Merry Christmas

Skyrim Soundtrack

Well, it finally arrived! I got my Skyrim soundtrack in the mail yesterday, and it's been on repeat in my car ever since. I'll provide a review of the soundtrack in an upcoming post when I review Skyrim as a whole, but I had a few observations about it I wanted to share.

Mass Effect 3 Score

Crazy story for you. I was happily sleeping. It was the first day of my vacation, and I was going to enjoy the luxury of being able to sleep in a few minutes before getting up to help my mother car shop (a trip that turned out to be more driving than actual shopping). Somewhere subconsciously, I heard my room mate get up and start getting ready to go to work, and I distinctly remember thinking ha ha. So, I wasn't necessarily sleeping, but somewhere between blissful sleep and waking up.

Then, I sat bolt upright, suddenly certain that Jack Wall wasn't doing the score for Mass Effect 3.

A Random Update

So, I'm sitting here at work, waiting for the printer to finish printing the giant posters I've been working on all day. Sadly, I didn't have much of a chance to work on any of the things I need to get done this week to go on vacation at the end of the week. Everybody's priorities are more important than mine. Eh, such is life.

I'm listening to Dream Theater's Ocatavarium right now. Not the whole album, just the song. The song, however, is long enough to be a whole album (by modern album-length standards). If you consider that the average song produced nowadays is about 4 minutes long, a song that is 23:58 is rather incredible. And that's not even their longest song!

You may be wondering why on earth I'm not listening to Chevelle's new album, and the answer is that the album sucks ass.

...
...
...

Just kidding!

Lulu

Well, I'd call this post a review, but it isn't. I can't bring myself to even listen to most of the songs all the way through. This is just bad.

So, I've long been a Metallica fan. My first album was Reload, then I went back to Load, then was S&M, before I finally dove back into the discography. I'll be frank, I think S&M is Metallica's crowning achievement. I like Load and ReLoad better than any of their older albums. Master of Puppets was my favorite album of the "hair" era. Then Garage, Inc. hit, which had a few neat songs on it (Turn the Page, Whiskey in the Jar), but most of the dual CD outing was trash. Then St. Anger, which, to this day, is the only album I've ever thrown away the same day I bought it. If Garage, Inc. was trash, then St. Anger was the burning pit of talentless hell. I'd equate that CD to listening to a toddler beat on his mommy's pots. Death Magnetic was better than the previous two, but it still couldn't hold a candle to their pre-Garage days.

So, I'm already so-so on this Lulu album, which is Metallica instruments backing the vocals of Lou Reed, whose non-Metallica music I am wholly unfamiliar with. Hit the music.... and if I'd purchased this album, I'd have snapped it over my leg before throwing it away. As it is, I'm considering burning the album to a disc before deleting it so I can break it anyway.

Let it Snow...

It's been snowing here all weekend. All weekend. And the air is chilly; just looking outside makes me want to bundle up and forget about the world. What can be done about it?

Anyway, it's been a very uneventful weekend, and I blame the weather mostly. It's hard to motivate myself to go outside when everything is so miserable looking. Plus the slippery roads don't help much either.

So... this weekend has mostly been Skyrim, lots and lots of Skyrim. Hard to believe that it's 7 already, and I'm still playing this game. Suffice it to say, it's a little addicting. Plus, it's much more fun to adventure outside in the fake snow than it is to do anything outside in the real snow.

In any case, I'm booking through the game as quickly as possible to try to get a review in for it. Plus I wasn't to have it beaten at least once by Christmas so I can devote ample time to the games I'm going to get that day.

There's my update, see you tomorrow.

A Couple More Preliminary Thoughts on Skyrim

I continue to dump an inordinate amount of time into Skyrim. That game is a little like a drug. Super addicting, crazy fun while it lasts, but you have a tendency to look back on it and wonder if you're sane for even doing it.

That, however, does not stop me from cracking out on my rogue, power leveling him through pickpocketing, lock picking, and sneaking around.

Bow and arrow? Check.
Double dagger awesomeness? Check.
Chest full of stolen goodies at my house? Check.
Badass thieves guild armor? Double check.

Morals? ...missing entirely. My rogue is a thief and a selfish bastard. I just started one quest line where, to initiate it, I had to lead a follower up to a certain god's shrine and kill him. Then I had to kill all the rest of the followers at the shrine. Now I have to kill the god's previous champion and the people with him. Lots of death and other ways to make myself obscenely rich.

Winning.

Did I mention that I am also a werewolf?

Tonight, I'd like to share a few thoughts on Skyrim, as posed by the fine, creative, and funny folks over at Penny Arcade.

My Christmas Wish List

It's that time of year again, that time of year when my parents ask for a Christmas list so they know what to shop for. I, of course, obliged, because there are few things better than getting free video games. Well, I do happen to enjoy giving gifts, so I bought my family some neat things on sale during Black Friday madness.

Of course, I bought them all from the comfort of my living room while wrapped in a blanket, drinking hot cocoa, and playing Skyrim. Sale or no, I do not stand outside in line to shop. Ever.

Anyway, on to the list!

A Post in Pictures

Today, I went back to work for the first time in over a week, and I was greeted with a desk that was quite... amusing.

I have this decided hatred of anything Christmas before I've gotten to eat my Thanksgiving turkey. The other folks who work on my team felt the business end of that hatred any time they wanted to rock the Christmas carols during the month of November. Why oh why do people need to have Christmas for two freaking months?

Anyway, I came back today to this fascinating desk. Follow along as I take you on a brief, pictorial tour.

Skyrim Soundtrack and Other Randomness

All right. Didn't miss today. Though I came very close. It's close to midnight, and it probably will be past that once I finish. But, I'm going to count that as a post for today, Monday.

First things first, today was my last day of vacation. Boo. It's been a great week and a half, but all good things must come to an end, as they say. In any case, in three weeks, I start another, even longer, vacation. Sometimes, not being able to take a vacation all year works out at the end of the year when I get to burn 3 weeks over the course of a couple of months.

Skyrim First Impressions

Hey, y'all! Wow, I've already missed another TWO days on my write-every-day initiative. I'm on a roll... or well, not on a roll, as it were. I gotta get on this thing.

Anyhoo, it's almost 4 in the morning, and I'm writing my blog. I'm in the middle of pulling an all-nighter with my best friend. He's (finally) playing Mass Effect 2, and I'm observing, because the story is THAT good. Plus that gives me lots of time to do things like blog. And sort Magic cards... lots of things that I could've spent the last week of my vacation doing, but things like Skyrim kept getting in the way.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

So I don't miss a(nother) day of blogging, here's the obligatory Happy Thanksgiving announcement. I'll be up at my parents house tomorrow with no Interwebs access, so, I'm posting this bad boy early. Hope everybody enjoys eating turkey and other, assorted yummies.

So, we'll celebrate today with the best way I know to celebrate anything. Some good ol' Calvin and Hobbes. Enjoy.

See you on Black Friday!

Magic Worlds

So, with the weekend being over, albeit a few days over, the final Magic: the Gathering World Championships has ended. It's a bit sad that with all the organized play changes that Wizards of the Coast has implemented lately, the biggest tournament of the year is gone. I've been reading about this for a couple of weeks now. The organized play community, that is, the people who pay to play in tournaments, are generally in an uproar about everything that's come down.

I don't care either way very much. As a strictly casual player, it's been a couple of years since I paid to attend a tournament. I usually find myself sitting at a friend's kitchen table going a few rounds of Commander format. However, I did have the goal of one day forking out the money to travel to Worlds, if only for the experience. That goal is, sadly, no more.

Games and Things

Sooo, yeah, less than a week into this new initiative, and I miss not one but TWO days' worth of blogging. I am pathetic.

To rationalize: I posted twice on the 19th, so that makes up for not posting on the 20th. Yesterday was my birthday, so there you go.

Today, I'm back with a new post... and a lot of randomness.

Review - Mumford & Sons - Sigh No More

NOTE: This is a post I started many months ago, and am just now getting around to finishing and publishing it. That sorta makes today a bonus day: 2 blogs!!

Good evening. It feels... strange to be blogging here again. It's been a rather long time since I've taken the time to do this. Seriously. Wow.

I'm not sure I even remember how to write.

Nevertheless, I'm in a writing mood, so I figured I'd sit down and write for a bit. Today, I want to tell you about this amazing album that I'm listening to right now. It is about the best damn album I've put money down for in a long, long time.

A Very Nice Chat

Not to get into too much of a trend of repeating myself on this blog, but I wanted to share again one of my favorite TEDTalks. For those of you who aren't familiar, TEDTalks are where visionary people share their opinions, their skills, and their thoughts. They've started posting these to YouTube, and some of them are quite remarkable.

A Late Celebration

Soooooo, how many people celebrated the Fifth of November this year? I sure did, and I did it the best way I know how. I watched V for Vendetta, which is one of my favorite movies of all time. The message is simple and effective, plus there's a lot of stylish action to entertain us while we listen absorb that message.

The movie constantly serves to remind me that of a lot of things I believe, and things that I sometimes let get away from me in the bustle of day-to-day life. For those of you with about three and a half minutes to spare, I'd like to share with you V's television speech. I would argue that it is one of the most relevant, one of the most important moments in the history of movies. It speaks not just to the government in the movie, but also to what ours is becoming.

Not Moving After All

About a year ago, when I was chatting about coming back to blogging again, I mentioned peeking around at other blogging platforms to determine if Blogger was still the home for me. Well, last night, after posting my World of Warcraft blog, I jumped over to a fwe other blogging platforms. After an hour or so of research, I settled on WordPress. My work on ColonelEz.net gave me a taste of what you could do with WordPress, and I think their dashboard control area is about a million times more advanced than Bloggers.

I spent many more hours building a blog over there, going so far as to actually import the contents of this blog over there. I played with the themes, read about pages, made a few of my own, and generally had a good time with it. I enjoyed the amount of customization that WordPress allows.

Not to mention, I was severely disappointed by the utter lack of customization available within Blogger's new dynamic views.

Thing is, I kept running into this problem with WordPress. Namely, there'd be some detail or another I didn't like about a theme, but I wasn't allowed to change it. You see, WordPress is actually a pay to blog service, or, at least, pay to get the most out of your blog service. Want to change fonts? Pay for it. Want to run off your own domain? Pay for it.

Many of the things that WordPress wants to charge me for (and they want a LOT of money sometimes), Blogger gives me for free. As a result, I've decided to stick around Blogger for now, but bear with me as I goof around with carious themes and skins as I try to find the right one. The dynamic view angers me with it's zero customization options, so I'm going to try to find a better one.

Until tomorrow!

EDIT: After several hours of goofing around with themes and layouts, I believe I finally have one I like. Plus, I finally have pages that function almost how I'd like them to eventually, thanks in HUGE part to fiddling around with the code provided from this blog. Yay. More categories coming soon, if all goes according to plan.

Human Behavior and Warcraft

So yeah, I must confess, one of the reasons for this project is the amount of writing time that has been leached from me by the game World of Warcraft. I resisted the urge for many, many years, but Blizzard's offer of "play for free" snagged me. I was in between interesting things to do and was randomly browsing around the web when a dancing goblin caught my eye. Play World of Warcarft for free, the advert said, until level 20.

What do I have to lose, I thought to myself. It's free. I can really decide whether I like the game by level 20.

Problem was, I REALLY liked the game.

Today, A Project

Welcome back to blogging, I'm saying to myself right now. It's been a long time, as most of the posts I made "recently" said over and over. The last few times I've blogged here, I said I was back to stay and yadda yadda. Of course, I then faded into obscurity, as the very real demands of the real world kept getting in the way. Not that there's a problem with IRL demands, but they definitely got in the way of some of the things I've wanted to do with my life - namely, write.

I'm definitely an aspiring writer, but I'm feeling a little out of practice. I've recently invested in a new MacBook Pro to replace my dying Windows netbook. I've had an Apple laptop since around 2002, one of the old iBook G3s that were made out of white plastic. I accidentally threw that thing once. I put it in my carry bag, forgot to zip it, then went to throw that over my shoulder, and BAM the laptop flies out of the bag and crashes into a cabinet before hitting the hard, tile floor. Crazily enough, I picked up the laptop, turned it on (panicking the whole time), and it worked. Booted right up and everything. The case cracked, and that was it. I've been super-loyal to Apple ever since. Fast forward 9 years, the thing still works. Just so you know.

Anyway, I wrote my first stories on my old Apple iBook, so there's something about using a Mac that makes me want to write. Which brings me back to the point of my new project. Sitting and staring at my laptop screen, I can tell I'm completely out of touch with writing. My brain doesn't want to function on that level any more. My writing hat is damaged.

So, here's my slightly early, new year resolution. I will blog every day. Yes, I said it, every day. Every. Single. Freaking. Day. From now until I get my groove back. It doesn't matter if it's a short post no longer than a tweet, or a great novel-length post, there will be something here every day. And words too, not just pictures. Posting a picture kind of violates the purpose of the project.

I need a catchy name for this project, something short that can be made into a Twitter hash tag and can be used as a label for these posts. Any ideas? Hit me up in the comments.

This here counts as my first post, as I slowly fade from consciousness, thinking to myself how I probably should have gone to bed a couple of hours ago.

Anyway, I hope this is an exciting and productive journey, and I'd like to look back on this in a year's time and think of how awesome this was. We'll see. In the meantime, enjoy yourself as I continue to fiddle with these new (and rather annoying) dynamic views in blogger.

While you're at it, you should follow me on Twitter and/or Google+. I'm usually very active on both services.

Good night.

A Farewell to SGU

It is with a heavy heart that I return to blogging. After nearly a year of absence and a posts left unfinished, I return on the day that will, at least in my mind, mark the end of great science fiction television.

It hasn't been long that I've been a Stargate fan... just a little over two years now. But Stargate filled a void that I wasn't always conscious that I had, the one for great science fiction. For the last 14 years, the Stargate franchise has been giving fans just that. Like I said, I wasn't watching 14 years ago, but in the last two years, I've managed to cram in 14 years' worth of television, and those last two years have made me a passionate fan.

Simply put, I love Stargate. I've become a diehard fan, because the Stargate franchise offers me everything I want in a TV show and everything I want in a Sci Fi show. For me, it is the epitome of awesome science fiction, and I'm not sure I can think of a better way to put that.