Glanced at the blog and felt immediately bad that I hadn't updated in 10 days. And so much has happened too, with me having a birthday, and Alex having his first day of playschool. But then I realized that none of my friends update their blogs regularly, even on a monthly basis. Then I felt better. Yes, insulting my readers do give me a sense of resolution.

Anyway, the main reason why I've been absent is mostly to do with the PSP, but some of it has to do with my wife being on vacation. Unlike most of our counterparts, we're not doing anything on our vacation, just taking some time off for some sanity. My wife has been so overworked that this week has been a little better. It doesn't make our boy less crazy or our girl less talkative, but it certainly does make her life a wee tad stressful.

So, just to get the PSP out of the way, it's been a fun little multimedia device for me. And when I say multimedia, I really just mean videos and games. MP3s are for my iPod and having photos on the go is overrated. Most people don't use photos on the go unless it's like porn or something. I've never found that feature especially useful for my phone, iPod or PSP. But yeah, I watched "300" on it, and "The Descent" as well. It's nice to be able to catch movies at work, albeit the feature are interrupted - but the movie still gets watched. And podcasts do have to be converted, but it's worth the trouble for the most part. Just bought a cheap pouch for it today (cheap because the PSP Slim accessories aren't even out yet.) and so now I look like a bona-fide geek, with a PSP hanging off my belt loop. No worries, am married and have kids - doesn't matter how I seem to the opposite sex anymore. Just as long as I'm not creepy, that's good enough for me.

My birthday came and went mostly without incident - since the aforementioned gadget was my gift, I just got some sweets and cards from the family and that was it. Didn't do a whole lot, but I didn't work. Which was nice. Working 10 hours on my birthday isn't exactly my idea of a good time. But that was fine. Alex started his playschool which was very exciting for him, spending 2 1/2 hours twice a week in an environment with a teacher and other kids. He doesn't seem to like to share about his experiences, but he did miss Zoe when he came out of it last time. The first time he went though, it was tough to tell Zoe that she couldn't stay, that she couldn't play. Instead she had to have some Mommy time instead. Cost was a factor, but it was also about getting him ready for school, whereas she still have a couple years to go before we had to think about school.

I decided yesterday that I should start encoding all my home movies to mp4. I had begun a previous project like this, converting all my home videos to DVD, but the thing of it is that it is still sorta accessible, but still not. And I'm never happy with the encode because it gets to be too time consuming. With the mp4, the format is small enough not to kill my HD space, and actually plays on the PSP, though that is not really the main reason for doing it. I just want to have the access to all the videos at my fingertips. Don't know why, but it seems like a nice idea.

DUDE. Today we decided to go to Gene Coulon park because it's a nice park that my wife's never seen, and it had a pretty cool playground that I wanted to show the kids. We then went to Fry's to pick up the PSP case and then we were going to go to Walmart. But I was hungry so we wandered to that neighborhood to see what there was to eat. We saw Arby's, and was considering Popeyes' until I saw the drive thru window and decided that it was simply going to be another different kind of fast food. So we were going to go to Billy McHale's but in the same parking lot was an interesting sort of building - Sorta like a barn or a worn down house. My wife read the slogan "Steak. Crabcakes. Peanuts on the Floor." and I was hooked. Walking inside Jimmy Mac's Roadhouse was a bit weird, the front door looked like a screen door made out of chicken wire, and when we went inside, there were peanuts of the floor alright. The ambience is really something, like we had wandered into a Patrick Swayze movie or something. The menu dropped our jaws at first, most entrees were starting at 21 bucks. But we ordered the half-rack ribs, and the kids were splitting a kids meal.

The first hook were the rolls - they were warm and slightly sweet, and with butter they were just plain delicious. I ate two and wanted more, and my wife ate the other half. And right after we finished it, another tray of rolls came and got devoured. Our meal came and they had divided the single kids meals into two full baskets, which was pretty nice of them. Our half-rack of ribs were huge, certainly more than I had expected. The beans were awesome, and the sweet potato fries were... different, but not bad. The ribs were good, and I just sat there with a smile on my face. I truly appreciate good food and it makes me happy. I'd recommend the place even if it is a bit gimmicky, though I'd suggest going not during their busy time. Because they were busy during dinner time. We were there at around 5 and it was just about right.

So there, all caught up now.