Is it heartburn or death knocking on your chest?

I haven't been posting lately because redoing my entire itunes library onto my Laptop is proving to be quite a daunting task. Its pretty much taken me about a week to get to this point. Write now im working on editing the titles for all the songs. Right now most of the songs have extra information I don't want in the title. After this I still have to find all the album art for the songs. So I'm probably going to be working on that for the weekend.

As you may be able to tell something else has been bothering me lately. Sometime earlier this week I started feeling pains in my chest. It wasn't so much of a sharp pain more like pressure on the middle of my chest. Its been more annoying then anything else. When it started it only seemed to happen when I was sitting in my chair at work. When I would get up and walk around it would go away. Also when I ate something it would also go away for a little while.

But lately its been appearing more often. So I have set up an appointment with my new doctor next Tuesday. Its been awhile since I've gone in for a check up. And by awhile I mean I can even remember the last time I had one. So I'm not exactly looking forward to find out exactly how destroyed my body actually is. Ignorance has been very bliss for me so far. But I guess I will no longer to be able to enjoy that bliss anymore.

Now that this has become such a problem I decided to use the internets to try and see if I was making this mole hill into a mountain. That was not a good idea after coming from such bliss. Pretty much every link I saw with my search basically said heart disease or heart attack. Not exactly what I was hoping for. But then again I'm not exactly surprised at all. However, now I'm extra worried to the point that this weekend is probably not going to be as relaxing as I originally hoped.

I hope the results from any testing I have done on Tuesday are not to bad. But if they are I may just have to rush my Memento Mori list.

The Lazy Perfecitonist vs. the iphone

I've come to the realization that I'm a lazy perfectionist. By that I mean I'm basically a pretty lazy person unless I have some specific task that needs to be done. And when that happens my perfectionist side kicks in. It then turns a small 5 minute task into a whole day project.

Case in point as I said before I just bought an iphone. Its still awesome by the way. Well the thing is I already own an ipod touch which is basically the same thing minus the phone and camera. So my plan was just to take the music off the touch and put it on the iphone. Well if any of you have ever tried to transfer the music off an ipod onto another ipod then you would know that it can be an incredibly big pain in the ass. And with the ipod touch and iphone its twice as bad because Apple decided in there infinite wisdom that they should change how the filing system should work. This means that when its connected into a computer the it won't be detected as its own separate drive as it does on older ipods. When the ipod is detected as a disk drive on the computer its easier to move files around.

So now I have an ipod and iphone that are going to be a pain to move music between. I found a few programs that might be able to do it somewhat. I would probably lose my playlist and album art.

Speaking of album art when I originally bought my ipod touch I had to go through this with my ipod nano. At that time I didn't have any album art for my songs because the screen on the nano was so small that it wasn't worth the effort when no one could see it unless they were looking really close and even then you couldn't really see it that well. So when I was transferring the songs over to the ipod touch I decided to find all the album art. Well I didn't expect it to be that bad. It end up taking me about a week to finish.

That brings us to the present and now I'm moving all the mp3 files from my desktop to my laptop. And since the mp3 files themselves are not actually associated with the album art it looks like once again I'll have to take the time to find and match up all the album art work all over again. So what that means is I really don't have time to write this entry. And with that I head back into the depths of mp3/itunes/ipod hell. Good Day

OBJECTION, its time for the testimony

Tomorrow I'm going to give a presentation on a game from one of my favorite series. That game being Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney. This presentation is basically a review of the game and highlighting all the things that make this a great game.

It was my idea to give the presentation after seeing other people present other games. For some reason every time I saw a presentation I had a urge to do one myself. So finally one day I email the person in charge of doing these presentation and she said she would get back to me when there was an opening. So I waited for about 2 weeks before I got the go ahead. The problem was that I had finished playing the game about 2 weeks ago and had since moved on to different things. So I had to pull it out and start coming up with the presentation that I would have been much more prepared for had I done it when I was playing the game.

So I found out that I would be doing the presentation next Tuesday (I found out about it last Friday). So I spent the weekend trying to come up with interesting bits to show the people and also give them the general idea on how the game works and why I think its pretty special. One of the problems is that the game only contains 1 save slot and since I had to show a few different things this posed quite a dilemma. I figured out a work around that involves using my laptop to create a few save states of the areas I wanted to present. So I worked out the kinks over the weekend and it seemed to flow as well as could be expected.

The funny thing is I'm somewhat dreading the presentation for some reason. I think part of the reason is that I have somewhat of a small time frame to try and fit in everything I wanted to talk about and I'm worried that people will not be able to see why I think the game is awesome. Also I don't want to take to much time because I know at a certain point its going to get really boring and I don't want to end up there. I should be fine though. Its not a life or death presentation and I'm pretty good at just winging it when I need to. So hopefully everything works out well.

Sleek, sexy, its the iphone

So I just got my iphone and I must say it is quite a looker. I already have an ipod touch which is basically the same thing minus the phone and camera capabilities. While there was nothing wrong with the ipod touch I felt that I should probably try to consolidate some of the gadgets I have into one easy to carry phone. Currently I'm carrying my ipod touch for music, my camera for photos, and a phone that for making phone calls.

Now I know that the iphone is not the greatest camera but the fact that I always have my phone with me means that I will always have my camera handy as well. Also since my phone will also be my mp3 player I can cut down on the amount of things I have to carry with me. Plus like I said before the iphone itself is just plain sexy.

Also the other reason I decided to get an iphone was I was made an offer I couldn't refuse. While I was going through a the gadget blogs I look at I came across a post about AT&T offering the iphone for $249 with no contract. I thought it was to good to be true but I wasn't about to let this go with out looking into it. I used the link they had posted to the site when I got to the site it said that I needed to get a 2 year contract. I thought, "Oh Great" but when I read more about the offer I read that people were able to purchase the phone without doing the 2 year contract. So to make a long story a little shorter I was able to buy the phone without the contract.

I told my girlfriend about it but she was hesitant well actually she took some advice from her father who knows nothing about technology and didn't get it when I told her about it. So when she finally decided she wanted to get it it was to late. They probably had sold out by that time.

That made me wonder if they actually sold other refurb phones like that. Ones without a 2 year contract required. When i went back to the site and looked at the other refurb phones they all require the customer to purchase the plan before sending the phone out. It seems weird to me that they would sell a phone that only they carry without the contract. But I guess they have their own plans. As for me I've already unlocked mine and plan to go with tmobile as the carrier.

Hopefuly I will be able to take pictures and post to my blog on the fly. Thats the plan anyways we shall see how well that works out.

Fear Changes Everything stay out of the Mist

I read this short story in the book Skeleton Crew by Stephen King and I really liked it. I remember reading it and thinking how it would make a great movie someday. But that was a long time ago when I was into Stephen King. So when I heard the movie was coming out I didn't really thinking about it.

So today I finally got around to watching it and I must say its actually pretty good except for the ending. Actually it seems to be even gorier then I remember. I'm not really much of a horror fan but I really enjoy this story except for the ending. I thought I may be the only person that hated the ending but apparently not check out these comments I came across on IMDB. There are a few comments that think its the greatest movie ever (they must be payed off) but the mass majority give it a 1 star rating and every one of them mention the ending as an issue.

I wasn't really going to write about this but in the second half of the movie there are some great lines that really made me think about how fragile our society really is. I picked out one of the quotes that makes this point pretty well:

Amanda Dunfrey: You don't have much faith in humanity, do you?
Dan Miller: None, whatsoever.
Amanda Dunfrey: I can't accept that. People are basically good; decent. My god, David, we're a civilized society.
David Drayton: Sure, as long as the machines are working and you can dial 911. But you take those things away, you throw people in the dark, you scare the shit out of them - no more rules.



*SPOILER ALERT*My beef with the ending is that they changed it. Now i wouldn't really mind but I guess its supposed to be twisted in some kinda Twilight Zone way. In the book the main protagonist, his son, and a few other escape the supermaket they are in and drive away in the protagonist SUV. The story ends with them driving but seeing no end to the fog. I don't care for this ending because of the lack of closure but at least theres some kind of hope so thats fine.

However, in the movie it turns out differently. They still escape and its the protagonist, his son, a lady the protagonist has grown close to during the incident, and old lady, and an old man. They drive for awhile and the movie takes this opportunity to show how the mist has effect the town. Everything pretty much destroyed or covered in webbing because of the crazy mutant spider things. So after a few minutes of this driving and looking the car finally runs out of gas and they are still in the mist. In the car with them there is a revolver that only has 4 bullets left. After a long piece of silence and time spent looking at each other the protagonist is seen loading the 4 bullets into the gun. Next thing you see is an outside shot of the car then you see and hear 4 gunshots. Next its inside the car and everyone is dead except our "hero". Then he screams a few times then leaves the car to accept his death. And heres the twist it appears that the army has actually beaten back the mist and there are survivors. So now our "hero" has killed everyone that I have come to care about and the calvary was a few minutes behind. Not only is it a downer but its doesn't make sense for the characters who spend the whole movie doing everything they can to stay alive and not give in to the madness that over takes everyone else to switch on a dime and decide its time to commit suicide.

I read somewhere online that Stephen King likes this ending as do many other people but I can't stand it. You spend all this getting to know and like these characters and then the end of the movie comes to punch you in face, give you the finger, and kick you while your down.

*END SPOILER*

This brings me to another thing I've come to hate about movies that have been coming out lately. What is the deal with all the depressing endings to movies? I'm not paying an outrageous sum of money to go see a movie thats going to leave me more depressed leaving then when I came in. Life is depressing enough without having to pay for the privilege of being more depressed. I know some people like the endings that are not happy but not I. When I spend my hard earned money on anything I expect to be happy with what ever I spent it on. I guess when your the person making the movie it may seem more artsy by putting in an ending thats based in reality. But I don't want to pay for what amounts to a buzzkill.

Anyways shifting away from the ending if I remember correctly in the book there was no real explanation for where the Mist came from but since its an actual movie I guess they had to give a reason. Now if you have ever played Half life then the explanation may seem a bit familiar. And by familiar I mean its like they pretty much took the story behind half life and transplanted it onto this movie. I mean they even put in things that look like striders from half life 2. So I guess if you like half life and half life 2 this movie maybe the closest thing to a real life adaptation for awhile.

So ultimately I would recommend this movie except for the ending. If you feel that you can't watch a movie without watching the ending then I would say skip this movie. The ending is that much of a kick to the nuts. I hear theres an alternate ending on the DVD and as much as I'd like to see it (cause from what I heard its a more pleasant ending) I don't feel like spending money just to see it. I'll just read about it on the internets and image it in my head. Mmmm...imagination

A new view of the common story

I just recently came across this website and I thought it was a very interesting use of technology.
I haven't had a chance to really get going with it but from what I gather it takes you through a story but you follow the path of the story via satellite images. I haven't really had a chance to read through a story but I did click through a few pages and it seems to work well.

This idea got me thinking. Maybe someone could do this to a best selling story. Something like the Da Vinci Code comes to mind.

Do you have protection

I'm currently trying to set up securities on my desktop and my laptop but its proving to be kind of a pain in the ass. Lets just say that the programs I got may or may not have fallen off the truck. So since this isn't going so smoothly I only have myself to blame. Hopefully I can get this stuff sorted out tonight because I don't feel like working on it tomorrow.

Where the heck are we

Recently I bought the GPS unit for my PSP. I was around 70 dollars with shipping. Currently the GPS unit is only available in Japan. I had it imported from China cause if its for sale anywhere in teh world then it can be purchased in China.

So anyways I bought it with hopes of finally getting something for my psp that I could be proud of. When I got it I put it on the psp and was prepared to find myself in this great big world. Except there was a problem. Being that this item was only suppose to be used in Japan there was no software to actually use the GPS device in the US DOH!

But never fear where theres a will theres a homebrew. And yes there happens to be a homebrew out there. So I went and loked it up and installed it on my psp ready to start finding myself. Except getting it to actually work has actually been a more doubting task then I could have ever thought.

So for now I have put it aside and hopefully when I come back to it I will have more luck.

Computers and I

A few days ago I received my hard drive that I had ordered online from Newegg. It was quite a step up from the 20 GB IDE drive I was using before. I was excited as I always am when I get something in the mail (bills not included). But this was different.

I was happy for a minute but then I thought about it. I was going to to have to take out my old hard drive with the OS installed and reinstall everything from scratch. Also I'm not much of a wiz with computer hardware. I pretty much know just enough to get by without blowing something up or electrocuting myself. But even knowing the little I do I'm still worried when ever I have to slide open that case and get down in there plugging and unplugging things. I'm always sure that somethings going to go wrong and I'm never going to get it working again.

So last night ago I finally willed myself to unplug the old hard drive and plug in the new one. This process went smoothly even though I had to figure out where to plug the SATA II drive into on the motherboard. Once I got that sorted out I booted the sucker up and it actually worked and detected the drive. SUCCESS well not quite.

For some reason the computer decided not to detect the other drive I already had installed on the motherboard. And it just happen to be the drive where I had all my crap stored on (since my OS drive only had 20GB).

So installed all the drivers and what not and but it still didn't detect it. Finally I just said screw it I'll deal with it later cause I was pretty tired after watching a bunch of progress bars move across my computer screen.

On my motherboard I have 2 SATA drive slots and 1 STAT II slot. I had left the one drive that was attached to the SATA drive slot alone because it was working before why would I change it. But this morning I thought to myself what would happen if I connected the old drive to the other SATA slot. I just changed it to the other slot and low and behold it worked. I'm not exactly sure what the issue was and frankly I don't care as long as it works. It could be a miracle from God for all I care (although thats a pretty small miracle).

I didn't have a chance to actually work on the computer to make sure everything was hunky and also dory but it seemed to work fine so I'll just have to check it out later.

Placebo no longer

Apparently the company that sell the product Airborne has settled a lawsuit for 23.3 million dollars. The lawsuit pretty much says that Airborne isn't the end all be all cold killer they made it out to be.

The problem with this is that the stuff really worked for me. Or at least it made my body think it was working enough to get me though a cold. But now the secret is out and if theres one problem with a placebo its that when the secrets out so is the placebo. Even though it was kind of expensive usually when I took it I felt better. But now I'm just going to have to find something else. And that sucks.

Heres the article : Placebo No More

Zero Punctionation FTW

If you are an avid video game player then I'm sure you have probably read/seen quite a few reviews for what ever the game o the month happens to be. But zero punctuation has got to be one of the most awesome.

Yahtzee lays it all out in his own personable style. His reviews appear every Wednesday on http://www.escapistmagazine.com/. Its something I look forward to every Wednesday because of it. So unless you don't like video games, have an aversion to profanity, or hate people with British accents I would highly suggest you go check it out.

And heres one of the wonderful reviews you will see.

HEY ITS FINALLY FRIDAY (MEH)

I remember a time when Fridays used to be awesome because it was the end of work and the start of a weekend full of fun. Or at the very least not work. Well those wonderful days are gone to the sands of time. Well I may be over dramatizing the situation but it still doesn't bring my weekends back.

Well at least I have one of the two days off so I guess I should be happy about that. When I worked at the Disney Store I pretty much got used to kissing all my weekends goodbye. So I guess the whole happy Friday times ended after I graduated high school. Oh high school how I miss those care free stress inducing times.

Musicals are awesome

I do love musicals and in case you were wondering I am very much straight. I just happen to really enjoy musicals. I don't know how to explain it but its always awesome when I go to the theater and see something live.

Its funny cause I think in the past half year I've been to the theater more then the movies. Its not that there are no movies I want to see its just that I just don't feel like making the effort to go to the movie theater. I actually have 2 free pass to the movies and I still don't feel like making the effort. Not sure why that is, probably just lazy. Plus I'll eventually get to see it when it comes out on pay per view. Also I have a pretty big TV at home so its not like I'm missing to much with the huge screen at the movie theater. So really the only reason I could think of to go to the movies is to spend time with people. But I can usually do that at other places.

But shows at a theater usually don't appear on TV and if they do its not nearly the same. Its probably like going to a concert live and seeing it on TV. Since I've never been to a concert I can really say.

I've never actually seen anything other then a musical at the theater but thats fine by me. The first musical I saw live was Avenue Q in San Diego. It was funny cause it just happen to be a coincidence that I was in San Diego. And also it just happen to be the opening weekend for the Avenue Q tour starting in San Diego. It was cool because I had been wanting to see that musical ever since I heard the songs from it. So I really really liked it. So much so that I went and saw it 2 more times. I didn't go back down to San Diego those times I just waited till it reached LA.


More recently I saw Wicked for the first time in November. It was a gift from my girlfriend on our anniversary. Before I saw it I only kind of wanted to see it. It wasn't crazy for it but I did want to see it since so many others had said it was pretty good. Well lets just say that after I saw it I was then crazy for it. I love Wicked so much that since that first time I have seen it 4 and a half times (I had to leave early once).



If you haven't seen it I would suggest you make the trip. Unless of course you hate musicals then you would probably be better off saving your money. But everyone else should go see it at least once cause its awesome.

Its not a Tumah

This morning I woke up to the same headache I thought I left behind last night. It was like a dull pain in my head that started yesterday and when I woke up it was still with me. While I was driving to work with my headache in tow I started to wonder if a person can feel a tumor. Kinda morbid eh. I wondered if my on going headache was a sign that maybe I had one.

Well eventually the headache finally went away sometime when I was at work. So I guess it wasn't as bad as my bored mind made it out to be.

Welcome to your life

Well I decided that since I have a blog that just focuses on my list of things to do before I die I should just have a blog for day to day stuffs. Not that I really expect anyone to read either one of these so I guess I'm really writing these for myself.

If you happen to be not me then if I bore you feel free to leave and read something more interesting.

Today was another day at work. Because of my NDA (Non-disclosure Agreement) I'm not allowed to go into details but suffice to say your not missing much of anything. Like any other job it pays the bills. In case you happen to not know I work for Disney Interactive Studios as a Microsoft Certification Tester. I do specific test for the titles that Disney is submitting to Microsoft. Its interesting because I enjoy playing video games and I love Disney things. So its a nice fusion.

Usually when I tell people I test video games they assume that its a fun easy job. And why wouldn't they I do have video games as part of my job. However, its actually a less like playing and more like work. Basically think of a game you would not care to play and image being forced to play it for 8-12 hours a day 6 days a week. It can be a bit boring but then again most jobs fall into the boring phase at some point. But don't get me wrong I really do enjoy my job and I'm very blessed to have it.

Today was just more of the same for me. Lately I've been working 10 hour days and I notice I've been eating a lot more then usual. And since at some point I want to work on getting fit this is not a good sign. I seem to be eating to pass the time a bit quicker. I guess I should either stop eating so much or at the very least choose healthier options.

Speaking of getting fit I've been wanting to start working out again but I feel like if I start now I may just end up stopping again. I think I need more motivation to keep going before I start. I'm thinking of waiting until they offer another promotion for 24 hour fitness at work. Also I'm trying to think of a sport I can get into so at least when I am working out I'll hopefully be having fun and not notice that I'm working out as well. I was thinking of maybe trying tennis. I know its pretty hardcore but I think it might be fun. Or maybe I just played to much Wii tennis. Another idea is to get a work out partner but thats kinda hard since schedules never seem to work out. Either way I think I'm going to hold back on getting fit until I feel like I have enough motivation to keep going.