Alright, so it's no big secret that this site has lost some key personalities, but it seems to me that the past few video reviews I've seen on this site are just plain bad. The most recent one I've seen is for The Bourne Conspiracy. This guy just drones on for five minutes about the combat mechanics. It never mentions the game's strong points or weak points, how many hours of gameplay, technical performance (graphics, framerate, etc.), in fact the video review doesn't even show the review score.

Bourne punches and shoots, I get it. Tell me whether the game is worth my money or not. This site is going downhill fast. Is giantbomb.com finished yet?

Sid Meier's Civilization Revolution.

Release Date: Early June or early July, depending on who has the right info.

Unreal Tournament 3 (X360)

Release Date: July 7

Yeah, I know this game is already out on ps3 and PC, but I don't have a ps3 and my pc sucks.

Command and Conquer 3 Kane's Wrath (X360)

Release Date: June 23

These are the games I will be buying shortly.

So I switched internet browsers today, from IE to Firefox. Man was this ever a great idea. Better performance; yeah, straight up faster performance from the Firefox browser. Plus I like the way it handles RSS. The real reason I switched was because IE had started giving me problems on random sites, i.e. I havn't been able to go to yahoo.com in like two months. Every so often I'd try to go to a site and IE would just lock up for no reason, so I finally got fed up and downloaded firefox. It also appears to handle AJAX a lot better, which gamespot uses a lot of, so there's another perk I'm enjoying.

Right, the comic book. Well, I've never been into comics, but I went and got an Iron Man graphic novel. I didn't notice till I got back to the house that it was written by Orson Scott Card, the guy who wrote Ender's Game - one of my favorate novels. Anyway, so I actually enjoyed the comic book. Prolly won't become a collector, but maybe I'll get one from time to time.

Over the weekend I of course saw Iron Man (see my previous blog), and also the Stephen King movie: The Mist. Aside from Schindler's List, and a few other holocaust movies I can think of, The Mist was the most brutal movie imaginable. I really wasn't expecting an ending like that at all. Speaking of Stephen King, don't know if you knew this but I'm a huge King fan. I've read twenty something of his novels, including all seven Dark Tower books. Some of you may know that they made a Dark Tower comic book series. lol. I have to read them. There's just no choice in the matter, I'm a Dark Tower nut. Details will follow when I get around to it.

Yeah, it deserves to be said twice.

So I went and saw Iron Man on openning night. I don't normally do that, nor am I a big fan of comic books or their movie adaptations. But I just had a feeling about this movie, and I'm happy to say that I was right about it. The story was cool. The acting was well above par for this kind of movie, and the special effects were amazing. It was just a very entertaining movie. I had no idea that Gwyneth Paltrow and Jeff Bridges were in it either. Gwyneth Paltrow plays Pepper, Iron Man's assistant, and she's delightful :) . Jeff Bridges plays Iron Man's business partner. He did a fantastic job with this role. The acting in this movie really stands out as being of a much higher quality than we're used to seeing in action films. I may go see this movie again while it's still in theaters, and I havn't done that since the first Bourne movie.

So I layed the groundwork for my own website. I got the domain and the dotnetnuke framework set up. I don't think I'm allowed to say the name of it on here, because it will eventually be a pay-site and mentioning it here would be advertising. It's a site about game design. You may or may not know that I make small video games in my spare time. The site isn't fully operational yet, and won't be for several months, but I've gotten the ball rolling.

In other news, it looks like I'll be over here at my mom's all next week as well. Her new husband travels a lot for work. That's why I've had to be over here so much. I really don't mind being here at all, but my mom lives on the complete opposite side of town from me which makes my drive to work incredibly brutal. I drive completely across Houston in downtown rush hour traffic. lol.

My sister came over here tonight also to spend the night. Apparently she and her husband have been fighting. :( I hate to put it like this, but that's not exactly suprising news. They fight a lot. I'm sure they'll make up just fine. They always do. Meanwhile, older brother (me) hasn't had a steady girlfriend in over a year now. Granted I havn't been back in Houston for that long and it's tough to meet new people, but I honestly just havn't been putting any effort into it. I hardly ever go out anymore. I just work, come home, and recoop. :) So I've decided to make an effort to go out more and meet new people. I've even thought about trying speed dating. I've always been good at the initial meeting part. I'm just a flirt. :) This would prolly give me an advantage in speed dating.

I've also found some new leads for a better job. If it doesn't work out with that internship with Jacobs, there's another complany I can go work for immediately doing what I do now. An old coworker of mine is starting with them next week. The pay is 22 bucks an hour, which is a significant raise from what I make now. We'll see though. If I don't here back from Jacobs by tomorrow, I'll call them and see what the score is.

So I got a new game (sort of). It's Moto GP 07. I saw it used at the good old gamestop and decided to buy it. I have 06 and got pretty good at it. I was expecting a big improvement with 07, but it really seems like they just added a few more trees on the sides of the tracks. lol. The rider models definitely have better animations in this one, along with some slightly improved bike physics, but to be honest I'm a little let down by it. I know it's an older game, and a lot of people don't play the Moto games anyway, but you know what? I took the time to learn all the tracks and get pretty good at the game, so there.

In other news, I still havn't heard back from Jacobs Engineering yet about that internship. Got me pretty worried but I'll be OK either way. I've been trying to get my union tournaments organized and started, but I've been working overtime hours this week so far. This will probably last through wednesday.

My mom is slowly getting better. She's due for a check up in three weeks to see if her bones have healed properly. I'm still over here taking care of her through this friday at least.

I'm talking about Command and Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars for the 360. I hadn't played it in awhile, but I've recently gotten back into it. The first eight or nine missions in the campaign are pure cake, then I get totally stuck on one in which I never even come close to beating. As for skirmish mode: I can win on easy with only one unit type usually. I then put it on medium and never come close to winning a match. Until I can get this damn wired internet connection problem fixed (everything is wireless at the moment), I'll be stuck playing all my xbox games offline.

So I had a busy day today. I got up early and went to the interview with Jacobs. It went pretty well. He said I should here back from them within two weeks at the latest with the final word. He gave me the impression that the job was mine, but they were looking for another summer intern as well. The office they had was amazing. It was more like a small city than an office building.

After all that came the fun part - having my wisdom teeth extracted. The procedure itself was of course painless, but I'm starting to hurt now. It should be a lot better tomorrow though. I'll be taking the day off from work.

I managed to squeeze in a couple of skirmish matches on CnC today. I'm trying to learn how to play Scrin. Still havn't won one match against the medium AI as scrin. Back to the drawing boards I guess. I'll get the hang of em eventually.

For those of you who don't know, the past two weeks have been pretty hectic/stressful for me. My xbox was broke and I was commuting way across town to take care of my injured mom. Well today is finally a day of rest and relaxation for yours truly, and I'm making the most of it because Monday the circus starts all over again. I have a job interview on Monday at 7, and I'll go straight from there to the dentist's office to have my wisdom teeth pulled (all four of em). And starting Tuesday I'll be back at my mom's after work everyday to take care of her again. Not complaining or anything, I like being there for my moms. But for now, I think I'll get back to my PJ's, my bean bag chair, and my working 360 for some more CnC3. I'm playing the campaign again. Man is it awesome. I rented that Universe At War. The controls are great, but the campaign is laughably bad. I'm in the mood for a good story so I'll stick to Command and Conquer this weekend.

Peace yall.

My Xbox 360 got back from the repair shop today. :) The bad news is that I'm at my mom's taking care of her still, so my power cable and controllers are not here. Bummer, going to have to wait till this weekend to make sure the repairs went right. I want to get my Command and Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars skills sharpened back up so I can play some guys from my union.

Right, the union... we've got 44 members now and growing a little everyday. I expect that the bulk of our members will come shortly after the releases of Halo Wars and Endwar.

I bought a DS and a couple of games for my mom yesterday. Today when I came back from work I found her playing with her new digital pet: Smooches (heaven help us). Yeah, so far Nintendogs is a hit. For those of you who don't know, my mom was in an accident and broke her foot very badly. She can't walk or drive, and she's stuck in the house for at least 10 more weeks. I thought she could use a diversion for when I'm at work.

I also filed my taxes last night. I know, I know - I put it off till the last night, but I was still on time and that's what counts. I'll be getting a little over 900 bucks back this year. It's gonna come in handy. There's a bunch of games I'll be buying this year. Six at least.

This coming Monday I have an interview with Jacobs Engineering for that job in their design office. And right after the interview, its off to the dentist to have my wisdom teeth pulled - yeah, all four of em. So I'll be taking the last of my paid time off from work on Monday and Tuesday. So long vacation/sick/personal time! Hopefully I'll get this new job and it won't matter.