I went to Disneyland this past Monday and was pleasantly surprised to find that the attic has been updated, both effects-wise and story-wise. The Disney Blog has a quick blurb on it, linking to a thread on the Disney MiceChat forums with lots and lots of pictures. If you want even more pictures, DoomBuggies.com's forums has 'em.

There are pictures throughout the attic of the bride (now named "Constance") with various husbands. Every couple of seconds their heads disappear.. it's very creepy, and the effect looks "natural". Don't know how else to say it. The old bride used to be in the right corner as you left the attic, but now she is in the right, and is totally updated to be projected/live-action. She stands there holding a bouquet and saying random marriage phrases, such as "'Til death do us part..".. sometimes during these, her bouquet morphs into an axe which shimmers and makes a swishing sound. It's awesome!

Someone posted good footage of the new bride on YouTube:



You might notice the music is louder now, as is the beating heart sound. The shadow piano player is still there, in the side of the room just before you see the bride. That effect seems to be better, too, but I can't place my finger on why.

There are other updates happening slowly around the Haunted Mansion -- if you haven't been in a while, you might not know that the seance room has been revamped a bit. (As of a year ago,) Madame Leota's head now floats around the room in the crystal ball (instead of staying put on the table.) I'd post a picture if I had one. It's a very cool effect, and further detaches you from thinking "this is all just trickery.." -- Supposedly there are going to be even more effects added soon to this room, such as spirits fading in and out with fog/smoke, as if they were "coming through" because of Leota's incantations. Nice. I've heard they will be updating the "hitchhiking ghosts" (that you see in the mirror at the end of the ride.) They will be more developed animatronics, and rumor has it they will be amazing, very top-notch.

Indiana Jones might have had some updates, too, but I can't remember 100% -- inside the chamber of destiny, it looks like the roof is now full of stars and sky.. I don't remember that being there before. I know there used to be an ice maker up there, that would flash-freeze a sheet of water and make it fall in front of your car (like the ceiling was collapsing) but heard the effect never worked 100% of the time so it was removed..

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Anyhow, that was my Disneyland experience. I can't wait to go back again, and see what else is in store for the future. Here's hoping the Finding Nemo submarine ride is pretty cool..

August 27th, 2006 Update: Please check out my new site, MickeyRevealed.com for more Disney trivia/secrets!

This is the first post in my blog-- well, okay, technically I've had a blog since April of 2000 (tail end of my high school experience.) That was back in the LiveJournal days. I was user number 2012 to join LiveJournal. I'm "old school", yo!

Reading my LiveJournal entries is strange. With time has come a better understanding of the world, and knowledge that the things I thought were big deals growing up, aren't really that big of a deal in the real world. It's all relative I suppose.

Anyhow. Welcome to the new blog location. I'm going to be posting in here a lot more often, and trying to mix it up a bit (technical stuff, music, movies, televisions, reviews..)

I bought World of Warcraft a few weeks ago to try it out (lots of friends are on there already..) so, yeah. I tried it for a few days and honestly didn't dig it that much. I figured I'd sell my game on eBay and try to recoup my losses. I ended up selling it fairly quickly, and I thought that's that.

It turns out there is a primary activation key that comes with the game, and a "guest pass" key. I used the primary activation key, and now, according to Blizzard (the developers of the game) that means that no one else can activate/create an account with that key. The person who bought my copy is trying to create an account, but cannot do so without a "new" activation key. Also, if he uses the guest pass key, it only works for 10 days, and after that he has to enter a retail activation key.

This all boils down to the fact that I now have to refund this guy's money, hope he mails it back.. and I cannot sell a game that I bought! The game is essentially forced to be mine now. Thanks a lot, Blizzard.

Has anyone else had to deal with this ridiculous policy? I might write a nice long letter to Blizzard tonight..

Bible study was mucho awesome last night. The church's youth leader, Dave, started us on a series he made about God's word when it comes to attracting, dating, courting and marrying the very best person God has intended for us to be with. I was blown away. Even if you aren't a Christian, you have to recognize some of these truths.

To start off with, there is a picture of a pyramid, with "Physical" at the top (small), "Mental/Emotional" in the middle (medium), and "Spiritual" at the bottom (large.) It represents the most important aspects of finding that person. The world tends to flip this pyramid on it's point, and make it seem like "Physical" is the most important. What a lie..

How to determine good character:

1. Observe their behavior in stressful times. (James 1:19-20)
[my notes: 'quick to listen, slow to speak']
2. Check out their reputation with others (Song of Solomon 1:4)
2a. Ask yourself:
- Would I feel honored to go on a date with this person?
- Would I feel privilaged to be seen in church with them?
- Would I be excited about bringing this person home to meet my parents, grandparents, etc.?
[my notes: Love is a learned behavior, not a feeling!]
3. Observe their obedience to authority. (Song of Solomon 1:5-6) [my notes: Observe how a woman treats her father. How a man treats his mother...]
4. They should never ask you to comprimise your character to be with them. (Song of Solomon 1:7)
5. They must have a daily quiet time with the Lord. [my notes: schedule out your day, see where your time is spent. That shows your priorities in life..]
6. They must be actively involved in a Christian church. (2nd Cor. 6:14-16)

Requirements for successful dating:

1. You need lots of time. [my notes: Do not spend long periods of time with the person you are dating.. take time to ponder their character "away" from their presence.. try to see them in different situations.]
2. You must have a "no strings attached" policy. (Song of Solomon 1:16-17) [my notes: Make no promises, and you'll have no pressures..]
3. You must display extreme respect for this person. (Song of Solomon 1:9)
4. There should be a desire to listen and growing ease in communication. (Song of Solomon 2:1-2)
5. There should be a feeling of complete safety with this person. (Song of Solomon 2:3)
6. There should be complete containment of the fires within you by both the man and the woman. (Song of Solomon 2:7, 15)

Anyone have feedback? I think this is great advice, and just what I needed right now..

Music: P.O.D.'s new album Testify -- looking forward to Beth Orton's new CD, Comfort of Strangers. (Feb. 1st!)

Movies: Catching up on the classic spaghetti westerns.. Fistful of Dollars, A Few Dollars More, and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. TGTBTU is amazing from many standpoints.. it's hard to imagine this was made 40+ years ago, and still has validity today (and is still seen as one of the top films of all time.)

Television: Hopelessly devoted to Battlestar Galactica and Lost. I'm convinced neither show can do any wrong. As a side note, when Sarah and Jeff move out in a few weeks, bye bye Lost and BSG in HDTV :( But maybe later this year I'll buy my own HDTV..

Programming: Everyone likes to tout FireFox as this awesome replacement for IE.. well, it has it's pros and cons, just like any other browser. I spent 7+ hours this weekend trying to code around a stupid 2-pixel scrollbar issue. It seems that FireFox's scrollbar is not the Windows standard one (or at least, doesn't match Internet Explorer's.) Found more information about it here and here. This bug has apparently been unfixed since the beginning. Talk about stinkin' lame. I ended up having to create an "IE Only" CSS that defines the widths correctly. Opera/FireFox/Safari will just have to suffer with their lame implementation. As a side note, why is there no CSS/etc. to control how scrollbars look? I'm talking completely.. like custom buttons/placement/graphics..

Video Games: Trying to play through Perfect Dark Zero on my Xbox360 when I get free time (which is almost never.) Also throw in a little Battlefield 2 time on my PC... I'm consdering a new video card soon. The ATi X1900 XTX which just came out looks to be the fastest card you can buy right now.. so it's looking mighty tasty.

A few days ago, I bought a 30gig iPod video to replace my older 20gig (non-photo/non-video) iPod. It has been better in so many ways over my old iPod.. the album art showing, the larger screen, video capability, photo capability.. all lovely. The user interface is almost exactly the same as the old iPod, but with the niceness of smoothed fonts and full-color icons. So, in short.. it's great, just like everyone else says it is.

Now for the bad... I bought some accessories with it, namely the new official Apple dock, with the infrared port (to work with the Apple remote.) The remote only can control the forward, back and play/pause buttons. Huh? Why not "Menu" or the rest of the controls? Also, the "line out" on the back of the dock is not actually a line out-- it is just the headphone jack from the top of the iPod, so when you change the volume of the iPod while docked, it changes the "line out" volume.. which makes no sense at all. The final nail in the coffin is the grounding noises you get while your iPod is docked (and being charged through USB) and you try to use the line-out to play some music... you'll get horrible clicking and buzzing noises through it, thanks to some ground loop inside the dock. I don't have the time to try and figure that one out, but yeah..

Buy the video iPod, just not the official Apple dock.

Wow. It would only take me 20 hours to drive up to Oregon and check out the various buildings from "The Goonies" (my all-time favorite movie, if you aren't in the know.)

I'm very very tempted. Hah. Maybe someday I'll round up some friends and make a roadtrip out of it. Maybe see some other sites as well, and visit some friends in that area. Yes, you know who you are.

Hah. I'll admit, out of all the Britney Spears songs, Toxic is probably the only one I can "dig". It's my guilty pleasure, per-say.

Michael informed me that when he last saw Nickel Creek, they did a cover of it. I did not believe him, because that sort of talk is just plain silly. Funny enough, I search Google Video and found two different videos of them performing it! I also found a full-length MP3 recorded at the House of Blues in Cleveland (where I believe those videos came from too..)

Enjoy! And just as a bonus, here's some live footage of Nickel Creek doing "Reasons Why".

If anyone wants tips.. here ya go. There are four different target types:

Circle, 100 points
Square, 1000 points
Diamond, 5000 points
Triangle, 10000 points+

The triangle ones are what you want to mainly aim for. They are usually hidden.. for example, there is a part on the ride with a jack in the box with a square target-- if you hit the square target, the "jack" pops out, and he has a triangle on his chest. Keep blasting away at that! There is also an "alien" with a triangle on his chest that pops out after hitting another square.

As for the hidden targets, there is one on each "Zurg" character. In the room where he is flailing about and everyone is shooting him, there's a "Z" target holding his "cape" on.. if you fire below that, between his chest plates, you can get some nice points... I've heard you can take the same shot with the Zurg guy at the end (in the "prison"), but I haven't been able to do it.

Also, it's worth noting that you get 100 points automatically for every six shots you make. This is to probably make you feel like you did okay, even if you didn't hit diddly.