Today has been go go go from the very start.
I got up early (well about normal time) to get gifts wrapped (see bagged) for BZ, as its her birthday. Gifts went over well.
Then rushed to get in to school, but still got in late. I'm down in the stupid shuttle lot and its raining.
Lab work has been constant.
Went through a lot of emotional stress, but doing better now. Well some what better, maybe beter in general. No time to think. No time to write.
Still have to get classes stuff sorted out.
Have to show my apartment again tonight, hopefully these people will take it.

I'm feeling better today. Got in at a decent time, even with about a 20 min hold up in middle town. I still got a garage spot. The rain is nice as its really cooled the place off so its not nearly as hot and humid.
Listing my appartment on Craigslist.org worked pretty well. I still have it, but I got about 6 hits for it toray.
In better news we sold another two boards between yesterday and today. We seem to be doing about one sale a day, which seems ok to me to start until we get some major advertising going.

Today is also my brother's birthday so I have to remember to give him a call, still haven't sent his gift out yet, drat.

Thats about all the news.
Oh if you find your self bored, tune in to "that show again" its a pod cast so it can be received anywhere you have a computer or dump it onto your Ipod. A college friend of mine is doing it and they are pretty funny.

Well this weekend just flew by. I spent most of friday and saturday cleaning up for the release party. Then it hit 3:00pm party start time.
no guests.
3:30pm.....no guests.
4:00pm.....no guests.
4:15.....a few people show up, these were some of BZ's friends from Amgen, one of which plays with us, which was cool.
4:30....2 more people show up, my sister and her boyfriend.
5:00...I start cooking the mounds of food I bought.
5:45....2 of my friends friends from under grad, also cool
that was about it. I guess I never need to throw a party again. Hell even my business partner and my web design guy didn't show up. At least a few people actually emailed me and said they couldn't make it and I didn't really expect all of you in other states or countries to show up, but for the rest of you...grrr.

Party went well enoguh without many guests. Food was good and we gamed until after 2AM.

SundayI got up late, watched some giant monster movies, did some shopping, then went to my parents house for some sort of joint birthday party. It was fun but we didn't get home until after 10 so this is another morining of super sleepiness. Also I didn't come in at all over the weekend so now I'm a few days behind. And its hot and sticky here.

2 days till BZ's birthday. Have to find a few suprises for her.

Oh and the blasted class sign up computer system won't take my pasword and dosen't want to send me a new one so I have to go and battle the people at the regestrer's office.

Its all done. It went well as they sometimes do. I got "good jobs" from a bunch of people including the boss, who also said he could tell I practiced. I'm just glad its done.
I made it through, no stuttering, only a few word mistakes, but nothing bad. I answered all the questions as well as I could and even got a laugh....I told as joke, it wasn't at my data.

So its back to business now. Catch up on RP stuff and get those bugs a growing.
That is until I pass out around 3.

Presentation in 40 minutes and counting. I don't feel quite as prepared for this one as I was for the last, but still should be in good enough shape to get through it.
It seems like just yesterday I was giving my last presentation. As always I'm a big knot of nerves and shaking. Probably would have helped if I hadn't medicated at about 7 last night which kept me up until maybe 1am. So here we go again, little sleep, drugged up, caffinated, and ready to freak out.
They are getting a little easier though. I'm not nauseaus this time. Its kind of funny, BZ is givng a presentation to her department at about the same time I will be going. We've both been a mess this week. I'm really looking forward to the weekend. I think I may only come in one day:) .

Thats about it, off for one last restaroom trip and to head down. Wish me luck......

Wow does time fly. Its already thursday and my presentation goes off tomorow.
Besides just this week, I just learned that two friends of mine just got married. These are kids I practically watched grow up playing an online star wars RPG. I remember when they were 16 and fooling around in high school. Now they are all grown up and married...well maybe not exactly grown up, but you get the picture. Now I really feel old.

This week has been a mess. This presentation is driving me nuts and its hard to find time to work on it and do experiments. Well I better get cracking.

And the week continues. Apparently we did decently at the conn, selling about 200$ in boards, which probably dosen't even cover the cost of going. I am hearing back from a few people that they eithor got my email or saw Kyle at the Conn which is kind of cool.
No sales from the web site yet though, which kind of sucks. I was hoping for at least a few.

Back to work on my presentation.

Not to much time to write right now, but I'll do a quick recap of the weekend.
Friday was a decent night of gaming, besides the fact that people seemed to need to call me every 10 minutes or so, whihc was all sorts of annoying.
Saturday was a late start. A college friend stayed over so getting up and going was slow. I ended up getting into lab around 2ish and was there until 7:30, which sucked.
Sunday was a bit of an earlier start. Got into lab by 11ish only to find that my stuff didn't grow right again so another wasted couple of days.
The rest of the day was decent. Went to my parent's house and visited with bro and sis and played starwars game.
That was about all that happened over the weekend. Boards are becomming an annoyance and I barly seem to have time to work on them. I have to give a presentation of what I did this semister at the end of the week, which should be all so fun. Most of this week will be spent working on it.

Its friday morning and I'm going crazy. MY birthday was yesterday and it was a y-yo of a day. It stated out well with cool gifts and waffles, then did a quick 180 with my plates beog contaminated so now I'll have to come in saturday and sunday. This trend continued, when I got home there were stacks of boxed on the pourch and I'm thinking excelent, the adventureboard is in much sooner then we had expected. Only we just got boards, 300 in total, but no magnets, no pens, no packaging, all of which we paid for. They were supposed to come preassembled and all set to toss in an envelope and ship out, but nooooo.
Also I've been calling my partner in this venture time and again, but eithor he gave me his home number or he just isn't answering his cell. He is currently at Gencon and is the only one with the manufactor's info. I aso have info about the conn I picked up to give him.
This is really frustraiting.

Horah, Horray, Horrie,
Happy Birthday to me.
Well so far it seems I am forgoing my normal b-day of moping and feeling bad. Things are going decently. I got up, dog didn't pee on the floor. BZ made waffles so carbs were a plenty. I'm much happier carbinated.....or something like that.
I got a big bag of toys, angelfire packs, SW packs, some buffy leggo guys, comics, battle cows, and more. I like toys:)
Ride in was decent . Religious station was not interfeernig much. I did write a letter to the FCC about it, but I doubt it would have had any effect yet.
School is apparently back in scession, because there wasn't any parking and I had to mosey down to lot 3 (shuttle lot), but it didn't bother me much.
I don't have too much work to do today so I'm hoping to escape early.

Oh in good news, the adventure board web site is up and running so take a look at www.adventureboard.com
and let me know what you think. Also please buy one. The life of a grad student is a poor one and its a quality product for RP ers.

I saw Sin City the other night and I must say it was nothing short of spectatular. If you like the comics you'll love the film. The directing/shooting style really brough the pages to life. The acting was dead on..well some of the chicks sucked, but what can you expect from brittany murphy. I highly sugest you all check it out.

Diet, day 3. My head hurts, I feel woozy and crappy in general. Low carb is deffinatly not the way to go for me. As soon as my blood sugar drops I get all nutty. Also I get unexplainably angry. Well there was a decent reason this AM.
Apparently some philly Xian radio station has decided to set up a tower somewhere in Ct and effectivle Jamm 106.9FM which is host to the howard stern show. I cannot describe how much I despise religious broadcasting. If I knew where the tower was I would have a good mind to go and torch it. There are plenty of unused frequencies in and around new london. They could have picked any of them and I would never be the wiser and happier for it, but now. They have to set up shop and make my ride in a ragging cursing wave of furry.
To top it all off, when I finally broke free of the jamming signal, apparently Howard's interview withwilly nelson was just too much for them to take because they first jumped from his show to some sports thing when they started talking about smoking pot. Then it went into a comercial break, and finally came back to the show when they were done talking about weed. Howard got in one question about Willy's problems with taxes and the show cuts off again and goes into some spanish program.
I am way pissed.

Drove the new car in this morning. So far, I like the Forrester. Granted it is no mustang its still a fun car to drive. It handles well and accelerates easily. The seats are comfortable and there is enough head room for me to actually sit up.
I didn't get any of the usual looks when driving a sportier car, but I guess those are the trade offs.

This weekend looks like it will be one of paintball, which is exciting. I haven't played in a long time and hope I haven't lost my touch.

Well, its just about done. I went and saw the car this weekend and the deal was good enough. So tonight I go to turn in my Keys to cool and pick up a rational vechicle. I did end up getting the nicer package, with sun roof, ect, but its still no convertible.
Most of the rest of my weekend was spent comming in to school to work on stuff. At least my research seems to be working well enough.

Today I am beat, and for once for a good reason. Friends of ours who moved from texas came back and ran a game yesterday which lasted from 1pm to around midnight. I got home 40 minutes later, the was up half the night reliving the opposite of dinner.
The game itself was a lot of fun. We were playing in Ravenloft, which is kind of Goth D&D. It has some nifty new classes and a cool spin on magic which I may utilize for one of my furutre campaigns. Its especially neat because you're playing more or less ordinary people, no buffed out barbarians, super healing clerics, or desimating mages. Magic takes forever to cast, often batles could be over before even simple spells are finished. Healing is very limited so you end up resting a lot and there aren't really any magic weapons or items. I know this probably sounds weird, but it was actualy a fresh change. I think our group has worked into somewhat of a rut, where we...well most of us know how to max characters out correctlyand play them to the upmost. Its not as challenging and often just comes down to a numbers game.

Well the night went well. I got turned into a vampire at the end, thanks to my slacker of a roommate (Haha), but thats ok by me.

When I got home and went to bed, I had a night full of dreams of fighting vampires and family members dying. It was pretty disturbing. I remember waking up soe tie in the middle of the night crying after seeing graves for me and my brother. This should teach me not to eat so much crap before bed.

Well with luck tonight we go to look at cars. I'm both excited and dreading it. I'll probably be in both days this weekend, just because:)

Well its going to be a sad sad day/weekend as I am beginning to say good bye to my life of fun and excitement. Real world concerns dictate that I trade in my mustang for some thing with beter gas mileage and that has all wheel drive. This is just about how I expected to roll into my year before 30, cash in the fun chips, get some more insurance, sell the toys and comics, buy some more furnature and appliances, hang up my dice bag....well lets not go over board.

This was one car I though I would never sell, but the though of another winter of fish tailing abd spin outs is not appealing at all.
So this weekend we got to the subaru dealership with check book in hand looking for the best bargin possible :( *sob*

Last night I saw Kung Fu Hustle. I must say it was possibly the best film I've seen this year. It was hysterical. The writing was good and parts are even funnier when you watch it with both dubbing and subtext to see where they altered the lines from what they were orgionally saying. Directing was also good. Nice camera angles and good shots.
Action was excelent. The fight scenes were so much better than what was in "Hero" and most of them seemed realistic with a dab of mysticism. I think I'm going to have to watch it again and try to make up feats and abilities, maybe even some prestige classes based on the characters for D&D.
Over all I laughed theough most of the film and finished with a big smile on my face. I highly recomend it to all.

Not too much else going on. Still doing work on the adventure board. The web site is almost up and I had an idea to put together a mini adventure to give away with sold boards.

Tomorow will be a big game day. Friends I used to play with are back up from Texas and are having a full day of gaming taking place in 1890's brittian I beleive. It should be a good time.

This past weekend was a total blurr. Friday's game went pretty well. After much coaxing, so of that at the hands of an army of orcs the party finally returned to what could be the right way to go about their mission. Its really interesting to see how they all think in responce to certain puzzles and yes I'm evil and hedge the bet often by forcing them to act against player knowlege and certain D&D norms, like stay away from the water.
I also spend a lot of time working up some really nasty boss and mid boss villians, which were ruined by a long string of rolling 3s and 4s. I might need some new dice.

Sat was an up early sort of day. This was the start of the annoyance. I wake up and there is a ringing in my ears. Maybe a shower will clear it up....Nope still ringing. In short this annoying ring has lasted all weekend and is still happening but to a lesser degree today.
Usefull things on Sat. ME and NY Kool made it to the bank and opened an account for our compagny which will be called Sneak Attack Games. I'm working on a logo for it that looks like a couple dice stabbed through with a rapier, like a dice shish-ka-bob. My art needs help. We also got the papers noterised and all signed off on so that part of things is taken care of.

I also made it in to start my cultures.
Sunday I came in too and transfered the cultures to liquid form. The rest of sunday was spent on the couch watching giant spider films on scifi. I did get off my butt for a bit and took doggie to the park. She always enjoys that, but the stupid kids on dirt bikes were there again. I kind of want to check with new longon laws and see if its legal for them to ride there.

So the review you have all been waiting for, Alaxander - the director's ct

Now since I haven't seen the normal version, I won't be able to compair the two. What I did notice looking at the back covers of both, was that the director's cut is 167 min while the theatrical version was 175 min. Now right off the bat this says something to me. Usually directors cuts are longer than the normal version, due to studois wanting to release a film that takes up less time so that it could be played more and frankly most people just can't st still for that long. For example all 3 of the lord of the rings director cuts had about 30-40 extra minutes of footage. Dune had an extra 2 hours of footage.
Usually if a director decided to just cut footage its because they watched it and realized it blew.
But not to go into this film with preconcieved notions........

So alaxander blew.
To start it was long and not just in time, but it felt long. I can't tell you how thankful I was not to have to sit through another 8 minutes of it like those who saw the normal version did.
The writing in the film was just plain aweful. The lines were horrible. The "kick ass" speachs designed to inspire courage in the army just before battle were long and dull. None of which had even a sprinkeling of the force you felt when Mel spoke in Braveheart, or even what little was said in "Troy". To make matters worse, they often did something stupid with the sound durring some of the speaches so you could't even hear what Alaxander was saying. Just genuis, I can see him talking but you've covered it up with horse sounds and wheel moving sounds. What a directing inspiration.

Which brings us to the directing part. I don't think I can describe in words how baddly it was directed. Scenes were all out of time, now normally this can have a cool effect, but in Alaxander, characters were not developed and hardly introduced. So placing scenes out of sequence for the most part left me asking, "who is this guy? No matter he is dead now." The film ended up being very confusing, not due to a complicated sequence of interactions meant to leave the audience stumped, but because it was a bunch of almost unrelated bits strung together with only a "bablyon 10 years prior" tag to bridge them. Ugh.

To the actor's credit, I beleive most of them did as well as they could with what they were given.
To Oliver Stone's credit, I will never willingly go see another one of his films. I never realized how baddly of a director he was until I reallt stoped to think about it.

And finally I'll list a few minor annoyances:
Alaxander was gay or bisexual. Now homosexuality was acceptable back in this era and I don't know if there was any historical records which would indicate Alexander was gay. To me it seemed like it was done more as a publicity stunt. We didn't need to see Alex checking out the pretty boys in his ranks time and time again. This was supposed to be a kick ass war film. Thats not to say a kick ass hero can't be gay, but if he's going to be gay, make him gay and get on with it. We don't need to see hours of sexual inuendo and hints Alex likes boys.
Though I guess I can't really blame this universe's alexander for crossing the fence so to speak due to my next issue.

All the chicks in the film were Butt Ugly. Now this is really hard to do today. Just about every woman I see has at least some redeaming feature and those who are actresses usually have many good features. I think they spent a lot of time ugglying these chicks up. Even Angolina Joulie who is usually smoking was not all that attractive. Maybe they did their casting at the Ground Round or the Sizzler or something.

All battle scenes were shot in the shakey camera close up technique. This makes it very hard for you to see anything thats going on. We didn't get many pull back shots which would allow the audience to know who was winning or losing. Also since both sides of a lot of the battles dressed in the same colors and type costumes, you had no idea who's side anyone was on.

Tripple Ugh. I just can't say anymore. When it was over and thankfully it finally did end, I had to go upstairs and watch eppisodes of Cleopatra 2525 just to get the horror out of my eyes.

Maybe I should read a book.

So far today I've started two cultures and now I'm bored out of my mind.
BZ got home late last night so we didn't watch alaxander so no review for that.
I did watch "We Were soldiers" so even though its months past prime.

"We were soldiers" is a stunning orgional look at war that really shows you the horror of being on the front lines of a battle.
huh? Whats that you say? This horror of war thing has been done before? Well "we were soldiers" has blood and guts and people being exploded and set on fire, so there!
Oh thats all been done too.
Well it keeps you on the edge of your seat because not all the big name actors make it back alive, they aren't invulnerable, able to walk around on the battle field while anyone sensable would be lying down, unlike so many other war films.
Actually thats not true eithor. Mel tends to just wonder around in combat, no ducking, diving, ect, while people to his right and left get picked off.
Ok well it does have a lot of shots of soldier's wives reading the "your husband is dead" mail.
Yeah I didn't find that part all that exciting eithor.
So, "We were soldiers" more of the same. Not a bad war film over all, but like most war video games, been there done that, finished bored.

I did have some wild dreams but again they are forgotten. I remember there were some hottie in them, who got nakid, but it was weird. They were shaven in those shaveable places, but they had a lot of hair growing around those places. Not really sure what to think about that. It seems like something Captain Kirk would run into. At least they weren't blue.

Well its almost time to get out of here today and I'm just now finding time to post. Mostly because I've been doing too much emailing.

I had two dreams last night. The first got me up around 4am. In it me and BZ and a red headed friend of ours were at stop and shop going through these odd bargin shelves looking for all sorts of treasure trove type finds. I remember finding a few items but can't remember what they were now. Then the dream shifted and the three of us were all in bed together.
Let me just cut this off as, "It was a good dream"

The second dream was odd.
Me and doggie were at somr sort of strange bar or lodge which was on top of a hill. It was winter I beleive as there was snow on the ground outside. My old boss Henry was there in the bar with us. We decided it was time to go and I walked with Henry back to his car. He told me that I should get in touch with him soon, probably to go over my schedual for the fall semister or something. I said I would and went to get my car, which turns out was actually a big dump truck. I get in and start it up and begin to drive down the very steep hill. The back end fishtails a bit and I realize I don't have doggie with me. So I coax it to a stop. I get out and set the emergency break and take two steps away from it. I look back and the truck has started to slide. It goes all the way down the hill and almost hits some cars turning into the bar at the bottom of the hill. The truck slides past them and partally up an incline on the other side of the road. Then it begins to slide back. The truck comes to rest in front of a power line pole and slides back and forth in front of it a few times. This sliding somehow knocks down or cuts the power line. Now there is a live wire by the truck and the electricity at the bar goes out. Some people come out mad and doggie comes out too. She runs over to me and I pick her up.
People crowd around me and tell me how cute she is. It ends up that the people there alter the scene and make it look like the power line fell for some other reason to get me off the hook because they like my dog.

Very odd dream.
Not too much else went on.
Alaxander comes out tonight so with luck I'll have a review of it tomorow.

Woke up form a bad dream this morning about going to see my ex. I was riding some sort of bicycle, but it had 4 wheels, 2 in front and 2 in back and the wheels had extra grip or spikes on them because I was riding it in the snow. What was really weird is I ended up going up my parent's driveway and thats where her house was. It was a massive white house, with big bay windows in the top floor which seemed like it was the bedroom, but there were blinds going up half way up the windows so you couldn't see into the room, but you could see the light on at the ceiling. The top of the window was frosted, probably due to the snow. There was a number on the house like that was four digits in the 1 thousands and I think there was another 1 a 6 and a 7 in it.
I woke up feeling very distraught.

The rest of the weekend was ok. I had to come into school both days and each time for only like 10 minutes, which sucks because its a 2hr+ round trip. Sat was cool.
Me and Bz went to the dudly farm, highly advertised by Tempest. It was nice. Not too big, but the baked goods were tasty and it was cool to walk around and see the animals.
From there were went back to Tempest and Purge's place for a cook out and some gaming. In short, sausages were giant, I kick ass at munchkin, I get beat down in Talisman, I eat way too many chips and dip and mini cookies and feel sick the rest of the night.

Sunday I got a late start and didn't get back from school until 4ish. Went out to dinner at applebee's soon after. Dinner was decent. Came back watched some TV, worked on some gaming stuff and hit the sack.

Ah yes, also worked up a list of potential compagny names, pick your favorite. The business will be to create RPG gamming accessories.
Sneak Attack Games (or Products)
Cap Gun Games
Six Shooter Games
Six Sider Games (or Products)
Purple Castle (games or products)
Who Goes There Games
Arcane Enterprises
Orange Suit Games
Loaded Dice Games
RKS Games