Wow! My head is spinning from that amazing episode. Now that is a Lost episode we know and love. We had not seen that in the first 3 hours of this season but they did need to build the stage. This episode did not answer a lot of question but at the same time led us down the path to them.

• Who was that young boy? I didn’t have a clue the first time but he did look like he had blood on his hand. The second time I saw him and he started talking about rules and I immediately thought it was a younger Jacob. What really blew my mind is thinking that is Aaron or maybe Jacob and Aaron are the same people.
• Aaron and Jacob being the same person hit even closer to home when the new Locke said to Sawyer that “Of Mice and Men” was before his time. It came out in 1937. Isn’t that after his time if he was on the island at the time of the Black Rock? This made me think of weird time loops.
• The Numbers and the list was party explained which I did not expect. What I missed was that each character they named from Oceanic crash had one of the numbers: 4-8-15-16-23-42. That is quite interesting. Interesting omission was Kate.
• I loved Locke being a substitute teacher in the “present” day. It really rounded out his story. He went from being a guy feeling sorry for himself for not being able to fix his situation to actually genuinely helping others by teacher the youth of America.
• Looks like Alpert has been a pawn all along which was sorta verified earlier. He is more of an executive assistant for the leader.
• Looks like Ilana knows a lot more than everyone else. Could the fake Locke been the cause of her hospital flashback with Jacob? He knew she would be a problem so he tried to change things? If Jacob can leave the island, why cant fake Locke?
• I have no clue who is good and bad but it almost seems like it doesn’t matter. I don’t think there will be a straight answer and it will be up to the viewer to make their own decision based on the outcome.
• I do not think that Sawyer does want to leave the island (or at least not in this way). I think he is doing what he does best …. playing a con on Flocke (fake Locke). There is no way they could make Sawyer a bad guy again after his character progression in the last 10 or so episodes.
• I loved seeing through the “eyes” of Smokey
• I wonder why Flocke is stuck in Locke’s body according to Ilana. Is it because he broke a rule or does the “island” need to reset for him to change back or take another form?

Have anything other theories that I may have missed or comments on my thoughts? As always, I would love to hear them.

Update 1: I totally forgot to mention another huge point. Why Locke is in a wheelchair in the flash-sideways if his fiance mentioned his dad in a “favorable” tone  when talking about eloping to Vegas. How did Locke become paralyzed? Obviously, he was not pushed out of a building by his dad this time.

Wow, what a fun weekend. Mardi Gras is one of my most favorite weekends in St Louis. It is #1 when it is warm but we have not seen that in several years. I also missed out last year due to my senior capstone class at Wash U so I felt like I needed to make up for lost time. I headed out to my friend’s now annual party which has unlimited alcohol (or at least we thought), heated tent, and multiple port-a-potties. It was a a fun time. I was surprised that we did not walk around as much but it was pretty cold. It was also a first that I did not go to a bar but that is because we were having that good of a time. It was also the first time I woke up without a hangover afterwards…lol. Here is the limited pictures from the weekend.

Friday and Sunday were both laid back days. Got some good Vday time in with the girlfriend along with some DVR, COD, and movie watching. Two things: (1) I am getting better and better at COD (up to a level 21). Especially since I gave up on the sniper rifle. My kill to death ration is almost always positive now. (2) I watched District 9 on Sunday. The first 25 minutes was so bad that we turned it off but I gave it a second chance since it was recommended and up for awards. I turned it off right as it was getting good. The weird thing about it is that the movie had a totally different look and feel the first 30 mins compared to the last hour. It was almost like it was directed by two different people. The last hour was very good and I would recommend it. It had a good plot which I did not see coming.

I was pretty disappointed with this episode. It seemed like a lot of filler to me. Something I definitely do not want to see with less than 15 hours of Lost left. The reason I call this filler is because we have no idea why the Lost writers are spending so much time focusing on the “present.” Hopefully there will be a major twist and the “present” that we think is really the past. Otherwise, what is the point of focusing so much time on it….All we care about is the island. With that said, they need to reveal that pretty quick otherwise a lot of Lost fans are going to be disappointed.

There were only two revelations this episode and neither were very big. The first being that Sayid has the sickness and the Others somewhat explained the sickness. I already had a pretty good grasp on the sickness so this did not seem like a revelation at all to me. The question I have about this is if Ben has the sickness since he also used the fountain to hell him? Is that why he couldn’t ever see Jacob? I don’t think Ben was dead though but I don’t think Roseau’s crew was either do the sequence of events do not add up.

The other revelation is that CFL (otherwise known as Roseau) probably had the sickness and so does Claire. The only question is how did Claire get it. She didn’t seem to be entirely crazy because she only killed the Others; not Jin. Maybe she escaped from them like Sawyer did. What if we find the MIB is actually the good guy while Jacob is the bad guy. There are clues to see if from both angles.

I had the two rings over heating Xbox failure several months ago. I found out that only the 4 ring (i.e the Red Ring of Death) is covered under the extended 3 year warranty. Pretty worthless considering both are overheating issues. I wrote about this before but basically I tried to clean it off, inspect the fans, and put new thermal compound on it but nothing worked. I didn’t want to buy a new one but had so much invested in Rock Band songs that it was hard to walk away.

A friend suggested I give a guy a call that he saw on his work message boards and has this site. I was super skeptical because it didn’t sound on the up-and-up. The reason I thought this was because it was basically a guy picking up Xbox’s outside a local restaurant in St Charles. A second person posted on my friend’s work message board that his fix worked so I figured I would give it a try since what did I have to lose since it was basically useless.

The guy charges $35 (unless it’s unrepairable) but the estimate to fix  is free. Their main fix is to reflow the chips with a special machine. He also does a modification on the fan to keep it running at full power which cost another $10 (even thought he charged me $5). He told me it would be loud so made sure I did not use my xbox for watching movies. He claimed the change would decrease heat by 30 degrees which is a pretty bold statement.

I got the xbox and he told me he reflowed it and put in bolts for the heat sink clamps (something that makes much more sense than the stupid X clamps that MS used). I took the unit home and fired it up. The first thing I noticed is the loudness. I was expecting it to be first generation loud like some of my friends but it is 3 times louder. I don’t notice it when playing games but definitely can when it’s idle. I probably wouldn’t have done this if I knew it was this loud but then again it will probably prevent it from breaking again.

All in all, it is still working after several hours of COD Modern Warfare 2 and Rock Band.

I would make a couple suggestions to the guy running this service even though it sounds like he is running a pretty successful business and I would recommend him to anyone with Xbox 360 problems.

1. Have some kind of receipt/contract for when you turn your $300 xbox over to a random stranger in a mall parking lot. I asked him about a receipt and he said no one ever asked him about that even though he thought it was a good idea. He claimed to do a over a dozen fixes a week so business must be good.
2. Workout a better drop off process. It just makes the whole thing shady. You have a great word of mouth business but it could be better if you had more of a professional front.
3. Detail the 40 day warranty that you claim in a contract. A spoken warranty is never good for a business.

I figured I needed to post something since I have been sort of dormant lately with my blog. I need to make sure that people still think I am alive. My lack of post will change soon since I got a post brewing about my Xbox fixing experience and Lost reactions with the season starting tonight.

This weekend was somewhat laid back. On Friday, my GF and I went to a 30th birthday party for a friend from grad school. It was good seeing some of the ole group. I was more amazed by the location of the bar. We went to Llywelyn’s Pub in Webster Groves. I had no idea it was even there…it’s almost hidden in a neighbor hood/back alley. We followed that up by meeting my GF’s sister and brother-in-law at The Dubliner. The place was empty which was good because it allowed us to talk. Saturday continued my laid back weekend. I chilled around the house and ended up finally watching Inglorious Bastards. I did like it but I had a hard time following it at times. I wouldn’t mind watching it again…especially since it is up for a Best Picture. As for Sunday, I got in a good swim and workout…something I plan on doing much more now that I have a YMCA Metro pass. We followed that up a good steak dinner with some friend’s at the GF’s.