'd love for our kids to see him play a bit. They have little point of reference of someone their age being any good on an instrument. I don't want them to get the feeling that you have to be my age before you can play anything decent on the piano. (and I'm not even all that decent...)

Posted by: Scott at August 1, 2004 09:19 PM

Scott, I see you bought the new Mario Golf for GBA. I was going to buy it for the trip. Do you know off any link options the game has to make it more fun for us to all play together. Also, do you have the game boy adapter for Game Cube so we can play on a regular sized screen. If not, I have one I can bring.

Posted by: Chris at August 4, 2004 09:30 AM

I believe it does have options for the link cable, and yes, we have one. We also have the Game Cube Gameboy player. I often set it up for Abby so that she can play "on the big screen". That way, if she gets stuck it gets easier to point out what she should do without having to say "here, give it to me and I'll show you".

Posted by: Scott at August 4, 2004 09:35 AM

Scott- thanks for the happy b-day!
I can't wait to leave tomorrow- I believe I am living in pure hell right now, and thus, cannot wait to get the hec out of here- See you very soon!

Posted by: Suzy at August 4, 2004 01:46 PM