Hey hot ladies

Lookit me here, i'm going to switch to IGNs blogging system i think. All I ever post about is entertainment stuff anyweay so i figured why not.

http://blogs.ign.com/hohez/

Hunting For Notes

SO I'm taking a small break from Xeno 3 to look up some music. I normally do this pretty much every few days, but Xeno has been 4 days and 40 hours so I have neglected it. The following is just some things I find interesting.

First song up from Joe Hedges upcoming album

http://www.myspace.com/joehedges
My first thought was that it doesn't sound very much like July for kings. But once I let that aspect slide, it is a fantastic song. There is a lot of musical depth there that nostalgia didn't have. One thing that worries me, is he says this is heaviest song on the album. It kind of sucks having that ruined so far before release. Should have put up a mid range song.

Paul Durham keeps shitting in our mouths

http://blacklabworld.com/blw/pages/01a_ybam.html
First thing I notice when I go to the site is there's a new banner. "Holy Shit," I proclaim as I frantically click links to find out what has changed. You see Paul doesn't give us news very often. I love his music, but more often than not, we get 2-3 updates a year and most mean very little to someone who already has every one of his releases. So I click, and what do I find:

New CD

Oh wait, no it isn't. It's another fucking re-release. It's been 9 years now since we got a full new album. And I understand the reasoning that the older one is hard to find, but you have to understand, that its not. I have never had a problem with replacing my copies, and I don't see one in the future. Most people who have YBAM, have had it, and replacing old CD's isn't that much of a market. So what do we get? A director's cut so to speak. 2 new songs and a couple parts added back in.

How much? Twelve dollars. That's not bad for a CD, no but add a few bucks shipping, and I'm basically paying 13 dollars more for this version than getting an original would cost me. This is the same shit Caroline's Spine did that made me lose all respect for them. Re-releasing shit over and over and charging way too much for it every fucking time.

You know Paul, when a pair of shoes gets old and needs to be replaced. Don't hand me the same shoes with new shoelaces and expect me to be happy.

Dredg Live CD Nov 7

http://www.dredg.com/news.html
19 tracks, and I couldn't be more excited about a CD release right now. Dredg sounds phenomenal on their albums, and I imagine they sound even better live. Cannot wait!

Flickerstick Recorded a new Live CD/DVD

http://www.flickerstick.com/news.html
Again, this is fantastic, and although there is no release date yet, I cannot wait. Causing a Catastrophe, became my staple Flickerstick CD once it was released. Having seen them live twice, it just adds that much more to owning a live album. You can put yourself right back to that moment, experiencing the music in it's purest form.

Roddy Woomble album coming stateside

http://www.myspace.com/rwoomble
HELL FUCKING YES BITCHES! Seriously, you know how just moments ago I said I couldn't be more excited than the dredg release? Yeah well I lied. Roddy's CD will be coming over in early 2007. This means I won't have to pay 30 bucks to import it. Although if I see it reasonable between now and then I may still order it.

Mae has started recording

Mae is in the studio right now working on a new album. I'm not going to say what excites me most anymore because all this kick ass release news is making me run out of semen.

Our Lady Peace Greatest Hits

Due out late November. It will have 2 unreleased tracks, and I will end up buying it. Same with Live's greatest hits, I just haven't seen it cheap enough anywhere to justify the money.




That's enough for now.

Well That Was Short Lived

So I'm done with EQ2 already. Man did that game have tons of good things that were held back by some glaring faults. Here's some of my observations:

Battle System - Damn good, but it's Everquest, I shouldn't have everything available at all times like in WoW. EQ1 was about strategy, this game had none. The Heroic Opportunities were fun, albeit shallow, and no where close to as fun as FFXIs combat linking system was.

Encounters - No more splitting pulls? That's right, and it's not very fun. Being able to single mobs in EQ1 was a sign of a good player, but there is no such feature in EQ2. You get either single mobs, or you get encounters. Encounters are groups tied together and you cannot single them in any way, shape, or form. It took all the fun out of pulling. You know exactly what you are getting every single time. Predictability is cancer in an MMO.

Graphics - Damn nice, some of the best looking water I've seen in a game. Adequate spell effects, and multiple appearance settings made it a pleasure to look at. But why the fuck does the water glow at night? I don't lift the lid on my toilet at night only to ruin my night-vision.

Class Depth - Meh, this seemed robust at first, but quickly became shallow. There are 24 classes, but it could easily be dropped down to about 16 and no one would notice. Lots of classes are just slight alterations of other ones.

Crafting System - This is the games strongest point. I Love the crafting system. It's deep, active and incredibly fun to work with. It makes crafting just as much fun as adventuring.

Variety - Here's the Hep. C. At level 30 with my Dirge I had killed about 2500 NPCs. A thousand of those were Gnolls, and Skeletons. That's 40% after 5 days played. Jesus, Forty Percent, what the hell. Also there is a severe lack of world to explore, and everything is islands so there's no travel. Level 20? You go to Nek Forest or Thundering Steppes. That's it. Those are your options. It continues like this through the rest of the game.

Music - I don't care about music in MMOs.

Community - Not much of one actually. Since so much of the world is instanced and there is no travel, only teleporting, you don't get a feel for anyone else in the world. You don't have to interact, and thus most choose not to.

Anyway, regardless of all this, I still want to play an MMO right now, I just wish there was a single one on the market that didn't feel meaningless.

EQ1 had by far the most variety and best community, but the flagging system was the worst part of any mmo I have ever played.

FFXI was beautiful and had the best combat system, but I don't want to kill rabbits for 50 levels.

WoW has without a doubt the worst community, and leveling is just meaningless since it is so easy, even solo.

EQ2, well, see above.

Sadly I don't think any upcoming games are going to solve these problems. Vanguard looks interesting, but making it like old EQ doesn't mean it's going to be good. Honestly, most of the improvements to EQ made it a much better game, it was the flagging system that aidsed. I don't know if I want to go that far back in time.

I'm bored...

Some Kind Of Freakish Garbage Phoenix Rising From The Gutter

Oh ye of little faith. You totally thought I was done with this stuff didn't you? Well I'm not, and I'll tell you why.

So for a while now my PC had been complete aids. At some point my Monitor sort of had a stroke and it lost 2 inches vertically. It basically letter-boxed itself, but on the sides instead of the top. Well It didn't stop me. My PC lasted months more with my monitor like that. It didn't really bother me since the more time it lasted the longer I didn't have to spend the money.

Computers crash. It's one of the few guarantees in life. Computers crashing, taxes, death, and all minorities being born with natural ability to beat up the white man. But computers shouldn't crash as much as mine did. I couldn't run Zoo Tycoon anymore. That's a six year old game. Well something had to be done. I couldn't have my PC resetting every time I try to add an icy cave for my poor Polar Bears.

I tried bringing my dad's monitor in here and testing it to see if my video card was just so crap it couldn't output anymore. Well that wasn't it. It worked fine with the different monitor, but still crashed. Well I needed a new monitor anyway, so I had an adventure.

Went to Wal-Mart with the idea of getting the cheapest monitor they had as a replacement for my 6 year old CRT tube piece of crap. Bought a 17 inch Flat CRT for $117. Yeah it's a shitty deal but it was cheaper than the rest and all I wanted it for was a band-aid until I could get a better one down the line.

I get home, open it, and there's someone else's old shitty E-Machines monitor inside the box. They did such a good job of sealing it up when they took it back Wal-Mart just put it back on the shelf. Well I drove right back up there and took it back. Was a hassle but at least they took it back after I explained to them what happened.

I get home and order a nice 17 Inch LCD from Newegg, and think I'm done with all my monitor woes. Not Quite.

A week goes by, and I check my credit card online to make sure they charged me back appropriately. "What the Fuck," I exclaim as I see the charge still there. I get the receipt and look it over, and find out that the stupid whore at customer service didn't give me a refund, she gave me an exchange. Which was wonderful since I had nothing to show for it. So back to Wal-Mart we went, anger in tow.

I walk straight back to electronics, and luckily both people who helped me last time were there and they helped take care of the issue. Had to wait for about an hour, but eventually everything was fixed and I got my money back.

So my monitor troubles were done. But now I had this pretty new badass monitor but no PC to run it on. Here's where the awesome takes over and scored a touchdown for all things glorious in the platinum trees of Goldenville.

I start brainstorming on what the problem could be. I think I know what I'm doing and in general, I do. I start checking shit and going down the list and crossing off what works. Well I get to my processor. Please don't let it be the CPU, because my board is so old I'd have to replace the entire machine. I shut down, go into my Bios, and hmm...PC is running at 190 Degrees. Well, that's not good at all. I found my problem.

I decided to take off the heat sink and add some of this silver nitrate coolant stuff to see if it would help enough to make it not crash every time I open two pages at once. I put it back together and it just died. Wouldn't even finish start up and it would shut down. Cold, dead, giant worthless paper-weight.

Long story short from here on. I ordered a new one from Dell and can now run games that I never thought I could. I can run EQ2 on high, and it's smooth as butter. And fun. Oh crap you say? I agree, but god damn it's fun. It's at least worth the 9 bucks for the trial period.

Back to my original intent of this post. When my PC died and I thought maybe I had lost everything, I had a small amount of solace that anything I put on my blog was still here. My Blue pictures, Bitty, etc would all be safe regardless of whether I lost my HD or not. So I am going to start posting again since this is an online, self contained way to keep track of things important to me, and also just basically useless to the world.

It's amazing how long you can rant when you haven't posted in half a year.

It's a Jungle In There

So my dad and I are growing a wicked badass hella garden this year. Here's some pictures of my green thumb in action.


Some Banana Pepper plants


Broad picture of tomatoes


Nice Shot of some Bell Peppers


More Bell Peppers


One of the Chili Pepper plants


The Cucumber Fence


Row of Different Peppers


Some Cherry Tomatoes and what would become our first full red one the next day.


A kick ass tomato that looks likes a pumpkin.


Some cool looking teardrop shaped tomatoes, some are almost 3 inches long.


Cluster of Tomatoes


Fat Cluster of Tomatoes including our first one to appear


Some of Our Cucumbers


Some More Picked two days ago. Notice the one shaped like a cock and balls.


Yesterday's Harvest


Comparison Shot of the Garden's Height with that of my car.

Set The Fire To The Third Bar

So, I guess it's time to move the snake pictures down. Not much news though.

Few applications out, hopefully something will come from them. DDD %20 sale coming up again soon, gonna stock up on Garfield me thinks. Brain Age = Fun.

Time to hunt for goat eggs.

Glad I Looked Before I Wiped.....

Here's something you don't see everyday, even in Texas:



That's right, there is a snake sealed inside of a 12 pack of toilet paper. Just so you know, it is Angel Soft and was purchased at Winnsboro Brookshires.



Was going to just let him go in the woods, but my mom was throwing a fit about it so i ended up killing him. I feel bad about it, but it's better than listening to:

"I hope it doesn't get the cats."
"Where did you put it again?"
"I hope there aren't more."
"what if it's poisonous?"

All day.