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December 30, 2004
External Locus
I'm sitting in this creepy Settle Inn hotel that is sort of castle themed overall but has a ton of themed rooms inside. I wish I could stay in the Pharoh's Nest, but the Captain's Quarters have been creeped out.
This is the family get together commonly referred to as Newmas. This is where we chill out, play games, eat food, and open presents.
Having a good time, though I'm tired and tomorrow night will be spent doing New Year's Eve elsewhere and I open at Best Buy on New Year's Day. That'll be fun.
Tonight should be great... next week I'll be in Vegas for CES (actually, really just there for the PSP Press Conference), but it should be fun to stay in the Bellagio.
Finally, it seems things are running at a nice pact right now, a little break-neck for me, but at least it's better than being bored. I'm hanging on for dear life at times... it doesn't seem right that I have 10 days till class starts again.
Not that I'm entirely looking forward to it either, thought about changing my major to marketing again this weekend. It seems more useful/practical than Management. Then again, could be interesting trying to get into MRKT major classes a week before.
Meh, stuff to mull over this weekend and while making the trip to Sin City. Also need to decide on all these big purchase options such as a HDTV, trip to the Big Island, trip to Europe, trip to E3, trip to Missoula/Seattle, trip to Valdosta/Pensacola and other platinum level expenses. Dunno how I'm going to manage all of that --- got one free plane ticket and a lot of frequent flier miles, Europe might crowd out a couple of trips, so it may end up Europe gets the axe.
Maybe I'll just come into a small fortune in the near future (c'mon Progressive, settle up with me).
I'm tired after writing this, time to get some sleep. PRESENTS IN THE MORNING!
Wooo!
Man I'm such a 4th grader sometimes.
-Will
Posted by badwillhunting at 11:31 PM | Comments (1)
December 25, 2004
Merry Christmas
Had a great Christmas so far.
I need to spend an afternoon updating this site, but between hanging out with the Corys for part of a night, working a ton at Best Buy, seeing Raymond and other close friends, hanging with my family, and trying to find some little fraction of time to sleep, I've been busy.
Going to be another fun week, then in the next week I'm going to CES and after that - school starts.
It never ends :-).
-Will
Posted by badwillhunting at 11:50 PM | Comments (0)
December 21, 2004
100th post, still alive
I'm still here... I'm just busier than hell. 80 hours of work + finals and most of that work consecutive, plus trying to find osme time to write and my friend Ray is in town.
Two more days of work before Christmas. I can't wait.
-Will
Posted by badwillhunting at 08:23 PM | Comments (0)
December 13, 2004
ROTK EE Impressions
There be spoilers here boys and girls, so if you don't want to know about the EE, don't look in this here post. This is being updated live.
Spoiler space
Saruman scene is kind of week. A cheesy camera shot and the nasty way in which his staff breaks took me out of the scene. Plus the death is very Mortal Kombat-ish. I think I understand why this was cut.
Elf vs. Dwarf Drinking game: hehe.
Eowyn dream - a nice addition to her character, though I believe it was a Faramir line originally.
Aragorn and Merry chatting on the tower - funny stuff and a nice moment between them.
Gandalf and Pippen discussing Gondor/Minas Tirith - very awesome. One of the best scenes I've seen so far as far as conversation regarding background of the story.
Gollum on tea: "We're not in, decent, places." Awesome. The forest that this setting is in with statues and such is pretty cool, very scenerific.
Additional river sequences as Faramir fights the enemy - most excellent, added a lot more to this battle in terms of setting it up and explanation and shows the ambush/reversal.
Preparing to leave Rohan: including Merry offering his services for war and Gimli chatting about wanting dirty dwarves to fight.
Faramir gets bitched out: a cool scene regarding Faramir letting the hobbits go. Johnson leaned over to me and said, "isn't this out of order? They haven't even done the scene with Gollum at the pool." "Dude, that was in Two Towers." "Oh, right. Doh."
Faramir and Pippen have a nice little chat. I think that's my favorite part of these EEs, the extra little one-on-one conversations that are had.
The paths of the dead receives lots of new stuff. More on the mists, more Gimly being more than just a little afraid of the underground. Mists and lots of skulls! And Aragorn is going to have to do a bit more convincing of the King of the Dead.
Battle of Pelenor Fields.... Just waiting for Gandalf vs. Witch King. Much more Gandalf kicking ass, some other random fight scenes so far. Still waiting for the good stuff. Lots of arrows into the battering rams. Before they bring up the big Wolf's Head.
INTERMISSION... dammit, must see Gandalf.
We start with a new scene of Aragorn vs. the Pirates. Great stuff.
On the road to Gondor with Merry and Eowyn, great little conversation and an update on where the battle at Minas Tirith is during the ride from Rohan.
More fighting, more death in Gondor. HERE IT IS!! Gandalf's confrontation with the Witch King... solid stuff... very cool.
Eowyn on battlefield after killing Witch King, being chased by Orc leader. Shows her trying to get to a weapon and Aragorn getting there just in time.
Battlefield dead sequence on the fields. Pippin finds Merry's cloak, Eowyn is found. Then to the Houses of Healing with a new song. Pippin searching the fields looking for Merry into the night and finding him under a body.
Aragorn picks up the Pilantir to show himself ot Sauron in order to attempt to get Suaron to take the bait and distract the forces from Frodo and Sam's passage. Cool sequence.
Faramir and Eowyn in houses of healing. Holding hands now and gazing into each other's eyes.
Frodo and Sam getting whipped and beat into a line of marching orcs. This from the book but not shown in the original film. They get into a bit of an orc bitch slap fight.
The Mouth of Sauron: Awesomely creepy sequence. Agressive negotiations.
Smeagol Lied. Heh.
All in all, very nice. Also nice, for those of us who have bought the EEs already, we can get the slipcase the boxed set comes in for just the cost of shipping - 3 bucks.
Anyways, now I must go home and sleep before an 8 hour shift tomorrow followed by more final studying. Wheee for a 30+ hour work week during Finals!!!
-Will
Posted by badwillhunting at 09:37 PM | Comments (0)
Return of the King: Extended Edition
Sitting here watching Return of the King: Extended Edition before its official release. In the middle of it now, may post some reactions after I'm done watching.
Work continues to go well, though I was a little worn out after three consecutive long shifts over a busy weekend. To make it more fun, when I got there yesterday, my boss asks if I want more hours this week, as I didn't work again till Sunday, I was like, hell yes. He then quickly tripled my hours over the week with 3 long shifts.
Yikes.
I'm expecting a rather long week at work and combined with finals things get a bit harrier than I thought. May be more hours at Best Buy in the future as well as apparently the reason I picked up 20+ hours is because someone else was fired who had been there a while and was full time. My performance has been good and I think I have a good chance of being kept on past the holidays which will be great.
Aside from that - I would like to note that I find there to be a remarkable amount of stupidity in the world. But you know what? Free country. Why is it that I have such a desire to see stupidity rewarded with bad things? I'm a huge fan of the Darwin award books, I resent labels telling me not to stick newspaper into my toaster oven, and I find it funny that I have to be told not to stick my hand under the lawnmower while its running. Is it wrong to take glee in someone else's misfortune when they do something so stupid that they deserve it? Am I just a vengeful bastard?
I think I need to go see Closer again. Maybe Thursday after finals. Yeah, that sounds pretty damn good.
-Will
Posted by badwillhunting at 09:28 PM | Comments (0)
December 10, 2004
Laziness
Is it a sign of laziness that I haven't updated since the 7th? Or is it a sign of laziness that I'm sitting around on my ass to update thie now?
I think its more of the latter - although really this is sit back and relax time for me right now. Starting on Tuesday night I got only 90 minutes of sleep, Tuesday involved quizzes, projects and other fun. Then I got home, watched Bourne Supremacy, Dodgeball, worked, went to bed. Wednesday, I woke up and I took care of business by writing for hours on a bloody 10 page multicultural education paper. I also had to study for Mangement 360 and I'm quite glad that I'm finished with that class.
Today I got up and went straight to work at Best Buy. We were uber-busy, to the point where the bosses at front demanded we sent someone to the front to work a register at one point. I got tapped as a grunt, and spent quite a while ringing up folks. Wheee.
After depositing a check, I'm sitting here debating on what to do with myself, Ocean's 12 is tempting.
Tomorrow I must be back at Best Buy at 3:30 and I'll be there until 11:30 (why are we closing at 11? According to the schedule I'm the only HT employee working after 10:30, I hope this means everyone else is doing all their closing duties first before abandoning, but who knows, I've only closed a couple times so far... I just don't want to get stuck downstucking doens of TVs, DVD Players, etc.).
In other news..........
Wow, there isn't really other news.
Sorry about not posting photos in a while, that truly is laziness. But I've been uber tired after two nights this week netting an avg. of an hour of sleep.
Christmas is going to be amazing. Ray is back from Hawai'i on Thursday - the day I finish finals. He'll be around till the 28th. So we'll get a couple weeks in of fun times. On Christmas my dad's sister and her husband/kids will be in from Florida, so we'll be hanging with them. Tim comes in from Missoula on Christmas and is around for a little over a week which will be awesome. My mom's family get together is like on the 28th at a hotel on the north side of town so I'll be camping out there for a few days (want to swim in Dec.? lemme know). After that is new years, Tim takes off on the 3rd, I fly to Vegas on the 4th, the PSP event is on the 5th, I'm back from Vegas on the 6th. A week later I'm going to San Antonio to see my brother and maybe the high-school football All-American game.
Then classes start the Tuesday after that.
When did a break stop becoming a break?
-Will
Posted by badwillhunting at 04:36 PM | Comments (0)
December 07, 2004
Spam
Well I'll be dammed. Some online gambling establishment spammed my blog comments this morning. Banning IPs has never felt so good.
-Will
Posted by badwillhunting at 12:56 PM | Comments (0)
December 04, 2004
Closer
A movie that I cannot describe as beautiful because it is an example of all of the ugliness that people can inflict on each other's hearts. I was absolutely floored by the movie closer, by the acting that made me forget I was watching Julie Roberts, Natalie Portman, Jude Law and Clive Owen and mostly by how much it hurt to watch these characters suffer so much pain.
Very good film, very painful, and something worth seeing.
-Will
Posted by badwillhunting at 05:16 PM | Comments (0)
December 02, 2004
A boss battle so long, even the boss falls asleep during it
A few nights ago I experienced a boss battle in Snake Eater that took me two hours to complete (no dying involved). It essentially was an area the size of four football fields, filled with rocks, rivers, hills, trees and gress, and in it, you and an ancient sniper sneak around trying to kill each other.
Needless to say spending two hours stalking someone while being stalked by that person is pretty intense. I finally figured out the quick and dirty way to beat him which involved finding him, sneaking up and shooting, letting him run and using thermo goggles to clearly mark his footsteps. Neat thing was that once when I held him up he dropped his Moss camo which is pretty awesome.
I think Snake had to eat like 5 Markhors during the course of the battle to keep his stamina up, damn bosses that uses sunlight for food.
-Will
Posted by badwillhunting at 11:39 AM | Comments (1)
December Already?
Sweet jesus. It's December. I guess I'm just shocked the year is almost over. Oh well, couple tests tomorrow, then time to start working on some papers for the end of the year. WHEEE.
Just saw a TV ad for Spike TV's GOTY Awards. They're way mainstream and dirty because of it (I'd like to see the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences award show televised), but I met the guys who are behind it and behind those DVD Game Guides. Very nice guys - though a little suave for me. They offered me an internship in New York working on guides as we talked about guides but I wasn't interested, maybe I'll run into them in Vegas next February again and see if the offer is open next summer.
My brother's dog has adopted with me and cuddles with me constantly. I can't get him off me sometimes. Maybe there is a lesson to be learned in this about clingyness... Jesus Christ :-).
-Will
Posted by badwillhunting at 12:38 AM | Comments (0)