Just finished listening to 39 hours and 44 minutes of a D&D campaign from RPPR.. it was pretty fantastic. I listened to their "New World" campaign, they have 12 games up (sadly, the first game is missing, so only 2-13 are there) and each is a bit over 3 hours.. I really loved it. It made me want to play some 4th edition even more than I already wanted to, which was a lot.

Although about halfway through, say, 20 hours into listening to these guys play D&D, I realized I was doing something most people would never even consider doing, and I was enjoying it greatly, so I figured I'd post something about it here.

The really sad thing is, Mass Effect 2 only took me about 41 or 42 hours to beat 100% with all the side quests, and I enjoyed listening to these D&D games more than playing Mass Effect 2.. and they took about the same amount of time to do..

I'm moving to a city that is way, way bigger than my current city soon. Current city's population is 25,000 people. New city? 538,000. So its over 20x bigger.. Thats not the only change, though.. my current city is 90.6%  white, and 5% black. while the new city is 61.4% black and 31.3% white. This might be weird for me, having grown up and  lived in the mid-west for almost all my life, where there are almost no minorities at all, then moving to a place where I'll be the minority instead. I don't have a problem with it, but I think the culture shock might be a bit stunning. But my hopes are I'll be able to find some new friends there, maybe people who will play D&D with me.

edit; awesome.. I just found they had 5 more games, about 3-4 hours each posted of that series.. looks like about 18 more hours of enjoyment for  me.

GRARGH. I'm very annoyed. I just beat Mass Effect 2.. Good game overall, although it seems less in depth than the original. But the  problem is the romance options!

In the original there were 3 options. A straight male, a straight female, and an asari (a race of entirely female aliens) who was bi. That seemed fair to me. But in this game there are 3 straight girls, 3 straight guys, and 1 bi girl.. It really annoys me, because ALL the girls who I want to romance in the game are straight apparently. Even the one who has mentioned in dialogues at least six times in various dialogues that she has had sex with girls in the past. She isn't programmed to have a romantic relationship with a female, only a male. She is, essentially, a lesbian designed to only want males, but who will happily tell them about her past experienced with females. Every guy gamers dream I guess.

So I'm really annoyed at the variety. I only have ONE choice of a character to romance with, unless I want to like.. do something with a guy. Which would be icky and gross. And I don't LIKE my one choice. She's a freaking psychologist, and a whore ontop of that. And she's not even a soldier.. Everyone else you can romance fights along side you, goes on missions with you, you build a nice in depth relationship with them. This girl just sits on your ship all day and says "You have mail!" whenever you get an email. Seriously. I do not want to have sex with the "You have mail!" AOL voice.

Been playing Mass Effect 2 this week.. Fantastic game. I was about halfway through yet another play of Dragon Age Origins when I started playing ME2 and it stole my attention from it. Totally different flavors of RPG, both distinct and good. I have played DA:O 2 times all the way through, and was working  on my third run.. if I manage to play ME2 a second time I'll be impressed. The first game gave nice bonuses for second playthroughs.

Anyhow.. I highly recommend the game. And although I totally started playing it about a week before it was being sold in stores, rest assured thats just because I'm very impatient. I'll buy it someday!

Today I went to the mall, which is a rare thing as I usually do not go out.. But FYE is going out of business, everything 80%  off.. and the bookstore is going out of business, everything 50% off.. and there were 3 other stores having 50-80% off everything as well, going out of business..

The mall is like a ghost town.. I'd say at least 40% of the places for stores are empty. Its not just the mall either, businesses are closing all around town, the place is dieing.. I don't know if the mall can survive at all or not though, as with almost half of all the stores closed and more closing each week there is really no reason at all to go there, other than to pick over the bones of a dieing store having an "everything must go" sale.

Anyhow, I picked up a couple graphic novels. The sad part is, even with it being 50% off, it was only $1 cheaper than just getting it at amazon. Retail was $18 on them, so I paid 9.. amazons graphic novels/trade paperbacks are like $10 or $11..



Got this.. it sounds good and the art seems neat.


Ah and in  other news I'm playing Dragon Age yet again. This time with mods. Got my own personal harem, and a nude patch to make the girls nekkid when they remove their clothes rather than wearing undies. It makes the lesbian sex scenes way cuter.

Another video from Symphony of Science.. Its a really good one with David Attenborough and Carl Sagan being especially eloquent in it.. Putting Sagan to music is just.. a really cool thing, because that man managed to make science into the most beautiful poetry on his own.. so the addition of music is just something very special.



In other non-sciencey news, I've been watching Dexter lately. Pretty good show.. Its like CSI or NCIS, the whole forensic investigation focus, Dexter being an expert at blood spatter analysis, and quite good at solving cases.. Luckily it has a twist, which is that Dexter is himself a sociopath murderer.. The fact that he cuts people up in every episode lets him really get into the mind of other murderers, since he is one.. and also, he avoids the police quite well, since he works for them.. All in all, I'm really fond of it.

Found this earlier today, I quite like it. Has Lars and Frontalot both, which is nice.

Well, I have to admit something now.. I've never owned a Gamecube.. Gasp. I always thought very little of it and wasn't very interested. So after having my Wii for.. 2 years? 3 years? Meh.. After having my Wii for a really long time, I finally got a Gamecube controller and memory card, and now I have the ability to play Gamecube games! I'm pretty excited, and lucky for me, there are only a handful of really good games for it, so it shouldn't be too hard to acquire some cheap used games for it.

I need to grab Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, Super Mario Sunshine, and The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker first and foremost.. I also want to grab Tales of Symphonia, Viewtiful Joe, Pikmin, and maybe Starfox Adventures.. I already have Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, which is what I've been playing using my new controller, and loving it. I believe I can get most of those games, which are all fairly fantastic, for under $15 each. Many for under $10.. Woo! Gives me something to look forward to, and some things to hunt for in game stores now.

Anyhow.. I'm really excited and happy with it. The controller, which I always thought looked weird and uncomfortable, is really fantastic. I like it much more than my ps3 controller, which is hilarious. I still think the xbox 360 controller is my all time favorite, but, the Gamecube controller is certainly up there with it and a lot of the games on the virtual console let you use one, which makes me happy.

Happy 2010 all.

Got Cross-Edge in the mail from a friend for christmas.. Its really fun. Lots of characters and combos and skills and just.. well.. it strikes me as the type of game that has so much content and such, that it will take a very long time to beat, like Disgaea 3.. That makes me happy. I'm really loving the game so far, the battle system is pretty cool..



Stepping out of the world of video game geekery for a moment and into that of comics, I've also recently read the first few issues of Preacher and its fantastic.. The art, the writing, the atmosphere.. its all great and I'm looking forward to reading more. Not for the faint of heart, though.

And now, random Deadpool.. But.. really now, is there ever any Deadpool which is not random?

Demonoid has been up for a little over a day now, and that makes me really happy.. I missed it so freaking much. Also the fact that there was no great data loss made me really pleased.

I'm possibly moving to Atlanta within the next couple months, which is exciting and scary.

Also, my ipod broke a few days ago, and I need to get it serviced, but there is no apple store near me. Sad.

I want to watch Star Trek again someday.. Just how I originally watched it.. All of The Next Generation, followed by all of Deep Space Nine, followed by all of Voyager.. right straight through.. This will be quite the feat.

Well, I couldn't sleep so I figured I'd write in my journal since its been a while.

My birthday was a few days ago, I always get pretty grumpy around that time of year, as I hate getting older.. But afterward I figured that I should be happy after it was over, because its going to be a really long time until my next one. So, hooray. I have about a full year left before I have to endure yet another birthday! Thanks to everyone who was nice enough to send me presents, Kacey and Noriko got me a couple of books I had really been wanting, Climbing Mount Improbable and The Greatest Show on Earth.. I also got a nice new messenger bag that I really like, a couple of graphic novels, Team Fortress 2 on Steam, and the Super Mario Bros Wii game, all from different people.. thank you all, again.

For the past week or so, I've laid off playing games, and I've been mostly watching anime and reading manga instead. I did beat the new Mario game on the wii though, and let me simply say, it is fantastic. Seriously, if you enjoy the classic Mario games, you will love this. Even its multiplayer feature is great.. I played it a lot with my nephew, and it was pretty infuriating at times, as its easy to accidentally kill your teammate.. But it was still very fun and amusing to try to make it through a level without destroying one another.. Highly recommended.

And, on a completely different note.. I've found myself loving some auto tuned songs created using segments of scientific speeches and documentaries. This is the newest one that I've been just, utterly loving. If you like it, check out the guys youtube page, he has two other fantastic songs there at the moment. I probably have linked at least one of them here before, maybe both.. Anyhow.. They're great. This particular one has a LOT of Dawkins and Sagan, two of my personal scientific flavors. Its still hard for me to believe I have actually seen Dawkins give a talk, in person.. I'd love to see Sagan's grave someday.. "Matter flows from place to place, and momentarily comes together to be you. Some people find that thought disturbing, I find the reality to be thrilling" is a lyric in the song. Reminds me of this which I wrote a while back.

Anyway; Here is the video. Love the song.

Playing a bit of Borderlands lately; its pretty fun and I'm sure it'd be a lot more fun if I was playing with friends rather than solo.. I'm level 19 now and its pretty interesting. Other than that I've been reading a lot lately.. A lot of Sagan and Hitchens.. Saw this and figured I'd post it here, as its one of the cooler things I've seen lately.

Well, I beat Dragon Age Origins 3 days ago.. 95 hours of play time total for me. But that was the version without any DLC.. I think I'm going to maybe buy the deluxe steam edition which has the DLC, and replay it.

I highly recommend this game to anyone who likes western RPGs.. If you liked any of the Knights of the Old Republic, or Neverwinter Nights games, I think you'll really love it.. I had a friend ask me if it was like Oblivion or Morrowind.. Kind of? Except you control a whole party, and it really is "turn based" in many ways, as you can pause the game and queue up actions, and you really need to a lot of the time. Its more of an RPG than most things that pass as RPGs these days. I loved Fallout 3, Oblivion, and Bioshock.. But those games were all hybrids in my opinion, none were the "pure" RPG. Dragon Age Origins is straight up, livin' in your moms basement, wearing two inch thick nerd goggles, arguing about Kirk vs Picard, pure nerd RPG, and I love it.


I'd have made a post about Torchlight or about Champions Online recently, two games I also played.. But.. Dragon Age has just overshadowed everything in my life, many of my friends were wondering what the heck happened to me.. I pretty much played 95 hours of dragon age, in 7 days. I would wake up, play Dragon Age, then fall asleep. I love games, and play them constantly but that rarely happens to me, where one consumes my entire life until I complete it. So bravo Dragon Age.

I might write more about Torchlight or Champions later.. Or I might elaborate on the amazing combat system or how spells interact with each other in Dragon Age.. But for now.. I am going to revel in my awesomeness.

I have been very gone lately. Playing Dragon Age Origins.. The game is hard to describe. I would say Neverwinter Nights or Neverwinter Nights 2, but with better camera angles and controls, would be closest.. But it also has an elder scrolls feel that you get with Oblivion or Morrowind.. And sort of a Suikoden vibe, with army gathering.. I utterly love the game, and so far I've sunk well over 60 hours into it.. I'm sure people have beaten the game in much less time, but I am sucking every ounce of content from it that I can, doing every single side quest, talking to every single NPC, never ever skipping dialogue, reading all the lore.. I am really quite taken with this game, and I hope it lasts me another 60 hours. I want to speak of some of the fun I've had in the game here, but, I'd rather be playing the game than speaking of it. So instead I'll write this.. it was whispered to me in a deadpan voice of a broken woman as I stalked through a disturbing dungeon.. The atmosphere of the game is incredible.

First day they come and catch everyone..
Second day they beat us, and eat some for meat..
Third day the men are all gnawed on again..
Fourth day we wait and fear for our fate..
Fifth day they return and its another girl's turn..
Sixth day her screams we hear in our dreams..
Seventh day she grew as in her mouth they spew..
Eighth day we hated as she is violated..
Ninth day she grins and devours her kin..
Now she does feast, as she's become the beast.

Well I spent most of today playing Champions Online.. really, really fun. Just, fantastically fun.. I want to buy this game, but I know that I don't have the money nor the time to dedicate to it, so I'm just going to enjoy the free halloween weekend play.

MMOs tend to steal my life, too.. I know that I have wasted so much of my time and mental abilities over the years in various MMOs, so despite the fact that I looove Champions Online, I am going to try very hard to not buy it. We'll see how that works out.. I still know way too much about every MMO I've ever played. I know the different weapons, maps, enemies, professions, bosses, strategies, and lore for Ragnarok Online, Starwars Galaxies, Priston Tale, Knight Online, City of Heroes, Lineage II,  and Runes of Magic.. I also know some about Everquest 2 and Ultima Online, but not nearly as much.. I played those two but not for long.. Point is; for whatever reason, these games suck my time and life away, and I retain a very in depth knowledge about their workings, when I cannot normally remember things that happen to me in my real life. 

If I had not kept a somewhat close journal of exactly what I did in Virginia, I've no doubt I'd have forgotten a lot of the fantastic things I've done.. And yet, I still clearly recall my priestess build in Priston Tale, with her amazing Divine Lightning skill.. I mean, Priston tale is a freaking MMO from like, 8 years ago, that I played for maybe 3 months.. Yet I still clearly remember each character I had, the skill builds I had for them, and how to play them.. But the thing is, most likely, all of that knowledge is now completely useless due to patches changing everything, and thats assuming the game still has servers running. Just.. so frustrating to love something like MMOs so much that I have clearer memories of it, than I do of my real life.

So yeah. MMOs.. love 'em with all my heart, but they're totally not good for me.

Okay, well, I skipped a lot of days because I was either busy, in shock, or inappropriate things were happening that I didn't want to talk about! So, here  is me trying to sum up the last 5 days in Virginia.


We went up to Baltimore and got a room at a Holiday inn.. We went to a few strip clubs, which was really fun.. The girls were all very nice to me, and I even got a couple lapdances.. Really, really cool. We went to Scores, Fantasies, Hustler Club, and Goddess.. Goddess was my favorite, and it was also like, the smallest.. the girls there all really liked my hair, and were super nice to me. Friend 2 essentially got raped there, which I found hilarious, because he kind of deserved it. And when I say raped, I mean it.. He did NOT want what happened, to happen, and he showered hardcore for like an hour straight, then took a bath right after trying to get it out of his mind. I won't say WHY he deserved it, but, he did, and it was hilarious. If youre curious about exactly what happened, ask me privately sometime <.<

We spent about 3 days in Baltimore, which is 2 days longer than they told me they'd stay there.. But they REALLY enjoyed it..

We went to DC after Baltimore, and it was really stunning. I went to the Washington monument, the WW2 memorial, the reflecting pool, and the Lincoln memorial.. Also like all the animals there were really tame, which made me happy.. I had a cute little sparrow following me, all hophophopping behind me lovingly 'cause I kept giving it breadcrumbs from a hotdog.. it'd jump up and snatch the crumbs in mid-air when I threw them to him.. then a squirrel was all "hay, i want some too" so they both followed me and would fight over the crumbs.. I think I was upsetting some people by feeding the cute animals, I guess thats bad manners in a city or some such thing, but in Iowa I've never seen animals so tame as that, probably because theres hunting allowed.. I quit after people kept giving me the stink-eye though, and the sparrow seemed sad and stopped hopping behind me.

Went to a few other new restaurants while in/around Baltimore and DC, including a Bob Evans, some cool local place called "Upper Deck" that had tasty sweet tea, and ate at a couple of the strip clubs.. Fantasies had super tasty food, a wonderful angus burger with provolone.. but scores had possibly, the worst chicken strips I have ever tasted, they were horrible.

On the way back to my friends house, it was a craaazy long drive, we didn't get home until 5am.. I had to keep whoever was  driving awake with random conversation and nudges, 'cause they kept almost dozing off at the wheel.. The fact that it was raining hardcore and pitch black didn't help, either.

The next day we ate at some place called Bone Fish, which was way too fancy, but very tasty.. I had sirloin and scampi in a white wine butter sauce.. which was soo freaking good.. Also we had "Bang Bang Shrimp" for an appetizer, which was so freaking good.. shrimp in a spicy/creamy sauce.. wah. I want some right now as I type this, it was the best thing I've ever tasted.

Then this morning, we went to a Cracker Barrel, which I'd never been to before.. I wasn't very hungry, as I'm always nervous before a flight, so I just pointed to something on the menu which I saw said country fried steak, figured I'd eat a part of it.. They brought me out country fried steak, spiced apples, grits, 2 biscuits, an extra bowl of gravy, and something else which I don't recall. It was waaaay too much food. Very tasty stuff, but I obviously couldn't finish it all. And that was my first time tasting "grits"! One taste was MORE than enough. It seemed like corn bread that had not been cooked yet.

Then.. I was taken to the airport, paid $25 for a checked bag, even enough it SHOULD have been $15.  grumble.. and flew to charlotte, which is where I am writing this now.. waiting for my flight to Kansas city, then from there I''ll go back home to burlington.. I'll edit and addmore to this later if anything interesting happens on the other flights home..

so yeah.. I'm dead tired right now. looking forward to going home.

edit/update: landed in kansas city at 5:30 local time, and my flight leaves at 8:30.. 3 hours.. i check in, and the lady says i am the ONLY passenger on the flight and that if i let the girl at the departure place know, they may leave early with me. I hope thats true. I'm just waiting down here by the gate but it is completely and utterly deserted, no one around at all. Arrrgh.. If I have to wait 3 hours despite being the only person on the flight, it'll be slightly annoying.. but if they somehow "forget" about me here, that'll be even more annoying! ^.^;;

Couldn't sleep at all last night, so at around 5am I realized friend 2 was awake and hungry, so we headed out to Denny's.. It was pretty good, I got a country fried steak and some pancakes. We drove around for a bit after before returning home.. Friend 1 then offered me a pill to help me sleep, "Ativan" or some such thing. I guess its a hypnotic/muscle relaxant/anxiety thing that makes you pretty sleepy if you take two instead of one, so I did, and managed to get a few hours of sleep.

Woke up later and friend 2 decided that we should go on a segway tour today!  It was really fun, we all rented a segway then we rode around some trails in the woods for a couple hours.. those things go FAST.. I think its like 13 mph max, but thats really rather quick for when youre standing up.. Also, it took just about 2 minutes to get entirely comfortable with it, if that.. they're really intuitive and responsive.. I waaaant one, but they're too expensive.

Afterward we went to Virginia Beach and ate at a Beatles theme pub called Abbey Road.. I had a roast beef sandwich and fries, and it was quite good.. Then we went to Flipper Mccoy's arcade, which had alllll kinds of wonderful games, including the Simpsons and the TMNT arcade games, which are like two of my favorites ever.. really they had just about every good arcade game that there is to have.. I was very impressed and had a fun time there..

Tomorrow is the big day, I am going to DC and then to Baltimore.. Baltimore is where we are going to go to the strip clubs at. I am nervous and excited. Hoorah! I will get to see cute naked girls!

Today I went to Panera Bread for the first time and got breakfast, it was quite tasty and I really liked the atmosphere. Went to the mall and walked around, then went to Chic-fil-a for lunch. Then came home and watched The IT Crowd, which is a really great british comedy I highly recommend.

Went to Quiznos  for lunch today, it was really good. I'd been to a quiznos in the past, but it was in an airport and the service was horrible, and they were also out of  most ingredients, so I don't really count that..  This time in a "real" quiznos, was  great though. I had the chicken carbonara without mushrooms on wheat, and quite liked it.. Then friend 1 and friend 2 informed me that they were going to a coffee meetup today, which they pretty much explained as going to a random coffee shop to meet random strangers from around the area and have a drink and talk about stuff.. I was very weary but it was really quite fun. Only two people besides the three of us showed up, one was a 49 year old gentleman who ran the computer systems of an entire school district, played world of warcraft, and was quite funny, and the other was  a cool asian guy who was an atheist and was impressed when I showed him my ticket from the Dawkins talk from a few days ago.. So, I talked about computers and WoW with the white tech guy, and about Dawkins and the difference between theists, deists, and atheists with the atheist asian guy.. They also had a snickers latte and an almond joy latte, i had the almond joy and really liked it a lot..

Then came the real surprise, it was open mic night.. Got to see some really cute girls sing songs, one played a guitar, and another alternated between piano/harp while they sang.. I also saw a white kid with a funky wispy beard recite poetry about taoism which made me cringe.. Friend 1 decided he'd get up on stage and do a poem or two, which were really, really horrible, but I respect his courage to do so, I know I could never get up on stage and speak into a microphone in front of a bunch of people I don't know. I think he just did it for a laugh, anyhow.

I typed to Kacey a bunch during my time at the open mic coffee shop and  was happy she was around to distract me. Afterward we headed out, it was about 10pm at this time, and we decided to go to a Hooters.. Wow. My first time ever being in a place even remotely similar to that, the waitresses were so incredibly cute and sexy, and their outfits left very little to the imagination. I got some cheese sticks and curly fries, but did not eat much with all the waitresses constantly coming to our table and leaning foward suggestively and engaging us in conversation.. I guess they know how to get big tips.. Our meal was $30 and we left a $12 tip..

Anyway, today was a real adventure.. I was in a coffee shop meeting and talking with strangers, and I went to hooters which was swarming with pretty girls.. Happy Ami.

Updated restaurants I have had for the first time while in Virginia in order: iHop, Chick-fil-A, TGIFs, Mellow Mushroom pizza, Cheeseburger in Paradise, Bojangles, Costco Food Court, Quiznos (real one outside of an airport), Small locally owned coffee shop, Hooters.

Today I went to Bojangles' for breakfast, had a cajun chicken biscuit, it was really quite good. Afterward we went to Costco..  I have never been to either before. Bojangles was a ddelicious place, the chicken biscuit I had was amazingly tasty.. And as for Costco, it was huge and awesome. I had been to sams club earlier this week, but Costco was so much cooler.

Played some Guitar Hero and Rock Band today, and thats about it, besides the costco and bojangles.. Anyhow, Good and happy day.