Good/Bad News: My best friend Eric is about to finish up Navigator training in the Air Force (if you’ve seen Top Gun, he’s Goose instead of Maverick). After nearly a year of training 1500 miles away in Texas (he and I are California natives), he just found out he’s getting stationed in Omaha, Nebraska. The good news is that it was his third choice of location (better than getting a 17th choice, I suppose) and that he’ll be flying in/out of London and other parts of Europe pretty frequently, which is something that he’ll really enjoy doing. The bad news is that even in Omaha, he’s still 1500-1600 miles away from home, and I just plain miss spending time with him like we used to. Phone calls and iSight video chats just aren’t the same.

Good/Bad News: After being retarded and waiting 6 years to get my wisdom teeth pulled, I finally went to an oral surgeon and got all 4 wisdom teeth pulled yesterday. The good news is that I no longer have to worry about my wisdom teeth coming in directly horizontally causing very painful impacted molars (I’ve been taking Tylenol every day for the past 3 weeks for the pain). The bad news is that even with my medications Toradol and Vicoden (which is a close relative to drugs like Morphine and Heroine), my mouth is still killing me. I’ve been sitting here eating ice cream with a package of frozen peas on my face all morning to little avail.

Bad News: We had to let our house go last week. With my being out of work for three weeks, we weren’t sure how soon I’d've been able to find something else considering how competitive the market has been lately here in Silicon Valley. So we signed the “Release of Contract” documents last week, and are currently planning to wait a few months to be sure we’re financially stable again and then start looking for a new home. The lease on our apartment is over in August, so we’ll ideally need to find something else by then. Here’s hoping everything goes well with that.

Good News: For my fellow geeks that are as excited to start using the next version of Tarzan as I am to release it, I just want to say that I’m close to finishing development on the brand-new, completely overhauled Tarzan Control Panel. Besides the new features that I talked about the last time I mentioned Tarzan here, I’ve added the ability to apply custom descriptions to items via the Control Panel, and I’ve also added advanced cache management options — specifically the ability to recache the image/data for a given item without having to FTP into your cache folder and try to discern which item is which. I’ve also begun building the API that will allow people to search for items based on keyword rather than just ASIN/ISBN numbers. It should also be noted that I’ve completely overhauled the caching system in Tarzan 1.2, and you’d have to be Forrest Gump to not notice the significant speed gains that this new system has allowed. This same caching system (as well as a few other Tarzan features) will be making it’s way into the next version of SimplePie as well as Simple PHP Gallery 2 in the upcoming months.

Okay, I’m done writing now. I think it’s time to take my frozen peas into the living room to try to finish up Metroid Prime 2: Echoes

Two and a half weeks?! Ryan, that’s just no good. What’s your deal, man? Why are you being suck a slacker?

This is the obligatory “Sorry, I’ve been busy” post as made famous by Dan Rubin, Todd Dominey, and Adam Polselli.

Every time that I’ve come across something cool lately, my boss has handed me another 5 hours of work that is due in three. Everytime, I’ve gone to work on Feed Parser, or Blocker, or Blogroller, my wife says “Time for dinner!” Everytime I’ve gone to sit down and experiment with unexplored features of CSS (for my upcoming redesign with the Longhorn-esque timeline), I realize that if I don’t leave right away, I’ll miss my train and be late for work.

Weekends haven’t been that much better either since I’ve either been out of town or watching my friend’s kids for a few hours while they’re at work, or I’ve been trying to get through disc 1 of 3 in Final Fantasy VII.

I’ve got to figure out how to re-work my schedule so I’ve got a little more room. Spending over 3 hours a day either on or waiting for the train as been a huge loss of time. Of course my iPod and Final Fantasy Tactics Advance for GBA-SP have helped the boredom issue, but I’ll be able to do more once I can finally afford to get my laptop.

Anyways, I went down to the video store today, and rented a copy of Mario Kart: Double Dash for my GameCube. I stuck the disc in, and powered up the system. After an unusually long pause, the system went into setup mode, which is something is only does when the lid is open, or there is no game disc.

“Maybe it’s just dust,” I thought to myself as I wiped off the disc on my shirt and blew across the laser lens to get rid of any dust that may have been there. I tried it again, and it still didn’t work. So, I grabbed my Zelda: Wind Waker disc and tried that one. Same problem. Getting frusterated, I tried my copy of SSX Tricky. Still no luck. Well crap!

After 15 minutes with no luck, I figured it was the system, so I went online to look at my warranty/repair options. I’ve had the system for just over a year-and-a-half, so the warranty is definitely expired. I looked up my options for paying for a repair, and the cost was $74.95! Oh my goodness! With all of the Day-After-Thanksgiving sales going on, I can get a brand-new system for $80. So that’s what I’m probably going to do. I hate to do it though, ’cause it’s paying $80 bucks for something I already have.

Then, I looked down at my NES (that I still have). I grabbed my Super Mario Bros 3 cartridge, blew into it, blew into my NES, put the game in and turned it on. Within a few seconds, I saw Mario and Luigi running around on the bottom of the screen, followed closely by three koopa turtles (with the third one slightly out of sync with the first two, as always). If my NES can last me 15 years, why can’t my GameCube last me two?

I’ve got a Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis 2, PlayStation, Nintendo 64, GameBoy, GameBoy Advance, and a Nintendo GameCube, and it’s the GameCube that breaks. What the heck?!

I beat Final Fantasy Tactics a few weeks ago. I hate Delita. Even though he’s supposed to be your best friend, don’t trust him. In the end, you’ll die and he’ll take over as king of Ivalice, reigning over the land with the peace that you brought. Stupid Jerk!

I’ve taken a break from the GameCube version of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. If I don’t even have the time to beat Wind Waker, I definitely don’t yet have time to finish Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

Anyways, I started playing it, and the game is fantastic. It looks like you’re playing a cartoon… smoothe as all-heck. At first, I thought it wouldn’t be as challenging as Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask, but so far it has turned out to be a fantastic game. I think it’s gonna give Metroid Prime a run for it’s money.

On a separate note, I’ve been concurrently playing Ocarina of Time and Final Fantasy Tactics for PS One. The FF storyline keeps getting deeper and deeper, and I can’t figure out if Delita is actually still my friend or if I should try to kill him. I’ve just begun Chapter 3. I saved Princess Ovelia from Execution, and realized that the Church Cardinal is in on the Zodiac Brave conspiracy.

I love the Final Fantasy storylines. I wish I had a PS2 so I could play the new FFX. I think before that, I should play 7, 8 and 9 first. So far, my favorite is Final Fantasy 2 (US).