Gouge, Kudos, and a Rant

Playing Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy, I found a lot of great gouge on the internet with lots of pretty color pictures and videos. Now, playing Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga, it's thrown in a few new things here and there, and the internet knowledgebase just isn't as robust as it was for LSW II.

I went on a quest looking for information about the blue cannisters.

You see, for each level of LSW, you have to play the level once through in "Story" mode using the characters that are given to you. After you've played the level once in "Story" mode, then it unlocks the ability to play that level in "Free Play" mode. In "Free Play" mode, you get to choose any character you've unlocked on other levels or purchased in the Mos Eisley Cantina with the points you've earned playing so far. Different characters have different special capabilities that enable you to reach or access different hidden parts of the map.

As you play the game in either "Story" or "Free Play" mode, there are ten white cannisters hidden throughout each level. When you find all ten white cannisters, it gives you like a 50,000 point bonus and a vehicle you can use in some race later on.

So far, everything I wrote above was the same from LSW II to LSW CS. Now in LSW CS though, after the "Story" and "Free Play" it has added the "Challenge." The "Challenge" mode is ALL about finding ten BLUE cannisters hidden throughout the map. You have a 10 minute time limit to find them all. There are no studs (coins) to be found anywhere in "Challenge" mode, but all the same bad guys are there to thwart you that were there in the Story and Free Play. It's pretty... well... challenging.

In my search for hints on the internet, I found lots of discussion forums, and I clicked here and clicked there and through some untraceable series of links, I ended up at THIS site. I don't know why it didn't pop up as the FIRST result on the list when I googled it. It SHOULD have.

Now, this guide is technically written for the Wii version of LSW CS, but it's all good gouge for playing on the XBox, too. It's not pretty and doesn't have any color pictures or other frills, but it is very well organized and logically laid out.

For the sake of anyone who hasn't played Lego Star Wars before, I wanted to share this "hint" from that website, because I thought it was a surprisingly simple synopsis of the game:

Shoot.  Freakin'.  Everything.  If it's made out of LEGO
bricks and not obviously part of the background, gun it
down, or saber it down, or whatever you have to do,
because a lot of stuff to move ahead in the game requires
you to go on a destruction frenzy.

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PT Update: I got my trophy back! On my Polar F11 heart rate monitor (HRM) watch, it keeps track of my workouts. I set up a plan for how many and what type of workouts I'm going to do each week. If you reach at least 75% of your goal each week, then it displays a little trophy icon for the rest of the week. I had lost the trophy over the holidays from holiday laziness. Thanks to getting back into my regular weekly routine last week, my watch gave me my trophy back on Monday.

Unfortunately, a shipyard fire drill prevented me from joining my crew with the PT Nazi over at Bloch Arena this morning. I'm really disappointed I missed it. I hear he had the guys running quarter mile sprints out on the bike path.

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Proud of my Tiger Scout: Last night at our Cub Scout Pack meeting, ES earned his first awards as a Tiger Scout. He earned his Bobcat Badge, six beads toward his Tiger Badge (there are 15 total to earn the badge), the Geography belt loop, and the Swimming belt loop. I know during the week or so before the pack meeting as I was quizzing him on the Cub Scout Promise, the Law of the Pack, the Cub Scout Motto, etc (all things you need to know for the Bobcat badge), he got a little frustrated or annoyed with me. I think when he got the awards last night though, it really gave him an ego boost and made the effort worth it. Now he's excited and wants to start earning more belt loops.

It was interesting to see the difference in awards last night though. Most of the other boys in his den got the basketball, soccer, baseball, and other sports belt loops. Not only did ES not get any of the sports belt loops that the rest of his den got, he was the only one to get the geography belt loop. I think that's more of a reflection on his non-athletic nerd of a dad though.

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CBS Rant: LW and I were REALLY excited to watch the season finale of The Amazing Race on Sunday. We plopped down in our chairs and clicked on the DVR, and... found... nothing... Our DVR did NOT record the finale of the Amazing Race.

So you say to yourself, "Self, WHY on EARTH would the DVR NOT record the finale when it has recorded EVERY Amazing Race episode before this?!?!?" Well, I'll tell you. Some IDIOT at CBS decided to change the official NAME of the show in the electronic listings that go into TV Guide and Dish Network and everywhere else. Our DVR was set to record every episode of "Amazing Race 12," and that worked for the entire season, because that's what it showed up as in the Dish Network guide. For some reason, they changed the name to "Amazing Race: The Season Finale" or something like that. So NOBODY's DVR recorded it if they had it set up as an automatic "record-all-episodes" function. Turns out the same thing happened to my Mom, too. She isn't using Dish Network, so it's not a problem unique to Dish.

I read the recap of the final leg of the race, and it sounded pretty intense. It's a real bummer to have missed it. Why do they offer to let you watch full episodes of all their other shows on their website, but not Amazing Race? To CBS, I say, "Thbbbbbbt!" >:-P

Friday night odds and ends

Okay, this writer's strike crap has gotta come to an end. There is absolutely NO REASON on God's green Earth that *I* should be familiar enough with my wife's soap opera (All My Children) to know the characters' names and basic storyline. I HATE that show.

You see, I've never been the one to turn on the TV or choose the show we're going to watch. I normally just sit here with my laptop and end up watching whatever LW turns on. Yes, there is some sort of bizarre local disturbance of the gravitational field in our family room and LW controls the TV remote. Most of the time, I don't mind. I mean, how else would I have discovered HIMYM or Amazing Race? (Only 2 shows left in this Amazing Race! Check it out this Sunday!) We also really like Numbers (geeky show where a mathematician helps the FBI solve crimes) and The Closer (Kyra Sedgwick's character Deputy Chief Johnson has an amazing ability to draw out confessions once she figures out whodunnit). Since the writer's strike has left us with nothing but reruns, LW has been turning on her soap opera after the boys go to bed. ENOUGH ALREADY WITH THE WRITER'S STRIKE!!!

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LW bought a new board game to play with ES today. It's called UpWords. It's similar to Scrabble, but you can stack the tiles. Say the word "THIS" was on the board, and you had an A and a T in your hand, then you could put the A and the T on top of the I and the S to turn "THIS" into "THAT." It offers a LOT more flexibility than Scrabble. ES had a hard time with Scrabble in trying to find words that fit in the two-dimensional space on the Scrabble board. We played UpWords tonight, and he did really well. Neither of us branched out much on the board. We just kept building up and up and up replacing one letter here or there to change CASH into RASH into CRASH into TRASH. It was fun.

I know you all are dying to hear the score after ES beat me at Scrabble the other day. TECHNICALLY, ES "won" the game tonight, but it was with a lot of HELP from DADDY, so I don't consider it a detriment to my ego. (...THIS time at least).

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Funny Blog. I don't remember if I put a plug in before for this blog, but if you want a good laugh, check out Boobs, Injuries, and Dr. Pepper. She is a little bit vulgar or foul-mouthed at times, but she has a great writing style and some pretty funny stories. The first post of hers that I read was Holly Jolly Christmas, and I laughed pretty good at that one.

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Wii Play! Thank you to whoever recommended Wii Play to us. I think we actually got the recommendation from a couple of Wii friends. Plus LW liked the fact that Wii Play comes with another controller. It's a collection of games similar to Wii Sports.

There's a shooting game sort of like the old Duck Hunt where it goes through rounds of balloons then targets then clay pigeons to shoot at. Then, in the last round, there are a dozen of YOU (your Mii character) running around on the bottom of the screen, and these UFO flying saucers fly down and try to abduct the Mii's with a tractor beam, and you have to shoot the UFOs and save your Mii's. It's really funny to see the Mii's running around in a panic as the UFOs are trying to abduct them.

There's a matching game where it will show a crowd of Mii's, and you have to find the two matching Mii's in the crowd before the time runs out. There's also a tank game and a fishing game that I like, too.

The only thing I DON'T like about Wii Play is that you're limited to only TWO players. When you play two players though, you can play any of the games on the disk and it keeps a tally of how many games each player has won during your session.

Family Movie Night

The boys wanted to have a family movie night tonight, so we printed off our monthly Blockbuster coupons and headed off to pick out some movies. Tonight's flick was Evan Almighty. ES at first was annoyed with me for picking out this movie. In the car on the way home though, I asked him, "Who was Noah?" We talked during the car ride home about who Noah was and what God told him to do. Then I explained to ES that this was a funny movie where God appears and tells some guy named Evan to build another ark and everyone thinks he's crazy. We all enjoyed the movie tremendously. It was a pretty safe movie for kids - no profanity or gratuitous sex or blood and gore.

LW made some awesome gingerbread waffles from a Rachel Ray recipe for dinner tonight. Yes, we like to have breakfast for dinner periodically. I saw LW putting some pumpkin stuff in them - that's the only way she'll ever get those boys to eat anything pumpkin or otherwise vegetable-related is by hiding it.

Catching up on the Amazing Race tonight... What an excellent example in karma. So they all have to find a way to Vilnius, Lithuania from the middle of Western Africa. They go to the Air France office and the first team, Nicolas and his grandpa, sat down with the agent. The Air France agent girl claimed not to speak much English, but I think she was holding out on them. Nicolas tried to tell her he needed the quickest ticket possible to Lithuania, she said there was a flight that arrived at 1:20 p.m. He told her that'd be great and asked her to put all the other people on later flights... with the other teams standing right behind him well within earshot. Way to burn bridges, dude. So then, the airline lady tells him that flight is full and gives them a flight that lands at 5:35 p.m. Meanwhile, the next team goes to the next agent over, and she puts them on the 1:20 p.m. flight. The real kicker is that the same lady who claimed not to speak English to Nicolas-the-dimwit, when the next team came up, she just booked them on the 1:20 p.m. flight. So she just totally bagged Nicolas because he asked her to bag the other teams. Good job, Nicolas! (sarcasm) Not only did your karma bring you a 4 hour delay, but because the other teams heard your treachery, nobody's ever going to help you when you're in a tight spot. Between that and Nicolas' inability to find the salon later on, I can't believe they pulled it off - they almost came in last this leg.

Last random observation of the evening: Why do I always have Star Wars music going in the back of my head??? Sorry, just a little sarcasm. Those of you who know my boys and their obsession with all things Star Wars know that if they aren't playing a Star Wars video game, then they've probably got one of the Star Wars movies on in the background.

Weekend Recap

The weather was kind of blah (by Hawaii standards) on Friday and Saturday, with dark clouds and sporadic showers, so I didn't get out hiking or snorkeling like I had wanted to. Besides the Pacific Aviation Museum and jogging the bike path that I wrote about on Friday, we played some video games and I managed to finish watching Season 2 of HIMYM on DVD and caught up on Heroes on the NBC website.

Saturday, LW went on a shopping marathon and out to dinner with her friend L. While LW was gone, I took the boys on a bike ride out on the bike path. ES rode his own bike and I pulled YS in the trailer behind my bike. We rode out 1.5 miles to a park with a playground where the boys played for a little while. Then we rode half a mile to Best Buy to get some replacement headsets for our XBox. Then we rode the last mile home for a total of 3 miles.

I think ES is ready to have the training wheels removed from his bicycle. I really don't think he needs them anymore, and they're pretty beat-up and about to fall off on their own. I've been trying to talk him into letting me take them off, but he hasn't gone for it yet.

After we got back from the bike ride, I had a family movie night with the boys and we watched Over the Hedge. The boys had seen it before, but I had not, and L's husband keeps telling me funny scenes from the movie. I really liked it and laughed a lot. "Hammy" the squirrel was awesome, especially after drinking that fully-caffeinated soda.

Sunday though, the weather was perfect - mostly sunny but not too hot or humid. We loaded up our camelbaks and headed over to the Friendship Park in Kaneohe to hike the upper loop trail (the last blog post I wrote about this park, we only hiked the lower loop).

The boys on the trail.

It was only a one mile hike, but it came with 227 feet of elevation gain. We parked the car at 295 feet and the highest elevation we got to was 522 feet.

Altitude profile from our hike of the upper loop.

There's a beautiful panoramic view of Kaneohe from the top of the Friendship Park upper loop trail.

Me and YS hiking toward the summit.

Gumbo night was tonight at the home of one of my JOs. Mark and Denise took the carcass from our turkey on Thanksgiving home with them and used it to make turkey gumbo tonight for dinner. They invited everyone from the wardroom over and had a pretty large turnout at their place tonight. The gumbo was excellent. I never knew what roux was before Mark explained to me the finer points of making gumbo tonight.

Amazing Race: Man, those African dance-contest judges were just FULL of personality weren't they??? (sarcasm) They weren't exactly Simon, Paula, and Randy. At least Simon and Randy listened to Paula. The two African men judges didn't seem to listen to any of the ladies' opinions - not that any of them were all that talkative. (Note: I wrote this as I was watching the show and BEFORE anyone on the show made any references to American Idol).

Weekend Recap

Saturday, our schedule was planned around a birthday party that ES was invited to by one of his classmates. LW took him off to the party around 11 a.m. while I took YS for a jog along the bike path in the jogging stroller. I wanted to stop at Buy More, oh, I mean, Best Buy, and it's only a mile from our house. So I ran out 2 miles, then ran 1 mile back to Best Buy. Picked up a replacement ink cartridge for our printer and the new Lego Star Wars (click on the link and there's a pretty cool trailer video for the game on Amazon). Aside: I'm trying to hang onto the new Lego Star Wars for a Christmas present for the boys, but I'm not sure I'll be able to wait that long before I break it open and start playing it myself. Then ran the last mile back.

This is the first time I have NOT seen a mongoose while we were out jogging on the bike path. I normally see at least one mongoose when I go out on the bike trail. The mongoose was imported to Hawaii in 1883 to try to control the rats that were eating the sugar cane. Unfortunately, the mongoose is a daylight feeder and the rats are nocturnal, so the two never really met. Turns out mongooses will eat just about anything. The unintended consequence was that the mongooses killed all the ground-nesting birds on the island and a lot of other native species of animals. You can find a more detailed explanation of the mongoose story here and here.

Saturday night, I'm very happy to report at least ONE of my JOs upheld the Navy tradition of holding a wetting down. When I just looked it up on wikipedia, I was surprised to read that it traditionally involves either throwing the newly promoted officer in the sea, or dumping a bucket of sea-water over his head. That's the first I've heard of that (but it sounds like a great idea!). In my experience, a wetting down has always just been a party where the newly promoted officer puts on a nice spread of food and drinks for his wardroom. We had regular wetting down parties on each of my first two boats. I've been on the MSP now for 11 months, and this is the first wetting down we've had. I was surprised to hear one of the JOs said, "Nobody does that anymore." I hope this weekend changed that opinion and that we'll see more.

Sunday morning... Regression. I was so excited last Sunday when YS actually stayed in the pre-school at Sunday school. Today though, he wouldn't have anything of it. He refused to stay in the pre-school class and came up to the sanctuary with me. So we got one of the Keiki bags (they have coloring books and puzzles for little kids) and he colored for most of the service. On a positive note though, when we it was time for bedtime prayers and I asked ES what his favorite part of the day was, one of the things he said was "going to church" (he even said it before he said "and playing video games.").

The Amazing Race observations (Warning: Contains Spoilers - DON'T READ if you haven't watched this week's episode):
- Okay, the dad and daughter combination... If I were her, I NEVER would have agreed to go on this show with a father who treated me like that. That guy just won't shut up and is incessantly criticizing her!
- My most-annoying player award for last week's episode is a toss-up between the goths and the grandpa. Kynt... Um... That dude is a wimp. Did you see his weak attempt to pole-vault across the muddy stream last week? It was pathetic! My 3 year old could jump farther than that (and make a more manly grunt in the process, too, instead of that weak whimper he made). As for the grandpa, Donald, man - I really did NOT need to see him get all muddy in his tighty-whities trying to pole vault that stream. Was getting naked REALLY NECESSARY???
- The most annoying player award for tonight goes to Lorena and her whining while she was trying to milk that camel. I'm shocked that they weren't last ones to reach the pit stop after the amount of time she wasted on the camels.
- Unlike previous seasons, none of the teams this season have jumped out as being my "favorite" (yet). None of them seem to compare with Uchenna & Joyce or David & Lori or BJ & Tyler.
So who has your favorite team been? Do you have a favorite this season?