Valentine's Day is commerical propaganda at its worst.  Happy Chinese New Year instead (a few days late -- I had meant to post something on Feb. 7)!

In boring news, I've slipped from my Halo 3 habit into a Rock Band one.  I basically consider Rock Band to be a party-in-a-box and I've carted it with me (and an extra guitar from Guitar Hero III) to several parties.  I beat Devil May Cry 4 in what was basically two sittings and picked up a copy of Lost Odyssey, though I haven't fired it up yet.  My professional career is smooth sailing, but my personal life continues to perplex me, so I take solace in video games.  What else is new?

P.S. I really want to buy a house but I'd be a fool not to wait for the housing market to completely bottom out in a year.

Incoming mid-life crisis!

So, I've noticed that I've grown a little wilder in the past few months and have behaved very uncharacteristically.  "Party animal" may be too much of a stretch, but I've definitely gone out and deliberately gotten smashed a few times since the holiday season started.  I've also gotten in a couple of fights (I'm 2-0 with nary a scratch, but I was actually pretty lucky the second fight was broken up as the guy was 6'5" and over 250 lbs.) and have been flirting with girls almost ten years my junior.  Okay, so maybe dating younger girls is part of my repertoire, but this is extreme even for me.  There's actually a maturity gap wherein I'm the more responsible party.  Crazy, right?

I feel like I'm rebelling against my upcoming thirtieth birthday and acting like I'm still twenty, or, at least, how I think twenty-year olds behave because I was never this crazy when I was actually twenty.  I'm probably also rebelling against the very "vanilla" flavor of my current life.  I've always been more of a "raspberry sorbet" type of guy and need that extra level of "oomph" or what-have-you.  What I really need to do is stop delaying the purchase of a permanent residence (I've had enough saved up for awhile) and find a nice girl with whom to settle down.

Any volunteers?

This is a little late, but I spent most of yesterday with a giant headache.  Raaaawr.  I hope everyone made it through the holiday season intact!

So I'm thinking about buying a condominium or a house, but I realized I don't have nearly enough stuff to fill a condo, let alone a house.  I just got a new car so I don't need one of those, and I'm just too fiscally irresponsible to just keep on saving!  Maybe I'll take a nice vacation somewhere!

X-Box Live gamertag: hotzp

I plan to be online frequently in the next couple of weeks.  Feel free to friend me so that I can shoot you in the face (I can also be convinced to play co-op).  Cheers!

So, I finally broke down and bought an X-Box 360.  I'm glad I waited until they ironed out the kinks of the first generation models, because they definitely had a plethora of problems.  I grabbed it in anticipation of the soon-to-come releases of Blue Dragon and Eternal Sonata, and I'll also eventually want it for Halo 3 and Fallout 3.  I picked up Marvel: Ultimate Alliance and Giant-Jiggling-Boobs-on-Unbelievably-Proportioned Females or Alive 4.  I really liked the X-Men: Legends series, so it's no surprise that I'm enjoying Ultimate Alliance; and while DoA4 is actually a surprisingly good fighting game, I can't help but feel kind of dirty while playing it.

Hey, Kasumi: It's called "modest attire".  Look into it.

So, we threw down at work the other day.  It was a hard core and OG (Original Geek) tussle.  There are terminals near the human resources area that are set up with typing programs to measure Words Per Minute.  I don't even remember who originally threw down the gauntlet, but all the geeky guys on my team agreed to the challenge.  We comandeered one of the terminals and went in pairs: One person would act as an observer and would record the results of the other, and then they would exchange positions.

The typing program (or, at least, the challenge with which I was presented) was a split-screen affair.  It had one of Aesop's Fables at the top and room to re-type it as quickly as possible on the bottom.  The tricky part to this test was that you could only backspace within your current word.  If you made a typo and hit space, you were screwed and stuck with it (thus hurting your final score).  I think that part of the testing made everyone type a lot more slowly and carefully than they normally would.  I normally zing through my typing without a care in the world, and I often won't spot an error until much much later.  I made a couple of mistakes early on and had to slow my pace to ensure that I wouldn't make any more.  Still, I wound up 67 WPM with a 98% accuracy rate and trounced the competition.

Hail to the King, baby.

So I feel as if one of my friends is grooming me to be her next boyfriend.  She's currently dating someone else, but that relationship has been falling apart for the last few months.  In that time, she's turned to me for support, and I've gladly been there for her; however, I am also friends with her boyfriend and it makes me feel somewhat disloyal to be talking to her so much even though our conversations have never been remotely inappropriate.  She's never explicitly stated or even strongly hinted that she'd like to date me after she's single again, but I personally think the implication is there.  And if it's an unspoken understanding powerful enough to penetrate even my thick skull, then I don't think I'm just imagining it.

Pros: She's cute, smart, sexy, funny, gorgeous, charming, pretty, kind to animals, hot, sophisticated, and beautiful.  Did I mention how attractive she is?  I don't think I'm communicating that clearly enough.  She's one of those girls that you don't even bother flirting with because she's probably already dating a movie star or Jesus or something. 

Cons: I have never been "the other guy" and I refuse to ever get involved in that kind of situation.  While nothing improper has happened yet, it feels like it might sooner or later.

I should probably just tell her this straight out, but I'm afraid of alienating her.

...

When the fuck did I get so wishy-washy?