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I went and bought Guitar Hero III for Xbox 360 Saturday night at midnight. I really couldn’t wait. Went to the local Gamestop and there were like maybe 10 others there. Rocked out for a few hours and went to sleep because I had work the next day. That’s right. I worked on Sunday to make up for skipping Friday. It was a drag but at least I get paid. Helps pay for Guitar Hero. I also got a new video card on Saturday. I had this recurring problem of my Vista blanking out and coming back with an error. At first it seemed like a driver issue as I had looked it up. But later on I started getting blue screen errors. I even formatted my hard drive and reinstalled Vista and got a blue screen right away. I bought a new video card and all the problems seem to be gone now. So far… I had a Geforce 6800 GT before and it served me well for a while. I replaced it with a Geforce 8500 GT. It’s a pretty weak card by today’s standards (cost under $150), but it’s enough for me. I don’t play PC games much anymore and I don’t plan to overhaul to a monster system to play Crysis.

Oh, if you’re playing Guitar Hero III, join my tour group.

I’ve been pretty tired lately. Days seem longer, I seem to have less energy. I decided to stay home today. I just feel bummed out all the time. I’m not sure what it is. My work is a drag, I kind of want to find another job. The fires all around and on the news is a downer. People are upset at me because I can’t remember important things. I woke up this morning with a big headache and lack of sleep gave me some sinus problems, or the smoky air at work did. I called in and stayed in bed.

Los Angeles, Orange, and San Diego counties have been experience some really bad fires. Many homes have been lost in the Malibu area and San Diego area. The skies are all grey and orange at my workplace in Irvine. Even indoors with the air condition I can smell the smoke and my eyes dry up. Many in San Diego have evacuated in the largest evacuation since Hurricane Katrina. Hundreds of thousands are staying in the Qualcomm stadium down there. My company has a location in San Diego and they closed down because they are in the mandatory evacuation area, but luckily they were not directly affected by the fires. But since I work closely with the San Diego group I had no work really on Monday. I got off early for the day. And then I got a lot of work cause they decided we should take some of the workload that the San Diego group is missing out on. So lately I been working a lot in a smokey environment and I get really tired.

I attended the Video Games Live concert again this year. This time it was at the brand new Nokia L.A. Live! Theater that they built next to Staples Center. One memorable moment was when we were at an intersection in between the theater and Staples Center. Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony were performing at the Staples Center that night. As we stopped at the crosswalk, we watched the people crossing left and right. It was a clash of dressed up J. Lo fans and dressed down game geeks. It was funny to see how different the crowds were going in different directions.

The venue was nice, the music was nice. I enjoyed it. The only thing that puts me off is the crowd. It was basically an orchestral venue with orchestral music, but viewed by a bunch of frat boys. Every time they saw a game or character they recognized, they shout and woo. Especially during the events where someone goes on stage to play a game on screen, there are lots of shouting. It’s not like I didn’t expect it, given the subject material and audience. It just makes it difficult to enjoy the music I guess. That and the laser lights were really annoying.

I went with some friends and their friends. Most of them got drunk before the show, arrived late, and got more drunk. They seemed to have had more fun than I did. Although one of them ended up in the restroom for an hour throwing up. Good times. It’s a rare accomplishment, getting wasted at a video game concert. I’d like to go to that theater again, but probably not for video game concerts anymore. I’ve been to 4 of them already, 2 run by Square Enix and 2 VGL. They were good experiences, but I can enjoy my music at home.

I got Orange Box today, which is a collection of games by Valve. It includes Half-Life 2 and the continuation episodes 1 and 2, Portal, and Team Fortress 2. I started right away with Portal. It’s like a puzzle game FPS with portals. Those that are unfamiliar, it’s best explained by this trailer:

The game was short, about 2 1/2 hours. But it’s design is so brilliant, and it’s very humorous the things the computer says as it guides you through these puzzles. If you played it you would know what I mean. The ending was the best. I got the mp3 of the end song, Still Alive, right here for those who love it as much as I do. Here is also a link to many of the humorous quotes throughout the game. Be sure to play the game first.

I’ve had this obsession with keeping the boxes to every electronic item I buy. I don’t know why really. I decided today that I need more space and need to start throwing them out. I had PC game boxes like Warcraft II, Starcraft, Half-Life, and Everquest. I had the box for every console since the PS2. There were also boxes for 3 Guitar Hero guitars, Donkey Kong bongos, zip drive, PS2 hard drive, 360 HD-DVD drive, to name a few.

Work:

Home:

Some time ago, Microsoft offered Xbox 360 owners free Live Arcade games if you bought a console between August 8th 2006 and September 15th of this year. I signed up a while back and today received the email with my codes to redeem the games. Turns out the games are Joust and Robotron. I already have Robotron from buying the Vision Camera. They aren’t the greatest games, but they’re free. I was hoping for Frogger and Defender. I think you can still sign up for this.

So they’re re-re-releasing the DVD of Princess Bride once again, but the logo on the cover is pretty impressive.

It’s one of those things where you look at it upside down and the words are still the same.

I upgraded Gallery, and there are so many features and plugins and stuff I don’t even know what to do with them. I’m still fiddling with the look of it, but it’s migrated and working so far. It’s been awhile since I put any new pictures though.