It's been several weeks where I've had a whole weekend where I had no special activities planned. Where I could just veg out and spend just about every hour doing whatever my whims dictated right at the moment they did so.

This isn't a complaint. It's not like I wasn't out having fun, whatever I was doing. But sometimes it's nice to just do nothing. By and large, I took advantage of the long weekend to do exactly that.

And my whims were mostly game related. I can't remember if I posted it here, but back in early June, my 360 finally red-ringed. I sent it in to get repaired and got it back, but I know the repeat failure rate is pretty high. Add that to the fact that I was an early adopter and got pretty screwed by MS's concessions that maybe people really do want HDMI output (among other things) and I decided to not deal with the old one anymore. I had enough rewards saved up on a couple of my credit cards that I was able to go down to Best Buy and get a new 360 (Pro) at no direct cost to me. Sweet. I did that early last week. Then waited around for Newegg to deliver some HDMI cables.

First off, YPbPr->HDMI = a world of difference. I was amazed at just how much better the picture is. Plus I now get true 5.1 sound which makes everything that much better.

So I've had Halo 3 and Gears of War 2 sitting on my shelf, still in the shrink wrap, since their respective release weeks. My whims decided it was finally time to remedy that.

Halo took me 3 sittings, and that's largely because two of them were on work nights where I didn't have as long to play. I know multi-player is the true focus of the game and if you're really going to judge it, you have to do it off that. But I couldn't care less about it. I'd played the first two and I really wanted to see how the story ended. Overall? It was probably the right ending, but it was very unfulfilling. The game was fun, though. Leaps and bounds ahead of the previous two in terms of gameplay. I obviously didn't think it was horrible, given how quickly I went through it.

I took a lunch break after I finished Halo on Friday and then loaded up Gears. The original plan was to co-op it with Tek. But we never got past talking about it and it's been a while since we've even done that. So I figured I'd go through on my own, get the Insane difficulty unlocked, and then if we want to co-op that, we'll do it again.

Holy hell was that game fun. I finished it in two marathon sessions and was halfway tempted to start it again as soon as I was done. I can't believe I waited so long to play it. And it's a game that did the story right. Compelling all the way though. Never let up. And the best part? They know how to do a proper cliff-hanger. So many games (Halo 2 and God of War 2 come immediately to mind) do it the cheap way, where they build the story right up to this huge climax and then just end the game. Wanna see how it ends? Get the next one, sucker.

Gears (both 1 and 2) does it right. The story they're telling resolves. There's a proper climax and dénouement. The characters genuinely believe it's over and they've won. It's only we, as the audience, that understand there's still something coming. That's how it's supposed to be done.

And, as morbid as it may be, I will never get tired of watching Locust heads pop like watermelons from a well-placed sniper round. So satisfying.

After that was said and done, I turned my attention to Prototype, which I picked up with the new 360. I've only put a few hours into it so far, but it's got me hooked. It lacks a lot of the polish (graphically and otherwise) that was so evident in Gears and made that such a good game. But it makes up for in sheer fun factor. The moment I started playing, I was grinning and giggling like an idiot, and that giddy feeling really hasn't let up at all. You can run straight up the sides of buildings. You can jump off them (even when you need 3 digits to label all the stories) and free fall completely safely, leaving a small crater where you hit the ground. You can pile-drive tanks into nothingness. You can pick up cars and hurl them at helicopters. And that's just in the first 5 minutes.

Seriously. So much damn fun.

So yeah. That's pretty much all I did. No plans. No stress. No meetings with real estate agents or mortgage lenders. Just a weekend of shooting, slicing, chopping, mashing, and blowing up anything that had the audacity to cross my television screen. In 1080p. With true 5.1 surround sound.

I need more weekends like that. :-)

Hockey last night was crap. Seriously. We outplayed those guys every second of the game and we still lost 5-1. They had one goal--ONE--that could actually be considered a skill goal. The rest of them were just stupid freakin' luck (including one where the refs should have blown the puck dead underneath the goalie--a favor they didn't return on the other end later even though we knocked the puck in the net as they blew the whistle).

To top it all off, I'm going to be thinking of the game every time I sit down or reach for my wallet for a few days. At one point in the first period I was parked in the high slot. A shot rebounded out to me, I shot it back in off the backhand, but two of their defenders collapsed in on me right as I got the shot off and knocked me off balance. I did the classic banana-peel style, legs-high fall right onto my ass. It stung worse than a fall like that ever stung before. I skated off to the bench and joked that I thought I might have landed right on someone's stick.

When I got home, I found out that may not be far from the truth. There's two long, thin open cuts on my bum, parallel to each other and about as far apart as the thickness of the blade of a hockey stick. Curved similarly too. And the spot is all swollen.

To top it all off, I found out that I'd actually managed to flip the puck up with my wild backhand shot and it bounced off the crossbar. So I was that damn close to scoring. I had no idea at the time. *sadface*

On a more positive note, I'm finding that I really enjoy playing wing when I have a good puck-control center with me. When I've played offense in the past I always seem to end up on lines where all 3 guys are non-puck-control players. They're more reliant on position and opportunity. But if no one's controlling the puck, that opportunity is never going to come. It's also hard to be aggressive when you don't entirely trust the other guys on your line to be doing their jobs right.

Last night I got to play on a forward line with two other very good players. I was able to skate faster, freer, and more aggressively because I knew they would be doing the things they needed to do. If I had the puck and needed to pass, I knew they would be where I expected them to. I also trusted that if I got myself into the right places when I didn't have the puck, they'd find a way to get it to me. It made things a lot more fun. I felt like I was actually playing forward instead of just being on a "grind line."

So it sounds like MJ, the King of Pop, is dead.

LA Times is reporting that he died at a hospital after suffering cardiac arrest. NBC has apparently confirmed this, though CNN is still trying to do so.

Man, crazy.

http://www.joystiq.com/2009/06/24/metroid-prime-trilogy-packaging-cooler-than-a-chozo-suit/

Because what was on the disc all by itself wasn't already sexy enough...

The inspection today went pretty well. A few problems, but nothing overly major. Probably less than $1000 worth, all said and done.

I've apparently been remiss about posting pics of the house. Below are the ones I have. Keep in mind that these weren't really taken with the intent of showing them off. They were just to help me and strm remind ourselves of what each house looked like and to help add visuals to my hand-written notes on each place. So a lot of them aren't really taken from good angles to show off what's really there.

( Pics beneath )

So yeah. There it is.

First of all, I want to thank everyone that took the time to reply to my post from Wednesday. I know I didn't respond to the individual comments, but you all gave me good points of view and things to think about. Especially jazzfanatic.

I did go walk the house again Sunday and took a lot more time to really look at it all by itself rather than in the midst of a day spent looking at 11 other places. A lot of my lingering doubts were eased by that. It's still daunting. But I know I'm making the right move now.

So if the inspection tomorrow goes smoothly, I'll most likely be a home owner by the end of next month. Crazy. I almost feel like an adult or something. :-P

In other (WoW) news, we got down Mimiron last night in 10-man Ulduar after about 3 hours of attempts. It was on our declared "last attempt" of the night as well, since it was getting pretty late on the east coast and people had to work in the morning. What an insane fight. But so much fun.

That's all the keepers down (though we still have to get Freya this lockout period). Only Vezax and Yogg-Saron remain. (We're not holding our breath on Algalon.)

So I haven't talked much about it here, but I've been spending a lot of time over the last 6 weeks in the market to buy a house. So far I've seen a number of decent places and put in offers on 2 (one of which I walked away from because the seller kept mucking with the terms too much and the other which I'm going to have inspected this week).

I have a lot of mixed emotions over the whole thing.

Some days I'm really excited. It's going to be nice to get out of apartment life. No lease terms. No up/downstairs neighbors. Not worrying about sound carrying through walls. Guaranteed personal parking spaces (coming home from hockey at 1 in the morning after the late game is a bitch). No more throwing away money on rent instead of being able to view it as an investment. And just coming home every day to a place that's "mine."

It's also daunting, though. I mean, it goes without saying, but this shit is expensive. Not just owning, but the whole buying process, too. It's really hard to get overly excited about a house you like when there's this huge pricetag affixed to it. It's like fog on your windshield when you're driving through the mountains in winter. Yeah, it's beautiful view, but it's also obscured. Sometimes dangerously so if you're not careful.

There's also the realization that, at this point in my life, what I want and what I can afford are separated about 33%. So no matter what house I settle on, it's ultimately just that...settling. I know this isn't a bad thing. But again, it's a bit of a downer when you have to go into every house knowing that there's going to be some aspect of it that's just not good enough. So how do I weigh those things? Would having a home that backs to a huge, open field outweigh dealing with a disgustingly small master bathroom? Does having a large, walk-out basement make up for a kitchen that needs a lot of work? Is taking a house with less square footage than I'd like worth it if it doesn't really need anything in the way of immediate repairs/improvements? If I have to hold off on buying the king bed I've wanted because the master bedroom is just a little too small, can I live with that knowing that the kitchen and living area is almost perfect?

I spend almost every moment bouncing back and forth between being excited about the things that are right about a place I may have put an offer on and fighting all the doubt over what's still wrong.

During the whole loan pre-approval process I kept thinking to myself "I'm not ready for this. Even with the first-time owner tax credit and home prices as low as they're probably going to get, I'm just not ready." But if I'm not ready now, when am I going to be? That tax credit is a huge help, especially 'cause the bank is giving it up front (I don't have to wait to file for it). And if home prices start going back up, how long do I have to go before I can afford again what I can already afford now? Forget about even going into that everything-I-want category. I recognize that a lot of those feelings are largely due to the combination of the facts that I'm somewhat of a penny pincher and that a home represents stickershock to the nth degree. But knowing that doesn't really ease those feelings any.

You can probably tell by the tone of the post that right now I'm a little more down about things than not. Probably because accepting a counter-offer, writing an earnest money check, and setting up to hire an inspector starts to move things from the realm of excited possibility to that of daunting reality.

Am I really making the right decision?

Because I needed a smile this morning and thought I would share:

When work gets a little surreal...


...slap your troubles away...


...and then just mess around a little.

(Make sure to listen until the very end for the more production-quality segment.)

Looks awesome, but the title needs a little work...



It took me a few views to realize what she was fighting at the 1:27 mark.

The Brain is back!!

So just a quick wrap up here.

Overall the week in FL was pretty good. I spent the first few days hanging out. Spent some time with my cousin and his friends. Also had a fantastic dinner on Wed night with another group of friends of mine that all live down there. I didn't get to really spend any time in the parks at Disney, which I was looking forward to. But I can only really blame myself for poor planning. Next time I'll try not to throw together everything at the last minute.

The next few days were spent at Elliot's Spring Gathering. Not sure what to say. I don't want to say that I had a bad time, because that's not the case at all. But at the same time, I won't be planning any more vacations around that particular event. So yeah.

Meh.

No, not Christmas, you fool. E3. This is the yearly week where I end up seeking medical advice for rampant priapism. The docs tell me to stop watching press coverage and it will go away. I tell them where to shove it. Unf!

Just to give you a small sampling of the awesome so far...






This was just yesterday's highlights. And yesterday was only...Day 0.

It's gonna be a long week.

Hooray for free airport internet!

I'm just chillin' at DIA waiting for my flight to FL to board. Gonna be out there for about a week. Visiting my cousin in the house the mouse built for a few days and then heading to Elliot's. Gonna be good times.

Also, I just realized the guy that I've been seeing out of the corner of my eye for the last 30 minutes that hasn't moved is actually a statue. Hooray awareness!

And, just because:

Hooray beer!

They've been teasing this game in little bits for a while now. Ever since last year's E3, I think. I've kinda been keeping my eye on it.

The more they show of it, the more I want it.

So, I'm a dumbass. Or, more, just a procrastinator. Maybe a little of both.

I have a Frontier Airlines Mastercard. When I buy things, I get miles. I can then spend those miles for flights. Basic flyer program stuff, right?

So the policy used to be that there were a few seats (10?) reserved on every flight for miles redeemers. As long as one of those seats was open, you could turn in 15K miles for one. If they were all gone, you could double the spendature (30K) and get any seat on the flight.

A while ago they upped the 15K number to 20K. I thought that, along with that, they got rid of the limited seats deal. Turns out not so much so. Guaranteed seat after those few have been sold is now 40K. As of last night, I had 35K miles I could redeem.

The reason this is all important is because I was planning on using miles to buy my tix for my Florida vacation next week. Since I had assumed the flight was going to be free, I really wasn't hurrying to buy said tix.

I think you can see where I'm going with this.

Since the day I fly out was only 9 days away, I decided last night would be a good time to finally redeem my miles and get my tix. You know, before the flight filled up.

Well, all the reserved seats on Frontier were sold, and I didn't have enough miles for a regular seat. So off to Expedia I had to go. Long story short, my planned "free" flights cost me $312. And instead of flying out of Florida Monday morning, I'm leaving Sunday evening.

And this extra spendature has put off a number of other purchases I had been thinking about recently, and may be a nail in the coffin of any AC plans. I'll have to see what the bank account looks like at the end of the month. House shopping has started ('nother post for another time) and I'm hoping I can move a few more thousand from the checking account to the savings account before I end up clearing it out on a down payment.

But yeah...anyway. I'm going to be at Elliot's in two weeks. So if you're gonna be making an appearance, I'll catch you there. :-)

Yes, please!

Meet my niece, ( Kelsey McKenna Sosias. )

This Uncle transition is going to be interesting. Especially since I only live about two miles away...

Do you ever feel like this?



I do.

Also, LICD recently wrapped up a really good stretch of strips about the state of the newspaper industry right now. It starts here, if you're interested.

Well, hockey last night was not to be. After checking the schedule, I found out that it was just a practice and not an actual game. And since it was at 11:00, I decided to pass. I wouldn't have gotten home until after 1 and for a practice that's just not worth it. Instead I raided and watched the Nuggets game.

Nuggs lost a close one. And man, it was exciting at the end. I did not see KMart's foul on Nowitzky at the end, the one that fouled him out of the game. All I saw was a good defend and a missed shot. I thought right then that the Nuggs had the game. But the whistle blew and Nowitzky went to the line to make the two free throws that put the nail in the coffin.

Still, Nuggs are up 3-1 in the series and now they're coming back to Denver. All in all, the loss was probably good for them. They need to not feel invincible heading into the next round, especially if the Lakers advance over the Rockets.

Raiding was good as well. The 10 of us that started Sunday night went back in (sans one substitution) and got two more bosses down: Ignis and Auriaya. Both are guild firsts. So that's 5 bosses (3 guild firsts) in two nights. Not bad at all. Especially considering none of us had ever tried Kologarn or Auriaya before these past two nights. I have more to say on that, but it may become a new post later.

Finally, we're now a week way from the release of Punch-Out!! on the Wii. The more I've seen of this game, the more I absolutely want it. I think I'm going to have to break down and finally buy my own Wii. I mean...honestly...look at this:


More here.

Too awesome.