monkey nonsense

Grandma, let me play that video game!

i don’t see what the big deal is! i’ve been fighting my grandparents for the video game consoles since i was little! one time when my grandparents came to visit us and were bored (’cause they can’t really go out without my parents who worked), we introduced them to those japanese video games (“11083091 games in ONE!”). they were hooked! i remember being called down to the basement while i was supposed to be practicing piano so i could solve a banana (who remembers that game?!) level for them. they equated smarts with the ability to beat video games (yay! that may have been the only time in my life they considered me smart) and i remember my grandpa lecturing me, while playing video games, on the need to keep the mind sharp by exercising it often.

when they went back to taiwan, they bought their own console and played all the time. when i went back to taiwan to visit them when i was 18, my grandparents excitedly told me to go upstairs to this room – their gaming room! my grandma complained that there were days that my grandpa wouldn’t even leave that room and that she’d have to bring him up his meals!

even my mom would get hooked on the games. i remember some summer nights staying up til 2-3am playing tetris with my mom!

Wednesday, December 28, 2005; Posted: 10:28 a.m. EST (15:28 GMT)

SHALERSVILLE, Ohio (AP) — A 69-year-old grandmother has become the heroine of young video-game fans and the star of a Web log created by her grandson.

Barbara St. Hilaire plays video games 10 hours a day and spends a good part of her Social Security check on games.

St. Hilaire thinks the blog and media attention she’s gotten is funny but doesn’t quite understand it. However, she appreciates the free games showered on her by video game makers who want to share in the reflected glare of publicity.

And there are the bloggers she has met online. “I guess this is my form of traveling the world,” she told the Akron Beacon Journal.

MTV profiled St. Hilaire, hired her as a video game correspondent and offered to screen her interview requests. It’s all been, as her 22-year-old grandson Timothy St. Hilaire put it, a bit head-spinning.

“Well, last weekend was hell, but it’s over,” the grandson told his grandmother’s fans on his blog http://oghc.blogspot.com/external link. The blog is named for her moniker, Old Grandma Hardcore — as in hardcore video game player.

Grandma, who lives with her daughter and four grandchildren, moved with them last weekend from Shalersville in northeast Ohio to nearby Mantua and a more specious house that gives Grandma her own game room.

“We’re in the new house, Grandma’s game room is coming along, although there was some scratching of some furniture if you know what I mean,” her grandson reported on the blog.

As for interviewing Grandma, “My head is spinning off my neck trying to make everybody happy with scheduling resolutions (it would be a funny sort of thing if it didn’t hurt so much) and I want to help as much as I can, but we just moved; so things are tough for the moment.”

With the new living quarters, Grandma’s busy interview schedule and the Christmas holiday approaching, the St. Hilaire family holiday cards ran late. Besides, Timothy St. Hilaire said Grandma was busy breaking in a new video game, “Dragon Quest VIII.”

Business Week, The Washington Post and the “CBS Evening News” all did stories on St. Hilaire and ABC’s “Good Morning America” and The Associated Press called to line up interviews.

Along the way, Germany’s influential Der Spiegel did a piece, and the Akron Beacon Journal weighed in with the assurance that her sudden fame was “completely logical in the present state of popular culture.”

According to the trade group Entertainment Software Association, 19 percent of computer and video game players are 50 years old or older. The senior-citizen share was 9 percent in 1999.

Video games can be useful in maintaining eye-hand coordination as people grow old, said Linda McNeal, a Columbus consultant who works on recreation and activities issues for nursing homes and rehabilitation hospitals.

“It’s also very good mental stimulation,” according to McNeal, who said nonstop television watching can dull the mind.

Paul Alandt, who runs the 12 Golden Age Centers of Greater Cleveland, said seniors visiting the day centers spend a lot of time playing video games on computers.

“They are really loving it,” said Alandt, who estimated one in five center visitors use the computers for games.

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

from: http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/fun.games/12/28/granny.gamer.ap/index.html

so my parents are like little kids and every year, my mom wants to open presents 18291 days before christmas. this year, my dad called me at work and was asking me when i was coming home so we could open presents early. they used the lame excuse that we were having guests stay over with us thus we needed to open presents before they arrived christmas eve. sure…

so i was sad to find out tuesday of this week that my parents’ gift (a roomba!) was not going to be shipped before christmas. boo home depot, with no inventory control, allowed everyone to order the roomba on sale (thanks slick deals!) even though they had long run out of stock. i was pleasantly surprised to receive a shipping confirmation on thursday! but i figured it might not arrive in time since it shipped so late. after calling up home depot (because they charged me incorrectly after all this, grrr), they ended up giving me the tracking number and seems my package actually shipped 2 days earlier and was due to arrive on friday! yay!!

friday at work i was constantly refreshing the fedex tracking number, hoping to leave work whenever the package arrived. in the afternoon, i called fedex three time! the first time they said their trucks would be out until 7-8pm tonight just to try to get packages out. the second time they said they were also making deliveries saturday. the third time, the lady said she thought it would come saturday for me though she had no updated information to go off of other than the scan they had in hagerstown, md the night before. i was all sad i had contemplated waiting for the package to arrive up til 7-8 pm (could’ve grabbed dinner with jason at the end of his long drive home!) but finally decided that it might not even come friday so i called my parents and told them i was coming home but their present would’ve arrive until saturday and i’d have to make a run to my apartment before we went to the mei’s house to celebrate.

so after rushing home early from work, packing and loading up the car with the rest of the presents, i was making one last check of everything (oops, forgot my camera)… when the fedex truck pulls up! YAY!!! got the package and wrapped it (in it’s shipping box!) really quickly and left. even better news?! at the peak of normal rush hour (by this time it was 5pm), i got home in 45 minutes!! wow! that’s how long it takes when i drive home in the middle of the night on a weekend! YAY! great commute!

i was all excited that all the presents were here that i didn’t mind (and even wanted) opening presents early! ehhehehehe, i got all excited for my parents’ reaction. my mom was feeling and shaking the packages as i was bring them in and she kept guessing she got 24 (since that’s what i got my parents last year for christmas and for father’s day and my mom’s birthday)… haha, i think she was even slightly disappointed she didn’t get 24. apparently, she’d been telling all her friends she was sure she was going to get it and that they could borrow it after she finished watching.

i think she liked the friends DVDs though and then when she found out how much they were (it’s a family thing, we tell the price of presents when they’re good deals… heck, my parents don’t even bother removing price tags to presents they are particularly proud of… yea, we’re cheap), i think she was happy

and my sister was kissing DVD boxes because of dean cain and wong fei hong

just got an email from a high school classmate (the one who organized our 5 year reunion) about a teacher at one of the feeder elementary schools who’s in danger of getting fired. even though i never had this teacher (i went to another elementary school after kindergarten), i feel as if she was a great teacher! my sister had her… and i can remember all the stories she told me about this teacher. i always wanted this teacher because of the great things i heard about her.

teaching is such a honorable profession, teachers make such a lasting impression on kids. anyone else remember all their teachers growing up? i remember….:

• elementary school: quist (good), montgomery (not so good), strade (barely knew because she had a baby that year)/powers (bad), sheehan (good), diggs (one of my favorites), tehrani (another favorite), feldman (ok), katz (ok), dvorak (good)
• middle school: furfine (good)/ herman (bad!)/stein (alright)/cornell (ok, funny man at least)/tischler (ok)/milne (another fav)/RH (ok… a math teacher teaching gym!??), chase (ok)/herman (again!)/kaplan (ok)/wing (another fav)/poirer (ok)/hinkle (not that great)/sansom (good)
• high school: canham (ok)/parsons (good)/rakshpal (good)/stross (ok)/bascom (good), heyman (a fav)/leavitt (eh.. the lady who made me come into school sick with mono)/brodsky (ok)/adler (ok)/whitley (eh), broadman (ok)/gasser (good)/brasoveanu (ok), storck (good)/allison (ok)/musgrove (ok), trettel (good), cox (ok)/mccain (ok), shire (ok), ross (ok)/hampton (ok)… i’m actually missing a couple of math and english teachers there… i’m missing the algebra 2 teacher who used to make fun of me whenever i DID do homework (because it wasn’t that often)… this teacher is also the one who erased blackboards weirdly (mariam imitated her)… anyone? anyone? and i’m missing the english teacher i had with janet and vicky (remember our dr. catholic, irish-catholic, russian jew, chinese “me no english” immigrant skit?)

even if the teacher sucked, i still remember the teachers distinctly (even teachers whose names i’ve forgotten now ) and things the teachers did like sprinkling fairy dust on us before we took the maryland state exam, being obsessed with garfield, “is it true? it is true!”, being a seinfeld fan, warning us to “flee to safety” whenever the fire alarm would sound, and always telling us that teachers do indeed have lives outside of school (a difficult concept to grasp when you’re just a kid).

anyone who went to lakewood, didn’t get that email, and wants to help out mrs. kim, let me know. i can forward it to you. (incidentally, it seems it is the asian community who is trying to force mrs. kim out, go figure! asians… finally getting off their butts and getting involved! … and to get rid of a great teacher, no less )

most of my favorite teachers growing up were my favorite because i remember doing fun and exciting projects in their classes (sheehan, diggs, tehrani). later on, my favorite teachers were the ones that taught me more stuff (heyman, parsons, gasser). who were your favorite teachers growing up?

edit: teacher who wipes blackboards weirdly – kovarcik!! teacher from dr. catholic skit – solomon!!

is there something that says after a certain age, you no longer are “technology savvy.” you don’t keep up with the latest and greatest, you’re unsure of what new technology is available and although you programmed your own VCR in your youth, you now rely on your children to do it for you?

my parents really amusing. my dad worked for ibm for 20+ years before he retired and since i remember, i always knew he was “worked on computers.” but when our family got our first computer when i was in 8th grade, my dad had no clue how to use it! my sister or i would have to turn it on for him, log him onto the internet, and load the hotmail webpage! it made me wonder whether he really did any work while at work

a couple of years ago, when my dad retired and started spending a lot of time at home, he decided that dialup was too slow for him so he got the family cable internet. i guess he was so excited with the new technology that he felt he had to go all out. so he also got our family a wireless router.

wireless! router!! technology overload! he used this router to route internet to the house’s ONE computer. and he put the WIRELESS router right next to the computer…. bah, thereby fully utilizing the wireless and routing capabilities of this new gadget!

a couple of weeks ago, my dad bought a new scanner. why? because he couldn’t get the old one to work. why couldn’t he get the old one to work? because it had no connection plugs. he dumped the scanner onto me and told me to “fix it.” bah!!

why do i bring this up? ’cause i just received an email from my mom. i need to drive to some person’s house next week so i needed the address of the place. i figured she’d email me the address.

no… instead, i received an email with an attachment on it. the attachment was a scanned-in image of a scrap of paper with the address handwritten. BAHH!!!!

today, i broke my bed…

i slid-dove onto my bed (i’d like to say julie is a bully and pushed me? tho that’s not really what happened) and 3 of the legs, two of which were already wobbly, gave way. one of the leg’s welding was already falling apart so this just ripped the welding completely off. the other wobbly leg’s screw was already bent (i think this bent screw was what was causing the stress on other wobbly leg’s welding). when i got the legs from my sister, i could already see problems, but i was too lazy to put off putting my bed together and getting new legs. i think it’s about time. at least temporarily, everybody helped put my bed back together again (many a shirt was sacrificed to piece it back temporarily). thanks guys! it almost makes up for the fact that you all are big bullies and were picking on little, innocent, cute george before all this >:O my poor monkey, i’m more worried about my monkey than the bed

woohoo! this is the highest cranky crabs score i’ve ever gotten! too bad my arm is so out of shape that after one game of cranky crabs, i’m done for the night. i’m gonna start “training” again so that i can take over the top 10… muhahahhahaha

http://www.ferryhalim.com/orisinal/g3/crab.htm… try playing yourself it’s highly addictive

kiwy the big blue dinosaur (or as betty once called him “stumpy blue”) was cutting up some fruit the other day…

i’m told i have too much time on my hands…. AND that i should become a professional fruit cutter tho really… i can only cut dinosaur shaped kiwis…

talida bought a can of pimpjuice a couple of weeks ago. a couple of nights ago, julie, tina, and talida started to do commercial poses for it (one too many episodes of america’s next top model maybe?). for some strange reason, it reminded me a lot of zoolander and his commercials though really the poses are nothing alike. anyhoo… here are some of the results from their photo shoot (more available here):

julie’s original pose with the pimp juice

talida takes julie’s pose and elaborates with a wink

tina’s pose with the pimpjuice

chug chug chug!!

i think i’ve finally figured it out. this just about sums it up…

s: i’m torn between doing something and being a lazy bum
w: awww
s: the lazy bum inside of me is pissed
w: pissed that i have to do more work to switch
s: the ambitious person in me (about 0.01%) is pissed that the lazy bum has let it go this far without doing something
w: that means 100% of me is frustrated
w: awww
s: but to search again would upset 99.99 of me
s: since it’d mean more work
w: yep
s: but to stay at my current situation would piss off that 0.01%
w: ohhhh i know!
s: which, because it’s the most ambitious, gets the most upset
w: just quit!
s: 99.99% of me is usually “meh” about things
s: 99.99% of me has thought of that!
w:
s: it’s that pesky ambitious part…
s: it’s pretty persistent despite being outnumbered
w: hehehe
s: 0.01% of me convinced the 99.99% of me that switching groups would be a step in the right direction
s: at first 99.99% thought that might be a good idea
s: however, htis has become too much work so 99.99% has gotten annoyed
s: plus, it has the sneaking suspicion that 0.01% is tricking us into switching there
s: but that it won’t be satisfied there either!
w: awwww
w: you need a new one entirely
s: 0.01 agrees with you!
s: and that is exactly why 99.99% doesn’t trust 0.01%…
s: why switch to another group if you’re just gonna ask to switch completely later on?!
s: that 0.01… such a troublemaker
w:
w: oooh, well maybe if you find a new goal for that 0.01%
s: then the 99.99 will just continue to toil in boredom
s: (that was 0.01 talking sorry. 99.99 doesn’t see a problem in “toiling” in boredom… it’s not really toiling!)
w: hahaha
s: yeah..
s: i’m so stressed, i’m breaking out like a teenager!

(conversation edited a bit)