Thursday, March 24, 2011

New stuff

Let's see, what's been going on in my life... There's one thing I had planned to mention a few weeks ago right after it happened, and I began typing up a long post about it, but it was upsetting for me to talk about. I'll just make a brief mention of it here.

On March 8th, I got my first speeding ticket. Here's the thing, though: I wasn't speeding. The speed limit was 70mph, and I was driving exactly that. Either the cop's radar was incorrect, or he was just crooked. I'm leaning towards option two. I'm pretty sure anyone would be able to tell that I couldn't possibly be speeding, radar or not. He claims I was going 86mph, but the car I was driving isn't even capable of going past 80. I was driving my friend's car (which happens to be a yellow sports car. Never driving one of those again), and I think, based on the appearance of the car, that cop decided he was giving me a ticket no matter what. I was absolutely confused about why I was being pulled over, since I knew I hadn't done anything wrong. I figured it was a brake light that was out or something, but NOPE! Just an evil cop. Since I'm strongly opposed to being pushed around for a crime I didn't commit, I will be going to court to fight this ticket. I don't care if it's a futile effort, I'm still giving it my best shot. Even if I do pay off the ticket and go to traffic school to remove the points from my record, my insurance costs could still go up over this. I want to get the ticket completely removed from my record so that is no longer a concern.

This whole situation has made me feel so violated. I really can't trust cops anymore. They're allowed to do illegal things just because they wear that uniform. I'm not saying that all cops are bad, but there's no way to tell from just a glance whether a cop is good or not. The great thing about all of this is that I was driving my friend's car home as a favor to help her out, since she was too tired. Oh well.

I had a friend visit for a bit over a week, since it was his spring break. We had lots of fun. We didn't really do much exciting stuff, besides a day at Disney exploring the resorts and watching the fireworks (didn't go to any of the parks, just did the free stuff). We just ate at restaurants, played games, went to stores, watched movies and such. Good visit!

A game I've been really excited for just came out last week. It's an awesome DS game called Monster Tale. Here's the cover:
This game was created by the team that made one of my favorite DS games, Henry Hatsworth. I absolutely adore that game, and you should play it if you haven't already! Here's the cover of that one:
It's a brilliant game. It utilizes the two DS screens better than most other games. On the top, it's a platformer, and on the bottom, it's a puzzle game. You switch back and forth between the two, using the puzzle to power you up and such. It's a fairly difficult game, but it's extremely fun, and I adore it. Definitely one of my top 5 DS games.

As for Monster Tale, this one also utilizes the two screens for different things. The top is, once again, a platformer (and the physics feel very similar to Hatsworth, which pleases me), but the bottom screen is used as a sort of pet-raising simulator. You have a monster companion in this game, and he grows and evolves into different forms throughout the game. You can call on him to assist you at any time, and as he loses health or gets too worn out, he must go back to the bottom to recuperate. He also eats items and uses power-ups and such on the bottom screen. I've only played a bit of the game so far, but I'm loving it!

The development team for those games, DreamRift, is actually local to this area. They used to work for EA (hence the EA logo on the Hatsworth cover), but they left after making that game. I'm a big fan of theirs, and a friend of mine even used to do some work with them at EA. He's been trying to help me secure an interview with one of them for Nerdy Show, to talk about their games a bit. I hope I'll be able to do it!

This post is pretty long, so I'll stop here. More stuff soon! Oh yeah, I made a new poll yesterday.

14 comments:

  1. Sadly I voted the 2nd option. :C

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ehh... cigs didnt exactly make my life better.. least im off of them... but ouch crooked cops are the worst believe me... had my car towed because i was "being hard to talk to" and i was half amile from my friends house so he couldnt even let me drive it so i didnt have to pay for towing charges.. i hate cops sometimes

    ReplyDelete
  3. That's too bad. Hopefully it gets resolved without you having to pay anything.

    The day we bought out our lease on the car we got pulled over because the registration was outdated and even though we had tons of paperwork on us proving we bought the car an hour ago they still ticketed me. The stupid dealership forgot to give us a temporary registration permit, among lots of other stuff.

    Fortunately when we went to fight it they absolved the ticket from my record and we didn't have to go to court. The cops were just jerks and wanted to ticket us.

    ReplyDelete
  4. If it helps, you might want to find out how the cop clocked your speed. Because i'm pretty sure that in some states they're allowed to give out tickets based on if they think it looks like you're speeding, with out using radar.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Yea, cops seem to be out for everyone. I was pulled over for driving UNDER the speed limit. How he knew that, blows me away because he pulled a U-ey to pull me over.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Fortunately when we went to fight it they absolved the ticket from my record and we didn't have to go to court. The cops were just jerks and wanted to ticket us.

    ReplyDelete
  7. @Hombredeagua

    He claimed he got me on two different radar guns, which was a blatant lie.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Hmmmm. Then either the speedometer's broken or he lied

    ReplyDelete
  9. There are law examples of people claiming and winning cases over how:
    A/ The radar gun is inaccurate
    B/ Improper use of radar gun causes speed estimation to become in-valid (ie not keeping the gun still whilst clocking down speeds)

    If you claim an injustice accusation usually they let it go but seeing as the cop claimed he was using 2 guns and the clocked speed was a fair amount higher than the limit it's likely you will have to go to a small claims court.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Also a word of advice,

    Do not try to claim that the cop is crooked, it changes the accusation that you were driving correctly to criminal injustice which is far more difficult to claim over.

    So keep it to inaccurate use of radar, also note that you have never got a ticket before, driving friends car so are likely to be more careful etc etc

    ReplyDelete
  11. I wouldn't do that in court, that would be silly. :P I know that implying that an officer of the law is anything but an upstanding citizen (hah, what a joke) would just make me look bad to the biased court. I just have to play up the whole incorrect reading/faulty equipment angle.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Don't let this one officer make you think they're all bad and out to get you. There are many upstanding police officers and I wouldn't want one bad cop make you think they are all the same.

    ReplyDelete
  13. I'm playing monster tale now, its frikkin awesome, the sprite animation and quality is top notch!

    ReplyDelete