I just spent my entire day at Mike (Langenbacher)'s house. What was I doing, you ask? Not feeding ducks, to be sure. Our German class is doing this group (ours was Mike, Matt, Julia, Ryan, and myself) project for a book we read - paraphrase the movie in the form of a play, and you can do it in a movie. So, we did the movie thing. We shot the entire thing in about 5 hours (5:00 - 10:00), with about 9-10 minutes of actual footage. None of us actually memorized the lines - we'd shoot short sections (like 30 seconds) and just memorize right before. It was spiffy. I died about 5-6 times throughout the movie, which was thoroughly enjoyable. I hope Mike does a good job splicing it together, since I think it will turn out well if he does.
Various events worth noting:

• I watched the Matrix Reloaded again Wednesday night. I've forgotten how cool some of the action scenes are - despite being a poor movie as far as the plot goes, I thoroughly enjoy the fight scenes and car chases.
• I watched Black Hawk Down again Thursday night. I saw it a couple years ago, when I was in 6th grade. Another good action movie, a nice, realistic portayal of Rangers in action. I was unaware until watching some of the credits that Ridley Scott directed it. Man-points for him.
• I may be getting my braces off Thursday. It depends on how much they like me. That same day, I will be taking the permit test.
• I was cleaning out the car that will eventually be mine, (the green Ford Explorer in my driveway), and found much phat l00t throughout it. Jonothan never cleaned it out, so there's all kinds of stuff about.
• Benjamin and Nolan are spending the night tomorrow, as well as staying over pretty much all day. Their parents are out of town. Hopefully, Benjamin and I will be able to get this other box running on SuSE and have it serving all this stuff more reliably than it is on here.
  

Among the important events, Christopher will be coming to live with us (as in, in our house). He'll be out of the military in a couple weeks, and pretty much has nowhere else to go, but home. His plans for the future are ambiguous, but he's thinking about taking some courses to finish up his degree (he has at least 2-3 years worth in credit-hours from all kinds of random places). This is cool news.

[geek]

The Xbox 360 was unveiled about three days ago. If it holds up the Xbox tradition, this will be the hardware I'm getting. I don't like Sony much at all - the PS3 is not appealing to me, even though I haven't even seen the specifications or capabilities yet. The wiki on it is more extensive than anything the mainstream sites will give you. To sum it up, though, the Xbox 360 does everything and anything you want it to - it can handle media across the Live community and from external sources, like mp3 players, cameras, digital and video. It's completely wireless enabled, so LAN parties no longer require hubs or cables, and the controllers are wireless. It has customizable plates, detachable 20 GB hd, it just, man, it looks sweet. The games are not worth speculating on - when they're here, and they're good, I'll say something. But the list is nice - Fable 2, Halo 2, Perfect Dark Zero, Blue Dragon, Elder Scrolls IV, and Ghost Recon 3. It's some crazy stuff. The graphics look incredible for all the games currently along in development. I don't want to be a raving fanboy, but I hope I can save up enough for this thing. It's sweet.

And Nintendo? The DS and Gamecube prevent me from trusting them until the deliver. I'm still hurt from the dissapointment of Project Dolphin. I remember the screenshots of the Zelda that was to be on the Dolphin. My heart ached for a long time.

[/geek]

Time to pick a movie to watch and clean up the room.