firepowr.net

This weekend was a much more eventful probably because I had it off from work. Yesterday I ran the 5K race with only three hours of sleep. I did OK, given that I was sick. It turns out my week-long cough was caused by bronchitis. Immediately after the race I spent the rest of the day swimming with friends. The lack of sleep and constant activity was tiring. On Sunday, I finished this weekend off with a hiking trip with several friends at Mt Diablo state park.

We woke up early in the morning and drove for an hour to the site. From the maps and online information the trail we were taking is about 5.9 miles. What we didn’t know was practically half of the hike was steep up-hills trails. With the scorching sun beating on our heads and back we hike off trail to Rock City where we climbed to the peak. We had a great view of the valley and enjoyed the nice cool breeze.

After our rest on the rock, we found a campsite to refill our water bottles. The campsite was a life-saver because the hike back around the other side of Mt. Diablo was just as tough, and we had drunk all our water. And at that point we were extremely tired. The hike back was full of ups and downs. It had seemed that we were lost and we didn’t know that trail that we were taking was going to take us back. Luckily for us a mountain cyclist road by and helped us with directions. It turns out that we were on the right trail, but it was a long ways back to our car. About a mile and a half one of my friends started to cramp up. He had run out of water and so did I. He persevered the last mile, and we made it back to the parking lot. Overall, the hike was really tough and we all had a lot of fun. We probably hiked more than 8 miles. Now I know what I’ll be doing for the rest of the week; recouping from the hike and getting some rest to rid this bronchitis.

It’s been two Saturdays in a row where I didn’t get to do anything at all. Well, I’m still running and playing Final Fantasy. In fact, I have a race coming up next Saturday. It’s a 5K race. The event is called the Kids Count. It’s a fundraising event to build a Youth and Children’s Center. For $20 bucks you get to help out children get their center, and you get to run 3.1 miles. These races are fun. Most of the time you get a T-shirt along with your registration, and if you place in your age category you get a prize, which isn’t much but its nice to get something. Last time I got a digital clock and a coupon for a free car wash.

Back in the day when Super Nintendo ruled the video game consoles, I was a video game addict. The SNES had awesome role playing games (RPG). The ones I remember fondly was the Final Fantasy series. The first Final Fantasy game I played was Final Fantasy II. I remember playing it for months; leveling my characters to the max and beating it over and over again. The story was great and there was tons of magic spells to cast. Then in 1994, the most awesome game was released, Final Fantasy III. The Final Fantasy games are not sequels but rather a new and different story per game. Final Fantasy III was in-so-many ways better then its predecessor. The story was captivating and each character had their own personality. It had a great system of leveling up each character specifically; strength, defense, magic, or speed. I’ve beaten the game so many times. I use to have the game emulated on my computer. I played it from time to time, and again, beaten it several times more.

I’ve played many RPGs, but I don’t play as much as I use to during the SNES days. The last RPG was Diablo II on the PC. It’s a great game, but the game didn’t grab my attention as much as Final Fantasy III. A couple of years ago I browsing around the internet reading up on classic video games news I saw a poll listing people’s favorite RPG. Final Fantasy III was listed as the best RPG. I did some more searches and found another poll which had many more votes. Listed number 1 was NOT Final Fantasy III, but Final Fantasy VII. My game ranked 2nd. I was surprised. I’ve only played Final Fantasy VII as demo on my Sony Playstation, and I didn’t like it much. Maybe because it was way too short and the demo was made only to show off the graphics and in-game videos. I went and looked around on related forums and saw that many people in the RPG community agreed that Final Fantasy VII is the best RPG ever made. Final Fantasy VII was release for the Sony Playstation in 1998 and a PC version was released a year later.

The PC version is no longer being sold, and on the downside it doesn’t work with the latest Windows XP operating system, which was why I never bought the game to try it out. All my computers run Windows XP. Just a few days ago, I found out that someone had a patch to fix Final Fantasy VII to run on Windows XP. I was able to download the whole game online. (Yeah, I know it’s illegal, but I’m planning to buy a copy if I see it for sale in one of those dollar bins at Frys or Walmart.) Since last night I’ve been playing the game. The game is definitely out dated and the dialogue is cheesy as how old games are. I’m looking past it and hopefully beat the game before summer ends. Then I’ll see which RPG is the best. So more news will come about this when I beat it.

I didn’t do much this weekend. I worked and stayed home and watched the CSI shows that I recorded. Everyone else seems to be on vacation of some sort. The weather is warm which is nice hopefully it stays like that when I get my days off.

Summer has been quite eventful, and now it looks like its winding down. So what’s next for me? Well, I’ve been getting back to my running routine. I’ve been running at least 3-4 times a week for the past year up until a few weeks ago. I got sick and had to put it off for 13 days to be exact. Many of my friends ask me why I like to workout much. The truth is I don’t workout much at all. I just run mostly. I rarely lift weights or do any kind of resistance training and when I do it’s usually a light workout. The funny thing is when I was younger I hated running. I was fine with sprinting, and I was pretty good at it. Running for longer than 30 seconds wasn’t my cup of tea. I hated long distance. Now, running 4-5 miles a day is pretty much a usual thing for me. As for sprinting, it’s almost non-existent.

So why do I like running? I like it because its relaxing. Other people like to meditate, paint, or write poetry. I treat it like a hobby; like a collection of stamps or comics. Mine is just a collection of miles.

Update: (As of 11/03/05 the web game section has been removed)

I just added a Flash game to my blog. The link is located under the ‘About Me’ called ‘Game of the Moment’. I will be changing it up from time to time. At this moment, the game is Tetris. Who remembers this game? Unless you lived in a cave for the past 18 years, everyone should know what it is. The game is about 100kb so it may take a few seconds to load. To make it competitive, I’ve got a high score you can try to beat. Below is a screenshot of my high score.

The sixth installment of the Harry Potter series hit the shelves midnight Friday. Kids and their parents waited in line for the midnight opening of bookstores around town just to get the book. I’ve read the first book only and seen the three movies. I must say, I don’t remember the book, but the movies were great.

Any books that can get people to enjoy reading is fine by me. But I’ve been seeing people in the media claiming that Harry Potter books represents the anti-Christian teaching of Christianity. These hardcore religious people are attacking the book and using it’s popularity to make the issue notable.

One anti-Harry Potter activists says the books promotes the wrong message to children. He says these books displays, ‘revenge, violence, and death’. Well, I know another book that displays the same thing. It’s called “The Bible”. So why Harry Potter and not other books? I don’t know for sure. It seems anything that is popular or has a high profile status always endures some kind of criticism whether it makes sense or not.

It’s scorchin’ hot outside and its almost too warm to do anything except going swimming or going to the beach. It’s about time we got weather like thiis. I won’t have a weekend off till the end of July, so hopefully it’ll still be hot. I’m sitting here thinking, how to beat the heat on a blistering hot day like this? So I came up with a top-five list:

5: Jump into your neighbor’s pool, and swim till they come home.
4: Turn on the sprinklers and run around in the grass till you passout.
3: Find someone fat and stay in their shadow, its 10 degrees cooler in the shade.
2: Take all the frozen meat out of the freezer and try to squeeze in.
1: Take a stroll through a car wash.