Longklaw.com

I finally bought a copy of Terry Goodkind’s lastest book: Phantom. It’s book 10 of The Sword of Truth series and book 2 of The Chainfire Trilogy that will bring an end to The Sword of Truth series. Does that make any sense? Even though many elements of The Sword of Truth are similar to Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series, this series hasn’t become as boring and as full of fluff as The Wheel of Time. There hasn’t been a bad book in the series…except for book 7…book 7 was just annoying.

The only thing that bothered me about this book was all the technical jargon that wizards, witches, and sorceresses used when speaking of their craft. I never knew that spell casting was so math-oriented.

I did notice a trend that I liked. It seemed like whenever I was expected something tragic to happen, the good people usually turned out on top. It may have been an unrealistic string of good luck, but I can live with that. I’m tired of all the good guys falling on hard times in the books that I read. Of course, the good guys do have some bad luck, just not all the time. It wouldn’t be interesting if everything went their way.

I won’t give away the plot, but Phantom has a lot of the attributes that made me a fan of The Sword of Truth in the first place. Many incidents from the previous 9 books in the series tie directly into the plot of this one. Once I started I had trouble putting it down. After reading Phantom I’m really looking forward to reading the final book in the series. Currently, it’s expected to be released in 2008.

I moved in January and I decided then that cable TV would be something that I would do without. My roommate didn’t already have it in the apartment, so I decided that I could go without it. Since I could barely get two network channels clearly enough to see what was going on even with an antenna, I have been pretty much without TV since then. I did manage to get caught up on all the shows that I had previously been watching, but I was always behind.

Over time I got used to not having TV. I spent more time on other hobbies. There were times, however, that I couldn’t help but feel out of touch with things that were going on in the world (I like to watch the news) and new TV shows that everybody talked about.

With the start of the new TV season I figured it was a good time to jump back into TV. The DIRECTV guys came by today and installed our service. The guy who seemed to be in charge wasn’t the friendliest person in the world. The second guy who seemed okay, but he installed the dish outside so I didn’t see him much. The third guy didn’t seem to speak much English. The lead guy spoke to him using English and a few Spanish words. I tried to help the lead guy connect the receivers to the TVs since I know how to do it and I know our TVs better than him. He didn’t seem to like that and they handled all but the first TV. I can understand why they would want to be ones to do it. One guy went into my room and shut the door while I was helping the lead guy in the other bedroom. Somehow that made me slightly uncomfortable to have a complete stranger shut up in my room. I’m sure it was all innocent and all he was doing was connecting the receiver. The lead guy kept asking to use our phones to make calls. He made the calls in order to get the service up, but you would think he would have his own phone to use for that. He also asked to use our bathroom. I’m glad there wasn’t any major unpleasantness going on in there.

They had trouble getting the receiver activated at first. A few times the lead guy came back in, looked at the screen, and left without saying a word. At one point after he had been gone for a while, I looked outside and noticed that the truck was gone. I went out back and didn’t see anyone there. I didn’t know for sure if he was coming back or not. He had left his clipboard, so I assumed that he was coming back. When he finally came back he informed us that the guy installing the dish wasn’t doing something correctly and that was what caused the problem. At some point while he was on the phone, he handed me the phone to answer some questions. The lady on the other end tried to get me to sign up for some kind of special promotion, but I quickly stopped her. I signed up for exactly what I wanted when I signed up.

Overall, it wasn’t a whole lot of trouble getting DIRECTV up and going. They didn’t have to do anything out of the ordinary that would have cost me any kind of fee. It’ll be nice to get back into this form of entertainment. It was even fun to see TV commercials again. I enjoyed watching Cheat! and X-Play for the first time in a while and I spent some time watching ESPN (I won’t even comment on that game tonight). I started on my newly purchased Battlestar Galactica DVDs last night. I wonder if I can get caught up before the new season starts.

I have so many games that I have: only played once, played a lot but never finished, or never played at all. I decided to come up with a plan to work my way through some of these games. I started by compiling a list of all the Xbox games that I hadn’t completed yet. I picked the Xbox because the Xbox 360 will probably be the first next-generation system that I buy. I figured I could just retire my Xbox if I play all of the games that I want to.

After I made the list I ordered the game in the tentative order that I want to play them. That order is very tentative. Then I went to Gamespy.com, Gamespot.com, and IGN.com in order to obtain estimates on how long it would take to beat each game. For games that I had already started, I tried to estimate how much longer I had to play the game to finish it. Of course I used a spreadsheet for this because I have no life. I know this makes it sound like work, but it’ll be fun. I’m already having fun working my way through KOTOR II. My total estimate for Xbox games is 143 hours. At my rate it’ll take me about 6 years to finish them. The third Xbox and the PlayStation 4 will be out by then. The list and estimates are below. Some of these games I don’t even own yet. Some I may not like and decide not to play anymore. We’ll see how it goes.

Over the past week or so I’ve been watching the first season of an HBO series called Rome. The twelve episodes depict the period from Caesar’s victory in the Gallic Wars to the time of his death. Although it focuses on Caesar’s rise to power and death, it also focuses equally if not more on the lives of two Roman soldiers: Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo. If you’re like me and like to watch shows and movies based on historical events, then this show is definitely worth checking out.

Yes, there will be a second season that will air sometime next year.

As I was falling asleep last night I was watching something on TV that had skaterboarders in it and it brought back a vague memory of some game that I played long ago on the NES. I remembered skating on a halfpipe and doing tricks for points. It seemed like there were other events you could compete in, but I couldn’t remember any of them. Of course I was going to go crazy if I didn’t figure out what that game was. I was too lazy to get up a look it up last night and didn’t want to take the time while I as at work today.

Using Google I was easily able to find out that the game was California Games. I probably played it some time around 1989 or 1990. Check out the Wikipedia article for more info. and some pics. I remember not being any good at the surfing event, so I didn’t really like it. I think the rollerskating event was pretty fun though. Nostalgia is great.

Every once in a while I listen to music on Yahoo! Music LAUNCHcast Radio or AOL Radio. The selection on AOL seems to fit me better, but Yahoo does allow you to skip a few songs every hour. AOL Radio offers many XM Radio stations in addition to their own stations. The 90’s Alternative stations on both services have been my favorite so far.

I’ve probably used Yahoo! more because I started out with it and I tend to think of it first. I may be listening to AOL more in the future. I found out last night that they have an All Pearl Jam station and an All Final Fantasy station, among other good choices. Just hearing the music from Final Fantasy again was fun and it’s no secret how I feel about Pearl Jam.

I may not have total control over what I’m hearing in either case, but the variety of music is good enough that I can always find something that suits me. And it costs me nothing to use them. It’s hard to beat FREE!

I’ll be starting my new job on August 1. I have this week off.

Over the weekend I started playing Star War Knights of the Old Republlic II: The Sith Lords. It’s been sitting in my collection for over a year and a half now. Better late than never. It’s a fun game so far. It’s a lot like the first game, and that’s not a bad thing. As much as I’m trying to go to the dark side, I keep getting light side points. I guess it’s just in my nature to be a good guy.

Over the past few months I’ve been slowly making my way through the complete series of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I’ve seen all of the episodes at one point or another on TV, but now I can watch the whole series all the way through on DVD. I just finished season 4. The show started getting really good in season 3, but season 4 is even better.

My roommate and I are almost finished with our second helping of Tales of Symphonia. The sidequests are what’s keeping us from finishing the game. I’m going to try to make Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks our next joint project.

I finally finished playing 24: The Game for the PlayStation 2. I hardly ever finish games that I play on my own anymore, so I feel the need to write about it.

The game takes place between Season 2 and Season 3 and fills in a few of the plot holes that where present at the beginning of Season 3. The graphics aren’t the best, but the story is good and the voice acting is great. It sounds really good in surround sound.

For the most part, the missions are easy and short and I didn’t have a problem with that. The ones that are annoying are extremely annoying. Maybe that’s just me. The missions vary from the standard action missions to descrambling data on a hard drive. You get to complete action missions as different characters from the show such as Jack, Tony, Michelle, and Kim. Yes, Kim does get in trouble and you do have to save her. It’s cool to see characters that aren’t on the show any more either because they died or they became one of 24’s many characters that disappear without any explanation.

The enemy A.I. is terrible. You can run out in front of one of the bad guys and they’ll soon forget that you are even there. One weird thing is that sometimes when the bad guys run out of ammo they’ll yell, “Reload!” That’s basically another way of saying, “I’m reloading, so now is a good time to shoot at me!” The camerawork can be a pain, especially if you’re fighting up close.

There is a lot in the game that will remind you of the show: the multiple camera angles, the music, the sound effects, the ticking clock, etc. Overall, I had a lot of fun playing this game. If you’re a fan of the show, it’s a good game to try out. No, it won’t take 24 hours to complete the game.

HBO does have some good original programming. Over the past few weeks I have taken the time to watch two miniseries that I had never gotten a chance to see: Band of Brothers and From the Earth to the Moon.

Band of Brothers is a 10-part series that details the World War II experiences of an American group of soldiers called Easy Company. The series is based on real events and all of the characters are based on real people. You see brief interviews with actual members of Easy Company before each episode. The battles scenes were pretty intense and some reminded me of playing Call of Duty. I don’t remember being bored or thinking that I was tired of watching at any point.

From the Earth to the Moon is a 12-part series that chronicles the space race of the 1960’s and 1970’s. Their goal was to show the events in a way that they had never been shown before, so they don’t focus only on the astronauts. Instead of detailing the Apollo 13 disaster from the astronauts’ perspectives, they showed it from the perspectives of journalists that covered the story. One episode focuses on the wives of the astronauts and another focuses on the people that designed the lunar module. I learning a lot of things about the space program that I never knew before. There were a couple of episodes that seemed to drag on a little bit, but I was probably just a little distracted at the time.

Tom Hanks was a producer on both series and you’ll see plenty of recognizable faces. I definitely recommend them both if you have the time.

Another trek down memory lane.

I remember that Fall 2004 was an unusually great season for video games. Not long after I started this site, I created a list to help myself keep track of all the games that I wanted to buy. I had planned on making it available online, but I never got around to it and the list has sat out there all this time with no links pointing to it. Eventually, I stopped using that list and now I keep track of the games that I want on IGN.

Some games on the list that still haven’t been released. Some I never owned but maybe will someday. Some I owned but never played much. Some I spent way too many hours playing.