Benie's General Blog

I finally got myself a cell phone. Though I can’t help but think I didn’t need it — yet my parents claim I do.

Why do I feel this? I’m not an ‘on the go’ person. What convinced me, yet the wrong way, was what happened last night. I try to contact ProgramFiles to speak to him through Steam. Said he was on his iPod Touch.
I wonder if I could use a cell phone as a second computer after that, just incase my computer is at the shop, or if I’m banned, as a 2nd account like Fishy.
I should had gotten an iPod Touch instead…

But when I went up there, I got nervous. Yet I still am. I’m scared that this phone is going to change my life. Make me wanna start texting, and browsing the web through it, putting a hell of a bill in my checking account.
I’m afraid I’m going to get into something I may not even need, and it’ll be too late to get out of it. Such as signing up for ‘free’ ringtones and ending up paying out the ass for them, and having to send a text to stop it before I overdraft.

Still, this phone isn’t perfect. What pisses me off is I didn’t get a fucking USB cable that I could upload ringtones, wallpapers, and other shit from my computer. I spent $60 on this phone and they couldn’t give me a god damn USB cable! D:
I’m going to have to go to Amazon.com and buy one.

Another thing that ticks me off is Voicemail. I was expecting to go into my phone and be able to listen for any messages that I’ve missed when my phone is off. Instead I have to hit *86, then enter my password, then wait for it to play any voicemail left over.

Still, I still ask myself, why did I get this thing? My parents have a cell phone. If the power went out in the house, we could use that. Is it because my mother refuses to learn how to use their cell phone?

A cell phone in my hands just doesn’t feel right. I don’t have a job.. hell, I rarely leave this house, so why do I need to remain in contact with anyone? I guess I’ll just use it for small things. As I said, of taking my computer up to the shop, going to the dentist or doctor and calling to need a ride back home.
Not to mention, Fishy and Angry can call me whenever they want too.

Since it’s mine, I’m going to make it mine. As soon as I get my hands on a USB cable, I found a place with Dragon wallpaper for cell phones. 🙂
Yet I still can’t help but think that getting a cell phone that I can customize was one of the worst things I’ve done in my life.
Looking around on these “free” sites for ringtones, there’s a chance I could get a virus in my computer.

The reason I feel this is I just can’t leave well enough alone. I won’t just settle with what I have, and know the real “reason” I got this phone. We rarely get calls on our normal landline phone, and I have very little in friends/people to call.

I was expecting it would get my money’s worth when I bought it earlier than I was planning to.
So far, I like it. Yes it has a few things that annoy me, but I’m trying to work around them and enjoy the game for what it has.
I must be grateful anyway my computer will run this, and flawlessly. The fact it wasn’t made by Bethesda is good.

I did want to cry in real life in the beginning. Seeing the Normandy utterly destroyed by an unknown enemy brings great grief to me.. not to mention a desire to seek vengeance, yet my Sheppard character acts like he’s too much of a tough guy to wanna shed a tear. To walk away from the past. Still.. that was a damn good ship.
Even though Cerebus, the company that you are “working” for, gives you a near-exact copy of the Normandy, except bigger and there’s a Shuttle now instead of the Mako, it just isn’t the same. Though Joker loves it because it has real leather seats.

I kinda like the Galaxy Map. It reminds me of Spore’s Space Stage, but with the Mass Effect theme. Now you pay for fuel to fly through nebulas to get to star systems, and use your mouse to actually tell the Normandy where you wanna go in a Star System, even lead it to a Mass Relay.

What annoys me is the minigames they threw into the new game, especially the hacking terminal and unlocking door ones. If you enjoy “HURRY HURRY you only got 10 seconds to figure this out!!”, then it’s right up your alley. However since I got a hack upgrade, it should be easier on me.

I am glad they brought back your old crewmates from Mass Effect. Though some of them think you’ve gone rogue for joining Cerebus. Such as Ashley. As much as I tried to convince her that I’m still on the side of good, she wouldn’t come back on my side.

The Citadel is back, but is … ‘redesigned’ after the attack by Sovereign. Only one of the familiar places you could go in ME1 is back in ME2, the Presidium. The rest are the new wards.

I can’t help but feel though that they threw the phrase “simple interaction” out the door with this one.

With the Mako replaced with the shuttle, you can only land on planets that have an Anomaly. There you must track it down to its source using the scanner, launch a probe, and then you’ll have a Land option.

It’s been one year since the worst national disaster in my history.
We knew we were going to get something, but not anything like this. Nearly two inches of Freezing Rain fell over the area.
It has been said after freezing rain falls, and the land is frozen in ice, that it sounds like a battleground when you step outside. And it surly did. Constant popping sounds of tree limbs sounding like they were about to snap and fall on my head.

We lost our power for three days. But what saved us is our garage behind the house still had power. So we ran a bunch of extension cords from the garage to the house, keeping the heater and the fridge going.

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One year has passed since then. Though the ice has melted, our memories will remain frozen in time.

And now we possibly have a repeat of that faithful day. 2-3″ of snow is forecasted as a winter storm begins to move the same track as the storm did one year ago.

Will we be spared another ice storm, and just get the snow, like we were supposed to a year ago? Or will history repeat itself?

As the entry title says, there’s only five more days until the happiest time of the year. Not for me anyway.
Sure, I still got my health. And my parents. So I’m grateful for that.
Could be worse. Father could be in the war fighting terrorism. So I feel sorry for the families that can’t bring their loved ones home for Christmas.
But… mine will still never be the same as the Christmas’ I had in the past.

The past, when my grandparents were still alive, and the family wasn’t split apart over it. When we went over to grandma’s house on Christmas Eve. My cousins, being of course younger than me, were just kids back then. They wanted to fuck dinner and just rip open those presents ASAP, as badly as I did.

I still remember when I wanted to jump up and hug everyone in the room, when I got my first 56K modem. To think a few decades later I would be sitting here making a blog post about it, using my cable modem.

To want to bring back these happy, joyful memories, is pretty much my only Christmas wish. Even for a day. Just to relive them. But wishes never come true. And even if they do, they aren’t what you expect them to be.

The joy was cut short due to that flu epidemic one year, making us all sick. We couldn’t go over there because of it. And the next year, my grandfather dies.
A few years later, my grandmother dies.
Now I have no grandparents, and the family has been split apart over due to grandpa’s death of what to do with the body.

My cousins have probably grown up and moved out their house by now, to start their own families. As for me, I’m still doing what I’ve been doing for years… sitting infront of my computer all day, wasting away. Sometimes wishing god would just end my suffering and let me die in my sleep. Just to be with grandma again, to tell her how much I missed her.

But the real thing I should be doing,.. what I’ve should have done a long time ago, is have my own family, and our own Christmas’ with my children and wife. To watch my kids carry on my never-dying Christmas spirit to their kids. You can’t bring back old memories, but you can create new ones.

Sadly, the new memories are getting more and more … unpleasant. Soon I’ll reach a point that my spirit will die and not even put my tree up anymore, saying to fuck it. Last year was just about that breaking point. I’m the only one left with any remaining Christmas spirit in our existing family. A slowly… painfully dying spirit.
Already, I feel Christmas Music being.. meh. Especially the fact it does get boring hearing an original song get redone 20 times by other singers. Or hearing the same damn song every year. There is epic songs that never get old, and then there’s the ones that do.
I’m actually starting to like Halloween music over Christmas. Probably because there’s no “Oh baby.. this Christmas isn’t the same without you holding me all night”. Love songs make me hurl.

The only other living family members I got is my father’s brother and sister. But they live their lives and we live ours. Never again to enjoy what Christmas felt like years ago. I’ve pretty much grown out of wanting stuff. All I want is the family love we had.

I “got” SimCity 4 Deluxe today. This is due to the SimCity 4 thread in Facepunch. Finally hopped on the bandwagon.. and I wish I didn’t.

The last time I got bitched at for traffic jams/disfuctional road networks, was back in SimCity 3000 Unlimited. I still remember that ugly face of the dreaded Financial Advisor as he said “You are FIRED!!!!” after watching my cash flow go deep in the red, doing a tutorial city. Failing in a tutorial city!!!

Yet I have the guts (or maybe I’m just bored) to do it all over again in SimCity 4. Though the advisors aren’t as butt-ugly as the last game (they’re Sims), transportation is more difficult to master.
But this time you got subways, above-ground railways. All sorts of different stuff.

Like I said though I still don’t know what the hell I’m doing. I made a city based off of my map in Minecraft. The city/residential-themed map. Well.. sorta like it. It’s not the same size and the road network definitely isn’t the same. What I have sucks IMO. But I don’t know how to improve it.

I can’t seem to get my Commercial demand up, and my Industrial demand down. This really sucks. I wish there was a way to force sims to build what I want built and be happy. I want a damn Sandbox mod or something.

There are mods out there that are supposed to aid you in city construction. But I can’t find anything that will help me with my wants.

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Hopefully I can get this sorted out and start to enjoy the game for what it is.