News & Updates in April 2010

Posted the character profile of Jiro (from Blue Dragon). Posted the anime profile of Yumeiro Patissiere.

Started a new blog at Blogger.com: Ken's Blog.

My wife and I are still missing one Xbox Live achievement for the game Earth Defense Force 2017, the one where you need to collect all the weapons. We're only missing one weapon, but seems like no matter how much we play, the game just does not want to drop that one last weapon. We've beaten every stage on every difficulty so now we're just playing the second-to-last level over and over again on the highest difficulty until it gives us what we need. It's a fantastically fun game, but the monotonous nature of only trying to collect weapons can really become numbing. It's why we stopped playing it, but now enough time has passed that we decided to give it another shot. I really hope we'll be able to do it before getting sick of it once again.

Let's see, what's been going on... I guess the first thing since my last blog entry is that on February 26th, my wife and I went to a school play that the daughter of one of my wife's friends was in. It took place during the prohibition era and was enjoyable. Danielle didn't have a major part but I still think she did a great job. It had been a long time since I had been to a live play, and I think the last one I went to was also a school play. Oh, and we forgot to bring our tickets with us so when we got there we had to buy two new tickets :(

That brings us into March, where on the 1st we went to see Percy Jackson The Lightning Thief. It was alright, though I had been hoping for a bit more from the plot than basically just a search for three pearls. Oh, and the board game called Dark World arrived this day. I had sold the boring HeroScape board game and bought this new (used) one, which was supposed to be more similar to Hero Quest, but still just was not quiet as fun as there was no actual story and the rooms of the dungeon were pretty much always the same (except for random monster placements) as was the goal. What made Hero Quest so fun was that each stage had a story and rooms would be build differently and hallways leading to the rooms would be different for each story. And building the rooms when the door is opened was much nicer than spending a lot of time getting everything set up at the very beginning. So I sold that game as well, and replaced it with yet another game called The A-maze-ing Labyrinth. This game is much simpler than any of the others, though I haven't actually played it yet so can't say how enjoyable it is.

Apparently the next day, police came to the door looking for some guy who supposedly lived next door to us. I was sound asleep when it happened, so my wife was the one that answered the door, and she said that they were canvasing the whole neighborhood looking for this guy. We knew our previous neighbors, but after they moved out we still haven't gotten around to meeting our new ones. I know, that's terrible, isn't it!? I should go introduce myself tomorrow....

On the 4th, Treese's friend who had moved to D.C. but was in town visiting came over to visit and had me fix up her laptop. Then afterwards we went over to visit another of my wife's friends at their place because their computer had that stupid fake antivirus thing on it plus a bunch of other malware. It took until like 2 in the morning but I got it spic and span! Luckily they are both night owls like me. Their house is pretty cool too, decorated with all this Gothic horror stuff.

On the 6th we went to see Alice and Wonderland in 3D together with several of my wife's friends. I was really shocked by how boring it was. Felt like there was absolutely no story at all. I was also shocked that afterwards, my wife completely agreed with me! The 3D effects were nice and the film looked gorgeous and Johnny Depp made for a great Mad Hatter but my god the thing was just so dull I actually laid my head back and rested my eyes several times, nearly dozing off in the process. I don't think I have EVER done that with a movie in the theater before.

On the 9th my wife went in for wrist surgery to remove a ganglion cyst. Thankfully everything went well. The operation only took about 30 minutes, then had to wait around for another 30 minutes. Flash forward today and the stitches are out and the scar looks to be healing nicely. It's still tender but that's to be expected. She is going back to work on Monday, but only half days for now, so we'll see how that goes with the typing. I know she's eager to put her mind back to work.

Not much happened after that until the 19th, when I started to fix up our poor neglected gazebo. I did a few minor fixes, then started scrubbing the whole thing down in preparation for a whole new stain job. Started working on it in the evening before it got dark, then the next day until we were invited over to another of my wife's friends' place for a BBQ of oysters, shrimp, and steaks. (This is the same friend who's kid was in that play I mentioned earlier.) As usual I fixed up the computer, and the meal was delicious... well, the shrimp and steak. I'm not a fan of oysters. Danielle tried one, which was surprising, and turns out she's not a fan either!

The next day I finally finished all the scrubbing of the gazebo, but it was too late to start on the staining. That night we went over to her friend's place again (the goth couple this time) where we just hung out, watched TV and talked. We didn't get home until like 4am! I figure next time we should just bring sleeping bags. Anyway, so I didn't get an early start on staining the next day, plus I had to exchange the stain I had bought previously for a different color to more closely match the ceiling (which didn't need re-staining). I was in a hurry because my wife needed the car back to get to her doctor's appointment to get her stitches removed, and of course that's when I hit every light red on the way there and the way back, and can't find the color stain I'm looking for and nobody can find the person who is supposed to be manning that department! In the end, I made it back just in time.

Two days later and I finally finished staining the gazebo! And just in time too, because it was supposed to storm that night... and it did. That was the 24th, and the next day we actually had a hail storm! The hail lasted for about five minutes and luckily didn't seem to damage anything. Though I did notice some rotted wood that needed replacing on the gazebo, so still need to get around to fixing that.

On the 30th we went to see How to Train Your Dragon in 3D, and I really enjoyed it. I mean, the movie itself was good but the 3D effect was done really well, like it felt extremely natural, not gimmicky, especially during the flight scenes. So this new 3D definitely has it's place in movies, and it sounds like a lot of new movies are going to be using it, which actually has me a bit worried. Yeah, it works great on some of these, but does every movie need to be 3D? Standard 2D movies are great too, you know. And I really don't want to be shelling out these higher prices for every movie I go see. Ah well, guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Posted my review of Alvin & The Chipmunks: The Squeakquel (2 Disc).