Well I did it, I finally got me a 360. Got Wolfes old one off him since he upgraded to an elite. Not a bad deal, lower price, free Xbox subscription cards, a sexy Viva Pinata faceplate I had him give me. So yeah I'm finally next gen ready now. Still got no cash for games really but I did pick up FFXI so I finally have the third expansion pack and also borrowed Dead Rising from Wolfe. I'm kinda pissed though cause since he transfered everything to his Elite that means no Hexic for me... Ne ways if anyone cares my gammer tag is Spoon Dagger and all that good stuff. Off to game now yay.

Well the last few days have been rather busy for me, been actually doin stuff... seems that life I got on Ebay finally came in. Well Sunday was my birthday so I did what I do every year on my birthday. Every year for my birthday my mom takes me to see the Detroit Symphany Orchestra play at Meadowbrook, which is a nice outdoor ampetheater. Its nice we lay back on the hill, relax, watch the stars and enjoy the music. Normally the concert is a day or two off my birthday but this year it was actually on my birthday. It was kinda a bummer cause it rained but still I'm not that picky and still enjoyed my self sitting in the rain.

After the concert it was kinda funny, we ended up going to this bar and grill my mom loves. They make a salad that she really loves. She had never been there on a Sunday night, apparently they have a live comedy show every Sunday night. Yeah my mom is old and not exactly used to the vulgar nature of modern day stand up comedy. The restaurant is divided into 2 parts, smoking and non smoking basicly. The smoking section is pretty much the bar half of the place. When I walked in the bar was packed and there wasnt a single person sitting on the other side of the restaurant. We were the only ones over there but I'm not much of a fan of crowded noisy restaurants anyways so it was nice. My mom was just going nuts cause you could still here the comedian on the other side of the place swearing up a storm and telling vulgar jokes as just about all comedians tend to do, mom wasn't very happy.

Monday I went out with my dad for my birthday, just dinner and we went to see the Simpsons movie. I gotta say that movie really really sucked. I heard so many good things about it but to me it was just more of the same old stale jokes we've been getting for years. Actually it seemed like 75% were taken directly fromold episodes, 20% we all saw many many times in the tv comercials and only the last 5% or so were actually new. I'm sorry but you can't come up with a whole new plot and story then just cram in a bunch of played out jokes, it just doesn't work. Well the movie was terrible and I'm gonna leave it at that.

Yesterday was a great day. Went to see The Stooges last night and it rocked. Was kinda cool, my dad works at Meadowbrook, yeah thats where i was again, and he had some vouchers for $20 tickets so me and Wolfe decided to go. We got there and the lady at the box office told him to just wait for like 30 min and they should be getting free employee comps. So for nothin we got in and were in the 7th row. Was kinda pissed I was stupid and wore my sandles otherwise I woulda been in the pit. Yeah its nice to know people who can hook you up with stuff.

It was kinda funny, this was only Wolfes third concert and honestly his first real concert since he was a kid for the others. He just kinda stood there the whole time... people were actually asking him if he was having fun cause he didnt look like he was. He was rather amused by me though cause I was rocking. Iggy Pop may be pushin 60 but man can he still rock. Oh yeah for those of you who don't know the Stooges are an old school punk band, one of the first. They been together for like 40 years almost so as u can imagine theyre all rather old. I still had a blast and kinda annoyed people on FFXI last night I think cause when I got home I hopped on and was super hyper.

Anyways that was my fun few days of pretending to actually have a life. I'm gonna go now cause I gotta... well... doh I think I misplaced my life... oh well I'm still runing away now.

Well its been over a week since my last blog cause I've been rather busy lately. Last week just after writing my last blog I found out my Uncle died. So needless to say it was a long long week. Spent a lot of time with my Aunt and Cousin. The funeral was really tough too.

Things decided to keep being crappy once the weekend came. My buddy was supposed to be in from out of town and we were going to go out on his dads boat all day Saturday. Naturally he called me Friday at like midnight to tell me he isn't gonna be able to come up. After the week I had that really pissed me off cause I needed to relax and have some fun.

Yesterday things finally got better at least. I was out with Wolfe all day, threw out my back helping him carry his new T.V. to his room. We went to Best Buy and hung around there for a long time though and I picked up Elfien Lied. For those of you who don't know its an anime. Its very bloody and definatly not for kids but it was an amazing series. We watched the entire thing last night once we got Wolfe's new T.V. hooked up. I hadn't seen much of it before but all it takes is the first episode to get you hooked.

Other than that mainly been playing FFXI a lot lately. Don't know if its my internet or the game but been having issues connecting and what not a lot which is retarded but thankfully once I do get on its been running lag free and all that. Well I'm sick of typing so I'm going away now.

Well today I got stuck doing one of my least favorite things ever, cleaning all the windows in the house. The windows are really easy to do, its the screens that are evil. They're annoying to get out but the real issue is putting them back in. Last year we took a few hours to get them all back in. This year we decided to try to put them back in from the outside.

From the outside they actually aren't that hard to get back in. The first 3 were fairly easy, once my mom stopped screwing things up trying to put them in backwards. The last one on the first floor was a pain. I had to pretty much climb into a bush and put it back in with branches stickin up my butt. Needless to say it was really not comfortable.

Sadly when it comes to the screens my mom is fairly useless which means I got screwed. Any one who knows me well knows that while I'm not afraid of heights I do not like heights in small places like ladders. Still I got stuck having to climb up to put back in the screens on the second floor. Had to go to three neighbors before we found a ladder that was even tall enough.

Well now I'm tired, sweaty and my nerves are shot but thankfully its done. I just hope I can manage to find some way to get out of it next year. That ladder really sucked...

Well I went and did it and now I'm addicted again. I started playing Final Fantasy XI again. I've been out of the game for something like 4 or 6 months but now its almost like I never left. A few of my friends no longer play but a lot of them still do so I'm enjoying it. I was just glad that after all this time with my Content IDs canceled they didn't delete any of my characters.

I pretty much freaked out my friend Rukia. Rather than message people or sit in my Linkshell and see who gets on I set my status to invisible and unequiped my Linkshell (linkshells are items you use to comunicate with all your friends, kinda like a guild). Once a few people were on I re-equiped my Linkshell and said BOO!!!! It took Rukia a couple min to realize what was going on. He said he reread it like 8 times cause he couldn't believe I was back.

In other news I've been thinking and decided I need to join a new union. Ever since posting stopped in SEAB and Surrounding FocechangedI haven't really payed any attention to Unions. I'm still not sure what type of union I want to be active in though. I know I want lots of posting in the forums and a cool group of people. Part of my problem is I'm picky about liking things and not sure if I would want to join another Star Wars or Final Fantasy/Square Enix union. Half the problem with a lot of these unions is it seems their threads are just a bunch of games or whats your favorite threads. I always loved some of the in depth discussions we had in The Surrounding Force union. Don't get me wrong games and stuff are great but I want something more.

Anyways if any of you have any ideas of good unions let me know. I will say I'm not a Naruto or Harry Potter fan and don't want anything Nintendo related, haven't been into Nintendo since the SNES and not up for a Union about old games. I just want something fun and relaxing, it doesn't have to be big or anything just active.

Today was a very very very irritating day. First off yesterday I had to run a bunch of errands and stuff with my mom. It wasn't too bad and lucky me we went and got me an early birthday present. My birthday isn't for another couple weeks but we went to Best Buy to get me a new wireless keyboard and mouse. They had one on sale, Logitech MX 3200, for $70 which I had seen in the weekly ad and I kinda liked it and it was a good price. When we got there we looked at a few different and I ended up getting a Logitech MX 5000. Normally it runs $150 which is more than mom would want to spend on me but there was a opened/floor model/returned one. Not sure which but it had no box and was just shrink wrapped, but it was only $112 instead of $150 so I was happy cause I got a better keyboard then I had expected.

I hooked it up last night and well... got nothing. My computer wouldn't recognize it at all. I called Logitech when I got up today and after trying everything, most of which I had tried last night, we decided the reciever must be bad so I had to take it back. I had to swing by the bank on the way, which is never fun but it didn't take too long. When I got to Best Buy I sadly had to dish out the extra $40 to get an unopened one, I know I'm cheap but I like to save money. I got home all happy and thinking everything was all good.

Now I know any of you veteran gamers out there have thrown controllers and possibly keyboards across the room, or have at least come close. Well I almost threw my PC across the room cause of course the new keyboard didn't work either. It was then that I finally realized just how much of an idiot I was and went and tried plugging it into my moms computer. Of course it worked no problem which of course ment my USB ports were shot. I was rather pissed as you probly assumed. I had shelled out an extra $40 and taken back a perfectly good keyboard.

Well I decided that I wanted my $40 back and went up to Best Buy yet again and finally something good happened. They gave me back the one I had returned and gave me back my $40. I had to spend $20 of it picking up a 2 USB port PCI card but still its better than $40.

So now here I am finally typing on my sexy new keyboard and I'm loving it. I went over to a friends and did some gaming and stuff but I almost skipped it to come home and get this keyboard hooked up. Mostly played Catan, that game is strangely fun and addicting.

Other than that not much goin on. I rented Rouge Galaxy a few days ago and I gotta say I love it. I'm tempted to actually go pick it up. I'll probly write a review later this week when I get farther through it. I figure I actually should be around halfway done give or take. The combat system isn't anything special, I'm an old school RPG geek who prefers menu based combat to the real time combat almost all new RPGs use. The great part is the character and item development aspects of the game. The Revalation Flow charts remind me of the License system from FFXII but actually done well. The Frog Log and Factory are fun ways to make new items. Insectron Battling is a rather amusing little minigame to give you a little break from all the normal battling. Ok screw it I'm gonna go write that review now lol you see what you did you got me started and now I can't stop... its so all your fault...

Well E3 is over and I've had some time to digest all the info and figure I'll throw out my final thoughts on the subject. First the big 3.

I'll start with Nintendo since it will be quick. This year Nintendo for me was pretty much like the past few years, lots of gimics and nothing really interesting. I've made no secret that I feel the Wii in general is a joke. I'm still yet to see a single game that I have interest in, definatly nothing that would hold my attention for more than an hour or two. Nintendos only realy strong point to me is the DS and I never leave the house so I don't have a whole lot of room for a handheld.

Next up is Microsoft, which actually disappointed me a bit. It seems like all their focus has been in pushing their big sequals like GTA4 and Halo 3 which as some of you might have noticed, I'm not a fan of most of the big series out there. There are a couple of good games coming to the 360 though, Assassins Creed being the biggest of them. I do find it funny that while it was originaly announced as a PS3 game Assassins Creed is now showing all their love to the 360. I'm also looking forward to some other games, Masseffect and Folklore being the two I'm looking most foward too. I think part of what lost me interest in Microsoft this year was while they talked about all these games they didn't announce anything new really and said almost nothing about Xbox Live or anything.

Lastly is Sony who I thought brought by far the best to E3 this year. While they have lost exclusive titles they more than any other seem to be pushing forward. I was very impressed by Home which they focused on a lot this year. I think its a great ap and if they can pull it off properly dare I say it has the potential to make Xbox Live look simplistic and outdated. They announced a whole slew of games for the Playstation Marketplace and while none of them really knocked my socks off there were several games that looked fairly amusing and lets face it thats what the downloadable games are there for. Definatly their biggest game this year was MGS4 but they still had a few other strong titles like Heavenly Sword and the one that kinda suprised me LittleBigPlanet. Ok so LittleBigPlanet may end up being complete junk but it just might be that amusing game we never saw coming, kinda like Viva Pinata was for a lot of people.

Now then on to the good stuff the games. The one game that really seemed to suprise me this year was Call of Duty 4. Now I've made it no secret that I'm not much of a FPS fan but Call of Duty 4 looks amazingly good. I actually saw a Halo 3 trailer after watchinga Call of Duty 4 trailer and the first thing that popped into my head was why the hell are people so impressed with the look of Halo 3. Sure everything is shinier but the graphics look almost bad compared to Call of Duty 4, not to mention that it will be running at 60fps which is rather smooth. Add in the create a soldier system for multiplayer and its enough to get me interested in a FPS again.

There were plenty of games that we got pretty much no new info on this year which was a great disappointment to me. Well lets face it no one really expected much new on Starcraft II cause thats just the way Blizzard is but where was all the new trailers and info and stuff for Fallout 3?

In the games that I can't help but wonder why everyone isn't talking about them I'm kinda amazed that I haven't heard any mention of Army of Two. I know that all my friends are really looking forward to it but online I've heard nothing about it. This looks like one of the most creative and innovative games coming out this year. I mean lets face it shooters haven't done a whole lot amazing or new for years really. Every new shooter is basicly just better graphics and new weapons but Army of Two is a whole new concept and that I would think would get people talking.

Now for games the no one but me really cares about much. All I've got to say is Ace Combat 6 looks sexy.

What I don't really get it whats all this amazement with these music games. Now I know some of you are giant fans of the Guitar Hero games and stuff but I was suprised that Rock Band got this much focus. I mean lets face it all they really did was take Guitar Hero and Singstar and add in drums. I've been confused by the whole music game thing ever since I first saw DDR and to this day I still dont really get it but oh well. I just was kinda suprised that other than Halo 3 I swear Rock Band got the most coverage this year and it just amazes me.

Oh well theres my incoherent ramblings on this years E3, this blog is long as it is so I'll end it here.

Well I hate to blog twice in the same day but I gotta give my thoughts on the Sony conference too. I'm rather pissed I was having issues with Gamespot and couldn't get the stream loaded and missed like 30 min of the conference. I jumped in while they were talking about the PS3 online store. It sounds nice but I'm not so sure how long you'll have room on your HD if you dl full games through the store.

I like Home. They talked abit about the new version coming up and it looks nice. You'll be able to start and join games straight from home, even single player games. It looks like its gonna be a sweet well Home. I always liked games with giant lobbys and stuff where you could just kinda hang out while either looking for people to play with or if u just feel like chilling.

They also talked about the price drops and the new 80 gig PS3 of sexyness.

Wow the sweetest thing so far at E3 was just announced. Unreal Tournament 3 is going to be a PS3 exclusive, thats not the cool part though. You'll be able to port over maps and mods from the PC through the Playstation Network. That was always my biggest complaint about console games, there was never much modding and stuff on FPS. I used to play a lot of Rainbow Six on PC and we always played with some fun mods, it will be nice to be able to get mods on the PS3. Lets just hope that UT3 isn't the only game you can do that with.

You know theyre playing this little montage of some of the big titles coming to PS3 and so far I think Kain and Lynch is the only one that won't also be on the 360... kinda funny. And this stream is driving me nuts, for most of the videos theyre just using a camera far back that can see the whole stage rather than just show us exactly whats on the big screens like Microsoft and Nintendo did. Its really annoying trying to see whats going on, I hate when people film big screens like that. Oh apparently those were all supposed to be non exclusives, i think I missed a lot of the exclusives... Stupid internet.

Fun Hideo is here to show off Metal Gear Solid 4. Hopefully theres some good stuff here. Wow Metal Gear is 20 years old... man I must be getting old. Awww MGS4 is gonna be the final one, thats no fun. Man MGS4 looks sweet. I was kinda annoyed that it was only a trailer, I was hopeing for some gameplay footage at least. Cool next week in Tokoyo Hideo said he will have a demo for us. At least the trailer was real time and not a movie. It does look sexy. The first half of the trailer was kinda week but it finished off with a sweet fight between ninja Raiden and Vamp. I didn't recognize Vamp at first but he does look sweet... Raiden still looks kinda like a girl. I'm definatly looking forward to it early 2008.

Man I hate that pulled back view of 4 screens, they just showed Folklore which looks cool but I couldn't see it well. Just showed Heavenly Sword, terrible camera on the feed again but it looks rather sweet. Its kinda funny it seems like every designer has subtly mentionedhow they couldn't have made the game so great without Blue Ray. Uncharted: Drakes Fortune looks kinda cool, and its from Naughty Dog and you know they can make a good platformer.

Oh yeah the first trailer for Gran Turismo 5 Prolog. The game looks just stunning and if you know the team that does GT you know they're always a bit obsessive about making the driving as real as possible. I still plan to get a 360 first but I think I'm gonna have to shoot for a PS3 by the time GT5 comes out, screw this little precursors. Then they finished off with Killzone, it looks pretty but I'm not much for FPS.

I must say after the disappointment that was the Microsoft and Nintendo conferences I was actually pleased with Sonys. They got some good stuff coming up. I also thought it was pretty cool they did a lot of their intros on stuff using their characters in Home. I'm really tempted to get a PS3 just to screw with Home lol. Well in wrap up MGS4 looks sweet, naturally. Being able to transfer mods to the PS3 from PC for Unreal Tournament 3 is sweet and I hope you can do the same with other games. Folklore and Heavenly Sword look interesting so I'll need to keep an eye on them. They didn't spend the whole time saying how great they are like Microsoft and Nintendo did... they did say how great Blue Ray was a lot though... but still I guess thats an improvement.

My final thought is Sony started a bit slow but they got a lot of goodies in the works, don't count them out just yet.

E3 is disappointing me so far this year. I kinda screwed up and thought that the Micosoft conference started at 9:30 PST instead of 8:30 PST and missed the first half hour. It seems I didn't miss much. It was a rather disappointing show. They didn't really show us anything new. Even the new trailers they showed were just more of the same old stuff we've seen. Sure I enjoyed the Assassins Creed demo but it really wasn't anything all that new.

I'm currently watching the Nintendo conference and its been rather annoying. First off this guy is such a freaking tool, I just don't like him. He talked about how many women are now gaming thanks to Nintendo for what felt like hours. That and I'm so sick of Nintendo saying they have the biggest system cause the DS is selling like mad. They need to realize its a handheld so you really can't compare it to regular consoles. I know several people who own multiple DS because they're not that expensive and you need more than 1 for multiplayer. Go ahead and say you dominate the handheld market but stop claiming that you own the entire system market with it.

They just showed the new Zapper a bit ago and is it just me or does that look incredibly uncomfortable to anyone else. If you're gonna make it like a 2 handed assault rifle you need to give it some size. It will be nice though cause now what you do with the Wiimote...(god I hate that word...) will actually be like what your character does in the game. I'm sorry but I can't stand any Wii advertisement cause I'm sorry shaking a little controller is nothing like swinging a sword. I've never seen anyone actually play Zelda and swing the thing around, they just shake it. I'm sorry but shaking a remote isn't that much fun.

Now I know a couple of you out there are Metroid Prime fans but I just have to ask why? I really don't get it. Any FPS that actually has lock on targeting just doesn't make sense to me.

OMG he just starting talking about when will Nintendo get serious about online play and is acting like they already are cause people are playing Pokemon online... Since when is one game being serious? Oh wait they have another 5 games going online, man they are serious. Considering 2 are Madden and Guitar Hero III which will be online on every system kinda takes away from it. That and does anyone else think that Mario Kart shoulda been online long ago? I know I just mentioned I don't like it but why isn't Metroid going online? Or Soul Calibur for that matter... Or did they just not mention them, you would think they would... A serious online company would also be putting Smash Bros. online too.

Well the Worldwide President is just finishing up talking about games for everyone and I can't help but wonder where the hell are Nintendo games for people like me? He said remember when you first started gaming and what it was like and all that but I gotta say I don't mind you making games to bring in new people just dont claim they are games for everyone. Nintendo doesn't have a single freaking game for the hardcore loser like me who rarely leaves the house and wants something tough and in depth. Pretty much none of their games could keep my interist for more than an hour or so, if they last that long.

Well we got to see some more bad games and uselessly stupid devices. I still cannot for the life of me see what the appeal of the Wii is. I can see whats been drawing people to the Wii but I just don't understand how any part of the Wii can appeal to a even semi serious gamer. Well thats 2 conferences down now and so far the only thing that I've really seen that is even worth mentioning really is the Assassins Creed demo from Microsofts. I just hope we get some good stuff goin later in the week.

Well yesterday was Independance Day here in the States and I had tons of fun as usual. Every year I go to my aunts and we barbeque and light off fireworks and stuff. My grandmas birthday is today so every year we have a cake for here and celebrate it on the fourth. It seems like I spend most of my holidays at either my aunts or grandmas but we always have plenty of fun.

The fireworks this year were pretty good. My cousin tends to spend a lot of money on them and has one of the better non professional shows in the area. I was kinda disappointed that our show was so short this year though. My cousin is kinda a pyro and he couldn't wait and lit a bunch off on Sat. Still he lit over half off on Sat and we still had enough for a couple hours of fun. My favorite is always those spinning wheels that you nail to a board, one of these days they will give me a seizure or something it seems but they are sweet. We always have something big for our grand finale too and this year it was great.

The only downside to lighting off fireworks is my aunt is one of those pariniod overly safe people. Every year she tells my cousin hes not allowed to go pick up fireworks but every year he does anyways. We are safe when we light them though, we don't tend to do anything stupid. This year she seemed a bit worse cause a couple days ago there was a story on the news that some lady got killed lighting mortars. For those of you who don't know what mortars are they basicly are just balls that you drop down a launch tube and light. They are fairly loud and big and are always fun. Apparently this lady lit one and it didn't go so she decided to be crazy stupid. She walked up to the launch tube, looked down it and shook it. Big suprise that it blew up right in here face. Some people are just too stupid to light fireworks. I mean yeah its too bad she died but come on it was her own fault.