I had a pretty good Thanksgiving break. I really needed that. For the first time in a while I had a weekend that didn’t fly by way too fast, but that’s probably because it was over twice as long as normal.
This was only the 3rd Thanksgiving that I can remember where I didn’t go back to Jackson. I was kind of glad when I saw how many people on Twitter were stressing out over cooking and relatives and what not. Also, I didn’t want to deal with the hassle of boarding the dog somewhere. I wish we had some real kennels around here. It’s good to spend a break doing only what I wanted to do. I even went an entire day without seeing another human being.
What did I do?
caught up on all the stuff on my DVR
finished the Babylon 5 re-watch that I started last year
did some shopping and bought stuff for me and the dog
played video games
After 3 more weeks of work, I get a 2 week break. I’m ready for another break.
I ended up canceling my gym membership today. There’s no use in paying when I wasn’t going anymore. I already get up around 6 every morning and I don’t want to have to get up any earlier to work out. Also, I was having trouble motivating myself to go back out to work out after I got home from work.
I did, however, buy Wii Fit about a week and a half ago and have used it almost every day. Some activity is better than nothing. I just hope it doesn’t get boring.
When I was in college I downloaded a lot of stuff from the Internet using file sharing programs. I hope that saying this here isn’t going to get me in any trouble 🙂 . I downloaded music that way if I wanted to get only one song instead of the full album. I downloaded movies and TV shows. I even downloaded games where you had to get 30-something zip files, unzip them all, and then run a program that would combine the pieces into 1 game.
Now that I have a full-time job and I’m making decent money, I don’t do that anymore. I don’t really have the time or patience. I don’t leave my computer running all the time. Even when I tried to leave it running more so that stuff could download, it would take days or even weeks for it to finish. Why wait hours for a TV show when I can pay $2 and download in less than half an hour or instantly if I’m streaming? Also, when I’m at work and a song pops into my head I’m not going to start up a file sharing program and look for it. I go to Amazon MP3 or iTunes and get it there. The only time I might make an exception is when I check all my legit sources (Amazon MP3, iTunes, Hulu, Netflix Watch Instantly, Xbox Live, DirecTV on Demand, etc) and still can’t find it. That’s pretty rare these days and if it’s a TV show I’ll delete as soon as I’m finished. I have reformed.
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 🙂
Today is Tax Day. I started on my return online a couple on months ago. I realized that I was going to owe the IRS for the first time, so of course I’m waited until the last day to pay them. I just finished my return.
I’m going to celebrate Tax Day by buying a PS3. I’m not buying any games. I just want to use it to watch movies. I’m not sure that I’ll buy any Blu-ray DVDs anytime soon, but I’ll rent some.
I’ve been itching to get into another MMORPG and last week I started playing The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar. I had heard some good things about it, so I wanted to try it. It’s The Lord of the Rings, so it had to be good, right? I don’t usually do this, but I bought it from their website and downloaded it instead of going to a store to buy it. I haven’t gotten very far into it, but I’m having a blast so far. I always have fun in the beginning of these games. Except for maybe Dungeons & Dragons Online. In hindsight, I don’t think I really enjoyed that one as much as some of the others I’ve played. Anyway, I’m on the Landroval server. I’m a human male guardian from Bree-land and my name is Longklaw (of course).
I had heard about Lost Odyssey before it was released and knew that I would get around to playing it sooner or later. Around the time it came out I saw an advertisement for it on TV. I knew right then that I would want to play it sooner than later and that I wanted to download the song that was playing. I now know that the song is “White Rabbit” by Jefferson Airplane. I downloaded the advertisement on Xbox Live and I’ve already watched in several times. I’ll probably watch it many more times until I get the game. It’s one of the best video game advertisements that I’ve ever seen. Lost Odyssey will definitely be the next game that I play.
Some time over the past couple of weeks we finished Blue Dragon, which is a JRPG on the Xbox 360. I got it as a Christmas present and it was a lot of fun. It’s a single-player game, so we took turns playing it. It has some gameplay features that are really cool. The graphics look really good on a standard def TV. I guess another play through is called for now that I have an HDTV to play on. Besides, I want to get some of those achievements we missed the first time around. The guide for this game is great. It’s one of the best that I’ve used recently. I just wish they had included maps of the Overworld areas.
One thing that will stand out is the boss fight song. They play the same song during every boss fight. And it’s kind of a short song, so they loop it over and over again. I did some digging around and I found out that the name of the song is “Eternity” and it is sung by Ian Gillan. Ian Gillan is the lead singer of Deep Purple. Remember that song “Smoke on the Water”? That’s Deep Purple. “Eternity” is more amusing than anything else, but it does start to get on your nerves after a while.
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