Left 4 Dead

So yesterday between classes, I downloaded the Left 4 Dead demo on Steam.  I love good zombie games, even though they can scare me like crazy.  Left 4 Dead is not only a zombie game, but it's also a Valve-made FPS, and it has a heavy emphasis on cooperative play.  Basically, that means it's entirely awesome.

There are a lot of things I could say about this game, but I'm not going to talk about the general gameply too much.  Instead, I'd like to write about a few of the more memorable moments I had in the game.  One thing I love about it is how heavily it empasizes team work.  I was in a game with one of my friends, buzh3rd, and we had a really stupid guy join our game.  He did a couple dumb things, like shooting teammates or throwing a moltov coctail in close quarters.  Moltovs frequently make fire, and lots of it, so throwing one where there isn't a lot of room means that you're going to set yourself and your teammates on fire.

That wasn't the dumbest thing he did, though.

The dumbest thing he did was when we were in the subway after we had just fought off a wave of zombies.  Down the hall, we could hear a little girl crying.  In Left 4 Dead, that means a witch is near, one of the most deadly enemies in the game.  The good thing is that they don't attack until disturbed.  Well, he disturbed it, and not by throwing a pipe bomb or riddling it with assault rifle bullets, but by teasing it with a pistol.  That not only did almost no damage to it, but made it attack us before we were ready to fight it.  Fortunately, she only killed the idiot, after which time we kicked him from the game.

There were some great games, though, like the times I played in the same game as some of my other friends.  Once, I got in a really good group on a random server, and we totally owned everything in our way, which was a ton of fun.  Taking out a tank zombie with two teammates still living afterwards on Expert mode was a great experience, too.  I swear I loaded that thing with about 25-40 shells of shot gun at point blank range before it died, not to mention my teammates fire.  It was quite fun.

Overall, I love Left 4 Dead, and I can't wait to get the full game next week.

Stupid Facebook

So I don't really want to, but I finally put a picture on facebook today. Stupid thing, making me book my face. Now I'm going to get stalked. I guess getting stalked wouldn't be too bad if it was by a hot girl, but I'm probably only saying that because it hasn't happened to me yet. Oh wait, yes it has. That sucked, and that is only losely classified as stalking. Ok, so it was just a girl that had a crush on me. Great, now I'm rambling, but I guess that's what this thing is for.
A day or two ago, meaning Monday, I had fun blowing up a bazillion balloons with some other people in our apartment. It was pretty insane how full that living room got from just balloons. I even got a blister on my finger from tieing all those things together. That's one thing I've never been able to do very well, but I managed and did well over 50 balloons all by myself. It was impressive. In other news, I officially got an A in Japanese 101, 102, 201, and 211. That makes me happy.

In Colorado

So I guess I don't really have a lot to talk about. I'm in Colorado visiting my brother, so you'd think that moving here for a month or so would give me something to write about, but I've got nothing. Things here are ok, I suppose. I really like getting to hang out with my brother and his family. They're all great. I adore my nephews and little niece. It was great to see them play the Wii, not so much because it looked fun, but because I helped them get to do something that made them happy and laugh and stuff. I've just really enjoyed being out here and spending time with this family that I haven't really seen very much for the past 3 years.

As far as a social life... well, it's not my strongest area thus far. It's just hard to find a group of friends and stuff when you don't know anyone and they all have their own friends already. Oh well, I won't be here too long anyways.

All signed up for fall semester

So I signed up for my BYU fall semester classes today. It's amazing how much a good counselor can help. My first semester at college was a train wreck, largely because the counselor I had gave me horrible recommendations for classes. He had me in classes that either were way too hard or didn't fulfill any requirement, sometimes both. I ended up doing very poorly, but I also didn't study much. My wonderful high school (and by wonderful I mean crappy) really didn't prepare anyone who attended for anything important.

Anyways, my wonderful counselor helped me pick a class schedule that satisfies me for now. It might change depending on how my summer courses go, but here it is for the time being:
Japanese 311 (yaay!)
Some physical wellness class (I forget the name, but if fulfills a GE requirement)
Biology (yuck)
Sociology (meh, whatever)
Book of Mormon (hopefully I learn something. It's been hard to find new things that I haven't heard of or really thought about since I got back from my mission, and I really love learning new things about the gospel.)

So there it is, for the time being at least. I'm really excited to go take these classes.

Iron Man

So I saw the movie Iron Man maybe a week ago, and it was good, but it's been bugging me for a while because I didn't like it nearly as much as I thought I would. I think I'm the only person I've heard of that didn't think it was amazing. It was impressive in the way it showed Tony Stark becoming Iron Man, but that's it. The fight scenes weren't all that thrilling; I've forgotten most of the details already. The graphics were excellent, but isn't that more or less expected from a movie now? The plot was decent, but had no surprises. It was clean, well organized, and fit together fairly well, but it was too easy to guess what was going to happen from the first 10 minutes. I remember seeing the bad guy for the first time in the movie and thinking "wow, he looks like a bad guy. There's no way he's going to be good through this whole series." And I was right.

But there was a bigger problem with the bad guy. He was a villian, yes, and he was evil as a matter of necessity. But he wasn't a super villian. Iron Man is a super hero with his intelligence, cleverness, resourcefulness, and priorities, to say nothing of his very cool suit. He also was dynamic, changing and realizing things throughout the movie, and it was very interesting to watch his character. The bad guy, however, was boring. There was nothing "super" about him except for

*SPOILERS* that he stole the technology to make his own suit. But regardless, he was a petty crook that only worked for money, unlike Magneto who had different ways of doing things from his nemesis, Prof. X, but had the same objective, causing a conflict of principles and less oof blatant good/bad, or Dr. Octopus who had good objectives on the whole, but was overpowered by his invention into forcing something he should have forsaken at least until doing more research. But the bad guy in Iron Man (I can't even remember his name) was little more than an average double dealing business man looking only to further his profits. *END SPOILERS*

Don't get me wrong; I enjoyed Iron Man. Just not as much as I would have liked.

Review: Not bad. Entertaining. Expected more. Definately see the sequel.

Resuming My Life

Well, I figure that today (May 7) is about as good as a day I'm ever going to find to start one of these things. Blogs weren't very popular before I left on my mission, not that I remember anyways, so I've been somewhat wary of them since they were suddenly everywhere when I got back from Japan. It just didn't seem like something I'd be interested in doing, or something anyone would particularly want to read. But I found that I enjoyed reading other people's blogs and getting to know more about them. It's interesting how much you can learn about a person by their writing.

Anyways, as I was saying, today is probably as good as a day as I'm going to get to start something. It has been one of the happiest days I've had in my life, and I had some wonderful days in Japan. But those days were good because something great happened. Today is different, because I have finally gotten my life back.

As those who know me undoubtably know, I was diagnosed with a form of bone cancer within a few weeks of returning home from Japan. I had originally planned to stay here with my parents in West Virginia for about 2 weeks, then fly out to Utah to go back to school at Brigham Young University. I was excited to go and learn, to get the normal social life I never quite achieved that was based on something besides Nintendo and to hopefully find a girl upon whom I could focus my affection. Instead, I was delayed and thrown into 9 months of torturous therapy and surgery that would hopefully save my life and arm. I generally tried not to talk about it because talking about it didn't help anything, but chemotherapy is literally a poison that only cures cancer because it kills it along with so many other cells in the body. It's like buring a forest to the ground just to eliminate the poison ivy that is in there. And the surgery to replace about 5 or 6 inches of bone in my left arm began the worst, most painful week of my life. I suffered greatly, during that time, and the Thanksgiving when my parents finally took my sister to Disney and I ended up having to stay in the hospital for a week because of a fever. While some may question my parents' decision to leave me while they went on a vacation with my sister, it was a good decision, the best they could have made at that time. I was well provided for and taken care of, and it allowed my parents to finally fulfill years of promise after having to disappoint her so many times because of other more dire family emergencies.

Finally, after 14 arduous cycles of chemotherapy, including at least 70 or 80 hours of travel to and from hospitals (not including trips to a local clinic for shots and blood tests that sometimes were done daily for weeks at a time) and a radical 6 hour surgery that consisted of more than one miracle to save my arm and movement in my hand, I finished my last treatment back in March. Following that were scans to check and double check that all traces of disease were gone and dead, but today was my last appointment with my oncologist, Dr. Palmer. It was a wonderful day. My mom, dad, sister and I drove out to the hospital in Morgantown an hour and a half away, first to meet with my doctor for the last time just to have a check up and get set to transfer to another doctor for my follow up. I cannot say enough how good a doctor Dr. Palmer was, and not just her, but many others. She often cheered me during my week long stays in the hospital with various treats and pasteries or other presents from stores nearby which helped because no one else was there to get me anything if the hospital food was particularly nasty that day. And when my appointment today was done, she and some of the others in that clinic surprised us with a celebratory cake (which was absolutely delicious, one of the best I've had). Following which, we went to eat a blooming onion and ribs at the Texas Roadhouse. Having lived in Texas for 5 years, my family has developed a fondness for the cuisine of that region. It was also note worthy because it was the nearly the same meal we shared to celebrate my leaving for Japan. During the car trip back, I simply studied my American Heritage class while listening to my favorite music I had missed terribly while I had focused my life on serving my God and fellow man. It was a small thing, but being able to study and listen to music was immensely satisfying and relaxing. All this further enforced the realization that I had finally beaten that horrible sarcoma that had delayed my life and hindered me for so long. I will return to college this summer as a 22 year old freshman, but simply being able to go live again and swallow without pain or get up without struggling every inch and live how I want to is the most liberating and encouraging though I can imagine. I am thankful for the things I learned and the strength to face opposition Heavenly Father was able to give me during this period of my life, but I have never been more relieved to move on than at this time. It will be challenging, of course, but without opposition to overcome and weaknesses to perfect and happiness to achieve, what's the point of living?

And then after getting home, still full from our dinner, I simply relaxed in my room, playing one of my favorite games online with friends I have never met, most of whom have no idea I've gone through any of this, yet their friendship unbiased with that knowledge has been a comfort for which I am thankful. I have a great many things to be thankful for; my family, the technology that makes being locked in a room bearable, and the Savior Jesus Christ who knows my pain and has given me more and greater comfort than any other. I know He knows my pain and understands it better than any other, because He experienced it and worse. I also know He and my family and friends love and care about me, though not all of them express it the same. And so I close this part of my life and eagerly strive to pick up my life with the same objectives I had before, only now I do so with a greater appreciation for my life and all the glorious things in it. I treasure my life because of the past that has made me into the man I am today, the future that holds so much hope and so many posibilities, and the present because I like what I have made of myself.