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I've had the PS3 for a year now, I finally got around to signing up on the website. |
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I currently have the free trial but I created some awesome creatures already. I don't know what this thing is but they showed some html to paste into my website, so I'm doing it.
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GTA IV is all over the news because you can:
- Drive Drunk
- Shoot Cops
- Score with Women
- Go to strip clubs
- Cause complete chaos and have the cops forget about you a few minutes later
- Of course, steal cars
- And, hit monstrous jumps
There are a bunch of groups that are going after the game, like MADD, who has turned from an anti drunk-driving group into a prohibitionist group trying to get alcohol banned again. Good luck with that.
There's also other people addressing the violence.
Any of those things I mentioned above, you would not be able to survive in real life. It's what makes it a game. In other games I've also ran through burning buildings and lived to tell about it, or have taken thousands of bullets and all I have to do is find cover and I'm fine. One time in GTA IV I drove my car off of a 80 foot drop straight down. The car flipped numerous times and wound up hitting a pole straight on. I didn't even lose any health.
People need to lighten up, but damn that game's fun. And I wasn't driving like a maniac after I played for a few hours. I just drive the way I normally do. In fact, I have a difficult time "escaping" reality in that I don't just go running over pedestrians or shooting people. I try to find one car and stick with it as long as I can. I don't even like to get into accidents where all I do is side swipe someone. Sometimes you can't help it though and it will turn out to be some hilarious death of some poor sucker who just happened to be between your car and some pole or wall at the most inopportune of times.
It is soulless fun and it takes some really screwed up minds to come away affected by it, more than just dreaming about it. I've played Railroads! for hours, which is the least violent game ever, and I've dreamed about it. If you have no imagination, then you obviously can't think this kind of stuff up to keep your idle mind entertained. If you have video games, you don't need an imagination to have fun (unless they're the really old games that expected you to still use your imagination). However, if you look at games as *practice*, then you're screwed up. |
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AIM IM with ZatkoZatko: 25 hours
Zatko: won by space race
Zatko: it was total annilation though
Me: jesus
Me: year?
Zatko: like 2045
Me: my last big victory was a space race in 1957 on warlord
Zatko: nice
Me: 13000+ points, abraham lincoln
Zatko: how are points calculated
Me: no idea
Zatko: i annilated everyone but 2 countries
Zatko: i was at war most of the game
Zatko: which is why it took so long
Zatko: i found the option to turn off battle animations on hour 24
Me: but if you hover your mouse over your name, you can see how your points are broken down... population, technology, land, wonders
Me: yeah, i turned them off recently
Zatko: yea, big time saver
Zatko: every turn was taking like 15 minutes
Me: and it'll tell you what your score will be if you won on that turn
Zatko: i wonder if nuking people helps that score
Me: i don't think it hurts
Zatko: i nuked the shit out of the indians
Me: haha
Zatko: i was clearly winning, but my lead kept diminishing
Zatko: the indians were trending up on me
Zatko: apparently the nukes made them go broke
Zatko: what a game
Me: it's great huh
Zatko: that sins game is gonna be the same thing
Zatko: dude my whole 3 day weekend can be summararized by civ4
Me: haha
Me: addicted once again
Zatko: yea, majorly addicting
Zatko: i was dreaming about it at night
Me: yup, been there
Zatko: i'd wake up at 5 in the morning, clenching my fist and cursing the russians
Me: once i play Pain on the ps3 for a whole day, and i'd dream about throwing mimes into glass
Me: haha
Zatko: ha, the mime game
Zatko: well i'm out
Zatko: maybe for next weekend i'll get sins
Me: aight, i might start up a game
Me: k, i can get it
Me: i'll just get it like i did with gears of war and wait for you to get it 
Me: i bought that game months ago
Zatko: yea, that'll probably be some good coop action with that
Zatko: later
Me: later
Zatko: has gone offline. |
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So, some big weeks lately... This week:
Monday: Paid off my car on Friday and got the title on today!
Tuesday: Received second iPod Touch that I didn't order, and assumed I'm on some sort of iPod touch weekly subscription, for only $400 a week! I sent it back. (It was Amazon's fault, not Apple's :P )
The rest of the week... I will finally be buying my house! My parents sold their house and move on Halloween. They are hiring movers.
My keyboard's kinda screwed up because soda was spilled on it (not me!!). The keys were really sticky, so I pulled a bunch of them off and wiped behind them with a wet paper towel, but my "I" key will never be the same (although it works fine, it just sticks up a little more than the others), and my "0" (zero) key (and hence, my "close parentheses" key) makes some weird noise when pressed.
This month and next are big months for gamers:
Crysis Collector's Edition DVD-ROM with Bonus! PC Pre-Release
Ships 11/13/07 $59.99
Kane & Lynch: Dead Men with Bonus! PC Pre-Release
Ships 11/20/07 $49.99
Sim City Societies with Bonus! PC Pre-Release
Ships 11/13/07 $49.99
Super Mario Galaxy Wii Pre-Release
Ships 11/12/07 $49.99
Uncharted: Drake's Fortune PS3 Pre-Release
Ships 11/20/07 $59.99
Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure Wii Pre-Release
Ships 10/23/07 $39.99
That's my shopping cart at EB games.
This Friday will be the first time all of us from work head out to the bar since we hired a bunch of new people, including me! We're gonna get wasted.
I'm 3-3 in Fantasy Football this year, winning the last game by 2 points! Tony Gonzalez had a huge game, and Muhsin Muhammad has finally started scoring for me. My team stinks, though. It will be miraculous if I finish over .500. I only had 76 points, and really only got points from those two and the Eagles D. No one else contributes. This week I play my brother Scott. He'll be at the Eagles game so I'll have to call him and tell him I'm whooping his ass.
I joined Netflix finally. It's gonna be a great way to finally watch all those movies I haven't seen yet.
I'm also trying to quit smoking. It's rough, and I know drinking will make it really hard, but the trick would be to go back to quitting after a long night of drinking with a few smokes here or there. Drinking in Philly is a lot easier than in the suburbs.
This post has a little of everything. |
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| BioShock GameStop Exclusive Limited Edition 1 Shipped |
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Outside of binge sessions of Company of Heroes (best game ever) I've been looking for something to relax and play. Something with a story, puzzles, where I can put my feet up and my heart rate doesn't go out of control. I'm not sure if I was looking for that or if I started playing some adventure games lately and have just been enjoying the experience to think that it's what I needed before. Either way, they're good times.
A few quick notable ones then I'm watching "The Good Shepherd" while I try to fall asleep. It all started when I looked at my Grim Fandango disk, and decided I didn't want to get into something really long right now. This was a few weeks ago. As some may know, I'm a subscriber to Gamespot.com, and they've been reviewing these games over the past year that have looked different but I thought they might be like Ratchet & Clank or whatever that game is called on the PS2. But then I watched a gameplay video and realized that "Sam And Max" is indeed an adventure game. So I bought the first season for $35. Six episodes in all. I played the first 4 over a weekend, and the next one a few days later, and the last one is now available for download. These are short games because they're just episodes. Each about 3-4 hours long if you don't cheat. Sometimes I have to though. The reason I'm not downloading the last episode right now is because I'm playing another game. The Longest Journey.
The Longest Journey is cool. It's a full adventure game as opposed to episodes like Sam and Max. You start out and there's truly nothing that you *have* to do right away. You are in the future, living in Venice as an art student. You have two weeks before you have to get your painting done for the show. It's an interesting story so far. I don't want to spoil it for anyone. I also got the sequel for when I beat it. Should be good times.
Adventure games are very hard though, for me. I sometimes don't examine every nook and cranny, and so sometimes they're harder than they should be, because some puzzle might be obvious if I just checked a drawer and found some item that would make it so. Some of the puzzles just seem downright impossible though. I have to open up a walkthrough to help out on some parts. It's brutal. A lot of the puzzles I figure out though. An example of one that I didn't figure out was in The Longest Journey, you talk to the land lady and she found a ring of yours. You go outside and there's this machine, and on it is a severed wire. Just saying that now, though, you'd be like "Use the ring to connect the two ends of the wire, dumbass!!" But it doesn't even enter my mind. Some people maybe, not me. I guess I'm not creative or imaginative. Who knows. It's a testament to the variety and creativity found in Adventure games though. You never see the same puzzle. |
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DOH! I recently began to question my wisdom when looking at the best games for the two common hand held gaming systems on the market. I have the Sony PSP which has games like Tiger Woods and Virtua Tennis. The other one is the Nintendo DS. It of course has two screens, hence the "DS" for "Dual Screen". And one is a touch screen.
I was checking out the list of the best games, obviously sorted by rating descending. Out of the top 10 or so games for each system, I found myself wanting more from the DS and already having all the ones I'd want on the PSP. That blows. I'm not going to get a DS soon because I don't really have the time for either anyway. But I chose the wrong one or I am in the wrong profession and should have been able to buy both and determine for myself which one is better. This way would likely be the best way. Oh well. That would surely be a luxury item and I can't buy luxury items now. Only after I have tons of loot saved for a house.
Speaking of luxury items... I'd love to have a file server running on Linux or Mac (preferably something cheap to set up), with tons of space on it, like a terabyte or two. For one thing, I'd love to be able to import all of my DVDs and store them on there, and of course have all of my music on there. Then buy an AppleTV and have my Mac reference all of these things in iTunes. Then of course be able to watch any movie I own with a click of a button on either my TV or my Mac. That would be ideal. I've researched ways to import DVD into a format that iTunes and AppleTV can understand. It's possible but the legality is questionable. They're my movies though, and as long as I keep the disks I should be fine. Although the MPAA and RIAA want to make it as difficult as possible to do that, so Apple really isn't allowed to provide the means, I have to find a hack. |
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I mentioned in my last post that Railroads! looks great on my new computer. Here are some screens in a game which I am totally dominating two computers. (In fact, I had bought them out YEARS [in game] ago!!) I'm playing on the "Mogul" difficulty which is where it starts to get hard.
In this one, you can see the train's reflection on the water. Also, notice my freaking cash!! $128 MILLION and I'm worth $194 million.
This one was taken a few minutes later and in game time about a year and a half later. Notice the cement holding the bridge, you can see into the water and see it go down to the bottom of the river.
On this one, the water has moved a bit and I have trains on the screen carrying tons of stuff. Well, one actually has no cargo.
This is where I started the game. You can see the relative location on the map screen. I actually started in Harrisburg. I noticed right away that Lancaster had a steel mill and York had an automobile factory. That's like, JACKPOT!! Cars are the most expensive cargo in most scenarios where they appear. I had two coal trains dumping off coal from two different mines to Lancaster, and a single train just loading up as much steel as it could carry to bring to York... very short distance. The next problem was shipping the cars. The only city at the early stages of the game that demanded cars was Washington DC, which, on the map, is the bottom-left-most city. It cost a pretty penny to get down there. But you can see, I bought the Automobile factory in York (which is why it's blue), and it had made $2.8 million. So it was well worth it.
Great game in terms of beauty and fun. Definitely playing again tonight :D
[Update] I just finished the game and, after my career in the rail business, I decided to run for president. That basically means that you played the best you could play. Of course, that's where the game ends. You can still play but you don't run for president :( That would be awesome. |
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It's actually five days with a slight lapse (one smoke) three days ago...
Part of the trick to quitting smoking is that you need to disassociate stuff that you used to smoke a lot while doing. For me it's most things besides going to church or sleeping. Disassociation takes a lot of doing everything that you smoked during, doing it more often and longer than you did when you smoked, and doing it without smoking. The first of the disassociation process for me was video games.
This weekend Beaner and I played the Wii pretty much all weekend. It was indeed another "Wiikend". Tanks on Wii Play is awesome. We pretty much played three games on Wii Play the whole time, which were Tanks, Shooting Gallery, and the one where you have to find Miis. I'm not sure what it's called. Bean made a Mii, too, which looks a lot like him.
Besides the Wii, I played a lot of STALKER, Rainbow Six Vegas, Company of Heroes, and Sid Meier's Railroads! The latter game was played the most because I bumped up the difficulty from where I'm used to playing, and I bumped up the graphics to 1280x1024 with anti-aliasing on. It looked f@%#@$ing beautiful. It's a slow paced game where smoking would be easiest. You're not always doing something with the keyboard and mouse. You'll set up a route and wait until you're able to make enough money off of it to set up more routes. It's a good financial strategy game. Lots of time to sit back and smoke, which is what made it all the more worthwhile to play it a lot.
Did I mention that my new computer is a goddamn beast?! I think it actually runs cooler than my liquid cooled PC. And I'm telling you, Company of Heroes never looked so good. I have it maxed, but the thing that makes the biggest difference is having the effects maxed. So when my rifle guys are shooting their Browning Automatic Rifles, they kick up dust next to the German soldiers they are shooting at. Or when I drop a howitzer artillery strike on an enemy base, the dirt, concrete, and dudes that it hits all go flying. And I'm so damn good. Zatko and I played a multiplayer game at about 12:30 am Sunday on Seine River Docks. It was him, me and a hard computer vs. an expert, a hard, and a normal computer. Zatko was backed into his corner sucking his thumb, while I was trying to make forward progress the whole time. :) It was a brutal match, but I finally broke through the computer's defenses across from me, and eventually made my way through to the other computers. All without smoking. The only bad thing about online multiplayer is that you can't tell which computer is which. Meaning, I would love to know if I had at least the hard computer across from me. Zatko and I were split with the hard computer between us, and the hard computer wasn't doing anything. So he had a good opponent across from him. I know the CPU player across from me was getting help from someone, so it's not like I couldn't take out a medium. The expert was definitely helping. Anyway, after an hour and twelve minutes, the match was over and we emerged victorious.
Rainbow Six Vegas is a fun game, and it also looks terrific. I had started it on the old computer, but decided that I wanted to go through it from the beginning when I got the new computer up. Well worth it. The combat in it is fun. First person, or even third person, shooters haven't really innovated in terms of combat. I can name a handful... FEAR, Max Payne (1 & 2), Brothers in Arms, and Rainbow Six Vegas.
In FEAR, it was just incredible. I have to install that again. Running up to a dude in slow motion and bashing him across the face with your gun could never be equaled in any game. Or throwing a proximity mine then switching to slo-mo and watching it jump up and explode at eye level with enemy. In Max Payne, again with slow motion, diving and watching all the bullets fly was great. Max Payne 2 introduced a more interactive environment with physics, which became apparent from the start when you shot a dude into a tray full of medical supplies in the hospital and watched it all fly all over the place in slow motion. Brothers in Arms had a less interactive environment than both of those games, and no slow motion, but still it was very innovative. You couldn't kill a guy unless you suppressed and flanked. You could sometimes score a lucky shot, but you had to use the situational awareness (pause and view from above the battlefield) to find the best place to suppress from and the quickest path to flank. Each map was like a puzzle. The third one in that series is sure to be a blast, with a more interactive environment (built on Unreal Engine 3, with destroyable buildings and the like).
I just noticed I'm missing some movies. Sometimes my movies will make their way downstairs. I like to watch them on my MacBook Pro, so the best ones are usually in my bedroom. But sometimes my brothers will take them downstairs where they'll pile up until I collect them. Tonight I collected about 30 of them and brought them back upstairs. That's like half of my collection. But I know that I'm missing some, like Minority Report. I should really keep a better catalog... but once I buy a house, it'll be easier to keep track, since I also have some movies in Jeff's room, like Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I'll collect them tomorrow. I'll probably end up buying Delicious Library... if there's a way to export it to some format that can be put onto a website easily. That would be a great use of a webservice... send an image with a barcode and get back the details of whatever it is you scanned. Or just a website with an exportable format where you upload images of the barcode (or ISBN for books) and it adds it to your library. The new applications will not be run on my computer, which is what Google has figured out. There's no need for anything but computational intensive applications, or just stuff that you can't do on the web, to be running on my computer. Figure it out, already, stupid internet. I'm out. |
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In fact, it's downstairs. I finished the sidework and decided to just order it. Here's what I ended up buying.
1) New keyboard! I'm typing on it right now. It's an Apple Keyboard. No one makes a good plain keyboard anymore. Apple and I share the same philosophy on a lot of things, and a good plain keyboard is one of them. It's gonna take some getting used to though, since this thing is so small compared to my other one which sucked. It had about 80 extra keys, for volume, sleeping the computer, starting certain programs, and a bunch of other crap that I didn't use ever. Not once. Hopefully it's good for games. I'll probably try that out before I go to bed.
2) Don't you hate when you order from one online store, and your order ships from two different places? That's what happened here. I ordered 9 things from newegg.com and 7 of them shipped from New Jersey. Good thing I didn't pay extra for shipping! The other two packages shipped from California! That's fine, but the New Jersey packages got here today, and the CA ones were still in CA last I checked.
3) What I ordered: 2GB ram, 320 GB HDD (SATA-II), EVGA Geforce 8800 GTS w/640 MB RAM (a beast), Intel E6600 Core 2 Duo running at 2.4 GHz, ASUS motherboard with dual GB ethernet and a whole lot of extra goodies (2 graphics slots! 4 DIMMS!!), Huge case with a fan on the top and side as well as the normal places, power suppy, cpu cooler, and some thermal compound. That's 9.
4) What shipped from CA: Power supply and cpu cooler. This makes it impossible for me to put it together tonight. I could but I also got a game for my Wii called "Elebits", which I played for about 8 minutes and later learned that an hour and a half had passed.
5) Upgradeability. My current computer is not upgradeable, which is what I said in a previous post. This computer... Here are the things I can upgrade:
--- Extra memory. Right now I'll have 2 GB and it has two more DIMMs for another 2GB! Won't be doing that for another year or two.
--- New CPU. The motherboard I got can support up to 1066 MHz FSB, and up to Intel Quad Core! Probably as long as they're Socket 775 or whatever, I'll be able to upgrade quite a bit on the CPU. Won't have to for a long while though.
--- Video card. As well as just flat out upgrading the video card when new ones come out which work on PCI express 16x, I can get a second one! There's not a lot of room in there, and I plan on putting a sound card and a physics card in there. There are enough slots of for them, but the fan on the video card covers a ton of shit. If I have two in there, it's hard to imagine what kind of room, if any, I'll have for other crap.
This keyboard is nice. Only thing is that my wrists are more in a carpel tunnel position than with the other one, but I never type this much on the gaming PC! I'm just typing it on here this time to get a feel for the keyboard. It's quiet. And white. Nothing goes with anything anymore. When I strip the parts out of my old gaming PC and put it in the new one, it'll have a black DVD drive sticking out of a silver case... oh well. I'm not playing a game tonight, it's time for bed.
In other news.. whenever I try to preorder a video game off of Amazon.com, it always gets delayed. I cancelled it and placed the order on ebgames.com and it shipped a few hours later. Of course, it's STALKER, which should be fun. The graphics won't be that great, as I suspected, since they haven't upgraded them in about 2 years, but still, graphics 2 years ago were pretty good. You still got dynamic lighting and physics. I can't wait to play that. Hopefully the power supply and cpu cooler get here soon.
I almost could just throw my power supply in the new PC, and use the fan that came with the CPU for keeping it cool, and if the game comes tomorrow and doesn't run too well on this PC, I will certainly do that. The fan that came with it has to work, but the fan I bought is going to run cooler and quieter, which is why it's $30. Anyways, now it's time for bed. This keyboard rocks. |
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This is really just a checklist for me. Let me know if I forgot anything!
You'll need:
Motherboard
CPU
RAM
Video Card
Hard drive(s)
Sound Card
Network, although usually built into mobo nowadays
Keyboard and Mouse
Speakers
Monitor
CD Rom (DVD recommended)
Power Supply
Case
Stripping from another computer that you plan on replacing is usually a good idea, so you don't need to get everything and can save some money, especially if those parts really haven't seen significant technological advance since you bought them.
I am stripping:
DVD ROM
Mouse
Speakers
2nd hard drive
Sound card
Monitor
Make a checklist of what you plan to upgrade on the 2nd go, usually within a couple of months down the road.
I will, in the not so distant future, upgrade:
To dual 22" LCD displays and ditch my 19" CRT
Next, make a checklist of what you plan on upgrading further on down the road, like a year or two.
In a year or so, I will be upgrading:
Sound card to latest Dolby surround and EAX
Speakers to support latest Dolby surround (7 speakers or whatever it is now)
RAM
Possibly a 2nd video card because SLI is awesome.
Find the parts on a trusted website, like newegg.com, outpost.com, or tigerdirect.com. Place order. Wait.
When the boxes arrive, it'll be like Christmas and your birthday for the last 20 years of your life, all in one day. Now comes the best part. Building the beast.
Sloppily take out all the parts and throw them in a pile on the floor, making sure to remove the static guard from each piece, and allowing your dog and/or wool blankets to run over them a few times. Carefully place your mobo on the screw mounts in your case and screw it in. Connect the CPU, RAM, HDDs, Graphics and Sound Cards, and any other cards you won't need because this is a f@#%@$ing gaming machine. Connecting the pin connectors for the case is always the worst, and I just find out where the power switch and LEDs are and connect them, completely ignoring everything else. Who needs a reset button, or an HDD indicator? Certainly not me. Strap the power supply unit (PSU) up in there. Put your HDD and DVD rom drives in there before you start connecting them to the mobo. Connect the power cables to these components, and finally, plug in the power to the mobo.
Close the cover on your case, hopefully making it look like what it did before you took it off, but this is not important. Actually, the more f@#%@ed up it looks, the better. This is a goddamn gaming PC. Cut yourself and throw some of your blood on there, or if you can't be wicked l33t, just find a red marker. Glue with red sprinkles, red #40 food dye in a highly viscous liquid like shampoo, and ketchup all make convincing substitutes.
Connect your monitor, mouse, keyboard, speakers and network cable. If you have wireless built into the motherboard like some are offering these days, one of those steps can be skipped. If you have a bluetooth mobo and bluetooth keyboard and mouse, then a few more can be skipped.
Finally, plug the power into the PSU in the back of your case.
Hopefully all went as planned, and when you turn it on, you can immediately begin installing Windows XP (don't get Vista until all old games are supported, like Duke Nukem and Doom). Reboot. Install updated drivers. Reboot. Install the updates from 2002 to SP2. Reboot. Install SP2. Reboot. Install all updates from SP2 to current. Reboot. Note, you may have to reboot a few times for each set of updates. Install DirectX 10. Reboot. Install a game. Play!
You are finished.
Some notes on installation:
The CPU fan does not want to go on. Ever. But don't put too much pressure on the motherboard, especially if it's bending due to the position of the screw mounts. You might want to put the CPU and fan on before you put them in the case.
HDD masters and slaves are a pain. Get SATA HDD drives and an IDE DVD drive if you can. This will prevent much confusion. Get a big HDD (200+ GB) because you don't want to have to uninstall games to fit more on there. You only want to have to uninstall games because the game you are uninstalling happens to suck, or you got totally noobed online and can't bare to even look at the icon on your desktop. The uninstalling games because there's no room thing happens to me every time I get a new game. I have only 80GB and about 5GB left now that I uninstalled a few games that I won't be playing for a while.
Some other recommendations: 2GB ram is good for now. Dual core [insert brand name here] are good, and over 2 GHz is awesome. 700W PSU should be good for all upgrades over the next 2-4 years. Since DirectX 10 is out, get a DirectX 10 video card. Hopefully MS doesn't totally f@#%@ us over and upgrade to DirectX 11 before 2010. Sound cards built on Dolby 5 are great. 5 speaker stereo surround... who in their right mind would *need* more than that? You can save some money this way. I'm keeping my card which is 4 years old now, and my speakers which are 2 years old. Gigabit ethernet is the only way to go now. |
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Depending on whichever one happens first:
#1) S.T.A.L.K.E.R. performs crappy on my system. The minimum requirements are much steeper since the last time I checked.
#2) My MacBook Pro has been paid off. Which isn't really easy for me to gauge since I buy music and TV Shows off of iTunes with that same credit card.
#3) I become a millionaire soon
#4) The bank errs in my favor and I collect $200 (or more).
#5) My computer dies
#6) I accidentally place the order.
Hopefully at least three of those things happen before Wednesday. |
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I hate the fact that I'm contemplating this, but it has deemed itself necessary. I built my current PC two years ago, and I still think it's a beast. Until I try to play the latest first person shooters. I tried to combat this by not playing them, but lately, I really just want to play.
I have the parts to an uberleet PC sitting in my shopping cart over at TigerDirect. I even cut down some unnecessary parts that I can get later (sound card, monitor, dvd drive, extra hard drive), and it's at $2100! Granted, this one's twice the PC I have. Here's a rundown of what I have vs. what's in the cart, and I'll try to make it as boring as possible.
Current PC: AMD 64 FX 53, 2GB RAM, 80GB SATA, 250GB IDE, NVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra w/256MB, SoundBlaster Audigy something or other, and the real kicker, it's liquid cooled! This makes for difficult situations.
Dream PC: Intel Core 2 Duo E6700, 4GB RAM, 320GB SATA-II times 2, NVidia Geforce 8800 GTX w/768MB, SoundBlaster Audigy something or other, and NOT liquid cooled. Also, dual 22" LCD displays (Sceptre makes a good monitor that I'd definitely get).
Problem with Liquid Cooled PCs
No, they don't leak. Actually, it did, but this won't happen generally. The case that's pictured isn't the current one. Yup, I had to drop $400 on a new case with built in liquid cooling. Long story short, I also had to get a new motherboard because I fried it (not from the leak). Read that story, it's worth it, I promise. The major problem with liquid cooling is that you buy coolers for each component that you want to cool, so if a new video card that you want isn't the same shape as your old one, you have to buy a new cooler, which then means you have to drain your whole system, re-cut tubes, re-tube it all, refill the water, etc. Major pain in the ass.
Long story
My current PC was no longer upgradeable when I built it, for reasons other than me avoiding having to go through the liquid cooling upgrade hell. You see, right when Halflife 2 came out, I was ill-impressed with the performance I was getting on my old PC (AMD 3200+, Geforce 5900 Ultra). I went ahead and ordered the 6800 Ultra for the old motherboard, and AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port) was what it supported. A few weeks later, craving even more performance (and coincidentally frequently overheating the old PC), I went and bought the current PC knowing I couldn't alienate my new $600 AGP graphics card. So, right when I bought the 6800 Ultra in AGP flavor, I was f!#%@ed.
For a while there, after I bought the Wii at the end of December, I almost had myself convinced that I already have the best PC games, and any new Wii games plus what I already have on PC should suffice just fine. I mean, really.
Boring list coming up. Awesome games installed right now are:
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas (doesn't perform well...), Neverwinter Nights 2 (performs fine), Fallout, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (fine), Dawn of War + Winter Assault Expansion, Company of Heroes, Civilization IV, Heroes of Might and Magic V, Sid Meier's Railroads!, Rise of Nations, and "Steam" with Halflife 2, Episode 1, Day of Defeat Source, Counterstrike Source, etc. More of a DOD guy myself
I dabble in all genres. My favorite, though, is "Real Time Strategy games made by Relic". Dawn of War and Company of Heroes are my two all time favorites of that genre ;-) And I was into Homeworld briefly.
As much as I tried to forget about the potentially great games coming out, I am a paid subscriber to GameSpot, and I have about 30 games in my watched games list. This little tool on that website ensures that you will never forget. I get emails every day, and the two games that I have to go look at right when I get the email are S.T.A.L.K.E.R. (I know, it's a pain to type too), and BioShock. And you can't leave out Spore or Crysis. While Stalker will probably run fine on my current PC, BioShock and Crysis sure as hell won't. Stalker ships this week!! I've been watching that game for about three years now. It's one of those games that I won't believe I'm playing (kinda like Duke Nukem Forever). I already preordered it on Amazon.com.
So, while Stalker was being made over the past 3+ years, of course they've been upgrading it to work with the latest hardware and such, but they claim that it will run on any hardware that supports DirectX 9. I find it hard to believe that it won't run like a f@%#ing champ on my current PC, but why risk it? All I have to do is press "Submit". Justifiable? How about my birthday's on Friday :D |
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2 Days filled with lots of Wii Tennis, some boxing, lots of bowling, and tons of other Wii games is a great exercise. I can't lift my arms up. Zatko, Jared, and I were all at Zatko's house, playing the Wii for literally all day on Saturday with no real breaks. Zatko and I continued on Sunday with a fierce competition in Tennis and Bowling. Bowling is my main sport, and golf is the second one. I haven't played enough Tennis to really compete... something I've taken note of for the next trip. I went pro last night on my own Wii in Tennis. That game's exhausting. We only played two bouts in Boxing since we knew if we were to do more, we'd be useless for a few days, instead of just one. Good thing.
Some quotes from the day (not exact quotes...):
Zatko: "You should team up with a computer player" (in Tennis)
Me: "Nah"
Zatko: "Oh yeah, you might get teamed up with a jackass"
Me: "I already have a jackass on my team" (meaning me)
(had to be there I guess)
Jared in an email:"Hopefully my new lazy throw I'm developing will help."
I read that as
"Hopefully my stolen style from the god of Wii Bowling, Jason Connell, which I will copy and call my own and copyright it, will get me to even half the skill level of Jason and hopefully cause no physical pain, which will help deal with the mental anguish I will experience due to not coming up with the technique on my own."
Next time will be even more fun... lots of new Wii games coming out in March.
No video. Although for our boxing match, I had the idea to face each other and box. Double boxing!! Like, my other idea to bring a Wii Sports Golf out onto a golf course and play that and golf at the same time. Although, Wii Sports Golf only has 9 holes on one course :( They have to release updates to that one... |
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| Mike, Jared and I each have the Wii, but the limited online play (it's a Wii... you're supposed to have people there) means that we have to actually be in the same house with each other to really get the full effect. We can say "Yo, you can't beat my high score in bowling of 258", but it's just not as fun. So, we'll all be at Zatko's house this "wiikend", competing in many events. I'm sure I'll have some video. I'm gonna kick some f@#%@ing ass!!! |
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I've been working on getting my entertainment system set up how I wanted it lately. Got the wireless router and the HDTV all set up. Just yesterday, I decided to go and check if the local game store had a Wii in stock. I go there, pick out a PC game that I've been eyeing for a few weeks (Rainbow Six Vegas), and head up to the counter. I ask, "Do you guys have a Wii?" And the guy says "Yeah, we just got a few in!" I'm like "Really?" Without asking, he heads back and gets it for me. I say, I'm gonna see what other games I might want, so don't ring it up yet. He asks "Well, everyone and their mother bought Zelda with the Wii, did you plan on getting that one?" I said hellz yes. So I go and look at what other games they have. I didn't really see anything that I remember loving from my subscription to the gaming website, so I just got Zelda and the Wii, and also Rainbow Six Vegas. Throw in the $40 store warranty (I get a new one if anything happens), and this was quite a hefty purchase. But well worth it! I got a workout playing Wii Sports, and I rock at bowling. In Zelda, I've made it to a respectable place after just 3 hours over the span of two days. I do already hold a professional rank in bowling though, so that's where my time has been mainly going :D Tennis is fun, I won my first baseball game earlier today (got whooped every other game), and boxing is a major workout. I suck at golf, but that's fun as well. I can't wait to see what innovative ways to use the "Wiimote" that game companies come up with. It'll be fun. Anyway, here are some pictures of me, Mii, and the Wii!
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I was watching this item on Amazon.com for about 4 days now, and it was fairly expensive, but not expensive compared to other items of the same type. Then, Amazon.com said to itself "If we lower the price, this dude's gonna buy this thing." And you know how websites talk to themselves, right? Through AJAX. It's common knowledge. So, the website heard this from itself, and said "F@#% it, let's lower the price and get rid of this item, we'll still make a fortune off of it." So, after a few moments, I log in and check my cart, and it always alerts you of price changes of items in your cart since the last time you checked. It said "The price of that thing you need and want has lowered to a price where you might think you are stealing it from us." And I said "Where in the hell is the checkout box?!" Seconds later, it was purchased, and shipped overnight for a total of $3.99 extra. That's my Amazon Prime membership at work again. That is, again, Amazon making me think that I'm stealing. I should go to confession. It shipped tonight, it should be here tomorrow.
Oh, by the way, it's the HDTV that is a prerequisite for the Wii and PS3! 26" 1300x768, HDMI, ATSC tuner built in. Got good reviews, but again, I don't need the best TV ever, it's replacing a 16" TV. Now I have to buy Christmas presents... |
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Zatko55: actually i don't have it. i just told you i had it to make you jealous
Me: didn't work sucker
Me: every night i pretend I'm playing the Wii when I go and have my brother pitch wiffle balls to me and I have a wiffle ball bat. it's very convincing that I'm actually playing the Wii, but really I'm just playing baseball :(
All you hear like that from now on are just cheap imitations. |
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| The future is upon me. I got the wireless router last night, hooked it up, got WPA security working, and hooked my Mac up to it. It works. It supposedly transfers at 300 Mbps, which is 3x faster than 100 base T... without wires! That's crazy. I hooked my PSP up to it with no problems, downloaded the new update released yesterday in record time, and that rocked. This paves the way for the PS3 and Wii, which both have wireless. Before any of those, though, I have to get an HDTV. Not a big one though. If I can find 23" or 26", it's enough. It will replace a 16" TV. |
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The Prey demo comes out tonight at midnight.
Damn I'm bored.
If only I didn't live near Philly which I wouldn't trade for anything. It comes out at 9pm in California...
This just in!! As I was typing up this blurb, the HR from my company came by and said they are hiring me full time. So now I have a job...
Back to Prey. Actually, that 9pm in California is lucky for me, because when Half-Life 2 came out, it came out at midnight Pacific Time... which of course means 3 AM here. I took off for that game though. Not like I'm really interested right now in Prey, but it should have some cool things:
a) Great graphics. It's built on the Doom 3 engine I think
b) ... umm... Did I mention the graphics should rock?!
c) It's built on the Doom 3 engine... supposedly.
I really can't say much, I'm not a fan of science fiction shooters anymore. I hate when they give you weapons, basically, that don't exist. That's just my opinion. Doom 3 was fun though. I absolutely LOVED F.E.A.R. due to the weapons and everything else in that game. Everything rocked. Best game ever.
Anyway, I look forward to running some high def graphics on my computer tonight. Before that I'll be playing some more Dawn of War. I'll comment on the work situation tomorrow... three posts in one day was my limit set forth by the FCC. |
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I ended up taking off yesterday because I haven't felt good all week. Not like last week anyway. After walking the course last week during golf, I felt great the whole week. This week, it's wearing off. I'm back to being tired after lunch. I guess I should try to maybe exercise without having to go golfing. Maybe.
Anyway, a new game happened to come out yesterday also. Half-Life 2 Episode 1. It was pretty good, though nothing like HL2 in terms of quality of gameplay. Although Gamespot says the gameplay is better than HL2. I like them long, and this one lasted less than 4 hours! I stopped playing a few times for a few minutes to go get coffee and stuff. Started after 1pm and finished by 5pm. I would say it definitely had its moments, but the time was just way too short. But, it is the better of the two "Episodic" games I've played this month. "Sin Episodes : Emergence" came out too, and that actually lasted longer because it was a little more difficult, but it only had one moment that I can recall. More on that later. Basically with HL2E1, you start the game by trying to get on a train to leave City 17, and at the end you're on a train leaving City 17. There are a few twists between then though :) And it's definitely not the same train. I have no complaints about it only that it was less than 4 hours... oh, and that you use the stupid powerful gravity gun for most of the beginning. To its credit, you use that gravity gun for more problem solving tha you do for fighting. You feel like a god with that thing. Nobody stands a chance against you.
Sin Episodes : Emergence had that one moment I can remember. Basically, you have no health left, and hardly any ammo, and you have to kill a bunch of guys with miniguns using your 7 bullets. That was fun.
HL2E1 had many more moments. The part before the end was my favorite. You're cranking this valve to open the door, and the one thing you learn early on (like, 3 hours before) is that you have to crank it so the door opens all the way, or else it'll come back down. So you're cranking this thing, and looking down this trainyard. Alyx, your partner in crime, sneaks under before it's opened all the way, and you're like "WTF Wait!" So you keep cranking. Then right where I was looking, this giant thing drops down with 2 guys next to it. It was one of those tall long legged things... stalker? I forget. Anyway, you're like "@#$@!!" and try to duck and still crank the valve. Right away it shoots at you and breaks the valve. "@#^@$@#!!" So now you're stuck fighting this thing. All you have are three rockets in your rocket launcher, and this thing takes around 7 to kill. But, there are always boxes with rockets around a spot where something will show up that takes rockets to kill. This is a hint too. Like, if you pass a box of rockets, you're like "Guess I'll be killing something that requires rockets in this spot in a few minutes." Which was the case when you had to escort people to another train that everyone else but you were taking out of the city.
I liked the game I was just pissed when I'm on the train leaving, and some crap happens and the screen is white, and the credits roll. I pre-ordered it so I only paid $18 for the 4 hours. It comes with no extra content, but it does look beautiful. High Dynamic Range Rendering (HDR) rocks. |
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 I didn't. But here's how it went down. Aaron Rowand plays center field for the Phillies. Top of the first inning, bases loaded, 2 outs. A long drive deep to center field. Rowand's going back, back, back. HE CAUGHT THE BALL!! Meanwhile, my brother's downstairs watching it, and starts going ballistic. "HE CAUGHT IT, HOLY SH@# HE F@#$@!ING CAUGHT IT!!! JASE, YOU HAVE TO SEE THIS F@#%@ING CATCH!!!" So I go running downstairs and catch it in slow motion. All I can say to describe it is "Splat". They cut back to the live action. Rowand is on his knees, leaning over, and blood is POURING out of his nose. Literally. It didn't look as horrible in slow motion as it did when they showed the live replay. That's why I use the word "Splat". It was like he was an insect and Citizens Bank Park was a car going 70 on I-95. There are these metal bars that go across the fence area in center field, he caught one directly on the bridge of his nose. It was ugly. He had complained when he was traded here that the bars are dangerous. The field crew was scheduled to pad them over TODAY! Horrible luck. You can see them in the picture, the silver part of the fence.
A guy on WIP talking to Angelo Cataldi put it best. He said that he had no regard for his own wellbeing in order to improve the wellbeing of his team. Isn't that just what we want in Philly?! He described how he was in FULL STRIDE when he hit that fence.
This was a bases loaded jam with two outs, afterall. If he hadn't gone all out into the fence, it was guaranteed a bases clearing triple. Phillies end up winning 2-0 after it was cut short when the skies opened up after the top of the 5th.
Today Rowand lies in a hospital bed. Another article I read said, and you can imagine the severity of the injury, that Rowand "destroyed" his nose. Destroyed. Ouch. He'll have reconstructive surgery today.
And what was I doing while Rowand was risking life and limb? Watching video game movies of course! It's E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo), where all the video game makers and hardware makers (Sony, Nintendo, etc) show all their coolest sh@%. Let me say, there's some pretty f@%^@ing cool s@#% out there! I watched a few hours of game movies last night on GameSpot.
Picture courtesy of The Philadelphia Inquirer. The 700 Level has video and some better pictures. |
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Yesterday, I had a half day because I had to be home for the cable guy to give us digital cable (which is pretty cool). I pulled into the local Wawa to get some lunch at like 1:50, just in time to get home and wait. Well, I start moving out of the parking lot, and sitting on the curb at the Wawa is Beaner. He said "My guitar's at your house." I drove him to our house, and his guitar was at our house. I thought he wanted to stop by and pick it up, and it was inside, but it turned out he went there first, waited for me to come home, couldn't get in the house, left his guitar out front, and went to Wawa. But, as I said before when my pillows got here, we live in a trustworthy neighborhood.
So, we sit there, eat our sandwiches and wait for the cable guy. After the cable was set up, we played "Monkey in the Middle" out front with our neighbor's six year old daughter. I won. ;-) After all that was over, Bean spoke words that he will regret forever. "Wanna play some hockey?"
This means, of course, NHL 2k6 on my PlayStation 2.
The first two games were pretty close. They were both tied going into the third period, where I would score one or two to secure the win. Then there was this thing on the NFL network, which we now get since we signed up for digital cable. It was hilarious. It was about the Vet (Veteran's Stadium in Philly, where the Eagles and Phillies used to play), about the 700 Level, fights, drinking, municipal court on location, etc. Hilarious. The next game, the infamous best game ever, was paused and waiting for the Eagles' show to be over, patiently awaiting the glory that was to come.
Los Angeles Kings (my team) vs. the Atlanta Thrashers. It starts out in my favor, 1-0 with a Jeremy Roenick goal. Bean ties it up shortly after. Then goes up 2-1. Then 3-1. Next, 4-1! Seeing a pattern? Bean's scoring tidal wave finally ends at 5-1. Each time he scored, past the 1-1 tie, I said "That's ok, I never lose." Every time. It was an opening for trash talk and bragging rights for the rest of the week :) If I lost, Bean wouldn't stop about it, and if I win, well, I would be posting it on my website :)
Third period, 5-1 Thrashers/Bean. 9 minutes to go. Something happens out front of Bean's net after I shoot the puck... the red light goes on. Bean put it in his net for me!! Thanks! 5-2. Another goal with 6 minutes to go. 5-3. Another one with 3 minutes, 5-4! Keep in mind, a 20 minute period is played over the real time of 5 minutes (for non mathematical wizards out there, 4 game minutes goes by in 1 real life minute). It's coming down to the wire. 3 minutes left, fighting off chances, pressure is building, two minutes left, getting some chances of my own, generally an all out brawl, Bean and I are as tense as can be, one minute left, Pavol Demitra gets the puck, moves in, shoots, the goalie goes down in the butterfly, it hits his pad, bounces once, twice, towards the net, and in as slow motion as you can possibly make something without stopping it, squirts across the goal line!!!! 46 seconds left, TIE GAME!!! The greatest comeback in HISTORY!!!
Overtime. Bean can't lose this game because, well, that would just blow. Five minutes into the 20 minute OT (we don't like shootouts), JR gets the puck again, fakes the shot, turns towards the boards, sees a cutting left winger and hits him in front of the net for the win. Bean loses. I rock.
Greatest game EVER! :P |
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I've logged nearly 60 hours so far, and have strictly done the main quest in the last two days, so I'm a bit further in that. I'm gonna do the next step then do more stuff in the mages' and fighters' guilds. I also murdered someone so I can join that secret thing but I forget its name. Flyers play tonight so I won't have much time to devote to it, but any spare second I get, you can bet your butt that I'll be playing :) |
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*** SPOILER WARNING ***
Don't read this if you want to play Elder Scrolls IV and not know anything about it going into it, or unless you've already been a vampire in real life or in the game :) And if that ruined part of the game for you, I'm sorry :( But says in your stats, before you learn about Vampirism, "Days as a Vampire : 0"... So, it's not my fault
*** END SPOILER WARNING ***
This wasn't made public yet, but I was a vampire for 15 days!! In Elder Scrolls IV, that is!
Hooked.
I didn't want to jump ahead in the actual plot of the game (actually, I'm stuck in that part, but that's fine, there's so much more to do and no rush to do anything!). I joined the Fighter's Guild first and was doing lots of missions with them. I've made quite a bit of gold (which I actually have a physical piece of since I bought the collector's edition of the game) doing that and leveled up a bit in physical combat related areas (Swords, Heavy Armor, Speed, Agility, Endurance). However, I'm of the race "Red Guard", so I start out adept in some magic and some combat. So, instead of continuing on the Fighter's Guild path, I joined the Mage's Guild! During one of the missions to acquire recommendations from heads of the Mage's Guild in each city, I had to go into this catacomb and find a certain type of stone. There were vampires in there, and I eventually caught the "poryphyric hemophilia" disease, because there was a sexy vampire in there and it's like medieval times, there are no contraceptives. I kid, you combat a vampire and you can catch the disease. However, stupid me thought nothing of it after two days and no symptoms. I forgot I had it! (A day in game is a few hours, but you can skip over most of it by sleeping or waiting, or fast-traveling far without a horse). Then, I wake up one day, and I get this message, saying something about a dream, then at the top I notice all these attributes and skills being added: "Vampirism Added", "Lure of the Vampire Added", etc. It wasn't long after I realized that the disease I contracted turns you into a vampire after three days! That SUCKED. It was fine at first, but when you're a vampire for two days, you get hurt in the sun. And in three days, you can hardly get from door to door, running as fast as you can, without dying. The longer you go without feeding on someone's blood, the more kickass you become. You get your stats up to like a bazillion. I was whooping monsters' asses. But, you can't do anything! I had to find a cure. Luckily, the guy at the Arcane Academy told me where I can find one. This old witch up in the hills along the river. She needed some stuff before she was willing to give me a cure though. So, I got them for her. Next, she didn't have ANY of the ingredients for the cure... WTF b@#%@!! You say you can make it, why don't you have the ingredients?!?! It only took me a day to get the ingredients, though, lucky for her.
This was weird though, presumably a bug in the game. After I got the last ingredient, which happened to be ashes from this "powerful" Vampire that I completely OWNED. He was trying to PUNCH me and I was already at level 12 since I had gone through a bunch of the Fighter's Guild missions, and I had this awesome sword and a Lightning enchanted Wizard staff. The dude didn't stand a chance. But anyway, I went back to her to give her the last ingredient, and she wanted to whoop my ass!! She is powerful, too, summoning ghosts and skeleton archers on me, shooting me with magic to drain some stuff. I'm like WTF I just want to give you the last ingredient! Fortunately, there's a way to "yield" to someone, like an ally if you accidentally swiped a sword half way through their skull, by holding up your block (right click) and pressing the action key. The thing at the top would say "Whatsherface accepts your yield." But, then she'd apply Chameleon (I can't see her unless I look close for her), shoot me up with spells again, and summon more ghosts!! I got around it by yielding and clicking to talk to her real quick. After she gave me the potion to cure Vampirism, she still wanted to kick my ass, so I just ran out, got on my horse and got the f@#%@# out of there!
That was fun. Sorry to bore everyone but the game ROCKS. |
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| Not really but close. Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has me hooked, it's a wonder two years haven't gone by already. I can write up a huge description of it, but just go visit my Google Pages page instead!! There, you will find nothing related to Oblivion. The end. |
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I also got some movies, namely "Walk the Line". Who knows... deep inside I might be a Johnny Cash fan and not even know it!
And who the F@#%@# voted on my poll? There's 25 votes but only 7 or so people, two of which selected every option before submitting... |
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Woohoo.
In other news, I have the latest version of stringed.org up there. Actually, the official name of the software is "dumb web" since it's written on top of "dumb". At home I'm testing with the following data architecture: Authors have books, books have chapters. So when you add or edit an author, you'll be able to add books for that author and add chapters for each book, while on the author form. It is 100% dynamic. It's working except for some quirky validation issues, however, what's on the site works 100% (with just books and authors). As soon as I get subforms inside subforms inside subforms working, I'll post that version up :) Please note that I recreate the database each time, so your additions / changes will only remain intact until the next update.
I still have a lot of work to do, but I should be pretty close by the end of this weekend.
I played "The Movies" but only for a few hours, and didn't get a chance to take any screens. There's no easy way to do it. But here are screens at GameSpot. It's a fun game, but more like "The Sims" with it's "Keep your stars happy" theme. But, there are a lot of neat things going on... writing your own scripts to movies, directing movies, post production of movies, buying sets, researching technology, etc. I recommend it if you find that kind of stuff interesting.
Kodie was out in the snow the other day, and what happens when a furry little dog runs around in 16-22 inches of snow for an hour?! I'll post that picture tonight :) It's HILARIOUS. And Cute.
That's what happens to furry little dogs in the snow :)
Today I was tired, so I went to Dunkin Donuts and got a medium for the ride into work, and an extra large for at work!! To make it look like I was ordering for 2 people, I got a few donuts. I should just shamelessly admit that I can drink like a gallon of coffee without it having any effect on me, that way I don't have to get donuts to go along with them. I could do without them :) |
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I downloaded the demo of The Movies the other day and finally got around to playing it last night. It seems like a good way to waste an entire weekend :) So, I ordered it off of Amazon.com, but the default, free method of shipping, 2nd day delivery, wasn't acceptable since I wanted to waste away this weekend playing it. So, I paid an extra $3.99 for the overnight delivery. I should be getting it by tomorrow, or else I will sue Amazon for me not being able to waste a weekend.
This game was created by a good studio in the gaming world, Lionhead Studios, which has some really quality games out there. If you know video games, you know Lionhead. I will buy any game from the following developers: Relic, Valve, Bioware, Blizzard (except for World of Warcraft), 3D Realms, Lionhead, Firaxis (God bless CIV!!), and Sierra. I show the most reluctance to buying a game when there's an "EA" symbol on the cover. I definitely own games by other developers, but these are the ones I buy without researching or reading at least one review. I just know they're going to be good.
So, this weekend I'll be hiring actors, crew, directors, extras, as well as script writers, buying sets, and making movies. Then releasing them to the public and making bazillions of dollars. It should be fun. I'll post screens. |
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I just won in Civilization IV in 1958 with a space race victory! I had also taken over two other civilizations and was just generally whooping some major ass. Check out these pictures
I'm the greyish white Civ on the lower right hand map, check out the size!! It wraps the whole globe!!
[Update] Ugh, images temporarily deleted... will be back tonight. |
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Here are some pictures from my last Civ conquest. I've had two pretty notable conquests in the past week and the first one was pretty amazing, but these pictures are from the second one. You might notice three Civs each with a score of Zero. Two of them were my doing. I whooped up on Spain (Isabella) and Greece (Alexander). I like picking off the weakest of the Civilizations when I'm the strongest... free cities!
The first game I won this week was incredible. I was at war with someone, and I was clearly the weakest on the planet. Well, it comes down to the end, there's about 20 turns left and I calculated that I needed about 19 to finish the spaceship! Well, one person was already attacking me pretty heavily, I think it was France (ironic, as it where, since I play as Germany!), and then with about 15 turns left, TWO other nations declare war on me!! I think they felt I was going to win, and didn't like that. These are all computer players, so the fact that three of them wanted to not see me finish was pretty cool, however, they did not get their wish! I had some pretty huge cities. I had taken over a Barbarian city pretty early, and it had grown to be a huge city with tons of gold and fast production, and contributing lots of research, all the while sufficiently feeding itself and growing. Well, that was the second city taken by the onslaught of the two opponents as the hordes from the east moved in. It sucked. So, I just decided to protect Berlin for the last few turns. At this point, there was only around 6 turns left, and Berlin and the Barbarian city, that I had taken that had grown into a powerhouse, were pretty much right next to each other. So I stacked up a bunch of troops around Berlin, and held my breath for the last few turns! I won, but damn was it f#@#!$ing INTENSE!! I usually don't consider other experiences with Civ "intense". "Fun", "difficult", but never really intense. It was a fun time. I won't be playing again until tomorrow night probably, since the Flyers play both tonight and tomorrow night. Of course, Friday is like my stay up all night and play video games day, so when the Flyers are over, the night's really just beginning! Unless I go out, of course.
So far, my only way of winning has been to win a space victory, but Civ has many victory types. The space victory is the easiest, since it's just a technological victory. You can win a cultural victory (3 cities with "Legendary" culture status), standard conquest (defeat all other civilizations and control the world!!), land and population victory (control a set percentage of land and population), a diplomatic victory (voted on through the League of Nations which you can build), and possibly some others. So, it's a great game that can be played forever without getting bored.
In my best game, I won a space race victory in 1991! That's pretty sweet. However, I've heard of some pretty remarkable victories on a Civ forum. One guy apparently won a cultural victory some time in the 1600s! It's one of those that was heard from a guy that knows a guy that knows a guy, so I dismiss it as Urban Legend. My 1991 space race victory put me in the good graces with Henry VIII on that list of your leadership abilities. Usually I'm Dan Quayle! That sucks.
Oh, and whoever picked the Bucs to win the Super Bowl is WAY off. I'd bet that they go out in the first round :) |
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This update of the web server has been a giant f@^#@ing migraine... Tomcat will just delete stuff. And for some reason, there's no events showing up in the calendar, but that's probably my fault. (Actually, I paused to look at the code, yup, it's my fault... you might not even notice since I'm updating it right now). And I'm not sure when my host does backups, but I'll ask them for a copy. But, to make sure that I don't lose everything if this happens again, I'm running a daily cron task (WTF is this?) which will backup that directory into a new directory. Of course, if the whole hard drive goes bad, then it's a whole different problem. Well, hopefully they give me a copy from sometime before Saturday :)
[The next morning] I'm on an incredibly small amount of sleep today. That has to do with Civilization 4 and I can't remember what I did after that to stay up as late as I did. Civ, as it's called, is the best game ever. I have a few posts on it going back since it came out in late October. It's amazing that I've ever left the house since it came out. With an introduction like this, "Sid Meier’s Civilization is a turn-based strategy game that challenges players to build and expand an empire, throughout all of human history, and become the most powerful ruler in the world.", how can you not get f!#^@ing addicted?! I heard someone once say that cigarettes are more addicting than heroin, but Civ is more addicting than anything I've ever known. I seriously need help! Good thing there's a help group (shout out to NAOT) out there! If ever a game needed one...
There's a new song up (Christmas Blues), and a lot of the songs have been restored, but not much of anything else. Still waiting on the hosting company to let me know if they have a backup. For Pete's sake, it's been 7 hours and still no contact! I'm kidding, they rock. |
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Zatko and I played again, twice, last night. The first time, I got whooped by Barbarians, and Zatko made fun of me by saying stuff like "BARBARIANS?!?!!! You SUCK!!" and the like. Then, about 25 seconds into our second game, he asked "Are you still alive?" I thought it was funny. I answered back with "OMFG HELP!!!!111111111". Then irony. A call from the East (I was on the west coast of this huge continent). "Dude, I'm getting killed by barbarians." I was like "Pffff it was funny the first time, you don't have to make fun of me anymore, I have a higher score than you." However, he wasn't joking!!! HAHA. He lost all of his settlers, which you need to create new cities and expand your empire, and only had 2 cities, which came under attack. It was great. I sent guys over there, but the little icon under the arrow said that the guys would take 39 turns to get there, which is like a thousand years. Maybe closer to a hundred. Plus, they cost me money as they get further away, with attrition and all that stuff. But, they eventually get there, and Zatko was still alive.
I finally learned a bit about how to play. The city view screen is tough to understand, but it is the key to success. I finally got it. I don't know how to make things happen like I want (less sick people, more happy people, etc), but I do understand the game more now, so that's good. All this time I've played other Civs, and never had a clue what I was doing.
In the second game, I got attacked by the Nation of India, and was able to fend it off. Without losing a city!! Sure, their malicious hordes will come through and destroy everything else on your land (farms, mines, houses, etc), but if you can hold out, maybe fight them off or wait until you can talk to the leader again and get them to sign a peace treaty before you get your ass handed to you, then you'll be in good shape. I'm addicted. |
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Zatko and I played CIV 4 online last night. Thanks, Mike, for getting me addicted again. I'd have to say that most of that game's addictiveness comes in its absolute mystery. I have no idea what I'm doing. Like, no idea. But, Mike and I were playing, and I jump out to a lead and pretty much hold it for the next 5000 years. Yes, 5000 years. Then Mike jumps in front, then it's just me and him, battling it out over a few hundred years... actually, we were friends, basically giving each other technologies. Then, all the sudden, he starts crying from half way around the world: "Yo, I need help." He's at war with the blasted Mongols. Those blasted Mongols. I'm like "Dude, I can't get there, George Washington won't let me through his crappy land." Then, the only part of Russia that was left was a quaint little town known as "Zatkonia". Or, at least that was the only one I could see, due to my lack of exploring. Whereas Germany was thriving! Really. I still have no idea how to play that game, but as long as you don't piss anyone off too bad, and give them stuff when they're angry at you. This way, you won't get into a fight, and you won't have 2 cities left and have to ask your pacifist pal Germany to travel half way around the world to save you... I had no boats.
Tune in next week for more tales of addiction and cluelessness. |
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Although more of an obsession nowadays...
Those are games I've bought in the last month. Well, I don't remember when I bought Fable. Rise of Nations : Thrones and Patriots came out a while ago though. It's an expansion pack for Rise of Nations. It's a good game. I'll have more about each game as they slowly take over my life, and I get hooked to each one.
Those cover the spectrum of video games, as pretty much every major genre is represented. I like my video games like I like my music. Varied. Just like in music though, I have a favorite. It's Strategy. Civilization IV, Rise of Nations, and Age of Empires III are all strategy. Fear, Brothers in Arms, and Call of Duty 2 are all first person shooters, and in the genre "Action". That's my second favorite. See, you need more FPS to keep you interested for a while, whereas one strategy game will usually keep you interested for a long time. Well, me anyway. However, FEAR is the best game I've ever played in that genre. Fable is an RPG, and it has the potential to be awesome, but it takes a really long time. Except Fable, which was awesome, but it was too short!! 10-12 hours on a RPG is way too short. You need them to last at least 40 hours.
Games not pictured that I bought in the last month : Serious Sam 2 (sorry Zatko!) and Dragonshard. |
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Woohoo! Today, I was offered two jobs literally 20 minutes apart. I've never been offered more than one job at a time, so I would always just take the next job. This is a different experience completely. Getting to choose is a pleasure, however, having to choose SUCKS!! In the end, they are both great companies, but one was more along the lines of what I feel that I want in this stage in my career. Money is hardly an issue, I knew they would both be sufficient to my needs. I didn't get into programming for the money, obviously!! Just read under "Computer Science" on the left! I'll take the money though, because I have bills and stuff that I need or might eventually want. However, two jobs to choose from wasn't an easy choice. I had a feeling yesterday that I would be offered both jobs, so that's when the deliberation started. I had to really find out what I wanted, and it was tough. Anyway, I am back on the career ladder. And just in time! Some great video games came out today.
F.E.A.R. (First Encounter Assault Recon) is the best game I've ever played. It's gorgeous, the combat is exciting and beautiful, the atmosphere is freaky as hell, and it's just an all around great game. I'll have screens soon.
Dragonshard is being installed now. It's a real time strategy game (RTS) based on the rules defined in Dungeons and Dragons. That's a role playing game (RPG), or rather, a board game RPG with a set of rules that many computer RPGs follow. Neverwinter Nights uses the D&D rules, for instance. So, it'll be an interesting mix between RPG and RTS. I look forward to playing it.
Another game worth mentioning, which isn't out until at least February '06, is S.T.A.L.K.E.R. I know, lots of acronyms. I've been following the development of this game ever since I first heard about it. I'm happy to report that they are still working on it! They actually had it done at one point, then decided that it wasn't fun enough, so they reworked some things, rewrote the story, tweaked some things, and are well on their way to seeing the February '06 deadline. You can read about it here.
Overall, a pretty exciting week :) |
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| Read about it here. It's stupid that a game is considered responsible for that action. I played that game, and beat it. It's all about how you interpret the game that depends on your possible fate later down the road. Sure, I would go on rampages with a sniper rifle from the very top of a parking garage and take out passerbys and cops, but what was I thinking about when I was doing it? Using a controller to aim at what seemed to be heads on a digital person. Mostly, I would try to drive around as fast as I can without crashing, that was where I had the most fun. This guy probably imagined killing cops. So where is the problem? Not in the video game, I say. Afterall, it's just a video game. It doesn't make someone violent. Years of abuse does or an aggressive attitude does. I can't imagine someone playing Doom 3 and thinking it's real, but I also can't imagine someone playing GTA III and thinking it's real. The overall concensus is that it's not, which is why they're allowed to be released to the masses in the first place. It's the sinister few that might ruin it for everyone. |
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| I haven't given a coffee update in ... ever. Well, once I did. Anyway, I'm lost as to which coffees got here during which months. I'll just tell you I'm drinking a blend called "Reggae Blend" during my "working from home" days. Actually, I'm working on a new video game. Fresh idea. Screw this web stuff, I'll get to it later. This game will be everything I've ever wanted in a strategy/RPG/economic game. I might play it exclusively, and I might play it exclusively, if you catch my drift. Meaning it might be the only game I play, and I might be the only one playing it... dumbass ;) |
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So, I've realized this after 3 days (Lemonade Tycoon days, which is like a minute of game time) of selling in the "Mall". The beach and the mall are capable of making the same amount of sales if the weather dictates it. If it's 80 - 100+ degrees out, I'm selling at the beach. If it's 50 and raining, it's the Mall or bust. I can keep the price the same, if it's 50 and raining, the mall people still pay $1.10 for a cup of lemonade, just like the beach people will if it's 100 and sunny. Obviously. You just have to learn the rules before you can assume that a program realistically simulates human tendencies. Especially one written for a cell phone.
Here, check out GameSpot's story on it... Lemonade Tycoon. I'm addicted, but soon, when my popularity in the mall gets to 100%, I consider that game over. I just want to be famous :)
From GameSpot:
Start small, and focus on the fundamentals. Lemonade Tycoon is a business simulation for our uncertain times. Beginning with just a tiny stand on a suburban street corner, you buy supplies, mix up a batch of lemonade, and hustle your drinks on the street. If your price is too high, the line is too long, or your recipe stinks, you'll be stuck with melted ice and spoiled lemons. With finely honed marketing skills, a canny grasp of what customers want, and a double-squeezing of luck, you can work your way into bigger stands, better equipment, and big-time venues, like the beach or a mall.
and...
The sim is deep and complex, with hours of gameplay for the dedicated sidewalk lemonade hustler.
one more:
As mobile games go, this sim is quite deep. Not only must you set the right price and buy appropriate supplies, but you've also got issues of weather, market awareness, demographics, and advertising. Stripped to the essentials, the dynamic and interconnected nature of business is represented here in a fun and clever manner.
They just make it seem harder than I do :) I have to admit, I am quite awesome at the game.. you might even call me a Tycoon. |
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Over the past week or so I've been playing a game on my cell phone on the bus and train ride into work. It's incredible. It's called "Lemonade Tycoon". Don't laugh. Obviously, all you do is sell lemonade, but, there's lots of twists.
First, you invest $40 of fake money into your venture. You get a stand and apparently the tools to make lemonade. You have 4 things to buy: lemons, ice, sugar, and cups. There are multiple places you can set up shop. The suburbs are free, so that's where you start. The places that cost money are guaranteed to be more populated. Before setting out on your first day of sales, you have to decide a few things. The recipe is first. You pick how many lemons, sugar and ice to add to each pitcher of lemonade. People will not buy bad lemonade. The next thing to consider is your price. This is based off of numerous things like how popular your brand is in a particular location, and of course the weather. Don't charge $1.00 per cup on a 50 degree day! Lower your prices, you'll sell the same amount of cups as a 100 degree day, but you won't make as much, but you'll still cover your costs for that day. People will pay $1.50 for a cup on a hot day.
Repeat this as desired. You'll notice that it takes a long time to make a pitcher, and also a long time to serve someone. Lemons go bad after a few days, and you're always buying ice, always. There are upgrades. To make the time between pitchers go down, buy a "Lemon Juicer 9000". It's now instantaneous. Customers will complain of long waits if they are in a line with too many people in front of them (which I've found you can't control), if they are in line when you have to make a new pitcher, or they are in line and you don't have this upgrade: the cash register. Processing a sale is instant with this thing. You go up from maybe 25 sales at a location to easily breaking 60. They have an ice machine, but I noticed that it only gives you 100 ice cubes (which is nothing, I'm now buying 500 on top of the 100 given with the ice machine), and it will slowly regenerate them during the course of a day. It's useless when you start making 100+ sales in a day. Another thing is a fridge, so you can stock up on lemons and they won't go bad. The last upgrades in the game are pretty convenient. You have all this new technology for speeding up sales, capable of making hundreds of sales in a day, but you might not be able to hold enough supplies to support those kinds of sales. You can buy 2 different types of lemonade stands, which will hold all your stuff and increase your capacity. I now buy hundreds of lemons at a time, and up to 800 cups at a time, along with my 600 ice cubes and 100+ sugar kept in stock at all times, I'm pretty much set. I am using the second most expensive location, the beach, rented at $40 a day (the mall is $50 a day), and selling different amounts of cups a day (sometimes 160, sometimes 50), charging an arm and a leg when the temperature spikes over 80... like $1.20-$1.50. I have all the upgrades. The most expensive one is the Lemon Stand (a stand shaped as a lemon), and it goes for $999.99. The cheapest upgrade, the lemon juicer, is $149.99. This price, $149.99, seemed insurmountable when I was selling 10 cups a day, making $.36 profit on each cup. Now, my cash on hand is $1,500 with plenty of stock, and the market is ripe for the picking.
It makes me want to make a game like it. |
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Check out F.E.A.R. First Encounter Assault Recon is what it stands for, but really, it's more about being scared out of the room and hiding under a blanket with a baseball bat, calling friends over and sucking your thumb. I've written on this before, but it's very close to being released, and it looks unbelievable. The demo was a short 10-15 minutes the first time through. I got chills each of the three times I played it. The graphics are unbelievable, the particle system and effects also, the sounds, the lighting, and now the Artificial Intelligence.
AI has always been an interesting subject to me. It's incredibly complex, but that hasn't stopped me from reading books on genetic algorithms, path finding routines, and other broad subjects. The AI that this game uses is called Goal Oriented Action Planning, or (GOAP). You can read about it here under the header "Designer Diaries". It doesn't get deep into technical details, but it is just a fascinating read, and I can't wait to play it.
AI is the next thing in games. You have these games that look outstanding but have the dumbest enemies ever. They pop their heads up in rhythm, it's like that groundhog game where you use the big padded hammer, only easier, since those are more random. Games even realistically portray interactions between objects pretty well. If there are a few wooden boxes stacked, and you shoot the bottom one, it might not get that far from underneath the other ones, but the resulting effect is that the tower of boxes will probably fall towards you, if the bullet doesn't just go right through. They haven't done that in games yet, realistic surfaces, at least not really well. A great effect in this game is watching its particle system. Bullets spark metal, blow concrete off walls, creating huge chunks in the wall, shatter glass, and grenades. Cool game huh?
Now, add SLOW MOTION!! Slow down time in the game and watch all this stuff happen. I tell you it's a thing of beauty. |
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My college buddy, Zatko, and I play video games. We played through the first Serious Sam (Serious Sam: The First Encounter) and maybe also what I thought at the time was Serious Sam 2 (Serious Sam: The Second Encounter). It later became widely known that this was, in fact, not Serious Sam 2. I became confused when GameSpot (not the store, that's GameStop) started putting up screenshots and articles about Serious Sam 2. I'm like, I already have it, beat it, it rocked, etc. But then I clicked one. "What the F@#%#@@ is this?!!?" I thought. Well, this is the real sequel. New graphics engine, physics, new monsters, real time shadows, lighting, and everything else that makes today's games beautiful and immersive. So Zatko and I made a pact: To only EVER play the game cooperatively when it comes out. See, another beautiful thing about the Serious Sam games is that they're $20 and that they ALWAYS have cooperative mode. NO games today have coop. It's stupid. Every game would make a killing if they let you play through the missions with a friend or family member. They don't do this, citing "technical difficulties" or some crap. Anyway, today, I hop onto GameSpot, and lo and behold, there's a Serious Sam 2 DEMO. Knowing my pact with Zatko, and knowing that he'll b@#%@# and moan at me for YEARS if I break it, I went to him:
Jason Connell: serious sam 2 demo
Zatko: you better not play it
Jason Connell: can i play?!?!?
Jason Connell: DOH!!!
Zatko: hell no!
Zatko: don't even look at it
Zatko: tear your eyes out
Jason Connell: can i download it?
Zatko: :)
Jason Connell: at least?!!
Zatko: you can pretend downloading it
Zatko: but thats about it
Jason Connell: alright, i'll write a program that says it's downloading the serious sam 2 demo, but it's really not
Zatko: yea, thats ok
Jason Connell: sweet! you want a copy?
Zatko: i might have to take you up on that
Jason Connell: alright
Jason Connell: oh wait, there's a brothers in arms 2 demo out too, i'll play that instead
So, I can't play :( I will hold to the pact though... |
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Here's a 2 for 1. These have nothing to do with each other, I am sick, so I don't feel like making new entries for each thing I have to say.
I feel for those Israelis in the Gaza strip who don't want to leave. I really do. The government just came up and said "Get the F%@#! out, BI%#@!ES!!!" Like those people who bought a house where a highway will be built many years later. Except, this is way different. If your house is needed because of a highway, you can probably find another house in the same town to buy. It would be like our government taking New Jersey, and telling those people to get out, and giving it to us Pennsylvanians. Alright, that's probably a somewhat invalid analogy, since, who would want New Jersey?! Just kidding. Point is, that sucks, and I feel for those poor Israelis.
Now to the fun part!! w00t! I bought 2 MORE video games the other day. They are both awesome. Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War is the first one I'll talk about. It adds some great gameplay elements to the traditional real time strategy (RTS) game. There are strategic locations that you have to control to gain resources. These are just points on the map, usually in a strategic location. You control them by having guys there to defend it, if it's your furthest point from your base that you control, or you leave it and go get another one. These give you resources to buy things like more units, buildings, vehicles, upgrades, etc. The other cool thing about it is the squads. You build a unit, which is in fact a squad, like a "Space Marine Squad" and it pumps out with 4 space marines. Then, you can reinforce the squad with more guys. You can also add a Sergeant and a hero (if you have heros left) to it. Next, you can upgrade up to 4 members of the squad's weapons. You can give them a flame thrower, heavy bolter gun, plasma rifle, or a rocket launcher. I can beat the computer with 3 fully upgraded squads and a few "Dreadnought" robots. The game is awesome.
Next game. Psychonauts!! Get this game. It's awesome. Check out Tim Schafer's news posts and practically everything on the website over at DoubleFine.com. There are a very high number of great and fun aspects to this game. The level of creativity in the level design and abilities that "Rasputin" gets and the story makes the whole game wreak of outstanding quality. It wreaks so much of quality that when I'm not playing it, I have to put it in a airsealed bag and spray the room with Lysol. When I am playing it, well, let's just say that you don't want to come in the room. I actually emailed Tim Schafer a few times now, and he's always written back. I keep them because he's a "celebrity" in the gaming world. You might have played "Grim Fandango"??? I did. He thought up that one. He's a genius. He has other games out there, but I'm sorry to say I've only played two of them. So, buy this game. It's out on PS2, XBox and PC. I bought it for PS2. I actually asked Tim what his beef with Nintendo was. Here's what he wrote back for those of you who can't buy the game because you only own a GameCube:
"Jason,
We here at Double Fine definitely have no beef with Nintendo! We love
Nintendo. We all would have been overjoyed to see Psychonauts on the
Gamecube. But it's just not up to us. The developer doesn't make such
decisions. The people with the money do, and in this case they decided
not to." |
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Fridays always sneak up on me now. Before, at other jobs, it would always seem like months had passed before you would get a few days off. Now, it's like HOURS. It's wonderous.
So, to kick off the weekend, here is a list of some funny things and some trying to be funny things:
40% of the internet population would refer to this website as a "blog". I don't care what you call it, I don't call it a "blog". Here is a comment I made on this topic earlier today:
"We have to come up with a better term than that."
Amen. As if not being considered anywhere even close to cool wasn't enough, now I have to contribute to something that 40% (+) of the internet population classifies as a "blog". Wonderful.
One popped in my head: "Vulcan"... That planet!! In Star Trek! ;-) Honestly, having never watched Star Trek, I still think that's better than "blog". My girlfriend from a few years ago was the first person to use the term "blog". When she got sick after drinking a lot, that's the sound she made.
Another one popped in my head: "Iceman". This would create better situations at the bar.
Me (to girl at bar): I write an iceman.
Girl: Awesome! Like Val Kilmer?!!? Here's my number.
And there you have it.
Next. I don't think Terrell Owens will be an Eagle this year. He might play a game or two, but Andy Reid will get sick of his B.S. and trade him.
Next. I play video games. Last night I played Battlefield 2 on my newly rebuilt computer. It was neat. On one map, I climbed to a roof behind the other team's base, and picked off like 9 guys before running out of ammo, jumping off the roof, parachuting down (you always have a parachute on you), and reloading all of my ammo, only to be killed by an artillery strike. I laughed at that one though. It was like I had just reloaded all of my ammo from a supply crate that dropped from the sky, and thought "Alright, time to go kick some more ass!"... The first artillery shell is what got me. I had no idea it was coming! At one point, before refilling my ammo, I was shooting 100 yard shots with my pistol! I only got a kill or two with that thing.
Next. Linux and the mug still hasn't arrived.
Damn, I know I had more. Here, let me check the newspaper...
Hmm. First headline : "T.O.'s tirades could signal trade envy." Nope, already commented on that one. Second headline: "Owens heads to Atlanta." Nope, I've said everything I can about that one. Third... "Owens errs in telling his Super Bowl story." Nope, can't think of anything to add to that one. Man, the media has to stop writing about T.O.... honestly. Shut UP!! Hehe, get it. Like T.O. and Andy Reid said to each other?! Read the paper, you're bound to find an article or two-ZILLION about it. Cripes.
More video game news. Yesterday, I also bought "Fantastic 4" for the PS2, so Jeff and I or Bean and Jeff or Bean and I or whatever, can whoop some ass together. It's fun.
Don't trust Microsoft's benchmark tests. Here is a security comparison between Windows Server 2003 with SQL Server 2000 vs. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 with MySQL. Seems like a fair test? Well, download the PDF. Nowhere does it mention that the current version of MySQL (even at the time of the test) and the version of MySQL that is used in the test differ in version number by 1 MAJOR VERSION!! How big is the difference of 1 Major Version? Well, SQL Server 2000 is actually SQL Server Version 8.0. SQL Server 2000 was actually released on January 19th, 2001. SQL Server 7 was released in late 1998 or early 1999, I'm not sure. I couldn't find it. So, that's a difference of at LEAST 2 years. Plus, Red Hat recently released Enterprise Linux 4.0, so maybe Microsoft should do another security test? This goes for most of their tests. And you can't blame them for fixing the results, but you can blame them for writing inferior software :)
Next. Thinking back on a certain state's decision to elect a certain Hollywood action star as its Governer, I began to realize the obvious good and bad in that. A good thing is no stupid Arnold S. movies have been released in a while! A bad thing, Hollywood had to find a replacement, so there are still stupid movies, but without Arnold's style of awful acting.
Next. I'm starting to hate Rounders. If you watch it too much, you'll just find Matt Damon to be another awful actor. It's funny, that movie also stars John Malkovich, one of the best actors. When I watch a movie, I want to watch it and say "That's Teddy KGB" not "That's John Malkovich". But every movie in which Matt Damon stars, he's always the same. Whatever happened to the great character actors, and why aren't they all famous, if they are still around. Another way to look at this quality in an actor is to watch a movie with an actor, and then watch another one with the same actor, and not see the previous character one bit in the new character. If they can't do that, I consider them a bad actor. No offense ;-)
Maybe I'll have more, if you're lucky. |
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After the race was over, I was all upset and wanted to buy more stuff from California to fill that now cavernous void in my heart that only a man-made race across the country between two competing delivery companies can fill. But then I remembered, I have to install my new motherboard and then I can play games! While this won't fill the man-made race gap, it's a start. So I did that in a shade under a day... actually, two hours, but that thing's a pain in the MOTHERF$@#$@#%! ASS!! Oh well, it's over, and it works. And it works well.
I had been watching the development of a certain game, and it prompted me to buy the motherboard. Last week, a playable demo came out for F.E.A.R. (First Encounter Assault Recon). It's insane. It's like a police game, you're going in, taking out bad guys, slowing down time so you can dodge bullets and stuff, then all the sudden you're crapping your pants. I can't say why, but it is one scary ass game. The graphics are unbelievable, and the sound, at times, sends chills careening down your spine. It's scarier than Doom III, which, before I played the FEAR demo, was the scariest game I had played. At least in Doom 3, after you get scared, you get to kill whatever made you crap yourself. Alright, I'm saying too much. I anxiously await the October 10th release date of F.E.A.R. My hair will turn white. This was a 10 minute demo and I had nightmares. Imagine what the WHOLE GAME will do! |
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I never reported this, but I broke my motherboard on my very expensive gaming computer a few weeks ago. This is how I described the mishap on a forum I visit:
my F#%$@#!ing motherboard broke... it was my fault though. stupid crazy ass place for a 5 gallon bucket of paint... i'm kidding, i tried to put in a pci card but there wasn't room, and i snapped one of those little chip things that sit on the motherboard and make them work...
Woops. So, eventually, after like a month, I decided to finally replace it because I want to play video games like I do sometimes. So, I ordered the motherboard. Here is that forum entry:
I miss playing games sometimes, but I want to play F.E.A.R. more than anything. The demo is out. So I ordered that b@#$%@ today. Plus, I have a 250GB secondary hard drive on there, with no room in my other computers for it, and I need the space. I hope I got a good one, it'll definitely be better than the last one though... it got a score of "5 out of 5 eggs" on newegg.com. plus it has a very similar layout to the other motherboard, which is HUGE. the last thing I want to do is empty out my liquid cooling and recut tubes to make that s@#$% fit.
It's thundering and lightening here pretty bad, I'm scared so I'm gonna go under my desk. (19th floor is a lot closer to that stuff than the 1st floor).
hopefully, by friday, you'll hear me mumbling sweet nothings to you on teamspeak after I put a bullet through your mother F@#%@#$ing dome.
A few liner notes. Teamspeak is a program used for talking to other people over the internet for free and in real time. There are a few people that I talk to, but I haven't been on in a while, because it's normally used for trashtalking in games and coordinating strategies in a first person tactical team based shooter. FEAR is going to be a cool game. And a motherboard is a very necessary, very fragile computer part. I ALWAYS censor myself, on any webpage I go to. Anyone who knows those words can tell right off the bat, but what if little kids visit? I can't make them not read it, so I figure I'll just make it safe for everyone, for the most part. These posts are "as is".
The other part of this story is my converting every other computer I have to Linux. When Windows Vista (formerly Longhorn) is released, I won't and can't go buy a copy for each computer I have. If they're lucky, I might buy one for the gaming PC. Here is the post about me ordering Linux. So that's also on the way.
It's a race (as the title indicates). Linux and the coffee mug are somewhere between San Pablo, CA, and Drexel Hill. They left San Pablo on August 6th at 5:01 AM. It's anyone's guess where it is now. The motherboard was ordered yesterday, and left Los Angeles, CA at 9:16 AM today. However, Linux and the mug were shipped through UPS, and the motherboard was shipped through FedEx Saver and is estimated to arrive on Thursday, August 11th. Obviously the UPS package has a bit of a head start.
Place your bets! |
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But not today! So, while the oil prices are skyrocketing (it's apparently up to around $60 USD a barrel, but that doesn't mean anything to me), the o-zone layer is leaving us, we're almost out of oil, and there's still war in the world (not War of the Worlds...), I still find better stuff to post about.
Battlefield 2 comes out today so it'll probably be in stores tomorrow. However, I have a video game being shipped to me that's not Battlefield 2. I will get Battlefield 2 though, eventually. The game I'm getting is called "Boiling Point: Road to Hell". You play on a piece of land that's 25x25 kilometers. That's 625 square kilometers! I was in the cub scouts, I'll be fine. You get to fly helicopters, planes, drive tanks, cars, buses, and blow everything up. It's a game world like Grand Theft Auto games, but it's in a jungle. Nothing will get done this week. Here's an exceptional review of the game. |
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| I turned back on the gaming PC for reasons other than listening to music while I program. I started playing Guild Wars. I've never been able to get into any MMORPGs, but really the only other one I've tried was Final Fantasy XI. I couldn't get out of the starting town in that one. Guild Wars is incredibly simple to get into. Its main selling factor, though, besides the beautiful graphics, is that it's free to play online! You still have to pay a hefty starter up price of $50 USD to own the software, but I managed to afford that. The cool thing about it is it can be a standard role playing game, but you can also opt to join up with people hanging around. There are a few cool gameplay elements, and it's definitely worth your and my time. Right now I'm trying to save up the god-awful amount you need to buy square fur. They're unbelievably expensive, but after that I can get some major upgrades to my armor. w00t. Rate my geekness below. (Usually I only play games that are less detrimental to your coolness, like shooters and real time strategy games, as well as sports and Mario games) |
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Have you seen the specs for the PS3?
PS3 Specs
Tell me you're not going to buy at least one of those.
Now read this one.
Nintendo Revolution Specs
I'll take out a loan if I have to, those two systems will be mine. The who-box? Oh, the XBox. Yeah, no way. Zatko said it best when he said
"yea i think xbox is gonna get pounced"
What kind of stupid name is the XBox 360? One sports guy said "we need to turn this team around 360 degrees" which he thought meant to go in the opposite direction. Turn 360 degrees and all you've accomplished is a little dizziness. I wonder why they call it 360 if they didn't mean a circle. It's the only 360 I can think of. On that note, I will again be showing no interest in the XBox. It's funny though, it's the least powerful one by far. The PS3 is just an amazing piece of machinery, and Nintendo has all the great Mario games and other franchises. There's no need for an XBox for me since I have a PC that plays games. |
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