News & Updates in December 2002
- Saturday, December 21, 2002
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Added much longer descriptions to character profiles of Nadia and Jean (both from The Secret of Blue Water).
Treeses was in Vegas most of this week, returning late Thursday (or technically that would be Friday morning). She had a great time, and brought back some cool gifts (which you can view here). While she was gone, part of our back fence blew down in the storm. I'm still trying to get that taken care of. Also, we haven't heard anything about our fridge yet, so I just called and their going to leave a note for the service people to give me a status update on Monday.
I went to see The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers on Wednesday, and it was awesome. I arrived at the theater just after 8:30 PM for the 9:15 PM showing, and the line to get in was already around the building. I played Castlevania: Circle of the Moon on GameBoy while waiting, but didn't make much progress because it was so cold outside that I could barely move my fingers. By the time I made it into the theater, it was already completely packed. There were a few stray seats available in decent locations, but I needed to find a pair together because Victor was coming too. Unfortunately, the only seats I could get that were together were in the second row from the very front. They really, really sucked, but it was still a great movie. I'm planning on seeing it again with Treeses, probably in Sacramento.
I finished off The Thing last Sunday. The last boss was a complete wuss. I started on Onimusha 2, but I really don't like the control, and I hate the new gift giving and town exploration features that they added. The control is similar to Resident Evil, except that your character will automatically turn to face an enemy. I started playing Resident Evil (for GameCube) a while ago, but I just couldn't take the awful control scheme and idiotic item management system. Oh look, there's an herb right in front of me that I need very badly, but my inventory is full so I cannot pick it up to use it. Oh look, there's ammo right in front of me that I need very badly, but my inventory is full so I cannot pick it up to put it in my gun. What moron designed this, and bunch of morons approved it? But hey, the game looks great, and that's all that matters. I mean, who cares if it's fun?
- Sunday, December 15, 2002
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Added character profiles for Seto Kaiba (from Yu-Gi-Oh!), Kai (from BeyBlade), and Kage Houshi (from Flame of Recca).
It has been storming here for the past couple of days. The wind has been fierce, and has knocked over signs all around town. The power went out in several areas, but luckily it hasn't happened here or at the office yet. It did happen at the gym though, so we missed our workout. Treeses is leaving for Las Vegas on Monday with her brother and sister for a four day trip (for her sister's birthday), so hopefully the weather won't hinder that at all.
Well, our refrigerator broke this week. When the service guy got here and looked at it, he said that the compressor broke. Luckily it was under warranty, as we bought it in March of 2000, but to fix it they had to take it into the shop for several days. They gave us a loner, but we already lost a bunch of the food. And although the loner is smaller, I prefer it's design over our side-by-side model. The next fridge we buy will definitely be a top-to-bottom design. Oh yeah, and I was able to get our phones working without having to send them in, but with no thanks to Sony's tech support. I told them what I did, and it looks like they actually updated their knowledge base article to reflect it.
In video game news, I just recently went back to Rogue Leader (for GameCube) and finally beat it. I had been stuck on the last level ever since I stopped playing it several months ago. It took several hours of trying, but I was eventually able to successfully make it into and out of the Death Star without crashing and burning. Now I'm on the last level of The Thing, so I should be done with that soon. Last week I finished off Metroid Prime, although I didn't get 100% completion. Treeses has become addicted to Ratchet and Clank, playing it every spare moment she can get.
This week we watched Dragonfly, The Accidental Spy, Vampires: Los Muertos, and Terror Toons. Dragonfly was a movie that could have easily been an episode of The Outer Limits. There was absolutely no need for this to be a movie. The Accidental Spy had one good Jackie Chan fight scene where he's fighting naked through the town, but the rest of the action scenes had nothing special, and the story was insignificant. Vampires had like two actors and then a bunch of other people who should stick to high school plays. Half way through I started fast forwarding, and only stopped here and there 'till I got to the end. And then there was Terror Toons, a movie that looked like it was made as a high school project. I was expecting a stupid horror movie, but they didn't even try to make it enjoyable. Overall, it was a disappointing week for movies.
- Sunday, December 8, 2002
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Added the anime profile for Metropolis, and the character profiles for Takato Matsuki and Ulube Ishikawa (from G Gundam).
Last night Treeses and I went to a dinner/play called "The Christmas Connection" at a local church. The play was about a work-a-holic father who finally realized that he was missing out on his family's life. It was enjoyable, and the food was good. Afterwards we stopped at Toy 'R Us and ended up getting Star Wars Life, Gauntlet: Dark Legacy (for PS2, only $19), and some really cool gargoyle action figure. We just finished playing the Star Wars Life, and man was it boring. It didn't even feel like Life. Very disappointing.
For Thanksgiving, my parents came up and Treeses cooked dinner. Everything went very smooth, so smooth in fact that both Treeses and my Mom thought that they must have missed something. We set up the good dishes on the table all nice looking and took a picture, but then just brought out the plastic plates and used those. After dinner we watched Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring, the new 4-disc set. I think that the extended version is even better than the theatrical releases, especially with the added banter between the Hobbits.
At work I'm still hammering away on Growlanser 2. The writing is basically finished, so we should start recording all the voices pretty soon. I'm just finishing up with all the menus. They were all completely inconsistent with each other and none were aligned right, so I fixed all that up and color coded them. I have Growlanser 3 up and running, so hopefully I will get to start working on that soon.
Treeses hadn't been feeling well for a while, and we actually went to the emergency room a couple times. They couldn't give here a solid diagnosis and kept telling her to just go home and rest. When her pain got worse, we finally went to the other hospital where they nailed it down right away. She had cellulitis. They gave her some antibiotics and it started getting better right away. They said that it got pretty bad and that it shouldn't have gone this long without treatment. From now on we will be going back to that hospital when something's wrong, even if it does cost us more.
We also just bought a extra refurbished handset for our Sony phone (SPP-A2780), but had problems registering it. So I went to Sony's website, and they had our exact problem listed in their knowledge base, along with a solution. After implementing their solution to the letter, the handset still would not register. And worse than that, the solution told me to un-register all of the cordless handsets, and now NONE of them will register. So I sent them off a message explaining it all, but haven't heard anything back yet. I then also searched the web and found others with our same problem, and it looks like we'll have to send everything in to Sony to have it reset. EVERYTHING! The base phone and all the handsets!
If this is true, we are pretty much just going to stop buying Sony products all together. Not just because of this, but because recently Sony has just been sucking. Like with our new Sony A/V receiver in which they changed the remote codes so that it won't work with any other Sony remotes or universal remotes. Or with our new Sony DVD player, in which the power button turns the unit completely off instead of into a standby mode, so that even the remote control won't turn it on. Or with Sony published PlayStation 2 games, where they lower the price to $39 because they don't have to pay royalties to themselves, but won't reduce the royalty rate so all the third party games have to keep selling at $49. It's unfortunate, because Sony used to be top notch. I wonder what happened, new management or something? I really hope they start firing some people, and can return the company to greatness.
We recently watched Spiders II, Scooby-Doo, White Squall, The Goonies, Men in Black II, Ice Age, Go Shogun: The Time Etranger, My My Mai, Insomnia, and Eight Legged Freaks. Spiders II sucked. You didn't even get to see a spider attack until over an hour into the movie. Scooby-Doo wasn't that great, but Shaggy and Scooby still made it worth watching. White Squall was okay, and The Goonies was still good, but Men in Black II totally sucked. It was just awful all the way around. Ice Age, on the other hand, was quite good. Go Shogun was extremely boring. I didn't even finish watching the whole thing. My My Mai was funny, Insomnia was boring, and Eight Legged Freaks was a well done humorous giant monster movie.