I was tired of not being able to find DVDs I wanted here in Vietnam, so I finally figured out how to get a workable bittorrent system in place to download movies and then stream them to my television wirelessly using my Xbox 360. It took some figuring out, but now it works great. So far I’ve downloaded Stepbrothers, Pineapple Express, Thirteen Days, and Nixon.

I watched Stepbrothers and Pineapple Express over the weekend and they were both hilarious. If I had to pick one, I’d probably pick Stepbrothers, but I liked Pineapple Express too. The reviews for Pineapple Express were not very good, so maybe it just exceeded my expectations, but I liked it.

I’m using a free program called TVersity that I downloaded onto my laptop to stream the video from my laptop to my Xbox 360 over my wi-fi connection. It’s awesome. No more watching movies on my laptop!

I’ve also been playing the hell out of Gears of War 2. I am not sure how long it is, but I think I’ve got to be getting close to the end. Right now I’m underground heading toward the Locust’s “Nexus” compound and I’m on a gunboat fighting with some big monster fish that keeps attacking me. The crazy thing is I’ve had GoW2 for over a week now and it doesn’t even come out officially until November 10th. I hope to have completed it by the time it officially comes out. Just to say that I did. How is it? Okay. At first I didn’t like it much – the graphics are great but the gameplay was almost identical to Gears 1. And one thing I didn’t like about it was that a lot of the skirmishes with the Locusts seemed to be more at a distance than in Gears 1 where there was a lot more up-close, hand-to-hand combat (from what I remember, at least). But later on there’s a lot of good variety in the game – like when you get swallowed by a giant worm and have to fight your way out of its digestive system and kill it by severing arteries to its multiple hearts, driving the Centaur vehicle up a snowy mountain, etc. It’s changed it up enough that it’s at least kept my interest.

Oh, and I also bought an “official” shrink-wrapped version of Call of Duty 4 when I was home in the U.S., so if anyone wants to play online, send me a friend request. My Xbox Live gamer tag is, unsurprisingly, Orangwutang. (Which is where the title of this blog came from. And where did the gamer tag originate? Not really sure. I used to be “Ridonkuloid,” which I loved, but I had this strong desire to pay $10 to change my tag to Orangwutang. I think I was going through a phase where I was listening to a lot of Wu-Tang Clan and that name just jumped into my head. It started as kind of a joke – I was telling James and his brother, Joey, I was going to change my name to Orangwutang and only talk using Method Man’s voice when we were playing online. Then I really wanted to do it. Sometimes I miss Ridonkuloid. I know – I need to get a life.)

It’s noon over here and I am through teaching for the day. I’m heading to the gym now – no plans later other than to chill. I’m out. Happy Halloween!