Ain't That a Kick in the Head?

This passed week has been mostly wonderful!

Isn't that a good thing?

It's been a while since there has been any updates here, and for that I apologize. This may be a lengthy one.

First things first:

Fallout New Vegas.

Has is been taking up a lot of my time?

The answer is "yes".

At this point I am at level...18? And well on my way. So here comes the "review", so to speak.

The beginning of the game may have been the biggest disappointment I have faced since Sonic the Hedgehog became 3D.

The storyline was god-awful, the startup of the game was slow, the area was boring and the new features were confusing.

Total play time before throwing down the controller: 45 minutes.

Total time spent bitching because the game sucked: 5 days.

Eventually I had some more spare time and I finally mustered up the patients to guts to pick it up again.

Same thing.

Total play time: An hour and 15 minutes.

Faith in Bethesda: Diminished.

"Oh, it gets better," they said.

"Keep playing!" They said.

Fine.

"You can launch Ghouls into outer space!" They said.

...

Well... in that case...

Controller back in hand, I trudged onward through the Mojave wasteland, trying to make the best of things.

Total playtime: 32 hours and 15 minutes.

Ultimately, it redeemed itself, making it a more playable game. Less frustrating, too. Here is a quick run through of what is good and not so good.

Good:

The dialog. I was extremely impressed with the dialog, this time around.

In Fallout 3, you could walk around and another character would make a nasty, offhand remark about you. Though, as soon as you clicked on them to speak, they were cheery as can be.

Here, that changed that. When they're mean, they're mean. When they're nice, they're nice. It is refreshing. Other than that, the dialog options are great.

Creatures and people.

The new characters and creatures in the game are awesome! Robotic dogs, firebreathing geckos, Elvis impersonators. Its great. A lot less run-of-the-mill.

Companions.

The companions you have follow you are swell. They also give you a lot of neat-o perks.

Let me tell you, Boone is just the bee's knees.

Fame:

Instead of just having good or bad karma, you gain fame an infamy amongst the other colonizations and groups in the wasteland. This is really nice, actually, because instead of having EVERYONE shooting at you, you only have a few people. Though, the disguises and outfits don't work as well as I had hoped they would...

Mediocre:

The storyline.

Perhaps Im just not far enough along yet, but I think that I like the other storyline a little bit better....

Housing:

It takes a bit longer to get your house here, I feel, but the options are greater. The first house you get, there is little or no attachment to the tow you're in. No reason to stat, reall. Evertually you get a really badass one.

Perks: There are some good ones, but there are also a lot of the same ones.... its disappointing. On top of that, you only get to choose a perk every-other level, which confused and upset me in the beginning.

Weapon mods:

Cool in theory, but a little too complicated for my liking. Especially the ammo. It is too time consuming and the menu screens are too cluttered for my to bother taking my time on it.

Bad:

THE BUGS AND GLITCHES.

This may be the reason that I permanently lay this game to rest. There are too many quest-breaking bugs. It stutters, freezes and stalls. People and items don't show up where they need to be, and we have has some file corruptions that set us back HOURS.

Ammo mods/Creation:

I hate this and try to avoid it at all cost. Too much of a pain in the ass for me.

Snow globes:

I miss the bobble heads! And they give you money, instead of skill points... Oh well...

Overall, its pretty cool, but it doesn't quite hold a candle to Fallout 3. After falling in love with those characters, it really sucks to have to start over again. The bugs in the game are excruciating and frustrating (along with the lengthly loading screens...)

I would recommend picking it up, for sure. But I may actually recommend that you wait until there is a patch out for it or you will just be wasting your time.

When not playing Fallout, I have been working overnights (hence the lack of updates.) Personally, I think it is awesome. Most of it was physical labor, which was a nice chance. Getting in to work at 9, then leaving at 9 in the morning was actually pretty sweet. (McDonald's bacon, egg and cheese bagels for dinner! YES!)

I didn't really like sleeping all day though. Didn't get to see Van very much either. But other than that, it was nice. A lot of hours and a lot of moving around. I dig.

Finally I caved and applied for college again. I just need to get my transcripts sent in. I'm going to be a High School English teacher. This is something I look forward to.

Right now all I can think about is food, so I'm going to go and perhaps play Fallout until Van wakes up. My sleeping schedule is all screwed up now, so I just woke up a little while ago and its 4 AM (I think? Daylight savings time has confused me a little bit, since the clock on my computer is already wrong?)

Off to scrounge up some Lucky Charms.

No, Mumm Ra, That Is My Cheese Cake!

If my blog were a puppy, it would have died from neglect by now, or at least been taken away by social services. We still don't have Internet in my house, since money is a little bit tight. But I think one of my neighbors has it, hence the fact that I am typing right this very moment.
Life...is big.
As of now.
There have been a lot of changes.

I dropped out of cooking school, which many people tell me was a bad idea.
Personally, I don't think saving thousands of dollars from going to waste is a bad idea. At some point in the near future I will be changing my major and going to a new school. Most likely for journalism I believe we already went through this. I had been working as a chef for a horrible restaurant called All Shook Up, that charged 9 dollars for a tiny sandwich and didn't have ice cream when they called themselves a "malt shop". Thankfully I am no longer there.
I now work a mediocre job at Best Buy, but I am not complaining. All things considered, I am making money and selling video games, so all is not that bad. I've come to the understanding that sometimes you have to start from the bottom and work your way up. There are no cheat-codes for life, with maybe the exception of the lottery. But that is one of those impossible cheat codes that are really difficult to activate, much like the ones in Earthworm Jim.
Speaking of Earthworm Jim, he is now permanently engraved into my bicep. As I had always said he would be. My sleeve is coming along nicely.

Thanks to some awesome Black Friday sales, we got Left 4 Dead 2 and Dragon Age for outstanding prices. Van and I beat L4D2 on Co-op mode, but need to go through it on single player still. It is a good game, the graphics are nice and the new weapons are useful, but it isn't all that different from the first one. Honestly, it kind of seems the exact same in some parts. Though, I don't own the first one, so I'm alright with that.
Zombies tend to go in a backwards order for me. Always start with the second part. as I did with 28 Weeks later.
Dragon age is pretty awesome, but also very frustrating to me. There are a lot of different controls and settings that I really don't have the patients to deal with. I just want to go and be the most evil of mages. Unfortunately I have to listen to hours of dialog to do so. Alas, it shall be done.
\And while we are on the topic, I will quickly state that I got to level 30 out of 55 on Zombies Ate My Neighbors. No cheats used. Go me.

As of recent we have a new addition to our family: Mumm Ra our little cat-baby.
Well, he isn't so little anymore, but he is still a young one. We found him outside last month and didn't want to leave him. He came right up to me and was more than happy to stay. Now that he is massive and has become a master of parkour. He is also trying to eat my cheesecake.
And yes, the name Mumm Ra did come from ThunderCats.


Yes, that is a chicken hat.


My parents just got to meet Mumm Ra at our first Thanksgiving.
It was a very interesting and slightly horrifying experience, but luckily enough it all turned out okay in the end, despite our power going out an hour into cooking our Turducken in out electric stove and me being rather sick for a few days. In the end all was good and we had enough food for 30 people to feed our little gathering of 6.


I suppose that is all that needs to be said for the time being. When I think of something new and also have Internet, I will keep this updated.
Ta.

MWAHAHA

Now that I have spent the passed few hours lookign aroudn on the internet, primarily Ebay for a nice dice set, I have found two. One set was 10 10d, black with red numbers, and the 1 is an Ankh. They're very nice. The other is a 7 dice set of several different kinds, I believe a d4, d6, d10, d12, d20, percent, and one more. I don't recall what though. They were Chessex Ice Blue Precision dice. Very cool.
Well.
As "cool" as polyhedronal dice can get...

While looking at the facebook, it really seems like all of the kids that are seniors this year at my old schoo do NOT want to go on the senior trip.
(Senior trip- a 3 day trip to the middle of bumfucknowherevirginia with no cell phone service where the seniors of the school or encouraged to bond and worship together whilest taking part in semi-widerness activities and jesustime.)
The majority of my class seemed to enjoy it, but if you couldn't already tell by my writings, gettin jesusy up in the highschool hood/wilderness is not number one on my list of favorite things to do in my free time.
It really does seem like the ones that are going this weekend seem to be dreading it more than anyone would imagine. I will have to investigate further to see what the matter could be.
Moving on.
I have one hour of tutoring left to go to before I take my exam tomorrow. I had best pass it this time. If not there will be some incredible problems. Let us hope for the best.
After my tutoring I will go pick up Van from work and then we will return back to our comfortable home and I shall sit in my "MWAHAHA!" chair.




Anyhow, i just got disracted by feeding a crow and now I may be late for tutoring. I shall return, blogworld.

ITS THE FINAL COUNTDOWN!

I have 68 hours to have everything packed and be OUT of my dorm room. This isn't even funny.
We just got the news that there needs to be a deposit for electric. awesome.
I have 15 minutes before class. So much to do. Not nearly enough time for any of this. Thankfully we're finishing desserts today, tomorrow we get them all ready for grand buffet, which isn't too bad. Then on Friday we have graduation where we will be helping serve the food for the graduates.
And on top of this, I am getting an AWESOME ear infection.
Hooray.
Hopefully I'll actually have something positive to write about soon.
But. I will have pictures of the apartment to put up soon.
Maybe some pics of me and Van?
I don't know if I want all you creeps to know exactly what I look like.

(See, right here I would normally put a winking smiley face, but I hate using those in blogs.)
Anyway, gotta run.
Time to put the mirror glaze on some lemon lime curd & cream cheese mousse.