Monthly Archive for June, 2006

Yo quiero taco bell

Published
by
Tim
on June 23, 2006
in Food
. 0 Comments

I love Taco Bell. It’s so great. They seem to always be open, the food is super cheap, fills you up and there is always one around (plus they carry Mt. Dew). Probably the best thing about Taco Bell is that they keep coming up with new ways to invent the taco. Who thought there would be a hundred ways to create a food item out of meet, cheese, lettuce, sauce and a shell? But Taco Bell always does it.

I think I first noticed this whenever they came out with the Chalupa and Gordita. Boy are those good. It’s like a Taco but with a better shell. Then they one upped themselves by including Nacho Cheese on their Gorditas and Chalupas. Amazing. Finally, they released the peak of perfection in Taco Bell foods with the Cheesy Gordita Crunch. If you have never experienced this 200% daily recommended amount of saturated fat and cholesterol then you don’t know what you are missing. They take their Gordita pita bread, put a hard-shell taco filled with nacho cheese sauce in between and meld them together with some crazy melted cheese blend. It is heaven in taco form. I think I had them for lunch for a whole summer once. From there Taco Bell has continued to innovate new and delicious foods. When they came up with their Value Menu it included the brand new Spicy Chicken Burrito. For $1.19 you could get the best burrito that Taco Bell could produce. I guess it was last year that the Crunch Wrap Supreme came out. A beef tostada with nacho cheese sauce, wrapped in a tortilla, I was wondered who kept coming up with these ideas. But like nearly all new Taco Bell items, this one was not to be outdone.

Now you may be wondering what caused me to blog and rave about Taco Bell. Well imagine my surprise today when I drove over to Tuttle Mall for lunch and saw that Taco Bell had a new item. The Spicy Chicken Crunch Wrap Supreme!!!! I nearly died. Two of my top 3 TB items combined into one!?! I must be dreaming. I quickly ran through the drive through and devoured my meal. It was all that I could expect and more. All the wrapped cool goodness of the crunch wrap supreme now with the awesome spicy chicken filling. I should keep a tab of how many of these I eat over the next few months before it disappears off the menu.

The terrorists have won

Published
by
Tim
on June 22, 2006
in Games, General, Movies and Sports
. 0 Comments

The USA has not advanced past the first round of the world cup. That can only mean one thing. The terrorists have won. Tis a sad day for US Soccer. But that still doesn’t change the fact that I’m desperately trying to get a Don’t Tread on Me USA Soccer Jersey or Hoodie. Sexy. I think I will now be cheering for either England or Sweden. GO SVENSKA!!!

Went home over the weekend to see Dad for Father’s day. I brought DS Lite with me mainly to show it to my brother Ryan, but also to show my mom and dad Brain Age. Boy was that a mistake. For most of the day all my mom did was play Brain Age. She loves it. Which is cool because Brain Age is helping everyone understand that games aren’t bad for you. They CAN be educational and productive.

Since Bree will be leaving in the next few weeks and taking along with him the Stereo system we’ve been using up untill now, I’ve been searching out to purchase a new one. I have been doing lots of research and chatting with various peoples and think I’ve got my system narrowed down to just a few final choices. Hopefully within the next two weeks I’ll have made a purchase and be able to post some pics and tell you how glorious my ears feel once they awaken to sound never thought possible. At least I sure hope they feel glorious after plopping down nearly 2 weeks worth of pay! Ouch. But I’ve been a frugal buyer and have been saving for this so it’s ok. Next up, pop-corn machine to go next to my newly purchased Snakes on a Plane & Superman Returns poster.

Btw, the last time I was this excited/hyped for a movie was for LOTR: Return of the King. I’ve now got the soundtrack and the movie is only a week away. Wooo freaking hooo. (edit: I realized this could be confusing. I was talking about my hype level for Superman Returns, although SoaP is right up there :P )

Post-post: While looking around the net for an image of the Snakes on a Plane poster I found these funny knock offs. First we have the Playstation spin-off of:

Snake’s on a Plane
Snake's on a plane

and then the even funnier:

Snape’s on a Plane
Snape

Too Funny.

“Enough is enough! I’ve had it with these m-fing snakes on this m-fing plane!”

Wikimapedia

Published
by
Tim
on June 21, 2006
in Links
. 1 Comment

Wikimapedia - Google maps with highlights of interesting spots around the world.  Columbus has got a lot filled in.

Google: Don’t Not Be evil

Published
by
Tim
on June 16, 2006
in Links
. 0 Comments

Google: Don’t Not Be Evil - an entertaining article asking the question, What if Google was Evil?

DS Lite is Hot

Published
by
Tim
on June 16, 2006
in Games
. 0 Comments

So the DS Lite is pretty much awesome. Nick, Adam and Newbs ended up making the purchase this week and some of the multiplayer functions that are included in the games are amazing. We first popped in Mario Kart, which feels and plays just like the N64 version of the game, but better. One of my favorite additions is in battle mode. You start off with one balloon for your cart and 4 extra balloons in reserve. The way to get more balloons on your cart is to “blow them up”. To accomplish this you’ll need to physically blow towards the microphone. The twist is your cart needs to be at a dead stop for you to do this. It’s a very creative idea and great way to make the game more interactive with the player.

As many reviews have already stated, the New Super Mario Bros is the best Mario game to come out in a long time. The single player is classic Mario Bros, with enough enhancements to make it worth the upgrade. If the main game wasn’t enough, there is a whole second mode that you can play with up to 4 people. We tried this out for a bit and it is great. It’s basically Mario Party, where you and 3 other players will play a set of mini-games. These can range from wack-a-mole style games to snow ball fights. Nintendo really ran away with the many ways you can you the stylus and touch pad for these mini games. If you don’t already have a DS and have been debating getting one, get one. NOW!

What sucks more, video-Games based on movies or movies based on video-games?

Games, Gadgets and Graduation Weekend

Published
by
Tim
on June 13, 2006
in Flickr/Pics, Games and General
. 1 Comment

So I’ve been saying that I was going to talk about what I’ve been gaming and now I’m going to. Let’s see, I’ll start on the PC side of things. Almost 2 months back Oblivion came out and I posted about my decision process to buy it for PC or Xbox. Sadly I haven’t played much of it since. I know it’s a great game, and I enjoy the time I spend with it, but there is something about RPGs and myself that I always have to get over. I’m not sure what it is but almost every RPG I’ve encountered, I’ll start the game, play part of the way through the first section and then kind of drop off. I usually end up revisiting the game months, sometimes years later and playing the crap out of it till it is completed. I feel this is how I’ve approached Oblivion. Maybe sometime this summer I’ll conquer the land of Tamriel. Last week, Half Life 2: Episode One came out. This is a new type of gaming experience in that it only cost $20 (as opposed to $50 or $60) and the length of the game is much shorter. Valve plans on releasing episodes every 8 months or so. The topic of episodic gaming has been getting a lot of talk recently. I’m really enjoying this new type of presentation format. I’ve become a huge fan of being able to sit down and play a game for a weekend or a few hours during a week and be finished with a game. I really hope this is something we’ll see more of in the future. Don’t get me wrong, I still love the Epic 60+ hour games. But this just brings a new type of style to gaming that I really dig.

Towards the end of May I finally gave in and purchased a PS2. This was my first Sony Gaming product and I had planned on holding out until the PS3, but with the recent announcement of its price point of $600, I decided now as the time to pick up a cheap used PS2. Did I mention it’s modded? Yea, so that kinda gives me…. ummm… extra options. I hear the PS2 has a lot of games :) I’ll go into depth on that another time.

Finally, on Sunday I made my way over to BestBuy and purchased a super hot DS Lite + Brain Age. When the DS first came out I didn’t like it at all. It looked to bulky and just didn’t draw me in. Now with the redesign and added brightness and battery life, I caved. So far I’ve only played Brain Age, which is a very entertaining little title. Who thought I’d ever have fun doing simple math. Kate has been playing Brain Age as well (mostly Soduku) and has managed to get a lower Brain Age than me. Grrrr. Matt was an early adopter and has a DS Huge with Mario Kart and New Super Mario Bros. so I’m going to try to steal those while he’s away on vacation. At a $130 purchase price, it’s really not that expensive for such a great package. Hopefully a few of the other guys will pick one up this week and we can get some mad multiplayer going on.

This past weekend was Graduation Weekend for OSU. It’s hard to believe it has only been a year since I’ve been out of school. Seems a lot longer for some reason. Saturday night we went out to Rose and Thistle (local pub) for some good times. You can check out the pictures…

Sunday, while everyone else was at Graduation, Kate and I went to COSI. It was only the second time I had been and they have totally redone the place since I last went. Unfortunately most of the changes aren’t for the better. The layout is very sparse and there aren’t nearly as many hands on experiments as I remember. The building COSI is in is way too big for as few exhibits as they have. The areas and exhibits they do have are very cool looking and professionally done, it just needs more. Now through August I believe, there is a Star Wars exhibit that has a bunch of props from all the movies and also displays how we might use some of the technology from Star Wars for future life. Overall the day was a plus. Check out the pictures in the photo section.

After looking at all those pictures and choosing the ones I did for the links, I realized I need to do more editing than just removing red-eye. Time for some cropping and brightness/contrast adjusting.

Till next time…

OSU Athletic Budget

Published
by
Tim
on June 13, 2006
in Links
. 0 Comments

OSU Athletic Budget Analysis - The Ozone takes a look at how tOSU Athletic Dept. spends and makes its money.  Good article.

Top 10 stock photo cliches

Published
by
Tim
on June 6, 2006
in Links
. 0 Comments

Top 10 Stock Photo Cliches - I recognize at least 6 of these from pamphlets or posters and whatnot.

X3, Superman and boating

Published
by
Tim
on June 5, 2006
in General, Movies and TV
. 0 Comments

No posts in a while. Yes. I realize that. I made the attempt several times, I swear. Instead of creating a monster of a post with detailed happening of the past few weeks, I’ll just hit on the key issues and hope to update more often in the future to prevent such a post from being necessary.

Let’s see. Last weekend X3 came out. It was good. Not awesome, but good. X1 and X2 were awesome and really set the bar high for the third film. In X-men 3 there is plenty of action (good) and some really well done special effects (very good), but it felt like there was too much to cover considering the main plot(s) that were presented and so the story didn’t flow as well as it could (say if Singer had written/directed). Oh well, I feel this is the end of the X-men movie line. But that’s ok. DC has started to make its mark in the comic movie realm with the revisiting of Batman and Superman.

Speaking of Superman, I could write a whole page on recent Superman and I activity, but I will try to be brief. Over the past month or so I have been watching the entire stretch of a Television series called Smallville. It is about the goings on of a young Clark Kent during his high-school years and how he comes to discover his powers and deal with them. At times the show is very corny and teen-drama. But every so often something incredibly relevant to the comic universe happens and gives me chills. The show, combined with the hype of the upcoming Superman Returns movie has made me a card carrying Superman Fan.

On to other life events. Over Memorial Day, Kate and I went to Lima to see my parents for a bit. My parents had recently decided they were going to sell our boat, and wanted to take it for a test run, having kept it in storage for the past 2 years. Being a gorgeous day, we decided to join them. Now there is just one thing you need to know about Anderson’s and boating. No boating excursion is complete until some sort of “event” takes place. Now when I say event, I don’t mean like ooo fireworks night or check out that cool fish. I mean something like, “hey we ran out of gas and have to paddle back” or “woops, we forgot to block off the wheels when taking the boat of the trailer and now it has rolled down a hill into the woods” (yes, this did happen and I have the pictures to prove it).

All that being said, I should have known better when it came to the end of the evening and we were grabbing dinner at the local lake side taco bell and I made mention to the fact that this had been an excellent uneventful outing. Boy was I wrong, and had the darn taco bell picnic tables been made out of wood instead of some composite plastic we might have been saved. Making our way back to the loading dock, my Dad discovered that the prop of our boat had lost hydraulics, making it impossible for us to raise or lower it. Simply put, we could not get the boat out of the water due to the fact that our prop, which normally would raise above the lower part of the boat, was stuck. To cut this short, 2 hours later in the pitch black of night, frustrated and tired we finally cut the hydraulic line and manually lifted the prop and tied it off so we could pull our boat out of the water and get it home. And you wonder why we’re selling it.

I think that’ll do for now. If I have time later this afternoon/evening I hope to make a post about updates to my gaming life. But Bree is planning on brewing up a batch of beer tonight, so I can’t guarantee anything.