All I want for christmas is........

so the title can be seen as being a bit late. And it is. But anyone that knows me knows I'm always the last one on the bus.

This year, I was pretty much on board with the whole "holiday spirit" thing. Well, more on board that I usually am. I think that focusing on God rather than my own lack of....whatever, is what put me in that spot. I even stayed in a generally good mood at work. With all the idiots. Man there were idiots.....BUT, I stayed mostly cheerful and glad to be around. I even said "merry christmas" to a couple people today and actually meant it. I've NEVER done that before. It was......weird for me.

But tonight, I kept hearing songs about being with someone at christmas time or wanting to be with someone. It kinda brought me down a bit in mood. Luckily, though, I didn't have any PEOPLE talk about that stuff. That would've made it worse. That's the main reason I got the itch to stay up and write a bit even though I'm exhausted.

I'm bugged that being single bugs me lately. On one hand, I feel like it shouldn't bug me, but on the other hand, it's a legitimate desire. So.....yeah. Bit of a loop de loop there. That's just part of life though isn't it? I dunno.

So yeah, I had a pretty good christmas. Lunch with dad and dinner with my sister. It was pretty nice, all things considered. And now I'm off to bed. Gotta sleep. really tired.

Movie Review 001 - TRON: Legacy

I'm not sure where to start with this movie. Perhaps I should start with the anticipation. I've been looking forward to this sequel since I heard the first rumors about it back in early 2009. First title I saw for it was "TR2N". I liked the idea behind that title. But changing it to Tron:Legacy was a good decision for two reasons. First, you can actually say it. Second, it really makes sense for the story.

I was so excited for it the week it came out that I don't really have words for it. Even better, it came out the day after my birthday. What a birthday present, right? But then I bought my ticket. Almost instantly, I started having doubts. I didn't want my childhood ruined once again. COUGHepisode1COUGH What if it was terrible? What if the story didn't make any sense? What if the proper connections weren't made? Or, even worse, what if continuity was broken?

Thank God for previews. They alleviated some of this stress with some much needed laughter. Then the movie started.

I was impressed right away with how Disney redid their opening logo to look like it was scanning you and to be that neon outline. That was my hook. And I was in for the rest of the movie. Even though I had to pee through the whole thing, it was too good to leave. ALL my doubts were washed away. Continuity? Check. Proper character development? Check. Awesome special effects? Check. Witty references to new and old technology? Check.

And not only were all the proper elements there, but they were done WELL. Executed with great precision and accuracy to keep all the lore already in place intact. It covers all the happenings between the destruction of the Master Control Program and the creation of the new Grid. And it makes sense, the way they explain it.

There was really only one element in the movie that I wasn't too big a fan of. And I'll probably get a lot of slings and arrows sent my way for this, but I'm okay with that. That element was Quorra. She was a good character, but she seemed out of place. All of her interactions with Sam seemed really forced. And I wasn't a big fan of that.

BUT that one little thing doesn't make the movie bad. And you should go see it. See it in a theater. Don't wait for dvd or blu-ray.

Final Score:
94/100

Mind Dump 2010

my last post was in July after Anime Expo. I don't think I did a very in depth post, and I'm not gonna go check right now to see how bad it was.

This post is for something else entirely. This post is to help me get back into mind dumping. For those of you that are unaware, a "mind dump" is when you just throw down all the thoughts running through your head without trying to organize them or make any sense out of them. Usually when I did this in the past, I ended up talking about the various females in my life for a big portion of the post. I may end up doing that again, but I'm gonna try not to. God knows I have a LOT running through my head about various women in my life.

My friends recently started picking their blogs back up. And I recently started having a lot of head issues. So maybe more mind dumps will help me out. That's what I'm hoping for anyway.

so I figured out one of my issues is caused by residual effects of activities I shouldn't be engaging in anyway. So support to NOT do that is probably something I should seek out. So I guess you can hit me up if you want to help with that. Or, ya know, just randomly send me texts with something like "Fix your head. Avoid THAT." I dunno.

Linkin Park. My favorite band. Their music speaks to me. Touches a piece of me that I didn't know was there until I discovered them. That piece of me that needs healing. I've tried giving it to God to heal, but.....I don't know if I ever actually have. And that tells me that I probably haven't. And that makes me sad.

Some times I feel bad that I don't really have the drive to do anything. Don't have the drive to exercise. Dont have the drive to read regularly. Don't have the drive to get up in the morning. Don't have the drive to keep myself out of trouble. It's one of the annoying things about me that I don't like. And I don't really know what to do about it. Oh sure, people tell me that I just gotta start doing stuff and then it'll turn into a habit. How long does it take for something to turn into a habit? about six weeks of doing it EVERY DAY. How do I get that far if I usually stop around week two? Really now. And I haven't met anyone that's willing to help me out through that period. It kind of sucks. I mean, even if I partnered up with someone as bad as me, I'm sure we wouldn't BOTH completely fail as long as we stick together with it.

I dunno. Just one of those things in life. Maybe I'm just lacking proper motivation. So what are some of the reasons that I should be doing this:
my health - if I sleep and eat decently, that's not really an issue
increased stamina - I have enough for the life that I live
look better - who am I trying to impress?

The main reason I don't do it is that disciplining myself isn't fun. Fun level is a major contributor to my views on things in life. Why is this? I'm still not entirely sure. BUT I do know that one thing has worked to motivate me in the past. And that was a focus on what God would want me to do. It kept me going long enough for a partial habit to form. So that's something I guess.

So that's it for now. I might do another one before the year ends. I might not. We'll see. LATERS.

Tech Blogs

So I built myself a new computer about a month ago. It's pretty sweet. It's got blue LEDs and everything. :D

I buy all my computer parts at New Egg because they have the best return policies that I've seen. Occasionally I'll look at other sites and compare prices, but usually it's not worth the money saved to buy from them. If I was just gonna buy one part, then I probably would buy from, say, Tiger Direct, but usually I need more than one part at a time. And usually no one but New Egg has all of the parts I'm looking for. And it's a hassle to have multiple orders and multiple suppliers when you're trying to get a project going. Of course that philosophy goes out the window if the sale is really AWESOME.

But yeah, I kind of have a bias toward New Egg too. Kind of like I have a bias against Microsoft. They're both kind of baseless, but I can't help it much. But that's a different post.

So Specs for my new computer:
GIGABYTE GA-890XA-UD3 motherboard
AMD AthlonII X2 245 Regor 2.9 GHz processor
4GB GeIL Black Dragon 240-pin DDR3 SDRAM
Western Digital VelociRaptor 150GB SATA HD
2 Western Digital Caviar Black 640GB SATA HD (RAID 0)
Radeon HD 4770 GDDR5 PCIe 2.0 graphics card
LG Blu-Ray SATA Combo Drive
Windows 7 Ultimate Edition

All of that is neatly contained in:
APEVIA MX-PLEASURE-BK ATX Full Tower case with 500W power supply

So this thing can run everything I need it to run. Including a bunch of emulators, a bunch of games, and the screen capture programs needed to stream what's on my screen to justin.tv. So for my standards (which are admittedly low) this beast is totally awesome.

I know that this thing isn't anywhere near top of the line, but it has everything I could possibly need and it'll last me a really long time. And really, that's all that matters.

Interesting bit of trivia:
The processor was the cheapest component. :D

Pics coming soon.

I'm not gonna count

It's been too long and I'm feeling the need to really start blogging again. Not sure if it because of my recent pitfall into depression or not. It probably is.

But this will not be like my blogs of the past where I simply whine and mull over my own thoughts. I am going to try and make this into something productive. I'm not sure how, though. I've seen lots of people do lots of different things, but none of them really fit me. Perhaps I will use this simply to psych myself up to get back into doing my comic. That story needs to be told, even if it's been told a thousand times before.

So I'm thinking that I'll leave this idea here in the open and see if anyone responds to it. And I'm thinking I'll go draw.

Sundays

so life is crazy lately. I have my A+ tests coming up the next couple of days. I was studying last night and I slept through my alarm, thus making me late for pipeline. So I need to not let that happen again.

The nice thing, though, is that the series we're doing makes jumping in while it's happening really easy. There's just a video and some songs, both really easy to do as long as you know which video clip you need to run. This week's video was about faith. I missed most of it, but I caught the part where Dan Gerous jumped over a whale on his tricycle. I was pretty distracted by a dream I had right before I woke up. But it finished well. I wasn't too distracted to keep the show going. So the video is cued up for next service and there's one song left to launch. Good show so far.

The ends of six. This is the thought from my dream. The context from the dream is a bit weird but I feel like the concept is important. In the dream there were a bunch of people at a party and they each submitted a naked picture. On the back, people were supposed to write six things on one end of a spectrum and six things on the opposite end of that same spectrum. The dream didn't really specify what spectrum to use. Because they were naked pictures, I kind of assume that they were comments about how they looked, but that's not really important. So the Ends of Six. Six really awesome things and six things that we should work on or that we can improve. I dunno. It seems like something that I should remember.