Books
So yesterday, I went to the library and picked up some books I had put on hold. More specifically, I picked up 11 Novels, 1 trade paperback comic, and 1 DVD. Here's a list:
- Books
- Star Wars: Death Troopers
- Star Wars: The Force Unleased
- Star Wars: Darth Bane II: The Rule of Two
- Star Wars: Darth Bane III: Dynasty of Evil
- Kiss
- Burn
- The Lost Books II: Infidel
- The Lost Books III: Renegade
- The Lost Books IV: Chaos
- The Lost Books V:Lunatic
- The Lost Books VI: Elyon
- Comic
- Star Wars: Invasion I: Refugees
- DVD
- Star Wars: The Clone Wars
Anyone who knows me probably figured that the ratio of Star Wars books to others would be high, with Dekker books coming in a close second. Since those all fall in one of those two categories, they would be right.
Anyway, as of now, I have already read Invasion: Refugees and Death Troopers and I just watched The Clone Wars with Caleb. I've already started on The Force Unleashed, though I'm only a few pages in.
When I picked up the books, I wondered if I was insane thinking that I could read all those books before having to take them back. Now, I'm thinking I can do it.
I am a reading machine! Booyah!
Season Finale Season
It's that time of year again. It's the time when we say goodbye to our favorite TV shows for the summer. Usually they leave us wanting more with a particularly juicy cliffhanger but sometimes, they leave us with a bit of closure without stringing us along. Either way, we take it in like some kind of drug.
But the vices of TV watching are something for another post, another time. This time, I just wanted to talk about the dru- err... shows I watch and what the finales will be about. So without further ado, here's my list (in order of the day they air).
- 24 : Obviously, this one isn't going to be much of a cliffhanger, since the series itself is ending. I've enjoyed this one through it's many ups and downs. Seasons 1-3 were excellent, 4 was okay, 5 was good, 6 sucked monkey-butts and 7 and 8 have been great.
- House : This season has been one of the best in the show's run. House has kicked the Vicodin habit and is now using ibuprofin and the puzzles presented by his cases. He's even becoming a better person, being nice to people for the heck of it. And the finale showed that it paid off for him.
- Castle : The finale for this one made Ashley and I a little sad. Beckett finally works up the courage to admit her feelings for Castle, and his ex-wife shows up at the wrong moment to ruin it all. Oh well... next season perhaps?
- Heroes : I was really looking forward to next season and what the heroes would do in the face of Claire outing them all, but now that it's been cancelled, I'll just have to do with the comics. Oh well.
- NCIS : Back in Season 3 when Gibbs was re-remembering what happened to his wife and daughter, I remember thinking, "When it gets out that he murdered that drug lord, things are going to be very, very bad for him." Guess what? Things are looking very, very bad for him right now.
- NCIS: Los Angeles : I've loved everything about this show from the beginning and I'm sure the end will be fun. Unlike previous years (and other shows), I'm trying to stay fairly spoiler-free so I have no idea what the finale holds for the show.
- Law & Order: Criminal Intent : So far this season, I'm not impressed with the show sans Goren and Eames. Ashley and I didn't even watch the last episode or two.
- Criminal Minds : The finale for this one didn't have a big cliffhanger, but it was a great episode. I love what they've done with the show and I hope it's around for a long time to come. As was pointed out in the comments, there is still one more episode before the finale. A killer who comes out during some rolling blackouts in LA is who the BAU will be hunting in the ominously titled finale, "Our Darkest Hour".
- Law & Order: Special Victims Unit : I'm still trying to get used to the new ADA, Stabler's former partner, but she's growing on me. The finale was good and in keeping with L&O tradition, it did not have a cliffhanger.
- FlashForward : This show had a lot of potential, but sadly the way they have handled the show has been mediocre at best. Too many storylines, too much technical stuff and not enough focus on the characters themselves. I wish it were better, but alas, it shall be a one season wonder.
- Fringe : Fringe's season finale was awesome. Although, I figured the switch happened, they handled it very well. It will definitely be interesting in the first few episodes seeing how Olivia gets out of the alternate universe and how Bolivia (as fans are calling the alternate Olivia) tries to keep her cover.
- The Mentalist : The finale brought Patrick face-to-back with Red John, which was interesting. He got to watch, while tied to a chair, as Red John killed a couple of wannabe movie makers that were obsessed with Red John, then Red John said a few words and walked away, leaving Patrick helpless.
- Bones : This, of all the finales, is the one that made me the most divided. I love how they are breaking everyone up for a year. It fits with the storyline and the characters. I hate how right the awesome 100th episode, Booth and Bones are no closer to getting together. Argh.
- Stargate: Universe : With two episodes to go, things are set up to be quite interesting for the crew of the Destiny. Although, I have to say, when I heard that there was a traitor close to Icarus (from an episode description) I figured it was Telford. Totally called it way ahead of the episode airing.
And that is the list.
As I was writing this, I realized that I was upset that some relationships haven't worked out between main characters. Some would say I sound "girly" for that. I don't think I do. I love character development and relationships can be major in developing a character. Take Bones for example. Booth is super-protective of Bones because he loves her. It's a core part of his character. Until something happens in his relationship with Bones (like, say, the 100th episode) he can't move on. Now that something has, we get to see how he deals with it. That's character development and that is what makes a great show.
7 Days until 8
In seven days, my website will be 8 years old. Just for fun, I went to the Way Back Machine to see what my site used to look like and what I used to post about. It's amazing how much different my posts are now, 8 years later. Than it was all about the comics i was creating and the games I was playing. Now I mostly post about my family, my web development and the many reviews I write. There's even a different focus in my reviews.
Anyway, I'm just being a bit nostalgic about it since my website has been a fairly big part of my life for almost 8 years now. I, personally, don't know many personal websites that have been around that long.
For the morbidly curious ones that want to see my website from years ago, be sure to check out both thesocs.com and soc.levels4you.com on the Way Back Machine to see it all.
Sitting on a House
The roof was a bit rough to sit on, but access to the Wii made it worth it. Okay, so I didn't really sit on my in-laws' house or it's roof. I'm sure you figured that out on your own, though.
Sunday night, we went down to their house so we wouldn't have to drive down there at 6:00am the next morning. That night I went to Blockbuster and rented Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Rabbids Go Home, two Wii games. SSBB Was for me, Rabbids for Ashley and her sister. They played their game first.
Apparently, for this game, there is a Rabbid in your Wii-mote that causes the vibrations and makes random Rabbid noises while you play. At one point in the game, it shows you a camera view as if you were looking in the back of it, through the nunchuck port and you see the Rabbid standing there. If you push a button on the Wii-mote, you see it pressed on the screen. If you shake the Wii-mote, your Rabbid bounces around inside of it on the screen. This caused several minutes of laughter. As did the loose lead inside the Wii-mote that you can use to tickle the Rabbid. Once the girls found that, the poor Rabbid was barely able to stop laughing long enough to catch his breath.
Smash Bros. Brawl is an awesome game. It's everything I hoped Melee would be (especially when i heard that the Gamecube was supposed to get online capabilities): Multiplayer, lots of characters and stages, good single player campaign and modes and hundreds of trophies and stickers to collect as achievements. In the week i had the game, I was able to unlock all 37 characters (more if you count the three Pokemon under the Pokemon Trainer and the Shiek/Zelda and Samus/Zero Suit Samus combos), all 41 stages, completed all solo events and unlocked Boss Battles and All-Star modes. I was even able to complete Classic mode with about 7 characters, one of them on the Intense difficulty and All-Star mode with one. I collected over 150 trophies, over 300 stickers and over 200 songs. I wish I owned a Wii and the game so I could unlock everything in it, but I don't and won't be able to until well after I get a good stable job.
Along those lines, Monday was my phone interview that was supposed to happen the week before. It went pretty well and I'm expecting a call or email soon to set up another phone interview. The duties I'd have at this job are things that I love doing already so I'm really hoping for this to work out.
The rest of the week was pretty uneventful, so there isn't anything else to really comment on until my in-laws returned from their anniversary vacation. They told us a little about where they went and what they did, showed some pictures and handed out some gifts. Ashley got a San Francisco mug that she loves, Caleb got a little toy trolley and I got a bag of chocolate caramel popcorn that only has a couple handful's left in it.
In other news, I'm planning out a review schedule that I will hold myself to. Every Saturday starting next week, I will post a review. I have dozens of movies, TV shows, books and games to review so I won't be running out of content anytime soon. Also, I am somewhat standardizing my own formats for each type of review so you'll get more than a single paragraph as I've done in the past. Instead, you'll get a bit more about what I liked in each item and why and a breakdown of certain elements of each item. It is possible that you will find minor spoilers in my reviews, but I will keep the main plot points from being revealed.
Anyway, I'm off to spend time with my wife. Until next time...
I Think I Missed a Few…
- December 2009
Entering Month #3 of unemployment. Oh, that's right I never mentioned here on my blog that I lost my job at the end of September. It wasn't anything I did or didn't do. The Navy decided to cut a bunch of contract jobs across the country and mine just happened to be one of them. Anyway, December comes and I know that it's one of the hardest months for job searching. Ashley and I have resigned ourselves to the fact that we will not be exchanging gifts with each other, instead only giving Caleb the gifts we had purchased for him before I lost my job. But God is good and we received a gift that allowed us to get a few gifts for each other. I got Left 4 Dead 2 (expect a review of it soon) and a couple of GameBoy Advance games I've been wanting for a while. Ashley got a bunch of nice yarn for her knitting habit. Caleb got a bunch of toys and clothes. We had Christmas with her family and they got me a copy of the New Super Mario Bros. for the DS and an actual Buck knife. We didn't do anything special for New Year's Day. - January 2010
I realized that I had a few dollars in my PayPal account and decided to spend it on eBay. I bought a copy of Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria (another review to expect soon), which gave me 30 days of playtime on LOTRO. Booyah! Unfortunately, nothing on the job search. I do keep hearing that the market is turning around, though, and I have more hope for February - February 2010
February has started of pretty well. We got our Income Tax Refund which was a lot bigger than we had expected. I have a phone interview next week for a job in LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) development which is my specialty. I've seen more jobs on my searches, so here's hoping I'll find one soon.
I've also started dabbling in PHP frameworks and am currently working in CakePHP to build my image site. If this works as well as it looks like it will, this may become my new preferred method of web development. I'm looking at building my comics and forums sites in Cake after the image site is up.
In more personal news, Caleb is now 18 months old. He runs (not walks) everywhere he goes and babbles sentences in his own little language, all the while learning new words almost everyday. The other day he said "Spongebob" and "two bowls." He is up to 3 feet tall and over 30 pounds (as my dead arm can attest to after holding him for more than a minute). As I write, he is dancing to the music (tobyMac) on my computer and playing with his plastic lightsaber (*sniff* I'm so proud!).
Ashley and I have been watching a lot of TV shows online (since we don't have cable) lately. We recently watched through Prison Break (yet another review in the pipeline). I am glad and sad that I missed this masterpiece of a show while it was still running. Glad because I didn't have to wait a week for new episodes. Sad because I would have loved to be part of it's fanbase during it's run (as I would have loved to be in Firefly's fanbase while it was running). We started watching Criminal Minds which is truning out to be quite an interesting show, though it is very dark (even compared to Dexter, which we also watch). There's been a few times when we had to turn on an episode of another, lighter show so we could go to bed. It's a great show, don't get me wrong, but be warned if you are going to watch it that getting into a criminal's mind as they do on the show has psychological consequences. We also started watching USA's new show, White Collar. So far, it's as good as the rest of their shows that we watch (Monk, Psych, Burn Notice, In Plain Sight). I'm watching through the last half of Battlestar Galactica's third season and I'm loving what I'm seeing. My friend was right when he said that from season 3 on, it's like a completely different show from the first two seasons.
We watched the season finale of Heroes the other night and loved it. I hope NBC keeps this show for next season as the ending was quite exciting. I love that they've brought Sylar around to being a hero now and not in the way they tried in volume 3, when Angela and Arthur tried manipulating him. Now he's actually made the decision himself, which is the only way it was ever going to stick. It was weird watching Samuel, though, as it was during the holiday break that we watched Prison Break and I kept expecting him to break out T-Bag's southern drawl.
On the reading front, I've been reading a lot of Tom Clancy's work (Clear and Present Danger, The Sum of All Fears, Without Remorse, and Debt of Honor) and I finally took the time to read The Bourne Identity. Let's just say that the pen is obviously mightier than the camera for all of those that are also movies. Currrently, I'm reading The Bourne Supremacy and a new Star Wars book, Crosscurrent. It looks interesting for two reasons: 1) it follows the character from the game Jedi Knight III: Jedi Academy, Jaden Korr and 2) it's the first Star Wars story I know of with time travel. Once I'm finished with those, I have Millenium Falcon to read on the Star Wars front and The Bourne Ultimatum on the other, then on to the rest of Clancy's Jack Ryan series that I own (Patriot Games, Executive Orders, Rainbow Six, The Bear and the Dragon, Reb Rabbit, Teeth of the Tiger).
So there's my big blog for the last two and a half months. I'm going to try to be a bit more active here on my blog and write a new post at least every week, if not more often, as I used to do. Actually, I won't try. I will do as Yoda said: "Try not. Do or do not. There is no try."
Gobble Gobble
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
I just wanted to post a few things that I am thankful for real quick.
I am thankful for my wife. She completes me and I would be lost in this world without her. She makes me a better person than I am and makes me want to be even better than that. I love her and am so grateful that she is in my life and is my wife, sharing in all the things that life brings us, good or bad.
I am thankful for my son. Frustrating as he can be sometimes (read: most times, since he's a toddler now), I still love him and he reminds me not to take things too seriously or personally. Whenever I find myself getting too wrapped up in something I'm working on, he's usually hanging on my arm as if he's saying "Daddy! Come play with me! Take a break from all that boring stuff for a few minutes. I want to spend time with you and besides, you are always in a better mood after we play for a while." I love him and thank God for him everyday.
I am thankful that God has given me such a loving family as those two.
I am thankful for the roof over our heads and the food in our cupboards. These are especially important right now with me not having found a job yet.
There's a lot more, but that's all I'm going to post here. Hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving!
To My Love…
Two years. How quickly they have gone. Two years ago, at the time I am writing this, I was preparing myself for what is still the happiest day of my life: the day I married you.
Now look where we are. We have endured things that break up marriages a lot older than our own. We have a beautiful son. We have overcome all the obstacles life has thrown our way. We are more in love than we were two years ago.
I just wanted you to know that I love you now more than ever. You make me want to be a better man than I am. You give me the courage to take on the darkest of days. You help me to see my weaknesses and how I can become stronger in them. You make my life worth living. I could not have designed a better woman than you, had I been given the opportunity. You complete me in ways that I still discover every day.
I love you, Ashley, and I will forever. Happy Anniversary, my love!
5 Months Later…
Things have happened in my life that I can’t talk about freely on my blog. This is why it has taken this long for me to post anything. And don’t bother asking - I won’t tell.
I’ve put my website development on hold for the moment, until I finish my current client’s website. I’m almost finished with it, though, and I’m hoping to get back to my website soon. I’ve decided to scale it back a bit, since what it was turning into was basically a wiki site of what I like. I didn’t want that, so now I’m scaling it back some. I’ll still have my writings (MPD Stories, Reviews, Rants, etc), Comics (MMSoC, MMSoC.EXE, LinkSoC), and I’ll be adding an Image site that will allow me to post images I like to my own Flickr-like site. The Forums will return and the Blogs will stay.
Once I’ve got the Comic site done, I’ll be reposting all my comics on a regular schedule. And while MMSoC.EXE is finished up (I have an outline written to take it from where it is to the end), I’ll also be working on a new comic, also set in the BN universe, but following the main story of the games with a few Anime elements thrown in (at least, elements from the episodes I’ve seen).
For those who don’t know, I’ve finally joined Twitter. My tweets are private, so you’ll have to request to follow me. If you don’t think I’ll recognize your Twitter name, email me or Facebook me as well and let me know who you are.
I’ve started using Google Reader to catch all my favorite sites’ new posts and now I’m using the share function to share my favorite posts. Usually, these will be from the icanhascheezburger.com network and similar sites, so you can expect to laugh. Anyway, you can find my shared items here. Enjoy.
And just in case you did not know. I’m now an old fart. At the ripe old age of 1/4 of a century, I’m certainly feeling it. I feel sorry for those who are even older than myself. You all have my pity and sympathy. Before all you older people kill me for that, know that I say that with as much respect for my elders as I can muster. You are where I want to be, for I want to be old!
*runs away to hide from the cane wielding, denture throwing masses that will hopefully forget what they were after me for before they can find and kill me*
Mad Piggy Virus
My previous blog, posted on March 17th and found here, was titled “Airborne Swine Coming Soon to an Internet Near YOU!”
Shortly thereafter, the “Swine Flu” breaks out.
Coincidence or prophecy? You decide.
(If you don’t get the pun, then you can assume that all of SoC’s personalities, including SpamSoC, are laughing at you - though SpamSoC might not really know why he’s laughing. 
)
New Newsboy
My father-in-law looked up the new Newsboys song a few weeks ago, after hearing it on the radio. This led to a discovery I wasn’t expecting: Peter Furler is no longer the lead singer for the band. Who is replacing him? None other than Michael Tait, one third of another huge Christian band, dc Talk.
Holy. Crap.
At first I wasn’t sure he could pull off the sound of the Newsboys. But Ashley and I were just looking at some videos on YouTube of him singing live. He doesn’t sound like Furler (in reality, who could?), but he does sound good with them. I’m liking this move.
Aside from all that, the new Newsboys CD, “In The Hands Of God", hits stores on May 5th. It will be the last CD that Furler is lead singer on. Be sure to pick up a copy. Newsboys are good enough that I can say that without hearing more than the one song on the radio.
Music
Here is the Music Player. You need to installl flash player to show this cool thing!
Categories
Archives
Tags
Friends
Funny Stuff
- Cake Wrecks
- GraphJam
- I Can Has Cheezburger?
- I Has a Hotdog
- Pundit Kitchen
- ROFLrazzi
- Totally Looks Like
SoC's Links
Polls
How do you like the site redesign?
- It could definitely use some work. (0%, 0 Votes)
- It's okay... (0%, 0 Votes)
- It's nice! (0%, 0 Votes)
- Sweet! (0%, 0 Votes)
- Sucks like a Hoover. (100%, 0 Votes)
Total Voters: 0
Loading ...
SoC's Tweets
- Just finished Lost Season 1. I guess I'm officially hooked. C'mon library, tell me I can pick up seasons 2 & 3 tomorrow... please?
- Halfway through Lost Season 1. Liking it so far.
- So... we are back from the "Camping Trip from Hell." That was decided by all to be the official name for it, so no I'm not exaggerating.
- Today we clean house and finish preparations for vacation. Tomorrow, vacation. Booyah! Thank you Dave & Becky for making it possible!
- Recently, my wife watched Lord of the Rings for the first time. Now, Caleb is watching Lord of the Beans and she wants to watch LOTR again.
- Anyone have a rhino killer that's not a giant gun or explosive? We have a nasty one running around our apartment, and it needs to die now.
- My wife just called me "old".
- If I were a shape, I would be a rhombicuboctahedron today. Also, if I were a number, I would be between a square and a cube.
- Apparently, the world is going to end next May. This means I will not see my own 27th birthday or my son's 3rd. I do not like this. No sir.
- Can I just say that I really, really, really hate jazz. And freestyle jazz is worse.
