Great Scott!

A Houston company has bought delorean motors and plans to make about 200 a year.


They're gonna run around $42K which isn't bad if you consider that it's one of the coolest cars of all time. Of course $42K is a lot to pay for an less than average performing car.


Now I just have to find me some flux capacitor and Mr. Fusion schematics online...

Hyrule saved

Last night (after many, many hours of play - I've been playing it since February) I finished Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.

Despite a few gripe sessions (mostly caused by my poor gaming skills), I loved this game. It's incredibly long - clocked in at 55 hours of play to finish - and there's still a lot of little things I could go and do (non-story related quests, mini games, etc).

Unfortunately the system hung on the "The End" Screen and I didn't get it saved. So if I want to complete all the little things, I'd have to repeat last night's 3 hours session. I think Ocarina of Time is a better way to go.

Anyway, I just wanted to share that I've finally finished it. Not that anyone cares about my sad little accomplishments...

...and he's....SAFE!

So I finished HP: Deathly Hallows last night.

Now I can stop avoiding everything online (which is way harder than I thought). Now I can actually get something done.

WOOT.

I really liked it (No spoilers here), and while I know this is the last Harry book, I hope that J.K. Rowling thinks about other books in the world she's created. Because frankly, I'm glad this is the last book about Harry. From book one, Harry has always gotten on my nerves, but I love the wizarding world the author has developed.

Oh, and literary/internet gods, I'll get started on those promises tomorrow...

4-Wheeled Goodness

This could be the coolest fanboy creation EVER:


Yep, someone made a replica warthog from Halo.

I wonder if it only takes one person to right it when it flips over...

Amusing

Found this comic strip while surfing. Don't worry no spoilers here (click to enlarge):

Prayer to the literary/internet gods

To the powers that be:

Last night I started Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. PUH-leez let me get through it without anything being ruined for me. If you allow me to read this book unspoiled I promise I'll read a super dull book (I'm talking Grapes of Wrath boring) and won't look at porn for a week.

I know I'm asking a lot, this is going to be impossible, probably not as impossible as some people I know (one that works in a book store and one in radio), but difficult nonetheless.

Which is why I'm willing to sacrifice so much time being bored and pornless (a great website BTW, boredandpornless.com - but I digress).

Anyway, please, please, PLEASE help me out here.

Sincerely,
Me.

Oh, I'd also like a pony and a plastic rocket...

Evil Geniuses

Damn those evil geniuses at Microsoft. They have this power to repulse me (Vista) and draw me in at the same time.

I refer to the newest announcement from them, surface computing. What is surface computing you may ask? It's basically a coffee table that is multi-touch operated, the table surface itself is the display/user interface/peripheral connection (video link here).

Potter Hotness

Since its release I've now seen Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix twice and I really like it. I don't really intend to review it though (see Drheimlich for that).

My comments are about the actress that plays Nymphadora Tonks (Natalia Tena). Finally there's an actress that's hot and is old enough to ogle while watching these damned movies. Emma Watson (Hermione Granger) has definitely grown into a beautiful young lady. Watching her grow up from the little girl in Sorcerers Stone, though, it's impossible to think anything but "She's cute, but she's still that little girl with bad hair" (for those keeping track, same thing applies to Kirsten Dunst, Natalie Portman & Christina Ricci).

Natalia Tena though, while still young (23) is at least an adult. God bless the casting people of the movie! Good job, Tonks is supposed to be a cute young woman (of course they've done a great job with all of the casting, from Colin Creevey to Dumbledore).

I'm pretty sure I'm still going to Hell, but that's nothing news-worthy...

Punny Side up

I recently finished Jasper Fjord's latest book, The Big Over-Easy: A Nursery Crime. The book is set in the world that his Thursday Next series resides in. It was apparently his first book, and his editor told him that no one would understand it without some back story.

The editor was right. I have read all the Thursday Next books and this one still had moments when I thought, "The Hell?"

However, in the end I liked it. It had his usual play on words (if you couldn't tell from the title), literature and life, all of which keep the book moving along well with humor.

The book is about Jack Spratt, a literary detective specializing in nursery crimes. This particular caper is about the death/murder of Humpty Dumpty. The murder mystery is nothing spectacular - typical suspects etc. This is intentional though, the literary detectives in this series all must follow certain guidelines for their cases and clues.

Anyway, it's a fun book, but not for those that haven't read the rest of his series. You may still enjoy it, but I guarantee you'll have no idea what's going on. I do recommend the others though (The Eyre Affair, Lost in a Good Book and Something Rotten).

Keeping the fear alive.

Last night on the radio I heard a list of tips on how to stay safe while traveling. This tips included things like:

• Carry a second wallet with expired credit cards and a small amount of cash in case you're mugged.
• Only stay in the second through seventh floor of a hotel. Apparently the ground level has the highest rate of break-ins and anything above the seventh floor a fire truck's ladder won't reach.
• Pick a seat near the back of the plane on an exit row - that way you'll be the first one out in case of an emergency (screw that "help those that need help thing"), plus you'll be furthest from anyone trying to hijack the plane.

Seems to me they missed a key tip to staying safe;

Don't leave your house. Lock the front door. Lock and barricade your bedroom door. Crawl in to the back corner of your closet with some sort of weapon and cower until the "vacation" is over.

God bless fear mongering...

Pageant girls are people too?

It seems as if there's another Pageant scandal. Miss New Jersey has a few pictures out there that someone has tried to blackmail her over. You can see some of them here.

Basically they're pictures of a young adult having a good time in a bar. One shows her spreading her legs (fully clothed mind you), another shows her kissing her boyfriend, yet another shows her - get this - having a drink!!!

This could mean the end of the world as we know it folks. Apparently, pageant contestants are human!!

Never mind that part of the contest is strutting around on stage in a bikini - that's respectable. But show a young college girl acting like a college girl? Unacceptable!

Re-God-Damned-dicilous...

Skip THIS!

A short addendum to my last entry;

Why don't some games allow you to skip scenes? I'm all for getting the storyline, but it some cases it's ridiculously drawn out. Zelda :Twilight Princes is such a game. LOOOONG cut scenes that can't be skipped. If you die while fighting a boss? You can't skip the 5 minute scene to introduce the boss that just kicked your ass.

I know I'm not the only person here, I have a friend who tried Okami, a game I love. However, he never played it because it's another game guilty of long, unskippable, intro scenes. Okami's is about 20 minutes if I remember correctly.

So please, any video game designer out there that has nothing better to do than read this blog, puh-leez allow me to skip the scene. It should be my choice to watch the frakking scene or not...

TWiilight Princess

At the same time I purchased my Wii, I picked up The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. I've only now been playing it in earnest.

I now kind of regret never playing any of the other Zelda Games. Especially Ocrina of Time, which has received a top 100 of all time ranking with most video game boards (IGN - #2, Edge - #1, GameFaq - #6 (OK this was top 10 adventure games), GAF - #50). Fortunately, Nintendo has it available for download on the Wii, which will be happening on my console shortly after I finish Twilight Princess.

Anyway, I really love TLoZ:TP, it's got a great mix of action and puzzle solving. Hell I've got 33 hours invested and am only half done (even less according to the game - taking into account all the unlockables).

The Wii makes a great game even better, combat is based on how you move the remote & nunchuk. Aiming the bow and other weapons is intuitive and simple, unless you've had too much caffeine.

However, the motion sensitive controller is also my biggest complaint with the system. There have been numerous cliffs I've fallen off because I moved the controller too quickly, or scratched my nose and proceeded to swing my sword off the edge.

Also, and I know this has been said by others before, but what is up with fishing in adventure video games?

Colorado "Pride"

Sunday the Phillies played the Rockies in town. I didn't watch the game, and actually didn't know anything about it until I saw this story. The Rockies lost (big shocker), but the noteworthy event was the wind. The wind was so strong that as the ground crews tried to cover it, the tarp started to drag some of the crew around the field. Before this went on too long, the Phillies came out of the dugout to help the crew secure the tarp.

What did our beloved Rockies do? Not a damned thing, they sat on their fat asses and watched the whole thing transpire. The only Rockies player to help was LaTroy Hawkins.

REAL...NICE.

At least we have one Colorado Player that's not a total ass...

***Amendment*** - I found out today that the most of the Rockies were in the clubhouse already, but I still find it hard to believe that no one else knew what was happening on their own field...

SCUBA Duh-ving

I know that there's supposedly no such thing as a dumb question. I also know that everyone, everywhere has had to answer stupid questions in the workplace. Working at a dive shop is no exception:

• How many breaths can you get out of a snorkel?
• If I go under the water, can I still breath through the snorkel?
• Can you wear glasses with a scuba mask? (bearing in mind the skirt of the mask needs a water tight seal to keep the water out)
  
• When I clear the water from my mask, where does the water go?
• How do you breath through your nose with a mask on? (again keeping in mind a scuba/snorkel mask covers the nose)

And my personal favorite:

• Does it get dark on night dives?

Another favorite, though not a question per se, is a customer telling a coworker that she was taking a few small jars on her trip to bring home some ocean water. When asked why she was taking more than one, she replied (I swear I'm not making this up), "I want one for each of the water colors - The real pretty deep blue, the light blue, the greenish water - all of them!".

Honest....to....God...

I'm sure there are more, I just have to ask the other guys here, the above questions are just the ones I've heard personally.

The hardest part is answering with as little sarcasm as can be mustered...

That jerk Murphy and his damn laws.

Guess what I found?

Yep, the Netflix movie from below. It was in the frakking couch. Of course I've already ordered the copy of it. I still need to see it, but I really don't need my very own copy.

Anyone want a copy of The Illusionist?

The real lesson? Patience is a virtue...

Difficult choices

Unfortunately I seem to have lost my Netflix copy of The Illusionist. Trying to be the honest type, I contacted them to ask about what I needed to do.

The response from Customer Service was that I report it lost and I will be charged $20. This isn't actually too bad, except Netflix is selling it for $10.

The agent even recommended that if I could find it cheaper somewhere else I could just send them that copy. So guess what I'm going to do?

Just seems silly that I have to order it from them, and turn around and send them the disc back - but that's just me.

What really gets me is that I could have just reported is never showing up - for free!

Lesson learned? Honesty doesn't pay...