Today I decided to go back and re-rate all of the games that I posted a review on Gamespot. I mostly focused on some of my older reviews because my opinion on a lot of the games have changed. A lot of the ratings have been lowed, and some stayed the same and a few were raised. Here are the results with my newest review first. Donkey Kong Country 2 Old: 8.9 New: 8.9 NASCAR Racing 2003 Season Old: 9.6 New: 9.6 F.E.A.R. Extraction Point Old: 8.7 New: 8.7 Mortal Kombat: Armageddon Old: 8.4 New: 8.4 Battlefield 2 Old: 7.8 New: 7.5 Half-Life 2: Episode One Old: 9.2 New: 9.0 F.E.A.R. Old: 9.3 New: 9.3 World of Warcraft Old: 8.8 New: 8.4 Black Old: 8.0 New: 7.8 Call of Duty 2 Old: 9.3 New: 9.3 Doom 3 Old: 8.8 New: 8.8 NASCAR 06: Total Team Control Old: 8.1 New: 7.9 Half-Life 2 Old: 9.2 New: 9.6 Counter-Strike: Source Old: 8.6 New: 8.0 Halo 2 Multiplayer Map Pack Old: 9.6 New: 9.6 Halo 2 Old: 9.6 New: 9.6 Halo: Combat Evolved Old: 9.5 New: 9.5 Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance Old: 8.8 New: 8.3 NASCAR SimRacing Old: 8.5 New: 7.7 NASCAR 2005: Chase for the Cup Old: 7.7 New: 7.0

Ok so I went to a tire place to get the brakes changed on my car because the brakes on my car were just about down to 0%. After sitting for 2 hours of waiting and later paying $150 I have new brakes for my car, now here's the insane part. In the waiting area in the tire place one of the walls is a big window so you can see out into the road. After sitting for about an hour waiting and staring at a boring soap opra on the piece of crap TV I herd a small boom and felt the room shake a bit. Everybody in the building was at first like "wtf was that?" then we looked out the window and saw a car screech to a halt with fire coming out from underneath the hood. The family in the car quickly got out and ran from the car, while a mechanic from the tire place grabbed an enstinguisher and put the flames out. The problem was that the engine was still on and the fire started up again, and that this is was right next to a very busy intersection so there was a lot of traffic. A person called for the fire department while the fire continued to grow. It didn't seem that it would be too bad until the interior of the car cought fire. In seconds the entire car was in flames. We worried about a fuel line getting set on fire cuase then the car would explode. Luckly, that never happened and the fire trucks came out and put the flames out. This all happened in about 5-10 minutes. It was crazy.

Well I went to a superbowl party which started around 3:00. There was about 10-15 of us watching the game. I rooted for the bears because one of their players, Bernard Berrian, graduated from the same high school I was in. Also because I normally don't watch football so I didn't realize that the Colts was obviously the better team. The 1st quarter was the most fun to watch. I left around 11:00 and got home around 15 minutes ago, I am tired despite drinking 5 Cokes and some Starbucks coffee.

Last week was a crappy week for me. My car had electrical problems so I took it to a dealership to get it fixed, which was last monday. They called me on two seperate occations saying my car was "fixed" and it wasn't. So 1 week and $1000 dollars later it is still being worked on (this time however, it is very likely that they screwed up and are trying to charge me again for their mistake.) Also I play CS 1.6 a lot, and have played the game for about 2 years. Natually, I have Steam on my computer. I got more confortable with Steam lately and started buying and playing games through Steam, reaching up to about 10-15 games total. Friday, someone stole my Steam account and I can't access it nor the games I have on it. When is this going to end?

If anybody knows what ESEA is then you'll fully understand what I'm about to say next. Last night I joined a pug for Counter-Strike via ESEA around 11:30 pm, the match did not end until 1:00 am thanks to 8 rounds of overtime. To make things worse it was on a crappy map, de_cpl_fire. When we hit overtime round 3, everybody was thinking that this was getting rediculous. By the time we hit overtime round 6, we stopped caring about winning and just wanted to get this disaster of a match over with. Anyways, the final score was 26-28 and everybody left the server within seconds of the match ending.

This morning around 7:30 I was awaken by my phone ringing. I thought to myself "Who could be calling this early?" I looked at the caller ID and it said "Central Michigan University." That immediately got my attention. Long story short, I got accepted to Central Michigan University!

Happy new year to everyone at gamespot!

This Halo 3 video was all about the Brutes. About how they were in Halo 2 and how they will be in Halo 3. We first started fighting Brutes towards the end of Halo 2, the Elites had resigned from the Covenant and the Brutes filled in for them. When fighting them, they were like big bad-ass Grunts. They were big and strong like the Elites, but instead of having energy shields they just simply took a lot of hits before defeating them. Soon anybody that was experienced with Halo 2 learned how to get easy headshots on them. You didn't have a huge unique experience fighting them as you did with the other characters, but they still had their own challenges. Their big weakness was that they didn't have much character in them, and it appears that is what we will see with Halo 3. Halo 3 is on its way, and it appears that the Brutes are now the new face of the enemy. If that is the case, they need an extreme makeover which they are getting. The Brutes in Halo 2 were ment to be the more brutal side of the enemy, but they looked more like dumb apes. In Halo 3, they now are fully geared up in weapons and armor. There have already been 3 classes of Brutes stated: the Standard Brute, Brute Captain, and Brute Chieftain. The Standard Brute appears to be the same as the Brutes we fought in Halo 2, basic weapons and armor. While the Brute Captain has a bigger helmet and more armor, and the Brute Cheiftain has very elaborate armor. From an artistic standpoint, the armor for the Brutes look like a cross between ancient Roman armor and Samurai armor. Which looks pretty cool. The character animations have also been redone. Bungie displayed animations of Brutes smashing people to the ground and destroying objects with their giant hammers, which appears to be the Brute version of the Energy Sword. Speaking of we also see a Brute holding a sword, which appears to be a Brute Captain holding one. So it could be possible that only the Captains and Cheiftains can have the sword/hammer. It appears in Halo 3 that the Brutes will actually be Brutes. This video arose one big question out of me: what's going to happen to the Elites? Right now I've come up with 3 possibilities. 1. The Elites remain at a "neutral" standpoint and fight both humans and Covenant. 2. They side with the humans. 3. They quit fighting in the war and "leave" the game. There's still a lot of unknown about Halo 3 but this video did do a good job showing us some of the enemy and some gamplay footage. The Brutes actually look like a lot of fun to fight against.

for the past 5 weeks i have been volunteering at an air museum helping restore a H model huey for static display before trading it off to another place and getting another huey that we will restore to flying condition. here some pictures. this is what the huey looked like after i had been there for about a week. me sanding the belly of the huey. we painted the huey in sections, doing the tailboom first. about a week and 1/2 later we painted the rest of the huey the base color. the finished project with all the markings on it. it is ready to be traded next week where they will finish the rest of the work. i.e. putting on the main rotor blades. while i was there, we got called up to do a flyover for a funeral with our B model huey, which was restored to flying condition. i got to go for about an hour ride.

I'm level 20 now!