Entertainment

I finally have my hands on a Nintendo Wii. After months of waiting and anticipating, the Wii is mine. A couple of my friends are jealous right now because I managed to get one but that’s too bad for them. If they really wanted one, they should have gotten to know my cool friend, Carole. And I didn’t even have to wait in line to get a hold of one either. I went to bed, woke up, and received a phone call. And it was a done deal.

I didn’t have to work Wednesday so I was going to stop by the Walmart on Upper James to ask if they had a Wii available. I was willing to stay up until they opened just to go and check it out. But the night before, my good friend Carole said that she was going to go to Walmart later in the day. She’s had very good luck in finding the Wii. She bought one for her boyfriend, her boss and even managed to secure one for myself. I don’t know how she does it. She probably has some inside connection with someone that works at Walmart or something.

Around 3:00pm yesterday afternoon, my phone rang. The ringtone that I had set up for Carole’s phone was the song in the Pepsi commercial. At first, I thought I was dreaming because I hadn’t heard that ringtone in a long time but then again, Carole never calls me. But that day, she called to let me know that Walmart had a Wii in stock. I had just woken up but the news of me getting a Wii made me wide awake. I jumped at the opportunity to one the moment she asked if I wanted it.

Carole gave me the details of what came with the system. The box included one controller so she asked if I wanted another one. Her boyfriend, Ricky said that it’s a bit boring if you only have one controller so I asked her to grab me another one. The total for the system and the extra controller came out to about $400. I received my income tax return that week and I still had some money left over so basically, the government bought me a Wii.

Later that night, Carole dropped off the Wii and I hid it in my room so my little brothers wouldn’t see it. Then I went upstairs and told them that I had a Wii but they didn’t believe me. But when I brought out the box, they got all excited. I told them that they weren’t allowed to play and my little brother wanted to tell my mom on me. What he doesn’t understand is that I bought it. Well, Carole bought it but I paid her back.
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We quickly took out the entire component from the box and started setting it up. Hooking up the Wii wasn’t a problem. And the initial set up to configure the remote controls were a breeze as well. The console looked very nice and clean. I felt like I was going to dirty it just by touching it.

The Wii remote and Nunchuck fit nicely in my hands. It took a while to get use to how it interacts with the console. Plus, there’s a bit of a delay. Also, being left handed, I had to change some of the settings. I hold the Wii remote in my right hand and the nunchuck goes in my left hand.

The system came with Wii Sports which included baseball, bowling, boxing, golf and tennis. All of the games are very fun to play but my favourite at the moment is tennis. Baseball is a bit weird because it seems when you hit the ball, it goes in whatever direction it wants. I’m not sure if there’s a way to control where you hit it yet since I’ve only made it once. Boxing is okay too but sometimes my character doesn’t punch when I punch. I’m not sure if that has anything to do with the location of the sensor bar. The television was placed about two foot off the ground and the sensor bar is sitting right on top of it. Maybe I just need practice. Golf is fun but the control seems weird as well. Sometimes, when I swing, it doesn’t do anything. Then again, maybe I need practice with this game too. As for tennis, it’s just fun to watch because your character goes for the ball all the time. When you swing and miss, they sort of dive towards the ball in an attempt to get it. I just find it funny when they dive.

Also, I’ve set up the internet connection for the Wii as well. At first, I thought that an extra Wi-Fi piece was needed to get online but it turns out that the Wii has a built-in Wi-Fi card. But I heard from a couple of friends that I had to buy an extra USB device to plug into the Wii. So I asked my brother to buy one, only to find out that we didn’t need it. So I’ll have to return it to Walmart to get a refund.

Once I was online, I downloaded a few updates and some extra software. In order to download some software, you need points. I’m not sure how to earn points but I know that you can buy it. There were a couple of software that didn’t require any points so I download those two. I download the Opera browser and some voting channel thing. The browser was kind of cool. It allowed you to do the regular browsing stuff like scrolling and clicking. But there was a zooming function as well. I haven’t played with all the features yet but I know that I can view YouTube videos on the Wii.

There was also a News Channel and a Forecast Channel. I set up the forecast channel to display the weather for Hamilton. But if you wanted to see the weather for another city, you can zoom out and spin the globe to see the weather for other cities as well. The news channel had headline news and it sorted the information in categories. I viewed the international news and the technology news, just to see what kind of news it had to offer.

Overall, my first impression of the Wii is that I love it! I didn’t get a chance to play it much since I had to run to work. But my family members are getting a workout just by playing it. I think I’m a little sore too from boxing. I have a few night shifts left so I was thinking of bringing the Wii to work and playing it on the projection screen. No one plays with the Wii at night time anyway so no one will know it’s missing. I just might do that during my last night shift.

I just saw the new Transformers movie trailer and let me tell you know, I’m drooling. It’s not the lack of sleep that’s causing me to drool. This movie looks like it’s going to be a kick ass movie.

The movie isn’t schedule to be released until July 4, 2007. That seven months away. Seven months is too long! After watching the trailer, I don’t know if I’ll be able to wait that long. I want to see it now! The main thing I want to see is Optimus Prime transformation sequence. The things they can do with animations these days it just mind boggling. The one thing they changed was the transformation sound. Usually it’s goes something like, “gok gook goook gak gaak gaaak!” You probably sound like a monkey if you’re trying to say that out loud.

In the trailer, you get to see Optimus transformer, but it’s not the whole sequence. He’s the red and blue truck. Usually, he’s upper parts are red while his legs are blue. But in the new movie, they made him look more like a souped (supped?) up eighteen wheeler.

They made Megatron into some alien looking thing. Over the years, he has gone from being a gun, to being a T-Rex, a dragon, a car and now this, some sort of like a high tech alien spacecraft.

This movie looks like it’s going to be a big hit. I might end up going to watch it a few times. Normally, I would just wait until it comes out on DVD but this movie is way to good for that.

My cousin went to see “Pirates of the Caribbean” the other day and she mentioned that there was a trailer for the new Transformers movies. I was like “No way!!!” I was waiting around forever for this trailer. I even signed up for the update on their website. I didn’t get any email about a trailer. I stopped everything I was doing and immediately went to see if the trailer was available online somewhere. To my amazement, there was!

If you couldn’t tell by now, I’m a Transformers fan. I’ve been a fan of the series since I first saw it on tv back in the 80′s. The idea of cars changing into talking robot was wicked awesome. Anyone who was born during the 80’s has got to be a Transformers fan. If not, then they must have been born on some other planet.

In case there are people who don’t know what Transformers are, allow me to enlighten you. Transformers is a tv series about robots that changes into cars, trucks, planes, trains and other stuff like that. Like other tv series there are the good guys and the bad guys. The good guys are known as the Autobots and the bad guys are call the Decepticons.

The Autobots are led by a robot named Optimus Prime. In most series, he’s a red truck of some sort. In the “Beast War” series he was a gorilla named Optimus Primal. In the Japanese version he goes by the name, Convoy. He’s the main characters and most likely the hero of the movie. He’s also my favourite. In the last few series, he links up with other transformers to increase his powers and beat up Megatron. During the last series I watched, he linked up with a rouge Autobot named Knockdown, an airplane. I have that action figure which stands about a foot tall.

The Decepticons are led by Megatron. In the series that I grew up watching, he transforms into a gun. In later series he changes into a whole bunch of stuff. So I’m not too sure what he’s going to be in the movie. He has a second in command named is Starscream. That guy is always looking out for himself. He wants to be the leader of the Decepticons but he usually fails. He’s usually a fighter jet.

This movie does not come out until July 7, 2007 but already it is getting a lot of attention. It’s going to be directed by Michael Bay and released under Dreamworks. It’ll be a long wait but I believe it will be worth it. Just by watching the trailer, I can already tell that the transforming action is going to be wicked awesome!

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last couple weeks, I’m sure you’ve heard about the Da Vinci Code movie. It’s starring Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon, Audrey Tautou as Sophie Neveu, Ian McKellan as Sir Leigh Teabing, Alfred Molina as Bishop Aringarosa, Jean Reno as Captain Fache and Paul Bettany as Silas. The plot revolves around a murder inside an art museum known as the Louvre and clues hidden inside Leonardo Da Vinci’s paintings. Those clues leads to a discovery of a mystery that was kept hidden by secret society, a secret regarding Christianity.

I came across the novel during my last semester of college. It was during a time when I took interest in reading more often and I had just finished reading Douglas Adam’s the Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I searched around for a new book to read and I am across the Da Vinci Code. I searched eBay for a copy and managed to find one for $20, shipping included. It took about a week for the book to arrive and once I started reading it, I didn’t want to put it down. I read the book every chance I got. In between classes, on the ride to school and on the ride home. After finishing the novel, I was hooked on Dan Brown’s work. I went search for the rest of his novels and both them too. On eBay, of course.

What I liked about the book was the storyline and the things that are being told in the novel. Those things are controversial because Dan Brown makes a bold claim at the beginning of the book saying that everything is based on facts. There are people out there that are saying that everything in the book is fiction. I could care less whether it is real or fake. I found the novel to be very interesting to read. I’m not religious so it doesn’t affect me that much. But it does affect a lot of Christians out there. Dan Brown is a Christian. I heard one time, there was an audio clip of an interview he did. He said that he wrote the book to find out more about his religion or something along those lines. But it turned out to piss a lot of people off. But I don’t know exactly why it would piss them off. It’s just a book.

The Bible, to me, is just a book. I can read it as if it was like any other novel. Whether any of those events took place, I don’t know. I wasn’t there at the time the book was published. But with the Da Vinci Code, it’s that claim at the beginning of the book that is causing people to get mad. It’s like saying, “I’m going to tell you the truth.” And then telling lies. But again, whether anything said in the novel actually took place, I have no idea. I just like the novel because of its content. I wouldn’t want to read a novel that was boring. That is just not good. The reason why this novel sold so many copies is because of storyline. It’s the kind of stuff that people are interested in.

I’m planning on going to watch the movie tomorrow night with some friends. I’ve already heard things about it but I still want to see it. It’s not like anything can ruin the movie for me because I’ve already read the book. Some friends said that it stayed pretty close to the book but they had to take some things out. I’m curious to see what they took out and what they left in. Once I get back from the movie, I’ll have a review up. I’m hoping to give it two thumbs up.