Off to Mali to see my sister for two weeks. There will be pictures after I get back July 10th. In the meantime, I will continue not posting in my LJ :oD.

And now, the online fun of Mario Kart!

My friend code is 4339-2990-3722.

The old tracks from the N64 version are still deep in my brain.

For some reason, I’ve found “drifting” to be much easier with the Wiil than with a traditional controller, from say Double Dash. They may have just made it easier.

The problem with the Wiil is gripping it while applying enough pressure to hold down the accelerator; too much of that and my forearm gets tired fast.

I got Super Smash Brothers Brawl, the game for which I bought the Wii.

My friend code is 0087-2039-4826.

I’ve played a bit with the single-player modes, and it’s bring back great memories of middle school wasted on the original N64 version.

Riding home today, I heard geese. Between that and the Spring Forward, it’s starting to feel like the end of winter! Which is a little bit sad, as winter is my favorite season – except in Boston, where it rains too much and snows too little. Stupid global warming.

I’m about to head to my polling place (the Hellenic Cultural Center) and bubble in the oval next to Barack Obama.

I originally decided that I would vote for him if he ran after I read his autobiography Dreams From My Father early last year; it wasn’t until MA moved the primary date up to Super Duper Tuesday that I thought that my vote might actually matter. Previously, the MA primary would probably have been too late to decide anything, and I had no worries about MA voting for anyone other than the eventual Democratic candidate.

As for Obama himself, I like his stance on technology and openness (which earned him the endorsement of Lawrence Lessig), as well as his realistic troop-withdrawal plan, and his repeated willingness to negotiate with everyone from belligerent foreign states to Republicans in order to get things done.

A number of my LJ friends have already posted better explanations than this; my peers seem to be going overwhelmingly for Obama. You can see a sample of them as written by , , and , among many others.

It is eerie to me how this election is converging towards the plot of the last season of The West Wing.

I only hope my polling place has I Voted stickers.

I realized yesterday that I was 25.25 years old on the 25th. Nifty.

Thanks to ‘s [FUN] post, I went to the absolutely excellent Paul & Storm and Jonathan Coulton concert at Johnny D’s in Davis Square.

P&S opened (am I the only one who thinks Storm looks like Steve Jobs?), but they did backup on at least half of Coulton’s songs. I was introduced to some amusing new music, so I bought a P&S CD and a shirt to add to my Witty T-Shirts line. It also means I can go one more day without doing laundry.

Coulton played a number of the songs that I had heard, most importantly “Code Monkey” (my personal anthem), but also “I Feel Fantastic”, “Skullcrusher Mountain”, “Re: Your Brains”, plus some new-to-me songs. I’ll have to get the Thing A Week boxed set, I think; I was out of cash at the concert.

The audience participation was what made it so great – definitely a big geek crowd. The venue is such that I was in the standing area in the back, but I am tall and remembered my glasses, so it mattered little.

Thanks to a poster in the Johnny D’s mens room, I learned that a Malian griot is performing there in two weeks; I will definitely have to go to that concert.

Now people are going to think I have a Kanye West ringtone. I pulled out a short snippet of the Daft Punk song “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger”, because it sounds good on the dinky phone speaker, and I work too much. Almost the exact same sample is used in the background of a new West song, apparently. I make a point of not having popular music ringtones!

“Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” from Discovery by Daft Punk

So, for kicks, I kept the iPod Touch on active scan the entire length of the 1 and 71 bus routes. Along Mass Ave. there were generally at least 15 detectable wireless networks at any given time, thankfully all password-protected. Among some of the network name highlights:

Wirenizzle
MobileSex
Bush is a Cocksucker
Bluetooth

My local Star Market now carries Victory beers, including Storm King Imperial Stout, Golden Monkey Trippel, and Hop Devil.

I win.