Life and Times of David L. Kenney

Sunday, Sunday.

2009-01-25T11:46:00.000-08:00

How's everybody been? "Ha!" You say "Nobody reads your blog!" Well poopoo to you nonbeliever, you're reading this aren't you? Ooh, burn.

Anyway I'm just chilling out, wasting away my Sunday afternoon before I have to go back to work tonight. I enjoy lazing around on Sunday. Almost nobody is open today, and anyone that is closes at 6pm, so there is not a whole lot of reason to exert myself. Don't you agree?

On to more serious matters. I regret to inform you all that the cat closest to my heart has passed away. She was an old dear, and I could see the end coming from a mile away. I wish you the best Skinny, enjoy your time in the great catbox in the sky.

Back in the saddle.

2009-01-04T04:13:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Courtney for reminding me I even have a Blog. Not sure how you found it yourself though.

Anyway, things are different for me now. I'm living on my own with a roommate, paying for rent and cable internet myself. So if it goes off it's all my fault for not paying. Got a new pc that can pull it's own weight as well as a PS3, feel free to add me internet people from the ether, PSN id is Celial.

Been workin' hardcore for a while now and money has been coming along pretty well. I'm not rich, but I'm managing. I'm going to try and keep this site up for a while yet, here's hoping I don't fall off the horse again.

Sup yo.

2008-05-26T05:33:00.000-07:00

Not much going on over here. The pollen count is ridiculous and my face is suffering immeasurably because of it. It's a strange feeling when you feel super sick and crappy, but really you're fine and just have pollen in your nasal cavity.

So I watched Juno last night. It's a good movie and Juno herself is incredibly likable. A very intelligent comedy, I'd recommend it as a fine time waster. If you like comedies that is. It's about this teenage girl named Juno that randomly decides to have sex with her best friend Bleeker. She gets pregnant, and has to find a family to adopt her unborn child. Hilarity ensues. Actually, not so much hilarity, not often was I laughing my ass off or anything. But I was smiling just about the whole time.

Keeping these posts relatively short for the time being. Just cuz I don't have much to talk about.

Alright so here is what happened.

2008-05-25T04:38:00.001-07:00

A few weeks back I wrote a ton of content out and set it all to post one a day so that I could walk away from my blogging duties for a little while and focus on work.

I screwed up. Somehow that didn't happen and I lost weeks worth of posts for my blog.

Now that I know what happened I should be able to get everything back on track and blogged. See you soon. I need sleep.

Oh finally, a day off

2008-05-05T04:57:00.000-07:00

It's been an awful long time since I blogged. Due almost entirely to the fact that work has kept me so busy I've had very little time to do much else except sleep and occasionally eat. Things are looking up though. Since I have started work I went from a state of system shock to more energy than I've had in what seems like forever.

I feel like I'm detoxing the lazy. All the aches and pains, they are just my body turning on machinery that hasn't had a use since I last worked overnight. I'm feeling challenged again, and that's a good thing. I bitch (inwardly) about how much it sucks, how much I want to just flip off my supervisors and walk out the door. But at the same time I want this. I want to come home after a 10 hour shift and prop up my feet. Rubbing the soreness out of my heels feels great. And nothing beats having your own money.

Pain

2008-04-24T13:00:00.000-07:00

Well I've worked for two nights now. The pain is quite horrible. My back and my feet got the worst of it, mostly my feet though. I'm not sure why I'm in so much pain, it doesn't make all that much sense to me. I have done this kind of work before and I never recall it hurting this much.

After my first night I came home (crawled through the window because somebody locked the door on me)crawled up to bed and stayed there until I had to get up and go back to work. I felt fine for the first couple hours, but around the time of the first break my feet start to ache. By the time second break rolls around my back is throbbing and I could hardly walk with my feet hurting so much.

After each break I can hardly move. It's like my muscles have stiffened and fused together to make one big muscle. All I really want is to sleep, it doesn't hurt so bad when I'm sleeping...

Well this is it.

2008-04-22T08:34:00.000-07:00

Tonight is my first night at work. It's taken a month since I was hired, but finally everything has fallen into place. I'm not going to lie, I'm very nervous. But that's just my anxiety. I have to try really hard to screw up a job like this (though to be completely honest I'm not sure what it is I'm going to be doing.) So I really should just relax. Breathe a bit. Innnn and ouuuut.

I don't understand why I have such a hard time with first days. Nobody expects anything from you yet. They know you have no idea where things go yet. And they are always nicest on the first day. I know I can do this, and I know I can do it well. After all, I've done practically the same thing for the past 3 years.

ANGER

2008-04-16T20:08:00.000-07:00

I've mentioned the Target dealio a few times now. Well, I finally got fed up with hearing the same story on the phone everyday. So I went to the actual store to see if they had anything different to say to me in person.

Oh boy did they have something to say. I approached the hidden door with a purpose, there were other employees about to go in just as I got there. They tried to stop me from going in, but I pushed my way inside. This guy kept asking, over and over "Can I help you?" but I just ignored him and pointed to the girl behind the desk/counter thing.

"Yes?" she asked, a bead of sweat formed on her brow. Slowly making its course along the side of her head, and through her unshaven beard. "Can I help you with something?"

"I took my drug test 3 weeks ago. Has it ever taken this long before?" My tone suggested I had no time for the runaround. I wanted answers.

"Yeah, you did." She admitted. "It was actually all my fault, I'm so sorry for the mix up."

"Mix up?" I asked, intrigued at this turn of events. "What mix up?"

"Oh.. uh..." she muttered "You see, when we issue the drug test, you need to have it done within 12 hours for it to count. Miss the deadline and you automatically fail."

"I did take it within a day. I got it done as soon as I could!" I was angry at this point, was she insinuating that I took too long to take the test? That's not possible, I was there at 10am the next morning. I would have gone after my interview, but they had already closed the labs for the night by then.

"Oh n-no! I know you did! But you see I was a bit flaky that day and put the wrong date into the database. So sorry." I said nothing, but motioned for her to continue. She responded with a dull, empty look.

"Can you fix it?" I said, "Or do I have to take the test again."

"Oh!" she exclaimed, as if waking from a daydream. It was no wonder she screwed up my application. "Of course, I'll call the drugtest company day and night until I get an answer, I swear it!"

"All right." I said, "Call me when you have an answer."

"I will sir, I'm so sorry about all this."

"I know... just fix it."

After that I left, shaking my head in disgust. After the many MANY times I've called. This is the first time I had heard about this shitty mistake.

I guess I failed my test after all. The one person who has never touched a drug in his life, failed a drug test.

Lovely.

This Blog Needs More Tenchu

2008-04-12T23:00:00.000-07:00

I've received a formal request for more Tenchu. I'm not sure why it's more Tenchu because I'm not sure I've written anything about it. (Have I?)

Tenchu is, in a word, AWESOME. I personally have this thing for stealth killing. If I am seen even once in my mission, I consider it a massive failure on my part and restart. This isn't all that smart really, as in the most recent Tenchu Z, you got more gold by letting the boss see you and killing him normally. I never did this. At the expense of doubling my gold for that kill I would sneak about in the shadows and murder my targets in complete secrecy.

I took great pride in what my Ninja looked like in that game. I bought each and every piece of armor and clothing and chose what I felt made me look coolest, even if that didn't make me look like much of a Ninja. Good times, I can still remember the blood fountains as they blossomed from the throats of my fallen foes.

One thing I hated about the game was innocents. They would wander around aimlessly screaming and making a ruckus if they caught sight of you or your deadly work. You can't kill them, that makes Rikimaru angry and he docks your pay. What a jerk, they are interfering with my art. They should be punished, to the full extent of my blade.

Another problem the critics had with the game was the fact that guards are stupid, and forget you ever existed after they let you slip away. What's the problem with this? Personally I don't want to be hounded incessantly by a generic samurai that got lucky enough to catch a glimpse of me. Maybe I want to slip away before he even realizes what he saw and then I can stab him in the neck. Granted, I've already stated I don't let them become fully aware of me without restarting the mission. But if a guard hears me run along the roof "What was that?!". I don't want him following me to the ends of the earth.

Let's say though, that I want to practice my non-sneaky combat. Let a guard see me so I can engage him mano a mano. Uh oh, things aren't going well. I try and escape, hide and let him go back to his route. If the guards were really smart, they'd follow me and I'd have no real way of escaping. But the way it's designed, I can pretend I'm really a ninja and *poof* I'm gone. They can't find any trace of my being there any longer and go back to being trained dogs and walk along predetermined paths again. I like it this way. Maybe that's just me. I can forgive sloppy programming as long as the gameplay makes up for it and the sloppiness doesn't make the game unplayable. My opinion anyway.

That's all I can really think about Tenchu at the moment. Sorry it wasn't a fanfic about Rikimaru and his protoge realizing that all these battles they've been through... They've created a bond that cannot be broken, a bond called love.

Fantasy, Science Fiction and Me

2008-04-11T16:37:00.000-07:00

I've always had a thing for writing. I dream up expansive worlds full of all sorts of magical beings. My problem is a sort of internal roadblock that keeps me from finishing what I start.

I'll get that itch, telling me to start writing. I write out my ideas on paper usually. Scribbling tales of lost empires and forgotten ruins in composition notebooks until my wrist burns and I need to stop. Sitting in front of a computer and writing is difficult for me, not because I can't type, but rather because I am easily distracted by the wonders of the internet. How many times can one man click the same web page in one day before he understands that it's not going to change anytime soon.

I think I'm going to draw out a schedule, a life with structure forces me to accomplish far more than freewheeling. I'll let you know how it goes.

So I want a new computer...

2008-04-10T14:01:00.000-07:00

It's been a long time coming, and I'm not quite there yet. But it is really time I updated my hardware to something a little more reasonable. Probably the biggest hint that it's time to move on and put my old Celeron D to pasture was when I was flipping through that package of ads that come with the Sunday paper and saw one ad for a Dell PC. It was one of those ultra tight budget PC's, the ones that cost you like $300 after rebate and come with a monitor and printer. Curiously I glanced at the stats on that rig and my face dropped. By all accounts this $300 computer was better than my PC. Every single piece of hardware was three times as good as what I had, for less than half the price I paid for mine.

Now when I look at my PC I don't see the old but formidable machine that has got me through years of happiness. I see an old nag, a breed of questionable pedigree that has seen it's last race. I don't plan to ever throw old Hachan away. She can surf the internet as well as any, and could always make a good backup in the future if her replacement needs to go in for some work or something particularly horrible happens. It's happened before, Hachan had a penchant for dying often and brutally, just like her namesake. And my previous model, with nonexistent memory and running off a first edition Win98, would often step in so I could at least read the news.

As for my new computer. I don't really know where to start. I've mentioned before that running the numbers comes up to about $3000-$4000 for what I consider a good, long lasting investment. Looking at those numbers though, and knowing myself as well as I do, I don't know if I could save up that long. There are a few standards I have as far as what needs to be in that new rig, and those are a copy of Windows Vista Ultimate, a BluRay Disc Drive, and at least 500gigs of space on my harddrive.

Whatever your feeling is on Sony, there's no question that BluRay is the new disc format, not putting a BluRay drive in my PC now is like not putting a DVD drive in my computer at the start of the millennium, it's just nonsensical.

I also don't really know who to buy through. I want something good now, and I can go and buy something great later. Granted if I knew somebody who knew how to put a computer together from scratch I could save a lot of money. I don't though, at least I don't think so...

Damn Cats

2008-04-09T14:55:00.000-07:00

So I spent most of yesterday cleaning my living room. I got it as clean as I can without industrial strength concoctions ritually created by a mad witch locked within the underearth in the deep down.

Basically the room is clean, but it still has that godawful pink paint flowery wallpaper. I need to do something about that. Anyway, I brought down my blankets and futon mattress and settled in for a night of Numb3rs on my HDTV.

When I woke up, it was because I felt something cold. A wet spot, just beside me on my mattress. Oh no.

I smelled it, and my fears were confirmed. Cat Piss.

I wanted to keep sleeping, I was having this dream about Al, Zoey and myself. We were renting out a boat or something. A school trip I guess. But after I realized my bed and blanket were soaked with ammonia I just wasn't going to be able to close my eyes anymore.

I sat up and sure enough there was some shit to go with the piss. It wasn't on my bed (thank god) but just about everywhere else. I can't tell you how angry I am about it. I spent at least six hours getting this room clean, only to have two cats shit eight times in the four hours I was asleep. That's four times each assuming they split the deed evenly. So I ended up spending an hour this morning cleaning everything up again, and another two washing my blanket. There isn't anything I can do about my mattress besides flip the fucker and hope for the best until I can get some pet odor cleaner to clean it out. Thing is I expect I'm going to have to do this every morning until my damn job finishes examining my urine and lets me start working so I can buy some new cat litter so they stop taking out their anger on my floor.

Furry bastards.

24-48 hours

2008-04-08T07:38:00.000-07:00

I called Target again today because I'm getting impatient. I asked about my drug test and they told me they are still waiting on the results, yay.

So I asked them "How long does it usually take the results to get back?"

"24-48 hours"

Whaaaat, I explained I've been waiting for 2 weeks now and she sounded surprised herself. She tried to transfer me so I could get some answers but then she told me they were going to email the drug testing company to see what's taking them so long.

Most people get past this step in less than 2 days? Really? I'm going on 3 weeks now dammit.

So close

2008-04-06T18:55:00.000-07:00

It's hard to think of things to post about when my life is as boring as it has been lately. All I can do it sit around twiddling my thumbs waiting for Target to finally call me and let me start working already.

It's really quite lame. They made me take a preemployment drug test two weeks ago now. They said I could be working at the end of the week. That was a LIE. They really meant in THREE weeks time. Maybe, assuming they get around to bringing me in for orientation this week.

I tried calling them the other day so I could get an update on what the hell is taking them so long. You know what they told me? "Sometimes certain people's tests take longer to process than others, your sample was particularly outstanding so we need to take more time in making sure we test it thoroughly."

Basically, my piss is outstanding.

WAAAGH

2008-04-02T22:31:00.000-07:00

I mentioned it briefly in one of my recent posts, but Warhammer: Onlinehas reached the point where we can preorder it. That's big news!

I was really hyped for the game a few months back but through sheer force of will I was able to suppress the longing so as to deal with the endless delays. I want the product to be the best it can possibly be coming out of the gate. But damn I want them to work faster!

Inevitably Erdrick was sadistic enough to let me know that preorders opened and with it a sweet collectors edition with all sorts of awesome stuff I'll probably just shove under my bed and forget about. But really that doesn't phase me, I still want that hardcover artbook and Greenskin figure!

Really the wait for this game has to be boring holes into the sanity of those that are frothing at the mere mention of a potential release date. I was free from that torture for a good 3 months at least. Now I can't stop thinking about it again. Damn you Erdrick...

One of the most pleasing things to me about this game is that they are throwing away most of the things I despise about MMO's. No longer will I be tasked with collecting 15 Rabbit Spleens only to find out that only 1 in 6 rabbits has one. Silly me, I thought spleens were a pretty common thing.

I could always make excuses for the rest of the body parts, specifically anything on the outside. It's POSSIBLE that during the course of the fight, you slashed up that wild bears hide so badly that it's pelt is unusable. That I can understand. But if you're collecting bear meat you cannot tell me that half the bears I kill are literally nothing but skin and bone. It's a small change, but it should make the game so much more bearable, pun not intended.

Another small change is that you carry a book, called the "Tome of Knowledge" of something. In it you record EVERYTHING that ever happens to you. Including monsters killed. Say you come across a farmer. He's mad at the rabbits that are eating all his lettuce. He wants you to kill 10 of them and he'll give you a pair of Rabbit Hide battle gloves. Thing is, you killed 40 of the little fuckers on the way there. Now if this was WoW, you'd turn around and go kill 10 more. But no, you just whip out your book, flip to "Voracious Rabbits" and be like, "BITCH! I already killed FORTY!" and he'll hand over the gloves.

Now of course the game is still in development (*cri*) so things are bound to change still. But from what little we know, it's going to be awesome.

Now because of my recent resurgence of interest, I'm back to plotting a new PC. Seems like I need to spend like $3k to get the machine I really want without cutting too many corners. Granted that includes a nice monitor and sound system but damn, thats going to take a few months of saving. Anybody know of a good site to use to build a custom PC on the cheap?

Command & Conquer 3

2008-04-01T14:27:00.000-07:00

So I've had this game since it came out. I love C&C, ever since I watched somebody play the original over a friends house when I was in 3rd grade.

I was instantly hooked on the idea of the game. But not so much the strategy. I loved crippling the enemies forces and then building. I wouldn't stop building until I had a force under my command so vast, that the ancient video processors built into my machine were strained so far that just commanding my force to attack was played in slow motion. I could just imagine how the poor GDI power plant workers must have felt as they futilely tried to patch together a fighting force when suddenly, through the fog of war, a thundering acclaim would break the stillness. They would stop their work, to stare into the unseen, unable to grasp the horrifying truth.

Suddenly, a patrol of NOD Buggies would break through the line of sight. Ten, maybe a dozen of the futuristic motorbikes would descend upon the meager line of defense. But NOD Buggies are faster then any other unit. The true horror would appear next. Hundreds of troops, riflemen, grenadiers, rocket squads and many more would swarm the base as they scrambled to produce something to stem the tide.

I was a cruel leader though. I would grow bored watching the weak try and escape as my men ruthlessly gunned them down. Oh no, I needed more. That's where Nukes came in. I'd laugh maniacally as the 1000 megaton package made its way to the front lines.

I never scored very high, too many lost units, but I had one hell of a time doing it. My average time on a given map was somewhere in the neighborhood of 4 hours, with a par of about 15 minutes.

It should be only natural then, that C&C3 would be more of that same wonderful times. But it isn't. The pieces are there, but I just can't seem to get that same feeling as I used to. A shame really. As I would love to follow Kane in his precocious little madness.

If you go down to the woods today...

2008-03-30T21:25:00.000-07:00

You're sure of a big surprise.
If you go down to the woods today
You'd better go in disguise.

For ev'ry bear that ever there was
Will gather there for certain, because
Today's the day the teddy bears have their picnic.

Ev'ry teddy bear who's been good
Is sure of a treat today.
There's lots of marvelous things to eat
And wonderful games to play.

Beneath the trees where nobody sees
They'll hide and seek as long as they please
Cause that's the way the teddy bears have their picnic.

If you go down to the woods today
You'd better not go alone.
It's lovely down in the woods today
But safer to stay at home.

For ev'ry bear that ever there was
Will gather there for certain, because
Today's the day the teddy bears have their picnic.

Picnic time for teddy bears
The little teddy bears are having a lovely time today
Watch them, catch them unawares
And see them picnic on their holiday.

See them gaily gad about
They love to play and shout;
They never have any care;

At six o'clock their mummies and daddies,
Will take them home to bed,
Because they're tired little teddy bears.

We need a metal remix of this song. I think it'd be awesome to have Blind Guardian do it.

Another Day, Another 360

2008-03-30T08:26:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I fail to comprehend the sheer scope of the retardation at Gamestop. I have quite a few friends that work at the store I frequent the most. Good people that I enjoy buying games from, discussing the faults of the industry, the latest gossip. All in good fun. But then they have to go and hire those ones that are just plain... well, you'll see what I mean.

I walked into Gamestop last night and put my grocery bag full of broken 360 components on the counter, handed Jayson the warranty and simply said "Red Ring". He nodded, checked the serials and went to grab me a new one. Once he came back I handed him a couple of games not worth keeping anymore and told him to use the money to get me a new warranty with it. Apparently they just don't offer protection for 360's anymore and I couldn't get a warranty.

"Alright" I said, "Put $10 down on Warhammer: Online CE, and the rest on the card, I'm gonna look around. Please watch over my new 360 for a bit."

He told me it was no problem and handed me the card. The whole process couldn't have been more smooth. A model employee. I walked around for a bit before settling on a messenger kit for the 360. Jason was busy, so I turned to the other one, he seemed harmless from the looks of him, but I just didn't like him for some reason. I spoke.

"Messenger kit please" I handed him the card. "And use whatever is left on my Warhammer preorder." I handed him the receipt showing the preorder. There was just enough money on the card to pay for the kit, and like 52 cents left after that for the preorder, not much, but I just wanted to zero out the card.

He smiled and grabbed the messenger kit. I smiled back politely.

"That will be $64, the card covers half, so you only owe $32"

Wait, what?

"$32 for the preorder, and $32 for the messenger kit."

"Christ no! Use the card to pay for the kit, then use whatever is left on the preorder!"

"But sir, that will only leave 52 cents for Warhammer."

"I know that, I just don't want a card with 52 fucking cents on it!"

After that he corrected it and tried to put the change on the preorder, but he just couldn't figure out how. So I told him to just toss it.

Next I told him to grab me my 360 so I could head home. He walked over and grabbed my old one in its bag.

"Here you are. Next please!"

"NO! The one in the BOX!"

He apologized, and Jason pointed him to my 360. He grabbed it, and rung it up...

"That will be $426"

At this point Jason must have seen the smoke billowing from my ears because he stepped in and handed me my stuff and I left.

That's all. Seeya

Hmm

2008-03-28T18:03:00.000-07:00

I need a camera, one that takes pictures cleaner than that last one. Hard to understand, since my phone used to take strikingly clear images. Oh well.

Since my X360 is dead, I don't have much to do tonight. I guess I'll watch more Numb3rs or something. Yeah, that sounds like a plan.

Come tomorrow however, I'm going to go and cash in on that warranty I told you about earlier. Get my new 360, whine about the shitty DRM and then just keep playing.

I'm also going to pre-order the special collectors edition of Warhammer: Online. Let me find the pic...

There she is. Beautiful.

Might be hard to see all the contents with the black background, but it comes with all sorts of goodies and in game items too. Like exclusive heads that won't really impress early on, but a year from release when there are way more people than the early adopters they'll be rare. And it will make me feel better about myself having some new player be like. DUDE, WHERE YOU GET HEAD LIKE THAT?!? And I'll be like, what? This head? And just act all coooool.

Actually I doubt anyone will care. I'm a sucker for art books though.

Also, wtf. I just spell checked "coooool." because firefox was complaining about it being wrong and I decided to see what it recommended. It suggested "Coolies". Coolies? When did that become a real word. Jesus.

Damn It

2008-03-28T17:56:00.000-07:00

I knew it was coming.

Old internet bad, New internet better? Xbox woes...

2008-03-28T11:37:00.001-07:00

Much to my chagrin, my internet access for the past week or so has been nil. The modem upstairs in the main office decided to, I dunno, hang itself. Stupid thing just blinked lights at me in an angry fashion to alert me to some internal problem. I tried to turn it off for a while and give it a break, but when I turned it back on even the blinking lights were absent. We held a service, and called Verizon.

We just got the new box today, and so far it doesn't seem to be much better in terms of wireless access. I'm still connected at like 58% and nothing I do changes that. Still, I am connected, which is more than I can say about yesterday.

While my internet was out of commission I was spending a lot of time playing my 360 games. I was particularly enjoying a fresh run at Oblivion when it started to happen. Major slowdown here, a lockup there. Then the freezes started coming.

These are the telltale signs of a RRoD. It's coming soon. I'm sure if I was able to stay on the machines menus for more than 5 minutes before it freezes I would have one already.This is not good.

I looked through my paperwork and found my warrenty, I have 2 weeks left on it. That means my 360 has lasted just under 1 year. Dammit.

Fiiine I'll blogggg

2008-03-19T16:51:00.000-07:00

Don't worry, nobody's really pulling my leg to blog or anything. I just haven't really had anything to talk about lately. My life was so boring this last week I just didn't bother subjecting you to it's monotonous nature. Now that I've stocked up on some happenings for the past week I think I can put together a half decent post.

Last we met I mentioned that my internet was screwing up. This is undeniably true. Zoey keeps trying to tell me to call tech support or something to get it fixed, but really I don't care enough about it to get myself into a conversation with techies. Seems like no matter what you say with those people they think you're retarded for not knowing that you attach the hyper conduit to the continuum transfunctioner on the 12th eve of the moon when the sky is darkest and the dead walk the Earth in order to get your VCR to stop blinking 12:00 all day. Now I can sympathize with the poor stiffs that screwed their life up so bad they need to sit in a dark room in India making 3 grains of rice an hour taking phone calls from rednecks and their ilk that can't seem to figure out where the power button on their new (read: stolen)laptop is. I'd be jaded too! That and I'm lazy. Mostly lazy.

I also failed to mention that I'm now 22 years old. Of course if you read my profile you'd know that, seeing as it tells you right there that my birthday was March 11th. For my birthday I got a few gifts. Here's the layout.

1) A copy of Elite Beat Agents that came with a red DS case, 2 screen cleaers and 3 extra styli from Zoey

2) A pair of sneakers from my Mom

3) 3 T-shirts, 2 pairs of pants and 1 pair of running pants as well as $25 in a card from Grandma

4) The opportunity to use my sisters Gamespot discount she somehow gets from working at a bookstore from Cassandra

5) A limited edition copy of Assassins Creed and Lost Odyssey from well... basically me because I traded in some doubles of games I had.

6) A Feather Pen stylus from Nintendo. This doesn't really count because I only got it because I registered Phantom Hourglass a month ago.

That's it for my birthday haul. It's actually a lot better than it had been for a few years prior to that.

I also apparently got that job at Target I applied for weeks ago and gave up on. Somehow I failed to fill in a few spots or something? I'm not really sure I believe that, but I don't see why they would lie to me. We'll find out tomorrow when I go and check it out.

Assassins Creed Review

2008-03-19T15:21:00.000-07:00

I finished Assassins Creed the other day and managed to get everything in the game. Which means I'm finally qualified to review it. Let's take a look.

Assassins Creed is available for the Xbox 360, PS3 and now the PC. I wouldn't recommend the PC version, as its requirements make Crysis look like Solitaire. Not quite so bad, but you get my point.

The first thing you'll notice about the game is the way Altair (pronounced All-tie-ear) moves it's very fluid, almost as if you aren't directly controlling him but more guiding his actions. Sort of like Ico if you ever played that. The game refers to this as the "puppeteer" system. With A controlling his legs, B his free hand, X his weapon hand and Y for his head. Basically use X to use your weapon, B to gently move people in your way, A to blend into the crowd and Y to enter first person view. Holding the Right Trigger (RT) will switch to high profile mode which turns all those controls into ninja assassin versions of themselves. Blend turns into sprint, attack turns into deadly counters, push turns into grab etc.

You don't need to control every single action Altair does, just holding RT and A will send Altair climbing buildings and jumping across rooftop beams with ease, making you feel like a badass as these actions flow from your deft finger movements.

The graphics vary from pretty awesome to jaw dropping. The first time you climb the citadel tower in Acre and swivel your view across the landscape seeing every building in the entire city (and if you're eagle-eyed enough, spotting hidden flags on rooftops you may have missed) clear as day without so much as a hint of the distance fog of games of old your jaw will most certainly drop.Then you jump the 500ft off the tower into a tiny wagon full of hay you can just barely make out without so much as a scratch on you. Make sure you jumped off the right side though, no hay means a dead assassin to be scraped off the concrete.

Combat seems to be one of the main problems people had with this game. Most people are content to just sit and wait for each enemy to attack and counter each hit for a kill. That's all well and good, but it can easily get repetitive if you do that. I thought combat was a blast, but I spent most of my time in battle switching between weapons and pulling off cool moves. I don't ignore counters, they are a lot of fun, but there is so much more, guard breaks, combo kills, throwing knives, short blade, hidden blade, long blade, grabs, counters, counter counters, disarms, etc. Sure it's a little harder when you don't keep countering, forcing enemies to attack one at a time and actually go on the offensive, but at least the combat feels fresh like that. You feel so incredibly awesome tearing enemies apart, countering any attacks they try to make and picking off further away enemies with throwing knives and coming out unharmed, or even better, sending the remaining few guards scrambling away to escape the white-robed demon. Then chasing them down and planting a blade in the back of his skull.

Another problem I've heard people talking about is glitches. I haven't heard specific glitches people have encountered, because frankly they don't say. I can say from personal experience that I've come across two glitches. The first was when I was trying to escape a guard and was killed when trying to jump up a corner in Masyaf. I fell face first into the wall and promptly fell through the game map to the glowing embrace of afterlife below. I only encountered it once, and I was already dead when it happened. The second glitch happened twice in the city of Damascus. As I entered the Assassins Bureau the person behind the desk is supposed to acknowledge my presence and ask for the information I gathered on my target. He didn't though. I just walked in and out a few times until he finally started to speak. It happened again after I finished the hit and was trying to check in afterward at the Bureau. Once I left Damascus I never encountered a glitch again though.

Finally the ending, people hated the ending. Hate hate hate hate, with a dash or RAGE. Honestly, I didn't mind it so much. Altair's story is wrapped up nicely, the only cliffhanger is with Desmond Miles, Altair's descendant. His story is just beginning and honestly, you got just enough info to stave off any pressing concerns about what's going on without unwrapping the entire story in one game. There's a lot of room for a sequel, and if you look carefully you should have no problems finding lots of hints on where the next game is going to take us (My guess, Japan).

All in all, I've praised the game enough. The game isn't perfect, and there's a chance I just got lucky with glitches. One thing that hinders the game is that there's really not a lot of room for replay value. I restarted the game about halfway through so I could redo things I screwed up my first time with my improved assassin skills. Redoing those early missions again was tolerable at best, and besides collecting the 420~ flags and murdering the 60 templars hidden around the game world there's not much to do once you've finished everything. It took me almost exactly one week from the day I bought the game to the day I got 1000/1000 gamerscore, and I split my time playing with Lost Odyssey (review to come soon) trying to make the game last longer.It's also a short-lived experience, with only 9 targets in the game spread amongst 3 cities cut in 3 pieces each.

For my final word I say the game shines the first time you place it in the disctray. And throughout the experience you'll continue to mutter to yourself just how cool that move you pulled was. After you beat everything though, there's not much incentive to go back and do it all again. And the lack of a second save file is just shameful these days.

I give Assassins Creed for the 360/PS3/PC four stoic-looking red stick men with oversized heads out of five.

Bah, internet

2008-03-15T05:10:00.000-07:00

My internet's been screwy lately. Rendering me wholly incapable of staying on long enough to blog this past week.If I can manage to keep it on later today I'll tell you what I've been up to.

Haunted Ms. Pac Man Machine

2008-03-11T09:32:00.000-07:00

Saw this on Kotaku:

Everyone knows that Ms. Pac Man is filled with ghosts, four of them to be specific. But a fifth ghost?

That's what a Boston-area Craigslister claimed when he was contacted to ask why he was giving away a Ms. Pac Man cabinet for free.

Someone on ArcadeControls.com contacted the cabinet owner for the explanation, which involves poltergeist, a crying 3-year-old and a "dark figure."

I sent a message to see if anyone had claimed it and if they had any pics. I got a response back saying that it was available but no pictures. I emailed back asking why they where getting rid of it for free. Here is the response I got.

"When I bought this machine the previous owner told me it was haunted. I laughed, didn't believe him, because I didn't believe in that sort of thing.

Got a bad feeling the day it was delivered. Game started on its own in the middle of the night several times, had a tech service the machine three times (very pricy housecalls), but he couldn't find the problem.

Three-year old daughter started talking about the "man in the video machine", didn't think much of it, then my wife saw a dark figure move across the basement and into the machine. She ran out of the house, would not return until the machine was out of the house. I moved it to my business garage (two miles away), and several times I have opened the garage to find tools missing or scattered, things tipped over.

This is why I am giving away a $1000 machine for free."

Now mock me if you will, but I'm not fucking with this. I mean, I live near Boston so if I wanted this cabinet I'd take it. But hey, The first person to die in a horror movie is the retard that doesn't believe the stories and rushes into the haunted house to look cool. I'm not going to be that guy, rather be a safe pansy thank you very much.

Pe'k At Chu

2008-03-10T21:43:00.000-07:00

So I was playing more brawl. And turns out my best character thus far is none other than Pikachu.

I was playing with the Wiimote held sideways, a task thought impossible by me just yesterday, and I was destroying anyone that dare take me on. My luck likely wont hold up, but for what it's worth that mouse is pretty tough.

Achievement Unlocked!

2008-03-09T23:08:00.000-07:00

I'll admit, I'm a bit of an achievement whore. I'm not so bad that I'll go and buy a game just so I can get those sweet, sweet gamerpoints, but it does weigh heavily with my multi-platform game choices.

For me, personally, If a game is released for both the PS3 and the Xbox 360, I will jump on the 360 version and not even think about it. This is partly because I don't even have a PS3, but if I did, I would still make the same choice. And the reason for that is... Right! Achievements.

The difference between the two systems is small enough that any game that goes multi-platform is going to play and look pretty much the same on both (though to be quite honest the PS3 versions tend to fare a bit worse, or they used to at least)So really it comes down to a few things. Extras, controller preference, and hard drive dependency.

For the 360 version, you always get those Achievements adding up to a total of 1000p for a disc game, and 200 for Xbox Live Arcade Games. Should a company decide to release downloadable content, they are allowed to extend the limit to 1250p so that the new material can have some achievements attached to it. The achievements don't have any tangible purpose, but they are universal and make for great bragging rights.

On the PS3 side, the extras are less guaranteed. They tend to get 360 games ported over that were released a couples years ago but with the extra content you would have had to download on the 360 already on the bluray disc. The extra space on the disc also allows for some nifty addins, like more full TV shows in the Darkness, or the movie Hardboiled being packed in with whatever that Chow Yun Fat game is.

The 360 is not HDD dependent in any of its games (Except FFXI, but thats the odd man out). This is so you can buy the much cheaper HDD-challenged versions of the 360 and a memory card and just jump in. This means slightly longer load times than the PS3 assuming you chose to install the game to the HDD. Unfortunately certain games like DMC4 (Devil May Cry 4) force PS3 users to sit through a 30-odd minute download for what seems like a quarter of a second of time saved on loadtimes. Other games probably save a significantly larger amount of time than this of course, but I don't have any evidence to back that up.

Penny-Arcade.com

The last thing is controller preference. I can't speak for anyone else, but I feel the 360 controller is damn near perfect. It's taken the conventional ideas of what a controller is and refined it into something more. The PS3 controller is just a wireless PS2 controller without rumble, they'll be adding that feature in later models of the controller. Technically the DualShock3 is out, but only in Japan at the moment. So import one if you must feel the magic right fucking now.

Woo, long winded post. All I wanted to say was I finally got every single achievement in a game.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion 1250/1250

Woohoo!

Brawl

2008-03-09T19:08:00.000-07:00

So Brawl released today finally. Been playing matches with my brother off and on all day. I'm still not sure who "my character" is yet. I was thinking Pit long before it released, and he is a good character, just... not my type of character. We'll see as we unlock more characters and I can get a feel for everybody. Toodles.

Comment away!

2008-03-08T03:39:00.000-08:00

I figured out how to make it possible to comment without joining Blogger. Just click on the "x comments" link on the bottom of the post and type away. You can also click on the post title where there is a big ENTER POST box.

I had to make it so you can post anonymously, but I'd rather if you took a few seconds to type in your name at the very least. After all, I want to know who you are!

Oops

2008-03-08T03:04:00.000-08:00

Sorry I missed a post yesterday, I slept right through it! I'll post a couple times today to make up for it.

First things first, last night (as in, before I went to bed and slept right through March 7th) I finally sat my ass down and finished up the Mages Guild questline in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. I kind of cheated, as I never really used a spell. And since it's the MAGES guild, I probably should have. But I noticed early on that a stealth arrow to the face will kill any mage a lot quicker and quieter than a spell would.

So I trudged sneakily through all the dungeons in the questline, arrow knocked on my Perfect Madness Bow as I sniped each and every Necromancer that dared glow purple with life essence. It was a lot of fun watching enemies 120ft away, glowing purple because of the "Detect Life 120ft" enchantment on my Gray Fox Cowl slump over as the purple glow left their now lifeless corpse. One shot, one kill. My aim amazed even myself as I went to collect my arrows from the corpse. Oftentimes the arrow would be stuck between the eyes, or on the left side of their torso, straight through the heart.

The only time I did cast a spell was when those damn Gloom Wraiths appeared. Bastards are immune to physical force so the only thing that could take them out was a spell, or an enchanted weapon. Since I never bothered to enchant my bow, I fired off the spell the guild gave me when I reached the Wizard rank. Took a few seconds to kill them, but it always did so within one shot.

Thanks to finally getting that guild finished I'm finally the head of every faction in the game. I'm probably the first Arch-Mage in Cyrodiil's history to get there wearing heavy armor and brandishing a sword as opposed to robes and a staff. But whatever works.

Damn you Gen

2008-03-08T02:23:00.000-08:00

That music is going to be stuck in my head for weeks now. Ike and Falco are not amused.

Wow, you can sleep that long?

2008-03-06T21:59:00.000-08:00

I went to bed last night around... oh I don't know, 4-5am. Didn't wake up until 7pm! Now if I do the math out I got around 12-15 hours of sleep. As it's really hard to sleep when my youngest siblings are being ferreted out the door to school I probably didn't actually fall asleep until around 7am. But still, I never saw daylight today! Just darkness unto darkness.

On the bright side all that sleep finally broke me from my sickness. All I've got left is a runny nose and a stuffy head. We'll see how I feel in the morning shall we?

Still sick, feeling gross.

2008-03-05T19:45:00.000-08:00

I'll spare you the details, suffice to say my body hates me. More sleep is in the pipe for me, hopefully I'll get passed this soon.

Anyway, I'm sure you've heard that Gary Gygax died the other day. Truly a great man that any lover of RPGs anywhere owes a great deal of respect to. Hell if it wasn't for him, there wouldn't be RPGs at all. So go bury a 20sided die in respect. I did.

Sick and Tired

2008-03-04T14:55:00.000-08:00

No, I'm not sick and tired of anything in particular. I am literally sick. And tired. It all started a few days ago when my sister Catherine came down with this nasty cold. She spent most of the day hanging around me asking me to get her stuff. I didn't care, she was sick so I figured I'd help her out a bit.

All she wanted me to do was get her a pop now and again and let her watch me play more Eternal Sonata anyway, so I let her. Same thing last night, except she spent most of her time hanging around my mom. When my mom eventually said "I'm going to get sick" I realized that my throat did feel tighter than usual. I knew what was coming, and by the time I went to bed, my body was really starting to feel it. Sore throat, runny nose, headache, blurry vision, the works. So I went to bed and slept.

The next morning when my mom was yelling to get John and Catherine off to school I was forced awake. I leaned over and took a tissue to blow my nose since I couldn't breathe through my nose. It was incredible how much crap came out. My nose felt cleaner than it had in years right after, and I got a few really nice breaths in. But I could feel it closing again in real time. My throat was the thing of nightmares. light breathing was fine, just a light tickling that I can deal with. But if I opened my mouth to talk I was in for a world of pain. My whole throat rattled and vibrated with each syllable I uttered. It hurt so bad that when my beloved called to say good morning I had to cut it short trying to get by on as few words as possible so as to avoid the pain. Even explaining the sheer torture I went through with each consonant was hardly worth it. So I just told everyone I was sick. You'd think word would travel quickly in a household. But I was interrupted many times during the day for varying reasons.

Eventually I did sleep. And I had a really interesting dream. It was such an odd concept. Basically I was a Dragoon in training. At school. But I was also a Space Marine cadet. Most of it is fuzzy, but one of my fellow space cadets learned of a spot where giant alien worms were in abundance, and there was a safe spot where they couldn't reach us. So if we went there, and killed as many of the unending waves of alien earthworms as we could bring enough ammo to handle, we would level up enough to make the rest of the semester a breeze. It worked like a charm. We gained 15 levels in the span of an hour. By the time we left, we were no longer lacking in levels. On our way out I saw a door that was a little bent around the edges.

"Don't go in there" my classmate warned me "The Urdon behind that door are too dangerous for us, only a few teachers are strong enough to handle them."

I didn't object to the warning and off we went. When we rejoined classes our special training regiment really paid off. We were far stronger than before, and for the first time we got an "A" in our classes for the day. Needless to say that such a positive response told us we should go back to the Thresher Maw camp to get more powerful. Maybe even powerful enough to enter the yearly student tournament.

The same guy won that tournament every year. He was so untouchable that the idea of beating him never crossed our minds. We just wanted to get into the top 4 or something. That kind of recognition was enough to get us a bonus upon graduation. Turns out that guy doesn't like the idea of fair play (do they ever?) and had learned of our secret training rituals. So he followed us one day, and set a trap to make sure we could never catch up to him.

Our training wasn't going as ludicrously fast as it was the first time we went there, but we weren't under leveled anymore. We still were gaining experience at a steady clip and our progress never faltered again. We were acing all our classes and that was good enough. After one especially fruitful afternoon we ran out of medpaks and decided to call it a night. As we walked back to the main shuttle we found the door locked, and the shuttle missing. While we were trying to figure out what to do I thought I saw something move in the hallway. I decided to investigate while my classmate stayed behind tryijng to call the shuttle back. I wandered down the hallway and found a small glowing kitten. I sighed to myself and picked the little guy up.

"You little bastard, you scared the shit out of me, you know that?" I said to the glowing cat. I looked back to see my classmate but he was just beyond the curve. So I looked back to the cat and found... Nothing. The cat was gone. I was holding in my hands a spell scroll of some sort. I put the scroll away, a little weirded out and started walking back. That's when I noticed the door to the Urdon area. Or rather, the fact that the door was gone. Laying in a pile of scrap metal on the inside of the room.

Nervously I looked into the room, the thick metal walls slashed to ribbons by some disturbed creature. Backing away, I ran to where my classmate was working with the door. I could only hope he had it opened and was waiting impatiently for my return. I rounded the corner and froze in my tracks when I saw a large monstrosity, the Urdon I could only imagine, walking slowly towards my classmate, Frozen in the far corner, unable to find a way out of his predicament. I had something of a flashback, and I saw the glowing cat again. I also saw the spell scroll and I pulled it out without hesitation. I read the indecipherable words aloud to myself and with a flash of bright light, I realized something in me had changed. For lack of a better term, I took a level in badass.

I slowly raised my head, my eyes shone with an intensity unknown to me before as I clasped my hands together and produced a lance made of both fire and ice, bound together by thunder, forged in the darkest pits of my soul.

I lunged at the beast, who now had my full attention and slashed at me with one of his many clawed limbs. I ducked beneath the attack and lunged upward into his underarm. Following through with the attack I tore the limb completely out of its socket. Wounded, the beast was pissed.

Attacking with its remaining limbs and leaving me no chance to rest, each blow was aimed to kill. I ducked and dodged every attack with relative ease at first, but it was not long before I began to tire. I had to find some way to get close to finish the beast. Then, I saw it. After a particularly wide swing the Urdon had left its left side completely exposed. I rolled to the right, planted my feet and put all of my weight into one desperate lunge.

The beast saw me roll and attempted to stop me, but it was too late, his weight was shifted the complete other way, and there was no chance for it to get me in time. I felt it's skin tear, it's muscles shred, it's bone crack and finally, it's heart stop. With a final whimper, the great Urdon fell to the ground. It's eyes managed to focus on me just once, they showed great fear. They looked at me as if I was a monster, coming to destroy everything it had ever known. And as they lost there luster, I felt sadness. I helped my classmate to his feet. He was in complete shock, unable to work his mouth into producing words.

We walked together, back to the Urdons cell. We spent some time examining the walls, trying to figure out how it was being fed. We never found how it got food, but we did find a nest, full of long dead baby Urdon. After that, everything blacked out.

Several weeks had passed since the incident, and the tournament was upon us. Despite repeated attempts to resummon my lance, I had been thus far unable to do so. I still had unimaginable strength though. I fought my way through the tournament fairly uncontested. And eventually made it into the final 4. The other 3 were my classmate, that jerk that set us up (nobody knew about that, not even us) and a certain special Red Mage I had a thing for.

The first round was me vs. the Red Mage. The fight lasted for nearly an hour before I finally succumbed to her deft attacks. That's right, I lost. To a girl. But hey, she kissed me before I was escorted out to the medical ward to get patched up.

I didn't get to watch the next match between my friend and the reigning champion. But I did hear about a "horrible accident". Not long after, they brought my friend to the medical ward and they tried their best, but he was gone. Killed by the champion.

They were calling it an accident. But I knew better. I made my way to the Red Mages room and beg her not to fight, to forfeit the match and let him win. She was as stubborn as I was though, and refused to back down from the fight. She thanked me for the concern and asked me to leave.

The next day the tournament championship started. I watched as she fought with elegance and grace, returning each blow she took with 3 more of her own. It seemed as though she would win. I sat back in my chair and sighed with relief. Then, it happened. It seemed as though the wind stopped blowing. I looked down at the fight, and I noticed a flash in the champions eyes. He grabbed the Red Mage by the throat and punched her 3 times in the gut with his free hand. He threw her to the ground and lifted his great sword high over his head. He was going to end this with one blow. As she layed there, totally unguarded, trying to regain her breath, he started to swing.

I didn't recall doing it, but before I knew it I was at the large fence blocking spectators from interfering from the fight. My head spun for a moment, I saw the glowing cat. Then somebody whispered in my ear...

jump...

I stood back for a moment, looked up at the 30 foot fence, closed my eyes and leaped with all my strength.

When I opened my eyes, I was in the air above the fence. I landed in the ring. Grabbed hold of the Red Mage and leaped again to safety, just as his sword carved a 6inch gash deep into the ring. He looked at me, hate in his eyes. And something else. They were dark, too dark. He pulled his sword loose from the rubble and brought it to bear. I knew what to do. I clasped my hands together and brought forth my mighty lance. It started to rain, and I do believe some heavy metal started playing in the background.

He lunged at me, and I sidestepped it. I swung my lance at his back and cut deeply. He turned to me again, his teeth clenched in anger or pain. And started a flurry of attacks. I parried, blocked and dodged each attack. Slicing away his armor when the opportunity presented itself. Obviously outmatched, he called upon some dark power. It corrupted his dark heart beyond any remnants of humanity. And what was left wanted me dead.

He kept up his flurry of attacks, but he was too fast for me now. It was as if he never tired. I backed away while desperately blocking as many attacks as I could manage. Suddenly he stopped attacking, howling in pain. The Red Mage was laying on her side across the arena. Readying another spell to blast at the monstrous champion. Not one to take an opportunity for granted, I used the chance to power my own attack. Thrusting an innumerable amount of times deep into the soft tissue of his torso. Finally, with one final blow, my lance began to glow brightly. I lunged it deep into the monsters heart. Light began to shine from his eyes and mouth as he howled in pain. He dropped to his knees, then to his side, dead.

The crowd erupted into cheers. And I woke up.

That was my dream. Surprisingly vivid. See you all tomorrow.

What's Dave been playing?

2008-03-03T11:21:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm glad you asked! You did ask right? No? Oh well.

I've been playing Eternal Sonata lately. And by god the game is beautiful. That's one of the main things the game has going for it in spades. The sewers you run through early in the game are so nice, I've actually heard two different people on completely different occasions say, upon viewing them, that they "Are nice enough to live in". That's a good thing then. Because people do live there. A group of orphans that one of the main characters, Allegretto, takes care of holes up in the sewers waiting for Retto and Beat to bring them more bread stolen from the local bakery in the port city of Ritardando. Makes you wonder then, how they manage to survive without Retto and Beat around when they go off on the grand adventure the game centers around. Hmm...

Another awesome thing about the game is the battle system. It starts off really simple. You have infinite time to think about what you want to do, then you amble on over to the back of the enemy (frontal attacks are prone to being guarded) and start whacking away with either regular attacks or a special attack that changes whether you are standing in the sunlight or the shade. Then you finish the first dungeon, and it throws you for a loop when your party "levels up". This is different than the usual character level ups you are used to. This is your whole party at once, and it completely changes the battle system little by little.

The difference between Party Level (PL) 1 and 2 is far from negligible. Setting PL2 means that when you use regular attacks, you store up "echoes" or combo points if you prefer, which will power up the strength of the special attacks mentioned earlier. You can build up 4,8,12,16,24 and 32 echoes. Building up 24 or 32 echoes causes your character to say a little catch phrase before using a super powered version of the special attack you have set. Any character can build up echoes. But when anybody uses a special attack, they are all used up. Eventually you unlock PL3, which reduces the amount of time you are allowed to think about your actions to a mere 3 seconds, but allows you to set 2 special attacks and up to 20 items to use in battle. PL4 is more exciting, unlocking the ability to use "Harmony Chains" a skill which allows for ridiculous combos as it lets you use BOTH of your special attacks in the same combo so long as you built up at least 24 echoes prior to activating your first special. It also lets you set 30 items for use in battle and further reduces your tactical time from 3 seconds to 1 second. And reduces your battle time to 4 seconds from the original 5. you'll be doing so much damage that you won't really notice anyway. I'm not finished with the game yet so I don't really know what PL5 and PL6 bring to the table. But from what I understand they do more of the same. Reduce time, add more item slots, change up battle mechanics etc.

The one big weakness for the game is the storyline, which on occasions can feel like it droning on forever. A standout scene is when a certain character that you don't care about at all is dying from a stab wound, and has a ridiculously long monologue where she rolls around on the floor, gets up to look out the window, walks across the floor to get a bird, writes a note, sets the bird flying to deliver said note and eventually dies after what feels like a 15 minute long scene of her yammering on about how she is unloved or something. It's poorly written, poorly executed and out of place. The fact it is immediately followed by another 20 minute long scene that has nothing to do with the story is just too much. Granted these points are few and far between, but when you hit one, you know it.

When this game was released, there was not much choice for RPGs on the 360. And this is only now being rectified. However this game should not be overlooked. The art alone makes it worth playing if that's your thing.

I give the game four stoic-looking red stick men with oversized heads out of five.

Job Thing Redux

2008-03-03T11:12:00.001-08:00

Well I woke up this morning to my Mom calling me telling me I had to get up and get dressed, I had a job interview apparently. So I got up and grumbled to myself about how much this job is going to suck and how I don't want it and I should purposely sabotage my own interview.
(Aren't I a dear in the morning?) Well I got dressed and waited the 3 or so minutes for my Grandfather to pick me up and bring me to my "interview".

I should have known better, nobody just gets an interview right off. I went and filled out an application. Then came home. That's it, no interview, no job, nada. Can't say I'm terribly surprised, but I kind of expected that the job was going to be mine.

I managed to get a few details about the gig though. I'd be working 20 hour weeks. 2 hours every morning Monday through Friday and 2 hours in the afternoon. I'm free in between, before and after. It pays $8.50 an hour and they provide all transportation. The pay is crap, but hey, it's money.

If I get the job, I'll do it. But I'm going to keep my eyes open for an exit strategy. I need to start making enough money to support myself and possibly Zoey when she moves up. Not going to happen on $8.50 an hour.

The Job Thing

2008-03-02T22:56:00.000-08:00

I didn't mention it in the last post because it's a little stereotypical, but I'm sort of depressed. Part of this stems from being away from Zoey for an extended period of time. But another part is that I'm unemployed. I hate being jobless. Whenever I end up in this situation I usually just go and get a job. But for some reason that's not working out this time. I've been to pretty much every reputable establishment within reasonable distance and still no luck.

Everybody of course assumes that I'm just not looking hard enough. And maybe that's true. A part of me likes not having to get up every morning to do some meaningless job. But for the most part I want to get out of my house now and again. For economic reasons as well as health reasons. It can't be good for me sitting on my couch or laying in bed every day. But when I'm not working, it's hard to find motivation to go and do anything. After all, there's only so much you can do without money.

I heard my Mom on the phone with my Grandfather earlier, apparently he has some job as a bus monitor lined up for me. Several problems arise when I think about this.

1) I'm going on 22 years old. I hate having to live with my parents to begin with.
2) The fact that my Mom and Grandpa are teaming up to find me a job tells me that they simply don't think I could do it myself (Or I would have one by now)
3) I hate kids, Why would I want to watch them every day making sure they stay buckled.

At the very least I'll be making some money. And that's more than I can say right now. Who knows, maybe the experience will be enriching or something. I doubt it though, I think it's just going to be a big pain in the ass.

And so it begins; The first post.

2008-03-01T03:13:00.000-08:00

Well here it is. My very own blog. Don't know why I never made one of these before, but I figured it was about time to get started.

First let me introduce myself. My name is David L. Kenney. I'm 21 years old born on March 11th 1986 at 2:06 pm on a rainy Tuesday afternoon. My childhood was uneventful for the most part with no particularly large deviations from the norm.

When I was six I was first introduced to video games. They quickly became a large part of my life and my main source of entertainment.
Over the years I spent untold hours in front of a television set twiddling away on some mystical journey to save some princess I never really cared about from the horrors of imprisonment by fire breathing turtles. Truth be told I watched my father bring down King Koopa in Super Mario Bros. years before I managed to do the same to Bowser in Super Mario World on the SNES. It was a proud moment for me, and I left the game on the "The End" screen for a few days to make sure everybody in my household saw that I had freed not only the princess, but a menagerie of multicolored Yoshi eggs from the evil clutches of the Koopa Kids and their evil mastermind father in his hideous clown faced glider. Suffice to say I eventually did turn it off, when my Mother informed me that leaving the game on so long would probably start a house fire, and since my Mom works all night and sleeps all day, she would most likely burn up in the blaze I unwittingly started.

Over the years I played more and more widely differing adventures until it led me to the love of my life on GameFAQs.com (of all places). Honestly it sounds strange to even me. But GameFAQs was really only the catalyst. She got ahold of my Instant Messanger address on a board dedicated to Harvest Moon: Magical Melody, a game that in hindsight was actually pretty terrible. But I'm still glad I bought it without reading up on it, or we never would have met. And what a great tragedy that would be.

Zoey, as her name would happen to be, is truly an astounding creature. Few people can claim to have found true love online and stuck with it. Come June 7th 2008, we will be celebrating our two year anniversary (pause for applause). As I said before, we met through an online gaming website that is for all accounts barely tolerated by the community at large because well... The community at large sucks. She had started a thread about listing our AIM addresses so that we could help each other out through the game. Nothing every came of it for a long while until at one point she sent me a message just to see my away message. Truly grateful I am, that she was unaware that she could just select "User Info" to see it. We started taliing, and over the course of the next few days I fell for her hard. When I learned she had similar feelings I pounced and took a chance asking her out. She said yes, obviously.

I learned a lot about her, most notably her Animal Rights activism. At the time I met her she had been Vegan for only a few months. As of this writing she is going on two years. That's a long time. Kinda. Anyway I realized that the only way I could stay with her was by becoming vegan myself, so I did. Or... tried. When I stay with her at her house. I have no problem being animal product free. But living with my parents, an unfortunate situation to begin with, it becomes much harder. Not because I don't want to be vegan, but because I need to make choices that make being Vegan nigh-impossible. So for the time being. I'm just Vegetarian. And even then, not strictly. When all I have in the entire house to eat is chicken noodle soup. All I can do is pour myself a bowl and pick out the meat chunks. Honestly I feel silly doing it. I'm still drinking chicken broth after all, but what choice do I have. At this point I feel like I should just do what I can for now, to survive, and make the full life choice when I move out and can do my own shopping.

I think that's enough for an introductory post. More to come later.