3:50 Giants touchdown, Victor Cruz salsa’d. I’m eating TJ’s Chunky Salsa, quite good.

3:51 Bud Light party, dunno. M&M’s commercial for the tan ones. v. Cute, made me laugh! Best so far. Celebrity Apprentice, dunno.

Short football break then coke! A polar bear has his paws stuck together? Drinks coke through straw… Cute-ish but not making sense. GM truck, disses Ford, by name! Is that like 1/2 point for Ford? Also, is a crossover ad for Twinkies (at the end of the world, only GM trucks and Twinkies I guess).

3:58 More football.

3:59 END OF 1st quarter? Already? Barely any football. Giants 9, Pats 0.
Bridgestone something about performance. Godaddy, annoying. Lexus, shiny. Battleship the movie, lots of robots, thought it was Transformers again.

4:04 Pats score, now more ads.
End of Prohibition, it’s the Clydesdales! Cute! I like it! Doritos, clever dog bribing human! Cute, I like it! Chevy Camaro, not a graduation present, but fun.

4:07 Another few seconds of football reminding us of the score. GE and Bud now having a crossover ad. GE makes the turbines that makes the beer… well ok. John Carter movie. TaxAct, kid has to pee, bathroom full, jumps in the pool ah relief, not bad. Reminder that Madonna is in the halftime show, ok we know.

4:10 hey look, we’re watching football! Travis Beckham hurt? Ad time.
The Lorax! But wait, we don’t need jaw dropping blah blah… The Lorax awesome just the way it is. Cute Beetle ad with a fat dog exercising to get slim, all new Beetle. Something with Star Wars I dunno. Howard Stern joining America’s Got Talent, shrug.

4:15 I don’t get football, they play a teeny bit then show 5 replays of what they just did then there’s a penalty, then much standing around and then a bit more football then standing around, repeat, then ads! And that’s a long segment of football.

4:18 Ads! David Beckham in his own underwear for H&M, nice, I guess. Polar bears for Coke, sliding on the ice trying to save bottle of Coke, cute! Better than Beckham!

4:22 Jason Pierre-Paul’s dad is Jean… That’s a lot of apostles in 1 name.

4:23 Travis Beckham from before torn ACL.

4:29 We Are Young, like the song, Chevy Sonic intro. Star Wars like you’ve never seen it before… In 3D, but we all know every time he gets, George Lucas makes sure it’s Star Wars like you never seen it before. Madonna! In the halftime show!

4:34 Avengers movie. Chick getting ready to go out, Valentines quid pro quo Teleflora. Blech. Dog wearing shoes, I didn’t even catch that it was Skechers. Cars.com, weird.

4:38 Penalty then penalty. Hernandez! He was on my fantasy team (Thanks Al)!

4:41 Annoying kid taunting about having Doritos, clever grandmother wins by slingshot baby. ETrade creepy baby. Summer GI Joe movie…seems whatever, but wait, it’s The Rock!!!

4:46 Pats touchdown now tied. Kick good now NE 10 NY 9. Now Bridgestone Halftime Show feat. Madonna.

4:50 Something about live like a millionaire. Citibank something about eggs and omelets… Didn’t they get bailed out? How do they spend 3.5 mil in 30s? Xfinity fastest house something, Round Table Pizza. More Citibank. Blech.

4:53 I always think Bob Costas looks like a camel. Cute sorta. More analysis. Gob for Hulu Plus.

5:00 The halftime show. Madonna does walk like an Egyptian Vogue. Guessing she’s not singing. Looks nice though. Segued into Music… I think? LMFAO mashup with a bouncing tightrope dude! I thought she said I’m 60 and I know it but Yut says it was sexy. Oops. Now Gimme all your luvin’. Oh a drumline, always fun. Ceelo? Nice effects. OMG Like a Prayer! Maybe she is singing? Love this song. Choir too. “world peace” heavy handed but overall not gonna be cynical that was great. :)

5:14 The voice after the SB. James Gale (random kid) delivered the game ball to a ref.

5:16 More football talk with Tony Dungy and 2 other dudes.

5:19 Chrysler: America is tough feat. Clint Eastwood, good choice.

5:23 Back to football, mostly.

5:28 Td patriots
Smash, you had me at Angelica Huston… Seems like a Glee type show? Local affiliate ad. Xfinity add again with the racing houses. Chase quick pay, hey didn’t these people get a bailout?

5:31 Football, nice run.

5:37 Gasping from the violence. Geez.
NYG 12 NE 17

5:38 Fiat 500 abarth=sexy confusing woman. Someone wins free Pepsi Max for life, Regis jumps in to announce.

5:41 Football.
My bad 1 kick later, back to ads. Toyota something or other. Polar bear is sad then he yells, they hear it all the way in the south pole (hence penguins) gets coke. Eh. Dannon Greek yogurt. John Stamos(?) gets headbutted for yogurt. Injury timeout. Jerry Seinfeld wants an NSX gets beat by Jay Leno. Not bad! GE hires Americans!

5:46 Football, JPP, bad hit, dude kid is only 23, ouch poor kid. Football is nuts.

5:48 Back to ads. Budweiser through the decades, and all the trends therein. I like this one! Bridgestone performance this time with Tim Duncan (previous was Aikman and Sanders I think).

5:50 football! Petting Hellspawn!

5:59 football through the ages? Yeah NFL ad. eBay, kind of mean spirited? Not really but anyway whatever. Toyota. Jack in the Box marrybacon.com ha!

6:02 football OMG interception! Dude who was a teacher last fall intercepts Brady to Gronkowski throw.

6:05 Ferris Bueller grows old, takes day off, drives CR-V. Navy SEALs make a movie. Classic cartoon characters! MetLife. Smash.

6:08 football. Injury! Geez, this game!

6:11 Genesis car. Bud light rescue dog gets beer for everyone. Pretty good.

6:13 football.

6:19 Mr. Sandman wait cars and skimpily clad women and classic rock and bucking rhino Kia Optima. Career builder chimp. NBC comedies. Football

6:24 more injuries!!!
Standing in line is boring. Samsung is trying to bring back styluses to touchscreens? Another The Voice ad.

6:24 football. Dude, is that a cheat sheet on Brady’s wrist? Nice catch by Manningham(?). It’s feeling like it’s getting more exciting. 2 minutes left. NE 17 NYG 15, Giants ball.

6:38 Cadillac ATS built to beat BMW 3 series? Swamp people on History channel. Godaddy again. Awake new show with B.D. Wong and Cherry something … President Taylor from 24.

6:42 football. 6:43 Giants td! But supposedly it’s not even what they should’ve done! The guy was trying to stop himself but fell in to the endzone by momentum. The Patriots just let it happen, maybe. I do not understand this game. I mean they are explaining it and ok it is sort of making sense but still what the heck?! NYG 21 NE 17. At least it’s not boring?

Giants win Super Bowl XLVI!

6:55 game’s over, this is the most attention I’ve paid to a Super Bowl in 20 years! Maybe ever?

Besides it being available in pink, I picked the Sedu because it was listed first on Folica’s Top Ten Professional Hair Dryers list, and got overall good reviews, and Sarah at Hair Thursday likes it. She’s the one who ages ago recommended Fekkai Glossing Cream which I tried and never stopped using. I didn’t do much more thinking about it than that, because I am so not an expert on beauty products. All the other thinking was should I or shouldn’t I. But anyway!

Ater using it once I thought it definitely dried faster but it wasn’t any easier to wield, and I thought it dried nicer… like my hair felt softer and smoother. But it’s hard to tell if that’s just more of my brain justifying my purchase, so I thought I had better compare the stuff that’s more objective. You’re thinking, what are you talking about? Well I timed myself blow drying my hair. Yes, I did! This would be more helpful if I had my mom’s blow dryer to compare as well, but whatev, do what we can, right? In both cases, I towel dried my hair, then applied KMS Flat Out Hot Pressed Spray (heat protectant). My hair dresser told me to buy it, I don’t think she cares which brand just said to use something, here, buy this, sort of thing. Then I blew dry my hair in the normal random way I do it.

Results:

Time: The Sedu took a bit over 6 minutes, but it was my second time using it and I spent some time fussing with the controls. The old Conair took a bit over 8.5 minutes, but afterward it felt like I might’ve semi missed a spot, nothing that required more drying though ’cause I didn’t notice ’til I was applying the Glossing Cream. On both I was fumbling around with my phone to time it so both times may be longer than it actually took.

Weight: The old Conair is lighter! I had Yut hold them without looking at them and he agreed.

Noise: Both somewhat noisy, the Conair is more annoying because in addition to the sound of wind, there was a high pitched whine.

Size: Sedu is smaller, but has a cord that’s close to ten feet long (I measured 117 inches, but I wasn’t pulling taut and I figure it makes more sense for it to be ten feet than almost ten). The Conair cord was more like eight feet.

Other random facts: The Sedu is made in France, the Conair in China, if that matters to you. The Sedu also has a matching pink flat iron if you think you might be needing or wanting a flat iron. The Conair has lasted ten years and probably cost a lot less! The Sedu comes with a two year warranty. Both have cleanable lint catchers in the back. The Sedu came with two concentrators (or I think that’s what the little flat pointy plastic attachments in the front are called). One of them seems wider than the other but I honestly don’t know how to use them very well and don’t know the different utility of each.

I can’t say that I am unequivocally saying that the Sedu is the best thing ever, but I still think it’s pretty good. But my old Conair was not bad! Still if 25% less time drying causes a bit less damage to my hair, and if the ions and ceramic and tourmaline or whatever are better for my hair, then I am satisfied. Anyway, I’m not returning it. :)

We bought Kingdom Rush for the iPad and this weekend we have been totally addicted! It’s a tower defense game, which we like, and it’s on sale, so we figured why not. Compared to The Creeps!, which I have previously recommended, I think Kingdom Rush is more polished, and there’s kind of a story. Yut thought maybe deeper too. But it’s shorter, only thirteen levels, The Creeps! had lots of levels for the free version with lots of in-game purchase levels; I haven’t totally finished all of the included levels yet. We’ve played through all thirteen levels in Kingdom Rush at least once on Easy, but haven’t gone back to look at the other modes for each level. This game also has a building with units to guard and stop the creep which was somewhat reminiscent of Ninja Town which was one of my favorite Nintendo DS games (seriously you should pick that up if you have a DS whatever), so I was extra predisposed to like it, I think. Anyway, I liked it! If you like tower defense games and want to play one, I am recommending this. (And also The Creeps!) [via Tools & Toys]

By the way, I wrote this post on an iPad, using the WordPress app. I think if I was on a computer, I probably would’ve linked to the Kingdom Rush and The Creeps! websites. And the specific post wherein I wrote about the Creeps, but it just felt like kind of a pain. The plan is, I’ll edit and add those in later. :) I mention this ’cause it kind of clarifies how I feel like the process is convenient enough to mean the difference between blogging and not blogging, but isn’t really great yet.

Edited: I added in some links! Also, you can try Kingdom Rush, there’s a free Flash-based version. I still think it’s worth getting. Playing TDs (tower defense games) on the iPad is a nice experience — the touchscreen is a good interface, and it’s nice to play wherever.

Last year was the year of the rabbit, but today is the first day of the year of the dragon.

Hellspawn does not approve! Ok, ok, actually I woke him up and that’s the look he gave me. Hellspawn and Fluffleupagus don’t care about the year of the dragon, it’s the year of the rabbits all the time as far as they’re concerned. Look at that face and try to tell him any different.

I’m always saying that Trader Joe’s is both wonderful and evil. Wonderful in that it’s convenient and walking distance and we go all the time, but evil in the sense that every time I go in, I end up buying at least $20 worth of stuff, even if all I wanted was a loaf of bread. So these are my latest thing. See this trash can? There’s two packs of the freeze dried grapes in there. We empty out the trash can once per week, which means that so far this week, we’ve eaten two bags of this stuff! Anyway, in case you were wondering, it’s yums. People who’ve tried it with me pretty much agree, I think. I guess the novelty of having a Trader Joe’s nearby hasn’t worn out.

Also, my old computer case was a little loud. So annoying. Really, it all just adds up to needing a new computer, don’t you think?

The Set Up, in no particular order. Most items purchased from Newegg which has good prices and lots of reviews. Also, they ship when they say they will. Some things were purchased from Amazon but they shipped late and kept changing the predicted ship date, which is unusual since Amazon is generally really good at this!
• Case: Silverstone Temjin TJ08-E A case for a mATX board, so it’s smaller. Also, it’s supposed to be pretty quiet — I check Silent PC Review for their reviews. Quiet is much more important than you’d think when it comes to computers. Anyway, the case is nice and quiet for sure, but I found putting together the computer pretty annoying because it was so cramped. It did have a slide out motherboard tray which was really helpful. I’m not much of one for opening my computer to mess around though, so it’s basically okay. Yut much prefers his P183 which is humongous. He doesn’t mind the size. We like our computers on our desks but I don’t like the big black box next to me.
• Hard drive: Kingston V+100 96 GB SSD Mostly I wanted an affordable SSD. Dude, if anyone reading this is looking to buy a computer, buy an SSD. It might even be worth it to either pay for the upgrade or buy one to install yourself, if you are at all inclined for that sort of thing. It speeds up boot-up amazingly.
• Processor: Intel i5 2500KSpeedy Sandy Bridge processor — a step or two below the top of the line. Top of the line is too expensive. Usually at around $200-250 is the price/performance sweet spot.
• Motherboard: Asus P8Z68-M A mATX motherboard. The standard one got good reviews and my last motherboard was Asus. Also read good things about UEFI on Newegg.
• RAM: Patriot Gamer 2 Series 8 GB Was on sale and didn’t have the super tall heat spreaders because…
• Heatsink: Xigmatek Gaia SD1283 Sooo tall. Almost too tall for the case. It seemed like it should be quiet-ish based on Silent PC Review’s reviews on other similar heatsinks, and it was cheap.

Total: under $700

The old computer. I took the power supply, an old Corsair 520HX which is modular. We still like it and it had the plugs I needed. Also I am reusing one of my old hard drives — the other one was an IDE and the new motherboard doesn’t support that any more. And the optical drive? I don’t remember. It looks like it might be IDE also in the picture.

Isn’t she cute? One of the hardest parts was keeping all of the rabbits and rabbit hair away from the computer.

Here’s the motherboard on the motherboard tray and the processor and heat sink installed. We forgot to install the heat sink before installing the motherboard on the motherboard tray which was a mistake since there’s a part to install on the underside of the motherboard so we had to undo and redo.

Look who else is helping!

Tada! New computer pretty much done, except for the side panel.

After all these months, it’s been fairly quiet. Periodically (as in not every day) there is a high pitched whine sound which is super annoying now. May be something I can figure out and fix but I haven’t yet. I didn’t buy a graphics card because onboard graphics are getting better and I’m not exactly playing crazy high graphics games. It plays Civ fine and if I ever feel like it, I can add one later.

I meant to make this post in September but it took a long time to transfer the photos from the camera to the computer. :)

Alas, the WordPress app is … kind of inadequate. If all you’re trying to do is add a simple post with no photos, it’s not bad, but somehow, doing anything extra is harder. I hope that it’ll get better since it does get updates now and then. Anyway, I think some of the fault lies with flickr. I host photos on flickr because I like flickr and because I don’t want to deal with hosting photos, but the flickr app is no good either! And I’m not sure if I should hope that flickr is going to get much better unless Yahoo! decides to do more with it or sell it.

So… overall, I don’t think the experience is quite there yet. Not undoable, and I think I will sometimes do it. Using an iPad is just such a pleasure — don’t have to think about it much, it’s easy, and no waiting for the computer to turn on. But if it was my only choice, I don’t think I would like it much. I wrote this on my computer, but actually this post would probably have been relatively suitable for writing on the iPad. Except maybe I put in too many links for it to have been easy.

Every other year, insurance covers a new pair of glasses. By then, my old glasses have usually got scuffs or some such, so it’s good timing.

I always go in thinking I want something not too boring, maybe plastic with nose pads. Plastic so my thick lenses aren’t too obvious, and I always want nose pads, they’re better on my nose and face somehow. But I never end up with plastic. It’s hard to find nice looking (on my face) glasses that are plastic and with nose pad. Usually plastic glasses don’t have nose pads, so the number of choices is smaller anyway.

This pair is style Kliik 459, metal frame around the face, and plastic side ear sticks (what are those called?). And the frame isn’t too big. The bigger the lenses get, the thicker they are. I like ‘em ’cause they’re light and cute. And not too boring. :)

We were on break and there were a lot of sales and we had time to look through lists and try out new stuff and our niece and nephew like to borrow our devices for games so we downloaded So. Much. Stuff. Especially games. Standouts from that week were The Creeps! and The Creeps! HD from Super Squawk Software and Jetpack Joyride from Halfbrick (the makers of Fruit Ninja which I also have). Yut and the nephew (and I think neb) liked Jetpack, but I haven’t tried it; Yut, the nephew and I all liked The Creeps! which was just a really good implementation of a tower defense style game. I think the base games were all on sale for free, but are worth money. The Creeps! HD for the iPad is nicer than The Creeps! cos it was nice to play on the bigger screen.

In case you were looking for a couple of games to pass the time. :)