Earth Hour is a worldwide gesture to shut off nonessential lights for an hour. Las Vegas participated in the event.

I was actually downtown at the time. The Freemont Street Experience was turned off and even though it wasn’t pitch black, it was still weird to see the place that dim.

Here’s a link from Gizmodo with photos of the main strip during earth hour. And here’s a photo I lifted off that posting:

Kerri said I’ve been slacking; it’s been nearly a week since I last posted, not like my last posting was anything significant, either. Sorry I’ve been playing Lost Odyssey this entire time. The RPG spans 4 discs, so I thought it’d be pretty epic. But after playing Fallout 3 and seeing the amount of stuff they could cram into one disc, I’m currently on disc 3 and feeling really underwhelmed. There are LOTS of cutscenes though. It’s like, play a little, fight a little, and then watch a 10 minute cutscene. Wtf?!

I guess another disappointment is that combat is all turn-based. I just had the idea in me that with what today’s consoles are capable of, you wouldn’t need to resort to this. To their credit, this game’s kind of old, and I guess most hard core RPG’ers prefer this.

But anyway, for some reason I’ve gotten addicted to this Final Fantasy ripoff, while at the same time itching to just get the whole thing over with and mail the four discs back to Gamefly.

So while I’m playing, I usually have the laptop with me, with a page opened to a walkthrough (so I don’t waste more time than I should). During cutscenes, I also browse through my RSS’s. Speaking of which, check out what I just found; it’s a kid playing the Mos Eisley cantina tune on his harp. Awesome!

Other than that, Kerri and I have been enjoying the warm weather lately. We’ve been getting out a little more and trying to go walking. With all the stuff happening on the strip, 2 mile walks are a lot less tedious than, say, multiple laps around Ala Moana.

Plus, you get to drink beer at the same time (WIN!). On top of THAT, it’s easy to find somewhere to sit when you want to take a break (ie: a slot machine) (WIN!), and sometimes we end up coming home with more money than we left with (WIN!). But usually not (FAIL!).

That reminds me; we took some pics of the Bellagio’s new spring garden. I’ll post some up later. Cut scene’s done, time to go back to one of the boringest things I’ve ever done with my xbox (it’s right there next to waiting for system updates to download, and playing through the “Tool” songs in Guitar Hero World Tour).

I just finished Mad World last night. That game was good times! Thanks again for the Wii, Doug!

This game was good times. Any game where you can choose to slice people in half either vertically or horizontally is a wild ride. Loved the art and the commentators, too.

It’s hot today! I think the temperature is technically around the high 70s / low 80s, but it felt way hotter. What blows me away is that just a week or two ago, we had to bundle up to keep warm.

Now I’m hearing more birds chirping and the tourists are wearing shorts and t shirts again. Billboards for the casino pool lounges have also been sprouting up.

The grounds workers have always done a good job keeping the place looking good, but somehow everything looks a lot greener around here. Pinker, too. Here’s a tree near our mailboxes.

Sorry, it was cloudy when I took those pictures. Does anyone know what this tree is? I want to say it’s cherry blossom, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen one in person before. But I swear this tree was just bare branches a few weeks ago.

Here’s a close-up picture.

I just had me a Guinness while playing Halo with some of the guys. Kerry, what’s your work schedule like? We gotta play when you’re free.

We’re probably just staying in tonight. We went down the strip this past weekend though, and saw that the Venetian colored the water in their indoor canals green. I’ll post a pic up later.

Oh man this is the future:

This is a British bike being put together for something called the Zero Emissions Grand Prix this summer. It’ll be what I’m guessing may be the quietest race ever.

(Wired.com: A British Motorcycle That Doesn’t Leak Oil)

It’s Pi Day! (not like I’ll be doing anything to particularly celebrate it)

We went back to the M Resort (or, the-big-hotdog-place) last night for dinner to eat at their buffet, which they self proclaim is ‘the best in Vegas’.

I think everyone else had the same idea of cashing in their voucher before it expired, because there was a huge line in. We waited about 50 minutes before we were seated (it would have been longer if there were more than just the two of us).

The buffet was nice. Not best-in-Vegas nice, but it was nice. There were a lot of pastas and some Asian food. I found a few things noteworthy:

• Free beer and wine - It’s all-you-can-drink, included with the dinner buffet. There’s an alcohol station right next to the soups. I didn’t bother with the wine, but they have have a few beers on the tap with someone pouring out glasses for you. I had 2 PBR’s. Would have drank more, but I wanted to save space for food (incidentally, this is the same place that has free-standing soda fountains in the middle of the casino available to everyone, whether they’re playing or not).
• Pastas everywhere - I think it has something to do with the owner being Italian, but there were about a half a dozen different kinds of pastas there (vs. the single spaghetti and 2 sauces station we see at other buffets here). Unfortunately, I didn’t find any of them that great. Their stroganoff was good, though (does that count as pasta?)
• Sashimi - It’s been a while since either of us had raw fish. I think the last time was when Kerri bought some poke for New Years. They laid out salmon, ahi, and hamachi. I mostly went for the hamachi, which was actually pretty good (either that or it’s just been a while since I’ve eaten sashimi). Here’s something interesting, though - most people just left the fish alone. The few (white) people that did take any mostly seemed to go for the ahi and salmon. I think they may have been dissuaded by the lighter color of the hamachi, which also turned out to be the best of the three. It kind of felt like we had inside information there.

It was good times all in all, and nice to have a break from cooking.

Of course, the highlight of the night was after I came home, and the guys put together an impromptu Halo session. Kenny, Jason, Edwin, and the two Joels were there. IT’S JUST LIKE HOW I REMEMBER!!

Yen, I just saw some of your new — or should I say, ‘old’ — photos on your flickr page. Man, I miss them days!

That was what…six years? And about eight bikes ago.

…In other news, I don’t know where the hell I’ve been all this time, but I just found out that there was a third X-Men movie (that came out like, over two years ago). Or maybe I’ve already seen it and kind of forgot all about it. Either way, I’m watching it (again?) now.

Looks like Jon Stewart came back to deliver even more pwn4g3 after last week’s rant against CNBC.

Jim Cramer should just stfu for good already. I’ve personally lost money in the past from that guy’s hype. It’s a shame that in-depth reporting like this only seems to be found on a comedy show.