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I got an email about that postal employee who stole one or more of my Gamefly and/or Netflix rentals. She plead guilty to 1 count of Delaying or destruction of mail or newspapers and 3 counts of Theft of mail matter by officer or employee. She’ll be sentenced on September 29 and any other charges will be disposed of then. I could go out to Los Angeles and speak at the sentencing if I wanted to. I’m curious to see what her sentencing will be, but I don’t want to be involved in any way. No major harm done.

I remember reading Childhood’s End a while back and getting to the point where humanity didn’t have to work for a lot of and people became absorbers of media. It made me think of how much time I spent watching TV, playing games, listening to podcasts, etc. It’s fun. I can do what I want with my free time :). Here’s some of the stuff that I’ve gotten into over the past few months.

I rented Robot Chicken: Season 2. Still hilarious. Some of my favorite skits: • The Neverending Story • Final Fantasy VII • E.T. • Captain Planet/Ted Turner You can probably find these skits on YouTube if you don’t want to get the DVDs.

I played BlackSite: Area 51 on the Xbox 360 on an off over a couple of months. Those commercials with the little girl made me want to play it. Fun game with excellent graphics. Not the best first person shooter, but still good.

I finally played Portal. Now I know what everybody’s been talking about. It’s a first person shooter puzzle game. I felt smart when I figured out some of those puzzles.

Five Days was a British miniseries that came on HBO. It was an interesting concept. You get to see 5 days out of a 79 day missing person investigation. Neat, but I got bored.

John Adams was an HBO miniseries that I actually liked. I love those historical dramas. Guess what it’s about.

In Treatment was an interesting show that came on HBO. It’s about a therapist named Paul and his patients. It came on 5 nights a week and you got to see the same patient each Monday, each Tuesday, etc. On Fridays you got to see his sessions with his own therapist. It started out really slow and I thought about only watching the episodes with the patients that I liked. However, I stuck with it and about 3 weeks into it got really good. I’m interested to see what it’s going to be like next season.

Enchanted Arms is a strategy RPG that I played on the Xbox 360. It’s a pretty good. I found myself getting bored at times. You spend way too much time scrolling through dialog. And there’s no animation during a lot of those scenes. You just see images of the characters in the foreground that change occasionally. The graphics are great and the battles are fun. It has a flamboyantly gay playable character. The manual says that he’s a transvestite. *Spoiler Alert* After he supposedly dies early in the game, he goes around disguised as someone else. At the end he reveals that he did so because the stuff he had to do to help save the world wasn’t ladylike. Fun stuff.

If you’re a fan of LOST, you might want to play LOST: Via Domus. It’s not a long game and you get easy achievement points. I had heard that the executive producers of LOST said that the ending to this game wasn’t a dream, so that meant that I definitely had to play it. I’ll give you a link to the ending so you don’t have to suffer through the game.

I rented Planet Earth and it looks awesome in HD. Enough said.

The Lost Odyssey commercials with that Jefferson Airplane song made me want it. It’s a really good game. I haven’t gotten to the end. I really need to get back to it.

I’m got around to playing Halo 3 only about 9 months after everybody else played it. I liked the game and the story. I’m not really sure about the ending. I’m going to start playing multiplayer this weekend. Some of the guys at work are having a Halo night next weekend.

Heavenly Sword is the first game that I’ve played on the PS3. I decided to rent it from Gamefly since reviews said that it was as short game. It’s a very good looking game and a lot of fun to play. It reminds me a lot of God of War. It is a pretty short game, which is fine by me. The final boss fight is annoyingly hard, and I almost gave up on the game because of it. But a couple of weeks later I picked it back up and beat it. Score!

I got a letter from the U.S. Department of Justice yesterday. A postal carrier was found to be in possession of multiple Gamefly and Netflix rentals. One of the rentals in her possession was either on its way to me or on its way back from me. Her illegal activities had been going on since August 2007. She’s out of custody and her trial was supposed to take place this week. I went to the victims’ website that the DoJ has set up and I can stay up-to-date on the developments of the case.

Since this trial is taking place in California, I’m assuming that the crime took place there and it’s a Gamefly rental. I wish I knew exactly which game it was. It was probably a game that I sent back and marked as sent on their website when they didn’t get it after a while. I think there has been a game or two that I didn’t receive after a week, so I asked for another copy. Whatever the case, at least somebody is doing something about it. The long turnaround time annoys me sometimes. I figured that this kind of thing does happen. Gotta have my games and movies 🙂

While listening to Slice of SciFi, I heard about a movie called The Man from Earth. I rented it from Netflix and watched it last night. It’s about a college professor who is having a goodbye/retirement party that is attended by several of his colleagues. At the party he reveals that he’s been alive for 14000 years and that he believes that he is a Cro-Magnon. Every 10 years or so when people notice that he doesn’t age, he packs up and moves on. It quickly becomes a philosophical discussion about life, death, and religion. It‘s not the kind of movie I would normally watch. There are no special effects or action scenes. Most of the movie is a group of people sitting or standing around in one house talking to each other. To me, it never seemed to drag on. I really enjoyed watching it.

The only problem I had with the movie was the video quality. It changes at different times throughout the movie and gets noisy and grainy at times. It distracted me somewhat. I eventually got to the point where I was only listening to the movie and not really watching. If it seemed like something interesting was happening on screen, I would watch then.

Definitely check this movie out if you get a chance.

John and I recently finished out second play through of Gladius. I wrote a lot about it after we finished it the first time. I liked the game a lot more this time around than I did the first. Although we spent more hours on it, it seemed like we went through those hours much faster. We played through a different character’s story, but I don’t think that’s made much of a difference. It’s definitely worth playing if you like strategy RPGs. I wish they would make a sequel.

I’ve really been enjoying listening to a CD set by Pearl Jam called Live at the Gorge 05/06. I love Pearl Jam and they are a great live band, so I knew I had to have it. It’s 7 CDs long and is a recording of 3 concerts they did at the Gorge Amphitheatre in September 2005 and July 2006. I think that these shows were bookends on all the touring they did from 2005 to 2006. Since I bought the set from the Ten Club’s website, I got a limited edition postcard set.

I’m always worried about giving too much away, so I’m not going to say much about Stardust. We went to see it over the weekend and I had lots of fun. Michelle Pfeifer looks pretty good for her age. Witches, magic, action, adventure, special effects, humor, and a gay pirate are all so much fun. I think I want to see it again.

Lately, I’ve been watching:

• Eureka (very good)
• Damages (very good)
• Kyle XY (good)
• The 4400 (very good)
• Flash Gordon (bad-ish)

I don’t think I’m the only one who is not really taking sides in the high definition format war. I’m not so secretly hoping that neither one will last. I’m happy with my standard DVDs. I’m sure that when DVDs first came, out there were plenty of people who were content with VHS tapes, but I wasn’t one of them.

I probably won’t get my wish though. Blu-ray is out selling HD DVD and I heard somewhere that it is finally outselling VHS. The price of players is going down and it might be low enough to tempt me in a year or two. Even if I do start buying high definition discs, I won’t be replacing all of my old movies. At least that’s what I’m telling myself now.

We went to see Transformers last night and I had a really good time. I’m sure part of that had to do with the fact that I was a big Transformers fan growing up. It had lots of humor, cool special effects (the transformations were awesome), and fun Michael Bay action scenes. Maybe it was a little too long, but it wasn’t a big deal. It’s one of the few movies I’ve seen recently that I knew I wanted to buy when the movie was over. It’s definitely worth going to see.

Last night we went to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I had been looking forward to the movie for a while because this is my favorite book in the series so far. For me it was the one where things really started to hit the fan.

I hate that they had to leave out so much, but it had to be done. It’s been 4 years since I read the book, so my memory of events isn’t as great as it could be. One scene I was waiting for that they didn’t do was the scene where Dolores Umbrigde is trying to get rid of Hagrid and Professor McGonagall goes to help Hagrid. In the bonus features for the previous movie’s DVD, the 3 main cast members were asked what part of the 5th book they were most looking forward to doing in the movie. Rupert Grint’s (Ron) answer was the Quidditch stuff. I felt bad because he had no way of knowing at that point that the Quidditch had been taken out of the movie.

Overall it was a really good movie and it didn’t seem like it was close to 2.5 hours long. I liked Imelda Staunton as Dolores Umbridge. Helena Bonham Carter was great as Bellatrix Lestrange. I wish we had gotten to see more of her and I wish there was more Tonks. The scene at the end in the Ministry of Magic was my favorite. I can’t wait to read to final book in the series later this month.

I’ve never been much of a fan of Westerns, but I have seen a few in my lifetime. When I was really young, I saw Shane over and over again. I put it on Netflix recently so I can watch it again. I’m sure there was a lot of stuff on TV that I just don’t remember right now. When I got older I do remember Bonanza (or was it Gunsmoke?) coming on late at night on weekends. I didn’t watch it much, but it was good for background noise. Unforgiven was really good and now I want to watch some of those old Clint Eastwood movies.

Firefly had western elements and is probably partially responsible for my current interest in Western movies and series. What have I seen lately?

Into the West is a miniseries that I believe came on TNT. It’s comprised of 6 episodes that are an hour and a half each without commercials. It covers the American expansion into the West during the 1800s. I really liked this series. I did get a little bored with some of the later episodes, but that may be because I watched them all too close together. It’s definitely worth watching, however.

Broken Trail is a two-part miniseries. It was ok, but not that great. It’s about an uncle and nephew who rescue 5 Chinese women from a life of prostitution. Maybe I just had too much other stuff going on because I kept finding my attention drifting away.

I’ve watched the first 2 seasons of Deadwood over the past couple of weeks. I had heard so many good things and wanted to see it for myself. I didn’t like it much at first, but it grew on me. It’s still not the best show, but I’m fascinated by it. It’s an HBO show and they use a lot of bad language. It’s actually kind of annoying at times. Everybody and their mother seems to use the word “cocksucker” in every other sentence. It’s an interesting show and I’m glad that I’ve taken the time to watch it. The third and last season comes out on DVD tomorrow.

It seems like things are actually started getting back to normal after being shaken up for a while. I like it.

I saw Pan’s Labyrinth on 2 consecutive nights last week. A fairy tale for adults, huh? It’s definitely worth checking out.

We’ve been playing Rayman Raving Rabbids for the Wii. It’s a cool game. I’m not sure it’s as good as Wario Ware: Smooth Moves, but it’s a lot of fun nonetheless. Like Wario Ware, it’s more fun when you’re playing with other people. I think a sequel to this game was just announced.

Titan Quest was the game I ended up starting on the PC Friday night. I’m having fun with it. I’m not sure it’ll have the same replay value as Diablo II. I need to buy the expansion soon.

The season finale of Heroes was really good. A lot of people are complaining about it, but I don’t think they have much to complain about. There was much more closure in this episode than I’m used to seeing in season finales. Tonight is the LOST finale and maybe tomorrow I can watch the 24 finale that I missed on Monday. I hate that these good shows are ending for now, but I will have The 4400 and Kyle XY to watch over the summer.

I’ve been watching season 1 of Dead Like Me. It’s another one of those weird, good-but-cancelled shows that I find myself liking. I’ll probably be checking out season 2 soon and they recently announced that they are making a straight-to-DVD movie.

Work is going fine. I like being busy and I haven’t had anything to complain about in a while. It looks like there could be some cool new stuff coming up soon.

I think I’m launching a major household cleaning project within the next few days. We’ll see how that goes.