YAY, Yesterday was the last day for NBA Live 2004. Today I worked a little on SSX3 again before it gets finalized and sent out tomorrow or so. Tomorrow, my sister is going to love this one, I get to work in the Sims – Making Magic expansion pack. No it isn’t dirty, it’s like magic-magic, like Harry Potter or David Blaine kinda magic. Heh, while waiting in the lobby my first day of work, the was a video of previews of all the up coming games and Sims 2 was one of them. It was just a FMV with the hyped-up graphical Sims characters and it was pretty cool if they could get the game like that. But I bet is was just the movie. A couple parts if the movie you see the chick tear off her top, blurred of course. Pretty funny though. Anyone remember the nude skins for Sims? Ha. My sister showed me those a long time ago. Tomorrow, C&C:G Zero Hour and Freedom Fighters, YAY! In any case, it’s nice to be off of NBA Live 2004… Now, to find a way to dodge the NCAA March Madness…

WTF are there so many damn cars out at 11PM on a Saturday Night on 101 Going SOUTH?! Yes, I’m stupid. I just got off work after 12 working hours + 1.5 hr breaks. I’m up to 44 hours and it’s only Saturday, I still have another 8 hours left in this week! I’m probably gonna work Monday and Tuesday too. Which would put me at a 7 day work week and there’s no telling what the week after will look like. We get our schedules every Wednesday, not every month… I wonder if I’ll get double time next week… On the plus side, supposedly, today was the last day of NBA Live 2004!!! YAY. Which means these next 8+ days either the last part of SSX3 or… LORD OF THE RINGS, YAY! Then again March Madness is supposed to be coming in soon, and I BETTER NOT be stuck on that, or I don’t know who I’m gonna hurt! I can’t wait until SSX and C&C:G – ZH Come out. Man when I leave EA I’m gonna have a stack of games… As we say at EA (or at least I do), EA pays us, and we just give ’em back the money.

Has anyone noticed the BRAND NEW Ikea sign in PA from the freeway? How sad, the ”K” light is already out. I still haven’t been to an Ikea, but I’ll probably stray far away from it for a few months, and then again maybe until after christmas too.

Ah sleep time, so I can wake up tomorrow and to the same thing over again. AH precious sleep.

Ok, I’ve been on NBA Live 2004 since, I think, Tuesday. I’M SICK OF IT! I’m not sick of the job, I still like it (I know someone who’s not so into it anymore), but just the game is SO boring to me. Maybe if it were NHL 2004 I’d still hold a little interest. But with sports games, there’s only so much you can do. Damn, I wanna go back on Command and Conquer: Generals – Zero Hour or even SSX3! Can’t wait till they come out! Gotta get some EA gear too HA. W00t paycheck tomorrow!!! Too bad most of it goes to my sister… Damn food for costing money.

Woohoo!!! I got accepted to be a Beta Tester for Socom 2!!! Dope. But, I bet it’s an online only beta. If not, I get a free (but, bugged) unexpiring game. Unlike EQOA Beta, which expires in a few months.

The past few days I’ve been testing SSX3, a really cool snowboarding game much like the Tony Hawk: Pro Skating line of ”extreme” games. Controls were something to get used to, ’cause I was used to Tony Hawk’s controls. All-in-all a really fun game.

Overtime today (last night? A few hours ago…) I was put on NBA Live 2004. Pretty cool, I suppose. I’m no basketball guy, so I didn’t really know what to do, or know any moves. Put me in front of a hockey game, I’ll tear that up. More some other time…

OK, so I really lagged on this entry, sue me. I basically crashed hard when I got home after the game. I just didn’t feel good. I just came home from working (if you can call it that) from 9:30AM until 11PM and have to cut it short ’cause moO’s giving me dirty looks ’cause she just got here and then I tell her I’m gonna blog.

During the game I couldn’t play very well, despite my scoring chances (which I couldn’t convert). Even though I was on the ice, I was extremely hot. It could be the gear and the fact that I’m ”exercising,” I’m not sure, but I felt OVERLY hot. I’m sure I showed it in the game. Oh well, it’s just pre-season… now where the hell is the schedule?! I need to know what days I need to take off work! Grrrr.

So, is this whole KaZaA/MP3 scare going to really scare all the people from trading mp3s massively? Your thoughts? Please respond. Even you random people that come here =)

My thoughts? Well, I don’t think they can get rid of MP3s as a medium, period. I also don’t think they can get rid of the companies with programs that allow people to share music massively. If you close one, someone out there will see an opportunity to build one up and the whole cycle will start again. HOWEVER, I do think that singleing out people and suing them or whatnot, IS a start. It won’t hurt the companies directly, but it WILL scare people from sharing and downloading. Maybe… Ha. I’m not sure… We’ll soon see. Even after the whole scare in the newspaper, I see 3,567,487 users online… How are you going to scare all of them? (I say as I CLOSE my KaZaA Lite, while my brother in the other room deletes his copy from his computer) I think pay MP3 WOULD be a good idea if it was implemented in the FIRST place; try to do that now, I’m sure it’ll happen but with a BIG struggle. A BIG plauss for pay MP3s is the quality. How many times have you DLed a song and it was either corroded, cut off, or looped? Don’t have to worry about that anymore with the pay services. I know Apple is running one, I can’t recall who else is. Supposedly, Apple is only Mac right now. Not sure if they ported to the PC yet… Do YOU remember the last time YOU bought a CD? I don’t. Mainly ’cause I hated spending $11-15 something for a CD when I ONLY LIKED ONE FRIGGEN SONG! Singles were cool, but some songs never even came out on single CDs. If the music company wants to be jankie about it, fine. But, don’t expect me to buy any CDs soon. I’ll just listen to the radio or listen to a DVD in the car. Yes, I said listen… Maybe, if the music companies were smart they’d sell custom CDs or something. Pick the songs I want and buy the CDs close at a cheap price somewhat close to cost. We all know how much a CD costs nowadays, you buy/manufacture them in BULK! I’m not asking for 200 MP3s on one disc, but at leasst give me a choice of songs if I’m to pay my hard earned cash (yeah right) for a CD. Alas, I write this all purely for flame, since it’s too late, no one’s changing and MP3s WILL stay here for good! <^> Music companies. We all know alot of artists don’t care, they make a sh*t load of money from concerts, public appearances, commercials, ETC. YOU’RE just greedy to fill your pockets with MY money from MY EMPTY pockets… Once again <^>

So, after four days off of work, I get back and find I’m no longer working on Command and Conquer: Generals – Zero Hour Expansion. BOOOOOO. (I have to buy C&C soon, after I get a new comp that can handle it, and ZH when it comes out! But, I know moO will kill me) I’m now working on EA’s new Lego game called Bionicle. Ah, the greatest thing about my job, other than playing video games for 8 hours, is the fact that I get to play games (and beat it too, heh) that I would probably not likely ever dream about playing. Well, that’s a little harsh but somewhat true. I don’t think I would have rushed out to the store and bought this game. I think there are only a few games I WOULD rush out and buy; maybe a Final Fantasy series, or a tactical espionage game like Metal Gear Solid or Socom, maybe even an Everquest expantion LOL …(wait, I hear they just made one live yesterday)… Bionicle is just some adventure game which stars the robots famed from those little blocks we used to play with as kids. But, now they have robots? That’s not Lego-ish, HA. It’s a VERY basic game, easy, but very trying on the mind. Hard to imagine something easy but hard, eh? I don’t really know how to explain it. I mean, even the easiest of games has its moments where it can be hard… Now I’m just rambling… Ok, its hard but easy. I’ll leave it as that. But, yeah, if a game has a save function and it’s supposed to have a 3-5 hour play time, there’s something wrong and it’s too easy… Now, finding EVERYTHING in the game is a little harder. I’m like missing 1 gem from like every lvl, and they’re like hard to find. Damnit!

Yeah, it was a shame Sean wasn’t at the game tonight, (Yeah, right. He’s in Hawaii and will miss the other pre-season game too) he woulda had a field day with this team. We played a team that was 2 divisions below us. Apparently, they have a few ringers. You could actually see that a few of the other team members didn’t belong in this division, good and bad.

I managed to get 2 penalties today. Ha, I have to let it out of my system early, all before the actual season begins. After I scored a goal I was checked from behind, so I got up and pushed the guys head behind me away from me and both of us were called. I just laughed all the way to the box. The second was just some bullsh*t that he wanted to pick a fight with someone smaller than he ’cause he’s a big p*ssy. LOL, I had to have a ref hold me back. Lucky you, punk b*tch.

Before I forget, they did the cutest little group huddle and yelled “break” or “lynx” or whatever before the game and at the intermissions. You know, the kinda thing you did when you were like 10 years old. I just had to make a comment like “aw, how cute.” LOL, sarcastically of course…

Kinda funny thing, we were short benched in the first period, and then it was like we got reinforcements when the two Riches and one of the Joes game in. (Did I miss anyone?) It was kind of like, oh you’re in the lead? Here comes the Cavalry…

Well, I can’t wait for next week. We have a sorta rematch vs. the team we played in the finals last week. Maybe we’ll have a full team this time? Everyone who missed today better get there asses back in town and play, HA. Oh, and it’s nice to have our captain back on the ice. Way to heal, Kelly.

WTF? Adam has a job now? Yeah, and it’s about time too. I interviewed last Friday for a CQC Game Testing position at Electronic Arts in Redwood City, and they called me back later on that afternoon asking me to come back and work the day after Labor Day; that’s today! So, my morning didn’t start out too good since my alarm woke me up. I don’t like alarms and I don’t like mornings. As if waking up at 7:45 AM in order to leave by 8:30 and get to Redwood City wasn’t enough, when I got to the 85 – 101 interchange, it was packed full-on bumper to bumper. But, once I got on 101 it was a little better.

You’re probably thinking to yourself, “Come on, game testing? That’s SO easy. I wish I could do that.” Well, you can’t. All the 7 positions are closed. And, no, it’s not easy. Sure the job is as simple as playing video games for 8 hours, however, there’s a lot more too it. You have to find playability issues. I find that if you don’t find any, it makes you look bad. So there is some stress within. Sure it’s fun and games, but it still is work.

Curse the new tech companies for making all the damn electronics with stupid cameras. Because of them I’m not allowed to bring in my cell phone AND my CLI?(Sony PDA). So, if you need to get a hold of me… too bad. I can have it, but it needs to be turned off while I’m on my floor. If need be, I can be reached between ~ 12:30 – 1:30. I don’t have my own desk nor my own computer, but I will have email. However, that, too, is limited. Gosh I miss having my own office…

One of the coolest perks of having the job, other than the obvious playing video games 40+ hours a week, is the company store and the video library. The company store is a bunch of EA games at a nice discount. The library is a bunch of DVD/video rentals and tons o’ video games, not just EA games mind you, that you can rent for free for a week. Oh, the discount? What have you done for me? HA!

You may still be thinking, “Oh, what a cool job. I wish I could do it.” Well, apply. But, just be sure you can sit in front of a monitor/TV for like 8 hours straight. It’s tougher than you think. Luckily, being unemployed for 2 and a half years now, I’ve gotten used to it.

And that ends a great season. Maybe next time we can win the championship game. A big part of the game we were tied at 1. Some how we let it slip away. Last time we tied them with a full bench, this time we were missing a few. I don’t want it to seem like an excuse or anything, or blame anyone, but I’m sure we could have won if we constantly had fresh legs on the ice. Maybe not, who knows. Maybe we would have still lost. But, then, maybe we would have won. Either way, how we played our final game this summer season was full of valor. Ok, maybe not valor, but really strong down to the last minute where it looked like Joe wanted to pick a fight with someone, what was up with that, Joe? LOL. Well, great season guys. Lets see if we can skill all the losses in the beginning of the season and just go to the wins!!! LOL

On a separate note… Damn, another goalie got up in my face again. I’m going to take less and less from them next season. If a goalie starts to talk sh*t to me about watching out and not hitting them when I KNOW I’m pushed into them and can’t do anything about it myself, you can be sure a fist will be thrown. F*ck if you can’t take a hit, you p*ssy, don’t play hockey. I don’t care if you’re a goalie, don’t talk sh*t to me if YOUR f’n teammate pushes me into you. If it’s my fault and I could control how I skate fine. But if you talk sh*t to me and it’s NOT my fault be ready for my uppercut to the f’n chin you GD p*ssy. Anyone know any goalies in the league better warn them I don’t like being sh*t talked to when there was nothing I could to. Ph4g. FU Ahole. I’m gonna try to get a goalie kicked out next season, thats my goal. I goalies think they have too much power, untouchable. I understand the whole no check/contact to the goalies, but if there’s nothing I can do, and someone pushes me into them WTF am I supposed to do about it? Bah. It’s hockey, a contact sport. If you can’t take a hit on the ice go golfing, go bowling, play solitaire, or maybe you can find something a p*ssy would do.