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Sunday, December 30, 2007
  Keeping Time

As you most certainly would have to notice by being here, the blog has moved. Actually almost all my stuff has moved to using Google Apps, which has pretty much everything I need, mail, website, blog (okay not officially part of Google Apps but still), and calendar. Basiclly Google owns me ;-) All my pictures are on Picasa, my mails on Gmail, my videos are on YouTube(, except one I uploaded for a friend to Google Videos as it was 15 minutes long...) and lastly my blog is obviously here. If Google goes south, I'm screwed. Though their stock prices don't seem to be headed any direction but up so..

So any techy person may wonder how I got all my posts/comments from ExpressionEngine onto Blogger. It was easy I tell you, okay, that's a slight lie ;-). I wrote a custom application that uses XML file definitions to read text file exports of posts. It uses Google/Blogger's Data API to post the stories to Blogger. Comments are done the same way, but due to restrictions in the API you can't post anonymously and so all imported comments are tagged to the blog owner (hence the "Posted By:" at the end of the comments.) Published dates are persevered for both comments and blog stories. HTML has to be stripped from comments which makes thinks a little interesting, but workable. The last thing it does it write an htaccess file of RewriteRules to forward all the traffic. Pretty complete solution if you ask me ;)

The application itself isn't very pretty, but it's usable, by me anyway. I might stick it up later so others can take a peak and try and use it. Anyway, couple more days in Utah, staying with the in-laws until the first of the new year.

Grade reports so far for Fall 2007 semester as follows:
Yugoslav Wars - A
Intersection of Race, Class, Gender,and Sexuality - B-
Intermediate Japanese I - C+

Waiting on a grade for America Sees Red and then I'll post an updated GPA graph, though I'm projecting that I finally broke the 3.0 barrier! w00t w00t!

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Sunday, December 16, 2007
  Old School Xbox Gaming

As my dead week stress relief I have beaten 2 Xbox games: Dreamfall and Gun.  Here’s my quick reviews!  P.S. Saw I Am Legend, book was better, movie’s not bad, but…

Gun Good game.  Action keeps you going, side quests are fun though the idea is usually the same and Pony Express gets on your nerves cause it’s spurin the horse to the limit and jumping off with seconds to spare, but I guess that’s realistic right?  Played the game on normal and it wasn’t too bad, the hunting missions where the worst as you had to be aiming the bow just right and really have the animal in the cross hairs.  Story line was interesting, lots of blood, wish the scalpings actually did something, stats, money, something.  Money is overabundant, if you can’t buy all the upgrades you’ve done something seriously wrong as I had a couple hundred bucks left over.

Dreamfall It’s an RPG, minus the RPG.  Completely linear story line that mostly consists of running back and forth between two or more places.  Combat (the two or three times you use it) is slow and clunky.  There’s really nothing going on, and in the end the story doesn’t even wrap well! Come on people, WTF?!?!!? Finished the game mostly because the story was interesting, game play was boring after about the first 20 minutes.  Some puzzles that are interesting, but there were times I spent 15-20 minutes trying to figure out what the hell I was suppossed to be doing before I final would give up and look at a walkthrough (something I didn’t have to do with Gun.) Usually it was something retarded too like, “look for the cracked wall and secret door.” Stupid uni directional games with no guidance.  And then there were the times you got into conversations with the AI where backstory had never been mentioned, that was akward (Calculator, need I say more or did I really miss something?) Anyway.  Play Gun, avoid Dreamfall, find better RPG.

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Location: Boise, Idaho, United States

My borg designation is 2 of 7. My parents raised me LDS, but I'm atheist. My wife loves me, my kids think about it. My dog thinks I abandoned her and sleeps on the couch.

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