Lori is a fucking cunt. Honestly, I can't think of a more hatable character than her. All of the characters in The Walking Dead have their faults, but she's on a whole other level. Fuck. I just want her to fucking die. She irritates the living fuck out of me. Every time I see her I just want to jump through my TV and choke her to death. I have never been this passionate, either good or bad, about any other character ever. Just thinking about her infuriates me.

Everybody says it's fucking great, but honestly I was just not that much into it. Maybe it's the whole dungeons and dragons feel; never really cared for that. However, I started to get a better feel for it in the 3rd or 4th episode. Still not crazy about it, but it might be growing on me.

Way back on January 11, my Xbox account was compromised; points and money were spent. I called up Microsoft and a few days later they had restored SOME of my points and started working on trying to refund the money. After 3 or 4 more calls today they finally restored the remainder of my points. Refund is still pending, though. They had problems sending it through PayPal for some reason so I am supposed to get an email sometime soon with details of how I can request a physical check. Technical support is kind of funny because you can almost immediately tell whether the guy you got is worth anything. The first guy I got was OK, the second guy I got obviously had some experience and actually knew what the fuck he was doing. The guy I got most recently did not inspire confidence, but he routed my problems to the proper channels and one of them is now solved so at least that worked out in the end.

Apparently cheggit.net voluntarily shut down because they could not comply with various laws. Can't really blame them, but FUCK MY LIFE. [Nancy_Kerrigan]WHY?!?![/Nancy_Kerrigan]

Honestly this is probably the best prison movie I've ever seen (Shawshank Redemption notwithstanding). Typical story, but everything is done perfectly. Great performances from Stephen Dorff, Val Kilmer, Harold Perrineau, and the rest of the cast. Fantastic.

I've put it off for the longest time, but tonight I finally saw Changeling; I was pleasantly surprised. Clint Eastwood has had arguably the greatest career (and probably life as well) in the history of Hollywood. It's unfortunate that he's really getting up there in terms of age; he's not going to be around much longer. I wonder if he had been born 30 or 50 years later if he would have seen similar success. It's kind of a shame that a lot of his work is sort of hokey by today's standards, but I guess that's the way it goes.

Walking Dead finally back. Still kind of bogged down on the farm, but there was an interesting conversation about hope in the bar. Followed shortly by a nice scene where Rick had to lay down the law. I'm just wondering if they're going to pick things up soon. At this point I think there's nothing left for anybody on the farm.

What can I say? Liam Neeson is one bad motherfucker. Interestingly he was in two of the previews before this movie (Wrath of the Titans and Battleship; yes, I will eventually see both (on DVD) because he is THAT awesome). So basically he's (sort of) part of a crew of oil workers up in Alaska; they are flying back into town or whatever when the plane goes down in a vast wasteland of ice and snow. As a side note I thought the scene of the plane crashing was very well done considering they don't actually show the plane crashing. Anyway, a small group of survivors have to band together to, uh, survive. Obviously the elements are a big problem, but more pressing is a pack of bitching wolves that are harassing and attacking them for invading their space. And their struggle for survival is pretty much the film, only in the end it's actually more than that. Look. I'll see Liam Neeson in fucking anything. Kicking ass and taking names is great, but when he reminds you that you've got feelings and emotions and shit it really takes it up a notch. There is a short memory of his wife intertwined in various scenes throughout the movie. The nature and purpose of this memory is perhaps hinted at though not quite made clear until the final scene; it comes together very nicely. I suppose one could argue it is uplifting in one sense (e.g. the sheer will to fight and survive), but I've got to say I found the ending quite depressing (one of my favorite movie traits). It also doesn't have quite as much intense action as the trailers might lead you to believe; much of the movie is spent on character development, which tips the balance to the low key side of things (another of my favorite movie traits). I went in expecting the obvious, and it did give me a decent amount of that. But it also pleasantly surprised me, and that doesn't happen too often. Very good movie.

The game was decent enough if not particularly memorable. I suppose the commercials were slightly better than last year, but that's not exactly saying much. Just complete meh for me.

Has anybody else experience odd behavior with logging into Slashdot lately? Probably the past week or so every time I login I get redirected to some random page rather than the front page (usually my Edit User page, though not always).

Couldn't find anything decent to push my Amazon order to free shipping

Cancelled order

Little Earthquakes is fucking 20 years old. I don't feel quite so old since I didn't discover it until 1998 or so, but still. Also, what the fuck.

Just completed Mass Effect 2; it is superb. Mass Effect 3 is just around the corner; can't wait.

Watching it live I wasn't too emotional about it (though I did enjoy it), but later that night and this morning the finality of Chuck really got to me. Haven't felt like this since I finished Firefly, though it's not quite that intense. At least with Chuck everyone knew the end was coming and the writers were able to give us a nice sendoff. I also listened to a podcast interview with Joss Whedon I had saved a while ago; they talked about Firefly and that perhaps added to the melancholy. Shit. If this turns out to be the final season of Fringe then I think I might just fucking lose it.

It didn't quite have that epic feeling I was hoping for, but overall I liked the Chuck finale. The Jeffster performance was a fitting finale, and I really loved the hard choice Chuck had to make between restoring Sarah's memory and saving the people in the concert hall. The last scene where he's telling her about their story is a nice outtro, but by far my favorite thing is that they left the ending open. They could have taken the easy way out and let Sarah remember everything, but that would have been lame. So Casey is out chasing his woman, Sarah is most likely going to go on some mission of self discovery, Elle and Awesome could take the jobs in Chicago, Jeff and Lester will be recording in Germany, and Chuck and Morgan will presumably still be working in the Buy More. Come on, does that set up perfectly for a movie that picks up the action a few months later or what?