Dennis Spielman's Blog Archive for January 2008
Newest posts are at the bottom.
Fact and fiction are blurred here.
You have been warned.
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
In this piece on Psychology Today titled, Dreams: Night School, they discus that dreams are a training ground for events that might happen in real life. I found this on Reddit this morning and it got me thinking, if my dreams are a training ground for something that might happen, then I'm going to have some bizarre encounters.This morning I had a dream where I was like in Italy water rafting on their rivers. I was with this girl, that I'll just refer to her as my dream girl, for she didn't have a name and the only thing I ever seem to remember about this girl when I dream about her is that she's pretty and she has long dark hair. After doing some repairs underwater to this machine that helps generate electricity, we encountered these three like thugs. I managed to get one of their shotguns, but they got my dream girl. They made some threats and I made a bigger one. I pointed the shotgun at some like hydrogen slash nitrogen air tanks and threaten to blow us all up if they hurt her because I couldn't live without her. They know I was serious so they let her go, and we escaped on a yellow water raft air tube.
Kind of on the subject of dreams, I'm hoping for a big paycheck this Friday. I'm also looking forward to getting my taxes taken care of. I got 16 payments left on my car! That's less than a year and a half. I can't wait to get that paid off. As for more fun random stuff, going to Rome for two weeks on my Birthday in April will cost around $4,000 for air and hotel. It also looks that way for Tokyo and London as well. Basically, I can go anywhere in the world for $3,000 to $5,000 for two weeks. It's a shame that I don't have that kind of money lying around, but it would be more fun if that dream girl came with me. I guess that's all for now. I have to shower and get ready for work and make some money for those crazy dreams.
Friday, January 4, 2008
C-C-C-C-COMBO BREAKER! Casting has officially started for Running Out of Lives. I've made announcements on Craig's List, MySpace, and Facebook. It's time to get this show on the road! My e-mail address is on the Running Out of Lives page, so check out the page for more information. This show is going to be awesome. I've already got several great skits planned. The goal is to start shooting next month, building up several episodes and then release them on a regular basis. For the first season we'll have between 10 to 15 episodes that would be around 10 to 15 minutes in length. Now, would you kindly join us?Caturday, January 12, 2008
By my time, I still have time for Invisible Caturday for this week's You Laugh, You Lose. There are 14 tests to make up for the lack of tests that I've not been giving 'cause I haz video games. I beat Metroid Prime 3 for the Wii yesterday. It was a great game, rather challenging. I can't seem to think of what to write about it mini-review for it right now. All I can say is, if you play first person shooters and like adventure games, give it a try, even if you've never played any of the other Metroid Prime games. The game doesn't make you feel like you've missed out on something except on some of bits with Dark Samus. Playing this game for some reason made me want to make a Metroid movie. I actually wrote a scene for a movie, so who knows, maybe someday I'll develop it and make a movie staring Samus.On the subject of game movies, I've gotten around 10 people interested in Running Out of Lives so far. We'll going to have a production meeting probably on the 27th if that works out with everyone. I'm working to get more people into working on the project since not everyone is going to be able to help with every episode. I'm excited and I'm looking forward to the meeting. I'll let you know how the meeting went of course. I plan to start a production blog for the series once it gets underway.
Let's see, what else. Yesterday, I did a survey testing a product for an hour and I got paid $50 (I can't go into details due to an agreement, even though the products might already be on the market). I worried my work a bit as I told them I was leaving to go to an appointment. I was supposed to do the test on Thursday at 4:30, but they put me down on for Friday instead, so I had to leave work an hour early on Friday, which was fine because we weren't busy. I came back to work after that test to check on them and to get my sunglass thats I left in my locker. I told them what I did. Dana hit me because she got worried. The way Eric told her what I was doing made it seem really serious since my Mom came to pick up me and Eric knew my car was fine as he took me to go pick it up from the service center. The reason my Mom picked me was because she didn't want to go alone and she had the directions on how to get there.
I also got my transmission on my car fixed on Friday as well. I dropped my car off at the Goodyear service center that I usually do business with for serious car matters right before work. (They may be slow, but they do the job right.) I had been noticing my transmission was slipping when it was cold outside and the car wasn't warmed up all the way. It turns out I was slowly losing fluid because a bolt had come loose. The place fixed it for free since they were the ones who did my transmission fluid. I also had my tires rotated and balanced since they had the car. Yeah, I dropped the car off and then I walked to work from the service center, which took longer than I thought it would at about 15 minutes. It wouldn't have been so bad it wasn't for that damn wind chill, but this friendly homeless dog followed me to work, so he kept me company. I did try to call work to see whoever was there wouldn't mind picking me up real fast, but I got no answer. (It turned out Bill was there, but on the other line when I called.) Once I got to work, I asked Bill to call the dog police, as I told the dog I would do for him, so hopefully he'll get a good home.
I guess that's it for random news. I think I went into more details then you may have wanted to hear. Enjoy the cat pictures.
Monday, January 14, 2008
Okay, here's a fun game you can play if you're good with a picture editing program such as Photoshop or Paint.1. Take the third image from here (you may have to do a screen capture).
2. The title of the article you get from here is the name of your band.
3. And the last four words (or thereabouts) of the last quotation from here is the album title.
4. Slap them all together into some album art, upload, and POST YOUR FINDINGS.
These are the ones I ended up with: Album 1 Album 2 Album 3. If you're a member of a message board, play this game. I found out about it from my own SoaH City message board.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
A lot of people ask for my help. It's not very often someone asks for my help in stopping a bomb, but that's what happened Sunday morning. A scientist at a research faculty was going to blow up the building because he was fired by the company. Time was short and I was far away. I flew there, staying low tot he ground, passing through the country side as the faculty was deep in the country, away from the city. I was flying pretty fast, but not fast enough, so I used my time slowing ability (Chaos Control) to travel even faster. Everything became a blur as I flew over the dirt roads. I started to slow down once I saw a large warehouse building.Standing outside on the dirt field was the guy who contacted me. The man, who I never caught his name, was about 30 something years old with a skinny build and messy, brown hair. His outfit was simply blue jeans and white lab coat.
"Thank goodness you're here," he said.
"I must admit, I've never stopped a bomb before," I told him.
"Well, this bomb is set up in a different way from what you've see in the movies. There are actually two panels that need to be destroyed that act as a link to stopping the bomb."
"How hard is it to get to these panels?"
"Well," he paused for a moment. "One is guarded in a pin by zombies and the other is at the end of an electrical obstacle course."
"Damn, I'll guess I'll deal with the zombies first."
"Alright," he pointed to a chain-linked fence to the west side of the building. "That's where that panel is. The other," pointed to the other side of the building, "is back behind there.
"I'm on it," I said and flew into the air toward the zombie pit.
I didn't have time to fight through the zombies kept within the chain-linked fence, so I flew over them toward this large black box hanging on the wall. The box was actually a PC hard drive case. I flew toward it, ripped it off, letting it fly backward, hitting a few zombies that were trying to sneak up to me.
I flew up and headed toward where the next panel was located. On my way, I saw the scientist who built the bomb. He was cussing in a rage. He had just released the trigger to let the bomb explode. I made my way to the next panel. This panel wasn't going to be as easy. In order to get to the panel, one must climb up a ladder, hold onto a set of horizontal bars (picture monkey bars from a playground), and then pull up onto another ladder through a tube. There were electrical wires everywhere and one false move and you'll be cooked.
My contact ran up to me. "Well, what are you waiting for?"
"I just need to figure out a way to get through this safely."
But I was out of time. The bomb went off. I turned around to face the explosion. My contact ran away while I stood there, ready for the impact. I could hear the cries of people dying in the blast. I held my hands out like a person trying to push a car against the blast wave of the bomb. Have you ever tried to push a car up a hill? Well, that's what it felt like trying to push this bomb blast back. The blast wasn't moving and neither was I. It was a stalemate, but I was starting to give away. I prayed to the Gods to give me more strength, and they answered. A cool wind blew at me from behind, going inside my body. I gave the blast-wave a good push back into itself and the bomb imploded into itself.
The damage the bomb did was not reversed, but at least I managed to stop the bomb from reaching even further. That's a good, right? All in a day's work I guess. Now, the story of my time at my day job wasn't that interesting. I busted my ass cleaning the lab for a big visit on Tuesday (which thankfully I'm off on that day). I used my time slowing powers to try and get as much of the lab cleaned. My coworker in the lab wasn't feeling to well, so I let him go home early, but I still kept things under control. We weren't too busy, so of course that helped. What's worth noting is what got me upset when I first walked into the lab. I came into work and saw a pile of dust on the floor right next to the dustpan with the broom a few feet away. Seriously, sweeping up that dust into the pan isn't hard like trying to stop a fucking bomb.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
In this week's You Laugh, You Lose theme, I make fun of movies. I got a few themes planned for the next few weeks. Until next time!Wednesday, January 30, 2008
This week I have a very special You Laugh, You Lose theme: You Laugh, You Go To Hell! It's a collection of offensive images hence the title. Check that out to see if you're going to Hell. Now, while you're still here, I got some things to talk about. I've had a couple of interesting dreams lately. A few of them have involved me fighting Terminator robots. One dream I've fleshed out into a story.But, I'm not going to talk about that story idea since I don't want someone else to write it. What I'm going to talk about is my quest to play No More Heroes. You see, last week I pre-ordered No More Heroes for the Wii through Amazon to save on taxes (that $5 adds up after awhile). Well, I got a notice yesterday saying that their shipping of it has been delayed. I was off work yesterday, so I went to Wal*Mart and picked it up since I had to pick up some cheese for dinner anyway. I get home and started baking some chocolate M&M cookies. While a batch was cooking, I tried to cancel the order at Amazon, but at that time it got into a stage where I couldn't cancel, so now I'll have to return the game back to Amazon. I couldn't wait and return the Wal*Mart copy because I had already opened it up and read the manual while I was baking cookies. The funny thing is, my gut told me to cancel the order first before going out to buy it. Moral of the story, listen to your damn gut!
However, the funny doesn't stop there. After I got done baking cookies, I booted up my Wii to play No More Heroes. I clean up around my couch, went to the bathroom, you know, getting myself ready to sit down to relax and play the game. Just as I was about to sit down, work called. My coworker, John, was really sick so they asked if could come into work and finish his shift. Of course, I went to work. Funny, huh? Well, the good news is I now get Friday off and I already have Saturday off, so woohoo! Of course, as soon as I got home, I ate dinner, dealt with some e-mails, and finally played No More Heroes. The fighting is a blast. I don't think I've ever had that much fun using a sword weapon in a video game.