Monday, December 27, 2010
-Seasons greetings! It has been an insanely busy past few weeks, but somehow I am managing to keep it together. You just got to love having so many extended parts of the family, which results in celebrating Christmas three time in one week. We did get a little creative in celebrating Christmas when we have to celebrate it so many times in a week and decide to save the all-out holiday dinner for the last meal of the week.
First Christmas celebration was with my older brother Bob and his family, and that was kind of a BYOF smorgasbord, with a bunch of bars and treats my mom made on top of it. So we were all bringing pizzas, burgers, you name it. Definitely different, and a nice change of pace. Second Christmas we celebrated with my Dad, and we went with a simple meat and cheese platter and a slow cooker filled with delicious smokeys in Honey BBQ sauce. For the third celebration we are going down to my sister's in Montevideo for the traditional Christmas meal and had a blast singing karaoke all night on her boyfriend's karaoke machine! It has been a pretty good haul for Christmas this year too, with the following loot haul this year:
...SNL Board Game, Red Dead Redemption Undead Nightmare, Adidas cologne pack, 1.75 Bottle of Captain Morgan, On Tap custom hat, Ottoman, Nativity Set Figurine, Leather gloves and Need For Speed Hot Pursuit
-Speaking of gifts, I did a little bit of gifting myself on the annual Black Friday splurge. There was only one thing I really wanted, and that was a $500 HP desktop from Wal-Mart. I ran the stats by my computer technician buddy Chris, and he said it is an great computer at a great price. For those curious it is an AMD Dual Core II 250, 5 gb RAM, 64-bit Windows 7, 1 TB HD, ATI Radeon HD 4500. I almost did not get it. I knew the Wal-Mart big ticket items went on sale at 5am, but I ever-so-slightly overslept and woke up at 5:45am. I rushed over to Wal-Mart and got over there just after 6am and to my surprise they still had seven of them left. I snapped it up, I wanted to also pick up NBA 2K11 and Smackdown vs. RAW 2011 which were also on sale for $30 each but Wal-Mart was already all out of those.
I then remembered that Target does price matching, and since those two games were not on sale at Target, they had plenty of them in stock and I got them at the sale price, with my discount on top of it to boot! Since I was there I also picked up Starcraft 2 since I realized I finally had a PC powerful enough to run it. There was only one other type of item that rounded off my Black Friday shopping, and that was was two towels for a $1.50 apiece. It is about time I got a new PC, my main desktop has been incredibly outdated for many years now. Over the next weeks following Black Friday I got all my primary files and games transferred over and am loving the new PC. I can actually stream Youtube and Hulu with no problems whatsoever now, I can actually run Steam and modern PC games! I actually took advantage of these great Steam sales I hear so much of and picked up Torchlight, Super Meat Boy, and seasons 1 and 2 of Sam and Max during their year end sale, all combined for under $25.
-Longtime readers of this blog will recall for the past several holiday seasons I would work as temporary help for Gamestop. I knew a bunch of the crew there, and I stopped in there enough as it was and blew enough cash there to the point where the staff pretty much knew me and offered me a job so I could save on my spending sprees. So since 2004 I worked every holiday season, usually only once a week. After the 2009 holiday season, the manager offered to keep me on after the season as a regular part time worker doing my regular once a week shift. Since I was finally done with college, I decided to take him up on the offer.
It was not all that bad, and it was not all that regular of a thing either since there was usually at least one week a month where I was off too. I hear a lot of people give Gamestop employees crap for pushing preorders and subscriptions, but I was usually pretty laid back when it came to those things. It was not my main job, and for doing it once a week, it was a breath of fresh air in a fun atmosphere. Of course getting a better discount on games than at Target and game checkouts was a nice perk of it too. Those days are coming to an end, because in a couple weeks the Gamestop I work at will be closing. I thought the coworker who told me was messing with me at first, but after finding it to be true I was a little shocked since I am use to hearing them doing well financially. I blame it on them deciding to open this location five years ago only two minutes away from the more established Gamestop in town. I was thinking of trying to transfer to the other one, but I think I will close this Gamestop chapter for me, plus it will be a lot more easier on me not working at Gamestop and going directly to Target anymore.
-Got a chance to hit up the bar karaoke scene a couple weeks ago with Joey and Scott. Had a fun time leading up to it with the bar running an all you can drink special for $10. First song I sang was Jackson 5's "I Want You Back." That performance did not go how I wanted, but I still managed to keep it together somewhat. Next song I sang I did much better, with Danzing's "Mother" which I sang before and was far more comfortable. I actually had the bar bopping pretty good during that song, where even one woman was dancing on top of a table during it.
-I caught my third local MMA show. It was ran through the Crowbar MMA promotion, which featured a lot of local fighters, and fighters out of Denver primarily. There were a few other special attractions with Dan Sayers from Ultimate Fighter Season 12 fighting in the main event, and "UFC Vets" Jesse Forbes and Steve Steinbeiss in action too. Brock Lesnar also was there making a special appearance where he signed autographs during intermission and cut a quick interview during the show. There were also two women MMA fights on the card, one with two top 10 world ranked women fighters.
The two women fights actually were the most brutal on the card, with both involving quite a bit of blood and nasty hits. I am not a hardcore UFC/MMA fan, but with Brock Lesnar and Bobby Lashley crossing over in the past few years I have kept a mild interest in it. I have also been picking up UFCs yearly best of DVDs to keep up with their best fights, and recently picked up and got several fights into their top 100 fights BluRay collection.
-So the greatest thing happened in WWE in quite some time. My man, The Miz has finally cashed in his Money in the Bank contract and used it to pin Randy Orton to become the new WWE champion. For being one of the few who have been behind the Miz since he arrived in WWE in 2004, I am psyched to see him reach the ultimate prize in wrestling. It is also awesome to see him getting a ton of publicity from ESPN to MTV covering the former star of the Real World going from reality tv to WWE Champion. As happy as I am to see the Miz's success, I am mighty disappointed how the Nexus has been booked the past month. They were the best new stable wrestling has seen for most of this year, but this past month John Cena alone has been making the comparable to the lows of the DX beatings on the Spirit Squad. It is extremely lazy booking, and WWE has rushed right through what was a money angle, and buried their best new heels they have had in years.
-Well, Mike Singletary got fired as coach from the Niners yesterday. Sad to see it happen since he looked so promising from their season last year. After hearing a lot of the rumblings however that he was a bit of a hardass and he has never quite been behind a QB these past two year, I guess it is probably the right move.
-Season 2 of the PSN exclusive reality show The Tester just wrapped up last week. This videogame reality show along with WCW is a guilty pleasure of mine. Once you get past some of the silly reality show hijinx that most of these shows have, I found it to be pretty entertaining. Shows are a little longer and more fleshed out than last season, and the challenges are videogame oriented. There is a lot more interesting characters and rivalries this season, that is to be sure.
-I will not try not to bog the end of this blog down with my massive gaming recap as I usually do. I will just say for now I am absolutely loving Marvel Pinball and Pinball FX2, along with all the friends leaderboard score-chasing it entails. Speaking of Marvel, the re-release of the 1992 arcade classic, X-Men is just as much fun to play as it was back in the day, especially up to six people online! Also, I royally suck at Dragon's Lair, and Dead to Rights: Retribution is not all that bad, but seems a little too drawn out so far, just like the original!
-Thanks for riding out yet another long blog with me everyone, this will most likely be my last one of 2010. Peace!
First Christmas celebration was with my older brother Bob and his family, and that was kind of a BYOF smorgasbord, with a bunch of bars and treats my mom made on top of it. So we were all bringing pizzas, burgers, you name it. Definitely different, and a nice change of pace. Second Christmas we celebrated with my Dad, and we went with a simple meat and cheese platter and a slow cooker filled with delicious smokeys in Honey BBQ sauce. For the third celebration we are going down to my sister's in Montevideo for the traditional Christmas meal and had a blast singing karaoke all night on her boyfriend's karaoke machine! It has been a pretty good haul for Christmas this year too, with the following loot haul this year:
...SNL Board Game, Red Dead Redemption Undead Nightmare, Adidas cologne pack, 1.75 Bottle of Captain Morgan, On Tap custom hat, Ottoman, Nativity Set Figurine, Leather gloves and Need For Speed Hot Pursuit
-Speaking of gifts, I did a little bit of gifting myself on the annual Black Friday splurge. There was only one thing I really wanted, and that was a $500 HP desktop from Wal-Mart. I ran the stats by my computer technician buddy Chris, and he said it is an great computer at a great price. For those curious it is an AMD Dual Core II 250, 5 gb RAM, 64-bit Windows 7, 1 TB HD, ATI Radeon HD 4500. I almost did not get it. I knew the Wal-Mart big ticket items went on sale at 5am, but I ever-so-slightly overslept and woke up at 5:45am. I rushed over to Wal-Mart and got over there just after 6am and to my surprise they still had seven of them left. I snapped it up, I wanted to also pick up NBA 2K11 and Smackdown vs. RAW 2011 which were also on sale for $30 each but Wal-Mart was already all out of those.
I then remembered that Target does price matching, and since those two games were not on sale at Target, they had plenty of them in stock and I got them at the sale price, with my discount on top of it to boot! Since I was there I also picked up Starcraft 2 since I realized I finally had a PC powerful enough to run it. There was only one other type of item that rounded off my Black Friday shopping, and that was was two towels for a $1.50 apiece. It is about time I got a new PC, my main desktop has been incredibly outdated for many years now. Over the next weeks following Black Friday I got all my primary files and games transferred over and am loving the new PC. I can actually stream Youtube and Hulu with no problems whatsoever now, I can actually run Steam and modern PC games! I actually took advantage of these great Steam sales I hear so much of and picked up Torchlight, Super Meat Boy, and seasons 1 and 2 of Sam and Max during their year end sale, all combined for under $25.
-Longtime readers of this blog will recall for the past several holiday seasons I would work as temporary help for Gamestop. I knew a bunch of the crew there, and I stopped in there enough as it was and blew enough cash there to the point where the staff pretty much knew me and offered me a job so I could save on my spending sprees. So since 2004 I worked every holiday season, usually only once a week. After the 2009 holiday season, the manager offered to keep me on after the season as a regular part time worker doing my regular once a week shift. Since I was finally done with college, I decided to take him up on the offer.
It was not all that bad, and it was not all that regular of a thing either since there was usually at least one week a month where I was off too. I hear a lot of people give Gamestop employees crap for pushing preorders and subscriptions, but I was usually pretty laid back when it came to those things. It was not my main job, and for doing it once a week, it was a breath of fresh air in a fun atmosphere. Of course getting a better discount on games than at Target and game checkouts was a nice perk of it too. Those days are coming to an end, because in a couple weeks the Gamestop I work at will be closing. I thought the coworker who told me was messing with me at first, but after finding it to be true I was a little shocked since I am use to hearing them doing well financially. I blame it on them deciding to open this location five years ago only two minutes away from the more established Gamestop in town. I was thinking of trying to transfer to the other one, but I think I will close this Gamestop chapter for me, plus it will be a lot more easier on me not working at Gamestop and going directly to Target anymore.
-Got a chance to hit up the bar karaoke scene a couple weeks ago with Joey and Scott. Had a fun time leading up to it with the bar running an all you can drink special for $10. First song I sang was Jackson 5's "I Want You Back." That performance did not go how I wanted, but I still managed to keep it together somewhat. Next song I sang I did much better, with Danzing's "Mother" which I sang before and was far more comfortable. I actually had the bar bopping pretty good during that song, where even one woman was dancing on top of a table during it.
-I caught my third local MMA show. It was ran through the Crowbar MMA promotion, which featured a lot of local fighters, and fighters out of Denver primarily. There were a few other special attractions with Dan Sayers from Ultimate Fighter Season 12 fighting in the main event, and "UFC Vets" Jesse Forbes and Steve Steinbeiss in action too. Brock Lesnar also was there making a special appearance where he signed autographs during intermission and cut a quick interview during the show. There were also two women MMA fights on the card, one with two top 10 world ranked women fighters.
The two women fights actually were the most brutal on the card, with both involving quite a bit of blood and nasty hits. I am not a hardcore UFC/MMA fan, but with Brock Lesnar and Bobby Lashley crossing over in the past few years I have kept a mild interest in it. I have also been picking up UFCs yearly best of DVDs to keep up with their best fights, and recently picked up and got several fights into their top 100 fights BluRay collection.
-So the greatest thing happened in WWE in quite some time. My man, The Miz has finally cashed in his Money in the Bank contract and used it to pin Randy Orton to become the new WWE champion. For being one of the few who have been behind the Miz since he arrived in WWE in 2004, I am psyched to see him reach the ultimate prize in wrestling. It is also awesome to see him getting a ton of publicity from ESPN to MTV covering the former star of the Real World going from reality tv to WWE Champion. As happy as I am to see the Miz's success, I am mighty disappointed how the Nexus has been booked the past month. They were the best new stable wrestling has seen for most of this year, but this past month John Cena alone has been making the comparable to the lows of the DX beatings on the Spirit Squad. It is extremely lazy booking, and WWE has rushed right through what was a money angle, and buried their best new heels they have had in years.
-Well, Mike Singletary got fired as coach from the Niners yesterday. Sad to see it happen since he looked so promising from their season last year. After hearing a lot of the rumblings however that he was a bit of a hardass and he has never quite been behind a QB these past two year, I guess it is probably the right move.
-Season 2 of the PSN exclusive reality show The Tester just wrapped up last week. This videogame reality show along with WCW is a guilty pleasure of mine. Once you get past some of the silly reality show hijinx that most of these shows have, I found it to be pretty entertaining. Shows are a little longer and more fleshed out than last season, and the challenges are videogame oriented. There is a lot more interesting characters and rivalries this season, that is to be sure.
-I will not try not to bog the end of this blog down with my massive gaming recap as I usually do. I will just say for now I am absolutely loving Marvel Pinball and Pinball FX2, along with all the friends leaderboard score-chasing it entails. Speaking of Marvel, the re-release of the 1992 arcade classic, X-Men is just as much fun to play as it was back in the day, especially up to six people online! Also, I royally suck at Dragon's Lair, and Dead to Rights: Retribution is not all that bad, but seems a little too drawn out so far, just like the original!
-Thanks for riding out yet another long blog with me everyone, this will most likely be my last one of 2010. Peace!
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