Time Flies...

It's hard to believe that we're down to the last day of August already.

We had a pretty nice weekend. We didn't do anything Friday but Saturday we went over to Dothan and made a Sam's run. We also stopped back by Gamestop.

Unfortunately, they won't take anything back that's been opened, so it looks like I'm stuck with the collector's edition. I've decided to just embrace it and enjoy it the best I can. The game is supposed to be excellent, so maybe once I get a chance to play it, I'll forget all about the horrible turn of events that lead me to playing the game. The thing that really burns me about the return policy though is that the company allows employees to open new games, take them home and play them and then when they bring the game back, they sell the game as new. If you ever buy a new game from Gamestop and it's not shrink-wrapped, that's what's happened and you have every right to demand a copy of the game that is still shrink-wrapped. It's a horrible policy and one that I don't think should be allowed, especially in light of their return policy.

After Gamestop, the rest of the day was good. We spent a ton of money in Sam's, but we always do and we only go every three or four months, so I guess it's alright.

All in all, not a bad weekend. I also was able to finish playing Wolverine. It was a really good game. I also played some Left 4 Dead with Edwin. We've both had the game for 6 months or more and have only played it a few times. It was a nice change of pace from Gears and I really enjoyed it.

Have a good Monday.

--Paul

Not A Title

Well, we've made it back around to Friday once again. I have to say, it'll be nice to get off work this afternoon.

Not a lot in the way of plans this weekend. The only major thing is that we're going to make a trip to Dothan tomorrow. We need to hit Sam's for a few things and I want to stop by Gamestop and return that rip-off of a collector's edition Batman game that I bought. I'm looking forward to getting the regular game and trying it out. I didn't download the demo but to hear everyone else tell it, it's a great game.

We watched "I Love You, Man" last night and it was pretty good. It was kind of strange in that it played like a romantic comedy but it was between two guys instead of a guy and a girl, but not in a homosexual way. Anyway, it would have been even better if not for the totally unnecessary foul language. I can't understand why screenwriters/directors/actors/whoever think that the f-bomb adds anything to a movie.

Anyway, that's all I've got for today. Have a good weekend and a good Friday.

--Paul

New Music

There's a good bit of new music about to come out and a couple of new singles I want to talk about.

First up is Weezer. Their new single is called "(If You're Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To". You can hear it on their website http://www.weezer.com. Go and give it a listen, I'll wait for you to get back...Back? Good. Pretty awesome song, huh? It's horribly catchy and just an all around good song. Their last album was pretty good but I have to say this single is better than anything that was on it. If the rest of their new album is this good then it could be the best Weezer album ever.

Creed is the other band with a new single out that I want to talk about. I first found out that they were back together when I got an email from ticketmaster that included one of their dates in Atlanta. I almost fell out of my chair. As far as I could tell Scott Stapp was the only one that needed the band to get back together. The other three seemed to be doing pretty good with Alter Bridge (a band that I really like). So somehow, they're back and on tour and have a new album and I heard the other day that the new single was out. I went to their website (www.creed.com) and gave it a listen. Musically, the song is pretty good. It's got a good drive to it and even the way Stapp sings the song is decent. Tonally, it has a lot of potential. Where the problem comes in is the lyrics. They sound like something that Miley Cyrus would be singing. Of course, Creed's had that problem since their second album when "Arms Wide Open" got big. After that I guess they decided that all their songs had to be some great sweeping inspirational spill that's really just grating in its cliches. At any rate, I'm sure the new song will be huge on the radio. It's the kind of thing that KMX will eat alive and play until you want to hurt yourself.

Other bands with new stuff either out or coming out:

Jet: One great album, a decent second one that no one bought but me and I haven't heard anything from this one. I'll keep you posted.

Wolfmother: Haven't heard the new single yet but I'm looking forward to this one. Hopefully it's as good as their first.

Paramore: They've gotten huge since "Riot" so let's see if they can hold it together and release a good record when they know everyone is watching.

There are some others that I know I'm forgetting but that's all I can come up with right now.

Have a good Thursday.

--Paul

So...

I know, I didn't blog yesterday either. No excuse, I just didn't. Consider it me taking vacation time or something. I don't know. Anyway.

We had a good weekend. Courtney and Edwin hosted us for the weekend and we had a great time as usual. Edwin had decided that he wanted to tackle the "Endless Setlist" in Rock Band 2. You start it and you play ever song on the game disk. All 84 of them. We made it about half way through on Friday night and ended up just leaving the xbox on over night and coming back and finishing it the next day. It was pretty cool to finish it but man, was it a long, hard road.

Speaking of games. Batman: Arkham Asylum finally came out yesterday. I had pre-ordered the collector's edition because it supposedly came with a batarang. All the pictures they had on the internet made the thing look really awesome. So we ran over to Enterprise yesterday afternoon to pick it up and when we got into it, it turns out that the batarang is a cheap piece of plastic that's not removable from the stand it was on. When I say "cheap", I mean it was like bad cheap. Like it probably cost them 5 cents to make this thing. I've never felt so ripped off in my life. So the plan is to go back on Saturday and return it and just get the regular game. Then I'm going to take the extra money that I spent on it and order Beatles: Rock Band. To say I'm disappointed is an understatement.

Have a good Wednesday.

--Paul

No Blog

No blog today. Sorry. The alarm clock failed to set itself last night. Bad alarm clock, bad!

--Paul

Hello Old Friend

A week ago I talked about Les Paul passing away. Last night I finally had the chance to get my guitar out and let it rip for a little while. I didn't just get my guitar out either. I pulled my amp out, fired it up and let it roar. It felt really good. I'm out of practice pretty bad, but as time went on a good bit started coming back to me. Everybody knows the saying about riding a bike. Sure no one forgets how, but that doesn't mean that when they get on one again that they can go very far before they're winded. I don't think you can forget how to play guitar, but if it's be a while like it has been for me, your fingers just don't move like they used to.

I'm really going to try and make an effort to play more. Ever time I do play a little, it makes me really want to play on a more regular basis and I never seem to be able to get myself into a routine with it.

So it's Friday! It's been a long week and I'm ready for a nice weekend. After today, the weather's supposed to be better. It'll be nice to get more than 2 hours of sun in a day before it clouds up and starts raining. I was beginning to look for the moving van that was bringing all of the Cullen family's stuff to move in.

Have a good Friday and a good weekend.

--Paul

More About Games

There's been some game news this week that I'm pretty excited about.

One, Sony announced the PS3 "Slim". It's just a smaller version of the PS3, but the exciting part is that they dropped the price to $300. That's getting within striking distance for me. There aren't many games for the PS3 that I'm wanting to play, but it would be nice for the games that I would like to play and to have a blu-ray player on top of it.

The other big announcement was that Fable 3 is scheduled to be released in late 2010. I've still never played the first one, but Fable 2 blew me away. Heck, even DeAnne loved it. I think she even beat the game before I did. Anyway. From what was said, the story is going to be more closely related to the story from Fable 2. You'll be playing as the child of your character from Fable 2 and it's set only 50 years from the end of 2. 2 was set 500 years from the end of Fable 1.

I also watched Gran Torino yesterday. The language was horrible, but it was a pretty good movie. Clint Eastwood is one bad dude. He is not someone I would want to run into at night down a dark alley. Or maybe I would want to run into him at night down a dark alley as long I wasn't the bad guy. Either way, Clint is the man.

Have a good Thursday.

--Paul

Games

I've been making a renewed effort this week to get through X-Men Origins: Wolverine. DeAnne bought it for me for my birthday and up until this week I had played a little but hadn't managed to get back around to it. I think I'm pretty close to finishing it now though. I'm really enjoying it. The fighting system is nicely done and the graphics are pretty good. All the voice acting has been great with the one exception being Gambit. I don't know who did his voice but it was terrible. I may just be nostalgic, but it seems like I remember Gambit's voice being spot on in the cartoon series from the 90's. Why couldn't they get it right for this game? Or for the movie for that matter? I seem to recall having the same issue there.

Edwin and I have taken a bit of a break from Gears also. We've been hitting up Rock Band 2 again and I've been really enjoying it. Beatles: Rock Band comes on on Sep. 9th, so it's been a nice warm up for that. I'm really excited for the Beatles game. It only has 45 songs on the disk, but from what I've read, there are a lot of extras like pictures and videos that are just now being released for the first time, so it should be neat to see all that. They're also going to be releasing albums for download so that should fill in the gaps from what they left off the disk.

Other than that there's a lot of other stuff I would like to play but just don't have the time. Maybe one day...

Have a good Wednesday.

--Paul

Also...

One more thing.

Happy Birthday Courtney!

--Paul

Date My Avatar

I talked about "The Guild" last week and how awesome it is. They released their music video to youtube yesterday. Here it is:



If you don't play video games then it's probably not that funny to you, but I'm still laughing about it. You can buy the mp3 for the song on amazon and it's supposed to be up on iTunes later today.

Nothing really exciting happened with the storm yesterday. Mainly just rain and even that quit by lunch. If only every tropical system that came through was just a "rain event" as the weather channel likes to say.

Not much else going on. Enjoy the video and have a good Tuesday.

--Paul

Slowing Down

It was another pretty slow weekend. We didn't really do anything other than sit around, play a few games and watch T.V. It was kind of sad really.

I guess the one kind of exciting thing that happened was the developing storms. We've gone all of hurricane season so far without a single named storm and then three develop within 2 or 3 days of each other. Pretty wild. I thought the weather would be worse this morning, but it's really not that bad out yet. Looking at the radar, it looks like we might get some heavy rain in an hour or two, but rain is no big deal.

It looks like hurricane Bill is going to turn up into the Atlantic and not be a bother. As for Ana, they're saying that it doesn't have much of a chance for development and should just bring some more rain by the end of the week. The rain's all fine and good, it just means the grass is really going to need to be cut.

Anyway. Have a good Monday even if it's a wet one.

--Paul

Rock & Roll Star

I was saddened to see that Les Paul died yesterday. I don't know that many people realized that he was still alive or that the guitars he was famous for creating were actually named after a real guy, but he was real, he was a great guitar player and he was a genius not only for his contributions to guitars but also the recording process.

When I was 18 and graduating from high school, my parents wanted to get me something. It ended up being a Les Paul Custom. Solid black finish, gold hardware, mother-of-pearl in-lays, beautiful. And that was before you ever plugged her in. Plugged in it just hummed a deep resonant tone. Add distortion and it would simply growl. It's one of the best presents I've ever gotten. Once I had that guitar in my hands I just knew I could conquer the world with rock. The dreams never panned out and I don't play as much as I should anymore, but that guitar is tied to some of the very best memories I have between the time I got it and the time I met my wife.

Les Paul will always be a part of my life and the world will rock a little softer without him in it.

Have a good Friday and a good weekend.

--Paul

Nada

I'm stumped. I've not got a single thing in my head to talk about today. I'm really trying too. There's just nothing there.

Well, I haven't talked about SocialScope. SocialScope is a new program for BlackBerry that combines your Facebook and Twitter feeds into one program and can alert you on either. It's in alpha right now and you have to sign up for an invite in order to get the software. I had signed up months ago and forgotten about it until they sent me a download link the other day. So far, I really like it. It seems to be more responsive and faster than either the facebook blackberry client or twitterberry. Plus I can see everything in one app instead of having to switch apps. I was worried about what the program would do to my battery life since it checks for facebook updates all along but it doesn't seem to be having any adverse effects. I uninstalled twitterberry and I can't tell a difference in battery life. It's a pretty neat program. If you have a blackberry and are using facebook, twitter or both, you should sign up and try it out.

So I came up with one short thing after all. Have a good Thursday.

--Paul

The Guild

On occasion in the past, I've been known to play what's called "Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games", MMORPG or MMO's for short. For those of you who don't have a clue what I'm talking about, an MMO is a game you play on your PC where you create a character and then do various quests or jobs in an online world that thousands of other players also inhabit. The most popular of these games is called "World of Warcraft". MMOs have a tendency to be highly addictive and there are more than a few jokes about the people that become obsessed with them and the culture that exists around these games.

That bring us to "The Guild". "The Guild" is a kind of T.V. show that is broadcast on the web. Each episode is usually 5 or 10 minutes (maybe less even) long and it's about a group of people who play an MMO and are all members of a guild called "The Knights of Good". It's a comedy series and pokes fun at all the stereotypes and quirks that tend to be associated with MMO players. It's hilarious.

They've had two seasons so far and the third starts on August 25. If you've ever played an MMO or know anything about them, you owe it to yourself to watch this show. DeAnne and I have cracked up watching it and can't wait for the new episodes. They originally are available for download on Xbox Live, but you can watch the first two seasons on their website or youtube.

Have a good Wednesday.

--Paul

Nothing Doing

This weekend we sat, we slept, we watched T.V., we played a few games and that was about it. We lived like hermits most of the time. Outside of going to church and going to Kinston on Saturday night, we didn't do anything.

Well, we did play with our new camera a good bit. The poor animals still probably can't see properly, they've had so many pictures taken of them the past two or three days. I'm pretty happy with it and I think DeAnne will be too, once she learns all the ins and outs of the different settings and figures out what works for her. It's just going to take her a little time playing with it and getting readjusted. We had our previous camera for over 4 years so she's pretty programmed as to how it worked. We did get some pretty good pictures as far as quality goes. The composition may leave something to be desired, but we're no professionals. I put up a small album on my facebook if you're interested.

We also watched a movie called "Fanboys". It's about a group of friends who love Star Wars. One of them finds out he's dying of cancer and probably won't live long enough to see the premier of Episode 1: The Phantom Menace. They set off on a road trip to break in to the Skywalker Ranch and steal the rough cut of the movie. For geeks and Star Wars fans, it was hilarious. If you're not a big fan, you probably won't be terribly amused. I thought it was great.

Have a good Monday.

--Paul

Friday, So Good To Me

Yea for the weekend.

Boo that we lost another celebrity yesterday. John Hughes died of an apparent heart attack. He was 59. I was young when his string of hit movies were coming out in the 80s, but I was just about the right age when they started hitting cable, so even though I never saw them in the theater, Sixteen Candles, Farris Bueller's Day Off and The Breakfast Club all had a huge impact on me. Even into the 90's he wrote or directed movies that I did see in theaters. The Home Alone movies, Christmas Vacation and a host more. Looking at his IMDB credits, it's amazing the movies that he had a part in making. I'm sorry to see him go.

I'm not sad, however, to see the auditors we were hosting leave. They wrapped up yesterday and went on their merry way.

No plans for the weekend. We're just going to be hanging around doing nothing I guess. Hope you have a good one.

Have a good Friday.

--Paul

No Real Post Today

We've got auditors at work looking at some of the cyber security stuff that went into effect last year. It hasn't been bad, but they ran late yesterday and wanted to start early today so they could finish up on schedule this afternoon. So, I'm heading in a little early to help out.

I didn't really have anything I could talk about anyway, mainly because I was at work until late yesterday. Have a good Thursday.

--Paul

Grass = Cut

More of the same yesterday as I came home from work and finished cutting the grass. The cutting part isn't that bad, the weed trimming though, that's a whole other story. Using the weed-eater wouldn't be that bad either if our driveway wasn't half a mile long. I guess that's the price you pay for having a big front yard.

In somewhat surprising news, Paula Abdul has decided to end her entertainment career for the second time and quit American Idol. This very well may have been the plan all along since bringing on Kara last year. I said several times to DeAnne last season that Kara was probably there so that they would have someone that was already familiar to the audience when they got rid of Paula. The official word is that Paula turned down the contract offered by Fox and that very well may be true, but you can't help but think that the plan all along was for the previous season to be her last. I was never a fan of her on the show and was often annoyed by her but I have to admit, her being gone will take some of the fun out of it. It'll be interesting to see how the ratings are with her gone.

Have a good Wednesday.

--Paul

A Break In The Rain

We finally caught a break in the rain and I took the opportunity to cut my grass. It was so hot though that I decided to just do the front 2/3 and leave the rest and the weed-eating to today.

The socialist health care bill (or "heath care reform bill" as they're calling it now) managed to not get passed out of the House before the August recess. The Senate version hasn't even been written yet, but maybe the members of the Senate will take some time and think about what they're doing after seeing things like this happen:

http://www.foxnews.com/video/index.html?playerId=011008&streamingFormat=FLASH&referralObject=7752706&referralPlaylistId=playlist

That's one of the best videos I've seen in a while. I've watched it more than a few times and I would encourage you to do the same. It just puts a smile on my face to see Specter and Sebelius stumble when faced with the reality of what is being proposed.

Sorry, I fell onto the political train again. I'll try and not get stuck on it.

Have a good Tuesday.

--Paul

EDIT: Well, I can't get foxnews.com's video embed code to work, so I just had to link the video. Sorry.

A Slow Weekend

We had a slow weekend and that's not necessarily a bad thing considering how things have been lately.

We ate dinner with Dad Friday night and came back to the house and watched "Revolutionary Road". It was pretty bad. The acting was good, but the story was just depressing and slow and we just didn't like it.

Saturday, instead of cutting grass like I wanted to, we sat and watched it rain. We then went to Opp/Kinston and went to the wake for the Ramer children. It was one of the saddest things I've ever seen but I was encouraged by Bro. Tommy (who married both DeAnne and I and the Ramers) who posted last night on Facebook that there were salvations at the funeral yesterday.

After the wake, we ate with DeAnne's Mom and Stepdad and headed home where DeAnne proceeded to get sick on me. She had been acting like she was getting a sinus infection for a few days and Saturday night, it hit full force. She couldn't breathe/sleep/stop coughing/anything, so we both had a pretty restless night. I went to church Sunday morning, but I stayed home the rest of the day trying to get her more comfortable. She seemed to sleep better last night or at least, she didn't wake me up much, so maybe she'll be doing better today.

So not a very fun weekend, but it was still nice just for the fact that we really didn't do anything for the first time in a while.

Have a good Monday.

--Paul