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.
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."
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!
Airborne Swine Coming Soon to an Internet Near YOU!
So… For about four or five years, I’ve been saying that I’m working on a new version of my site. Each time I’ve said it, I meant it. Unfortunately, I didn’t follow through. Not enough time, got bored with the design or just plain didn’t want to code. Now, I want to code it. I am coding it. I’ve finished the public side of my site. I just need to finish the admin panel and fill in some content and it’ll be ready. I’m shooting for May-ish, but no guarantees.
You can start looking for those flying pigs now. When you see them, my new site will be live.
In other news, I just moved Tia’s website to her new domain: www.capturedbytia.com. I’m sure she would appreciate you taking a look and be sure to contact her if you need a photographer.
Since I’m talking websites, I should probably plug my wife’s website again. You can find it at www.unfinishedproject.org. She’s got gluten-free recipes, a couple reviews and pictures of Caleb all up ons her site.
A Not-So Unfinished Project
So I was wrong in my last post. Ashley’s website will not be taking weeks.
It’s done!
Be sure to check out www.unfinishedproject.org!
And for the record, I am a website coding machine! Two websites in two weekends! BOO-YAH!
Crawling, Court & Websites
As of tonight at 11:31pm, Caleb is 7 months old. He’s growing up way too fast. I keep telling him to stop, but typical of a child, he won’t listen. The last few days he’s been sick with a nasty cold. It’s harder for him to sleep, eat, and breathe and he has a ugly cough. Does that stop him? Of course not. He has still picked up crawling. He now crawls and rolls his way to whatever he wants in out apartment and nothing is safe. See the video below for proof.
Also, his first word was "Tiggy." While technically not a word, it is what we call his little Tigger toy. Sometimes it come out as "tsssiggy" or "iggyts" or just "iggy," but his meaning is obvious. Especially since he is always looking at his toy and holding out his hands.
He’s taken to putting his arms out when he wants up now, too. It’s great that he’s finally able to communicate. It was heartbreaking, however, when I put him down for a nap he put his arms up for me to pick him up while he cried.
*sniff*
Ahem.
Anyways, tomorrow (read: in 8 hours… I really need to be in bed) I go to court for the accident where I totaled the Hyundai. I’m not fighting the ticket, just trying to defer it. If they allow me to defer it, I have a chance to keep it off my record. All I would need is one year of no tickets and it doesn’t show up on my record. Short of that, I hope that they will drop the amount, since, to my extensive (read: not-so) legal knowledge, it seems that the $550 is higher than allowed by law. Pray that it goes well.
EDIT: It went well. I got the deferment!
In other news, I’ve been working hard on my website. I’ve got a good chunk of the coding done (about 50% by my estimation), but I’ve still got a long way to go. This is easily the most complex website I’ve built and I want it to work as close to perfect as possible. Once the code is done, there’s the task of filling in the content. I want to copy over the content from my old site, which shouldn’t be too hard, and begin putting in new stuff. Hopefully, the end result will be a website that everyone can enjoy and lasts a long time.
Oh, and by the way, I’m not just building my own site right now. I’m also building an image hosting site, a forum site, a comics site, a resumé/portfolio site, a family tree site, a web design site and Ashley’s website. Ashley’s should actually be ready within the next couple weeks! The Image hosting site is actually finished already. I was able to code it over my four day weekend last weekend. Booyah! I’m a website-coding machine!
So… now I’m off to bed.
Christmas Stuphs
So Christmas has now come and gone. We had a good Christmas this year, especially when compared to last year. I thank God for my job and hope to never be unemployed over Christmas again.
Caleb made out like a bandit this year, but then again, he is a new baby and they tend to get spoiled. He loves his new toys and the ones that his Nana and Papa (Ashley’s parents) got him. The last picture in that link was him sleeping with his new caterpillar in his high chair.
My gifts this year were lots of candy and sweets, new sheepskin slippers, a KJ-52 CD, Brisingr, a new keyboard (pics below), some freaking comfy Wii pajamas and a Moutain Dew beanie. Ashley’s parents got me a Best Buy gift card and Super Mario Galaxy for the Wii. We don’t have one so I either have to play at their house or at the base recreation center, but that’s no biggie.
Ashley actually got more video games than me this year. She got Rayman Raving Rabbids 2 and Club Penguin: Elite Penguin Force for the DS, and a mystery game for the computer. She also got an eBay gift card, the new Patricia Cornwell Scarpetta book, Short Circuit on DVD, a Shea Cashmere gift set with cashmere socks and lotion, and the David Cook CD.
Aside from Christmas, we’ve had quite an interesting couple of weeks with all the snow up here. It’s been fun to just try to get to the Starbucks in our back yard.
Caleb is now eating stage 2 foods, which are thicker than the stage 1 foods we started him on last month. He had his first taste of Macaroni & Cheese yesterday for dinner and he loved it. He’s getting so much into eating his solid foods that he grabbed the spoon from Ashley one day to feed himself.
Caleb Stealing the Spoon
He also now has his first tooth! We tried to get a picture of it, but the flash just reflects off his saliva and drool so much that all you get is a big white spot where the tooth is. We’re thinking his second tooth won’t be too much longer as we can feel a bump where it would be.
Anyway, I hope you all had a Merry Christmas! Happy New Year, too!
My Old, Disgusting Keyboard
New, Sexy, Sleek Keyboard
Wedding Photos and Caleb Videos!
So, after more than a year, Ashley and I got the DVD with all of our wedding photos. This is good, because other than the really nice prints in the wedding album, we don’t have any pictures from our wedding. No one who took pictures ever sent us any. Oh well. Now we have all the professional photos and we are loving it.
You can find the photos on my Facebook or here.
Also, Ashley put together another video of Caleb and put some music to it. Here it is!
A Triple Play? Holy Blog Posts, Batman!
So this will be my third post for today. Some might say that Hell has officially frozen over and pigs must be flying somewhere. I say, that day doesn’t come until I actually finish my website redesign.
You’ll notice that I’ve changed the look of the blogs. I never was satisfied with the blue one, and this one is just so much more my style. Meaning, it’s green. I love green. Freakin’ awesomest color EVAR!
Ahem.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
I started another blog. You can see it at the top of the page. The last one. Yeah, the one that says “Photos.” Guess what I’m posting on that blog? You guessed it. Photos! This will be a blog for the people who’d rather not read my longwindedness and just look at the pretty pictures, for there will be no text, save the title and posting date. Enjoy the little I’ve posted so far. I will post more soon.
[NOTE: I've since changed blog systems and dropped all but the main blog, so everything above this is outdated. -SoC]
So I bet you’re all wondering what’s been going on in the world of SoC. You’re just on the edge of your seat, I’m sure. Don’t fall off.
Caleb is now over 3 months old and doing very well. He’s the size of a 6 month old and eats like one, too. A month and a half ago, we pulled out his jumperoo. Normally, babies don’t start in them until their 3-4 months old, and even then they have trouble touching the ground. Caleb has been able to touch since he started and now we almost have to raise it to the next level. He’s learned how to smile and does so every morning, according to Ashley. I see it on the weekends, when I get up with him and let Ashley sleep. It is the freakin’ cutest thing in the world. Then he starts cooing and babbling at me and it just melts my heart. I may be biased, but my son is the cutest baby in all of everdom! And smart too!
I love being a dad, if you couldn’t tell.
We got to spend some time with Adam and Bekah (sorry if I spelled her name wrong) when they came up a couple of weeks ago. Her sister is in the Seattle Children’s Hospital, being treated for necrotizing fasciitis, a disease you may have heard mentioned on House a few times. It’s super scary and she’s going to be in the hospital for a very long time being treated for it. Keep her in your prayers. Anyways, we got to have lunch with them while they were up here. Adam held Caleb, the first baby he’s ever held, according to him. He says he’s always been too scared, but he doesn’t realize that he’s a natural at it. Yes, Adam, you are. Bekah crocheted Caleb a blanket that is really cute. Thank you again, Bekah!
Work is going great. I survived the end of the quarter reports and they were generated by the database I designed. That’s really cool because this database means I don’t have to sift through 3 months of sometimes indecipherable Outlook calendars to create these reports. There’s still some kinks to work out, but it works. They are now using this database through Navy Region Northwest, too! Booyah!
Ashley and I have celebrated our one year anniversary now! Woohoo! It’s been the wildest year of my life, but I wouldn’t have wanted to spend it without her. She really does complete me in every way a wife should complete her husband and more. She’s everything I could ever want or dream of in a woman. I love her and I look forward to the rest of my life with her!
That’s about it for now. I really am working on getting Hell to freeze over… I mean a new version of my website. I hope to have it out before Caleb goes to college, but no promises.
Music
Here is the Music Player. You need to installl flash player to show this cool thing!
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SoC's Tweets
- Done with Lost Season 2. That was a confusing cliffhanger. Oh well.. on to Season 3 tonight!
- Me: "I love you." My son: "I know." Quoting Han Solo at two years old. *sniff* I'm so proud. #starwars #geekpride
- 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.
