These are the specs of the PC I built (my first time ever doing that) back in June 2011 and have been using since.
| CPU | Intel Core i5 2500K |
| Motherboard | Asus P8P67 Pro REV 3.0 |
| Memory | Corsair XMS3 8GB DDR3 1333MHz |
| Video Card | Asus GeForce GTX 570 |
| Storage | Western Digital 2TB Black |
| Optical Drive | Asus DRW-24B1ST |
| Case | Fractal Design R3 |
| Power Supply | Corsair CMPSU-850HX 850 Watt |
| Operating System | Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit (OEM) |
In December 2011 my brother and I took a road trip for Christmas. First, we drove from North Carolina to Washington, D.C., then from there to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and from there to Kansas to visit our mom. Usually when we take trips I fill up my phone with old Bombcasts, but I've heard most of them at least two or even three times now, so I needed to find something different. I don't listen to any other podcasts and generally don't like to listen to music anymore (unless it's a soundtrack I can associate with some experience I had, like a game or movie), but I wanted something that wouldn't easily be tuned out to make the drives seem shorter. This meant I needed people having conversations, and the only thing that came to mind that would be suitable for both my brother and I was the talk radio stations from the Grand Theft Auto series. So along with Giant Bomb's Game of the Year 2009 deliberations (my brother hadn't completed Uncharted 2 when the podcast was first released), I placed Chatterbox FM from Grand Theft Auto III, V-Rock from Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (has some good music along with more Lazlow), West Coast Talk Radio from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, and Integrity 2.0 from Grand Theft Auto IV on to my phone. It didn't take my brother long to realize what we were listening to.
None of the subsequent talk radio stations were as good as Chatterbox FM.
We're about to take another road trip in September after he returns from Afghanistan and I'm trying to figure out what to do next.
With Kitty peeing all over my only real pair of shoes, and my nurse clogs I wore as Nurse Joker for Halloween 2008 being a filthy mess (for a different reason), I was out of options for footwear in the first half of 2011. I preordered a pair of Penny Arcade's new shoes, not realizing the wait for them to be manufactured and shipped out would take so long. They eventually arrived on August 15th.
They feature the Penny Arcade logo on the front and the Konami Code on the back.
I was going through some old, unorganized pictures on my computer and found these two I took on April 29th, 2011 on our move from Texas to North Carolina. It's graffiti of Master Shake from Aqua Teen Hunger Force:
In 2010 (I think it was 2010), Kat Smith, an artist most known for her work with Whiskey Media, drew a picture of Santa Claus for Christmas. I printed it out with the intention of coloring it in, and several months later, I actually did! I did this back in the middle of 2011 and always meant to post it. I did it in crayon!
I think I did pretty good:
I was going through old files on my computer and came across some pictures I had taken when I reached a certain number of Gamerscore. This first one was taken when I reached 20,000 Gamerscore on December 21st, 2008. I had played various Xbox Live Arcade titles in an attempt to get the number just right -
I was REALLY in to Left 4 Dead.
783 days (or 2 years, 1 month, and 22 days) later on February 11th, 2011, I reached 45,000 Gamerscore. I don't remember why I took a picture of this, but I figure it's because I landed on a nice, even number.
Rocking my Limbo avatar awards.
It was 246 days later on October 14th, 2011, that I reached 50,000 Gamerscore. I had originally planned to get it with my brother while playing Gears of War 3, but my score reached 49,990 on October 7th, and it wouldn't have been possible to land on 50,000 if we kept playing. I somehow reached 49,995 (I can't figure out how) and tried playing Comix Zone and Street Fighter II': Hyper Fighting to get the last of the points, but needed something faster that wouldn't push me over 50,000. I then looked at Game Room's achievements and remembered that I never changed a theme in my arcade for 5 points. My brother disapproved of my method and thought it was cheap, but achievements are achievements, and I needed that perfect string of zeros.
Wait for it...
Uh-huh...
Yes!
That's right, I bought a Batman costume and Towelie prop. Worth it! Here's him stealing my Cheesy Poofs.
Our gamerpics match up rather nicely.
Last month, on our way to visit our mom in Kansas for Christmas, my brother and I spent a few days visiting Washington, D.C.; Philadelphia, and Gettysburg. Having not had a StreetPass encounter since the ones with the Whiskey Media staff in June of 2011, I was eager for more. Luckily for me, at least three other people had the same idea on December 17th at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History. My Mii got to meet Max from Virginia, sarah from Virginia (I'm thinking they're from the same family since both of their Most Recent Software titles were nintendogs + cats), and nick from Coahuila de Zaragoza, Mexico. Max and sarah helped me finish my Pikmin and Metroid: Other M puzzles, respectively. I took more steps that day than ever before with a total of 7,545.
The Miis I met, along with some of the new features Nintendo added recently.
The next morning, on the 18th, I was excited for more SteetPass opportunities. If I got three in just one museum, how many would I get today? Though I crushed my previous record of 7,545 steps with a new, and current, record of 17,396, I got nothing. At first I was sad, but then annoyed because I realized the wireless functionality of my 3DS has been turned off somehow. I wondered how many encounters I missed as I turned StreetPass back on.
Ahhhhh, my legs!
I encountered another person, Aggan, on the 22nd while in Kansas, but only via Super Street Fighter IV. Much like my fights with Jeff and Matt, I got my ass kicked.
Fast-forward almost two weeks later and we pass by someone on a road near our home, will rhein from North Carolina, who happened to have their 3DS on as well. On the 13th, at the Genghis Khan exhibit in Raleigh, North Carolina, I encountered Fupo, also from North Carolina. Supposedly it was their birthday!
I think that price drop is working!
#1 - Dragon Age II
#2 - Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception
#3 - Batman: Arkham City
#4 - Saints Row: The Third
#5 - Portal 2
#6 - L.A. Noire
#7 - Gears of War 3
#8 - Bastion
#9 - Child of Eden
#10 - Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary
Hello! I figured I would let everyone know this since I just found out yesterday. I recently finished up all three seasons of Breaking Bad on Netflix and, like with most good shows, just started watching it again with my brother. I was seriously confused for the first half of the pilot, as scenes that I vividly remembered watching before were no longer there. Figuring that I wasn't some creative genius that imagined scenes that fit so perfectly into the show, I told my brother to wait a few minutes so I could look something up on the Internet. While I couldn't find anything specifically about this situation, I did learn that there were two versions of the pilot: a 58-minute version, and a 48-minute version that aired later. Netflix originally had the 58-minute pilot, but, for some reason, replaced it with the edited one fairly recently.
I feel that the full pilot is the one to watch, as cutting out nearly 1/6th of a TV episode results in a lot of missing scenes, some of which I consider to be important and make Walt's decision to start cooking meth make more sense. We went to Amazon's streaming service and bought the episode, which is the full version, and went back to Netflix for the rest.
Just something to think about for those of you that would care.
Here are some of the scenes that were cut out (minor spoilers ahead!):
There might have been more scenes that were cut, too. We stopped the episode about 25 minutes in, so I'm not 100% sure on what was left out.
