What to play?

GI exam is over, and it was very hard. Luckily, these feelings were prevalent among my class mates, so maybe some questions will be thrown out (though not likely). I think I passed, but otherwise it was not my best exam. HST is on Wednesday, so after this post I have to stop procrastinating and start learning about all those things that Dermatologists consider important... zits and warts mostly.

If you don't play games... ignore the rest of this post.

It seems that I have developed a routine where around this time of year I start looking through gamerankings.com, bomb, and other sites to get myself caught up on what has happened in the world of gaming. I don't follow the news as thoroughly as I used to, probably because I have less time to play games now. So instead of waiting eagerly for anything decent to come out to fill up some empty time, I now have to carefully pick out what games are actually worth spending my precious free time on.

One thing I noticed this fall is that my PC is now two years old. When I first built it, there were a lot of exciting PC titles coming out. Bioshock, COD4 modern warfare, Crysis, and the Orange Box (with Portal, Episode 2, and TF2) all came out around that fall and kept me busy for my entire senior year at Hope. Two years later, I am looking back and noticing that PC releases have been SLOW since that time. Left 4 dead was good but I didn't play much beyond the demo. While most games are multiplatform these days, the games coming out for PC lately have been ones that I would rather have on a console (Braid, RE5, ect). I kind of ignored Far Cry 2 and Mass Effect, but neither seemed like must play games from the reviews I read. I hope that Starcraft II, Diablo III, and HL Episode 3 will come out (among other good games, hopefully) and give me a reason to fire up the PC and get windows 7, and maybe a new wide-screen monitor.

My first year at Baylor I found time to play Crysis in the fall (which I had put off due to TF2), and I played Super Mario Galaxy and Metal Gear 4 in the spring. I am currently playing Metroid Prime III, and GTA4 is still sitting on my shelf, waiting for me to give it another shot. I was so bored the first hour I played that I put it down and haven't gone back, but everyone says it is so good I feel like I should try again sometime.

Here is a list of games I am considering for this year. I'll order them roughly by how excited I am to play them:

- Uncharted 2: among theives - PS3
- Infamous - PS3
- COD 4 modern warfare 2 - PC
- Flower - PSN
- Final Fantasy VII - PSN (I have never played it before)
- RE 5 - PS3
- R & C: a crack in time - PS3
- Braid - PS3/PSN or PC
- Trine - PSN or PC
- Batman Arkham Asylum - PS3

Uncharted 2 seems to be getting fantastic reviews from everyone and looks like a great game. Infamous didn't have perfect reviews, but the game looks awesome. Flower and FFVII are cheap and both seem like something fun to do. And the first COD modern warfare was such a thrilling single player campaign, I might replay it and then move on to the sequel. From about RE5 down I am not sure if I should waste my time. Let me know what you think, especially if you have played some of these before (or are currently playing)!

Mint

Good for more than just Mojitos...

About a month ago I was reading slate.com and ran across this article about mint.com. The article is really more about the success of "web 2.5" companies, but when I read it I was curious what features the website had to offer. Lisa and I did budgeting the old fashioned way, with an Excel spread sheet and online banking (irony intended for you old folks). After exploring the website, I decided to give it a try for a while and see if it could replace our normal budgeting process.

Mint is a start-up company that runs a website where you can manage your money and use their tools to set up a budget. One neat thing is that you can give Mint your login information for your online banking and online credit card sites (they use the same encryption that the banks use, so it is secure), and Mint will automatically connect to those sites and pull over information about recent transactions each time you log in. This makes it useful already because you can go to one website now to see any recent purchases, whether from your bank account or any credit cards you might have, all in one list. It then lets you set up budget categories, and it will try to assign each transaction you make to one of the categories. It often messes up, especially if you make custom categories, but it is very easy to look over recent purchases and assign them correctly. Also, individual categories can be set up to "roll over," so if we don't spend all of our clothing budget one month, the extra will be added to the next months budget (this makes Lisa very happy), and if you overspend there will be less for next month.

Also cool is that I have student loans administered by three different entities (actually that is not cool), and Mint can login to those web sites as well and keep track of how deeply I have signed my life away. Currently the service is free and I hope it stays that way, but so far it has been so useful I might even consider paying if that is what happens.

Now budgeting takes all of 3 minutes a week, and we can check to see how we are doing anytime we want. I have never used Quicken, and it might be better for those with more complicated finances, but Mint.com is a neat, free tool to check out.

In Med school news, I have tests coming up is less than a week. The new schedule keeps them coming at a rapid pace. Dermatology has been completely unappealing so far, and it has been neat to learn what rheumatologists actually do besides rheumatoid arthritis. GI has been somewhat interesting though more complicated.

I heard from faculty talking at the curriculum committee meeting yesterday that hospital volume is VERY high right now due to flu season. Regardless of what Glen Beck and Bill Maher may tell you, flu vaccines (including H1N1) are safe and effective! Get them if you can!

Disappointment

I recently read an article about the Kindle which got me thinking that it could be a good Christmas present. Especially since the next Wheel of Time book is coming out this October!!! The author who is taking over the series has decided to break the last book into three smaller books (thank God) with the first coming out on the 27th this month. I thought it would be neat to have a Kindle, where I could get the whole series on one device and maybe start doing a read through of the series.

However, I noticed that the Kindle store has no Robert Jordan books at all! In fact, I also discovered that none of the Harry Potter books or LOTR books are available for Kindle either. I thought by now that Kindle's library would include such popular novels, but I guess not. I know that in Harry Potter's case, the lack of e-book format has something to do with JK Rowling being against electronic publishing for some reason. I am just worried that if books like these haven't been converted over yet, then there are probably going to be other titles that i can't find for it. And while the price has dropped to $260, that is still a lot to pay for a device that can't display all the books I want to read on it.

Retention

Well my AT&T saga took a few more twists and turns, but I think it ended up well. I decided that I didn't want to pay $80-100 for a new AT&T approved modem that would probably overheat and die in a year again, so I called AT&T with the goal of arguing them into giving me a free modem. I was on the phone for 2 hours, and was transferred to 6 different departments before ending up at Retention, which is the place you want to be. The conversation each time involved me saying my story, and that I wanted a new modem, the person responding that they didn't have the authority to do that at this department, but that the ___ department did, and they would transfer me over there. Each time the next department would say that they in fact didn't have any authority, and finally the person in Orders knew I needed to go to Retention.

Retention is the magical department where they have the authority to give free upgrades to people who are trying to quit their AT&T service. I told my story, and the guy told me that he would send me a free modem, or i could upgrade to U-verse internet for the same monthly fee, which would also up my speed from 3 to 6 Mbps. Also, he waived the installation fee and the U-verse box comes at no charge, so i didn't have do pay anything. So two hours of complaining got me double the internet speed for nothing... not bad. They came out on Thursday, a week and a half after my internet first went out, which is WAY too long to go without internet.

In medical school news, we just finished respiratory and renal exams, which went well. Now i have had 1 week of classes of our new block which covers GI and "hard and soft tissues." The hard and soft tissues course is a combination of dermatology, rheumatology, and bone diseases. GI has been surprisingly interesting so far, and dermatology has been predictably boring.

Quick Post

So I have my renal exam in about 9 hours, so this will be a quick post, but I wanted to link to this article in the Houston Chronicle about the Rice-Baylor merger talks. I went to one of the town hall meetings that our president gave, and it was very interesting. Pretty soon I could be attending Baylor College of Medicine at Rice University.

Also, I am posting this from the "business center" at our apartment, because our internet has been down since Monday. Living without internet is terrible. However, this week, it turned out to be a great thing. I found that while studing in the apartment with no internet to distract me, I am much more productive! I think even after it is fixed, I will be shutting off the modem and router (which are downstairs), and then going up to the loft to study.

AT&T has decided that their lines are fine and told me that most likely the DSL modem that they gave me for free on sign up is broken. Oh well.