So I’m back in Seattle but not quite home yet since I’m at Will’s watching 3D movies. Also, driving to the airport is a much better experience than having to deal with a bus or a taxi home, but it definitely comes with a cost. As long as Microsoft is paying that cost though, I’m happy to take advantage of it.
My Super Bowl plans tomorrow involve staying in my building but just heading down a couple floors to a party. It may not be as cool as the party from last year that I had, but it’ll do as a decent alternative. If the Giants win though, then the size of the party is completely irrelevant since it’ll be an awesome day regardless.
Personal - Seattle
Dallas, 11:35 PM: Mass Effect 2, I’m going to put off playing you until I get back up to Seattle, but you might have to wait a little longer than Sunday to get started. That’s because if I can learn the basics of Android app development and submit one to RIM within the next week, they’ll give me a free Blackberry PlayBook. Sure, the device may be about to be end-of-lifed, and I definitely have no need to buy one even at a discounted price with a 7” Fire already and a 10” Touchpad arriving on Tuesday, but for free, I can put my CS degree to use in my spare time. Besides, you’re about to get an OS update later this month that addresses a lot of your shortcomings, and I’m sure I can find some use for you.
In other news, the PATV episode today was about the Child’s Play golf tournament and dinner last year, both events that I worked. You’ve seen the videos of PAX, you’ve seen the video of what Enforcers are like, so it seems only fair that I let you round out the video experience by seeing what the third component of my Penny Arcade volunteer life is like. Go watch, my readers.
Dallas, Personal - Seattle
Dallas, 11:50 PM: So I thought I had moved all of my 360’s saved games to the cloud, but apparently Mass Effect was one that I overlooked. So, instead of starting on Mass Effect 2 tonight, I’m currently just downloading the DLC to this Xbox and have a choice to make tomorrow. Do I wait until I get back to Seattle so that I can do the character import, or do I just go ahead and start a new character while I’m down here? Please note that the answer is not start a new one now to get used to the game and them import when I get back home; I had enough game restarting experiences with the first one.
The presentation went well today; as always there were more people than what Microsoft was anticipating it seemed like. You’d think that by now they should just plan on 300 people at presentations and reuse whatever is left over at the end. Oh well, I’m not the one who gets to make those decisions. In fact, my only real decision to make for the rest of the trip is the one in the first paragraph as aside from work, it’s the primary candidate for consuming the most of my next 40 or so hours.
Dallas, Personal - Seattle
Dallas, 11:00 PM: I’ve only had to mask the fact that I was going to Dallas since Thursday of last week as this trip was done on pretty short notice. Of course, if you’re my friend on Facebook, you would have known about this trip all along. Are my parents my friends on Facebook? Why no they aren’t, so my plan to keep them in the dark about this was a success until I actually showed up inside my house.
As I’d think would be obvious, this trip is for recruiting, but it isn’t nearly to the scale of the fall one. Literally the only thing I have going on is a presentation at 5:30 tomorrow, and that’s it. I fly back on Saturday because while my normal plan would be Sunday (and was in fact that for 16 hours or so), there’s this little thing called the Super Bowl happening that I sort of want to watch. So yeah, heading back on a day that I’d otherwise just hanging around here rather than being on a plane getting updates from the pilot.
This trip is also the reason why I had to adjust my February YotGotYGP game; I decided that since a 360 is down here and hooked up, it might be worth my while for it to be a game that I could actually start. In fact, this is a game that I was planning on starting down here last Christmas, but Fable didn’t get played quite effectively enough for that to happen, and it’s been languishing on my shelves ever since. Never fear though, for now is the time to play it…
YotGotYGP Game for February 2012: Mass Effect 2
Dallas, Personal - Seattle
I wrapped up my game freedom (for the time being) not with Old Republic, Assassin’s Creed 2, or even Skylanders, but I instead reached back into my game vault and busted out Borderlands to play with Andrew some. In a span of pretty much an hour or two we blew through one of the two remaining DLCs that we hadn’t completed the story portion of. The remaining one will have to wait until after my next YotGotYGP game is complete so that my attention can be rightfully focused.
Speaking of, you’ll figure out just what that game is going to be in tomorrow’s post. It’s still a game that I owned before coming up with this idea; I’m at least going to try to focus on the ones I wanted to play regardless before I move into the category of games I had to buy just to fill out my calendar. In fact, I’ve even talked about it before, but I don’t expect that to be any sort of giveaway considering just how many games I mention.
Personal - Seattle
I was so sure of my February YotGotYGP game up until very recently, but I’ve ultimately decided to change it. See, this is why I never posted a list to begin with. If I had, I couldn’t make decisions like these Well, I guess I still could, you’d just know about them. Technically you know about this, but only because I decided to tell you. I could have totally just played like the new choice was the old one all along, and no one but myself would have been any the wiser.
I put some effort into Assassin’s Creed 2 over the weekend, but it’s just not going to get done by tomorrow. I’ll also admit that I might have broken down and started to play Skylanders as well. I really just played the “get to know the game” levels, but the gameplay is actually fun. I haven’t yet encountered anything that requires the use of any of the non-three starter figures. “Required” may be too strong of a word here; you never really need any other characters to beat the game, but if you want to get to all of the optional areas, then that’s when they start to become necessary. Also, they’re something to collect, and who doesn’t like collecting stuff?
Personal - Seattle
Hanna is just an odd movie. Granted, it looked odd from the trailers, but it actually got decent reviews. Perhaps that should have been my red flag right there? It was definitely not a high note to end my Amazon movie watching on, but I guess it could have been worse. It did keep my attention for whatever that’s worth, so I hope it enjoyed that since it will only ever have my attention that once. My score: 5.5/10.
Once again it feels like far too short of a weekend, but don’t misunderstand my desires here, another snow week is not something I’m asking for. In fact, I’m totally fine with not having any more snow weeks for as long as I live up here. The occasional snow day or two is fine (and if timed right, very appreciated), but let’s keep it just to that, Seattle.
Personal - Seattle
With no TV series finale to watch tonight, I can move onto my other (and last) movie from Amazon. I know I didn’t provide a review of the first one yesterday, but I didn’t think about it until right after I’d posted, and going back to edit it just seemed like way too much effort given that I could do the review tonight. So, right before a new movie is about to begin, let’s look back to Thursday night.
She’s Out Of My League came out in 2010 just a couple weeks before How To Train Your Dragon. This is relevant because the lead actor is the same in both, and one of the things at the forefront of my mind all throughout the movie was being able to visualize Hiccup. Apart from that though, it was a decent movie to watch. Again, it fell in that area of many rentals where I don’t regret not having seen it in theaters and I won’t be rushing to Amazon to buy it, but I don’t feel like two hours of my life was wasted. My score: 7/10.
Personal - Seattle
It always sucks when one of your favorite TV shows ends, but at least you can be thankful for when the show knows it’s getting cancelled and can actually provide a decent end to the series. The Chuck series finale was tonight, and while not every loose end got wrapped up, it ended on a good note. Hey, Hulu and/or Netflix, need another show to resurrect for your burgeoning exclusive online shows?
I may have gone a little spend happy last night, so as to be a friend to my credit card, I’m skipping snowboarding this weekend and the associated costs that come along with it. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t spend so much that I couldn’t afford to go snowboarding if I wanted to, but I feel there’s at least some restraint that should be exercised. That said, if someone was to ask me to go with them tomorrow in between now and when I go to sleep, I’d say yes without any further consideration, so I guess that “restraint” isn’t quite as absolute as I’d like to imagine.
Personal - Seattle
Since I have my final two Amazon movies to watch before they expire tomorrow evening, it’s probably a good idea to start one of them tonight. I think I’m going to choose the comedy for my first one and leave the thriller for later. Once these are done, I can either choose to keep using the Roku for renting movies from Amazon in place of a monthly Netflix subscription, or it could potentially go down to Dallas and be a Netflix box on one of the TVs there without a 360. Well, it would only serve a purpose down there if my parents actually got a Netflix subscription, but they mentioned it most recently, not me.
I’m leaning towards going snowboarding on Saturday mainly because I only went twice last winter I think, and I remember resolving to go more often this year. Lack of snow definitely isn’t an excuse anymore, so it’s just balancing outdoor activity with things designed to keep me inside (say, a certain game project I have going on). Before I go though, I need to make it to REI tomorrow and pick up a piece for one of my snowboard boots to keep the laces tight. If I’d remembered this when I had lunch with Sinan today I could have checked at the store in the Commons where I bought all this stuff to begin with, but my tomorrow isn’t that conducive to heading over there unless I go before my day really starts. Hmmm, we’ll see what ends up working better, but one of the two needs to happen.
Personal - Seattle