Queens of the Awesome

Last night, the Tove-ster and I went to see Queens of the Stone Age at Paramount Theatre. It was freaking awesome. That's all I can say, they rocked their asses off. It's the best show I've seen in a long time.

Thank you QOTSA.

The pictures are from here.

Oh The Games We Play

I'm setting something right I should have done long ago. I always spend money on games with the perfect intent on actually playing them. After all, isn't that what they're for? Some games I'll start playing, lose interest and then forget about completely. Most of the time, the reason I quit playing one game is because I've bought another. So, in my attempt to remedy this, I'm going to post all the games that I currently haven't completed in an attempt to put some finality on the situation. Here goes:

Wii

Super Paper Mario

Excite Truck

Gamecube

PN03

Pikmin

Viewtiful Joe

Viewtiful Joe 2

Custom Robo

Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem

Mega Man Anniversary Collection

Xbox (Original)

Genma Onimusha

X-Men Legends

Rallysport Challenge 2

Prince of Persia: Warrior Within

Otogi: Myth of Demons

Nintendo DS

Cooking Mama

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney

Trauma Center

Kirby: Canvas Curse

Lost in Blue

Advance Wars: Dual Strike

Pokemon Diamond

Meteos

Hotel Dusk: Room 215

Gameboy

Mario and Luigi Superstar

Racing Gears Advance

Pokemon Sapphire (although I was so close one time, but my saved game got erased)

So that's about it. I'm promising myself not to buy anymore games until I at least beat a few of these. When I finish them, I'll be getting rid of them. I hold on to games for far too long that I never play, which is part of my problem as well. I'm not even going to get into the fact that I buy a lot of crappy original NES games and never play those either, but I'm excusing them from this list because it's just the right thing to do.

Games of December

Here are some of the games I've been tirelessly playing all month, along with some quick tidbits:

Mario Galaxy (Wii)


I've loved Mario ever since the olden days of gaming. Though I never played Super Mario 64 (don't stone me to death please), I did play Super Mario Sunshine, and loved it. Super Mario Galaxy is more of a throwback to Mario's groundbreaking adventure on the N64, however, it still feels strangely familiar to Sunshine. Coins have a different purpose this time around, offering life, intead of, well, money. Star bits are what you're after, though. Fifty and you've got a new life. You'll have no problem finding plenty of them, nor will you have problems finding extra 1up mushrooms.

The game does get a tad disorienting once in a while, since your adventure will take you to small, goomba-infested worlds in which you're jumping upside-down and backwards to avoid getting hit. One of the coolest additions to the game is Mario's bee suit. This adds a whole new dimension to some levels, making for some really interesting play-throughs. I haven't beaten it yet, but I'm still trying to find all of the damn stars (more than 100 of them), then I guess I'll go save the Princess.

Mass Effect (Xbox 360)


Mass Effect is made by one of my favorite developers, BioWare. The story driven plot and great action elements make this one of my favorite games of all time. Though, in my opinion, not quite as good as BioWare's first game, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. A lot of people bash this game for it's subtle design and gameplay flaws, but I think the design, as somewhat simplistic as it is, serves the game well. The shear amount of story lines, sidequests, and subplots make this game well worth the 30 or so hours it takes to complete. Not to mention you get to make it with hot alien chick.

Other games and such:

Guitar Hero III (Wii)
Starcraft (Still going strong)
Wii Sports (Wii)
Forza Motorsports 2 (Xbox 360)

The love and loathing of Christmas

Christmas has always been, and probably always will be, one of the most awkward holidays for me. Most people either truly hate the holiday for what it's become, or love it based on beloved childhood memories. I prefer to ride the fence on this one.

The Loathing

• It's freakin cold damnit!
• People often make themselves feel better by giving to charity this time of year while completely ignoring the other three quarters of the year.
• Childhood greed is much more prevelant. Parents are spending way too much money to make their child happy for less than one day than to teach them that life isn't about getting everything you want.
• The over-commercialization of everything. Everything.
• The music. You'll never understand my deep hatred for Christmas music unless you've worked at a retail job for more than five years.
• Christmas's origins aren't religious, nor is it the day Jesus was born. It is a holiday that was stolen from pagan solstice festivals celebrated by the Romans and other early civilizations. Nobody seems to care about this fact, yet all that's talked about is how religious Christmas is. I don't get it.

The Love

• Christmas specials and cartoons. I'm talking the old school ones like the Grinch and Rudolph.
• The wonderful, fattening food.
• For one day out of the year, you can feel like a kid again. You don't have anything to worry about (usually), you can eat all you want (pie!), and you can play with your new toys (Plasma TV!) all day.
• You can buy really expensive things for yourself and not feel guilty (you earned it!).
• Although it is cold out, it's a great opportunity to warm up with the one you love.

There you have it. I'm sure I'll think of some more and throw them in there when I have time. Let me know if there's anything else I should add! For those of you who read this, have a great Thanksgiving!

Music I'm Into - Winter '07

If, for some reason, you want to motivate yourself to be as cool as me (I understand), I'm offering a small glimpse into the world of Derek Bigelow, Music Connoisseur. Here is my list of my favorite bands at the moment (in order of awesomeness):

Queens of the Stone Age

The White Stripes

The Brian Jonestown Massacre

The Flight of the Conchords

Fujiya and Miyagi

Altough Fujiya and Miyagi may be a bit out of my ordinary listening style, let me just say that I'm always up for some nice beats. But I still mostly prefer listening to grungy, hard, rock. Flight of the Conchords are just plain funny, as well as able to bring the coveted funk.

Honorable mentions (you should also check them out):

Hot Chip

Death Cab for Cutie

The Warlocks

The Beatles
The Shins

I tend to go for softer stuff in the winter like Death Cab for Cutie for some reason, don't ask me why. My musical tastes change according to the season, anyone else suffer from this?

Updates and Such

So I have a lot of news. For starters, I'm an idiot and never post. Sorry!

I've moved into some new digs. Pretty exiting. No pictures yet or anything, maybe I should get on that.

I've just landed a new gig as a vendor for a very large company you may or may not have heard of. Also very exciting.

Tove (Toe-va) and I have been together for almost nine awesome months! And she isn't sick of me yet! Gotta love that.

I'm getting my wisdom teeth out on December 13th, which isn't that exciting, but it's news!

That's about all of the new stuff going on around here for the past few months.

Intense Morning

An intense morning to equal an intense night. I was supposed to present information about all the work I'm doing around MySpace at our bi-weekly marketing meeting. However, partly due to my lack of sufficient PowerPoint experience during my post-collegiate years, my initial presentation was less than stellar. After another go, I got my groove back and was able to compose quite an interesting presentation. However, it didn't get instant approval, and so I was completely unsure if I was actually going to present it at this week's meeting.

[insert dilemma here]

So the night before the meeting, after months of anticipation, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix came out in theatres. I, of course, got tickets to the midnight show. My stomach churned from the realization that I could, of course, have to present my semi-stellar slide show to the entire marketing team the next morning, with roughly four hours of sleep and little preparation. After all of that exhausting worrying I didn't have to present after all. But, I did learn my lesson. Know when to play and when to put the toys away.

I'll be presenting in two weeks, so I'll let you know how that goes.

The Desk at the End of the Hall

Just as Harry Potter lived in The Cupboard Beneath the Stairs, so to do I work at The Desk at the End of the Hall, as I have come to name it.

My desk sits at the end of a row of cubicles, vulnerable and alone. But hey, I have great access to the watercooler and copy room and I'm within striking distance of the free apples and granola bars. Not a bad deal at all I say.

The Internship - Week One

And thus ends the onslaught of week one of my new internship at All Star Directories. The Desk at the End of the Hall was busy this week. What did I do you ask? Well, let me tell you.

On Monday, I had a small orientation and got all of those pesky tax and government forms out of the way. My boss and I discussed what it is I will actually be doing here, among other things, building out keywords to help Google find the site better, as well as creating an ever-important online presence for All Star in the online social communies such as MySpace and Facebook. My responsibilities are limited only to two sites currently under All Star Directories, AllArtSchools.com as well as AllCulinarySchools.com. Both sites generate quite a bit of money for All Star and I'm here to help generate a bunch more.

On Tuesday I was given a short demonstration on how to generate keywords using Excel and then told to go at it, goal being that I could generate at least 20,000 keywords using a basic formula that we have established. I compiled words, phrases, and everything surrounding all that is art, art related, art education related, etc. Needless to say I came up with quite a bit. For the next three days I combined, copied, pasted, and morphed every possible keyword combination together, eventually coming up with close to 200,000, roughly ten times what I should have had. Great. I wasn't trying to get that many, it's just the way it worked out. My process seems to have be a little too thorough, but 200,000 in a total of 3 days? Thats like 8,333 an hour, or 138 a minute! Pretty cool if you ask me.

Now it's Friday and I'm working on more MySpace stuff, finishing up this blog and thinking of ideas for what I'm going to do with Facebook. I've had a great week so far, it's a lot different than I thought it was going to be. Everyone here is really laid back, yet surprisingly devoted to their work. Being my first office job, this was quite a surprise and yet I wasn't quite sure what to expect either. Most of my expectations were derived from either movies or tv, but then again, this is the Northwest and everyone works differently up here. Suits? Who needs 'em? Cars? Who needs 'em? Very cool.

I'm Back

After a long, enduring time away, it is now time to re-animate the remains of this blog.

The purpose?

To start frequently blogging about my experiences at my new internship at All Star Directories. It's one of the fastest growing companies in Seattle right now, and I have been charged with the task to increase our online presence through social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook. I will be updating weekly, so be sure to keep checking back on my progress.

Derek

All Star Directories