T-Hybrid

There's a party at the Haven. After having played Pokemon since Red first launched so many years ago, I finally...after having two previous failures...have caught my first Shiny Pokemon. First it was a Rattata that I accidentally fainted in Silver. Then a Pidgey that used Whirlwind in Leaf Green. But this time, this time I was ready. While training in the Tower south of Solaceon in Diamond, a Green Zubat popped up. Thankfully I had my Lvl 63 Luxray in the lead. So all it took was a Quick Balll and I was good to go. Needless to say I saved IMMEDIATELY after. So now I have a Green Zubat. I don't know what I'm going to do with it, but it's there. And it's MINE! So break out the spirited beverages and the pixie stix. ViceGreymon's letting everybody in today!

I thought it was great seeing the old Bug side by side. Great little bit with the Camero Bumblebee saying 'Heck no!' Movie did a great job of building him as a character, even without any dialouge.

Yeah, I realized after four years of college that I never really got a good picture of myself. Except for one, in which I'm with a very famous retired ball player. I think I know where it's at though. I HOPE I know where it's at.

It's quite an ambitious project by Square with this one. The only downside is I'm not too encouraged to get a PS3 just yet. If the prices start dropping and Rock Band rocks as hard as they say it will...then maybe we'll talk. Interesting name change by the way. May I ask what inspired the shift to an X-2 name?

Due to surprisingly unexpected results of yesterday's split double-header between the Twins and White Sox, I've found myself in need of a Justin Morenau jersey. See, in the 7th inning of last night's game, Morenau came to the plate having already hit two homeruns in the game (first to right, then to center). The last time a Twin has hit three homers in a game was Tony Oliva back in like 1973. So it's no easy feat. Well, I made the comment...in all seriousness...that if Morneau could put the ball over the fence in that at-bat, I would go out and buy myself a Morneau jersey. Two pitches later, Justin had parked a ball in the left field bleachers for his 3rd of the night, 23rd of the season, and 102nd of his career. Besides the fact that it made the score 8-0, it was amazing to see Morneau (in his 3rd full year as a starter) do something for the Twins that hasn't been done since guys like Oliva back in the 70s. Last year Morneau became the first Twin to hit 30 homers in a season since they had three with Puckett, Hrbek...and a guy I wish I could remember. Thankfully I get paid next week, and I've been wanting to get a jersey for a while. It was a tough choice between Mauer, Morneau, Santana, and Hunter. I guess Morneau must've decided it was time for me to stop pondering and start acting. So by next weekend I'll hopefully be sporting my team colors at the Dome.

Man. I need to get back to that game. But Diamond and now Guitar Hero (the 80's version's coming soon so I have to get back into my groove) have just been sucking up so much time.

T-Hybrid is currently running around like a chicken with his head cut off as he spreads his first paycheck out over his first round of bills. Uh, hi I guess. It's been awhile, and honestly I don't know what to say. T-Boss called me up this afternoon while he was at the office and said I'd have to write an entry. Apparently he wasn't gonna make it and from the looks of things this place has been dead lately. I think it's too much of the Pokemans but that's just me. There's no room in his new place form me. Anywhere! I spend most of the time outside his balcony looking menacing. Cept for last night when I was watching the fireworks. Fireworks that were about 30 feet to my right. At 2 in the morning it's not cool to start waking everybody up with those things. Too bad it woke T up, otherwise the little bugger would've been introduced to some fireworks of my own. This place may not be a Nightclub, but I sure as heck can keep bouncin people out. Wow. That's really it for me. Took me a bit to write to. This place looks a lot different since the last time I stopped in. Wonder if T knows. He was pretty out of today. But lack of sleep will do that to a guy. He doesn't talk much about work, but he hasn't come home angry yet so I have to guess its going well. Well, it looks like I'm stuck behind Server Busy messages. So hopefully this'll get posted while its still topical.

Be a pal and throw a few Neshek's in there too.

Hopeflly everything works out. SO best of luck. I'll send VGM over to keep the blog warm.

All-Star Rosters annouced, Justin Morneau...Torii Hunter...Johan Santana. None of them starters, but that's still a good showing. Not to mention Pat Neshek is in the Final Vote. Justin Morneau has the honor of being the only first-baseman representing the American League. David Ortiz's 7 starts (as great he is offensively) do not qualify. Kevin Youkilis is the Red Sox 1B, and the fact they listed Ortiz instead is doing him a disservice. No Mauer, but that's alright. Joe had an injury that kept him out for a month or so, which meant he really didn't have a chance to get himself in the public eye enough. Hopefully he can stay healthy next year and give Pudge Rodriquez a chase for the starting catcher spot in '08. And not to be Mr. Conspiracy Theory, but I find it fishy that Barry B*nds manages to wiggle into the 3rd starting OF spot in the final days of voting. It'd be easy to make happen. Slip B*nds into the starting spot and make Alfonso Soriano (who wast he actual 3rd vote-getter) into the first backup spot. It's especially fishy when all you hear on the sports reports is "Boy MLB got lucky that turned out." and "Oh, I guess the fans DON'T all hate Barry." Meh. I'm rooting for the AL. Hopefully things can work out so Johan can make the start. That, or Morneau can show his stuff in the Home Run Derby.

Getting thrown out at 2nd's no biggy(o). Just Craig making sure you remember #3000. Congrats to him. Especially for doing it all with the same team. That's something you don't see much these days. Minnesota just had Brad Radke retire as a career Twin. It's a cool feeling, one which I agree we'll start seeing die in the next few years.

Do you mean everybod's making their own? Or everybody's just posting the one you made them. Either way, they say imitation is the sincerest form of...something or other.

I see pics and read stories about how the Mahri are now available. Yet it appears the LIC at MoA has yet to get them in stock. In fact, the Bionicle section's been moved deep into the middle. The formerly Bionicle display cases are now filled with Batman, and the shelves close to the front are Exo-Force I think. But seriously, where are the Mahri? LIC was the one of the first places to get Rahkshi and Hordika, I'm sorta surprised by this recent twist. But it's probably for the best. I gotta make my first rent payment this weekend!

Wow. You're life is prett sweet. What with the full orchestra fallowing you around. I think I'm going to do this to. It's the whole put the playlist on random and see what comes up right?

Since I'm only in my second week at work, I'm not about to start spending all kinds of money. But just to test the waters, how many other people here are going to be picking up Pokemon Battle Revolution in the next few weeks? If a lot of my fellow BZPers get it around launch, I may go ahead and snag a copy (or at least try to) so I can get into PvP battling again after a very long hiatus. Hopefully Omi's still trying to hold the BZPFL together. I've been training up a team that I think could make things interesting for everybody involved. Don't know if I'll be able to fulfill my initial commitment to serve as a Leader in the League, but I'd still love to start going head-to-head with some other Trainers around the forum.

Sorta. But thankfully I don't feel like Milton. At least not yet.

Software Engineer, working on the backend of a search engine type thing. And yeah, it's your traditional 9-5 (in this case 8-4) cubicle job.

Day 1 of my post-college career started yesterday at 8am. And I have to say I think I now know what KIE was talking about. As I was slowly going through the different forms and notifications, I had that feeling that it was all for real now. 401(k), Insurance, Vacation Time...what were all these numbers and terms being thrown at me? Apparently "becoming vested" doesn't mean you get a new overcoat. Who'd a thunk? Thankfully I've got a month to get everything set up, which gives me a chance to learn a few things from the parents. After a full day of overview training from HR yesterday, my first full day on the actual team came today. About 10 of us in a company of 6000. That's pretty cool that even when it's that big they're able to keep teams small. Will make working together a lot easier, and I think that everybody in the group except me has about a decade of work with the project...if not far more. That means I'm really green comparred to them. Extremely green. My first team meeting was today, with a three-hour block of meetings slated for tomorrow morning. Looks like I'm getting the crash course in reality pretty quick here. But I'm looking forward to it. Something I've really only said about two jobs in my life...both of which have been in the last year.

And I didn't do a thing. -Omi Best revenge there is. The kind where it just happens. Ah, but it's better than revenge. It's irony. Revenge implies you had a hand in the events, at which time you'd feel at least a hint of guilt. With irony, you get to enjoy the results without any of that nasty guilt.

Virigina? This Saturday? I'll have to run really fast, but I can try. Virgnia's like two blocks from Minnesota right?

The biggest LEGO Batman thing I'm looking forward to is the new vidja game going out eventually. LEGO Star Wars was a blast on the Cube.

"Hey Chief! Check out that sweet park job in spot 7A!" I should take some pics of my awesome parking skillz. With a littler car, I can just swing right in and go between the lines.

I did. Unfortunately, no Mahri. I was stunned to find that their Bionicle section is no longer the very first thing you see when you walk in. That's now Batman. In fact, Bionicle is further back in the store than Knight's Kingdom and ExoForce. It's like the last LEGO thing you see before you get into Duplo and the building area.

"Rock This Town" once again proved to be my downfall. But for an official event held in the Rotunda of the MoA, the GHII Tourney on Saturday sure seemed pretty unprofessional. Since my one and only performance was at 12:15, I was left with quite a bit of time to discuss the merits of the contest with those around me. For starters, the field was open to over 200 competitors...however, the limited time constraints for the tourney left them able to only take the top 10 scores. 10 out of 200. One song eliminated 190 people. Which means after all the excitement and all the build-up, most everybody who went to the MoA on Saturday ended up being done after only 4 minutes. Hardly exciting. There were other problems to. The biggest was the apparant inability of the organizers to realize the significance of HD Lag in any sort of gaming. Especially one who's major focus is on timing. Anybody who has an HD TV knows that there is a certain lag associated that doesn't exist in an old school fat TV. So failure to properly calibrate the delay left each player with a different delay, and no opportunity to adjust for it (I've played GHII on a 360, so I've come to realize that if the game isn't properly calibrated for the lag it can take anywhere from two to three songs to get used to the delay). This wasn't helped any bit by the fact that the entire tournament was played on Expert. That's really my biggest complaint. If MoA and GameStop are supposedly trying to draw a diverse fanbase and make the tourney accessible, why set it at the absolute highest difficulty? There's a big enough cut-off when people transition from Medium to Hard, as there's an extra bit of practice required to start moving your pinky to hit that fifth button. Expert Mode is just that. If you think of Easy as the Tutorial portion of the game, Medium becomes a more standard difficulty. Hard is a good enough difficulty level for an open tournament, as anybody who's good enough to win a tournament on Expert is theoretically good enough to rise to the top of the pack in the Hard setting. There were other issues. Since this was organized by GameStop, every store in the district was asked to bring their 360 Kiosk to the Rotunda. These were all wired together and hooked into some massive power supply somewhere. Whoever set it all up though didn't realize the kind of juice the whole thing would be pulling though. Throughout the opening rounds of the "tournament", one entire section of 360's would repeatedly power down. Not surprisingly, most of the people who were forced to start over (some people had to restart twice) didn't make it through. Why? Because they were slowly getting adjusted to the Lag, which was then restarted (and never recalibrated by the organizer) when the machine was powered down. All in all, the whole thing turned into a joke. There were people who I knew could do better who were coming out of it with scores between 50-60%. This is not a game where you can just get "lucky" and get a high score. If you can consistently get a certain range, that's the range you'll get anytime. You're not going to consistently hit 95% in a certain song, then suddenly fall apart and hit only 55%. And when everybody mentioned the lag as they came out of there...yeah. It's sad when an tourney at a local restuarant is more professional and entertaining than a large-scale public event. And if anybody who was running that tourney is reading this...next time make sure you make that if you're going to set up a website ahead of time, you actually go ahead and put more info on there. Because had I known it was going to be on Expert...and there was a good liklihood I'd only play one song in the whole 4 hour period, I wouldn't have bothered. I'm not good enough on Hard yet to even think about playing on Expert. The whole thing was just a waste of my time. And for shoppers who were watching, it was the same song...over and over again (the first two hours were people playing Rock This Town). Hardly entertaining for them. I hope they learn from this, and next time have qualifiers at Local Gamestops. That way by the time it gets to the MoA event, they can have a solid bracket already built...and everybody just plays on the same giant TV. That way it's the same lag, and the audience sees a variety of songs.

No kidding! It's taken me a few weeks of about an hour a day (I really don't have anything else to do) to get used to having to slide the pinky down to hit the orange button. But after awhile you start getting used to it. Sorta like how you can eventually learn to type without looking at the keyboard.