TMNT review

If you've seen the previous TMNT movies, you'll know that they'll never be up for an Academy Award. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was the precursor to the Power Rangers in the '80s, and kids that grew up watching TMNT are now adults that want to see their lean-green fighting machines back in action. I watched the cartoons growing up and I saw all three live-action movies numerous times. Not so much the third one, that one was particularly bad, but even with Vanilla Ice and grown men in rubber suits, there is something special about the ninja turtles.

With that said, the new TMNT movie is completely animated with a new cast of voices which may not be exactly what you had expected. The same goes with the storyline. A 3000 year old curse that involves immortality and 13 monsters sounds like something that was randomly picked at the last minute. Besides the fact that we're talking about walking talking turtles, the time traveling, portal opening storylines never do so well. Regardless, the animation is fantastic and the overlying theme is about that brotherly bond which of course raised the cheesyness factor by at least 10 points.

I know I wasn't expecting a masterpiece, and as long as I saw my turtles in action again, I would be fine with that. It's all nostalgia for me, considering I've been buying the original cartoon series on DVD. Definitely a movie worth watching if you're a huge turtle fan. Otherwise, if you're expecting an awesome animated film with a deep and involved story with great dialogue, then you can skip this one.

Spring Break!

I got a chance to meet up with some old coworkers in the old PeopleSoft days. It's been too long. I've had a daily schedule last quarter so I was always in school while people were at work. Cramming all my classes into 2 or 3 days was too much. I don't mind school everyday, it's just that it makes it hard to keep in touch with people.

As busy as I was with work, being at school and studying takes up even more time, especially since I am trying to get good grades. It was really good seeing them again, it made me realize how lucky I am to have this opportunity to go back to school and pursue something I really want to do. I liked it when I was at PeopleSoft, I knew I had a great opportunity and I had a wonderful group of people that surrounded me. Oracle came and kind of took it away, not only with the changes of the company but the changes it ultimately brought on the group. People started leaving, and when my boss left I knew I had to figure out what I was going to do.

Moving to a smaller company was a good choice, I learned a lot and it eventually led me back to school so I'm grateful for everything that's happened. I got in touch with a lot of people I haven't talked to in ages, people are getting married, having babies, all wonderful news and I'm so happy for them.

Having a weekend off to just unwind was very much needed and I feel refreshed to go clean the house now and continue with my break.

I'm back and it's raining

I had some self control, I only logged on once on Friday. :p Otherwise I spent the weekend trying to improve my snowboarding skills and not get myself killed. I only wiped out once, and maybe a few more times if you count the times where I was just too tired to stop. I ate an obscene amount of food, which was still way too much to compensate the amount of exercise I was getting.

I would like to get some productive things done this week while I'm off. I don't want to jinx myself, because there is a good chance that I'll get nothing accomplished. Even though I'm looking forward to next quarter, a part of me wishes I was looking for a real job already so I could get a real paycheque.

It's nice to get away

Although even though I'm on vacation, I somehow manage to find a way to mooch wireless internet and still be online :p But I did go running on a treadmill, I ran a mile in 12 minutes, so much for my goal of 10. I'm pretty impressed that I stay at a constant 5mph run, usually after about 3 minutes I'm walking so I actually ran the whole time.

We played a bit of pingpong afterwards, until we got bored and decided to go find a place to eat. Squaw Valley is a nice little area, I can't wait to hit the slopes early tomorrow. Hopefully most of the spring break people are gone, considering spring break for semestered students was a week ago. It's my turn!

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Who's excited about the new movie? I am! :D In theatres this Friday. Woohoo!

Not enough hours in a day...

Especially if you lose an hour due to spring forward! There are 24 hours in a day, assuming I get my 8 hours of sleep, that brings me down to 16. Eating, brushing my teeth, getting dressed, showering (not in that order) can be 2 hours right there, and that's assuming I'm not cooking. If I cook (which rarely happens anyway) that's another hour at least, plus another good 30 minutes to clean up.

Then we have commute time which is about an hour each day, thankfully. I don't want to be one of those commuters that spend 4 hours a day in a car because of the lousy driving skills that seem to be inherent in this area.

I take about 20 units in school, and with the crappy scheduling that I'm given, I'll need to be at school at least 6 hours out of my day.

And then there's homework, and the list of things I would like to do if I had "free time". I spend a ridiculous amount of time online, but that's mostly because I'm reading, writing or just wasting time on Facebook (which I really need to stop). But there are other things I want to do too, like watch tv, play piano, draw, learn flash/dreamweaver, blog, check forums, work on website, knit (can do that while watching tv), play my many games that haven't been opened, take pictures, play with my dog, go running (which can be combined with dog).

So being conservative, that leaves me with 7 hours left for homework and free time. That seems like a lot of time...

If I spend about 30 minutes for each item and 3 hours of homework, that's about it. If I cook, then it's 1.5 hours of homework. I'm pretty good when it comes to time management, but where does my time really go? I think I need to get rid of my computer because I'm on it way too much. But I also use it for school. Maybe I should just get rid of internet and see how productive I become.

Video Game Research

I'm not sure why this has never occured to me before, but people do research about the video game industry all the time. Only recently when I found out that one of my professors was interested in beginning a research study on MMOs and college gamers, did I realize that conducting that type of research would be fun and interesting for me. (I know, I have a weird concept of fun)

I remember doing a project on Nintendo in grade 6, just thinking about it, I remember having so much fun collecting all the Super Mario images and writing up my project on the various Koopas. My geekiness started early.

I also really enjoy psychology, and to be able to analyze that part of the industry as well would be very cool. I think it would be nice if women had more visibility, this could be my way of getting us female gamers noticed.