The Storm Clouds aren't Gathering

I hope at least. The weather has been quite nice of late, and it would appear I emerged safe and victorious through another cold desolate winter. So congratulations to all of you who survived as well. This time of year is sure to bring some nice rainy weather but I'm hoping it will stay absolutely perfect out for the next two weeks.

I tried to go to my usual mini-golf place last weekend, but unfortunately it wasn't open yet. I'll have to check their website but I'm thinking it might not spread its legs until this weekend. I'm going to try and get out to the driving range this Saturday, so that should be fun. Also I really want to make it a plan to go out to a 9 hole par 3 course with my friends this summer, just for the hell of it.

I'm taking Monday off to go to the Nationals Home opener vs the Marlins. With any luck JaxJaggyWires will have recovered from his ebola outbreak and will be in attendance as well. Then the next Monday/Tuesday I'm heading up to Baltimore with Becky to go to a concert, scope the aquarium, and have a fantabulous time.

After that let the thunderstorms rain down upon us with furious anger and great vengeance.

The Government Stole My Dollar Signs!

Ahhh yes taxes, my immortal enemy. Just got done doing the annual grueling task, though admittedly I don't really have it all that hard. Also it's somewhat shocking in that I didn't wait until the 2nd week of April to start. I used H&R Blocks e-file for 2005, which wasn't too bad. I had some trouble with finding all my documents and 2004 return, but it all worked out okay. Last year it was also free which was a nice benefit. For whatever reason I couldn't seem to get away with getting something for nothing, but it was a modest fee($15.)

They had all my info from last year already plugged in and it only took me 10 minutes or so. I figured it was worth it. They try and charge you double that to do your state taxes. Perhaps thats good for some people, but if you live in the ole VA you can file on their website for free. I used to complain they ditched the way I could file by phone, but online is way easier.

I ended up making more money last year than I thought I would. This translated into a larger refund, which I certainly will use irresponsibly. I don't know if it was the profit sharing check from the company(which I spent on my 360). Or perhaps it was that I got about an extra paycheck from cashing in 70ish hours of paid time off at the end of the year(which I spent on a camera and stuff.) I think I also started getting 2 hours of overtime each weekend simply for being the pager bitch. I'm certainly not complaining, I was just pleasantly surprised to see my w-2 rolling the 5th digit up a number.

Speaking of things rolling over, my car hit 75k miles this week. Huzzah I guess, but I think I should start putting some cash aside to buy a new one at some point. Not that I have any idea what car I would want. Course I know plenty of cars that I won't get so I guess that helps somewhat.

Wanna Play?

So I beat the next difficulty setting of G.R.A.W.2 Couple minor updates. I don't recall if I said it before but the campaign is pretty short. Jaxjaggywires said Act 2 was really long, and I suppose I somewhat agree, but I think it was compounded by the fact that Act3 takes less than 10 minutes. Also, while I'm fairly sure they weren't directly referencing Penny Arcade, I couldn't help but chuckle and think of a strip every time one of my teammates uttered the phrase Check the flower pot! I thought it was lame that they force you through the training each time you start a new game. Until I started over on uberhard last night. At one point I hit pause and noticed a skip training button. So thanks Tom Clancy!! I still need to try out some co-op goodness, but I should be available most of this weekend if anyone is down.

I also downloaded Castlevania:SOTN from xbox live marketplace last night. I was hoping for a bit more updated graphics, but its playable. I always wonder why I keep coming back to Castlevania games, but I do. I don't play all of them, I'm not some CV freak who must own every new title, and I almost always forget the main characters names. But when one comes easily available to me I tend to dive into it. Maybe it has something to do with the side scrolling platform, tho I actually enjoyed the n64 3d version, and maybe some others. Maybe it's the generic hack and slash with minor rpg elements that appeals to me. It's not the story, as I assure you I was mashing bushing furiously last night wishing I could skip it or scroll through faster. I will say however that the voice acting they put in seemed decent. At any rate I found myself playing this for at least an hour or two last night, and I will definitely plan on beating it and getting my hard earned 200 achievement points.

Thats the extent of my gaming for the week really. I still need to check out Rainbow Six and I might look at blockbuster for something to play because I haven't used my March coupon yet. Also for those who didn't know or may have forgot like me, the final season of Newsradio came out on DVD this week. Not the best season really, but at least it's closure. It was a great series though and if you've never seen it I demand you do so.

Good Eats

Went out to The Melting Pot over the weekend. I hadn't been there in quite some time. I think the last outing was when I was quite young. I don't know if it was simply the prices, or if it was the fact that the woman in my life at that time (A.K.A. Mom) didn't want to go there because she couldn't smoke. Fortunately the woman in my life now(A.K.A. Becky) can content herself to wait.

If you've never been to this restaurant and can afford it you should definitely check it out sometime. I'm serious on the if you can afford it tho. Don't show up with less than a c-note, and you'll probably need more. Also you might want to have a reservation, as when my Becky and I showed up out of the blue around 5 pm we were told they were booked up til 10:15. We promptly left and ended up at Ruby Tuesdays. A fine meal to be sure, but not what I had been hoping for. So when I got home I made a reservation for Sunday.

Basically they offer you several simple choices. Which of these 5 cheese dips do you want? Salad? Pick your meat or meat platter, and what to cook it in. Later you get to choose from a variety of chocolate dipping sauces. Then they bring out each course and you dip and cook and eat at your leisure.

The cheddar cheese fondue was quite tasty, tho I slightly regret not going with the traditional swiss. We ended up choosing their signature selection of meats, but both of us ended up being huge fans of the teriyaki marinated sirloin. For dessert we went with their combination of milk chocolate and Baileys Irish Cream which was quite delicious. At first they served a simple platter of chocolate dipping foods, but at our servers offer we gladly accepted extra strawberries, bananas, and mini brownie cubes. Overall the meal was tremendously fantastic.

Couple things of note.... This is not a short meal. I think we were seated around 5:55 and didn't leave until after 8. Beverage selection is limited. They serve you water, which I like well enough, but it seems kind of lame given the fanciness of the meal to be had. There's a range of mixed drinks(which were quite potently made), and a vast wine selection. Not much else.

Also you might want to change clothes afterward, unless you want to smell of Coq Au Vin for the rest of your evening. Speaking of which while there might be plenty of people all dressed up at the restaurant, there is no dress code, so feel free to show up in a tshirt, jeans, and sandals like I did.

Definately a place to go when you have the cash to blow and want a delicious and/or romantic meal.

What the Cell?

So I FINALLY got around to ditching my old cell phone. Well not literally since I have it in my backpack still. I don't really know what I'll do with it. The last time I got a new cell phone was because I lost its predecessor while suffering from extreme heat exhaustion/dehydration. Prior to that the last phone I used up was broken, and upon being replaced I summarily dismantled the old one because I'm a geek and thought it would be fun.

At any rate, the old cell phone has been turned off, perhaps never to be turned on again. Then again, one of the reasons I needed a new cell phone was because that one kept turning on, despite its not being off to begin with. Perhaps if I opened this one up I'd find gremlins, but since I tend to have a lot of water around me that might be dangerous for all mankind.

I managed to get out to the Sprint store over the weekend, and for once they actually were open AND had the phone I was looking for, the Sanyo M1.
Despite my initial objections to the mp3 controls on the front reminiscent of an ipod, and its lack of an extendable antenna, it looked to have pretty much anything else I might want. It's got bluetooth, nice fancy pants Sprint Power Vision features. I doubt I will really use it much as an mp3 player, but I think I get 4 free songs a month from the sprint music store with the plan I went with and the phone has a full gigabyte of storage space, so I might as well download stuff. It has a 2.0 megapixel camera that actually has a focus feature.

I find the layout and key sensitivity adequate for texting, and the screen is nice and crisp, including the outside LCD. Haven't much tested out its battery since I am pretty much ingrained into my habit of needing to plug my phone in when I get home. Some other nifty features which I have since found include multiple vibrate settings(You know you want it ladies!), handy news, sports and weather updates(including radar!). It also supports sprint TV, but I haven't yet had an opportunity to check that out. I can plug it into my computer via USB, but I don't yet know why I would.

Too make a long story short.... I like my new phone and its a lot nicer than my last one. Now you know.

I Know Exactly Where I Am.

So I used to watch the show Lost. Well I didn't really watch it when it started, mostly because of my work schedule I suppose. I didn't know much about it, but I heard my brother and my dad mentioning how good it was, or see posts on messageboards about how amazing and crazy complex it was. As the season passed by I decided I would have to check it out when it came out on DVD.

When it came out I picked it up and watched the whole season over the course of a weekend. It was great, I loved it and each end of an episode made it hard to not watch the next one. So I eagerly awaited the second season. As much as I love my technology and stuff I have not quite yet jumped to TiVo/DVR so I was stuck with leaving work tremendously early to catch episodes. Or rely heavily on my memory or kind father to set up a tape for me.

This worked pretty well, except for those times when it didn't and I was left to watch the episode on abc's website or eventually I started grabbing episodes off Itunes, cause why not? The nice thing about this season was that I could finally theoretically take an active role in the discussion of the show and come up with my own conspiracy theories or try and find things my "friends" may have missed. The show started to decline a bit in interest for me I think. I still enjoyed watching but I wasn't as in love with it as I had been after watching season 1. Still the end of the season left me just as excited as ever to get on with the story and learn more about whatever the fuck is really going on.

On to season three. This year I somehow missed the second or third episode. Instead of dealing with the whole trying to tape stuff all the time, I decided I would just buy the season pass on Itunes. I figured well I may have to wait until Thursday nights to watch the episode, but at least I know I'll have it and wont have to worry about it. This lack of worry though, has caused me to be completely lackadaisical in actually watching the show. Last night was Lost night, and I happened to have left work early for no particular reason. So I was home and able to watch a brand spanking new episode of Lost, when I realized that no I couldn't, because I never got around to watching the three previous episodes. So now I have four to watch and who knows when I will get around to actually looking at them, and I'm obviously not keeping up with the internet drama, or whats left of it at least.

I don't know if I can blame this on Apple fairly but I will anyway. It's all ITunes fault for letting me not care. Also I don't enjoy watching them off ITunes as much because a)It's on my computer screen and not my somewhat nice tv, and b)I don't get closed captioning on my computer. I'm sure I will watch them, and when I do I will probably watch several in a row. I hope the show keeps on, but I think next season, if I dont have TiVo yet, I'm just going to wait for the dvd's again.

Giant Reptile Actionfigure War 2

I picked up GRAW2 over the weekend. I've been a big fan of Tom Clancy for years and I was happy when the original game came out that it didn't suck ass. In fact I very much think it kicked ass. It kicked so much ass that I bought downloadable content for the game before I even owned my own copy of the game(Dont ask).

So it was with much excitement that I boldly hunkered down on my couch, with my tv shining brightly, my 360 purring not so softly as it spun up GRAW the second. So far it hasn't disappointed. The graphics are of course spectacular and the game plays like anyone who loved the first would hope (i.e. they didn't go crazy and change everything) They even made some improvements I think. Your squad members aren't completely stupid as often as they were in the first game. They also shout out somewhat useful information like "2 bad guys to the North!" They also introduced medikits and a medic class of squad member, but to be honest so far I've just always ditched the medic for more firepower. I don't need some half assed soldier on my team.

They slightly revamped the system for controlling vehicles where you can actually take over control of some of them and move them around in first person mode, you can even do this through the eyes of your squad. I haven't really found this necessary yet, but its a cool little feature I suppose. I'm hoping you can do something like that in co-op mode but I don't want to get my hopes up.

Am I the only person left in the world who sometimes just wants to play video games and doesn't want to waste time on the so called story? I mean let's face it for the most part video game plots aren't anything special, for military games especially. Bad guys have weapons and they want to hurt you and yours stop them! But no, im forced to sit in a jeep, looking around like a dumbass with nothing to do, while person after person and news report after news report pop on my screen. It makes me want to shoot them. So please game designers, let me skip cutscenes. It rips my heart in triplicate when I press start during a videogame movie element and it pauses rather than vanishes.

It's Not the Weekend

However, it just was so we can still talk about it. Spent a lot of time with my girlfriend which was quite nice. The gang and I went out to see 300. For those who might not be familiar with it, it's a movie adaption of the Frank Miller graphic novel depicting a fictional account of the battle of Thermopylae. For those of you not familiar with that either well, basically a long long time ago the Persian empire was spreading and a group of Spartans went forth to stop them. Hopefully thats a good enough plot for you people out there, because that was about the extent of it. Lots of carnage ensued.

That carnage was really well done, the battle scenes were fraught with blood and gore. A plethora of stabbings and beheadings not to mention the occasional freak of nature and bodies so filled with arrows it looked like an acupuncturists orgasmic fantasy. The movie was well paced and kept you going and even tho the subplot really only accounted for 10 minutes of the film, I felt it was well placed and of reasonable interest. It certainly wasn't nearly as comic-booky as the last Frank Miller movie adaption of Sin City, but there were similarities in artistic vision and presentation.

All told I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, well worth seeing. Honestly, I really only had two gripes about the movie, one of which would kind of spoil the movie for some and quite possibly history itself so I wont mention it. The other thing well... it seemed to me that all women of greece in this movie have breasts that are about 95% nipple. It's weird... get some implants or something ladies.

A New Era in Online Jander

Ha! I have a blog. It will probably suck and I might not update it. But I'll pretend like I care when I do. I swear. Here you can read possibly interesting stuff on video games, movies, and idiots. I might post random pictures I take or might bore you all with colts talk. Who knows and who cares but thats what you may or may not get.

I'd say stay tuned, but that might not prove a wise decision. At the very least, don't hold your breath.