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good weekend (Tuesday, January 18, 2005 - 12:30:24 PM)
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On Saturday, my old friend Anthony came by and he continued to DM us through the Dungeons & Dragons campaign he came up with. It really started to get interesting. Besides the neat story developments, my half-elf ranger made it to level 2! I know it's not much, but it seemed like a huge accomplishment.
On Sunday during my free time, I managed to finish the Icewind Dale trilogy and re-read the next book in the series, Legacy. Now all I need to do is read the 3rd Harry Potter book and I'll have read through all of the books I got for Christmas.
I heard an interesting story on NPR this morning that was from yesterday's All Things Considered. The story was about how Christian groups are becoming a major part of Colorado Springs. I really, really liked a quote from a "non-Christian" from a different group in the city: "I like God, I just don't like the members of his fan-club." If this is what the people of the world think of Christians, then we're doing something wrong.
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Carolaina's cousin, Ryan Schnitzer, loves to do to these various quizes he comes across. One in particular caught my attention and I thought I'd try it myself.
On a completely different note: Thanks to a fellow Armchair Arcade contributor, I've recently gotten a Gmail account. Soon after, I found that I have 6 invites. So if you want a Gmail account, by all means, please ask.
I've come across a wonderful comic/graphic novel by Derek Kirk Kim--he's a Korean-American. It's called Same Difference, and you can read it in it's entirety on his site. If you can get past some of the language used, you'll find it to have a wonderful, touching story and interesting characters.
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Star Wars Holiday (train wreck) Special (Monday, January 10, 2005 - 12:15:35 PM)
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Yesterday, I cooked up the "wookie-ookie" cookies. Carolaina didn't help me with this batch so they didn't turn out quite as good as they did last week. They were still quite nice, though.
Once the cookies were made, we watched the Star Wars Holiday Special. It was much worse than Carolaina expected. Here is a couple of the hilarious things she said about it:
"It's so bad, you need the cookies just to get through it."
"I will never, ever admit to having watched this."
At least the cookies were good. :)
I made a little money from working on Mrs. Walker's computer this weekend. She has DSL internet and her computer had gotten so clogged up with spyware and virus (virii?) that I had to declare it a total loss and just re-install Windows 98. After that, I installed Firefox and free firewall software. That Outpost Firewall is nice! If/when I ever get DSL, I'll definitely be using that software.
I plan to use the money I made to buy a new webcam. You may have noticed that my webcam has been down since Christmas. I got a new computer here at work and the drivers for the camera would crash this new computer. The drivers were for Windows 98 and 2000, so it's no suprise that it wouldn't work under WinXP Service Pack 2. Since Kodak is no longer supporting that old webcam (no XP drivers), I'll have to get a new one.
I've already used part of that money to add to my Atari collection. At Thackerland this weekend, I found some neat store display posters that look like they were meant to be hung on a string. You can see my post asking about them over at the Atari Age message boards. I also picked up a 2600 Junior there on Saturday, but found that it didn't work. I hope to eventually find someone who can fix it. The "Junior" is just so lovably small and cute.
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wookie cookies (Monday, January 3, 2005 - 12:23:56 PM)
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Yesterday, Carolaina and I made cookies from the Star Wars Holiday Special. I intended for us to enjoy a few while watching the show, but then 5:00 snuck up on us and it was time to go to our church "heart group". I'll make more cookies this coming Saturday and we can watch the show then.
I had gotten a couple of Hastings gift cards for Christmas from a friend, so I used them to get Castle in the Sky. It's a wonderful, magical movie--we watched it twice on Saturday. I now want to get all of the Studio Ghibli anime movies. It looks like it will be "easier" for me to get these Studio Ghibli movies as/when they are released by Disney. I strongly suggest you read Ebert's review of Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro. It will give you a sense of the magic of these movies. Oh, and if you ever have to "explain" anime to a friend or relative, point them to this essay by Roger Ebert.
Saturday was just a movie-watching day for me. I also watched Star Wars: ANH and parts of the Star Wars bonus disc that I got for Christmas. I wanted to also watch Blade Runner yesterday, but didn't have time. Carolaina wanted to go grocery shopping at Wal-Mart, so we got that done. Since we had gotten the last ingredients needed for the wonderful cookies, I made them instead.
Under extreme theat from Carolaina, I got off my butt and took down the Christmas tree yesterday as well.
Sometime during the weekend, Carolaina gave me some cash to spend. I'm torn between spending it on more anime or saving it for Atari game hunting this weekend.
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post-Christmas (Wednesday, December 29, 2004 - 12:11:22 PM)
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In many ways, it's nice to have Christmas behind us. I can now listen to all my preset radio stations in my car without having to worry about being tormented by another overplayed Christmas song. I also have all this wonderful loot to enjoy! >:]
We had a white Christmas this year! This is the first year that I can remember that I've actually seen snow on Christmas! I had fun trying to get home on Wednesday, since the weather got bad so quickly--took me two and a half hours. It was worth it, though, since we had a WHITE CHRISTMAS!
Here's what I got:
Games:
- Half-Life: Yes, I know I'm 5+ years behind on getting this one, but I didn't have a fast enough computer back then. It does seem more advanced than a regular first-person shooter, but I'm still not overly impressed with it.
- Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls: I just had to get this so I could play FF1 on the GBA. Unfortunately it's so brain-dead easy I could play it in my sleep. Just look at the characters funny and they'll gain another level. Oops! They tripped on a rock and gained yet another level! I wish they would have included Hard and Easy settings, like they did for the Origins release.
Books:
- Harry Potter and the Prizoner of Azkaban: it's time to read it since I've seen the third movie.
- The Dark Elf Trilogy and The Icewind Dale Trilogy, both by R.A. Salvatore. I had borrowed these from a friend as a teenager and read them then, but I began to miss these wonderful books and wanted them for my own. Drizzt Do'Urden is just such an awesome character.
DVD's/Movies:
- Star Wars! Not the re-re-re-mastered crap DVDs you can get in the store. No, I got the origional movies on DVD. Ask me how sometime. ;)
- Star Wars: Holiday Special: from the same source as above also offered this, so I snapped it up. This campy show has to be seen to be believed.
- Blade Runner: again from the same source, this is the original uncut and untampered-with version
- Cowboy Bebop: Session 5: this was the last set of episodes I had yet to get. From what I'd read, I had expected these to be just plain "ok" episodes. Not a chance. Once again, every episode blew me away with the sheer quality of the story, acting and animation. Now that I've seen them all, I don't have any more unseen episodes to look forward to. I'll just have to start searching for other anime that will hopefully come close to the quality of Cowboy Bebop.
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