Thursday, March 31, 2011

Bargain Queen

A few days ago, I got a new monitor from Target. It was originally $160, and I paid $60 for it. HERE'S THE STORY!

Actually, I first purchased the monitor a few weeks ago. It was clearanced down to $112 at that point, but I knew it could possibly drop even lower. I held on to my receipt and kept the monitor sealed up, then I repeatedly went to Target to see if the price had dropped. One day, it had! All the way down to $80. The awesome thing is that I also managed to dig out a $20 Target gift card I forgot I had. I went in, returned the monitor, repurchased it, and used my gift card. Grand total: $60. Heck yeaaaah!

Here's the page for the monitor. It's quite snazzy, and I'm very happy with it!

Bargain shopping is one of my biggest hobbies, and it's somewhat of a game for me to find awesome deals on stuff that I want. I basically have a rule that I refuse to pay full price for most things. I don't think I've bought a $60 video game yet. I think from now on, I'll make a post series here out of whatever big bargains I come across in my daily life. It's such a common thing for me that I'll undoubtedly have lots of bargain updates.

I probably mentioned it when it happened, but the last big bargain I found before this one was my beloved coat I was raving about back in November. It was originally about $500 at Macy's here, and I had this whole ridiculous plan set up to have someone in Spain purchase and mail one to me (since the company that makes it is in Spain, it was a lot cheaper there). However, a miracle happened: It went on clearance at Macy's! In addition to the clearance price, I opened up a Macy's card to get an additional large percentage off of the cost. Grand total: $135! That's still pricey, but considering how amazing it is and that it will probably last me my whole life, I'm very pleased!

I love bargains.

Here's a picture of something I just noticed at the LAN center like two nights ago. It has apparently been there as long as they've been open, and I never noticed it a single time in my year or so of hanging out at this place. I was very sleepy when I spotted him, so I immediately went into a laughing fit for a good 10-15 minutes. My friend had to stand in front of me and block my view of him to make me stop.
Ceiling cat.

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.

Wednesday, March 23, 2011