Category: All My Rowdy Friends

Sam likes Rock Band 2 (but NOT Guitar Hero)

~ m ~ 1 Comment

I’ve known my buddy Sam since high school, but haven’t seen him for years – he went to Cali to produce video games years ago. But now he’s moved to town! He’s working on “serious” games – currently one that help kids with cancer remember to take their medication. Cool stuff.

He’s downtown and drives out to RTP to work, I’m in suburbia and drive downtown to work, so we’re crossing paths. But we’re trying to get together on Wednesday evenings at his place. This week he bought a second guitar and we played a few hours of Rock Band 2, which was long enough to get the hang of the medium setting pretty well. The vocals on hard are easy, too. Sammy had bad dealings with Activision (he’s got lots of awesome gaming industry stories), so it’s Rock Band, not Guitar Hero, punk!

We ran hard for Obama

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The whole family dug in and ran hard to help get Obama elected.

Weekend before last: knocked on 90 doors, called 50
Saturday: knocked on 81 doors
Tuesday: knocked on 50+ doors, called 25

Great job crew! I am TIRED. :P The Dobbs are coming over soon. Time to relax and watch the numbers roll in…

Coaster Weekend

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Andrea and I are coaster-lovers, and we’ve got two brand-new recruits, Wren and Reiley! These girls rode EVERY COASTER that Busch Gardens Europe in Williamsburg, VA could throw at them! Each of their top 5 coasters is boss enough to have a mascot. Wren was tall enough to ride three of them, and she did! The Loch Ness Monster, The Big Bad Wolf, and Apollo’s Chariot all surpassed our expectations and had us wetting our pants. In addition, Reiley showed nerves of steel tackling the Griffin with Andrea and me – it’s rated as one of the top 5 in the US, with a 4g 205-ft STRAIGHT DROP. We have one left to hit when we return, the Alpengiest. WE ARE READY. :>

Soccer Mini Tournament

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Here’s a super-fun drill we tried out yesterday, described via a set of funny emails with my bro Dan…

> Mike,
>
> You pocket dialed me today. That’s why I called you back.
>
> You were playing something with the girls yelling out numbers and colors
> (3, yellow!).
>
> What were you playing??

hahaha! It was Reiley’s soccer practice, we were doing a
“mini-tournament”. I’d been wanting to try it for a while now (ever since
I was taught it in a coaches’ clinic a couple years ago), and with
Reiley’s head coach out of town, it was time.

You line up the girls and boys (it’s coed this year) and they count off,
so everyone has a number. You set up a couple small fields and number
them. Then I have a list of the numbers, and call out random assignments
(“player 1, yellow penny on field 2 – player 2, green penny on field 1 –
player 3, no penny on field 1…” etc.). Everyone goes to their field and
plays a little scrimmage. After about 4 minutes, you call them all in and
go through the numbers. They yell out their scores – 1 point for a goal,
one point for an assist. Then you have a second, third, round… At the
end you can tally up the scores and give a shout out to the top three.

Reiley came in third place!!

Bareback!

~ m ~ 2 Comments

This past weekend soccer was rained out by a tropical storm, so we switched to blueberry pancakes and board games. After a game of Carcasonne (with Andrea as the sneaky victor), the weather cleared up. The girls took me to the stable and I got a turn on Sundance, bareback! Takes a lot of balance! I stuck to trotting. Maybe next time I’ll put a little more speed on. :>

Sowa Nation Reunion

~ m ~ 2 Comments

Had a grand time reuniting with all my Mom’s relatives last weekend at the homestead (Decatur, IL, of all places). I took a pile of video, I’ll try to post some soon…

The Ultimate Practical Joke Site

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The world’s greatest practical joke site was created recently. It’s called NiceCritic, and I got victimized today at work. When I sat down at my computers this morning, my inbox had this to say:

    It seems like your thong is showing. – an anonymous “nice critic”

Now I received the message at work, so it had to be from a coworker. But seriously, there are very few practical jokers left at my work after years of attrition. And when you receive your first “nice criticism” out of the blue, it’s a whole new experience in paranoia. I was wracking my head ALL DAY LONG trying to figure out if someone saw me biking to work in my bike shorts and mistook them for a failed attempt at putting my (sexy) clothes on in the right order.

Well, after getting crank-emailed on my college buddies’ email chain (they are pros at this kind of thing – before I noticed, they had planned a full-blown reunion in my attic – people were buying airplane tickets thinking I was begging them to come see my “renovations” – but I digress…), I figured there’s no time like the present for a little revenge. So – fair warning if you read this my pals – you’ve been nicecritic’ed today…

Hurry up and use the site, I’m sure it won’t be long before some disgruntled hacker DDOS‘es the thing into oblivion because he was told his feet smell one. too. many. times.

UPDATE: Wow, that was scary fun. I might need therapy…

  • Doug needs to stop patting people on the bottom
  • As everyone knows, Mark’s pants are a bit too tight lately
  • Ken needs a breath mint
  • Erik has worn heels on his shoes
  • Sounds like it’s time for Keith to visit the barber
  • I hope Mike soon realizes that “yelling doesn’t help morale”
  • Kevin needs to look people in the eye when he shakes hands
  • Unfortunately, Paul doesn’t release his hug in a timely manner

Horse Show!

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Mom and Sundance tear it up at their first show! Reiley and Wren ripped it up too, on Tuff and PonyBoy. It was Tuff’s first show, so Reiley had to take him through the events slowly to teach him the ropes. The other girl that rode Tuff almost got bucked off. Good job Rei! On the other hand, Mom and Wren were all about speed. Check it out… the video needs editing but I’ll throw the whole thing up for now…

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