On the road, almost to H-town. Little bit of rain, little bit of Cake - Going the distance. Good times. I'll get a pic or two up later.

Audioslave - Dandelion

It's been a pretty rough couple of days, but someone was there for me and I thank her for that.

Tomorrow (today?) I'll be headed down to Houston to catch an Astros game and try to get into some trouble downtown. I'd probably write more than this, but I'm not really in a great mood. If you need to laugh, check out the guy with the sign below...

Pantera - Cemetary Gates

Green Day - Deadbeat Holiday

Kevin Mench smashes a 2 out homerun in the 6th to bring in 3 runs and start a Rangers rally. Texas extends its win streak to 8, beating Chicago 12-4.

Shinedown - 45 (Acoustic)

If I say something really insightful or profound...that was on purpose. Anytime I say something that offends you, or worse, that was a joke.

Please use these rules to come to the conclusion that I have no doubt created the most profound and respectful blog on the internet. Thanks.

Led Zeppelin - In My Time of Dying

It's really too bad that the man-purse doesn't exist, or if it does exist, a guy would look goofy as hell carrying it. I'm thoroughly convinced that the fanny pack was a secret plot by some guy to have the versatility of carrying a bag with you everywhere, without being asked, "Hey...is that your purse?" Man, that would've been awesome if people hadn't caught on right away and placed it firmly in the "uncool" category.

Being absent of some sort of masculine tote, I have to pick and choose what comes with me. I don't think I ever leave the apartment without at least my cell phone and iPod shuffle. There's just something magical about being able to whip out that Shuffle and listen to a few songs while waiting on food, walking to class, or whatever other crazy adventures take place here in North Texas. Add to that the house keys, car keys, chapstick, pen, wallet, and watch; no wonder I feel like a woman whenever I go somewhere.

Completely disregarding everything above, I've decided I want a more portable camera to replace my aging Fujifilm A303. I've been nothing but happy with the pictures it takes, but it's too big and clunky to be something I can grab and shove in my pocket without thinking about it.

I'm thinking of using some Dell gift certificates I've evidently earned, and getting a Fujifilm F440. It's about a 1/4" shorter, half as thick, and a few ounces lighter than my A303. With this new camera, I could officially become that person; the one who always has to have a picture taken of everything. I'm sure everyone I know would love that....

Somehow I don't think there's gonna be a Rangers game today. I guess the White Sox will have to wait until tomorrow to be beat again.

Alfonso Soriano rounds the bases after homering off Brandon McCarthy. (Tony Gutierrez/AP) Rangers beat the White Sox 6-2.

Bob Schneider - C'mon Baby

I'm nearly done working on this web design for my blog. At some point, most people realize that putting 10 hours into the graphic design of a page that'll be seen by you and your friends is a bit much. Not me. I do have to admit, though, that my goal is to include enough interesting information on this site of mine to where it's interesting to people I don't even know. That's going to require me stepping it up and utilizing writing skills that I haven't touched since 9th grade English class. Maybe if I put enough thought and finesse into my writing here, it'll benefit me in college. Stranger things have happened, I'm sure.

As far as the links at the top, eventually I will convert those over to match this page, but damn I'm tired. Give me a chance to rest, please!

Oh, and also feel free to email or IM me using the links on the right. G'night.

Labels: blog, web design

The Black Keys in concert at Trees. It's about a month old, but I wanted to get it up.

The White Stripes - Truth Doesn't Make a Noise

I touched on it a little bit earlier, and now I want to go into it a little more. I'm not sure exactly why people have taken the blog idea and morphed it into this personal hellhole that they use to complain about every insignificant thing in their lives. Sometimes I can't even read the stuff from the people I know, because it's too melodramatic and pitiful. I think the most valuable bit of info that I've taken away from my communications classes is how your mood spreads so easily to other people. Depressed people tend to make the people around them depressed, etc.

So here I am to hopefully make whatever random person is looking at my blog feel just a bit better. I've come to a point in my life where I'm absolutely content with who I am and where I am. My trip to Las Vegas, for a multitude of reasons, caused some switch to flip in my brain, and that's about the best job I can do at describing it. I used to be good at projecting confidence, but only from a distance. Now that switch has completely changed me as a person. I'm approaching people differently, caring less about appearances, and generally feeling good.

I wish there were some way to really get this feeling across, but I'm just not that good of a writer...haha. Maybe it's something that dawns on someone as they get older, maybe not. All I know is that I'm thankful for this last trip to Vegas, and feel like it was truly a turning point in my life. We shall see a few months from now if I'm still feeling this benevolent and tranquil.

I'm severely tempted to gut this whole page and build my own template from the ground up, just to give myself something to do. I've seen a few people have done this with Blogger, even though the majority of these pages are by people just getting into the bad habit of posting painfully useless thoughts on the internet. My thoughts, however, are truly astounding.

Labels: blog, web design

The Black Keys - Grown So Ugly

I'm now at a level of laziness that I've been unable to reproduce since my unemployment days. I love having a few weeks off in between semesters, but all the same, it makes me feel like I've somehow fallen off the planet and into my own world. Go to bed at 5am? Sure, why not. Don't bother to set the clocks that were reset during a storm yesterday. No need to wake up for anything, or be anywhere. You hungry? Yeah, but I'm not gonna shower or anything. Let's chow down on a bag of instant rice and some soy sauce.

With over 40,000 college students in this town, the population drops from 95,000 to 70,000 or so during the summer. The campus is dead, nightlife is taking a vacation, and about the only way to pass the time is watch baseball and convince myself that I'm getting something done by being on the computer for a few hours a day. Even the rec center is off-limits right now since I haven't paid the $18.50 to use it during the short "Maymester."

This has passed a few minutes of the day. I think I'll take a shower now...maybe I need to make a checklist...

Chemical Brothers - The Boxer

How many times can I update in a few days? We're about to find out.

Saturday I'll be busy. Sunday I'll be busy...

Monday I'm off to Houston with a friend to see the Reds play the Astros at Minute Maid. Yes, I realize I'm driving almost 300 miles to see a 16-30 team who's not even my favorite team, but it's gonna be good times. Didn't even know until tonight that I'd be leaving for the land of hot, sticky weather. It'll also be my first trip to H-town, so we'll see how it goes.

I'm pretty sure the point of this blog is that I'm bored right now.

A view of the fountains at the Bellagio hotel & casino in Las Vegas.

Rage Against the Machine - Born of a Broken Man

Who would've thought that creating a new blog is so time consuming? I'm going to be changing the frontpage to something that covers some movies and games, and other random things, but I still wanted to keep my place to talk about all of the important news that affects me. No wait...maybe just all of the stuff I write when I'm bored...

I just got back from Vegas on Monday. This trip was definitely much more enjoyable than my last to sin city. While I didn't come back with much more than I left with, I did manage to pull down a Royal Flush in Las Vegas. How many people can say that? I could only use five cards, but if I had been allowed to use six, I'd have a Royal Flush + 1... 9 of diamonds to the Ace. There were definitely some more interesting experiences, but I'm going to leave that under the "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas," category. I'm glad to be back in Denton, watching the Rangers win some ball games and kickin' back until the first day of Summer I classes.

Doubledrive - 11:59

This really isn't going to make sense if you read the Vegas post first. I'm actually posting this one afterwards, but dating it earlier. I'm tricky like that.

We decided not to go to E3 this year, and this might have been my last chance to do that. Looking at the academic calender for next year, I'll be taking finals the same days that the convention is going on. I wouldn't be able to make it to the show, much less the press conferences a couple days earlier. Crappy, but school is more important than vacations.

Last year was a ton of fun, because we weren't as focused on the show as we were being out and about in Los Angeles. Rainbow bar & grill, Roscoe's chicken & waffles, Sunset strip, Hollywood & Highland, etc. It was good to be able to forego the scantily clad strippers for a couple days, and instead see the sights. Los Angeles is such a great place to visit, and I honestly couldn't tell you why I like it so much.

On the topic of this year's E3, though, I'm glad I didn't go. Not only did I have a great time in Vegas, but reading reports by others that did make it to the show this year is kind of depressing. Everyone went in with such high hopes of a great show. This was going to be the year that Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo were gonna burn the mf'er down with all of their new systems, and games.

Instead, it was pretty tame. Sony showed off some CG of what they think PS3 games, could look like. What they hope to achieve. They showed off a console that's half as big as Ken Kutaragi, and nearly as ugly. But don't worry, it has 6 USB ports. As if any person in the past 5 years ever used the USB ports or Firewire port on the revolutionary PS2. You'll also get a blu-ray DVD player, nevermind the fact that not even a single blu-ray DVD exists yet. You can also use a controller that loosely resembles something you'd get from an adult novelty store. All of this is coming to a TV near you sometime in 2006. Don't mention the PSP, btw, Sony sure didn't.

Microsoft wasn't much better. I remember reading something once, and I can't remember who at Microsoft said it, that they learned their lesson with the Halo 1 showing at E3 2001. People go to the show expecting to see five minutes of highly polished gameplay demo'd for them. You can have the extra 2 hours of game, but if you can't blow people away with a short snippet of the game, then you've failed. Evidently they must have gotten rid of whoever said that, because half of the 360's games at the show looked like revamped Xbox 1 titles. They completely swept Perfect Dark Zero under the rug, and all of their games were still running on dual-dual PowerMac G5's, with a 360 in decoy mode.

Finally there was Nintendo. I'm sure that their business model is great, because it seems like they're always making money, but it's sad to see how far they've fallen. Every person in America used to know what a "Nintendo" was. I bet 80% of them couldn't tell you who the hell makes a "Gamecube" now. How does Nintendo fix that? By releasing 4 new Mario games, of course! Mario Soccer, Mario Baseball, Mario Dance Dance Revolution, and Mario Party 7. As if we haven't had enough Mario in the past 10 years, we now get four more games to satisfy the 12 and under demo. Then they show the Gameboy Micro...a portable game system so small and akward, that only the tiniest of hands could appreciate it. We'll see if Nintendo makes a killing by selling it to 11-15 year old boys, and petite college girls. I'm guessing not.

Anyway, that was the show from the perspective of someone sitting at home, waiting to catch a plane to more entertaining destinations. After all of this, I'm sure I'll still play games as often as I ever have. That would be about 1 hour a week anymore... :P

Labels: games