Got My Wrangler

Well, I had to pass in August when even with the employee pricing, I was worried I couldn't afford it.  Glad I waited. 

I called my dad on Monday to wish the old man a happy birthday and he told me Jeep was having 0% on the 06 models.  Now that's not all that uncommon.  However, if you wait until the end of the commercial you see a disclaimer that states that it doesn't apply to the Wrangler.  Because they are so impractical, the Wrangler is one of those vehicles that you either want or you don't...sorta like a mini, a wrx, evo, etc...there usually isn't much of a need to provide a financial incentive to buy one.  This time around, they were clearing house, and were including the 06 wranglers.  Even more, they were giving you 0% for 60 months.

For the next two days, I didn't get much work done.  I checked the inventory of every dealer in about 50 miles.  I ran the numbers again and again.  Finally, I just said screw it, and on Tuesday night I bought a 2006 Midnight Blue Wrangler X. 

Hopefully, I can keep my wife from stealing in when the weather gets warmer.

Battlefield 1942

Holy crap.  I missed the boat on this one.

On The Office, last thursday they were playing Call of Duty at the Stamford branch.  I came into my office last friday and thought it would be fun to download a 1942 demo and see if it would run on my office computer.  The next step was to throw it on a memory chip and distribute it around the office.  It spread like wildfire.  Who knew I had so many closet gamers.  The game is a blast and I'm 28 years old and I've just had my first LAN 'party' at my office.  We've een playing for a couple of hours each day after work.

Yesterday, I spent my lunch hour running around to all the game stores buying up any and all copies of the complete collection that I could find.  With BF2 out and BF2142 on it's way, these things have been pretty hard to find. 

Does anyone else still play this?

WOW and Oblivion

The other day I called my buddy upstate to make plans for Halloween and another friend's birthday party and he seemed pretty distant on the phone.  I figured he was probably playing a video game while we were chatting.  I asked if he was playing a game and he said yes.  The two of us had stopped playing WOW almost nine months ago...or so I thought.

Then I asked him if he was back to playing WOW and he said maybe.  'Maybe'? It was like I was asking him if he had started doing crack again and he was trying to hide it, but couldn't get enough balls or creativity to lie to me.  'Maybe'.  It was pretty funny.  Hell, I guess that was a taste of what I used to put my wife through when she would try to talk to me while I was playing.

The South Park WOW was hilarious.  It was great advertizing and we all get a good laugh at both ourselves and the game. 

I've started to immerse myself back into Oblivion.  It looks great on the new TV.  My last character was a jack of all trades.  So much so, that when I would log I never knew what to do with myself.  I could use everything and I was good at everything so I would spend most of my time hoarding loot and trying to multitask through different quests at the same time.  I beat the game with this guy but now I really don't have much of an interest in playing him. 

I made monk.  I figure I'll try and role play him a bit and ony use my fists and bow.  Since I'm prety stealth based, I think I'll rob the world blind and even become a vampire.  It will be a nice change from the Mr. Goodguy-magic-user-sword -and-bow-expert I ran with the first time around.

Tom Waits

Just like the feeling you get when you find a great video game, I love when I stumble onto some new music.  I especially enjoy it when I show up late to the party and realize that the artist I've only just discovered has a huge catalog of work.  This brongs me to my latest 'find'...Tom Waits.

This guys is great.  Back when Jane and I got engaged a buddy of mine gave me Closing Time.  It's a real depressing album, but it's got a lot of heart and emotion in it.  I was suprised to hear that he was the guy who wrote Goin' out West...as heard in Fight Club and covered by another one of my favorite bands, gomez.  9 months later, I was on a road trip with this same buddy and he gave me 3 live bootlegs.  Now, for those of you who don't know who Tom Waits is, I'll try my best to describe him.  His music is pretty eclectic.  He'll go from slow and smooth, bringing a tear to a grown man's eye, and then another song will have his raspy throaty voice feel like it's drilling into your skull.  Understandibly, it can be a somewhat unpleasant experience...at first.  These live CDs fell into that catagory.  When my buddy was playing them in the car I had to ask him to turn it off after a while.  The quality was shit and the balance was all off, but when I began to listed to them on my own I started to hear his spirit come through.  So, I would listen to them and skip through to the tracks I liked and skip the rest.

This past weekend I went out and bought the CDs where some of the gems were originally released.  Goin' Out West on Bone Machine and 16 Shells from a Thirty-ought Six on Swordfishtrombone.  Holy crap.  First off, the studio quality really helped on these tracks.  It made the good songs great.  Second, I also found so many other great songs on the albums.  Third, these albums are 14 and 23 years old.  There is so much more of this guy to discover.  It's great.

The thing with EB trade-ins

I was reading about the Hawaii EB Wii and PS3 pre-order and it reminded me of my constant battle with going to video game stores to trade-in.  I think it can be described as an insecurity.  I think I may be a pussy.  First, I don't use ebay because I am a spaz and, while I am sure it is simple and they've worked out all the kinks, it just seems like a pain in the ass.  So, when I buy a crap game or am just looking to shed my collection for some extra 'cash', i head on down to EB or Gamestop. 

I walk up to the counter with a game in my pants or a small ShopRite bag full of games and hope for the best.  I always think the guy behind the counter is either laughing at me because I am selling for a percentage of what the games were once worth or because I am admitting that I bought a lemon.  It's even worse if the guy is a damn video game elitest.  Coincidently, tomorrow I am returning the two copies of Nintendogs I bought for my wife and myself (we both have DS Lites) because I can't get into it and she thinks it's too creepy.  I'll bet the guy behind the counter tta get a kick out of the grown man who walks in and trades in two copies of Nintendogs.