The day I entered the 21st Century

My fiance suggested today while we were at the mall that we stop by the Best Buy she works at and apply for a store credit account. (We had tried previously a year earlier but were declined).

My only intentions at the mall were to pick up a new game and maybe see the Simpsons movie.

Since our last attempt I have financed a $20,000 truck and have been issued a mastercard so my credit is steadily improving. I said sure why not. We applied and we were approved, for a large sum of credit.

Anyway, I finally bought what I've wanted for years, and now all my gaming competitors will suffer my wrath!
a
Samsung 40" Flat-Panel LCD HDTV



Plus I got HDMI connectors for my cable box, a $200 monster surge protector, and a $250 Harmony 880 universal remote.

Altogether it totaled over $2200.00 but with my fiance's discount I only paid just over $1600.00 for all of it!

Damn I love her.



.... still havn't seen the Simpsons movie though.



Posted by V10L3N7_JAY @ 6:07 pm EDT | Permalink | 1 Comments

Enjoying a mid-week break

So I came home from Albany yesterday afternoon. I'm not going back this week but I may be going back Monday. Anyway when I got home last night Michelle and I decided to go out. We got tickets to see the 10 pm showing of Transformers and then we went to TGI Fridays for dinner.
She forgot her drivers license so she couldn't get any alcohol, MUAHAHAHAHA so I just had to rub it in a little bit by ordering a Blueberry, Mango margarita. But in the end I caved and at least bought her the collectors margarita glass the drink came with.

Dinner wasn't really that good and the service was terrible. The waitress forgot about our appetizer so we didn't get anything to eat for almost 30 minutes and then she served our entree's about 2 minutes after finally giving us our appetizer. Plus anytime we asked her to get us something like butter, water, whatever, she responded with "Sure thing, I'll get it right now."

And then she'd wander over to another table and chitchat with these 2 guys she apparently knew for about 10 minutes or so before finally going to get what we asked for!

Normally I'm a really good tipper, the meal came to $50 and I probabaly would have tipped $10-$15. Which is well above the norm. But I was angry at the lousy service so I kept telling Michelle I wasn't giving our waitress a tip at all, and she agreed with me.
But I guess I'm just a softie because when she gave us the bill and I handed her my credit card I still wrote in a $5 tip on the reciept. I just can't not tip!!!
-------
I'm kind of bored today so I was reading my Halo:Ghosts of Onyx book and it got me thinking ... I miss the Halo 3 Beta, I miss playing Halo 3, and I miss making Halo montages!

I made these while the Beta was available.
This was my first montage ever, its a little choppy and no real organization.



Then this one came, I experimented with different transition wipes and special effects.



Then I did this one as a tribute to my clan, the footage from this one is not just from me but from 4 of us.



I can't wait for the full version of Halo 3 to come out.  By the way if anyone is reading this and would like to see the full hi-res versions of those videos, they can be downloaded at www.unscsection3.com


Posted by V10L3N7_JAY @ 12:26 pm EDT | Permalink | 0 Comments

Albany sucks

No offense to anyone who lives there but I just spent all of last week living in a hotel room because I was in Albany working "out-of-town". I got to come home for the weekend but am headed back there tomorrow morning.

The stupid thing is because of the holiday I'm out there for Monday and Tuesday, come home Tuesday night and have Wednesday off because of the 4th of July, then I go back out there Thursday morning and come home again Friday night.

I'm getting real sick of thruway I-90.

Posted by V10L3N7_JAY @ 12:17 pm EDT | Permalink | 1 Comments

Reconciliation

Ever since we were 10 years old my best friend Mark and I did everything together. We drew pictures constantly in school, we hung out every weekend, raided the mall after school and dominated the arcades.
Our passion was horror movies and after college we eventually started up our own company that specialized in special effects, prop making, and haunted attraction designs. When we were in our early 20's we were contracted to design build and run a haunted park for a local ski resort. We built it on a $2000 budget, called it Haunted Hills, and it ran for 4 weekends during the halloween season.
We produced a $15,000 profit.

2 years later we opened our own haunted theme park and ran it successfully for 3 years until it finally happened.

Last July due to mounting pressure to produce and money squabbles, Mark and I parted ways with a lot of bad blood left behind. We havn't seen each other or spoken to each other since. 20 years of inseperable friendship shot down the drain in one night over money.

Until today. I extended the olive branch and sent him an email admitting that while I was still angry over several things, I was wrong about the way I handled them. A few hours later, he responded by saying that we're both too old for holding grudges and that high school ended long ago.

And while he isn't ready to dive right into being "best buds" again, he does want to take things slow and see what happens.

At least we're talking, and maybe some day I'll have my bro back.

Posted by V10L3N7_JAY @ 9:56 pm EDT | Permalink | 2 Comments

Gears of War Glitch Points?

Me, Josh, Jerry, and Burnsy all got together late last night and played Gears of War with a couple other people they know. I joined the match late but we ended up just playing Annex a bunch of times 3 vs 3.
But the thing is each match we would take turns winning, it took me a couple of round to understand what they were doing but one team would capture the territory and let the time climb to between 115-119 seconds, then the other team would grab the territory and win the round. We'd do that for 3 rounds and then it eould be the other teams turn. I had no idea at first why they were doing it but then Jerry said the new achievements they released with the last update can be gotten in player matches instead of ranked matches like like before.

After about an hour and a half of this I ended up getting these.


Now I don't glitch, I dispise glitchers. However I also don't play ranked in Gears of war because it's a team based game but they don't allow you to team up with friends. That's the gayest thing ever so I refuse to play with random people and hope by some miracle we can pull off a strategy. Nope, I just avoid ranked altogether, so this time I think Epic owes me one.

Posted by V10L3N7_JAY @ 9:44 am EDT | Permalink | 0 Comments