Friday, December 07, 2007
-Heyyyyyy yo. I know it's been way too long since my last entry but my free time has been super limited. Whether its been overloaded with homework with finals right around the corner or using the several hours a week of spare time I do have left to hang out with friends and family or catch up on my massive gaming backlog, it all conglomerated to me neglecting this blog for wayyyyy too long.
-So let's see. Classes are just a week or two away from being completed this semester, and it looks like I'm doing quite good again this term. Anthropology I'm doing so well in that my instructor said after we take our last quiz a week from now, there's a good chance I'll be good off enough to finish the course with an A without even taking the final, so I will probably be exempted from it. That was some of the best news yet I heard this semester. In MacroEconomics I do not know my current overall grade but I got a good feeling its a solid A or high B at worst. From our 3 exams so far I got a solid A, B, and C on all of them, and I have had near perfect attendance and our instructor is tossing out our worst exam score at the end of the semester after our last final, so I'm feeling great about that class too.
Humanities I'm surprised I got an overall grade of an A thusfar. I did horrible on our latest exam, where I got a D, but it turned out she said nearly the whole class averaged a less than satisfactory score so who knows what will happen. Last week I spent a good chunk of both of my days off getting caught up with homework. For Econ I worked on our main paper that goes along with the final exam and got it done 2 weeks advance. Same with my Anthropology paper which was a movie review I'll touch on in a bit. Also, our Econ instructor lets us take our exams home, and I made sure to take my time with it and it took me nearly 4 hours to complete, but it resulted with just one wrong answer and one of my best exam scores yet.
To my surprise, things are going way better than I anticipated the couple years I've been in college. In High School I mostly got Bs and Cs with an occasional A for elective classes like Computer-related courses and Gym, and I thought that would be the same course here. But so far Out of my 10 classes I completed (soon to be 13), I finished with 8 a B, and a D in College Algebra, but screw Math, that is my Kryptonite, but it is good enough to finish the Tech with.
-Ok enough talk about classes, I'm sure you guys were just ecstatic reading the three prior paragraphs. So a little holiday happened since my last entry I hope a few of you are familiar with, and for longtime readers of this here blog, you know that Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year, and what best way to do it with my family than celebrate it twice! On the actual day of Thanksgiving I went over to Jane & Shawn's on base along with all my siblings and parents and we had a grand meal. Jane made a superb Food Network-themed dinner, and I got to try a few things I never had before which were delicious. Was a great time, and I got a chance to rock with Shawn at Guitar Hero III for awhile too.
The second Turkey Day dinner happened two days later where my sister from Montevideo came up and we had another five star Thanksgiving dinner. As what happened the past couple years, my mom was awesome to let me bring some leftovers home which lasted me a few days. I think I surprised my family by leading the post-dinner clean up. Usually my sisters and mother do all that fun stuff, but I finally uh......man'd up...so I could bask in the awesomeness of doing dishes. After the meal a bunch of us played poker for awhile before calling it a night. Overall another amazing Thanksgiving weekend!
-But wait, I can't just wrap up Thanksgiving without mentioning the annual craziness I participate in that is Black Friday. Dick tagged along with me this year which was awesome cause I would've hated braving those crowds on my own. I didn't wait in line forever, all I did was just hit up Best Buy right when they opened at 5, picked out my things right away, waited the same 40-45 minutes in line to checkout as I did last year cuz our Best Buy decides to only have 8 checkouts. Anyways that times out just right cause it allows me to get to Target right when they opened at 6am. I was surprised to find out Target honored their Price Adjustment policy (where if you happen to buy an item and it goes on sale within 7 days u get the difference refunded) for Black Friday sale items. So I picked up that 37" LCD Olevia HDTV a few days early and got $250 refunded to me right when I got to Target, and didn't have to wait 8 hours in line like most of everyone else who wanted one.
Anyways here is everything I got.......
Target
Olevia 37" LCD HDTV - $500
Borat - $5
25 DVD-Rs - $5
Office Season 2 - $15
Seinfeld Season 8 - $15
Best Buy
2gb USB Drive - $15
Gun 360 - $5
DefJam Icon 360 - $15
Stuntman 360 - $20
Gamestop
Ultimate Alliance 360 Special Edition, Prey 360, Psychonauts Xbox (Buy 2 get 1 free) - $32
New York Times Crosswords DS - $10
-Niners continue to suck, but at least Dilfer is throwing a few TDs....at least the Vikes and Cards are managing to win some more games recently. Vikes play Niners this weekend which I foolishly put $5 on with my supervisor, but I did win our bet last year when the Niners Field Goal'd their way to victory 9-3 (I framed the newspaper article on my wall!), but the Vikes are on a hot streak, so we'll see what happens.
-I saw Hitman about a week ago with Chris and Joey, damn was I surprised at how good it was......once I got over the fact that Timothy Olyphant used the absolute worst voice as 47 (why are u trying to sound like Keanu Reeves!?!!) and accepted him as the actor cause he got his motions and body language down to a T the movie wasn't all that bad. As a matter of fact is was surprisingly good. They were pretty faithful to the game as far as weapons and locations go, and after about 15-20 minutes I was hooked. Action scenes were all top notch too, Hitman wasn't as stealthy and blunt as he was in the game, but I can see why they didn't make it like that for the film and his image still seemed mostly loyal to the game........other than the voice. But overall this gets a big thumbs up from me..........Dammit..........dammit.........I think this may just be the second best videogame movie evar!!!! (next to the original Mortal Kombat of course!) 8/10
-Chris finally got his own apartment, which is about time. That guy had so much bad luck trying to find a full time job after going through so many temp positions across town, but he had for nearly a year now, and it is good to see he finally got his own place. Which is way bigger than mine, so now his place will be the ultimate gaming pad!
-What I have been managing to game up in lately....hmmm. I got Kane & Lynch to review from Ryan, and I know my fellow coworker Mike was really anticipating that game so I met up at his place and we played it on his mammoth HD projector. Though the screen was split vertically, I still had a good 40" of space to work with. We had a blast with that game, which is from the Hitman developers, play a little like it with a slight emphasis on tactical action like Gears of War...though managing the squad can be cumbersome which resulted in us being stuck on a stage for nearly two hours. But overall, still a pretty damn good time.
I also have been playing Rock Band a bit. Dick and Dave came over a couple times the past few weeks and we created our own band in Band World Tour and made a weeee bit of progress. I like how they throw in downloaded songs in the setlists so it seems like there is always new songs thrown in the mix. And creating your own band members rules, I really liked the character in Guitar Hero, but it is very nice to get a chance to create your own headbanger. So far I'm mostly sticking with the drums, I beat solo tour on drums on easy, and am working on Medium right now, and with the exception of a few songs, I am starting to feel comfortable with it, though that Kick Drum pedal tends to throw off my timing still a bit. If you have some friends to tear this up with, I highly recommend checking out Rock Band as it is just a blast to experience.
-I got around to playing Scene It for 360 with Jane and Shawn last night. Those two are huge Scene It fans, and I never actually have played the game but always was fascinated with the movie trivia concept of it so I decided to chance it and pick it up for the 360. We had a blast playing it last night, and completed four round of long play, which I estimate took around 25 minutes each to complete. So far I gotta this is the ultimate casual game for the 360, just grab a few drinks and reminise about old flicks and try to kick ass in trivia. I did not win any of the rounds as Shawn won every one of them, because that guy must have seen way more movies than I have. Those controllers rule too and are the perfect match for the game, very durable, portable, and wireless!
-I finally decided to start up a GameFly subscription. I shouldn't since I bought so many other games recently, but there are still a bunch I want to play and try out and not spend all that money on and with a 3 week Christmas break coming up I decided to sign up and give it a shot. Already got my first game in the mail......Simpsons game, which I was just a few levels away from completing before my rental ran up. Other games I got on my Q I want to try out are Conan, Timeshift, Assassin's Creed, Jericho, and a few others.
-I finally finished up part 3 of 3 of the wrestling videogame retrospective for my podcast with Dick and Dave. Check it out by right clicking and saving this link - http://www.vgpub.com/pubcast/vgp-ep47.mp3.
-I want to take the time right here to say good luck to Jeff Gertsman from Gamespot. If you didn't hear by now, he was mysteriosly let go after writing for Gamespot for nearly 11 years. A lot of speculation has been going around that is was because of the "tone" of his review for Kane & Lynch, which also happened to be a big advertisor for Gamespot and that review was the last straw of a string of which weren't pleasing Gamespot's owner, Cnet. Whatever officially led to his firing, it sucks because Jeff was awesome to listen to on their podcast, Hotspot, and his video reviews I was fan of, and I was also a loyal fan of their old weekly video show, Let's Gamespot, which is the precursor to their current show, On the Spot. Jeff just had an awesome wit to him, which I can see why some people may dislike, but it just clicked with me and he brought a very amusing side to the gaming news side of things. Wherever you end up next Jeff, good luck!
-Been watching a bunch of DVDs too recently. I just watched Superbad again, the extended cut, which didn't seem to add a whole lot, just a few more edgier lines of dialogue, but the movie is still a freaking laugh riot. Great stuff. Didn't get a chance to watch the extras yet though. Hopefully they'll be as good as the awesome extras on the Knocked Up deluxe edition. I also watched the Shawn Michaels DVD that just came out. The documentary was amazing, two hours long and covered everything in detail from his Rockers years, to his initial WWE title run, to Montreal, and his comeback years. A great watch, now one of these days I just gotta roll on through all the matches.
Finally I had to watch two DVDs for classes to write responses for. One was Control Room, a political documentary about how local Iraq news-stations covered the US "liberation" of Iraq. Then, I watched Rent for my Humanities class. And man was Rent amazing. Very powerful, very emotional. Not all that a fan of musicals, but that one was nearly perfect in every way imaginable. 10/10
-That finally does it.....wow, this went on forever, but I had a lot to catch up on....thanks for making it all this way! Latez!
-So let's see. Classes are just a week or two away from being completed this semester, and it looks like I'm doing quite good again this term. Anthropology I'm doing so well in that my instructor said after we take our last quiz a week from now, there's a good chance I'll be good off enough to finish the course with an A without even taking the final, so I will probably be exempted from it. That was some of the best news yet I heard this semester. In MacroEconomics I do not know my current overall grade but I got a good feeling its a solid A or high B at worst. From our 3 exams so far I got a solid A, B, and C on all of them, and I have had near perfect attendance and our instructor is tossing out our worst exam score at the end of the semester after our last final, so I'm feeling great about that class too.
Humanities I'm surprised I got an overall grade of an A thusfar. I did horrible on our latest exam, where I got a D, but it turned out she said nearly the whole class averaged a less than satisfactory score so who knows what will happen. Last week I spent a good chunk of both of my days off getting caught up with homework. For Econ I worked on our main paper that goes along with the final exam and got it done 2 weeks advance. Same with my Anthropology paper which was a movie review I'll touch on in a bit. Also, our Econ instructor lets us take our exams home, and I made sure to take my time with it and it took me nearly 4 hours to complete, but it resulted with just one wrong answer and one of my best exam scores yet.
To my surprise, things are going way better than I anticipated the couple years I've been in college. In High School I mostly got Bs and Cs with an occasional A for elective classes like Computer-related courses and Gym, and I thought that would be the same course here. But so far Out of my 10 classes I completed (soon to be 13), I finished with 8 a B, and a D in College Algebra, but screw Math, that is my Kryptonite, but it is good enough to finish the Tech with.
-Ok enough talk about classes, I'm sure you guys were just ecstatic reading the three prior paragraphs. So a little holiday happened since my last entry I hope a few of you are familiar with, and for longtime readers of this here blog, you know that Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year, and what best way to do it with my family than celebrate it twice! On the actual day of Thanksgiving I went over to Jane & Shawn's on base along with all my siblings and parents and we had a grand meal. Jane made a superb Food Network-themed dinner, and I got to try a few things I never had before which were delicious. Was a great time, and I got a chance to rock with Shawn at Guitar Hero III for awhile too.
The second Turkey Day dinner happened two days later where my sister from Montevideo came up and we had another five star Thanksgiving dinner. As what happened the past couple years, my mom was awesome to let me bring some leftovers home which lasted me a few days. I think I surprised my family by leading the post-dinner clean up. Usually my sisters and mother do all that fun stuff, but I finally uh......man'd up...so I could bask in the awesomeness of doing dishes. After the meal a bunch of us played poker for awhile before calling it a night. Overall another amazing Thanksgiving weekend!
-But wait, I can't just wrap up Thanksgiving without mentioning the annual craziness I participate in that is Black Friday. Dick tagged along with me this year which was awesome cause I would've hated braving those crowds on my own. I didn't wait in line forever, all I did was just hit up Best Buy right when they opened at 5, picked out my things right away, waited the same 40-45 minutes in line to checkout as I did last year cuz our Best Buy decides to only have 8 checkouts. Anyways that times out just right cause it allows me to get to Target right when they opened at 6am. I was surprised to find out Target honored their Price Adjustment policy (where if you happen to buy an item and it goes on sale within 7 days u get the difference refunded) for Black Friday sale items. So I picked up that 37" LCD Olevia HDTV a few days early and got $250 refunded to me right when I got to Target, and didn't have to wait 8 hours in line like most of everyone else who wanted one.
Anyways here is everything I got.......
Target
Olevia 37" LCD HDTV - $500
Borat - $5
25 DVD-Rs - $5
Office Season 2 - $15
Seinfeld Season 8 - $15
Best Buy
2gb USB Drive - $15
Gun 360 - $5
DefJam Icon 360 - $15
Stuntman 360 - $20
Gamestop
Ultimate Alliance 360 Special Edition, Prey 360, Psychonauts Xbox (Buy 2 get 1 free) - $32
New York Times Crosswords DS - $10
-Niners continue to suck, but at least Dilfer is throwing a few TDs....at least the Vikes and Cards are managing to win some more games recently. Vikes play Niners this weekend which I foolishly put $5 on with my supervisor, but I did win our bet last year when the Niners Field Goal'd their way to victory 9-3 (I framed the newspaper article on my wall!), but the Vikes are on a hot streak, so we'll see what happens.
-I saw Hitman about a week ago with Chris and Joey, damn was I surprised at how good it was......once I got over the fact that Timothy Olyphant used the absolute worst voice as 47 (why are u trying to sound like Keanu Reeves!?!!) and accepted him as the actor cause he got his motions and body language down to a T the movie wasn't all that bad. As a matter of fact is was surprisingly good. They were pretty faithful to the game as far as weapons and locations go, and after about 15-20 minutes I was hooked. Action scenes were all top notch too, Hitman wasn't as stealthy and blunt as he was in the game, but I can see why they didn't make it like that for the film and his image still seemed mostly loyal to the game........other than the voice. But overall this gets a big thumbs up from me..........Dammit..........dammit.........I think this may just be the second best videogame movie evar!!!! (next to the original Mortal Kombat of course!) 8/10
-Chris finally got his own apartment, which is about time. That guy had so much bad luck trying to find a full time job after going through so many temp positions across town, but he had for nearly a year now, and it is good to see he finally got his own place. Which is way bigger than mine, so now his place will be the ultimate gaming pad!
-What I have been managing to game up in lately....hmmm. I got Kane & Lynch to review from Ryan, and I know my fellow coworker Mike was really anticipating that game so I met up at his place and we played it on his mammoth HD projector. Though the screen was split vertically, I still had a good 40" of space to work with. We had a blast with that game, which is from the Hitman developers, play a little like it with a slight emphasis on tactical action like Gears of War...though managing the squad can be cumbersome which resulted in us being stuck on a stage for nearly two hours. But overall, still a pretty damn good time.
I also have been playing Rock Band a bit. Dick and Dave came over a couple times the past few weeks and we created our own band in Band World Tour and made a weeee bit of progress. I like how they throw in downloaded songs in the setlists so it seems like there is always new songs thrown in the mix. And creating your own band members rules, I really liked the character in Guitar Hero, but it is very nice to get a chance to create your own headbanger. So far I'm mostly sticking with the drums, I beat solo tour on drums on easy, and am working on Medium right now, and with the exception of a few songs, I am starting to feel comfortable with it, though that Kick Drum pedal tends to throw off my timing still a bit. If you have some friends to tear this up with, I highly recommend checking out Rock Band as it is just a blast to experience.
-I got around to playing Scene It for 360 with Jane and Shawn last night. Those two are huge Scene It fans, and I never actually have played the game but always was fascinated with the movie trivia concept of it so I decided to chance it and pick it up for the 360. We had a blast playing it last night, and completed four round of long play, which I estimate took around 25 minutes each to complete. So far I gotta this is the ultimate casual game for the 360, just grab a few drinks and reminise about old flicks and try to kick ass in trivia. I did not win any of the rounds as Shawn won every one of them, because that guy must have seen way more movies than I have. Those controllers rule too and are the perfect match for the game, very durable, portable, and wireless!
-I finally decided to start up a GameFly subscription. I shouldn't since I bought so many other games recently, but there are still a bunch I want to play and try out and not spend all that money on and with a 3 week Christmas break coming up I decided to sign up and give it a shot. Already got my first game in the mail......Simpsons game, which I was just a few levels away from completing before my rental ran up. Other games I got on my Q I want to try out are Conan, Timeshift, Assassin's Creed, Jericho, and a few others.
-I finally finished up part 3 of 3 of the wrestling videogame retrospective for my podcast with Dick and Dave. Check it out by right clicking and saving this link - http://www.vgpub.com/pubcast/vgp-ep47.mp3.
-I want to take the time right here to say good luck to Jeff Gertsman from Gamespot. If you didn't hear by now, he was mysteriosly let go after writing for Gamespot for nearly 11 years. A lot of speculation has been going around that is was because of the "tone" of his review for Kane & Lynch, which also happened to be a big advertisor for Gamespot and that review was the last straw of a string of which weren't pleasing Gamespot's owner, Cnet. Whatever officially led to his firing, it sucks because Jeff was awesome to listen to on their podcast, Hotspot, and his video reviews I was fan of, and I was also a loyal fan of their old weekly video show, Let's Gamespot, which is the precursor to their current show, On the Spot. Jeff just had an awesome wit to him, which I can see why some people may dislike, but it just clicked with me and he brought a very amusing side to the gaming news side of things. Wherever you end up next Jeff, good luck!
-Been watching a bunch of DVDs too recently. I just watched Superbad again, the extended cut, which didn't seem to add a whole lot, just a few more edgier lines of dialogue, but the movie is still a freaking laugh riot. Great stuff. Didn't get a chance to watch the extras yet though. Hopefully they'll be as good as the awesome extras on the Knocked Up deluxe edition. I also watched the Shawn Michaels DVD that just came out. The documentary was amazing, two hours long and covered everything in detail from his Rockers years, to his initial WWE title run, to Montreal, and his comeback years. A great watch, now one of these days I just gotta roll on through all the matches.
Finally I had to watch two DVDs for classes to write responses for. One was Control Room, a political documentary about how local Iraq news-stations covered the US "liberation" of Iraq. Then, I watched Rent for my Humanities class. And man was Rent amazing. Very powerful, very emotional. Not all that a fan of musicals, but that one was nearly perfect in every way imaginable. 10/10
-That finally does it.....wow, this went on forever, but I had a lot to catch up on....thanks for making it all this way! Latez!
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