Thanks again everyone.  This should be a very interesting year.  Now that my annual day of self worship is over ( ) I need to get my butt in gear.  Lots and lots of things to start crossing off of a list.

No worries about the call, Matt.  I'd still like to catch up at some point, so I'll try again later.

Quote from: inadvertent imitation on February 21, 2007, 11:53 AM

Tank Ball

ok...that wasn't stupid...that was just fun

If you really want to create chaos, log in, check someone's name and color, log out and back in as them.  You may need to type "/join 5" or whatever the room number was, no biggie.  Then start shooting their team.  Watch the comments fly.

Com-o-dee!

Thanks guys, it was a really great day.

Normal stuff during the day, a few presents (no SW, but that was just fine) and work, but then a little surprise from Kris.

Last night aound 6 my wife had arranged for a lot of friends to show up at our house.  It wasn't the typical jump out and yell surprise kind of surprise party, instead more and more people kept coming through the door.

Since we moved to Utah 6 years ago Kris and I have often talked about how we know a lot of cool people who don't know one another, and how much fun it would be to have them all in the same place together.  So, aside from last night being a fun surprise, it was also incredible to have a lot of our friends together.  Some of them go way back, some of our friends who lived in Minnesota at the same time as us were there.  We even discovered that one of them had gone to college with another friend who was there.  It's a small world after all.

So, thanks for the birthday wishes, and thanks to Ryan for coming to the party (for a little while) even though you had a sick family at home.  Ryan, you'll be interested to know that all of the kids played nicely with each other the entire night.

Why is no one watching Arrested Development?

Really?  A piano case?

It's a problem, mostly because I remember how I treated my toys and have an unreasonable expectation of how I want my kids to treat their toys.

That's right, their toys.  Everything from the modern line (and some sturdy vintage pieces) are free game to my 6, 4 and 2 year olds.

Some things I need to constantly remind myself about:

1.  There are way more toys today than I ever had, and we own a lot of them.  It's impossible for our kids to keep them picked up and put away.  Ships are constantly missing parts and missiles, and figures with weak elbows and removable parts are always in numerous pieces.  Usually on the floor.

2.  Hasbro isn't Kenner, and a lot of today's toys are MUCH more fragile than the vintage toys I had growing up.  And they break.  Say goodbye to your gunship cannons that came with the AOTC pilot.  Those broke right away.

3.  My kids have toys at a younger age than I did.  Star Wars came out when I was 5, but I got most of the toys when I was 7+.  My kids have trouble getting modern figures to fit in ships, then again, don't we all?  These toys are tough for little kids.

4.  So many toys makes it easy to trash a figure and not care about the loss.  Okay, my 4 year old broke the Evolution Emperor's lightening hand off at the peg.  He doesn't care, there's another Emperor five feet away, or Darth Maul is cooler.  Speaking of which, the day he couldn't find Vader's lightsaber, he decided to just break the Evo Maul's blade in half.  Score! TWO Vader sabers!

I'm still learning.  We put a lot of auxiliary figures away because I tired of cleaning them up.  I'd say stage the giving over YEARS.  Be super selective about not flooding kids with lots of Luke or any other figure.  Choose the figure and features carefully, maybe even hold stuff back until they're old enough to watch the movies, and then produce the toys to go along with the movie.  Space the movies out over months or even years, that would be an interesting way to make it last.

Anyway, more later.  I need to get back to work.

I'm not sure what specifically is different about this season, but it is consistently not as interesting as last season.  Is it the lack of suspense in each episode?  They seem to be taking quite a bit longer to develop the story and each arc carries across several episodes vs. the character intensive episodes of the first and second season.  Is it because there isn't a lot of mystery as the creators try to unravel all the bits and pieces?

I'm lost.

The Apprentice/The Amazing Race (tie), Survivor, American Idol