I entered this GameSpot contest and ended up winning grand prize! :o An Xbox 360 limited edition Gears of War 3 console. Plus copy of Gears of War 3, and life size Gold Retro Lancer replica. When I first got notified of winning I was like..OMG Seriously!?! Got notified on December 21st so it was like a Christmas present. After weeks of waiting it's finally here! First thing I felt like doing with the lancer was roadie running down the block with it, but then thought better of it. You never expect to win prizes like this, but when you do it's a very nice surprise.

Hope everyone is having a great new year!

What's up people. I figured now is a good a time as any to post my semi-bi-tri-annualish, blog entry.

I've been good during my time away. My grandmother is a 49ers season ticket holder so I've been going to all the home games. Our seats are pretty good. Front row in the lower level. Last weeks' game vs the Falcons idk what happened there. We get Gore back next week so hopefully it goes better. I could go on about how it looked like Shaun Hill had glue on his hand when passing but it pretty much speaks for itself. I know DH's Pats had and incredible game yesterday 59-0. :o Makes you wonder if the Titans were even trying.

I've been watching this show called The Guild. not sure if any of you heard of it but it's a show that makes fun of MMORPGs. Pretty funny stuff, especially for me since I played FFXI online. If you use YouTube you can pretty much find all three seasons on there. The episodes arent long so you can easily watch all 3 seasons in a couple hours.

There's so many games that look good this holiday season, Its hard to decide which ones to get first. There's Left 4 Dead 2 which I can't wait for. Frankly I'm amazed that Valve came out with a sequel so fast which is almost unprecedented for that game developer. Dragon Age: Origins is Bioware's newest RPG. It looks really good, and if there's one company that always delivers its Bioware. Assassin's Creed II is another one of those must have games. What could possibly be better than one hidden blade? Why not two? Plus it takes place in Italy and you get to use weapons and equipment created by Da Vinci. DJ Hero looks promising as well. From what I've seen in videos the song mixes make you want to play this game. And of course the grand daddy of them all. Modern Warfare 2. I'll get it but probably not the Prestige Edition. A few friends of mine are getting that one though. Anyone gonna get the Prestige Edition and get some cool NVG? I can just imagine a lot of people getting that and then doing some night time paintball or airsoft war with it. Or people driving away from the midnight release wearing the goggles. 8) And of course the best game this season.........Is

Well, I'm finally getting around to posting this blog entry. Had most of it typed out weeks ago but finding 5 things is tougher than I thought. First off I wanna say that its weird that since 2006 Ive only posted two blog entries per year :o I just noticed that. This would be the second entry this year. I'll see if I can make more than two this year lol. And second congrats to Liz for tagging me.

I got tagged within 2 days of posting my last entry. For those 2 days I was feeling like the gingerbread man thinking I wouldn't be caught :P Now that that's out of the way let's begin.

1. Kinda funny and cruel at the same time. Yes, I have a cat named Puppy. :P Probably really confuses my 2 year old niece lol.

2. I almost actually joined the army one time. Took the test and everything. Got a pretty good score on it too but then changed my mind before I actually signed up. Cause I wanted to go to school instead. This happened shortly before I joined GameSpot so if I had joined up I probably wouldn't have met all of you. Funny how things work out.

3. I used to have three pet rabbits. All of them white and all three named after flowers. Daisy, Violet, and Rosie.

4. I once sung "Wanna Be" by the Spice Girls in a karaoke bar in Japan with my cousins on stage. At first they wouldn't let us in since we were young. I was 18 at the time. But we told them we were there to sing so they let us in. Since it was in Japan most likely not too many people even understood us but they did clap and cheer us on when we were done :P

5. I actually got summoned to jury duty today on my birthday this year. :| Been stressing on it cause I remember how boring it was the last time I got called in. 9 hours of waiting around and they didnt even call me up. And of all the days to be called in, my birthday is the day they chose. So I telephoned in yesterday as requested and got automated message saying for me to call in again today for a possible 1:00 pm appearance. It turns out that a jury had already been selected and I no longer need to report in :o So to this I say w00t! And happy birthday to me! :P What was going to be an annoying bday this year turned out to be better than I expected. Instead of saying. Why oh why me!! I'm like, oh yes! No jury duty for me...until I get called up the next time...

As far as I know, I'm pretty sure nobody knew any of that.

I guess now I can enjoy the rest of my day, maybe some gaming for a bit. Though this is me when gaming.... you get kinda hypnotized.

Its been waaaaaaay too long. I think I need to make a blog entry. :P If anything at least so it wont be more than a year since I made the last one. :o But mainly just to let anyone reading this to know that I'm alive and well and didnt finally morph into a video game playing machine that only stops to charge his battery. ;) I've only done that once...maybe twice. The break was good but I actually missed this site. And missed you guys. GS still looks the same as it did before. And my profile...exactly the same. I dont know how much longer I can take looking at my banner with the cut off text so I'll probably change it lol.

So how's everyone been, anything interesting happening on here while I was gone or is it just same old? Also I gotta ask, whats with all the tagging? :P That is all.

-Edit: I also just noticed that its been 5 years since I first joined GameSpot. Imagine that.

Hello all! Well...my birthday came and went as expected. It was alright, I didn't do anything overly exciting. Got a few gifts and some money which is always useful. :P Also and iTunes gift card which I really appreciated! Thanks Nancy! *Big Hugs* :D Next year I really have to plan something, maybe a trip somewhere. People are always telling me I should go to Vegas. They know who they are. ;)

This is my second blog entry this year which is a record! :o I did say I'd be around more often though and it looks like I'm about to level up on GS too! Which brings me to the unfortunate news... My Xbox 360 has finally made it's way to the big game room in the sky. On Wednesday I got the dreaded "Three Red Lights of Death" which mean an Xbox 360 system failure! I already called the Microsoft support. After finally getting passed an annoying automated voice help system, I was able to talk to an actual person in order to get my 360 repaired. It will take approximately 5-7 business days in order for them to send a box to me to ship my 360 in. After they receive it, it will take about 10 days for them to repair it and send it back to me. Which means I will be unable to game for about 2-3 weeks. :( That's a long time considering that the Halo 3 Beta is available on May 16 and will only be 3 weeks long. *sigh* I may just end up getting the new Black Xbox 360 Elite, which has a 120 Gig hard drive. Since most of the devices and stuff are black it would match pretty good. My iPod and phone are black. I haven't really decided what I'm going to do, but if I get the new 360 I'll probably trade the old one in for credit or something.

I wish this birthday entry was more positive but sometimes it just can't be helped. Thanks everyone who wished me a happy birthday here and on MySpace! It's very much appreciated :)

Hello all! I just realized that I haven't made a journal entry this entire year! :o For all of you that still remember who I am..that is shocking.  I guess I just haven't had much to write about. but I wanted to at least show that I was still alive and not some automated bot that just logs in occasionally :P

Let's see what have I been up to. I beat Castlevania: Portrait Of Ruin with a %200.0 completion ratio. Yes, the perfectionist in me is still alive and kicking as well. ;) I'm at the end of LoZ: Twilight Princess. and got several new games. Rainbow Six Vegas = Awesome game. :D I got Final Fantasy III. I sure do like to purchase addicting games for some reason. I got Crackdown. It's an alright game but lets face it. Most of us got that so we could play the Halo 3 beta, which I am still anticipating. I just downloaded a Halo 3 multiplayer video on the XBL marketplace which is awesome! It shows off the new bubble grenade and trip mines. I can't wait to play it! the video looks reall...Hey how come I can't copy and paste :? weird...um anyway the video is really cool. It shows off some of the new multiplayer maps and other things like the man cannon. 

One other thing I've been busy with is achievements. Microsoft achievement points to be exact. I'm not really an achievement junkie or anything. As some of them are way too easy to get. I mean..score a first down...come on! I've been playing the games that I have to try to complete them. Ever since the Xbox live rewards thing came out though, I've been even more determined to get points to finish the challenge. I need about 250 more points by Sunday to complete it. I might have to pick up Need For Speed: Most Wanted again to get them.

I guess I've been kinda busy with Final Fantasy XI on the 360 as well. It takes a long time to get stuff done in that game. Like leveling up. You can level up different jobs to play as. I've almost leveled everything. Here are my current levels. The max level you can have is level 75.

Red Mage: 62
Blue Mage: 45
Black Mage: 33
Thief: 27
White Mage: 26
Ninja: 24
Beastmaster: 20
Warrior: 17
Ranger: 14
Puppetmaster: 13
Paladin: 12
Samurai: 12
Dark Knight: 10
Dragoon: 7
Corsair: 7
Bard: 7
Monk: 6
Summoner: 1

For my Red Mage I have all 5 of my artifact armor pieces. Took me forever to get them. But they look cool. I'll post a screenshot in my next journal entry. Hopefully it will be a lot sooner than four months next time. :) If any of you want to message me or something I put up my email address.

On another note, my Birthday is coming up soon. This coming Monday the 23rd! Mine are usually kinda meh lol. I'm not sure if it's just me but this year is going by fast. Maybe too fast. Seems like I'm just going from game release to game release. And movie release to movie release. Already it's been 300, Grind House. Coming up is Spider-Man 3, Pirates of the Carribean: at World's End, Transformers, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, The Simpson's Movie...hmm I guess I did have a lot to write about! :P Well, for the three people that read this, thanks for visiting. I'll try to be around more often. :)

Umm...I mean...Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess for Gamecube! About time too, I think I preordered it two years ago. Two years is a long time and I tend to forget things sometimes. Things like, which EB I preordered it at. Not anything tooo important. There are two of them kinda close to one another but also far away in Berkeley where I usually get my games. One on Shattuck ave. and the other is on Telegraph. For some reason I automatically assumed I preordered it at the one farthest from where I work. Cause that's logical right? When I went down to the Telegraph EB pick it up during lunch they said that they didn't get the shipment in yet. At this point I would have checked to make sure I bought it there. Nope, didn't happen. I'm sure I would have normally but instead I got distracted by Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin, which I just had to buy. Also I only get an hour for lunch and here I am rushing to get some food as well. The guy said that they had the Wii kiosk with Trauma Center: Second Opinion if I wanted to wait for the FedEx truck to get there. I was pressed for time so I decided to go get some much needed food. Food > Games..sometimes.

Fast forward 4 hours later and here I am again at EB on Telegraph. Long walk and in the rain too. I asked if I could pick up my preorder, which was taking an unusually long time and the guy said that I wasn't in their system. My first thought was, umm wait...I did preorder it right? He then said it was possible that I preordered it at the other EB, the one that's more easily accessible to me from work. Yes, now that's something I should have thought of earlier. Sure enough, it was there that I preordered it. I then commented that, "I'm at least glad that I did actually preorder it and it wasn't just a figment of my imagination", as well as saying "Well...at least I got exercise".

I kinda felt like running over to the other store, but it was pretty slippery everywhere and too many people in the way. Felt like last minute Christmas shopping at the mall. Some people just like to walk in slow motion, as well as suddenly stop moving for no apparent reason. I finally got to the Shattuck EB and got my game. It felt like Christmas! Kinda was actually, like a Christmas present from myself from two years ago lol. As for the game itself, I'm not sure yet, I've been typing this for a while now.........*goes to play it*

PS: Whoa! No emotes in this entry! That's gotta be some kind of an achievement or something.

I'd say GameSpot After Hours was a hit that can be summed up in one word "Awesome"! :D Having experienced a game event in person before, I thought I knew exactly what to expect. Still, this event did manage to surprise me. Coming into it I kinda had a gameplan. Take a quick look around and see everything before I stopped to play any games. I recommend doing this if any of you were to attend one of these events. That way you won't miss anything. :) Close to the entrance was a Lara Croft replica. I got a quick shot of it.

After that I visited each of the indivivual gaming booths. The first game I got my hands on was Splinter Cell: Double Agent. It was the multi-player part of the game. Spies vs Mercenaries. It took a little time to get used to the controls like all games, but easy after I got into it. The multi-player is definitely a fun experience.

I spotted Guitar Hero 2 and had to stop and watch. The lines for the games were kinda long so I went on to look for some free stuff. In total I scored a poster of Justice League Heroes, some Smint gum, A glowing Scion necklace, wristbands, and demo cd. I got a Justice League Heroes comic book. The best part was at the end of the show when I got a GameSpot After Hours T-shirt. Not bad for a free event. They had food there, pizza and other stuff. But there was no chance that I would be buying a bottle of water or soda for $3 :P Luckily I ate before I got there.

In PS3 news, the graphics looked awesome for Full Auto 2, also I'm absoloutely loving the PS3 controller. It feels like the Dual Shock 2. I'm glad they changed it from the boomerang design. The system itself on first glance looked huge, I'm talking bigger than the first xbox. Maybe it was the lighting or something. You kinda forget about all of that when you start playing though. I still can't wait to get it! :D

I got to try out Mortal Kombat: Armageddon. The controls once again took a while to get used to but it's still as fun as ever I spent a while playing that. Using a bunch of different characters. Scorpion, and Cyrax I used quite a bit. I got to mess around with the Fatalities. You get to basically create your own. In a single fatality. I punched a guy in the face, Ripped out a bone from his leg, knocked him on his knees, uppercutted him to his feet, ripped off both his arms, spun him around, and ripped out his heart to end it. A pretty brutal finisher 8)

There was a huge crowd around the Dead Or Alive Xtreme 2 area. For obvious reasons I would assume...There was a really comfortable couch right next to it :P The game itself though had pretty sharp graphics, the gameplay was fun and addicting. It had a lot more types of mini games than the first one. Aside from the standard volleyball matches, they also had jetski racing, pool hopping race, flag grabbing and butt bumping. The last two I would normally leave to your imagination, but I actually recorded video on these two. :) I'll upload them soon.

I watched some of the stuff going on onstage, including when they were demoing the Wii with Super Monkey Ball 2 but most of the time I was busy playing games. The last game I was playing before the show ended was Battlefield 2142. I'm not really much of a PC gamer but it was pretty cool. I got several sniper kills, and shot some people in the back as they spawned. It was all in good fun! ;) If this game were on a console I'd definitely get it. It would be awesome on the Xbox 360.

When the event was over I wanted to get a quick shot of "something" before I left. Here it is, this is near the entrance.

It's a good thing I stopped to do this since they started giving away free T-shirts after a lot of people had already left lol. By the end of the night my feet and legs were kinda tired from standing around, but I'd say it was worth it. I can't wait to see what other GS events they will have in the future :D 

Whoa I just scored a VIP invite to Gamespot After Hours in San Francisco! :o Dude I am so there! It will be just like G.A.M.E. except this time I will be able to play PS3! :D I get to invite two friends when I RSVP. It's probably more fun with friends anyway so even better.

The event will be on Saturday October 14. It will be a night time event that lasts from 5 to 11 pm. 6 hours seems like such a short time for all that gaming lol. I'm not sure what games will be there yet but I'll make sure to play all the major ones. When I was at G.A.M.E. I spent 2 hours playing Dead Or Alive 4. I'll make sure not to spend too much time playing one game this time. :P Hopefully this event will be just as good or better than G.A.M.E. was.

I'd say that's progress ;)

Just checking it to see how everyone is doing and to let you all know that I've finished moving, and already got settled in with my wireless internet. w00t!! It's been a while since I was able to go on here regularly. Moving combined with FFXI. My Xbox 360 was the last to go lol. To all those who haven't forgotten about me, I hope to see you all again in the boards. :)

Please feel free to fill me in on anything that has changed here. It looks the same but, appearances can be deceiving. I'm pretty sure that they haven't restored the purged threads yet. Just a guess but and educated one.

If there was a theme song for the time I've been away I'd use Where'd You Go (feat. Holly Brook) - Fort Minor. I can't really think of a song for my return so I'll just use Give It Up To Me (feat. Keyshia Cole) - Sean Paul. Meh I'll add Fly Away - Nelly just cause I'm listening to it now :P

If anything I gotta flex my multitasking reflexes and get on here an equal amount of time I'm playing games. We'll see how it goes so wish me luck. Until next time, I hope you all are well. :)