One Night at McPerkins

Saori and I both spent the night with family: Saori slept at her sister's host family's house, and I over at my parent's scottsdale condo (triple secured!). After working an extra two hours to get some more design stuff hashed out, I drove to Scottsdale and met mom and dad at Best Buy. We picked up Tay from his driving lesson (completely virtual) where the instructor told us that Tay needs to work on slowing down earlier for stop signs and lights, and that he needs to scan ahead more.

Of course, the simulator that he's working on, instead of a computer tracking where your eyes are looking, you have to push a button to indicate that you've done something. This is completely stupid and actually harmful. When tay actually starts driving, instead of using his eyes to scan, he's going to be feeling around the dashboard. There is no reason at all, other than the company's refusal to shell out the money, that the experiance of driving cannot be very closely simulated with high resolution, accellerated graphics, motion feedback systems to approximate the reaction of the car, and tracking cameras to look at where the eyes are pointing. All the tech exists, and has existed for at least the past 10 years.

Anyway, we played a family game when we got back to the apartment, an electronic game called catchphrase where you play in teams of two and have to get your partner to guess a word or phase without using that word or part of the word. Theres a timer that goes faster and faster on the unit, and the idea is that once your partner gets the word, you pass it off, like hot potato, and the guy with the thing when time runs out, the other team gets a point. It's fun, and pretty quick.

Mom and I went to pick up Havana Cafe takeout for dinner. Good stuff, lots of leftovers. After mom and dad had gone to bed, Tay and drove out to Blockbuster where I picked up Pan's Labyrinth and Casino Royale. We stayed up late watching Pan's Labyrinth.

Bikenomics

Today I bought a bicycle. It's an old used blue Schwinn Varsity road bike, with 26 inch tires. I am sick of Tempe's public transportation system (I call it a gross failure when I can WALK the mile and a half to school faster than the time it takes for me to get there taking the bus), and Saori's bike is way too small for me. Considering that the rest of my bikes have been stolen, I invested in the best lock I could buy. I also picked up a little LED headlamp which easily snaps to my handlebars so I'm more visible at night. Grand total $170. A tidy little sum of money to be sure, the bike itself was $110. Actually if I'd bought a cheaper used bike online or from the classfieds, odds are I'd make up the rest in repairs, new parts, shifters, brakes, etc. Everything on this bike works great. So I'm glad I got it. In terms of security, I'm storing it IN my apartment while its there. No more leaving it anywhere overnight.

Last weekend, Saori and I went to go see Pan's Labrynth, a movie by a Mexican director, and it was in Spanish with subtitles. Good movie, very surreal, very graphic, extremely bloody, and actually has the most terrifying scene I've seen in a long time. Not a movie to take the kids to. Very interesting though, the non-American director gave it a really fresh take. It's not what you're expecting.