A Simple Way To Go Faster Than Light That Does Not Work

Wii Fit Plus is a fantastic piece of software, a $20 upgrade to the original that fixes its most annoying flaw. In the original Wii Fit, exercises lack flow. You choose one from a menu, work at it for a minute or two, then have to click through screenfuls of text and a high score list before getting dumped back to the menu where you must choose another exercise. (Sometimes it will suggest a follow-up exercise based on the one you just did, but infuriatingly, leaves it to you to paw through the menus to find it.)

You can still use Wii Fit Plus that way, but you can also instead use it to build up a custom regimen either from individual exercises or thematically linked blocks of three. You can also just say "Gimme N minutes of exercise" and the Wii will oblige you. I find that after working through a Wii-scripted regimen, I actually enjoy spending a few more minutes poking around the full menu in the old style, just to wind down. And then I'm done for the day.

I've been hitting the balance board every other day for a weeks and I feel super duper, working muscles that I ordinarily barely use. Even though some of the yoga poses cause my belly to become twisted or pinched in ways so unfamiliar that my guts misconstrue the context, and then I have to actively resist the urge to retch. Downward-facing BLARRGGHHFFF!

Anyway, if you own Wii Fit and are disappointed with its not-quite-thereness in the way that I was, please go pick up this update. You will like it.

In other news:

I screwed up my ability to pay taxes on time. I have the money, more or less, but it's not in the right location. I'll spare you the details. So anyway, I filed extensions for the first time in my life. The thing that people seem not to know about extensions is that you're still supposed to pay what you owe on-time; the extension's just for the paperwork.

Fortunately(-ish), tax slackers are a common case, so the gov't will happily take your payment later, plus interest for however long you slacked. The rate is based on the Fed so it's cheaper than credit cards. They won't raise too much of a stink so long as they see their tardy money in a reasonable period of time.

The feds got an in-good-faith payment of $1K from me, and the commonwealth got NOTHING. I'll have to make it up to them next month. I need to be a busy beaver with Appleseed work for the next coupla weeks to make sure I can pay all that and everything else, but the work's right here in front of me.

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Climbed back on the exercise horse. I guess it's better that I keep fallin off and gettin on than just stop altogether. The funnest thing about getting back into shape is objectively observing your strength come back, day-to-day. I could barely do five push-ups last week, and now I can do six smoothly. Let us forget that I could do ten easily a coupla months ago. Stupid, slippery horse.

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Been playing a lot of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. The best parts of the game are wandering the countryside on a mission, as it really is quite beautiful, and getting into utterly insane encounters due to the fact that monsters and NPCs can, if they wish, locate or follow you to literally any location in the game world. Once I had an ally from the game world's main city show up three levels deep in a dungeon to ask me about a quest I had left half-finished. Also, if crazed goblins ambush you in a cave, you can let them chase you right into the middle of the nearest city, where the imperial guards'll be like "wtf?" and stick 'em for you.

Yesterday I did this by accident, except that I got into a situation where two assassins were chasing me, and a guard was chasing them, and I got them all to run into the middle of a deep lake - I have magic boots that let me walk on water, see. None of these guys had any issue with either buoyancy or oxygen, and the assassins stood around directly beneath me, puzzled, as the guard methodically relieved them of their hit points. Presently their bodies floated up like dead guppies, which was nice, coz they're easier to loot that way. Moments later, the guard burst out of the water on a shore dozens of yards away, and zoomed off over the hills, back to wherever he came from. I laughed.