Alright Pooky lovers... For the moment you've all been waiting for... Brian's RETURN!

This past week I took a road trip around the bay with a couple of friends to play DDR and take pictures. It was actually a lot of fun. Not very much DDR was played but I started playing more arcade games... First on the list was Soul Caliber 2... That game is so much fun! I tried out conquest mode, where you fight for a kingdom comprised of other people who've used the machine. After playing your rounds, the game creates an AI version of you! People can then fight you and move up a ladder... It's a great way to get people to keep playing.

Mmm, next up was something called Derby Owners Club. It's a massive machine comprised of 8 Stations and two HUGE monitors. The idea is to create a suitable horse to race. When you start off, you get a magnitized card with your horse. You train and feed your horse at the station, and after that, you race the horse shown on the big screen against the other players. After many races you can breed a new generation, and get a new card... And the cycle continues...

Initial D was a fairly average anime, but the game is pretty fun. It's also based on the magnitized card system, where you can choose your car and fix it up. Supposedly there's a story line, but I didn't get very far. I ran over to Guitar Freaks and Drummania, the two games that Jon was describing a few months ago... Damn, if Scandia got those arcade games, I'd never leave work. A couple of us are getting a proposal together for the management to see if we can get some of them.

Alright, enough talk on video games...

So everyone's in school that should be except for me, and I'm hating it. I'm just sitting around doing the work/sleep thing and it's bugging me. It feels like I should be doing something! Actually, I should be happy I'm going to school this semester. I did pretty bad in my last year of CS and landed on academic probation. I wasn't sure how good my grades would turn out this year, but I did fairly well! So I guess business, here I come!

Saw Swingers again last night. Man that's a great movie. I always wondered why we kept talking about it in the past, but I guess I've seen the light.

As you know, I've gotten back in to online poker... Man it was great! I took so many people's money it wasn't funny! But then I got cocky and hit some bad beats. I'm back down to where I started, but I'll build it back! I think that a lot of the time, my problem is knowning when to fold. I'm one of those that hates to fold in a heads up game. I have a fairly good hand after the flop but the turn gives a very scary card. I keep playing even if the pot odds are terrible... That's how I lose a great deal of money. I won a tournament for the first time the other day though. It was great, I felt like I was in control the entire time.

As for Socom... Looks like it'll have to wait for a bit... At least until I can secure an american PS2! Roomate has gotten back into the console craze, and doesn't like Socom... The bastard :D