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I saw the last episode of Rome last night. It was a great, although sad, end to a great show. The 2 seasons of the show were comprised of 22 episodes. It was decided due to budgetary concerns before this season started that this would be the last one. Since it is based on historical events, I suppose they would have eventually run out of stories to tell. I like the idea of a show lasting for a short period of time and going out while at its peak quality instead of dragging on forever. Besides, I have too many shows that I’m trying to keep up with. That being said, the second season of Rome was the reason that I subscribed to HBO and I hate that it is no more. Be sure to watch the DVDs.

I have officially given up on Trauma Center: Second Opinion. The last time I played I was stuck on a “mission”, but I have since then read a way to beat it. The main reason I gave up on it was because I wasn’t really enjoying it anymore. I was mostly playing just so I can say that I finished it, which at this point is probably just a waste of time. Weeks go by without me even touching the game. When I do play, it’s not very long before I want to stop. The story is uninteresting and the missions are annoying. There was one where I had to diffuse a bomb using my surgical equipment. Weird!

Another factor is that the Wii seems to be more fun when you’re playing with others. As much as I like Twilight Princess, one of the most fun sessions I’ve had on the Wii was a few nights ago when there was about 6 or 7 drunk people around playing Wario Ware. Hilarious!

I rented Trauma Center from Gamefly. When I joined Gamefly, I said that I didn’t want to keep games for longer than a month. I’ve had Trauma Center for almost 3 months. At the rate that I’m paying, I could have bought the game for the amount I’ve spent on renting it. Ridiculous!

So, I guess my point is to not buy Trauma Center. Rent it because it is fun and interesting in the beginning. Move on if you ever start to feel annoyed with it. Maybe I stopped too soon, but I don’t think it does enough to make you want to keep playing. Disappointing!

I can add Hitman 2: Silent Assassin to my list of completed games. Yeah, I know I was supposed to be playing Neverwinter Nights, but I took a little detour. I first played Hitman 2 a few years back on the PS2. I got bored and frustrated on one mission and ended up selling the game. I decided to give the Hitman series another try on the PC and played the first game, Hitman: Codename 47, during the summer that I spent in Ohio. Hitman 2 is a much better game than its predecessor. As the title suggests, you play a hitman and you are assigned hits on various individuals. The plot isn’t really important, but I like that there are a variety of ways to complete each mission. The sound is good and the graphics are nice at a high resolution.

After a while I did get tired of sneaking around and killing people. I had thought that I might move on to the next Hitman game, but now I think I really will get into Neverwinter Nights some.

A Hitman movie is going to be made. Originally Vin Diesel was going to play Agent 47 (the main character), but then the role was given to Timothy Olyphant. I think that Jason Statham would make a better Hitman.

I’ve been doing well lately when it comes to reading. This past week I re-read The Hedge Knight and read The Sworn Sword for the first time. Both of these are short novels by George R.R. Martin that were included in the Legends collections. They take place in the same world as Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series, only 100 years in the past. The main characters are Dunk and Egg, a knight and his squire. Combined they are about 250 pages long. I liked The Hedge Knight more than The Sworn Sword, but they are both definitely worth checking out if you like A Song of Ice and Fire. Hopefully, he’ll finish the next book in the main series soon.

Now I can update my reading 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

Netflix recently introduced a “Watch Now” feature that allows you to watch movies on your computer. It was only available to a limited number of customers in the beginning. I noticed last night that I can now use this new feature. It doesn’t cost anything extra to use.

I’ve read that watching movies on your computer is going to be the way to go in the future. Throughout 1999 and most of 2000, my computer was the only DVD player I had at the time and I didn’t mind watching DVDs that way. I don’t mind watching stuff on my computer from time to time. If I miss show I sometimes watch it on the network’s website or download it from iTunes. For the most part, however, I prefer to watch movies and TV shows on my TV.

That being said, I’m sure I’ll make use of Watch Now. The selection is limited right now, but I’m sure it’ll grow. Only 5 movies of the 160+ in my queue are , but I’m sure I’ll find other stuff that I may not have thought of to watch yet or stuff that I know I want to see but haven’t added to my queue yet. For example, I keep hearing that Red Dwarf is a great sci-fi show. I checked and all 8 seasons are available to be watched online. There are only 6 or 8 thirty-minute episodes in each season so they should go by quickly.

I’ll try watching something this weekend and write more about it once I’ve had a chance to try it out a few times.

I finally got around to reading the book that probably every other science fiction/fantasy fan has already read: Ender’s Game. One reason I picked this book to read next is it’s length. So many books that I read these days are newer books and are at least 600 pages, but this one is only around 300 pages. It is possible to tell a good story in 300 pages. And it is a great story with a great ending! I’m sure that I’ll read at least one more book in the series some day. I recently heard that the book is being made into a movie. Now I’m back to re-reading The Hedge Knight.

Also, I finished playing The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth. It’s been fun getting back into real-time strategy games lately. This game seems to focus more on the fighting than creating troops and gathering resources. It deviates quite a bit from the books and the movies, but it’s not a big deal. It got really good at the end and I fought some really long battles. I’m interested in playing the sequel, but for now I’m on to Neverwinter Nights.

Tonight I finished watching the second season of Alias. My sister and brother-in-law liked this show and I had heard good things about it. I watched the first season recently and now I was ready for the second season.

I started out not liking the season much. I was getting annoyed with all the stuff dealing with Sydney’s mother. How many times did they have to go to her because they needed information and had no other choice? Once I got past the first few episodes, I didn’t want to stop watching. A major milestone happened that I didn’t think would happen until much later in the series, but the show doesn’t feel old.

Don’t watch the previews for the second season that play at the beginning of the first disc. I think they gave too much away. I already have the discs, so they didn’t need to convince me to watch it. Since I read a lot of entertainment news so I hear about major events on TV shows that I don’t watch. I had already heard about the surprise revelation at the end of the season finale back when the show was still on TV even though I didn’t know exactly what point during the show’s five seasons it occurred. It seemed like a big event on the show and a surprising plot twist. However, I had completely forgotten about that until they mentioned it in the previews. It would have been a fresh surprise when I got to that part, but I was expecting it the whole time I was watching this season.

It was a great season and I’m looking forward to watching season three sometime soon. I almost picked it up when I returned season two to Blockbuster, but I decided to wait a little while.

Getting that new monitor last week made me want to make some more upgrades. Everything looks so much better now. There are some PC games out there worth playing and I’m getting the urge to play more. I installed the Command and Conquer 3 demo over the weekend and by default all the settings were low. I have a feeling that if I bump up the settings I’ll see some serious performance issues.

My desktop is about 4.5 years old, so it’s past time to start thinking about a new one. I’m going to start buying components for a new system. Thankfully, I should be able to transfer some of the newer stuff from my old system to my new one.

The first thing I want to buy is a video card because I could probably start using it right away. I’m a little behind on video card advancements. My current card is a Geforce FX 5200 with 128 MB of VRAM. Don’t laugh!

Even something in the 6 series would be an improvement for me. I want to buy other upgrades, so I don’t want to spend too much on a video card. I haven’t started looking at prices yet, so I wouldn’t be surprised if I could shoot higher for a great price. Also, I haven’t ruled out buying an ATI card.

Sci Fi Channel will be airing a marathon of The Dresden Files on Wednesday, February 28, beginning at 5pm CST. They’ll be replaying all 5 episodes that have aired so far. I recommend giving this show a try if you haven’t already.

Episodes 1 and 2 were really good, but episodes 3 and 4 were much better. I haven’t seen episode 5 yet.

From what I understand Sci Fi has been airing the episodes out of order and I hate that. The episode that was supposed the be the pilot won’t be seen until March. However, you should still be able to follow what’s going on without any problem.

I ended up buying this monitor as a replacement for my CRT that died. It’s fine for what I need it for and I get a rebate if I remember to fill that form out. I seem to be partial to Samsung products these days.

I watched Parenthood the other night at its still good after all this time. My mom was a member of Columbia House (when they had VHS movies) and that was one of the movies she bought. The fact that I still remembered most of it even though I hadn’t seen it in around 15 years means that I must have watched it over and over again. “When you’re slidin’ into first and you feel a sudden burst…”

I finished reading Black House by Stephen King and Peter Straub. It’s the sequel to The Talisman. It’s a much different book than The Talisman. The whole style seems different. A lot of that may be because they were written about 20 years apart. It’s still a great book, however. There’s a lot of Dark Tower goodness that people who were fans of that series will enjoy. **minor spoiler warning** It even had a warning about continuing past a certain point at the end just like book 7 of The Dark Tower. **end spoiler warning**

Speaking of The Dark Tower, I hear that it may also be made into a movie or TV series.

I went online to pay my DirecTV bill a few days ago and saw that I owed over $200. It turns out that they charged me fees that I had been told I would be charged. I paid the amount that was due on the last bill, waited a day for the payment to go through, and then called them to have all the extra charges taken care of. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and say that they weren’t trying to cheat me. It probably happened because my call got disconnected before the guy could finalize the deal and the second lady didn’t know that I wasn’t supposed to be charged those fees.

Those Amazon.com ads on the right side of the home page seem to be different depending on whether I’m using Internet Explorer or Firefox. I wonder why that is.

I got pulled over for not wearing a seatbelt of all things. The one time I wasn’t wearing it and that happens. I discovered at the time that I didn’t have a recent insurance card on me. I had 3 expired cards, but not one that was up-to-date. I also discovered my driver’s license expired in about 2 months ago on my birthday. I had no idea. Time flies in the real world. He let me off with a warning on the seatbelt and expired driver’s license and only gave me a ticket for no insurance. Once I go show them proof that I do have insurance, I’ll be set.

Update, 2/26
Stephen King has now confirmed that The Dark Tower will be adapted by LOST co-creators J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof. How much did they pay him for the rights? $19. Somehow that’s not surprising.