An Indepth Look Into A Geek's Soul

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

I've had this website for awhile now, something along the lines of three years, if not a little bit longer.  I've chronicled my life in it, from my nerdiest highs to my most depressed lows.  I'm sure to my faithful readers, this is a nice, if sporadically updated, corner of the internet where they can keep up on some aspects of my life that I don't plaster all over Facebook or Twitter.  However, if I were to be completely honest, I think there is one aspect of my life that doesn't get a high enough word count here:  my lovely and wonderful wife to be, Megan.

For those of you who don't know, I asked Megan to marry me on February 5th (okay, it was the 4th, but it was close enough) and she was awesome enough to say yes.  This delighted me like nothing else ever have.  I was a wreck before asking the question, and she managed to sooth my troubled soul with just one word.  She's always had this effect on me, and I think that she always will.  No matter what mood I'm in, she has this way of calming me down and making me feel like I'm worth everything.  I could have been slammed around at work, came home completed dejected, and she'll build me and give me hope for not only a better future with a different company, but also with her.

Simply put, she's inspiring.  Of all the people I know, she manages to juggle a full time job, working out, and maintaining a relationship with someone better than anyone else.  It gives me hope that one day I can achieve the same level of success that she has.  She may always kick my ass when it comes to lifting weights, doing box jumps, or throwing around a kettlebell, but the fact that my goal is to beat her is something that pushes me a little farther every time I do attempt something in life.

Megan, I love you.  Never forget that.

The return of the top ten is a glorius thing indeed.  This one has been brought you to by a request from Joel, which I was only to happy to oblige.  The names of each of the games is a link to a video which represents the trailer (or closest I could find to one).  WIthout further ado, lets dive into the list.

Number Ten:  Elder Scrolls IV:  Obilivion

Starting off the list this week is Oblivion, the huge, open world RPG by Bethesda.  Why is this ranked number ten?  Well, it has mostly to do with the fact that it is open ended.  Something tells me that if this game was more themepark, I would enjoy it a slight bit more.  As it is, I tend to get lost doing all manner of quests that has absolutely nothing to do with the storyline.  Makes the game drag to a crawl at points, which is probably why I've never finished it.  However, this game is simply gorgeous to look at and a thrill to play.  Your character can be whatever you want it to be.  I always go for the more sword-and-board style of character myself, but I've made up a pure magic use that probably hasn't attacked once in the game with anything resembling a weapon.  Even if you get tired of how your character plays, you can start using completely different skills and change your armored warrior into a holy cleric that does nothing but heal.  You might level up a bit slowly, but it is more than possible to do that multiple times in a single game.  All in all, this game is fantastic, and it never seems to get old, no matter how many times I reload it onto my computer.

Number Nine:  World of Warcraft

World of Warcraft is on the list because it is the one game that has gotten me hooked on a whole new genre of video games.  While WoW wasn't my first MMO, it was the first one that got me to pay for it.  And pay I did.  I have probably put more money into WoW throughout the various years than I have in any other series of video games that currently exists.  There is just something about WoW that keeps me coming back for me.  I think it's the idea of being able to have an effect not only on the game world, but also on other people who play the game.  I'm not just some guy saving Westfall from the Defias.  I'm a guy that is keeping my entire team alive by soaking up as much damage as I possibly can.  It's one of those games that builds teamwork, whether you want it to or not.  True, I do perfer to do mostly solo missions in the game, which is totally fine, but it is nice to know that when you need someone to help you get through a dungeon, there are plenty of people that will have your back.

Number Eight:  Final Fantasy X

Coming in at number eight is Final Fantasy X for the Playstation 2.  This one I debated on for a long time, because I have long held that Final Fantasy VIII was my favorite game in the series (well, that I've played at least).  However, I think FFX beats it.  It could be that I was just more involved with this game than I was in the other one, but there is something about the game that is just captivating.  Even after being out for all of these years, you are looking at a game that still holds my interest when I pick it up again.  Have I completely destoryed it like Joel has?  No, I don't put that much time into most of my games.  However, I have picked up a legendary weapon or two along the way and have played countless hours of blitzball in the process.  The game is the pinacle of what makes an RPG, Japanese or not, worth playing.  Sure, the company might have made a mistake in making a sequel to it, but hey, everyone makes mistakes.

Number Seven: Mass Effect

Mass Effect managed to take a genre I feel so-so about, add in the right amount of RPG elements, sprinkle in some game altering choices, and come out a game that I absolutely love.  The game is primarily a third person shooter, though there are some times when you want to go first person.  Normally third person shooters are tough to control, but this one was never troublesome.  In fact, the only trouble I have with the game is that I feel like I have to play it twelve times over to see all the parts the game has to offer.  Choices include whether to exterminate an entire alien race, who to fall in love with, and which character you have leveled up to die.  This game really made me think hard about what consequences my typicaly goody goody choices might have in the future, mostly because there are no right and wrong answers to any of these.  I haven't played the sequel(s) yet, but all the choices, including who died, transfers over from one game to the next.  That level of immersion and attention to detail is something that keeps me coming back to this game time and time again.

Number Six:  Age of Empires II

Age of Empires II is hands down my favorite RTS.  Now, I understand that most people would declare Warcraft of Starcraft as the superior item, but seeing as how I have never played them (though Starcraft 2 looks sweet), they are not even in the running.  This game made the learning process nice and even for a relaitve newbie into the games, and I think that's what got me hooked in the first place.  The campaigns were horrendously hard to me, so I never much bothered with them but I would play random matchs all day long.  Plus, there were plenty of easily available cheats for the game, which made doing some simply crazy things easy to do.  I still remember walling off an entire island, just because I could.  Probably my favorite thing to do with the game though was destory an enemies town center then build a castle in its place.  It gives you that right amount of glory while still fortifying the surrounding area.  Makes me want to load up the game even as I type this up.

Number Five:  Timesplitters Future Perfect

The only true first person shooter on the list, Timesplitters Future Perfect is one of those games that drew me in not because of any deep gameplay or awesome story, but simply because it is fun to play.  The last (so far at least) game in the series brought everything that I enjoyed about Timesplitters 2 and added in a humorous, if rather average story.  The mutliplayer aspect of the game is what drew me in, spending hours in this game with Steven, just trying to slaughter as many computer opponents as possible.  Of course, he was the better of the two of us, but that is to be expected.  I still remembering trying to collect all the various characters you can unlock (something well over 100) and Beheading the Undead with shotguns.  Until I added Killzone 3 to my game collection, this was my only first person shooter in my possession.  It is still my favorite.

Number Four:  Champions:  Return toArms

This one was a tough choice to be honest.  I hold Champions:  Return to Arms on the same level as Baulder's Gate Dark Alliance 2.  They are both awesome games that I never get tired of playing.  However, when I think back during my time in highschool and early college, this game is the one that sticks out more.  It was probably because I remember playing this almost every single weekend with at least Steve, if not Chad and Joel as well.  Our team was essentially unstoppable, even with Chad falling into every pit that there was.  The amount of items in this game was awe inspiring.  You could play through the game multiple times (which we did) and not use the same set up of armor and weapons in each one.  While the story was kind of weak (DA2 wins in that particular regard), playing it with friends more than makes up for that.  Plus, being able to go one on one against Joel's maxed out elven ranger was always a fun, if short lived, adventure.

Number Three: Sim City

Sim City for the SNES is the first game I remember falling in love with.  Who would have thought that city planning would be a thing that would interest a young boy?  Well it did, and is probably the reason I love world building in DnD.  It's just so open.  This is easily my favorite sandbox game, and my favorite of the series.  Yes, the other games got more sophisticated in what you could do and more complex in what you had to control, but I think this game blows them all away.  I still remember playing on good old map 696 for hours on end.  I played that game until I hit a century in game time, which took forever.  Then my sister deleted my file because she was pissed at me.  It was a fairly terrible day in my young life.  Needs to say, I've picked up this game from time to time when I could get my SNES working and just build a town and watch it grow.  Nothing more is needed.  Just watching the city change could easily eat up an entire afternoons.  Definitely a must have.  Also, it's free to play now on the sim city website, but only if you have a really old computer.  Alas, my fancy new one is too much for it.

Number Two:  Civilization III

  The mighty and expansive Civilization series is one that I launched into a long, long time ago.  I want to say Civ II was the first computer game I ever bought.  I still have no idea why this gem caught my eye, but I'm glad I did.  When the sequel came out, I was even happier.  They added so many revolution ideas, the favorite of mine being the idea of culture.  With increased culture meant you have larger boarders and if you have enough culture you could actually acquire whole towns and civilizations!  There is nothing like taking over the entire world with art and literature.  I played this game to death, and I've even loaded it up on my current computer just to try it out.  It definitely shows its age, but that's okay.  It is still my favorite one to play, even if Civ V has the better mechanics.

Number One:  Pokemon Black

Yes, Pokemon Black is my favorite game I've ever played.  It takes everything that I love about the Pokemon series and updates, makes it new, and perfects a tried and true formula they've used since the first pokemon games first came out in Japan all those years ago.  Pokemon Black is the only pokemon game where I haven't restarted the file countless times over, which is something of a miracle.  I find that I still have enough stuff to do once the Elite Four has been defeated that I don't want to start over.  Well, I did try to start over once, on a ROM that I downloaded, but that was only because I wanted to trade and battle over wifi.  Alas, this is not possible with the ROM I have either, but oh well.  I will continue playing my cartridge version, and maybe just going down to the school more often to get my trade or battle on.  I may only have 74+ hours of gameplay in Pokemon Black, but this will be the game where I catch them all.  Also, here's a bonus video for you guys.  It's a video of a Magikarp sweeping a team of legendary pokemon.  Enjoy.

So there you have, my top ten favorite video games.  This list changes all the time of course.  For instanced, I'm sure the Old Republic will move up to the top three places easily when released, as will Skyrim if I ever get my hands on it.  Until then, that's that.

Peace Out.

Jayne!
The Man they call Jayne!

Oh, He robbed from the rich
and he gave to the poor.
Stood up to the man
and he gave him what for.
Our love for him now
ain't hard to explain.
The hero of Canton
the man they call Jayne.

Our Jayne saw the mudders' backs breakin'.
He saw the mudders' lament.
And he saw the Magistrate takin'
every dollar and leavin' five cents.
So he said: "You can't do that to my people."
said "You can't crush them under your heel."
So Jayne strapped on his hat
and in 5 seconds flat
stole everythin' Boss Higgins had to steal.

Oh, He robbed from the rich
and he gave to the poor.
Stood up to the man
and he gave him what for.
Our love for him now
ain't hard to explain.
The hero of Canton
the man they call Jayne.

Now here is what separates heroes
from common folk like you and I.
The man they call Jayne
he turned 'round his plane
and let that money hit sky.

He dropped it onto our houses
he dropped it into our yards.
The man they called Jayne
he stole away our pain
and headed out for the stars!

(Here we go!)

He robbed from the rich
and he gave to the poor.
Stood up to the man
and he gave him what for.
Our love for him now
ain't hard to explain.
The hero of Canton
the man they call Jayne...

Peace Out.

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.

Oh yeah, another Pokemon blog, and in the same week.  Crazy stuff here guys.  I am going to blame it on having lots of time on the school's computers.  They have nicer keyboards.  It makes me want to buy my own desktop and use that more or less for all my comptuer needs.  Well, not all, but for most of my typing needs.  And I would probably play lots of games on it too.  Yeah, lots of money I don't have to spend at the moment though.  Moving on to the meat of this posting though.

After defeating the first Pokemon gym, the next natural thing to do is tackle the second gym leader.  This chick had a paltry two Pokemon, both of which were Normal typed.  This lead me to be worried.  Normal types are probably some of the hardest ones to defeat when it comes to gym leaders.  I remember hating them back in Pokemon Gold and Silver, and again, this leader gave me some troubles.  Lost on my first match against her (just like in the first gym, damn it all) but won (barely) in the rematch.  I basically won by sacrificing my entire team to her guy while switching in Timburr for some Fighting typed match ups.  I won it though, and get myself the.... Basic Badge?  I think that was it.  Something along those lines at least.

The match did teach me one thing though.  I love the ability Sturdy.  In all the other generations, it only prevented being killed by those moves that kill you in one hit or don't do any damage.  Now though, it saves your Pokemon from death any time that any move might take you out from max health.  It is pretty sweet.  It makes Roggenrola pretty awesome at being a tank.  I get the enemy all built up, thinking they are going to get some awesome super effective move on my guy, then switch in Roggenrolla to soak up that damage, switch back to the previous guy, and win the match.  Good stuff there.

The game is still going strong.  Right now I'm attempting to get through Pinwheel Forest to get this Pokemon's skull (which looks like a lot like a certain first generation dragon I rather like) back from the nefariously righteous Team Plasma.  It is slow going, mostly because of high leveled wild Pokemon (comparitively) and the fact that the most common Pokemon in the forest is this Bug/Grass dude that happens to be strong against three quarters of my team.  Crazy stuff happening there.  I dont' like it one bit.

For the moment though, the team consists of Venipede, Servine, Timburr, Roggenrola, Panpour, and Munna.  Venipede is my favorite new addition.  He looks cool, has an interesting move pool that doesn't seem to make sense but works, and can defeat those damn Bug/Grass guys.  Plus, he gets some cool evolutions.  I shall keep you guys up to date though.  Promise.

Peace out.

The game is finally here folks!  Pokemon Black for the Nintendo DS has finally come to the United States and I was there to pick it up on day one.  I have only played it for about four hours or so, but I have to admit, I'm rather impressed with the game thus far.  The game is a real tribute to the original games.  You can see it in the way that developers designed the entire game.  A lot of the pokemon are updated versions of the originals that you would see, while still being completely new and fresh.  The battles have this intensity to them that has slowly been getting diminished in the last games.  This may have something to do with the fact that the battle screen moves now, but who knows.  All I know is that I love the game.

The coolest thing about the game in my opinion is the way they have revamped the TM system.  TMs are no longer one use items.  You can use them as many times as you would like, just like the old HMs used to be.  This is a most excellent idea.  No longer do I have to wait to my TMs in fear that I will miss out on giving a good TM to a stellar guy later in the game.  Once I get my Earthquake TM, I can totally have a team full of earth rattling pokemon, which is just an awesome feeling, let me tell you.  Makes me totally want to get into the competitive scene a whole lot more.

The current team is a fairly diverse once.  Right now I have a ruggenrola, a munna, snivy, lilipup, purrlion, and a panpour.  No overlapping types anymore!  It is pretty sweet.  I think my favorite new pokemon is ruggenrola, just cause of the sheer punness of the name.  Not totally positive that I'm spelling any of these names right though.  Oh well, they are new!  It will take me a little while.

So far in the game I have beaten the first gym battle, which was a pretty tough one becasue of Work Up, which raisese the attack and special attack of pokemon.  You would think a couple of sand attacks would cause a miss, but no, I got hit every time.  Damn pansear.  Oh well, I beat the gym leaders on my second try, getting myself the Tri Badge.  right now I'm working on Route 3 after just having saved a pokemon from the clutches of the nefarious (or perhaps righteous!) Team Plasma.  The whole team is between 11-12, just now learning some attacks that aren't tackle and leer.  We shall see how this plays out in the end.

Other than that, not a whole lot is going on.  I might add pictures to this later, or I might not, we'll see how I feel.  These blogs on Pokemon Black might get their own section on the website too, but again, not sure if I want to do the extra work for something like that.  I will play it by ear and see how it goes.  All I know is that I will keep playing, and watch some of Joel's Lets Play Pokemon White videos, just so I can know what is coming up.  Hopefully I can catch up to him, so we can duke it out, wi-fi style!

Peace Out.

The release of Pokemon Black and White draws ever closer (March 6th I believe).  With the release just a little over a month away, I feel that my urge to play Pokemon has drastically increased.  Everywhere I go lately seems to remind me of Pokemon in some form.  Joel's blog had his list of complaints about the original game, which in all fairness, were completely terrible but yet groundbreaking at the time.  I'm subscribed to a guy (TheKillerNacho) on Youtube who is doing a Pokemon Yellow walkthrough, though I decided to watch his FireRed walkthrough instead.  Heck, even other games I have laying around remind me of how much I miss playing Pokemon.

Why bring this up?  Eh, mostly because I felt like updating, lets be honest.  But Pokemon is one of those things that tie me back to my childhood.  Pokemon is the only reason that I saved up my money to buy a GameBoy Color.  Remember those?  I had this kick ass yellow one.  I still do.  If I were to guess, I bet my Pokemon Blue game is still in there.  I'm afraid to take it out to be completely honest.  The game probably has not left the safety of that yellow harness for the better part of a decade.  Yeah, a decade.  Think about that.  Crazy guys, crazy.

So that TheKillerNacho guy has this take on Pokemon that is totally foreign to me.  He runs through the game, only collecting and catching those that he wants as a final team.  It seems really weird to me.  He doesn't worry about leveling up by grinding countless wild pokemon.  He mostly fights trainers to level up all of his guys.  Right now (as of part 12) he has four pokemon on his team:  charmeleon, nidoking, mankey, and gyarados.  Right now, as far as he is, I would probably have ivysaur, pikachu, pidgeotto, probably a butterfry, a geodude, and maybe even a raticate.  All at roughly the same level as his guys, if not a little bit higher.  Makes me wonder if I waste too much time leveling up my guys.  I won't change the way I play, but it is something to think about.  Also, the guy flys through items.  Head back to the Pokemon Center sometimes dude.  Gosh.

Peace Out.

The second book that I read for my resolution was Star Wars The Old Republic:  Fatal Alliance.  The book details the events leading up the the upcoming Bioware game, Star Wars the Old Republic.

The book was pretty much what you expect from a video game book.  Lots of action, a good enough plot, and somewhat memorable characters.  The book is told from the point of view of various characters that are meant to represent the different character classes in the video game.  It was interesting to see how the different classes might interact with each other, though it all seems kind of weird how they work together, especially because everyone seemed to be helpful on the Republic side and splintered on the Empire's side.

I found the main enemy of the book to be pretty sweet, if very hard to picture.  They are these hexagonal robots with hands at each one of their points who can self replicate and join to others to form even weirder shapes.  The only problem I had with them were that they went from impossible to deafeat to rather easy for anyone to take down.  That part didnt'n make sense.  I blame that entirely on the ending, which was rather confusing and felt a little rushed to me.  Still, if you like Star Wars books, you would like this one too.

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.