I got a couple new templates so we'll see which I like the best and decide to stick with. Your comments are appreciated.
The before time
As I posted in an earlier entry I recently paid off my car and got out of debt. I was at a loss what to do next so I figured I'd get back into debt again. This time I decided to sign away the next 30 years of my life instead of the 2 years for the car. I just bought a house! Why a house you ask? Well at this stage in my life it just felt right. I had (and still have) plans to eventually move back out east and officially settle down but right now I think the thing I want most is stability. Moving means new people, new places, and new job if I can even get one. That was something I really didn't feel good about and right now with the (insert the economy sucks comment here______) yada yada yada I figured I would settle in for now and check back again in 5-10 years.
Then came my next predicament. I wanted a house that was large, in Provo, and not attached to any other houses. I am not a huge fan of townhouses or duplexes especially since they are often inhabited by annoying neighbors (especially the rude people upstairs). Learn to discipline your children sheesh!! This would prove to be difficult because large and in Provo means more expensive than most houses. I had friends showing me houses in Texas or North Carolina that were very nice and cheap but obviously the in Provo criteria was not met. I was willing to pay a slight premium for location. (On a side note don't ask me why I wanted in Provo. I really don't know but it feels right).
Then I got lucky and found a house the size I want in Provo and the best part was it was in my price range. The negative part of that is that it was neglected and needed work. Lots of work. I don't know how people can live in a house they neglected so badly but I guess it is really none of my business. As with most home improvement projects I have take before pictures and will update with after pictures once I get stuff done. I'll post a few in the blog and you can view the rest here.
Snikt!!!
The summer movie season has officially started! Normally I don't get too excited about it since I'm never all that excited for most movies but this year may prove to be different. It seems like almost every week there will be at least one movie I am interested in seeing. At least for the month of May I will be busy every weekend watching movies. The first movie this year was X-Men Origins: Wolverine. I grew up with this comic and Saturday morning cartoon so I was very excited and all in all the movie didn't dissapoint.
I'll try to keep this as spoiler free as possible for those who were somehow doing something more important than watching this movie already. The movie was good. Part of the fanboy inside of me would consider this movie good no matter what but then the other part takes issue with some of the artistic license taken with character backstories and powers. I really didn't mind when the original X-Men movies replaced Shadowcat with Rogue when portraying Wolverine's father-like relationship with the younger members. What I do mind is when they completely make up or change powers for characters. Or when they kill off or belittle characters for seemingly no reason *cough* X-Men 3 *cough*
I wasn't really aware of characters like Agent 0, Bolt, Silver Fox, Kestrel and never was a huge fan of Deadpool like some people are but why did we have to mess with their stories and powers so much? Out of the group Kestrel stayed most true to form since he at least still had his teleporting ability. The rest got all messed up. Out of the hundreds of X-Men you couldn't find any characters with the powers you wanted to portray? You really had to just make up new powers for existing characters? And what in the world were they thinking when portraying Deadpool? It's just blasphemy. At least they got one of my all time favorite characters, Gambit, more or less correct.
This is where they did a good job. Gambit, even with barely any screen time, was awesome! Kinetic cards, acrobatics, and even his helicopter jump with his fighting staff was included. I hope they make a movie with him in the future. They did mess up his age in relation to everyone else but I can forgive that. The Blob was done well as was Wolverine and Sabretooth. I was even pretty thrilled about them showing Emma Frost though they didn't focus at all on her real powers. Deadpool also was done quite well up until they completely ruined his character towards the end. This is a story about Wolverine and Sabretooth so it was refreshing they did a decent job of those two characters at least.
Overall I did enjoy the movie and was happy I went to see it opening day. When it comes to reviewing movies it basically always comes down to one thing for me; was it worth what I paid to see it? I paid full price for this one so I expected something good and it did deliver overall. Nitpicky fanboy complaints aside I liked the movie and will probably end up buying it. Oh and for those females out there not sure they really want to see a movie like this you get to see a naked Hugh Jackman and oft shirtless Ryan Renolds.
Next up Star Trek! Looking for someone to watch movies with as well since my brother is headed home and my cousin is broke.
Joseph picked their (5) for things I hate about Facebook
1 - Facebook Fan System
Joseph Meyers is a fan.
Become a fan
This is something that was really a neat idea at first but turned into a mess shortly thereafter. It can be cool seeing and learning about the things people like but there were no real rules on the fan pages being made. I'm not sure which Art Garfunkel spelling I am more a fan of. And seriously aren't people more a fan of Simon and Garfunkel than just Art himself? Then we got things like fan pages for every single actor that has ever had a bit part on CSI. It was also nice to know that some of my friends were fans of breathing. I guess all the rest of you have gills like Kevin Costner in Waterworld of which I'm pretty sure you can not only be a fan of the actor and movie but also the gills themselves. Oh and Chuck Norris, we get it, he's awesome because of the Internet but does anyone really like him, or his movies, or Walker Texas Ranger? I'm not a Facebook fan but I can sing you the theme song to that show, how many others can claim that?
2 - Joseph Meyers > Random Friend You Don't Know: That girl you were with last night was soooo HOT!!11! I hope your girlfriend doesn't find out.
Gotta love how not really private conversations are even less private on the new Facebook design. I understand there are private messages and an option to limit who gets to see it. I also understand that wall posts are semi public anyway but I rarely check everyone's page every day to see what their random friends are saying. Now I have no choice, it's posted right on my news feed whether I like it or not. It's like if you are at a dinner party and a friend gets a call on his cellphone. Let's also assume this friend decides he shouldn't call the person back or excuse himself while on the phone (manners people!). You and all your other guests get to hear one end of a conversation they really don't care about. Facebook has taken this awesome experience and made it so you don't even need to make dinner to get it.
3 - Joseph took the What banned substance using professional athlete are you? quiz and the result is Roger Clemens
I'd imagine if that quiz did exist (I wouldn't be suprised) some of the questions would include; "Do all your family members and dearest friends take banned substances and recall you taking them as well?" "Do you often get injected in the buttocks with mystery fluids?" and "Do you frequently associate with people who keep your old needles, bandages and blood samples in a shoebox in their basement?" But yeah some quizzes were cool... but that was back when AOL Instant Messenger was cool. I also really don't need to know what color aura you have or what city in California you are best suited to live in. Just California? Really limiting yourself there. Also beware the quiz variant that tests your knowledge of 80's sitcom theme songs or Disney movies starring deer. Is it really an "ultimate" quiz if every person I know scores 100%? Next up The Alphabet quiz! I bet I'd get 25 out of 26. Darn you Boggle! Qu is not a real letter!
4 - Joseph Meyers just completed dealing cocaine in Mob Wars!
I can't remember if that is an actual event but close enough. Why are respectable people and children playing such things? First of all it's just an advanced chain letter and second it's a very not fun version of real gang life, which I also hear is very not fun. Then again the other "games" aren't much better. Oh look my garden filled with Troll dolls is getting bigger. I can stare at this for days and days. Forget troll dolls, I'm waiting to the Alf POG collecting game. I guess at this point I should stop ranting and give credit where credit is due. I hear the Scrabble game is really fun and I haven't seen it myself because it doesn't spam me everytime someone gets a high score. Bejeweled does however and it's still hard to get mad because Bejeweled practically owns the world. At least until that Zombie game I posted earlier gets released. There's a zombie on your lawn...There's a zombie on your lawn...There's a zombie on your lawn...We don't want zombies on the lawn.
5 - Joseph picked their (5) for "Celebrity adopted children I wish I could be"
I think it's best to end with where I began. Pick 5 has arrived and it came, saw and conquered my news feed. We won't get started on the bad grammar in the line that gets posted on every update; especially since I know my grammar is probably less than ideal, but this thing is just getting annoying. It is nice to know which of my male soon to be ex-friends like Twilight as one of their top 5 movies but there seems to be a pick 5 for everything and it takes up a ton of space. On a side note if there was a pick 5 on Nintendo related Shows/Movies my 5 would be: The Wizard, The Legend of Zelda Cartoon, Captain N, Mortal Combat Series, and that YouTube clip of the kid opening an N64 at Christmas.
I love the power glove. It's so bad!
I almost forget one other thing that has since died out so I'll give it an honorable mention.
New look
I am already tired of this boring default template for my blog. I am looking for something premade that has a wider post section and possible tabs for different types of posts. I've looked around and haven't found much of anything that interests me. Any suggestions for places to go look? Oh and if the templates were easily edited (widths, images, colors etc...) that would be awesome as well. Post you suggestions please.
Kawaii
For those who live near me you already know this but to enlighten everyone else I am currently looking into buying a house. I'm just sick and tired of dealing with rent, small spaces, and ridiculously loud and annoying neighbors. While searching through listings and google maps I caught myself referring to houses as "cute." To some this may seem an odd choice of an adjective to describe something that isn't Hello Kitty related but this got me thinking. When is it OK for a guy to refer to things as cute and still retain his man card? After a good 5 minutes of deep thought I have come up with some acceptable circumstances.
Babies and young children are cute. Let's face it. No matter who you are or where you are from kids are cute. And even if they aren't, when in the presence of their parents make sure to refer to them as cute or at the very least "breathtaking."
Anything related to your girlfriend is, by default, cute. Hair, clothes, purse, pants, shirt, necklace, makeup, dress, glasses, shoes, car, etc.... If you don't refer to them as cute and not making her look fat she will soon cease to be your girlfriend and then the default cuteness goes away as well.
Animals can also be referred to as cute. This is especially true with pandas. I mean seriously pandas are the cutest things in the whole world. Case in point :
Besides pandas pretty much everything at this site is also cute Cute Overload.
And this brings us to houses. I'm really not sure why just yet but it seems to fit. When I think of the house I want and picture in my mind it always comes up as cute. Even as a child I would draw airplanes shooting and dropping bombs on made up cities and monsters but whenever a single house was included it was cute. One door, chimney, couple of windows, path lined with flowers and grass leading away from the front. Tree with apples and hole in the center was optional of course; as was the smiling, sunglasses wearing sun.
So yeah I just posted about cute. I think I need to go barbecue some meat and watch football now.
Bonus cuteness, now with zombies!!
Free at last
Free at last, free at last.... As of 1:30 pm MDT on March 17th, 2009 I am debt free!! I just paid off the remaining balance on my car loan and can again live without debt. That and I now have 100% ownership of my car.
My whole life I've dreaded ever going into debt and worked hard to avoid it. When I lost my scholarship (I blame Lauren :-P) at BYU I was afraid I'd have to take out a loan for the first time. Luckily BYU is one of the cheapest Universities around and I got a great job in the Physics Department. Somehow I always managed to break even with a little left over to feed my video game habits. It didn't hurt that I rarely ate anything beyond dinner if I even ate dinner. Oh, and it wouldn't have been possible without $1 Totino's pizzas, tuna, ramen noodles, and Marshmallow Maties, though not mixed together.
Then I graduated and was jobless. Being jobless is usually not a good idea if you want to avoid debt. My ex-wife draining a big chunk of my bank account wasn't all that helpful either. Luckily I had good friends who helped me find an affordable place to stay during my "transition" period. After a while I noticed what little money I had left was quickly running out. I decided to seek employment and by "seek employment" I mean applying for the "sales" job some door to door recruiter offerred me. I put "sales" in quotes because it was nothing more than cold calling people and lying to them about a product I was being lied to about. After a month or so at that place I got fired; mostly because I refused to lie as much as the other sales people. This marked the first time I've ever been fired or worked somewhere doing illegal business.
Now I had no idea what to do. At least I was going to last a little longer or so I thought. Turns out the company I worked for lied about their earnings, product, and ability to actually pay their employees. So after they declared bankruptcy and no longer had to pay anyone I was back where I started except now I needed to get off the road to hell I was on because I was, in essence, stealing from people for a living. Don't get me started on those door to door pest control, security systems, satelite TV, Melaluca, or other similar jobs students like to do. Make tons of money at the price of your soul. Sounds awesome, GO TEAM!!!
Bumming around the apartment one day I got a random phone call from someone who had my resume from a random application I sent in when I graduated. Here was my big break. Finally a real job after college. Suprise! It was phone support! I won't go into detail about the horrors of that job. Anyone who knows me probably has heard the story and I don't want to bite the hand that feeds as it were. I am still with the company but in a much more relaxed and enjoyable position. It all worked out in the end.
So there you go. A post that was just a "Hooray for me!" post has now turned into a life story post. Now to move on to bigger and better things... like a house perhaps.