A recap, shall we?

So, the weekend was pretty enjoyable.  A good friend of mine had a birthday, so I insisted on treating him to dinner at Buffalo Wild Wings.  I was never much a fan of wing until I went to this joint.  Now I'm looking for any old excuse to eat there whenever possible.  Let's see, what's tomorrow?  Any holidays going on?  Let's see what a quick wiki wander reveals...hmmmm...we have:

• 1869 - In New York, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton form the National Woman Suffrage Association. - certainly worth celebrating, but see the rest before making a call
• 1858 - Opening of the present Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London. - good music is always cool, but not the kind of thing to warrant a trip to BWW
• 1957 - At Malden Island in the Pacific, Britain tests it's first hydrogen bomb in Operation Grapple. - Yeah, I'm still a part of the "legalize nukes" crowd, but let's see what else there is.
• Today is also Peace Officer's Memorial Day - yeah, as if I'd celebrate that.
• 1718 - James Puckle, a London lawyer, patents the Puckle gun, fore barer to the modern machine gun. - This is the one! The reason to go get some wings to celebrate!

So, why the puck not?  From here on out, May 15th is officially "Puckle Gun Day!"

As for how else I've been spending my time, the roomie and I have been sinking our time into a new game we just found out about called Guns of Icarus.  Just imagine huge steampunk airships that are loaded to the hilt like battleships, duking it out over ruins of warships, and everyone plays an individual crew member on that ship, requiring excellent teamwork to survive.  Go check it.  It's intense.  

ugh

Busy trying to cough out my lungs at the moment.  Blogging will resume soon.

Momma

Next on the "most important" list after offering entrails up to the lord, is thanking the mother he provided to care for you.  So here's to you, Mom.

Sluething

Since I didn't take a lunch today, I didn't get to stop by the apartment. When the roomie came back from his lunch break, he was telling me about a package I received.  Not just any package, but one that was in a monitor box.  "Well, that's different."  I thought.  I haven't ordered anything recently, nor have I been expecting anything to arrive, and it's not my birthday or anything.  Naturally, this knowledge ended up driving me crazy for the rest of the day, with mind running in circles of what it could be.

Then my roomie said he was initially confused because the package had my first name and our address, but had a different last name on the parcel that he didn't recognize right away.  Thankfully, he knew that a long time ago, I did have other aliases I went by, this being one of them.

This mystery package had better not end up like this.

This is the part that somewhat alarmed me, as I haven't gone by that name in a long time, nor have I used it for anything relating to billing/shipping/legal docs, but a good number of people I'm on less than good terms with know me by that name, so I began running down the threat board.  Let's see:

• I know my bank account is okay, cause I haven't had any odd/unplanned charges to my card
• I haven't received any threatening letters or messages of any kind
• the package doesn't have any exposed wires, singe marks, oil spots, and it aint ticking
• I don't have any major outstanding debts to speak of
• I haven't made any major enemies that I'm aware of recently
• haven't heard from the Latvian mafia in decades, so I doubt it's them

Wow.  I still can't figure it out.  So, I'm thinking of running to the local defense equipment retailer, and see if I can get a full EOD and MOP suit for handling this bad boy.  Ah, screw it.  I'm too poor to afford all that crap.  looks like I'll be diffusing this bomb redneck style.

Okay, now that I'm home, let's see what this baby looks like.

Well, it looks like a monitor...but taking a quick peek at the sender's address revealed that it was from the Tennessee mafia (extended family).  Let's crack it open.

Ah ha!  An HO scale train set.  Looks vintage, too.  Nice to know the rest of my family think I need a new hobby as well.  J/K!  I'm kinda ticked to see this stuff.

When I was younger, I was crazy about trains.  Some of the most fun times I spent with my dad in my formative years, were just us sitting around tinkering with HO scale train sets.  Over the years, I've gradually become less interested in them as I used to be, but this doesn't stop me from getting some heartwarming nostalgia while looking at these things, and planning on how I can have fun with 'em now.  It's also a bit funny to me, because these things are like cockroaches.  It seems like no matter where I go or what I do, somebody always seems to have a train set packed away somewhere, and will eventually offer it to me.

Anyways, I'm glad to see that these babies were well taken care of, some of which look to be a little older than I thought.  I'll have to set some time aside to think of what kinda setup I can get going with these things.

ch-ch-ch-changes

It may be obvious to all who read this blog that I am far from being a grammar nazi, but what's far less obvious, is that I'm certainly one when it comes to spelling and punctuation.  The sad part of that attribute, is that I am an absolutely horrible proofreader.  You'd think that with the voracious amount of reading I do, I'd be a natural, but I is not all good and stuff.

Nearly every single post I make has some kind of spelling, punctuation or grammatical error in it that's published for at least a full week to even a year before I notice it.  Once I do, I cannot help but go back and correct it immediately, because it will slowly drive me insane once I know that it's there.

So, bear with me, 'cause I'm going to be editing this crap on a near constant basis.

unrequited idiocy

Barring fictional characters, I cannot think off the top of my head, more than a couple people that are worse at interacting with women than I.

In fact, I think I can sum it up by comparing it to a scene in Generation Kill, where an officer call in an artillery barrage at night to destroy a suspected armored column that was never even there.  They radio in that info to HQ the next morning, and one of the officers states, "Well, 11,000 pounds of ordnance and we didn't kill a single piece of armor, but we didn't blow up any villages either.  I guess that kinda goes in the 'win' column, doesn't it?"  Sometimes I feel this is an adequate metaphor for my life.

Long story short, I can't help but be very enamored with an amazing woman I know, that will never feel the same way.  Such is life, but I can't help but get this overwhelming feeling like this is the way it's always gonna be.

On a less depressing note, if you find yourself with too much free time, give Poker Night 2 a shot.  The game is nothing but you and a few NPCs playing poker.  Since I actually loathe the game of poker this is kind of a big deal.  The real meat of this game is that you playing against some of the coolest characters of all time, with some of the best dialogue ever.  just imagine sitting at the table with Brock Sampson, CL4P-TP, Ash Williams, along with Sam and Max, all while GLaDOS is the dealer.  Yeah, it's good.  Instead of gambling money, winning games will unlock new content for completely different games, such as Team Fortress 2, and Borderlands 2.  Neat!

slow week

Because I can't be bothered to be burdened with an excess of money, but an exceptional excess of free time, this week has obviously been light on blogging content.  As much as I love living in Utah, the lack of funds certainly hurts my chances at occupying my time with anything fun or even blog-worthy.

And the real bugger about it all, is that there are a couple of things that have happened that I'd actually love to talk about that I can't.  But, that's not because this blog is on the internet for anyone to see, but rather because there are things that are even best left out of one's own journal.  I hate it when that happens.

On a brighter note, I was treated by a couple young ladies to go see Iron Man 3 again tonight.  Making this evening end up just as awesome as it sounds.  I do so appreciate and enjoy having such kind and attractive friends.

All across the weekend

What is it about today?  I am tired beyond all belief, despite having gotten to bed early to specifically avoid this problem.  So that being said, I'm pretty low on blogfodder, as i am still not fully defrosted yet.  There are a couple things worth mentioning though.

All weekend long, I heard nothing from the roomie's mouth, unless he also made mention of the weather, and how it was the perfect weather for shooting, if ammo still existed.  That realization made me very nearly depressed, but being invited to eat with his family nearly makes up for all of that.  Dang good authentic Mexican food can solve a lot of problems.

Also, I noticed there was mass amount of people on the blogroll (among other cool people) headed to The NRA convention this weekend, and they all appeared to have lots of cool or at least interesting things to say, so check some of 'em out.

And since I don't really have anything else, here's a hilarious gif for you:

They never stop being awesome

Cause this is the pinnacle of all music videos:

Beastie Boys - Intergalactic 

More nerdy goodness

Ah, things have been busy around the work and the house.  Just too much going on.  Didn't even have a moment's time to write one thing on here yesterday.  So here's the story so far:

So, last night I went and saw Iron Man 3 with J and the Roomie.  Gotta say it was more than good; enough so that I think I like it better than the first movie.  Which isn't to say it's perfect.  It's certainly relies on humor far too much, because no matter how good the humor is (and it was really good), too many serious moments are blatantly ruined by it, thus marginalizing a lot of the tension and drama.  Another small complaint is that some of the supporting actors (not Guy Pierce) turned in abysmal performances (though possibly due to the director), and the story was more than a bit predictable, which led to an end that's not as epic as it could have been.

But, to counterpoint myself, it was still fantastically good, with the previously mentioned excellent humor, mindbogglingly good action scenes and special effects, with a few fun surprises along the way, including a bit of a different ending than you usually see (though it was still predictable, if that makes sense).  All in all, it's not only worth spending money on, but worth pending money on twice; even though I'm going to another free screening today.

Then there's the less interesting nerdy activities, such as Alpha testing the new Insurgency 2 by New World Interactive.  Since it is only an alpha, there are the usual problems, such as clipping issues, map balance, and a lack of assets and features, but I am happy to report that this game truly preserves the core experience that the Insurgency mod provided, along with improving it by a considerable margin.

My favorite part, is the fact that I was able to play with some of the game's devs and gripe about it with them directly.  What an excellent way to get feedback.  Top that off by knowing only $15 get you into this experience, and gives you a full copy of the game upon release.  I'm sold.