"It’s only stalking if you work at it…" [Dated 03/05/07]

Hey all, back in the library again and recently I have been really blitzing episodes of the Shield. I am about halfway through season 3 and working through till I reach season 6, the new season whose episodes are being broadcasted now. Even though I remember most of the storylines, it is still an amazing show, really rough and tumble, edgy stuff with a swagger, which I guess dares you not to think it’s cool. I’ve mentioned many times before about the strike team and how like when watching 24, you get pumped up and cheer loudly when they beat down the bad guys, whether it be throwing them over a car, pistolwhipping them, or whatever new method they can come up with the objects around them. As I said, the Strike Team, but Detective Dutch Wagenbach is also very cool, and he is the character in the show I am most like, so he is cool for different reasons.

Anyways, moving on from the Shield, and I think my WoW addiction is over, it’s strange, but I just don’t feel like playing it anymore – I think that’s the problem now that I’ve reached the level cap there is no need to obsess about figues like xp/hour and how to spend talent points etc. As I’ve moaned before, the low population of the realm also means that groups are hard to put together, so that can be very frustrating. I wouldn’t be surprised if my lessening addiction of WoW has been beaten by a new obsession of something, in the whole scheme of life, is pretty much pointless. And that is playing on my 360 and boosting my gamerscore – which doesn’t mean anything, but is just a way of showing other Live players what milestones you’ve hit in the games you’ve played. This has meant me digging up Amped 3 and finally completing the “story” to bag myself lots of points to go towards my gamerscore. Acutally to anyone who hasn’t played the game, I would advise doing so, just for the story itself, and doubling if you have an interest in snowboarding. The best bit of the story is the numerous cut-scenes which detail your progress, and they are ridiculous, often not having anything to do with snowboarding, and pretty much all of them have had me laughing my face off.
So much so was my quest for a better gamerscore, I actually bought the Live Arcade game Uno, and set about maxing out the possible 200 points that are up for grabs. Two weeks later, and I have them all :D

I have to say something about the type of achievements. Many of them involve completing missions through a campaign or story mode the game ha, which is fair enough. Although it’s ok ina few cases, games which have allocated a lot of the points into continued Live play are not so popular in the land of Jonny. Another group of acheivements which are lame and frankly cheap are those that could be classed as attrition acheivements, ones awarded for things like 20hours time playing the game etc. I don’t mind those that you could achieve quite comfortably if you are a fan of the game, and play it quite regularly. The ones that I can’t stand are those which take insane amounts of time and effort on the part of the gamer. I was browsing around the web, looking for lists/articles on the supposed “worst” achievments for 360 games. One I remember was one from this Bomberman game – a game which is univerally accepted as an awful game -and the achievement was for blowing up x amount of bombs or something to that effect. Now, the article in question stated that if you were able to do 1 per second, then it would take over 3 weeks (or similarily ridiculous time, I read this about a week back) non-stop gameplay to complete the achievement – pretty stupid.

Another terrible, not to mention tough, achievement was to rank 1st overall in Live play – now that’s a marathon and simply not attainable for those that are incredibly dedicated to reach that summit. Another similarily annoying achievement was to be online in this Tiger Woods game when there are another 1000 people online. The developers over-estimated the popularity of the game and there was simply never enough people on. This was got round, by people arranging specific times for people to go on Live so people could achieve this one.
Speaking of Live Leaderboards , it may have changed since me submitting the score, but doing this one particular event on Amped 3, my score registered as 8th on the leaderboard :D. Again, Amped 3 is another game that doesn’t have a supremely massive online userbase, with a lot of my scores, coming in as <1000 on the leaderboards. On the note of competitive leaderboards, PGR3 is one of the top ones I reckon. They stage regular tournaments every week or so, and I would love to get the achievement “Tournament Qualifier” but that means being in the top 64 times, and generally my times are usually at least 1000th and above. As this one guy I met in a lobby ages back, he’s waiting till PGR4 comes out, then hopefully all these hardcore amazing gamers will jump onto PGR4 and compete in the tournaments it has in that game – here’s hoping :D

And there couldn’t be a blog entry without mentioning some failing I have with some girl, lol. The last time I saw hot librarian chick was last Thursday, and it got me thinking, it’s no big deal if I just ask her out, but I’d rather not do that in the deafening silence of the library, so I was planning to catch her as she left, which basing on Thursday’s sighting, would be about 1. My reasoning being that she was in the library when I arrived at about half past, but not when I left at about quarter past 1.
So I camped outside the library reading my book, hoping to catch her as she left on the next day, Friday. To quote Dutch from the Shield, “It’s only stalking if you work at it”, so I thought why not actually devote a little time to finding out when she leaves so I can ask her out – that’s not obsessive is it?!!? Coincedentally, that quote is my current MSN screenname, lol.

Unfortunately, she never showed on Friday, and not see her, the following Tuesday or Wednesday (I didn’t work Monday). So here I am, the following Thursday, thinking that she would work this time every week – I walk in so I can head upstairs to write this very blog, and nothing. That makes me sad, but also curious to her exact working hours, I guess they change around, rather annoyingly. Ideally she should work the desk up here in the music section, where I come up to read/blog, as there are less people likely to listen in, but sadly that wish has not happened.
Anyways, I gotta go off to work in a bit, with any luck, she’ll be in tomorrow instead, or knowing my luck, manning the main desk as I leave in a min.

Take it easy.

Don’t forget to tip your geek… [Dated 24/04/07]

Hey, a short post this time as I have been shopping for a card for my Mum’s upcoming birthday. Anyways enough of that…

For some reason I got thinking about how I introduce myself to other people, and how people define themselves. I like to think there are two quite, well almost distinct halves to me, them being Jonathan and Jonny, everyone’s friend lol.

Not to dig up the Becca thing again, but I think she is actually the only girl I’ve met who has done a different reaction to me telling me that I do/did Computer Science. Generally girls I meet who ask what I was doing for a degree, and I reply Computer Science, and they would all go, “oh” and go colder to what was before a warming prospect of friendship etc. Becca actually replied “Oh, like what Rob does”, when I told her after she asked many a year back, but I dunno, maybe girls hearing that draw the same conclusion that I must be a geek, and that is a bad thing. That saying I am a geek, but I don’t like the way it is considered a negative thing.

Geeks are responsible for any piece of technology that we use today, and jock types/geek haters should actually realise that and be thankful for the time these “uncool” people dedicated to exploring what was possible. The internet, the vessel you use to send you horrible, gut-inducing chain mails, “send this to 8 people NOW, or you maye die! etc” to all your stupid friends, was created by University boffins trying to get two seperate computers to send messages to each other.

I remember back when I was an avid user of StumbleUpon, (great addon for FF if you use it, get it you will not be sorry), I found a few articles and the like where it was saying the benefits of dating a geek, and I quite excited about that, but that train of thought has not broke through into the mainstream just yet.
Thanks to watching the bizarre Japanorama, there is a buzzing sub-culture of Otakus,or geeks/nerds, that are finally being appreciated, and heck it sounds very tempting to be part of that movement. Also the word Moe (pronounced Mo-ay) is rather smart. The Japanese have given a word to a pleasure moan if you like – it was something I immediately wanted to force into my everyday vocabulary.

Speaking more broadly, I often get frustrated at how much imprortance is placed on money, and how effectively you need it to do anything basically. I am quite sick of the life I’m living right now, I’d love to uproot myself, move somewhere else, do something new and exciting, but that all takes money which I don’t have to a degree.

Moving back to something lighter, I’ve started rewatching the entirity of the Shield in preparation for the new season, season 6. There’s a few shows that have started new seasons, Scrubs, Lost, Prison Break, 24, and I’m a little behind so I need to sort out some kind of schedule so I can watch them all, rather than blitzing them seperately. Oh my I forgot, the Stargate shows as well, oh my, that’s 7 seperate shows, and I might even wanna watch some more Drew carey Show, as watched season 1, and it’s not too bad, although Drew is a weird frontman for a show.

Time to wrap up, day off tomorrow, so some overdue tidying in store, both physically in my room, and files on the PC, so that should be fun. As someone said at work yesterday, “days off aren’t really days off, cos then I’m just busy at home”. Once again reminding me how little I want to do the whole 9-5 thing, just to chase some money to buy a few things to make me happy, and then savior the few days off I get, which would then be spent sorting out personal life. Man I can’t wait to join the Rat Race, seeya there!

Take it easy
J-Man.