Feeling Lucky

So far I'm having a very good break. Work was a little slow working remotely since I'm mainly waiting on Andrew to give me some code, but it was nice relaxing and even doing other things while working for a change.

So I feel very lucky overall. When I was driving home to my parent's house, I tuned in to 105.7. They happened to be advertising their new Bid 2 Buy system which is pretty much eBay. One of the things they mentioned was the DefTech ProCinema 600 system. I checked the price when I got home and it was only $200, a savings of 75%. Now I wasn't going to purchase a speaker system until like February, but I couldn't pass up this deal. The auction came and passed, and not a single other person bid on it, so I was able to buy it at it's incredible price. When I went to pick it up, the only bad thing I noticed is that the speakers are actually white as opposed to black. At first kind of a disappointment, but I think I'll get used to it, especially for the deal I got. Since these are DefTechs I know they should be good. It's a little underpowered and small, but for an entry system, it's great. Especially when you consider that I can always move the left and rights to satellites to create a 7.1 system in the future. Maybe I'll buy a good Mythos speaker to complement them. The only bad thing about the deal is that now to use them I've been searching for a good receiver and stands to put them on. I've been looking at the Sony 920 receiver, and it seems good since the Onkyo might not work with my PS3. For the stands, I've been debating purchasing the official DefTech stands. Quite expensive and overpriced, but they'll fit good and match. I can even get them in white to match. I hope I have space for all these speakers on my TV stand.

While I was home here I also was able to catch Bottle Rocket. I'm not a huge fan of Wes Anderson movies. I find them quirky and sometimes funny, but usually not enough for me to love or so, but often like them enough for me to keep coming back. I think this describes perfectly what I feel towards Bottle Rocket. Quirky, sometimes funny, kinda slow. I liked it, and feel it was probably one of his that I enjoyed the most. But that's not saying much.

Assassin's Creed/Traitor

Ugh, such a boring day at work with everyone leaving for vacation and not coming in because of the snow. It doesn't help that I'm waiting on people before I can continue. Oh well, work should pick up shortly.

Yesterday, I was able to finish Assassin's Creed. I picked up this game pretty dirt cheap a while ago and enjoyed it, especially for the price. The whole story is wrapped in this weird Sci-fi overcoat which I was not expecting. It shocked and confused me at first, but eventually got used to it, and allowed for some additional twists. I just wish they would have mentioned it maybe even sometime with the propaganda leading up to the game. The graphics were pretty good. I was amazed at the scenery and the surrounding objects, especially when I climb to view points to look out over the city. But I feel the graphics could greatly improve for the character models. Most of them look pretty average and some look absolutely horrible (the main doctor chick, UGH!). The actual game play was pretty fun - go to a city, climb to high places to complete map and find objectives, complete mini objectives to find info, complete main assassination, repeat 9 times. It is simple, but gets kind of tiresome towards then end since each time it is the exact same thing. I'm glad it didn't continue much longer. The game was also pretty easy overall. Most of the missions were easy and there wasn't a big penalty for dieing. Each town gradually increased in difficulty, but not enough to make a real difference. The story was actually quite good. Towards the end it actually drew me in pretty well and I was kinda excited to see what would happen next. Which brings me to the ending...what a complete let down. They do all this set up and all this suspense building, all of a sudden some weird shit happens and you're all of a sudden staring at the credits. It was all setup for the sequel. I thought I might get some questions answered. When developers do that, it sucks, especially since pretty much no questions answered for the entire game. It was all set up. If I can get the next one at a good price like I did this one, I might pick it up. For now, I have tons of other games to play/catch up on.

Tonight I also watched Traitor - the new Don Cheedle movie. I thought it was an ok movie. It was quite slow at times and could have used some more action to speed it up. The twists toward the end made the movie likable, because there wasn't a whole lot else. I guess my main gripe with the movie was that not for one second did I believe Don Cheedle was a terrorist. This made the entire movie's premise hard to follow. This was definitely his type of movie, but I think the role was completely off. Hopefully he can seem convincing in Iron Man 2 because I want a good War Machine.

Death Proof

Well, it's that lull before the holidays. Not much to do at work and hoping it picks up so I have some stuff to do.

Tonight I watched Death Proof. My first impression when putting it in, was why the hell was this a blu-ray? It looked terrible and sounded bad. Then I realized it was supposed to be bad and got used to it enough to enjoy the movie towards the end. The movie was fun at times, especially towards the end. I didn't like how the movie kinda wrapped itself up (poorly) and then began again at the time, but after finishing it, enjoyed it. There were times where there was too much dialog,, but it helped build the characters. It was a fun romp. My only question is how come he didn't know about the gun? He planned his other actions pretty well. And above all else, I could have sworn he was at the diner when she revealed she had a gun. Maybe he did know, and just wasn't expecting it or forgot, but I thought it was a plot hole that could have been explored.

Quickly, I also want to discuss the disappointing sales numbers. PS3 had a horrible month and it became clear that it needs a price cut and I hope Sony gives in. I don't care how much you lose, just do it! More regrettably was that I found out the numbers sold for Valkeria Chronicles. Only 33,000! That is pathetic and truly sad. Now I'm hoping it will steadily sell more copies as people wrap up their other AAA titles and want a good strategy RPG after Christmas. I know my excuse is that I'm waiting for some Christmas gift cards and going to buy it almost immediately after. I hope others may be doing the same. Please? This is a GREAT PS3 exclusive and we need to support it and I intend to since I loved the demo. The dumbest excuse I've heard for people not buy this game was that it didn't have trophies. That is pathetic. Trophies are so stupid and to not buy a game is even worse. Pointless little achievements that mean nothing. They may help you have continued interest in some games, but not a strategy game. You completing the missions should be challenge enough. I swear, people are pathetic. I just need to push my purchase to December/January. Hold on Sega! I'm coming!

Bowl Projections

I wanted to also give my predictions on the college bowl games with just a short reasoning, if I have any, just for fun. Here is the list. I plan on coming back to it to see how I did.

Eaglebank Bowl
Navy vs Wake Forest
Pick: Navy
Reason: Navy is a slight underdog, but they won earlier in the year against Wake Forest, on the road. Being in DC will draw a large Navy crowd, I think.

New Mexico Bowl
Fresno State vs Colorado State
Pick: Fresno State
Reason: Fresno State has more talent, leads in some rankings, and won more games. CSU has a first year coach which may not prep them fully for post season.

Magicjack St. Petersburg Bwol
South Florida vs Memphis
Pick: South Florida
Reason: Has enough talent to be at least ranked at one point and won against UCF, where Memphis did not.

Pioneer Las Vegas Bowl
Brigham Young vs Arizona
Pick: BYU
Reason: BYU is ranked and has won more convincingly. They have also won the past 3 Las Vegas Bowls. Arizona is bowling for the first time in a while. Arizona's run defense kinda sucks too.

R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl
Troy vs Southern Miss
Pick: Troy
Reason: Winner of Sun Belt and most of their losses come from pretty good teams. Not much else.

San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl
Boise State vs TCU
Pick: TCU
Reason: A tough pick, but the MWC was a tougher conference and TCU showed they can play. Boise can win bowl games as shown in 2007 Fiesta and have been putting up some crazy points.

Sheraton Hawaii Bowl
Notre Dame vs Hawaii
Pick: Hawaii
Reason: A home game for them and the Irish have a terrible coach, a pretty bad team that hasn't won much against good competition, and just cannot win bowl games.

Motor City Bowl
Central Michigan vs Florida Atlantic
Pick: Central Michigan
Reason: Has a home crowd and a better record. Vegas says by 7.

Meineke Car Care Bowl
North Carolina vs West Virginia
Pick: North Carolina
Reason: NC has a home crowd and has competed well with Big East competition.

Champs Sports Bowl
Florida State vs Wisconsin
Pick: Wisconsin
Reason: Tough pick. Wisconsin has done well in bowls, even if this is a let down year. Florida State QB could have some issues after being pulled and has thrown pretty many picks. Wisconsin has a great tight end and is representing the Big Ten. Taking down Bowden in Florida is key. Hopefully they have improved after losing some pretty ugly games.

Emerald Bowl
California vs Miami
Pick: California
Reason: Cal has home crowd, has a good running offense, and leads in several stats. Miami has lost some stinkers in the ACC. Vegas by 7.

Independence Bowl
Louisiana Tech vs Northern Illinois
Pick: Louisiana Tech
Reason: Not much here in the most uninteresting bowl. Home crowd and a better record. Did surprisingly well in the WAC they don't belong.

papajohns.com Bowl
Rutgers vs North Carolina State
Pick: Rutgers
Reason: Both teams turned their seasons around toward the end. Rutgers won by some hefty margins and leads in most stats. Vegas by 7.

Valero Alamo Bowl
Missouri vs Northwestern
Pick: Missouri
Reason: Would love to root for the Big 10, but feel Missouri leads in too many stats and Northwestern had too easy of a schedule. Missouri has Chase Daniel. Pat Fitzgerald is one heck of a coach though, maybe he can surprise me.

Roady's Humanitarian Bowl
Nevada vs Maryland
Pick: Nevada
Reason: Nevada has a crazy offense and puts up a lot of yards. Nevada has a stats advantage. Maryland can't be consistent.

Texas Bowl
Rice vs Western Michigan
Pick: Rice
Reason: Has a home crowd, a great passing offense against a bad passing defense, and did well in their conference.

Pacific Life Holiday Bowl
Oklahoma State vs Oregon
Pick: Oklahoma State
Reason: Convincing offense against injury prone Ducks. Only lost to the top teams in the country.

Bell Hellicopter Armed Forces Bowl
Air Force vs Houston
Pick: Air Force
Reason: Air Force won when they matched up earlier in the year. Both have good offenses. Houston didn't fare too well against the MWC.

Sun Bowl
Pittsburgh vs Oregon State
Pick: Oregon State
Reason: I would like to pick Pitt, but they are out matched statistically. Oregon State did pretty well once they figured some stuff out. Both seem rather lopsided on rushing.

Gaylord Hotels Music City Bowl
Boston College vs Vanderbilt
Pick: Boston College
Reason: Better record and more convincing as a team. Vandy is Vandy and took advantage of easy competition early on. BC showed they have grit to outlast others in the ACC. Leads in stats. Only challenge will be home crowd.

Insight Bowl
Minnesota vs Kansas
Pick: Kansas
Reason: Kansas is the far better team. I think Minnesota is pretty bad and only had some luck early on with turnovers, evidenced by them dropping their last few games. Kansas leads in stats.

Chick-Fil-A Bowl
Georgia Tech vs LSU
Pick: Georgia Tech
Reason: Looks to be a good match up, but Georgia tech showed it can beat the SEC. Home crowd should help.

Outback Bowl
Iowa vs South Carolina
Pick: Iowa
Reason: At the very least, for making our loss not look so bad and representing the Big 10. Iowa is hot now that they have their QB controversy settled. Shonn Greene should have a good day. If nothing else, it'll be close.

Capital One Bowl
Georgia vs Michigan State
Pick: Georgia
Reason: I'm hoping for an upset, but Sparty has been blown out in big games this season. Lots of running, should be over by 3.

Gator Bowl
Clemson vs Nebraska
Pick: Nebraska
Reason: New coach at Clemson doesn't have his team together yet, while Nebraska leads in most stats and has performed well in the Big 12 considering the competition.

Rose Bowl
USC vs Penn State
Pick: Penn State
Reason: I have to pick my team, right? Seriously, as long as we don't change our game plan now without Devlin, we should be fine, or an extremely close game, probably low scoring as well. If we continue to run Clark, they might not be expecting it. With Paterno on the sidelines, hopefully it will help and not hinder. With USC disappointed, it may give us an edge. 2 very even teams, should be a good match up. I don't like how we have to play in LA though. How about we come to Chicago for a neutral field?

Orange Bowl
Cincinnati at Virginia Tech
Pick: Cincinnati
Reason: Much better record even among QB controversy. VT had to beat a team they already lost against against.

Cotton Bowl
Texas Tech vs Mississippi
Pick: Texas Tech
Reason: Much better team with a better record. Vegas by 6.

Autozone Liberty bowl
East Carolina vs Kentucky
Pick: East Carolina
Reason: ECU showed it can win big games against better opponents and it can win it's conference. With everyone healed and rested, should be a big win for ECU.

Sugar Bowl
Alabama vs Utah
Pick: Alabama
Reason: As much as I want to pick Utah, I have to lean toward Alabama. To go almost undefeated in the SEC, is a bit more of a challenge than the MWC. Saban should have his team ready, he was able to coach them almost doubling their wins.

International Bowl
Connecticut vs Buffalo
Pick: Connecticut
Reason: No real convincing stats either way, but I think UConn's talent and defense will make the difference.

Fiesta bowl
Texas vs Ohio State
Pick: Texas
Reason: Texas is a great team, with completing 78% of their passes. It will be interesting to see if an OSU defense has any effect, but I feel OSU won't score enough to keep up.

GMAC Bowl
Ball State vs Tulsa
Pick: Tulsa
Reason: Ball State had a great season and all, but I think they may be out matched here. Both teams are 2nd place in their conference, but Tulsa has the offensive stats that Ball State doesn't.

National Championship Game
Oklahoma vs Florida
Pick: Florida
Reason: I think Florida's defense will make the difference. Having Tebow be dual threat should entertain and prove useful. Should be high scoring. but close. Oklahoma has a habit of losing BCS games.

The Toilet Bowl

So I want to go on a little rant about a series of complaints I have with the College Football post season. My first complaint is with the ridiculousness of the names of these bowls. We have to settle for crap like the papajohns.com bowl or the Meinake Car Care Bowl. These are total crap. How can a team and a fan base be excited to go to a bowl which sounds like a billboard. And I understand the need for advertising, but there are other ways to go about it. The Rose Bowl does a pretty good job about it by also preserving tradition.

Also, how can a bowl game be about rewarding teams and having post season match ups when the bowls can pick randomly. Many bowl match ups will pick the team that is most favorable to them to make the most money, not who is most deserving. As an example, this year Iowa was picked over Northwestern when Iowa was ranked lower in the Big 10. Bowl match ups should be based solely on your ranking in a conference and not how many fans may come to see you and spend money.

Another gripe I have is with the location of some bowls. Bowls are supposed to be a neutral field where teams can see who is better. That can be pretty hard when one team has to cross the entire nation and the other has to cross town. It will be a practical home game, but will displayed as neutral. That's crap. Make teams travel to play and not cop out on home field advantage. As an example, instead of having us play USC in LA, have us maybe go to the Fiesta Bowl. I dunno, it just seems unfair considering USC doesn't even have to have a hotel room.

There are way too many bowls. Bowls are about rewarding a team for a good season, but it seems more like we are rewarding mediocrity. Make the eligibility 7-5 instead of 6-6. That ensures that you at least have a winning season, which could be rewarded. Or, make it even more strict so that there aren't so many games.

Lastly is the controversy of the BCS. I feel that most times the computers pick the right teams, but to call one a champion over another is a bit unfair. A playoff system would be nice. Have something like a 12+ team playoff. The contenders should be the champions of each conference. I'm tired of having conferences excluded and all these at large bids. It's up to the conference to decide who should be sent. If you didn't win your conference/division, too bad. Now, I also don't want this to extend the game further into January. It continues too long as it is. We could even preserve many of the bowls to host the playoffs. Time would have to be considered for travel, training, and injuries, but I feel it would settle a lot of controversy.

Finally a use for Home

Mongol

Quite the lazy weekend for me. I was going to go down to NYC for shopping and holiday cheer, but decided against it. I didn't want it to be a wasted trip or go down without a real purpose. In addition, I may have wanted to come home sooner with it being rather cold. Instead I was pretty lazy and caught up on a couple things. I did watch a lot more It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and started playing Assassin's Creed. Initial impression is a gorgeous game, but I can see it getting repetitive.

I also watched the movie Mongol. My initial impression was that I was surprised at the architecture in the game. Some of the initial scenes showed buildings ripped right out of Assassin's Creed (which i found very cool since I was just playing it before watching it). I'm a little unsure if this is accurate or not. The places could of had similar buildings, but they are very far apart from one another. Assassin's Creed being around Jerusalem and Mongol being in the Mongolia/China area. As for the movie, I thought it was pretty good. It really did a good job at humanizing Genghis Khan. I wonder how much is factual. I felt bad on most occasions for his wife though. Not sure if that was the desired effect. The movie was good, but I didn't find it very memorable. There was talk of 1-2 more being made by this director, so I'll just have to wait and see.

Vagrant Story

I wanted to do a quick post on Vagrant Story. After not playing it for a little bit, I stuck it in and tried picking up where I left off from a few days/weeks ago. The first boss fight I reached I eventually died after getting pretty far. This was kinda upsetting, and was enough for me to put the game down and move on for the time being. I may eventually come back, but it's no use playing a game that I'm not having much fun with. Since I can't give a full review, I wanted to write down my impression since I only made it about ~25% of the way through. The graphics are absolutely gorgeous and it's surprising they look that good on the PS1. From there though, my criticisms get harsher. The story is not very enticing and pretty confusing with them explaining very little. You will go for long periods with little story interaction, so it is hard to get motivated to play and continue on. The sound is pretty pathetic. The battle system is confusing and not structured very well. Pounding the action button until I get an attack is not very fun or intuitive. What makes the battle system worse is the weapon system. The weapon system has great potential, and could have been great. Each weapon has three different traits that pair up to enemy's traits. The more you use it against certain enemies, the more it builds up against those enemies. The problem stems from you only having six weapons and endless combinations of weapon traits. Also, to try and maximize your weapons, you are constantly changing weapons against each different monster you face. Being that the changing weapons is way more complex, slow, and cumbersome than needed, this process gets old, QUICK. Even if you change weapons for each monster type you come across, when you reach a boss, you will do 1HP of damage per turn, if you can hit him, while he's wailing on you and your risk stat increases, making the fight go worse. For all of the negatives I spilled off, the game is pretty mediocre. When it's good, like for the story when it comes and actually completing tasks, it's good. It just has some obvious flaws and areas they could have easily improved upon.

It's Always Sunny with Dragonballs...Maybe Not

Check out this trailer. This has got to be the worst trailer I've seen in quite some time. The movie looks horrible, without even considering that they threw out all source material. Admittedly, there wasn't much there to begin with, but still, basic properties no longer apply. Also, what's with the subtitle? Is this a sequel already? /joking

Also, I checked out It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia tonight from the suggestion of a coworker. It is an absolutely hilarious show. It's edgy and random and insanely great. I now just have a lot of work ahead of me to catch up on back episodes on Hulu.

P.S. Hulu, you need to take down your Thanksgiving commercials. It's past. (But I do appreciate your IP address targeted ads...I think)

Head in a Jar

Not too much has been going on lately. I feel like a lot of my time has been eaten up by the normal stuff, resulting in rather boring commentary. Christmas is coming so busy shopping and frantically trying to purchase stuff, meanwhile trying to keep up with the long lists of TV premieres and podcasts like always. Also, trying to create some good sleep habits that will hopefully produce good work habits. I want to do 1-2 posts about college football in the coming times, but not tonight...maybe some other time.

Tonight, I watched Jarhead, a movie from a few years ago. I was disappointed in receiving this one off my queue since I just saw a war movie and a performance with Jamie Foxx, who again, I'm not the most found of. I found this movie to be rather confusing and twisting. Not literally, but with the style. The majority of the first half seems like this war comedy that does an ok job, and the second half then takes a more serious note and focuses on the war a bit more. Each half even has flashes of the other. This was confusing in that it was hard to take the drama and action seriously and also felt the comedy wasn't really anything more than tension breaker, but there was no tension built. I understand the memoir itself and can feel very much for the characters and their struggles, it's just that the presentation was so awkward or mixed. Jamie Foxx did another good role. Maybe I should give him a bit more respect in his movies. It seems he can be quite the good actor, especially if it isn't the lead role.

The Kingdom

Tonight I watched The Kingdom, dealing with a bombing and investigation in Saudi Arabia. I thought the movie was pretty good, even though I'm not a huge fan of Jamie Foxx. The beginning scene was pretty good and drew you in, but it was unfortunate that until the end, there wasn't too much else to get excited over. The final action scene though was pretty good, and tense, mainly since they showed they aren't really afraid to kill characters, so it really kept me on the edge. The movie also greatly reminded me of the first chapter of Metal Gear Solid 4. It's not that uprising since both are in the Middle East, with gun shots all over in a war zone. One thing I didn't like was the camera work. At times it was too shaky which made it hard to see what was all going on and get my bearings. Also, the very last part wasn't satisfying at all. The movie probably would have been better without it. They were trying to make a statement about revenge, vengeance, war, religion, and a us vs them mentality, but it came across too strong and almost seemed cheesy. Overall, a good movie with it's high moments at the beginning and end.

Rant Installation Complete

Wow this image is eerily familiar. give that kid some thicker glasses and I might pass it off for myself.

I wanted to do some quick video game rants. The first being a short complaint about Sony's Home. They sure are highly touting this thing, and for as many delays it has received, it better be worth it. In my mind, it's already failed. To me, it seems like a huge second life clone, with little else to do and the main point it to socialize. Is it just me, or when do video game nerds socialize? I feel those development dollars would be better spent better on other in house development or on advertising since Sony is failing faster than ever. I really hate seeing all this effort put into something wasteful and gimmicky like this. Maybe I'm just not seeing it. Once it arrives, I suppose I may give it a try, or even sooner. I have a beta invite in my mailbox, which I never asked for, so I suppose I could give it a try. I just don't like the direction it's heading and doesn't appeal to me at all.

Not having an Xbox, I suppose I'm highly biased, but I don't see the deal with the whole new Xbox Experience. Fine, it's a new GUI. Is that all? Did your last GUI suck that much that makes this the best thing ever? Or do you not have much of a holiday lineup that you need to tout your GUI as the best thing to get for the system? One feature that I hear people swooning over, is how you can now install games to the hard drive. First off, you continue to sell consoles that don't even have hard drives (a step backwards from the original) so a lot of people won't even be able to use the feature. Also, the whole idea of an installation was seen as such a horrible thing when done on the PS3. Now to have installs that are 3x larger or more seems good? I can get just a few games on the hard drive. It's only a matter of time before the method of needing the disk is hacked. If the load times are this horrid to begin with, why patronize the PS3 for installing to help alleviate those times in the first place? In addition, will this further shoddy game development? You have games like Last Remnant being released which are absolutely horrid with load times and only becomes bearable when you install it. Will this somehow become an acceptable norm? I certainly hope not.

And speaking of developers, I want to mention the sad state of affairs that I see current RPG development. I started thinking about the wonderful worlds of some of my favorite PS2 RPGs, particularly Dragon Quest 8. With (the sad state of affairs) the Japanese console market is in, Dragon Quest 9 is being moved from a home console to the portable DS. I find this ridiculous. I know almost the whole country has a DS, and to increase sales, it only makes sense, but this series in particular was born as a home console version. It is not made to be picked up and put down easily. It's a RPG. You should be immersed in the world and take the time to fully explore it. I feel that this is truly done on a home console. It is much easier to be immersed on a home theater setup than a 3.5 inch screen with 2 watt speakers. I hope great epic RPGs continue to be developed for the home consoles, even if that means the 360. Looking at Square Enix's current and future lineup, it seems very portable heavy which I feel is OK, but you also need to have strong home console sales. Considering their last 2 console RPGs were pretty much flops, I'm hoping Star Ocean 4 and FF13 hurry and at least give them some confidence in the home console market. We need more epic RPGs on home consoles and there is no excuse for more to not be in development at this point. ::sigh:: Oh well, I guess I still have Persona 4 to look forward to. hopefully more continue in the future.

Giving Thanks

Had a pretty good Thanksgiving break with the family. I know I ate way more than was healthy for me and feel like I should attempt a diet for this trip alone. I saw some high school companions which was nice to catch up briefly. Played some Rock Band and Singstar, which after getting familiar with both again, I actually didn't do half bad. Singstar just took a frustratingly long time. Caught up on some reading. Saw Oregon State lose pretty badly to rival Oregon. I suppose this is great news since now we don't have a rematch in the Rose Bowl. But now we are staring down the barrel of a shotgun since we now have to face an extremely tough USC. We went from extreme favorites to extreme underdogs. I feel that it's a better situation overall since we can prove ourselves. As long as we score more than 3 points, like OSU, we'll be good. I know it now won't happen, but I kinda hope the BCS will not pick Ohio State for a bowl. Having them stay in the Capital One Bowl allows for us to have more even matchups. The Big Ten matchups are already ridiculous so this will at least help. Also over the break, for lack of better things to do, I watched What Happens in Vegas with my mom. The movie wasn't very funny, but it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be. Pretty average and that is saying pretty much since I don't like Ashton Kutcher at all. Lastly, I also was able to listen to a lot of new CDs with all of the travel time. One CD that I thought was extremely good was SR-71's import CD of "Here We Go Again". Several songs were excellent and very fitting for me after listening to some of the lyrics.

Tonight I saw the movie Hancock. I thought it was pretty good. Will Smith seems to always get a pretty good movie for every summer release. I think this one sticks with the trend. He seemed believable as the misfit superhero and the rest of the cast seemed good as well. The main complaint every one has with the movie seems to be the major plot twist towards the end. Although I found it shocking and did slightly change the movie's tone, it by no means ruined the movie or take me out of it. I was still interested, but would have liked more continuity between the two halves. The whole movie also seemed very rushed. At only 94 minutes, I feel they could have slowed down and taken their time with some places. I feel that would have helped the movie pace a little better and maybe make the second half seem less jarring or allow it to explain itself better. Overall, a pretty enjoyable film.

Speeding to the Rose Bowl

Had a really good weekend. I went back to Penn State and was able to get some student tickets thanks to Michelle. Using my old ID, I was able to sneak into the student section for the football game vs MSU. I was determined to get there early and get good seats since this was my only game and Michelle paid good money for the tickets. This meant we were out in the freezing cold for more hours than we needed to be. Thanks to my pleading, we went to the stadium three hours early and waited until after the game until we left. We were all frozen solid with all extremities completely numb. That being said, it was soooo much fun. I just love screaming my heart out with 110,000 fans. We easily handed the Spartans a 49-18 loss which means we should be heading to the Rose Bowl. I probably won't follow the crowd there as tickets are going to be way to expensive to justify for one football game. I saw some going foe over $1,000 for one ticket. I'll gladly watch it at home or at the bar. I hope we don't have to play a rematch again though. I wish they could at least shuffle the teams if that were to happen as it would benefit all.

A real quick thought: Today I discovered the newest Linkin Park album, Minutes to Midnight from 2007. I really liked it and thought nearly every song was put together well. I was also surprised at how many songs I immediately recognized. There were 6-7 tracks I knew without ever fully playing the CD before. This CD must of had quite the exposure for me to know that many.

Lastly, my late thoughts on the Speed Racer movie that I watched through Netflix. Coming into this movie was expecting total crap to a mediocre film. Every trailer I saw over the summer looked like complete crap with just an orgy of color and absolute rubbish. I heard some mixed reviews saying that some liked and others hated the movie. For some reason, I decided to give it a shot. To my surprise, I really liked this movie. It was a total blast of a film. The races were actually very exciting and fun to watch. I was literally anticipating what would happen next and how it would be shown. The art style and visual direction were very effective and I fell in love with. The quick shots in the trailers made me hate it, but when watched as a full movie, I thought it worked extremely well. Seeing it all in High Def definitely helped, as the colors of the movie was incredible. I know everything was so hyper real, but I think that added to it. Some of the other art direction payed homage to the original anime styles and features. I thought it was a nice touch when I noticed it, and may have helped contribute to why I liked it. The movie's biggest downfall is its plot. It is very simplistic and is so formulaic. You know that Speed is going to win nearly every race as soon as you put the disk in, but I think that only deterred the movie slightly. Considering I was still anticipating every move in the actual race, knowing the final outcome mattered little. The movie was a pleasant surprise and I'm glad I enjoyed it so much. After watching the making of special feature on the disc, it made me think if there were any other major anime to movie transitions, after they were explaining some of their art choices. I'm having a very hard time coming up with one, and believe that this may be one of the first majorly successful ones.

Giving money to a crackhead

I wanted to make a post on my thoughts on an auto industry bailout, which many have speculated over for some time now in this economic downturn. I'm against it. Why should we spend all this money for only a few specific companies in a specific sector of the market? Does this mean we should bailout other companies that employ large numbers of people, just because others deem it necessary? What about if a large tech company was about to go under, would we bail them out, or would we let the free market take it's toll. Maybe I wouldn't have such a hard time swallowing this large bill that will be forked over to me, if these companies were actually competitive. They have been hemorrhaging money for what seems like the past decade. If they would have made some good business decisions, they wouldn't be in this position to begin with. And it's not like they changed anything since the economic troubles. They just keep on chugging. None of them have changed CEOs so the exact same wasteful spending and uninspired decisions are going to be made. These companies will continue to not be profitable along with wasting all of our money. The problem is that they failed to see a market that was changing and now are behind the times. Their vehicles are of questionable quality most of the time. They failed to realize that not everyone wants a giant Hummer Limo.
Look at the foreign car companies that are making (record) profits since they have built up their name for quality and knew how to capitalize a single part of the market. Most of these companies make their cars in America, so the jobs are still coming to America, while they continue to open up plants and increase jobs. Perhaps the biggest problem with the American auto industry is that they have failed to innovate, which is what you need to do to stay healthy in a competitive industry. The best thing GM has come up in recent years is the flex vehicles which run on E85 ethanol or regular gas. Look how far that has come, with very few ethanol fill-ups. Meanwhile the foreign car companies were the first to offer the best in low fuel, hybrid, and electric cars. That is innovation that matters. We here at IBM cherish innovation which is why we built an industry around it. We understand how important it is. The same apparently cannot be said about the auto industry.
I almost feel that the money that would be used to help out the American auto industry would be better spent elsewhere. (Besides the fact that it's not exactly fair if every auto company doesn't get a chunk of it). (TWiT #169 has a pretty good discussion at the end) The money would better spent giving it out to the families that could lose their jobs. We could train their workers to find better jobs or just to give them a nice bonus until they can find a new one. We should also invest in innovation. The auto makers that are leading in the next generation of vehicles, especially those that are green and energy efficient. Since we know that this will help the economy and the US as a whole, let alone helping the planet. Companies like Tesla should see additional funding to further research the possibilities of full electric cars. I just feel that it is wasteful spending.
I know that it is a backbone of our economy and our manufacturing industry, but why should we keep giving money to companies that continue to fail at innovating and never turn a profit. I realize that I may be not as affected about this as others, but feel that we as a country can stammer through it and allow our economy to rebuild on innovation and tried principles, not on free money all the time. Giving them money will not change the trend. Innovation is key, and that is where we need to lend taxpayers money, which will allow us to get it back.
< /rant >

Sing-along

So I decided to finally watch Dr. Horrible's Sing-along Blog. I know it's been out quite awhile, but I never got around to it. I'm just a little behind the times. I thought it was very good. by far the best web production I think I've seen. The songs seemed to be better versions that those in Sweeny Todd. This truly is the way of production and entertaining over the next few years.

Seeing how Felicia Day did such a good job, I decided to watch all of the Guild too, since I had some time after Heroes. The series itself, was pretty good and had me chuckling at a few moments, although for the most part, Felicia was the best character. She is a pretty good actor and I hope she gets more chances in the future.

Also, I want to claim my love of Top Gear. I think this is the best TV educational TV show, ever. Yes, even better than Mythbusters and Alton Brown (who by the way looks absolutely horrid lately, especially in HD. Think Tom Hanks from The DaVinci Code) This show is thoroughly entertaining and drop dead funny, all while teaching me about cars. Even though I'm not a huge car fanatic, I find it absolutely enjoyable. It being British also gives me this sense of knowledge, for which I have absolutely no reason why. I only wish it was more convenient to get a hold of. I don't get BBC America unfortunately and BBC's player doesn't work outside the UK, which is too much of a trouble to get a UK IP address. It's the best show they've got. They really should export it more easily.

So the Christmas Holiday has pretty much begun. I know I've seen ads for Christmas stuff as early as probably a month ago, but about now is when things start picking up. I can tell, because it is difficult to do anything for the next 2 months. The streets are packed and parking is horrendous. I tried going to the mall, and it was so crowded. Where are these people the rest of the year? I hope it dies down like most places mid January. Christmas shopping is exceedingly hard this year. Being away from everyone, I have no idea what to get people for the holidays. I hope when I'm home over Thanksgiving I can get some ideas for people. It doesn't get any easier telling others what I want either. Now that I have a job with steady paychecks coming in, when I want something I go out and buy it for the most part. This makes telling people what I want difficult. Hopefully I can come up with some stuff like clothes to pick out over the next few weeks.

Here's to hoping for a layoff free Christmas!

Send in the Clones

Tonight I finished 2 things that I wanted to get my feelings out for. The first was that I watched the new Star Wars movie: The Clone Wars. This is the computer animated film based off the tv show...I think. I have to say, it didn't click with me very well. First is the whole art direction they did which I hated. Having everyone made of block doesn't really help anything or add anything. The voice acting was also pretty bad sometimes, but at other times quite good. I guess my biggest gripe in that respect is how the voice actors didn't sound like the original actors at all. The plot was simple, but effective. It never was amazing, but I was never surprised either. I didn't care for the constant banter between Anakin and his new padawon. It really just reminded me of a brother and sister. Overall, pretty average fare, especially since I wasn't expecting a whole lot.

Tonight I also finished up Heavenly Sword. The only gripe I can find with the game is that it is pretty short. Everything else was simply amazing. The graphics were awesome and having vistas while fighting was pretty cool. At one point there you have to fight an entire army. There are probably close to 1000 discrete enemies on the screen and there was no slowdown what so ever. This was impressive. The voice acting was also really well done. I think this may have been the best voice acting I've seen for a video game. The actual game play was cool, but it did feel like a God of War clone, even having some quick time events. The game was super linear. I couldn't even explore or backtrack in order to keep the story moving along. The entire game felt like a giant, epic blockbuster of a summer movie, and it had the quality to match. I was thoroughly impressed by this game. Such a good job on the game, even if hack and slash isn't usually my type.


I'm not quite sure what I'll be playing next. Right now I'm leaning towards picking up something off of my PS1 backlog, possibly Vagrant Story. I guess I'll see.

Measuring the Queue

So gearing up for the holiday season and realizing all of the insanely good games that have been/will be coming out. My wallet is going to be hurting. Among the regular list of good games that I keep my eye open for a good deal, there are at least 2 PS3 and 2 PS2 games I want to buy this holiday season. (There's also a few PSN titles that looked good too) That's pretty expensive for such a limited time frame. Luckily there doesn't look to be too many coming out immediately after and I may get some gift certificates to help fray some of those costs. At the very least, this can be a test of willpower to see if I can hold out long enough to possibly pick up a used copy or even wait long enough for a price drop. My always constant fear is that the game will become rare and I won't be able to find it without paying a hefty price for it. (this is what happened to several PS1 games since I was late to the party)

This, stemmed with the fact that I am getting close to beating Heavenly Sword, got me thinking about my current backlog of games. I knew it was large, but wanted to see how bad it really was. My breakdown of completed games is as follows:
PS1 - 12/20 = 60%
PS2 - 35/55 = 64%
PS3 - 3/9 = 33%
I find this pretty bad. I have 20 games that need to played for the PS2 alone! And yet I want more. I find that my backlog grows for several reasons. The first would be exactly as mentioned above: I can't resist a good deal. If I find a good deal for a game, I'll buy it now and assume I'll play it later. This has gotten me into trouble, since I'm now eye high in games. Also, I tend to impulse buy on occasion. Recently, I went out and bought several NIS games since I knew most of them were good. Or how several years ago I bought 3 megaman games for PS1, which turned out mediocre at best. I also find that I get new system jitters. When I first got my PS2 and also with my PS3, I bought games which I probably wouldn't care for, or were of a little less quality. For example, my first purchase was Wild Arms 2 for my PS2. A mediocre PS1 game at best, but it was available right up the road from my house. I also bought several PS2 games including Summoner and Orphan, even though they weren't particularly good since I wanted PS2 games to see what the system was capable of. For the PS3, I bought a few games already, although this time around I feel I was just a tad smarter. I bought Enchanted Arms, Folklore, Assassin's Creed, and even Heavenly Sword, since I wanted some high-def gaming, although this time around, I tried to stick to games that were cheaper and I figured I would play. Lastly, my backlog keeps growing since I often suffer from a LIFO problem. Since the games I like keep me occupied for many many hours (darn you RPGs), I often will grow slightly tired of them. If I get a new game, before I finish the old one, I might skip to it and start playing. This seemed to always be bad at Christmas since I got several games, and wanted to play all of them at the same time, which always failed along with whatever game I was playing before Christmas.

But luckily I feel this is getting better. The PSN helps me a lot since I can get plenty of demos for all kinds of games. This will help me not purchase a game I will ultimately not like very much. (Although it can also be a detriment since I can try many more games, which I may end up liking) In addition, unlike the past 8 years or so, I now am done with school and should be able to game on a more regular basis. Before my gaming was extremely limited due to High School and 30-40 hours a week working and after that college in general, since my gaming all but halted as work picked up. Now I usually can get quite a few hours in a week, which is helping me complete games in a timely fashion so that I stay interested in the story longer, and am able to finish them. In the last 5 months or so, I was able to complete 8 games, 4 of which were pretty long RPGs. Hopefully the fact of having a steady income doesn't persuade me to make too many more purchases. I know I can't justify it. Now, I just wonder what I will play next.

Disappointed Panda

So quite a disappointing weekend with Penn State losing. It was a pretty bad performance with bad athletic performances and play calling across the board. With the wind as bad as it was, I was expecting some good running plays, but nothing of the sort was in store. I'm hoping we can pick up our emotions and play better next week before finishing up the regular season with Michigan State. If we win the last two, we should be heading to the Rose Bowl. I think that would be a good game against USC, although I still hat the fact that the Rose Bowl is played in California, across the fricking street pretty much from USC. Let's go State.

I also sat down and watched Kung Fu Panda. Quite a fun and enjoyable little family film. It was nothing extraordinary like a Pixar, but it still had it's moments of fun. The fight scenes were the best parts since if was CGI and could get away with a lot more than normal. I wish I would have payed attention to some of the voice work better. It turns out Jackie Chan voiced the monkey. Oh well, I don't remember him saying much anyway. It looked good as always on blu-ray.

Other things I watched included the premiere of the third Naruto movie and the anime block of Adult Swim. I thought the movie was a little slow and lacked much depth or surprises compared to the other movies. It just felt like an extended episode really. The anime block was a nice gesture from Adult Swim. I wonder how long it will stay around before they decide on more schedule changes. It looks semi permanent with all of the episode 1's they were showing. The episode of Code Geass really pulled me back in, even though I missed like the last 8 episodes of the first season. Hopefully it can keep my interest, unlike the last season.

I suppose I'll also give some final thoughts pertaining to LittleBigPlanet. I finished all of the story mode, aceing all but two levels and collecting ~80% of the items would be my guess. I played online some, and explored some of the levels others have made. I doubt I'll make any levels, I would rather play. The game is an absolute blast. I love the simplistic platforming and the intricacies of the levels. They are an engineers dream. I'm sometimes just so amazed at them. Other people's levels can be hit or miss. I've seen planet of bad ones, but a few really amaze me. My favorites seemed to be the ones based on other creations. Like there was one that was replicating Megaman levels and another that replicated Mario and Sonic levels. Still, others recreate entire musical scores which left me awestruck. The online system seems a little confusing. t seems hard to join others and the camera is a little annoying at times, trying to focus on the majority of the players, instead of everyone. Having a lot of players can make things harder, especially with perilous jumps and obstacles. I absolutely love this game, and will be frequenting back to see what other levels people have made. For the time being though, I think I'll move on to other things since my backlog is so huge. Currently I just started Heavenly Sword. So far I'm blown away by the graphics, and the entire thing is like a Summer blockbuster. It's short enough, so It probably won't be long until I have my reactions.

Bite my Shiny Metal ...

Tonight I watched the new Futurama movie, Bender's Game. I thought it was classic Futurama fun, although I thought it was probably the worst movie yet. The previous two were much more fun and had more throwbacks and inside jokes. This one started off very slow, and was only able to get a few more laughs from me towards the end. My main gripe with the movie is that the whole second half plot is based entirely on making fun of The Lord of the Rings. This would have been great if it came out even remotely close to when the movies came out, but it's been like 5 years at least. Many of the jokes just seemed old and stale and as if the whole movie was really a plot for when the show was actually airing. But since I'm a geek, I enjoyed it overall. I got the blu-ray of the movie. Not sure if it was necessary with a cartoon movie, but it looked fantastic.

Some final thoughts on the election that are on the top of my mind at the moment. Why did CNN have their ridiculous special effects show? The hologram of people, the 3d virtual models, etc. It just seemed superfluous.
I'm almost more inclined to think that the antiquated model of the electoral college should be changed. I like the idea of the popular vote or at least doing what Maine and Nebraska do and split their votes. This would allow and make a candidate to focus on the whole country they will be running, instead of just the key battleground. This way maybe people in not highly contested area will get to see the candidates. In four years, I imagine I won't get to see any of the candidates or see much coverage besides what is national. It also might make people feel like their vote counts more. I'm kinda scared to suggest this since it seems like it may harm the democratic party.
I was over analyzing john McCain's choice of Palin, and was thinking of the long shot that since this was a "democratic year" (although very winnable for him) he may have been thinking more about the future of the republican party. Now they have a young, new face that energizes the base beyond belief and gives them a new look. This way if she does decide to run in 2012, she now is recognizable instead of just the Governor of Alaska.
I think xkcd described my feelings almost perfectly concerning the political process that is now over:

Witnessing History

It is amazing to be witnessing history for such a memorable moment for our country. It is amazing to know that many parts of our country have come so far to elect President Obama. It is a truly great feeling considering how the other memorable things happening as of late have been so horrible...9/11, Katrina, Challenger, etc. This is truly amazing.

Mariobama

Mario knows who he's voting for, and I can't agree more. Should be an interesting day tomorrow with the election results. I plan to vote early to avoid the lines, hopefully. Then in the evening after work I can watch the results poor in. I'm hoping for some crazy results and the polls got it wrong (in a good way). Like Georgia, North Dakota, and Montana all going for Obama. Or maybe even Arizona. I'm hoping for a huge landslide and a good piece of the popular vote. Since polls generally don't favor/include cell phones, young people, or African Americans very much I think our chances are pretty good. Get out and vote!

El Presidente

I had a very busy weekend, doing lots of stuff. On Friday, I went back to Penn State to the Anime Club's Halloween Party. I had a good time, but was a little underwhelmed. I didn't know many people since many have graduated and moved on and the activities didn't catch my eye, but I had a good time just walking around pestering and talking to people. I enjoyed getting dressed up as Cid and people seemed to still like it, but I really would like to get a new costume. This one is getting old and worn out.

On my drive back to New York on Saturday, I saw the McCain bus parked at a rest stop. I was pretty ecstatic since it was a cool passing, with plenty of people all surrounding his bus. Later when I was on I-84, the bus passed me going probably at least 90 mph, on his way to 30 Rockefeller Plaza is my best guess to be on SNL that night. It was pretty weird having the bus pass me going so fast, but I guess if you are a presidential candidate you can get away with such things. (Either that or he's a POW)

That night I went to Anthony's Halloween party. I went as Mario. I felt it described pretty well as a geek, but was mainstream enough for everyone to appreciate. I think my costume was ok. It might have been a little too much from what I could pick up. People liked it and commented, but it might have just been small talk. Other people's costumes seemed to be simpler, or maybe I just paid too much attention to detail. I had a pretty good time. Anthony's band played which I liked a lot and they were pretty good. If they are ever in the local bars and I remember, I might go. I enjoyed seeing everybody, but only wish I knew more people. I imagine that will come. I didn't want to keep bothering the few co-workers I knew the entire night. I had a good time and hope I'm invited back next year, guess I'll see.

I also saw that yesterday Texas lost. That's good news for Penn State. Now with just a few more losses, we'll be set to play in the National Championship. Hopefully this week versus Iowa doesn't cause any problems.

And finally, tonight, I watched The Orphanage. For the Halloween spirit I decided to rent a scary movie, even though I don't usually see too many. I had heard this one was particularly scary and good, so I decided to give it a try. The movie ended up being very suspenseful. It was scary a few times, and made me jump just a few times, but nothing as bad as some reviews I had heard. Particularly Geekscape's review. The movie was beautifully well done and I enjoyed it being a Spanish movie. The movie was very good and I hoped people gave it a shot even though it's subtitled.

A Little off the Top, Please

So tonight I watched Sweeney Todd, the dark slasher musical that seems just right for Halloween...sort of. I was a little disappointed overall with it. The story really didn't get interesting until the end and entire story lines were left dangling and felt pointless and added on. What's worse with this being a musical, is that I feel that the actors were auditioned based on acting rather than singing. Most of the singing wasn't bad, but I just felt it could have been better, especially Johnny Depp. The last major gripe I had with the movie was with the mixing. I'm assuming the DVD was similar to the blu-ray. The vocals were mixed at such a horrible volume level. I could barely hear any of the people speaking, and any time there was music, it completely overshadowed the vocals. If I tried to turn it up, the rest of the movie became in general too loud, especially the music. Fairly mediocre, but I was expecting a little more.

Also today, I had the pleasure of telling off a political caller. After being called repeatedly all day at work (and me not picking up or them leaving a message), I finally was able to pick up and see what the heck they wanted. Calling from a Boston area code (why?), was someone doing some sort of "political study". (I was excited because I thought I might get my opinion in an actual poll) (Also, how do they get my number? It's a cell number which is illegal to do automated calls to...) They asked if I knew who I was going to vote for in the New York State Assembly race. I told them I was leaning on voting for Johnathan Smith. They then proceeded to tell me that he has been involved with many negative and questionable activities and make other false or unbased claims about him. I promptly told the person that I do not appreciate the negative campaigning that I was being subjected to and that I not be called again. She then replied with more negative "facts" about Mr. Smith. First off, pestering my phone all day is not a positive way to get my vote. Second, being independent, I don't like the negative ads and attacking of candidates, especially after telling someone who I plan on voting for. And lastly, this drastically differs from Johnathan Smith's call I got which was from a supporter, in a NY area code, who kindly offered his stance on issues in a positive way and in general was a very pleasant phone call. Let me say, if I was on the fence or had a sliver of doubt about not voting for Johnathan Smith, that is now gone. Being negative to me or through me loses my vote. It does not make me more likely to vote for you! It does quite the opposite! You just lost my vote or any chance I would vote for you, Joel Miller. Hope you waste more money (in Boston!! How can your campaign even say try and "create more jobs in the Hudson Valley" when you outsource to Boston!).

Sometimes you feel like a nut

What a nice weekend. Saturday had Penn State winning over Ohio State. It was an extremely exciting and nerve racking game. The defense was on center stage as we were able to escape with a narrow win. Now we just have to win out and hope for some losses. One thing I didn't like about the telecast was the eulogy they kept showing all day on ABC for JoePa. I mean I know he's old and his future is uncertain, but it just seemed ominous. It's fine to show him respect, but it just came across wrong to me.


Today I was finally able to finish Disgaea 2 for the PS2. I started playing it over a year ago, but moved on without beating it. I restarted it again recently so that I had it done before I started Disgaea 3. Overall, I enjoyed it, but it pales in comparison to the first one.

One last thing is that my praise goes out to Gamestop for once. Rewarding their loyal pre-order customers, they gave us LittleBigPlanet this weekend even though it's not supposed to be out before Tuesday. So far, I am enjoying it beyond belief. It is crazy cool and just an all round great game. The levels are so fascinating seeing how things work and how they are able to do some things. It is such a joy finding all of the hidden items of levels. The single player is enjoyable even though they don't have the servers up and running yet for multiplayer. I love the simplicity of a good platformer, and it is so much fun even just playing with the sackpeople. I thought I wouldn't care about outfits and such, but it is actually quite fun. Currently, my sackboy is somewhere between a pirate with a lion tale and a renassaince bunny.

Brown, Black, Red, Gold

Happy 1K day (with some tolerance)! Hope everyone is celebrating 1K day to it's fullest potential. I know I didn't do much. Maybe next year. At work, for the celebration today was Hack Day. It is where everyone is supposed to come up with unusual projects centered around the tools we use everyday at IBM. A fellow team member was showing me his hacks and projects he came up with in previous years. Stuff like a comment visualizer and editor for our code or a blog aggregator. We were going to check out the other hacks people made this year, but before we knew it, both of us got tied up in our work and he went home early. I know there's a blog site that has the info on, so I'll have to check it out. Maybe next year I can come up with something small. From what I saw, most of the hacks seem to be software related, so I'm curious if any hardware hacks were present. Although my software skills are rather limited when it comes to application hacks, I'm sure I would like to try.

I've been invited to a Halloween party. Yay! But with such short notice, I need a pretty quick, easy costume. I wonder what I can whip up in about week. Using what I have since I practically am one, it would be easy to be a very stereotypical nerd (even more so than normal for me). I'm just worried that it may just bring out how nerdy and uncool I really am since, let's face it, I wouldn't have to change much... Also, being that most of the people are engineers, maybe it wouldn't go over quite as well, or it may go over even better, depending on how I accessorize.

One last quick note on political candidates. I remember at the beginning of the election process people were saying how young Obama was. Well, I wonder what they would say about Roger Calero of the Socialist party. He's only 38! Over 10 years younger. And I was also surprised to find that Ralph Nader is 74. He's older than McCain. I wonder who will be the defacto independent nominee after he doesn't do it anymore, for age or otherwise. Oh well, I guess no one ever questions their age since they have little to no chance as it is. Just weird to find out.

Gangstas

So tonight I saw the movie American Gangster. I know it's been out a while, but it took awhile to cycle to the front of my Netflix Queue. I thought the movie was really well made and a lot of fun. It's a shame it was as long as it was. It clocked in at about 3 hours on the Blu-ray release. The ending was a satisfying ending, even with the long set-up. The characters felt real (maybe since they were). I remember seeing trailers and thinking that Denzel Washington couldn't play a badass drug dealer and russel crow's part seemed off. Not so after seeing it. I thought they both did wonderfully. I don't remember if they won anything last year or not at the Oscars. With all of the good TV on nowadays and the incosistant postal service of Poughkeepsie and White Plains, it is taking me forever to get through my queue. I hope I can continue moving through it pretty rapidly since it has soo many movies on it.

A Series of Unfortunate Rants

So I've got a few rants I want to get off my chest this evening, pretty unrelated too. The first is my usual Heroes thoughts. The show seems to travel like a roller coaster. It has it's ups and downs. I thought this week was rather good. Characters remembered most of their powers for once and used them (Hiro time traveling more, Peter going invisible, etc.), the story was relatively suspenseful and even had a glimpse at a cool fight scene with Syler and Peter fighting a little bit (having the two characters with tons of abilities would make an awesome fight if the writers can keep track of everything), and I wasn't yelling any obscenities at my TV for a change. Unfortunately, I'm totally expecting to be disappointed next week, since that seems to be how this show works.

Next, I want to say what a brilliant thing the most recent firmware update to the PS3 was. The update added Flash 9 support to Sony's shitty web browser. This means that services like Hulu can actually work through the PS3. I find this extremely awesome. I can watch TV shows that I miss through Hulu, and instead of watching them on my laptop screen or going through the trouble of hooking up my laptop to my tv, I can simply turn on my PS3 and watch them on a very nice looking screen. The feature is buggy as hell though it seems. Full screen mode doesn't seem to work so I just do a manual zoom, which isn't a perfect resolution for my tv, but still decent. The video can sometime be jittery even though I have a 15Mbps download speed, which I feel is more the crappy browser and flash support than my connection since it works fine on my laptop. Lastly, the higher quality videos don't seem to work so I have to watch everything at like 360p or whatever it is. This is a small price to pay I say. I get the added benefit of a huge screen, plus I can use my laptop while watching stuff on the tv, so I get added productivity. Overall, I feel this will be my new way of watching my missed TV content. I just wished a few more networks supported it like ABC.

Lastly, I want to address an issue that I saw today, although it wasn't the first by any means. My dad sent me an email today that was sent to him claiming that Obama doesn't say the pledge of allegiance and also had a 'shopped picture of him in a turban. To his credit, instead of instantly believing what was sent to him (like oh so many people do nowadays), he was asking me for clarification and if it was even true. I was able to promptly respond with the proper factual information telling him it was false. I am sick and tired of all of these sick, twisted and just plain false and baseless character attacks. Why in every election or in every political situation do people resort to attacking someone's character instead of actually talking about what matters in how to lead and correct this country? In the 50's it was Senator McCarthy attacking people for being communists, even if they weren't. Nixon's entire election was based on character attacks. Al Gore was character attacked for being boring, uptight, and elitist, and so was John Kerry. This is nothing more than the senseless "witch" hunts that occurred in the 15th and 16th century, which we all look back on and see how stupid they were. Why can't we stop with all of the character attacks? It does nothing to help us and only hurts us. Can't people understand that it's the issues that really matter in your everyday life? I don't care if you don't agree with Obama or McCain's issues, but to have baseless character attacks is just plain wrong and disgusting.

Maybe what sickens me the most is that the amount of racism that is starting to show in this election cycle. (I hope that people can overcome and that nothing horrible happens....vote for the right candidate and the one you believe in, not the one whose skin matches yours) Maybe the racists don't know but Obama is actually half white. That's right, just like me. Maybe they will realize that even though his skin may be dark and his name may sound funny, that he's a decent American. In case they haven't noticed, Obama, isn't even like the type of African American they dislike...He's well educated, speaks proper, and isn't a "gangsta". He cares for his family and isn't a criminal. He's practically "white"! (if rednecks don't count) If these racists hate African Americans so much, why don't they stop and think about what Obama might do to help that culture group. It is my belief that if Obama would become president, it would actually help the African American community, in such a way that it would help lessen many of the stereotypes. You don't think that having a highly educated black man as the President of the United States wouldn't have ripples in the black communities? Young people could look up to him as a role model since currently the only black role models kids have are sports stars and rappers. This might encourage kids to be well educated, go get an education, treat your family with respect, and most importantly, that even if you come from a broken home or a run down neighborhood (like Obama) you can believe in your dreams and you can do anything. I mean it's practically a Hallmark movie. I just want to see all of the racist smears stop. I imagine that's just too much to ask for.

In the mean time, after Palin's success on SNL, the McCain campaign realizes thay have to go after the youth vote. So they are going to star in a movie: McFast & McFurious