I’m Hearing: Mushroomhead - Solitaire Unraveling

Another weekend that just kind of slipped past me. :-) Once again, it’s hard to recall exactly what happened when, but I’ll do my best to remember. It’ll be good for my memory. :-)

Last Wednesday was just freaking wonderful. It’s without question the best birthday I’ve ever had. I was astonished by how many people remembered it and offered me kind wishes. :-D Jon and Brian came over to my parents’ house for a chicken dinner and my new computer case had arrived! :-D After supper we went back to the apartment and spent the night assembling my new computer in the new case. Big Brian (roomie) and I spent several hours rounding our IDE and floppy cables. Since this was the second time I’ve tried that, mine turned out pretty well, and I was quite pleased. After the guys left, I spent a huge chunk of time organizing and wrapping various cables in the case…till about 4 AM. I soooo did not want to go to bed at that point, but I knew I had work the next day.

My replacement video card arrived on Thursday, so I installed that successfully as soon as possible. First thing I did was throw in Dungeon Siege and check out the nice framerates! I messed around with Morrowind and Unreal Tournament, and it was just sooooo nice. :O~~~~~~ I can finally play all my games now, without chunking or low resolution graphics! :-D I’m so glad I didn’t get a dud this time with the card…I was really nervous that the manufacturer was just selling shitty cards.

Thursday night my roomie Erin took us out to eat at Victoria’s (my fave Italian restaurant) as a birthday treat. Awww. :-D The food was just fantastic. Then Dave, Jon and I went to see Terminator 3. It was so mindless I kept falling asleep so I couldn’t tell you if it was any good or not. (3 hours of sleep the night before with no nap is hard on one’s ability to stay conscious!)

I ended up getting an assload of DVDs and games and whatnot for my birthday, which totally rocked. Got 3 Farscape DVDs from the guys, X-Files season 7 from my dad, and Dark Cloud (PS2) from my brother. That, plus Harbinger, has just been overwhelming me because there’s just sooooo much I want to watch/do/play I can’t find enough time to do it all! At least there’s no danger of me being bored anytime soon! hehe.

Friday was Independence Day so I had the day off from work. I spent the day gaming….soooo fun! Played several network games with Big Brian. I suck terribly at fps games, but it was still fun! I also watched the most usless and horrible movie on earth and regretted it immediately. (Jackass) Makes me embarrassed to be American…we produce morons like that. :\ Went to Pizza Hut with family, then the guys came over. We finished watching Family Guy then watched some X-Files. Jon was working on some anti-spam email project and he kept getting distracted (big surprise) so he didn’t get much done that night. :o

Saturday I went shopping in Appleton with my brother. I got the newest Kare Kano DVD (disc 4) as well as a Matrix Reloaded poster and a new mouse. Jon’s dad was grilling out so we had supper over there, then played a bit of DDR. Went home and started assembling my old shit machine back into a computer.

Sunday was more gaming. Then Jon, Brian, Brian’s sister, and I went to see Evanescence at Summerfest. (Photos and movies courtesy of hachi, who is much taller than me and could actually take pictures of what was going on up on stage) They sounded absolutely fantastic, but we didn’t have a very good spot so we couldn’t see too well. With our luck, the concert was at 10 PM, so lots of people were leaving by the time we got there, and we got 3 of our tickets (general admission) free just because people wanted to get rid of them! :-D When I got home I messed around with my shit machine and got Win2k installed on it. I had some issues with the BIOS until I realized the CMOS battery wasn’t on the board. >_< Whoops. Had to dig around for it, as it had slipped behind the motherboard. After that, all was fine. I have yet to see if I can isolate the freezing problem. That would be awesome if I could cos then I would have 3 working computers, but if I can’t, it’s no big loss. It’s as good as dead anyhow.

As for games, I’ve been messing around with Harbinger and Dark Cloud the most of all. Harbinger has been called "Diablo in Space" and it’s a lot like that. The main character talks an awful lot like Gary Oldman’s character in The Fifth Element and the dialogue subtitles are written in Comic Sans (UGH!) but aside from that, it freaking rocks. Dark Cloud was really easy to get into…I got annoyed at first by how easily the weapons broke and other things but I realized that I was overlooking a whole bunch of stuff and suddenly the game took on a whole new life! Now I’m so addicted to that game I don’t want to go to bed at night. In fact, if I didn’t have to go to work, I’d probably just play it till I fell over. I really really really want to play Silent Hill 3 but that doesn’t come out in the US until August 8. It’s already been released in Europe and Asia so Sean has already beaten it. :-O He said there’s a shitload of Easter Eggs in it too. Waaa, I can’t wait! I’ll prolly get Dark Cloud 2 before SH3 comes out though. :-D

Last night my roomie Erin rented How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days so I watched it with her. Bleeeech. It was bad. Usually I tend to enjoy chick flicks, but it was too planned, too predictable. Plus, Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey both bother me like you wouldn’t believe. I was glad when it was over so I could get back to Dark Cloud. I stayed up waaay too late playing that and therefore I’m exhausted today. I woke up feeling really ill, but that may have been from lack of sleep plus the alcohol and week-old Chinese food I had before bed. >_< In any case, I feel better now, aside from being tired. More gaming tonight I’m sure. :-D

Oh, I almost forgot to mention I’m going to be in another art show. :-D Or have I mentioned that? I can’t recall right now. Anyhow, I got my confirmation letter on Saturday. They’re having all the pieces professionally photographed for free cos they’re making a catalog of the work. That should be really cool. Now I just have to figure out where this photography studio is so I can drop off my painting. (Femscape) I drove around looking for it (the studio) last night but couldn’t locate it. >_<