From Applegeeks Lite.
Oh bloody fuck. Spider-man 3 teaser is up now. It's freaking awesome. Peter Parker is more emo than ever. Sandman. Green Goblin. Symbiotic suit. Awesome.
Saw Superman Returns yesterday. A bit lengthy but awesome none the less.
Actually, it's not as awesome as I expected it to be. I was expecting so much more but the movie was okay. I watch the first screening at the Eastwood Cinemas at around 11:30 in the morning which was just after work. I may have been a little too tired to digest everything. Plus, it continues after Superman 1 and 2, and I have not done my homework and refreshed my mind for a better experience.
I liked it and would definitely see it a couple of times more. After a month or so, I'd most likely give it the IMax treatment.
I still do not like Kate Bosworth.
After seeing the movie, one would understand why Cyclops was killed off so early in X3. The first time I heard he jumped the boat together with Bryan Singer from X3 to Superman Returns, I though Cyclops would not even appear in X3. I was also confused at how big a role he could possibly have in Superman Returns. Questions answered I guess.
I feel so tired and the work week has just started. This does not bode well. We are into one hell of a long week.
Maybe am just tired because of lack of sleep. Being my day off yesterday, I was not able to rest properly last night. Regardless, the day was quite relaxed and I make it more relaxed than it ought too.
In World Cup news, Ukraine beat Switzerland in the first penalty shootout of the tournament. After 120 minutes, the score was still nil for both teams. Two magnificent saves by the Ukranian goalkeeper and a miss by the last striker for Switzerland and it was all over for the Swiss who lost the shootout, 3-0. That would have been exciting and never-raking to watch.
No England against Ecuador on Solar Sports today, they are showing another re-run of some other game. Ho-hum.
I am so bored. With less than a month to go, it really does not seem that anything magical will happen. I can't believe I am hoping for this magical thing to happen, I am not even doing anything to cause anything to happen.
**Yawns**
Heard that the longer one sleeps, the more energized one would be once he wakes up. Might as well try this thing people call sleep.
England won courtesy of a penalty kick from Beckham. Well, I think that's what happened. I stayed up the whole night, but the free Solar Sports channel did not show the game. They showed the Togo vs. France game instead. For the second time.
The phone lines had some problems during the game, so I was not able to watch the scores change via the Interwebs so I had to rely on some random news channel which would hopefully mention updates. I found this Indian channel (I think, channel 79 for Skyline subscribers) which had a small corner in the lower right of the screen dedicated to the World Cup scores.
Found the channel close to 12 midnight which would be halfway already into the game as it started at 11 PM Manila. Scores where still at 0-0.
Kept flipping over channels and when I came back to this channel, England had already scored a goal. I did not know from whom, but I almost shouted and cheered with excitement. Waited for a another hour until another news channel showed (via the scrolling text at the bottom of the screen) that England did win, 1-0. I was hoping for another goal to make it a little more convincing, but a win is a win and I am glad they are in the quarterfinals now.
They reached the quarterfinals back in 2002 where they lost to Brazil, the eventual champions of the same year. Now they face Portugal in the quarterfinals whom trounced Holland 1-0 in what the news say, quite a dirty game with a number of yellow (16) and red (4) cards. If I could remember correctly, England drew against Portugal in the Euro Cup 2004 2-2 during the quarterfinals but lost the penalty shootout. I hope it would not boil down to that this year.
If they win against Portugal, they may be up against Brazil (whom has not played in the knockout stages yet, but it is Brazil). Then if England somehow defeats Brazil or something would happen to Brazil's knockout matches and Germany keeps winning it's games on the opposite bracket, then we may see everyone's (German, English, and mine) dream match. It's 1966 all over again.
Now if I could only watch the games live.
Interesting. Yes. No. I don't know.
Another long work week is finally over and was capped off with another round of Gotcha Paintball Extreme.
When I mean a round, I mean exactly that, one round as in one game.
We had work until 11 in the morning and the Paintball event started around 10 I presume since they had already played 2 games when we finally arrived. They were patiently waiting for us for one final game.
Not much to talk about, it was over before I could even feel any adrenaline pumping. 50 bullets seem to breeze by so quickly when you know you're playing the last game. Still no kills or even hits for that matter which is quite sad.
Anyway, I was surprised to see her there and she looks so much prettier up close. Yes. No. I don't know.
After the game, the heavens poured and we were soaked. Nice.
So England topped their Group over at the World Cup and face Ecuador tomorrow at 11 pm Manila. I have no expectations that they would show the game live. I could watch at Gweilos Libis, but I could not do it alone.
Ecuador has been playing quite a good round at the Cup but I have no doubt England would win. I just hope it would be an impressive win. The 2nd half of their game against Sweden was so bloody scary even though I knew they'd end up 2-2 but Sweden's corner kicks/crosses really scared the crap out of me.
I am now think how I'd go about sleeping during my two days off and what other things I could do.
On the video gaming end, we have Shadow Hearts III but am already at the final stage but would still need to finish a bunch of side quests before I can be strong enough to complete it. Nah, a game nearing it's end usually bores me to death. It's like I never want it to end. Maybe I could start playing Psychonauts or Beyond Good and Evil and find out why everyone seems to be raving about it.
I could also watch DVDs as I paid a fortune for them and have only watch most of them once. I am thinking The Usual Suspects in preparation for a certain Bryan Singer/Kevin Spacey movie opening on Wednesday. Plus, I think it's time for my fix of Fight Club and Requiem For A Dream. There's also Seven Samurai which would be a nice movie to watch again since I just completed watching the Samurai Seven anime series.
Interesting.
As I was flipping through channels I came across the community channel of our local cable TV provider Skyline. It seems they are starting to offer broadband Internet along with the cable subscription of course. On the add, they cover most of Rizal.
Packages start at 990 Php for 100 kbps and max out at 1390 for 300 kbps. Sure, it is a tad more expensive than Smart Bro or PLDT myDSL both of which are not available in our place, but things even out if you factor in the 390 Php one pays for a current cable TV subscription
It's available in our area just not at our house.
For PLDT myDSL, I would have to say that we live more than 50 meters away from the main road. Having a DSL line going through that distance before reaching our house simply would not work.
On the other hand, we have Smart Bro which uses line of sight connection with a Smart base station. I do not see any Smart towers nearby, and the fact that there is close to no signal for Smart mobile phones in the house relays a clear message about it's proximity to one. Maybe it's the trees or our stupid hill.
However, this is just my assumption and I never really confirmed this by having someone check the site out. It simply ain't possible.
So upon seeing this ad for a new broadband Internet the cable provider is offering (we already have a cable subscription with them), a tiny glimmer of hope shone through.
This shattered though when my mom found out that so far it's only available in Morong, this tiny glimmer of hope was shattered. They are just planning to roll it out to other towns depending on the number of people who would subscribe to it. I knew they would have to upgrade the lines so that it work to way instead of the one-way signal old cables use for just cable TV, but I still hoped.
Eventually, they may get around and roll it out, but again it maybe a little too late already.
Hope. I really should begin eliminating this work from my vocabulary. Nothing good happens when I hope.
I knew I should not have kept my hopes up last night. There was no live broadcast of the England vs. Trinidad and Tobago game.
At 12 midnight they were showing a very delayed telecast of Ecaudor vs. Costa Rica. The game finished around quarter to 1 in the morning so I thought they could still squeeze the game I want to see in even though it was already halfway through.
Such was not the case. The game was followed by another delayed telecast of Saudia Arabia vs. Tunisia.
Found out England won by 2 goals to zero. I won't bother with the delayed telecast if ever there would be one, except maybe with the last few minutes when the goals where actually scored. The thing is with football, the exact minute a goal is scored is marked on the results table. Plus, I've already seen how the goals were scored on BBC. Thank god for the news. It's nice to know that Stephen Gerard finally scored a goal. He's a great player during Premierships but has not really shined during International matches.
With the win, England advances to the knock out stages, wherein they would face either Germany or Ecuador depending on the results of the remaining games of each team. There is one more match in the group before the knock out stage though which is against the Swedes. I believe this game would happen at around 3 in the morning Manila. Would love to check when exactly but I am on dial up and I can't wait for the schedules to open.
Solar Entertainment sucks major ass being the official exclusive partner to the World Cup here in the Philippines. Live games are shown in numerous bars in the Metro but in order for one to watch it at home, one would need to shell out money as it is a Pay-Per-View service. Add the fact that only selected cable providers are considered partners in this stupid venture and the accessibility of the live games is drastically cut.
It's the world's most popular sport. More people worship the game than any one religion. And instead of making the game more accessible to the country, they transform it more into an exclusive sport with a niche market.
In my opinion, we'd have a better chance of international success in the game of football than we would ever have in Basketball. We just don't have the height to be globally (or even, regionally) successful in the sport.
Dial up connections are so painfully slow. I have been online for almost 3 hours now and I still haven't read all the web comics I frequent. Imagine the things I could do if only I had a faster, scratch that, let me say decent connection. There is nothing decent about crap.
I want to sleep now but I am halfway through a youtube video which I want to view. Stopping now would mean I have to fucking load the whole thing again. Bummer.
This is so getting on my nerves. Makes me more frustrated about my so-called life.
I was happy once. Real and genuinely happy.
I know better than to hope, think or even dream that would ever happen again. I did before, more than once, and boy was I burned.
Arrgghh. Pessimism rears it's ugly butt again.
Let's put it in a more positive perspective.
It took Mario 8 castles before he finally reached Princess. Imagine how frustrating it would have been reaching the end of a castle just to be informed by a miserable little mushroom that the princess is in another castle. So far I've been through 4 and I'd doubt I would last past the Hammer Bros. Oh, and just for your information, none of them were miserable little mushrooms.
I should be happy today as for some twist of fate, the holiday leaves I applied for July 13-17 (niche!) were also plotted for June 13-17. Sure, I have been going to work for 3 days now but my Team Leader was not sure if I was willing to take them anyway. I have more than enough incentives to take 5 days off from June and another 5 from July and still be left with a bunch.
Anyway, he only mentioned it today and so I said I'd take them (right now, I'd do anything to get a break from work). That's Friday and hopefully Saturday as well.
Checked the World Cup schedule and it seems England is playing against Trinidad and Tobago (who upset Sweden with a nil-nil draw) at 6:00 PM German Time. This is 12 midnight Manila. I just hope the bloody exclusive Philippine partner Solar Sports Entertainment would show it for free, live as they did with Korea Republic vs. Togo as all games listed on their site requires pay-per-view.
If so, I'd be screaming and shouting during the middle of the night.
The PC broke down two Saturdays back and this marks the first time I have used a PC for non-work related stuff. More than one week of not having my PC is enough to cause permanent dysfunction in my so-called life.
I could not eat, not because I lost my appetite but more because I was lazy. Work seemed more of a burden thinking I'd be going home without finding any love from my PC. I am so glad that pace of my life is over now.
The PC would not POST. It would receive power but it would just beep. Stripped the system down and still the same thing. I personally felt it was the motherboard failing as no combination of memory would work. You see, my PC uses the stupid (but quick) RDRAM configuration which only works in pairs. This makes troubleshooting a nightmare. I was already willing to replace the motherboard, processor and memory just so I could get everything working again.
Had the PC checked out while I was out looking for a new motherboard and it turns out that it is not the memory nor the motherboard but the video card. It just did not occur to me that the newest part added onto this 5-year old rig would be the first to die out. How silly of me for a guy who works as technical support. Bummer.
Everything is back in order now after purchasing a new video card. Opted for a ATI Radeon 9550 rather than a Nvidia card, which made life easier as my previous card was an ATI Radeon 9600 and I did not have to install any drivers. All it took was a couple of reboots after sticking the card in. Shucks, and I was planning to save as much money ASAP so I could quit soon.
Oh boy, work resumes again tomorrow at 2 in the freaking morning and continues for 5 days. I need something at work to keep me going. Just like the Energizer Bunny.