Philly gets a championship

Ok, so its not a "major" sports championship, but nonetheless its still a championship.

The Philadelphia Soul defeated defending champion San Jose Sabercats in Arena Bowl XXII 59-56 to win their first AFL title. I have always been a fan of the Arena Football League and was very happy when Philly was awarded a franchise a few years back. Matt D'orazio threw 7 TD passes and ran for another en route to winning the game MVP as the Soul held off a furious comeback attempt by San Jose late in the game.

In other news I broke down and finally bought myself a Guitar Hero game. Best Buy was selling the PS2 bundle version of Guitar Hero III Legends of Rock for $30 off the normal price so I jumped all over it. I only got to play for a few minutes today but it was pretty fun. Honestly I think this is one of the best multi player games I've ever played and look forward to playing with some friends someday.

In FFXI nothing much new since I've barely played this week because my Mom came to visit me this past weekend. I got BLU to 40 and learned a few new spells. Also got Bonecraft up to 91.1 and thanks to a nice new skill up synth I found (caps at 97) I will probably keep leveling it to 100.

More and more my time is getting restricted thanks to my soon-to-be-baby so updates and overall time online for me will probably keep decreasing steadily. I still have a lot to do before the baby comes and I'm quickly running out of time. I have child birth classes starting next week and I still have to get her room ready. I'm also repainting another room and laying down new flooring so it can be our new bedroom which should take up even more time. I probably shouldn't work too hard and relax some while I still can. My new lifetime job starts in a few weeks so I better be rested and ready for it.

Obama in Berlin

In front of over 200k people Obama made his European debut with a well recieved speech stressing Trans-Atlantic cooperation in this new global society. By declaring himself "a citizen of the world" he showed his willingness to work with our allies and enemies alike (a sharp contrast from the Bush administration).

I didn't actually see the speech yet but I did read the transcript and I felt it was a very genuine and faithful attempt at restoring our broken image to the rest of the world. Lets face it, the Bush administration was a total failure when it came to foreign policy, probably the worst in our history. Unfortunately John McCain doesn't seem too interested in changing things very much and frankly that would be a very stupid and naive mistake.

I'm smart enough to realize that Obama isn't some kind of saint or saviour, but I'm also smart enough to know that the Republican way is the wrong way right now. I just hope enough people are as smart as I am come November.

Happy Birthday to me

Yes today is my 29th birthday, and still noone has called me or sent me any kind of birthday greeting. Nobody loves me ; ;.

Its been quite a while since my last update so nows as good a time as any for one. With all the crap I've been doing with my house and whatnot I haven't been paying much attention to the world outside lately. Obama is on his European tour and speaks in Berlin in about 45 minutes. I really wish I could listen to it live but I'm stuck at work unfortunately.

The Phillies have played like shit for almost 2 months yet they are somehow still in 1st place in their division. Today they are playing our rival New York Mets for sole possession of 1st place and they better win. They have our second best pitcher, Jamie Moyer, going today so I'm pretty confident about our chances.

In FFXI I've been soloing DRG and BLU a lot (level 19 and 38 now respectively) and finally got some BLM leveling in there too (now 64). I've also found a new and extremely easy Campaign Op to do that gives 341 exp and takes like 5 minutes to do. Since Fairy sucks ass at keeping control of things (ala the AC we lose all the damn time) we have no nations controlling areas in the past. This means that there are Campaigns in the actual cities now and they are quite convenient in some respects, inconvenient in others. The positive is there are almost constant battles in one spot, the downside is all the NPC's disappear so you can't teleport or get Sigil while battles are going on.

Other than that its been same old same old. My mom is coming up to visit this weekend and to see my new house. Maybe I can persuade her to buy me some stuff for it lol.

Back to normal (almost)

I finally got my internet back this past Thursday and I'm so happy. While having no Cable TV or internet left me lots of time to do stuff around my house, watch some of my DVD's, and play some forgotten PS2 games, I was quite ready to get back to my online life.

But before I get into that I wanna talk about the Phillies game I went to that day. This time I went with 9 of my co-workers instead of my parents and wife, so I could let loose a bit. They met up early in the parking lot of the Center (our hockey/basketball arena) to drink some beer, grill some food, and play some whiffle ball. Sadly I could not go early because I had to wait for the Cable guy and thus missed out on most of the fun.

The Phils were playing the St. Louis Cardinals and one of the guys that came with us is a huge Cardinals fan. We had a good time picking on him and baiting other fans to try and beat him up lol but he was a good sport about it. Well the Phils ended up winning the game 4-1 and Ryan Howard hit two home runs. We all had a great time and we are already talking about doing it again but probably not till next year.

I finally got to log into FFXI and check my Bonanza Marbles on friday morning. I ended up winning some exp scrolls and a Rank 4 prize on my main character. I used it to get an Empress Hairpin and sold my Emperor Hairpin for 450k so I made out ok. I considered getting a Behemoth Hide to either sell or have crafted into Dusk Gloves, but ultimately decided against it.

I also decided to pick up yet another soloable job (Dragoon) to pass my time. Since almost everyone I know has either quit or rarely plays, and since when my baby comes I will have very limited play time, I am going to pass my time soloing these jobs. I figure between BLU and DRG solo, and BLM duoing with Shay, I should have plenty to do in my time online. There are still a few small goals I'd like to accomplish soon (finish AU and WoTG missions for example) and I'm confident I can get it done.

Thats about it for the moment, see you all later.

Small update

Not a whole lot has been happening lately besides trying to get my house in order. I haven't even done too much with that because I'm STILL waiting to get my internet and cable hooked up, and I'm waiting on my IRS check on the 11th to buy some things I need for it.

About my cable and internet, we ordered it online and they were supposed to show up Tuesday to install it. Noone shows up Tuesday so we call them on Wednesday to find out what happened. Apparently our original order never processed properly so it was never actually set up. So we had to redo the order (on the phone this time) and they won't be out till this Thursday to set it up. So in all I'll be without internet for almost 3 weeks which really sucks.

I'm due to get my $1200 IRS stimulus check with the last batch on July 11th. With it I plan to get a new entertainment center to hold my 92835928469 DVD's and PS2 games. I also want to get a bookshelf or two, a weedwhacker, and also a dining room table. If theres any left I'm getting my new grill I've been wanting forever.

I'm looking forward to getting back to my usual routine and seeing if I won anything from the Mog Bonanza. It was funny reading about the supposed "fix" against PS2 players and all the conspiracy theories about it. If you hadn't heard, if you play on PS2 and had the Moogle pick your numbers it picked them in an Odd -> Even pattern. So that means the numbers were either OEOEO or EOEOE (O being Odd E being Even), and if you looked at the results it meant that anyone that did this had no chance at winning a prize over rank 5. So of course since so many people were lazy and let the Moogle pick their numbers they didn't win, so it was obviously a conspiracy against the PS2 gamers.

Well thats all for now, see you online in a few days.