I lent Andres my D&D 4E materials. He used to play and got the itch again after seeing stuff about 4E. After flirting with all the roles and nearly all the classes, I think he's finally decided that he wants to be a Shaman... named Shamandres. If he doesn't change his mind and go Avenger, that is. Also in D&D news, I heard Eberron came out and we have monks now. They're Psionic Strikers. No big surprise I guess. At least now that Psionics are being better merged into the game itself, I'll actually give things like Psions and Kalashtar the time of day.

So our new hobby at work is to find stupid blogs. I thought I should share some of our favorites:

• http://awkwardfamilyphotos.com/
• http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/
• http://www.unnecessaryquotes.com/

Anybody know some other good ones? I know the Fail Blog and Texts from Last Night, but they weren't as big of hits.

Meanwhile in Punch-Out!!, I've been stuck on the Title Defense version of Soda Popinski for nearly a week now. I have the patterns down, but he's so fast that taking advantage of them is difficult. Then again most of my online boxing has been done in Golds' Gym Cardio Challenge rather than Punch-Out!!.

On the next episode: one of those running gags using Impact font!

Work is completely eating my life and will continue to do so until next weekend. Today I worked 7:00 - 4:15 and then came home to unsuccessfully try to log in to my account from home. And I have to stop into work for a few hours tomorrow. I just feel like I'm the only 23 year old who has to have all the responsibility of being a key player of a fairly large business initiative when I'm not doing other boring responsible thingslike being the first to leave social gatherings or failing to form long term bonds with others because they will most likely be leaving my life in the near future.

Having rolled my eyes enough at Facebook's attempts to become Twitter The Talented Mr. Ripley style, I cut the middle man and got my own Twitter account. Right now, I'm trying to give it the same "safe haven" feel that Livejournal has and Facebook lost somewhere between Sam and Karen. In case you're interested my name is Coacuatchoo which you may recognize from the movie--

*Peter David style page turn*

Wolverine. I don't think there's going to be a grand Yahtzee style review on Facebook, especially considering that for it to work it has to be up today or tomorrow because the moral is "Don't sweat it. It's the Hellboy to Star Trek's Batman." The people most curious about my opinion have heard them in one instant messenger or another so here's the outline view.

What worked:

• Surprisingly, the cast. The Lagos mission in the beginning introduces us to a bunch of C-Listers, but it injects them with more personality than the X-Men. I much preferred new Sabretooth to old Sabretooth so long as he stays on two legs because his "animalistic" crawling reminded me more of the bad wire-fu from Twilight. Speaking of Twilight, Jackman has become the anti-Pattison because it's clear that he cares about the character of Wolverine.
  
• Clearly between this and Watchmen, computer generated "Tunnel of Doom" effects are old hat and the new superhero movie opening of choice is to make the opening credits the most imaginative and clever scene in the entire film. In Wolverine, I'm referring to Wolverine and Sabretooth through the years.
  
• It wasn't a good character drama, like we expect superhero movies of the '00s to be, but it was a decent action flick.

What didn't:

• Frankly, the movie needed to be more violent. For a movie where violence is generally regarded as something negative, they pulled a lot of punches which in turn hindered their message.
  
• Three Mile Island for so many reasons. Why are young versions of half the X-Men in this film? Is this now Heroes where everybody is connected through really contrived coincidences? Sure Wolverine is amnesiac, but you're going to tell me that nobody remembers the man with claws for hands who saved them from being imprisoned in cages? And THAT'S Deadpool? No, just no. It's like making Reed Richards Dr. Doom. And of course, where did he get HIS claws and eyelasers and how can he bend him arms when the swords aren't out!?

Also, the line of the week was totally when spica said she gets Shunsui being my favorite captain on Bleach because of the drinking and skirt chasing within about three feet of my father.

Maybe the cute girl from research will have to make copies again on Monday... dammit. Well at least I'm sober.

Not much to report about Operation: Stunning Failure except that's fun to say, especially if you remember the notes you're supposed to say afterwards. I began thinking about the primary places I could meet people and broke it down into three categories: ETS, Rutgers, and Other.

I've never been a proponent of workplace romances, but I wonder how far the boundary lies. I figure since I work in a relatively small building it's pretty much off-limits, not that anybody in the building falls into the right demographic. I figure it'd be a secondhand sort of thing like a sister or a friend of a friend, even though after going out with the non-nerdy people for lunch, I'm convinced they might be evil. No... really. However, ETS is quite a large campus, so theoretically if I met somebody in another building would they be fair game? Rutgers would seem like the most likely place, but there's the distance factor and the fact that I spend all of 6 hours a week there. Plus I'm pretty sure the YA class already has me labeled as Sam's. I had one of those weird "You know..." kind of moments at Rutgers recently, but who knows. Other has the advantage of having more people, estimated at roughly 6 billion over the other two combined, but I don't know where they are. In fact, without a unifying place to corral people (i.e.: a school or... okay just a school) I'm kind of lost in that regard.

Continuing with today's theme, I was driving home when I heard an ad on the radio. Flowers die and chocolates get eaten, so give him or her the gift that'll last a lifetime... laser hair removal. I couldn't make this sort of thing up if I tried. I guess if all you have to sell is laser hair removal, you've got to do it any way you can, but is there anybody who doesn't think this doesn't sound like a one-way ticket to getting slapped and/or dumped?

And in totally unrelated news, Nuka-Cola Quantum IS REAL.

Edit: Sidenote, I put the bulleted list in a table because it looked really weird on my page because of my icon displaying in the top left. If it makes your page look really messed up, let me know because I'm planning on doing this to a blockquote at the top of my page on my academic LJ.

I didn't want to start with the D&D review that's long overdue so I thought I would share some other things.

The first is a list of things that are supposedly In and Out this year. There's enough on here to make you laugh/cry/want to throttle the writers. The biggest Wall Banger is probably Gay Rights allegedly being out in favor of Vampire Rights because one group is, you know, real unless you're Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or... okay, only Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Also while I have to admit Steampunk is generally much cooler than Goth, I don't know if it's really a way of life the way Goths are. I don't see kids at the mall wearing hats with gears in them... yet. I have to admit it'd make going to the mall a lot more interesting if they did though. Watchmen over Wolverine is a curious matter to me. I'm looking forward to the Watchmen movie, but dreading other people seeing it because there's going to be squicky Fandomsecrets like "I think Rorschach is the perfect man!" or "I wish Ozymandias was our real president!". Otherwise, the humor seems to be hiding a certain tone of "We couldn't afford the beach house this year so the world is a bleak bleakness of bleakitude."

Speeeeeeeeaking of steampunk and bleakitude, I gave in and finally bought an XBox 360 so I can play Fallout 3 in the comfort of my own home. Unfortunately, my television is way too dark for this to work very well. I gave in and made a fairly normal build, focusing on things like intelligence, agility, and perception over strength and even charisma. So far I've been taking the obviously good skills like Gifted and Comprehensive. Stealth is still my favorite skill, so perhaps my dream of sneaking up on someone and shouting "SURPRISE!" before punching them in half isn't completely out of reach. My first quest is to complete the Survival Guide for Moira, and I'm either going for a sly or snide approach, probably snide just for the reward. Burke's dead; Simms isn't, and as of this evening the bomb has been disarmed. Hoo boy are the criminal types not going to like me.

I'm sitting in what I guess could be best described as an office classroom right now, and someone wrote "ichung" on the whiteboard. This is probably someone's username or something, but I'd like to think it's the past tense of iching (iching, ichang, has/have/had ichung).

Does putting a SUPERWEEKENDATHON 08 in a SUPERWEEKENDATHON 08 mean the world is going to explode, or does it turn inside out and spill its contents on the floor? I DON'T KNOW! Better get the cat ready Matt.

Last Sunday was the literal Big Fat Greek wedding. Unfortunately, I learned firsthand that by big and fat they actually mean "Kind of polarizing". I was fortunate enough to avoid the actual wedding ceremony since the church was already going to be packed, but I heard that two thirds of the hourlong ceremony was on Greek. This continued into the wedding. The toasts were primarily in English, but the music was all Greek and clubby. I think they had maybe slow dance type song for people not in the wedding party, which made my parents kind of sad. Plus the groom's side (my family) was outnumbered about three to one. Food was good though.

Yesterday was Halloween. After putting it off for almost an entire month, I finally settled on being House. I think it came out alright; I had the props (in particular, the cane with the flame designs came out particularly well), but I didn't take the time to shave down the night before and that would've helped. The funny part about being what's otherwise a most realistic human being is that I got one of two responses.

1. "Chris, what happened to your leg."
2. *Inquisitive stare* "...HAHAHAHA! I get it."

I would say about 60% of the people at work got it, and 40% of the people at Niki's. Niki's party was pretty fun, but I just felt out of it that night. I think part of it was that I actually hurt my wrist from overusing the cane all day. One of the stranger things that we did was try Niki's Ouija board, which I'm totally sure Krystle was the one pushing. I think Will was losing patience with her by the end. How can you tell when Will's mad at a girl? When she's the only one he hasn't cuddled with by the end of the night! Oh snap!

I didn't really get to see many costumes this year because ETS lets you wear costumes, but everybody's so boring there. Catherine and I were the only ones to do anything in our building, whereas in Anrig, I saw a poster for a costume contest with pictures of people dressed as Scooby Doo, Where's Waldo (Walda?), Iron Man, rappers, and a fire(wo)man.

Ironically, my day as House involved me doing more good deeds than I do on a normal day. At work, Catherine and I managed to organize a Halloween/Philadelphia Phillies breakfast complete with a bowl comprised of only red and orange candy despite starting on October 30th. Last year, someone had declared such an event at least a week in advance, so I kept waiting for them to do it again. Truth be told, I think my building had to come together to do something after the recent passing of a valued and respected colleague so I think this was doubly important. We attended her memorial service was this morning.

As of today, I've been working at ETS for one full year. Things have been going pretty smoothly here which is good because I hate my first class with Neener this semester. Right now, I'm shooting for a B/B+ in there and an A in my other course.

I ordered Power Stone Collection online about a week ago, and it's been a fun time. I like Ryoma the samurai and Wangtang the martial artist, but I'm sadly finding that I'm better with Jack the token freak character. As for Power Stone 2, the wackier level designs seem like they'd be a lot more fun in multiplayer, but the cowboy Accel was the only interesting new character.

Random: TVtropes labeled St. Christopher a Genius Bruiser turned Gentle Giant. I find the concept of troping saints really funny.

As part of a wellness campaign at work, we were all given pedometers. I assume that if I get enough steps, I'll get my secret last weapon or a super secret technique or something. So far I've noticed that the least effective method of increasing the little number is by walking with it, as it only records about 75% of the actual steps taken. It's far more effective to just shake it really fast.

I'm reading Endangered Species, a story set during the third season of Angel: The Series and not the second like I originally thought, as Fred (far left, see below) lives in the hotel but doesn't leave it. It's not bad so far and the canon characters are pretty well done, but the original characters are total snark bait. I think the reason you get more of these sorts of characters in literature than in television is because in television you need to find a real person to physically represent the character.
Of course, like most television shows the regular cast is generally good looking, but in the novel they don't appear to hold a candle to the new characters. The first is a female vampire named Marianna, who we spend about an entire page describing in physical detail. Okay, she appears to be a villain whose charm is an essential part of the character, but that much physical description, especially into how her outfit clings to her body, makes me want to fire a Sue warning flare. This is still pretty reasonable compared to the new good guy, who made me have to put down the book and start laughing for about a minute straight. To set the stage, Wesley (second from left) and Gunn (far right) are being overcome by what could be described as "mix and match" demons, each having a unique combination of things such as hair, limbs, fangs, eyes, etc. from existing demons. Thankfully they are rescued by a tall, musclebound, gray-haired Spaniard in a cape and bare-chested vest with an electric sword named Chaz Escobar. At this point I'm imaginging some bizarre combination of Zorro and Joachim. Chaz has an appropriately booming voice and ever-so-slightly theatrical mannerisms. Fortunately, Cordy (second from right) has already suggested that all of Chaz's masculinity simply must be compensating for something.

( Coming to NBC this Fall. )

Like 99.9% of Americans, I want to seriously lose some weight this year. From what I've been reading, I'd like to do the South Beach diet or something that helps regulate your blood to a healthy, more natural level but on a practical level it sounds virtually impossible, especially while I'm at home.

So anyway, here's my cubicle before the holidays:

And after:


Note the Office calendar, Zen garden in a box (currently closed and to the right of the phone), and Dwight Schrute bobble-head.

On a side note, so long as there isn't glare from my monitor, the camera on my iPhone looks a lot better than the one on my old phone or even the one built into my laptop.

After a few days without a post, I wanted to write about this cookie I had because it was delicious. It was a really soft dark chocolate cookie with M&Ms for chips. I also think there was a bit of sugar sprinkled on top as well. However, I think these were knockoff M&Ms because I swear they were thicker and more packed with chocolate than normal M&Ms and the shells were softer. I don't know where Westampton bought these but they were delicious and I would to know where I can find them.

Also, I got a job today.