Eric’s Blog

I finally finished this veteran campaign. I was stuck on the last level, The Final Blow, for a while now. I spent many hours replaying this campaign. In fact, I beat it only because I used normal speed and reloaded the game many times and saved the game a lot. This map was hard because the computer comes at your base from multiple sides at once. So it’s like you’re being attacked by three different computers at the same time, and they have a lot more resources than I do. In fact, my final score had about 1200 units killed and over a hundred buildings razed, and my game time was 2:20. I’m just glad it’s finally over so I can move on to better things.

Man, I don’t know how much code and report I need to write.

Met Sara Kline today, when I walked past Public Affairs Building. She’s not doing Taekwondo anymore, because she’s in the same weight class as Mara and Kira, so it’s like she’s spending $120 per quarter to just practice. I could understand, I guess. Plus, she said she’s taking four classes this quarter. I must have looked pretty funny, because I just got off the 761, wearing my bright yellow ski jacket and carrying a duffle bag. I went straight to Lu Valle Commons because I wanted to get some pasta before they closed for the day. I didn’t make it. They close at 2:30pm and I got there after, so I had to settle for pizza :-/.

So today is the day when we finally had to go back to Santa Barbara, and I realize that I got nothing done. Pretty much, when we weren’t going out, we were playing Mario Kart, watching The Office, Columbo, Murder She Wrote (well, actually, Mom watched this), and other movies. We watched Predators, Food, Inc., and Religulous. Mom and Ellen watched Eat, Pray, Love. I didn’t want to watch that.

Predators was not bad. I didn’t watch the first Predator or Predator 2, but I thought overall, it wasn’t a bad movie. I just never thought of Adrian Brody as an action hero. It was more of a thriller than an action movie. It’s true that you know the protagonist and the hot sniper woman (Alice Braga) are the ones who will survive at the end, but that doesn’t make the movie any less fun. The part I hate the most about the movie was the fact that Topher Grace was in it. He was perfect for That 70’s Show, but here he’s just really annoying, and he almost killed off Alice Braga’s character. I mean, what is that? The Japanese guy died, too, even though he had a lot of potential. I mean, other people blew themselves up or took forever to kill off the Predator, but this guy fought a Predator with a sword, and won (even though he apparently died right after, too). Still, I would recommend this film to most people.

Food, Inc. really makes you think about what your foods are coming from. On the one hand, it’s true that food could be made cheaper with mass industrialization, but I agree with that farmer in the movie who says that we are subsidizing our food, that in order to get the cheap food, we are pouring money into buying gasoline, pesticides, and healthcare. If our food is healthier, then we might not need to spend so much on healthcare, and we wouldn’t need to ship corn to all over the country, and use pesticides everywhere. Overall, Food, Inc. is pretty objective, though the goal of the director is obvious, he tries to present both side of the argument, which is why I think this film works. The goal is to get you thinking about your food, and I think it accomplishes that.

Religulous is a film about religion and why it’s ridiculous to believe in it. Although main actor we see in the film, Bill Maher, says that he preaches doubt, he is doing it in a way that can be described only as attacking religion. As a result, I feel that this film can only be watched by people who already agrees with his viewpoint that we should have doubts about religion. Unlike Food, Inc., it is not a film that can be watched by religious people because the contents would probably be very offensive to them. However, the film does present useful arguments against religion, and shows even high priests who say the Bible is not factual. I think the most convincing argument in the film is when he got people to say, “What if you’re wrong?” Basically, these people believe in religion just in the case that if they don’t, they’ll go to Hell. I don’t think “just-in-case” is a good enough reason to base your entire life around something.

We were late when we left this morning, since we went to check if OSH had any replacement garage-door hinges. It turns out they didn’t have hinges with the same size, so we have to order online, probably. Since we left late, when we got to Santa Barbara, it was already 4:15 and Ellen had to drop me off quickly to go to her dance rehearsal. So I played some Mario Kart Wii. I couldn’t find a Gamecube controller, so I used the Wii Wheel. I tried to unlock all the expert ghosts on time trial, but I got stuck on SNES Ghost Valley 2, the normal staff ghost was pretty fast already, and I couldn’t beat it by the 4 seconds requited to unlock the expert staff ghost.

For dinner, we went to Madison’s Sports Grill and Tavern (I think) to watch the Lakers-Grizzlies game. Grizzlies eventually won that game, so it was good. Santa Barbara’s sports bar scene is a lot better than East Bay, I feel. I ordered Hefeweizen and Ellen ordered something else, we also ordered some bbq chicken with some nachos. They were both pretty good.

At night, when we got back home, we played some Mario Kart Wii. After Ellen went to sleep, I managed to unlock Rosalina, which is probably the coolest character in the entire game!

This New Year we didn’t have anything amazing planned. Mom suggested that we go to San Francisco to watch the fireworks, but Ellen and I felt that it was too much work, and from previous experience, the firworks weren’t all that great. So we decided we should go to a sports bar to see if we could catch an NBA game. Initially, we went to Magoo’s Grill in Pleasant Hill, but it seemed like there were very few people there, so we decided to go to Elephant Bar. There were some stuff showing, and there were lots of people, but it wasn’t really the sports bar atmosphere that we were looking for. So we went to Masses Billiards & Sports Bar & Grill in northern Walnut Creek. It was more of a Pool Hall, but we decided to check it out anyways. There weren’t a lot of people there, either. Bay Area people are no fun.

Finally, we decided to go to Pyramid Alehouse in downtown Walnut Creek. It’s not really a sports bar, but at least it had the people and the atmosphere. We had the a sampler of beers, which included the Haywire Hefeweizen, Draught Pale Ale, Thunderhead IPA, Alehouse Amber Ale, and Pyramid’s current seasonal offering, which I didn’t remember, I think it was some winter warmer. I liked the Hefenweizen and the unfiltered Alehouse Amber Ale. We also ordered some spinach and artichoke dip. We asked the waiter if he could switch the TV channel to the Lakers-Sixers game, and we thought they did, but it turns out we were tricked. Initially, the game came on NBA TV, but actually, it just happened that we saw the quick report before they continued with NBA commercials. I guess because of some stupid licensing agreement, they can’t show games on NBA TV, how stupid. Anyways, the game was showing on Fox Sports, but this place didn’t have that channel subscribed on their DirectTV :-/. So we ended up not being able to cheer for the Sixers afterall.

After that outing, we went home to celebrate New Year’s Eve with Mom. Since we could only receive one channel from Concord from our TV antenna, we decided to watch the New Year’s celebration live on the internet with Kron4. Because of our crappy, crappy, connection from our neighbor, I couldn’t really receive it from the living room, and we had to watch it on Mom’s computer, since her computer was closer to our neighbor. Stupid connection. Anyways, we watched the countdown, and the fireworks this year was actually better than when we saw it. We opened a bottle of champagne to celebrate. Barefoot champagne is pretty good.