I had quite the awesome weekend. Friday night, Ruthie and I went to a Noodle place called, ironically, “Nothing But Noodles”. They had a very wonderful bow tie pasta with a very excuisite marinara sauce.

The best part of the weekend, though, was probably the end. I really love Sunday. I have certainly been loving it of-late. The first half of it is usually quite relaxing. I had some time with Ruthie. It was very mellow and serene. We had some lunch together–wings, of course, and she was the cook.

Eventually, after suffering through some girly-type television (I will not say what), we went to RCIA. I am so glad that I am going with her to these. At first, I was a good bit hesitant; almost to the point where I was when I was little and didn’t want to go to Sunday school–but perhaps not that bad 🙂 As I’ve been going with her, though, I’ve been discovering what a joyous occasion it truly is. She’s becoming Catholic, and it’s such a beautiful and exciting journey. I’m so very glad that she wants me to be there by her side, along with her sponsor. I’m learning so much about myself, and also about my Faith that I have forgotten over the years–and relearning things that were misconceived in my younger years.

I made Level 52 this morning. I’m still questing in Un’Goro Crater and have a few more to go, still. I’ll be 60 before I know it 🙂

I started playing Oblivion. It is truly an amazing game; it’s everything Morrowind was and then some. The graphics are absolutely stunning. The physics are amazing; they’re rendered via the havok engine–the same used in Half-Life 2. The way the grass sways with the trees is just astoundingly beautiful. The quests have been a good bit like the ones from Morrowind, though I’m on mostly Mages quests right now. I also bought a horse, which is pretty awesome. No longer do players have to walk or take a pretend Silt Strider. Also, the quick travel via the map helps out a lot.

Anyhoo, hope everyone had a great weekend and don’t dread too much the week ahead.

This has been quite the most awesome and relaxful weekend. It’s gray and drab outside, but it hasn’t gotten me blah at all. I feel quite well-rested and ready to go.

I finally started Eye of the World for the first time. This’ll be a really long literary journey, for sure. From everything I’ve heard from everyone who’s read it, it’s certainly a sojurn well-worth the effort. 11 books are currently out there, so this is a mere fraction of what is to come. I can’t wait to dive deeper into it. There’s an entire track at D*C for the Wheel of Time series. It’ll be nice if I can go into it having read at least the first book 🙂

Tonight, I will go to Mass and play Simpsons Clue for the first time in a while, and only the second time ever. The first time I played it was the first time I had played Clue at all, with Matt and Missy. It’s a good change of pace from all of those computer games.

Yesterday was a LAN party, but there weren’t many present–physically, that is. A few LAN cohorts were playing over the interweb. It wasn’t quite the same, but TeamSpeak certainly helped when we weren’t playing a game that had voice chat. Most of the time was spent whooping the snot out of bots. The AI of Counter-Strike: Source is actually quite impressive.

And now, for my next trick. A nap. Nothing up the sleeve. Presto! *zzzzzzzzzzz*

I ran 3DMark05 on my new vid card (Radeon x850, AGP) and it has..

5267 3DMarks

This is roughly 2.75x better than my 9600XT in 3DMark05. It’s certainly not the most absolute best I could do, of course, but probably just about the best I can squeeze out of my current hardware. Good enough for now, I think.

Of course, my next computer will probably be liquid-cooled with PCIe. But, that’ll be in about a year. That’s about when it’ll probably start getting to the point where I can’t stand my rig any longer. lol.

Then again, by then, I might wanna just go with the PS3. hehe.

Where the heck did this weekend go? Would it kindly rewind back to the beginning? 😛

SciFi Friday was just unbelievably awesome. My initial reaction to the Galactica finale hasn’t changed. It was absolutely the best finale I’ve seen in years in pretty much any SciFi show. It’s re-run on Monday night. I might say more about it after that–if you haven’t seen it by then, you’re frakked. lol.

Saturday was quite awesome. I went to a birthday party with Ruthie for two of her friends’ kids. I played on the PS2 with one of those kids, and was quite surprised that I was able to hold my own. He only beat me by varying scores ranging from 10 points to a couple thousand (5-10% greater score on average). Of course, it was my first time playing the game and all, so I think I did fairly well. I doubt I’ll do so well when I’m 50 🙂

X-Files boxsets are now $50 😮 It’s about time; I guess they got rid of a lot of fluff and kept the content to mostly the series. Thank goodness; Those $150 sets were way overpriced. I will finally be able to start collecting them and not feel as if I’m wasting moola on frivilous stuff. lol. Bonus features are kewl and all, but not kewl enough to me to blow $150/set on.

Today will be a bit of relaxing, going to Mass, RCIA with Ruthie and then who knows? There’s the possibility of a double date with her sponsor. That should be pretty spiffy.

*sigh* So, really. Can we rewind the weekend back to the beginning and start over? 😛

Cassini Finds Signs of Liquid Water on Saturn’s Moon

Quite the awesome discovery, that’s for sure. Europa is very much covered by ice, possibly with under-ice oceans, and a very tenuous atmosphere. Mars has a whispy atmosphere, as well, and is covered with a wee bit of water (but mostly frozen CO2).

Perhaps if earth was seeded with the rudimentary building blocks of life, it came from one of these.

I’m kind of reminded of the movie 2010, where they found Chlorophyll on Europa. Hopefully next we won’t find a zillion monoliths in Jupiter’s atmosphere 😉

Happy Friday to all!