At last!

The MCAT is done! Now to wait 60 days for the results. (Grumble)

Only 36 hours until my Biochemistry exam! Damnit!

Vi Veri Veniversum Vivus Vici

So earlier today I went and finally saw "V for Vendetta", and I really liked it. I didn't come into it expecting much, but I really enjoyed it. I remember from European History the story of the Gunpowder Plot, and it always captivated me. I mean, an assassination attempt involving blowing up a major building? It's just so over-the-top that it was ingenious. Nobody expects that, you know. But back to the movie - while I'd heard some criticisms about the fact that the pertinent facts are beat into your head over and over (and this is true, but not to a huge extent - about as much as any other movie) as a whole I thought the story was well written, well acted, and overall a very good movie. Easily the best of the limited lot I've seen in 2006, but May's trifecta of X-Men 3, MI3, and The DaVinci Code all look promising.

When will people ever learn how to use their turn signals? I think my most hated "use" of the turn signal is when people finally turn on their signal in the middle of a turn, while they're already turning. Why bother? I mean, the whole point is to tell me, the other driver, that you're going to turn. When you're already turning, I KNOW you're turning. Last time I checked, blind people don't drive.

Animal Crossing: Wild World has been a lot of fun so far. Who would have thought that gardening, fishing, and foresting could be so interesting? Yes, I know that sounds terribly wimpy. Fortunately I don't really care. Fun is fun, no matter how unmanly it may be dressed up.

Next week is the last week of classes and Saturday's the big day. I'm not overly concerned with school or my MCAT prep, but I'd always like to do better. Can't wait for two weeks from today though - the summer should be a lot less stressful.

A couple weeks back I had a nasty run in with Office Depot and some customer service issues. I fired off a letter to OD customer service, and today got an apology...and a $100 giftcard. Crazy. Kudos to Office Depot for owning up to their mistakes - you've kept my business.

Boston has to do something about Boomer Wells. He looked absolutely terrible the other night, struggling to get out of the 2nd. Schilling and Beckett have looked incredible while Wakes and Clement have each had a good and a bad outing. I say trade Wells (to the Yankees, hell, that's where he wants to be) and sign Clemens. I would kill for Rocket to don the Red Sox uniform one more time. Here's to hoping.

While NFL draft talks have been hot lately, I have heard absolutely nothing about what my Buccaneers are going to do. I've got no problem with that as Gruden has been a drafting machine. Cadillac sure worked out. Here's to hoping this year's pick will be a good one.

I hate pro basketball. Just sayin'.

Since I'm touching all the sports here, I'm sure hoping my Thrashers can pull it off and get that 8th slot in the east. I don't think they will, but they sure came close. One of these years it's gonna happen. I still need to get a Thrashers jersey someday.

You'll Never Even Make a Sound

Another school week has come to a close, but more importantly, another week of potential MCAT studying is gone. April 22nd, two weeks from yesterday, and I'm feeling very prepared. My scores are at a good point, and I'm just hoping that I can squeeze another point or two from each of the disciplines. My Bio/Physiology scores have finally caught up to my Chem/Physics scores, which is quite suprising. Guess that studying's paid off. Makes me wish I would've done more, sooner - but I'm not going to complain. The social life has taken an obvious hit, but that's a necessary evil. "You've got the GPA, but where is the dirty love?" [Oh Nerf Herder, you're so right]

I tried Atlanta's new gimmick, Coca Cola Blak [note the absence of a c] which is a coffee flavored Coke beverage. So how does it taste? Like Coke and coffee, at the same time. Two very distinct flavors. Not terrible, but probably not something I'd drink on a regular basis either - mainly for the fact that I'm not really a coffee drinker.

After digging through the old hack-a-day archives, I stumbled across this article about hacking together a virtual machine using VMWare's free player. So I decided I'd have some fun with that and installed FreeDOS and some old DOS games. No, I know it serves absolutely no purpose, but I don't care.

I've gotten OS 10.4.5 running on my laptop, with everything but wireless working. Whenever I can get the whole thing working, it'll be awful tempting to just boot into Mac-mode every time. Let me tell you, running OSX on my laptop is so damned much faster than my ancient G3, but I'm in no hurry to ditch the old tower - it serves its purpose as a good IM/browser/server box. Though I probably do need to bump it up to 1Gb of RAM one of these days.

I picked up Animal Crossing: Wild World for my DS, a game I'd been meaning to play in its Gamecube form for a couple years now. It's not a game with a defined purpose, or even a guide as to what you should do. I love the open ended nature of it, but I don't like how your townies will harp on you if you're gone for a few days. I have a feeling that I'll just have to wash my hands of my current character and start a new one once I have some free time after the MCAT.

After a good deal of studying on Friday I went digging through my DVDs for something to watch, and ended up watching the 4-hour marathon that was Stephen King's 1994 movie "The Stand", a classic good vs. evil end of the world movie. I remember watching the first 2 hours when it came on TV back in the day, but never saw the ending. I have to say I enjoyed the flick, though Molly Ringwald's looked better.

Red Sox are looking good this year - Schilling's a solid 2-0, and Papelbon looked good the other night closing. Team's got real promise. The defensive moves made in the offseason were great, I just hope the offense doesn't struggle. Varitek, keep those boys focused on another trophy.

The more I read about the Revolution, the more psyched I am. Nintendo site 4 Color Rebellion has become a daily gaming read of mine (along with Penny Arcade, Joystiq, and Slashdot Games) and one article the other day caught my eye. "Red Steel" is a new game by Ubisoft for the Revo, and it looks absolutely ridiculous. I mean, just look at the scans. I can't wait to see what developers end up doing with the new controller scheme. Cool stuff.

I watched that new show Teachers on NBC the other night. Seems too contrived, too desperate for laughs. They better not pre-empt The Office for that garbage again.

I Write Sins Not Tragedies

So when reading Lifehacker the other day, I came across a snippet that AllOfMP3.com had released a new version of their download client, conspicuously called AllTunes. If you're not familiar with AllOfMP3, think iTunes, but instead of paying $0.99 per song, you pay $0.02 per megabyte, so that averages to about $0.10 per song. Oh, and there's no DRM restrictions, the files are just pure ol' MP3 goodness. Here's me buying an old Misfits album:




Quick review of Tetris DS: It rocks my soul. Online 4-player Tetris is incredible, and not since my old Tetrinet days has a multiplayer puzzle game been so good. I entered a tourney over at 4ColorRebellion, but got bounced in the 3rd round. I got 4 Tetrises in a row and still lost. I call bullshit. I've managed to clear marathon mode (200 lines) and got to 351 lines in endless before my hands were about ready to fall off. One of these days I'll crack 1M points.

Saw 1984 and Sahara tonight. 1984 was great, Sahara mildly amusing.

T-minus 3 weeks for the MCAT. Took a full length practice test today and did quite well. I'm not at all frightened that I won't get in, I would just rather study more to firmly cement it so.

If you've glanced at my Last.FM chart you'd see that this week I've pretty much been rocking out to Panic! at the Disco's new album all freaking week. I initially thought it would be just another fluff pop-punk album, but I got hooked. They've been described as "the Faint meets the Postal Service with the pop sensibilities of Blink-182" - which I have no clue about. Think Fall-Out Boy, but not shitty. That's Panic.

Fantasy Baseball draft was last night, and I think I fared well. Or at least better than last year - though there's not much worse you can do than 11th out of 12th.