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2009 Mar 01 aeris


Guy Blade Guy Blade---03:05:00


Tax Season
Yesterday I got word back from my dad that he'd finished my taxes. Apparently I will be getting back about $800 from my federal taxes and about $100 from the state taxes. Unfortunately, since those are California state taxes, I probably won't ever see them. Maybe I can use them next year as a credit against any potentially owed taxes. I was hoping the refund might be a bit higher, but it turns out that I don't really do that much that I can write off. It would've been nice if I could have written off my donation to Theta Xi, but they haven't yet gotten off their asses to make it possible for me to do such things yet. I suppose that the best thing that I could do from a tax standpoint would be to buy a house (of course) so that I could be writing off the interest on the loan. It turns out that being a homeowner has additional benefits from the home itself.

The handy thing is that that $800 refund will cover roughly half of my remaining college debt. I am clawing ever closer to being debt-free.

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2009 Feb 24 namine


Guy Blade Guy Blade---07:15:00


Lost
Why was there a huge build up/reveal of Lost Planet 2 on Xbox live? The first game was, at best, mediocre. The gameplay was shaky, the plot was thinner than rice paper, and the controls seemed to not have actually been playtested by anyone, ever.

I just don't get it.

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2009 Feb 23 utena


Guy Blade Guy Blade---02:12:00


Irony
So last night, as I was coming back from CAS I happend to be listening to the BBC world new broadcast on NPR. I joined part way through a discussion about the upcoming Oscar awards. In the discussion, they had a moderator/host and a pair of other people who were collectively discussing what they thought should awards. The moderator then asked the person with the distinctive Chinese accent what he thinks should get an award to which he said that he thought the opening of the Beijing Olymics should get an Oscar. I think that there must have been no way for him to understand how ironic such a statement is given that

1} Oscars are given to films. Though the Beijing Olymics opening was partly a work of fiction, it was certainly not a film. They might be eligible for a Tony though.

2} The Beijing Olymics opening was not supposed to be a work of fiction in any way.

It seemed as though the host was as taken aback by the comment as I was as he stammered through a comment like "it certainly deserves something". Unfortunately, when they did the closing identifications, they only identified the people by name and didn't give affiliation so I wasn't able to tell if this person was a PRC shill. The whole thing was rather ridiculous.

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2009 Feb 20 relm


Guy Blade Guy Blade---04:42:00


Credit
So, given my current debt paydown rate, I should be debt free within the next few months. This had led to me beginning to look into buying a home, especially one near my current abode. To that end, I spent some time today (while various tests were running) looking at Realtor.com and the similar Yahoo sites. Based on my analysis, it looked like there were quite a few places near me in the $250k-$350k range which is probably what I can afford. Hopefully prices will continue to decline while I build up a savings to use as a down payment.

This line of thought also led me to actually buy a copy of my full credit report (with score) from Equifax. It turns out that my credit rating is currently 737 (they range from 310 to 850) which is much better than I expected. The only "negative" parts of my score are the "total length" of my history and the "average account age" which are (for obvious reasons) not up to the 8-12 year desired range.

It amazes me how little it takes for me to pull a copy of my entire financial history from a company that I never before today had a relationship with. It seems crazy that, given my name, SSN and a single challenge questions, I can get a full listing of my account history from so many places. It may be a necessary evil, but it still seems troubling.

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2009 Feb 19 emeralda


Guy Blade Guy Blade---06:25:00


Things
Things that I approve of:

1. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

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2009 Feb 13 peach


Guy Blade Guy Blade---05:08:00


Gamertag Exchange
So, a few months ago, I made a post which ended up becoming a place where myself and other Theta Xis exchanged Xbox gamertags. This has resulted in me having a bunch of TXs in my friends list, but no one else that I know. As such, I'd like to reopen such an exchange by offering the following thoughts:

PSN ID: guyblade
Gamertag: Guy Blade
Wii Code: 8936 7597 9141 1035

Are there no members of 004 with such systems? What of those lost to me from years hence who I knew but in high school? Only such a dialog can reveal.

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2009 Feb 11 tifa


Guy Blade Guy Blade---11:54:00


Lostless
So, about an hour ago, I finally beat Lost Odyssey. It is a Japanese-style RPG for the 360. Overall, the game was probably above average. It was solid enough and managed to make a good number of design decisions--most notably the Suikoden style leveling system wherein the game automatically helps you if you fall behindin leveling. The premise of the game is that the main character is a thousand year old, unaging immortal (with amnesia, of course). This leads to various interesting gameplay mechanics such as your character simply standing back up after they've been KO'd for a few turns.

Where the game really shines, though, is in a part of the game which is almost incidental: the Thousand Years of Dreams. These are short text-only sequences which tell snippets of the main character's memory from his long life. All of these are incredibly well written (possibly better written than the main plot) and build to describe the sheer lonliness and isolation that would occur for a person who outlives everyone they will ever meet.

The game itself is in the $20-$30 range right now and I suggest picking it up if you're looking for a good, somewhat formulaic RPG.

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2009 Feb 10 utena


Guy Blade Guy Blade---09:03:00


Scheduling
I think I've finally discovered why Adult Swim licensed King of the Hill. There are two reasons:

1. If KotH comes on after midnight, it means that it is time to go to bed.
2. If KotH comes on before midnight, it means that I should change to Comedy Central to watch Futurama--a good television show--instead.

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