Shrimp #3... why is this so confusing?

So my shrimp are doing their darnedest to make me believe that I have gone insane.  First I went a long period of time thinking that one had died and I only had 2 left.  Then I saw 3 swimming around a month later and was elated/shocked.  Yesterday I saw only 2 and thought that maybe I was insane about ever seeing the 3.  So I looked and I looked and eventually I saw some red.  I shook the container some more so I could see the red more clearly and got some photographic evidence.  Shrimp #3 is in the mouth of a snail shell.  I have never known the snails to be alive, and I thought the shell was just decorative, so I can't say for certain whether the shrimp is alive and hiding in the shell or dead and being eaten by a snail I was not aware I had.  But I can now firmly state that I did have 3 shrimp in my ecosphere.  Even if I might be a little crazy, I am indeed still capable of counting shrimp in a small glass egg.

Pasadena... a vision of the future!

I tried to highlight the awesomeness in this picture but in case it's not obvious:
1) Solar
2) Chute
3) Compactor
4) BigBelly

That my friends, is the future.

I have been curious...

Yup, that's Doostang (pretty similar to LinkedIn) trying to inform me where my industry pees.  Next time they should check their grammar though.

Miracle Fruit 4-7-09

Notice how all the new growth has turned a healthy green. There's still a few new leaves but it seemed to be going through a rapid growth when it first arrived. I'm keeping my eyes on it to make sure everything looks healthy and that new buds keep appearing. I think the growth is pretty noticeable.

R.I.P. Dinner

I laid Dinner to rest this morning.  I hadn't noticed anything wrong and was just going to fill up her food bowl but when I didn't see the usual shifting of the bedding as Dinner would run through her self-made tunnels to see what the disturbance was I suspected something was wrong.  I had been wrong about this once before so a part of me was hopeful until I saw her body.

Dinner lived much longer than her sister Lunch, who for some unknown reason died within a week of us getting them from Petsmart.  That was shocking and it made us fear for Dinner's health, but as time passed we knew she was going to be fine.  I believe we had Dinner for around 2 years and since that's less than the estimated lifespan of 3.5 years I have this general unease that I was at fault for this shortened life.  When animals don't communicate, can't verbalize in any way, sometimes we don't know when something is wrong.  I hope very much that Dinner passed without suffering and was not unhappy.  I cared very much about that little ball of fur, and so did the cats.

Army of Two Review

I'm going to suppose that this is how the game "Army of Two" came to fruition:

First, someone heard a commercial for the Army, back when the slogan was "An Army of One"

Second, they thought that would be a cool game but realized that the Army had already trademarked that slogan, so they thought, "Why not make a game called Army of Two that focuses on co-op?"

Third, since the whole co-op thing hadn't really been fleshed out by the time this idea came about they decided to put the gameplay on the back-burner and focus all of their programmers on diverse environments: Iraq/Afghanistan, Jungles of China, Aircraft Carrier, Office Buildings...

Fourth, they had 6 levels created and thought they should probably get going on that whole co-op thing. They started brainstorming about what 2 guys in battle might do together... a few people snickered, a few people wondered why they snickered but blew it off. Then the ideas started flowing: they could fight back-to-back as enemies came from all angles, they could have one create a distraction while the other moved up and killed someone... then they were basically done. But someone said they needed more so they added a riot shield that one guy could hold and the other guy could fire over, a helping up move to get over walls, and finally, one of those programmers that snickered suggested a tandem parachute where the guy in front could shoot and the guy in back could steer and when one of the execs said that sounded a little gay the programmer said "Really? I don't think so ::snicker::"

Fifth, EA came over and said "Are you guys done with that game yet?" and everyone said "Oh Shit, we need to hurry!" and six months later the game was on shelves.

And that all explains why later on they added 2 levels, one of which completely re-writes the ending so that at least it makes a little sense and some guy didn't just survive a plane crash into the ocean with no injuries... that would be crazy!