It's been busy since the Letter 2 completed the endless setlist. Last week it was my grade school's summer Carnival. For the first time in my entire life (26 years), my dad was not in charge. And so, I didn't go the first three nights, although the third night I did show up for the very end of the night, but otherwise I wasn't there at all, and for good reason. Without my dad in charge, which was the reason I made a concerted effort to help out the last 5+ years, why should I help. Besides, I don't think the new group in charge wanted our help, as none of my brothers, to my knowledge, helped on any of the 5 nights. Both my parents still were there, but in random booth capacities. But since it is the Carnival, and I have been helping forever, I decided to help out the last two nights. Which brings me to a very busy last Saturday.

We'll start things off with my multi-sport dynasty league's supplemental rookie draft (for NFL/NBA rooks). I came in with the #8 pick (upto 6 rounds if you so choose, straight draft), but I also acquired a second first round pick, which turned out to be the #3 pick in the draft. After a few weeks of deliberating and planning, my best case draft scenario was getting Michael Beasley with the #3 and Kevin Love with the #8. I was really becoming enamoured with Beasley, b/c my basketball has good guards (CP3, Iguodala, Miller, Childress), but my big guys were less than desired (Aldridge, Wilcox, Haslem). So Beasley would've been a huge addition, not to mention Love. I only had to dodge the other owners, and a couple of them scared me. Come draft time, McFadden went #1, and Jonathan Stewart went #2, allowing me to happily snatch Beasley. Then the next group of picks saw more RBs taken along with OJ Mayo, so, once again, I happily took Kevin Love. Beasley & Love was my best case scenario coming in, and I got both. I was worried about Beasley b/c I wasn't sure if OJ Mayo would have been the right choice at #3 considering the RBs available (I have Ronnie Brown & Ryan Grant already at RB), so trading down was a possibility. But in the end, it all worked out and I got my top choices. The second round I snatched Matt Ryan as a great value pick (20th overall), then finished with Marc Gasol in the third round. And I may trade Ryan to help my baseball team, so it was a great day for my fantasy teams. My football team didn't improve any, but it was already pretty good to begin with (Carson Palmer, Brown, Grant, Brandon Marshall being the top players), and my basketball team got much better adding Beasley & Love to CP3 and crew. Also pair the draft with some gaming fun at our commish's house, playing Mario & Sonic for Wii (which despite the low reviews, 66% GameRanking, was alot of fun) and some Rock Band.

After all that, it was time to see how the 08 Carnival was. In a nutshell, it was weird. Since I've never experienced it as not the son of the chairman, throughout the evening I had the feeling that I wasn't wanted there. Still, after the first hour, I helped running out prizes like always, and closing up at the end of the night like we always do. Moving forward a day, Sunday was the same. It was the same thing we've always done, it just felt different. After going through those two days, I'm not sure I really want to help anymore, but I'm sure come next summer, I'll be willing to help out a couple nights, probably not all 5 anymore.

During the day Sunday, I randomly played Rock Band for the first time since we beat the Endless Setlist. On my own, I only have "Green Grass & High Tides" left to beat. Otherwise, I only have 4 songs from the disc that I haven't 4 starred or better (Flirtin With Disaster, Nightmare, Outside, Can't Let Go). I improved some of my other scores, including a near gold star run of "Live Forever", and closing in on the 200K mark on "Welcome Home". But the best moment came when I somehow 5 starred "Timmy & the Lords of the Underworld" despite hitting only 82% of the notes! Yes 82% 5 star run. I was so amazed that I took a pic with my cell phone. Incredible. Moving on....

Some quick thoughts on the big three's E3 conferences. I completely forgot about Microsoft's conference so I missed it Monday, but I caught the main details (Avatars, FFXIII, Gears 2). I heard about the avatars before hear on Rumor Control, so I wasn't surprised to see it, although it seems like Nintendo's Miis are having a substantial impact on gaming. I'm not worried about Gears of War 2, though I'm sure it'll be good. Final Fantasy XIII surprised me. I read today that it'll be a PS3 port, so I'm happy to hear that. Still, despite the surprise, its nice to hear that more people will get to play FFXIII.

Nintendo's conference was disappointing. New Animal Crossing, okay whatever. But that was about it. The 3 "sports" shown of in Wii Sports Resort looked bad. The Wii MotionPlus addon sounds okay, but its hard to tell if its a true improvement on the motion controls, or fixes the motion issues the WiiMotes have. Either way, okay. Wii Music I had some hopes for, but after their demonstration, not so much anymore. But the worst part about their conference was that nothing else big was announced or even shown off. That was very disappointing.

To finish off, Sony's conference was similar. It had some good announcements, PSN Ratchet & Clank title this summer (!!!!), God of War 3 official (!!!!!), inFAMOUS trailer (!!!!!!!!), but at the end, that was it. Watching Nintendo's conference, and watching the updated blog for Sony's (darn work network blocking the live feed for whatever reason), and catching up on Microsoft's conference, there was no big game revelation for this fall. It just feels like the only big fall releases will be Gears of War 2 and Resistance 2. That's it? Nothing else?? Just feels like something's missing. Guess the R&C title is a PSN and not a full featured release b/c of Resistance, okay, but there are no other big titles, from Sony nor Nintendo??? I was disappointed with that.

Otherwise, it is still shaping up to be a good gaming fall/winter. Lego Batman, Little Big Planet, NBA 2K9, Prince of Persia, Tomb Raider Underworld, Rock Band 2, Guitar Hero: World Tour (maybe), Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2, and others. Oh yeah, speaking of Rock Band 2, their tracklist is absolutely insane! Its a tremendous tracklisting with alot of great songs that'll be very fun to play (Girls Gone Grey, My Own Worst Enemy, Everlong, new Bang Camaro, Float On, etc, etc, etc).

And with that, my shift is almost done so I'll end this now.

I'm still recovering here from the epic day that was yesterday. After unlocking it a few weeks ago, we finally decided to take on the biggest challenge in Rock Band: the Endless Setlist on Expert! And so it began yesterday. Thanks to a very well done guide, found here on the official Rock Band forums, we broke the 58 song setlist into 5 tiers, as outline in the guide, and took breaks inbetween each tier, so we didn't wear ourselves out, or kill our vocalist's voice, or wear out my wrists, as I played guitar.

We got through the first 14 songs without too much trouble, though we did run into some issues with the first bonus songs, as we never play them, with the exception of Bang Camaro's "Pleasure (Pleasure)". We made it through the next 16 without too much issue, although the break after Ballroom Blitz was needed. But, as the guide, said, that tier was the end of the cakewalk. We made it halfway through when we ran into the first of many tough songs, starting with Fallout Boy's "Dead on Arrival", followed by a grand performance of "Pleasure" before we had to tackle the first of the tier 9 guitar songs, Aerosmith's "Train Kept a Rollin". But that's not where the first speedbump was encountered. That belonged to the hilarious, yet very difficult, song from South Park, "Timmy and the Lords of the Underworld". After a couple failures, it was an incredible moment when we finally beat "Timmy", barely surviving at the end as our combo vocals had a 28%, but all that mattered was we finished it! The rest of that third tier was not so bad, and we made it up to the nightmarish final 13 songs.

The next tier of songs we played was only 6, merely because the last song of the 6 was The Outlaws' epic "Green Grass and High Tides", the biggest obstacle in our quest for Platinum status. It took strategery, it took skill, it took 3 tries, and, mid-2nd solo, it took a bassist tag to a friend who just arrived, before we finished it, to the thrill of all, particularly myself, as leading up to yesterday, I was practicing some songs, getting to the point that of the main 45 songs, "Green Grass" was the only one I hadn't beaten yet, and "Suffragate City" was the only song I didn't 4 star or better (of the bonus songs, there are 3 or 4 I have 3 stars on). So finishing GG&HT was a tremendous thrill, as the last 20% of that song required lots of overdrive.

Making the final tier was great, knowing we were only 7 songs away from finishing the Endless Setlist. Previous songs that gave me fits, "Highway Star" and "Flirtin with Disaster" were finished without any trouble, a great feeling as it took me a long time to finally beat both of those on my own. But then we got to the last bonus song, Honest Bob and the Factory Dealer Incentives' "I Get By", a very difficult vocal song. In a photo finish, just like "Timmy", we survive with very little margin for error at the end, bringing us to the final two songs, "Run to the Hills" & "Won't Get Fooled Again". "Run to the Hills" required a replay, but that was finished upon the second try, and hearing the organ solos in "Won't Get Fooled Again" was a great feeling, knowing we made it, we were there, we were on the last song of the Endless Setlist, with everyone playing on Expert. And so it was that we finished the Endless Setlist last night, about 7 hours or so after beginning, notching 252 stars out of a possible 290, with myself on guitar, and our host for the day, Chris on drums, playing all 58 songs. Huge dap also goes to our vocalist, Joe, who hung in for all but one song, which was only "Don't Fear the Reaper", so major props to him for gutting it through the bonus songs, all but like 2 of which he has heard only once before, which came the night before courtesy of YouTube. Also, was a great effort from our group of bassist's, as one had never played Expert Bass, one whose been playing Expert Bass, but is still in training, and our ace in the hole, coming in cold, getting tagged into "Green Grass" mid 2nd solo, and accidentally resuming the song before everyone was ready no less. It was a great night.

And even afterwards it was fun, as we ran the mixed cavalcade of band members, which concluded with a run on Oasis' "Live Forever" that netted us the #2 spot.

Outside of yesterday, its been an okay span since returning from vacation. Work is returning to its awful period, as we keep getting more stuff dumped on us to handle, and we're losing people again. Still, my numbers are hanging on as I've won awards the last 3 months, and soon enough most likely 4 months. I picked up the graphic novel, Watchmen, and I'm halfway through so far. Other than Rock Band, I've played some more GTA IV, but the last few days I've randomly started playing Zack & Wiki again, making my way to the latter portion of the game. I also made a PC purchase, finishing my desktop redesign from May, picking up the 22" Widescreen monitor I was considering back when I bought the parts for my new PC. It looks absolutely incredible, and I'm still adjusting to it because its downright ridiculous for a computer monitor. I also randomly reinstalled Windows on my laptop, as it was having a strange issue where the wireless wouldn't turn on for like 5 minutes after a restart. I didn't want to reinstall Windows, but couldn't find an answer to the problem. Oh well, its back up and working fine now.

That's about everything right now. Still want to finish GTA, Beyond Good & Evil, Okami, and Zack & Wiki, and since Lego Batman is the next definitive game I want, I have plenty of time to finish these. Anywho, the rain delay has ended, so back to the Wimbledon final between Roger & Rafa.

Oh man, that vacation was so needed last week. Now that I'm back to work, especially hearing how bad it was last week, my family vacation last week came at the perfect time. Once again, we traveled to the Outer Banks in North Carolina. This year we couldn't get the oceanfront house we had last year, but the house we got was still good. It was more inland, but still close enough to the ocean. And it of course had all the nice requisite stuff around the house, lots of bedrooms & baths, pool, hot tub, pool table, multiple fridges, wet bar, two dishwashers, even a poker table.

The week started out pretty hot (90-95 on monday & tuesday), but the heat tapered off the rest of the week. Unfortunately that early heat cost me a round of golf, as I played 18 on monday in the heat and didn't feel too good afterwords. As it turned out, it wasn't that bad on tuesday, but I made the right choice, just in case the temps did near triple digits on tuesday. Besides, I didn't play that well on monday in the heat, so I would've played just as bad tuesday, and on a course I like. Monday's round was at the Carolina Club, a nice little course, the furthest one in on the mainland that we play. The course is starting to grow on me the more we play it. Last year I finished a great week of golf with a 99 there. This year I played well in parts, but poorly in other parts. Still, even in the heat I managed a 108, which is fine considering. At the least, I hit some great tee shots with my driver (straight or a power fade for once, instead of a push slice). A minor problem developed that day, chunking approach shots that hampered my other two rounds, but it wasn't evident on monday due to the temps.

The next few days I just lounged around, relaxing at the house. I started reading Devil May Care, the new James Bond novel written by Sebastian Faulks trying to emulate Ian Fleming on the centenary of Fleming's birth. I finished Devil May Care on thursday night, and I thought it was okay. It certainly is not as good as any of Fleming's novels, but for a Fleming-inspired novel, especially one written after Fleming's last novel, Man With the Golden Gun, I liked it. It did have moments that were comparable to Fleming's works, while others that felt inspired from the movies. Nevertheless, as a pretty big Bond fan (and I'm probably underestimating myself), I thought it was a fine effort. Also I started playing Beyond Good & Evil, which had a pretty cool premise, planet taken over by military group "protecting" the planet from invaders, although you are tasked to expose the truth. I made it through the first two big "dungeons" so far, and its okay so far. The gameplay does have a fair amount of stealth to it, which I'm not a big fan of, but its forgiving stealth, which I can tolerate. I still have some work to do, but its not a long game, so it shouldn't take too much longer to finish. My brother randomly brought Rock Band with him, so that was played alot during the week. Oddly enough, I stopped playing the guitar, when I did play it, after tuesday night and only played the drums. And I was getting pretty good too. I can only do Hard on most songs, but I was able to do really well on expert on some songs (Beetlebum, Dirty Little Secret, Live Forever). Myself and my nephew even gold starred a song (Beetlebum I believe), just the two of us, he was on guitar and I was drumming. And that brings me to tuesday night.

There was a massive power outage that lasted over 2 hours on tuesday night. I was playing Rock Band with two of my nephews when the power went out. Initially I thought it was more technical problems we were having, as we had a few power glitches our first two days at the house, but then we noticed the whole house was off, including the rest of our neighborhood. Plus when everyone else returned to the house, the outage spread to the main road where the shops also lost power. Thankfully, around 915, power returned. At least the outage wasn't a total waste of time. I read a few chapters of Devil May Care, and later when it was darker out, another brother was out on the top deck playing his acoustic guitar, taking requests from my niece and nephews, who kept spouting off Rock Band songs. Still, it was great when the power came back on, to the point people in our area were clapping. I also played through the Penny Arcade game, On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness. It was short, but it was very funny and a lot of fun. Basically a point and click adventure game, but with RPG combat instead of adventure puzzles, its was a fun title.

The next round of golf came thursday night at the Currituck Club, an incredible course located on the barrier islands. The Currituck Club is the nicest course we play while down there, as it has a great clubhouse plus GPS in their carts. Its also the course where I shot one of my first sub-100 rounds, and also where I holed out a bunker shot for a birdie! This year's round was much better than last year's. Last year we played in British Open conditions, 50s and windy. This year it was much better. Overall, I played okay, very good at times, awful others. My good driving continued, as I had some more straight & power fade drives in the 230 yd range, but the chunked approach shots reared their incredibly ugly face in this round. I figured at least 8 shots that I chunked, where even decent shots would've put me in position for par putts. I ended up shooting a 100 despite that. If only those shots did crop up so much, I could've shot a low-mid 90s round. Fast forward to saturday's final round, and that was the same story. I was driving it surprisingly well, few push slices, some straight drives, lots of power fades. But those chunks returned at inopportune times, and I couldn't putt to save anything. I finished with a respectable 101 despite 40 putts, a record I never want to approach again. Still, the round was enjoyable, as it was at The Pointe, probably my favorite course in the Outer Banks. Also my older brother shot an 80, just missing a birdie putt on the last hole for a 79.

So let's see, golf was fun, though I could've played a lot better. Still I had respectable scores and hit some very good drives for once. I finished reading Devil May Care. We got to watch the US Open, and as I had monday off too, I got to watch the 18+1 hole playoff (incidentally, after finding out today that Tiger won the Open with a double stress fracture needing surgery that will end his year, looking back at this year's US Open, that may have been the gutsiest performance ever, winning the toughest tournament in professional golf, literally on one leg. Congrats Tiger, get back to us soon, but please be 100%). All in all, it was a nice vacation. Unfortunately its now time to get back to reality. Oh well, at least I have another vacation coming at the end of August for my birthday. Only 9 weeks away.

Well, now it is official. I sold my 360 yesterday, bringing me back down to 2 consoles (PS3 & Wii). The departure of the 360 means the return of Rock Band, now for PS3. This was a crazy situation, but basically I decided to move the 360, so I sold my 360 RB to my brother's roommate, then the 360 itself for a PS3 copy of RB. And now its time to rock once again. Its unfortunate that I have to replay everything, but that is not as big a deal as you'd think. That's because outside of a friend's house every other week, I haven't really played Rock Band for well over a month, maybe two. So digging back into RB will be a pleasure (Pleasure!). Last night I started a new guitarist, and prior to work today, I got to the 7th tier of songs on Expert already, having earned two gold stars (Maps & I Think I'm Paranoid) on the way. Plus before eating lunch I accomplished a large feat, beating Joker & the Thief! Tonight I'll make my way back to the final tier, and the fun of Highway Star, Flirtin With Disaster, Run to the Hills, and Green Grass & High Tides.

Outside of Rock Band, I made three PC purchases recently. I purchased Sam & Max Season Two along with the Penny Arcade game, On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, last week. I haven't started Sam & Max yet, but I have played a bunch of Precipice, and I like it so far. The gameplay is fairly simple, but the humor is excellent, so long as you like Penny Arcade's humor. And I also picked up Mass Effect, to get a save going for when Mass Effect 2 comes out. Also just today, I purchased Beyond Good & Evil for PS2, in anticipation of BG&E2 coming out later this year, or whenever it does. I decided not to get the Bourne Conspiracy today, mostly due to the reviews stating that its okay (7.5-8.0) but its only 10 hours with little replay value. Didn't feel like spending $60 on it. Besides, I'll be in good shape for gaming for awhile now, especially with my family's vacation coming up next week.

I'll have GTA IV, Okami, BG&E, Sam & Max S2, Precipice of Darkness, plus the new James Bond novel written by Sebastian Faulks for the Centenary of Ian Fleming's birth, Devil May Care. I think I'm ready for a relaxing week, with 4 rounds of golf scheduled. I just have to make it through the next 2+ days of work. Almost there.

I've been getting lazy about this, but I did finally get around to reviewing Super Mario Galaxy, found here.

Considering my gaming track record, I shouldn't be surprised this was going to happen. Still, it is surprising nonetheless that its happening. That is I'm selling my Xbox 360 to a friend. Not a surprise that it was the PS3 that did the 360 in for me. It happened a couple times to the original Xbox. Honestly though, its not a bad thing, because I wanted the Xbox to be more than it was, considering it had a HDD and the PS2 did not (it did but wasn't used the same way as the Xbox used its HDD). The PS3 has a HDD, plus its built in, so games are designed to use it, whereas 360 games are designed without a HDD in mind. That and I've been getting games for PS3 of late, like GTA IV, and after looking at future releases, I had a hard time finding high quality games exclusive to the 360 that would be enough for me to keep the system. Suffice to say that Too Human was not enough, Banjo Kazooie 3 was not what I was hoping it would be, and I'm not betting on Tales of Vesperia & Infinite Undiscovery to be worthwhile RPGs (could never get into those types of RPGs). That and my new PC is pretty good, so I can get Mass Effect for PC, and wait for ME2 to come to PC to play that. So that's it, I'm back down to 2 consoles, PS3 and Wii. Oddly enough, I feel better after this too. I no longer feel compelled to get games for each system just to ensure its not collecting dust. Still, I'll miss it. The 360 is a good system, has a nice interface, and a very good online setup. I just never took advantage of most of it.

In other areas of my life since my last post, I'm still working through GTA IV. I've actually avoided screwing around because I feel it doesn't get me anywhere. And I like that because I may actually finish a GTA game for once. After watching a co-worker play it at work on an emulator, I downloaded Super Mario 3 for the Wii, and I've been playing that and Punchout. I played some Smash Bros Brawl over the weekend, finishing the Event Matches and the Boss Battles for the first time. I liked the demo of The Bourne Conspiracy, so that may be my next purchase, just in time for my vacation, week after its release. And that vacation can't come soon enough, as work has just been annoying of late, even though I got great news yesterday. I randomly won Employee of the Month for April! Now if I can just get that promotion to being a 2nd level associate.

Cavs, well, they need better players. We should have beaten the Celtics, but no Gibson in game 7, and very little Varejao, plus no one else really stepped up, so LeBron went nuts, but wasn't enough. We need a good PG (draft Ty Lawson?), and could use a quality big guy (Antawn Jamison???). I don't want to see LBJ leave, but who could blame him if he has these teammates during his Cavs stay.

That's about all I got for now.

This is a little late, but last Thursday night/Friday morning I went to see Iron Man with someone from work, and earlier that day, I finished building my new PC! Iron Man was good. I'm more of a DC fan than a Marvel fan, and I didn't know too much about Iron Man, but I still enjoyed the movie, and thought most of it was really good. I was hoping for some more action, particularly during the final battle, but otherwise, I can't find too many areas to complain about with Iron Man. Robert Downey Jr was phenomenal as Tony Stark, terrific casting. I was impressed by Gwyneth Paltrow, as I'm not a big fan of hers, but she did a very nice job as Pepper Potts. I would easily put Iron Man up there with the best comic book movies (probably Batman Begins being #1), as it did lots of good things with very few bad.

I'm very happy I successfully built my new PC, without much trouble too. I did hit a snag trying to mount the motherboard, took some time before I figured out I had mounting screws to use, but otherwise, I didn't run into too much trouble until it came to hook up one of my old HDDs to transfer my media off it to one of the new HDDs. That took the better part of a day, and at the end, a simple reboot got my PC to recognize it. Anywho, its up and running very well, and amazingly, I can even play Crysis (!!!) on it if I so desired. I downloaded the demo, and I was surprised how well it ran, max resolution and potentially at medium settings (Optimally at low settings). I wasn't trying to build a gaming PC, but I'm very happy to know that it can. I have an AMD Athlon 64 2.66ghz, 2GB RAM, Radeon x1650 w/512mb, plus two HDDs (160 & 500). I was nervous before even purchasing everything, just because I haven't built a PC from scratch before, but the process went smoothly.

In other areas, I've been mostly playing GTA IV, when I am playing something. I'm about 16% through so far, and I'm having fun to this point. I was amazed to see GameSpot award GTA IV with a 10 and I can see why. The graphics are great, the city feels alive, there are enough new subtle changes that makes the game that much better. Which is good because I may be playing it for awhile. And that's because I looked over new releases, and I don't see anything I'd want for a month. The next title I may get is The Bourne Conspiracy after playing the demo. I can see Bourne Conspiracy going either way, good or bad, but I thought the demo was good. I finished all 8 50cc cups in Mario Kart, plus 1 100cc cup so far. The inclusion of bikes with karts was a good idea, gives you more variety. Not to mention that you can choose between a bunch of karts as well, so for a Mario Kart game, there's a pretty good amount of variety (karts, bikes, 32 tracks).

That's about all I can think of to add at the moment.