Bargains + Show

I have a couple new bargains to report!

One of them is from yesterday. A friend of mine alerted me to the fact that Best Buy's website had Dragon Quest IX on sale for 7 bucks! I promptly ordered it, and then about 5 minutes later, it was sold out. Thank you again for letting me know, Mike, because I woulda missed it otherwise!

The other bargain is......Portal 2! First, I preordered it from Amazon, so they gave me $20 in credit. It was $55 for the PS3 version. After I got the game, I took out the code for the free PC copy and used it, and then I listed the PS3 copy on craigslist for $40. I finally got a buyer today, so...BAM! Portal 2 for $15, plus $20 in Amazon credit for me! I love getting games for dirt cheap, though in this case it was pretty much free.

I'm going to see Anamanaguchi perform tonight! If you aren't familiar with them, they're a chiptune band. They did the soundtrack for the Scott Pilgrim game, and that's how I became familiar with them. Their other stuff is really good as well. My friend's band, Random Encounter, is going to be opening, so it'll be really cool to see them perform, too. I'm super excited about the show! I've got mah Scott Pilgrim shirt on and I'm ready to rock out!

Awesome luck

So, something really cool happened today! Well, it started last night. I was at the LAN center, and I noticed there were a bunch of half dollar coins in the register. I decided to buy a few dollars worth of 'em (by exchanging them with $1 bills), so I can use them to annoy cashiers when I buy stuff with them. I picked out the oldest ones in there just for the heck of it. Now, today, I was spending time with my uncle who's visiting, and  I noticed he had a bag of coins and jewelry and such. He told me he planned to take those to a shop to sell them, and I figured I'd mention the half dollars I got the night before. He's really knowledgeable about coins and such, and he told me to check the dates on them. It turns out that my two oldest coins were made of silver! I ended up bringing them in to that shop my uncle brought us to, and I got 20 bucks! It was pretty sweet.

We posted a Top 15 DS Games list on the Nerdy Show site today. I did write-ups for 7 of the games on the list, so give it a read if you're interested! My name is listed after each one I did.

I've been playing Portal 2! It's pretty awesome so far. I haven't even started single player yet, though! I need to get to that already. I've also been playing Pokémon White, though not a lot. I only just received the first gym badge today.

I went to my other uncle's house today, and I gave the ever-famous Herbert a visit. Here are a couple photos of us:

Herbert is one massive wolfdog.

Borderlands and JERK CHICKEN

Austin, Tate and I just started playing Borderlands this evening. We just finished up a few minutes ago, in fact. I tried playing this game a very long time ago with Austin, Jed and Cody, but since we were never able to get all of us together with working computers, that didn't go very far. I'm hoping I'll actually be able to beat the game this time around!

Today, I ordered some delicious food from a Caribbean restaurant for lunch. The problem, though, is that they left out like half of my order! It was supposed to be jerk chicken with bread and a Jamaican beef patty. They left out the bread and the patty, so it was just chicken and nothing else! Oh well, at least it was awesome chicken. One other problem is that they didn't give me a fork! We had none around at work, so I ate my meal with a ridiculous little pair of plastic tongs. :P

Tongs!

Catching up, again

I forgot to mention that I got a very generous donation a week ago! Thank you so much, Daniel! I can't express just how grateful I am to you wonderful people out there who do such nice things. Money's been a little stressful for me lately, what with receiving that undeserved speeding ticket and having barely any hours at work. This is a tremendous help.

Another thing I forgot to mention: I went to go see Video Games Live here in Orlando on March 29th. It was an awesome show! For those unfamiliar with it, Video Games Live is a video game-themed orchestral concert, and it features lots of popular game music. I'd been wanting to attend one for years, so I was really excited to finally get the opportunity. After the show, they had a little meet-and-greet with all the main folks in the show, so that was fun. I chit-chatted briefly with each one of them, the most well-known of the bunch being Tommy Tallarico. He's the one who founded Video Games Live, and he plays guitar in the show. He's a video game composer, and he's worked on tons of games. My personal favorite of his work is the Earthworm Jim soundtrack! :> Oh, I should add that the guy who composed the soundtrack for God of War III performed in the show, and he was so smarmy! During the meet and greet, he was flirting with me in a very smarmy manner. :<

I really love having Netflix! My friend let me share his account, and I've been trying to make good use of it! I've been watching an anime series called Mushi-Shi, and it's really good. I'm very picky about anime, so it has to be something special to interest me. The series is quite sad, though, and it seems like each episode tries to outdo the last one in how sad it is!

I beat Monster Tale last night. It was a super fun game, and I really enjoyed it all throughout. The only big issue I had was that the final boss was super easy! Otherwise, though, it was great. I'm in love with the team who made it, and I can't wait to see what they make next! It's especially exciting because they're located in my area, and a good friend of mine may possibly be working on their next game. I'm hoping I can work for them someday, too! It will probably never happen, but a girl can dream. Now that I'm done with Monster Tale, I'm playing Pokemon White.

So I've been thinking about doing a new thing with my blog. I wanna start doing little random prize giveaways! I've built up a fairly large collection of gaming-related odds & ends that I don't really know what to do with, so I think it would be fun to give them away as prizes! These are things like posters, t-shirts, things I've gotten from work, etc etc. I'm not quite sure how the giveaways will be structured yet, but it will probably involve answering a trivia question or something like that. I'll keep working on the details of it, but keep an eye out for that sometime soon!

I see the grand majority of you have never smoked! Alright, now it's time for a new poll. Have at it!

Hmmm? What's this? ;)

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.

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.

There are two sides to every story.