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Last week, I ordered Mass Effect and Assassin’s Creed because they were cheap. I had already beaten them and don’t think I would play them more, but I just wanted to have them because they were good. Sadly, Assassin’s Creed came out to be the Platinum Hits version. They shrink the cover art and put it on this ugly grey background with PLATINUM HITS on top. I hate it. Even worse is the spine has the same background and makes it difficult to read the title on it.

This week I got Bioshock because it was cheap on Amazon. I did not know it was even a Platinum Hits because I have seen it in stores as not. Well it turns up today with the ugly ass PH cover. And on the spine the title is in some generic white font! I guess it’s to make it readable on the terrible background but it looks so cheesy.

So now I’m contemplating returning these games and try to hunt down a regular cover version. I’m sad I know.

Elite XC has announced that it is folding and filed for bankruptcy. This comes as a disappointment as my all time most favorite fight girl, Gina Carano, fights on their show. Despite having some of the most viewed MMA fights ever, Elite XC wasn’t making money I guess. They had bad commentators for one, and UFC is a powerhouse. It’s too bad though, it’s nice to have competition. I just hope someone picks up the girls, so Gina has a place to fight and a place I can watch.

Two things I want over with:
The general elections so I don’t see these damn proposition and candidate ads anymore.
The switch to digital tv so I don’t see the message about converting at the bottom of shows.

The fact that they both have to do with me watching TV should indicate what my life has been about lately.

Hung out with Matt and Keith last Sunday for Matt’s birthday. I got him Step Up 2: The Streets (he really likes it!) and Dark City director’s cut (I really like it!) on Blu-ray. We saw Bangkok Dangerous and had Tito’s tacos. Movie was meh, tacos were OK but I had high expectations and was a little let down. We then ventured to Best Buy for a bit. They had Halo 3 Legendary edition on clearance for 39.99. It used to be over a hundred bucks when it first came out and includes the Master Chief helmet. I thought about it, but honestly I’m not a huge fan of Halo and what am I gonna do with that helmet. Instead we all bought a copy of The Lord of the Rings Online which was also on clearance for $5. At first I protested because I didn’t want to get into another mmo ever again. But they were all like, “it’s only 5 bucks… we aren’t gonna play it past the 30 day trial”. So peer pressure made me do it.

So guess what. I am hooked to this game! I love middle-earth and questing and this game is full of quests. Gone are all the things I hated about mmorpgs, and I’m having loads of fun. Things like level grinding, resting, retrieving your dead corpse, losing exp when dying, etc. Are gone. I realize WoW had all this too, but I couldn’t stand the art style of WoW. Now I been staying up until 4 am playing this thing and I’m afraid I might go past the trial and continue to play this. At least until I do every quest ever.

Been keeping busy lately, which is always good when you usually don’t have much to do. Got a new coworker so I’m not as immensely bored as usual. Get to train her and talk and stuff. I’ve been watching the NBA Finals whenever it’s on and watched the Lakers completely get destroyed last night to end the series. As much as I wanted the Lakers to win, the Celtics had a great year and deserve it just as much. At the beginning of the year, finals were not even in mind when I thought about the Lakers so they have done better than expected and when Andrew Bynum comes back they’ll be in great position next year.

I also got Metal Gear Solid 4 last week at midnight launch. Been playing it whenever the Lakers weren’t playing. Finished it in 4 days or so. I highly enjoyed it, but because of some typical Kojima design choices it doesn’t reach that “perfect” status for me. But it’s not like problems I didn’t have with prior iterations of the series so I can’t really complain too much. I just hate the little things that mar the seriousness the game usually has. Things like breaking into reality by mentioning Playstation hardware in use, ridiculousness like soda-drinking/cigarette-smoking monkey, corny lines, Johnny comedy antics, and especially Snake’s voice. About his voice, it would be wrong to change it now, but it just seems so fake in contrast to everyone else’s normal voice. Despite all this, the game was great. You’ll find out that the game was more story than gameplay as I think there are 10 hours of cutscenes. I don’t mind so much cause they are awesome. And the women in the game are hot.

Couple things came out yesterday that people should check out. First, Firefox 3 final was released. If you’re not using Firefox then you must be on Mac using Safari, because Firefox is so much greater than Internet Explorer. I recommend you get it, even if you are a Mac user. I prefer it over Safari as well as IE.

Finally, Spore Creature Creator came out. Spore is game created by Will Wright (SimCity, The Sims) and is supposed to be the next evolution in Sim games. The Creature Creator is just a utility that gives you a head start in designing the various creatures you can use in the game. The trial is free and only has a small portion of the parts available or you can pay 9.99 for the full thing.

Visit Spore.com

After fiddling with my Wordpress theme, I thought I should enhance it a little bit with some plugins.

I have previously expressed my adoration for everyone’s favorite American Gladiator and female fighter. Now she’s getting even more mainstream attention. Tomorrow night on CBS is the debut of EliteXC on primetime tv. Not only is fighting beast Kimbo Slice on the card, but so is Gina Carano. On top of that it has been announced that she will appear in the video game Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3. She will appear in the live action cut scenes that the C&C series is known for, as well as a digital representation in game. Head over to Kotaku for press release and video clip.

Delicioius Monster released version 2 of their Library software. Delicious Library 1 was a nice looking app. It was a good way to manage your stuff and show off how cool it looks on a shelf. Except you couldn’t really show anyone other than looking at your screen. Now version 2 lets you export your library to the web and view others’ libraries right in the app. Other than that, the upgrades are minor and long over due. I still find the PC knockoff MediaMan to be more functional for me, like adding items directly into distinct categories like DVDs and Blu-rays instead of adding them to Movies, creating a shelf for Blu-rays and dragging each one over. The other thing that bugs me about DL is not being able to change the case size of items. DL1 had the wrong size for PS3 games forever, and never bothered to change it with a simple update until 2 came out. And now Dreamcast games are still the wrong size. MediaMan lets you change the size of any item. However the export feature is lacking and certainly doesn’t look as nice as DL.

Check out my library.

I updated Wordpress to the latest version, which was easy peasy thanks to the Wordpress Automatic Upgrade plugin. While I was at it, I decided to put a new theme up. I had that old look for many many years now so it was due. I also got rid of Gallery and started using Flickr as I debated about it earlier having found out I had a free Pro account. I kinda wish I had uploaded them in the order they were taken so they would make more sense in the photostream, but what can you do.

Now I need to go back and tag all my posts so I can use the cool tag cloud thing.

iTunes has never been as quick performing on Windows as it is on OS X, but on Vista it’s particularly bad. No matter how powerful your system is, Vista chugs along just scrolling through the library, especially if you have a lot in it. I finally figured out why. It has to do with Vista’s search indexing thing it does in the background. Apparently, iTunes uses .xml files to handle temporary functions. Every time these files change, Vista tries to re-index it. So the option here is to disable indexing of xml files.

Go to Control Panel -> Indexing Options -> Advanced -> File Types -> Find xml and uncheck it.

If this is not an option, and for some reason you must have indexing of xml. Then I guess you can disable indexing for the iTunes folder itself by going to the properties of the folder -> Advanced -> and uncheck indexing.