Now, don’t get me wrong, I love my dreads.  They are awesome, and I’d cut someone before I’d cut off all my hair.  However, my hair seems to be great for starting conversations with people I don’t really want to talk to.  I’m becoming increasingly annoyed with answering questions that random strangers have about them.  I tolerated it at first, but after almost 7 years of dreads, I’ve become tired of answering “So, how long have you been growing your hair?” and all the questions that come with it.  Which brings me to the second question the woman asked after I answered the first: “So, are you from California or something?”

I seem to be getting this lately for reasons that are beyond me.  I guess I give off some “foreigner vibe”.  For example, I was at Wal-Mart buying food so I wouldn’t die of starvation.  The cashier (for some reason, we don’t have self-checkout lanes here) asked me where I was from for some reason.  I told her I’m from Alabama, which I am, I guess.  Then she proceeds to ask “No, were are you really from?”  Presumably, she thought I was a lying lair, and she knew in her heart I couldn’t be from Alabama.  Note that this was before I took my debit card out, so it’s not like she looked at my last name and concluded that I couldn’t possibly have been born in the US.  At least she didn’t ask if she could touch my hair.

I know my hair is awesome, and I can understand wanting to touch it.  But imagine, if you will, random strangers asking you if they can touch your hair.  Weird, huh?  The amazing part is people seem surprised when I tell them no.  For example, I was (yet again) at Wal-Mart acquiring milk so I’ll be big and strong when I grow up.  As I examined the expiration dates of the available milk, I hear some woman, possibly a banshee, shreik “AHHHH!  I LOVE YOUR HAIR!”  I assumed it was the old-ish woman I passed on the way to the milk.  I didn’t bother to turn around and just mumbled “Thanks.”  As I found the perfect (yes, perfect) jug of milk, the banshee-woman shriek-asks “CAN I TOUCH IT?”  I told her no and she replys “NO!?”, as if I said “No, please don’t give me this fat stack of money.” or “No, I don’t want these hot, fresh Krispy-Kreme donuts.” (everyone loes Krispy-Kreme donuts).  It was at this point I walked away with my perfect jug of milk.

I may or may not have been rude to that banshee-woman, but I couldn’t care less.  Sometimes you have to be rude, and banshees aren’t even people.  You don’t have to be nice to them, especially if they’re harassing you about your hair.  I guess that’s the downside of having awesome hair.  People and mythical monsters harassing you about it.

• I enjoy Pandora, I really do.  I just wish I got more new music when listening to Pandora.  Their “you might like this” algorithm works pretty well; however, I’m often presented with a song that I already own and have on my iPod (I’m becoming increasingly unfond of my iPod).  Also, nearly all of my stations on Pandora play Tool.  I like Tool, so Pandora is correct in giving me some Tool to enjoy.  However, I listen to Pandora to hear stuff I haven’t heard before, not all Tool, all the time.
• Rachel demanded that I watch a movie called The Room.  So we watched The Room together, and all I can say is…wow.  You just have to see it.  It’s just…wow.  It definitely was filmed with the passion of Tennessee Williams.  Quite the quirky black comedy, if I do say so myself.
• I have Netflix, and it’s pretty awesome.  Not the DVD sending part so much as the streaming to my XBox 360 part.  It is significantly easier to use Netflix than to pirate everything, and it’s only $10.  People should take note: this is how you get people to pirate less.  Now if they could get all the seasons of Law & Order on Netflix streaming.  That would be optimal.
• I recently made the mistake of subscribing to the StarCraft 2 subreddit.  This was a mistake because it makes me want to play StarCraft 2 so bad.  But I’m currently playing Persona 4, and loving the crap out of that.  I don’t think I can play Persona 4 and StarCraft 2 at the same time.  Persona 4 seems like Persona 3: a commitment not to be taken lightly.
• Having a frequent visitor to my apartment is a pretty good motivator for keeping my apartment relatively clean.  It’s amazing.
• I’m considering getting a smart phone…well, to be more accurate, a smart device.  It would be nice to have an organizer in my pocket.  Of course, I don’t plan on changing my phone plan; I don’t need anything more than I currently have.  I’ll probably stick with my dumb phone.  It’s so small and does exactly what I need it to do.
• Why is it so hard to write music when you’re trying to write music?  I finally have my audio interface working perfectly (thanks Arch Linux!) and nothing I’ve though of so far is worth loading up Ardour (the program I use to record my instruments) for.  I should probably stop thinking about music, then it will come to me.  If I’m lucky, I’ll find one of my many stringed instruments before I completely forget the song that just popped into my head.
• I never knew how fast news travels on Facebook or how weird people act on Facebook.  Maybe I should use Facebook more?
• Black Dynamite 2.  It’s happening, and the world has instantly become a better place.  If you’re reading this, and you haven’t seen Black Dynamite, then I don’t know what’s wrong with you.  But something clearly is wrong with you.
• Inception.  Wow.  I have nothing but respect for Leonardo DiCaprio.  I forgive him for Titanic.  I thought I’d never forgive him for that.  Christopher Nolan movies are now insta-watch movies for me.  If there is one in theaters, I will go watch it.
• This guy with some chick knock on my door last week.  They tell me they’re trying to win money for college, but I don’t care about that.  They try to get me to drop $60 on a magazine subscription, and they earn points if I do that!  That’s enough to buy a game!  That’s enough to buy SC2!  They inform me that people don’t pay for the magazine, they pay because they like to help people.  I think I’ve become soft at my old age, because the conversation lasted long enough for me to get all that information from them.  They weren’t the last ones to knock on my door, but subsequent conversations were alot shorter.
• I went to see The Expendables, because I’m a man and I felt like that’s what a man should do.  The people I was sitting next to were a bit on the annoying side, but I am easily annoyed.  I left the theater with stubble: no full on man-beard was grown (not unlike the kind of beard one gets upon beating Demon’s Souls).  I wasn’t bad: it had awesome parts, but it wasn’t awesome.

Two calenders, a Pirates of the Caribbean pack (and we all know how much I like Pirates of the Caribbean), and two High School Musical alarm clocks.  Weak?  Infinitely.  I was saddened by my BoC until I saw this:

This thing is awesome!  You want to know why it’s awesome?  It flies and shrieks during flight.  That is just absurdly awesome.  You know what else is awesome?  This picture Rachel drew.  Am I on a robotic raptor?  Indeed I am.  I didn’t even mention the sword, she just added it because she’s awesome.  Third nicest thing anyone has ever done for me.  Ever.

My brother is currently visiting me, and he beat FF XIII quicker than I.  Jerk.  At least that gave him more time to kill zombies.  I’ve bought the Resident Evil 5 DLC, and I refuse to play with an A.I.  This is the first time I’ve played Resident Evil 5 on my widescreen TV with two players, and for some asinine reason, our screens don’t fill up the entire TV.  All that black space on my TV makes me feel cheated.  While playing RE 5, my brother and I realized how much better it would be if we were playing with a keyboard and mouse (or a Wiimote).  Shooters with gamepads are not the most elegant way to go.

Speaking of elegance, I got a Starcraft 2 beta key, and my SC2 abilities are anything but elegant.  My macro and micro are steadily improving, but I seem to make silly mistakes and pay for it.  For example, this guy is coming for my base, but there are rocks blocking his way.  I, of course, want to make mutalisks to defend this.  I have the minerals and gas for this, but I let myself get supplied blocked (no mutalisks for me until I get more overlords).  So by the time he gets into my base, I don’t have nearly enough mutalisks to fend off the attack (I have plenty of overlords now) and it’s all over.  A wiser man would have taken some drones and turned them into spine crawlers to fend off this attack until enough mutalisks were spawned to handle this, but I’m not a wiser man.  An even wiser man would have more than enough overlords, but I am not an even wiser man.  I’m just a man who gets spanked in SC2.  At least Picross 3D doesn’t make me feel like a loser.

Before I go, I have a couple of pictures!

We were rusty, but upon seeing this, my brother and I realized we were ready to play the DLC.

My brother was quite proud of this, and I was impressed.  Yes, that’s a can of nuts inside a former container of nuts.  Xzibit would be proud.  And now we’re done.

Speaking of embarrassment, I’ve recently started playing Starcraft again.  This time, I’ll actually beat the game instead of rage-quitting during the last Zerg mission (I lost my entire army and now I have to defend this point?  Rage!).  Then I’ll break Brood War over my knee.  Then I’ll think about playing online and laugh once I realize how bad of an idea that is.  Some 5 year old Korean kid will drop siege tanks in the back of my base 5 minutes into the game.  I need to find someone who sucks as much as I do to play Starcraft with.  I need to do a lot of things, like continue playing Picross 3D.  It’s like crack you don’t have to do shameful things for.

It’s pretty much the next Team Fortress 2, except completely not.    Speaking of Valve games, I’ve had Left 4 Dead 2 for months, but I’ve yet to play it.  I don’t know why I haven’t even bothered to go through part of one campaign.  I should find some L4D2 buddies with mics.  I need to practice my 12 year old kid voice.  They’re gonna love that so much.

You know what else is horrible?  Dr. Horrible and his sing-along blog.  That’s not exactly fair.  The only part that I don’t like is the singing, and there is a lot of singing.  Yes, I know Felicia Day is in it (which doesn’t impress me).  Yes, I know Neil Patrick Harris is in it (and he’s pretty much superior to me in every way).  I do not care about these facts.  Every time they start singing, I just wanted to rage-quit life.  In general, musical numbers and I just don’t get along very well.  People say Glee is great, but I can’t get past all that singing.  I watched an episode, and that was the last episode I’ll ever watch.  Every time I see a musical number in Family Guy, I just fast forward (with rage).  But I digress slightly, Dr. Horrible would have been awesome if it wasn’t a sing-along blog.  Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s Saturday morning.  Time to veg.

Now you have.  It was $700, and completely worth it.  Look at that matte-black beauty.  I don’t even know why they bother making non-matte instruments; matte is superior.  Every guitar/bass I buy from now on will be matte.  Did I tell you it also sound beautiful, because it does.  It’s like happiness being directly pumped into my ears.  It seems to rarely go out of tune, but if it does, this thing even has a tuner built in.  Isn’t that awesome?  It is.  I can change tunings with far less effort.  My only complaint is the action is a bit higher than I would like for it to be, and I’m scared to adjust such things on an acoustic guitar.  I’ll probably have to have it done by a pro.

On a completely unrelated note, today is Super Mario Galaxy 2 day!  New games should always come out on a weekend; I don’t know what Square was thinking releasing Final Fantasy XIII on Tuesday.  I bought the game at midnight, and I have collected 37 stars so far.  It’s absurdly good, and you’d be stupid not to buy this game for your Wii.  Yes, stupid.  I might end up beating the game by the end of the day (i.e., collect enough stars to face and defeat Bowser).  I might beat it in time for the Lost finale!  Some people are throwing Lost parties, which I think is absurd.  I shall watch it alone and in the comfort of my own home; I don’t trust people not to ruin my Lost happiness.  Speaking of happiness, I was pleased to find out that Amanda actually updated her blog.  I was also surprised to find out that she basically cut off all her hair.  I should cut my hair at some point.  My dreads are a little too awesome.

As I was being shown downtown Lawrence (while sipping my disappointing bubble tea), some dude sitting down on a bench (I think it was a bench) with a keyboard saw me and insisted that I should listen to his “mad beats”.  I, being a black man, obviously enjoy listening to the maddest of beats. So my only option was to stop, listen to his mad, possibly angry beats, and critique the aforementioned beats.  Actually, I just looked at him and kept walking. I didn’t even say a word to him as he hit the play/go/whatever button on his keyboard. I wasn’t offended that he saw a black man and thought he’d enjoy some hip-hop. He had a high probability of his assumption being correct. But you know what happens when you assume: it makes you look stupid and wrong. And for the record, his beats were lackluster.  I should have just listened to it and said “You’ve embarrassed us both.”

Speaking of music that can be embarrassing,  I recently purchased a mic and audio interface for guitar/bass recording purposes.  I’ve yet to get the audio interface to work perfectly and consistently on Linux.  I’m getting xruns (skips) far too often. I think I need to do something more drastic than I want to, like installing separate Linux OS for the sole purpose of recording guitar/bass tracks. Speaking of guitars, I have settled on buying myself an acoustic guitar. This will solve the problem of not having an instrument to play when traveling. I’ve even found the guitar I want. I had no intention of getting an acoustic/electric guitar, but I’m clearly getting one anyway. By the end of the week, my instrument stand will have one less open slot.

When I’m not playing Rock Band 2, I’m making my way through the excessively long list of games I didn’t play because I was trying to finish my research/thesis.  As I make my way though the aforementioned list list, I’ve realized something: the time is right to make a game.  I’ve always wanted to make games, but I either lacked the motivation or the free time to work on one.  The last time I had both the motivation and free time was high school.  I made a little game called “Tank Tank the Tank Game”.  I had big ideas, but I was only motivated enough to make part of it.  However, I’m now older (ancient), wiser, and more awesome than I was in high school (I really, really sucked in high school).  I still draw as well as I did then (poorly), but now I know people who can draw, e.g., my youngest sibling.  I could make it happen, just as soon as I’m done handing over my dignity and pride to the second part of Persona 3 and certain people update their blog.  Do they expect me to work at work?  Rubbish.

People will try and tell you that Final Fantasy XIII is too linear.  While you do spend the first half of the game going from place to place, there’s a pretty good reason (i.e., they explain it in the story) why you’re going from place to place.  Eventually you get to do side quests, and there’s a large number of things to kill and things to do (there’s even “end game” stuff!).  People will try and say the combat is simply reduced to “press x and win”.  As you progress through the game, you’ll wish that was true.  They’ve up the difficulty significantly, and not by having random things you have no business trying to kill like in Final Fantasy XII.  You can, and will, be killed by normal enemies.  Bosses will kill you in seemingly unfair (but completely fair) ways, and there’s a limit to how much grinding can help.  People will tell you the story is stupid, but I disagree.  However, my biggest problem with the story are the characters.  I find it hard to take Lightning McFlippySoldier seriously due to the fact that she decides to run into combat wearing the shortest skirt she could find.  However, my biggest problem with the characters is that all of them aren’t Sazh.  I’d be happy rolling with 3 Sazhs in my party.

Regardless, the game was great.  I would have defeated it much sooner if my mom and brother didn’t decide to visit me.  I took time out of my busy Final Fantasy XIII schedule to clean my apartment and do other things I wouldn’t have done if I wasn’t expecting visitors.  It wasn’t so bad.  I came home after work to an apartment smelling like delicious food and brownies.  Who hates brownies?  No one worth liking.

No one knows where it is.  FedEx says the delivery guy distinctly remembers leaving it in the closet (although there’s no way of verifying it actually made it to the closet).  After repeated calls and several days, FedEx eventually told me that they’re waiting on documentation from HP to go forward with the claim.  FedEx suggests I yell at HP, which is exactly what I did.  HP apologizes and tells me that they’ll look into it, they’re likely going to send me a replacement laptop, and they’ll call me back.  Of course, they never call back.  In the meantime, I get a call from the Olathe Police Department (OPD).  I panicked a bit (in my head, of course), then remembered that I use TrueCrypt, so all was well.  Apparently, they found the laptop!  It’s stolen property!  Unfortunately, they found just the laptop (no charger, CDs, etc.) and the shipping info.  It has been used!  It’s no longer new!  I, of course, haven’t told HP or FedEx about this.  If I did, they’d just say “Oh, the package is found!  Great!” and kindly tell me to die in a fire.

After the OPD called, I was promptly reminded that my mom doesn’t have a laptop, and HP & FedEx haven’t called me.  So I called HP and they told me that they considered it a valid delivery.  So I inform them that I had an expectation that the package would be delivered to me and signed by me, not some third party.  Furthermore,  he delivery guy left the laptop at the leasing office without my permission, and that’s why it went missing.  They told me they considered it a valid delivery and I should talk to the leasing office.  I informed them of the “you can’t sue us for lost packages” and reminded them about expectations and permission.  Then the lady repeated what she said and this went on until I talked to her manager.  She told me she’ll forward this to the people that handle this and I should call back on the next business day.

When I called back, she said what her subordinate said; however, she added that it was FedEx who old HP that the delivery was valid, and I should get into contact with them.  So I call FedEx and they say that they’re still waiting on documentation from HP.  I informed them of what HP told them and they said they considered it their fault and I would need to take it up with HP.  This went back and forth until I HP said they won’t do anything unless they hear otherwise from FedEx and FedEx tells me they considered it a valid delivery and are still waiting to hear from HP.  My mom suggested I decided to try and dispute the claim on my debit card, which is something I apparently can do.  Bank of America temporarily credited my debit account, and I wondered why I didn’t do this sooner.  By the way, we’re in late December now.

The day after this, I get a call from the OPD and they inform me that they still had my laptop, and if things don’t go well with HP/FedEx, I can still pick it up.  “Aren’t cops great!?”, exclaims the young black male.  Eventually, I get a letter from Bank of America saying my temporary credit is now a permanent one.  Awesome, although it took them 75 days to sort it out.  So I got my money back, and now I’m going to buy my mom another laptop (definitely not an HP).  If any good has come from this, it’s that  my apartment complex now locks that closet door and has people sign for things.  As for the stolen laptop, the OPD still has it.  If they call me about it, I’ll tell them that they should let HP know, because it’s not my problem.  Am I going to tell HP about their laptop?  What do you think?