Longklaw.com

Today I played Trauma Center: Second Opinion on the Wii for a little while. I rented it from Gamefly. You start out as a surgeon early in his career and you move your way up through the ranks as you complete surgeries. I’ve had to cut people open, remove pieces of glass and tumors, stitch them back together, and bandage them up. The hospital/medical terminology is at least a little familiar to me, probably because I watched ER for years. So far it’s fun, though a little creepy.

Maybe next somebody will make a plastic surgeon game where you have to perform cosmetic surgery on people.

Lately I had noticed that it took a really long time to create new entries. Last week I started getting that 500 Internal Server Error whenever I tried to add a new entry or rebuild pages. The error logs said something like “premature end of script headers”. Working with the tech support guys at the hosting company wasn’t much help. If you noticed a lot of “test” entries over the weekend, that was us trying to figure something out. I use the free version of Movable Type, so I don’t think I could’ve gotten any help from them. In the end I figured that it may have something to do with how long it was taking for the script to execute.

A couple of days ago I discovered that Movable Type 3.34 would be released any day now. The release notes promised a performance increase of up to 15 times faster. I installed it today. I tried rebuilding the site and the process is sooo much faster than what is was before. So far I’m not getting any errors. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

&tI think I may be one of the people that get Wii elbow or whatever you want to call it.

I finally got through the first dungeon on Twilight Princess the other day. It took me about 3 hours to get from the beginning to the end, though I did take a couple of breaks while I was doing it. I think this is going to be a long, fun game.

I downloaded Super Mario Bros., Altered Beast, and Dungeon Explorer from the Virtual Console. Retro fun! I’m excited about some of the games that are going to be on the VC soon, but I’m still wondering when we’ll see Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World, and A Link to the Past.

I rented Trauma Center: Second Opinion for the Wii from Gamefly and it should be here any day now.

Last week I reserved Wii Play mostly because it comes with a Wii Remote. Those remotes cost $50 by themselves and they are hard to find around here. I don’t think they’re taking anymore reserves on that game. It’ll be out in about a month.

Today I reserved a copy of Warioware: Smooth Moves and it will be out next week. It seems like it could be a cool party game. I don’t know much about it so I’m taking a leap of faith. If only I already had that second controller.

The GameStop employees seem cooler these days, so I’m happy to hook them up with some reserves. I know that there are some new people there and some old people are gone, but part of it may be because the Christmas season and the PS3/Wii launch are over.

I get these urges to get back into online game every once in a while. I thought about getting my Xbox Live subscription started again, but they just don’t have any games I want to play. Now I really think I want to play City of Heroes again. We’ll see what happens with that.

So with all this going on I don’t need to buy any more games between now and the end of the decade.

Wow! There was a plane crash near the Jackson/Clinton border yesterday. It went down less than half a mile a mile from my mom’s house – where I spent a lot of my early years. My mom heard it and called me afterward.

I had a lot of fun with the Wii last night. I played the tennis, baseball, and boxing parts of Wii Sports and they were pretty cool. I messed around with a lot of stuff on the menu, created a Mii, etc. I was able to browse longklaw.com using the browser that you can download. My friend number is 1875 7438 9934 0398. I purchased Super Mario Bros from the Virtual Console and plan on giving it real try tonight. I had the most fun playing The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. I wish I had gotten a Wii while I still had time left in my break and not on the first day back to work. Oh well. There’s always the weekend.

I got a gym membership again today. I’m not even going to try to plan a schedule because I know I won’t stick to it. I just want to go and do something a few times a week.

I saw the series premiere of Dirt on FX the Tuesday night. Those commercials that I’ve been seeing over the past few months got on my nerves. I had heard that early reviews of the show were bad, but I was surprised at how much I liked it. It was fun and mean and crazy. Maybe it goes downhill from there. I really don’t need another TV show to keep up with.

I ordered HBO because Rome starts back on the 14th of this month and The Sopranos will be back in April. A benefit is that on the various HBO channels they’ve been playing a lot of movies that I’ve been interested in.

I’m not sure that I mentioned it earlier, but around Thanksgiving I bought Wii component cables so that the picture will look better.

Yesterday I went to GameStop in Starkville just to browse like I frequently do. I overheard an employee say that they had been sent three Wiis and they might be receiving the Wiis today. I was really tired at work this morning and my back was killing me, so I went home for a little while to rest. Around noon I went out to run some errands. I went to GameStop with the intention of seeing how many they got (I assumed they would have already sold out of the ones they received) and when they might be expecting some more. A spiffy GameStop employee told me that the UPS man was running late and they hadn’t received their shipment for the day. I decided that since I had already been gone from work for 2 hours at this point I might as well try to wait it out even though I had told myself I wasn’t going to wait in line anymore. Since no one else in the store appeared to be waiting around for the truck, I knew that if the Wiis came today, I would be sure to get one since 3 supposedly were coming.

A few other people showed up to wait for the UPS truck while I was there, but I don’t think they all stayed. For some reason I had a good feeling about actually getting a Wii today, but I was prepared to be disappointed. I guess it was around 1:30 that I saw a UPS truck at the bank near Wal-Mart across the street and soon afterward it came to the shoe store next to GameStop and then to GameStop. There was one lady who went out to the UPS truck while the delivery guy was inside the truck preparing the boxes. I’m assuming she was just trying to find out how many Wiis he had and not trying to do anything underhanded. Once the delivery guy came off of the truck and I saw how many boxes he had and the size of the boxes, I knew that I was going home with a Wii. When I came into the store the employees could tell that they had 3 Wiis and 1 PS3 just by looking at the boxes.

I didn’t really care that I was first to buy one as long as I was one of the three. Everybody seemed to realize who the first three were and I would have been highly upset if somebody tried to take my spot among the 3. The UPS guy stated for the benefit of the people who weren’t going to be able to get one that he had just unloaded 22 Wiis at Wal-Mart, but they might not make them available until tomorrow. The spiffy GameStop employee had gone to Wal-Mart and returned in the meantime and said that he saw somebody walking out with one. I’m assuming there was a reason he didn’t share that information with us sooner lol. A couple of people immediately left and I hope they were able to get one. A ponytailed GameStop employee pointed at me and said that he knew that I was first, so I went up to buy mine. The spiffy GameStop employee brought the 3 units out and then ponytail guy rang me up. Ponytail guy asked me if I wanted some games, and I told him that I already a game – I just didn’t have a system.

I got back at work around 2 and now I can’t wait to get home to play with my Wii. It’s going to be fun. I may be working late today, but when I finally do get to play, it’s going to be fun. I just hope I break something or hurt anybody.

Remember that crappy DVD player I got from DirecTV recently? Well, they sent me another one.

A few weeks ago when I hadn’t received my “free” gift, I emailed them informing DirecTV of this. A few days later I received the first DVD player. I thought that because of my complaint they got on the ball and rushed the gift that they had neglected to send me all along. Now I think that they simply put a second DVD player in the mail.

I decided to put the first DVD player in my bedroom so that I can conveniently watch movies there. I don’t watch DVDs in my room much because I’m spoiled by the surround sound system in the living room. I checked on eBay and that model was selling for about $10. From what I’ve heard these DVD players aren’t that reliable, so I think I’ll hold on to the second one to use after the first one breaks.

That’s it for 2006. I want to wish everyone a Happy New Year.

Yesterday I used my desktop on and off sparingly throughout the day. It’s in my room and I didn’t spend a lot of time in there yesterday. I noticed a noise coming from the case, but it barely registered with me and I didn’t really pay much attention to it. Late that night when I finally sat down to really use it, I defeated the forces of Isengard at Helm’s Deep and then I attacked Isengard itself (The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth). Once I finished playing I went to bed, but I left my computer running. As I lay in bed, I heard the noise again and it finally hit me what it was. I immediately got out of bed and shut the computer off. A few years ago the same noise started coming from my laptop and within a week the hard drive failed. Back then I didn’t know about the dreaded clicking sound and I learned a hard lesson. I hope that I’ve caught it early enough this time that I can retrieve the important (and not so important stuff) from the drive. This morning I bought a new hard drive and I am in the process of getting it all set up. Hopefully, I’ll be back in Middle-Earth soon.

Oh, and I’ve been playing StarCraft some lately. Call me old school.

I’m back in Starkville after a short trip to Jackson. My friends and family were good to me again this year. For my birthday and Christmas I got:

• The Talisman and The Black House, both by Stephen King and Peter Straub
• The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe Extended Edition
• Time & Again Shea Butter
• Fraggle Rock: Doin’ the Things That Doozers Do
• a USB Hub
• a USB Adapters Kit
• money
• The Transformers 20th THe Movie Anniversary Edition
• a Visa Gift Card

Recently I bought Bully for the PS2. It’s mission-style gameplay reminds me a lot of GTA. That’s not surprising since they come from the same company. Bully is rated T for Teen, so I guess it won’t be quite as bad as GTA. I wonder if I can finish the game before I go back to work.

I started reading The Talisman on Christmas Eve. I’m already hooked on it and I’m having a hard time putting it down. I think my friend was right when he told me that a lot of the annoying elements of King’s writing are held in check, maybe because of the guy he co-authored the book with. At least I think that’s what John was saying. I discovered tonight that there’s a mini-series based on The Talisman coming out in 2008.

Please don’t waste your time watching The Wicker Man like I did. It was terrible.

The first season of Coupling was really good. I’m looking forward to watching the rest.

I discovered the option on the DirecTV menu that allows you to watch programs in Spanish when available. I never realized how much fun that could be. It really improves the quality of some programs.

I’ll be going back to work a week from Wednesday. I’m going to enjoy this time off as much as I can.

The name of the last book in the Harry Potter series has been announced. It’ll be called Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Let the speculation on the title begin.