Midweek update.

  Updated 12/31/14. I didn't have time to finish this before the Christmas vacation I had, but I won't waste a post so enjoy time traveling. And this will be the last post of 2014. Well, it's Christmas Eve, it's Wednesday and it's time for the midweek update. So many years ago, Melissa and I, played a PS1 game called The Grinch.

 It was very hard and very glitchy. We took turns trying to do everything and we just couldn't get it and it was frustrating. Well back to Blockbuster it went without a second thought. Well I came across a rom for it that my friend made. When I downloaded a PS1 emulator when I got the Ouya. I tried a few games on it and it works, but there are glitches and this is the free version. I loaded up The Grinch and was off trying to play it. On the Ouya, there is no start or select buttons. You have to map buttons like R3 and L3 which is fine, but on the PS1, you need to use those buttons. Wii got to play Super Mario 3D World. That was a blast. Trying to learn all the new suits and ability's was a lot of fun. Melissa had a lot of fun too. 

 I told you I got a Raspberry Pi computer for Christmas. This mini computer is amazing! I love everything about it. Now I actually want another one so I can have one in each room. I know, I know, be happy with what you have. Well, I read that constant plugging and unplugging is bad for it, so having one in the major rooms would be sweet. So I have been dreaming about the day I got a Raspberry Pi, I have been downloading a lot of different OS's for it. The Canakit I got had an 8gig micro sd card with like eight OS's on it? I chose OpenELEC and it ran butter smooth. I had all the default things on it. I did some research and it says to turn off the RSS, big fan art, background video playing and few other things. What this does is, save system resources for just streaming. If you have all this other stuff turned on, it still runs good, but not as good as it could. So I turned all those off and the background video still played, which is weird but it was really smooth and slick. I even got Airplay to work from my iPhone. That's so cool. After doing the research, I need to do that on all my platforms running Xbmc. If it helps the Raspberry Pi, it will help other machines too. Another sweet thing about OpenELEC, it auto updates. When I installed it the first time, it was running Gotham 13.1, now it updated to Gotham 13.2. That's sweet, the more and more I use this Raspberry Pi, I'm loving it even more. And I got the Rii mini wireless keyboard. I plugged it in for the first time turned it on and it was off and running. It was actually very responsive and intuitive.

  My next OS I want to try is, Ultimate Raspian. It has Retroepie and Xbmc built in. I will report back when I get time to actually do this and have time to write the post. I did install Retroepie, set up everything, got my controller working, updated the Raspberry Pi and then ran out of time to add any ROMS. One thing I did notice is when it was updating, it downloaded Xbmc, but it was not on the Emulation Station home page. It was me probably doing something wrong, as this was my actual first time using Retroepie. That's part of the fun in playing though. It was easy to setup OpenELEC because I had done it numerous times before. I also found some other interesting things. I downloaded an OS image, tried writing it to the SD card and it wouldn't work. The file type was .img, but it also had gz on it. I don't know what gz is, but I opened up 7zip and it extracted the image. So now it's (file).img. Learning as I go I guess. Retroepie was the first time I actually got to use sudo command. I tried Xbmcubuntu and I never could get sudo to work or getting back to lxde. I figured it was me having problems.

 Music, I don't have any music.

 Movies I'm watching. I started the Transformers anthology again. I am watching Revenge Of The Fallen. I actually started watching some anime off of Netflix again. I finished Spider-Man 1 with Tobey Maguire, now I'm on to part two. I want to Start Star Wars and Die Hard again.

 Random internet pictures.

One day I will get a Sphinx cat.

 Well Happy New Year! I hope you a had a great 2014, I know I did. Now it's the past and as we look to the future, it is what you make it. Deal with it as it comes, not before. Live in the moment, cause once it's gone, it's gone. A new year, a fresh start. My resolutions are going to be: I need to listen more. I need to breath more. I need to focus on doing my job and not let little things get to me. I need to regrow that rubber skin people talk about so I won't take things so personally. I need to work on being nicer when it's required. I need to enjoy the moments I do get. I need to beat some video games. What? You think this was all gonna be sappy, self help stuff? Ha ha. Till next year.

Wekend review for 12/25,26,27 and 28/14.

 Well I got some much deserved and needed time off. I used the rest of my vacation for a nice four day weekend. This weekend was a blur, a nice one, but a blur no less. So Christmas Eve, Melissa went over to our friends house for a pre Christmas party. When I got home, I had a Christmas feast, after we ate, we opened a single present and we rented The Interview. After that went to bed. Thursday, Christmas, we woke up kinda early and we headed downstairs in search of coffee. We arranged our gifts to each other, sipped some coffee and opened some gifts. After presents, we relaxed on the couch still trying to wake up. We watched some shows and some movies.

 Friday morning, it was time for Christmas with Melissa's mom. We woke up early again and hustled to get things arranged before she showed up. I made some coffee and cocoa for us and we opened some gifts.After gifts, we sat and talked about the year and life in general. After another cup of coffee, we headed out to Golden Corral for some good food. After eating way to much, we headed home. I turned on a movie and we sat and relaxed. Friday night, I put together my Raspberry Pi and we streamed some movies.

 I still can't believe I finally got a Raspberry Pi.

 Saturday, we headed over to our friends house for Christmas and a dinner. We played some games, bet some money on a dice game and ate too much again. Saturday night we got home and we watched a movie.

 Sunday, we had our normal house chores to do and that took a good part of the day. Sunday night I tried installing Ultraslim on my Raspberry Pi. I didn't have any luck, the keyboard and mouse wouldn't work so I couldn't do anything after the first boot screen. Oh well, I will try something else later. I hope you had a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, till next time.

Weekend review for 12/20 - 21/14.

 Friday night, I rented If I Stay, with Chloe Grace Moretz. It was pretty good. I thought she was amazing as Carrie, so I could see some of the expressions she used in Carrie in this. I guess it was different then the book? I don't read so I don't know. I guess the rocker guy is more of a rocker guy and does what shiesty rocker guys do. Well I'm glad that this rocker guy wasn't that guy. He sold his part a lot better this way then if it would have been different. I think Chloe Grace Moretz is going to be a huge star and have a long career if she keeps acting the way she does. I would definitely recommend seeing this movie. Love, let alone young love is always amazing to see and when you have the acting caliber like in this, it's completely believable.

 Saturday, we had to go grocery shopping and do some baking after we got home. Nothing too exciting. Saturday afternoon, we watched some Christmas shows and relaxed. Saturday night, we watched a few more Christmas shows like, Michael Buble's Christmas. He just reminds me of olden time Christmas song singers. I had visions of Bing Crosby up on the stage. After our Christmas shows, we headed upstairs and watched Into The Storm. We did go see this in the movie theater and I couldn't wait to see it again. I still got the same anxiety as I did before, in the theater. The shear epicness of the tornadoes, was amazing.I want to buy the movie now and add it to my collection.

 Sunday, we did our house stuff. After all chores were done, we relaxed all day and night. I turned on my Ouya and played a few games and then I went to bed. I hope you had a good weekend, till next time. 

Cellphone pic Thursday.

Midweek update.

 Well it's that time again. It's time for the midweek update. Movies I have been watching, I started watching A Charlie Brown Christmas. It's a yearly tradition. The song in the background is called Christmastime Is Here. I have always loved that song, well this year I did something about it, stay tuned for the music section. I also started re-watching Guardians Of The Galaxy, so I could get more insight on it. I already have seen things I missed the first time. I also started How The Grinch Stole Christmas! 1966 and How The Grinch Stole Christmas 2000. Notice the (!), that's how you tell the difference between the two. I really do love Christmas and I love how sometimes people are a lot nicer. I just wish people weren't pricks in the first place, oh well.

 Video games, I haven't played any games since last midweek update.

 Music, here's what you have been waiting for. So new-to-me music is, Sarah McLachlan - Christmas Time Is Here. She does an amazing job on this song.


 Random internet pictures,

I don't understand why people try to blame someone else, other than the person who did it.

I have never read any more truer word than this.

I need to practice this. There have been many times when I have just tried to help someone and it ends up backfiring for whatever reason. So annoying. Me in the future: No, I'm sorry, I don't know how to do that.

 "Ben, can you help me set this up?" "No, sorry, I don't know how to set up a computer. No, I'm sorry, I don't know anything about the internet." Or I could be like, "I need help doing that myself, do you know how to set it up?"

Drita cracks me up!

I do not condone violence. I do condone shit getting fixed.

What's cool about this is, she plays Mark Wahlber'gs daughter in Transformers Age Of Extinction.

I found this on someone's car. I would like doing this way too much!

 Well, that's what I got, till next time.

Weekend review for 12/13 - 14/14.

 Friday night, I got Slurpees. Melissa got movies from Redbox. We got, Guardians Of The Galaxy, Deliver Us From Evil and How To Train Your Dragon 2. So Melissa watched Deliver Us From Evil, while I watched Guardians Of The Galaxy. Guardians was a good movie. It seemed like it was a separate entity from the other Marvel movies though. The only tie ins where obviously Thanos and The Collector, but other than that, seemed not connected to me. I will have to buy it now for my Marvel collection and I'm not upset about it. It doens't change my mind about second tier Marvel movies, but I will be less critical about them, give them more of a chance, I will watch them. Zoe Saldana did good to me in her part. Vin Diesel as Groot was funny. And the after credits scene with Howard the Duck was interesting. I remember a completely different Howard the Duck. Side note, after doing some research, I guess it's actually the same Howard the Duck? It's going to be interesting to see how these other non Avenger movies do.

 Saturday, we popped in How To Train Your Dragon. It was actually really good. I did notice they changed the village and of course the cg was amazing. After a little bit, we went upstairs and wrapped some presents. After presents we took off and went to a couple stores for some miscellaneous wrapping supplies. After that we headed over to our friends house. We handed them their gifts and we got ours. I don't know if you remember me talking about some sweet Marvel ornaments or not.

 Well our friend decided she would hunt down not only the Marvel ornaments, but the DC ones too. Lo and behold the superhero Christmas tree.

 After their house, we all headed to the Holiday Tour Of Lights. We had never been to this before and we thought it might be fun and less of a travel then Seattle for the Point Defiance Zoo lights. So we got our tickets and stood in line for about an hour or so? We got on the train and we were on our tour. It was a little foggy and it started to get cold. Over the hills and through the woods we go, to see all the little lights, to and fro, back and forth. It was fun and I'm glad we did it. I think we will actually go back next year. After the train ride, we headed into their restaurant and had some dinner. We were told by our friends that the tater tots were so good, you would want another order. Well we decided to get a burger and some tater tots. The burger and tots were really good. After dinner, we headed home and wrapped some presents. After presents we watched The Santa Clause with Tim Allen. After the Santa Clause we headed upstairs to watch our Horror movie fest movies. We popped in Hatchet 2 and The Dead. I only picked Hatchet II because of Danielle Harris. Hatchet 1 was horrible and Hatchet II was about the same. I couldn't tell if it was supposed to pick exactly were the first one left off or if it was a later date. They changed the Crowley monster even. Whatever, Kane Hodder is actually Jason from Friday the 13th movies, that's crazy, I didn't know that. Well, Hatchet III is on our horror movie queue, because you can't not watch a trilogy. After Hatchet, Melissa fell asleep and I started watching The Dead. It started out really slow, but I gave it a chance. The whole movie was slow, acting wasn't horrible, but the movie was just so slow and the zombies moved like Romero's first, Of The Dead movies, which is fine, but people weren't scared. It was really weird. I fast forwarded towards the end and I still watched another half hour of it. You have to give all B  movies a chance, because you never know when it will a great movie.

 Sunday, we had our house stuff to do, plus I had to clean out the bathroom fan./vents. Boy was that fun. We have our cats and we love them, but the fan in the bathroom does not love the cat litter dust. It was literally, caked on the blades. After we did some chores, we wrapped some more presents and we finished. You might be thinking, holy shit that's a lot of presents. Well yes it is, but we have numerous people to buy for. After presents, we watched The Santa Clause 2. ABC Family, has been having Christmas movies every single day. Next year, we will actually buy The Santa Clause trilogy on DVD, but for right now, ABC Family works for us. We watched a couple Sunday shows and that was our weekend. I hope you had a good weekend, till next time.

Cellphone pic Thursday.

The Ouya micro Android gaming console. Anthracite black.

Midweek update.

 Where to begin? Let see, I got another throw away computer that had a dual core processor, 2 gigs of ram and a 160 gig hard drive. I was looking at the case and noticed it had a windows vista code on it. I paid it no mind and continued to download drivers for it for windows xp. I got it home and I was searching through my piles of disks and found my re-installation dvd for windows vista. I started thinking to myself, hey why don't I try this and see if it works. I started the install and all was going well. The computer boots to the desktop and it says activate windows. I click it and put the coa from the case in, it started loading and it worked. It's a genuine copy, I'm excited. Now the fun part begins, I start downloading all the windows updates. And I start installing some programs. We will see what happens. I installed my other hard drive. Now I got the 160 gig for windows and programs and the 500 gig for my movies and pictures. I want to try this as a server. It runs cooler and quieter than my other game room server I built with my terabyte hard drive in it. Like I said we will what happens. 

 Video games, I have been playing Minish Cap. I beat the level 2 boss. I couldn't take a picture of the boss himself cause I was to busy kicking some ass. 

Imagine this room filled with lava, a fire breathing dragon thing and spots of fire everywhere.

 Mirrors Edge was free for PS3s over the weekend. I downloaded it and played it for a little bit. Man oh, man is that game hard. I could barely jump correctly, yet do a Shinobi wall run. After numerous times of dying, I decided to turn it off and be glad I didn't pay money for it. What throws me off is, I can't judge the edge of platforms to jump correctly, let alone figure out how to land.

 Music, I don't have any new music.

 Movies I'm watching. I started watching the 1982 Conan The Barbarian. It actually still holds up surprisingly well. I started watching Piranha 3D. It's just a fun filled gore fest. I'm excited for the this weekend so I can try and rent Guardians Of The Galaxy, I still have yet to see this. I need to see what all the hype is about, for a second tier movie. They released the second or teaser trailer for Mad Max Fury Road. It looks pretty good actually. The trailer for Terminator Genisys, looks really good too. To me there is definitely some issues with the back story and the main store and characters, but I think I will give a try. I know I said before that Arnold did not need to be in this movie to make it a good Terminator movie and I stand by that.

 Random internet pictures,

Pretty much everyday.

The White Hand of Sarumon ornament? Why the hell not!

It is not a deal if it costs more than regular price! Don't fall for it people.

 Well that's what I got for now, till next time.

Weekend review for 12/6 - 7/14.

 Friday night we watched, Friday The 13th Part V A New Beginning. I have waited since around Halloween to watch this movie. It's actually pretty good, it picks up right after part 4. I still need the whole series on Blu-ray.

 Saturday, we had some Internet problems and my hard wired connections stopped working again. This is starting to be a really bad broken record. I start doing the unscrew the coaxial cable and pulling the power. I tried not unscrewing the coaxial and just the power and nothing happens. I call Comcast, tell them what's going and of course the modem starts working as I'm on hold. I finally get through to service, go through the normal steps and it seems to be working. I go downstairs and try my wired PS3 going. No Internet, I try wireless and of course that works, but not wired. I try doing some more trouble shooting. Anyways, a very long, many wasted hours later, my Ethernet switch was acting up again on top of Comcast not working. what kind of bullshit is that? Both at once? Damn, it's definitely time to buy a new switch. I also put my Comcast modem into bridge mode so I could use my own router. My D-Link DIR 655, used to be one of the best at time. Hence the words at the time. Now, it seems that it is too slow and actually not as robust as the Comcast modem/router, wow. So another thing to my list, a couple new Ethernet switches, a new router and some new crimping tools for my shitty wires I made my self. Saturday afternoon, we wrapped a few presents and tried to make the most of a pretty much ruined afternoon. Saturday night we watched a few shows and went to bed.

 Sunday, I turned off bridge mode on the Comcast router and quick few minutes later a few hours later, we were up and running again with the Comcast modem/router at them helm. We did a few house chores and knocked out some more shows. We made some cookies and I put a Hershey Hug on mine. Mm mm, so damn good.

 Sunday night, we made an amazing dinner, watched some more shows and I watched the Z Nation finale. What a weird damn ending. I don't even know how they will continue it next season. I guess I'll find out. Well, that 's what I got for now, till next time.

Cellphone pic Thursday.

Rainy day in Bellevue.

Midweek update.

 Midweek update, well I had my vacation so, I don't even know where to start. Video games, I haven't played any since last week. I have been seeing sweet special edition consoles and with Christmas just around the corner, deals are to be had. It would be dangerous if I was rich and didn't care about spending money, I would have too many special editions of everything. I'm not saying I dont appreciate what I have. 

 Music, 

In my vacation I heard a couple new to me songs. Fergie - L.A. Love. It's pretty good. (Embed won't work. Whatever.)

 Movies, 

On our vacation, we watched Hatchet. I'm not impressed at all. It did remind me of the old 80s slasher movies with the gore and blood, but it was bad and really bad acting. I watched the Grumpy Cat Christmas special, that was okay. I wasn't expecting miracles and it was enjoyable. What made me sad though was seeing the commercials for whatever cat food Grumpy aka Tardar Sauce is a spokes-cat for. Colonel Meow was on it. Colonel Meow passed away awhile ago, so it was nice, but sad to see him. 

 Random internet pictures,

Is it still a sale if it's only four cents off? Ha ha.

 I think that's about it for this entry, so till next time. 

The weekend review for 11/27,28,29,30 - 12/1/14.

 Here's the extended version of the weekend review. I had my vacation, that I have been waiting for all damn year. So first up is thanksgiving. We headed out and braved the crowds and went shopping. We had to score some deals, so we went to Walmart. We picked up a few things. They had a deal for a 32 gig micro sd card for $10 bucks! The catch, it was for 8 pm, damn. Regular price was $22 bucks which isn't bad, but still. I didn't get it. Then we headed to Kmart, big mistake, I really don't like this store anymore. They opened their door at 7pm, we got there at 7:45 and it was basically dead. No deals, no organization at all and they didn't accept a coupon because they gave a $5 gift card back? Weird, after that we headed home. 

 We headed back out and went to Bath & Body Works. The Everett mall finally opened the doors before 12. There was actually quite a few stores that were open. Last year, we had to wait before we were let in. We grabbed our VIP totes, some soaps and we were out. Don't be jealous, but we saved $340 dollars and spent $159!! Damn! That's a good deal! 

 Friday, I started backing up our phones. I had gigs and gigs worth of pictures to back up. After that, we headed out to AT&T to see if we could get a deal on some new phones. We had our upgrade and we were okay with a new two year plan. We walked in, not getting any help and we just sat there waiting for help. Finally we had a worker approach us. We started talking to her about all of our options. She asked if we had backed up our phones, I said yes. She said, what about your notes. I was shocked and started feverishly emailing all my notes from my phone, then I had to backup Melissa's too. As I was backing up our notes, barely hearing what's going on, I get asked by Melissa how does $117 a month sound? Dafuq!? Huh? I said $117 for what, she said for our cellphone bill. I said how is that possible? The lady chimes in and says that's our new plans we have. I still couldn't believe it. So actually paying attention to the person, I asked what about our plan now? She said with the new plan and the payment plan our bill would be $117 before tax. I still couldn't believe it. She asked if I wanted a LG tablet. I asked how much was it, she said .99 cents. I said don't we have to add more data to our bill, she said yes. I said no thanks. We were being up sold the whole time. She asked what kind of phones we wanted. We said the iPhone 6. She said she would go check in the back. She walked out with a space gray and gold. They didn't have any silver, but Melissa was okay with gold. The lady started asking about phone insurance, but we said no. We finally had a lower bill and wanted to keep it. 

 Now the fun part, we asked about our trade in for our iPhone 4S. She looked it up and it was $70 bucks. We were happy with that, but we weren't expecting what she said next. She said there was a promotion going on for customers and they would add extra money for a gift card. We were hesitant, but we went along with it. So the deal was $70 and $130 so $200 all together. The lady said we could buy speakers or cases or whatever we wanted. We decided to get some screen protectors and some cases. We were really excited, then she added my trade in, it was another $200 bucks! What the hell? The lady said go get a speaker or something. We headed over to the Bluetooth speakers. I saw a Bose for $60, the lady said you have more money, pick something else. The lights showed down and the Beats pill was bathed in lights. We grabbed it and headed back to the counter. 

 She started ringing everything up. Two phones, two screen protectors for $35 a piece, two cases at $50 a piece and a Beats Pill for $200. With our payment plan and trade ins, the only amount do was $2.73 cents!! We saved over $1600 dollars. I still can't even believe it. And we have a lower cellphone bill. That's a score of I have ever heard of one. And the thing is, we would have never gotten that deal online. It would have added the $21.25 on top of our bill. It would have been close to $200 bucks for our bill. After shopping and catching our breath, we came home and made out thanksgiving dinner.

 After dinner, I went through all of our cellphone bags to get chargers and restore our phones from iTunes.

 I noticed something different when I saw Melissa's wall plug. Hers is a European version! Ha ha. Well I guess we always wanted to travel internationally and now we can. Ha ha.

 Melissa and I (mostly Melissa) have always wanted a Beats Pill. It actually sounds amazing. And being free, you can't beat it.

 Friday night, we got like 3 inches of snow. Why? We headed out to Value Village and I scored a 24 inch tree for $3 bucks. We headed to Big Lots, Bartel's and then we headed back home and started decorating. I got to finally setup my Starbucks tree! This year they released 6 new ones. Holy shit. My old metal ornament stand, won't stand anymore cause there's too many ornaments on it.

 Another new addition is our Starbucks advent calendar.

 The obligatory artsy shot.

 Bartel's we scored this sweet metal sign.

 We got the battery operated led lights for $3 bucks and it looks amazing. 

 Sunday, we headed to Golden Coral for our buffet date. We had way too much to eat and the food was enjoyed by all. After the buffet, we headed home and finished decorating our tree.

 Monday, was our Sunday, so we had to do our regular house stuff. With the tree I scored from Value Village, I made my Star Wars m&m ornament tree.

 I have had these ornaments since 2006 and I finally get to use them. By today's standards, these are retro. Now I need to find some more. I didn't take any pictures of outside, but we did that all up too. This vacation flew by, but the time I had with Melissa was amazing. Well that's what I got for now, I hope you had a good weekend, till next time.