Monthly Archives: February 2011

That one day…

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So Valentines Day, February 14, Lover’s Holiday, lets talk about… on the blog.

Fact about Jilleun: I love Valentines day, its my favorite holiday, so what?

It’s just a big deal at my house, every year my mom and her good friends have a Valentine card making party… I think it started when I was about 9 or 10. What started out as a Saturday afternoon with a few friends, paper and stickers, turned into an entire weekend away with boxes and boxes filled with pink hearts, poke-a dot-ribbon, and glitter. This is the second year I haven’t been, which it always a bummer. I love the party, I love having a fancy dinner, I love the anticipation, I love kisses (the chocolate kinda, duh), I love having an excuse to tell people you appreciate and love them, I love that its the only month I like the color pink, I love it all.

This was mine and Kelvin’s third Valentine’s Day together. We do have a little tradition which is going to Einstein Bagel’s, other than that the rest of the day is free game. I think the first year we went to the movies with every other couple in Provo (which is a lot of people btw). Kelvin got me 14 pounds, yes pounds, of M&Ms and an iPod nano. The second year I think I had to work or something, but I got flowers and 4 delicious custom cupcakes from the chocolate, it was lovely. In 2011, our third year together, first year being married and Valentines was on a Monday, gross. We celebrated on Friday, Saturday, and Monday.

Friday we went to one of our favorites date places: Brick Oven and Kelvin gave me a necklace that looks like:

Saturday we had our bagel date and Monday we both worked. I made an amazing dinner of left over Brick Oven :) and gave Kelvin three Valentine’s cards. One right when he woke up in the morning, one when he got off work, and one just before bed, and each was packed with one of his favorite treats. I also build a fort in our living room (ps. I finally know the trick to making the perfect fort) we like forts and each other, so it was pretty great. Then Kelvin did a little tricky thing and we ended up going on a two hour drive. At the time it wasn’t what I had in mind… but now its funny plus it doesn’t matter. Because I love my husband (and because everyone loves to read mushy stuff). Also this is the first year we didn’t take a picture together. I know, I know its sad.

Well there you have it our history of Valentine’s Day. The End.

Starcraft 2

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Starcraft-2-Box-Art

Starcraft 2

I play Starcraft 2. Jilleun doesn’t like it that much, since I am not paying attention to her when I’m playing, but I still play it.

Here is a slightly modified–not by me–comic representing what generally happens when I’m playing almost any video game, but especially Starcraft 2.

If you don’t know, Starcraft 2 is a birds-eye-view “military science fiction real-time strategy video game”. Well, that makes it sound pretty dang stupid. It’s a real-time strategy game, which means you’re not just running around with a gun in your hand trying to kill the enemies, a la Call of Duty.  Real-time strategy means you control a set of units to create an army to destroy the other player(s). It also means that it actually takes skill to play the game and win.  I don’t claim to be a good player in any way (as told by my track record), I only have 109 league wins and am really only a mid-to-high Gold  level player; the scale goes is as follows:

  1. Masters League- top 2% of players
  2. Diamond League- next top 18% of players
  3. Platinum League- next top 20% of players
  4. Gold League- next top 20% of players
  5. Silver League- next top 20% of players
  6. Bronze League- bottom 20% of players

I generally play on a 2v2 team with my older brother Bryant, he’s a Platinum to Diamond player with about 350 league wins under his belt.  In fact, here is a screen shot of a game we played (and lost) just a few days ago.  I cropped it to show some action between us and them.  I’m the red in the bottom left, Bryant was the blue in the bottom right and we were attacking purple who was temporarily without his teal teammate.

2v2

2v2

Starcraft 2 has been out since the 24th of July, which is 212 days ago.  With 109 wins, that means I’ve won 0.514150943 games per day.  With an average game length of about 20-30 minutes, that ain’t bad.  But…since I know Jilleun will proof read this and make me put this next part in here, I might as well just add it myself.  These 20-30 minute every other day averages doesn’t exactly sum up my Starcraft 2  time.  I also watch Starcraft 2 videos on YouTube very often, specifically Day[9] (my favorite), Husky, and HDStarcraft.  In addition to the many hours dedicated to watching strategy videos online, I also spend a good amount of time discussing strategies and et cetera with Bryant via text or instant messaging, or in real life when we are together.

It’s not just me. I promise.  E-Sports is huge (albeit not necessarily in the US)… and Starcraft (1&2) is insanely popular worldwide.  The GSL (Global Starcraft II League, sponsored by GOM-TV in Korea) has several major tournaments a year with giant cash prizes (~$200k) for the winners.  A major Korean airline even has two of their airplanes plastered with Starcraft 2 pictures.  This isn’t a very small game.

Well, I have probably sent every reader running for the hills but a few of you might understand.  I enjoy the game a lot, and I know I will enjoy it for many many years to come.

0.5141509

A case of the Monday’s

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Oh Monday, you’ve got such a bad rep. And I don’t think it’s your fault, not really, it’s just because you’re kind of a downer. It’s just everyone is feeling such a great high from their weekend and you come in and give us real life on a nice ugly platter.  Back to work, back to school, back to not sleeping in or staying up late, back to a messy house, and routine…back to boring. But you want to know the real reason I’m not a fan of you, Monday?

It’s because on the weekends I get to spend every second with my best friend of a husband, and then you come along and ruin it. And I hate it and that’s why I hate you.

Movies- January 2011

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So I’ve decided to do something new. “Record” all the movies that JR and I watch together; mostly to see large brush-strokes in our watching patterns and also to document some of the films that we see.

For clarification, I am using the same rating conversion system that Netflix uses for Stars, that is-

1 Star = Hated it
2 Stars = Didn't like it
3 Stars = Liked it
4 Stars = Really Liked it
5 Stars = Loved it

Evan Almighty (2007)
Watched on: 5 Jan 2011
Rated: PG
Three Actors: Steve Carell, Morgan Freeman, Lauren Graham
Source: Local Library
Reaction: Kelvin- Good and funny movie, but definitely for kids. A little far fetched, even for a God movie. I liked Bruce Almighty much better, although… that one was much more blasphemous.
Jilleun- This is an okay movie, it’s kinda weird that it’s a squeal to Evan Almighty but… they’re really not similar. The wife kind of bugged me because she didn’t believe him at first, other than that it was an alright movie.
Rating: 4/5 Stars

Mr. and Mrs. Smith (2005)
Watched on: 8 Jan 2011
Rated: PG-13
Three Actors: Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Vince Vaughn
Source: Netflix DVD
Reaction: Kelvin- I hate Angeline Jolie. I like Brad Pitt. Movie was okay, but most action scenes were overly fake. Maybe I’m just picky, but he whole plot of two spies/killers not knowing that they were married to each other is… stupid.
Jilleun- This movie is entertaining enough, it had some pretty funny parts. It’s not one I need to see again, though.
Rating: 3/5 Stars

The Last Song (2010)
Watched on: 11 Jan 2011
Rated: PG
Three Actors: Miley Cyrus, Greg Kinnear, Bobby Coleman
Source: Netflix DVD
Reaction: Kelvin- Holy crap, this is the worst movie I have watched in a long time. Miley is a pretty bad actor and her (speaking) voice sounds like a man. We actually didn’t even finish the movie because we were laughing so hard and the movie was basically terrible.
Jilleun- What Kelvin said.
Rating: 1/5 Stars

Rain Man (1998)
Watched on: 11 Jan 2011 (after we couldn’t finish The Last Song)
Rated: R (we didn’t know it was R at the time)
Three Actors: Dustin Hoffman, Tom Cruise, Valeria Golino
Source: Local Library
Reaction: Kelvin- We went on a stupid movie watching streak for today.  Rain Man sounded cool, but in reality it was not.  There were wayyyy too many “F” words coming from Tom Cruise’ mouth and the story just wasn’t that good. Dustin Hoffman did a fantastic acting job in his autistic role, like Leonardo DiCaprio did in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, but that was really the only good thing about the movie.
Jilleun- I really didn’t see what point this movie was trying to make. Basically they took a story that could have been told in 30 minutes or less and made it into a two hour movie.
Rating: 2/5

The Social Network (2010)
Watched on: 18 Jan 2011
Rated: PG-13
Three Actors: Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake
Source: Local Library
Reaction: Kelvin- I really liked it. I have seen this one before, but I still really liked it. I don’t know (or even really care) how true the story the story about Mark is told; it was good. Jesse Eisenberg played the role really well and the movie was “technically accurate” enough for me, right down to the wget magic that Mark does in the beginning of the Facemash project, cue antiquated-yet-legit KDE 3.
Jilleun- This movie is good, I do wish it was accurate but not much I can do about it.
Rating: 4/5 Stars

Ocean’s Eleven (2001)
Watched on: 22 Jan 2011
Rated: PG-13
Three Actors: George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Bernie Mac
Source: Local Library
Reaction: Kelvin- Excellence. So they really trick you at the end, but it was excellence anyway.  The acting was good, the story was great, the music was sweet, and the cinematography just topped off the excellent cake.
Jilleun- I didn’t remember this movie at all, and it was great. I loved the story, I like Brad Pitt’s character best (and no, it wasn’t because I thought he was hot).
Rating: 5/5 Stars

Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (2010)
Watched on: 23 Jan 2011
Rated: PG
Three Actors: Logan Lerman, Brandon T. Jackson, Alexandra Daddario
Source: DVR
Reaction: Kelvin- The story might have been good-ish, but the acting just really threw me into a whirlwind of “meh”.  Kind of like Harry Potter 1, I can’t stand watching that movie anymore because the kids are just such terrible actors, especially Harry Potter.. and he’s hard to get away from, since he’s the main character. Speaking of… Chris Columbus directed both of these films… maybe that has something to do with it? He can just put up with crappy kid actors.
Jilleun- This movie was worse the second time around, its still an OK movie. The idea of it is really cool, Greek gods but the movie was just kind sloppy.
Rating: 3/5 Stars

Ocean’s Twelve (2004)
Watched on:  26 Jan 2011
Rated: PG-13
Three Actors: Catherine Zeta-Jones, Julia Roberts, Matt Damon
Source: Local Library
Reaction: Kelvin- Excellence again.  I did not like the role that Julia Roberts played, but that can be minimized (in my mind) out of the picture.  They sure showed that stupid French guy who’s boss, that’s right. Americans!
Jilleun- This one was equally good. Only complaint is I kinda feel like they cheated, but then again they make a living out of stealing things so…
Rating: 5/5 Stars

Ocean’s Thirteen (2007)
Watched on: 28 Jan 2011
Rated: PG-13
Three Actors: Al Pacino, Elliott Gould, Don Cheadle
Source: Local Library
Reaction: Kelvin- Not as good as the first and second of these movies, but I still really enjoyed it anyway.  They trick you AGAIN! What with the swapping or non-swapping of Mr. Banks’ diamond necklaces, how am I supposed to keep track of what is going on if they keep pulling the switcheroo? The acting was great, as usual; the music was basically the same, sweet; everything was awesome, I suppose maybe I just got tired of the trick-you-till-the-very-end genre.  On the other hand, it all three of the movies must have had extremely creative writers behind them.
Jilleun- This one was my least favorite mostly for the cinematography. I thought it was kinda cheesy.
Rating: 4/5 Stars

Up (2009)
Watched on: 30 Jan 2011
Rated: PG
Three Actors: Edward Asner, Christopher Plummer, Jordan Nagai
Source: DVR
Reaction: Kelvin- I’m thinking that pretty much everything Pixar touches turns into solid gold. Up was such a good movie, you couldn’t help but fall in love with grumpy old Mr. Fredricksen; and you couldn’t help but laugh at Dug and Russell. The first time we watched this was in the theaters when it first came out, we saw it in 3D (a technology that I hate, btw).  It was great then and it’s still great now!  It has a slightly serious tone in the beginning and end because of Ellie and her role, which would make me not want to recommend it to children under a certain age. Superb movie!
Jilleun- I love this movie, but who doesn’t? :)
Rating: 5/5 Stars

Some stats
10 movies
R- 1 (oops)
PG-13- 5
PG- 4
G- 0
Favorite movie this month-
Kelvin- Up
Jilleun- Up