So, the snowmobiling trip was completely awesome... up until about 2am Sunday morning. Stomach started hurting so much I couldn't fall back asleep, had to go puke at 7:30am... laid back down until 10am or so, then got up, dressed, and stumbled upstairs. (Keep in mind, this is all at a YMCA camp, with a bunch of other people about my age)  I ended up puking 2 more times there before I finally could leave (had to wait for my parents to bring my car back).  Then I had to drive the 2 hours back to my place.  The drive actually went fairly well, all things considered... got home, napped on the couch for about 6 hours, til my girlfriend got back in town and came over... went to bed about 9:30 that night, slept for like 11 hours. I felt better Monday... until I had to go to work, started getting the fever/chills and dizziness again.  I still get waves of dizziness, but I think it's just because I'm still a bit dehydrated.  Puking your guts out will do that, I guess.  Oh, and I was so sore Sunday and Monday I could barely walk, trails got kind of rough Saturday afternoon.

...until I'm done with class for this week!  Then I need to try to finish up whatever homework/reading I have, and I'm free. Probably some video games tonight, but tomorrow... I'm going snowmobiling!! All weekend!! WOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

Yeah, I'm really just doing this for quest stuff.  Kinda funny that I'm doing it in class though. :)

So, this is maybe just a little bit late, but I totally have a 360 Slim.  Bought it a couple weeks after they first came out, once the Gamestop near me finally got a second shipment it.  I somehow managed to get in on the awesome trade-in deal they had going at the time, but not quite as I had planned.  I wanted to trade in my old 360, while it was still going... unfortunately, the dude behind the counter was smart enough to pull the faceplate off and see that it doesn't have the warranty sticker anymore.  Nothing I can really be angry about, dude's just doing his job, and it's a completely reasonable policy... sucks to lose out on that $100 value though.  So the old 360 is back home now - I tried selling it to some friends for super cheap (like $20), but nobody wanted it, so I left it at home.  I did get to trade in some stuff for it, though - the HDD that came with my old 360 (a 20GB, thing was old as hell), my roommate's memory unit and an extra power brick he had, and a couple wireless controllers I didn't really need anymore.  All told, got just over $100 off the 360 Slim, which I'm happy with.
 
Verdict on the Slim: It's awesome!  Does everything the old 360 did (obvz), it's waaayyyy quieter than my old 360 (it really did sound like a jet engine winding up for takeoff), it has an HDMI port (my old one didn't), etc... 
 
P.S.: I had mentioned that the store I work at had a Special Edition of GTA:IV left over... yep, definitely bought that.  Maybe not the greatest idea, but whatever. I really like that safety deposit box. :)

So, my Xbox succumbed to the RRoD last night... again... but hey, I fixed it! Again. :D Same thing as last time... took it apart, cleaned off the CPU and GPU, gooped it up with some thermal paste, and put it back together. Normally, I'd start playing it... but I'm gonna leave it for tonight, since it's going to be the last night I have it (hopefully).  Why's that, you ask?  Well, tomorrow after work, I plan on using Gamestop's crazy trade-in deal towards a shiny, new Xbox 360 S. Awwww yeaaahhh.  Assuming they don't stop me from trading it in.  And hey, I even realized I can just sell my roommate my 120GB hard drive, instead of trading that in... so my GTA:IV install that I can't play without (the disc doesn't completely work) will still be around. Huzzah!

So, been a while since I've done this... lots of stuff been going on for me. Big thing is, I've moved into my own house (with a couple friends), which has been exceedingly awesome so far. Not just living with people I actually chose to live with, but living in a city. Where there's actually shit to do.  Like... movies, or going out to eat, or walking down to the Farmer's Market (street fair type thing). Yeah, it's been awesome.
 
Anyways, on to the point(s) of this post... I've been playing a hell of a lot of Red Dead Redemption lately... well, since it came out, really. I've got like 2 and 1/2 days of game-time, which is like twice as much as I have on Modern Warfare 2's multiplayer.  And I had been playing that a lot. The funny thing is, I pretty much didn't care at all about RDR before I bought it... this is one of the few games (like, 2 or 3 of the 30 or so games I've bought) that I really wasn't all that psyched for. I didn't think it would be bad or anything, I just had little-to-no interest in it.  So I don't really remember why I bought it, and I wasn't really into it when I started playing... then all of a sudden, I had played it for over a day total, and hadn't even gotten into Mexico yet. I haven't beaten it yet, but I'm close... just a few missions from the end, I think. Still haven't touched the multiplayer, which I should really get into (anyone wants to play, send me a message or friend request), but I'm like 3/4 of the way to the Legend of the West outfit, which I really, really want. I'm really not sure where the rest of the time went... a lot like Vinny on the last pre-E3 podcast (I think that's the one).  Long story short: very glad I bought the game, have had a lot of fun with it... even if it is pretty much Grand Theft Horse.
 
Speaking of Grand Theft... the store I work at has a brand new, unopened copy of the Special Edition of Grand Theft Auto IV for sale... for $19.99.  This is probably not a great idea... but I decided if it's still there by the time I get paid (this Friday), I'm going to buy it.  I mean, come on! It's the GTA IV Special Edition! It retailed for, what, $150?  So yeah, that's happening.
 
That's all for now... time to go find some food.

So, I found a place to live... well, technically, a friend found it. Moving into the upper half of a duplex, downtown Green Bay, with a couple friends. I guess one of them grew up there, and his mom is moving out of the place we're moving in to. Rent is surprisingly low, but it's also a very small place... my bedroom is basically a glorified closet, which kinda sucks... but it'll be nice to live on my own, off campus. Yeah, I'm excited, I hope this goes well... it should be a lot of fun!

I need one.  Not for the typical, "I want to see the future/change the past" reasons (although there is definitely some things in the past I'd like to change).  I just need more time...
 
Let me back up a bit, here:  I'm taking more credits this semester than I have so far in my university "career," 16 credits... which at first glance, doesn't seem like some insane amount, considering I've been doing 14... but my classes this semester are way more involved than the typical General-education classes I've mostly been taking.  3 Computer Science classes this semester, all 3 of which have regular homework... one of them, there's a big group project I'm in the middle of, and we're way behind where we should be.  There's also near-weekly quizzes in class (easy since we can use notes, but time-consuming to write out the notes), and a two-part midterm project, the first part of which is due tomorrow.  I should probably start that. =\  The other two CS classes have homework pretty much every class (one is smaller labs, usually pretty easy, the other is a math class actually, so generally 2 or 3 problems).  And to top it off, one of the two Gen-Ed classes I'm in, there's an annotated bibliography due Friday evening.  If you don't know what that is... it's basically a research paper, but without actually writing the paper.  You pick a subject (world culture class, so something to do with culture), do the research on it (5 sources, at least 4 of which have to be peer-reviewed papers), write a paragraph summary on what you found, and a paragraph underneath each entry in the bibliography summarizing that particular piece.  It's really mega-lame and annoying... =/
 
Oh, did I mention I have a job, too?  Lucky me, I don't usually work during the week (class schedule is too late to get scheduled at work), but I work every Friday/Saturday/Sunday, unless I ask off... which means weekends are pretty effectively useless to me for actually doing anything unique or more interesting than playing video games or going out to eat with friends (maybe).  
 
And to top all that off, Giant Bomb rolled out this amazing, horribly addictive quest system this week (blog post for quest get!)... and I'm very easily distracted. So it hasn't been an especially productive week.  But alas... I need to get crackin' here.  Hopefully I can knock out at least one of the things due before this live stream starts up tonight... You know I don't want to miss that!
 
 
If anyone actually stuck through reading all this, thanks... just needed to vent a bit. As a sign of my appreciation, here is a picture of the flying DeLorean:

So, my 360 red-ringed a few days ago... check the previous blog if you want details on it.  One of the guys that was over that night had his 360 red-ring a month or so ago, and tried fixing it himself for reasons that will go unexplained.  His didn't work, but his still had some leftover parts, which he gave to me, along with some thermal paste.  He came over yesterday, we took it apart (mostly him), and I... supervised... while he took off the old heatsinks (holy crap, were those things dusty!), cleaned off the chips, put new thermal paste on, and put on his heatsinks.  Now, his Xbox had been a newer chipset than mine, which means one of the heatsinks he brought with had an extra array on it, that mine didn't... bonus!  We were going to swap in his fans too, but they had a different connection.  Anyways, popped the heatsinks back on, tightened them down (X-clamps are retarded, MS... just sayin') and turned it on without the fans, to overheat it and seal the thermal paste.  After overheating it and letting it cool back down, we plugged in the fans and turned it on... and voila, worked like new!!  
 
We put the rest of it together, and he ran off to work... then I sat down to play some Bad Company 2 for a while... played that for a few hours, then the Perfect Dark and Splinter Cell: Conviction demos.  (Quick impressions: I effin' love how Perfect Dark plays, definitely buying, don't know why the GB guys were so meh towards it; and I'm really liking SC:C... it feels like Splinter Cell, but faster, smoother... better)  Played it a little more tonight... no problems with it yet.  Honestly, I think it might be a little quieter than it used to be... don't know if that's just it getting the dust blown out, or if the bigger heatsink is helping, or what... I like it, though.  It doesn't sound like a jet engine spooling up for take-off anymore.  
 
Guess that's all I have to say... if anyone wants to add me, GT is "J Meyer 13".  I tend to jump around a lot with the games I play, most consistent is Rock Band 2... just put in that you're from Giant Bomb in the FR. :)

So, my Xbox 360 finally succumbed to the Red Ring of Death earlier tonight.  I know, not a huge deal, everyone on the internet has had it happen to them at least 4 times... but this one is mine! It's a launch-era chipset (manufactured 2006-4-11 according to the sticker), and until now it's mostly worked fine.  Sure, it's had the occasional lock-up on some games... and this really weird problem where it would lock up back home when it was connected to Live, but I'm pretty sure that's just because it would take forever to check if friends were playing a game (slow DSL is slooooooow).  And the disc drive was slowly failing.  And when I played GTA:IV a lot, the video would sometimes wig out and I'd have to restart it... But it never out-and-out failed... until tonight.  And it still works, actually... sort of.  I tried playing some Rock Band 2 (readers of the last blog entry know about my affection for that game) today, and it locked up on the Dashboard.  I figured, no big deal, just restarted it.  It went fine, played for a couple hours, until a friend came over.  We sat around talking for a while, while the Xbox was sitting on the Dashboard.  We went out to buy Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (and some basic foods) , got back, started playing it... it locked up again partway through the second mission.  I just turned it off then, since we were looking at apartments and furniture.  Another friend came over a bit later, sat down to start playing Halo 3: ODST, started loading a Firefight level, and it locked up again... turn it off, turn it back on, and we got this: