My PS3 is dead. Long live My PS4! (Redux)

So, early this year my PS3 gave up the ghost, you probably saw the post I wrote about it on the this blog back then. I hemmed and hawed about it for a while and our family ended up purchasing a Sony Blu-ray player for around $60 about a month after the PS3 died.

That little machine has pretty much been a very mediocre one for us. It's always freezing up at random times and it takes forever to load apps (Netflix) and is just generally a poor quality replacement for a machine like the PS3.

Fast forward 8 months and this little game launched. I had read about destiny sometime during the summer of 2013 and I was pretty excited, thinking I'd pick it up on my PS3 and give it a shot (or at least rent it). Since my PS3 was dead that wasn't happening. If you haven't seen the trailer for Destiny yet, you should check it out, cause it's awesome.

I had no plans to purchase a PS4 either, but after 8 months of dealing with the sub-par Blu-ray player (compared to what we had with the PS3 anyway), and the launch of Destiny (a First-person shooter with Co-op online multiplayer) and realizing that my sister had a PS4 as well and I've always wanted to game with her.... All of these factors coalesced into me deciding that it was time to purchase a PS4.

No, I did not do the "Single Guy" move and just go out and buy one. I've learned a few things about being responsible since I've gotten married. Instead, I mentioned it to the wife and we agreed that it would be a pure luxury item and as such won't come out of our regular budget.

I told her I still had some magic cards to sell and I could probably make the $400 I would need to pick up the console. I also noted that Black Friday was coming soon so I'd wait for that and find a solid deal on the console plus the destiny game and get it all for the current price of the console.

I ended up selling enough magic cards in two weeks to fund the whole thing, and I was able to find a PS4 online for $310 ($90 off)! So I snapped that up, found a used copy of Destiny and even got a headset to boot. All for about $380 total.

My younger self feels revived in a way I didn't think it would. Tomorrow night will be my first "Gaming night" with the new console. My sister and I are going to try to become legend...

MMA 2014: A.J. "BigBro" Pielmeier vs L.P. "6 Tooth" Pielmeier

After dinner this evening the family moved from the dining room into the family room area of our house. Nina went to the recliner with Kira to nurse her, I went to my desk, and the boys went to the area in front of the T.V.

I had my back to that portion of the room and Nina's chair faced the T.V. and the area where the boys were. Apparently, Lucas and Xander disagreed about who was going to watch "their show" on the T.V. because after a few moments I hear Nina say sharply, "Let him go!"

Mind you, at this point I have not heard crying, whining, or other serious noises from either of the boys. At hearing Nina say this to the boys I rotate my chair around and am instantly frozen in place.

The sight I beheld at that moment stunned me because at first I wasn't sure what I was seeing, and then when I realized what it was I wasn't sure if I should laugh or immediately go intervene.

When I turned my chair around to see the boys it was immediately apparent they were having a serious disagreement. Xander was on his back on the ground with the top of his head pointed toward me, legs splayed out away from me, shoulder width apart. Lucas was face down on top of the lower half of Xander's body, laying with his head on Xander's right side just below Xander's hip. Xander had Lucas's right arm in both of his hands, one hand at Lucas's wrist, the other on his forearm. It looked like Xander was holding Lucas in an armbar submission hold similar to the one pictured below:

Two key differences from the picture above and what Xander was doing. One, Xander's legs were not crossed or on Lucas at all. Two, if the guy getting his arm locked is Lucas then flip him over so he's face down and on top of the other guy. Now, these two key differences don't mitigate the fact that Xander had Lucas pinned because Lucas is 16 months hold and he doesn't have the upper body strength or the abdominal strength necessary to lift himself out of the hold that Xander had him in. Needless to say I was stunned. I wasn't sure to laugh out loud or run over and help.

It all happened so fast that the decision was taken away from me anyway. At this point I was thinking, "Lucas is gonna have to tap out and I'm gonna have to go save him from Xander." It's important to note at this point that neither of my sons was crying. They were both making noises but none of those noises could be considered crying. Instead, they were more like grunts and such, maybe from exertion or from frustration, probably both.

So Xander has Lucas armbarred on the floor in front of the T.V., Nina is nursing Kira and saying for the second time to "Let him go!" and I'm stunned in my computer chair looking on. This goes on for probably five to eight seconds and I become convinced that Lucas is stuck and not gonna be able to free himself from Xander's grip. Then Lucas does what he always does: he surprises me and proves me wrong.

Lucas's head is facing the ground and flailing back and forth near Xander's right leg as he tries to extricate himself from what I'm calling the "Baby Armbar." I'm not exactly sure what went through his little head but I imagine it was something like the following:

I'm stuck. My arm is stuck, why can't I move. I want to turn my show on. I'm trying to move and Xander is holding my arm. I can't free my arm. I need to get free. If he won't let me go I'll use my only available tool.

At this point Lucas proceeds to bite Xander's leg hard enough to elicit a squeal of "Lucas stop biting me" from Xander. The bite also causes Xander to let Lucas go, get up, and limp away complaining about Lucas biting him.

At which point I burst out laughing.

Lucas Wins!

On Transformers: Age of Extinction...

Disclaimer: I have not yet seen this movie.

The Screenwriter for Transformers 4, Ehren Kruger had this to say about this movie:

"We wanted some sense of continuity in terms of the previous films. Those films exist in this universe. But we did want to come at it from the perspective of new human characters, and new Autobot characters around Optimus Prime, who kind of vectored into the franchise from a totally different direction. And it is kind of it’s own thing. It is sort of a reboot, and sort of a fourth movie, or third sequel. It’s its own animal, but this franchise has always been its own animal. It’s as much a circus or a Super Bowl as a regular movie."

I had to read that a few times to make sure I was correct in finding no logic there whatsoever. Go ahead and read it again so you are sure as well, I'll wait.

Ok, so if this is the kind of statement we get from the writer of the movie, I can see why everyone hates the new transformers movies (the same guy wrote all three sequels).

It makes me super sad, because I was genuinely excited to go see this movie (granted it was because of Grimlock, but hey).

Lexicon X

My first born son Xander talks quite a bit and is generally very intelligible for someone his age (he's two and a half).

Every now and then though, he hits upon a phrase or word that he uses to represent something that has nothing at all to do with what he is actually talking about or he just says the same phrases constantly for various reasons.

This blog entry is dedicated to these groups of phrases.

The other night, after we had put the kids to bed, I was laying on the couch waiting for my wife to come join me to watch some TV. She was walking around the house taking care of a few things and I was laying there half covered up by a blanket. As she walked by I said to her:

"Cover me up bigger!"

She turned to me with a look in her eye that made me think that if I had said this to her while she was closer to me I might have received a solid punch to my face.

Xander will often say one of these phrases: "Cover me up bigger Mommy!"; "Cover me up bigger my neck, Daddy!"; "Cover me up bigger my teeth, Mommy!" and so on, ad nauseam. Now, you might be thinking to yourself, "Just cover him up then." Yes, yes you poor fool.

We do cover him up, to the various degrees he asks (arms, neck, teeth) and it matters not. He will still ask you to "Cover [him] up bigger" no matter how much you excel at covering him up. We've come to the conclusion that the words themselves don't actually mean much to Xander. Instead, he just wants you to continuously cover him up, pretty much until he falls sleep; which, FYI, is never gonna happen while you are in the room with him. Good luck with that though.

Xander knows how to push people's buttons too. He's actually nowhere near as accomplished at this endeavor as his little brother Lucas is though, but he's a quick study. Throughout the day he'll often do things that he knows he's not supposed to do (Empty out his brother's milk bottle all over the floor, Body Slam his brother, have an "accident" in his pants/all over the floor, etc.) and then he'll add insult to injury by asking his Mother this simple question:

"Is it funny, Mommy?"

Let me tell you, I've seen Vanina's face when these things happen and I can testify that it most certainly is not funny.

When Xander wakes up in the morning there are two things he invariably says:

"Good Morning Daddy" immediately followed by "Please Chocolate bread."

If I don't produce Nutella covered bread quickly enough for his liking it turns into "Pleeeeeeaaasseeee Chocolate Bread" and then if I'm still too slow it switches to "Chocolate bread Pleeeeeeeaaaaseee" just for variety.

I'm a fairly good whistler and I am practiced enough to even whistle while breathing both in and out so I can continue to whistle for quite some time uninterrupted. I also love music and sometimes I will whistle along to the music.

Xander has very keen ears. He can often hear things before we do and points them out, usually telling us what the noise is (i.e. if he hears a plane overhead: "Daddy, there's an airplane, do you hear it?"). However, if I start whistling, even if he is sitting on my lap, he will look around confused and say "What's that noise?" We've told him it's whistling, but it doesn't matter, if I start whistling he starts looking around all confused and asks "What's that noise?" Other whistle sounds, except train whistles (as he's something of a resident expert on trains in our house), produce the same confusion. He's like Pavlov's dogs, except instead of salivating, he gets confused.

A nice family that goes to our church gave us a Thomas the Train train-track set that came with a little Thomas the Train toy train that runs around the track on battery power. Well, we had the track up for a while, but it was huge and took up half the floor space in his room so I eventually took it down again, but he kept the toy Thomas train out to play with sans track. He calls it his "Little Thomas" and it must indeed be very little because he loses it like every two hours. When he does lose it this is all we hear: "Where's my little Thomas?" as he wanders around the whole house poking his little head into every nook and cranny he can find. As if we let him make a habit of playing with his toy trains in my clothes closet.

Here is a listing of other random stuff he says, most of them have stories to go along with them but this post will get way too long if I keep writing them:

When he wants to point out something he thinks you are missing: "Did you see that, mommy?"

Whenever we open the front door: "Is Jojo coming over?" (Jojo is his cousin, he's obsessed with Jojo).

"Lucas is a baby" either preceded or followed by the question "Is Lucas a baby?" Occasionally he'll include the epithet "Lucas is a funny baby."

Before Naps: "I'm not tired" followed by "I need to watch my show."

Sometimes even Xander runs out of energy and when that happens and he wants to not have to chase you down he'll say the following to you: "Come here. I have some important news for you."

And lastly, as you may or may not know my wife Vanina is pregnant with our third child, a baby girl. Xander is utterly fascinated by Nina's growing belly. He often wants to see her belly saying "Can I see your belly?" She usually does show him her belly, and he rewards her by saying the following:

"Your belly is so big!"

Ah yes, that's my son, he really knows how to woo the ladies.

What's Lucas like?

I couldn't think of a really appropriate title because it could just as easily have been "Living with Lucas" or "Lucas Lights up my Day." I just wanted to tell a bit about my second son.

I was sitting on the couch after a long day of work yesterday with Lucas on my lap and I could tell that he was really tired. I had both of my arms around him and he was just leaning his little head back onto my chest and occasionally saying "Ugh" and kicking his left leg halfheartedly each time he'd say it. He seemed content to just lay there on me resting and I know I was super content to just hold him. He's much more cuddly than Xander ever was at that age, or even at any age really.

Lucas lights up my life in a different way than I experienced with Xander. I love Xander and he's an amazing boy and he changes my world every day. Lucas though, I didn't realize I was missing him in my life until he showed up and changed everything for me, again.

Lucas will talk to me non-stop, and he doesn't even have to use any words. He only knows 2 words, Mama, and Dada, and yet he'll have whole conversations with me. Most of these he initiates too. He'll look at me and, while tilting his head back slightly, say "Uuugh." I'll respond in kind saying "Eh" and tilting my head back a bit too. He'll then continue this for a good long while, letting me know we are communicating.

Xander loves to play, and I mean LOVES it. But Xander get's tired of playing the games I make up and just wants to do something else sometimes. Lucas though, this kid will play any game I can think of with me and he'll play it to the bone! I've often come up with random things trying to turn them into a game just to see if Lucas would play. Every time I've done this Lucas is all in.

Lucas is calm in a way that Xander never has been. I often find myself comparing him to a rock weathering a storm. He's as patient as a tree and as unflappable as a mountain. I've seen him toss a toy out of his reach and then try to get it back and then fail, all without crying. He just tried and tried for a while, and then gave it up as a bad job and went on to something else.

He's also content either by himself or with others (us). He'll often play by himself for long stretches but also be happy playing with his brother or with us too. His brother has made him tough too. Xander is tough as nails and that has rubbed off on Lucas. I've seen Lucas fall off a step a third his height, fall on his face while crawling too fast, fall off the couch, hit his head on the underside of a table, and get body slammed by his older brother all without making a sound.

His toughness doesn't lessen his emotions either. I've received 5 kisses and 6 hugs all within a few minutes from him. Lucas kisses like no one else I've met too. He just opens his mouth as wide as possible, sticks out his tongue and then proceeds to head butt you, mouth leading the way. It's an experience not to be missed. He loves his brother too, I've watched him watch Xander constantly. He's en rapt when Xander is doing one of his routine antics.

It's hard for me to explain this because he's only ten months old, but I feel like I've known Lucas forever. He's what was missing in my life, even though I didn't think anything was missing at all! We truly named Lucas well because he certainly is a light in our family.

My PS3 is dead. Long live My PS3!

This past Tuesday morning, at the crack of dawn, my oldest son asked me to turn on Curious George on Netflix for him. I complied and turned on my PlayStation 3 Fat to get Netflix going for him. The light on my PS3 turned green, as usual, stayed on for a few seconds and then immediately turned a kinda sick looking green-yellow for a moment and then changed to a constant blinking red light.

Needless to say I was nonplussed. After doing some research, I found that this could be a symptom of any number of things the two most prominent are: my PS3 was overheating because of too much dust, or my PS3 had contracted the dreaded disease known as the YLOD or "Yellow Light of Death." This is the death of my machine. Apparently I can fix it if I want to get my hands really dirty and buy some parts. I don't think that's gonna happen though.

This is the end of an age for me. Once I finally get past the denial stage and throw the PS3 away this will be the first time since I was 9 years old that I have not owned a console gaming machine at my house (not counting my time spent in Panama).

I feel like having a funeral because I feel like a younger part of me just died. I had this last console longer than almost any of the others. I bought my PS3 in 2007, used, from a guy who bought his when they first came out in 2006. That means my PS3 is 7 years old. Some are saying that it's a miracle mine lasted this long.