Game 3 Complete: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009 Nominee)

I was afraid of playing this, especially because I am traditionally terrible at first-person shooters, as my best friends will attest to. Nevertheless, I put my gritty-hat on, ready to see what disaster I would make of this game.

It's hard. Real hard. I played through it twice - once on the easiest difficulty - Recruit, and it really tested my mettle and patience. Here's the thing about Call of Duty - you never can permanently defeat an enemy. You can only kill them fast enough so that you can push through. Any other shooter feels like you can clear out an area, Rambo-style until you can walk through the wastelands like the ultimate gunning hero. Not here. If you don't advance, the guards will keep refreshing.

The game's story is pretty out there, but entertaining. Makes you wonder what would happen if full-scale war broke out on US soil again. The single player campaign is short, but I'm glad it's short. My mind can only have all that adrenaline for so long, and my armchair can only handle so much fistpounding from my raging at the game. I even forced my way through the Veteran difficulty.

I'm still looking for a partner to do the co-op missions with, but I'm ready to put this one to bed and move on to the next one.

2007: Rock Band (Nominee)
2008: Grand Theft Auto IV (Nominee)
2009: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Nominee)

Movie 1: Fargo (1996)

This is one of my life-long projects - to watch every Academy Award Best Picture nominee.

The first movie in this very long and ambitious project is Fargo (1996). There are a lot of really great movies out there that I have not seen - which is basically the inspiration for this project. Fargo is one of them. Ethan and Joel Coen are some of my favorite directors - with No Country For Old Men being one of my favorite movies, which I will have the pleasure of seeing again, as it is a Best Picture winner, and Fargo gives me the opportunity to watch a very acclaimed picture with the dark-humor way of describing a serious plot in only the way that the Coen brothers can.

Rather than give a sort of plot summary, I will give my reaction to the whole thing. I'm not a movie critic or reviewer, but I do find myself engaged in lots of films, and our reactions are what make us attracted to these distractions. I loved this movie, and it was very odd to see such a matter-of-fact approach by the folksy Brainerd police toward a triple homicide and lots of twisted and demented folks. No one in this movie is normal, by any means, and there's an underlying politeness about the whole thing. It's wild. I can't help but feel a sense of humor in the fact that all of the murders and crimes (with the exception of the initial kidnapping) were more or less accidental and panicked. It shows the pettiness of folks and how snap decisions make people spiral further and further down paths of mutual destruction. In the end, no one is better off. One hell of a film.

Game 2 Complete: Rock Band

I am on a lifetime mission to play each of the AIAS (interactive.org) Game of the Year Nominees. Game #2 : Rock Band (2007 GOTY Nominee)

Anyone who knows me knows that I love Rock Band, Guitar Hero, all those cheesy music games. It was fun to go back and play through all the songs again, especially the ones that did not make it onto the "list" for Rock Band 2 importing - Paranoid by Black Sabbath and Enter Sandman by Metallica.

I also remembered that I actually wasn't able to finish all of the songs on Expert Drums when I first played through it, and when I got Rock Band 2, I just let it go and left it unfinished. This time around, I forced my way through "Run to the Hills," and "Won't Get Fooled Again." It took me a very, very long time and lots of frustration to finally bang those out.

I also went through the Guitar career, I was able to finish all but one song on Expert - Green Grass and High Tides by the Outlaws. I started a singing career, but I got bored very easily and was satisfied with finally finishing all the songs on Expert for one of the instruments.

My grade: 10/10 - It's obviously biased, but I have so much fun playing these music games that it really doesn't matter.

Games finished:

2007: Rock Band (Nominee)
2008: Grand Theft Auto IV (Nominee)

Day 7-9: Let it snow...

I was real glad to get my running workout in before the snowstorm hit today. This is the end of the first "Phase"... 35 more to go. Hopefully I'll be able to get to the dojang tomorrow (if it's open) for board breaking class. I'm really looking forward to the Chinese New Year celebration on Friday.

It's really cool to be appreciated at work - we have the Academic Decathlon coming up on Saturday, and I got a few well-wishes. I also got a nice little gift card for having perfect attendance this year. Anyone up for Cheesecake factory?

So, the past three days I went to TKD, ran, and did a couple sets of pushups/situps, and squats.

This next phase is 7 straight days of working out, then two days of rest, same intensity.

Weight Lost: 8 of 100 pounds

Game 1 Complete: Grand Theft Auto IV

My goal of playing all of the AIAS Game of the Year Nominees has passed the first step - I have finished 2008 GOTY nominee Grand Theft Auto IV. 1 down, 69 to go.

My overall grade of the game was a 9/10. It's a complete immersion into a New York-style city with an incredible amount to do. I almost felt that the game lacked focus, unlike other GTA games where you were never too far away from your main objective. I felt that as soon as they stopped showing me how to do everything in the game, I had about 10 missions to go until the end. It was very short for its scope, and I think its scope might have been too ambitious.

Snowed in today and tomorrow - I will not be updating the workout plan until Sunday. I'm going to try to maintain my weight tomorrow, day 7 will be then. I have 12 "emergency days" for things like this - I'll have 10 left after today and tomorrow.

Day 6 of 324 - Incoming Snow

Figuring out this Academic Decathlon thing has been insanely difficult. I was really stressed out today because of it - a million people asking me questions I don't know the answers to. When I know, they'll know :-).

When I get stressed, I eat terrible foods. It's the reason I'm over 300 pounds. So, today was a terrible day for food and all that stuff. At the very least, with this weird "goal" of mine to not eat the same restaurant meal twice, I'm eliminating a lot of bad foods from my availabilities. Maybe eventually I'll have tried everything there is, and I have to eat home-cooked meals in perpetuity. Awesome.

Today's meals:
Wawa - Sausage, Egg, Cheese Pancake
Wendy's - Fish Sandwich
Chick-Fil-A - 12-piece Nugget

Weight Lost: 7/100 pounds (1.9% done plan - 17 days ahead of schedule)

Yeah, today was awful. I tried to make up for it working out, though.

Today's workout - Running 4.0 mph/20 minutes, 5 pushups, 5 situps, 5 squats (gotta start somewhere).
Day 6/9, Phase 1/36

Day 5 of 324 - Thinking About the Future

They really need to make 26 hours in a day, that would be awesome. I'm slowly coming to terms with the fact that I really won't ever have the time to myself that I used to have. I loved lounging around playing football with my friends in the quad and playing video games between classes.

Work is, well, work. I'm used to that, I was used to it in high school. College gave me so much free time that I wasted it all, it seems that way.

I love teaching... I just sometimes wish that I had more time to myself. This will come in time, I'm sure.

I've been planning for the future, taking inventory, making sure we have enough chemistry supplies for the following year. I'm also working on standardizing a chemistry curriculum so that if someone else ever teaches a chemistry class, I can hand them something that says "Here, this is what we teach here, start from this." It's a logistical nightmare, but necessary, and who else can say that they're doing curriculum planning their first year out of college?

It can't snow on Saturday, for the record. Please help me pray that we can get this Academic Decathlon competition in during the storm of the century.

Lots of awesome events happening at the dojang these next two weeks. I'm especially looking forward to attending my first Dojang Championships in five years.

Workout - TKD Class
Day 5/9, Phase 1/36
Weight Lost: 5/100 lbs, (1.54% done program)
Meals - Didn't eat out today! =)