SEVENTH ARC

I'm still unemployed, and it's still bullshit.  Especially around Christmas. 

Fuck it, whatever.

Season's greetings to you all, whether you've got a steady check or not.  I've been trying to keep myself busy while pinging away like mad with the applications, and checking constantly on their progress.
Tomorrow I'll take the printed application to Gamestop and see if I can get some work there.

Anywho, I'd started a series of gamecaptures over on Youtube for "Star Trek The Next Generation: Echoes from the Past" for the Sega Genesis, but Gens+ is bein' a boner, so that's going to have to wait for now.  Currently working on a series for "Colony Wars III: Red Sun".  It's working fine aside from some audio anomalies while in the main menu, the first part of the game is already being movie-fied by Windows Movie Maker as I type (Jeezus is it taking it's sweet time right now.)

Oh, yeah.  New logo and all, wish I could change more, damn my limited knowledge of CSS.

The Osiris is coming along, abeit slowly due to my current youtubing antics.

I've recently discovered a certain V-logger on Youtube that goes by the handle "Over The Gun".  The dude has a game series called "How To Sucessfully FAIL" at whatever game he's playing.  Think of a Let's Play combined with a wiseass beta tester and you're getting pretty close.  He's played through many games, though his playthroughs of Resident Evil games seem to be fan favorites.  I'll admit watching him play is a bit addicting, as well as infuriating, but always pretty fucking funny.

Unemployment sucks.

There's really no other thing I can say about the current situation.  I'm out of work for now, applying wherever I can.  I'm not going to get into specifics, as I really don't feel like talking about it in any depth for now.  One thing I can say, though:

Borders broke my heart, like seriously.  On a journey through Padre Staples Mall looking for anyone hiring for the holidays, I spotted a Calendar store where Waldenbooks had been.  When I asked if they'd relocated, the store clerk said that it's parent company (Borders) had shut it down.  *cries*

Also, am I the only one who hates applying online?  I really would like to at least get a look at my prospective employer before someone deletes my online application because I didn't answer one of their eight billion questions correctly.  Those things take time to complete.

*sigh*  There's nothing for it right now, though.  Just gotta keep looking.  I know I'm going to miss alot of people where I used to work, it's going to make picking up my meager final check on Friday a little awkward to say the least.

On a brighter note, my brother's birthday was yesterday!  Happy Birthday StretchTimelord!

I just got back from seeing Quantum of Solace, I'm still not quite sure what to think of it.  It's a fun movie to watch, sure, and MGM's sure as hell going to make some paper off of it.  But I can't help but be reminded of the acronym 'PWP' (Plot What Plot) when I think of this movie.  What I mean is, I've seen Casino Royale, and the plot threads in QOS are still hard to follow at times.  Woe to those who haven't seen the first third of this story (Yes, I said 'first third'.)  I say this because the plot of QOS resolves just about nothing from Casino Royale other than allowing Bond to end the film with a moderately clear conscience.  Well, it actually does resolve the plot thread of Vesper Lynd's boyfriend, mostly offscreen.  That bit wasn't helped in the slightest by the fact that by that point, the movie had felt like it had been dragging on thirty minutes too long.  Many of the action sequences seemed more like filler than anything remotely integral to the plot, and while I can forgive said sequences for never letting the characters finish a damn sentence (after all, you can't expect the bad guys to politely wait for you to finish speaking before they try and kill you), I can't forgive whoever directed the movie for constantly showing the various over-the-top action scenes replete throughout QOS...and then randomly switching to Bum-Assville, wherever.  Here's Bond fighting off the villains' goons in the kitchen of an operahouse, bullets are flying and things are exploding, it looks like Bonds in trouble and...Let's see what's going on in the play that's on stage!  Back to the action, oh, looks like James has gotten himself out of another tight spot. 

Is anybody else wondering what the hell he was doing while we were watching the play?  I'll bet it was something awesome.

I also can't forgive this:


Things like this never bothered me before I started frequenting TV Tropes... 

...No, scratch that, things like this have always bothered me.  Oh look at me, I'm the bad guy making clandestine arrangements in my big exploding hotel in the middle of a desert with no backup or escape plan, I sure hope no one whos british and has been chasing the other Bad Guy who fully intends to screw me shows up with one of the children of the shitloads of people I've killed, armed to the teeth.

By the time the movie got to the part with Vesper's ex, the people behind me were muttering "It's not over yet?".  Bad Bond movie, we should not be tired of watching you.

Quantum of Solace has it's flaws all right.  It's certainly no From Russia With Love, as it's twists and turns ultimately leave the audience with absolutely no closure on the story, and less of a clue as to what's going on.  It stacks up with it's more immediate predessesor the same way Tomorrow Never Dies stacks up to Goldeneye.  It's far better than Die Another Day, though, and Daniel Craig's pragmatic, cynical Bond is just as much a treat in QOS as he was in Casino Royale.  It's just a shame we don't get to see him doing anything that matters in the big picture by the end of the film, other than leaving his demons behind.

I would have liked to see Q as well.  Who the hell else could have turned MI6 into a giant computer monitor like that?  That's a Q OS if I've ever seen one.

Some may notice a change in the sites domain name.  The new URL is:  http://aeonhyrulex.webs.com/index.htm

Yeah, that's right.  The seems to be a slight problem, though I'm not sure if it's on my end or what.  I attempted to log in to my Myspace page on Friday, only to find a page load error/server error message.  The same thing happened when I tried to access the site. 

Everything's bananas right now as I'm trying to figure out what the hell is going on.  Hopefully it isn't the doing of a Trojan or Rootkit.

The page editor is all crazy to, it's like everything's just half there.

On a brighter note, Sonic Unleashed is on it's way via GameFly.

To summarize the past seven days:

Gears of War 2 = Awe-Inspiringly EPIC.
X-Box Live = Awe-Inspiringly EPIC...-ly Crappy.
New X-Box Experience = Hard shell with a tasty GUI center

Gears of War 2 is awesome.  This game manages to take level ideas that almost always suck, and make them awesome.  Take the "fantastic journey" kind of levels for instance, like Monstro from Kingdom Hearts,  Jabu-Jabu from The Legend of Zelda, or the Gravemind-ed High Charity from Halo 3.  Whenever you get swallowed by a huge creature, most gamers instinctively go to their secret happy place, because they know they're in for at least one stage of annoying enemies, disgusting scenery, cheap bosses who electrocute/paralyze/poison the player, and pain.  GoW2 averts this beutifully, the only real threats you encounter in the Riftworm are environmental, and they tend to make more sense than billions of violent poisonous creatures inhabiting a giant violent poisonous creature.  It's also the level where you get to perform a CHAINSAW BAYONET BYPASS on the damn things hearts.  All of them.  Oh, did I mention that Gears 2 makes quite a bit more use of the good old Lancer?  Sure you could just bash that barracade open, but there's nothing more satisfying than firing up that chainsaw bayonet and just destroying that sucker.  Nothing.  Ever.

In fact, just about everything in terms of combat is just completely over the top.  Remember when people used to call games like Resident Evil over the top?  Not anymore, son.

To contrast, X-Box live has been acting pretty buggy the past week.  Theories abound from the massive amount of traffic from GoW2 to something to do with the NXE.  I'll be happy when it just stops dropping matches and disconnecting.

As for the New X-Box Experience?  I admit to being a little wary at first.  I stayed up until early in the morning to see if I could catch it early and see what was what.  I just wanted to get it over with.  I'm happy to report what many are finding out, the new interface kicks ass.  This is much more functional than the previous dashboard layout, but that's not to say it won't take getting used to.  The location of a lot of stuff has changed, and you'll have to look around and re-learn where everything is.  There's also the matter of the Mi-I mean "Avatars".  You can customize your own avatar pretty much, though it's very limited in the department of the kinds of clothes you can put it in.  Is it too much to ask for a Space Marine suit?  They've pretty much been the mainstay for the X-Box since Halo.

There's about four avatar-based games for download right now.  Though none are really groundbreaking, they are pretty cool proof-of-concepts (Just like the Miis before them).  Here's hoping for a survival-horror themed one down the road.  It'd be like Happy Tree Friends meets Resident Evil.  Make it happen Microsoft!

In other news, Saints Row 2 and Gears of War 2 look like they're going to be the ones to do in my X-Box.  It's started to suddenly freeze occasionally when playing them.  Time to start saving.