One Bong to Rule them All...

Sorry for the usage of Bong in the title, but I felt Water Pipe to be a little unwieldy in the title. Jon got this killer Hookah for his birthday. It's pretty damn slick. last night it was sitting on his dining table like some sort of centerpiece. Thursday was Yvonne's birthday and friday was Jon's, so we had a little celebration friday night to cover everything. Then we ate the mescaline and went swimming. Just kidding. I've been watching Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas lately, not to mention just finished the book again for what is probably the hundredth time. So I've been spouting quiotes from the books every now and then, as I'm sure you can tell by the title from a few days ago.

So we're in the mall playing DDR yesterday and chad is bemoaning his single-dom and I offer him sage advice, as I'm often paid to do. "Just point a girl out and go do your thing" is along the jist of what i tell him. And we're playing DDR and this chick is up there and chad decides to go for it there. what's truly sad is the first thing that came to mind was "Wow, someone actually listened". We played a fair bit of DDR yesterday. I was pretty damn stiff for the first couple of songs, so I looked truly rediculous on songs that I normally can ace no sweat. I think the chick is bad juju because as soon as she went to the bathroom I got my groove back. Well I guess as much groove as a 26 year old white guy can have. I'll have to hunt chad down to find out how the movie date went last night.

I'm probably gonna head up to the mall in a little bit to play some DDR. I'm thinking of being saucy and strating my conquest of Heavy, though I might wait until I'm a little better at Max 300 and Orion .78 on Standard first. I'm pretty decent, but not as decent as I'd like to be at them. I can whip through them on Light with no problem now, so if I can ace them on standard I think i'll feel like I've gotten my grasp of Standard.

HAL is reborn...kinda

After 2 straight days of struggling with this damn computer I finally have it back to some semblance of working. I tried to reinstall Windows no less than 7 times. My little Hard Drive is on the fast track to being fried I believe. Even after the reformat and installation its almost got more problems than it started with. So I'm gonna pick up a new Hard Drive Friday and hope that works. And now onto weather.

It's hotter than fuck. It was at least 95 yesterday and after the rain slacks up this morning I'm sure it'll get to somewhere around the same temperature. Thankfully I can't remember the last time that it went a full day without raining so it been pretty decent for the temperature. As long as it's raining that is. And now onto sports.

I picked up a few new games this weekend. From the same aforementioned Buy 2, Get 1 free sale at Gamestop. I picked up Super Bust-A-Move 2 for Yvonne. She loves those games so I have no problems picking one up every now and then. I used to play it back in the day, but I haven't since they felt the need to incorporate some sick idea of a story to it. I also picked up Robotech: Battlecry and Defender. Defender was really for the collection value. I'm a huge, what they would call now, retro-gamer. I love all of the old arcade games and games on teh Atari, which is where Defender comes in. It's a remake of the old Arcade/Atari Golden Age. In the original you flew this little ship and had to pick up colonists before the aliens killed them. It was pretty neat for the time. Well the new Defender ownz it entirely. In true Midway fashion they remade a classic into another classic. You get to pick from 6 ships, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. It's a fuckton of fun. Robotech: Battlecry on the other hand satisfies my Anime/transforming plane fixation. It's a nice looking, cel-shaded game that does incredible justice to the Robotech series. As you progress you can unlock new Veritech to pilot and color schemes and intervies and all sorts of neat stuff. The game relies heavily on you being able to effectively use your Veritechs transformation abilities. Trust me it's a mother fucker if you don't.

Well I think that's about all I have to rant about today.

We were somewhere around Barstow when the drugs began to take hold...

Today turned out to be a thoroughly enjoyable day. We picked up Yvonn'es little sister Nikki and went to the movies. We had to g to University mall since Nikki had never played the 8th mix machine. She did well I must admit. We all went to see Pirates of the Carribean. I loved the movie personally. It was a lot of fun to be sure. It had a kind of light hearted tone to it despite the overall action of the movie. Johnny Depp played an incredible pirate and really made the movie. I definitely reccomend it to anyone looking for a decent movie to check out.

I've been playing more and more of Legaia 2, and I think I figured out why. If you look at it in a different light, it kinda resembles the PnP game Exalted. The types of "Mystics" resemble the castes ad types of Exalted in the game, and the storyline kinda runs along the lines of how an Exalted game might run. If you're wanting to get into Exalted, and you have a PS2, I highly reccomend this game for some loose reference material.

My migraine the other night prompted me to take a jungle juice concotion of Lortab 7.5 and Demmoral. It made for an interesting night. It didn't have quite the expected effects however. I pretty well expected to be a pile of goo as everybody else was on just the demorral alone. I got a little fuzzy and things were slightly more humrous, but that was pretty much the extent of it. It certainly made the pain go away though.

My video card is going bad...really bad. I just had to go back to onboard video. ack. i miss it already. I know i'm not gonna be able to play my games, but i'm sure i can hold out until friday when i get paid. I'm gonna start work on a new computer as well. it's gonna be pretty slick, and will hopefully keep me ahead of the curve for a year or two at least.

Coronary? Yes, I'll take two please...

It's hard for people who are set in their ways to admit that they're wrong. This is an ongoing struggle I'm having with my interim boss, Smitty. He seems rather reluctant to admit that I am right on a good deal of the stuff that we deal with. He's been out of action for about a year now, and I have to admit that I didn't know a quarter of the things that I do now. For some reason he still feels the need to treat me like I just started working there and don't know my ass from a hole in the ground. He refuses to admit that I may actually know more than he does about air conditioning and duct work. I can be minding my own businees doing something right and he feels the need to cme up and completely tear it apart saying it's wrong. something as simple as making a piece of duct he drug out into a 2 hour ordeal in which i just took the kerfing tools from him and cut it myself while he stood over me saying it woulfn't come out right...and it did. So all of my accomlishments are nothing more than "luck" and they would have turned out better if i'd done them his way. I think i'm gonna crack if he keeps it up.

Buy 2, Get 1 Free....Sign me up.

Well i went to gamestop last weekend and picked up a few games for my PS2. Here are my thoughts on what I picked up:

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City

Killer game. I also own GTA3, but for some reason this game is just so much more fun. The killer 80's soundtrack doesn't hurt a bit either. There's nothing like runing a drive-by while listening to "I Wear My sunglasses at Night". There was one mission in the beginning where I had to go all Scarface on this one guy with a chainsaw. Good stuff. For what a lot of people seem to think is a rehash of GTA3, I find that the soundtrack and the gameplay are a worthy investment. I love it personally.

Legaia 2: Duel Saga

This would probably be on of the most underrated RPG's I've ever run across. Legend of Legaia for the PS was an OK game, but lacked a lot of graphic detail. Legaia 2 makes up for it. It's unique combat system make for an interesting play experience. You fight by entering where your strike hits on your opponent. If you enter the right combination you learn Arts, which are super powered combos. As you level up you gain more Art Blocks, so you can enter more strikes per turn. It really is worth the experience. While the storyline is still kinda so-so, the gameplay itself is pretty fun

Enter the Matrix

Everybody and their brother has mixed opinions of this game. And on some counts I have to agree with a few of them. There is a certain "unfinished" quality to it. There have been several instances where the game will just go spastic for no apparent reason. The music in certain areas gets quirky and goes into an infinite repeat of the game 6 notes. Those are my only down notes for this game however. The action is top notch, and the Focus moves are awesome. The movie scenes between some scenarios are great, featuring the actual actors. I personally enjoy the hell out of the game. But I swear, if agent smith throws me off of one more skyscraper I'm gonna throw the game.

All in all, I think they were worthy purchases, though the game I'm really waiting for comes out at the end of next month.

The Job that never ends (reprise)

Just when youthought it was safe to answer your radio another laundry list of crap to do has sprung up for harbourview. So we've gotta do that sometime tomorrow. Today was a day of impossibilities. Things that are not really possible in refrigeration popped up all at once today. In addition to these the alternator in the worktruck died on us on the way back from the dump. So we got to change that on out. I'm starting to think that karma is nailing me for somethign that I might think about doing in the future. I have what I've always called pre-emptive karma. i get nailed for all the bad stuff before i do it. It's rather irritating really. nothing much to write about, just wanted to sign in and say hi to everybody.

:)

Dread Zeppelin always makes me smile.

Apologies

You're gonna have to excuse my rapid-fire depression and self pity posts of the last, oh, about 20 minutes. I've got a lot going on in my head at the moment. There's a lot of heavy things going on right now and I guess I need some sort of affirmation that something's going right. Though I really do feel like destroying something beautiful, my desrtuctive streak goes much deeper than that. I want to crush, maim and kill for no good reason at all. No one is on to talk to, and I have no urge to do anything. I've started no less than 3 projects in the last 20 minutes and I've made it no further than selecting a background color and text color. I have no desire to write, to create, to share, or to continue doing much of anything. There's no real reason to. All of my efforts end up in a Dead Projects folder. Trust me, there is such a folder, right on my desktop next to the shit can. Only one step away. I even set out to draw a little and got as far as bringing my case in from the car. Stacy is a prime example of why even try. here's someone who did it all by the book. perfect credit, perfect lifestyle. owns his own business. now it's all going to shit in less than one month I'm sure that ACS mechanical will be no more. It seems to be the end of a lot of things lately.

Dear Universe,
I'm sure that i've been a part of your personal Gag Reel lately. Why do you feel the need to bring everything to bear against me all at the same time? Have I not believed in your power and pull all this time? Have I not helped others to open their minds to possibilities that established organisations would rather we not think? Why do you sit up late at night and conspire against me? I would like answers. It's the least you could do at the moment. I think the game started when I was fourteen and you thought it would be funny to see how I persevere. Well I'll tell you. i've played by my own rules. I've lived my life how I see fit and kept true to every single one of my morals and beliefs. I haven't languished in self pity or angst like some would. Don't you think that was a pretty heavy load to thrust upon a teenager? I did everything right up until I turned 18. In the end you realise that it's all a waste and you've gone out of your way to prove it to me lately. If you could see clear to clear your schedule for a few minutes and tell me why it's so funny I'd appreciate it.

I'm done for the moment. I needed to get this off of my chest. There's nothing overtly wrong with my life, but everything just seems to be falling apart around me for everybody else. I want to destroy something beautiful...

I feel like destroying something beautiful

Welcome to the Gulag of intellectual stagnation

I'm always one to jump the gun. I'm impatient and very seldom late for much of anything. I fear my little rpg isn't going to go anywhere. I'd had such hopes for it before. Which is where I always fall short. I always envision grand things when in fact no noticible response is ever commited. I'm waiting on quite a few people to return emails for the playtest and despite my best efforts nothing is happening in the group I created for it. So I think i'll send it to the dead projects folder with several other of my industrious, but apparently ill-timed projects. I've been in something of this sort of mood all day. I feel grim things and grim news is on its way soon. perhaps grim is too harsh of a word...but perhaps unwanted might be a little better descriptor. it never fails that when I feel like i have a grasp on teh universe, something comes out of left field, something unpleasant. I think I'm looking for something to guide my pent up anger at. Unfortunately that something never fails to show up not long after I make the realisation. It's time for me to build another web page. I need something to vent all of my creative energies into. Something to use up this energy I have, perhaps for good...for I feel that evil isn't too far behind. My quest for acceptance continues...

The end of an era...

I was quite hung over from the hours of drinking and debauchery last night when I awakened at 10am this morning to a radio call from Smitty wanting to know if i wanted to go on a service call with him. Since I can't say no to work of course I agreed to go. Thank the gods that it wasn't a bad call. I returned home to the news that Barry White had died. This men was a sexual legend. His music and voice has helped thousands of men get laid over the years. He died of kidney failure at 58 years old. It saddened me immensely. As I stated before, he was a god. He never personally helped me get laid, but I'm sure that there are thousands, if not more, men that have had sex while Barry was singing in the background. If you're one of those people I think you should drop to your knees and thank god that he created such a man for without him you'd robably still be virgins.

ummm....OK

So, here's how I spend my fourth of july. I was playing Tetris Worlds on my PS2 and decided to give a go at some of the other play modes available. I'm a tetris purist. I don't believe any other game mode besides making lines out of blocks classifies as Tetris. So i try this mode called Hot Line Tetris. I'm doing my thing when I hear this voice on the TV "Try a Hot Line" I had to pause it because I couldn't believe what I'd heard. Madam Tetris wishes me to try a line...and a hot one at that. I mean really, I think they could have chosen better wordage for that particular mode. Now we're gonna get lawsuits because little timmy went out looking for his local Coke dealer so he could try a hot line. Tis a sad day when something as simple as Tetris endorses rampant drug use...and hot drugs at that. That is all.

Happy Usurpation of British Rule...

Well I just had to hop on and say happy fourth of july to all three of my readers. I haven't done much of anything lately. Working and kinda in a slump as to actually doing anything else. I've figured that I would pass the time by writing up some history on the twons in my RPG. I figured that I would write it as kind of a second book, seeing as how just the rules weighed in at over a meg in PDF form. Which is something I've been meaning to talk about. I'm not entirely happy with adobe acrobat. Yeah it makes for some nifty looking documents after you're done with it, but you can't "make" PDF's with it per se. You need to first make it in some other word procesing program and use the adobe distiller to turn it into a pdf, so you don't really make them, you just kind of convert them. And what you can actually do with it once it is a PDF is quite limited. It makes for a handy format since just about everybody has the Acrobat Reader on their computer. I might convert some of my other books to PDF for ease of use. I'm gonna start up the playtest on my rpg here soon, even though I'm waiting on emails from about 6 other people. I have myself and two other people in the group thus far so I could get a story started I guess. Stay tuned, I'll probably post updates as to how it's going periodically.

mmhmmm....

Well, Chad got ahold of Shadows of Undrentide for me. It's the Neverwinter Nights expansion pack. It's all right I guess. Though I'm only still in Chapter one, it seems like a rehash of the original. I mean in the beginning your mentor is poisoned by kobolds and four artifacts are stolen from him. of course it's your job to find them. Let's compare this to the original. A plague hits Neverwinter and teh only source of the cure is stolen. Four mythical creatures are the only means to cure neverwinter, and of course it's your job to find them, along with taking up shitgobs of sidequests. The same holds true for SoU. It was great the first time, but it just seems like a rehash in a ifferent town. The graphics aren't upgraded and thew action is about the same. They added a few Prestige classes which are pretty cool, but it's just not enough to make it all that much of an incredible expansion. The Diablo 2 expansion only had two new classes, but it had an entirely new act that was pretty damn cool. It made it entirely worth picking up, especially with the pllay upgrades. Shadows of Undrentide just seems to fall short. Any of the modules you can download can give you the same experience. As a matter of fact, i've been playing through a pretty cool one called The Shadowlords. I think it rocks and it was free. That's just my two cents on the matter. It just seems like i could have downloaded a module and gotten the same experience as the company created "Expansion"