Bunker Project Log

Friday night’s Bunker Party started at 7:30. I had arrived home at 6:45 to tie a few loose ends, namely vacuuming… and unlocking a few more songs on Guitar Hero II 360. I’ve had trouble finding time to play (compounded by the fact that the X-plorer guitar totally sucks.) I suffered through and unlocked up to Thrash and Burn just as the first contestants walked in.

The Shocker?used the 9V battery connector, a relay, a capacitor,?a transformer, and probably one or?two more parts that I can’t remember.?It basically charged the capacitor, then somehow tripped the relay, then charged it again with a nasty clicking noise.?I zapped my sister a few times,?and was hooked.

There’s a lot of prep for a BP. I’m procrastinating by posting.

Checklist:

DDR Room
Get CDs back in cases
Make sure projector starts and all consoles are hooked up
Make sure CRT?starts and all consoles are hooked up
Check Batteries
Sweep

The Lan
Clean up
Put CDs in cases
Clean off Make Trax
Make sure all the machines start
Check the NAS
Vacuum

The Theater
Clean out the cupholders
Vacuum
Put away all the pillows

Bathroom
Stock TP
Make?sure we have clean towels
Clean the toilet (boo!)?

It was a month after Version 2.0 popped out of Mrs. G’s belly, and?ma and pa had come to do the things that grandparents do when their children have children. My dad and I were sitting on his truck’s trailer hitch, shooting the breeze. Him with his Busch Lite, me with a Diet A&W Root Beer. Then he looks at me quite seriously and says, “Y’know?son, If you ever need anything, you know you can call and we’ll come out and help.”

So I think about this for a second, and I say, “Y’know dad, there is something you can help me out with.”

(Please note: for the length of this review, the word “huggermuggered” will mean duped, ambushed, suckered, or just outright screwed in to something. For example “I got huggermuggered into playing ‘Huggermugger’ with my wife”. Recent dictionary searches?have pointed out that I may have been using this word incorrectly for many years. If so, I blame my public school education.)

For the moment, my “project log”?has?turned into?anything but. However,?I’m hosting a big Bunker Party on Friday, so I’m going to have to make some progress on something.?

Until then, here’s?the beef?on Huggermugger (yick! 5.1 on Boardgamegeek). ??

I have documented my love of Target before. This weekend contained two blissful trips to that commercial mecca.?On the second, I stumbled upon this deal.?I’m posting it here because: 1) it’s a great deal and you should buy it, and 2) I get to bitch about USB memory stick design, which, on the whole, is moronic.

First, why this is cool? 4Gigs be big. It’s light and svelte, and most importantly, this:

and… it also does this:

?

Excelsior!?

For some reason, I was compelled to play something tonight. The kids were in bed, but I know Fatty McGee well enough that within ten minutes of starting a flick, he’s going to scream his little lungs out. (Actually, the sweet little monsterpop is sitting right in front of me, prolly with teethies poppin out of his 4-month old gums.)

So, I did the unthinkable and gave Mrs. G a choice. Y’see, she took umbrage with my assertion that she always picks something crappy (read paragraph 1 here) so I did this as a test. Her options were Rat Hot (6.5 on boardgamegeek), or Inkognito (5.2 on boardgamegeek). She chose Inkognito.

I love audiobooks. I have a 30 minute commute, and road rage… or I had road rage until I discovered Audible!

Now, I actually look forward to traffic jams! My car has become a whole new venue of individual entertainment!

In fact, my company is moving offices so my commute is cut in half, and I’m worried that I won’t get my book time.

Mrs. G is never in the mood for anything except girly movies, cookies and Crunch bars. However, she does have very geek sensibilities. What this means is, almost every entertainment media we watch or play or whatever, has to be a surprise up to the last second, because… if she had the choice, she would never pick anything remotely cool.

So, the onus is on me to find stuff that I know she will like, even though her first instinct would be to roll her eyes and grouse about it. This can be daunting, because I’m always worried about the one time that I will make her watch something that legitimately sucks, or… that she just doesn’t like, at all.

Mrs. G and I tried to watch Renaissance?tonight, but we only got 20 minutes in before Version 2.0 (the gigantic 4 month-old boy super-smiley blob-thingy)?decided it was screamy time. Wifey took one for the team, and I decided to get back to the guitar.

I’ve been trying to come up with a good Whammy mechanism, and what I’m settling on (but still haven’t quite figured out how to do) is some kind of motion sensing thingy.?Since this is the goal, my first priority?is to disable the motion-activated Star Power switch. Since?Star Power is also activated by one of the buttons on the guitar face, I can retain the functionality by?moving that switch somewhere easily activated by the fret hand.