Category: digressing

Burnout Paradise rocks.

Could not be more awesome than checking off my last Stunt Run and breaking the million point barrier for first time. My last ten or so Burnout Paradise events were all Stunt Runs, because I put them off earlier in the game when I couldn’t figure them out. It took a long time for me to get even decently good and I was just bouncing back and forth between different start points for a couple weeks.

I think my biggest mental stumbling block was trying to “clear out” locations right near the starting point of the Stunt Run. Even before I got lots of extra practice, there were places like the southern bridge where I could easily rack up big stunt multipliers. It wasn’t that hard to get to the jackpot locations as long as I conserved boost or drove backwards, and I needed to get over trying for a perfect run and emphasize making it easier. The clinching run started outside the tunnel outside the Lawrence Tunnel, but the key was keeping the run going long enough to get to railway and hitting the big Billboard/Air Time/Spin combos. (Remembering to get in those Flat Spins are another big help.)

I’m so proud to get my Elite License, as proud as I’ve been to ever accomplish anything in a video game. I could’ve looked up hints all I wanted (and probably will when it comes to crossing off the smashes, billboards and jumps I’m still missing), but I still had to win the races/events myself and that’s what I did. If anything, I’m disappointed it’ll be until Fall when the new Island is released, but I’m sure I’ll be restarting the game on my own before then.

Random things that probably should have been extended in to separate posts themselves, and posted long before. That’s just not the way it went.

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I’m stuck in a two week period where I don’t have my car and I have to call in every night to see if I head downtown for jury duty. I’ve never been under house arrest, but I think this is what it feels like. Minus the ankle bracelet, so far.

My car is in the body shop for some work on the rear passenger door. It was the stupidest one car accident ever, but the damage seems minimal. Yet, it is going to take two weeks to repair. I am borrowing cars in the meantime and quite dislike having to put people out. Should have just ignored them and rented a cheap car, so I don’t feel indebted.

I’ve never had jury duty, and am not looking forward to a six am wakeup call to catch a train. Otherwise, I’m fine with it. I like my chances at avoiding it. Veterans day and Thanksgiving take care of three of the ten eligible days and I have been skipped over for three so far. Hope this doesn’t jinx me.

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After playing thru most of it, I sent Final Fantsay V (GBA) back to GameFly earlier this week. It was not at the level of the other FF games. That’s seems completely unfair to hold it to, because a game can be good (like this one is) and not meet those standards, but it does say FF on the front of it. IV (II US or whatever) has a better story and felt deeper (though it could just be nostalgia speaking.) FFV felt like they wanted to quickly squeeze out another version of the game while people were happy with the prior version, but threw a B-Team crew to reuse graphics from IV while the A-Team did VI. It’s a dip between those two, without a doubt.

I did beat the game and started wandering thru the bonus dungeon before stopping. Pointless miniquests to get special items didn’t seem like fun enough to keep slugging thru monsters. I generally liked the job system and the options it opened up, but I didn’t want to complete more tasks just to get the final bonus job – it’s kinda pointless to get another way to fight after you’ve fought and done all you can. I’m not that bored.

When I was moving along on the game, it was enjoyable, but I felt like I lost all momentum leveling up before facing the second huge climatic boss battle and I had to repeat the process before the end game. At least the job system allowed me to fool around while leveling up, but it was just as boring as any other RPG leveling up.

As something to squeeze in for minutes during lunch breaks and sitting around waiting for things, it worked pretty well and kinda makes me think I should up my GameFly plan to two at a time, so I can always have an GBA/DS game to take my time with while trying out more PS3 games.

Not that I’m watching TNA, but…

When BG James and whatever they call Billy Gunn were talking about helping get over two guys who couldn’t get over on themselves in the midst of the anti-WWF/DX rhetoric, I’m pretty sure it was a misdirection. I think the people pointing out the timeline problem with them helping Shawn and Hunter are missing that they were actually very confusingly referring to Honky Tonk Man (manager of Rockabilly) and Double J (managed by Jesse James), though I’m not exactly sure when any of those people got over. It does fit the time better.

This reminds me of the time on Nitro where Nash told a story of having a match in Montreal with an unnamed person who refused to lose, so he intimidated him into losing, and everyone was rightly “huh? wha? who?”, and it turned out to be some ultra-obscure story involving Pierre Outlette.

Hey, same guy wrote it. What a coincidence.

and then I went to

A Great Day For Democracy (and sprinkles.)

So. No RAW recap again this week. We’re officially blaming K-Fed. THERE WILL BE BETTER CONTENT HERE THAN THIS around 5:30ish (CST) today, but till then, various things I’ve been thinking

But for something better than what I’ve got to say, go check Scott’s new blog @ http://somebodystopthedamnmatch.blogspot.com/ – you’ve got Tajiri vs Great Muta, and you’ve got Jake the Snake vs the Big Bossman, and you’ve got a lot of other things.

– What are going to be the choices for the Lita vs Mickie James tournament final match at not-Taboo Tuesday? “Match goes 3 minutes, match goes 1 minute, match doesn’t go at all?” I know, it’s going to be what outfit they’re wearing, and nothing says Championship Match Final like voting on what they’ll wear. Lita’s retirement run sure isn’t Trish’s.

I have no idea why this is such on my mind lately. I’ll stop it now.

I’ve been reading about it, but I haven’t been watching much WWE stuff of late – I’ve got two Smackdowns sitting on my TiVo and they’re about to be joined by a third, and I skipped 90% of the taped RAW. (ECW is a struggle to watch based on my current cable setup, not that I think I’d bother if it was easier.)

– Johnny Nitro is so good at being Johnny Nitro, I can not imagine the day when Johnny Nitro will be anything besides Johnny Nitro. I’m not going out of my way to see Johnny Nitro or anything, but once a segment, Johnny Nitro’ll do something so Johnny Nitro, it’ll be great.

– The TNA/AAA/Mexico thing is so weird. In TNA, they acted as if AJ Styles was attacked by Konnan, Homicide and others in a continuation of the normal TNA storylines, and they’re (or at the promoter) is selling their Monterrey show on those normal angles.

Except, TNA TV is barely on in Mexico (up till a month ago, the only people who could follow it were those with illegal US satellite dishes) and only the hardcorest of the hardcore know what’s going on the TNA world. Almost all the people who’d consider going to their show know TNA from the AAA show – and they’re just a bunch of indistinct Americans in AAA. For instance: Homicide was there to beat down AJ Styles, because Homicide was teaming with AJ Styles on the show (and so were Low-Ki and Samoa Joe.)

It’s not a complete loss – the lowest of the low guys in TNA (Skipper and Hoyt) have been presented as main event mystery stars in AAA. But that’s also the problem – they’re being used as interchangeable guys, and guys who matter only for being from TNA, having nothing individual going on. They’re infantrymen, and who wants to pay to see infantrymen? (No offense to infantrymen.)

Then again, maybe Angle will just draw the house and it won’t matter.

They are being projected as important people, but matches in between them wouldn’t seem to be important.

– I think I may be going to the Chicago Ridge ROH show this SATURDAY. (In caps, because til late last night, I was under the impression it was today. I dunno why.) Thing is, I thought I was going to one night of TPI, and I had talked myself into being excited to go to SHIMMER, and things came up. I have no particular interest in any match besides Joe/Danielson, but that should be worth it alone. I’m just kinda expecting something to happen in the next 12-24 hours and find myself not there.

I’m also expecting this match to go, like, to 4 AM (not factoring in the ‘fall back’ hour.)

– The best part of James being quoted by the WSJ, with the sarcasm sucked out of his words, is that it came right after a post about his dentist checkup. If there’s a better example of THE INTERNET, I don’t know what it could be.

Three years ago: (This is not a blog, Hobbes. No it’s not. Keep it up and I’ll link to your page.)

This is apropos of nothing. The not-blog (yea right) updates of that kind actually go back to 11/2000 – they’re still around this site if you knew where to look (and I told you where to look, I think) – so I guess I should throw a party then, if I’m going to throw a party. I just happened to notice that date today when I was looking for stuff.

Figure out an anniversary for this site is tough because…

* thecubsfan.com, at least if you consider when I started paying for hosting, started around that 11/19/03 date
* but then the sites that were The Site previously go back to – what, ’98? (don’t look it up)
* and the first recaps date back to 07/07/97
* and the CMLLblog has a different date and the wiki has a different date (and is a spinoff, so should it count?) and on

…and I’m not much for site anniversaries anyway. So what the heck was the point of this post? I…don’t recall.

Oh yea, I guess, 3 years later, Hobbes was right, and this is kinda a blog, just the idea of what a blog is has changed. The livejournals of the world (though not necessarily Livejounral) still probably well outnumber every other sort of blog. (The ‘deleted livejournals because the wrong person read them’ outnumber the other types of blogs TOO.) I guess, now that I had 36 months to think about it, putting up messages, with the newest on top descending from there, using some web script to automate the process, is not the worst thing in the world (even if I didn’t invent.)

Still not joining mySpace.

It’d be nice if I had non-inside joke material for content, but I bet you beat me to that conclusion. I guess I should do a Cubs post to talk about something?

Things on my mind that I haven’t remembered to tell someone who cares (and still probably haven’t)

– I know Johnny Cash seemed to do nothing but covers (and still is doing covers, magically), so everything is fair game, but, still, you can not put a cover of Walk The Line in your commercial. That’s just incredibly wrong.

– My favorite part of Numbers if when the non-Math Professors openly mock one of the technical explanation of a math solution. I’m watching this show at this moment and can not actually explain why. They’re totally pretending to drink coffee from empty cups right now, and it’s bugging me.

– Scott asked if I’ve got to indy baseball games like a month ago, right? I could, there’s about 5 different indy teams in the Chicago area within an hour from me, the Tribune even did an article about trying to hit as many of them in the same night as possible, along with the Cougars. But the Cougars are five minutes away, and are the local team – they’re my team in a way the Cubs or any of the Chicago teams can’t, because they’re so local. Going to see the Joliet Jackhammers or the Schaumburg Flyers (I’ve driven by their stadium a dozen times, and it looks great from the highway) seems like turning on on the hometown nine. (Though they could care less, and probably don’t know I exist outside of the time where they send out the forms for season ticket renewal, and the times they call me because I haven’t gotten around to sending the form in.) And I kinda hate the Northern League and all of their forced wackiness to get press attention; it seems really phoney.

(Still, if someone else wanted to go, I think I might get over it.)

Google buys YouTube for $1.65 billion (in stock)

Yea, that’s for a company that was losing something like a $1mil a month in April, when it was just starting to take off (in terms of bandwidth cost – they’ve made deals since, but I’m sure they’ve never made one cent and have lost many of ’em.) The tech has been mimiced and improved by untold number of sites sense – Google’s paying that much just for the name value and current market share.

Net business is weird and these people are beyond rich, and I think the pirated footage will have to find a new home. But more, I wish I was these people!

It’s been pointed out by people far smarter than me that Google’s never actually made money on any of the things they’ve bought, except for the Google ads. I don’t know that’s going to change here.

Maybe I should’ve remembred all sane people tuned out of the game by the start of the 4th?

The Saints drew 10.85 million cable households, compared with 11.2 million for the debate.

(USA Today)

350,000 of you made me look dumb. Good job.

So I was trying to work this out at 1 AM last night – like all matters of great importance – and I’m missing a piece.

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