Yeah, sorry for not posting anything recently. Once Thanksgiving was underway things got out of hand. We cooked all day then watched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in the evening. Once we finished with that I was too far gone to write anything worth reading. Although some would argue that I don’t write anything worth reading normally.

I took Friday off which means I had no idea what to do with myself. Violet convinced me to play some games and I ended up finishing off God of War which is of course awesome. That is the game is awesome no me finishing it but it is the first game I’ve finished in forever so I suppose that does qualify as “awesome” and perhaps even “rad.” Who needs an Xbox 360 when I have half a fucking library of uncompleted games to play with? Then we did some errands and dropped Densoro off at a friend’s house.

Once we ditched the boy Violet decided that she needed to shop so while she looked at clothes I headed to Best Buy to take in the “Black Friday” aftermath. The store associates appeared to be largely in shock and several had barricaded themselves in corners with empty storage bins and duct tape. One thing of interest that I noticed was the sheer amount of Xbox 360 accessories in the store. More than you could possibly imagine. Controllers, play and charge kits, faceplates, wireless adaptors, you name it, they had everything. Except of course for the fucking systems. Enough wireless controllers for every man, woman, and child in this valley to have one but no systems. And why the hell did they have so many when the number of consoles available locally must have numbered in the hundreds? Who knows, but perhaps Microsoft should have put some of that manufacturing power in to making systems rather than accessories. But I digress.

I’m thinking that I may have slept through Saturday as I seem to be unable to remember what we did that day. I think we ran some more errands and picked up Densoro but I can’t really be certain.

Sunday was interesting because we started out with no plans and ended up finishing off my “HoneyDo” list in record time. Here’s how it happened. Our landlord/housemate noticed that the front sprinklers weren’t working and asked us to look in to it. I found the problem and fixed it by re-wiring one of the valves. While Lady V and I were in the garage putting away the tools I noticed my tube of carpenters Goop (good stuff BTW) sitting there so I decided to fix one of the dinning room chairs that had been coming apart. Did that and suddenly remembered the pole on the stair rail that had split and decided to fix it as well. While gluing things back together I was thinking to myself, “jeeze, this stuff is cold and hard to work with” which of course led to the yearly service on the furnace to make things warm and stuff. Once I was finished with that I put away the Goop and saw the leaf blower/vac sitting in the garage unopened. Couldn’t have that so V and I tore in to it and cleaned the whole fucking yard. We hurt more than I could have thought possible after that.

So that was my weekend. How was yours?

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I completely forgot to post this when I registered at Xbox.com. My Gamercard.

You’ll notice that I don’t have any achievements or anything because I don’t have a damn 360. I’ll get one but not for awhile. At least not till they stop crashing. And not until the mayhem has subsided.

I just watched some of the videos from the early hours of the 360 launch event and I can now say with complete confidence that I am grateful that I didn’t get invited. What a bunch of fucking jackasses. These are the guys who beat up people like me in high school. Well not me exactly because I’m pretty big and not really in my high school due to the small size and catholic nature of it but you get the idea.

So I didn’t get invited to the X-Box 360 Zero Hour Launch like I was hoping I would. Which is truly a shame because it would have been a 10 minute drive to the festivities. I guess I should have been more loquacious in my description of how I was planning on getting there. It’s my own fault for not reading the question thoroughly enough. I think I wrote simply “driving” as my answer. I should have mentioned that I really wanted to go to give Microsoft the chance to give me a reason to buy a 360. I still have yet to see any games that I care about even after some additional time on a demo station. I should have said that I wanted to give them the opportunity to make me salivate over their overprice, over hyped piece of plastic.

Alas, now my only recourse is to look at the glowing green building in the distance and shout obscenities in there general direction. Microsoft sucks, long live Nintendo!

I just realized something as I sat down to write this. I suck at writing reviews of things that I like. I lose any kind of detachment that I should have about the thing and end up simply saying that it was fucking amazing.

So here’s my review of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. It was fucking amazing. That’s really all I have to say about it. It was awesome and was everything I hoped it would be. I love the movie and the entire Harry Potter universe to be anything like objective about it so there you go.

In any case go see it if you like HP. And go see it if you don’t. Every theater was sold out on Friday so it’s not like they really need your money to make it fly.

Or at least it’s upon me. I’m not really some one that anybody would refer to as well traveled. I don’t really take vacations to anywhere, mostly due to the fact that I can’t fucking afford to go anywhere so when my vacation time rolls over at work I usually cash it in so I can buy new gear. Well not this year bitches! I’m taking some time off because I desperately need it. I already took one day off over Veteran’s Day (no I am not a vet, no I never will be) and I decided to take the day after thanksgiving as well. I also managed to combine my paid holidays with the remaining three days of VT I had and take the entire week between Christmas and New Years off.

Now here’s the issue, I can’t handle time off. I get bored. I get tired. I act like a lump and then feel guilty for doing so. It’s not that I’m addicted to work because I fucking hate my job but I am addicted to being actively involved in something, anything. Even my hobbies, which are severely neglected most of the time continue to get neglected while I’m on vacation. I am, in short, vacationaly challenged.

To the best of my knowledge there is no support group or 12-step program for my affliction but there should be. Maybe a government subsidized kind of thing that helps pay for travel for the recreationaly inept. Fuck the homeless, I need to go to Hawaii!

In other news, I fully intend to spend some time over the next few weeks working on a podcast. A while ago I actually spent roughly $150 on gear for the exact purpose of doing a podcast. But things seem to keep getting in the way. Things like work, and house stuff, and a raging lack of self esteem. And creativity! Or rather the perceived lack there of. But I’m going to do it. I swear to the goddess I’m going to do it. Soon, keep watching for it.

I went and picked up our tickets today for the 6:50 showing. I would have liked to go to the first showing but of course I have to work. There needs to be some kind of benefit that allows for this sort of thing. Time off for kick ass movies. Like time off to vote only nerdier.

I also listened to the Mugglenet/Leaky Cauldron live podcast from New York today. It happened in a B&N there after all of the podcasters got to see the US premier (bastards!). It was really funny as all of them were totally beside themselves form the experience.

Should be lots of fun. Full report on Saturday.

I picked up Metroid Prime Pinball and have been playing with it a fair bit since then. It’s exceptionally fun and highly addictive although a close friend tells me that pinball belongs in cheap bars with white trash and the like. Normally I would agree but I don’t think the wife beater set will appreciate the addition of space pirates and phazon to their beer swilling activities.

One complaint I do have about the game is that it’s really fucking hard. Well, it’s either hard or I suck at pinball. Both possibilities are equally likely. In either case go pick it up and see what you think. If you like Metroid then I think you’ll like it.

When I first heard about Jaws: Unleashed I was skeptical. It looked fun but seemed a bit shallow (pun fully intended, locked, loaded, and fired without remorse) but then I thought, “hell yeah!” I want to swim around and eat people and sink boats and destroy things. This sounds fun as hell and looks pretty good. The early videos that I saw seemed a bit craggy and sluggish. In any case it appears that it’s getting a January release. I’ll wait to see the reviews come in before I drop $50 on it but I will own it eventually.

More info here and just as an aside it’s from the people that made Ecco the Dolphin so the underwater atmosphere should be killer.