And back to gaming, Naruto Shippuuden Ultimate Ninja Storm 2

This isn't a new game, it isn't even really a popular game it's just one of the games I'm playing at the moment when I'm bored and putting flame to incense.  Naruto Shippuuden Ultimate Ninja Storm 2 is based on the Naruto Shippuuden anime and thus the Naruto manga and as with many anime based games there is an option to have the audio in English or in Japanese(being a HUGE sub fan, I of course opt for Japanese with english Subtitles), mainly because they usually get the actual voice actors who play the characters to do the voice overs. So it's pretty much a seemless immersion into the anime. NS2 is along the lines of a fighting RPG you have to walk around and do quests to help you get items to get strong but for the most part the story moves along once you go and have certain fights. You don't really level up though in this one, you get new versions of the character as the story moves along and you get past certain chapters of the story, that coincide with things that happened in the anime. In this case you get regular Naruto who just knows how to use the Rasengan, then you get Naruto who knows how to use the Rasen Shuriken, then you get access to the "sage mode" Naruto who also uses the Rasen Shuriken but it's alot stronger. There is also an "unlockable" Naruto if you beat the game.

Fighting Role Playing Games also differ from normal RPG's in the fact that your main goal is to get characters, items, and abilities to use in the actual tournament or P v P action outside the main story. You really don't have to play the Main story at all and can just fight with friends using the characters unlocked when you first open the box, there is also an online component. If you are going to play online though, I recommend you play out the story otherwise you will be catching a few Sasuke Uchiha Kirin, and Naruto Rasen Shurikens to the face. If you are a fan of the anime you will recognize some of the locales and the epic battles. In some of the fights there will be added "interactive sequences" where you can use button combinations and directional pad presses to attempt to earn stars. The faster you enter in the combinations the more stars you get(if you fail you will be sent back to the beginning of the sequence), you have the chance to earn what is called a secret factor. Which is usually a scene from the show itself or the Naruto anime in a kind of faded out 2D. It makes you want to fight harder and pay attention more, while it adds to the story it's unnecessary to go ahead and finish out the game. For those who have to have absolute 100 percent "gotta catch them all" completion of the game there is an option to go back and attempt to earn those stars later in a game. In the Hokage's(or Kazekage later in the game) office there is a ninja who will offer you the chance to go back and refight battles. 

*Yaaaaaaaaaawn*

Hey Ponderers, I'm tired as hell today another late night in a series of late nights. I have found the "tag/script of my dreams" on wordpress, its a little bit of code that allows me to basically let me turn long blog posts into book form. I know some would prefer that my more enormous blogs could be cut down a little into more bite-sized offerings, you know let you get to the bottom of the page and feel a sense of progress before you continue on with one of my rambles.

Unfortunately as of yet that doesn't help me here, I'm sure that there has to be some html code out there to "paginate" a non wordpress blog and I am going to find it. I don't know when or where but I am now determined. I know some would say "doesn't that just give you an excuse to be wordy?" Well yes, but you won't suffer because of my wordiness now will you, okay maybe slightly, mentally, and chronologically(because if it takes a minute to write it takes a minute to read).

Anyway this is just a quick, "write what is on your mind to keep the juices flowing" post especially tailored to my "barely keeping one eye open" state of mind right now.

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my barbecue on 3/27/10

Why this blog has been languishing in draft for the last 16 months is beyond me. It's just a blog about a barbecue, with pictures to show you exactly how I roll when it comes to throwing meat on the grill and getting it that nice smokey flavor. I didn't even notice that I had turned my grill around(I do admit to sometimes missing out on subtle details). I haven't even really decided on pic placement yet because I started putting pictures in this blog and then just forgot about it. I'm human it happens, I may come back later and go ahead and place the rest of the pictures from that day in this blog, it will just have to be one of those I sneak in hurriedly dumb a blog and then sneak out.

Since I have barbecued a few times since then of course I have a lot of pictures to go through, I actually think I have gotten a lot better in that time. I'll post this as a current post instead of sneaking it into last years count because that just wrong and while SOMETIMES I have been known to do that in this case I will bite the bullet and say yup I goofed. So enjoy these few pictures and if you're ever in the neighborhood and smell some good food come on by and get a plate.

Trailers: Transformers Dark of the moon

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol

The IMF crew are being framed for a bombing at the Kremlin.  The entire department has been disavowed, they are on their own and must discover who has set them up as international terrorist, there are some new faces in the group (Jeremy Renner and Simon Pegg stand out from the trailer) to help stalwart Ethan Hunt figure just how the world is on it's way to hell. And your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to hang on for the ride. Gadgets, explosions, and Tom Cruise hanging from some new climbing contraction, whats not to like?

Abduction

Nathan is your average high school teenager, nice house, great school, enjoying the life. Until his girlfriend shows him a photo from a "missing childrens" site that has a picture that when aged looks a lot like him. Of course this raises some eyebrows, and not long after seeing his picture on said site there is a knock on the door, his "parents" are shot and killed which puts Nathan and Karen on the run. Mysterious characters are searching for Nate some want to see him kept safe, others seem to want something that he has in his possession, all Nathan knows is that he wants a piece of whoever is killing his loved ones and acquaintances.

Energon Depletion Detected

So last night while attempting to watch Transformers: Dark of the Moon we got to the middle of the movie, the Rising Action as Kitsune was saying, it was starting to get Juicy, they had Sam Witwicky in a pinch and all the sudden *Poof* the lights go off. I don't mean a quick flicker I mean dark, game over, stayed at the arcade too long and they want to go home dark. Most of the lights were out though some of the things were still working(want some Willy Wonka candy, we got you). So we all decide to take a bathroom break, it was the 10 pm showing and we were all taking it pretty well. After finding the bathrooms sufficiently lit for us to relieve ourselves without having to worry about stream crossing or hitting the walls we walked out to speak to the Theater staff.

They were handing out free passes due to the fact that MOST of us had gotten cut off in the middle of our movies though I'm sure some were at the end. So as we walk out and joke with other customers what do you know MIRACULOUSLY the lights come back on, and we are all staring at each other. The darkened theater was suspicious in the first place because when you walk into the lobby and look out the front door everyone else has power. It wasn't much of a black out past the movie theater, and the fact that most of the patrons were outside the door now that the power comes back on made many of us think they just wanted to go home. It was the 4th of July and yeah it sucks to work on holidays but hey if you signed up for that money I say you work the whole night, just saying.

As they weren't going to restart the movie(hey I had my free pass in hand) it didn't matter to me or Kitsune it didn't become a free movie without them giving us our money back. Yeah yeah let me see you get a double dip opportunity and not take it, I thought so. So we know who the new bad guy is, we know who is going to day(at least up to the first half of the movie), and we have seen that Shockwave looks pretty much to the cartoon with a few minor changes. I would like to thank Michael Bay for always sticking to as much character design as is plausible. So Transformers Take 2 will either happen to day or tomorrow, seems like it pulled in a decent haul this weekend so thats nice. We might get a fourth one, dunno there are more than enough transformers you can bring to life if you so choose to keep going.

Primaldata Grill Enthusiast

This year I was honored to be asked if I would cook the meat for my family reunion, my eyes being bigger than my grill of course I said yes. After a few words in reminder from my mother and a one of my aunts it was decided I would just do the chicken. Now I must confess me and cooking chicken for my relatives and extended family always comes with a running inside the family joke, as my cousin Mack put it so perfectly "I don't know why you cook something and expect it to be here when you get back". Now I will confess my "famous" chicken is actually a family undertaking, yes I decide how hot the fire is, how many wood chips will be thrown in to each batch, and when I will pull it off but the spices as well as the spice combination is usually decided by my mother. The sauce that is usually added most times is added by Ero Kitsune, yes he has other skills besides just forcing me to sit through bad movies or coming up with catchy derogatory titles for movies, sometimes I will do it(but I will usually be dead tired by the time sauce making commences so usually his sauce is better than mine), this year it was handled by dad since Kitsune was the only brother who decided to work today(I have an excuse I was on the grill, Lank not so much unless you count Infamous 2 as some holy undertaking).

After buying my first batch of supplies my mother started marinating the chicken for me while I cleaned my grill, as not to fight over space I grabbed a large Tupperware bowl, put some soap in it, grabbed my grill brush, and decided to do the cleaning outside. a few passes of the brush to remove any leftover grease and or schmutz off each grate and a quick blast with the hose and 25 minutes later I was done. Now while I don't use all of my father's "Country Boy Grilling techniques"(my father was born and raised in AR), I do subscribe to the cover your grates in foil and pop holes through it technique. It still lets the smoke through, controls some of the flame ups,(some not all not claiming this is some holy grail of flame maintenance), and it cuts down on the amount of cleaning I have to do later. The only caveat is that I don't get the grill marks most people who just touch the food straight to the grate get, there is still minor stickage as well but no where near as bad as straight metal on flesh. This year was also a new medium for me: leg quarters. Usually I make chicken breasts and we pound them out flat so that they cook faster, but since I was cooking all of the chicken and not just trying to win the barbecue contest we decided the leg quarters would allow for more for everyone while maximizing cooking space.

Primal Files-Tech Tales:You fool no one but yourself

We've all done it, attempted to pinch a penny, cut a corner, recycle parts from something old into something new. Now while when it comes to electronics you USUALLY can do that, if the problem is a hard drive that is about to die, 9 times out of 10 you're better buying a brand new hard drive. This lovely screen belongs to a customer's computer I was trying to reload Thursday night going into Friday morning. I had two computers to work on a Gateway desktop that had mystically decided that it didn't want to recognize Windows XP anymore and a Toshiba Laptop that the owner promised he had put a new, non dieing hard drive in. To be fair the real dagger in my heart was the Gateway, as I would find later it would require at least 7 hours to load windows 7 on that computer. 7 hours, a despicable task because usually I can get a computer reloaded within 2 hours, regardless of the operating system so the fact that I started at 8 o'clock and finished around 2:30 am did not sit well. To make matters worse, I still had to load drivers for it's Surveillance system card, which added ANOTHER 2 hours to my total, to say I was exhausted is an understatement.

The Toshiba I treated like a rotisserie chicken I set it and forget it, came back in about an hour and 30 minutes and I got a nasty gram "Windows 7 could not be loaded on to this computer, all changes that have been made have not been saved". Excuse me, I just wasted a good hour waiting on you while I was running back and forth with Captain Molasses who might as well be visiting Nanoock in his home(Nanoock of the North, joke my mother used to use when we left the door open in the winter back in Jersey). So of course I restart windows on the Toshiba and begin the load again only to get a little orange message that leads to that pop up box. Why me? The customer and I had just had a DETAILED conversation as to why he needed a different hard drive, about the importantance of using a good drive(didn't have to be new new, it just had to be WORKING). I almost wanted to call him and ask if he had taken the surname Flecher and had his cousin 'Dung been in for a visit, it didn't matter where he got the drive it just needed to work.