Knowing ignorance is strength. Ignoring knowledge is disease. - Tao Te Ching 71

All men will come to him who keeps to the one, For there lie rest and happiness and peace. - Tao Te Ching 35

http://www.trueachievements.com/Hands+of+Jade.htm

• 26Sep 09

  Yellow

  Just popping in to say hi to everyone. School is going really great. Got a good roommate. Making a couple good friends and doing a good job of ignoring all the younger kids that don't quite know how to behave and keep their mouths shut and hands to themselves. Really thinking a lot about giving up this Reserve thing, quitting graphic design and going full time active duty. But that'll all depend on whether I can get a station/career path I want. Apparently, the CG is so popular right now and the retention rate is so high that they've shut down the recruit training center for a short time and aren't allowing reservists to go active as easily. Just goes to show, if you're going to join the military, Coast Guard is the way to go.
  
  Also, I have to brag a little bit. Had my big Nav Rules test yesterday. Fail that test and you fail school. What constitutes a failing grade? It takes 90% to pass. 50 questions. Miss 6 and you've failed. So it's a big deal. On top of that, I had watch duty the night before and got a grand total of 3 hours sleep. Not a good day to take a test. That said, I decided to take my sweet ass time answering the questions, went back over the entire test after I finished and carefully read each question again verifying my answers and at the end I was rewarded with 1 of 4 perfect scores. Pretty excited. I'm only the second person at my unit to ace that test.
  
  So now, if anyone finds themselves on a 15 meter sailboat and run aground while in a fog at night, in international waters, you know where to turn to sound the proper whistle signals and display the correct lights.
  
  So outside of studying, life around here is pretty mundane. Lots of class time. Spent a week on the water driving boats around a couple weeks ago. But if you're not in class, there's not a lot going on. As a result, a couple shipmates and I have taken to playing WoW. Never thought I'd ever play it. But it's a decent way to kill time. If anyone's interested, right now we're playing Alliance on Stonemaul.
  
  Hope everyone's well. I'm trying to catch up a bit with people's blogs but I'm a bit behind the times. I'll catch y'all again later.
  • Posted Sep 26, 2009 3:16 pm PT
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• 25Aug 09

  Quicky Mart

  Just trying to do a quick update here. I'm tethering my internet connection off my phone in an area with really bad service so I can't really surf as I please. But I wanted to jump in here and let everyone know that I'll be away for a few months again. I flew to Yorktown, VA on Sunday for more Coast Guard training. I'll try and poke my head in here now and then but service is too unreliable to make a habit of it. Hope everyone is well. Gotta go do a uniform inspection...
  • Posted Aug 25, 2009 2:39 pm PT
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• 21Jul 09

  Games and Hot Brass

  Double post here so check out my blog review of Prince of Persia that I just posted as well.
  
  Lots going on in the world of B lately. The girlfriend and I are trying to spend as much time as possible together with our last few weeks before I'm deployed for more training and she officially enlists in the Navy. Kind of like an impending asteroid. You know it's coming but it's going to suck nonetheless. But I've always kind of wanted a summer fling and it's been lots of fun.
  
  Drills this past weekend were a lot of fun but very exhausting and a bit nerve racking. My second time out ever shooting. No time for learning. Pick up the gun and qualify in the time allowed. A little stressful. I managed to qualify with the M16, despite two hot shell casing landing in my shirt and giving me a couple 2nd degree burns. Didn't do as well with the shotgun. Loading those things in the middle of a gun fight is serious business and really threw off my aim since I was trying to make up time lost loading. Using an ACOG with a shotgun is pretty fun though. Way easier to use than the M16 iron sights.
  
  So the real news: games. Picked up Prototype on sale from Amazon. Been really enjoying that. Pretty good difficulty curve I think. Not really sure why people seem to complain so much about the difficulty though. Some fights are definitely tough but they're still manageable. Also got a deal on some Microsoft Points so I decided to pony up and get Battlefield 1943. Been pretty fun so far. Keeping Friends in the same Squad seems to be broken but other than that I'm enjoying it. If you have it hit me up for a few games.
  
  So, a while back I posted a blog commenting on the game X-Blades and the ridiculous screen shots that Gamespot had chosen to feature. Well, a demo came out and I figured I'd give it shot. Scantily clad women with big swords may be cliche in gaming but I like a little T&A - sue me. As long as there's some depth to it I don't really care if my heroine is fully clothed or not. So I played the demo a little and was intrigued. The combat was interesting. The anime style, cell shaded graphics were appealing enough - especially that butt of hers... And there were some interesting RPG style upgrades to magic and melee combat. All intriguing enough to put into my Gamefly queue. Well, yesterday it showed up. OK, cool. I can use a break from prototype. The girlfriend isn't home so she can't give me **** about the bare butt of the protagonist.
  
  I think I played for about a half hour. Maybe an hour. X-Blade is back in its mailing sleeve and now on its way back to Gamefly.
  
  Yes, it was that bad.
  
  This isn't just a hack n slash. It's a stand in one place and spam the X button while countless enemies spawn around you until they stop and the level completes. I think there's supposed to be a story but I'm not really sure. Every level is just an arena with enemies spawning over and over and mobbing you while some big boss pummels you with fire balls that follow you around. There's some idea of magic powers but the only way to charge your magic supply is to kill things and if you don't kill things often enough your magic supply runs out. But using magic also uses your magic supply. On top of all that, the girl's voice is some ditsy valley girl thing that just grates the ears having to listen to her talk. And all that barely scratches the surface. Never mind the plethora of other problems. Yes, she has a nice butt. But so does my girlfriend.
  • Posted Jul 21, 2009 11:32 am PT
  • Category: Games
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