I’ve been keeping an eye on Fallout 3 over the past few months. It’s looking really good and I’m starting to get a little excited about it. In fact it’s probably the only game I’m really looking forward to getting this holiday season.

The guys who made Fallout also made Oblivion, and I played the hell out of Oblivion. It remains to this day the only 360 game for which I’ve gotten all of the achievements! So yeah, you could say I have high hopes for Fallout 3.

Bethesda just released five gameplay trailers today and now I’m drooling.

Fallout 3 releases on October 28th. Mark your calendars!

Last weekend we had our five year anniversary, so to celebrate we went to Burning Man!

Haha, just kidding. Me at Burning Man! Could you imagine such a thing? Hahaha! Give me a second to catch my breath. I’m such a character. Hoooo! Okay.

We actually went down to spend a night in San Diego! (We left Kate with Tammy’s parents.)

Downtown San Diego is so great. I love visiting whenever we find ourselves with a free weekend…and redeemable Starwood points, of course! It kills me to spend money on vacations, so trading in Tammy’s points for free hotel rooms is the ideal solution!

Downtown San Diego is only a two hour drive from home so I feel like we’re able to get away without really getting too far away. It’s easy to get around, it’s clean, and the best part of all – no homeless people! San Diego must be the only beach city in southern California without homeless people. I don’t know how they do it.

We stayed at the W and had dinner at Salvatore’s.

Before we left we went to check out the Festival of Sail, a tall ship extravaganza that took place along the Embarcadero.

I’m so happy to be married to this lady. She’s such a good wife and a really tremendous mother. It was fun having her all to myself for a day or two. It reminded me of the days BK (before Kate). These days are pretty good too, but they involve a lot more work.

We went on boats!

My parents had their 40th wedding anniversary the very next day, so my brother and I surprised them with an engraved champagne bucket, a bottle of Dom, a fancy dinner at Noe, and a limo at their front door to take us all to and from dinner.

Here’s me and the missus, toasting like royalty in the limo on the way back.

You spent three months in isolation.

You spent sixteen hours a day rehearsing.

You also spent five to ten minutes a day peeing and pooping in your adult diapers.

If any of these cherished memories belong to you, you were probably a performer in the Olympics’ opening ceremonies.

They sure did make it look good though.

After five seasons and 100 episodes, Stargate Atlantis has been cancelled. It follows in the footsteps of SG-1 as it lives on in an indefinite number of straight-to-DVD movies.

The good news is that Stargate Universe, a new spin-off series, is now in pre-production.

One door closes, another one opens! Atlantis was getting a little stale anyway.

I have a Roomba. A 550. I got it about 6 weeks ago at Costco.

It’s great when it works. It’s not so great when it breaks. It broke on its six week birthday. The two roller brushes just stopped spinning.

I’m no mechanical engineer, but I know trouble when I see it, and I’m pretty sure that every 500 series Roomba will eventually break down. Here’s why.

Roomba’s got two brushes. On the left is what the end of one of these brushes looks like before you start cleaning. On the right is that same part after a normal cleaning cycle.

(I promise I’m not dirty. I just have two (short-hair!) cats.)

See, there’s a gap at the end of the roller. That means that instead of being rolled into the collection bin, a fair amount of hair and debris gets caught up in that gap. Eventually (six weeks in my case) that junk makes its way into the gearbox where it jams everything up permanently. This has happened to lots of other people too. Power is applied, motors meet resistance and heat up, the plastic gears melt, and the brushes will never spin again.

I did everything that I was supposed to. I emptied the bin and cleaned those rollers religiously after every cleaning. Every day. (Roomba’s novelty wears off pretty quickly when you realize just how much work you have to do to keep it running.) Six weeks of daily vacuuming trips around my two-cat, all-carpet house was ultimately more than Roomba could handle.

Rather than deal with shipping the whole thing back and dealing with iRobot’s infamously unhelpful customer service, I just packed it up and brought it back to Costco, whose lifetime return policy is legendary.

I walked out with a new Roomba, but I’m almost positive I’ll be back in another six weeks to do the ol’ switcheroo. Again.

Way to get it right on the fifth try, iRobot. So glad I waited this long to sample your wares!

Kate is 6 months old!

Her 0.5 year birthday was Friday so of course that means picture time!

I took the day off and we had some family photos taken too.

I love my family.