BSG and DS

I’ve been watching a lot of Battlestar Galactica lately thanks to NetFlix. I got the first disc of season one earlier in the week and watched all the episodes that night. Last night I watched disc two in its entirety as well. I’ve also been watching Heroes still, and am loving that too. It’s still very weird to me to be carving out time to watch television shows, but once I catch up on BSG, it’ll be a lot more manageable.

Yesterday I bought a Nintendo DS Lite (I got the Polar White one) and four games to go with it (Brain Age, Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime, Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, and Retro Atari Classics). I’ve added all four games to the Digital Archive. I mainly got the DS because I’ve never owned a handheld gaming device, save my iPAQ, which I rarely enjoy the games on because of the kludgy controls (PDAs are simply not meant for gaming). That, and the fact that the Wii is coming out soon and Nintendo has stated many times that it will support the wireless features of the DS with the Wii. I think you’ll be able to use the DS as a controller, but will also be able to have special video content on the screens of the DS while playing your Wii games. The system is a lot of fun, and I’ve played each game a bit already, but I’m focusing on Rocket Slime the most right now, as that’s a fantasy RPG.

Well, today I’m going to clean my desk here and begin doing bills. Fun, fun, fun.

Sick Thought of the Day: Cram it in the nasal passage.

Games

I finished Lego Star Wars on Monday night. The game is pretty cool, and I made it all the way through the story line. You can actually go back and play this mode called Freeplay, which allows you to use any of the characters you unlocked during Story mode and get to hidden areas you couldn’t before because your characters at the time lacked the skills. I went back and got through about 50% of the Freeplay stuff, then decided that I had enough.

So, last night I installed Star Wars: Empire at War and started running through the tutorials. I’ll probably play that again tonight. I played the demo for the game a couple of months ago, and liked it and, now that I’m re-learning it, I remember why I liked it so much. The game is a Real Time Strategy (RTS) game, ala Command & Conquer.

I’m going to be busy the next couple of nights getting my private life in order (paying bills, cleaning house, etc.) so I hope to be able to devote more time this weekend to gaming and finishing up a project for Jeff.

Sick Thought of the Day: Abdominal hemorrhaging into the toilet.

Zev Freelock

zev001
“Watch out ladies! Zev Freelock is back in Paragon! The debonair super hero is back in costume, helping the innocents of this great city. Keep looking up in the skies and you might catch a glimpse of him as he streaks by, on his way to vanquish evil-doers!”
-Rodney Zelf, Paragon Times

Yes, indeed, Zev is back. I installed City of Heroes on my computer a couple of days ago and also purchased City of Villains to compliment it. I’ve been having a lot of fun the last couple of days! I’ve added my Xfire information once again to the bottom of my homepage. Check it out and you can see what I’m playing. I ended up printing out all the maps for the game and have decided to give it another go – at least for a month. Fists of Flame, where are you?!?

I need to go get some chow now and watch the Lightning get their asses handed to them by Carolina.

Sick Thought of the Day: Pink Elephant love.

Pucks and Wii

I’ve joined a fantasy hockey league up on Yahoo! with a bunch of people I know from work. It’s fun. I like it. I will do it again next year. I enjoy watching the games (the Lightning at least), but it adds a little more now because I have players on my fantasy team from all over the real league, and I think I’ll get to a point real soon where I’ll watch those teams play on TV as well. At least once in a while. Speaking of which, the Lightning play tonight. Excellent.

I’m currently researching some ideas for some short films. I may start pre-production as early as November 1st. Keep watching the Suncoast Studios site for more info.

I tried to get a preorder in on a Nintendo Wii. I called ten different EB Games stores throughout Sarasota, Bradenton, Tampa, St. Pete, and Mt. Myers around 10:30am today. All preorders were filled except one store in northern Ft. Myers. They still had three left. I was psyched! I asked the guy if I could get one and he said, and I quote, “Sure, if you can make it down to the store.” Shit! I totally forgot about that snag. If I knew I could drive an hour and a half down to Ft. Myers and they’d still have one preorder available, I would’ve done it in a heart beat. I just couldn’t justify leaving work for three hours (round trip, ya know) and then have a high probability of coming back empty handed. My boss would have been cool with it if I actually gotten a Wii (he’s a gadget freak too). Oh well. I guess I’ll just wait until they start taking pre-orders on the EB Games website.

I watched The Score last night on DVD. A friend of mine from work lent it to me. It’s a great story. I think I’ve realized that I really enjoy movies where I root for the bad guy: The Thomas Crown Affair, Pulp Fiction, The Score, etc. I’m not sure why, but I think it has to do with the fact that you’re doing something you shouldn’t be doing (rooting for the guy who’s hurting everyone), which is an interesting way to get someone (like me) feel more like they’re part of the movie, suspending their disbelief more.

I will play a lot of Lego Star Wars this weekend, and hopefully finish it.

Sick Thought of the Day: Cough. Cough. CoughFartShit.

Nachos and Hockey

Thursday night I watched the season opener game between the Lightning and the Thrashers. Tampa’s new goalie, Marc Denis, was great in net even though he didn’t face many shots on goal. Ultimately, the Lightning rallied from a two point deficit and came back to tie it, forcing the game into overtime then into a shootout. Vinny Lecavalier won the game for Tampa when he was the only scorer in the final shootout.

On getting all riled up over the Lightning’s win on Thursday, Shauna and I decided to get tickets for the game on Saturday. I ordered them Friday afternoon, and got the nosebleed seats (which we happen to enjoy a lot). The game on Thursday was Tampa’s first of the season, but was an away game in Atlanta. Saturday would be their first game at home against the Bruins. On top of that, the St. Pete Times Forum was celebrating their 10th anniversary. So, we knew it’d be a special night.

Thursday and Friday nights I ate tons of nachos. Anyone that’s ever been fortunate enough to be at my place when Shauna and I make nachos knows that this is a big deal. We usually have a huge batch of food cooked up with all the fixin’s: refried beans, melted cheese, shredded cheese, seasoned ground beef, diced tomatoes, salsa, hot sauce, jalapenos, shredded lettuce, olives, guacamole, and this time we did steak and onions and peppers, and also cooked up some black beans with corn. All this plus chips and tortilla shells.

After my bout with all the nachos (usually two huge plates each night), I had trouble getting to sleep Friday night. My stomach ended up being quite upset (surprise!), but I wasn’t on the shitter at all yet. I finally make it to bed around 1:30am. I toss and turn in my sleep. Around 4:00am, I wake up with a feeling that can only be described as some 300 pound man standing on my stomach and intestines with army boots on. Not wanting to have an accident in bed, I promptly stand up (although hunched over from the poop-pain) and hobble into the bathroom, trying not to step on cats or run into anything in the dark. I enunciate each thing in my head, trying to make sure I don’t mess this procedure up:

Close door.
Turn on light.
Squint (from brightness).
Drop trou.
Flip lid.
Hunker down.
Release (explosively).
Grope sore stomach.
Squint (from pain).
Grope stomach.
Release.
Release.
Giggle.
Grab Wizard magazine.
Read.
Wince.
Read.
Release.
Sweat profusely.
Wrinkle nose from smell.
Release.
Release.
Smile.
Wipe.
Flush.
Flush again.

Mission accomplished! Man, I felt giddy after that. By the time I got out of there it was almost 5:00am. I was amazed that I had been grunting for an entire hour. I think I remember seeing a lot of corn in the toilet out of the corner of my eye. Of course.

So, anyway, there was a bit of a sleeping problem Friday night which resulted in me getting up around 11:30am on Saturday. Shauna and I batted around the idea of going out to run errands and then going to a restaurant in Tampa before the game. We ended up deciding on just staying at home and watching the Star Trek:TOS marathon on G4. We then got ready and headed up there around 5:00pm. I stopped for gas and we hit the highway. We got there, paid the parking attendant the $10 fee, and walked to the Forum. We went in and walked around for a bit. It was about 6:15pm when we walked through the doors, and the game was to start at about 7:15pm so we had time to kill.

We walked around then eventually went to our seats. Not kidding about the nosebleed comment earlier. These seats were in section 327, row R. Row R is the last row at the top. Shauna is afraid of heights (although she’s been getting a lot better about it over the past few years). We emerge from the tunnel, past the usher, and out into the stadium and it immediately starts bothering her. We make it up to our seats and decided to wait there until the game begins. She had gotten a brewsky and hotdog, and I had a diet Coke and a hotdog. After about 10 minutes being totally weirded out (there were very few people in the stadium at that point, making it feel higher than it was for some reason), Shauna got used to everything. When the people flooded in, it made it even better.

Attached to each seat was a bag with several opening-day goodies in it including a 2006-2007 program and roster book, a large magnetic schedule for the season, boom sticks (for the uninitiated, these are long plastic tubes you blow up and bang together to make noise), and finally a necklace with a “Hockeytown USA” logo pendant and, when the button is pressed, it blinks via a healthy LED light in the pendant. Shauna and I put our necklaces on and began to blink profusely.

So, the lights go down, they do all the opening night ceremonies, and I look around the arena and see thousands of blue and white lights blinking everywhere. It was really cool to see that in the dark. It worked really well, as the Forum was shining all these white and blue spot lights all over the place as they called out the players names. Ultimately, that all stopped after the national anthem and the game got underway. After the first period, I went out to the commissary and got us more drinks then Shauna and I sat and watched that rest of the game. The Lightning eventually lost 3 to 2 to Boston.

To top the evening off, we drove home, got some Taco Bell and watched Scary Movie 4 on InDemand.

Sick Thought of the Day: Grab the squirrel. Grab his balls. Massage. Massage more. Place squirrel’s wiener near mouth. Wait for creamy surprise.