Longklaw.com

I watched the premiere of The Office when it first came on a couple of years ago, but I didn’t watch it after that. Over the summer I started watching it again. Thanks to Netflix’s Watch Now feature, I was able to watch season 1 and 2 online without having to wait for the DVDs to get here. When season 3 came out, I rented them and was able to get caught up before the season 4 premiere Thursday night.

I’m glad that I started watching it. I need to watch more funny shows. I can see why it’s become such a popular show. I find myself laughing out loud during almost every episode. I can relate to working in an office setting. I think that is also one of the reasons that I like Office Space so much. The Michael character is a little too over-the-top for me at times, but he does create a lot of those laugh out loud moments. My favorite character on the show would probably have to be Pam. She’s probably the most like me, personality-wise at least. Some of the extra-long episodes dragged on a little bit, but they were still great. Now I have added another show to watch every week.

I’ve been avoiding all the Halo 3 madness so far. Eternal Sonata has been keeping me busy, so I’m not in a hurry to get Halo 3. Something similar happened with Halo 2. Everquest II came out on the same day, so I didn’t play Halo 2 right away.

Yesterday, I went by GameStop at lunchtime to pick up my copy of the limited edition that I had reserved. The lady who I believe to be the manager was the person behind the register. She looked me up in the computer and started to pull out a copy of the regular edition off the shelves. Then she realized that I was supposed to be getting a limited edition and she began to search for it complaining, complaining that she didn’t know what they (her employees) had done with her games. She went to the back to look and even tried unsuccessfully to reach one of her employees on the phone. She laughed and said that she hoped it hadn’t been sold. There was an awkward silence for a few seconds and it seemed like she was waiting for me to say something about what I wanted to do. I was a little annoyed and I was waiting for her to tell me what she was going to do about the situation. She finally asked me if I could come back later when the employee she was trying to reach would be in.

I went back after I left work and I was told that they were sold out of limited edition copies. Apparently they hold games for 48 hours after it is released. As long as I’ve been reserving games at GameStop, I’ve never heard this. She offered to transfer the $10 I had put down toward a regular edition, but I asked for my money back. Now I am finished with GameStop for now. I ordered Halo 3 on Amazon.com last night.

Today is the 20th anniversary of Star Trek: The Next Generation, which is one of my favorite shows of all time. If my memory is correct, I watched the first season, skipped the second season, and came back during the third season. I think I caught reruns of all the second season episodes while the show was still on the air. Thanks to my friend, John, I have the collection of all 7 seasons on DVD. The nerd in me wants to celebrate by watching something TNG-related, but if I do it won’t be anything from the first season. The first season was really bad.

I think my mom was the one who got me interested in Star Trek. She would’ve been in high school when the original series debuted. When I was still in college and went home to visit, after she would go to bed sometimes I would hear The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and probably Voyager reruns playing on her TV. Even I didn’t watch Deep Space Nine reruns back then (I do now). She doesn’t wear it anymore, but every once in a while she would wear her Star Trek: The Next Generation t-shirt. Go mom!

I’m back on Xbox Live now. My wireless adapter came Friday, but before that I used my laptop to get connected. Unfortunately, it had been so long since I cancelled my previous account under my old name on the original Xbox that I couldn’t recover the name longklaw. I decided to use the name longklaw1 because I didn’t feel like coming up with something creative.

I finally have an Xbox 360. I ordered the Elite Edition online and it came yesterday, which was a day earlier than expected. John said that the UPS man dropped the package down pretty hard, which makes me nervous. In a separate package came the second wireless controller that I had also ordered online.

John and I hooked it up last night. We tinkered with the settings and then put in Eternal Sonata. Just a few minutes into the opening movie, the 360 turned itself off/died/whatever. Three of the four lights in the ring of light turned red. The manual says that signifies an internal error. I hit the power button and nothing happened. I figured that I had the dreaded red ring of death that I keep hearing about. I had heard this mentioned so many times and assumed that there wasn’t anything I could do about it. I don’t think I had the system on for even 20 minutes before this happened. I was kind of annoyed that all of the planning and excitement was ruined because of a defective product and possibly a careless UPS man. I disconnected everything because I thought I would have to send it to Microsoft for repair.

After watching the season 3 finale of Battlestar Galactica (frakkin awesome!), I left my roommates to the TV and decided to call Microsoft to get the repair process started. The guy asked me if I had done any troubleshooting. I said no. The manual only said to call Microsoft and I didn’t think to look online. He asked me what the color of the light on the power supply was after the ring lit up and I didn’t know. I decided to call back when I could be back in front of the console and do whatever troubleshooting he told me to do. A little later I went and plugged the console back in and hit the power button and THERE WERE NO RED LIGHTS. Woohoo!!! I reconnected the audio and video cables and we played Eternal Sonata late into the night.

I’m hoping that everything is okay now. My biggest complaint about it so far is that the console is loud, but I can live with that. It gets pretty hot, but it is pretty well ventilated and I may buy a cooling device that I saw online. Eternal Sonata is a fun game and we’ll probably be playing it a lot this weekend. I hope to get signed up on Xbox Live sometime today.

Starkville got its own GameStop in the summer of 2004 while I was in Ohio. When I returned I was so surprised to find out that one had been built. After living in this town for 7 years, it finally had a real video game store. I’ve spent so much money there since it opened. A lot of times I go just to browse and kill time.

Now it seems like the store is going to shit. There’s a new manager and many new employees. These new employees seem unprofessional at times. I’m sure they’re not all bad, but the ones that have stood out are. It seems like when you’re ringing up customers, you shouldn’t stop to answer your cell phone. Your cell phone probably shouldn’t be out there to begin with. Back before things started changing there, one of the employees asked me if I wanted to apply for the open manager position because I was in that store so much and he thought that customers make the best managers. Maybe I should have considered that.

John and I went there a few nights ago and the guys behind the counter were loudly joking and laughing the whole time. They never said a word to us the whole time we were in there. Of course you should have fun on your job, but you shouldn’t disturb or overlook the customers while you’re doing it. On Tuesday I went to buy the copy of Eternal Sonata plus the bonus item that I had reserved. The person that rang me up didn’t know how to perform some of the tasks she needed to do, even though I’m pretty she’s been working there for a while. They didn’t know that they had strategy guides for it. I already knew that they had copies because I had looked it up online earlier. I asked them if I was supposed to be getting a bonus item for pre-ordering the game with them. I figured that if they didn’t have any I was going to just forget about it. They looked around confused and said that they didn’t know what I was talking about. I finally helped them out by telling them it was supposed to be a face plate for the 360 and they finally found it.

I don’t even like going in there anymore and when I do the visits are usually short. After I buy the last game that I have reserved there (Halo 3), I think I may be done with GameStop for a while. I’ll have to either order games online or go to Wal-Mart or Sam Goody to find games. Too bad.

I just saw on Dragonmount that one of my favorite fantasy authors, Robert Jordan, passed away today. He was suffering from a rare blood disease called amyloidosis.

My friend Seth introduced me to the fantasy genre around 1999 or 2000 when we were working in New Orleans. He seemed to enjoy the books I always saw him reading a lot so I decided to give it a try. We were on one of our many lunchtime trips to the bookstore and I asked him to pick out some books that he thought I would like. The ones he picked out were The Eye of the World by Jordan, Wizard’s First Rule by Terry Goodkind, and Magician: Apprentice by Raymond Feist. Of those 3, The Eye of the World was easily my favorite and I’ve read most of the books in the Wheel of Time series that it belongs to on multiple occasions. Despite whatever complaints I may have had about the progression of the series, I really enjoyed reading it and it’s a shame he won’t be around to write more books.

I finally finished reading What Would Jefferson Do?: A Return to Democracy by Thom Hartmann. I don’t really have a lot to say. It’s an interesting book and it’s informative. He gives a lot of information about decmocracy in the world and in the United States and argues that democracy is being threatened. For some reason, I just never really got into it much and that’s probably why it took me so long to read it. It was probably just the wrong book to read right now.

I added another book to the bottom of the list. It’s been in the back of my mind for months, but somehow it never made it onto the list.

• Dreamcatchers, Stephen King
• Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card
• Summer of the Monkeys, Wilson Rawls
• The Hedge Knight, George R.R. Martin
• The Sworn Sword, George R.R. Martin
• The Taking, Dean Koontz
• Timeline, Michael Crichton
• Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
• Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling
• On Bullshit, Harry G. Frankfurt
• On Truth, Harry G. Frankfurt
• The Long Walk, Richard Bachman (Stephen King)
• His Majesty’s Dragon, Naomi Novik
• Throne of Jade, Naomi Novik
• Black Powder War, Naomi Novik
• Empire of Ivory, Naomi Novik
• What Would Jefferson Do?: A Return to Democracy, Thom Hartmann
• A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L’Engle
• Titus Andronicus, William Shakespeare
• Confessor, Terry Goodkind

Adults do read after all.

I have started watching another show that I missed out on: Friday Night Lights. It’s another one of those critically acclaimed shows that not enough people are watching. I had heard a lot of positive things about it, but I never got into it. I wasn’t a big fan of the movie and I’m not into football as much as I used to be. And besides, I had a ton of other new shows I was watching last fall. It wasn’t until a week or two before the DVDs came out that I finally decided to watch the show.

I started watching it last week and now I am hooked. This may be a cliché, but FNL show isn’t just about the football. I’m finding myself getting really emotionally involved in every episode (I’m a softie). I blew through 3 discs on Friday and Saturday and now I’m waiting for Netflix to send me the last disc. I heard somewhere that if you buy season 1, NBC is offering a money back guarantee if you don’t like it, but I don’t know that for sure. I don’t think a lot of people that see it will want their money back. I hope that now that the DVDs are out FNL’s audience increases and it can get enough support to stay around for a while.

I went to Jackson last weekend. My family was celebrating my grandmother’s 88th birthday. Her birthday was in August, but Labor Day was a better time for every one to get together. It’s weird how many from my generation have children. It’s a sign that I really am getting old.

On the way back to Starkville I had made it to Louisville when I noticed that my car felt weird on the highway. Thinking it was just the road, I kept going. After a short period of time, I could tell that something was wrong so I pulled over. When I got out I noticed that I had a flat. I could smell the rubber and I could see streaks on the road. The tire was HOT. Because of the crappy tools I had I couldn’t get the lug nuts off. I eventually got help from a policeman. I’m not even going to talk about how one cop drove past me earlier without stopping, making me not want to call the police. The lug nuts came right off when I used the policeman’s wrench. I made it back to Starkville on the spare, but the last few miles gave me a little worry. It was almost dark when I had to pull over, so I was a little worried. I usually leave earlier in the day when I travel just in case I have car problems. Thankfully, I wouldn’t have been stranded. My roommate John was on his way down to help when I finally got some help. A new tire and a new lug wrench later, my car is doing okay.