I decided to start actively playing C&C3 again today, and while I’m having a weird problem of getting it recognize my old save files I backed up, it’s not a huge deal since I wasn’t that far into the game to begin with. I think that if I focus on playing it over the next week, I can probably beat it before this computer goes out to UTD a week from Monday.
I went to go see Stardust today, and during the end credits I was greatly relieved to see that it was based on a novel. If it hadn’t been, everything I thought I knew about Hollywood would have been in doubt because there’s no way I could see a studio going ahead with this movie. I want to say that it’s original, but I know people would probably be able to poke tons of holes in that statement, so I’ll instead say that I can’t come up with another movie as a whole that it really compares to. When you think about that, I’m basically saying that most of the movies I see are effectively copies of one another. I digress though; I don’t know at this point if Stardust will make it onto my DVD shelves, but it was definitely entertaining. My score: 7/10
Personal - Dallas
Nothing but summer for me until school starts!!! Uhhh…next week. :(
With my one week of summer, I don’t plan on having much empty time to just relax. Tomorrow is lunch and a movie, Monday and Tuesday will likely be lunch and/or movies, and sometime before Thursday next week I’m going by HP during football practice.
(See I knew these posts would be short without my internship to complain about…)
Personal - Dallas
Catching a flight out of Cedar Rapids 4 hours earlier than originally planned definitely did not meet any resistance from me, so we left on the 2:10 plane and got back to Dallas right around 4:00. This allowed me to come home and, well… rest and do nothing. I don’t know what the plan currently is (if there even is one) for tomorrow as far as stuff for Rockwell Collins goes, but my only wish is that it gets completed soon and efficiently.
A week from today I’ll have my first two classes, and a week from tomorrow I’ll be excited for my first weekend of school. Friday football games don’t start for another week, but practices do begin Monday so I’ll probably drop by to work out everything. No rest for me it seems, no rest at all.
Personal - Dallas
I guess the best thing I can say is that I survived. The day generally was boring; the banquet had a couple interesting moments (including one in which we all had to evacuate from the building because “an emergency situation [had] been identified”), but the food tried to be way too fancy. I therefore attempted to eat a bowl of oatmeal when I got back to the hotel (that being the only real alternative to popcorn that has way too much butter and salt), and I haven’t had a bowl of oatmeal in probably over 10 years. I now know why it’s been that long.
Tomorrow morning we’re going to see what can be done about getting an earlier flight out of here, but we’d be leaving at 6:10 in the evening at the latest (our current flight time). Aside from a couple hours on Friday, my internship is now basically done. Without it to rant about, I wonder what will take its place in my posts here?
Personal - Dallas
I leave here in 20 minutes. That’s not enough time to start anything to keep me entertained, but I’m also done with everything that I need to do. It’s a period of seemingly endless boredom. I call it “No Man’s Time”.
Once again, the hotel room I’m in is supposed to have “high speed internet access”, so I should be able to make a post tomorrow relatively painlessly. If not, I’ll be around computers all day long, so I’ll sneak a post in one way or another. There shall be no breaking of this streak just because of a trip to Iowa!!!
Personal - Dallas
Laptop, portable DVD player, GBA SP, iPod, cell phone — every electronic device I’m taking tomorrow is being fully charged tonight so that I don’t have to carry around a ton of AC adapters (I think only 3 are required: laptop, DVD player, and iPod). Luckily I have two great just under 2 hour movies to watch on the flights up and back down, The Bourne Identity and The Bourne Supremacy. I may take a third for emergency airport entertainment, but I think I should be pretty well covered.
The only thing not full of energy for this trip is me. I still don’t want to go, and if it wasn’t required, I wouldn’t be going. Actually, I’m not positive if it’s required or not, but I don’t have a good enough excuse to no go and really don’t feel like fighting with them about it. 48 hours, I can deal.
Personal - Dallas
This afternoon I finally got my hands on my Wii and by doing so officially entered into the (now) current generation of consoles. I played a little Wii Sportsand some Elebits on it, but the only substantial game I have for it is Twilight Princess which I bought and played on my Gamecube. It’s currently hooked up to our HDTV, but lack of component cables (and TV inputs) will mean that it’ll likely come into my room before too long. I also have an input shortage on my TV, so I foresee the scenario of my Gamecube getting boxed up and the Wii taking its place. After all, it’s virtually 100% backwards compatible, so any Gamecube games I want to play should not be an issue at all.
Looking ahead a couple of months, I see myself getting a 360 maybe in October or November. If I do get one this year I definitely want to do so before the holiday rush, but on the flip side I still don’t feel like I absolutely must have it yet. Once the price drop happens (which has all but been confirmed to be this week), the only reason I’d not get one is because of the game library. I’m sure the 360 will eventually get a must have game for me (no, Halo 3 isn’t one), but for right now it’s just in the process of building up a library of desirable games which will probably put my at the tipping point before that must have game comes out.
One last real day of my internship tomorrow, but I don’t really know what I’ll be doing. Development on our project halted for a couple reasons (one being so that we don’t break anything), so if I had to take a guess I’d say we’ll be working on stuff to prepare for the banquet on Wednesday. Just a couple more days and it’ll all be over and done with.
Personal - Dallas
Sure, id Software decided to show off their newest engine and game. Sure, everyone is all hyped up out about Quake Wars. The biggest news for me that came out of Quakecon wasn’t related to either of these things though. No, the big thing for me was that id Software is partnering with Valve and releasing their games on Steam. Cool, you mean like Doom 3, Quake 4, and all their latest stuff? Sure, but we’re also talking Commander Keen, Heretic, and Hexen. The games that pretty much defined my childhood gaming are available for $5-10 and (one would think) XP compatible without any hacking. Wonder what my first digital downloads from Steam are going to be?
If I don’t go to Gamestop before the end of the month for some other reason, I’ll probably pick up Quake 4 when I go get the GW expansion. It’s down to $20, and I want a good FPS fix until UT3 eventually makes its way out.
Personal - Dallas
Blizzcon (the other game convention going on this weekend) provided the details everyone was expecting on the next expansion for Blizzard’s kinda popular game World of Warcraft. Knowing Blizzard it’ll at least be another year before it gets released, so hopefully I’ll have a chance to actually get to 70 by then. Scratch that, I’ve had plenty of chances. Hopefully I will be at 70 by then so I’ll actually get to make use of the new content. A couple weeks of straight leveling and I could probably get up into the 60s without any big issue, but with some big PC games coming down the pipe, my WoW time may just end up being a tiny bit squeezed.
Although not announced today, the other two MMOs I have accounts with also have expansions announced. Guild Wars is having its first true expansion come out in October or November, and then FFXI is getting a 4th expansion. I already have the GW expansion preordered, and if I get back into FFXI I’ll buy its new one. My biggest problem with FFXI is that you pretty much have to group in order to even advance within the game which makes it much less of a pick up and play game than both WoW and GW which have a significant portion of solo content. Square Enix claims that since its an MMO you should be expected to party with others, and to an extent I agree with that, but in order to do so you really need to have a couple hours of time blocked off to find a party and then hope you can accomplish something useful.
Personal - Dallas
Tomorrow after I finish the demo presentation at my internship I’m going to work on the computer of someone I knew from HP but it was one of our mutual friends that recommended my name. After that, since I’ll already be down there, I think I’ll head over to Quakecon for a little while and get a feel for it. I’m definitely going back on Saturday for a couple hours to see someone that was in my grade at HP, but most of my time will probably be spent annoying a couple of my friends who are there at the BYOC. As one of them put it, I have “real people stuff to do” so that’s why I’m not going to be there more.
Although partially foiled by Quakecon, I still plan on picking up my books for school this weekend. That may not happen until Sunday now, but I definitely don’t want to wait until the weekend right before school to go do it. None of my classes share books from previous semesters this time, so it’ll be interesting to see just how many I have to buy.
Personal - Dallas