Cents and sensbility... and mutilations.

Of course, my original intention of getting online was to pay bills and balance my checkbook. But, as we all know, I hate doing that as all it does is remind me of how much I overspend my balance each month. I just hate dealing with money... period. Don't get me wrong; it would be awesome if I actually had enough where I didn't have to worry.

So, what am I doing instead? I just couldn't pass on this:

Death by Destuffing

I get the spoiled one a new toy while I was at the grocery store earlier tonight, and what does she do? It only took her 10 minutes to get the squeaker this time. Good thing it just cost $3 instead of the usual $5. Kids.... :p~

Ok. Gonna go do the bills. OH! Damm! Almost forgot.... One Tree Hill, did you see it!? Like, OMFG!! What a cliffhanger! LOL. Good thing there's another one next week. Awite, gonna go now.



l8rs.

Back to reality... er... virtuality.

Woah, it's good to be back. You guys probably thought I dropped off the face of the earth over the last couple of weeks. No, a dial-up internet access will do that to you. I love my parents, but I wish they'd quit complaining about the price and just go ahead and get high-speed internet.

Wow. There's a lot to catch up on. I haven't left you all with anything to ponder for a couple of weeks.

This is overdue. It just wasn't worth the hassle of waiting for everything to load over a dial-up connection. Thanksgiving. I'm thankful for a loving, forgiving, and supportive close family. I'm also thankful for good friends, both virtual and non. You guys rock! As you can guess, I went back "home" for the holidays. It's funny. I've been living in Atl for, what, around 10 years, now? And I still call the island "home"; even though I won't move back there to save my life. The warm weather was a very welcome change from the frigid days I've been dealing with here. It's been unnaturally cold for this early in the year. And I don't mean cold as in I'm used to 80 degree Christmases, cool chill. I mean butt ass freaking bone chilling "is it going to snow this year?" cold! It's not supposed to drop down close to freezing until Jan around here. It's been doing it for almost 3-4 weeks, now. Well, I have a new space heater, so maybe that'll help me cut back on my natural gas bill (since I don't get to choose my provider).

I've gotten the hang of Gears of War, finally. That game freakin r0x0rs!!!!! I haven't had any game time in almost a week, so I'm going to try to sit down tonight after work, and between Heroes and bed, to get some play time in. I've almost finished the game in puss mode. I want to get that out of the way so I can start on the harder settings (unlocking all the gamer points requires me to play on all settings).

In football, Tech has really suprised me this year. They've managed to land the by spot for the ACC Championship game this Sat; but, if they play anywhere near as bad as they did against UGA this past weekend (I still can't believe they lost), Wake Forest is going to stomp their butts all up and down the field. Normally, I could care less about football by this time of year, but with the GT vs. Wake Forest game, and the #4 BCS ranked Fla (and whoever they're playing) SEC Championship game this Sat, I'm hooked. Now as far as my other TV shows, I'm getting a little irritated. Nip Tuck keeps throwing in these lame episodes every other week, so you can't decide if you want to keep watching, or just scrap it and play video games instead. I'm totally hooked on Heroes, tho. There's been a few slow moving episodes, but the storyline is awesome. Not quite sure it has the material to last any longer than one season, however. I do hope it goes to DVD; I'd like to own that one. I've decided to forego The OC this season since it rivals the Grey's Anatomay time slot, which I've really gotten into (it's all your fault, Clue!). Besides, since Marissa is dead, there's not much of anyone left on the show worth oogling, newayz. I am still keeping up with Smallville and One Tree Hill, tho. Smallville has tremendously impressed me with its plots to introduce all of Superman's allies he's interacted with over the years in the comics. Hardcore fanboys will probably hate me for saying this, but I feel like they've done a pretty good job at working with DC to keep the base pre-storyline intact.

So, I guess that's my catch up for now. I need to actually get to doing some work, instead of playing here, newayz.



l8rs.

It's here!

Quick bump then I need to get back to work.

The last two weekends have been long hour days (and nights) to finish .hack//GU Vol 1., which I've completed. The story line finally picked up once I got into it. You'd think that in the real world if a game programmer drops some funky code that puts it's users into comas in not one, but both versions of a game world, there'd be some serious hell to pay. ;) Basically, the story line is similar to the first .hack series. Ur a player (dude) in the newly released version 2 of the MMORPG "The World" (called "The World R:2") who's lost a close friend (chick - potential love interest, I guess) to this "virus" that's put them in a coma. You're out to defeat the "virus", called A.I.D.A. (based on "Anna"), in this version. Fans will recognize Anna from the Legend of the Twilight DVD series. This time, certain game characters have been encoded by C.C., Corp. to utilize Avatars, which are the 7 waves from the previous game, to battle AIDA. Your character's Avatar is Skeith. Skeith is the first badass you battle with Data Drain in .hack//Infection. Anywayz, I'm not going to throw out any sploitz if you haven't finished it, yet. Graphics have been upped a little since the first installment, but nothing to give you mahagony over. Most of the effort was put into massively expansive and beautiful background environments. The FMVs aren't Final Fantasy quality, but they are still phonmonally done.

Just in time finishing .hack as Gears of War showed up in my mailbox yesterday. :D W00+!! I got all hyped up again after watching the release party coverage on MTV Monday night. Got to play it a little last night, and let me tell you: TH1Z G4M3 FR34K1N R0X0RZ!!!!11!!ONE!! Mwuhahahah!!! Ever since watching the demo at E3, I've been wanting to plant that chainsaw on the bottom of the auto rifle into the face of a Grub! Violent... gorey... fully revolving environment... impressively intelligent AI.... Everything to quench my fix until Halo 3 comes out next spring. The only way I can think to describe it is a mix between Doom, Quake, and Halo wrapped in a third person shooter. I haven't quite mastered the using cover maneuvers (I'm too used to the "run-and-gun" scenarios of most FPS's), so I've been getting my butt kicked something fierce (and I'm just playing on the "Casual" mode). I can't wait to get the guys together for a little Versus mode. :) As you can guess, my postings will continue to be quite sparse until I get so frustrated I'll have to take a break. This should keep me entertained until Christmas. ;)



Well, back to work. l8rs.

Need to change my hours.

That's it! I'm calling it right here and now. Until I can get my sleep schedule back on track and get my ass up in the morning like a normal person, I will be plopping my butt in bed before midnight. Whether I fall asleep or not is a diff story, but I'm still going to bed. This means no more G.U. until 5 am. Don't make me open up a can of "Ren Geki". ;) (That's my new "line".)

This weather sucks, btw. I feel like I should be in Seattle or something. It's cold and rainy. Makes you want to brew up a pot of coffee, crash on the couch in ur pj's, and play video games all day. Too bad I actually have a job. Well, at the rate I've been going the last couple of weeks, I may not....

Who am I kidding. My boss will just threaten me to get back on track, or he'll write me up (which he has yet to do). But, let's avoid the threat; I hate wasting his time and mine.



l8rs.

Is it just me, or do these posts seem to be getting shorter and shorter?

Wah hoo!

I'm sweaty, I stink, and I'm cold. Yet another fun night at Cowboys. No, no run-ins with the scary chicks. I was actually the dance instructor tonight. I even met a friend of a bride-to-be. I felt like such an idiot. I'm trying to point out the dances to these chicks, and I haven't been in, how long? I think it's been a month, at least. I'm out of practice. Eh, well, they were impressed and grateful. I guess I did OK. Even got a name from one of them (even tho I can't remember it to save my life). W00+! LOL. Whatever. Oh, Cowboys is going no cover before midnight. Figures since I finally managed to snag some free passes from my sister. Looks I might be making more than just my once a month trip now.

Well, I'm gonna get some more .hack//GU time in before I crash for the evening (morning).



l8rs.

Financial stupidities and a new OS (again).

I really should get an accountant that will only allot me so much a week for allowance to play with. It never fails. Every month, just after payday, I go an spend money on crap before I start paying my bills. Some of the things I've bought are a necessity. The Jeep needs some maintenance, so I've picked up most of the supplies for that, already. But, I made a detour to GameStop after work today and picked up 2 games. After last night, I've decided to start migrating the Xbox games that I can to the PS2 versions. So, I took a couple with me to sell that won't play on the 360 that I didn't really like when I bought them. Man, talk about a money making racket. I got all of $12 out of 3 relatively "new" games (I take care of my games, unlike other things). That's just sad. I probably paid a total of $100+ for those. Well, sorta. One of the replacements was the latest Tomb Raider. Yes, I'm madly in love with Laura Croft and own the entire series; even the crappy Angel of Darkness. My sister's probably gonna be a little peeved since she's the one who got me the Xbox version for my b-day last year. But, I have valid reasoning: it wouldn't play on the 360. I had no intention of getting a 360 when she asked me which platform I wanted it on. Duh, Xbox has better graphics than PS2. Course, now that I've been playing it all evening, the only difference I see is some minor rougher edges in the polys and a pain in the ass trying to calibrate the brightness and contrast. But, it supports widescreen (don't remember if the other version did or not since my old projector didn't support it). :D Enough; I could go on for days about Lady Croft. The other game I picked up, that I couldn't resist, is the newly released .Hack//GU. Generally, my GameStop trips are for used games, but I couldn't resist. I really got into the .hack series between the previous game, the anime, and a couple of the manga's. I forgot that FF XII came out this week. I'll have to put that one on my Christmas list. I still need to rent Dirge of Cerebus, even tho it's gotten a lot of bad reviews. I've been a fan of the FF series since the Nintendo. Yes, as in 8-bit. I know... I'm old. FF VII was the one that fully hooked me into the series, tho. But, now can you see why I need to have someone else pay my bills and get my staples? All I need is an allowance. I suck at finances.

Yes the wedding went well. No one passed out or didn't show. I was just happy for it to finally be over. Now maybe they'll let everyone continue on with their lives while the bride and groom start theirs. ... What? ... You want me to describe it? It was a wedding. You've all been to one. You should know what it looked like. ... It was big; too big. I'm all for the whole bride, groom, officiant, and small crowd (close family and friends) kinda wedding. This was too much of a dog and pony show for me. If I'm lucky, this is the last one I'll have to worry about until I get married (assuming I get married, that is). Small will be a big stipulation on it, that's for sure. Marriage is over-rated. No, no, no. I will not be bitter.

So, I'm back to Linux, again. Specially as my primary system. Some ppl probably think I change operating systems about a frequently as other ppl change their underwear. That's not too far off. I'm constantly installing and re-installing. It's what I do for a living. If I haven't re-installed my system at least twice in a 3 month period, something's wrong. With a little (and I mean _VERY_ little) convincing, I now have Core 6 in the laptop. I'm digging the power for virtualization, but Xen still isn't all that friendly. I'm back to running XP in VMware Server (for support purposes). My only complaints are: the Dell (Broadcom) wireless doesn't work out of the box, there's no CPU scaling support for the Core Duo, yet, and the power management still isn't totally there for the Duo (only about 1 1/2 - 2 hr runtime compared to between 3 and 4 under Windows). I think the Bluetooth works (haven't tested it); it supports the On/Off switch (recognizes when it's turned on or off via the switch on the side). There were, also, some much needed updates to a lot of the programs I like to use. I must say, I'm impressed. Which means I should be very happy with Red Hat Enterprise 5 when it finally comes out (slated for some time early next year). I've played with the beta, but it's not ready for my full-time attention, yet. Now don't get me wrong. Vista runs quite well on the Duo.. by itself. Once you start tacking on "legacy" programs (i.e., current versions/builds), it's still a little too unstable and grouchy for me to deal with right now. I'm going to take some time this weekend to try and get the wireless working (there should be some "Google"-able documentation somewhere out there). If I can't, then it's back to Vista, I guess.

l8rs.