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What I'm up to since October

I have to admit I was planning on taking a small hiatus after my Octroberween blogging madness. But I didn’t think it would take this long. Again a lot more in life popped up that kept me from blogging at a regular pace. So here’s a brief rundown of what I’ve had to tend with if anyone should care.

 

Unsatisfied with my Octoberween blogging:

Once again this year I belted out more blogs than I normally would in any given month. And like last year I tried to break up the blogs so that they focused on all facets of Halloween that I tend to enjoy during that month. Though last year’s blogs turned out quite well in my humble opinion I can’t say the same with this year. I actually found myself doing third and fourth drafts of blogs that I normally wouldn’t do on occasion. And even when I did I felt I didn’t quite get them right. Either I cut something from the previous draft that should’ve been in the blog or I felt I wasn’t able to fully express what the subject matter of the blog was in the first place. My “Gulity Pleasures” three parter felt like a major fail on my part given how they didn’t have anything to do with games at all, while my “Top 11” list felt it needed a little something more to make them half decent. Perhaps I needed to play them more “in depth” than just enough to get a taste of what the game had to offer I don’t know. Whether or not I’ll do this again is uncertain especially since I once again have extra blogs I didn’t post in October due to time constraints. I’m still debating if I should post them now or wait till next year, again if there is a next year. Either way I needed some time to recharge and figure out what to do next.

 

Work Issues:

In the beginning of November the company I worked for “let go” my manager of 10 + years. This of course left a lot of uncertainty within my department and we’ve been playing catch-up ever since. Workloads have increased and there was more than one occasion where I had to stay late to get tasks done at work. Though management has encouraged all of us in the department to apply for the manager positions, we’re reluctant to do so given how they let go the manager of 10+ without any forewarning or reason. So I had more on my mind about future employment prospects than blogging at that moment.

 

The fate of RWBY Tuesday:

It was a good run wasn't it. At this point I'm not sure if I'm going to finish up the final three episodes of this series. I've already written up one blog about it but after seeing the final two episodes, well...Let's just say I was very, very, very, very, VERY dissapointed in how Rooster Teeth ended the first season of RWBY. I was so dissapointed I didn't even take part in the "Name your own Team" contest that's going on. All I know is if I do try to write up a blog about the final two episoes, those blogs will end up being four-part blogs given how much I have to talk about on how much I hated how it ended.

 

I revamped my YouTube Channel:

I had actually considered trying to create some “Vblogs” given my limited time so I went about to clean up my YouTube channel. And by clean up I mean delete pretty much every video I ever made on there. The reason being (if you’ve yet to see the channel) was because all of my videos were complete and total junk. I originally left them up to help remind me if I ever wanted to do something with that channel, I really need to “bump up the effort” in doing such. Long ago I tried to call myself the “Temporary Exile” given that I was living on the east coast for awhile. I tried to make videos that pointed out what was so wrong with the east coast in my observations given how it seemed to me that area didn’t operate with any idea of the use of “common sense”. An interesting concept yet sadly executed by myself so I decided to wipe it clean and try again from scratch which sadly meant the deletion of my April fool’s joke prank video about my Tifa Lockhart costume lock out on PSP. Probably for the best given that the comments section had people threatening my life and actually organizing teams to hunt me down for this grave injustice. It was either shut down the channel altogether or report it to youtube….

 

I now have a google+ account?

I don’t like social networks. Ever since MySpace went music-centric I’ve never found myself actively pursuing social media in any big way. The most I have is twitter but the rest like facebook, instragram, tumblr, reddit and the rest is either “just to have” or “will never have even if it was forced on me like government healthcare” categories. The most social network I do is with various blogs and I like that because I at least have a CHOICE in how much personal info I can share on them. But apparently when google combined all their services I’m automatically signed up with google+ thanks in part to my gmail account. So right now I’m debating if I should keep it up or learn how to shut it down. I’ve already scrubbed all I could when it comes to personal information on g+; I even changed my avatar picture to be more “Sonic” based than what people usually see on my blog avatars. Still debating on keeping it though since it’s been a pain to find the off switch to it all.

 

My Xbox 360 Elite died on me (again) and I almost destroyed it:

I was turning on my Xbox 360 Elite to see what black Friday specials were being offered on XBL only to my frustration to find my console giving me the “E73” error code once again. After getting my system fixed TWICE it decided to die on me again with the same error code. At that point my memory of what happened next is hazy. All I recall is I started to see red and that one song from “Kill Bill” started to play in my head. You know the song, the one that is played whenever Uma Thurman’s character “The Bride” sees one of the people she’s going to kill in the movie.

 

The next thing I know my wife is holding me back, begging me to put down the hammer that’s about to break my now broken Xbox 360 Elite into many tiny little pieces. I was pretty much at a dark place at that point. Once things were calmed down I decided I wasn’t giving Microsoft any more money at this point when it came to console purchases. So there is no way I’m getting myself an Xbox One in the immediate future nor was I in the mood in buying a brand new system of any type. But my wife can be very persuasive. As an early Christmas gift my wife offered to buy me any kind of system of my choice. Be it a replacement Xbox 360, one of the newer Xbox 360’s, even a PS4, Xbox One, WiiU, 3DS, Vita, anything. I could have anything I wanted.

Of course I thought this was a trap.

 

In the end I got myself a USED Xbox 360 Slim at one of my local game store’s Black Friday extended weekend events. I wanted the max amount of memory so I was able to get a limited edition model. The good news it has 320GB of memory in it, the bad news it was the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 console. It was either that or the Gears of War one. Though I did like the black glossy look of the console, along with the blood splatters, I was afraid my wife would get scared if she saw the red smiling skull on it. I would’ve much preferred to get another old Xbox 360 Elite model or a model E if only to have this be the last 360 console I plan to buy but like I said I wasn’t interested in giving MS any more money at the moment. Perhaps I’ll get the E model when it’s cheap or get my Elite fixed by mailing it in to MS but for now I just want to get a console that just WORKS. The Modern Warfare console isn’t half bad. It’s just that I’m not that big of a fan and my wife thinks I got ripped off because she says it looks old and banged up. I keep telling her it’s meant to look like that with its paint design. But at 170 dollars I’d rather have this than an E model with only 4GB of memory in it for the same price. Either way it means that my plans to have two different HD’s (Kazooie and Tooie) for my Elite have fallen thru.

 

MST3K Turkey Marathon 2013:

One of the things I missed out on during my days as a nerd/geek/freak/gamer was Mystery Science Theater 3000’s Turkey Day marathons on comedy central. I only got to see the series when it was syndicated so I didn’t get the chance to see these marathon events. Well to my surprised it turned out that Shout Factory decided to bring back the Turkey Day Marathon for the digital era by having a live internet streaming event on their YouTube Channel hosted by the creator of MST3K himself Joel Hodgson! I only happened on this when I checked my twitter feed on Turkey day itself so I ended up missing half of it when I went to my parents’ house for dinner. But I made sure to re-watch the entire marathon once it was over while I still had the video saved in my internet explorer cache. From there I pretty much went on a MST3K binge upon learning that Netflix brought back more episodes of the series. It’s been fun watching them by the fireplace late at night as I drift off to dreamland during “I accuse my parents.”

 

Wanted to lay low during the Xbox One/PS4 launches:

Knowing the internet would explode over these new generation console releases I didn’t think I had it in me to keep up with the latest news, reviews, reports and activities that these new consoles would generate in the gaming world. I just wasn’t quite ready to get into the new generation even if it would’ve been cool to have a brand new piece of tech in my possession. Even now I’m looking more to owning more titles on my PS3/Xbox 360/Wii than I am about the current crop of games now out for the new systems in question. If anything I’m more interested in owning more XBLA/PSN/VC digital titles before their respective networks become exclusive to the newer consoles on the block. We know this will happen eventually people. Remember how Microsoft said they’d still support the original Xbox so long as there was a need for it only for them to kill it a couple of years later. Right now if I had a choice (which I did ironically) I’d be getting a Wii U. The only thing hold me back is the thought that it might get cheaper given how it’s not selling too well right now. We’ll see.

That sums up everything in a nutshell. Hopefully I get back into the swing of things when it comes to blogging. I already started with that DRM incident during a Killer Instinct tournament so that’s something.

Ta-ta

“N”