Weekend Rundown IV, V, and VI

Know what happens when you don't blog in a long time? You forget all the little details.... Well that's just fine with me.

Weekend Rundown IV (July 3-5)

Probably the best weekend I've had all summer. Merc came to visit for a whopping 3 days and we accomplished a whole lot of nothing. We did manage, however, to finally make it to the Thai restaruant that's on South Main Street. That's some damn good food there. I had some sorta soup with shrimp and pad thai. She got some sort of chicken soup that had cocunut milk and some other entree with chicken. (Told you I'd forget the details). Her soup was better than mine, even though it didn't have shrimp and the pad thai was perfect. Actually, the whole meal in general was perfect. We also went to see the fireworks at the high school. A sorry affair, but time well spent, even though only ONE of the smiley face designed fireworks came out correctly. Took us forever to get back to the apartment though, some kid (we believe) got hit by a car, four lanes of traffic became one, but there weren't any screaming/crying parents around, so it couldn't have been too bad, right? Also found out that the outlet for Main Street happens to be 460 west, a couple of miles from downtown, so we actually got back faster than going through town and the traffic. We were all ready to go swimming Sunday, but then it rained. I waited a couple of hours and went to check the pool temperature. Just a warning, dipping your hand in for five seconds and saying "Not bad" will get you yelled at, a lot. The water was freezing! Did a few case mods, Merc wanted to learn how to soder (a whole 10 second learning experience) and she finished up my switch. Ended up pissing the rest of the day away, watching some Naruto, yatta yatta yatta, end of the weekend.

Weekend Rundown V (July 9-11)

Didn't do a whole helluva lot of anything this weekend, only have of my computer parts came, so I finished all the sleeving, motherboard, RAM, heatsinks and all that good stuff. Was still waiting on the processor and video card at this time. Picked up some face mask though, so I pulled out the borrowed dremel (thanks Merc's dad) and sanded/brushed all the red paint off my metals plates of the case. Silver and black with blue lighting is so much better than red and black with blue lighting. Finished modding a 3.5" bay to hold the cathode controls as well. Watched a whole shit load of Naruto (prbably 30 episodes or so). End weekend!

Weekend Rundown VI (July 15-18)

After a whole of (what I'll consider) boring NSO, I left the office around two on Thursday to pack up and head home. I had to bring a whole lotta stuff back, like my dad's new PC (read = My old PC), borrowed dremel, anime for Merc to borrow, clothes, laptop, yatta yatta yatta. Took me forever to pack. Short of getting home and putting in my dad's old HD, I accomplished nothing Thursday. Friday I had lunch with Mel, catching up on the good ole times, then stopped by the Jeep and Chevy store to secure letters of recommendations (AKA visit old contacts) Doug and Phil. The stores are a lot busier than they used to be, damn the computer age! Saturday it was off to Merc's for a whole day of ... sleeping and eating delicious asian cuisine (Pho and Peter Pan Buffet, world's greatest asian buffet). Sunday we visited the twins along with a handful of other GLers to see "I, Robot", which is an entertaining, but predictable moving about AI and robots and all that fancy stuff. Then, lunch at Uno's, where the hostess had an ass that stuck out, like, a full eight inches from the rest of her body. Whoa! Not great though *shrugs*. Then it was back to the good ole burg to piddle the rest of the day away on my computer. My brother got me BF:V for my birthday, pretty damn awesome I'll say. The rest of the parts had come in on Tuesday, that's when I almost finished my computer. Oh, here are the specs of my new system, because I don't really know really where to put them:

Thermaltake Xaser III Supertower with 420W power supply
MSI Neo FISR 875P Motherboard
Pentium 4 3.2 Northwood
1 Gig of DDR400 RAM
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro
Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS with LiveDrive
Sony 16x40x12x40 Combo Drive
Sony 3.5 Floppy (meh)
40GB ATA100 Maxtor HD (Dual Boot XP/Slackware)
200GB ATA100 Seagate HD (Storage/Games/Etc)

The rest is the stuff from the old PC like Logitech MX Duo, Logitech Z 560 Speakers, and a 19" and 17" CRT.

I'm still going to buy an NEC DL DVD Burner and put it in an internal and still shopping for a nice TV card, but otherwise, I'm done!

Hasta

Weekend Rundown III

So, what did I do this weekend?

Well, it all started Friday (of course) after work, the Get Connected Summer Staff, sans Spoon, headed to the little podunk town of Salem to catch "Farenheit 9/11" on the day of it's release. Courtesy of Mapquest we got there to late, so the Fishbowlers had to pick up our tickets for us and we had to eat at a different resturant than them when we arrived. The whole area around this little theater was packed because it was the only place in about a 100 miles that was actually playing it. We made our way down the block in the pouring rain to find a little a bistro. As it so happens, almost everyone there was in a rush to finish their meal by 7.45, the time the movie started. The food was excellent (can't go wrong with a reuben) but the atomsphere was meh. Not meh because of the setting, but meh because of the pompous ass that sat behind us. I won't go into a lot of detail, but he was just a hardcore conspiracy theorist and his date, I quote, said "Oh yeah, Dick Cheney, isn't he like... the vice president or something?". Stupid bitch and he's brainwasher her, excellent subject, eh? I really enjoyed the movie/documentary, despite the obvious one-sidedness, but that's life.

Short of cleaning up around the apartment, all I really accomplished was finishing the second (and last) episode of Noir. Below are my feelings, some spoilers I guess you could say.

Episode 14: At this point the show, it really shows how powerful Soldats really is. Once again, there is some sweet shooting by Kirika, being that she's uber leet and all. I was glad to see Uncle Claude die, he was kind of freaky in a uh... uhm... how do I describe it? *plays the classic banjo song from Deliverence* That should sum it up.

Episode 15: Faye, uhm I mean, Shao Li (like that similarity wasn't on purpose) is just a kick ass bitch. Watching Kirika and Chloe side by side was pretty damn awesome, too.

Episode 16: Shao Li in that traditional dress was hot, like, hotter than Faye hot (obviously), my only question is, what kind of race is she, if she isn't affected by the poison? Watching her and Chloe fight, despite its shortness, was very similiar as the Rock Lee versus Sasuke duel, except this one didn't end up with me rolling on the floor laughing. Finally, Chloe's keeper, is that male or female? I'm pretty sure female, but it's got that asian transexual freakyness going on.

Episode 17: Who the hell is Soldats! How can you be a child of an organization, that's all I'm wondering.

Episode 18: This I found to be a very moving episode, just the plot twist keep piling up that I was beginning to get confused. Thus, I took a dinner break.

Episode 19: The beginning of this episode just made me feel weird, it was so much unlike all the other episodes. Mirielle's printer sucks, by the way, reminds me of my old Lexmark. The translations changed in this episode as well, Altena became Artena, so I was confused for a touch. I should go back and count how many times Mirielle would be dead had it not been for Kirika. It should average out to at least one an episode. It's pretty damn obvious Mirielle knows who took out her parents at this point.

Episode 20: This episode was chock full of history, which is a change of pace as opposed to just flashbacks. My question is, who in the hell wears heels while rooftop jumping? Kirika's hate filled facial expressions makes you feel a little uneasy. The ending was pretty screwed up, too. If you know most animes, you know it would run at least 26 episodes, but if you didn't and didn't have these all collected, I feel sorry for those who had to wait a week.

Episode 21: By the end of this episode, everything it out in the open, but by now it was all pretty much obvious. So, I'm hoping there will be no more flashbacks, that plagued this entire series.

Episode 22: That little girl looked just like Mirielle, as I reckon it was supposed to, oooh freaky. The whole village looked like something ripped straight out of a Steven King book. At the end of the episode, it was clear that most of the town lacked any sort of tactics. I mean, who charges armed soldiers in a mob formation? When the old man sniper got taken out by the RPG, it was just like the scene in Saving Private Ryan. I reckon' I should compare the release dates to see who got the idea from who, although I'm pretty sure, it was Noir taking it from SPR. Oh, a French based army got owned... big surprise =]

Episode 23: This was a very slow episode, not much to highlight, and unfortunately, more flashbacks.

Episode 24: What the hell, are they assassins or gladiators? Another blade breaking move by Kirika, scary huh?

Episode 25: Felt like I was watching a lesbo moving at this point, and since their age is pretty vague, it just seems so wrong. Kirika saves Mirielle, again, by stopping a blade, again! My question is, despite friendship, why choose Mirielle over Chloe? If I was an assassins, I'd want the strongest partner, not a sexy, high heeled, short skirt wearing, blonde who.... oh nevermind, answered that one myself.

Episode 26: What the hell kind of ending is that. I'm left wanting, again... I was pretty sure it ended in a homocide-suicide of the two maidens, but I was told that was wrong. They say the manga explains it better, so I'm search of that.

Overall, I thought this was an excellent anime, it could have done without so many flashbacks, but since they're meant to be watched one a week or so, I guess I don't have much room to complain. I'd like to watch the English dubbed/subbed version, see how the 'professionals' translated everything and what voices they would've used. Finally, the soundtrack was superb, a must buy for everything (Disc 1 anyways).

Work is still slow, but I've been setting up more and more systems (when I can find them). I really need to clean the entangled messed under my desk, it's a disgrace. Lastly, I must hit the Google to find an easy recipe for trout, since I bought one (Kroger had no salmon and I didn't want herring) and have no idea how to fix it.

Weekend Rundown II

Well, what all happened to me last week? Trying pretty much nothing (as usual with my boring 9-5 job) until the weekend.

As I normally do every three to four months, I take the long journey up I-77 to visit my buddy Chris in Parkersburg, WV. What was on the agenda? Anime, pulling ethernet cable, Dungeons and Dragons, and of course, drinking!

I arrived Friday night, about 9, and he showed me what he had purchased. Couple of wall plates, 75' of Cat5, some cat5 plugs, and a Linksys 802.11g router. After a delicious meal of pork-chops, corn, and stuffing, we set out to pull wire. While he was in the basement setting up the router and cable modem close to the outlet, I quickly made a section of 9' patch to test my now rusty skills. Perfect, of course. It took us about an hour to run the first wire to an old phone/cable plate, because we couldn't get through the floorboards and the outside insulation and etc etc etc. Eventually, we just dremeled a larger hole in the wire housing and the cable was ran in about 5 minutes. Ran downstairs and put a jack on the end of the cable and hooked it to the router. I stripped and attached the cat5 to the wall plate and tested out the port (which worked). So, I go to put the port on the plate and... damn it... wrong side. Had to cut off the wire, put the port on the plate, then rewire. Still worked, so I was fine. The second port was done in about 15 minutes, same process, minus the screw up. My powerbook was my best friend, helping test the strength of the wireless network in the house and each hardwired connection. It looked good, his PC was hooked up to one jack and the XBox by his bitching widescreen at the other jack. Watched some anime, went to bed.

Saturday, I woke and he was watching my Kenshin OVAs (which I still haven't seen). I surfed the web for a bit and around four we headed out to the NET (North End Tavern) for some of the best food and beer money can buy. Won two bucks on Keno, spent five to play. One day I'll just give the waitress the five and save some time. Bought a half-gallon growler of Net Lite as well, which I need to drink soon before it goes bad. Then it was off to Mike's for about five hours of quality Dungeons and Dragons, as well as some general UO and computer discussion. Got home about about 2.45am and played Halo with Chris till about 5.30. Levels are Heroic are a bitch, even with two players.

Go up Sunday late, around 1, meant to leave by 2... instead finished watching part of a Kenshin OVA, helped him reconfigure his entertainment system, showed him some router management items, hit the mall for some cheap Chinese food (combo meals without drink included aren't really combo meals, now are they?) then finally hit the road a little before 5. Got home, worked on my sleeving, which is taking forever.

That's roughly my weekend. Still haven't finished Noir yet. *sigh* Life...

Weekend Rundown

Wow, it's been a while since I've posted anything here. Then again, nothing really 'exciting' ever happens to me, so, blah blah blah here I go. I think our relationship is finally on a road to being fixed since she agreed to stop talking to him, I'll guess we'll see, but it's really taken a weight off of my mind.

Conan has started running new episodes again, so the nights don't go by as slowly. Humor is always a plus. I didn't get to watch any Noir this weekend because I was gone! After I lovely sushi meal from Kroger on Thursday, I headed homeward to see my sister's graduation the next day. Of course, it rains, and so it's pushed back to Friday and what I do end up doing. Driving my fiancee, my brother, and my sister around Winchester all day to shop for random stuff. I spent 7 hours in town so I could get a screw extractor set, does that seem right to you? In addition, we got to cook pork stir fry for the whole family and everyone liked it, that's always a good sign. It wasn't until about 11 o clock Friday that I finally got to work on the stripped screw heads in the case and of course that had to go wrong. Seems the smallest screw extractor was about the same size of the screw itself. Oh well, drilled the screw heads off and the threaded portions could be undone by hand. What a surprise.

Amy's graduation was ok, except for the getting my bald noggin' roasted and spending more of the day driving around town exchanging stuff and getting photos dropped off, developed, and what not. Merc and I took a peak at Victoria Secret, but she didn't buy anything, then again, I did just get her a PJ set (no, it's not that revealing). We watched a couple episodes of Naruto as well (up to episode 26 now!) and, well, let's say that Rock Lee is one interesting fellow, as well as Guy-Sensei. A very comical yet disturbing student-teacher relationship. And what's with that turtle?

We also watched Identity, you know the one where a whole bunch of people with the same birthday get stuck in a hotel together and they started getting killed? A very good movie with an interesting twist. I found it enjoyable, to say the least... too bad my sister wouldn't shut up for the first 30 minutes or so and I had to turn on the subtitles. Pity. We meant to watch "Pitch Black" as well, but Merc wasn't feeling to great and sleepy to boot. So, just had Toast rip a big ole 8 gig image of the DVD on the good ole Powerbook. Speaking of which, I should prolly move that over to a bigger drive when I get home.

Came home Sunday, had some brawt for dinner, watched the Laker's game. Not that I'm a big fan of basketball or anything, but I figure it's best to know what Merc's bitching about by the end of the game so I'll a general idea of what's going on. I have decided that if I had to be a big black man, I'd want to look like Ben Wallace. What a badass.

I should prolly should've posted this earlier, but I didn't think about it... only two hours of work left now, because we just got back from filming out commercial for New Student Orientation, it needs to be edited, but it should result in a pretty funny product.

So, I'm just piddling around work right now and I am so bored. Merc's got an internship at Time-Warner Broadband, so I'll get to talk to her less and see her even rarer. At this rate, I'll see her one more time over break, July 4th weekend or so.

I guess things are looking up for once. Here goes nothing, eh?

What a crock...

So the Bolts win the Cup, eh? What crap, I don't care what anyone said about that puck, no matter how you twist it, even with those 'ABC' specialist and their cameras say it wasn't in. So, now, they'll make a big deal about Andreychuck winning the Cup for the first time after playing 22 years or whatever. Maybe if he wasn't whipped and let his wife trade him to Tampa Bay, instead of bailing out on Colorado, he would've had a cup a lot sooner. Serves him right...

God, work is so boring. I don't know how to stay alive, worst of all, all these PCs and Dell laptops that sit around the office seem to interference with my Airport Extreme card and I don't get any connectivity inside the rooms, just in the hallways, lounges, etc, which makes work kind of hard at the moment. Especially when I need to go to meetings our what not *shrugs*.

My diet is going, eh, I don't feel like I'm losing anything... I guess I'll find out more when I go home, where there's actually a scale. My thoughts of paranoia are still around, I wish I could get rid of them. Friday is my sister's graduation, so, I still haven't worked a full week here, ha. Back to mindless web surfing.

One season down, one to go..

Finished up the first season Noir today. Here, are my feelings:

Episode 7: Some new flashbacks, the change of pace is good, right? I'm noticing even more that some people bleed and some don't. I've been told that I'll figure this out later (thanks for the spoiler =p). I gotta try that move my student ID one day...

Episode 8: First episode with the 'Dada' soundtrack, wasn't as funny as when I heard it the first time. Noir eating the nutty butty got me wanting one ... damn diet =[. Silvana is one crazy bitch, I'll tell you that much. You just can't go around stabbing everyone. The fight scenes were pretty intense here, got me itchin' to play some Battlefield, Vietnam style.

Episode 9: The black skirt Mierelle wears is just plain hot. I'll have to get one for Merc. Why are anime chicks so hot though? Maybe it's 'cause they're faker than American women. The Kiss of Death, that lasted way to long, can you say lesbian? And how come all these women only wear lipstick on half their lips. The near end of this episode really had me going, but, this isn't Counterstrike! A person with a knife cannot beat a person with a gun.

Episode 10: More 'Dada's, if they keep this up, they'll lose their novelty. Let's just face it now, people, if someone in this show has purple hair, they're just plain evil. True Noir! WTF is that about, eh?

Episode 11: Yup, purple people are evil, no denying it now. The true Noir reminds me sorta Sasuke in Naruto, the way she wears her cloak. How come lackeys can never fight? How do these corporations get into power with shots like that. I can't even imagine the cost in bullets.

Episode 12: "So you're here to kill me? Want to go on a hike?" Dur. He's a real smart one. And that kid, the true Noir, she's pretty freaky, never seen an assassin so happy.

Episode 13: Very sweet beginning, that Noir found a friend and all. You could just tell it was going to end badly and it did. Such a pity.

What else have I done this weekend. Try getting pissed off at the NHL. That goal was soooo in, but all the officials missed it, upstairs couldn't stop the game in time, and Calgary didn't have the oppurtunity to win the Cup at home. The NHL contacts ABC later and tells ABC they felt the puck did not totally cross the line and that there would be no more talk about it. This translates to we just made the biggest fuck up in Stanley Cup history since '99 when they let Brett Hull sit in the crease (not that I'm saying that part time, whiney, bandwagon goalie Hasek ever deserved the Cup). If Tampa Bay and that sorry Andreychuk win the Cup, it'll be undeserved.

What else have I done today? Try nothing! I ate some Pho, played some Mario Golf and surfed the web. I love weekends =]

Crazy Fish..

I have some chiclids, they like to dig... but this... was just way to much...

Click here for Pictures