Many of you are familiar with my daughter. Whether you have gotten to know her impish side or you get infequent tastes of her charisma via video blogs, you are probably sure to know of whom I speak.

This morning my daughter came in, woke me up and proclaimed, "Hugs for daddy!!!!" She then spent some time with my wife and I as we worked to regain consciousness. We marveled at her impressive knowledge of the letters, sang songs, and enjoyed priceless family moments before getting up for work. Ultimately, the time came when I had to leave to go to school; that part-time MBA doesn't complete itself.

As I went to leave, my daughter followed me out the door. She wanted to come with me. We talked, we hugged, and in the end she stayed home with mom.

Part way through my dinner I got a call from my wife informing me my daughter had fallen into the pool and was on her way to the hospital. You always think you will know what will happen in those instances. Me? At first I thought this was a sick joke, but my wife's sobbing on the other end of the line convinced me otherwise. I gathered up my stuff and drove to the hospital through Bay Area rush hour traffic. I was relieved to find out my daughter had not only survived, but may just pull through without much long-term damage. For that, I am very grateful.

I know some of you have lost those dear to you. Some have even outlived their children, but I never imagined the fear and the pain that comes when you find out your loved one is hurt. While I am definitely relieved she survived and am glad she will continue to be a beautiful part of our family for the forseeable future, my wife and I know that our relationships can exist beyond this fragile, mortal life. That provides a great confort in the face of significant uncertainty. Needless to say, incidents like this really put life and priorities into perspective.

Any thoughts, prayers, and well wishes on behalf of my precious daughter would be very much appreciated.

UPDATE: Thanks to everybody's prayers, thoughts and well wishes! Our daughter should have no problems whatsoever!

Below is a picture of her in a big-girl chair. She decided she had enough of the recovery bed. Now she is drawing, singing and watching fun movies with mom, dad, and brother. . . And she also got some fun socks to wear.

UPDATE 2: We are home. It seems we are out of the woods. Hopefully my precious daughter will safely be around long after daddy is gone.

Ever since the day Microsoft made Undertow available for free, I've had it sitting on my hard drive waiting to be played. Last night Dave, Kevin, and I dusted it off and started playing. While I can't really say it is better than fair, I can say getting this game for free feels almost criminal. As brett pointed out in his review, the audio is great and the action is fast. For the few hours I have spent with the game, it is only making me want to play more. Fortunately, the game comes with an achievement for defeating 10,000 enemies. This can be done online or offline.

While I will never look to get the Seriously . . . achievement in Gears, I am in too deep to turn my back on playing more Undertow, especially if it mens getting that achievement. The Ultra difficulty is very challenging, but Kevin and I are persevering. Without any delays, before Sunday we can close the book on the final chapter. To be honest, I can't really imagine playing through the game in single player since the AI is unapologetically aggressive. The fact the AI is so aggressive means it is all the more satisfying to watch the crafts, creatures, and enemy troops blow up, implode, and otherwise fall victim to my own unyielding assault.

While I can understand why a lot of people aren't playing online, this is seriously a great game to play with friends if you got it for free. Perhaps I'll have to start lobbying to give this title a game night treatment.

. . . and in other news, I totally scored a Wii. I spent the majority of the morning playing Rocky & Bullwinkle for the upcoming review and passed by a GameStop on the way in to the office. I stopped by on whim and inquired regarding a Wii. Turns out they had one!!! My six-month search has come to an end. Now I just need to get it home in one piece with a copy of Smash Bros. and an eye on Wii Fit. Mmmmm, Yoga.

On the way home from work on Friday I put the nail into the World Ends With You's coffin. You can expect a review from one of the lads down under next week. I have almost gathered every pin, purchased every item, and discovered every monster, but the post-completion tasks are still ahead of me.

One of my buddies from college came into town over the weekend. We played some Vegas 2, drove out to Sacramento to see one of our other mutual friends, and missed way too much sleep. Hooray for weekends!

Currently, I am debating whether to take one of the precious game night slots tonight. Justin has been a great internal advocate for a Dark Sector game night. Tonight is that night. Hopefully you will show up to support him. If I take your spot, promise to forgive me.

This game is not good. . . or even fair like the rest of the games.

The full review is here. Thanks to Jim for the accompanying video! If it wasn't for the disaster of Cyberball, this would have been the worst XBLA game released to date. I would expect that is small comfort for Namco Bandai Games.

Recently a user posited an interesting question to the staff members in the Ask GameSpot! forum (subscription required).The person asked what our pet peeves are. When I responded, I listed a lot of things that bug me about games. One thing I couldn't bring myself to articulate is the sense of frustration I feel when achievements don't unlock in 360 games. I have played a lot of games in my time and accumulated an decent gamerscore, but nothing really bugs me more these days than going to xbox.com, mygamercard.net, or my own 360 and looking at achievements I have earned multiple times over but have yet to unlock.

Many of you have read about my obsession over trying to get the Special Operations achievement in Ranbow Six Vegas to unlock. It was quite an ordeal when I was working on it. I guess you could say I have given up on it. Many patches and scores of hours later, no achievement. With the release of Vegas 2 mere weeks ago, I have pretty well been devoting most of my time there. Unfortunately, like the first game, the achievements are glitched. Not only do you have to do a special song and dance to get the Freedom Shall Prevail achievement (Complete the Story Mode on Realistic difficulty), but also unlocking the Private First Class achievement requires some seriously questionable tinkering. The only known cure for those who start the game at PFC or higher is something I am currently reticent to try. Thus far, I have enjoyed both RS6:Vegas games quite a bit. . . I'd just like to get what I earn. Unfortunately, Sierra's strategy game Commanders: Attack of the Genos is plagued with achievement problems. The problems with tha game are not many, but definitely include inconsistent achievements. Sometimes they unlock, sometimes they don't. If you happen to have earned it, but didn't get it . . . you may never get it until the core problems are discovered and fixed. Something the developers are looking into.

Unfortunately, Ubisoft and Sierra are not the only guilty developers or publishers to ship glitchy games with inconsistently unlocking achievements. EA, for all the love I have carried for them (thank you for Orange Box and Rock Band!), is no-no-notorious for games with achievement bugs. Tiger Woods PGA Tour 06 had two achievements that didn't unlock. Need for Speed Carbon still has a busted achievement for winning 50 free-roam challenges. It isn't as big of a deal as the Moderator Challenge achievement. Granted the achievement isn't glitched, it is just unattainable through poor design. Seriously, which of the people you need to beat is even still around to race against? None of them. . . and if you message them, they either get incensed or ignore you. Don't try it. The bigger problem is beating an EA moderator in a race is a requirement for collecting all of the reward cards in the game. You know what collecting all of those gets you? Yup, an achievement. That brings the grand total of deprived gamerscore up to 140 points! So, if you didn't race against the moderators the week the game came out (and won), then you can expect nothing more than 860 points out of the possible 1000.

And since we are on the topic of getting shorted on points, EA released Lord of the Rings, Battle for Middle-earth II with only 705 possible gamerscore from 35 achievements. I know some great people who worked on the game, but when a company releases a full-priced game to retail with only 71% of the gamerscore, it gets a C- on the achievement-hunter's report card. I heard the additional 295 points were going to be made up through a pay-to-download expansion, but Microsoft's gamerscore rules may have nipped that plan in the bud. While you can ship a game with any amount of gamerscore (up to and including 1000 points in achievement value), publishers can't charge for content that would bring the content up to the 1000-point threshold, only from 1000 to what appears to be a 1250 limit. That policy might explain why Condemned: Criminal Origins never netted players more than 970 points. Sega didn't do anything inherently wrong with lopping that 30 points off, but those absent points added up to one more reason why I never touched that title.

With so many games out on the 360, I am surprised that the titles I mentioned are the only ones that have come to mind with achievement-related problems. Hopefully the longer companies develop for the platform the fewer achievement problems we will see.

PS: I will be updating this with images. This wall of words may be more off-putting than a rant ought to be without some visuals to break it up.

Somewhere in the sea of business . . . er, busyness of life I have managed to accumulate 59,999 points through playing my 360. The latest game, TiQal has netted me an easy 105 points, but the rest looks to be some slogging. The game ramps up the difficulty gradually, but lately I've been wondering if I am going to make it to the end of the story. I have two lives left and I will be seriously stoked to finish the 6th chapter in this, my first, playthrough. Not only will I be showing it off on today's webisode of On the Spot, but also I'll have the full review up before the weekend. So, if you've been holding out on downloading it, you may want to wait another day.

Now I just need to decide whether to open up Lost Odyssey, make some more progress in Vegas 2, or pound out TiQal. I just can't decide. Unfortunately, my need to unlock achievements is not going away, despite my undying love of The World Ends With You. If you haven't checked out my apperently confusing preview, let me say, it is quirky but definitely fun . . . from what I've seen. Honestly, it is a title I wasn't expecting to like, but have gladly played hours and hours in my efforts to get closer to finishing the game and unlocking more pins and powers.

As a former copywriter for an advertising agency, I have developed an arguably severe case of ADmiration. Watching commercials is a bit of a guilty pleasure. So much so, that in years past I would fast forward through the football to watch the commercials during the Super Bowl.

Nowadays, my favorite comercials from yesteryear are archived on the web. I can open up the Youtubes or the Googles (same thing now) and get hours of commercial-watching enjoyment. Companies even create commercials for the web, commonly known as viral videos. This afternoon I discovered one such video for a reeeeaalllly good Xbox Live Arcade game. Sure it is already out, but it is also coming to handhelds.

Check it out.

Regardless of how it pans out, I am glad finals are over. Taxation was interesting but way out of my comfort zone.

Speaking of taxing finals, Tournament TV today was awesome! I popped in to say hello to the faithful in the chat room only to be relegated to closing duty. It's so hard to say goodbye.

Till tomorrow!

You may have heard about this all-out Vegas party I am throwing this Saturday (Sunday for the land down under). We will be doing all sorts of things in the game. Depending on the number of people who join, we will be playing a whole host of adversarial multiplayer modes, running terrorist hunts, and even playing the single-player campaign. This is all to help me, and by association anybody else who joins me, in the mood for Vegas 2.

Since the matches are going to be private, the only way you can get in is to either PM me on xbox.com or get added to my Live friendslist. . . and space on there is running out!

I finished my review for Rocketmen. No, seriously.

Next up: Brain Challenge.

Like I did with Rocketmen, I've already been playing it on a debug console. I will be waiting for the final review code to become available on Wednesday before I start writing my review.

. . .Just thought I'd share.