Martin's Adventures

Fishing level 71

2009-10-24T23:05:00.000-07:00

So I finally get around to updating my blog, and next thing you know I get another Fishing level. Fishing monks at Piscatoris, as I ran out of my previous stash and had started using spuds with tuna and cheese - which I wanted to save for Dream Mentor. Only 5 more levels and I can catch sharks for the Seers Village activity diary.

Ten months later ...

2009-10-24T23:02:00.000-07:00

... and I haven't played Ape Escape yet to try that new level. Getting a Wii for Xmas contributed to that in a major way, as we spent several months mastering Mario Karts, and now we are working on Rock Band 2.

Runescape continues to drag on - several new quests which need high skill levels, so I'm working on Farming, Fishing and Crafting for long periods of time.

Gaming update

2008-12-23T17:41:00.000-08:00

For a while now, we have been thinking of upgrading from our old PS/2 to either a PS/3 or a Wii. I prefer the PS/3, as it will integrate with our PSPs to allow audio streaming, and it has more of my kind of shooter games. Linda prefers the Wii for more family oriented games that we can play together. After spending a couple of weeks searching for a Wii, we finally ordered one from Amazon last week, and that will be our Xmas gift to each other. Nathan was pleased, as he will also be getting one for Xmas, and we may be able to play games against each other. I got him the Mario Kart game with a Wii Wheel, so we will have to go get one for us once they are back in stock in the area.

On the PS/2 side, I decided to try and finish the two main games that I have been playing - Ape Escape 2 and Medal Of Honor: Europe Assault. I have been stuck on the Code C.H.I.M.P. level of Ape Escape for about two years, on a tricky part where my character has to jump over a series of cogs that rotate in different directions at different speeds. I warmed up by grabbing the one ape that I had missed on Pirate Island - he was on the top of the ship's mast, and I had always had trouble grabbing him. I was encouraged by the fact that I caught him really quickly, so I pushed on with the Code C.H.I.M.P. level. This time, I managed to crack the cog section at the second attempt, and went on to complete the level - finally! I couldn't get my head around the Giant Yellow Monkey Battle level that followed, so I went back and finished the Skyscraper City level. If I can get past the Giant Yellow Monkey Battle this week, I can go on to the last regular level and then the final battle against Specter.

Let it snow ...

2008-12-22T16:17:00.000-08:00

After surviving a week of -20F temperatures in Minneapolis, I flew back home to Portland to find that it was cold and snowing. After dumping a couple of inches of snow, it rained for a few hours which added a crispy ice coating. Another foot of snow later, our back yard is deeply covered, which is making it interesting for Maya and Logan to go potty. The roads are a little slick, so we have decided to hunker down and wait for the weather to improve - no sense on trying to drive anywhere until the roads are clear.

One nice thing about our little neighborhood is the neighbors. When I returned from my last trip, we had received two deliveries of holiday goodies - cookies and fudge, and cinnamon rolls. We had another delivery the next day, so we did our part and cooked orange and cranberry muffins which we delivered to all of our neighbors yesterday.

MOH:Heroes

2008-11-13T09:19:00.000-08:00

Still stuck on MOH:Heroes 2, so I decided to pick up MOH:Heroes and see how it compares. The graphics are not quite as sharp as Heroes 2, and there are a few strange changes between the games.

In Heroes 2, you usually start out with a Thompson machine gun, Colt pistol and grenades. When a weapon becomes available, you can select the Thompson or Colt and swap for the new weapon, so it is possible to carry a machine gun and sniper rifle at the same time. In Heroes 1, the only weapon that can be swapped is the machine gun, so you can't swap the pistol for something more useful.

In Heroes 2, you have a set of objectives that are revealed throughout the level, and you can't finish the level until you complete all of the objectives. There can be many sub-objectives on a level, but if you don't find them as you go around, you won't know about them until you finish the level and are told which ones you missed. In Heroes 1, you know all the objectives and sub-objectives up front, and have little arrows in the overview map to show you where to go. This takes away some of the frustration of not knowing about the sub-objectives, but it does make things a little too easy sometimes.

Heroes 1 also has a lot of timed, "capture the flag" type levels, where the objective is to turn flags from German to American by holding a position for a number of seconds. So far I have gone through five or six of these, and I've only just wrapped up the second campaign.

Overall, Heroes 1 is OK, but not the best of the games in the series.

Defender Of Varrock

2008-11-03T15:00:00.000-08:00

Just finished the Defender of Varrock quest, after getting my hunter up a level by trapping Horned Grakhs on Karamja. The quest was pretty straightforward, involving a long walk around the wilderness, tracking a zombie army, luckily with no revenants in sight. The underground sequence and battle in Varrock were pretty easy in comparison, so it looks like this is just a teaser for a much larger and harder quest to be announced soon.

Runescape Halloween

2008-10-31T23:00:00.000-07:00

This year, Runescape doubled up on the Halloween fun with an event and a quest. Both started just north of Rimmington, and involved traveling around Rimmington, Port Sarim and Draynor Village. The event involved trick-or-treating the NPCs in those towns, and the quest involved visiting the witches in each town to solve a puzzle. The puzzles were quiet clever, and needed a bit of logical thought rather than just bashing things over the head.

Having completed both, I am now the owner of a rather smart mage outfit and a new scare emote. Plus several thousand smithing XP which bring me a little closer to the levels required for Rocking Out.

Curses! Stuck on a couple of levels

2008-10-20T09:15:00.000-07:00

My new PSP is a big hit - it's so cool to be able to just boot up an play straight away, rather than having to wait 5 minutes for Windows to load a game. But I'm now stuck on a couple of levels that are proving to be very tricky.

In Daxter, I'm stuck on the Hive Queen 2 level, where I have to defeat a nasty boss. Hive Queen 1 was hard enough, but this one is really tricky. So far I haven't even made it to the third stage of the fight.

In MOH:Heroes 2, I'm stuck on a nasty underground bunker level where I have to get through four sets of blast doors in five minutes, while fighting German soldiers who spawn in front of and behind my character. Once I made it out through the last blast door, but ran straight into an ambush, which sucked. After about 20 attempts, I'm ready for a rest.

I love my PSP

2008-10-05T08:41:00.000-07:00

Last week I took the plunge and picked up a PSP. I got the Daxter special edition pack, which comes with the Daxter game, a memory card, and a Family Guy video disk. Linda and I spent a lot of time in Best Buy, Circuit City and several game stores, looking at the various games and trying out the PSP against the DS. In the end, the PSP won out as I prefered the larger screen, it had more of the kind of games that I like to play, and the controls are pretty much the same as the Playstation 2, which we already have.

Since then, I've been busy playing Daxter and MOH:Heroes 2, which are both great games. Heroes 2 is very similar to the other games in the MOH series, but Daxter is very different to the other games that we have - probably one of the best games that I have played in a while.

Leaking bath

2008-09-10T11:00:00.000-07:00

One of things that we insisted on when we purchased this house was that the seller purchase a one year home warranty, to cover us against anything that goes wrong with the house during that period. I called the warranty company, and they sent out a plumber to check out the bath yesterday. He cut a hole in the ceiling below the bath, which was sensible as the ceiling already had some water damage, and he was able to confirm that it wasn't the water pipes or the drain that was causing the problem.

After I filled up the bath to the usual high level that I like, he was able to see water dripping under the bath by looking underneath the bath through the hatch which allows access to the pump for the jetted tub. This hatch is right next to the toilet, so access is tight, and the builders didn't give any other access points - we would love to change the original faucets, but the only way that we can get to the water pipes to disconnect and put in a new faucet would be to cut a large hole in the side of the vanity unit which is next to the foot of the bath. That will have to wait until a future remodel ...

The plumber figures that the water is draining around the air vent at the top of the bath, and it is possible to move the air vent, so I don't think it is properly sealed. I have to run some more tests to make sure that is really the cause, and then we can use the bath again, but with much less water than we have used previously :-(

Now all I have to do is find someone to come in and patch the hole in the kitchen ceiling and match the textured paint with the rest of the ceiling and walls ...

It's raining in the kitchen!

2008-09-08T08:57:00.000-07:00

After a busy weekend running around the house and doing odd jobs, I decided to have a nice long soak in our oversized bath tub on Sunday evening. Linda was out in the garden when I ran the bath, and she came upstairs to see what I was doing, saying that she could hear water dripping downstairs. I got out of the bath and went downstairs while she climbed in, and I could also hear dripping. A few seconds later, there is water streaming from the light fitting above the sink! Linda quickly drained the bath, and the flow of water stopped. I then poked around at the edges of the ceiling above the sink, and found that water had been leaking for some time as there were patches where the paint was bubbling away from the wall. I pulled off some of the paint to confirm that there was water behind it. Oh, the joys of homeowning!

Finished Dealing With Scabaras quest

2008-08-31T12:32:00.000-07:00

This was a long quest - lots of running backwards and forwards between the bank north of the agility pyramid, Sophanem, and the archeologists. The section with the golem and the four rooms was the trickiest - it took me several attempts to do the agility room, eventually needing an agility potion to give me a boost. The strength room was easy, and the giant scarab was simple as well. The puzzle room wasn't difficult, but I then realised that I hadn't pulled the lever in the scarab room, so I had to run back in and pull that one. Luckily the scarab did not respawn ...

After finishing the four rooms, I went back to the bank and picked up a prayer pot, super anti-poison and a Recilym's Balm to counteract the disease attacks that were to come. I headed back down into the dungeon and entered the room full of Scabarites. Running past them all, I was poisoned and diseased, but managed to make it to the High Priest. After a brief cutscene we started talking, and I was attacked with melee, so I prayed melee and fought back until he came back to his senses. He then attacked with range, so I prayed range and fought back until he stopped a second time. The next time, he attacked with mage, so I prayed mage and fought back, but this time he didn't stop. Eventually my prayer ran out, despite the pot that I took with me, and my food started to run low, as I fought off the High Priest and the three scarab swarms that he summoned. As his health headed down to zero, so did mine, and just before I could deliver the final blow, my ring of life kicked in and sent me back to Falador - thank goodness for the ring of life!

I decided to take a quick break and do the (very easy) new quest - All Fired Up - which gave a quick 20k gp bonus.

Then back to Scabaras - and this time I loaded up with two prayer pots just in case, and headed back down into the dungeon. This time the Scabarites were a lot more agressive, and I took 40+ damage as I headed to the High Priest. When I got in to the room with the High Priest, I expected another long, gruelling fight, but was suprised to find that I didn't need to do anything. The High Priest apologized for besting me in combat, and promised that the Scabarites would be nice to everyone from now on. Wow - that was easy :)

Woot! Finished Contact! quest

2008-08-21T22:09:00.001-07:00

I decided today to take another crack at the Contact! quest. I had already died twice doing this one, so I was a little hesitant about going back again. After picking up the required gear, I headed through the maze, only to realize that I had forgotten the anti-poison potion, so I had to tele home, get the pot and head back. This time, I tripped a scarab trap in the maze and had to use my ectophial to escape from the dungeon, and then head back again. Third time was a charm, as I made it safely through the maze and into the final battle. I had problems with this the last two times, but this time was very different. I stayed behind the corpse at the entrance, and waited for the scarab to range me. I prayed range, and started hitting him for 20-25 with Iban Blast, and it was all over in less than a minute. No scarab riders, no scarab mages, just a dead giant scarab. Strange! So I went to talk with the High Priest to finish the quest, and used the reward lantern to up my range to 64 and my defence to 70. I'm now 70 on attack, strength and defence.

As I was in Sophanem, I decided to start Dealing With Scabaras straight away, and had to play Pyramid Plunder for 30 minutes to get the required 10 gold items. Now I'm have six sets of bronze platelegs to cover in camel dung. How nice!

More Runescape quests completed

2008-08-15T21:23:00.000-07:00

When I completed Legends, I was finally able to start Throne Of Miscellania. Not a difficult quest, but it did involve lots of running between the two castles. That was followed by Royal Trouble, which was a little more interesting and involved a level 146 Sea Snake at the end.

Legends quest finished

2008-08-14T17:22:00.000-07:00

Moving on quickly from the Heroes quest to the Legends - and this one took a lot longer. The challenges were not that difficult, it just took a lot of time running backwards and forwards between the jungle and Shilo village.

As soon as I finished Legends, I went on to the Sir Amik Vaze section of Recipe For Disaster. This one was almost as tough as Legends, with a trip to the Evil Chicken's Lair to kill the Evil Chicken and a Black Dragon - thank goodness for prayer pots! Now that the Sir Amik Vaze section is completed, I have to fight six tough boss monsters in the final battle - not looking forward to that.

Heroes quest completed!

2008-08-11T19:22:00.000-07:00

Nathan finally decided that he didn't want to do the Heroes quest, so I set out this afternoon to do it myself. Easier said than done. I'm in the Phoenix gang, and the section of the Runescape forums that allows you to post request for buddies to help complete the quest is awash with Phoenix gang members, and not many Black Arm gang members. I posted a request, and then stood around Brimhaven for several hours, killing pirates and waiting for someone to pm me to say that were responding to my post. After a few hours, I noticed a player in black armor running around in the building that is the location for this part of the quest, but he had no partner. We chatted, and found that we were both looking for someone to help complete the quest, so we helped each other out and five minutes later I had the candlestick that I needed. I just finished cooking some lava eels and headed to the guild to hand over the required items, and have now completed the quest. Now I can start Legends and then start the next part of Recipe For Disaster.

More painting ...

2008-08-01T22:12:00.000-07:00

This weekend, we are mostly painting the hallway. I had to hire some scaffolding to allow me to get up to top of the entrance hallway - it's 20' straight up, and as well as painting the walls, I need to change a light fixture and put some privacy screening on the window above the front door. So we now have a scaffolding unit sitting in the hallway, and I'm climbing over the balcony rail to get onto the scaffolding - very surreal. I took down the old light fixture and primed the walls tonight. Tomorrow morning is painting time, and then the privacy screen. I just wish the scaffolding unit would fit in the stairway so that I could paint up there at the same time ...

Combat Level 90!!

2008-08-01T22:06:00.000-07:00

I thought that it would take a while to get my Summoning level up to 19 so that I could start the Spirit of Summer quest, but it only took around an hour. In the early stages of summoning, it is possible to get a new level with each round of summoning, and the prices for selling pouches on the Grand Exchange meant that I wasn't losing money when buying pouches and shards. An unexpected side effect was that my combat level increased to 89 when I reached 19 summoning - the summoning level is used as part of the overall combat level calculation. So off I went to complete the Spirit of Summer quest, which was not very difficult. The reward took me up to level 20 summoning, and I then used the ring to get 10k farming xp, which took me up to level 56, and 10k prayer xp which nearly took me up another level.

To get from 20 summoning to 22 summoning only needed 8 pouches, but this is where it gets more expensive. Spirit scorpion pouches require 1 crimson charm, bronze claws and 57 shards - those shards are expensive! But 8 pouches raised me up to 22 summoning, and that pushed me to level 90 combat, so it was a price worth paying.

New Runescape quest - Spirit Of Summer

2008-07-29T09:41:00.001-07:00

The second quest for July was finally released today, and it requires level 19 Summoning. I haven't done much summoning beyond the initial Wolf Whistle quest, so I'm only at level 11. Looks like I will have to spend a few days making spirit pouches before I can start this one ...

Electrical work

2008-07-26T09:42:00.000-07:00

It looks like a lot of the features in our new house are original from when the house was built in 1992. We had to replace the microwave as the front door was cracked, and it was built in 1991, before they came up with the idea of putting a turntable in the microwave to keep the food rotating. I've also found that a lot of the electrical outlets are very loose - some of them won't even hold a plug in place without it falling out. Rather than take a risk with loose connections, I have had to replace all of the sockets and switches so that we know that they are all in good condition. I'm discovering that US wiring is very different to the UK wiring that I was familiar with from my last remodelling project - the switches and outlets here have screw terminals, but also have holes into which you can push a stripped wire to make contact instead - it makes wiring a lot quicker, and really helps when replacing an old socket with a new one.

Runescape - Lumbridge activity diary

2008-07-15T21:56:00.000-07:00

A big week on Runescape, with the unveiling of a major change to the way that things are organized in the bank, and an activity diary for Lumbridge and Draynor.

The bank update allows you to divide the contents into several tabs, something which has been long overdue. I now have tabs for range, mage and runes, combat, slayer, herbs, etc.

The Lumbridge activity diary was very easy, as I am already well over the minimal requirements to take on the activities. I finished it up in a little over two hours, and got a nice XP bonus which upped my smithing to level 65

New house - moved in!

2008-07-15T21:48:00.000-07:00

This weekend was a real comedy of errors. I had booked a 28' moving truck from Budget truck rentals, with a 7' internal clearance for the large bookcases to fit. When I got to the depot, they had a 16' truck for me, with a 6' 5" clearance. This meant that the bookcases and large dresser had to go in on their sides, and we filled the truck pretty quickly. It was also the hottest day so far this year, with the temperature in the mid 90s, and moving heavy furniture into an aluminum clad box in that heat is no fun. After unloading the first load, we headed back to the rental around 8pm to load up some more boxes and the refrigerator. As we loaded the fridge, we found that when it is tilted to 45 degrees on a hand cart for loading, it is a little over 6' 5" tall, so it was virtually impossible to get it back to vertical inside the truck. Luckily the roof bowed up slightly in the center, and by rearranging some things we were able to get it loaded. We unloaded it into the garage at the new house just after 10pm and called it quits for the night.

Sunday was just as hot as Saturday, and we were left with a bunch of odds and ends to move, including the canoe, patio furniture, clothes, etc. We finally filled up the truck again, but had to leave behind three drawers full of clothes from a dresser, and my old TV. We also had to work around two viewing by prospective tenants, but I'm not complaining about that!

On Monday I had to go back to the rental to pick up the last few things, water the front lawn, and clean out the house - clean the counters, vacuum, etc. The last of our furniture reached the new house on Monday afternoon, and we are now officially out of the rental and fully into our new home.

New house - day 11

2008-07-08T22:59:00.001-07:00

Today was the big reveal, when we pulled off all of the masking tape to see how neat the paint job looks. We had used Frog tape rather than the regular blue painters tape at the suggestion of our agent (thanks Kathryn!) and it did a great job. It came off really easy, and the lines were very clean. The only hassle was that it took a line of white paint off the top of the fireplace in the family room, so I now have to sand and repaint that ...

Linda used the carpet cleaner on all of the carpets when she finished work, and I made a trip to Lowe's to pick up some new light switches and electrical outlets so that I can replace the outdated ones in the three bedrooms. Between the three different styles, mismatched colors, and some outlets that are so loose that a plug will not stay put, they really did need updating. That's a job for tomorrow, along with about a dozen other things. I'm trying to get the master suite and study ready for us to move in at the weekend.

New house - day 10

2008-07-07T22:57:00.000-07:00

Finally, we are done with the first round of painting. I did the guest bathroom today, and touched up a lot of gaps in the other rooms. Linda came around at the end of the work day, and we cleaned up a bunch of stuff. The drop cloths and paint gear has been packed away, and the carpets have all been vacuumed, so the place is starting to look liveable.

New house - day 8

2008-07-06T09:00:00.000-07:00

The new paint color looks fantastic! We managed to paint the three bedrooms upstairs, and Linda did the roller work on the living room, dining room and family room. Working with the final coat is a lot harder, as the paint is thicker and needs a lot more even coverage, so we have already gone through most of the four gallons that we bought yesterday. The color does look really good, and tomorrow we will be finishing off the edging of the downstairs rooms and starting work on the kitchen and bathrooms.

New house - day 9

2008-07-05T22:54:00.000-07:00

Well, we didn't get as much done today as we originally planned. The top coat of flat enamel was a little patchy, so we had to spend half of the day applying a second coat. We did manage to get the master bath and kitchen finished with the semi-gloss paint, and it's starting to look really good.

Happy July 4th!

2008-07-04T23:31:00.000-07:00

Being Brits, Linda and I don't really celebrate July 4th. In fact, I have a running joke with the people in my work team, that I celebrate "Good Riddance Day", when the Brits celebrate getting rid of those pesky colonies. I wonder what ever became of them ...

When we live in California, we didn't really see many fireworks. Most cities have total bans, which is probably a good idea when you think about fireworks being set off in an uncontrolled way during fire season. We saw one good display in San Ramon when Linda was working there, but other than that, it was pretty quiet.

Up here in Vancouver, WA, things are very different. About two weeks ago, we started to notice tents going up in vacant lots and parking lots around the town. Then large signs started appearing advertising exotic fireworks. It's a big business, and tonight we found out why. The neighborhoods around our new home spent a few hours trying to outdo each other in a pyrotechnical competition that took our breath away. We sat out on the back deck with a very trembly Maya while we enjoyed the show. As we drove back to the rental at 10:30pm, we saw many more displays on either side of the freeway, with palls of gunpowder smoke drifting across the road. With the combination of noise, brilliant explosions and smoke, plus the loud music playing on my car CD player, it felt like I was driving through a war zone. When we got back to the rental, we went out on the back deck and watched a dozen or more displays taking place across the valley to the north. And we didn't even see the main event - the city fireworks show is supposed to be the biggest display west of the Mississippi, but that will have to wait until next year.

New house - day 7

2008-07-04T23:19:00.000-07:00

Finally, we started painting! I picked up a Wagner Power Roller to help out, and this has proved to be one of the best tools yet. I just put the inlet house into a five gallon bucket of primer, pressed the button on the roller, and off she goes. It delivers a constant amount of paint to the roller through holes in the roller core, so I don't have to keep loading up the roller. The paint comes out very evenly, and I did each room in about 20 minutes. It took longer to do the trimming and edging with the smaller roller and brushes than it did to paint the main walls. Highly recommended! We primed three bedrooms, two bathrooms, living room, dining room, family room and kitchen in a little over 8 hours.

We also decided on a color - Cincinnatian Hotel Nichols Taupe - which is based on a color found in a hotel on the national registry of historic buildings. I painted a wall in the guest bedroom with the flat enamel version, and it looks really nice. I can't include a link to the paint color, as the Valspar website doesn't do direct links, but if you go to this Valspar site and search for taupe, you will see a sample. Now all we have to do is paint the rest of the house ...

New house - day 6

2008-07-03T23:00:00.000-07:00

Another busy day, running backwards and forwards to Lowes, Home Depot and Target. I managed to finish off the masking of the rest of the house, including taking down the blind in the study which was a bit of a challenge to figure out. The house is now ready for painting, which should start tomorrow.

New House - day 5

2008-07-02T18:38:00.000-07:00

Yet more taping of the baseboards, doors and windows. I managed to finish the kitchen, dining room, sitting room, master bedroom, master bathroom and most of the spare bedroom. I finally ran out of tape after 3 hours, so tomorrow I will finish the guest bedroom, guest bathroom and study, so that we can prime the walls on Friday and paint on Saturday. That's the plan, assuming Linda can pick a paint color before then ...

New house - day 4

2008-07-02T07:02:00.000-07:00

Shorter work day today as I had to take some cleaning stuff back to the rental to clean up ahead of some people coming around to view on Thursday.

The first big job for today was to move the thermostat for the central heating system. It was originally located on the wall in the hallway, but that was the only place that Linda could put her hall bench. So the thermostat had to be relocated to the other side of the partition wall - a relatively simple job involving removing the thermostat and blanking plate, poking a hole through from that side to the new side, widening the hole enough to get the wires through and then mounting the thermostat in its new home. The biggest part of the job was covering the two inch diameter whole where the thermostat had originally been mounted.

I also taped the baseboards, fireplace, french doors, windows, kitchen cabinets, etc in the family room, breakfast nook and kitchen. I have tomorrow and Thursday to finish taping up, and then we start painting on Friday.

New house - day 3

2008-07-01T07:13:00.000-07:00

Day 3 started fairly late as I had to work today. I got to the house around 2pm, only to find that the signal for my laptop datacard is not very strong, and I was unable to connect to the work network for the remainder of the day. I did manage to put new liners in all of the kitchen cabinets, and put a temporary sprinkler by the front door to water the front yard. We need to add something semi-permanent to the back yard, as the lawn has been suffering in the current 90F heatwave. The rest of the afternoon was spent having the locks rekeyed, and patching and cleaning up ready to start painting in a few days time.

New house - day 2

2008-06-29T23:08:00.000-07:00

Day two was a little more productive than day one, mainly because we had less shopping to do and could spend more time working. Linda continued with the cleanup, while I cleared out the border in the master bedroom. Earlier in the day I had picked up a can of texture spray from Home Depot, and used that the patch some of the holes in the wall from the previous owners and some that I had added while removing the border in the kitchen - soaking the border to remove it also soaked the paint underneath which then bubbled off ...

At the end of day two, we have removed the wallpaper borders from the kitchen and bathroom, scrubbed pretty much everything clean, removed all the outlet and switch covers, and cleaned out the kitchen cabinets and removed the liners (which were very firmly stuck in place). Still no sign of the start of painting ...

Pooped!

2008-06-28T21:45:00.000-07:00

Today was our first full day at the new house, and it turned out to be more work than we thought. I spent most of the day removing the fruit-patterned border from the kitchen wall, and it was a long process. The wall was previously painted with a textured paint, and removing the border caused some of the texture to come off, so now I have to patch the existing paint before I can prime over it. The good news is that we bought a power paint roller that will make it much easier, and quicker, to paint everything. Linda spent the day cleaning bathrooms and kitchen cabinet doors, and Maya spent the day checking out her new digs. The temperature outside today hit the high 90s, but the heatpump at the new house kept things comfortable while we were working.

The previous owners had a dog called Vader, and this is where he used to live:

Our new home!

2008-06-27T22:11:00.000-07:00

After several months of searching, Linda and I finally closed on our first home today. We were very lucky to find a really nice house that doesn't need very much work doing on it, other than a lick of paint and a few cosmetic updates. It will be nice to finally own our own place after years of renting.

The process of closing was a bit of a drag. We have watched lots of TV programs recently about first time buyers going through this process, and they always show the buyers signing a few forms and getting their keys. Well, they don't do it like that around here! We signed all of the papers this morning at 8am, and then had to sit around waiting all day for the lenders and escrow agent to wire money backwards and forwards. We finally got the keys at 5pm, and were able to measure up for paint and check out what needs to be fixed straight away. Luckily that is a very short list - two door stops, new smoke detectors and a new microwave. I just hope that I survive repainting the entire house over the next two weeks ...

Sure don't miss that heat

2008-06-13T06:29:00.000-07:00

On Sunday evening, I flew down to Sacramento for two days of meetings with the team that I have put together for my new project. Linda and I moved from Sacramento to Washington State about 15 months ago, so it was nice to see the place again. One thing that really hit me on Monday morning was the heat - I had forgotten how hot it could be when the temperature gets up into the 90s, and it stayed there for both days. Along with winds of up to 45 mph, it made the entire central and northern California area into a firefighters nightmare, and this was confirmed as we drove back to the airport on Tuesday afternoon. A wildfire on the eastern side of I-5 had closed the freeway briefly, and was still burning alongside the 99 offramp. As we turned off I-5 at the airport offramp, another fire was just starting within the median area between the on and off ramps, but luckily a couple of guys had stopped their work truck alongside the smoke and were reaching for the fire extinguishers in the back of their truck as we drove past. Just over two hours later, I was back in Portland with the temperature down in the high 60s and a slight drizzle - and it felt like home.

Smoking Kills

2008-06-06T08:35:00.000-07:00

New Runescape quest! This one is based in Polnivneach, down in the Al Kharid desert. The start of the quest was a little irritating - I headed down to Polnivneach, spoke to the character at the start of the quest, then found that I need a catspeak amulet. Back to Shantay to get the amulet, and back to Pol to talk to the cat. Ali Cat tells me that I need my own cat and hints that I need a ghostspeak amulet, so back to the bank at Shantay again. The next step involves finding the ghost of an old slayer master, east of the agility pyramid. I haven't been down there before, so I'm kinda stuck trying to figure out where to go next. There is a large rock area, with no obvious entry. If I head around that area, I'm facing some high level bad guys from the Dealing With Scarabas quest (which I haven't done yet), so I'm not sure if that is the right way to go. I'm trying to do this one without reading any of the online guides, although so far only Zybez has one posted.

Construction - Level 52, and a nice bonus

2008-06-04T21:02:00.000-07:00

Added a few more features to my house, and got my construction up to 52. I then went off hunting lesser demons in the Taverley Dungeon, training my defense towards level 70. As I was finishing off one of the demons, the security guard arrived and gave me a loop half of a crystal key. I already had the other half of a crystal key in the bank, so I put them together and headed to the locked chest in Taverley. My reward was an uncut dragonstone and three runite bars - worth over 50k in total :)

In that last round of house updates, I added a couple of really cool items. One is the wardrobe in my dressing room, which now holds a full set of ghost robes and lunar robes, and the other is the toy chest which holds all of the special event items that were cluttering up my bank. I can also store two other items in the chest in the room, so my bank is a lot clearer now.

With the profits from the sale of the items in the crystal chest, I've just added a chapel, so now I have to get some furniture for that. The madness never ends ....

Finished TokTz-Ket-Dill quest, and Construction Level 51

2008-06-01T20:41:00.000-07:00

The quest was interesting, and not that taxing. Probably the hardest part was working through the three tunnels and shoring up the cave walls - I managed to trap myself a couple of times. The three intermediate monsters were very easy to beat, and the level 100 boss wasn't very hard to beat. He hit me a few times with 14s and 16s until I had cracked his outer shell, and then he was very easy to beat. I prayed melee, and didn't take any damage once he stopped pounding the ground. The end of quest bonus included enough construction xp to get me up to level 51, so I can now add some more goodies to my house.

Construction - Level 50

2008-05-31T21:14:00.000-07:00

Well, that didn't take long! Several treasure hunts helped, and I also added a map and landscape painting to the quest hall. I'm going to add a portrait painting and a mounted amulet of glory, then it will be time to start the Tz-Haar quest. I can also add a portal chamber, but that's another 100k ...

Construction - Level 49

2008-05-31T20:37:00.000-07:00

Finally got my construction up another level. I added a bunch of things to the house - a steel sink and oak shelves in the kitchen, a teak dresser in the master bedroom, an eagle lectern in the study, an oak treasure chest in the dressing room, and some teak stairs from the skills hall to the quest hall. I messed up with the first set of teak stairs, and accidentally removed the quest hall from upstairs by clicking on "remove stairs-room" instead of "remove stairs". Oops! So I had to spend another 25k to replace the quest hall.

Level 49 doesn't really add much, as I don't have a chapel in the house. There are five new things that I can build, and four of them are for the chapel. The fifth item does help - building a treasure hunt for the games room. At level 48, I had to make teak staircases, which use 10 teak planks and give 980 xp. The treasure hunt uses 8 teak planks and gives 800 xp - 100 xp per plank, instead of 98 xp per plank. As well as 20 extra xp per plank, I can carry two loads per trip, so level 50 won't take as long.

Woodcutting - level 73

2008-05-30T21:18:00.000-07:00

I spent a few hours yesterday mining for mithril and coal, making mithril bars and smithing them into kiteshields. That gave me about 40k in gold, so I figured it was time to start getting my construction up to level 50 for the TzHarr quest. The quickest, and most expensive, way to do this is for me to make 16 teak staircases, which requires 160 teak logs, so I headed off to Ape Attol with my trusty rune axe and monkey greegree. During the second batch of teak logs, my woodcutting level went up to 73. Levels are getting harder to come by on most of my skills now, as they head up into the 70s. Getting from level 73 to 74 takes over 100,000 xp. Three more loads of teak logs and I can start making those staircases.

Teitur at the Doug Fir Lounge

2008-05-30T20:45:00.000-07:00

We made the short trip across the river last night to see Teitur at the Doug Fir Lounge, which is located in east Portland. This is a really nice venue - custom built as a music venue, rather than a large hall being retrofitted for the purpose. The venue is below the main lounge area, which was packed on a Thursday evening - next time we will sample the food there. The support for Teitur was a mixed bag - a female singer who didn't really impress us, and an Icelandic singer who didn't show up for some reason. But Teitur himself was an awesome act. He walked into the room during the support act, and Linda nearly walked into him as he stood quietly next to the sound desk, listening for a couple of songs and then strolling backstage. The first part of his set consisted of a bunch of songs from his new CD, The Singer, some of which we had heard before - I bought Linda a copy of the CD from the merchandise stand before the show. He then did a few older songs on his own, just voice and acoustic guitar, before his band came back on stage for a cool rendition of Louie, Louie, which is one of Linda's favourite songs. Some of the songs were soft acoustic/folky, some were almost free jazz, and some really rocked out. It was quite a mix. After the show, Teitur came out to the merch stand to sign autographs, and Linda had him sign the CD that I had picked up for her earlier. She chatted with him for about five minutes, and was really impressed by how down to earth he is. It was a late night - we got home around 1am - but it was worth it.

One thing really bugged us - why do people pay money for a ticket to see a band play, then talk all the way through the performance? We had a woman sitting in front of us who yacked away for most of the set, then left before the end. I guess she wasn't really into the performance, but it would have been nicer if she had sat in the bar to chat with her companion, rather than distract our enjoyment.

Bingo!

2008-05-26T14:25:00.000-07:00

Linda and I play the Scrabulous game on Facebook, and we've had some interesting games recently. Scrabble is one of the few games at which Linda will regularly beat me, but today I think I have bested her. For the first time ever, I managed to play all of the tiles in my hand. I played UNRIVETS, and scored 86 points!

Big Storm

2008-05-25T08:29:00.001-07:00

A big thunderstorm hit the Portland area last night. We had spent the afternoon in Portland, and it started to rain as we headed back to our car, just after 8pm. By the time we hit the freeway, there were lightning strikes hitting all around the area, and the sky had turned a very dark and angry black colour. After crossing the Columbia River on 205, traffic was slowed down to under 30 mph by the intense rainfall, and my Jeep got a good washdown from the large puddles on the side of the road as we headed up the ramp to Mill Plain. We drove around the Cascade Park neighborhood, as we are looking at some houses there, and it was quite a sight. The torrential rain had turned some of the roads into small rivers, and the absence of street lighting made it very hard to see the water until you hit it. A couple of times we hit large puddles that caused the water to cascade all over the car, removing all visibility until we stopped and let the water run off.

When we got home, we found that Maya had been totally freaked out by the storm, and had managed to chew her way through the two blinds that cover the patio door at the back of the house. I have to try and take those apart today and rebuild at least one complete unit and then try to find a local supplier to get some spare slats to fix the second one.

TokTz-Ket-Dill

2008-05-17T10:21:00.000-07:00

Time for a new Runescape quest. The

Dried fish

2008-05-16T21:53:00.000-07:00

Linda and I spent the afternoon looking at houses to purchase, and we had a fairly mixed bag. Some of them looked really nice in the realtor's photos online, but looked very different in reality. Some of them looked a little shady in the realtor's photos, but looked very nice in reality.

And then there was the Russian House ...

Part of our process of searching for houses has been to assign a nickname to each one so that we can easily remember them. Today we looked at The House On The Hill (which I tried to rename as Amatyville after seeing inside), the Cottage In The Woods, and The Hacienda. One house had no nickname before we looked at it, but when we got there it became obvious that it would be named The Russian House. This was a newer four bedroom house which needed some TLC, and we found out as we arrived to view that it was currently being rented out. The tenants were at home, and we found two large Russian gentlemen playing table tennis in the main living room, another asleep in the overgrown garden, one more upstairs and another wandering in and out. The house was a bit of a mess, but we could look past that and imagine how it would look if properly cleaned out. The one thing that did stand out was the four large fish carcasses hanging above the doorway that led from the kitchen to the living room. These had been beheaded, gutted, and stuck on a pole to dry, with plastic clips holding the body cavity open to dry out. We think they were carp, based on the scales. Strangely, there was no fishy smell coming from them.

Getting warmer

2008-05-16T07:55:00.000-07:00

Temperatures are soaring here in Vancouver, WA. Yesterday was a comfortable 84F, with just enough of a breeze to keep things comfortable with a few windows open in the house to let the breeze through. Today we are due to hit 94F, and that's a big jump. It's nearly 8am, and the thermostat in the house is already showing 78F. This heatwave should only last a few more days, and then we will go back to more spring-like temperatures in the 70s.

Time to turn on the a/c - oh no! This rental doesn't have a/c :-(

Looks like central a/c will have to go on the list of must-have items for our house purchase.

City Steam

2008-05-14T07:42:00.000-07:00

After a long day of transition meetings, Tom and I were invited to join our boss, Tony, at a brewery in downtown Hartford, CT for dinner. When we arrived at City Steam, we found ourselves part of a group of 27 people, most of whom I had been speaking with on the phone for the last nine months but had not yet met in person.

City Steam is an brewery restaurant that has a nice range of beers which are brewed on the premises. Hartford has a city-wide steam system for heating buildings, and the brewery taps that steam to provide heat for the brewing process. They had a special offer this evening - buy the first beer for $5, and get a free glass to take home which has the logo of their "Naughty Nurse" beer. Needless to say, we all took advantage of this offer, and I spent the whole night cuddling Naughty Nurses ;-)

Connecticut

2008-05-12T16:37:00.001-07:00

This morning I had to get up extra early (5:30am) to catch a United flight to Bradley International Airport in Connecticut. I'm going to be here for a couple of days to do some transition work to one of the PMs on our team. He lives in New Mexico, and I live in Washington, so we both fly to Connecticut to do the transition. Not as crazy as it sounds, as he was going to be here this week anyway, and I fancied a trip to Red Sox Nation. I had to connect at Washington Dulles airport, and the flight from Dulles to Connecticut was only an hour, but a very bumpy, white knuckle ride. One unfortunate traveller couldn't hold on to her lunch, and puked just as we were coming in to land - ewww!

It's nice to be in Red Sox Nation. I picked up my rental car from the Hertz depot and turned on the radio as I headed out on to the road. The radio was tuned to the local Red Sox affiliate, and it was nice to hear the announcers talking about the Red Sox in such glowing terms. I'm heading down to the hotel bar to watch some of the game - Red Sox at Twins.

Loud rock night

2008-05-10T23:07:00.001-07:00

Just got back from a very loud night at the Wonder Ballroom in Portland, where we saw Eisley supported by Vedera and The Myriad. Vedera are in interesting four piece band from Kansas, with a very distinctive singer. The Myriad hail from Seattle, and are highlighted on MTV. Despite that ominous tag, they really rocked hard, and had some very cool sounds. Eisley headlined, and were very competent. I expected a pop outfit, but they really can rock. My only complaint was that the levels were so loud that they sounded really distorted. Oh yeah, and the dumbass standing next to me who kept taking flash photos throughout the show ...

Before the show, we ate at the Queen Of Sheba on Martin Luther King Blvd. The food there is awesome - we had the vegan sampler which consists of 10 different dishes served on several large pieces of injera bread on a large tray. The food is eating by tearing off strips of bread and eating with your fingers - yum!