With a fistful of your girlfriend’s hair

So its been, what, 2 months now since I have posted anything to Idoru? I really am pretty terrible at updating this most of the time. But lets go ahead and hit some highlights from the past two months.

May was relatively uneventful, until near the end of it. I went out to Colorado to visit a very good friend and some other people as well. Went up Pikes Peak, finally. Went to Rocky Mountain National Park which is an awesome place. Went shooting and that was a ton of fun. Re-inspired me to consider getting a gun or two. Not a sure thing but it is a possibility. Played some video games and had just an overall awesome time hanging out with my friends. Reminds me why I miss seeing them in person.

Been continuing to play a lot of BFBC2, right now my goal is to gold star every weapon and there are very few weapons left to go. Really just two sniper rifles which I have started running with a red dot. Other then that I haven’t really been playing many video games. Been more interested in doing things out in the real world. Been out riding, meeting people for drinks, coffee whatever. Its actually been a really good thing for me to do. So I guess expect more of that in the future.

Otherwise there isn’t much news to print. Its a short update. Sue me. Have a happy 4th and enjoy the holiday. And remember, its for your sorrows.

And we could blaze it up on your block if you want to

So as Trevnor pointed out I should update this sucker. Its actually been something on my to do list for a few days now, just had life keep popping up to keep me busy and not updating it. Yes Super Street Fighter IV counts as life. Plus, since my readership has diminished significantly (not that it was ever huge) I have less urge to update it as I am trying to figure out the best thing to do with it. Yes the two are related. However for now it will continue being random updates.

Been listening to some newer music lately, so I figure I can start there. There are a few Wu Tang mix tapes out there, Wu Tang vs The Beatles, and the Wu Massacre - Avenging Eagles that are both fairly solid. Picked up the Jaydiohead albums, as well as the Beastie Boys - Double Check your Head and the Mos Dub mashups as well. All of them are pretty solid, you can google them and find them fairly easily. Best part is that they are free. If you dig the artists in the name, check em out.

Skipping directly to work, I applied for a new job a week or two ago. Who knows whether or not I will actually get it but it feels good take some proactive steps towards getting out of my department. Speaking of my department, I will shortly be up to my 8th or 9th supervisor (if you count the times I didn’t have a supervisor at all) in the 4 years I have been an official FTE. Yeah, talk about smooooooth. All of that without me actually changing my job. Not a pain in the ass at all I swear! But enough about work, I am sick of it anyway.

Two nights ago I red ringed my 360. So I went out last night and bought a new 360. Sure I am a bit of an addict, obviously. On the other hand, the new arcade system I picked up does in fact come with Viva Pinata so I can … I don’t even know what that game is about. But it has achievements so I will certainly play it some. Why not after all. Otherwise been playing a lot of BFBC2 and SSF4. Beat Mirrors Edge a few weeks back as well, it was interesting. The controls didn’t feel as tight on 360 as they did on the PS3 when I played in Korea and the combat continued to be atrocious but whatever right? Need to set some time aside to play through Dead Space, which has been started but I am too addicted to certain other games (see BFBC2) right now to want to take the time. Its just too much goddamn fun to run around with my AKS-74U and kill bitches. Or to snipe people from approximately 30 miles away with the M95. But enough about games for the moment I think.

Other stuff going on…. hrm, been sick for the past week. Getting better slowly but surely I can tell that much but its not going to be a super quick recovery I can tell. Mostly because its been almost a week already. But I am on the road to recovery. Mother’s Day is this weekend so remember to call your mom and wish her a happy one (or in my case go out to brunch with her). I have to fast on Sunday evening anyway for an unrelated medical thing so I suppose brunch works out best for me anyway.

Starting to gear up for a trip out to Colorado towards the end of this month. Looking forward to seeing some friends and also looking forward to meeting a few guys I play with on XBL. Plus, a vacation will always be fun. Starting to think about a trip somewhere this fall as well. Possibly going to Greece or Boston or somewhere else. Who knows, its tempting but its also entirely possible that I will end up going nowhere at this point. Its one of those “time will tell” things.

Installed a new OS on my main computer. Ubuntu 10.04. Its interesting. I like some of the changes and dislike others, as with any new distro release. Its fairly solid but far from perfect, still I have no illusions that any distro will be perfect unless I build it myself and I am too lazy to do that. Part of the reason I did that was some hardware updates to my main computer though. Now I have a video card that only ~2 years out of date instead of 4! And a nice shiny new HDD as well.

Other then that, not a ton of anything going on right now which is kinda cool. Had a hilariously bad first date last weekend but thats kind of a neither here nor there thing, so no point in putting the details out there really. In fact its kinda nice that it went badly since I love having downtime. So here is something for you to chill out too just a bit, as we enter the weekend.

I debated writing about two different news stories, the George Rekers scandal and another news story right now about a woman who lost her job due to technology… But I think I will save that until later this week so that my ideas can be a bit more cogent. Although I have a strong suspiscion that people who know me can already guess my reaction to Mr. Rekers.

From the five-star rooms down to skid row

So its been over two months since I updated this sucker and it seems that there have been some changes again. I should really try to get into the habit of updating this at least every other week again but who knows whether or not I will… Especially in light of the fact that outside of work I have been trying to spend less time online intentionally and that has been a good thing for me.

Speaking of work… its the slow season and like everybody else I am looking around to see what is out there and like everybody else I am seeing pathetically little thanks to our troubled economy. Still, the best time to find a new job is when you have one so I figure I might as well look. That said, my company has actually been making it somewhat appealing to stay with them since they lifted the freeze on salaries and such. It might not be much but hey, a raise is a raise in this economy. I have been doing a lot of reading and talking about this economy lately and, just my personal opinion, its going to get worse further before it really gets better and that downswing will last a bit longer then people are predicting (which is already into spring /summer of 2011). I also think the effects of this downswing are going to resonate a hell of a lot longer then people really realize. The people graduating college right now who can’t find jobs? That’s going to stick with them for years to come and effect their careers in negative ways. But enough depressing talk, lets switch to something a bit more fun.

In February I took a trip out to South Korea and it. Was. Awesome. Got to see one of my very good buddies, got to get myself to another continent (only 4 left on the list) and got to see all sorts of crazy stuff. Some of the highlights: Going to the DMZ, seeing the Gyeongbokgung palace in Seoul, the Namsan Seoul N Tower, seeing where my friend works/lives and how he lives and of course the food. I will be honest, here in the states I am hit or miss with Asian food, sometimes I really crave it but oftentimes I’m pretty indifferent. Well, the food over there was largely great. the fried shrimp thing wasn’t very good, but the rest of it? Fantastic. Fried thick bacon, ribs, Bulgogi, all of it was just absolutely fantastic. That said, they do have some strange takes on pizza as well. They also have a crazy market that we went to, just jampacked with everything you might want to buy and thousands of things you don’t want to buy. The food section (talking about the raw ingredients section) had a ton of food that you would never really see in America in the same way. So all in all it was a fantastic trip, I got to experience a ton of things that I have never really experienced before and I call it, overall, a complete win. Even the flights (about 19 hours to get there, roughly 15 or so to get home, including layovers) didn’t bother me much. The Jet lag sucked but I certainly can’t complain and I know how to deal with that. Regarding pictures, I took about a hundred which is actually fairly few for me and many of them are of the same sort of thing but as soon as Gallery3 gets released and I upgrade the gallery on the site I will be uploading at least some of my pictures to the site. I will make sure to make mention of it when I do.

Speaking of traveling, later today I will be buying some plane tickets to go out to visit CO. Haven’t been there in a few years (2007) and I miss it. Other then that, I am planning a motorcycle camping trip (might be as short as one night) for this summer and starting to figure out another trip overseas. I can’t decide, right now, between Egypt and Argentina. A few other places on my radar as well, like Greece and Turkey, Australia, etc but I think I want to make use of my Typhoid shot while its still valid and Argentina is looking pretty tempting at the moment.

Since I brought up motorcycling already… I am looking forward to the weather getting the rest of the way into spring/summer mode and getting out there on the bike. I see some people out there already but the potholes/crap on the road are just too bad at the moment for me to want to fuck around with it yet. Still, I can feel it getting closer, most of the snowpack is gone and I am starting to get antsy again… huge shock I know. Hopefully within a month I will be wiling away my weekends on the bike again but we will see.

Other then that… reading, started writing some again although its nothing worth sharing with anybody, and tons of video games now that BFBC2 is released. Its a good game (primarily the multiplayer is what I have been playing) but man do DICE and EA need to figure out how to do the online thing a bit better. Were they not expecting a rush of people? Hopefully having the servers down for a chunk this weekend will help them quite a bit and we can get back to capping flags and blowing M-COM stations. Till then… well I guess I can play the single player. I am also planning on picking up Darksiders from Amazon later today. We’ll see how that goes I guess but I won’t be able to complain much since it should only really run me about $20 after gift certificates and such.

I think that’s about all of the news that’s fit to print at the moment. So I just want to tell you that nobody loves you like your mama. Remember that.

Speak up my darlin’ I have been waiting

Been a long time coming on this update but it seems as though life has been entirely too nonstop these days, in a largely good way. Lets start with the holidays. They were good, got to see a bunch of family, got snowed in for Christmas (not that it would stop me) and still had a pretty solidly entertaining time all around. Oh, skipped turkey day. Ate a bunch, drank a bunch, good times. New years eve was spent, as always, at home. It just seems like the best idea considering MN has a fair number of drunk drivers anyway (lady in SD who blew a .708? Yeah, MN resident. Guy in St. Paul just got his 20th DUI, etc) and amateur night is not a time to be out of the road. Plus, its frankly just nice to spend the time sorting out the end and the beginning of the new year. Plus playing video games is always pretty great.

Work is past its mind numbingly busy season and I made a decent amount of money. That said, having the time back is way more important to me at the end of the day so I am glad that its over and that I am starting to get back into the swing of things outside of work as well. Now that its the new year as well it means that it really and truly is the time for me to figure out what the hell I am going to do with myself career wise. Time will tell I suppose with whats available. Doesn’t help that I think the recession is going to hit a bit more.

Video game wise things are good. Beat the ever loving crap out of AC2 on a single playthrough and now I need to decide between my collector self (and hey, maybe I will play it again…. maybe) and the fact that I can sell it for most of what I bought it for still. That said, aside from the fact that it was too easy (in my opinion) and it had some bloat with unnecessary additions to the game, it did improve on the first one in really every way. Story gets fucking weird part way through, fair warning. Otherwise, I have been playing some 1943 again and its still fun. The most recent game though has been Trials HD. Its a fun game. Its a frustrating game. Its … I dunno whether it was good to spend the money on it or not. I have played a fair amount of it and I think if it were easier it would feel like a waste. That said, I am not very good at it. Although I can see myself improving every time I play which is actually a really interesting phenomenon. Watching people do the final level with no faults in super fast times? Well, it is impressive to watch. Plenty of other videos of trials (and its various levels) on youtube as well.

Started reading again recently. It has been kind of a shame to me that I didn’t read much for a while considering how much I enjoy reading. Read Logicomix last week and I would recommend it to people. Next two books in the queue are “The girl with the Dragon Tattoo” and “The Gathering Storm” I believe. Who knows though I might get distracted and go back to some other books or something. Either way its sort of surprising how much I had missed it.

In other news, since tickets are bought and such, later this year, and not terribly far away actually, I am heading to Korea. Thanks to the wonders of the date line it will be a day and a half of travel local time to local time to get there and roughly …. 0 hours to to return. Actually technically I return a half hour before I leave in local times. That one will be a first for me. Either way, looking forward to it, no doubt about that. Have another, much smaller, trip in the works for this summer as well. That trip is still under wraps for the moment since tickets aren’t bought but it should be a good time if everything comes together the way I expect it to. So yeah… traveling again.

Lately I have been feeling a need to disconnect from the net a bit (odd for me to say really). Its going to be an interesting experiment to see what exactly happens witht hat and how it all pans out. I think that it will  probably be a good idea for me though, at least in the short run.

Man I was about to say something really pretentious and crap. Good thing I caught myself. The gist of it is that “09 was, at the end of the day, a pretty good year for me” so lets leave it at that. Hope 09 was good for you and here is a song that I heard earlier today that always catches me off gaurd.

Bunch of other stuff too but that can all wait for now.

No matter what you do, we’re gonna stand back up again.

So again around this time of year Idoru falls into disrepair as I start cranking out a ton of things in my life. I think the winter (or rather approaching winter) makes me want to be super busy in an effort to catch up on all of the things I neglected during the summer while I was out, you know, having fun and shit. So lets hit some highlights from the past three weeks or so.

About two weeks ago I picked up ODST to expand my game library and to play something with my buddy Trevnor who finally came over to the dark side and picked up a 360. Have to say, he had made me wary of purchasing it and I did find it wholly ironic that he is the reason I ended up picking it up as soon as I did. Either way its a surprisingly fun game. Not perfect but the campaign is something very different from the previous Halo iterations which is cool and the firefight mode is pretty great. So I have been playing a fair amount of that. It also reawakened my hunger for achievements so I went through and 100%ed Shadow Complex and then started picking up relatively easy achievements that I had been missing elsewhere. Its kinda sad how much fun I have with those considering they are wholly worthless. Also played Demos for the following games recently: Transformers, Brutal Legend and Left 4 Dead 2. In order: Clunky, misleading and harder then before. So the only one of those that interested me enough to even consider is L4D2 which I doubt I will bother to pick up. However Assassin’s Creed 2, which is a week or 2 from drop date is a must buy for me. Probably in early January since I am busy with work but still…

Brings us to work. Right now I am not exactly happy with my job. Actually, considering that this is the end of the first week of November I am really unhappy with my job. Its still there and its paying me both of which are good things but aside from the fact that there is nowhere else for me to really go with it (all of that has been completely shutdown) I am just not liking the environment. They are offering some OT which is nice but its certainly not an all day thing and I think that they are going to offer us less then they have in previous years. So, long story short, while I am working there for the moment its not looking like its going to last, that’s for sure. There is other stiff too but its depressing and I don’t want to think about it right now.

Back to some fun stuff, last weekend was a Halloween party, wasn’t really feeling it until i stopped by the bar but it ended up being a pretty great time. Saw a number of friends which is always good and overall just had a great time. Need to see if I can score any of the pictures taken of me from somebody. I know there are some on facebook and the like but not sure how many or even who has them. Except for the picture of me in a compromising picture with a penguin. I know who has that…

Other then that, the days are getting shorter and so forth. It definitely feels like winter, sun is down by about 5 pm which just feels depressingly early. Still today is supposed to be in the 60s so I intend to go for a ride after I work out. Speaking of working out, I have somewhat fallen off in the past few weeks so I am intending to start that up in full swing more or less now. Still though, I have lost around a dozen pounds which is a goddamn great feeling. I am sleeping better, have more energy, etc etc etc. It all sounds like hype but there really is something to working out it seems. No complaints from me.

Other then that, life has been productive and over all just solidly good. So here is a kickin video for you to jam out to and think of me.