Long weekend is almost over

Well, I was fortunate enough to have Friday off, so I netted a 4 day weekend. Superb!

I didn't do so well running this past week, though.

I did run Monday (with a swim there too). Tuesday, I gave blood (5:22 time, not a PR, but respectable), so no running that day. (I did get a gallon marker pin though. whoo!)

Wednesday, I don't remember where that went.

Thursday was full of family obligations, of course. I did some reflection during the time and was genuinely thankful of many things.

Friday, I did get out and ran *outside*. Amazing. So much more fun. It was nice being off so that I could run in the daylight. I put in 5 miles there, with a decent hill in the middle. Plus, my gym month's membership was up, so I delayed paying the next month's coin for a bit.

Saturday, I was the ultimate lazy bum, and didn't do much of anything but play video games. Hah. Oh, wait, no. I did get caught up on 'Prison Break'. They could have ended it. They could have had everything wrapped up, and people would have been happy. But nooooooooooooo. The writers/producers/TV people/whomever had to be greedy to make this show go on and on. Sigh.

Today was more family things. My newest nephew was baptized, so we went to the ceremony and the family get-together afterward.

And that was my week. What a blur. A good one, though.


So yeah, I was a lazy bum for exercise. But, my legs were really bothering me early in the week. I hope with the amount of rest I got, that I'll be ready to go this week. We'll see tomorrow......

Keep on rockin'!

Trophies

So, I got a PS3 a few months back.. One of the big reasons why was to play GTA IV. One thing led to another, and I didn't get fully immersed into that game until recently.

So, I'm playing GTA, and I've got about ~40% completion. (I'm shooting for the full hundred. For those that aren't familiar with this sort of thing, you have to do all sorts of silly mundane things, as well as some harder things, in order to get to 100%. You can finish the game around 60%).

The PS3 also has new support for "trophies", which are tied to your account. If you do more challenging things within certain games, you get trophies. The harder it is, the more valuable the trophy (bronze/silver/gold/platinum).

Where's this going, you may ask? On Monday, a patch was released to add trophy support to GTA. Awesome. I can finally get some trophies.

Yeah. As soon as I fired up the game and loaded my saved game, I get a message to the effect of: You're going to have to start over to get any trophies.

Are you freakin' kidding me?

Apparently, this is to combat people exchanging saved games with each other and gaining trophies they didn't rightfully earn. Really? People are that lame?

Sigh. I don't particularly care about the trophies, but I do like do get all of the little things that can be obtained when going for a 100% completion.

I guess I'm just not the target demographic anymore. My few hours a week doesn't compare to the folks that put in 50+ a week. In my defense, I do have to work to buy crap like this, Sony.


In other PS3 news, I downloaded the BioShock demo, and it seemed pretty sweet. Pretty much identical to the XBox version, from the 30 minutes I spent playing/watching it on the XBox.. I may have to get that as my next game, after I figure out what I'm going to do about GTA. (Finish it without trophies, or start over? Grrrrr)

Gaming Wednesday

I did 3.1 miles with my running buddy last night. It was fairly flat, some little hills. My legs still felt a bit on the dead side. I think we averaged a 10:00/mile pace. Nothing too amazing, but we got our miles in.

It was a nice and cool night- good time to go for a run.

She's going away for the weekend, so I'm on my own to do my training. I'm hoping that Friday I'll do a long run. Maybe 8-10 miles. We'll see.

Tonight will be a rest night. Going to hit the baseball game tonight.

I was supposed to do my pushups last night, but I decided to give myself another day, as my muscles felt a little tense. In theory, this is it. It's the final test. I suspect it will just be a day of doing pushups, and I'll redo week 6, maybe on the "intermediate" column.
Of course, coming home from the game tonight will not be ideal conditions for doing pushups, either. So, it will be Friday.. :)

So, what else did I do? I played games last night! Woot!
I finished up 'Metal Gear Solid 4' for the PS3. My wife kept coming in and saying "What are you watching? It's so weird!" during the ending movie.
It was a fun game, but not my favorite. It came with my system, so I figured I'd give it a shot.

The only Metal Gear game I had played before was the original NES version. (I only played that for a little bit at someone's house, so I never really got into it). The MGS4 game has a lot of cinematic clips which continue the storyline(s) of the previous games. Playing this game is like watching a movie after it's been playing for a while. You can generally catch up, but there's still a lot that you don't get the significance of.

The graphics on this game are phenomenal- even on a standard def TV. Game play is good, as well. I didn't even come close to cracking the full potential of this game. Will I replay it? I don't know. I went through on the 'normal' difficulty. I could turn it down to 'easy' and see what else can be done. I have some other games to dig in to first, though.

Keep on rockin'!

Geekdom

Went for an easy just under 3 mile run last night with my running buddy. A little hot and humid, but it worked out. It was pretty much all flat. I'm debating taking tonight off as a rest day, but I might go do another easy run. I don't want to do too much, but I feel pretty decent. It's supposed to be really hot/humid/stormy this weekend, so I'm afraid of missing my window if I don't go tonight.
We'll see what's going on when I get home, I suppose.. take it from there.

What else is going on? Ultimate geekdom for me.

First, I set up free WAP (mobile web) on my phone. (And my wife's, as well, of course). A bit hacky and non-intuitive. (Of course, the cell company doesn't want you working around their fee-based proxy.) I did manage to persevere.

Then, I took my PS3, partitioned it, and installed Linux on it. Managed to get the wireless working, the graphics, the sound, and the Bluetooth controller. Sweet. But, it's ultimate geekdom.

Yes, the PS3 is my new toy.. I bought it a couple of weeks ago, and have been having a lot of fun with it. The last new console I bought was the Super Nintendo, and that was many many years ago. I held off buying into the current generation of consoles for a while, but I finally caved.

Next toy to buy will be an HDTV. The PS3 would look even better running on an HDTV, compared to the tube TV I'm using now. Went looking at TVs, though, and they can get quite expensive.. So, no rush on that.

Have a good weekend, everyone.