"Boom shaka laka!"

First, I'm going to list as many commentator quotes from NBA Jam that I can remember off the top of my head:

Boom shaka laka!
The nail in the coffin!
Is it the shoes?
From downtown!
Can't buy a bucket!

If you can remember any yourself, please remind me of the wonderful literary artistry from that game.

Well, I'm sorry to say, but I gave up on Super Mario Sunshine. I got to a point where there were three or four levels that were just TOO frustrating to complete. Yeah, that's right, I gave up on a kiddie game. Hugh, if you're reading this then I know that you're the most disappointed in me, but that's just the way it is.

I started up Tales of Symphonia for GC, and I've put some serious time into it already. It's a pretty good game and not too difficult, though some of the bosses can hand my ass to me in a flash. It's supposedly a 50+ hour game, so it's gonna be a long journey.

I've spent quite a bit of money on eBay lately. I got a MIDI to USB converter for my mom's new Mac to replace the old sound-card dependent one. I won Wind Waker for $18, a DVD boxset of Mission Hill for $30 (I was reminded of it when looking at the Filmography of the voice actor for the main character in ToS who also is the voice of Kevin French in Mission Hill (and Robin in Teen Titans)), and a 36-booster box of Harry Potter CCG cards for $20 (the best deal I could find).

In an effort to clean up the crawl space/storage room, my dad bought 6 heavy-duty shelves. Of course, I wound up assembling them, but I guess I have to earn my keep somehow. At least now I can feel like I did *something* productive this summer. They were a bitch to assemble, but they certainly will help in organizing all of our shit. Once we get rid of our old entertainment center (my brother is going to take it) and our old couches, there will be a lot of free room. I think I'll move my gaming tables in there to be set up permanently.

I realized that since we got the HDTV, I hadn't yet tried setting up a computer to the PC input. I have an old 900MHz Compaq running XP that doesn't really do anything besides get played on by Adam (who now has a job and doesn't come over as often as he used to), so I set it up to the TV. I haven't really done much with it yet, but I've fiddled around with all my emulators and set them up to the right resolution. Along with my PS2 to USB dongle (hehe, dongle), it's a nice little gaming machine now. Unfortunately, it's not powerful enough to run Project64 without slowdown, but everything 16 bit and lower runs fine. I haven't yet checked ePSXe, but I have a modded PS2 so emulating PS games is not a high priority.

Well I guess there's only a month left of summer. I suppose that soon I'll have to get together with my academic advisor to figure out what courses I'll need to take. Fun. Last night I was thinking about how I don't really like dealing with Fibonacci numbers. Maybe if I'm bored I'll try to figure out if there are infinitely many Fibonacci numbers that are prime, or infinitely many Fibonacci numbers that are square. Or maybe I'll play video games. I'm not sure.

Listening to... No Use For A Name - Fields of Agony
Link of the moment... Does this blog have the Buddha nature, Master?

SMS or SM64? OoT or WW?

If you'll take note of the sidebar, you'll see that I have completed Suikoden 3 (and it only took 57 hours!). Often, when I finish a game, I already have another one in mind to play, but unfortunately no such game has piqued my interest so far. I've been spending a bit of time on Guitar Hero 2, trying to unlock some stuff. I'm currently trying to five star all the songs no medium (which is pretty easy but time consuming).

I bought a second Wavebird the other day. I couldn't find them at a slew of store, but I eventually picked one up at Superstore for $40. The next day, I was browsing the used games at Rogers Video, and noticed that they (most assuredly mistakenly) had priced the Wavebirds at $25 ($5 cheaper than they were selling the wired controllers!). Unfortunately, I had opened the packaging on the first one, and I didn't really feel like laying down $25 for a third one.

I think in the future I'll play a Mario game and a Zelda game, but I'm not sure which of each: either Super Mario Sunshine or Super Mario 64, and either Ocarina of Time or Wind Waker. Considering I still don't have my Wii online, and since Grant has WW that I can probably borrow, I'll probably choose SMS and WW, though in the future I might have time for the other two. I was telling my friend Gennie the other day how I try to stay at least 2 years behind the times WRT video games. You'll save a lot of money that way. I didn't buy my Wii because I wanted a Wii, I bought it because I wanted a Gamecube and figured that two years from now I'd want a Wii. It's genious, I tells ya.

I ordered Nexus Ops and Vegas Showdown from Amazon.com the other day. The two games are regularly $40, but they were on for $11 each (plus $4 shipping in the US). For that price, I figured it was worth the effort to get them shipped to Grand Portage and pick them up. I had planned on picking up Nexus Ops at some point, and Vegas Showdown has got some positive feedback on BGG. They made it to Minnesota on Friday, so they should be ready to get picked up sometime tomorrow. Maybe I'll try going Tuesday morning so I can break them out at the games night.

I'd like to turn as much of my media digital as I can, in an effort to clear up some space. I have a bunch of CD cases and DVD cases that are doing nothing but sitting there on the shelf. What I'd like is to get a 500GB drive, put everything I have on it, and then sell off my DVDs (undoubtedly illegal, so don't tell anyone). Of course, if I buy a 500GB drive, it'll be SATA. To use SATA, I'll need a new motherboard. For the new motherboard, I'll need a new processor, etc. I suppose I could get an external drive or a drive enclosure, but I think my system has issues with USB 2.0 (vs. 1.1), so maybe not. Well, it's not too urgent anyways.

I played softball last weekend with Sheena, Dan, and a bunch of Dan's friends. It was quite fun. I even got a double when I was up at bat! I was sore for a few days afterwards, but I'm looking forward to the next game (Dan wants to play sports more regularly, but we'll see if anyone actually has the motivation to organize it).

Listening to... THe Dillinger Escape Plan - 43% Burnt
Link of the moment... I'm starting to track game sessions to see how often games hit the table. Geeky, eh?

Hit the peg! Hit the peg!

Argh, thanks for waking me up, truck outside. Curse you!

I feel like I've been quarantined in my house lately. I can't seem to find anyone to hang out with. No one is phoning me, and anyone I phone is busy or not answering their phone. It was a pretty boring weekend; I just watched some movies on the movie networks.

Spiderman 3 spoilers
I watched Spiderman 3 on Friday, at a matinee. The theatre was only about half full. I don't want to give a full on review (I'm not a movie buff, so anything I say would just be coming from someone who doesn't know shit about production values and such), but I do want to say that I'm unimpressed with the way venom turned out. Topher Grace is not the right casting choice! They didn't put enough effort into building up Eddie Brock's hatred for Spiderman and Peter Parker. We saw Eddie lose his job, and have his camera broken, and even have his "girlfriend" stolen, but I never got the impression that it was all adding up and making him go mad.

On top of that, I didn't like how after Eddie supposedly reached his breaking point, he's still making wisecracks to Spiderman. I like how Scott Dewitt says that "Venom was the same dork as Eric from That 70's Show. Venom. Not the guy that turns into Venom. Venom himself is a dork". Venom and Eddie Brock really are two different characters, and there wasn't enough in the movie to get that point across. One thing I really missed not seeing as well was Venom calling himself "we", to show that the symbiote is a part of him, and not just something to enhance his powers. But enough of that.
END Spiderman 3 spoilers

I'm QUITE excited about my games night tomorrow night. I've had this fascination with werewolf ever since I had the idea of playing it. I've put a fair amount of effort into considering which roles to use, and how to handle voting in the day phase. I've whipped up some reference sheets for the roles and their powers, set aside some playing cards to assign roles to players, and even scrounged up some poker chips in hopes that the assist in the voting process. Now, all I've got to do is wait to actually play the game!

I picked up the Megaman X collection for Gamecube, as previously mentioned. So far I've blown through the first game, and I'm starting on the second. Even with all my heart tanks and four full energy tanks, the final boss took me countless attempts. Most of the time, I wouldn't be watching my health bar and found myself dead before I could use an energy tank. If memory serves correctly, X2 is just as hard, if not harder if I try to get the good ending by defeating three extra bosses.

I've been thinking of building my own poker table, using one of these designs. My old one is sort of in shambles, and if my weekly games nights actually pan out, having a nice table would go a long way. I've never been that good at that sort of stuff though. Even when I just changed the fabric on the old table, it came out in worse whape than when I started. I think I'm just too impatient. If I throw actual carpentry on top of that, I'm sure the end product won't turn out as it looks in my dreams. Still, I think stuff like that can be fun, and it's nice to have something that you built with your own two hands and can be proud of. I think I'll just mull over it some more.

Listening to... Death By Stereo - These are a Few of my Favorite Things
Link of the moment... They make it look so easy!

$220 later...

Given that I'll be getting $500 from marking, and I have renewed my $1000 scholarship for yet another year, I felt as though I deserved to treat myself to something, as money was burning a hole in my pocket. I forget where I got the idea from, but recently found myself with an urge to get a Nintendo DS. So I did.

The service at FutureShop was terrible as usual, but they had a deal where I could get a game for $10 with the system. I wound up going with Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2, which is a pretty decent game, but I'll need to invest in some more titles sometime soon. I started playing and noticed a dead (blue) pixel on the right side of the top screen. I threw out some of the packaging, but I'm hoping if I bring the DS along with the box with the same serial #, I can exchange it at FShop. It's not a terrible error, but if I'm going to pay $160 for something, I might as well get something without any flaws.

Along with my new system purchase, I got Super Mario Strikers for GC, because it underwent a recent price drop. It's a pretty decent multiplayer game, but single player doesn't have that same feeling. As far as a mario game goes, I feel it's sort of lacking. More play modes and minigames would have been nice as well as unique fields to play on and unlockable content (new captains and sidekicks perhaps?). Now I bide my time until Mario Power Tennis gets its price chopped...

Well I guess I'm sort of caught up now. I've got a few assignment deadlines coming up, but I have enough time to relax for a while. I got my ENGL midterm back: I scored an 84.5%. I guess that's ok, but it's below my peronal goal of 87%. Next is CO342...I think I have a good feeling about that midterm. I understand Graph Theory pretty well, and now we're getting into Vector Spaces, which I've already (more or less) covered in Rings and Group Theory. I only got 33/40 on the last assigment, so I've got to make sure I don't make any errors on this next one.

The other day, John Julie and I wanted to play kickball. We went to the school nearest my house, and sure enough, the very first kick of the game resulted in Julie kicking the ball onto the roof of the school. We spent most of the rest of the afternoon getting a ladder from Julie's house and getting the ball. It was an adventure to say the least. After that, the three of us went to Red Lobster to celebrate getting the ball. Well, in reality, we all just wanted to go to Red Lobster.

I updated the euchre website! Now we have the house rules listed, the current scores for the members, and some of my personal tips on the strategy page. Quinn and I had a dispute over the colour scheme of the site. We decided Molly's vote should be the deciding vote, and unfortunately she went with him on it. I still completey stand by my argument, but I'm willing to concede the point since we agreed Molly would have the final say. I should start my own Euchre Club, one that's not color-blind...

It's been almost two weeks since I played euchre. I'm dying to take some tricks! Now that midterms are starting, I wonder if our member turnout is going to be lower than usual. Well, so long as we have enough for at least one table, I guess it doesn't really matter.

I think my DS purchase is going to push back my Wii purchase...I'm not sure if I can justify buying so many systems in such a short period of time. The way I figure, I'll be getting a Wii for Christmas; it's just a matter of who is paying for it.

Well, I think I've run out of things to say. I'll head over to RCH and play my DS until Nathalie shows up.

Listening to... AFI - File 13
Link of the moment... Any thoughts on what I should buy next?