Sunday, May 24, 2009
-Hey yo! Meant to update this a little earlier, but then my laptop took a dump on me (mostly in part due to Atlus's mailing list being compromised and mailing out a virus, huzzah!), so Chris is fixing that up right now, and then I realized I have a desktop that I mostly neglect. Chris upgraded this beast too last year from a lean mean AMD 700mhz to a Intel something 2.6 ghz, so it is not all that bad. All I hope is that it can at least run Starcraft 2.
-Had a fun time in Fargo recently with Matt and Danielle again. Matt has not set foot in a bar in years, and he broke his streak for a post graduation drink with me! Incredibly awesome of him to do that! We had some drinks and afterwords we had a movie night watching some of our all time favorites including Dirty Work, Dumb and Dumber and Wayne's World....excellent!
-So yeah, I am all gradu-ma-waited now! Last few days of classes went well, we had a potluck for my final day in American Minorities and in the last week of Civil Liberties we had the town sheriff come to shed some fascinating insight on his profession and our professor shared Trail Mix and Sunny D with us on our last lecture day. After checking my final grades I was surprised I did so well with an overall GPA of 3.7, that is about up a full point from my high school GPA. The ceremony went by uneventful, a lot of people decided not to show up to walk, but a couple hundred still made it and it still took seemingly forever for everyone to get their diplomas, one gutsy student did a cartwheel across the stage before receiving his diploma!
My graduation party was the same day and before the ceremony it was nice and sunny out in the 60s, but after the ceremony it was the exact opposite with rain and cold gusts so we had to move the party at the last minute to my sister's. Still had a fantastic turnout with a lot of friends and family making it out with a lot of food to go around. That night, despite it dropping down to the 30s, we threw a bonfire which only a few people made it out to. Joey, Jake, Richard made it along with Brent and his girlfriend Jess from Fargo. First time I saw Brent in nearly two years! Despite the cold temps, the fire made it a toasty evening as we had the fire rocking until 12:30am and enjoyed a few brews in the process!
-Yesterday Joe and I drove a few hours to one of Minnesota's 10,000 lakes to join up with the rest of the family for a fun day at the lake. Been a couple years since I made it out to the lake and had a great time going on a pontoon ride, honing my Frisbee skills and what else but drinking some brews around a campfire. Also had some damn good pork chops and breakfast bagels! Got around to reading a few of the many issues I am behind on in the Punisher MAX line (caught up through issue 45, only about 30 behind now!), and also read Scott Pilgrim Volume 3 during some downtime. On the way back home we stopped at a McDonalds where I recalled a news article about a new feature added in one of the Zune's recent firmware updates, so I tested it out and used my Zune's wifi ability to access its online marketplace and download a song I had on my mind, that song by the Killers that was featured in Southland Tales. Paying for downloading songs wirelessly at McDonalds off my Zune...never thought I would be doing that 10 years ago in the midst of Napster-mania, technology is crazy yo!
-The PS3 recently got a new downloadable game for sale on its store in the form of Zen Pinball. Its developed by the same people who made the superb Pinball FX on Xbox Live Arcade! I tried out this new release, and it offers four new tables and features some snazzy new animations that were absent from their 360 release. For pinball nuts, this game is a must buy and a great deal at $9.99!
-So I threw in Oblivion again for the first time since last October recently. I took a break at the quest that required me to close several Oblivion gates to proselytize help for Bruma. That game is still awesome after more than three years, Fallout 3 is a little more polished in certain areas, but I had a great time rocking through a few Oblivion gates recently. Other games I have been playing recently have been Resident Evil 5 where I finished up area 2-1, and Metal Gear Solid 4 for the first time in a couple months where I finally finished up Act 2, and then proceeded to watch over an hour of cut scenes before finally being able to control Snake at the beginning of Act 3! Also continued my Gears of War 2 co-op campaign with Scott on Hardcore difficulty. We got to Act 4 where we square off against that sinister lake monster boss underground, and after a dozen attempts we had to call it quits before we ripped our heads off. We did manage to unload some steam off though in some Rock Band 2 Band Tour progress and a couple rounds of NBA 2K8.
-Finished up a couple games recently to up my total so far to the year to 9! I wrapped up X-Men Origins: Wolverine to make it game #8, and Halo Wars for game #9! X-Men Origins is a pretty good Wolverine clone, but it could have benefited by trimming down the generic puzzles. That is the gist of it, click here to check out my review, Matt and I also dedicated a recent podcast solely discussing only the game and the film, slice up a download. Halo Wars was surprisingly good for a console RTS. Still surprised it pulled off an online co-op campaign mode so well before, I do not think any other RTS had that feature and it would seem like a no-brainer for one of the many PC ones to add in. Sean and I rocked out the campaign over the course of a couple weeks doing a couple missions here and there over Xbox Live after work. Definitely recommend to at least check out the demo and give it a try, I also reviewed Halo Wars on the latest On Tap.
-With it being a three check month and getting some bonus graduation money I went on a game buying spree this month. At the Fargo Rock 30 branch I picked up TMNT 2: Back from the Sewers on GameBoy, Champions: Return to Arms on PS2 and Separation Anxiety on SNES. Been keeping an eye out for the second Champions game for awhile now, and was surprised to see it priced around $25. Also finally got Uncharted for PS3, got it for a decent price at $30 used, cannot believe it is still going for $60 new, but with the sequel coming out soon I want to get around to playing the original someday. Lastly, I picked up Lips on 360, being a karaoke nut I am surprised I did not pick this up sooner, probably because singing in Rock Band was tiding me by just fine, but seeing the game and 2 mic set on clearance for $30 helped persuade me. I will have to throw a karaoke party one of these days.
-Saw a few films since my last update. Last two Netflix films I watched were atrocious. Disaster Movie is by far one of the worst movies ever, it is even worse than Date Movie & Epic Movie, and both of those set a damn low bar that only Uwe Boll could match. I actually mildly enjoyed last year's Superhero Movie so I thought the people behind this line of spoofs were getting there act together. I could not have been more wrong. 0/10 S.Darko is the horrible spin-off of Donnie Darko, it pretty much copies the whole plot of the first film verbatim, but with only an extremely dull cast and a new story that I had very little interest in from the get go. 2/10
I redeemed myself after those atrocities by catching Terminator Salvation with Dad and Joey last weekend, and I liked it but something about it just seemed off. Guess I was hoping for grander battles of mammoth proportions, and there were glimpses of that, but considering the last three flicks were building towards this apocalypse, it was a bit of a letdown not to even see Judgment Day happen. That aside though, I still thought this was an awesome summer action flick (I know others thought the nods to the earlier films were cheesy but I liked how they were done and seemed like a fitting tribute to them), it just could have been so much more.7.5/10
-Anyone keeping up with somewhat ex-wrestler Bobby Lashley's rise through MMA? I saw him destroy his latest victim in 25 seconds with a guillotine choke and he is now 3-0. Quite daring of him though to simultaneously compete in TNA Wrestling and risk not getting signed by the big boys at UFC. In other quick wrestling tidbits I have been digging The Miz's push, I have been a strong advocate of him since he really started coming around in the ring and on his promos since he started up in ECW and especially liked the duo of Miz 'n Morrison, but to see him get a pretty singles pushing right after getting to RAW is surprisingly awesome! Finally, I have been watching the RAW 15th Anniversary disc set, and there is a ton of great material on there, a pretty good balance of classic matches and promos all around. Highly recommended!
-Well what do you know, my blog has ran crazy long yet again! Sorry if you passed out reading this, latez!
-Had a fun time in Fargo recently with Matt and Danielle again. Matt has not set foot in a bar in years, and he broke his streak for a post graduation drink with me! Incredibly awesome of him to do that! We had some drinks and afterwords we had a movie night watching some of our all time favorites including Dirty Work, Dumb and Dumber and Wayne's World....excellent!
-So yeah, I am all gradu-ma-waited now! Last few days of classes went well, we had a potluck for my final day in American Minorities and in the last week of Civil Liberties we had the town sheriff come to shed some fascinating insight on his profession and our professor shared Trail Mix and Sunny D with us on our last lecture day. After checking my final grades I was surprised I did so well with an overall GPA of 3.7, that is about up a full point from my high school GPA. The ceremony went by uneventful, a lot of people decided not to show up to walk, but a couple hundred still made it and it still took seemingly forever for everyone to get their diplomas, one gutsy student did a cartwheel across the stage before receiving his diploma!
My graduation party was the same day and before the ceremony it was nice and sunny out in the 60s, but after the ceremony it was the exact opposite with rain and cold gusts so we had to move the party at the last minute to my sister's. Still had a fantastic turnout with a lot of friends and family making it out with a lot of food to go around. That night, despite it dropping down to the 30s, we threw a bonfire which only a few people made it out to. Joey, Jake, Richard made it along with Brent and his girlfriend Jess from Fargo. First time I saw Brent in nearly two years! Despite the cold temps, the fire made it a toasty evening as we had the fire rocking until 12:30am and enjoyed a few brews in the process!
-Yesterday Joe and I drove a few hours to one of Minnesota's 10,000 lakes to join up with the rest of the family for a fun day at the lake. Been a couple years since I made it out to the lake and had a great time going on a pontoon ride, honing my Frisbee skills and what else but drinking some brews around a campfire. Also had some damn good pork chops and breakfast bagels! Got around to reading a few of the many issues I am behind on in the Punisher MAX line (caught up through issue 45, only about 30 behind now!), and also read Scott Pilgrim Volume 3 during some downtime. On the way back home we stopped at a McDonalds where I recalled a news article about a new feature added in one of the Zune's recent firmware updates, so I tested it out and used my Zune's wifi ability to access its online marketplace and download a song I had on my mind, that song by the Killers that was featured in Southland Tales. Paying for downloading songs wirelessly at McDonalds off my Zune...never thought I would be doing that 10 years ago in the midst of Napster-mania, technology is crazy yo!
-The PS3 recently got a new downloadable game for sale on its store in the form of Zen Pinball. Its developed by the same people who made the superb Pinball FX on Xbox Live Arcade! I tried out this new release, and it offers four new tables and features some snazzy new animations that were absent from their 360 release. For pinball nuts, this game is a must buy and a great deal at $9.99!
-So I threw in Oblivion again for the first time since last October recently. I took a break at the quest that required me to close several Oblivion gates to proselytize help for Bruma. That game is still awesome after more than three years, Fallout 3 is a little more polished in certain areas, but I had a great time rocking through a few Oblivion gates recently. Other games I have been playing recently have been Resident Evil 5 where I finished up area 2-1, and Metal Gear Solid 4 for the first time in a couple months where I finally finished up Act 2, and then proceeded to watch over an hour of cut scenes before finally being able to control Snake at the beginning of Act 3! Also continued my Gears of War 2 co-op campaign with Scott on Hardcore difficulty. We got to Act 4 where we square off against that sinister lake monster boss underground, and after a dozen attempts we had to call it quits before we ripped our heads off. We did manage to unload some steam off though in some Rock Band 2 Band Tour progress and a couple rounds of NBA 2K8.
-Finished up a couple games recently to up my total so far to the year to 9! I wrapped up X-Men Origins: Wolverine to make it game #8, and Halo Wars for game #9! X-Men Origins is a pretty good Wolverine clone, but it could have benefited by trimming down the generic puzzles. That is the gist of it, click here to check out my review, Matt and I also dedicated a recent podcast solely discussing only the game and the film, slice up a download. Halo Wars was surprisingly good for a console RTS. Still surprised it pulled off an online co-op campaign mode so well before, I do not think any other RTS had that feature and it would seem like a no-brainer for one of the many PC ones to add in. Sean and I rocked out the campaign over the course of a couple weeks doing a couple missions here and there over Xbox Live after work. Definitely recommend to at least check out the demo and give it a try, I also reviewed Halo Wars on the latest On Tap.
-With it being a three check month and getting some bonus graduation money I went on a game buying spree this month. At the Fargo Rock 30 branch I picked up TMNT 2: Back from the Sewers on GameBoy, Champions: Return to Arms on PS2 and Separation Anxiety on SNES. Been keeping an eye out for the second Champions game for awhile now, and was surprised to see it priced around $25. Also finally got Uncharted for PS3, got it for a decent price at $30 used, cannot believe it is still going for $60 new, but with the sequel coming out soon I want to get around to playing the original someday. Lastly, I picked up Lips on 360, being a karaoke nut I am surprised I did not pick this up sooner, probably because singing in Rock Band was tiding me by just fine, but seeing the game and 2 mic set on clearance for $30 helped persuade me. I will have to throw a karaoke party one of these days.
-Saw a few films since my last update. Last two Netflix films I watched were atrocious. Disaster Movie is by far one of the worst movies ever, it is even worse than Date Movie & Epic Movie, and both of those set a damn low bar that only Uwe Boll could match. I actually mildly enjoyed last year's Superhero Movie so I thought the people behind this line of spoofs were getting there act together. I could not have been more wrong. 0/10 S.Darko is the horrible spin-off of Donnie Darko, it pretty much copies the whole plot of the first film verbatim, but with only an extremely dull cast and a new story that I had very little interest in from the get go. 2/10
I redeemed myself after those atrocities by catching Terminator Salvation with Dad and Joey last weekend, and I liked it but something about it just seemed off. Guess I was hoping for grander battles of mammoth proportions, and there were glimpses of that, but considering the last three flicks were building towards this apocalypse, it was a bit of a letdown not to even see Judgment Day happen. That aside though, I still thought this was an awesome summer action flick (I know others thought the nods to the earlier films were cheesy but I liked how they were done and seemed like a fitting tribute to them), it just could have been so much more.7.5/10
-Anyone keeping up with somewhat ex-wrestler Bobby Lashley's rise through MMA? I saw him destroy his latest victim in 25 seconds with a guillotine choke and he is now 3-0. Quite daring of him though to simultaneously compete in TNA Wrestling and risk not getting signed by the big boys at UFC. In other quick wrestling tidbits I have been digging The Miz's push, I have been a strong advocate of him since he really started coming around in the ring and on his promos since he started up in ECW and especially liked the duo of Miz 'n Morrison, but to see him get a pretty singles pushing right after getting to RAW is surprisingly awesome! Finally, I have been watching the RAW 15th Anniversary disc set, and there is a ton of great material on there, a pretty good balance of classic matches and promos all around. Highly recommended!
-Well what do you know, my blog has ran crazy long yet again! Sorry if you passed out reading this, latez!
Comments:
Post a Comment
