January Hauls

[BWprowl]

Walked into Best Buy today and miraculously walked out with TWO purchases, neither of which was Anime! (Though for what it's worth, I was *this* close to grabbing that Step-Up Love Story set. It's only thirteen frickin' dollars! Later...) Anyway:

Transformers Animated Season 2- Boo-Yah! This is worth it if only to finally hear all of Megatron and Starscream's post-finale conversation.
Apocalyptica: Amplified- I've been craving some music by these guys, which is weird, since I'm not even that big a fan of Metallica. I am, however, totally for kickass cello rock. Their cover of "Nothing Else Matters" is almost worth the price of admission alone.

[Onslaught Six]

http://www.digital-toys.com

No, really. Monetize for time and gas, and....it is actually cheaper.

That's the thing, though--I actually pass a Wal-Mart on my way to and from work 'every day,' so it actually isn't that much of an inconvenience.

Oh well. The search for a vehicle continues!

[Dominic]

A Bunker Hill coffee mug. Given that I work there, and my most positive college experiences were there, it makes sense.


Dom
-waiting on an order from Digital toys.

[Onslaught Six]

Apparently my father has located a blue Cavalier for me to drive until the Volvo gets fixed'd. Woohoo!

[JediTricks]

Sorry for the lack of my presence lately, I've been swamped and finally finished moving to the new computer. I won't bother posting all my Christmas hauls, just these post-xmas ones:

TF:U Hound - decent, likable, lacking fine detail but good articulation and solid design to make up for that. Ravage is nifty but lacks cassette designs.

TF:U Cheetor - terrible, just not very good. Beast mode is ok, eye gimmick is a cute nod but not much really going on here. Transformation is clever in theory but produces poor results. Bot mode is an unmitigated disaster, bad sculpting and bad design choices doom this turkey.

Star Wars Commander Faie - nice new clone figure. Helmet looks good and is removable, new body parts look decent. Cloth cloak is on inside-out, belt is not removable so it takes a lot of work to get it put on right, but worth it, the cloak looks good with the plastic head covering. Feet aren't cambered though, which is kinda odd.

Metallica: Death Magnetic mp3 download - Amazon gave me a $5 free MP3 credit, so I bought this album for that price via mp3 download. Downloader is decent, not too shabby. Album is ok, enjoyable at times but Hetfield's singing is too thin, he doesn't bring classic Metallica and the writing isn't Black album quality if they wanted to go that way. A reminder of better days that's a little light.

[andersonh1]

Found TFU Cyclonus today. Looks great!

[Onslaught Six]

Metallica: Death Magnetic mp3 download - Amazon gave me a $5 free MP3 credit, so I bought this album for that price via mp3 download.
Downloader is decent, not too shabby. Album is ok, enjoyable at times but Hetfield's singing is too thin, he doesn't bring classic Metallica and the writing isn't Black album quality if they wanted to go that way. A reminder of better days that's a little light.

I blame the mix--the vocals need more reverb, and the drums sound like crap. But I'm picky about how snare drums sound most of the time.

[BWprowl]

Went to Target, to see that they HAD restocked, but only had a couple of Cheetors remaining. God DAMMIT. Had I gone there last night, there might've been a Hound or Cyclonus left. Left Cheetor on the shelf. I do want that toy eventually, since I'm something of a completist, but I'll wait until I see it at Wal-Mart for $7.77. Picked up Activators Grimlock instead. VERY nice little toy, probably my favorite Activator since Bumblebee. I daresay the beast mode looks better than the Voyager version, and this one can open it's mouth and move it's little arms, which only adds more points. The flipchanging works really well, 'cept for the annoyance of having to manually flip the switch on the beast head. The arms are a touch long, but I can deal. He suffers less for having no weapons than Megatron does, but I might make a sword for him anyway.

Also got that Step Up Love Story DVD set at Best Buy. Because I'm easily tempted by cheap anime.

[JediTricks]

Hit up the Fry's electronics for some little heres and theres...

USB to Serial (DB9) cable - I needed this to connect my old PDA to the new computer. $20, what the fudge?!? That was the cheapest I could find at the store, online I could save a few bucks but wait AND spend shipping. Needed me to install a driver and then reboot, but worked fine once that was all done.

Astronaut Ice Cream - $2, a steal. I'm taking it to my sister's place tonight to share.

Kingston 2gb DDR2 laptop RAM - my laptop had just 1gb of ram running Vista, it was always pegged at 50% and struggled far too often, so since it has an access panel on the bottom for that right next to the panel for the hard drive, I figured I'd drop $30 and max out the ram. Getting the old ram out (both slots were taken up by half-gig sticks, and it maxes at 2gb) was REALLY easy, getting the new ram in was almost as easy, and it works great. The old ram was 533mhz and that's all sold out, so I bought the 667mhz version (backwards compatible).

I blame the mix--the vocals need more reverb, and the drums sound like crap. But I'm picky about how snare drums sound most of the time.

The first time I listened to it, when they posted it via flash on their website, that's pretty much exactly what I said about it. The drums do sound like crap, they sound lazy in execution even though they are "going for it". But I don't think Hetfield's voice has the drive it needs to do this stuff anymore, effects or no. If you go back to anything before the black album (which, ironically just came up on my metal playlist in shuffle mode), no matter the effects his voice had that power and range. Now it's trying to "sing" instead of "drive", and you can hear his voice strain at the top of its now limited range on this album. I can't compare it to the previous 3 albums beyond their singles (which rarely get play), as after the black album I stopped buying.

[Onslaught Six]

The first time I listened to it, when they posted it via flash on their website, that's pretty much exactly what I said about it. The drums do sound like crap, they sound lazy in execution even though they are "going for it". But I don't think Hetfield's voice has the drive it needs to do this stuff anymore, effects or no. If you go back to anything before the black album (which, ironically just came up on my metal playlist in shuffle mode), no matter the effects his voice had that power and range. Now it's trying to "sing" instead of "drive", and you can hear his voice strain at the top of its now limited range on this album. I can't compare it to the previous 3 albums beyond their singles (which rarely get play), as after the black album I stopped buying.

Well, he shows bits and pieces of it here and there, and that's the really sad part. Load and ReLoad have some decent songs on there--Bleeding Me and King Nothing and Fuel are the favourites--but mostly they kinda suck. Oh well. DM manages to be decent for a good thrash-around occasionally, so.