A little while ago, I got ODST thanks to  my awesome gaming BFF and it is pretty cool. I like playing as an ODST, and I certainly like seeing a different side of the UNSC. The game is darker, scarier, more intense, and even a little harder. The Campaign is a bit too short for my liking. Total Campaign playtime on normal was about 3 1/2 hours for one full run through. I’ve had quite a bit of fun though going back to get all the audio logs, the ‘naughty, naughty’ achievement and it’s counterpart, ‘Good Samaritan’ for deciding whether killing things that are new and different is good, or bad.

Firefight is also an amazing experience, and was definitely something different to add to the general halo experience.  Firefight seems like it can just go on for as long as you can last without losing all your lives, and therefore, the game. My first match of firefight, on lost platoon with 3 players lasted 3 hours! We actually ended up just screwing around in the end and losing all our lives, because we just didn’t want to keep going for fear that it would go on FOOOOREEEVVVEERRR!!!

I think one thing I noticed about ODST, isn’t actually about ODST itself. When I am playing ODST and switch back to playing Halo 3, It’s terribly hard to get used to being a Spartan again. I jump off buildings expecting to lose my shields, wonder where I’m gonna get a health pack, and forget how awesome my Battle Rifle is.

Overall, I really enjoy playing ODST and see myself going back to play it again and again in the future, because while it is halo, it’s completely different, with the same enjoyability. Awesome Game!

I’m writing to you from NaNoWriMo day Three. That’s right! 3! My current word count is 2957, my main character hates me, and I’ve eaten a small child’s worth of halloween candy. So NaNoWriMo Crisis mode is green. All is good in the neighborhood. I’ve written my main characters bios, and most of my supporting characters have basic bios, I have a plot! YES A PLOT! All plotty and lovely! Exciting. I have a full outline, though it is always completely subject to change. This is just a post to check in and talk about how it was going so far, since I’ve been a bit to distracted to make a post. I am very happy though. That is all!

If my post could have background music, this would be what you were listening to as you read this post, just so you know.

So The Boy Creature is awesome and sometimes buys me things because he thinks I will like them. This time it was shoes. This is, of course, the great thing about being a size 7 nearly always and without fail. Surprise shoes! He got them from an online shop called shoe steal, which is apparently just the warehouse side of shoes.com, and they are awesome! He always knows exactly the kind of thing I will like, and even though I’ve never had a pair of shoes this style before, I really like them!

These are super cute with the pirate skull and swords/crossbones. They are DVS so I’m happy about that. The little bag has ribbons for the laces instead of normal laces, but I want to try to find some ribbon that is the pink color of the DVS logo. Cute!

Next are just some cute DVS flip flops. He said they were supposed to be all pink, but whatever, I’m a sucker for flip flops. These will definitely be lived in next summer.

And I saved the best for last! Super cute keds slip ons! I love the other pair of slip ons but these are just beyond cute and so ridiculously comfortable. And yes, they do say I <3 you. Because my Boy Creature is awesome. And the hearts sparkle. So cute.

Shoes are awesome, and when they are a great deal, that’s even better. Shoe Steal is a great way to go, and they seem to always have coupon codes. Try them out!

you can find these pictures, other random pictures and probably action shots of these shoes eventually, at my flicker.

I’ve made the decision to participate in NaNoWriMo this year. It’s been 2 years since I’ve actually participated as a writer. I have participated every year though, in some form, and I really do enjoy it. It is one chance to just write. I love to write.  I know that isn’t really displayed here, but I’m not very good at blogging. I don’t like writing about myself much, and I have trouble with putting my own thoughts into words.

I love to write about other people. People that I’ve made up, preferably. I love shaping someone elses’ life and doing what I want to it. I also enjoy the pressure of NaNoWriMo. For anyone who doesn’t know what NaNoWriMo is, and doesn’t like links, it stands for National Novel Writers Month. It’s an annual creative writing project that takes place in November, encouraging participants to create a 50,000 word novel within the 30 days, ending November 30th at 11:59 local time.

My first year participating in NaNoWriMo was 2003, and I was a junior in high school. It was crazy, and stressful, and I tried so hard, and what I ended up with was a 74,368 word novel that I still can’t read to this day because it makes me want to pull my hair out. I’m sure it is terrible. I am sure it has mistakes, but it is there, marking the fact that in my life, I accomplished something that many never dream of. It is tangible and that makes me feel great. Years later when I was participating in my 3rd NaNoWriMo in 2005, I was away at college. It was again stressful, but instead of creating tens of thousands of words full of crap, I created my best writing to date. It felt absolutely amazing to have this book that I created, and have it actually be fairly awesome. I like that feeling.

That’s part of the reason I’ve decided I want to participate again this year. I’ve been in a bit of a…mood recently, and I think this is just what I need to get myself out of it!

So you can expect to hear more about that as it comes closer to starting time. We’ll see how this goes. I imagine I will be at least decently productive, especially since I have my super awesome netbook! Which reminds me, I should probably put word on it. It came with the disk, but I don’t have it on it, because I switched to Ubuntu NBR, ended up hating it, so I had to switch back to XP. So I need to get on that soon. Sticking it on the to do list!

It’s that time of year again! I’ve been so sick for a bit over a week now. I’ve had a cough, sore throat, a stuffed up nose, a fever, and just generally being achy all over and fatigued. I am nearly over it now, but I am still feeling the effects of it, and still have the remainder of a cough and some sinus issues. Yuck. I am just feeling pretty icky.

I’ve finally decided it is time to make a post about my sidekick. Most everyone has seen a news article or something recently about the sidekick outage, and how terrible “living in the cloud” is, and how you should never trust a company with your information, and blah blah blah wank wank wank.

Whatever.

I love my sidekick. It is definitely the best phone I’ve had, ever. I actually didn’t lose my contacts like other people did, because I was smart enough not to freak out right away when I lost my G (means GPRS, has something to do with edge services, and I don’t really know. All I know is it means that if I lose it, I can’t surf the web or get email or chat on aim or any other cool ‘requiring data functionality things’). Instead I waited to see what was going on.

I was without data services for a total of 12 days, and even after that I didn’t get e-mail back until the 15th, making a total of 21 days with some type of outage for me. This is where my rant is going to come in. I’m a prepaid sidekick user. It is just the best option, really. I pay 30 bucks a month for unlimited data and unlimited text messages. I can surf the web, send email and texts, IM, and tweet, and hang out on Facebook for as long as I want, all the time. I like it. I don’t like talking on the phone so paying more for a contract just so I can have some minutes, doesn’t seem like a good idea to me.  But here’s where it starts to suck.

T-mobile doesn’t care about their prepaid users. Not one bit. I was reading some posts over at poweredbydanger and saw a post that said that during the outage, prepaid users weren’t having money subtracted from their account (prepaid users pay a daily fee of $1.00) by T-mobile, which I thought was odd, because I was still seeing the daily fee being taken out. So the boy creature called T-mobile for me and asked what was going on, and was told “to call back after my data service is fully restored to be credited according to how long I was without service.” So once I got service back, he called in for me. The rep from T-mobile said that prepaid users were only being credited $10.00 and that was that. So I’m kinda upset because that doesn’t even cover how long I was without service. But of course, T-mobile doesn’t really care about that.

Rant aside though, I still love my sidekick and really have no plans to ditch it and switch carriers. Where else am I going to find an awesome phone, with an amazing hardware keyboard, an interesting form factor, a fun OS, and a plan in which I am not forced to pay for voice minutes I don’t use, and can have unlimited data and texting?

Really?

Oh right, no where. Well, except for T-mobile.

So even though T-mobile doesn’t really seem to care about their prepaid sidekick users, I will still be sticking with my sidekick. It’s still my sidekick.

There.

I said it.

My boyfriend is a jerk. On Xbox Live.

You know those guys in Halo 3 that talk trash and when you get two of them together on opposite teams neither one of them will shut up?

That could be my boyfriend. He talks trash, sometimes unprovoked, and won’t hesitate to tell someone they are garbage whether they are on his team or not.

My boyfriend and I both have our own Xboxes and hardly ever play together.

Sometimes I’m thankful for this, because we have complete opposite gaming personalities. I’m the kind of person who talks very little trash to random team mates, or to the other team. Though I’m also the kind of person who doesn’t mind a little trash talk and tea bagging between friends, I mean what better way to show I love you than to beat your body a little? If you’re my friend and I haven’t tea bagged you a little, then you don’t know what you are missing out on. Anyway, back on topic! I’m the kind of person who just loves to play for fun. I laugh, a lot. I take pleasure in all the crazy things that happen on Xbox live and love to laugh and be silly and just have fun with friends. I nearly always say good game and hardly ever get upset when I have a bad game.

My boyfriend is the type of person who you probably don’t want to play with much on Xbox Live. He’s not a bad gamer. In a normal halo match he will communicate and make call outs, but he isn’t terribly pleasant. He doesn’t mind telling you that your stats suck, or that you suck. He takes the game seriously and is quick to anger when things aren’t going well. He complains about your connection, and might call you a whore. After a game he might just be pissed off and curse a little and not shut up if you talk back to him. He’ll rarely tell you good game.

Sometimes though, I’m not as thankful that we don’t play together, because he plays a lot. I play a lot. In other words, a lot of our time is taken up by gaming, which translates to less time spent together. I’d love to play with him a little sometimes but I don’t

Because my boyfriend is a jerk on Xbox Live.

In his defense though, he is a perfectly nice guy in real life, is pleasant to have around, friendly, talkative, polite and is a completely normal human being. He works a job in customer service, and loves me (which can sometimes be difficult to deal with, I’m sure) so I guess he deserves his outlet, but it doesn’t change the fact that he is an Xbox live jerk.

Scribblenauts is probably the most creative game I’ve played all year. Basically you are a boy named Maxwell who has to solve puzzles to collect ’starites’ and to do this you spawn objects by using an on screen keyboard or writing the objects name on the touch screen. So far there have been very few things I have entered that didn’t give me an object. Most of the objects appear to be usable, though I have found a few that you can’t really use. If you spawn a lasso, you can pick it up and “wrangle” a starite with it, which is cool. There are also quite a few internet ‘memes’ that can be spawned. I’m not going to tell you what they are, but I’m sure you can figure it out yourself.

One thing that I found completely interesting was spawnable character interactions. I spawned a ninja and a pirate and they fought. The ninja of course won because ninjas are much cooler than pirates. Ninja propaganda aside though, there are many other interactions like this. If you spawn a cop and a robber or a cop and a ‘bad guy’ the cop will kill the bad guy or the robber. If you spawn a vampire or a goth (the goth shows up as a vampire, much to my amusement) and a cheerleader (and possibly any other spawnable character) the vampire/goth will ‘eat’ the cheerleader, turning her all vampy like him. Some spawnable characters also interact with objects by themselves, given the right tools. If you give a fireman a fire hose and then spawn a fire in front of him, he will put it out. Or if you spawn a robber and a brick of gold in front of him the robber will steal it. If you then spawn another robber the second robber will kill the first robber and take the brick of gold from him. This of course leads to infinite amounts of amusement and I haven’t even started the game yet! This is great because the front screen (the start screen) is just one huge sandbox for you to play in. You can even change the scene and unlock more scenes by spawning objects.

The game play is fun, though some of the levels are a bit fiddly. Sometimes the most obvious way to solve the puzzle doesn’t work and you have to think of a new way, but thinking outside the box usually always works and gets you more ’style’ points which is great. Starting out in “The Gardens” the puzzles aren’t terribly hard, but even toward the end of The Gardens the puzzles start to get a big challenging. After doing the puzzles initially you can come back for a second try on advanced mode which requires you to solve the puzzle 3 times in a row without using an object you used before on the puzzle. This can be difficult and slightly tedious. However it can also be fun. On one of the last puzzles of the level I spent nearly an hour wracking my brain for new ways to do the same puzzle and once I figured it out (Brain Blast!) I was so satisfied with myself. Besides the puzzle mode, there is also an adventure mode, though to me it just seems like more of the same.  The differences between the two modes are negligible at best. Some might argue and say that they are definitely two different modes and the puzzles are completely different, but they really are still just puzzles. I would have liked to see more ‘run through a level and spawn things to fight bad guys and save the princess (or starite, as the case may be) to win the game’ type of thing and maybe I will later into the game, as I certainly haven’t finished it yet, but my hopes aren’t very high.

Overall though, the game is great. I love it and have already spent hours playing it (some of those hours spent not even starting the game, just playing around in sandbox mode) which is more than I spent on drawn to life all together. Scribblenauts has definitely won my heart.

————–
The next game in my game queue is Mini Ninjas DS. It was supposed to technically be played before Scribblenauts, but Scribblenauts line jumped straight into my ds when it came out and I just couldn’t tell it no.

—-

Sadly Edward Cullen is not spawnable.

I thought that I should talk more about my super awesome dell mini 10v now that I’ve had it for like a week.

There are certainly some upsides and some downsides to netbooks in general and some awesome and not so awesome things specific to this netbook. Let me first say that I love the thing. It is cute, pink, and even though it still remains nameless, we have definitely bonded in the past week. I’ve used it to blog, and work, surf the internet, watch videos on Hulu and Netflix, play games, listen to music, and even read a book or two! It has taken over the place of my Nokia n800 tablet, I don’t even use it anymore, and will be selling it soon actually (so if anyone wants a great condition (always had a screen protector on it) Nokia n800 with its accessories and box, an awesome leather case, and a bluetooth keyboard, for like $100 say it!)  which is sad news for my n800 but it will just have to learn to deal. I’m sure I’ll find it a good home.  Okay, now that all that’s out of the way, let me get a rundown of the specs of my 10v out here.

10.1″ Widescreen Display (1024×600)
Intel® Atom Processor® N270 (1.6GHz/533Mhz FSB/512K cache)
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 950
1GB DDR2 SDRAM
160GB, 2.5inch, 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
Integrated 1.3M Pixel Webcam

It’s decently spec’d for a netbook. I will probably bump the ram up to 2 gigs myself later on to give it a little speed boost, but it really is okay. It’s good for what it does. Sometimes it is a little slow on certain things (those crazy Facebook games like Farmville make it sad) but other than that it is snappy for basic web browsing, and even writing a blog like I am doing with it currently.

It’s keyboard isn’t cramped like many people complain that netbooks are. I believe dell says it is 92% of the size of a normal (I assume by normal they mean a 15 inch?) laptop keyboard which is actually really great. The first 5 minutes of use on it were a bit tricky for me as I would hit a instead of s and the typical typos that you would expect when you are moving to a smaller keyboard but I quickly adjusted and it feels quite nice now. I certainly don’t feel cramped at all. Another cool thing about the keyboard of the Dell Mini 10v (and possibly other dell minis but I don’t know) is the Function keys. First the Fn button is in the right place, as I’ve heard it isn’t on some netbooks, but you don’t have to push it for the volume, brightness, print screen, etc. you actually have to push it to hit the F buttons (like F5 or F11) I’ve actually found this to be a really nice change because I definitely use the volume and brightness buttons quite a bit more than I do the F keys.

The trackpad is also interesting on this netbook in that it doesn’t have buttons separated from the pad like most netbooks and laptops do. The buttons are actually built into the trackpad. The Buttons are also touch sensitive like the rest of the pad. I understand some people don’t like this, but I really enjoy it because it is not only more aesthetically pleasing, but it feels great too. The trackpad also has multi-touch, gestures, and two finger scrolling, though I haven’t really gotten into any of that yet.

Most netbooks use an awkward resolution of 1024×600 (though some don’t, like the first HP mini and the Dell Mini 12) and this one is no exception. The resolution is awkward at best. It feels odd, and sometimes viewing certain webpages may look a little different. I have found that going full screen is the best choice when a website doesn’t seem viewable.

The 10v comes with a 3 cell battery which seems to last nearly 4 hours for me when I am doing normal web browsing activities and around 2 hours when I am watching a movie (Hulu ftw) full-screen. This isn’t bad at all. If you don’t like that though you can get an upgraded battery from dell, though it lifts the notebook up a bit, and make it last a bit more than 6 hours.  Some say it is easier to type with the 6 cell battery because of the angle that it puts the keyboard at. It’s worth a look, I guess.

One of my favorite…features, though I’m not sure it can really be called a feature is the power supply. You’ve seen a normal notebook power supply with its long rectangular piece that you connect a second cable to. They aren’t terribly portable. They take up too much room. They are hard to wrap up and stick into a bag. The power supply that comes with the Dell mini 10v is awesome! It’s just one piece and is more like a larger cell phone  adapter than a normal laptop power supply.  They also come with a cord control thing on it (you know, little velcro strip you wrap around the cord and secure it to itself) for easy wrap up. Or at least mine did.

It’s a very quiet laptop also. It doesn’t have fans inside it at all. Instead it seems to just have a few extra ventilation holes. It does run a little warm at times. Especially when I am watching video.  It seems to only get warm under the right palm rest/right ctrl key area, though I’m not sure what is under there and don’t have any plans to take it apart in the near future. I will probably eventually find this out when I go to upgrade to 2 gigs of ram, because the upgrade requires quite a bit of work. At least it is upgradable though, unlike the Mini 10. It never gets overly warm though. I imagine the lack of fans also lends to its excellent battery life.

Overall, it’s a great little machine, and if you go through Dell Outlet you can get it for a great deal.

I finally made something again. After some serious failure I sort of gave up on all things crafty for a while but I got out my soap stuff and whipped up this soap. It’s got a super awesome light lavender vanilla scent that I absolutely love.  It’s of course natural, using vegetable glycerin as the soap base. I love it.

Massage bar soaps are so awesome. They are relaxing to rub straight onto your skin and the scent only helps with that relaxation. These soaps also contain aloe vera to sooth your skin and vitamin E.

These three are for sale, not in my etsy as usual, but I thought I would try something new so you can get them at big cartel which is a lot like etsy except it’s much more self run. So go ahead and give it a try, and remember if you place an order and tell me you came from my blog I’ll send you a surprise! Click here to go straight to the item page and place your order!