Starved of the internet for 2 days...

Well that sucked. Just as my internet at my home goes down, my work also puts a ban on the internet for this week due to excessive filing to the SEC. Finally got my internet at home back today, and according to the cable guy, 99 channels of free cable TV, though I've yet to actually see if this is true or not. Apparently someone in the complex was feeding a signal back through the cable line and it was screwing with more than just my service. I also found out that the cable lines in my apartment are low-density cables, and that I'd never be able to get digital cable here, and that I could possibly have more problems with the internet. However, since I've had my internet for over a year, without problems, I'm not worried, and since I rarely watch TV, I'm not worried about the digital cable wither.

As many of you may or may not know, got my PSP last thursday, and as I've barely done any actual work at my job, I've been playing it quite a bit. I bought Ridge Racer, Wipeout: Pure, and Untold Legends. I mostly play Ridge Racer, and split time evenly between Wipeout and Untold Legends. A coworker has Lumines, and that's basically a very odd version of Tetris. It is quite fun though, especially when the music and graphics change after a certain amount of time/points. Great for those that like puzzle games like that. I bought a pair of clamshell style UMD cases as well, since it's probably not the best idea to stick the UMD's in your pocket. Each case holds 3 UMD's, and still fits quite comfortably into your pocket. I can even fit my PSP and the UMD case, and my cell phone all into one pocket, though the pockets on my pants are pretty large. I managed to fit quite a bit more files than I thought I'd be able to on the 32MB Memory Stick that came with the PSP. At the moment, I have 4 saved games, 17 pictures, 4 MP3's, and two MPEG4 videos. There's almost no space left at all though, and the videos are only 2-3 minutes long each. I really want to buy a 1GB memory stick, but anyone that's not sold out is charging $150 or more for them. MWave.com is selling them for $110, but they won't be in stock until Friday. I'll have to make sure I order as soon as it says they're in. I had considered a 512MB card, but 1GB will store 2 hours worth of near-DVD quality video, so I can rip DVD's and put them on there.

I also bought a USB 2-in-1 cable that will not only act as a normal USB transfer cable for the PSP, but it has a power jack so you can charge your PSP off the USB port while it's plugged in. This is a much more portable way of keeping your PSP charged if needed rather than lugging around your AC adapter. Not as good as a car charger perhaps, but I don't yet have a car, and nearly everywhere I go for long periods of time (work or friends houses) will have a USB port nearby. I highly recommend this to anyone getting a PSP. You can pick them up for $7-12 on Ebay, and I know that BestBuy carries them, and I wouldn't be surprised if places like GameStop, Babbages, or EB Games do, or will sell them in the future.

Tomorrow at work is supposed to be an entire day of review for "the big test" on Friday, which covers all the chapters we've learned about the BITS coding since I was hired. I've done relatively well on all previous tests, mostly averaging 95%, with a couple in the mid-high 80's. You only need 80% to pass, so I'm pretty confident, and I know which areas I need to study already, mostly some of the stuff I had trouble with before, or that I haven't used in a few weeks. The test is on Friday, and although we will have 5 or 6 hours to finish, I'm expecting to be done in under 3. What's great is that we get to go home as soon as we're finished, and still get paid for an entire 8 hour day.

I've been meaning to upload pictures of my vacation to Washington last February, but I'm lazy, and haven't got around to it, but here's one I picked out just for fun. I'll try to upload the others later. This one is of Mt. Shuksan, which is right next to Mt. Baker, where my brother, myself, and our friend Justin went snowboarding. This was an extremely rare winter day in Washington where the sky was completely clear of clouds as far as the eye could see.

15 hours to wait!

It seems like a lifetime =(. I'll be picking up my PSP tonight at midnight. This means I'm going to get about 4 hours of sleep tonight, and it's going to cost me $25 to get a taxi back to my house, but it'll be totally worth getting it a day early; even if I have no games for it =/. I went yesterday and paid it off, but EB Games didn't have any of the 3 games I wanted (Ridge Racers, Wipeout Pure, and Untold Legends). They had RR and Wipeout, but only for pre-orders. God damn me...i figured it would be the systems that sold out, not the games, and so I didn't pre-order. I'll just have to wait for the weekend I suppose.

Apparently everyone's sold out of 1GB Memory Stick Pro Duo's as well, unless I want to spend $150+ on it, which is horrible considering most places sell it for ~$110-120. It sucks ass that Sony's forcing a 32MB stick on us, but I suppose I can use that strictly for save games. I'm really hoping that the Demo UMD that comes with it has at least one playable demo on it. I don't even care what game it is, as long as it's playable. I'd thought about getting Need For Speed Underground Rivals, but I read a review that said the car control was horrible, and that the slightest touch of the D-pad or analog stick sent your car slamming into the side of the wall. Mike Hill bought it though, so he's going to let me know how it is. I'm not too fond of the mere 20 cars it comes with either. I suppose I'm too used to the hundreds of cars in GranTurismo.

Speaking of which, apparently GT4 Mobile's been delayed until sometime in mid 2005. I've heard May from some forums, but when I asked the guy at EB Games, he said they didn't even have a date for it. GameSpot.com still says March 30th, and IGN just says "2005". Even GTA doesn't come out until April I think. I'll probably end up getting the 3 games I mentioned above though. Ridge Racers looks amazing, and I really want an RPG, and Untold Legends is the only one out at the moment, but it looks a lot like Diablo-esqe gameplay, so it should be fun. There's even random dungeons, and apparently thousands of items. By thousands of items, it's probably the same thing they did with Diablo, where different attributes "ie Sword of the Wolf" would give the item different properties, thus creating thousands of possible items.

I'm getting Wipeout because I liked the original one a lot, and apparently this one will have monthly downloadable content, adding a ton of gameplay. I'll need to buy a USB cord as well, because the PSP conveniently doesn't come with one. There's one that lets you charge it while it's plugged into USB though, for a mere $10, but currently it's only available in Japan. Hopefully shipping isn't too much. Why everyone else that made a USB cable didn't think of this is beyond me.

Bored

This job seems like it's going to be easier and easier all the time. We did our largest "project" last week, and after it was completed, the instructor said that nothing on the floor would be that difficult..but it wasn't even difficult! I told her I didn't understand why we were going to get paid so much, and she said that if I wanted, we could work it out to where I would get paid less if i really wanted =P. Took my first test yesterday, passed with a 95%. The 2 problems I missed were little minor things that I just didn't happen to catch.

The benefits they offer here are pretty nice. 8 paid Holidays, plus 2 rolling holidays (basically just 2 days we can choose to have a day off), a week of PTO (Paid Time Off) after 6 months, and another week after 12 months. If we work on a holiday, we get triple overtime. That's over $47 an hour! O_o Pretty good medical benefits as well.

The 6 weeks of training is extremely slow paced. To me anyways. We basically take breaks all day long if we're finished with our work, and even our hour long lunch is paid for.

Stacy had her baby. She actually had it the Monday after I came back from vacation (Feb 21st), but I didn't find out until a week later. She (the baby) weighs 6 pounds, 6 ounces, so she's pretty small. Haven't gone to see her yet, maybe this weekend. Stacy was going to name her Anna Karine...as far as I know she stuck with it. She pronounces the middle name "Karen", which I tried to correct her on, but she insisted that's how it was pronounced, so I didn't argue with her. It's her kid after all =).