Longklaw.com

I figured I should give an update on my situation. The job hunt has not gone as well as I would have liked. I got lots of nibbles. For a while the phone was ringing off the hook. However, I wasn’t getting any bites. It seemed like all the companies I spoke to didn’t want someone fresh out of college. Or maybe they just didn’t like me.

I hate to have to settle for something but a man’s got to pay the bills. Going home and living off my mother wasn’t an option. My brother-in-law and a former professor had suggested that I look into teaching. I heard about an opening, so I applied for and was offered a part-time position teaching computer science classes at the local community college. A few days later I was offered a position tutoring at the university. All of this happened less than 2 weeks ago. Both of these positions last until December.

Maybe better opportunities will open up later. I just hope I don’t miss anything because I am locked into these jobs until December. They’re pretty much throwing me to the wolves and expecting me to figure out a lot on my own. It’ll be ok though. I start tomorrow.

Life has been ok other than the frustrating job search. Other than searching for a job I haven’t been doing much other than reading (Harry Potter and The Chronicles of Narnia) and watching DVD’s. I beat X-Men Legends a second time and now I’m trying to figure out what game to work on next. I also plan on redoing the assignments I did for the Advanced Computer Graphics class I took last semester.

If gas doesn’t stop going up, I might be riding my bike everywhere from now on.

My cell phone number and primary email address have changed. I’ll get that out information out later.

So I went to Sam Goody a little before midnight Friday night to get the new Harry Potter book. There was hardly anybody there. They opened the doors and started letting people in at 11:52 according to the time I had. The whole time I was in the store, I saw around 10 other customers. I guess most people went to the Books-A-Million in Columbus or Tupelo. They had a party at the BAM in Tupelo.

I finished the book this morning. I would’ve finished it sooner had I not forced myself to stop reading a few times to other things. I figured I should spread out the fun some.

I thought it was a good book, though I didn’t like it as much as the last one. I think I liked the last one more because there was more interesting stuff going down. Like one of my friends said, “Did they even go to school that year?” Though I was not really surprised by the ending of this book, I was still a little shocked when the book ended. I kept thinking they were going to say that it wasn’t true, but that never happened.

I wonder how it all will end.

I’m just sitting here watching a bad movie waiting for midnight to get here.

Fantastic Four is a pretty good movie. I just wish there was more action. They saved most of it until the end of the movie. I think that Dr. Doom was quite a bit different he is in the comics. Oh well.

Hurricane Dennis was a dud. Everybody got worked up over nothing.

I’m out for now.

So I was wrong. It’s coming out sooner than I estimated: Feb. 2006.

8 days until Harry Potter…

After being deluged with good games last fall, there doesn’t seem to be anything really interested being released these days. I may actually have to finish some of the games that I started. Maybe I’ll start back playing Star Wars Galaxies or Final Fantasy XI.

For the 17th weekend in a row, the Hollywood box office has been down. They were hoping Star Wars would change things, but it didn’t. They were hoping Batman Begins would change things, but it didn’t either.

A poll came out last week showing that most Americans prefer to watch movies at home. Currently, I am one of those people. There are several reasons I like to watch movies at home. I don’t have to worry about obnoxious people. I don’t have to buy expensive movie theater food. I can stop the movie anytime I want to and do whatever I need to do. I hate missing parts of the movie. I bought a Samsung DVD changer with surround sound last year and I really enjoy watching movies on it. I also bought a larger TV, so it’s easier to see what’s going on.

Watching at home can’t beat the movie theater experience. If a really big movie is released, it can be a lot of fun going to see it on opening night. Something about watching a movie with a group of people makes it more fun than watching it alone. I like it when the crowd is rowdy and excited, as long as they know when to be quiet. The crowds at opening night of the Star Wars re-releases were great. I also liked the crowds at the Star Wars prequels and the ones at The Lord of Rings movies.

To get me out to the movies, there has to be something out there that I’m interested in. These days I don’t go to the theater just to go. If I’m really bored, I’d rather pick up a DVD and watch it. There just aren’t that many movies coming out this summer that I’m interested in paying $7 ($5 at midnight) to see. Other than War of the Worlds, The Fantastic Four, and possibly Bewitched, I think everything that I want to see has already been released. Compare that to past summers, when there was something I wanted to see coming out almost every weekend. I’m sure there will be a surprise hit or two, but who knows? Until they start releasing better movies, I’ll just stay at home and watch DVD’s…in 5.1 surround sound.

I told myself I wouldn’t start anymore incomplete series, and so far I’m sticking to it. I was doing some research on my current favorite series and this is what I found. Yes, I was bored.

Harry Potter
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is being released on July 16, 2005. This is book 6 of a 7 book series.

The Wheel of Time
Knife of Dreams is book 11 in a 12 book series. The publication date is currently listed as October 11, 2005. They recently released an image of the cover. That looks like Perrin and some other characters I can’t remember because the series has way too many freaking characters.

A Song of Ice and Fire
A Feast for Crows appears to finally be done. It is book 4 in a 6 or 7 book series. It could be out this fall. I think it’s been about 4.5 years since the last book, so he is very late with this book. The book was becoming very, very long and he still had material left to write. Instead of cutting parts of the story out, he decided to break it into two books. He decided to take half the characters out of this book instead of giving us incomplete stories for all the characters. So some of the storylines will be advanced in the upcoming book, but the rest will have to wait until the following book. He finally gets to release a book and can finish working on his incomplete chapters. I’m not sure I like his solution, but at least he’s finally releasing something. The good news coming from this solution is that book 5, A Dance with Dragons, is about halfway done.

Sword of Truth
Chainfire was release in January 2005, so it’ll probably be another year or more from now before the next book. The next one will be book 10 of an 11 book series. It will be the second part of the series ending Chainfire Trilogy.

I’m still working on The Dark Tower. I’m having trouble staying focused on book 4. I don’t think this will be my favorite one in the series. I may take a break and read The Chronicles of Narnia before the new movie comes out this December.

The big Electronic Entertainment Expo is this week and all the major next generation consoles have been unveiled. Aren’t they cool looking?

Xbox 360: Microsoft needs to fire the guys that name their products.

PlayStation 3: Unoriginal name, but it works.

Nintendo Revolution: My favorite name of the 3. I wonder if it’ll be any good.

I don’t know much about that specs of the systems. I just know that I want them. Now I need to get out of school and start making real money.

What have I been doing lately?

For one I’ve been working my ass off. My Advanced Computer Graphics class has taken up a lot more time than I expected. I’m working on generating an animation for my final assignment right now. Now I can concentrate fully on getting out of here.

I don’t play video games much anymore. I finally cancelled my Everquest II account earlier today. I don’t see the need to pay for something that I don’t use. Maybe I’ll get the urge to play again in a couple of months and reactivate my account.

I got Jade Empire for the Xbox. It’s made by the same people that made Knights of the Old Republic. I haven’t had a chance to play it much it seems like a really good game so far.

I’ve been watching tons of DVD’s lately. I’m not sure many of them are worth a recommendation. I’m watching one right now in which they are arguing over who would win in a fight between Wolverine and Batman. I say Wolverine. I haven’t been to the movie theater much, but I did see Sin City. If you haven’t seen it, go see it. Now!

I hate job hunting. So far I’ve only had one company show any interest and that was earlier this week. It was from a place in Richmond, Virginia. I have a phone interview scheduled and hopefully it will go well. I’m hoping some other places will also show interest.

In case I didn’t mention it here, my ear problems went away after about a month. It’s nice to be able to hear again.

According to my web stats, people are reading coming here, and it’s not just adbots. So, I’m going to throw out a question.

Does anybody out there use Xfire or Xbox live? I’m just looking for people to game with sometime. My username on both is longklaw. Just send me an invite.

My Xbox Live games are: Halo 2, Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow, and Burnout 3: Takedown, and Ninja Gaiden. I will have Doom 3 and Splinter Cell Chaos Theory next week. They both have co-op modes that I want to try out.

You can view my Xfire profile to see what kind of PC games I play these days. Just click the image below.

I hope to see some of you on. I promise I will be on this weekend while I am avoiding my homework 🙂 Thanks.