Should old acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind?

Happy New Year Everyone!
At last a holiday we can all agree on.

I was wondering if you've been setting New Year's resolutions, if so then please share. Resolutions don't sound like something that I'd usually go along with, if it's important enough to set a goal for then you shouldn't need some arbitrary date to set yourself goals. However, setting reasonable resolutions works and helps you better yourself and your life, with that said, here's my dumb goals for 09.

Gaming

Complete 2 Zelda games - so this doesn't really better me or my life, but I've only completed 4 Zeldas, 3, 4, OOT & TP. This is especially sad since I own every Zelda except for the first two. Not sure which I'll play through, perhaps Wind Waker and Phantom hourglass, but I'm also tempted by Majora's mask.

Fitness

Hundred push ups - I'm not in terrible shape, but I could always stand to be fitter. I managed day one on the harder routine which meant 45 pushups with 4 one minute breaks, I still hurt. If anyone wants to join me on this path of pain then checkout
http://hundredpushups.com/

Career

Complete at least one piece of paid commissioned work - I've been writing reviews on and off for quite some time now and have gotten rather serious about it over the last 2-3 years so it's about time I set myself up with the next level. Honestly I'm a little skeptical about this but I've thought of ideas for a column in a paper, so with enough stubborn behavior I may get this harder achievement to unlock.

 

I hope you all do well with your lists and may all of your achievements unlock.

Chest nuts nibbling at your toes

Hi all, I trust you all had a great Christmas!

I thought I'd give a quick list of some notable gifts that I received, as is the custom around these here parts

• 3 months of XBL
• 1600 Microsoft Points
• Mario Kart (W/Wheel)
• A stand for my tx2510us laptop
• A great chair for my desk

I think I gave pretty well.

• A D610 Laptop
• GForce 7800 Video card
• 19” Widescreen monitor
• 4-5 Bugs Bunny trinkets
• Gears of War book

Some other gifts given to others by others in our house

• Xbox 360
• Mortal Kombat Vs DC
• Some kind of basketball game
• A Proposal of marriage

Sure there were a lot of other gifts which were all pretty awesome, but most aren’t so interesting to write about here. Nothing I gave can quite top a marriage proposal and all six of us had a great time.

I did get one other gift though, which is so outstanding that it doesn’t even belong in the same list as the rest. A three day trip to San Francisco starting on my 29th birthday (Having a wife is awesome. FACT!)  We’ll be in the Fairmont about 20 minutes from the CNET office so I’ll be sure to take a look at where it is since the building does look rather cool. I’m honestly not sure exactly what we’re going to be doing in and around SF besides snapping a lot of photos, but Dana says she has plans that she doesn’t want to spoil so I’ll just have to wait a couple of week before I find out.

What was the best give you gave and received this Christmas?

So this is Christmas, What have you done?

Now you have John Lennon’s Happy Christmas (War Is Over) in your head, you’re welcome.

 

Things are looking pretty good on the Christmas front, the tree is packed! I’ve a couple of gifts to wrap once the final package arrives for my wife on the 24th but other than that I’m geared and ready.  I’m so glad I got in and ordered early from Amazon, although the stores don’t appear to be anywhere near as busy as previous years. I guess that’s just a sign of the times.

I’ve been thinking a lot about 2008 and how things have changed for me personally over the year. On Gamespot things have changed drastically. I used to write a daily Amazon.com deal of the day, rather a tedious affair, but I wanted to prove (to myself mostly) that I can pick something like that and stick with it and I did a rather good job, up until the end of May when I packed it in. Also more importantly I went from exactly 0 comments on each blog to the dozen or so that I see here regularly, thanks guys and a special thanks to Carstairs and Galadriel for being the first two regulars here, I’d like to think that perhaps my blog is a little better to look at now than it was before.

Outside of Gamespot, I’m happy that this weekend I finished my 2008 new years resolutions. Reading books isn’t really my thing, I’d much rather stare at a screen of brightly colored lights, but I decided that it’s about time I expanded my horizons a little, so I borrowed a copy of “The Road” by Cormack McCarthy. After getting really psyched up for Fallout 3 at the end of ‘07 I decided that reading a little post apocalyptic fiction might be the way to go and I wasn’t disappointed. Perhaps it’s a little dark for most people with numerous mentions of suicide but it gave me exactly the moment that I wanted, I kept reading and found it hard to put the book down. Now I get to be one of those jerks when the movie comes out next year when I say “The book was better”

The second resolution was to get a little closer to working in the game industry. I’m sure you’re all tired of me redirecting you (look at all these hyperlinks!) but of course CitizenGame is a home to me now and we have a game of the year vote going on right now, so head off there quickly and vote, my blog should still be here when you get back, baring any sudden apocalypse. Speaking of Citizen Game, I’ve had a blast the last couple of weekends playing Gears of War 2 with the guys there. Now Gears isn’t exactly my game of choice but the guys make it a tone of fun anyhow, we even had Don (ex GameSpot) in our voice chat for a while, good times

That seamless segway brings me onto the games I’ve been playing Banjo Kazooie Nuts and Bolts a whole lot, mostly thanks to the recommendations from Carstairs and I’m stunned, calling it a driving game is calling Fallout 3 a FPS or RPG, N&B is more like a platform racer, which sounds treacherous but is instead tremendous! New games for me this week have been Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility, Guitar Hero: World Tour, Left 4 Dead and Lips which I’ll likely go into another time and I’m getting real close to reaching 50,000 Gamer Score points by ‘09.

Alright, this post is running a little long so I’ll cut it here, even though I’m barely started talking about games but I don’t want to chew your ears off. Have happy holidays guys, I’m terribly jealous of all you who have time off school!