Zombies and Legos

I am an avid gamer. Okay....backtrack. I like to game, and while I play on a nearly daily basis, I usually only put roughly an hour (if that) into my gaming. I have tons of other stuff to do that needs to get done. Like say, my bazillions of fanfics. My original stories. Watching tv shows. Reading books. Other stuff.

If I play hour after hour, I end up feeling like I've wasted tons of time. Now with that said, there are some games, especially the ones I'm really into, I can crank out a couple hours of gameplay.

Here are the two games I've been playing lately.

State of Decay

What can I say? Zombies!!!!!

My uber-favorite game at the moment is State of Decay. The zombie apocalypse has hit the fan, and the survivors of Trumbull Valley fight to survive (including you). You can play as any character you add to your group of survivors, but in the end, your sole goal is to survive as long as possible.

The original game is a storyline where you try to survive long enough to fix up an RV and taking a select few, escape the valley. I have tried to play it twice now, and the first time around, I survived roughly seven days, before my group was decimated. I had just volunteered for a mission to see what the army was up to and save a few survivors. But, I had already lost two people that day (to zombie hordes) and I was killed trying to catch up to the survivors I had saved. After that, my group lost most of it's members, who fled for dear life, and I ended up getting into a rut where they kept having to deposit new characters for me to play because I kept dying and couldn't get any weapons or anything. Second time was only moderate better.

But when they released the first expansion "Breakdown" and removed the mission elements of the game, I have become a thriving beast. The whole point of it is to survive as long as possible. You can leave the valley, only to be deposited into a new valley, which is the same valley. And you continue to fight until you die out.

As a HUGE Walking Dead Fan, it sates my zombie blood lust. :P

I have made it to Valley #2 and I have gotten to a point that I haven't been killed once in a week. My only real gripes is how stupid the other survivors are. The higher hitting ones (which gain skills and levels only when you play them) are a bit more proactive on scavenging missions and defending themselves. But the less experienced ones are total morons. They stand around, waiting to get attacked. Scavenging missions are the worst. You might have six cars at your base, and they will send one person and they won't drive there! No matter how far.

I do hope that the second expansion "Lifeline" fixes much of the AI problems.

Lord of the Rings Lego

Lord of the Rings on Lego? YES!

The fifth Lego video game I've owned, it is the third for PC, my preferred gaming machine. And believe me, I've got a very nice gaming machine, personally built. I've put maybe six hundred dollars into it over the course of two+ years. But, that's beside the point.

I am a HUGE Lord of the Rings fan. This year will mark my sixteenth read of the trilogy. So when I discovered that LOTR was coming out for Lego (which I own Star Wars Complete Saga and Clone Wars for PC and the Harry Potter Years 1-4 and Gotham City for Apple) I knew I wanted it. But, despite my love for the games, these have taken me the longest to getting around to finish. Perhaps it has to deal with the fact that it is much harder to reach 100% than other games.

I also can't claim it's an improvement over the other games. The lack of a base area (which the Mos Eisley Cantina serves great as in the Star Wars ones) means that in order to get more people, you have to travel all of Middle Earth (which really isn't all THAT bad). The idea of side missions on the world map is an okay idea....considering you can figure out where ANY of the stuff is for these quests. I have yet to complete a single side quest.

What can compare to the Fellowship in Lego Form?

But I find it fun all the same. One vast improvement I find is the ability to not only swap through your small group during a mission, but the ability to switch with EVERY character you have purchased up to that point in time. That is a marked improvement over other games, where you only can change to a few characters at any time.

Now, don't get me wrong. I play many other games (I love the modern XCOM games, the Total War series, and the Call of Duty Games). But those are the two I have focused my efforts on the past little while.

Thank goodness for the Day Off!

Memorial Day Blues

Today is Memorial Day in the USofA. Not often do I get holidays off, but they decided to give me this Memorial Day off. It was a really nice day today as well. Sun was shining, went on a hike with my family and did BBQ at their place.

I would like to emphasize the niceness of the day. I've never in the twenty-four Memorial Days I've ever been in has been nice. It's always been rainy and overcast. Almost as if the idea of Memorial Day makes the world seem to be sad.

Sometimes it's just like this picture. The Earth is happy on any other day.

I have lived most of my life in Idaho, and it's always been raining. I was in Utah once during the holiday. It rained. Heck, I went to Colorado for my mission for my church. Both years it didn't rain. It poured!

The day is a somber one to be sure. Some of us have dear close loved ones that have been laid to rest underneath the Earth. But, some like us, the only close relative we have had to bury was one grandparent. And I've still got five kicking around like they are in their late twenties. 

Can't argue if they are in good spirits, can we?

I remember as a kid driving around to all the graves of family that had been dead for so long that they meant nothing to me than words in marble. As I've gotten older and moved out of my parents place, I've only visited one grave. And that was my Grandpa. 

But is the message of Memorial Day "mourn with those who mourn"? Should we not take time to look at not only the graves of family but also of those who have long lost passed away that weren't related to us? Or is Memorial Day meant to be a closer-to-the-vest type of holiday? One in which we are introspective and give others time to be alone, to work out their own grief.

Memorial Day was originally a Civil War holiday. It was meant to steer the nation towards honoring those that had fallen in battle to keep the United States united. Many Southern states, in a move of sheer spite, created their own days, and failed to observe the day the government had set up. I believe some of the ex-Confederate states still choose not to observe the national Memorial Day.

There is a story about a group of Northern and Southern women arrived at one the battlefields where thousands had perished. The northern women refused to allow the Southern women to place flowers on the graves of their dead husbands and sons, citing to the victors go the spoils. That night, a thunderstorm swept the land, and the next day, it was discovered that all the flowers on the northern graves had been "blown by the storm" to cover the graves of the southern dead.

According to some new studies, as many as 80,000 civilians died during the Civil War.

I choose to believe that Memorial Day, while it serves it's purpose, has a deeper meaning not usually thought of. Why is that that only one day of the year that we decide to visit the dead and remember them? Is it simply we choose to compartmentalize them and relegate them to the "never forgotten but never present" category of our lives? Some (as is right) never forget the pain of the lost gap in their lives left by those who had passed on.

But shouldn't we be focused on the dead anyways in our daily lives? Not the dead for being dead. But to keep us honest by the examples (both good and bad) that they showed us in life? Is not the true meaning of Memorial Day a way for us to not only visit the dead but to also take stock of how we have honored the surnames we bear that they gave us? 

My family has a long history of service. Service to nation. Service to the crown. Service to God. Service to fellow man. Have I honored that legacy of service and self-sacrifice? Have I added laurels to the standards of the clan that I am a part of? Are the scars that I have left on the name of valiant attempts to do justice and right, if if I failed in the end?

In summation, do we really honor the dead by having a holiday? Or is it not as important as it is to live to the fullest to make them proud if they watch us from beyond the veil? I would like to think actions speak louder than dates on a calendar.

Thank goodness for the Day Off!

Paid Time Off!!! Um...no. Never mind.

As my first official Day Off post that is not introductory, there was a few things that I was wanting to do. The lack of tv shows on the air that I'm interested in (Arrow just wrapped up it's second season, leaving a dearth of shows I like until Falling Skies' new season sometime in mid-summer). The dangers of Walmart shopping (ran into a really hot girl I used to date and an old manager from a pretty bad job in the same day). I even considered doing it on a book I've been reading, the less than usefully knowledgeable religious Civil War history Upon the Altars of the Nation.

But....no. Payday came around today, and in the first time in months payday had more than $400 waiting for me from my two part-time jobs. So, after getting a discounted PS3 and a few other items I needed (some drinks, the first issue of the Darth Maul: Son of Dathomir comic book series and gas for my car) I decided to check how much vacation time I currently have. 

You see, I've worked at the same place for a year and a half, and besides two sick days and a three day time off, I've never missed work. Sure, only part time, but in January I started earning paid vacation time. Ever so slowly, but last paycheck I had earned over 20 hours saved up. Not a lot, granted, but I just learned that it's based off how much hours your normally supposed to work. So, if you only ever get scheduled, say 20 hours, that's how they work it in and you'd get a whole week off.

I was thinking of using the time off that I've saved up by now. It'd work out to be most of a week. So, I get onto the employee website and lo and behold! There is no longer ANY time off saved. That really makes me angry. The same company doesn't offer part-time employees medical benefits, no raises, no personal days, not a single perk, except for days off. I had been saving up so I could get as near a full week as I could. You know, maybe go on that camping trip I've been meaning to take my little brother out for months now.

Last time we went, it rained only slightly and the entire tent got soaked through. Abandon tent!

But noooo. 

They went all Scrooge McDuck on me, or Billionaire Mr. Howard from Gilligan's Island. I had all that time saved up, and it's gone. The business I work at gets a lot of turnover in employees. Especially among the teenagers that start working there. They don't understand the whole part of responsibility. You say you will work and yet you leave and never come back as soon as you get your first paycheck. 

But a company should be bound to uphold it's end of the contract. If they say you will get raises or paid time off, they better give it to you when you've done your end of the bargain. By breaching said contracts, you open yourself to lots of legal issues. 

They wouldn't want ME to steal from them

Our Loss Prevention lady (the person who watches the cameras to spot items that might have been stolen to figure out who done did the foul deed) has even gotten sued in court for failing to provide evidence (video or otherwise) against an employee suspected of stealing money from the registers. She claimed she had them, but never provided them. 

But the same rules apply, not only as employees of a company but among our daily lives. If we say we will give you something for your efforts, we have to give it. Ebay is a wonderful example of this. If we provide you the funds, we better get what we asked for. Otherwise, you end up getting bad reviews. I will never shop (as a rule) from anyone who has less than 90% approval rating....and that's only if the seller has hundreds or even thousands of reviews. Anything less than a hundred reviews better have high ratings (95% or more) because my money is hard earned and I don't want to fight the hassle getting what I've paid for with money that could have been used for something more productive.

It's good business. And I think I have a right to be angry that they took away my paid time. Now, maybe there is a time frame to use it. Which is a crock. Isn't paid time supposed to be roll over and be able to be built upon? I'd be fine with it....if anyone had told me that was the case. 

Well, there we are. This post has been quiet nicely tied up in the maelstrom of broken promises and dissatisfaction. But, I promise next time that it will be much nicer and uplifting.

Thank goodness for the Day Off!

Update: Since I have made this post, I had gone and checked with management. They said it was a computer error, and it should be back up. But now, since it got back up, I have even less paid hours than before. Can someone just shoot me in the head? If it's not one thing, it's another.

A New Beginning

Hey all, my name is Adam. And this is a blog. Obviously, because you are here you realize that. But what will make this blog different from other blogs is this is about basically anything and everything. Movies, thoughts about religious stuff, books, video games, tv shows, the works. Except no sports, unless it really intrudes into my otherwise not so sanguine existence of part-time work and respect only found when one only is loved by themselves. :-P

Now, another unique thing is that this blog will only be posted on days that I have off from work. So, basically any day I'm not burdened down by work and the constant demand of never satisfied customers and coworkers to stuck on themselves to see the light of day.

The name is based off the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Never watched it, but the title was catchy, so I decided to snag it in part for my blog. Especially since it speaks volumes of what the blog is about.

Now, the fact that I did work today is beside the point. Kinda like Batman meeting Vader on a train.

Again, I mean, it really IS besides the point. Unless the point is indeed Batman meeting Darth Vader. But that is a whole 'nuther thing.

SO. Who am I? Well, first off, I'm the author of this blog, as my words of pungent wisdom would ascribe to only an author.

I had this image of a guy bending over a typewriter and smoke coming out of his ears that would have made a perfect followup for the above paragraph. But alas, no such image existed in the half a minute of scrolling through Google images.

If you've ever read any of my other blogs, you will know a couple things about me. One, I love history, especially military. I am an avid sci-fi fan. But unlike the loser who stills lives with his parents at 40 (which I am not so far old), I instead share an apartment with cousins. Three guys in a one bedroom apartment. YIKES!

I envy these two. At least he has got a babe! All I got is cousins. And it's bad when I'm the pretty looking one.

So prepare for a random blog, kept only sane by sheer willpower and a devilish wit. Thank heavens for the Day OFF!