Haloaded

As the road to college gets shorter and shorter, it's beginning to feel like I'm adding so much more activity to my life in an effort to avoid video games all together. Lately, I've begun reading much more, exercising almost daily, and putting in extra hours to help my family and complete strangers. Although I might be doing it for all the wrong reasons (in an attempt to get a community involvement scholarship to go to a really good private school down here in the AL), I recently signed up with my local Habitat for Humanity to begin work on their first housing project for the year. Sadly, due to economic stress (that even I'm beginning to feel), we will only do two housing projects this year (compared to the five or six average). Of course, I will only be able to help them out until I head to the bit city for college.

Anyway, one of my buddies from work recently got hooked up with Xbox Live and has been begging me to play Left 4 Dead with him. Personally, Left 4 Dead is the most enjoyable Xbox 360 game for me at the moment. Every time I fire it up, I get sucked into hours of fun. Still, I have yet to sign into Xbox Live and play with him... which is really beginning to get on his nerves. I am very anxious to start a new campaign on Fallout 3 because my current character is in all kinds of hurt. At the moment, I am only about seven hours into the game and haven't played it in about a month. So, I guess creating a new character won't set me back too much.

Either way, I feel like I've really been making choices that push my gaming habit to the side. Thankfully, gaming has become more of a habit for me over the past couple of years than the addiction it was during Halo 2's heyday. Maybe it's because there has been no game to come out after Halo 2 that got me as involved in multiplayer, or maybe I am simply growing out of it. I still love video games, but I would much rather hang out with my friends and play games than play with friends over the 'net. Nevertheless, I've pretty much moved my addiction from the Xbox to the computer (which is actually a vicious circle I've been caught in since I first bought my computer). I suppose I will be back on the Xbox and off the computer in a few months :).

My exercise routine is very poor and amateur: I do about fifty pushups and sit ups, run for a mile, walk for two miles, do fifty more push ups and sit ups, then run for a half a mile and walk for two miles. I get a pretty good work out, though, and do this at least three times a week. I've dropped another ten pounds since the beginning of the year and am starting to build some serious arm muscle. If time would permit, I would probably join a gym and get a trainer... but I just don't have the time for that kind of commitment. I haven't really started dieting, though... in fact, I sort of ate three meals today (Arby's for lunch, Chic-fil-a for dinner, and then five wings and fries/onion rings when I was hanging out with some friends). I should be able to burn all of that off tomorrow morning, though, or at least when I'm getting my lumberjack on up at my grandmother's.

Hmm... and I am really beginning to hate taxes. I tried filing mine last night without any help from my aunt or sister, and I ended up owing the government around two times as I planned to get back from them. I am going to get my aunt to file the form again, but I just can't begin to imagine the stress people with longer forms are under at the moment. I just need to get everything cleared out of the way by Feb. 15th so I can file my FAFSA and hopefully get some more aid from the college I desperately want to attend this fall. In the meantime, I guess I'll fire up Left 4 Dead and vomit on some survivors...

I just wanted to post a quick update about what went down this weekend. My great-grandfather passed on Friday morning. He was a great man and a famous preacher in the Southeast - he preached for 75 years in which he converted thousands of people and did around 1700 funerals and just as many weddings. The cops went through the trouble of blocking off all the roads between the three stops we made in the service, which just shows what kind of influence he had on the region. Unfortunately, I never knew my great-grandfather as well as my mother or grandparents, mostly because he was in the later part of his life when I started visiting him on the weekends a few times each year. I wrote an essay on his life and his influence on mine during the ninth grade, but I have no idea where that would be... so if you wanted to learn anything else about him, you could visit his website. We had the funeral on Sunday and spent some eight hours traveling between here and White County, GA.

Anyway, Monday was pretty eventful after I finally got out of the bed. I'm not sure how I ended up sleeping in so late, despite all the traveling I did the day before to go to my great-grandfather's funeral, but I guess a lot went down after I arose around 1:30. First, my sister sent over my brother-in-law's cell phone for me to use until I am eligible for an upgrade. I plan to upgrade to an iPhone before going off to college, but I won't be eligible until this July. Either way, it's not like my brother-in-law sent me some POS to use until July. Nooooo... he sent me a brand new Sony Ericsson W580i Walkman that he got when he upgraded earlier this year.

I was extremely excited when I started playing around with the phone. It has so many great features, such as an amazing camera (with built-in editing software), full-length music, internet, applications, animated themes, and way too much to compare with my previous phones. I went ahead and upgraded the memory to a 2 gig MicroM2 card and am starting to load it with a bunch of music and videos from my computer. The phone also supports a cool little application that allows me to compose messages and edit contacts on the computer and sync them up with the phone. Likewise, it lets me easily add and remove media and applications to and from my phone without dealing with the phone itself.

While I was out purchasing the new memory and transfer cable for my phone, I stopped by Target and picked up my copy of Left 4 Dead. For some reason, it was on sale for only $49.99, which is one of the reasons I bought it instead of Call of Duty 5. I jumped into a solo campaign when I first got home and was instantly shocked at how well the game plays without any actual partners. I expected the artificial team mates to be completely useless, but they ended up saving my life more times than I even had to assist them. I played through one of the four campaigns in around an hour on normal mode. I was constantly being torn apart by hordes of zombies and thrown around by enemy Tanks. Unfortunately, I was repeatedly thrown off of the roof by a Tank about three times before I started staying inside a building to avoid that problem. The game is very fast-paced and should be a great experience once I replace the artificial teammates with some of my buddies. Please let me know if you have this game because I am yet to see anyone of my friends list playing it.

I am going to avoid recapping my New Year's Eve because this day is a day of celebration. Anyway, I didn't get much done last night... I was supposed to go to a club but ended up staying home and watching some guy flip a truck backwards and then crash. Still, I am extremely excited about this potentially amazing new year. Here are my New Year's resolutions... I suppose if I post them here I might stick to them. Anywho, I gotta go to a movie and work on my new cell phone. Hope everyone has a great new year!!!

1. Get out of the house: I plan to go off to college in the fall and hope to never come back to this town, but I know that will only be possible if I get a great education and make something of myself. I would love to move out-of-state after graduating and do something I truly love to do.
2. Lose a little more weight: I lost just over fifty pounds in 2008 thanks to a change in lifestyle and more activity. Still, I only worked out a few times this year, and I'm giving all of my boxing equipment to my cousin that is starting MMA training. I need to move my treadmill from the garage into the house so I can run in the mornings while listening to my music, and I hope to start some kind of diet instead of just skipping meals like I did last year. I hope to lose thirty pounds by the time I go off to college and hopefully build some more muscle.
3. Get over the drama: I have pretty much gotten over my last relationship, which was a really big step for me. I hope I can avoid that kind of drama in 2009.
4. Read more: I've never been a fast reader but I do love reading. I finally got a library card last year and read probably half of the books I borrowed from them. Still, I would like to expand my library more and up my reading speed and comprehension before college.

I'll be back to blogging sometime this week, but for now I am going to rest up from staying up so late and then go to a movie. Hope everyone has an amazing new year!

- Robert Evans

Earlier this evening, I picked up my third cell phone in the past week from Wal-Mart for only fifteen dollars. Here's the story: first, my original phone from my father's cellular plan crapped out last week and I was forced to get a new phone from the AT&T store. I was convinced that the phone was old enough to be eligible for an upgrade: it was a pretty flabby flip-phone, the front screen and main screen had constant display issues, it still referred to my carrier as "Cingular," and it would no longer take a charge from my car charger nor my home charger. Either way, I found out that I would not be eligible for an upgrade until July of next year. Because you can get a brand-new phone for free when you upgrade (or an iPhone for half its list price), I decided to get a pre-paid "gophone" until I could find a better alternative.

I went to Wal-Mart on Christmas Eve to pick out my new "gophone." Of course, going to Wal-Mart on Christmas eve was an irrational choice, but I needed a phone ASAP. After fighting the crowd and waiting twenty minutes to get an employee to remove the guard on the phones, I walked out of Wal-Mart with a $30 gophone. It was not until I got home that I realized how crappy the phone actually was. First, it was a flip-phone but it did not have a front screen; therefore, even if the person who was calling me showed up under their name, I would not know it before I answered the phone. I went under settings and applied a function that made me press a button to answer a call, but that sorta defeats the purpose of the flip-phone design. Next, the phone had an address book but it did not integrate it into calls or text messages. So, every text I received or phone call I took would show up under a phone number instead of a contact's name. Even though I'm not a heavy texter (I can't be... it isn't free with my business plan), it quickly got annoying when I had to go into my phonebook to figure out who was texting me.

Anyway, why have a flip-phone with no flip-phone features (front screen, contact recognition, alarm clock, etc.) for thirty dollars when I can have a bar-phone with the same features for half the price? So, I went back to Wal-Mart this evening and exchanged the phone for the simplest phone in the current gophone lineup. Even though it is such a cheap phone, it has pretty much all of the features of my original flip-phone. The alarm should work much better than whatever beeping the last phone was making, and it actually recognizes my contacts when they call my line. The main hassle is getting all of my contacts programmed into the phone, which is a drag because I have maybe five numbers that I call on a regular basis but about thirty that call or text me every week.

It's amazing that neither my father or my aunt have said anything to me about the extra charges that appear on their bill every week. Before my original phone crapped out, I was browsing the internet (to some extent), texting, and IMing almost every day. Even if there is some kind of texting on their plan, I'm positive that they are charged every time I log into IM or get on the internet. Also, I've purchased two ringtones this month: one for my original phone from Atreyu and then a ringtone from the Fratellis for my second phone. I am going to avoid dropping two dollars on another ring tone for my third phone, mostly because I plan on getting a better phone by the end of next month.

Currently I have three options: first, pay fifty dollars for a replacement for my original phone and then an additional thirty dollars for a home charger. Unfortunately, I despised my original phone and don't see the point in spending any money to get the same phone again. Second, I could wait another six months before I am eligible to upgrade my phone and then get an iPhone or Blackberry for a great price. Finally, I could get my sister to order a phone off of Ebay and only have to pay her a small difference. Currently, I am looking at two sellers and one powerseller that are offering the LG Shine (my favorite of the sliders) for just over one hundred bucks. If my sister decides to order from the first seller or the powerseller, I would end up giving her around fifty dollars for the order (and the rest would be her Christmas present to me).

My final option (which just popped into my head as I was writing this entry) is to see if any of the other phones on my father's business plan are eligible for an upgrade. My grandmother and I both got our phones at the same time, but I am pretty sure her phone (my sister's old phone) had already been upgraded in the recent past. My aunt and father both got upgrades earlier this year, and neither of them like me enough to give me any help with a new phone. For instance, I was accompanied by my father when I went to Wal-Mart on Christmas Eve and he did not offer to help me pay for a better phone or drop anything on the gophone. I might post a rant in a few days about my father's performance this Holiday, but I can just say this: he believes that he can solve anything by throwing money at the problem, even his children's resentment for him. Anyway, I plan to call around a little tomorrow to see if anyone in my family is eligible for an upgrade and would let me have their old phone (and I could have my sister unlock it so I could use it). I just don't want to spend over seventy dollars on a new phone when I will get a brand-new smartphone next summer.

The five months before I finally got my hands on an Xbox 360 were filled with hours upon hours of fun on Star Wars Battlefront 2. Unfortunately, after I left in the middle of my campaign on the same night I went to get my Xbox 360, I never picked the game up again. Still, I remember spending hours every night with new friends on Battlefront II, and even playing for hours by myself against bots. Even though it is a backwards-compatible title, I have only tried to play it once in the three years that I've owned my console. Nevertheless, I would love to get back into the game if I had friends still playing the title.

Anyway, I have been searching for the perfect Star Wars game for my Xbox 360 ever since I purchased the console. I purchased both Lego Star Wars II and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, but I was disappointed by both titles. The Lego game lacked realism and online play, and I think I was just too bored of games to truly enjoy TFU. I traded it back into the local Gamestop after I discovered it was actually part of the game to waste around fifteen minutes pulling a huge starship down with the force. Sure, I would have wasted all that time anyway while I fought off wave after wave of fighters between pulling the ship towards the surface of the planet, but I was so ill when I found out that it was actually a gameplay mechanic that I packed it back up and traded it towards Guitar Hero World Tour.

The news of Star Wars: The Old Republic definitely lifted my hopes in finding a great Star Wars game. I am a huge fan of the Knights of the Old Republic series and would love to immerse myself in a massively multiplayer game set in that same universe. I just hope that a console version will be announced because my computer is definitely not strong enough to run the game. Earlier today, a former member of the team that was behind the development of Star Wars Battlefront III leaked a handful of concept images from the studio. Although the game is yet to be officially announced, I can only hope that Rebellion Developments has continued to build on the work done by Free Radical Design. Hopefully, Rebellion Developments will reveal their intentions within the next few months... so I can at least hope for a great Star Wars game in the future.

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