Now You're Baking With Portals

Last weekend was the observance of my firstborn's Birthday. He didn't have any specific idea what he wanted for his cake, but on his wish list was the Portal 2 video game. Oh, and he wanted two cakes.



This is what I came up with.

In case you're not familiar, that's Long Cat going through a portal!!!



The party was pretty low key. The boy & his friends mostly played video games & watched videos (a little clip of them singing along to one is here, the first vid from my new camera I've posted) The part I found most amusing was when they got on a kick where they were watching "My Little Pony" videos!!! That just says Happy Birthday!!!

The Code Companion Cube

Bar codes. They're incredibly resilient. They can be torn in two, or faded to where you can hardly see them, or all dirty, and they are still scannible!!! One of the occasional duties that I end up doing at work is retiring (or as everyone calls it, killing) labels on the containers that get used up. The actual retiring is pretty easy, the time consuming part is peeling the label off afterward.



One of the guys started making his labels into a ball, kept working on it every time it was his turn. Got near to the size of a bowling ball. Said he was going to urethane it and drill it with finger holes when it got to the right size. I said he should get a chain and shackle it to his leg and go around dragging it behind him, see how long that lasts!!! Anyway, many others of us did the same, although none of us got to such a grand scale. I just did one day's worth that came out about the size of a tennis ball. Brought it home and called my younger boy. When he looked my way, I pegged him with it and shouted, "Bar code ball!!!" Well, he fell in love with it!!! He'd get upset when his brother would take it, took it to school, ect. The week before Sammy and I went to the hockey game, I made a puck of labels. I did a few days worth of labels, the last day being a couple days before Christmas, and when one of my friends was admiring it, I replied "Yeah, at least now my kid will have something to play with on Christmas morning!!!" I did it, too, wrapped it up in a box and gave it to my younger boy. My wife was manning my old point and shoot camera while I was shooting video with my SLR, and she got this picture a split second after he'd tossed it in the air and caught it.




So, a few weeks ago I'm killing labels again, and starting another ball. It was kind of lumpy, with a couple flat spots. One of the guys sees it and says, "Everyone does a ball, you ought to make a cube!!!" Challenge accepted. Could this be done??? The flat spots were already close to 90° , so I started on from there. I filled low spots as best I could, and would fold them along the middle and stick it to 2 sides. The corners were pretty soft to begin with, but eventually it came together. Not a perfect cube, but everyone who saw it was quite impressed. The last day I was working on it, this Wednesday, I took some blank labels and colored them red and cut them into hearts on my last break. When I wrapped up for the evening, I applied them to the sides for my own bar code companion cube!!!

It's now on display in the boys' room...

Weekend of Wings

The older boys' birthday celebration was observed this weekend. I like the age he's at now, he just has a few friends over and they play Xbox most of the afternoon!!! His requests for food was a cake similar to the Portal cake and honey BBQ wings. The Pizza Hut wings were a big hit, and didn't last long at all. In retrospect, being barefoot in the kitchen after that wasn't a brilliant move.




I was of the opinion that the Portal cake has probably been about overdone, and thinking of a way to do a variation on it, came up with "The Cake" style cupcakes. Of course, this leads to all kinds of questions on what can be said about them. "The cupcake is a lie"??? Or would that be, "The cupcakes are lies"??? "The cupcakes: Just a bunch of little white lies"??? "Cupcakes = Fibs"??? "The cupcakes: Not really lies, just fudged a little"??? You see the quandary.



Anyway, in addition to Xbox, they did have a bit of a water fight and loquat war.

Sunday we went to lunch at KFC and had more wings there, too, so it was indeed a weekend of wings!!!

Boy's Birthday Post

As alluded to in the previous post, here's some of the pictures from John's Incredible Pizza!!! As always, the food was, well, incredible, and most of us ate too much.



The present that seemed to be his favorite was this plush weighted companion cube. His face lit up when he saw it.



He was very happy with all his other presents, too.



Tickets!!! Many of the games there distribute tickets, which can be exchanged for prizes. The older boy had something like 600 on his card from last time, and got his balance up over 1,250, the amount required for the small lava lamps (makes a dad proud that his boy would want a lava lamp, it does). Unfortunately, they were sold out of that particular item, so he's saving 'em for next time.



This is the John's Incredible Pizza version of making it rain!!! The bear comes out and dances, and they toss a bunch of tickets in the air. I saw a little kid picking some off my nephew's back.




Now this was pretty funny. When we got home, there was a traffic cone by our driveway from this morning when some workers were clearing brush up our street. The log on screen for Garry's Mod (also mentioned in the previous post) features one of these, and the older and I recreated this scene for a picture!!!

Friday CupDate

It's been a long while since I've actually had a cup to cupdate about!!! It has been quite busy of late at work, which is a great problem to have!!! We're shipping around 10,500 orders a day pretty consistently, and most nights it stays pretty busy right up to the end. Apparently the shift from phone in orders to web orders continues, and I heard something about the form being redesigned so people could build their order all day and complete it at the end of the day. Makes more financial sense than having half a dozen throughout the day. I'm not sure if we're actually that busy, or if they've cut the staffing.




I had the good fortune of working with the same girl who did the hula girl artwork on a previous cup, and she made this one up on my cup between batches. I thought it was pretty cool and clever, as well as apropos of nothing. As a collaborative work, I colored in Pac Man with my highlighter and blacked the eyes of the creature.

The younger boy's birthday was on Thursday, so we're going to Johns Incredible Pizza to celebrate today. His greatest wish was Steam games with Garry's Mod, which he has been playing ever since. One of those things where he sees big brother playing it a lot, so that's what he wants. Actually bought him the Orange Box set, so now he's got Portal, too. I had tried to set up Portal on my laptop to see how well the graphics card in it would do, but since it was already installed on the boy's comp, that did not go well.

Cup Cake Cupdate

Haven't done one of these in a while, a blog post OR a CupDate!!!



These cups are actually from a couple months back, I took their picture, and put 'em in the bank for a while!!! Now, they're back and here for your enjoyment!!! I did these around the same time I did the other Portal themed ones.

First up is the weighted companion cube. This plays a part in the game, and you are supposed to form an emotional bond with it, ala Wilson in Castaway. This makes the part of the game where you need to incinerate it that much more painful.



The second cup features the cake, which is promised as a reward throughout the game. Turns out the cake is a lie.

For a game I've never played, I know quite a bit about Portal!!!

But there's no use crying over every mistake,
You just keep on trying till you run out of cake...