- Yagr_Zero
- Rank: Easter Egg
- Member since: Jun 18, 2006
- Last online: 05/18/13 12:41 pm PT
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Yagr_Zero's blog
I'm just a guy with a pension of occasional insanity and the occasion for misadventures in airplanes. I also seem to be an aspiring writer, if I can ever get myself to sit down and write, which, by the way, makes it interesting as to how I'm an aspiring writer considering that I'm also an aspiring engineer. The two aren't supposed to be together.
But please enjoy whatever it is that I ramble about whether it be sports, news, or just anything that I decide to blog about.
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20Mar 07
So I'm in the playoffs in both my hockey leagues in my first year playing hockey. Not bad I must say. Although I'm the lowest seed in one and the 3rd seed in another. First round finished this past Sunday and my lowest seed, 6th, rolled by unchallenged while as a 3rd, my team made it even with forfeiting 5 of the categories (there are 11 categories in which to score). I have to say that I must've pissed off the guy I was against as he had me for the entire week except for the final day when my offense decided to show up. None of my goalies decided to go for the entire week, which pissed me off, so I dropped them and picked up other goalies who should let me actually contend for those 5 other categories. I just want to make the top 2 seeds shut up now.
I'm also apparently hooked on Steve Berry's Third Secret at the moment. I just thought I'd share that with everyone.
With limited time, I've managed to get past the first dungeon in Twilight Princess. I'm about 4 hours in and I'm in the next section of the game. I have to say that I love being in wolf form.
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19Mar 07
You knew it was coming. Anyway, the first two rounds of the NCAA tournament have come and gone, and Miami (OH) gave it their best and almost took down Oregon. They lost by two. Not bad for a 14 seed. My bracket is in serious jeopardy in my pool. I hate being in last place. At least USC made it to the Sweet 16, or round of 16 for those who don't know. Here's hopes for the rest of my bracket holding up.
Spring Break is over. That was rather quick. I still need to get some work done, but that's probably going to occur later on. I'm such the procrastinator. But then again, who isn't. Waking up for my 8 o'clock today was a chore I have to say.
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15Mar 07
So the first day of the NCAA tournament has come and gone and the first 16 teams have advanced to the 2nd round. Duke will not be one of them as they fell to Virginia Commonwealth, and was the highest seed to lose. None of the eight seeds made it so far, as out of the 16 teams, only 3 were the lower seeds. A very good day for higher seeds, and a bad day for my bracket as it took multiple shots. I can calmly say I suck at making a bracket. Miami (OH) is on tomorrow at 5, and hopefully they can make a game out of it despite their low seeding.
And I guess that's all I've got for this post. I love sports, what can I say 8).
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12Mar 07
So I'm here in Rio Rancho for my Spring Break (it's near Albuquerque) and I find a notice stating that the road right by my house is being used for a television pilot. Of course I was psyched by this and I was about to rush out and take a peak, until I noticed that they completed shooting less than a week ago. Talk about not fair and irony.
Recently, yesterday to be exact, I purchased Castle of Cagliostro and boy was that a great buy. For those who don't know, this movie is directed by the famed Hayao Miyazaki. For more on this, check my review.
Miami (OH) just got a 14th seed and will play Oregon in the first round. There goes a good chance of advancing into the second round. And for the heck of it, click on the link below to see how Miami made it in.
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10Mar 07
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8Mar 07
Ah Green Beer Day. Why do you have to end? For those who are wondering, Green Beer Day is an event here at Miami University (the one in Ohio) where every bar in town opens at 5:30 AM for all of us students to get drunk before class and have an overall great day. There were camera crews from the local news agencies posted well before the first bars opened to chronicle the entire event from its beginnings today. The higher ups at Miami don't particularly like Green Beer Day, and so they try to discourage students by asking professors to schedule exams on each date. It never works of course. Did I join in? Only until after my classes were done as I had a presentation I needed to take care of first.
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5Mar 07The last week of the NCAA regular season has just begun with the various conference tournaments, otherwise known as Championship Week. Already 7 teams (I believe 7, it might be 6 at the moment) have found their ways into the highly anticipated NCAA tournament next week by winning their respective conference tournaments. I'll be spending the last part of Spring Break watching the tournament unfold and hopefully find a couple of my teams make it far. For those who haven't experienced the NCAA tournament, you are missing out on a great sporting event.
So I played the Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess for the first time this past weekend, and for some odd reason it reminded me of Jade Empire and Gun. Not quite sure why, but those are the two games that immediatley popped into my head whislt playing the TP. -
26Feb 07The Baseball season is coming up, and to get ready for that, it's time for the first of a couple of drafts. My first draft occurred this past Saturday, and I missed it. Hah, I found out late Sunday, and I immediately checked to see how it turned out, with a pre-grimace in place just in case. To my surprise, I ended up having an unbelievable team. Talk about luck. I think I had the 2nd or 3rd overall pick, and my team is probably the fastest of the 12 in the league. What with two guys who can reach 50-60 steals. Jose Reyes and Ichiro are thanked for that. My pitching staff is also pretty darn good with all my starters having 150+ Ks. I think I'll be having a good year with this team.
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26Feb 07The Oscars came and went, but not with it's surprises and the well deserved rewards. I just have to make a comment about Pan's Labyrinth not taking home the Best Foreign Film. I mean how could it have lost to that one movie from Germany? Even the director of said film was shocked it happened. That had to have been the biggest surprise of the night, and there really weren't that much. Hudson won best supporting actress and Whitaker took home best actor. By the way, if you haven't seen Last King of Scotland, you need to. Whitaker is unbelievable as the ruthless dictator Idi Amin. The best moment of the entire show came with the honorary Oscar to that one music composer (oh gosh I can't remember his name). He just struck that pose of someone who really deserved it. He didn't speak and English, he spoke Italian, but good ol Clint Eastwood was there to help us along. I thought the Oscars was a great success especially with Ellen DeGenerous as the host.
Apparently this must be my cultural blog as I managed to see the Cincinatti Symphony Orchestra on the same day as the aforementioned Oscars. Why? Well mainly because I need to see two concerts for my music forbidden> -
13Feb 07So apparently today, I found out that itunes is selling anime on their TV section. I thought that was quite cool and a step in the right direction. Currently you can only buy Samurai Seven, Desert Punk, and Speed Grapher. Those shows are from Funimation, so for those of you who love Dragon Ball (cough, overrated, cough) you have something to look forward to.
Also for itunes, Paramount Pictures is starting to get heavily involved by sending quite a lot of movies to the digital store. The Untouchables and Reservoir Dogs have made it. It's just a matter of time before Fox and Universal decide to join the fray, and people get pissed off when they buy a Zune or Creative Zen and can't use itunes with them (there's a lawsuit against Apple for doing this).
Anyone notice this? Duke basketball is now 5-6 in the ACC and not in the conference's top five teams. That hasn't happened for a long time let me tell you. They've lost four in a row and, even though I doubt they're not going to make the tournament, doubts are rising about this team. They've been punished this past week by being knocked off the rankings. That's gotta suck for all you Duke fans.
As a side note, my professor announced there's no forbidden> -
6Feb 07So I've been using filmspot quite a lot recently. More importantly, I've been rating movies like crazy. I'm getting close to 300 now. I've seen quite a lot of movies, most of them have thankfully been good. And of course I have my favorites lining up, all of which people should check out. They're all been approved by a council of nine, or rather they should cause they're that good
. I also seem to be one of the few to watch a lot of Chinese movies. A couple of the more recent films, like The Departed and Little Miss Sunshine aren't up there as I'm a tad too busy to see them at the moment, with tests coming up this week and into next week. But they will get up there. I see it as my duty to inform people about films. All of you can click on the filmspot icon to check it out. -
5Feb 07So the Super Bowl came and went last night with the Indianapolis Colts coming on top 29-17. I have to say, it was a pretty good game. Not too many penalties and none of the crap that went on from last year's (Seattle had way too many bad calls against them). It was a great defensive battle with 8 turnovers between the two teams. Sadly though, the Bears contributed 5, many of which occurred right after their defense just took the ball away from Indy. It became slightly unBearable (hah, see what I did there) to watch with Grossman fumbling the snap twice and throwing two picks in the 4th. But congrats are in order to the Colts and Peyton Manning who showed that they can win the big one. Now I just need to survive a phone call from my sister; she's a Colts fan.
Anyone up for waking up to -1 F or -18 C degree weather? Didn't think so. And to make it worse, the wind chill is at -15 F. Yeah. That's what I call unbelievably unbearably fraking cold on my coldometer. Thank God the bus was there at the stop, otherwise, I'd be a popsicle; cherry flavored. -
1Feb 07Recently I found out that I have three other profiles across TV.com, mp3.com, and filmspot. I just now noticed the "My Other Profiles" section right under my assortment of emblems. I'm so observant. But what really made me click and let curiosity set in, was filmspot. Filmspot is pretty much what gamespot does for games, yet for movies. It's in its beta stage, so there are some features it doesn't have, like not being able to add which movies you currently own and a couple others, but it does allow you to create a list of your favorite movies, rate movies, and of course write reviews. I like the emblem system and how one of the emblems corresponds to your rank. Gotta love thos Oompa-Loompas, haha. On a side note, I have started up my tv.com profile. So you can check those out if you so wish.
So it's now February. Last month just flew by with almost me doing no work. Next week is going to be killer with two tests coming up, one in history and advanced thermodynamics. Doesn't that sound like a fun week. I also have to figure out what to get for my mom's bday and how to get it to her 10000 miles away. This could get interesting.
Hah, I finally figured out how to make tags. I feel like such a loser for just figuring that out. So now you can check my small assortment of tags. I'll try to get a larger batch as time goes by. -
26Jan 07Has anyone been watching the Australian Open? If not then you've missed Fernando Gonzalez just utterly destroy Rafael Nadal and Tommy Haas on his way to the finals. I've heard of this guy for the past few years as he's done decently, but now, it's just wow. He's entertaining to watch with his insane speed and unbelievable shots. I think he can actually take down Federer in a majors final. If you haven't seen him play, check him out tomorrow.
Heh, when I was in Singapore this past Christmas, I found out that Australia has the NBL, and Singapore has a team in the league known as the Singapore Slingers. Now for those of you who don't get where the name comes from, let me enlighten you. They're named after an alcoholic beverage, the Singapore sling, which makes them sound rather lame. I mean, would you fear a team known as the Slingers or the tiger-mermaid thing (no idea what it's called) the country's cool looking mascot animal that they like to post everywhere (especially their postcards).
So apparently I have great hair. I was told this by the girl who cut my hair. She ran her hands through my rather long hair at the time a couple times before she said that. Haha. So yeah, I have great hair. -
21Jan 07For those who don't know, I'm an avid fantasy sports player. I'm currently involved in Hockety, Basketball, and Golf, yes Golf.
This is the first year that I've done hockey, and I must say, I must be some sort of guru. Both of my teams are in the top 3 and feature a couple of some pretty good players. The only problem right now is that one of my teams currently has three key players on the injured list, and I'm suffering for that. I just need to catch that blasted first place, who seems to be 10 points ahead no matter what.
Basketball takes a new route this time. This is the first time I haven't gone head-to-head. It's points this time, and I've been climbing in the rankings for some time now after being stuck around 6-8. I'm currently 4th, but a good 500 behind 3rd and 900 behind 1st. Everyone else is clustered behind me 200 points back. Btw, there are 20 teams in this league. Yes, massive. I also had a key injury that occured early on, but he's back now and I'm looking to overtake the top 3.
I'm not going to write anything about golf, cause it's golf and there's nothing to say about it. -
16Jan 07Some of you may have noticed that I wasn't all too active this past weekend. The answer to why, is quite simple. I was done in Charleston, South Carolina to attend a chemical engineering student summit. The whole event took place in a relatively new hotel, so there weren't any internet ports and the whatnot. The whole group that I was with left Miami at 12:30 AM on Saturday! We could only get there at 12:30 PM, as that's when we were told the rooms would be ready. There were 13 of us, and so we took two university vans. Each van had a couple of drivers (you had to sign a form to drive the darn things), and I just happened to be the other driver in my van. After much fun and sleep, we arrived at around noon and found out the rooms were indeed not ready, so my van decided to hit the beach. It's not every once in a while that you can say you've swum the Atlantic in January. We did our opening summit events, which included a scavenger hunt around the city, and I collapsed in bed (it hurts to only have 2 hrs sleep in the past 48). The next day went by a little better with a whole day, 8 to 8 of summit events, which was followed up by everyone going to the bars at 9:30. I seemed to have picked up a couple of new nicknames along the way from a Georgia Tech fellow. We got back last night at midnight after yet another long day behind the wheel.
Overall I had to say it was fun, yet I seemed to have pulled (hopefully not torn) both my calf muscles in bed. How? No idea. -
11Jan 07With the new semester starting, I've decided to catch up on my martial arts and kung fu movies. I recently purchased a couple of said movies, and I must say, for all of them being blind buys, I was rather pleased with the choices. All have great choreography, and feature some good story lines. For those that are wondering the titles of said movies are Dragon Tiger Gate, Police Story, Killzone, and Fearless. As an added note, you can't find Dragon Tiger Gate (my favorite of the four) in the US. Check them out if you want, although I'd take a pass on Killzone, it gets a tad bit depressing.
So Apple unleashed their newest toy, the iPhone (which everyone should know by now). All I have to say is when are they going to release they're handheld or console or whatever it is that they're cooking up regarding video games. Also, speaking of Apple, has anyone noticed that itunes now provides movies from Paramount? The movie section of the online store has upgraded and you can now get all those great Star Trek movies you've always wanted (well, I've always wanted). I wonder how far they're going to go with it. -
8Jan 07All movies on this list are here because they are either adaptations from books, sequels, or remakes, and have failed to deliver. Pretty simple, eh. Feel free to argue and debate and whatnot.
5. Poseidon
A remake of the 1972 disaster film of almost the same name (The Poseidon Adventure), starts the list at number 5 (obviously). The remake features a couple of big names with Kurt Russel, Josh Lucas, Jacinda Barrett, and Emmy Rossum (who seems to be cast in disaster movies). You'd think that a movie with this stellar cast would be pretty good, but what you get is a very predictable movie where you know who's going to die a good ten minutes before it happens, with characters who really don't show a whole heck of emotions, despite being in almost imminent peril. The only reason why anyone would want to see this movie (other than seeing a captain with an apparent Spidey sense!) is to see Rossum, Barrett, and Mia Maestro getting wet, which is the reason I watched it, hehe
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4. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
Why is one of the biggest movies of the year on this list? Well, that's quite easy, it stunk when comparing it to it's predecessor. While the first Pirates featured a great blend of action and smart dialogue, the second flounders with its dialogue as a couple of characters, like the pirate duo of Pintel and Ragetti (the bantering pirates), suffer. Johnny Depp and Jack Davenport (Norrington) seem to be the only two who were able to light up the screen, besides Keira Knightley that is. While it may have made a lot at the box office, it's a crummy job and it seems the only objective that it accomplished was set up a third movie with a surprisingly spectacular finish.
3. X-Men The Last Stand
Say it ain't so with the X-Men, but lo, it is. X-Men The Last Stand ranks in at number 3 primarily because it failed to do what the previous two movies did, create a well defined movie with great character development in a world full of hatred and prejudice. What we got instead, was a movie all about Wolverine and mutant battles while destroying or not really looking at a couple of other mutants and stories (from the comics that is). For those who love the comics, you will be quite insulted and shocked about the outcome of this movie, as it took the series more than a couple steps in the wrong direction, it almost fell off the steps.
2. The Da Vinci Code
How can a movie with an all-star cast and an Oscar winning director possibly end up here. Allow me to pick up my axe. First off, the acting on the whole was miserable. Tom Hanks looked tired as if this was just another movie and not a movie based on one of the best-selling novels of our time. Audrey Tautou seemed awkward not speaking in her native tongue of French. The only person who seemed to bring any enthusiasm to their role is Ian McKellen (who by the way is brilliant). Secondly, the directing of the movie was a little slower than I would have liked (since I have read the book). Thirdly, the movie itself starts off with a major plot hole that no one seems to notice, and lets not forget the ending, which was unnecessarily boring (I almost fell alseep).
1. Eragon
It started as a movie that I was dying to see, only to turn up (after watching some clips on yahoo.com) to be the movie that I would avoid at all costs. Even though it stars Jeremy Irons, John Malkovich, Djimon Hounsou, and featuring the voice of Rachel Weisz, this movie is handcuffed by, well, being dumbed down, by quite a lot. Instead of getting a faithful adaptation of a bestselling book written by an 18 year old, what you get is a lame attempt (even lamer than my failed attempt at making microwavable Mac and Cheese) of a movie that fails on every end. -
6Jan 0720. Daxter (PSP)
19. Resistance: Fall of Man (PS3)
18. Bully (PS2)
17. Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War - Dark Crusade (PC)
16. Elite Beat Agents (DS)
15. Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin (DS)
14. Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories (PS2)
13. Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops (PSP)
12. Kindom Hearts 2 (PS2)
11. Guitar Hero 2 (PS2/Xbox 360)
10. Dead Rising (Xbox 360)
9. Rainbow Six: Vegas (Xbox 360)
8. Medieval 2 Total War (PC)
7. New Super Mario Bros. (DS)
6. Company of Heroes (PC)
5. Final Fantasy 12 (PS2)
4. Okami (PS2)
3. Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion (Xbox 360)
2. Gears of War (Xbox 360)
1. Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Wii/GC) -
5Jan 07Yesterday was my trip back home to Ohio (my college home not home home) from Singapore. Waking up at 4 AM just isn't for me, but the multiple planes rides make up for it. The movie selection this time around sucked, as most of the movies were the same as the first plane trip to Singapore and I missed out on The Departed (it was showing on the trip to Singapore not from). Luckily I had downloaded a couple of TV programs from itunes and had bought this one movie called Dragon Tiger Gate. I actually had some people come up to me to ask what movie I was watching (in correspondance to Dragon Tiger Gate) cause it looked quite good. I arrived in to Chicago a whole hour earlier, but that really didn't matter as the way through security took about an hour, ughh. Arrived into Cincinnati earlier than expected (there seems to be something about quickness that day). I retrieved my car and got home at about 5 PM, and then collapsed in bed only to wake up at 10.
Today, I decided to go off to Best Buy to use up my $50 gift card. I only purchased movies, as I've been told to lay off on the video games for a good while. I came out of that store with a good bundle of DVDs: Arrested Development Season 3, Blazing Saddles, Fearless, Kill Zone, Police Story, and Superman Returns. I have a thing for martial arts movies, hehe.
For those who haven't experienced jet lag, well let me put it to you this way, it sucks!
