It has been almost a week since I've been here. I guess I've been a little too lazy during my last few days off. I started playing Knights of the Old Republic 2, and so far I'm liking it better than the original. I hear that changes drastically in the end, and I'm hoping its not the case.

There really isn't anything I can think of saying about the situation in New Orleans that hasn't been said. I went down there for a trip in High School, and it is pretty wierd to think that some of its sights, sounds and people may never return. Mother Nature: We've had quite a few hurricanes in recent years. Please slow it down if you could.

Google Talk

Today I downloaded new the google talk client in order to try it out. Problem is, I have no one to talk to! If you have Gmail and want to check it out, go here to download the client, and add taidan19 to your contacts. Hope to see someone there....

Textbooks

So I was reading in the paper that college textbook bills are soaring to an alltime high average of $700-$900. I'm not sure if that is per year or semester, but I just finished purchasing all of my fall books except for one, and my total came out to around $250. That will probably go to $300 after that extra book, but even still, I'm bucking the trend by at least a hundred bucks (and if that number is per semester, then I saved me a lot).

I have a favour to ask all of the readers. Found here is a rough version of my newest review for Resident Evil. Quite honestly, I think it stinks. I took forever writing it, and I was often unsure of what to say or how to say it. I've been trying to make these things sound much more focused and serious, and less like something out of the tar pits of Gamefaqs, and the result means that I get more and more critical of them.

Anyway, if you have any spare time and would like to read through it, feel free to email me (at taidan19@gmail.com) with any suggestions you might have. It can be editing or criticism, praise or insults, I don't care so long as its honest. And if you can't/won't, that's fine too. Can't complain if nobody wants to give out free help.

So... that's it for now. And yes, I did spell favour with a 'u'. Intentionally.

My car

So here it is, my new wheels:












































I'm so very proud of it, even if I probably don't deserve it. Of course, it doesn't compare to the sedan's rolling around on the Loyola campus, but hell if I care. And yes, that is a Wal Mart vest in the front seat (As well as my now famous Mets cap that someone I know loves to steal from me).

This story here is just baffling. How a healthy 23 year old athlete could just drop dead is beyond me. Hopefully they'll figure it out.

Currently Playing: Suikoden for Playstation. Generic 2d RPG that has sucked this entire day away from me. I still don;t know why its good, but I can't stop, that's for sure.

What? I didn't actually post anything yesterday like I said I would? My bad; these last few days have been a grueling, lethargic span of boredom and fatigue. I'm back for the weekend though.

I have only one more week of work at Wal-Mart, but if it goes at the same pace as this week, it is going to feel like a month. Here's a pretty good analysis of every day this week:

-Management has a project for the Setup crew. They assume it will take about four hours to do.

- Setup gets on it, either together or in groups because they think we're "horsing around" too much.

- Despite the horsing around, the job is done in two hours, either because the sheer amount of people on the crew or because some of us happen to know what we're doing and don't screw up. At this point I might be sent off alone to do a tedious job while the rest continue the horseplay.

- Another two hour job, then lunch. After lunch there might be a couple last minute things, but by two o'clock there is nothing left to do. We get scolded for loafing around, yet management can't think of anything good for us to do. We get split up for odd jobs, and we stil manage to come back together and loaf.

-Eventually management just plain dissappears to go do whatever it is they do. The afternoon is ours to waste away. On three different days I chatted with my friends for an hour straight in the new sales floor, with not one person interrupting us.

-Leave at five with boredom fatigue.

The reason for it all is that the main manager of the store has been sick for nigh on three weeks. The man is a machine, always knowing what to do and who to do it. Without him, his assistants seem to be completely lost and much more prone to making bonehead decisions (or none at all).

So now you know a little more about how Wal-Mart operates. I don't know if anyone cares, or if the people that read this blog even shop at Wally World (I certainly do- always low prices bitch!).

Xbox 360 pricing - enough has been said about it, so all I'll chime in with is that I agree with PA's Tycho in that the $300 model is silly for the sole reason that upgrading it with the stuff found in the $400 model will actually cost more, and the lack of a harddrive will prevent any developers from using it to improve their games (which is never good, especially considering it could have been prevented).

I'll comment about the Xbox 360 pricing and other things when I'm not so tired. I also have a large piece I need to write soon, which was sparked from a large debate at work. I also need to finish my latest review (one week of diligent rewriting and I still don't feel content with it)

For now, I need to relax and play some DDR 5th mix. Back tomorrow.

Found!

After nearly two years, I will once again have a car to call my own. Its a 2002 Elantra, which I know will serve me well through college and the early job years (my father has a 2000, and its probably my favorite riding car in the household, which is why I jumped on this). It will be nice to have a car on campus, if for no other reason than having a comfortable drive home for the holidays versus taking the train. Though a large part of me still misses my '92 Legacy. That thing ran like a top....

Mike Cameron of the Mets will have to have facial surgery after his horrific crash with teammate Carlos Beltran. Hopefully things will turn out okay for him.

In other sports news, Rush Limbaugh has invited Terrell Owens and Donovan McNabb onto his radio show to sort out their differences. Let's see here: a conservative poster child who once called McNabb overrated because the media wants to see a successful black QB, who is offering to make peace for these players. No alternative motives there. Its not like Limbaugh is reviled by a large part of the media for his craziness in recent years, and needs all the goodwill he can muster.

I started Playing Final Fantasy 8 again. This is the third time I have tried to play this RPG, and I hope that this is the time I actually finish. I'm not doing too bad strength wise so far, so I shouldn't have any troubles with the difficulty. It is the story and pacing of the game that might get to me. You can only take a certain dosage of Squall's angst before you have to say "enough".

Yessir, there is nothing quite like having a few hundred pounds of steel fall onto both of your feet during work. Other than one obvious bruise, they don't seem to be in bad shape, though if that is actually the case (and it may not be), I must have some decent luck.

Madden 06 is out today, and my store had plenty of copies. Not a lot of near perfect reviews for it this year, which makes me wonder if EA really will slack off like everyone assumed. Or perhaps it is just a transitional year.

Oh who the hell am I kidding. I think EA and their Tiburon studios are going to milf the F-ing franchise to hell from here on out and watch as suckers still buy a couple million copies.

Everyone knows the Japanese are often crazy, but apparently even the government is a little screwy . Guess they really need their letters or something.

In conclusion, I present to all of you my design for the Nintendo Revolution controller. Thanks to my brother Tim for some of the inspiration.

And no, I am not crazy. It really is snawsome (work joke +1 !).

F.E.A.R. Demo

Played the demo for the game mentioned in the title. Good visuals, and some very good AI. But for a supposedly "scary" game it didn't do much for me. There were some scenes that should have been creepy because of the sheer surprise of them, but Monolith has centered their game around the typical "creepy little girl" that has been done to death at the movies and is just plain boring these days.

Once again, Monolith also doesn't know how to optimize a game engine. It ran choppy for me, as well as for my friend with the most godly PC I've yet to see (though he was running it in widescreen, but still....)

Update

Okay, so I asked some more people about that unprotected computer at work. Since it is only used for writing personal letters and whatnot, it won't be getting a password. That's fine I suppose, but today I managed to find another unprotected machine.... this time in the District Office. I'm not saying anyhting about this one; they can learn their lesson the hard way.

When I was at the mall I heard a cover of Don't Fear the Reaper that, for lack of a more clever term, was horrible. I've heard some bad coveres, and I mean really bad, but this one has to rank in the top three worst I've listened to.

You know, that gives me an idea...

Security Breach

Today at work I was moving computers out the old offices for a while. I wasn't allowed to hook any of them up (read: official Wal-Mart computer guy does that), except for one that is never hooked up to the network. I booted it up, only to find that it was not password protected. Obviously the alarm was going off in my head; no work related compy should be so unsecured. I told this to three different managers. The best response I got was "it doesn't matter, only managers can get into that room anyway." Too bad then that after I plugged the machine in I was able to sit down at it for nearly fifteen minuetes, in the comfy office chair no less, before anyone even saw that I was in there. And when they did see me, their only reaction was to continue walking. Granted, everything is still in construction, so no one is thinking of the office as having any sort of restricted access yet. But I had plenty of time to do some malicious things to that computer if I was a disgruntled employee or hacker in disguise, and the idea that regular employees will never step into there is laughable. I'm going to try to convince someone in management to put a password on that, but I doubt it will make a difference. I suppose this is my first example of just how insecure company hardware can really be.

Over the last month I've been asking myself, "What's been going on with Final Fantasy 12?". Now I know the truth: the original team is practically gone, the director may have gone crazy, and the entire thing is now in the hands of the man who made the Saga series, one of the worst piles or crap in the RPG genre. Oh, and the combat is now a blatant ripoff of Knights of the Old Republic, and the release date is pushed back until march 2006. This was supposed to be the first FF game good enough to warrant a purchase on the first day. It was supposed to be the triumphant return of the FF Tactics team. Instead it has become a shipwreck trying to salvage things together and limp into port. I don't see bright things on the Square side of Square-Enix in the next generation, though one can really only guess.

Started dipping my feet into Virtua Fighter tonight. Easily the deepest fighter I've seen since Soul Calibur, and a dauntingly difficult game to boot. That only gives me more reason to push on, since I always enjoy a good challenge.

P.S.- note to fighting game developers (especially devs of fancy 3-d fighters): you automatically lose a star from me if you can't include a practice mode that is even half as good as the one in VF4 Evo.

Virtua Fighter 4 Evolution for seven dollars? Can you say purchase? I've spent more on food at college (and a lot less, depending on when)! I also saw Metroid Prime for under ten bucks used. If anyone reading this has a Gamecube and has yet to play that game, there's absolutely no excuse for you now. Say it with me now: Best console game this generation.

As you might guess, today was mall day. I tried on a couple of blazers and suit jackets, since I'll need one for various events in the future. It is getting to the point in life where a even shirt and tie is considered underdressed for certain occasions.

The whole story aroudn Rafael Palmiero is just incredible. The man has spent quiet years amassing stats worthy of the Hall, and now its crumbling down around him in just a few days. Every time baseball seems to move beyond steroids, something new pops up to bring the gloomy shadow over the league again.

It seems Final Fantasy 12 is goign to have a combat system similar to what is found in Knights of the Old Republic. In my opinion, this can only be a good thing. I'm glad to see something, anything that is different from the *enemies on one side/heroes on the other* random battle crap that has been in the series for ten games now. I just hope it isn't identical to KOTOR, which suffered from severe repitition later on when all the attacks felt like they had the same effect.