Blog O’ Obscurity

If you suspect that your identity has been stolen or if you’ve already been the unfortunate victim of identity theft, you have a way of kind of freezing your information at the credit bureau so that no other fraudulent transactions are allowed. These fraud alerts require the credit bureaus to call you if any new line of credit is taken out in your name and last for six months after initiating one.

Experian is one credit bureau that has sued lifelock for providing this service to its customers. Lifelock charges $10 a month to issue a fraud alert every six months for you.

I’ve initiated a fraud alert for myself before, and hope that this suit does not affect my ability to issue fraud alerts myself.

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As promised, last night I went to see “Diary of the Dead” with my local group of zombie-heads. All in all we had a great time, and I would recommend that you take your friends to see this latest entry in Romero’s zombie canon.

However, let me warn you that the movie contains barely passable acting, a thin script, and ridiculous situations. Even giving it some slack for being a zombie movie. The old British professor that constantly drinks and spouts defeatist bits of philosophy got real old real fast. I can’t remember any characters names, but they included the filmmaker, the girl in the corset, the shy girl, the nerdy guy, and the tough girl.

The premise of this zombie episode is that a group of film students begin recording the events that happen at the beginning of the zombie crisis. This is played out as a shot-on-video style similar to “Cloverfield” or “The Blair Witch Project” but with less jittery-cam than the former and more structure and story than the latter.

Romero is famous for having a “Deeper Meaning” behind each of his zombie movies. This one is no different. However, the subtlety that worked for “Night of the Living Dead” and was somewhat present in “Dawn of the Dead” is long gone here. Romero might have well as had giant flashing letters announcing, “This line has a deeper meaning.” I mean, come on. At one point there is a globe with the Earth turned upside down in its stand. I truly expected Romero to be in the back of the theater to literally hit us over the head.

For all of its down points, I still recommend the movie because it is very fun when it forgets to be preachy. Each zombie kill is more creative than the last. One character gets a bow and arrow, and another kills a zombie with a defibrillator. The funniest part by far involved a deaf, Amish farmer who had had a stroke. He ambles up to the main characters, and almost gets shot before they realize that his moans do not make him a zombie. He promptly pulls out a small chalkboard to communicate before throwing dynamite at a pack of approaching undead. Wow. I laughed a lot.

See it, but see it with like-minded friends.

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When you start pricing a new entertainment system, don’t forget to include the price to mount the components to wherever you want to put them. A new projector is nice, but you don’t to take any chances when you attach it to the ceiling. To get the best sound out of your new sound system you need to put each speaker mount and each speaker in the right place to optimize your sound performance.

No matter what your system is or what you have to attach it to, there are great mounts and stands for your situation.

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I know that Hollywood is out of ideas, but really, do we really need every single Dr. Seuss book turned into a movie. Children’s books make great movies, but not children’s books based on modern day nursery rhymes that can barely make it to 20 pages.

Seriously, if they ever get around to making “Green Eggs and Ham” into a movie, I’ll boycott that studio for life. The entire book only has 50 words. They’re just repeated over and over. The only word with more than one syllable is ‘anywhere’.

I will not see this film.

I will not see it here or there. I will not see it anywhere.

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If you’ve got an eye for Vegas, for a quick trip or a weeklong vacation, then the internet is full of sites to get great deals. But if you want the best deal on a Vegas hotel on your Las Vegas excursion, then the i4vegas site is the best place to find the absolute best deal. Las Vegas is built around money, so make sure that you start the trip off right by not wasting any of your money overpaying for a room.

Have fun in the desert.

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On the same night that I tried out “Memoir ‘44″ I was also able to go through a game of “Frag”. “Frag” is set up to be a first-person-shooter, but on a board game. I was at least intrigued enough to try the game out.

Each player must choose a character and assign it points to health, speed, and accuracy. It seems like there would be a lot of options on how to assign the points, but in reality there are only one or two combinations that really work out. After that players walk around in circles to collect items and weapons, and after they feel strong enough, leave the starting areas in search of people to frag.

The game system is okay but a little awkward. It takes multiple rolls and a little math to figure out each shot. This kept the pace of the game pretty slow. Combined with rules that encourage players to walk in circles hoping to pick up good items and weapons, this game quickly got everybody involved bored.

When you design a game based on first-person-shooter video games, you’ve got to keep it fast, engaging, and interesting. The dice and math system is slow, walking in circles is boring, and some players become uninterested when it’s apparent that they aren’t going to win.

In other words, convince someone else to buy it if you want to give it a shot.

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I guess it’s just one of those things that happens when you start to get older. Now that I’m a couple of months from 30, I find myself thinking of getting more life insurance and of how much will be enough. The option of term life insurance may be the way to go, and I’ve found a pretty good site that features term life insurance quotes for many different people and situations.

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Last week I finally made it over to my local board game store’s monthly board game night. I first played the uninspiring “Frag”, but then very much enjoyed a couple of games of “Memoir ‘44.”

This World War II war game initially looks very much like “Axis & Allies”, but plays more like “Queen’s Gambit”. It is not a worldwide battle like “Axis & Allies” or even a regional conflict like some of the A&A series, but it is war fought at the battlefield level. The multiple scenarios included with the game and available through the expansions offer dozens of battlefield options.

Each scenario spells out the battlefield landscape, starting positions, available units, special unit abilities, and any other peculiarities to the scenario. The variety is nice in a WWII game as I find that games like A&A seem to play the same every time. The downside is that each scenario is not entirely balanced. The idea is to make the battlefield match up to the historical context when possible. Therefore, one side is usually at a disadvantage. (But then again, so is Axis in A&A.)

The gameplay is card-based with each player relying on drawing and playing cards to move certain units. Those units can move, attack, or both. Attacks are resolved using special dice that force defending units to take hits or retreat. Defending units do not roll dice when attacked.

I’m looking forward to getting another chance to play this one soon.

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As I surf around the web there are occasionally really cool things that I would like to get (or at least find out where to get it). One is the custom Cadillac sofa at the Home Improvement Ideas site. Getting my wife to agree to having the back end of a car in our living room might be a challenge, but it might just fit in nicely in our new home theater room of our new house.

The site has other great ideas for other home improvement projects like a fountain that floats in a pond and helps aerate the water or a flat panel TV stand that lets you hide the giant TV under your bed.

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It’s the decision of a lifetime for dinner tonight. Shrimp vs fish sticks.

In a restaurant this may be an easy decision. High quality shrimp scampi or maybe some crab stuffed shrimp vs. some unknown portion of an unknown fish under a heat lamp. When both of the choices come out of the freezer section, the competition is a little more fierce.

Frozen breaded popcorn shrimp is just about at the bottom of the shrimp barrel, yet fish sticks are still fish sticks.

I’ll think I’ll go with mainly shrimp with a couple of fish sticks.

Either way, I get cocktail sauce.

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