Update 1.09

     It's been a while now since I've written. I've been busy enjoying life, gaming, practicing the guitar, learning jazz music, listening to a lot of jazz, and working. I just ended a three day weekend off from work, it was quite exhilarating! The blog has kind of become a personal space for me online yet somehow I have gotten more readers despite not writing about music-particularly jazz, which I was doing some months ago. It's been a while but sooner or later I'll be back to writing jazz posts, for now I'm mainly going to continue doing personal posts and talking about gaming and general life stuff. So in terms of what's been up with me lately, I have been doing a lot of intense gaming sessions, anime watching, amazon prime watching, guitar practicing, and working late in the evenings. It's quite the life, feel free to walk a day in my shoes, you will see the light my brotha. Anyways, here's what I've been playing.
      It's a 2D retro-style indie game that's inspired by Smash Bros called Rivals of Aether. That's a screenshot of the game above. It's in early access at the moment on Steam for only $15, a really good price for a game that is already pretty solid. Right now there are only six available characters and you can play online or in local connections with people. The game features animals that all have special unique moves and abilities. There's a lion that has fire attacks and his recovery is just like Foxs' from Smash 4. Then there's a bird with kungfu attacks who's pretty reminiscent of Falco from Smash 4. There's a big rock bug creature that throws rocks at you and breaks them on you. Then there's a guy (not sure what he is) that can stir up dirt in the air and engulf the screen with it, and then he can turn into two, making it hard to figure out which one is the real him. Then there's a squirrel that uses punching gloves, he seems like the weakest link right now. And lastly we have a water type dolphin creature that reminds me of the Pokemon Vaporeon. He has some water teleporting abilities and bubble move that reminds me of Squirtle. The game-play is so reminiscence of Smash Bros, but mainly Super Smash Brothers Melee because the game-play is smooth, fast, combo-intensive, and requires a bit more technical skills than the average Smash 4 player. The game even has wave dashing! The game gets an instant 10 out of 10 from just for being a great Smash Bros style game that is still unique by itself. The characters in this game are so unique and interesting and combos are so nasty that its hard to say its just a Smash copy.
     The thing that makes this game so great is that the combos are devastatingly nasty. They are absolutely disgusting. You will get bodied so hard in this game unless you know how to get out of combos. At the same time, you will absolutely crush somebody's soul if you get them in a string of great combos. All it takes is perfect positioning and you can get in some insane combos. I did it today actually. I went on like a 20 win streak earlier and I had no idea how I was doing it honestly. All I was doing was getting in the right spots and attacking at the right times. I guess that's really all you need for this type of beat em up game. The controls are easy to learn and simple. My friend that got me into the game showed me a way to play the game with the Gamecube controller using the Wii U Gamecube adapter on my PC. So the game even plays exactly like Smash Bros! It's awesome. Do yourself a favor and buy this game. Once it gets out of early access there will be more characters to play and even a story mode for the players. In addition, the internet connection seems pretty solid when playing with others online. There were a few times where I had some bad lag problems but they were very rare. I've come to the conclusion that the game actually has a great internet connection for a game that's still in beta. My favorite character is the lion because he reminds me of Fox, but also because he seems to have some nasty combos that are easy to improvise with. This is the kind of fighting game that you have to improvise with, making up combos and attacks to do on the spot, much like Smash Bros but its still different enough that I can say its not like Smash Bros too at the same time. If you get what I mean? I feel like this game is going to blow up become a big thing. I'm glad I'm apart of the community for this game too. All the guys in the SoCal Smash scene are playing this game too right now so I have plenty of people to play online against. My brothers' friends are also into this game as well.
     So Rivals has been pretty cool. I've also been putting in work on Heroes of the Storm. I haven't been doing that well in Hero League but its all good. I've been playing it with friends chatting on Skype and also using this new chat browser program called Discord, I gotta say that I really love the Discord program, its neat. Try that program out, you can create your own server and chat with people just using your web browser. A lot easier than using Skype. It's been fun playing online and actually communicating with people instead of just sitting alone online and just typing out stuff to peeps. Makes the game much more enjoyable. I've been playing a lot of Lt. Morales, Uther, and Artanis in Heroes lately. I guess you could say they are my go to and best heroes to play. I feel like right now Heroes of the Storm is kind of in a lull because everybody's been playing it to death and some of the heroes just aren't all that interesting. There's also the fact that people just take forever to kill in Heroes unless you have your whole team of five focusing one person-which is super rare, especially in team fights.
      In addition, I've also been watching a lot of anime. Mainly Hunter x Hunter. My friend turned me onto the show and now that I've subbed to Crunchyroll, its a joy watching anime late into the night commercial free. I'm also into JoJo's Bizarre Adventures too, which is, aptly named so because it is, well, bizarre. I would say that I'm so into anime that I might as well consider myself Otaku, which sounds horrible and bad, but my friend claims that even though I don't consider myself otaku, that I am anyways. Its a bad term in Japan but I guess being otaku in America is a little less bad meaning because nobody really knows what it means here. I would say I just love anime, Japanese video games (Super Smash Brothers), and I play Japanese guitars (Jackson Dinky w/ Floyd rose).
     Also, I've been watching stuff on AmazonPrime. I recently became a subscriber so its been fun watching Man in the High Castle, Workaholics, and this show about college at the Manhattan School of Music called Mozart in the Jungle.
      That's all for now. Sleep awaits. Did you get that Slayer reference?
     

Artanis is here!

      So Artanis is available in Heroes of the Storm now but only to people who have pre-purchased physical copies of Starcraft II: Legacy of the Void. You have to send a picture of your receipt showing your pre-purchase to Blizzard and once they approve it you get Artanis as a character some two weeks before he comes out for everyone else. This is an awesome thing Blizzard is doing, connecting all their games together in a nice format, perfect because none of these games, characters, and skins come cheap! Now let's talk about Artanis. 

      Artanis is huge and buff. He looks like a giant tanking character but he's a Melee Warrior class type. I love the way he walks. He kind of just barely steps around, he has a cool way of walking around, its some great animation. He has this shield activation system where once he's below 50% health a shield will activate but this doesn't save him from dying all the time. He's not tanky at all despite being a super big giant Protoss, especially compared to Tassadar and Zeratul. His basic Q attack is a giant slide attack he does where he runs and attacks in a long direction any way you want, then he comes back and attacks again. It kind of reminds me of the way Illidan dashes around attacking. His W is this double slash attack that is pretty good. His E is a really great move that switches an enemy hero in your place and you go in their place, perfect for setting up killing blows, and timing his ultimate to hit them. His ultimate that I have been using is Purifier beam, this beam is psionic energy that chases an enemy hero that you target. They can easily run away from the beam so using your E attack to make sure it hits them helps a lot. I've been messing around with some builds with him that I've learned online and I have to say that he seems like a great hero, possibly one of the best in the game. He's definitely better than Rexxar, that was just one hero that I didn't like at all, and I will probably not get him with either in game gold or real money. If I had to rate Artanis I would say he's like an 8 out of 10, I would say he's probably going to be high tier once everyone is able to get him in the game. He's going to be great! Also, just having him in the game is a reminder that Legacy of the void is less than a month away. I can't wait for the last story of Starcraft II, one of my favorite games. "For Auir! We will retake our homeworld!"

Nairo beats ZeRo at MLG Las Vegas 2015

     So this weekend was a big weekend for eSports, especially Smash 4 Wii U and Melee because they were doing MLG (Major League Gaming) tournaments for our favorite Super Smash Bros games. I didn't see any of games before hand but I got to see the finals and it was a pretty hyped finals between ZeRo and Nairo. ZeRo is known as the best Sm4sh player of all time, with a total of 55 major tournament wins in a row, which is just insane! He's the most successful gamer in eSports history, even more successful than Mew2King, Melee's golden boy. Our underdog is known as the Second Best in Sm4sh, always making it to the finals but always losing to ZeRo in the end. Well, this was his tournament finally. Here's the video of all the matches here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSh_jAIcKoQ. Basically Nairo went Zero Suit Samus, my favorite waifu and currently becoming my new main and favorite character kind of just because of Nairo, but also because I love Super Metroid and Samus in general. Anyways, Nairo basically won the first couple matches because he was getting all his grabs and air combos down. Usually ZeRo does a better job of dodging the grabs but here he was little off his game. But when ZeRo picked Diddy he started to come back and wreck Nairo. He was doing great but he lost a game and when it was on the last set he decided to switch back to Sheik, which in my opinion was a mistake. I feel like ZeRo is better with Diddy even though Diddy got a major nerf a couple patches ago. Even with the nerf Diddy is still a beast. Even I like to play him with my friends when were playing friendlies. He's just the chimp with all the combos really. Anyways, Nairo just gimped and bodied ZeRo's Sheik. Its not that ZeRo played badly because he was doing pretty well, its just that he got caught in spikes and air combos way too much, and that led to his losing the set, and the entire tournament. Congrats to the new Champion of Smash 4, Nairo! Honestly I feel like this was kind of a one off tournament win where we will see ZeRo winning against Nairo in the future. However, nobody can be the King of a game forever. I feel like all that pressure might have gotten to ZeRo and he might've been stressing out while playing. It happens to all pros in sports, even in eSports (gaming as a sport is called eSports for all you newbies). I feel like in future tournaments he will be back to winning. Honestly I think he should take a break and let other people become Champions of Smash 4, we need more Champs in this game. Its a young game and having ZeRo as the only super famous known player gets boring to me. Anyways, it was a great tournament, enjoy the games!

Weekend Update

     I haven't written in quite a while but now is the perfect time to do so. Work has cooled down and I'm back to my regular hours so although I won't be making that extra bread I have been making the most of my time outside of work. I've been hanging out with my friends, gaming, and most importantly, practicing the guitar every night. I'm starting to get a good rhythm going with my guitar practicing. I've found that since I'm late night person I should dedicate that time practicing instead of just chilling on the laptop and listening to music-which is fun and great to do as well. I've been making good use of my daytime hours waking up early (which is around 11 am for me), and doing all my hanging out with my friends during those hours. My friends pretty much work the same hours I do so the only times we get to hang out is during the day, when everyone else is working. It's a bit strange but we've made it work and its been fun. Lately me and the guys have been playing a lot of Project M. Today I even downloaded it onto an sd card for my friend so he can play it at his place without my sd card.
     In addition, today was our other friends birthday. I got him a $20 Gamestop card. Apparently our other friend gave him a $20 Gamestop card as well so I guess he will be buying more games. I wish my other friend could've gotten him something else. We all have enough games really. It would've been more thoughtful to get something a bit more interesting. Although I can't blame him because I was thinking of video games too! As the birthday boy's mom said to him today," You have enough games." Seriously. We all do. But we are all thinking we can never have enough. Just look at my older brother's steam account on his PC. Or just our shelves in our room. Nothing but video games. We're just big gamers and that's how I like it. So anyways, its been awesome playing Project M with the guys. I'm really good at it, even in four player free for all. I would say I'm better at Project M than Smash 4. I would also say that I like Project M way better than Smash 4 just because PM has Snake, a character that I just have to have in Smash 4. They really need to get on that and add him as dlc because we all know its bound to happen sooner or later. Snake's a beast in Brawl and PM. Somehow Snake has become like my favorite video game character and I don't know anything about the Metal Gear Series like at all. I'm thinking about playing my brother's PS3 because he has Metal Gear Solid 4 on it, and maybe I could learn a thing or two about Sony's golden boy from playing that.
     Also, I've been listening to a lot of free-jazz. Its a lot different from the stuff that I'm learning to play, which is just plain ole' straight-ahead jazz. I think its much harder to learn how to play free-jazz because I think you have to be a great jazz musician that can play straight-ahead before you can abandon the rules and go all free, with no time signatures, melodies, and rhythm. I'm working on standards from the real books. Songs like Four on Six, Billie's Bounce, Fall, and Autumn Leaves are all things I'm currently playing. As I keep practicing playing over changes the more I realize that the changes aren't hard to play over, and that in some cases you can play whatever you want, as long as your hitting some of the key chord tones. I'm a novice at music theory but my guitar teacher is explaining it to me in bits and pieces here and there. I'm not really interested in theory and I don't think I could really fully understand it unless I studied it at University or even a community college nearby. But at the same time you can't just be completely ignorant of theory.
     Lastly, I subscribed to an anime streaming site called Crunchy-roll. So far its been terrific. I'm currently watching Hunter x Hunter and Jojo's Bizarre Adventures, two of the latest and greatest anime to come out of Japan. Hunter x Hunter is about a kid named Gon who wants to become a hunter because of his father. Jojo's Bizarre Adventures is about a mask that once worn, turns the wearer into an immortal vampire. It's pretty cool. With these less hours at work, life has gone back to a slower pace and I've been able to focus more on my music. I'm looking forward to next month when Starcraft II Legacy of the Void comes out. I'll be playing that a lot with my online friends. My friend said something interesting to me today. He said that although I'm a Nintendo fanboy right now, that he will always see me more as a PC guy. I responded with "PC master race, right?". It was a great little moment in the day. I also wanted to say that this blog has become a personal blog for now. Eventually I will go back to writing about jazz album appreciations and talk more about music and my thoughts on that. That's all for now. Keep on keeping on. And as Tavis Smiley says," remember, keep the faith." 

Update 1.08

     Life has been good. I'm getting good hours at work, making that extra bread. As ZZ Top sing, "Just got payed, got me a pocket full of change", I think that every week when I get my check. As a customer at my work likes to say every time I see him, "Life is good". Usually when I say that to customers they usually say, "It's better than the alternative". It seems rather drab to say that but I get it almost every day. Here's an update on what's been up lately. 
      For one thing I've been doing my usual schedule at work working until 1 in the morning. So I've been having long nights, staying up until 3 or later. Most of the time I'm just listening to free jazz, writing for this blog, and looking up things online like email, games, and twitch streams. It's a super fun night life. At the end of the night before I go to bed I play Wii U (Mario Kart & Smash), and sometimes 3DS (Xenoblade, Monster Hunter, & Smash). I would say the best part is just listening to the music. There's something about listening to jazz that just gets me inspired. Jazz has become my favorite style of music. I would say I'm not even really a fan of metal anymore. Although I am impressed by Animals as Leader's Tosin Abasi, he is a beast guitar player. I wouldn't become better than him even if I was practicing 4 hours a day. Which leads me to my next point.
     Today I had my guitar lesson with my teacher. It had been about 2 weeks since we last had a lesson so it was a good return to learning. We jammed on John Denver's Country Road, jammed a funky blues, improvised over Four on Six, and started playing a bit of Billie's Bounce by Charlie Parker. I couldn't quite sight read it that good but I'll get there. I haven't been putting in a lot of time on the guitar but I have been playing here and there. Its hard to devote time to the guitar with all the new gaming stuff on the horizon, especially next month with Xenoblade Chronicles X, Starcraft II Legacy of the Void, and Starwars Battlefront 3 coming out. I'm going to have to start a practice schedule every day in order to keep up with my lessons. No point in taking lessons if I'm not practicing everyday. But I digress. Let's talk about games!
      Gaming has been great lately. There was a new patch in Smash, patch 1.1.2, which adds the Super Mario Maker stage and the Pirate stage from Wind Waker. They're both pretty cool. I really like the Super Mario Maker stage but I don't see it becoming viable for tournaments, although the omega version of the stage looks just fine for that purpose. Nintendo also balanced some of the characters again. Every time they do this its like Smash is becoming a different game, which is good and bad in a way. It's good because we get to experience buffs and nerfs to certain characters but sometimes its good when a game is done and completed and there doesn't have to be anymore updates. We live in an era in gaming where everything needs to be updated. Its a blessing and a curse.
     Not only was there a patch for Smash but there was a big patch for Heroes of the Storm, another one of my favorite games at the moment. They added some balance updates for the characters but they also added a new hero, Lieutenant Morales, the Medic from Starcraft Broodwar. That ain't even the best part of this story folks. They added a skin that makes Morales look like the Apothecary from Warhammer 40k's Dawn of War series! That's it at the top. I don't know how Blizzard got the licensing to do something like that but its arguably the best skin in the game. So in total now I have the Novazon Nova skin, Medic Uther, and the Apothecary Morales. Not too shabby.
     Lastly, as I sit here listening to free jazz I'm reminded that this is suppose to be a blog about music. But in some ways it has transcended music and has become an almost personal blog, something that I did not intend nor think think was possible because I always thought writing about my life and what I do was super boring and that nobody would want to read about that. And somehow I was wrong because the blog has been getting lots of views, every month, and every day. Thanks for reading folks! I will eventually make a return to writing more about music-particularly free jazz, which is mostly what I'm listening to these days. Au revoir.

Project M

     

     I finally got my copy of Brawl in through the post. So I downloaded Project M onto an sd card and tested it out. I gotta say that the game is really well made, however, there are some bad things about it as well.
      First of all, the animation and graphics in this fan made mod aren't that great. It's kind of grainy and pixelated for a game mod made on the Wii. Brawl looks a million times better than PM (Project M). Some of the characters downright look horrendous, especially Zero Suit Samus. Her skins in this game are some of the worst looking graphics I've seen in a game since the early PlayStation days. The stages in the game look terrible as well, especially the backgrounds on the stages. We put up with the terrible graphics because the game has amazing gameplay!
      The game-play in this game is terrific. PM has some additional characters that aren't from Brawl, like Roy, Mewtwo, and Dr. Mario. There are some cool skins that come with the characters as well. I really like the Mewtwo skin where he has the helmet thing on his head that was used to control his powers in the first Pokemon movie. I also really dig the Snake Big Boss skin, which is basically Snake wearing some army espionage type clothing with an eye-patch. So the characters are all pretty cool. Now let's discuss some of the game-play mechanics.
     Basically, this game is like Brawl with Melee mechanics. It's hard to describe with words but that's the best way I can explain it. There is wave dashing for one thing, which completely changes the mechanics from Brawl. You can move around and attack much faster in PM. Also, the way you grab and hold onto the stage is the same way as in Melee. You can only grab the stage if you are pointed in the direction of the stage.
     What I really like about this game is how Fox plays. Fox plays pretty much like how he does in Melee, which is a much slower paced Fox from Smash 4, but still quite a deadly and effective character with plenty of potential for nasty killer combos. The main thing that I don't like about PM is how Snake changed pretty drastically. In Brawl I'm a Snake main so the first thing I did on PM was test out how Snake plays and he plays in a more aggressive manner in PM but I still don't quite like the changes. I preferred his missile special attack even though sometimes it was slow and would miss. In addition, I don't like his down B in PM where he throws down land mines and they automatically blow up as soon as you plant them, so you have to immediately spot dodge away and hop that it hits your opponent. It's kind of stupid but it is very effective if it hits. Instead of the missile from Brawl, Snake gets a sleeping dart, which puts opponents to sleep. It's pretty nifty but it only puts them to sleep for maybe 2 seconds, at best. It's an effective tool for getting in that last hit to kill. Lastly, I don't like how they replaced his forward smash with a double knife attack, which if you hold, can add a third hit to it. It kill pretty nicely but its just not flashy enough for Snake in my pinion. Snake should have missiles! I haven't really messed around too much with any of the other characters except Fox and Snake so I can't really say too much about the other characters. I'll mess around and try out other characters and see how they play. I did like how Dr. Mario played when I tried him out today. I'm looking forward to play this game with my friends. It's going to be a big competitive game with the guys, just like Melee, Brawl, and Smash 4, we really play them all. Although I would say our main game that we play a lot is Smash 4 on the Wii U, which I just got recently. If I had to give this mod a rating I would give it a solid 9 out of 10. The graphics need work but the game-play makes up for it. Plus this game is one of the big Smash tourney games at the moment. Every Smasher knows of it but not all of them have played it, making it a nice little add-on addition to the Super Smash Bros universe.

Summer's almost gone

   

     Just thought I'd do a little rant on the change of seasons and the holidays incoming. The first thing I noticed when I got up today was that it wasn't hot, neither in my room nor outside. In fact, I found it to be a bit chilly. Welcome to October in California. It was really only like 60 degrees but that makes a huge difference from the 90-100 degree weather we were having just a month ago. Things are looking better climate-wise here in Cali. Sometimes when it gets super cold here it reminds me of Wisconsin, where I used to live about 3 years ago. I happen to have a bit of a cold at the moment so when I left for work I made sure to wear my signature North Face jacket, which I have two of. I find North Face to be such a Wisconsin brand because when I lived there practically everyone wore it. I'm looking forward to the cool weather. Now maybe I won't have to turn on the air conditioner when I'm chilling in my room.
     Also, the holidays are coming up here after Halloween and the start of November (Black Friday and all that). I'm thinking of plans for gifts and all that for my friends and family for Christmas already. I know its a bit early but I'm already thinking of stuff.
     For friend #1 I was going to get him Fire Emblem Awakening. For friend #2 I would get him some game on the 3DS. For friend #3 I would get him an Xbox game. For step-dad I would get him either a book or a jazz CD (saxophonist Steve Coleman stuff). For my older brother I would get him a PC game (Shovel Knight, Metal Gear V, etc). For my younger brother I might give him my used tablet (because I have the Wii U game-pad, which kind of works like a tablet too) or a jazz CD. For my mother I would send a Buddha figurine (because she's a Buddhist now). For my step-mother I would get her an interesting ukulele or some other small musical instrument. I'm thinking that all this stuff is going to cost a lot so I'm going to start saving now. The only real expensive stuff that I want that is coming up is the Starcraft II Legacy of the Void Deluxe edition which I have on pre-order at the moment. It's coming out November 10, which is only about a month away. November is when all the new games are coming out. This year and next year is going to be a crazy good year for gamers. I know that in November on the 10th, Starwars Battlefront III is coming out as well as Fallout 4. Not only that but there's also the new Call of Duty Black Ops 3. A great haul incoming for gamers in November! On December 4th Xenoblade Chronicles X comes out on the Wii U. I'm definitely going to pick that up or my older brother will because that's basically the only game he wants to play that's a Wii U exclusive.
     Anyways,  I'm probably going to pick up Legacy of the Void and Xenoblade Chronicles X. What awaits us in 2016 is more great stuff. But because all this stuff is going to be pricey I'm going to be saving up, it'll be worth it to have an amazing Christmas with my friends and family. Christmas here has always been great. Maybe we can even get my younger brother out here to enjoy it with us. I should mention that October's my brother's birthday month so I'll probably send him something as a gift through the post. Either a CD or a book would be good. I'll probably end up sending him my Herbie Hancock autobiography book, I think he would love reading that.
     I'm also looking forward to Halloween because I might go to Halloween party with my friends. I was thinking of cosplaying as Ash Ketchum from Pokemon but I might think of some other characters. Other peeps I'm interested in cosplaying are Ryu and Snake. I would definitely do a cosplay of Snake, it would be sick to have a black Solid Snake at a party!
     On a side note, I'm really looking forward to Thanksgiving because I love eating Turkey prepared in a Chinese style, it's so good! Anyways, that's the end of this rant. I'm going to try to get back to writing about music, particularly jazz. I know the blog has kind of side-tracked and gotten to be about my personal life and gaming. I think it's cooler to write about music and I'm going to make an effort to get back to that soon. It is called ofigueroamusic.blogspot.com after all. 

Update 1.07

     

     Hey, its been a few nights since I haven't written anything so I figured I should just do a kind of update on what's been up. I know the blog has gotten a lot more personal lately and hasn't really been about music-particularly jazz but that doesn't mean that I haven't been listening! In fact, almost everyday that I'm online on my desktop or laptop I'm listening to jazz, mostly free jazz stuff. I'm part of a group on Facebook called free jazz. We currently have over 10,000 members. If you ever want to check out some new interesting music or the avant-garde side of jazz check out the page here https://www.facebook.com/groups/342186855874771/. Feel free to join if you want to listen to great free jazz. I like to post newer musicians playing on there. Its a great community with people from all over the world. I've had the pleasure of exchanging messages with other people in the group about the music they post. It's a great time. I would give Facebook a 10 out of 10 just because of this group. Anyways, what's been up?
     I've been working a lot more. In fact, this week I got over 40 hours. And next week looks about the same. It's pretty cool that I'm getting hours at my job now because before I was only getting about 25-30 hours. It's great especially with the holidays coming up and what not. I'm going to have to get my friends gifts this year as well as my family because my friends got me gifts for my birthday. Work has been hard but in the end its good for my character as well as my bank account. As my best friend from Wisconsin said today when we talked about my job,"It is what it is". Indeed my friend.
     Today was my only day off this week. It was pretty awesome. My brother woke me up bright and early (for me) at 11 am and told me he had an sd card for me because I was going to download the Super Smash Brothers Brawl mod called Project M onto it and put it inside my Wii U with Brawl-creating a great add-on. It's hard to call Project M its own game, its more like a mod made by the community for competitive gaming. It has a strong community and player base. It adds some new mechanics and more characters that aren't in Brawl, characters like Roy and Mewtwo. My brother and I looked up how to download the files and how to do it and format the sd card and my bro did all the stuff necessary and now I have Project M downloaded onto an sd card. Now I just have to wait until my copy of Brawl comes in via Amazon. My Wii Remote Plus came in the mail today so that was cool too. I usually order a lot of cool stuff from Amazon, I'm kind of a big customer online. I usually buy gaming accessories and shirts.
     In the middle of the day I practiced guitar. I figured out how to play Mr. Sandman with chords in a pretty stylized way-using sixth chords, which is how I think most guitarists play it. I just can't play it like Chet Atkins, with the Travis picking style. I leave that for the professionals. I got in a lot of good licks today and played a couple standards. Hopefully tomorrow I'll have my weekly guitar lesson. I haven't been playing as much as I should but I am playing every day at least for a little while. Recently I have been practicing improvising lines that I 'm singing in my head and thinking of the next one while playing the last one. It's quite difficult but I am getting better and sounding more melodic playing in this manner.
     In addition, my friends came over today and we played a lot of Smash 4 on the brand new Wii U. We played a couple versus matches but we spent the majority of the time unlocking stages by completing events and doing whatever else was necessary to unlock the stages that I was missing. It was cool unlocking Smashville because that's my favorite stage for fun and for tournaments. We ended up playing this mini game in Smash where you have to take turns around a grid, kind of like Mario Party. We had to do like three games of it that lasted 15 turns-all just to unlock the Pac Man stage. We ended up having a lot of fun. In the free for all matches we did I did pretty good with Ryu. Things are looking good for me using Ryu as a secondary after Fox.
     After my buddies left I played Heroes of the Storm, trying to complete quests for in game gold used to buy characters. I have 10,000 gold now, after playing a lot of games with Murky, this cute little Murloc from World of Warcraft. He's this frog-like creature that spawns an egg where he can respawn from. He's pretty weak but if played right he can be deadly and annoying. I'm starting to like him a lot. Today was the first time I really played him and tested out all his skills and best skill tree. He's definitely one of the most interesting characters in the game. His ultimate, March of the Murlocs is my favorite special move in the game. A bunch of tiny little murlocs come out and attack, slowing down enemy players and damaging them. I'm looking forward to the next patch because I heard on Tuesday we're going to get the Medic from Starcraft Broodwar. So I'm going to save my gold for that character instead of whats available at the moment. That's Murky vs Johanna in the picture. I haven't forgotten about my good ole pc master race console. Life is good. Jah is good. Keep the faith.