Wednesday, September 10, 2008
-Howdy howdy one and all! Right now I am towards the end of my 2 hour break
inbetween classes on Tuesday, and figured it was about time I update this damn
blog. Without further ado, let's get to the update...
-Last Saturday was one of those days from where I woke up I was nonstop busy.
Started the day off meeting my brother-in-law Shawn at Applebee's for lunch. Had
a good lunch and conversation with him, will probably be one of my last with him
though. He's got new orders and is going to be moving down to Georgia in a
couple weeks. Jane of course was suppose to go with him, but unfortunately
things didn't work out with them and they're now divorced after around 8 years
of marriage. I'll miss him as beside being my brother-in-law, he was awesome to
converse, game and play sports with. Sounds like he'll still be around on
occassion to visit his kids on the holidays, so I'll still manage to hang with
him from time to time. Just hate to see things run sour between them. An
interesting stat I remember from my Sociology class a couple years ago -
American divorce rate is 70%, 7 out of 10. I had no idea it was that high
(seemed like 30-40% to me), but when I come to think of it, I know of a lot of
friends and family who went down that road.
After lunch with Shawn, I met up with my sister and helped her out getting some
furniture repaired, and almost immediately after that I met up with Dick & Dave
so we could record our third episode of our new wrestling podcast, href="http://www.monkeyspike.com/thecheappop/">The Cheap Pop. I'm happy I'm
finally doing a wrestling podcast and am amazed at how I'm trying to keep up
with all the wrestling programming every week, the show is still evolving though
and we're trying our best to tighten it up each week. For those listening,
thanks for giving us a chance and be patient until we get comfortable with a set
format.
After recording the podcast, we cracked open a few beers and dusted off the 64
and dueled it out in some hardcore WWF No Mercy action. Had some intense triple
threat iron matches. Damn that gameplay still holds up as the very best today 8
years after its release. Also played some Mario Kart 64, which was awesome, and
after playing this I'll still have to consider the 64 version my favorite Mario
Kart yet. The graphics, while not at the calibur of Double Dash or MK Wii, look
fairly decent to this day to my surprise, I still consider it to have the best
track design of all the Mario Karts (though to be fair I never played more than
a dozen or so races of the Wii version yet).
Around 1am when Dick & Dave left, I still had some life left in me and gave
Scott a buzz and he came over and we hack and slashed it up in Baldur's Gate:
Dark Alliance until 7 in the morning. It was about 3 months since our last save,
but we didn't miss a beat. We're nearing the last stretch of that game as we're
hitting up the third floor of the Onyx Tower, and can't recall back to cash in
loot and buy potions. Man, I love that game. I want to go out and buy Dark
Alliance II, but it's a little difficult to track down and runs for around $40
used, but luckilly Chris said he'll lend us his copy once we finish up the first
Dark Alliance. I still have some regrets for never giving Diablo II and the PC
Baldur's Gate games a fair shake. I love console hack 'n slash RPGs, but for
whatever reason, I never got around to giving those critically acclaimed PC
offerings a try. I still see the Diablo Battle Chest set for sale for $30 at
stores and keep pondering if I should purchase it or not, hell I think it's the
only Blizzard game I do not own. What do you guys think, are Baldur's Gate and
Diablo II worth checking out this many years later?
-Last week I ended up picking up Uwe Boll's latest videogame movie to hit Dn\VD,
"Postal." Why would I do such a trivial thing, well, because like past Boll
movies like BloodRayne and Dungeon Siege, I wanted to do a podcast about the
film tearing it apart. There was actually some redeeming qualities about Postal,
and I actually came out of the film mildly enjoying it. The podcast was a blast
to do, and for the first time in several months I brought on some guest hosts
with insidepulse.com's Scott Sawitz, and Pause or Continue's Jarrod Johnston.
Had a blast recording it, and we talked up a lot of the other summer films we've
seen too in that episode. Brought Postal over for Joey, Chris, and my other
buddy Scott to see a couple days later, and they all ended up surprisingly
liking it too. I guess the shock comedy worked. Check out this episode (#71) at ontappodcast.com
In other podcast news I tried to finally get around to doing a podcast special I
had in the works for nearly a year now last weekend, and we almost pulled it
off, but one of my guests had to postpone last minute after an emergency at
home. But trust me, the wait will be worth it, as it sounds like we will
definitely be doing this special within two weeks, with a preview of sorts most
likely before that. Don't want to give it away, so pardon my hype. Last week I
also got to be a guest host on episode 76 of the PSnation podcast. Had a great
time being on where I got to gush about Eternal Sonata and manage to crack a
Chuck's mom joke in the process too. If you haven't checked it out yet, href="http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/psnation.org/podcast/files/PSNatio
n-Ep77-On%20Tap.mp3">download it here
-I was catching up on a lot of demos I had building up on my hard drive, and one
of them was so good I went right online and ordered it. The game I'm talking
about is one Civilization Revolution. Never played a Civ before, though I do
recall fun times watching a friend of mine playing a round of CivII for
countless hours. Always meant to play it, but the sheer amount of rules and mass
of the game seemed so daunting. Heard how Firaxis went to simplify the Civ
formula for console gamers so I figured the least I could do was give the demo a
try. Next thing I knew I was hooked and two hours went by before I got a call
and needed to stop playing to run an errand. I went to the menu to save, and
then realized I was playing a demo and that saving wasn't an option, after
realizing that I went online and found a decent deal and got the game new for
$45. Anyone else get suckered in by the drug that is Civ?
-I found an awesome birthday gift for my brother. We usually give each other our
birthday gifts earlier, so I know he's going to love when I surprise him with
the book on the Ultimate Guide to Zombie movies. John pointed this out in an
awesome write up on robotpanic.com, that convinced me that this would be the perfect
gift for him, since he is huge into zombie flicks. While I was browsing buy.com
I also bit the bullet and finally picked up the core set of books for Dungeons &
Dragons 4th Edition. I'm still a complete noob to DnD, but I was very intrigued
at the few sessions I got in last year. Having a coupon for buy.com also helped
peaked my interest. I do have DnD for dummies, but if anyone knows any other
sources or tools that help ease in noobs as myself to the game, please point me
in the right direction.
-Finally, I've been watching way too much wrestling again. Aside from keeping up
with RAW, Smackdown, ECW, & Impact every week I have been cracking away at the
Stone Cold 3 disc set. I'm about halfway through, and there are a ton of awesome
matches on here thus far (though his match from 1997 against Undertaker nearly
put me to sleep). I also picked up the new Mr. Perfect best of dvd. Haven't had
time to watch it yet, but cannot wait to do so. I also caught a couple awesome
pieces of content on WWE 24/7 lately. They had a legends roundtable on Ric Flair
and Sgt. Slaughter, where Jim Ross, Pat Patterson, Mike Graham, and Michael
Hayes spent about a half hour on each praising the abilities of each superstar.
Also caught the Hall of Fame piece on Harley Race, which included the classic
Starrcade cage match he had with Ric Flair. In the current wrestling scene I
have to admit that CMP Punk, pardon the pun, got punk'd out of his championship
at Unforgiven. Can't believe they took him out of the match in that fashion. I
was enjoying Marc Henry's title run on ECW too and was disappointed to see his
run get cut off seemingly too soon.
-Thus another crazy long entry comes to an end. Later!
inbetween classes on Tuesday, and figured it was about time I update this damn
blog. Without further ado, let's get to the update...
-Last Saturday was one of those days from where I woke up I was nonstop busy.
Started the day off meeting my brother-in-law Shawn at Applebee's for lunch. Had
a good lunch and conversation with him, will probably be one of my last with him
though. He's got new orders and is going to be moving down to Georgia in a
couple weeks. Jane of course was suppose to go with him, but unfortunately
things didn't work out with them and they're now divorced after around 8 years
of marriage. I'll miss him as beside being my brother-in-law, he was awesome to
converse, game and play sports with. Sounds like he'll still be around on
occassion to visit his kids on the holidays, so I'll still manage to hang with
him from time to time. Just hate to see things run sour between them. An
interesting stat I remember from my Sociology class a couple years ago -
American divorce rate is 70%, 7 out of 10. I had no idea it was that high
(seemed like 30-40% to me), but when I come to think of it, I know of a lot of
friends and family who went down that road.
After lunch with Shawn, I met up with my sister and helped her out getting some
furniture repaired, and almost immediately after that I met up with Dick & Dave
so we could record our third episode of our new wrestling podcast, href="http://www.monkeyspike.com/thecheappop/">The Cheap Pop. I'm happy I'm
finally doing a wrestling podcast and am amazed at how I'm trying to keep up
with all the wrestling programming every week, the show is still evolving though
and we're trying our best to tighten it up each week. For those listening,
thanks for giving us a chance and be patient until we get comfortable with a set
format.
After recording the podcast, we cracked open a few beers and dusted off the 64
and dueled it out in some hardcore WWF No Mercy action. Had some intense triple
threat iron matches. Damn that gameplay still holds up as the very best today 8
years after its release. Also played some Mario Kart 64, which was awesome, and
after playing this I'll still have to consider the 64 version my favorite Mario
Kart yet. The graphics, while not at the calibur of Double Dash or MK Wii, look
fairly decent to this day to my surprise, I still consider it to have the best
track design of all the Mario Karts (though to be fair I never played more than
a dozen or so races of the Wii version yet).
Around 1am when Dick & Dave left, I still had some life left in me and gave
Scott a buzz and he came over and we hack and slashed it up in Baldur's Gate:
Dark Alliance until 7 in the morning. It was about 3 months since our last save,
but we didn't miss a beat. We're nearing the last stretch of that game as we're
hitting up the third floor of the Onyx Tower, and can't recall back to cash in
loot and buy potions. Man, I love that game. I want to go out and buy Dark
Alliance II, but it's a little difficult to track down and runs for around $40
used, but luckilly Chris said he'll lend us his copy once we finish up the first
Dark Alliance. I still have some regrets for never giving Diablo II and the PC
Baldur's Gate games a fair shake. I love console hack 'n slash RPGs, but for
whatever reason, I never got around to giving those critically acclaimed PC
offerings a try. I still see the Diablo Battle Chest set for sale for $30 at
stores and keep pondering if I should purchase it or not, hell I think it's the
only Blizzard game I do not own. What do you guys think, are Baldur's Gate and
Diablo II worth checking out this many years later?
-Last week I ended up picking up Uwe Boll's latest videogame movie to hit Dn\VD,
"Postal." Why would I do such a trivial thing, well, because like past Boll
movies like BloodRayne and Dungeon Siege, I wanted to do a podcast about the
film tearing it apart. There was actually some redeeming qualities about Postal,
and I actually came out of the film mildly enjoying it. The podcast was a blast
to do, and for the first time in several months I brought on some guest hosts
with insidepulse.com's Scott Sawitz, and Pause or Continue's Jarrod Johnston.
Had a blast recording it, and we talked up a lot of the other summer films we've
seen too in that episode. Brought Postal over for Joey, Chris, and my other
buddy Scott to see a couple days later, and they all ended up surprisingly
liking it too. I guess the shock comedy worked. Check out this episode (#71) at ontappodcast.com
In other podcast news I tried to finally get around to doing a podcast special I
had in the works for nearly a year now last weekend, and we almost pulled it
off, but one of my guests had to postpone last minute after an emergency at
home. But trust me, the wait will be worth it, as it sounds like we will
definitely be doing this special within two weeks, with a preview of sorts most
likely before that. Don't want to give it away, so pardon my hype. Last week I
also got to be a guest host on episode 76 of the PSnation podcast. Had a great
time being on where I got to gush about Eternal Sonata and manage to crack a
Chuck's mom joke in the process too. If you haven't checked it out yet, href="http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/psnation.org/podcast/files/PSNatio
n-Ep77-On%20Tap.mp3">download it here
-I was catching up on a lot of demos I had building up on my hard drive, and one
of them was so good I went right online and ordered it. The game I'm talking
about is one Civilization Revolution. Never played a Civ before, though I do
recall fun times watching a friend of mine playing a round of CivII for
countless hours. Always meant to play it, but the sheer amount of rules and mass
of the game seemed so daunting. Heard how Firaxis went to simplify the Civ
formula for console gamers so I figured the least I could do was give the demo a
try. Next thing I knew I was hooked and two hours went by before I got a call
and needed to stop playing to run an errand. I went to the menu to save, and
then realized I was playing a demo and that saving wasn't an option, after
realizing that I went online and found a decent deal and got the game new for
$45. Anyone else get suckered in by the drug that is Civ?
-I found an awesome birthday gift for my brother. We usually give each other our
birthday gifts earlier, so I know he's going to love when I surprise him with
the book on the Ultimate Guide to Zombie movies. John pointed this out in an
awesome write up on robotpanic.com, that convinced me that this would be the perfect
gift for him, since he is huge into zombie flicks. While I was browsing buy.com
I also bit the bullet and finally picked up the core set of books for Dungeons &
Dragons 4th Edition. I'm still a complete noob to DnD, but I was very intrigued
at the few sessions I got in last year. Having a coupon for buy.com also helped
peaked my interest. I do have DnD for dummies, but if anyone knows any other
sources or tools that help ease in noobs as myself to the game, please point me
in the right direction.
-Finally, I've been watching way too much wrestling again. Aside from keeping up
with RAW, Smackdown, ECW, & Impact every week I have been cracking away at the
Stone Cold 3 disc set. I'm about halfway through, and there are a ton of awesome
matches on here thus far (though his match from 1997 against Undertaker nearly
put me to sleep). I also picked up the new Mr. Perfect best of dvd. Haven't had
time to watch it yet, but cannot wait to do so. I also caught a couple awesome
pieces of content on WWE 24/7 lately. They had a legends roundtable on Ric Flair
and Sgt. Slaughter, where Jim Ross, Pat Patterson, Mike Graham, and Michael
Hayes spent about a half hour on each praising the abilities of each superstar.
Also caught the Hall of Fame piece on Harley Race, which included the classic
Starrcade cage match he had with Ric Flair. In the current wrestling scene I
have to admit that CMP Punk, pardon the pun, got punk'd out of his championship
at Unforgiven. Can't believe they took him out of the match in that fashion. I
was enjoying Marc Henry's title run on ECW too and was disappointed to see his
run get cut off seemingly too soon.
-Thus another crazy long entry comes to an end. Later!
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