Finish the Fight!

Wow, so two weeks and nothing from the lunatic. Bad monkey! No biscuit!! Sorry about that, I'll try to be better in the future.

It's been busy. Relatively. Work, unpacking, arranging finances. All kinds of fun stuff. Then this little thing over there popped up.

I'll proudly proclaim from any rooftop that I'm a geek. Geeking has earned me years of entertainment, and it's helping to supply me with an affordable lifestyle, so I will never bash it, and will openly admit that I am geek.

That being said, I am nowhere near as bad as some of the people in this world. I've never stood outside a movie theater waiting for the next installment of the Star Wars series(which one of these days I'll get around to blasting). I've never theorycrafted about the uber amounts of damage that a gnomish berzerker on steroids can do in the freezing rain outside of Ravenholm, or whatever the newest "flavor of the week" module D&D comes up with(although I have done it in the Camarilla...and believe you me, my "what if" cheese is infinitely better than anyone's!) And I've certainly never sat in line at a Gamestop or EB Games waiting for a midnight sale for a video game.

I love my video games, don't get me wrong, but that level of blind fanaticsm is just over the top. That level of...something or other, ceases to be geekiness and turns into sheer fanboi(yes..with an i, fanbois are the spawn of satan, fanboys are alright) obsession. While I can respect, to a certain extent, people being fanatical over something they enjoy, there comes to be a point where you have to step back and say "What the hell am I thinking?"

How many people, would you say, ditched work, family members, loved ones, and god knows how many other responsibilities, so they could camp out at a game store, and be the first one in line to get a silver shiny dvd with some computer code on it? I'd wager a lot. And when all is said and done, is that shiny little disc going to make you a better person? Is it going to solve all your life's problems? Probably not. It's just going to put a small dent in your wallet, and give you some entertainment. Granted, it's some good entertainment, but beyond that, it's not very important in the grand scheme of things.

So, if the end result is a smaller nest of money, and you won't gain any long-term benefits, why do it? I have yet to have anyone be able to give me a viable reason on this, other than something involving 1337-speak, and lots of excalamation points and typoed ones everywhere.

But, all fanboi-bashing aside, the game in question, for those of you who are totally in the dark, or in this case, just ignorant in general, is Halo 3. Master Chief is back for one last hurrah.

I've never been a huge Halo fanatic. I remember when it was first talked about. The game was going to be a PC franchise, and then Microsoft threw their hat into the console ring, and Halo suddenly became the flagship game for the upcoming Xbox. Cue Jason's sad tears.

While I'm not a huge Halo fanatic, I am a huge FPS fanatic. I love my shooters. It always amuses me to hear Playstation fanbois screaming that the Xbox360 is a FPS-one-trick-pony, when basic fact of the matter is, FPS-based games sell systems. Especially well made ones, like Gears of War, or in this case Halo 3. The old saying does apply, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Suffice to say, I've had quite a long history with FPS games. Doom, DoomII, the Quake franchise, ok basically any game put out by iD software, the Unreal franchise, Call of Duty 1 through 237235, Battlefield 2, and it's sequel "Battlefield: We're really Mechwarrior, but we won't tell anyone", etc etc etc. The list is pretty lengthy. In a nutshell, if it has explodey things, and it's first-person, I've probably played it.

Now, not to contradict myself, which I do from time to time, deal with it, I haven't had much experience with the Halo franchise. I dabbled with the first Halo a little bit, but never could get really engrossed in it. I never was a huge fan of campaign stories in FPS games, because the AI was typically too predictable, and the game itself was too repetitive for the most part. Most of my time was spent playing online. Playing against a human adversary is a much more painful beast than playing against a computer. While you can sometimes predict how players might react to something, it's not a given.

With that in mind, I picked up Halo 3 this week. No, I didn't sit in line waiting for a copy. I went to Best Buy the day after release, and was shocked to see a stack of Halo 3 copies on sale. The clerk said they got something like over a thousand copies shipped in. Color me surprised. So I picked up my Collector's Edition copy with the special little tin(I'm also a "special edition" freak...I love having something other than the generic standard release, especially if the case is metal...see my copies of Gears of War , Prey, heck, even my Appleseed movie is a metal tin), got a second controller to knock out some local co-op, and headed home. I think I heard the sounds of my bank account weeping as I left the store.

I got home, and myself and one of my buddies knocked out the first few chapters of the game, and I must say I'm impressed. The game is beautiful without being overbearing. You're thrown right into the thick of combat right at the getgo, and the pace is frantic. Combat is smooth, very fluid, and intelligent. Enemies actually have some resemblance to tactics. It's nice to play against a computer that thinks somewhat like a human.

We blew through a little bit of the game, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. After that, I broke out some of the Live gaming, and ran through some matches, and was blown away even more. Multiplayer is just silly. I didn't see any lag anywhere, and the game was visually stunning on a whole new level. Suffice to say, me likey.

The only thing that bugs me is probably attributed to my own lack of experience. I would unload an entire clip into someone, and yet I would be the one to die. It got a little frustrating on more than one occasion, but I'm sure a few nights of running through matches will fix that.

The multiplayer modes are pretty slick. I've only tackled the solo stuff so far, Slayer, Oddball, and Crazy King. Slayer is typical blow people up. Crazy King, king of the mountain, is definitely quality. Pain in the neck as it is, I like it a lot. Oddball, on the other hand, I'm not a big fan of.

It's a twist on king of the hill, whereas instead of the capture point being a static location, the capture point is a skull that you gain points for while in control of. When you kill the skull-runner, it drops, then you can pick it up and start running. The few games I've played with it, ends up being one person being really good at running their ass off, and it ends up being a 30 second match. Kinda boring in my opinion. But again, this is more likely attributed to lack of experience on my part.

All in all, it's a quality game. While I don't get all of the ridiculous hype the game gets, it's definitely one of the top 5 games fot he 360. Although, it still won't replace Bioshock for me. That game makes me feel funny on so many different levels. It's absurd.

A New Chapter...

So, it's done...

The move is finally finished, and now I'm stuck with an apartment filled with boxes, furniture, and me. Life seems to finally be picking up, I think.

Now, I get to spend the next few weeks unpacking, rearranging, cursing because I don't like the way things are, rearranging some more, kicking boxes because I can't remember where I packed something, and christening new toilets with drunken binges. Go team!

Through all of this, though, I am really having a hard time shaking this nagging feeling that I'm making a huge mistake. Common sense says "Dude, relax, you're on your own, you've got a solid income, you're getting an education, you'll be fine." Fear says "Omgwtfbbq!! What the hell were you thinking??"

I'm thinking that the alcohol is going to help squash some of those fears as they well up inside. Let's pray that my wrecked liver can continue persevering through the constant abuse that I put it through. Although, I do think that a few new choices in alcohol may be in order. I need to find some good bottles of wine to get attached to, and expand on my tequila collection.

Sadly, with every good thing that happens in life, bad things happen also. I had a huge falling out with my brother over a comment I made that he didn't take too well. Apparently, it's alright for him to make a mockery of my education and me trying to better myself, but when the tables are turned, everything goes to hell in a handbasket. Unfortunately, the victim in this scenario wasn't a person. My curio cabinet was the tragic target of abuse.

Everytime I would go to my grandparent's house, I would always admire the collection of model cars my grandfather had. The majority were of cars from the 40's and 50's. When he passed away, and the family was dividing up the possessions, the only thing I really wanted was my grandfather's car collection. My mom even went so far as to buy me a curio cabinet to keep the collection in. The thing is ridiculously massive, weighing in at god knows how many pounds, and it makes me look like a dwarf.

When "The Moving Debacle" happened, though, one of the back mirrors was damaged, and now I have to go through the task of replacing it, and making my cabinet whole again. It's funny, but in all the things I own, that cabinet and those cars are the only thing that can really hurt me. Seeing the cabinet damaged really hit me hard, even to the point of calling my father in the middle of the night ranting about the whole thing. Funny how that works out.

Either way, the mirror is on order, and it will be fixed soon, so the cars have their own personal garage to sit in and be all shiny and spiffy. The other rooms will be finished sooner or later, hopefully sooner than later. Going full tilt seven days a week really doesn't give me room to do a whole lot, either due to exhaustion, or not wanting to cause a ruckus at four o'clock in the morning. Damn me for being a nice neighbor.

I'm just anxious to finish this junk up, so I can quit writing about moving, and put something more interesting down on paper...or, um...whatever this thing is considered.

Free At Last!

I had originally intended to actually put something up here relatively often, but moving tends to put my mood into somewhere along the lines of the 6th circle of hell, so, unfortunately, this place was neglected. Such is life.

But, the move is done. Somewhat...

I still have a storage unit somewhere near the old place with more of my junk that needs to get unloaded in the next few days, but other than that, it's done. The new apartment is nice. Soft carpets, nice air conditioning unit, and if I go outside on the porch, I have a lovely view of Best Buy across the main drag.

That big yellow tag sign thingy mocks me day and night, teasing me with their easy to acquire electronics, and beautiful audio/video equipment for slightly above MSRP. I shall have my vengeance upon you some day...soon...probably in the form of me throwing more money at your shiny yellow goodness, and crying myself to sleep on a plasma HD tv, that I really can't afford in the first place.

The apartment is a wreck. I never put stuff away as I move. I always get everything to where I'm going, then I worry about unpacking, arranging, and all that fun stuff. So, since I don't have the rest of my gear around, I have bookshelf laying in the living room, boxes of books lying against the walls, unpacked books stacked on the kitchen counter(hey, I needed the boxes), electronics strewn everywhere, and my computer running quietly in the corner, because I'm a computer addict and I have to have my fix.

Dad was kind enough to set me up with a couch. He had bought one a few months ago that never saw any use, so they replaced it, and it sat in his basement collecting dust. It's a nice little sleeper sofa that's actually fairly comfortable. The downside is, as much as I love the couch, and yes it's quite comfortable as a couch or a bed, I can't deal with sleeping on it on a regular basis. The bars dig into my thigh and I have a tendency to not be able to walk the next morning. Suffice to say, I was very happy when I got my bed set up, four days later.

That first night, sleeping in my own place, in my own bed, was some of the best sleep I have had in years. It took forever to get out of bed, because I just wanted to curl back up and pass out again, and sleep all day long. For the first time in a long time, I woke up with a smile on my face, regardless of all the debacle that's been "Jason's Moving Fiasco."

All of that fear I had originally, is slowly easing, only to be replaced by insecurity. Then again, I think most everyone that struggles financially has that same sort of sensation. Since I realized I needed to exhibit a little bit more discretion in my spending habits, and since I've started to actually act upon it, I might actually be able to afford it.

#1 - Cut the drinking back. No more $200 weekly bar tabs. I set a limit, and I hold myself to it, no matter how much I love killing my liver with more Guinness goodness.

#2 - Stop eating so much fast food. I spend upwards of almost $150 a week on food. That's just ridiculous. Go to the grocery store, young man. Fix a damned sandwich for crying out loud.

#3 - Lastly, and the worst, stop buying so much crap. Fewer video games, and fewer electronics in general.

If I can follow these 3 easy tenents, then I think I have a good shot of succeeding in this place.

Of course, the pay raise that I finally got approved for, should help out a little bit.

Housewarming soon. If you're out there, bring liquor, or a bottle of wine. No, I don't mean for myself, I need to start making a nice bar for guests.

No, really.