Gearing Up For War

The biggest deal (gaming wise) for me going forward is the upcoming Gears of War 3, which sounds almost too promising to be real. Just 8 more days until I can know for myself! I think I am most looking forward to the expanded and refined Horde mode, which was what became a damn near obsession in my house for quite a long while. We still break it out every now and again, just to scratch that itch of shredding a hapless Locust grub or twelve with the ever fun Lancer. Or Boom Shot. Or the Hammer of Dawn. You know that shotgun was always fun too...

Speaking of the armory, I am curious to see how the new weapons affect things. The new shotgun and its damn near one shot kill was a bitch in the beta. The retro Lancer seemed a little tough to make use of, but I'm sure that will be an afterthought once we can get more play time with these new weapons.

I hope Epic keeps up the flow of map packs with Gears 3, though I suppose they didn't really do a bad job with Gears 2. Still! Its always fun to have a lot of variety to pick from and games like this seem to benefit from having that sort of choices. Which makes me wonder about this season pass of theirs? Buy it and gain access to the first four DLC? What about the others (if there are any)? Hmm... that one is going to wait a bit I think, at least for us anyway.

Anyhow...

8 days remaining!

Chobits

Chi

With my internet issues now behind me, I can focus on getting back down to business and the business at hand (or what was before I moved) was an Anime I had just finished watching called Chobits.

Before ever seeing anything, I'd have sworn this would be a show that my girlfriend would be interested in. She doesn't mind the high schooler types of Anime nor does she seem to mind the cutesy appearances of the characters. Hell, she was a fan of Card Captor Sakura, whom also is behind the Chobits series as I understand it. So interest on my part has been next to nil for many, many years and I didn't even bother to pick up the Manga either.

But fast forward to about a month or so back and Netflix has given us the chance to watch a ton of different movies and TV shows at will. My interests grew as the library of Anime on there expanded and considering I didn't have to buy anything, why not give some random shows a try? And before I knew it, I was 6 episodes in and loading up the 7th.

How in the heck did that happen?

I enjoyed the characters and their interactions probably the most as it reminded me of how the cast in Tenchi interacted with each other. Despite the differences between the characters, they all meshed together rather naturally and I never really felt any of the pairings were forced or wrong even before the explanations for the hows and whys ever took place.

The main character (Hideki) was ever a bumbling, kind hearted fool who was kind of a perv but was probably way too innocent to really be so. Still, I couldn't help but feel for the guy for trying even in the face of overwhelming odds. And the guy was such a country guy that he was absolutely clueless to nearly all forms of technology, which makes his relationship with Chi all the more odd and entertaining.

The other aspect that really won me over was all of these chances for this series to sink into something twisted and overly sexual were never touched on. Where other shows would have went with the easy perv out moments, Chobits keeps it clean and I think that actually helps the overall story of this show. Would I have cared about this as much if Hideki had tried to have sex with Chi or become overly obsessed with seeing her nude or something like that? Probably not.

Now that isn't to say that certain thoughts do pop up in Hideki's mind from time to time and in no thanks to Chi's innocent and naive manner, but he never crosses the line and as I said, things are always kept clean from the start and until the end.

One last little thought about this show is this: I rarely pick up entire shows as far as Anime is concerned. I usually don't like how a lot of these series ends, but Chobits is one of the exceptions. The start of the series does go a little slowly, but towards the midway point things pick up and the conclusion to the series was fitting though it gets a little strange in getting there. Still, this ended up being a purchase for me and I wish I could enjoy more shows like I did this.

Back In Action!

Finally...

After spending the last few weeks (about 3) being "disconnected" from the world, I am finally back! In some ways it was kind of nice, though there were days where I felt like I was getting a little stir crazy. I think what I missed about not having the internet was being able to watch stuff like ThunderCats. What? I love the heck out of this reboot and it kind of hurt to miss it these past few weeks.

Then again I could/did watch the episodes from my phone, but still! Full screen videos wins over a tiny cell phone screen any day!

But the most frustrating thing about all of this was having to deal with so many uncertainties. I never would have guessed that moving into a new place and having internet service transferred could be such a hassle. Hell, I didn't even think trying to sign up with a new company would also end up being a headache, but that is how it worked out also.


Thankfully, we at least won't have to pay for the full month's bill because of the lack of service up until now. But I hope in the future these companies will do more to keep their customers informed when they have issues, rather then leaving 'em in the dark as much.

Our first idea for an alternative internet provider was Clear (formerly Clearwire), but I think they were quickly ruled out because of everyone we ever asked about it, two said they liked it and everyone else said it was the worst of the worse. Ouch.

Our second option was going back to Road Runner, which we had used a number of years prior. I can't say we had the best experience with their service, but in the years since then, it looks like they've added more options to their service and it looks and sounds worlds better then what we had.

So in light of that, I think the plan going forward is to keep our DSL and we're signing up for cable at the same time. The goal here is to see which of the two actually functions better and we'll keep the best of the two choices. So far our DSL has been pretty okay, the speed of it is nothing like it was before we moved (damn you old house with old wiring!).

All in all though, I think I am just happy we're reconnected again!

Disconnected... The Story Continues

A little update: So our choice of isp (Hawaiian Tel) finally transfers our DSL service to our new place. But does the tale end there? Absolutely not! As we discovered, there is something amiss with our connection and the bottom line is we are without internet. Still. But the real kicker about all of this is the fact that Hawaiian Tel cannot or will not do anything to fix the problem. They claim all is well on their end. So where does this leave is? Well they say they need to send a tech out here, but they cannot tell us any date in particular and it was/is driving me insane! Where we go from here, I cannot say for certain. Finding another company for our internet has been nothing short of pure frustration to say they very least. At this point we are looking to go back to using Road Runner, but that isn't without it's own share of troubles. I just want this to be done and over with already! And more importantly then that, I want my internet back!