The first step in enjoying the last summer vacation of my life had to be something good. Something big, something grand even. Like, visiting mom for a few days.
( In Perth, Australia. Hells yeah. Read more. And see pictures. )
For day 2 though, tune in later. Because the folks need this computer to look up a recipe for the kangaroo steaks we're having tonight. |
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May. 10th, 2009 @ 03:23 am
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So yeah. Long time no update. I could make this long, but I doubt most of you care enough to read a wall of text, so I'll keep it short and sweet ^..^
I graduated. I'm now the proud holder of a Bachelor's of Science, in History amusingly enough. So yeah. Educated dragon is.
So now I've got the summer free, with Navy OCS slated to begin on August 9th. What to do in the meantime... |
So this Christmas and New Year has turned out to be absolutely excellent for me. A few of you, I'm sure, were aware of my ongoing car problems with my poor old ancient older-than-I-am Mercedes 380 SE. Well, during final exams week, my grandfather called me up and asked me if I would be interested in his '85 Mercedes 420 SEL, which is basically a slightly newer and more powerful version of my car. Big difference being, it's got a quarter of the miles and has been garage-kept its whole life, and very well maintained. I'm ecstatic. New car! Finally! FINALLY!
Then the next week, he calls me back, and tells me that he just remembered that he'd promised the car to an uncle in Utah with a good job and company car, and the uncle was extremely upset about this. So, to spare the family some drama, I let the car go. More family drama ensues, but no mud hits me. Granddad promises to help me get a car after I graduate from OCS.
Then Maggie, my 380SE dies, again. Either it's the fuel filter or one of the two fuel pumps. Fucking hell, don't have the new car anymore, and my old one is dead once more. Sigh. I call my mom and ask what I should do.
"Oh, err, this was supposed to be a surprise, but we're going to get you a new car when you come down here in a week and a half. So start researching what you want, within reason."
Oh. Oh day. Oh sweet happy day. So yesterday, I went and got the car of my dreams.
Mazda RX-8. Sex. Oh god, sex.
Zoom zoom... <3 |
So, stuff's been going on and going on and going on, and I've been neglecting to make any real updates since generally whenever something happens, I tell the five nearest people I see in my IM contact list and consider myself heard. Buuut, there's been a lot more going on and a lot less chattage this week, so while I wait for my clothes to get out of the dryer, I figure I'll toss an update onto this old forgotten thing.
Friday afternoon - Drive to Memphis to meet up with best friend who's attending medschool there. Eat pizza and drink beer at a local restaurant. Watch MST3k. Hilarity ensues.
Saturday morning - Drive to Arkansas to pick up a cool girl he's been dating for a while.
Saturday afternoon - Wait for her at a motorcycle shop halfwav between her place and Little Rock. Discover Hyosung motorcycles. Discover the Hyosung 30th Anniversary GV650 SE. Discover my new dream bike. Simultaneously.
Saturday night - Watch The Sword, Down, and Metallica live in Little Rock. Down was alright. The Sword was awesome. Metallica blew my f'ing mind. And James Hetfield didn't catch on fire this time. *fanboy*
Sunday morning - Drive back to Memphis, go to sleep.
Sunday afternoon - Wake up, get lunch, drive toward home. Make a detour north of Nashville and pick up a new gun, a Romanian PSL 7.62x54R sniper rifle. Joy ensues.
Sunday night - Molest a few dragons, feel good.
Monday morning - Class, boo.
Monday afternoon - Take gun to local shop for inspection and detail cleaning. Begin new workout routine, even without my workout partner. Do better than I expected. Feel great.
Monday evening - Discover that the only girl in town I really liked had recently died in a house fire. Holy shit, I'd been wondering why she stopped responding to my messages and calls. Because I didn't get along with her friends, I didn't hear the news until after she'd already been buried in her hometown on the other end of the state. I still had her vacuum cleaner in my car, waiting to give it back to her. Blink in shock. Go to sleep early.
Tuesday morning - stay asleep
Tuesday afternoon - finally get up. Sit around feeling useless. Go to hated creative writing class unprepared. Don't care. Do some more exercise afterward, feel a bit better. Take Mallory's vacuum out of car. Pray for the first time in years.
Tuesday evening - Catch up with a few friends, play Fallout 3, go back to bed.
Wednesday morning - Class. Get my major history research paper back with a grade of 97%. Hell to the yeah, bitches!
Wednesday afternoon - Get a haircut, a High & Tight (military style), the shortest my hair has ever been in my life. My hair was longer than this when I was born. I look totally different from how I did when I came to college, with past-the-shoulder waves. It feels weird. Do laundry and eat lunch. Write FA journal. Try not to think about Mallory. Fail.
Wednesday evening (coming soon) - Fly to Houston, Texas for Thanksgiving! Catch you all soon!
So yeah, summary.
Good: Concert, rifle, workout routine, great grade on research paper, family for Thanksgiving.
Bad: Mallory is gone, and I didn't even get to say goodbye at a funeral.
Ugly: Haircut <..I'm feelin':  blah Now playing: Metallica - Death Magnetic album |
Well, it's been an eventful summer for sure. Went to Anthrocon last month, kept meaning to write a report on it, but my computer died while I was there so I never could. It's still dead, but new parts should be here any day now. Had a great time, met some great folks, hope I can go again sometime.
In more recent news, I got PRK laser surgery for my eyes! The day after the surgery I had 20/20 uncorrected, so I should be at *least* that good once I heal. Unfortunately, now that the healing process is n full swing, I'm blind as can be and have to have my browser text set to "Hearing Impaired Huge". I go in for a second checkup tomorrow, get the protective contact lenses out, and hopefully don't have to wear my ridiculous downhill-skier mask to bed anymore. Fortunately, after the first two days it stopped really hurting, so I got to stop using the comfort drops early. I've learned two things. Lasers go "CLACKCLACKCLACKCLACK!" rather than "Pew! Pew!" and your eyeballs smell nasty when they're roasted alive.
Finally, I'd like to bring to y'all's attention a little gem of a game for the Xbox 360 you may have overlooked. It's called Earth Defense Force 2017 (And yes 'Rift, your reviews influenced me to talk about this stuff :p)
This game is an absolute gem. Glorious brainless fun from start to finish. I suppose the most apt description would be to call it the game version of every godawful terrible aliens-are-invading-earth sci-fi movie you've ever seen, loved, and watched the Mystery Science Theater episode about. The practically nonexistent production values just make it all the more amusing.
Pros:
This game is so much fun to play it boggles the mind, especially on co-op. It doesn't even pretend to take itself seriously, and that makes it all the better. There are over 170 different weapons to find, 53 missions, five difficulties, over a dozen wildly varied enemies. The enemies themselves are beautiful, and some of them are so huge you wonder how they manage to fit in the world. I've had this game twice, and played it for probably a good sixty hours total, and it never gets old.
Pros posing as cons:
The physics are absolutely atrocious. This is cheesy and cheap but totally hilarious. There are practically no controls aside from move, shoot and jump. This just means you don't have to worry about complicated controls. The game even uses rotating 2D sprites for dropped powerups. You know, the things you haven't seen since Doom? At least you never have to hunt around for items - they're always plain as day.
Cons:
There are few true cons to this game, but the ones it has are still worth mentioning. The sound is alright, but rather repetitive. The music gets annoying after a while. Model clipping is a joke, and while usually funny, it gets really annoying when enemies hit you through houses and cave walls etc, while invisible barriers will sometimes make your rockets explode in your face. Also, forget about multiplayer other than co-op. There's no online mode, and Vs. mode shouldn't have even been included.
The rundown
Really, there's so little to this game there's not much I can do to review it. It's basically a solid gameplay style in a bargain game with just enough polish in all the right places. It just so happens to work fantastically well. With 53 missions, you'd expect a big story, and while there's a bit of one, it's only there to move you from one gigantic alien-infested battlefield to the next. I mean, when the aliens are called Ravagers before we know whether they're hostile or not, you know the "writing team" were probably just the programmers in spare time.
Basically, you're Storm 1, a soldier in the Earth Defense Force and you run around with machine guns, bombs, rocket launchers, missile launchers, lasers, plasma cannons, autoturrets, flamethrowers, etc etc etc fighting off hoards of giant ants, giant spiders, gianter ants and spiders, giant robots, gianter robots, a fucking ginormous robot, alien gunships, alien dropships, an alien mothership bigger than my ego, godzilla, godzilla and his friend, and mechagodzilla with plasma cannons for arms. You'll fight in cities, on beaches, in canyons, on open plains, in more cities, in underground tunnel networks, in destroyed cities, and so on. Times are rare when you're hemmed in by anything, and in perhaps only two or three missions have I run into invisible walls at all.
Every structure is destructible, and ridiculously so. A mis-aimed grenade can easily take down three skyscrapers. An errant rocket can blow up city hall. Blowing up buildings is half the fun of the game, and often crucial to success as they give you longer fields of view for shooting at enemies. Don't worry, the buildings will be fine by next mission! I've probably blown up the Space Needle fifty times and it's always satisfying.
You usually have a squad with you, or at least near you. I just call them my pack-o-dudes. They're generally useless and often just get in the way of your rockets, but I like to keep them around for their dialog. They talk and respond, but sometimes the statements and responses don't quite match up, usually with great comedic effect. "You're shaking - are you scared?" "I disagree!" and "Hey, are you alright?" "Go to hell!" or "It's dangerous to get any closer!" "Shut up!".
The most fun I've had with the game, though, has been with the co-op experience while playing it. For example, there's a guided missile called the Prominence that, when fired, flies straight for five seconds then tracks a target and hits it doing massive damage over a wide area. Unfortunately, it tracks the target that is closest to you when you fire it. When your partner is in flamethrower range of said target, the results are often fratricidal. To keep ourselves from blowing eachother up, my friend and I started warning each other when we fired them. Just for the hell of it, we called them "Bananas". A typical conversation would often go thusly - "Banana up!" "Rodger that Banana uppage, where's it going?" "It's uh... Oh shit! It's coming back! Rogue banana! Rogue banana! Extreme banana danger! Get your ass outta there! Roll, roll!" "Damn, it just blew up our pack-o-dudes!" "Oh well, they were annoying anyway." "Yeah. Holy shit, did you see how far that ant just flew when I shot it?" ... You get the idea.
Conclusion
If you like B movies and simple run-and-gun games like Serious Sam and Duke Nukem, you'll love EDF 2017. It does exactly what it sets out to do - provide hours of pure brainless entertainment, which is so hard to find these days, especially on a console. You can probably find it for like $20 at a game store, and you can rent it at Blockbuster or Hollywood Video. Most games are "better" than EDF. Very few are truly more fun. |
| » Wild Western Adventure! |
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Hey everybody! Long time no post I know, I keep meaning to update this thing, but in the meantime I'll just continue using it as a social link-up tool :P I'm going to head out west in August and was wondering if anybody I know here was out there? I'll be in Phoenix from about the 4th through the 8th, then I'll be in San Francisco/San Jose/Oakland from the 9th through about the 14th, then Sacramento from the 15th through the 18th. Anyone around to say howdy to?
Jul. 21st, 2008 @ 08:50 pm
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| » AC! |
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I'm here, and if you are too, I'm at the DoubleTree in room 417, and you can call or text me at (931) 205-1545. Hope to see you!
Jun. 26th, 2008 @ 05:36 pm
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| » AC etc |
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Hey all, I'm going to Anthrocon this year, and want to see who all's gonna be there, see if I can meet up with folks. When I went in 2005, I roomed with a handful of people I knew, but only actually met Fizer in person spontaneously. Like to get more folks this time ^..^ By the way, you going to be there this time Fizer?
Also, for those of you into urban exploration, ask me about this photo...
Jun. 22nd, 2008 @ 12:45 pm
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| » PSA! |
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To everyone who likes to use MSN in "appear offline" mode - I can get your messages, but I can't respond. I'm not ignoring you, MSN just sucks like that. How come AIM can do it but MSN can't? Don't ask me, that's just how it is.
Mar. 13th, 2008 @ 05:31 pm
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| » A'djos all! |
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To everybody who hasn't heard, I'm going to be gone for the next week and a half, touring the Continent for a history class at 'Tech. I'll be in the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany until March 8th, so I'll catch you all later!
Feb. 27th, 2008 @ 03:11 am
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mandarax85's journal
