Very good, but brick not hit back.

Bloodsport is such an awesome movie. We got it from Netflix yesterday and Erin watched it with me. The movie really is the epitome of 80's martial art movies, especially the soundtrack. Nostalgia aside, the fight scenes are still great and it has all the trappings of most other good JCVD movies: a gratuitous ammount of scenes showing Van Damme doing splits, Bolo Yeung, slo-mo jump spinning heel kicks, and hilarious training montages.

Death Race

I'm not sure how you could make a movie called "Death Race" boring, but somebody managed to pull it off.

Overload

I have way too many things on my plate right now. In an effort to figure out how many things I actually do have going on, I thought I'd try and make a list. Hopefully this will help me prioritize? (not my strong suit...)

-I'm porting a major project at work right now, which could very likely require overtime pretty soon.
-I am redesigning Color Bind for XNA Community Games (again) and want to get it launched as quickly as possible.
-I'm working on porting Color Bind to mobile phones again for a contest that requires you to use a particular set of development tools.
-I need to read a pile of programming and math books I've acquired over the past few months.
-I'm trying to make time to learn how to play the awesome guitar I got for Christmas.
-I really want to get back into learning Japanese. I was doing great before I slacked off.
-Because of all the other stuff going on our new apartment is still in need of some serious unpacking (which is why i haven't posted any pictures here yet).
-I was doing great with a regular exercise regiment before the holidays...not so much lately.
-I've been having a lot of fun helping Wes out with the revival of Idle Hours (his game website) and I want to do a lot more stuff for it.
-In an effort to become more independent in developing games, I want to practice drawing and pixel art again, as well as learn how to use some music editing software.
-In addition to all of the above I am also trying to find time to play games with Erin (Rock Band 2, Animal Crossing, Scene It, Halo3, ect.) and also the games I play by myself.

I don't know if I need to make a priority list, or schedule or what. I know I can do all this stuff, but I just can't seem to find the time necessary. And I am constantly forgetting to spend time on several of these things every week.

I think the core of the problem is that a lot of the things on this list, namely anything game development related, is being done in hopes that I can become financially independent eventually. But...I'm not right now, so I also have to do 40+ hours at my job every week. If I could just get rid of that...things would be awesome. But who doesn't think that?

What I'm Playing 12/31/2008

Last one of the year:

Catherine the Great

(10:27:11 AM) erinthedreamer: Kyle Busch was born on May 2nd
(10:27:27 AM) erinthedreamer: i must kill him
(10:27:49 AM) digita1alchemy: awwwww...
(10:27:54 AM) digita1alchemy: lol, how did you find that out
(10:28:05 AM) erinthedreamer: i also share a birthday with Catherine the Great
(10:28:08 AM) erinthedreamer: Wikipedia
(10:30:34 AM) digita1alchemy: the woman who was crushed to death while she fucked a horse?
(10:30:54 AM) erinthedreamer: yup
(10:31:06 AM) digita1alchemy: I know that random fact only because of my awesome wife.
(10:31:15 AM) erinthedreamer: :-)
(10:32:00 AM) digita1alchemy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_II_of_Russia#Death
(10:32:45 AM) erinthedreamer: hmmm I'm only saying what my World history teach told us
(10:32:56 AM) digita1alchemy: lol, i know
(10:33:01 AM) erinthedreamer: i thought it was true
(10:33:42 AM) erinthedreamer: oh well i'm still going to think that bc it's cool
(10:33:47 AM) digita1alchemy: http://europeanhistory.about.com/od/catherinethegreat/a/histmyths1.htm
(10:34:05 AM) digita1alchemy: http://www.snopes.com/risque/animals/catherine.asp
(10:35:04 AM) digita1alchemy: lol, it is cool
(10:35:05 AM) erinthedreamer: stop proving it wrong!
(10:35:09 AM) digita1alchemy: pretend you didnt read that stuff
(10:35:17 AM) digita1alchemy: I'm just showing you
(10:35:22 AM) erinthedreamer: I want to live in my fantasy world were great people die from fucking horses
(10:35:23 AM) digita1alchemy: i thought you might be interested where it came from
(10:35:29 AM) digita1alchemy: LOL
(10:36:09 AM) digita1alchemy: That is the coolest thing I've ever heard anyone say in a long time.

And another one bites the dust.

Erin and I were playing Rock Band a couple nights ago and having a great time, when all of a sudden at the end of a song the game froze. No big deal, I reset the game and we started again. Then it froze again. And again. We swapped the game out and it froze yet again. And then...it happened. 3 red lights.



Coincidentally, it happened on the same game, and almost the exact same time as last year. Only this time it was on our Elite, which we hastily went out and bought when our original system died last December...because we needed a "backup". So while I had second thoughts at that time, it was pretty awesome Sunday to just fill out a repair order, plug up the other Xbox, and keep on playing. The "coffin" should come today. Goodnight sweet prince...

What I'm playing 12/12/2008

Moving...

We're moving again. Not nearly as far this time...we're actually moving to a new apartment in the same complex we currently live in. We're downsizing from a 2-bedroom apartment to a 1-bedroom one. It's just the two of us, and while the extra space was nice, saving money is more important at the moment. We want to be able to buy a house in a few years, so this is the first step on the path to doing that.

The move date is on the 20th, so right now we have a little less than 2 weeks to pack everything and get all the necessary details straightened out. We'll get everything done, but it's just stressful right now, particularly for Erin who handles most of the "administrative" stuff. I'm going to try to do most of the packing, but we've both been sick the past week so we're kind of off to a late start. It's not the best time of year to be doing this kind of thing. We just got back from 5 days in Tennessee for Thanksgiving and will be going back for Christmas right after we move. Hectic probably isn't a strong enough word.

I'll try to take pictures of the new apartment once we get everything unpacked. It's on the first floor (we were on the second), and it has a small deck looking out to a lake.

Secret of Nintendo's Success.

From a recent MTV Multiplayer Blog interview with Shigeru Miyamoto:

On the other hand, we have a very large development team at Nintendo. And a lot of the members of our team play a lot of popular and more recent games. When they do that, they have a tendency to look at similar games that are out there and then they start to focus on: What can we do to make sure that our games are as good as those other games in a similar style? Whereas I feel that my job is actually to stop them and say, “That’s not the line of thinking we need to have.” Because, that results in us creating something that is more and more like those other types of games. My role becomes to put the brakes on and say, “We need to change our direction and way of thinking.” That’s the only way we’re going to be able to create something that’s unique and different.

Miyamoto gets it. He's one of the only ones.

Delicious

It's that time of year again:



I am trying to buy up more than my fare share of it in hopes they'll opt to keep it around even after the holidays.

Everything's Better in Japan

Erin recently grabbed the Japanese Kill Bill Vol. 2 Box for me, and it finally arrived Friday! I refuse to buy the half-assed North American DVD/Blu Ray, and I am getting impatient waiting for The Whole Bloody Affair set...so this will fill the void for now. Time to track down Vol. 1--which comes with a miniature Hattori Hanzo sword (among other stuff)!

New Office

We moved into a new office at work this week. We had planned to move in a month or so, but then suddenly found out we needed to move immediately, so it's been pretty chaotic. There are workers pretty much building the new area around us as we work. There are yellow moving crates everywhere, as we're still unpacking them. I'll try and post new pics when everything is all set up.

For real.

I am officially working on a new personal project. Like, as of now. Right now... Right this minute.

Heavens to Betsy

In a rut.

Per usual, I suck horribly at updating my blog. It's not like anything interesting hasn't happened since my last post, only now I'd never remember all of it if I tried to go back and recap. Oh well. I do, however, still plan to put some pics of our new car up here at some point...only it really needs to be washed first.

Right now I am mainly struggling with trying to manage priorities. I've lived in Raleigh for a year now and have been at my job for a year. Everything is well and good, but I feel like I am standing still. Getting my job and moving here was a huge step, but since then I've just sat back and enjoyed everything. It's been easy to do because life is undoubtedly better than it's ever been for me, but I'm still stopped short of accomplishing the huge laundry list of goals that I have. I just haven't been making any progress on anything at all. I got a late start on the whole getting a good-paying job thing anyway, so I really need to be on the ball. Just off the top of my head I want to:

-Pay off all of our debt faster (need even more monies to do this).
-Get another car.
-Buy a house!
-The above needs to be settled before we can have kids.
-Get in better shape
-Take a trip to Tokyo (ideally before the kids come)
-Work on any of the 10 or so ideas I have for games in my spare time...I've started none so far. I also want to port Color Bind to XNA.
-Learn a bunch of new things. More programming stuff mainly. I really need to improve my math skills. This goes hand-in-hand with getting a better job.
-Learn at least basic conversational Japanese.

And tons of other things I'm forgetting. Lately though, I've been pretty much stuck in a rut. When I am at home I don't do much of anything other than play games and watch T.V. Somehow, someway I need to suck it up and put off doing "fun" stuff until I get some of these more important things behind me. And I will. It's just hard... I'm such a poor manager of time :(

"And here...we...go."

"Look at the size of that whammer!"

Erin and I are going to see Hellboy II tonight! I'm pretty excited. I'd watch the original in anticipation, but I let someone at work borrow it. Right now I am trying to make oven BBQ chicken and some other stuff for Erin before she gets home from class. I wish we had a grill... We have some community grills here at the apartments but I'd much rather have my own.

Sega released a demo of Phantasy Star Universe for PSP yesterday so I've been messing with that. It's a Japanese demo but I've played the Xbox 360 version so much I can more or less navigate the menus blindfolded anyway. The game will soon be able to suck up my free time even when I'm not at home. I've also been thinking about restarting a game called Ace Online (formerly Space Cowboy). Its basically an MMO game where instead of creating a character you create a ship that you get to fly around and customize and even battle other people. It's free and was kind of a stopgap for me until I originally bought PSU.

I have to work again this weekend... It sucks but I need to make up for lost time for the 4th of July anyway. We need extra money for all the movies coming out in the next few weeks anyway (Step Brothers, Batman IMAX).

An update

I just got back from Spending the holiday weekend at my Dad's in Virginia Beach. We had a good time...I always enjoy hanging out with my Dad. My cousin Brandon joined the Navy and is currently stationed there so we got to hang out with him. We rode go-karts and went to Busch Gardens, which was awesome. We rode this:



Erin got her A+ Certification today! I am really excited for her and she's already checking out potential jobs. Meanwhile, she still has 7-8 more certifications she's going to get over the next year or so. Yeah, she's pretty awesome. This is probably the happiest I have seen her since we moved here.

Since the last time I posted on here we've also gotten a new car and we went to the Coke 600. I'll post some pictures of both pretty soon. Oh, and we got a new kitten who needs a name still. Other than that, just lots of working. I've been wanting to ramp up work on some stuff in my spare time but it hasn't worked out so far. I've lacked discipline lately.

What I'm Playing: 06/08/08

Random Stuff

I've been extremely busy lately, mainly with work. I've had free time with which to update my blog, but I've been spending it doing other things instead. I've actually started writing new entries 4 or 5 times before, usually at work, but I always ended up being distracted or pulled away in the middle of doing it and ended up just closing it before finishing. Even as I write this I'm wondering if I'll actually finish this one.

I'm working another 12-straight days after having to work both days this weekend. We unfortunately laid some people off recently which has really increased an already huge workload for my department.

The summer movie blitz has finally begun. I've seen Iron Man and Speed Racer so far, both were awesome. I've never seen anything like Speed Racer before. It's always nice to see movies with real ambition like that get made. Erin is excited for Prince Caspian but it looks like Indy 4 is next for me.

Speaking of Indiana Jones, we're going back to the Tri-cities for the first time to see the midnight showing of the movie at the Cinemall. I'm extremely excited because it's going to be kind of a mini-vacation. I get to hang out with my friends for 3 days and then we're driving to Charlotte to see the Coca-Cola 600, which is my birthday present from Erin's parents.

I've bought too much stuff since we moved here. It's nice to have money for a change though. I got a Playstation 3 a few weeks ago. I haven't had a chance to play it much, but it's nice to have all the systems out of the way. Now if I am interested any game that comes out on any system, I can get it. The same with going to the store to look at games...I can look at anything.

Overall I guess things are going pretty well here. Erin doesn't like her job but she has 2 promising interviews this week. I'm trying to push myself to work on a new personal project on the side, but it's been pretty difficult considering the aforementioned lack of free time. We're also trying to pay off all my debt and buy a better car. I probably would have visited everyone back in Tennessee a few times by now but we're afraid to take Erin's car on a long trip because of how bad it uses oil. Hopefully once we get something else we can travel around a bit more.

And that's a half-assed update of what's going on in my life right now. Hopefully I can post something a little more introspective soon.