Weee!

Well, I did it. We finally got them in stock at work and I decided to endulge myself and get one.

I bought a Nintendo Wii.

It may have simply been the simplicity of the box, or the interactiveness of the games, or the fact that I just wanted to get one, but I brought it home, along with a second controller (picked up a third with Wii Play a couple days ago) and have been using the Wii as a socializing tool.

Its funny, actually. Like my dad, who hates video games, actually likes the Wii. The graphics aren't the greatest but the revolutionary controller puts this system in a category all of its own leaving Playstation 3 and XBOX 360 to dook it out as the machine for gamers (it appears Xbox is winning that war) as Wii has its own line of games that are made specifically for it.

Furthermore, some licensed games, specifically racing games, are better suited for the Wii. I picked up Cars and played that using the Wii remote as a steering wheel. Though other licensed games, TMNT for instance, play better on the other platforms, like Xbox.

I like my Wii, and when I do move out I'll likely get an Xbox 360 as well to sublement some of the other must haves, but in the meantime, I'm getting sold on the some of the mini games.

Wii Sports is a great little series of games that almost anybody can play, and even my parents got in on this one. And I hate sports games. Usually.

Wii Play is actually somewhat disappointing, but there are a few games on it that make it a keeper. Specifically Billiards (9 Ball) and a throw back to Duck hunt. I'm going to try to see if I can't get some more content unlocked, becuase it seems a bit lacking at the moment. There doesn't seem to be enough available.

WarioWare: Smooth Moves is currently my favorite game for the Wii. Its a series of quick small and usually easy games that can stump you in that you have to figure out what you are supposed to do when holding the remote in a specific way. But they get progressively harder and harder and you have to figure them out. Quick! And its just as much fun watching the person playing as playing yourself.

I've still get to get Legend of Zelda (we've got a used on in stock, but I have to wait until the sixth before I can actually buy it *sighs*) and there are a couple of other titles I want to try out, but I think I will start utilyzing more of the rentals to make sure I'm not wasting my money. You know, rent them before you buy them to make sure they are worth the extra cost.

Tommorrow we're having a family get together complete with barbeque at the Parent's house. My mom asked me to bring the Wii.

School Woes

I've come to the decision that going to school online is not working for me. It might be the whole communication thing for me or my undecided lack of motivation currently, but I don't think this is what I want to do anymore. Now don't get me wrong, I still want to go into Animation or Game Design, but I don't think that this is the way I'm going to go about getting my degree. In other words, I need to find a school that offers a good curriculum for getting my degree choice that is affordable and in a classroom. Of course, this will mean I will likely have to move.

I think what got me is the fact that I'm paying a lot of money to attend school and I don't feel like I'm getting the information I need from it. In fact, I'm tempted to just buy the books and learn it on my own, because honestly, this is how the whole school appears to be run. Its a curriculum for reading a book that is monitored by another adult that sometimes offers their advice. I've had some good teachers and all, but I'm not getting what I want or need out of this course. I'm going to attend one more quarter, then go to Drill Sergeant School and afterwards try to find a way to mesh all of this together and figure out what I want to do with the rest of my life. *sighs*

I was motivated with this course at first, but in all honesty I'm getting some heavy doubts with it. It might work for some people, but its definitely not for everybody.

I fear that my financial aid is so screwed up right now that the school could be charging me for things that I'm not getting and I wouldn't know the difference one way or the other. I do need to get that all sorted out before much else.

Yardsale Sortage

So we're having a yard sale tomorrow, and while we were sorting out stuff, my sister handed these out.

Apparently her husband used up all the blonde ones, so these look a little, well, nasty.



I won't even say what my sister called these. It was just gross. But we had a good laugh.

Love is a Tree. . .or something bizarre

Every so often I find enough time to come home with a movie from work and pop it into the DVD player and watch it. Just to keep current on new movies.

Frankly, I tend to like artsy films. I like movies that make you go 'whoa', most of the time.

Not to say I liked this movie, becuase I'm not sure that I did. Nor did I exactly hate it either. It was just one of those movies that left me scratching my head and wondering what exactly was going on.

See, the Fountain is an artsy movie, and maybe so artsy as to require you to drop acid before viewing it to actually understand what is going on. Because quite frankly, I didn't get it. It was very beautiful and very well done, if not but completely incoherent.

I think there was some play of metaphors, some symbolism between love and Hugh Jackman and The Tree of Life. But whatever the case, it didn't stop me from saying "you can't see a nebula that clearly with a telescope that small!" and other astronomical inaccuracies.

This might be a movie that requires two viewings to get. But I was quite content on seeing it the once and returning it promptly thereafter. To which I decided to get to further play with my confused state by renting The Science of Sleep.

I'll admit that this one does require a second viewing.

My Cause for the Week

So, a friend of mine rescues reptiles, however recently she acquired a sick cat.



It kind of looks like my neighbor's cat. Except we hate that cat.

The story behind this cat is rather sad however. Somebody starved it and threw it in a bag off to the side of a major highway in her town. She is in the process of rehabilitating it. More posted about the cat here

So anyway, being a rescue type person, she took the cat to the vet and yeah, its pretty sick. Another friend has agreed to adopt it, but in the meantime, it is wracking up some hefty vet bills.

The poor thing tugged at my sensitive animal loving heart strings. Although in conditions such as this I may have euthanized the animal (but then again, I will spend upwards to $600 trying to remove an earplug from the stomach of an overly curious ferret so. . .) I went ahead and forwarded her a few bucks to help with the costs.

In case you like cats, and your heartstrings are torn too, here's more information on helping out a sick cat.

It can be frustrating in regards to the sick world we live in sometimes. I saw a YouTube video of somebody torturing a ferret and it made me go snuggle Blaine and Abby.

Who Would You Hit in the Face?

We were working on a project at work last week that I worked every day. It sort of started to get redundent, doing the same thing for eight hours a day.

What got us through it was socializing, talking about all sorts of weird things. My mind would frequently wander, but all in all, it was good times.

One of the things we did was play games, and one of these games ecompassed a simple premise where we would expand further as to why.

That game? Who would you want to hit in the face?

It started off as Musicians, living or dead. Then it went to athletes. Eventually it came to actors and actresses.

I stated I wanted to hit Avril Lavigne for her new single 'Girlfriend'. Somebody mentioned Barbra Streisand, just to hit her nose. I'm game for striking her proboscus. Count me in.

Actually, I also mentioned Jennifer Lopez, but the others were thinking that might not be a good idea, since she's Peurto Rican or something (I don't know what she is, they're the ones who said it) and its common knowledge that apparently you would get your ass kicked for picking a fight with one of them. But I mentioned a few Divas in general need to be punched. But seeing as I'm pretty mum on the singer side (and I do like some of Avril's songs), I got more talkative when we got to Actors.

Rosie O'Donnell won the actress round, but I stated Alec Baldwin could use a solid strike. Actually, I think Lindsay Lohan needs to have some sense knocked into her. I actually will admit when she first came onto the scene in Parent Trap, I was impressed with her acting and I love the movie. But, well, since she became a skank, I'm a bit turned off to see her in any film these days.

Of course, there is always Micheal Moore. Actually, that guy needs to be shot. It would add to the irony.

Ferrets got Out

A few nights ago, my ferrets got out. And I didn't realize they were out until it was close to midnight.

Its one thing when the ferrets are just out of their cage, scampering about the house and leaving presents for you to clean up in the corners, but this was something entirely different.

They got outside. Yikes.

Anybody who has ever owned a ferret knows that these little furballs are not like cats and dogs. They are strictly an indoor animal with good reason. They have no concept of self preservation, that and coupled with the fact that they average about 20 hours of sleep a day and have most of their hunting instincts bred out of them, well, they wouldn't survive perhaps more then three days outside on their own. I don't know where they went or what they were doing, but I just know the two little dookers found themselves outside.

I had to be at work at 7 the next morning and had to get some sleep, but I couldn't just leave them outside so I went about looking for them. No such luck. I got a little bell and tried to call them, but they remained hidden.

My next option was to find something soft and cuddly and familiar and try to draw them back to the house with that. I have this little bed I got for them that I sat near the door on the flower bed, hoping they would find themselves back with that. I then left and went to the back, looking for them and calling them again. Then I went back to the front after a couple of minutes and sure enough, Blaine was in the bed, staring at me and wondering how it got there.

I picked him up, nuzzled him and put him back in the cage, hoping that Abby wouldn't be to far behind. However, Abby still hadn't come home.

I put the carrier in the backyard with a familiar blanket in it and searched around the house some more. Still no sign of Abby, and now it was nearing 130 and I had to get to bed. So I left the door slightly ajar and fell to sleep next to the couch, hoping she would find her way home during the night and nuzzle me with her cold wet nose like she's prone to doing.

I woke myself up at 430 with the thought that I needed to check on Abby. The sun was just starting to rise, but there was still no sign of her. I checked the back and didn't see her there either. If she wasn't coming home, I didn't know what was expected of me so I went ahead and closed the door and started to fall asleep on the couch.

The scratching on the door got my attention, and not five minutes after I closed it, Abby had found her way home.

Stinky ferrets. I don't know what kind of adventures they had that night, but Abby was outside for six hours. I can only imagine that she found some place soft and cuddly and fell asleep.

I'll be sure they don't get out unsupervised again.

Advice before Jumping on the Bandwagon: Don't

So, show of hands, who here has gotten an email about May 15th, telling you that we are going to crack down by telling those big bad oil companies that we aren't going to buy their gas for one full day. Yeah, that'll show them.

There is another email making the rounds stating that if we can boycott the two biggest middle eastern oil suppliers, Exxon and Mobil, they will be forced to lower their gas and everyone else will follow suit.

You know what I plan to do? On May 15th, I'm going to go find an Exxon or Mobil station and get some gas. I bet the lines won't be that bad and it will make for a quick fill up.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm frustrated with the skyrocketing gas prices as much as the next person, and any fiscally minded person oughta be. But there is a better way to try to combat rising gas prices then to skip a day to buy gas or to bypass one specific station completely.

If you continue to do your errands and use your car the same as you always do, it doesn't matter if you skip Tuesday, you still used the gas and you still need to fill that tank up, whether it be on Monday, Wednesday or Thursday. In other words, you're still consuming the same amount of gas! Maybe people should clue in that this shouldn't be a day where everyone just waits to fill their gas tanks. Instead, maybe the consensus should be that to solve the problem, you simply need to bring the demand for gas down.

Boy, what a concept.

If everyone participated in an event where instead of DRIVING their cars to wherever they needed to go, they found alternate modes of getting to their destinations. For instance, carpooling, public transit, WALKING, Bicycling, or a bunch of other items that cause us to use less fuel. Really, the way to crack down on rising gas prices is to stop using so much of it.

Onto the other popular idea making the rounds. The boycott of Exxon/Mobil (or whatever other gas companies). The problem with this one is the unique industry that is the oil industry. Exxon and Mobil don't buy their gas from one specific place. They will buy it from wherever they need it, and in turn sell it where the demand is. If they aren't selling their gas, and everyone instead hits the Shell station across the street, well, guess what? The demand for gas at Shell will go up, they will run out of gas, and they will turn around and buy it from the Exxon that people are boycotting, which in turn, will raise prices even more. Brilliant strategy.

Furthermore (and correct me if I'm wrong) but most gas stations are franchised out, so when you boycott an Exxon station, you are hurting the family that owns that specific gas station. The head honchos over at corporate might feel a little dent, but hey, they'll turn around and sell their gas wherever they have a buyer. But who will get hurt is the owner of that station, which will lose their revenue.

More information over at Snopes. -
Boycotting Exxon/Mobil
May 15th

I'm doing a persuasive speech on this topic, so I'm doing as much research as I can on it.