The Default State Is Broken

Note:  Sorry I didn't update this sooner.  Boring Personal Shit intervened. Thursday was our free day.  We didn't really have a plan for what to do, we weren't doing anything at Disney, and we weren't leaving until Friday morning.  So Jean and I went hunting for breakfast while Ryan snoozed.  Jean found a place on Yelp that was nearby and got reasonably good reviews, so we set off and found it relatively easily. I'll just say, if that's a 4-star breakfast place, then Southern California has really low standards for breakfast. We then went wandering, first to The Pleasure Chest, where apparently Ryan once worked.  While there, I made a complete and utter ass of myself to Sex Nerd Sandra , who is a podcaster and my hero and I felt awful about slobbering all over her (virtually; I managed to avoid bodily fluids in reality). From there, we went to In-N-Out again for lunch, and I once again ate more than I really should have, ordering off-menu and enjoy...

We woke up early on Wednesday, our second and final day at that park, and Jean and I were up and awake thanks to our normal weekday routine that we scooted out to let Ryan sleep a little later.  We went down to the hotel restaurant for breakfast. A note about hotels restaurants:  I have joked on occasion that my idea of roughing it was when you had to leave the hotel to get to the bar.  So it was nice to be able to get a real breakfast, instead of some crappy stack of bagels and stale doughnuts.  If only the food had been better... Jean had a mediocre eggs Benedict and I had something utterly forgettable and a fruit plate.  I had forgotten that California is where the fruit comes from, so it was a pleasant surprise, but not enough to make up for the rest of the meal.  As I said to Jean at the time, it was a breakfast, but it wasn't a $30 breakfast.  It reinforced my previous position that nowhere but Portland knows how to do br...

We arose on Tuesday morning quite early, as we needed to get across town from Hollywood to Anaheim. Note on geography in LA:  I have no mental map of anything that has to do with Southern California.  I only know that every time we got in a car, it took two hours to get where we were going.  That was as true of the 100-mile drive on Monday as it was for the 1 mile drive from the hotel to the nearest In N Out on Thursday.  So no idea what that was about. We had tea and coffee with Damon, waiting for Ryan and his friend Megan to arrive, which they did around 7:30.  From there, we said a teary goodbye to Damon and headed out to Disneyland! A note on Disneyland:  I'd never been before.  This was my first trip and I was not exactly expecting anything special.  However, everyone around me (including Jean, Ryan, and our friend Donna) was very excited, so I was ready to be happy but underwhelmed.  Boy, was I wrong. We reached the parking lo...

We got up Monday morning pretty late, and Jean's family was kind enough to supply us with breakfast, and then we headed back south again into LA to meet up and celebrate Jean's birthday with her friend Damon and our friend Ryan.  This involved driving through late-morning LA traffic, which resembles rush hour in PDX; rush-hour LA traffic closely resembles the parking lot of a Wal-Mart on Black Friday. A note on traffic:  I do not understand how people in LA stand sitting in their cars for so amazingly long.  It's terrible. Ryan was driving down from San Francisco, so we went to lunch at Berth 55 Seafood Deli in Long Beach.  Jean had seen good reviews, and we knew driving up to it (it's a real hole in the wall sort of place) that it was going to be delicious.  So we had fresh clam chowder in sourdough bowls and honestly, we should've split one rather than getting two of them.  It was amazingly good.  From there we drove down the Long Beach main dra...

Having had some PTO I needed to burn off, and having spoken to my girlfriend Jean about the time, and to my friend Ryan about what to do, it was decided that we'd take a week off, and go to Southern California, and visit Disneyland. A note about Disneyland:  I've never been to Disneyland.  I did spend a slight amount of time in the greater Los Angeles Metropolitan Area, but mostly locating it so as to go around. A note about these notes:  there are a lot of them.  You should just expect it at this point. So it was with moderate trepidation that we planned our week of travelling.  Jean and I have been dating for nearly a year, and have been living together for over six months, but we hadn't traveled together yet, and I am notoriously unpleasant to be around while traveling -- I'm cranky, anxious, nervous, and usually in a moderate amount of pain due to back and leg problems -- so it was going to be interesting for our relationship, at least. ...

I've examined the NDA for my beta test this weekend, so this post will avoid specifics and deal in only generalities. The short version is: I liked it, but not sure I want to buy it. The longer version is: Jean and I played up to 13 or so over the weekend, in a real binge run that took most of Saturday and part of Sunday. I'm sure that if I wasn't binging, I probably would've liked it more. Jean stuck to the force-user healy class (shocking!) while I went with the blaster-wielding DPS. First caveat: the roles in SWTOR are NOT as explicit as the roles in WoW, so I'm being a little cagy about it. There are some very clear Bioware influences, too, including the morality slider and lots and lots of social interactions that change the way the world sees and responds to you. It's quite nifty. Also, as Jean pointed out, the morality is much more clear. Unlike in WoW, where both sides are roughly morally equivalent, it's VERY clear who the bad guys are in SW...

A caveat: I am a gigantic fan of everyone who performed on Wednesday the 16th -- the Doubleclicks were the opener -- so this particular review will likely not be particularly even-handed. There is no hate in this post, only love. The Doubleclicks started the show, with a six-song set and five of the songs were new since the last time I was at a show for them. Sadly, I haven't been able to support them nearly as much as I wished, but they're starting to get a real name in the Nerdrock sub-genre, and that's very cool to me, considering that as a Doubleclique (the fan club) I have a serial number that, as far as I can tell, is the lowest number available. And I have a t-shirt with that serial number on it. So you could probably call me a fan, if'n you wanted. Aubrey (cello) and Angela (uke and guitar) are, as far as I can tell, a young and attractive female version of Paul and Storm . In the vein of Garfunkel and Oates , though really much more cerebral (not a knock...