Please Excuse My Tardiness...

in posting to my blog.  I haven't been feeling myself lately.  Well, that and I haven't done any real thinking on what to post as of late.

First off I have GERD or Acid Reflux and it's gotten so bad as of late that they had to bump up my appointment with the Gastroenterologist.  For quite some time I've been having chest pain and before that I was taking Aciphex, which is like Prilosec or Prevacid, to stop heartburn.  The heartburn had gone for the most part and I've been fine until the chest pains.  All signs pointed to my stomach.  My heart is perfectly fine.  I had a scope done down my throat and all to find I have moderate esophagitis.  Which is the wearing away of my esophagus.  Yesterday was when I had my appointment bumped up.  I call, because I was complaining of a soar throat and various worsening of my symptoms.  Last night I had the worst pain since my kidney stone.  I hurt so bad, I could barely stand it.  As it was close to my time to take my stomach medicine, I took that and several minutes later was much better.  I may fill in what happens next later.

I must warn anyone that is addicted to Mountain Dew or any soda with caffeine that drinks as much of it as I used to.  Try switching to Kool-Ade.  I know water isn't the same thing and it can taste quite bad to many people, especially after drinking it for so long.  Caffeinated soda is really a bad thing for your stomach.  I have finally got off of it completely now.  I may have one when I go out once in a while, but I will not buy them by the case anymore.  This stuff can lead to some serious complications.  GERD is not a good thing at all.  Don't just deal with the pain.  Untreated GERD can even lead to cancer.  But of course I'm being currently treated for this.  I do have some worries, though.  I plan on trying to find alternate things to eat, too.  The biggest culprits in my previous diet included tomato based products, spicy foods, and things that contain a lot of grease or fat, which is ground hamburger or any fried foods.  Also citrus is one of the biggest no-nos of all.  I stopped drinking orange juice many years ago, because it gave me mad heartburn.  Funny how Mountain Dew(just one bottle)didn't bother me as much as it contained orange juice.

E3 '12

It seems everyone is into Halo 4, but as I am not a big Halo fan I won't talk about it here.  It's a sequel.  It's another cool shooter and the fans are talking.  That's it.

What grabbed my attention?  Assassin's Creed III.  Sure it's another sequel, but I saw things in that that make it much more unique than previous sequels.  It does take place during the Revolutionary War in our country, The U.S.  What makes this unique as far as gameplay?  Wilderness travel.  All the games before featured anything outside cities as waypoints to other areas of the games.  There is fighting of bears.  There's hiding and running along the narrow branches of trees.  Unique assassinations.  If you watched the demo on E3, note the way Conner hangs the red coat from the tree.

One of the biggest presentations on E3 was brought to you by Ubisoft.  They started out with a presentation on a world wide OS that runs everything in all cities and town, like electricity, street lights, etc and EVERYTHING has the potential to be hacked in reality, so the idea of one OS controlling everything is dangerous.  When I saw this video presentation, I wondered where they were going with it.  The next part was a description and title of a new IP called Watch_Dogs.  This game is simply amazing.  The character you play can hack into phones and spy on conversations.  He can trap people with anything and everything that is controlled by this OS.  For instance, the street lights, which he used to create an accident to get to his target.  Truly a unique game.

Lollipop Chainsaw.  First glance at this title screams bargain bin garbage.  And at this point even with the show gameplay, I'm still skeptical, but they are really pushing this game, so there must be something to it.  We'll see when the game comes out and is reviewed.  Right now it looks like a flashy, gorey, and rainbowy  action zombie brawler.

The Last of Us.  This game looks simply amazing.  Explore a world where a fungus has taken over people's brains and turned the into zombies.  But what's a zombie world without renegades who are violently trying to survive by killing anyone that is barely a threat.  Beware when you run into them.  The action in the game isn't too simple.  There's a lot of stealth like in many games now.  Hold a man hostage.  Use him as a shield.  Gorgeous graphics.  Can't wait to see this one.

So, what can I say about the Wii U.  Well, like the original Wii, I'm initially skeptical.  Wii won me over late in the game, but the only problem was the lack of 3rd party support.  Hopefully that changes with the Wii U as this is much more like a ps3 or Xbox 360 and then some.  Nintendo doesn't disappoint.  It's been taking people by surprise and it probably will again.

No announcement of a new PS or XBox.  Rumors people.  Rumors.  They mean nothing to me.

Oh, another game that has me intrigued is the new Dragon Ball Z game that uses the Kinect.  Just make the motions for a kah may ah may ah and so on.  A fighting game that uses motion control?  Nice.  Prepare to get tired.  That is, of course, if this even works as it should.

Take note of another game.  The new Tomb Raider.  Gameplay looks superb.  Can't wait to play.

So, are you an Elder Scrolls fan?  Skyrim is the first one for me to actually be playable.  I love it.  Now, I'm not going to be play a subscription based MMO again, but it will be truly interesting how this will translate into an MMO next year when it comes out.

By now everyone knows that Ghibli studios made a game called Ni No Kuni:  Wrath of the White Witch.  It seems like another J-RPG, so if you're a fan of Miyazaki and JRPGs this is a game to look into and Ghibli being known for it's stories will not fail us.  This comes out early next year.  It has taken a long time to localize this game as they try hard to make the dialog and story fit English speaking countries such as ours.

Yandere

This is a new word to me. The Japanese word Yandere refers to a person that is seeming nice at first, but is a complete psycho. Or someone that is completely obsessed with someone that they can be quite violent.

My first thought that came to mind when I heard this was Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni or When They Cry. That anime is straight up crazy. Nearly every main character in each alternative story arc ends up killing someone in the sickest most sadistic ways.

*SPOILER alert*

Another would be School Days. The two girls are Yandere to the max. The guy cheats on these girls and one girls stand him to death. The other confronts her, cuts her open and she the takes his head and cuddles with it on a boat.

To a smaller extreme there is Kaede from Shuffle. This girl has jealousy issues she did something she regrets to her cousin when she was a kid and yes it was a psycho moment. Later in her life she loves him, but only because she's so sorry for it. But her love turns to obsession and she attacks the friend of his that later becomes his girlfriend. She shoved her into a wall hard and yelled at her to get out and give him back to her. Her eyes screamed psycho. Din't get me wrong. She's really not a bad person, but she's very mentally unstable. She's the lesser extreme of yandere.

Men can be yandere, too, but I can't think of any that I have seen. Anyways, yandere. Crazy stuff. :)

This Is What Corporations Do.

Ok, you see when a company is in the red, what they do is they look at all the companies that have some reaction to them and they see what products they have and blindly try to find something to sue them for and cross their fingers hoping that they find a four leaf clover and they roll their lucky dice hoping against hope that they will get a lot of money.

This is not fiction!  This is reality!  They abuse the law in their favor, because our American legal system lets them do it.  No common sense is involved.  Just a giant book of laws.

Laws shmaws!  Common sense overrides any law that is in place.  With that said let's talk about the possibility or should I say impossibility of the banning of the XBox 360 in the U.S.

So, Motorola is losing money, so they spot a victim known as Microsoft and they go after their system XBox 360 specifically.  Now what's the basis for the sue.  They (Microsoft) is using video codecs that Motorola owns patents to.  Ok, but they clearly put these codecs out for everyone to use as fair use.  Millions of people use them everyday.  Companies use them everyday with no repercussions.  And why don't they go after them? Because it's free to use and many of them don't have as much money as the big MS.

So now a judge that has the knowledge of the book of U.S. laws says, "Ok, lets throw away common sense.  Let's just forget for a second that there's an implied 'fair use' in these codecs.  And then we can have this violence box banned from the U.S.  That way we won't have hooligans in the streets ripping each others spines out on the street."

Ok, so this is what the judge recommends.  Ban the Xbox 360.  Don't just ask MS to pay some money to a greedy company, but ban a product outright.  A system that has been out for years and APPARENTLY flew under Motorola's blind ass radar several years ago.  That's another big deal.  Why the hell would a company wait years knowing something and then suddenly sue.  $$$$$$$$  That's why!  Corporate outright greed!  And the law is blind to this outrage!  It's completely blind to the fact that most companies that sue other companies do it for no other reason than, because they want someone else's hard earned cash.  Why is it soooooo hard for our stupid ass government to see and do something about these stupid situations?

WHATEVER!  You know what?  The he** with it!  Why don't we all become legal thieves!  Everyone's doing it!

Online Dating

Soooo, I'm getting rather lonely.  Well I have been.  I'm not getting any worse.  Maybe I've gotten to the point where I know that online is the only place I really get to know new people.  So I'm trying online dating.  I've had a profile in several places.  Free like Plenty of Fish and OKCupid, but they don't work for me, because there aren't many people around here on it.  So I actually tried Zoosk.  That has many more.  I've searched through and sent quite a few winks or messages.  No response yet, but it hasn't been quite a week yet, but I feel lost there, too, because although there are plenty of good looking girls on there, I don't see messages coming back to me and I already have a bad idea as to how it would go.  I feel that it's been a wasted effort.  A big gamble spending money on something like this.  Really this is the only place I can find people near me that I'd date or would date me, if that is even a possibility.

I think What I'm going to do is cancel my membership there within a month and see what happens.  If there are any private messages sent to me while I'm gone I'll know, but I'll have to pay to see them.  Perhaps that's the plan.  Or try yet another site that's popular.

What do you think?  Have you tried it?  Is it any good?  If I don't get out much, then where else can I look?

Tim & Eric's Billion Dollar Mehvie

Yeah, I said it. Meh-vie. Don't get me wrong. I love Tim & Eric's humor and parts of this really were funny.

For those that don't know Tim and Eric. There a close comedy duo usually seen in Cartoon Network's Adult Swim programming block. Their sketches include old 80s style commercials, cable access like programming and various other abstract comedy.

It's hard to really tell you much more about their comedy, because it's so bizarre and abstract. In fact only certain types of people love their goofy sense of humor like I do.

Spoilers ahead possibly. If you like Tim and Eric chances are, like me, you'll watch it anyway. It's them being what they are known for.

That being said and this being a full uncensored R rated film Tim and Eric go all out and let loose. This often ends up being hilariously stupid and even disgustingly funny. However some parts, for me, went into disgusting areas that were a hair too much for me. I'll try to keep this from being too descriptive, but there's a poop scene, a sex scene and piercing scene that over did it for me.

I kind of noted that this seemed a little like it was influenced by Weird Al's movie "UHF." Tim and Eric try taking over and making an old mall better again. Hmmm. Sounds like when Al tried to bring an old UHF station back from the dead. Of course if you've ever seen a Tim and Eric show, you'll know that Al makes an appearance once in a while.

I hope Tim and Eric go back to doing Adult Swim. Their show is much better there.

International Day Against DRM

Spread the word.  The music world has won the war against DRM already, but it doesn't have to stop there.

DRM, for those that do not know is a form of copy protection designed to work only on devices registered by the seller of the media.  Sounds good for those that want to prevent piracy.  In fact outside of that you may feel ok with it as you may not plan to use the media you bought on anything else.  Here's where the problem lies.  eReaders can't read all e-books.  Why?  Because if you buy an e-book on Amazon, you'll need a Kindle or a Kindle compatible device like an iPhone or Android phone with a kindle app.  So they might have this great book you want on your Nook that you bought from Barns & Noble.  Trouble is that it's on Amazon.  Uh-oh.  Now you need a Kindle.

But that's not a problem for me personally.  Here's another predicament.  Let's say I finally give up on the DVD format.  In fact I know a few shows that should have been on DVD long ago, but the problem is that it's only available on iTunes, which carries DRM.  So you might tell me to just watch it on my computer.  WHY?  I'd MUCH rather sit in my recliner to watch the show.  I have a Playstation 3.  Ok, why not just stream it through my network from my computer to my PS3.  That doesn't solve anything.  I've tried doing it once.  I'm a techy, if you haven't guessed.  Why doesn't it work.  I have no idea.  I follow the directions.  To be quite honest most people don't even have the knowledge and skill to do it, if it even worked.  Well, there goes that plan.  If I want the series then I must watch it on my computer.  Oh, so maybe I can stream it with the new Amazon application on PS3.  Well, I wish I could.  Netflix works just fine over our internet line, but does Amazon?  Well, I have had a few free bucks to spend that was meant only for video purchases.  I got these from buying something else on their site.  Well I got The Dark Knight and Se7en.  Two great movies.  I tried streaming them through DSL just like Netflix.  It pauses to buffer after not even a minute.  We have a weak internet connection here.  As for why Netflix works most of the time and Amazon always fails.  Who knows.  Their speed requirements are exactly the same.

We SHOULD be able to freely copy these videos to a disk just to play them wherever and whenever.  This entire copy protection they call DRM doesn't just cripple our rights, but it makes things so convoluted that who's going to buy electronic media?  I don't.  I'm still buying DVDs and Blu-rays.  I guess I'll do without some of these great shows that are only available through electronic means.  If you want my money corporate America.  You damn well better earn it.  Till then, you aren't getting one red cent from some crippled video file you sell.