So Out of It

I saw this news headline on the Yahoo! Movie News website; “Murphy says he and Brown have split up”. I have no idea who these people could be. My first thought was Murphy Brown, then Peter Murphy. I guess it’s because we don’t watch TV much.

I Suck!

So I am in the Forest Temple in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, which is relatively early in the game, and I am stuck… I am at a part where there are some bridges that span a chasm (that’s a cool word, btw, chasm) and they swivel around depending on the way the wind blows. But I can’t figure out how to line them up all the same way. I tried using the slingshot to hit the little wind-propeller things, but that didn’t work. I don’t think I am missing anything in the other rooms either. I don’t want to have to check the spoiler sites/guides, but I think I may have to.

Goddamn Snakes

There’s this part of my commute home where two lanes turns into three lanes (a lane on the right is added because of a merge) and then about a half mile later, this right lane merges in and the road becomes two lanes again. Imagine that it’s an extended merging lane.

It’s maddening that so many drivers who were in the right lane will jump over to the “new” right merging lane and snake down the side, just to merge to the left again and cause us all to slow down. I hate those people. I wish I had a rocket launcher on my car at times like those.

Search for James Kim

I have been following the search for James Kim and his family, who were missing for several days. Yesterday they found his wife and two kids safe at the car, which had been stuck in the snow, but James set out two days previous in search of help, and is still missing as of this morning. I am really hoping they find him safe. I’m not sure why this story gets to me.. maybe because he is about the same age as me, with two kids as well. I hope he is found today.

A Quickie

Quick run that is… woke up a bit late and had to take a short run of 20 minutes at 5:40am. I need to be back at home by 6am, shower and get ready by 6:20am, at which time I have to wake the kids and get breakfast and lunch ready. We are out the door at 7:10am. That’s pretty much the morning schedule, btw.

Today I ran with my Shuffle hanging around my neck using the lanyard. Not sure if I liked it. It bounces around and I can hear an occasional click as it hits the plastic part of the cord. Plus that pristine white lanyard is going to get yucky pretty fast.

Like a Machine

Yesterday at about 2:30 I went out for a run. I planned to run my usual 4-mile route, but when I reached the halfway point, where I usually turn around, my legs felt so good that I just kept going. I estimate that I ran a little over 6 miles. (I’ll have to drive the route with my GPS later to make sure) When I got home, I could feel my legs were a bit tired. Actually it was more my joints rather than muscles. But my breathing and heartrate seemed to be fine. And today my legs felt ready to go again. We’ll see if I can wake up early enough tomorrow morning. The problem with morning runs is that I don’t have enough time for a long run. I usually have to cut it short at 40 minutes or so. Oh well, it’s better than nothing. 🙂

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess


I have played about 3.5 hours of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess on the Nintendo Wii, and I am really enjoying it. The graphics are great, and the Wii control scheme is excellent! So far, it’s pretty easy, there haven’t been any major puzzles and the combat is simple. Right now, Link is in wolf form and the little demon/elf thing, Midra, helps out a lot with hints and stuff. I guess I am still in “tutorial” mode, but it’s still lots of fun.


One criticism that many people have made is that they wish there was voice acting in it, rather than just text. At first I agreed, but now I think I like it where the characters speak a tiny bit of “animalese” and then you read the rest. That little bit of voice is just enough to set the tone of the conversation and give you a bit of personality, plus the gestures and expressions of the characters is superb. But by letting you read the rest of the dialog, you can kind of leave it to your own imagination how the rest sounds. Kind of like reading a book as opposed to having an actor give you his interpretation of a character. I also enjoy the music a lot. The tunes are familiar to anyone who has played a Zelda game before, but also new and grand in scope. As I said before, the graphics are great. The overall setting and ambience is really well done. I was really into the cel-shading style of Wind Waker, and wasn’t really looking forward to a more realistic looking Zelda game. But I think it is just about perfect what they have done. The characters still have that Zelda charm, but now are semi-anime looking. The overall mood is definitely darker than Wind Waker too, so I think they are really unique experiences. Which means I can keep playing Wind Waker as I play Twilight Princess.


It’s really a great game, and I can see myself actually finishing this one, alongside Wind Waker! I think the first vid game I ever finished was the original Legend of Zelda on the NES way back when. Since then I must have only finished a handful more, all from the NES days. With the estimated 70+ hours of gameplay that Twilight Princess has, it looks like I will be enjoying it for quite a long time!