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I had a relaxing and enjoyable Independence Day weekend. With all that’s been going on it was good to have a weekend with no stress and no traveling. I kept Bailey this weekend and having him around kept me from sitting around all day. I took him walking and took him outside from time to time…when it wasn’t raining that is.

What else did I do? I finished reading a book and started on a new one. I watched some good DVDs. I beat a video game. I cleaned up. I did whole bunch of other miscellaneous stuff that I’ve been putting off.

Weekends can be fun and productive at the same time. I didn’t even want to come back to work today. I’ve been away from work more than I’ve been at work lately. Back to work

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!

My grandmother passed away this past Sunday. We called her Ma’dea. She was 88 years old. Her funeral was Thursday in Bolton, MS.

I lived with my grandparents from the time I was 6 weeks old until I was 14, though I spent weekends and holidays with my mother. My grandmother played a part in raising a lot of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren (currently numbering 21 and 24 respectively). She was a very kind woman and was always willing to help people out. She had a great sense of humor. She joked a lot and played pranks on us grandchildren. I can’t remember ever having anything negative to say about her. She is greatly missed.

I read Unshapely Things be Marc Del Franco because it was the latest pick from The Sword and Laser podcast. Unshapely Things falls under the category elf punk. It takes place in modern-day Boston where you see people along with creatures like fairies, elves, and druids (collectively called the fey). There’s an area of Boston called The Weird where the most of the Boston-area fey live.

It was an ok book, but not something that I liked a lot. It took about a month to read a 300-page book, which means that it was very easy to put the book down and do other things. This was the author’s first book and I know that there’s at least one other book in the Connor Grey series. I’m not sure if I’ll read the next book. I have a feeling it’s much better than the first, but I may just read the Harry Dresden series instead.

I’m already finding Serenity.

• Headcrash, Bruce Bethke
• Childhood’s End, Arthur C. Clarke
• Timeline, Michael Crichton
• Unshapely Things, Mark Del Franco
• Finding Serenity, Jane Espenson
• Serenity Found, Jane Espenson
• On Bullshit, Harry G. Frankfurt
• On Truth, Harry G. Frankfurt
• The Appeal, John Grisham
• Playing for Pizza, John Grisham
• Night Watch, Sergey Lukyanenko
• Day Watch, Sergey Lukyanenko
• Twilight Watch, Sergey Lukyanenko
• Final Watch, Sergey Lukyanenko
• The Taking, Dean Koontz
• His Majesty’s Dragon, Naomi Novik
• Throne of Jade, Naomi Novik
• Black Powder War, Naomi Novik
• Empire of Ivory, Naomi Novik
• Victory of Eagles, Naomi Novik
• Lyra’s Oxford, Philip Pullman
• Unholy Domain, Dan Ronco
• Elantris, Brandon Sanderson
• Titus Andronicus, William Shakespeare

I first started watching Babylon 5 near the end of its thirds season when I was still in high school. I immediately liked it and watched all the remaining episodes and TV movies while in high school and college. I got caught up on the previous episodes during my freshman year in college when TNT started airing them 5 nights a week. I remember trying to be sure to be back in my dorm room every night or recording the episode if I wasn’t going to be there.

I’ve been meaning to re-watch B5 for a while now. I bought season 1 recently and finished watching it earlier this week. I hadn’t seen these episodes in over years. I had heard people say that season 1 is bad compared to the rest and I remembered the later seasons as being much better than the first. There were some moments here and there where I cringed a little on the inside, but I really enjoyed the first season.

Part of my enjoyment may have come from the fact that I know what’s going to happen later. Each season has a title, which is also the title of one of the episodes from that season. The title of season one is “Signs and Portents’’. I can see them planting the seeds for future storylines. I remember why I liked this show so much. I can’t wait to jump into season 2.

Well, not brand new but new to me. I finally got a new car yesterday.

My mom’s car was stolen recently and when she got it back it was in pretty bad shape. Since I had planned on getting a new car in the near future, I let her have the old car that I had been driving since 1999 until she’s ready to get something else. I just had to get a new car earlier than I had planned, but oh well.

My new car is a gray Nissan Altima. I realized today that a lot of people around here drive Altimas, probably because MSU employees get discounts on Nissan cars. It had 29000 miles on it. It drives well. It has a lot of room. It’s great for me. The previous owner left his Sirius satellite radio receiver in the car and it’s still activated. It’s not something I would have bought on my own, but since it’s there I’m going to use it. When it gets deactivated, I’ll start up my own account.

Anyway, I’m happy and I’m itching to go on a road trip.

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 🙂

Bailey is my former roommates’ dog. Yes, he was named after the drink. We got him last September when he was about 2 months old. I always took care of him when everybody else was gone. He is a cool dog and the best dog I’ve ever known. This past weekend it was time for Bailey to move away too. I hope I’ll get to see him from time to time. Unfortunately, most of these pictures were taken with my phone, which doesn’t take good pictures.

I became interested in Brandon Sanderson when I found out that he was finishing The Wheel of Time for Robert Jordan. I decided to start with his first book, Elantris.

Elantris was a city of magical people whose inhabitants were thought of as gods. Something has changed and now Elantrians are thought of as being cursed. It’s been 10 years since the fall of the city, and book focuses on 3 characters with related plot lines. The story takes place both inside and outside of Elantris.

One thing that attracted me to this book is that it’s a standalone story. It’s not one part of an epic series. Nice! As always with fantasy novels, it took a little while to get into. I think part of it had to do with learning a new universe. I was having a little trouble in my head figuring out how some of his terms should be pronounced and somebody else’s pronunciations might be different. I just had to make myself not worry about that and get on with the book. I also didn’t like the frequency in which Sanderson was throwing out new terms and not really explaining what they mean. There’s no glossary in the back to help clear things up. Eventually, everything was explained enough to understand what he was talking about. Once I started getting into the book, I really enjoyed it. I do remember thinking that there were a lot of surprising twists happening, but that’s okay. I found it interesting that there weren’t many battles. There was a great deal of intellectual maneuvering, but not much physical fighting. I’m pretty sure I’m going to read Sanderson’s Mistborn series when I get a chance.

F.Y.I. – There’s an Elantris glossary on Sanderson’s website. I wish I had known this when I was reading the book.

The Sword and Laser’s current book is Unshapely Things and I’m already reading it. I don’t think I had ever heard of elf punk until now.

• Headcrash, Bruce Bethke
• Childhood’s End, Arthur C. Clarke
• Timeline, Michael Crichton
• Unshapely Things, Mark Del Franco
• Finding Serenity, Jane Espenson
• Serenity Found, Jane Espenson
• On Bullshit, Harry G. Frankfurt
• On Truth, Harry G. Frankfurt
• The Appeal, John Grisham
• Playing for Pizza, John Grisham
• Night Watch, Sergey Lukyanenko
• Day Watch, Sergey Lukyanenko
• Twilight Watch, Sergey Lukyanenko
• Final Watch, Sergey Lukyanenko
• The Taking, Dean Koontz
• His Majesty’s Dragon, Naomi Novik
• Throne of Jade, Naomi Novik
• Black Powder War, Naomi Novik
• Empire of Ivory, Naomi Novik
• Victory of Eagles, Naomi Novik
• Lyra’s Oxford, Philip Pullman
• Unholy Domain, Dan Ronco
• Elantris, Brandon Sanderson
• Titus Andronicus, William Shakespeare

Yeah, I’ve gotten hooked on Twitter too. I wasn’t really interested in it at first, but once I started I just couldn’t stop. My profile is here. I’ll probably put a widget in the sidebar one day. If you don’t know what Twitter is, then that might be a good thing.