A Day of Mourning in Rememberance (not for Anna Nicole)

Anna Nicole Smith died.... no more reality shows about an overweight slug who has received too much fame for being lucky and who exposes all the potential negative aspects of the "American Way". That's all I have to say about that...

I'm off to do some heavy donation to the Salvation Army today. I finally cleaned out my storage area last night and have the car loaded up with a bunch of things to donate. A desk and VERY HIGH QUALITY LAMP that was left by my old roommate before he moved for destinations south. We are both having a hard time parting with this floor lamp (the touch kind) as every time the air conditioning would turn on, the lamp would turn on/off. Plus if you walked within about 3 feet, your body had enough electricity that it decided to turn on or off as well. It was by far the coolest part of my house for about a year. But now it's someone else's and for me all that is left is a tax write off!

I'm also parting with my Nintendo plus games. Half of my games don't work anymore, plus I'm hoping they will all be available on Virtual Wii soon enough and then they really don't have a use. But the games did bring back some awesome memories. These are my favorites that I'm parting with - wanted to share some with you:

• Contra - quite possibly the greatest video game ever made. I could beat this in about 15 min without ever dying. Don't need the 30 guys, but the cheat code became the language to decide if someone was a true Nintendo fan or not. Every day after coming home from school involved a quick run through Contra. After beating the game, it would just start over from the beginning and I think one time I went through 6 times in a row out of sheer boredom. Yes, I was a weird kid. Still am.
• Top Gun - I never did beat this game but I thought it was well done. Refueling in mid-flight was always the hard part. 80s graphics at its finest!
• Super Mario Trilogy - Funny, I never could get past World 8-2 (the dang super big jump always intimidated me) so Mario 1 is the only one I've never beat. I could get through Mario 3 very quickly via the warp whistles. Don't know that I ever went through every single world to try to beat it that way. Only nerdy kids with too much time on their hands would do that.
• Double Dragon - So this game wasn't nearly as cool as the arcade game. But it was still worth buying.
• Tecmo Bowl - (No, not Super Tecmo). The best football game in the pre-Madden era. Play with the Super Bowl Winning Bears... Walter Payton could run through any other team, and Singletary could pick off any pass. I usually would end up with scores like 56-6 on a regular basis. No, there wasn't a lot of skill involved in this game.
• Double Dribble - Basketball at its finest. The close up slow motion dunks made it "cutting edge"!
• Blades of Steel - A hockey game where you were REWARDED for winning a fight. The loser of the fight got a 2 minute penalty. The whole goal of the game was to try to get in as many fights as possible and see if you could create a 5-2 situation.
• Golf - Mario playing 18 holes (9 of which are the same exact holes for the Golf on Wii Sports). A good relaxing game.
• Excitebike - What kid didn't own this game?
• Legend of Zelda - I wasn't a Zelda freak, but it's available already for downloading to the Wii so I might try again. Plus there are all kinds of walk throughs and maps to get you where you need to go in this game.
• Who Framed Roger Rabbit - Another game I wish I would have beaten at least once. Claire was always playing this game with her sisters. Did you ever beat the game?
• RBI Baseball/Bases Loaded 2 - Fun baseball games, each for different reasons.
  
• Track and Field 2 - The primary reason I bought a NES Advantage (joystick controller with turbo goodness). Only way to win the speed races in the Olympics was to cheat. A valuable lesson to learn in life (apparently a lesson used by the real world "athletes" as well).
  

So goodbye Nintendo (and my old N64 with 3 games). It was a good 20 years but the aging and reliability testing done in the 80s didn't plan on you lasting this long.

I'm off to NY Monday morning.... HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND!!

Haiku of the Day -
Nothing is better
Entertainment at its best
So Long Nintendo

Entertainment for the Day - I'm finally getting through listening to Katharine McPhee's new CD. Pretty good, nothing to win a Grammy for or anything. She'll sell a lot of records and probably have another CD to follow. She's cute enough though that I bet she'll stick around for a while.

Weblink of the Day - A newer fun webpage of Science experiments to use in the real world. Questions are answered such as "How to nail jello to the wall?" or "How to keep beer cold?" (I personally like the Rice Krispie Treat Coozy the best) or even "How many condoms can be worn at once?" (The answer will shock you). Consider it a Mythbusters type thing but for cool people.