An Indepth Look Into A Geek's Soul

The Olympics are back!  Well, technically they've been back for about a wek now,but that is besides the point.  I always get a little giddy when they come on.  There's just something about them that makes me happy about watching the best from around the world duke it out on the world's stage.  Every year the games happen allows me to like sports for a short, two week period.  For some reason, I just can't get into the whole professional sports leagues we have here in America.  That's probably part of the reason why I'm not a fan of a lot of the more mainstream sports in the Olympics, such as basketball or soccer.  While most countries have no problem fielding a team of amateurs, America has no issue with bringing out their pampered, paid sports stars.  I think it kind of goes against the whole spirit of the Olympics.  Hell, if you paid me millions of dollars to be really good at something, I'd get pretty good at that task as quickly as possible.

Regardless, I still love the games.  I also seem to discover a new sport that I'm far more interested in than I should be, and this year is no exception.  Volleyball grabbed my interest and hasn't let me go yet.  While I'm more of a fan of the indoor version, beach volleyball also is interesting.  All the little tricks and head games that the players must use to score on the opponents is just intense.  I always thought that it would be nearly impossible to score when you have a court packed with six players, but I've quickly learned otherwise.  To win the game, you don't aim to score on the opponents; you force them to score on themselevs.  It's rather intense and awesome.  Now, I'm not going to run out and join my local volleyball team, but I do have a newly found appreciation for the sport.

I hope you guys will tune in sometime over the last remaining week of the Olympic games and watch something that will interest you.  I know that NBC hasn't done the best job in handling the Olympics, but it's where I watch them, mostly because they own all the rights to it here in the United States.  At the very least you can watch just individual events online, without commentary, which is nice.  Happens to be where I've watched all of my volleyball games so far.  Anyways, hope you guys get out there and enjoy the games while they last.

Peace Out.

So, I stumbled back upon an old "game" that I used to play called Nation States.  The reason game is quoted is because while it is described as a game, there really isn't any way to win, no enemies to defeat, and no real firm end goal.  The basis of the game is that you are the ruler of a government and everyday, a certain number of issues come up that you may answer.  The issues brought up are generally broad in nature and often blown out of proportion.  The issues will range from politics, to economics, to civil liberaties, and everything in between.  Anyways, I figure as a way to try and get this blog to claw it's way back out of the grave, I will post an interesting issue when I come across them and post them here, as well as my reasoning why I chose the answer that I did.

The issue at hand today is:

"In response to a slow news week, certain highbrow newspapers have stirred up the debate over voluntary vs compulsory voting."

This would probably seem like a weird thing to argue about if you go back to the founding days of the United States.  I feel like back in those days, people actually looked forward to voting and wanted to have an active hand in the decision of their country.  In today's society, the opposite view seems to be the more popular one, probably because of the seemingly high amount of out of touch politicians that have been elected.  However, even with this change in culture values, I don't think anyone now or in the past has ever really thought that voting should be compulsory, though it has always been strongly recommended.  Even today, voting should remain voluntary.  Yes, I know that millions have died over the years for our right to vote and elect whoever we want to, but in the end, you can't force someone to do their democractic duty to society.  If they don't want to vote, then they probably don't know anything about the candidates.  If you force them to vote, their vote would be almost certainly a throw away vote to whoever's name sounds the best.  That is not what any society needs.  For that reason, voting should always be voluntary.

So yeah, how about them apples?  We'll see how long this goes on for.  I'll only try to post the more interesting ones that I come across.  Let me know if you guys find this even the least bit interesting.

Peace Out.

It seems that a lot has been going on lately.  The first thing, and most important by far, is that I have gotten married to the wonderful and beautiful Megan.  I have a whole post I want to write about the wedding and the marriage so far, but I want to wait until the photos are done, so I can link them to you guys.  For now, we shall move onto more trivial and unimportant matters in life.

First up in the unimportant updates would be the announcement of the newest edition of Dungeons and Dragons, which right now is going under the name DnD Next.  It is an attempt to unify all the editions and end the edition wars.  From what little I've seen of it, which is hardly any at all, they are attempting to do this by making the game as module as possible.  Not a huge fan of feats?  Don't use them.  Love having tons of skills?  Throw as many of them in as possible.  Hate Vancian magic?  Well, that one is still up in the air, but I'm sure that will be able to be changed as well.  Right now I'm on the fence about the whole thing.  It's still very early in the playtesting so almost nothing is set in stone yet.  I'm not sure how it will play out, but I will give it a shot because that's just what I do.

Next up, and last for today, is the announcement of Pokemon Black and White 2.  That's right, sequels to the amazingly awesome Pokemon Black and White are due out in Fall of this year here in America.  I'm rightly super excited about this.  I've always liked Pokemon, as it painfully obvious to anyone who reads the blog.  I'm not sure if it's going to be a true sequel, or just a new tweak on the story, which is how the third game in any generation normally tends to go.  Whichever the case, I will be buying the game when it comes out. 

Peace Out.

Lately, I've been getting back into RPG's of all walks of life.  I blame this mostly on Joel, as he graciously gifted me Fallout 3, the post-apocalptyic first-person shooter RPG made by Bethesda Software, the makers of other games such as Oblivion and Skyrim.  I haven't played it too terribly much yet, maybe eight hours or so, but it's enough to get me hooked.  Essentially, the game is set in the nuclear wasteland that was once Washington D.C. and the surrounding areas.  It's like walking through my childhood every time I play the game, only there are a few more freaks and mutants around.  Currently, my mission is to go place a satellite dish on the top of the Washington Monument so we can get the radio systems up again.

The Monument itself is simply amazing!  I haven't even been inside of it yet, but just seeing the shell of the building that I've visited many times as a kid blows me out of the water.  It looks so familiar, and you can tell that the designers put a lot of work into the enviroment, which is to be expected coming from a company like Bethesda.  I wouldn't be the slightest bit surprised if they had the reflecting pool located somewhere in the game as well.  I would love to blow up mutants while Abe watches me defend his monument.  The game has made me slightly afraid of going into the Metro systems now though, as there is a lot of scary stuff going on down there.  Mostly monsters creeping around every corner, but also just the empty halls are enough to make me jump at the slightest sound.  Well done Bethesda, well done.

However, Fallout isn't the only RPG I've been playing a lot of lately.  I've recently picked up Pokemon Black, again, thanks to Joel.  He challeneged me to a duel on January 1st to see who is the best trainer around.  I naturally had to accept, and have been crafting a new team ever since.  It's a pretty weird team, so I can't promise anyone that I'm going to win, but I'm certainly going to give it a whirl.  It should be fun whatever the outcome happens to be.

Also, sorry for the lack of updates lately.

Peace Out.

So, I've invested some time into a new game.  Which game you ask?  Why none other than League of Legends!  It's a pretty interesting game if I do say so myself.  The basic premise of the game is that you are a summoner in the League of Legends, which is essentially a place to settle the scores between countries in Runeterra, the plane of existance the game is set in.  As a summoner, you control one of several different champions, each with their own unique, special abilities.  You have all of your typical roles that need to be filled, from tanks and dpsers, to supporters and crowd controlers.  They give them a few different names of course, and there is an add role, called a jungler, though I haven't 100% figured out what his deal is.  The matches are generally 5 vs. 5, one purple team, one blue.  The first team to destory the opposing enemy  nexus (essentially the item used to summon in the champions) and they win!  Best of all, the game won't cost you a single dime to play.

I haven't played much, only about seven games, of which my teams have won four.  I consider that to be pretty good if I do say so myself.  I haven't played any ranked PVP yet, mostly because I don't think that it is up to be completely honest.  I've unlocked two characters so far:  Nunu, a kid riding a Yeti, and Alistar, a minotaur who is trying to right some wrongs.  I mostly play with Nunu, seeing as how he has an ability to heal himself by devouring the little minions running around the place, which is really helpful when it comes to trying to stay alive, which I will admit, I tend to have a problem with in any given match.  It's a ton of fun and so far none of the people have been anything resembling a jerk on there.  I know I will run into them at some point, but hey, you run into them in real life too, so what's the point in trying to avoid them?  At any rate, you guys should head on over, download the game and try it out sometime.  Look me up if you want to; my name is thegeekcorner, just like always.

Peace Out.

How does one measure one's worth in the world? I mean, what value could possible measure the unmeasurable worth of what it means to be a good person? That, my friends, is a very tricky question. However, I think I have stumbled across the answer. Oddly enough, I found the answer while reading my friend's blog. A link to the entry that made this measurement possible can be found here. Yes, that's right. The only true way to measure worth is through PLAYSTATION TROPHIES!

Now, I know what you're thinking. "Jon, what if I don't have a Playstation 3?" Well, that simply means your life is not worth measuring. Sadly, my life was not worth measuring only a sad few months ago. However, since then my value has gone up like a rocket. And it's not just all bronze plated crap either. A good chunk of my wealth is in cold, shiny silver and gold. Oh yeah. You guys are totally jealous right now, I can tell. No worries though, I'll keep your secret.

I do have some competition right now though. The biggest one being Joel himself. His trophies are more vast than mine at the moment (even if mine are far more impressive if I do say so myself). So I will take a moment to through down a challenge the Video Game Master himself: I will get more trophies than you. I will scour each and every game in my limited collection and squeeze every last trophy out of them, just to let you know who's the best. Your days as the reigning champion are dated. As of tonight, the score is 376 trophies to 153 trophies, in his favor. This will not last long. Your days are numbered. I am on your heels and gaining more every single day. You have been warned.

Peace Out.

Hey guys, long time no see.  I would like to say that I've just been too busy to get online and actually update this site, but we all know that isn't the truth.  I just haven't been applying myself to do so.  And you know what?  It'll probably continue to be that way.  But hey, one blog entry every... four months is acceptable from a man as awesome as myself.  True story.

The biggest thing that has been happening is school, but that's kind of boring, so I'm going to talk about doing physical inventory (PI) last night as Best Buy.  It really wasn't all that bad to be completely honest.  I was expecting something a lot worse than it was, even though I've been through it twice before.  The biggest thing that helped me through it this time was the fact that I knew that doing what I did is something that many new accountants go through.  Did you guys know that?  Cause I didn't until a few weeks ago.  It seems that a lot of beginning number crunchers go on audits early in their careers, and basically all an auditor does is count stuff.  Lots of stuff.  Like, thousands of items of stuff.

Anyways, back to the PI.  We got new scanners this year!  It made the retail-holic in me super happy.  They worked so much better than they have in the past.  Like, I could scan at the press of a button right ways, sideways, upside and right side wrong.  I feel like it was also a tad bit more organized than it has been in the past, even though fewer amounts of directions were given compared to past years.  It could be because I had to home theater stuff, which is vastily easier to count that say, 400 games over in home office.  Who knows.  Plus, the pizza from Jet's was always a plus.  It's my favorite time of the night to be honest.  All the hardwork pays off just for that.

Well, that was me rambling about work at Best Buy.  Aren't you guys happy thta I decided to jump back on to talk about that?  Yeah, I thought you were.

Jon Link

So, I've been reading a lot of comics lately.  I would like to say that I have been reading a well versed and varied assortment of them, but truth be told it has been mostly X Men stuff, which is fine by me.  I feel like the X Men series is what originally brought me into comics, so it deserves to get the most attention out of me as I continue down this line of geekdom.  Plus, the last story arc of Uncanny X Men wasn't too terrible, which is nice seeing as how I jumped right into the middle of the story.  There was some catching up to do, but I think I have a pretty good grasp of what is happening in that universe now.

The big thing that I've been reading besides X Men is another Marvel production, Fear Itself.  Fear Itself is the big crossover even of the year that Marvel has put together to make people read a little bit of everything and sell some more issues.  It basically focuses (at least right now) on the Thor and Avenger's side of the Marvel universe.  Right now Sin has revived/released this old god that has opposed Odin for years and who's return heralds the destruction of Earth.  Odin, knowing that he can't win this fight, retreats back the Asgard, forcibly taking Thor with im and leaving the Avengers (minus Thor) and the rest of the super heroes back on Earth to fend for themselves.  Pretty interesting stuff.  A lot of characters, both good and bad, are being turned into basically possessed henchmen for this old god (who's name I can't remember right now), which will lead to some pretty interesting match ups down the round.  Basically, its scarying the crap out of everyone, hence the name Fear Itself.

The last issue that I read was a stand alone issue named Fear Itself:  Sin's Past.  I was expecting a whole new issue talking mostly about Sin and who she was (seeing as how she's a Captain America villian, and I don't read any Captain myself) and how she got to be the way she is today.  The issue did it, too, but by means that I wasn't expecting.  They essentially reprinted three issues of Captain America from 1989 detailing her past, while adding in a few extra pages at the beginning and end to tie it into the Fear Itself storyline.  It was interesting to see how much comics have evolved since the late 80's.  For one reason or another, I thought that they had gotten away from describing so much of the action in words and focused more on pictures.  I was a bit wrong in that regard.  Yes, they have stopped doing as much narration, but there is still a ton of it.  I was surprised at just how long it took me to get through three issues of old Captain America.  It was interesting to see how much everything has changed, most of all the art of telling the story.  By throwing together both the old comics and the new ones, it makes it all that much more obvious.  Definitely worth checking out if you are interested in the evolution of stuff like that.

Anyways, I've ranted long enough.  Thank you for listening.

Peace Out.

Here is the first review of a book that I finished about a week ago.  It is the tale of a newly promoted Captain WIlliam T. Riker, taking command of his first starship, the U.S.S. Titan.  The first book in my quest to read twenty six books this year is Star Trek Titan:  Taking Wing.

I actually enjoyed this book (a huge surprise, I know).  I was expecting something, different I suppose.  Definitely expecting of less enjoyablity than that.  The Titan is a new deep space exploration ship with a crew that has a lot more aliens than one would expect to have.  In fact, humans only make up some twenty odd percent of the ship.  The aliens on the ship include beings that live underwater, beings that grew up on a planet with a lot less gravity than Earth, even a dinosaur that is the ships Cheif Medical Officer.  It is pretty awesome stuff overall.

The most enjoyable thing about the book is that it takes everything that I liked about the Next Generation films and shows at buts it into a well crafted novel.  It did have its slow parts, but it also had its page turning ones too.  It wasn't action all the time, like Deep Space Nine or Voyager tended to be, but it wasn't all diplomacy either, though there is a good bit of political wrangling in this one.  It was well written, with no glaring mistakes that I saw in grammatic, which is a pet peeve of mine when it comes to published items (yes, am completely aware tha this site has numerous mistakes of all kinds).  The only kind of let down that I had was the Voyageresque twist that the book had at the end.  Seemed like a been there, done that kind of thing.  However, I will certainly keep reading this fine series.

Peace Out.

I decided to try out some drafting tonight, just to see how it would go.  You know, get a good start on one of the resolutions that I have set for myself.  It did not go so very well.  In fact, I went 0-3.  Rather abysmal if you ask me, which I know you would if you were near me.  I should have written down the cards that I drafted, and in what order, but alas, I did not.  I cannot even recall my deck list.  In future updates on my Magic games, I will try to remember to write down exactly what it is I am doing.  I can go back and replay games (at least until all of the matches are over), so I can give you guys a play by play if you really want.  Just let me know in the comments below.

My deck was a blue/green one that tried to run both some combat tricks backed by big creatures.  It did not work really as well as I planned.  I don't think I played a single creater with a toughness greater than two.  I blame this mostly upon not getting enough land.  I later went through my decklist and found that I only had fourteen lands.  Definitely thought I was running four more than that.  A rookie mistake.  Well, at least I am aware of it, and can take care not to let something that stupid happen again.

Not everything is bad though.  I did end up getting some cards that I think might sell for a little bit of money online.  This will at least help to ease the pain of loosing.  I believe that the card that will fetch me the most is Lux Cannon, which is a mythic rare even if I think it kind of sucks.  It takes three turns to kill something.  Most other cards are a bit quicker, what makes this one take its time.  In fact, I'm looking it up right now.  Lets see what it comes up with online for a price.

Looks like 1.5 tickets, which is about $1.50.

Oh well.

Peace Out.