2008

So there is no announcement from Bungie regarding their next game. In the wake of this sad news, Microsoft went ahead and talked about the absence of Halo from their presentation. They have confirmed that along with Halo Wars, along with the Peter Jackson Halo Project are not the only Halo games in the works. Bungie is working on a new Halo game. This could be the Halo “Blue” that Walmart reported a few days ago. Rumors say that it is a Master Chiefless Halo game focusing on the UNSC soldiers turning it into more of a Call of Duty meets Socom game. I wonder if we will ever see the Chief awaken from his cryo sleep and get off that planet. I guess we will have to wait and see.

So Bungie’s countdown was shut down and replaced by a message signed the president of Bungie, Harold Ryan. There are some reasons to believe that this is legitimate, but it is Bungie so there are reasons why you should believe that this is merely a joke. First off, Harold Ryan is not the president of Bungie studios, his last known job title is that of studio manager.

Secondly Bungie likes the number 7. At 7:00 exactly this message was put up. If they had wanted to make it look less suspicious they should have done it at 7:10 or something. They also didn’t put the old website back up, just the announcement so the weekly updates and the front page are still in limbo. Taking look at the counter from yesterday, it was set to expire on July 15th, not the 16th when the announcement was to be made. I think they are either messing around, or this is some sort of viral campaign like the Cortana Letters were for Halo 1. I guess we will know soon enough though.

I am still amazed that forumity is offering Free Forum Hosting. I mean I know from experience how much of a pain it is to keep a PHPBB forum up to date, and I don’t imagine that PHPBB3 is any easier than PHPBB2 was, so it has to be a weight lifted off people who use their service. If I ever want to put a forum back up I may do it through them instead of myself, this way I won’t need to worry about updates.

Well E3 is in full swing now. I have seen a few of the trailers, I have to say that there is a Square Enix game that looks good and is coming in September, but other than that I think I am looking forward to Halo Wars the most this E3. I am surprised that Microsoft didn’t announce a motion sensored controller, but maybe that was never their intention. They did announce that you could load entire games onto the harddrive and play them that way, of course the game disk needs to be in the disc drive for it to play. I am not going to find much of a use for that considering that I don’t find load times that annoying, though for GTA4 it might be good.

Nintendo and Sony are tomorrow with something going on with Bungie on Wednesday, so I guess I have a few days before I decide who wins E3 for me. Nintendo already announced MotionPlus which gives you precision accuracy with your Wiimote. Something like that you’d think they would wait for their press conference, so maybe they have something much bigger in store for tomorrow? I can only speculate.

It has been rough financially for everyone lately. Krissy is suffering hard and has been doing paid surveys to make ends meet. She has been making a decent amount with it so it doesn’t seem like a bad way to make some extra cash. Personally I am surprised though because a lot of those survey places are scams, but I guess if you find one that pays you and doesn’t stiff you then you should stick with them.

I found a legit one that I might sign up for, though I don’t know because I should be spending my time working and not doing surveys, but if it makes me money then it can’t hurt right? It is called getpaidtotry
Click here to begin. You can get $20 just for signing up so it might be worth it, but I think I am going to tell Krissy about it first and see what she can make. They seem to have a lot more higher paying opportunities than some of their competitors. Who knows, maybe you could make a living off taking surveys, though I doubt that is possible, but the extra money would help with those rising gas prices right? More money for gas used to sound ridiculous, now if it went below $4 a gallon I would be in awe.

I watched the E3 2008 press conference and I am in awe. They touched on many things, including a new avatar system that will be released in the fall. I am not going to go into everything they touched on, just the ones that interested me.

Gears of War 2: They showed video from the campaign and online play. I played and beat the original Gears of War and I can’t wait for this to drop on November 9th.

Fable 2: I had the first game, it was kind of bland, this one doesn’t seem to look much better. I will probably rent it to see what the hype is about.

Fallout 3: I haven’t played any other Fallout, but that isn’t to say that this new Fallout hasn’t caught my eye. I am very interested in seeing how it plays.

You’re in the Movies: I believe this is the name of the game. It is a game much like the Wii, only it takes your movements and puts them into a movie. It looks really cool.

Resient Evil 5: Online drop in/out co-op along with a conclusion to the Wesker/Chris Redfield story makes this game an absolute for me.

Final Fantasy XIII: The first Final Fantasy game for the 360 and it looks stunning. I wonder if it will be multiple disks. No I do not count Final Fantasy XI to be the first on the 360.

On a side note, Bungie seems to have this error message up with a countdown to Wednesday. There aren’t any press conferences schedules, so I am interested to see what they have up their sleeve.

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What may be the world’s oldest blogger died on Saturday. Olive Riley who was 108 years old when she died was the webmistress and blogger of The Life of Riley. She would blog about the differences of kids today and when she was growing up, she would even post Youtube videos of herself and her friends. I came accross her blog not long ago and originally thought it was a joke, now I see that it is no joke and she really was the world’s oldest blogger. I wonder if her wisdom will remain on the internet for years to come, for people to learn from, or if it will simply disappear into the proverbial tubes that run the internet?

I just tested my Bills IQ and I have to say that I am surprised. I never thought about many of the things that they had asked me on the test, I guess because I am still relatively young and don’t think about retirement or anything like that. After taking the test I realize that I need to get my credit cards paid off once and for all. They are all right for emergencies, but when you have to maintain your credit, they can be the one downfall you have.

I guess my first thing to do is see if I can do some Debt consolidation, this way I can just send out one low payment with a lower interest rate than I have now. I really need Debt relief, especially if we plan on moving. It just sucks because my income seems to be the only one right now, but that is really no one’s fault. I wish we lived closer to the middle of the US though, I found out my friend in Texas is only paying 394 dollars a month for a one bedroom apartment all utilities included. I thought Texas was just as expensive as here, I guess I was wrong.

Unfortunately I do not live in Texas so I need to figure out how to pay everything off. Maybe I need to look for Debt help, though I really don’t want to.

By now I am sure you have heard about the Family Guy spinoff, that stars his buddy Cleveland who leaves town to be with his ex. I love Family Guy, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t think that Cleveland can hold a show of his own, but we’ll see because the characters on Family Guy are really only funny because of the supporting cast, so maybe Cleveland will be the same way. I just hope that it doesn’t turn into something as bad as American Dad, bring back Futurama before that happens.

It has been 25 years since WarGames came out. In case you haven’t seen it, it is about a teenager who accidentally hacks into a government computer thinking it is there to play games. The government arrest him thinking he is working for the Russians, who they believe are launching missiles. The best part of the movie is the ending, which in order to stop the computer from playing the game, and essentially launching real nukes at Russia, they need to teach it that not all games are win or lose. To do that they have the computer play tic tac toe, with itself. Eventually the computer learns that not everything is black and white and decides to stop playing the games.

I love this movie, I think it has more significance now then it did back then. If I can I am going to try and go to the one night only screening of WarGames on July 24th which includes never before seen interviews with the cast and crew. They are also showing a making of WarGames 2, which is out now, I believe.

I am stuck here because my water pump blew and I need a serpentine belt. I have an appointment on Tuesday to get it done, but it just sucks that I need to wait until then, especially considering I made the appointment on Tuesday. The mechanic comes highly recommended though, so I can understand why he couldn’t take me until then. It is just sucks not having a car, though Monday and Tuesday I guess I will be preoccupied with E3 conferences to even notice. Monday is the Microsoft one, which is what I am most interested in since Bungie has been hinting at something, and Tuesday is the Sony and Nintendo one. I am interested to see what Nintendo has to bring to the table since Reggie was teasing E3 back in April. Hopefully it will be something as big as Wii Fit. As for Sony, I can’t imagine they are going to do anything more exciting than Home, and that doesn’t excite me at all. I know they are rolling out Achievement like things known as trophies and that all games will eventually have them, it might prompt me to buy a PS3, especially if I can display my trophies online.