Fallout: New Vegas

I recently had a Birthday on November 26th, which also happened to be black Friday. Since my birthday is so close to the Holiday season usually I don't get any gifts, I just get cards and money, which I'm completely okay with. This year the only gift I received for my birthday was a new video game made by Bethesda Softworks, and is a Massive Role Playing Game (RPG).

     Fallout takes place Post Apocalyptic war near what was once Las Vegas. The story line basically sums up that the main character is a delivery man, who gets intercepted by some not so nice people, and takes a bullet to the head. You gain control over your character in a near by down after being dug up by a robot. The beginning of your adventure is your searching for the people that tried killing you, and along the way you meet several people that need aid, or errands, if you so choose to help them. One of the great things I love about this game is the freedom to choose what to do. Lets say you come across a woman who needs help getting rid of some Guys causing trouble in town, you can choose to help her and get a reward, OR you can kill all the guys, take the reward, then kill everyone else. There is also the option of just avoiding it all together as well, but that is no fun. Another aspect I love of this game, is that you can never play it the same way twice, there is too many little decisions you can make that will alter the game later on.
     Something new that they brought to this game, is a new game mode call Hardcore, where Water becomes a health issue, Sleep deprivation can kill you, and bullets are extremely scarce. This makes the game more realistic, puts you into the main characters shoes, but also makes it ten times harder. However at the beginning of the game when you choose your difficulty, it says that if you can make it through the whole game playing hardcore mode, there is some sort of special gift you'll receive, which pushes me to play it on hardcore just to uncover what you may get. If anyone knows what this may be comment on it, or let me know what you think of the game!

Christmas Time!

I posted a blog a few weeks ago on my negative thoughts towards the holiday season, and not having anyone to spend time with, and family and such. As I look back on it I realize it was silly of me to think that the holiday season wouldn't be an enjoyment. Since I recently got my job a Chester Wal-mart, I've been loaded with work, especially during the holiday season. More work means more money, and more money  means more gifts to buy for friends and such. I have a few gifts for a few friends picked out. One gift that I want to buy for my buddy Jared is a flat billed ICP hat, with his Initials stitched into the back of the hat. He's been a good friend of mine for awhile and even though we haven't been to close the past year or so, he's still one of my really good friends. I'm also buying a few of my friends some goofy hats, and t-shirts and such. Just small items that aren't expensive but meaning something. Another gift I'm getting for one of my friends is a personalized blanket with all her friends on it, and right in the middle of the blanket is going to be a picture of a penguin, cause she loves penguins. I'm also getting one of my friends a Transformers 2 movie poster. Since I currently still work at Showtime Cinemas in Sparta, I can get movie posters for a reduced price, however anyone is welcome to purchase movie posters from there for only $10, just contact the current manager on duty and he'll present you with a list of posters to choose from. I'm also buying him a Transformers toy action figure, just because. A few things I wanted to do this Holiday season was, instead of just buy gifts for people, I wanted to buy them one of a kind gifts, or at least personalize the gifts so that way, there is only one gift, and nobody will ever have one like theirs. If anyone has any gift ideas please feel free to comment and let me know what you think!

Call of Duty: Black Ops

     For any gamers out there, obviously you have played, or are going to purchase COD:BO hopefully before Christmas. Within 24 hours of release this game sold over 7 Million copies. One of the great aspects to be appreciated in this game is the mini game, Zombies. Zombies is where you can have 4 player online, 2 player split screen, or solo play. There is never ending waves of zombies that you must try to survive for as long as possible. For anyone who has read my previous post, I recently have a new job, so my time dedicated to gaming isn't as great as it use to be. With that being said, my brother and I still managed to find time to team up and kill us some zombies. On the first level, that you start out with, is called Kino Der Toten ('Cinema of the Dead' in German). We tried for about 3 hours to figure out a decent method to survive for as long as possible. The game play is timed by rounds, a certain amount of zombies are released each round and you must survive. Well we couldn't make it passed round 10. Once we got one of our buddies to join us to play, we managed to get to round 24. 24 isn't a high number, but it can get quite crazy. My brothers new record on that level is 41 with a buddy of his, and they played for a consecutive six and a half hours!
     The multiplayer is improved in some aspects since Call of duty: Modern warfare 2. The damage ratio is is a little more timid and realistic.The continuation of the constant camping is just as bad as ever. All in all its still the same as the previous games, with in my opinion for the better. Anybody who is into FPS games, this is a must have. 

New Job!

     It's been awhile since I've made a post, but since between my last blog and this one I recently started a new job at Chester Wal-mart, working in receiving. In comparison to my job at the Showtime Cinema in Sparta, this job is a definitely better. I'm working more hours, with a higher pay rate, and I work with more people. Another profitable thing is I'm at the bottom of employment, where as at Showtime, I'm at the top, (well almost the top,  I'm Asst. Manager.) I've currently been employed for 2 weeks on Wednesday and I really look forward to keeping the job. I'm hoping to get a transfer after my six months to Sparta Wal-mart, but they have to have an opening, until then I on working as often as I can to help pay off my bills, and to aid in my schooling. The only downside of having this job so far is, I was hired during the holiday season, so I'm filling in for so many other positions then my specified job because their short handed, which is understandable and quite alright with me, gives me a little extra spending money in my pocket for the holiday season. However by working in receiving, during the winter, that means that my job is going to get real cold, real fast. My goal for my future job is to stay employed with Wal-mart at least until the summer where I plan on taking a CNA course here at SWIC to give me some experience in the medical field, before acquiring my P.T.A certificate, which is what I'm currently attending classes for.

Not looking forward to the Holiday Season.

I have always enjoyed the Holiday Season. I absolutely love Thanksgiving, and Christmas. With this holiday season, I'm getting older, I have no significant other to spend my Holiday season with. I'm trying to get another job on top of my current job, so my expectations for this Holiday Season, are to work, work, and do more work. I have had previous addictions in my life, I've had quite a few loves. Currently the only thing I'm addicted to is money, and the only love I have is to myself and my family. I look forward to spending time with my family, and seeing my pregnant sister, and brother in-law, and my older brother and his wife. I'm also looking forward to November. For those of you that know me my birthday is at the end of November. Along with that, its the day after Thanksgiving. I also enjoy to play video games on the occasion, here in the past 3 months I've steadily grew away from gaming, but Call of duty: Black Ops comes out in November. I enjoy playing games because its a way for my brother and I to communicate and enjoy ourselves while live over 200 miles away from each other.
      If there was something fun that I could do during the Holiday Season, then maybe I would be looking more forward to it. If anyone has interesting holiday plans then let me know

Vehicle Problems!

I recently purchased a 1999 Chevy S-10 Extreme. I plan on using it as my daily driver. I am hoping to get a job somewhere in the area outside of Sparta, which is why I purchased this type of vehicle, so I get good gas mileage. In the first week of owning the truck, it drove fine. There were a few problems I was aware of such as, the heat didn't work, the bed cover works but is a little messed up, the passenger tail light doesn't work but the blinker and brake lights work, and the driver door handle doesn't work properly, but it does work.
     About 2 weeks after purchasing the vehicle I noticed the check engine light came on, so I stopped by Auto Zone to have them check the problem. It appears that there is a cooling problem. Were more then likely sure that the heater core is bad, the thermostat needed replaced along with the ECT sensor. I replaced the cheaper stuff and took the truck to Tire Plaza to have them perform a Radiator flush and now found out that the previous owner dumped about $60 worth of stop leak in the truck prob due to the heater core being bad. So now I have to purchase a new Radiator, a new heater core, along with flushing the old radiator all the way out, so I can get the stop leak out of the block. This job looks like its gonna take about 6 hours, and it has to be done in the next 2 weeks before it starts getting to cold to be able to drive the truck or work on it. I also need to buy new suspension, New tires, and new brakes, along with getting the tail light fixed and finances right now are tight. If anyone has any pointers or know of any cheaper parts to buy, or any mechanics that don't over charge or specialize in this area, feel free to let me know.  

Camaro Work

So I've officially started the tear down of the Camaro. There is little to no rust on this car what so ever. I'm super pumped about this because that saves me on so much time and work. The only thing left to do is start removing the wiring. As soon as the wiring is removed I plan on pulling the motor, to do a tear down of it as well. It currently is a Lt1 with a few aftermarket parts. It has an Elderbrock throttle body, open headers, three inch exhaust, unsure of the transmission, (haven't got under it yet), brand new roller rockers. However it needs a new head gasket, new spark plugs, an egr, gonna replace the radiator, and some other odds and ends. I have a cam that I'm not sure if I'm gonna put it in or not. This project is meant to be a street car, that's gonna be fast, but I really want it to be sharp and look good, that's why most of my focus is going to the body work, and the interior. Im 95% sure I'm going to do a 98-02 conversion on the car, same body style, just looks better in my opinion. I plan on putting in 2 Sparco pro 2000 seats. These are $750 a piece, a visage body kit, considering making it into a wide body if I feel up to it. Also the back part of the car wont have anything in it, other then a sound system. I'm thinking about getting a veil side spoiler to put on, but not sure if I wanna spend that type of money just for a spoiler. I'm putting some 18" Helo 825 rims on the front, and 20"s on the back. The time frame I'm putting on this project is around a year and a half. If anyone has any suggestions, feel free to comment and let me know thanks!

1995 Chevy Camaro Z28

A Work in progress

Any of you who know me, know that I appreciate cars. I'm typically more fond of American made cars then imports, but theres always the occasion. My first car I ever, was a 1996 Chevy Lumina LS. It had 99,000 miles on it, with the 3.1 V6. This car is a Grandma's Car for sure. In the year that I had this car I put over $3000 into it. The usual oil change, transmission flush, new brakes, new tires, rattle can painted the interior. It was practically a car that I could use as a daily driver to get me from point a to point b. When I purchased my 95 Z28 I planned on redoing the interior and was just gonna drive it. To find out when I went to replace the window motors in the door panels, there was a wiring problem. Not only that but the car originally was a automatic that a previous owner converted to a 6 speed. There is participially one problem with this, when you do a conversion like that theres a sensor, for automatics, that tells the engine which gear its in, (park, reverse, neutral,etc..) and when that sensor is in reverse, the reverse lights kick on. This sensor was never removed therefor I had no reverse lights. In addition to that, there was no heat or ac. I began a tear down of the entire interior, so I could get the car rewired. After weeks of sitting on the project planning what to do, I came to the conclusion that were going to take this ride back to square one. I'm talking total restoration. Due to the lack of finances, school, and work, and no place to work on the car, I'm currently sitting on the project tell tax season. However I do have some pictures and info on the car.

Boxing: The good, the bad, and the Painful!

     My brother is currently 25 years old, standing at 6' 3, 245 lbs. A few years back he was involved in mixed martial arts, kick boxing, karate, ju-jitsu, and boxing. There was an experienced that changed his fighting career. He was up for his first major amateur kick boxing, which was being held in St.Louis. He was nervous of course, the guy that he was to fight was a little smaller then he was, but he also was a  amateur boxer for a few years. My brother was watching the fight before his, and one of the fighters was struck to the side of the head with a kick, it not only knocked the guy out, but caused severe internal bleeding that led to his death about 8 hours later. This scared the hell out of my brother, especially before his fight. He ended up losing the fight due to a broken nose, that wouldn't stop bleeding. The moral of this story is any type of fighting is dangerous, and can be fatal. Its best advised that if your practicing any physical sport that makes contact to the body, take safety precautions.
     I however did not follow this piece of advice until recently. Four to five weeks ago, I was boxing with a few friends from work. We use 12oz boxing gloves, mouth pieces, and on the most part, headgear. The only thing that we left out, was of course, our hands. Out of the 6 people that go boxing with me, I'm the only one to ever sustain injury. I received a mild impact fracture to the inside part of my index finger (2nd metatarsal head) and several minor hair line fractures through the knuckle. Though I would love to put the gloves back on and go a few rounds, the thought of re-injuring my hand is just something I just couldn't cope with right now.
     I have a few videos posted on youtube of my boxing experiences. The links are First Boxing Video, and Second boxing Video. Please don't judge the videos based on their content, their not meant to show hard knock out hits, their meant for learning purpose to watch our techniques, and to work on our form. I also don't usually make videos with the exception of boxing videos. Please comment and enjoy!

Just a Little information about me.

     As you all should know now my name is Morgan Cavalier. This is my first semester at SWIC. I'm 19 years old, and I work at Showtime Cinemas in Sparta IL. I drive (or will when its done) a 1995 Z-28 Camaro. I currently hold the title as Assistant Manager, and will have worked there for two years come October. The job is pretty fun, most the people there are nice, and its always an enjoyment seeing people come to the show. One of the perks about working at a theater is having the availability to watch movies free of charge, and sometimes even before they're released.

    If you can't find me at work, you can usually find me sitting in front of my thirty-two inch LCD SANYO playing X-box 360, or the Playstation 3. The usual games I enjoy playing range from Call of Duty, to Forza 3, to Castlevania. For anyone who enjoys gaming and looks for a pretty decent competition, my gamer tag for Xbox is bobbymax2 and my gamer tag for playstation is bobby_max2.

     While in high school, I joined the Journalism class hoping to not do much and just sit around, cause that's what most teenagers want to do while in school, is nothing. It actually turned out that I enjoyed doing the writing, and developed a skill for photography as well. I most commonly wrote about video game reviews, and mixed in some of my artistic skills as well drawing up graphics. Since the work was being published, I couldn't pull pictures off of google or anything like that, and I would have to have permission to publish other peoples art work. I eventually became photographer of the Journalism class, developing skills with editing, angles, and positioning. There are some pictures to the right that I have taken for the zoo, and a field trip that I took in high school. Photography is defiantly a hobby I want to pursue later on in life.

Check in for next blog, will be discussing about my boxing experience, along with my car development of my Camaro.