Oh, it's just him.

I know, I know – I've become an awful blogger. On the bright side I don't solicit you for cash, or force you to review my poorly drawn artwork with captions about how each individual anime character is reflective of my existential crises.

You're welcome.

I won't bore you with all the details of my ongoing absense, but should you wish to be up to speed, here is the cliff notes version: This entire year has been nuts. As I mentioned in one of my only two or three blogs I've managed to post in the last 10 months, there have been some family issues, personal issues with people who I suspected of lying (later confirming their filthy, filthy lies) and so on. The silver lining there is I am now single. I was also in the middle of a huge audit at work, the kind of audit that ultimately resulted in the president being fired for stupidity and general incompetence. Since then, my boss has moved up to fill that position, and I have been working ridiculous hours to support him, as well as (potentially) securing a higer position for myself.

Now then, on to the stuff that matters:

Due to time constraints, I have mostly busied myself with simple games, Plants vs. Zombies served me well, I know it's last year's news, but I was late to the party, okay? More recently, I grabbed Dungeons of Dredmore off Steam, and it is terrific, frustrating fun. It's incredibly hard by design, but the humor found throughout certainly numbs it. It's basic point and click dungeon crawler madness, and if you want the challenge, I strongly suggest dropping the 5 bucks on it and amusing yourself.

The simple games of course were only meant for mild distraction, however. The current jewel in my bat belt of gaming is Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

I preordered this game about a week before release on Steam. I had been toying with getting it on release or waiting a few months, but ultimately, I had enjoyed the original so much, I was really only kidding myself. Deep down, I knew I would buy it asap, and so I did.

What can I say that hasn't already been said? I'll just give my critiques: My biggest problem with the game is that the character animations during the dialog sequences drive me nuts… I don't want them to hold perfectly still, but the sporadic movements of the arms and head is… I don't know, it just bugs me… It does lack some of the depth from the original, but this game has got everything where it needs to be, and makes it all count. It's definitely not the usual "run in and shoot everything randomly" type of FPS. Its focus is definitely on the stealth, whether you like it or not. Fortunately, I love it.

There are a few ways to approach the different missions, and several variables to the different situations and conversations, you'll be hard-pressed to find them all in even a second play through. All your augments require energy which is represented by batteries that run along under your health. Which is fine, but only one cell recharges on its own, meaning there is an element of resource management as the other cells can only be replenished with energy bars found in the game. I am not a fan of this mechanic, and would like to have seen an upgrade to allow for two or three of the cells to recharge, but I understand their thinking in choosing to do it this way. Doesn't make it any less annoying – I'm just saying I get it. Unfortunately, it forced me into playing the game with just one cell my first run through, avoiding upgrades that require more power as it's simply the most efficient way to play, which made my investment into more energy cells a waste.

So those are my gripes. Over all, the game is fantastic; more than able to rise above any of my issues with it – I would highly recommend it to any gamer out there. The story and the characters are enjoyable, the environments are fun to explore, and you play as an ass-kicking cyborg, what's not to like?

Okay, I wrote a blog about Back to the Future - The Game... which I enjoyed... mostly... but I had three serious problems with it - one in particular which I ended up ranting for like two pages about instead and decided to just sum things up on the game real quick and hit you with a *****fest.

Item #1) Game Difficulty - Jbul actually summed up my thoughts on this in general, I'll spare you my thoughts on the industry at large, but this game. Jesus, this game - not only does it want to hold your hand, it wants to bring flowers to your window at night, serenade you and ultimately marry you. It's borderline harassment. I am the type of gamer who sets the difficulty to 11. (points if you get the reference) I say crank it up and strap in. It makes things more interesting in my opinion. If I want an easy game, I'll play an easy game. Hence, I played the point and click adventure game "Back to the Future". However, even with the easy games, particularly when it's wall to wall puzzles - I don't want to hold hands with the game, just shut up and let me work it out myself. Even after I turned all the hints and popups off, the hints stay on in the first area, saying "Have you looked at [this item] yet!?" It did this while I was clicking on all the hot spots in the room, just seeing and hearing Marty's reactions and exploring... the game seemed to take this as me being lost and confused, with no clue what to do and therefore began offering me obvious tidbits I didn't need or want... Like the fat kid in high school who would offer the hot girl some of his french fries in the hope they would then bond and become inseparable as their love blossomed into whatever the hell kids think love is these days. bah.

Item #2) Game Content - when I say content here, I have to clarify that I am speaking about episode one only, and specifically, the amount of time it took me to complete it. I will say that my expectations were ridiculously high on this point, but only in hindsight. Originally I thought I was being quite generous. I figured the 'episode' would last somewhere between 5 and 10 hours. I thought, surely, this episode will carry me to March, then I can start on the second episode, and by the time I finish that, episode 3 will be out and I'll never even notice the blanks in between. Two hours. I played for an hour last night, went to bed, woke up, went to work, came home, played for another hour and then I had completed episode one, and I was taking my time. I enjoyed it, don't get me wrong - but on the list of things I could complete in two hours, a video game hasn't been on that list in years. My top 3 spots aren't even appropriate for this site, but number 4 is power drinking, so whatever escalates from there. I mean, I get that it's just *AN* episode, but... two hours followed by a month of nothing? C'mon.** I would still recommend this game to fans, if this tiny part is an indication of the quality - then fans will not be disappointed. The movement system takes some getting used to, and there are a few syncing issues, but other than that everything is pretty solid. Personally, I'll be waiting until it's all available at once.

**fortunately, I got this episode for free from Telltalegames.com episode 1 is free if you register - so nothing lost.**

Item #3) EPISODIC GAMING - I despise this business model. These games have guaranteed releases each month for their various episodes, which says "the game is completed" to me. It also says "...but you can only have a little bit of it at a time" and ".... you have to pay for it all now"

Just for fun, let's put that all together, shall we?

"Our game is completed... but you can only have a little bit of it at a time.... but we'll take all your money upfront."

At first glance, it's not that bad of an idea - I can almost see the appeal, pay now, and then get a new section of the game every month! Yay! It's like a monthly pre-paid xmas!!! Or a book club, maybe? Like maybe if you get one book, and then they send you one page at a time... something like that. It takes a special kind of person to enjoy that sort of thing I guess. However, I am not that person - I look at it this way: if each episode is roughly two hours of content - that's 10 hours total spaced out over 5 or 6 months. Once again, that is 10 out of some 3,650+ hours - and thinking about it like that, personally, I would rather just have the whole game all at once, play it over the course of a week or two and be done with it... Nevermind that I'd be paying 25 bucks for a 10 hour game, assuming that is roughly the length. I can't see the benefit of these tiny, spaced out releases over a complete release when your customer is paying 100% upfront. Especially given the A.D.D. riddled minds of many gamers today - I don't even HAVE an attention span problem and I can tell you I am not going to remember month to month what is going on, especially on time frames so small. Perhaps if the number of episodes were reduced, and the sections of game were combined into more substantial pieces, maybe halves. I could handle that as long as there wasn't too much time between the two. Maybe I just have no patience and I'm whining for the sake of making noise - but I really do find this model to be obnoxious, the price is relatively small, but so is the game, too small to justify its total release being strung out over the course of 5 months, potentially more since the final episode doesn't have a date next to it. More than that though, this broken up delivery can detract from the overall story, imagine if the new Batman movies, instead of being released as self contained narratives with a beginning and end, were released in 10 minute clips each month over the course of a year, you pay the 15 bucks or whatever for your ticket up front, and each month you can watch another 10 minutes. Wouldn't that be annoying? I defy anyone to go to the theater the 3 or 4 times it would take just to get through the opening act of 'Begins' - god knows I would be bored senseless.


OR WOULD I??

Stay tuned to find out next month for Episodic Gaming, Episode 2!

Fun Cubed!

It has been awhile since my last post - you will have to forgive the absence of comments on your blogs, my year has been off to a rough start amidst a wall of constant but vague placations (read: "probably lies") from people I should be able to rely on but can't, and the loss of a family member to whom I was extremely close, I have not felt much like socializing in any form.

However, as things return to normal, so too does my usual habit of getting all angrified at common human stupidity and dreams of punching the perpetrators of said stupidity in the face… hard. It has been difficult to keep my mind off of all the things that are bothering me right now, and my aggravation has been magnified many times over under the circumstances, I haven't even WANTED to play games - but I do have a saving grace:

Minecraft.

I heard about this game through a Zero Punctuation review a couple weeks ago and was immediately intrigued. I found the main website, read through some of the forums and discovered a veritable wealth of 'Let's Play" videos on YouTube. Some of which are mesmerizing for reasons I can't explain. The simplicity of the game, if you can call it that, to me is incredibly gratifying. There is absolutely no point to it. It is PURE sandbox. There are no achievements, there's no plot; all you do is survive in the world while you carve out, explore, build, create and destroy things all around you, finding a cavern with rare minerals always evokes a girly "squeeee!" from me and I can't wait to throw up some torches and mine every little bit so I can add them to my ever expanding cave/house thing I've built – all the while avoiding and/or killing zombies, skeletons, and those ****ing Creepers. Seriously, screw those **ck shaped bastards. Of course, being a sandbox game, you can set the mode to 'peaceful' and be completely without baddies, but I prefer the additional element and occasional jump scares. It's quite an engrossing game despite its simplicity.

For me, this all harkens back to the old days when I was a little kid – I didn't always care about getting through the story, I just liked playing around in the game world. I remember one game specifically on the NES when I was maybe 8 years old at most - and I got "Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland" as a random present from my mom. I played the game, and found many of the levels to be frustratingly hard for my 8 year old self, but the mechanic of feeding candy to the different creatures and taking their abilities for a short time I found to be a great deal of fun. I loved flying around as the bee, and burrowing through the sand as the mole, digging out a little home for myself or whatever. I always did this sort of thing with my games when I was little. Minecraft and its purposely pixel based retro graphics puts me right back in the mindset, and on top of that, encourages it. It's quite addictive, even in its current beta form and while I haven't tried any of them, there is a wide selection of mods from a very active community.

Granted – this is definitely not for everyone. As I said, there is no real point to it, it's a time waster, perhaps more in the vein of one of those Facebook games, (which I loathe, by the way) – but only in the sense of being relatively pointless, even those games assign specific goals to be accomplished, thus giving direction and drive. You have to quite literally make your own way, and your own entertainment in this game. I'm sure the multiplayer part of this game is even more so, since you can be either robbed blind or given a helping hand at any time by another player, and setting up mutual goals within a group of people online is a challenge in and of itself without the game backing up the rules.

This game relies heavily on your own imagination – and If that is not something you can or care to deal with, then don't waste your time or money on this game.

I am well aware that there are those among you who prefer a gun bobbing in front of you instead of a blocky hand or a pixilated pickaxe and will no doubt point and laugh at me and my silly collection of cubes – and that is perfectly fine. It keeps my mind busy and yet blank – and that little bit of peace however temporary it may be - is what gaming is to me.

Movin' and Shakin' to the new year!


Barring my ex girlfriends, I've been very fortunate with the people in my life. I love my family and friends dearly, That said, the holidays to me are a total hassle... I don't get the 'xmas spirit' anymore - the "magic" of the holiday has ceased to exist for me which gives me my grinchy charm that I grace you all with year-round. It's not that I don't try - I watch the xmas specials, and don't kid yourself, they're xmas specials. I hear the xmas music, seasons greetings, blah blah blah.

Nothin'.

There's no backstory, nothing awful happened to me on xmas when I was a child that I have to relive the painful memories of every year. I don't hate the holidays at all, I just don't get that overwhelming feeling of joy and good will anymore. Maybe I'll get it back someday....but enough of that, on with the loot!

I had a pretty damn good haul this year, I never ask for anything so I usually get money and a few random stocking stuffers and some funny gag gifts, and while I did get those things this year, among them a fushigi(sp) ball because they're hiariously ridiculous, and a roll of animal print duct tape (my mom's favorite thing to give me, knowing I find animal print to be the tackiest thing on the planet I always get something with animal print on it, last year it was a zebra snuggie)

George Carlin dvd box set with all of his HBO Specials - My favorite comedian of all time, hands down. It never even occurred to me to look for something like this - I am most pleased. I've already watched most of them, and it's interesting to see how dramatically he changes from year to year... his very first one was littered with HBO disclaimers about his 'strong language' which itself made me laugh at how puritanical everyone was back then, (and still is to a degree) especially on the heels of his supreme court case about the 7 dirty words.

Sandwich Grill - when I was a kid, my grandmother had one of these things, it's made specifically for sandwiches, it makes a perfect panini AND cuts it in half for you. I am, shall we say, not so gifted in the kitchen, and yet I love kitchen gadgets. As stunted as my culinary abilities may be, I can do sandwiches - and this thing makes them awesome on toast. Literally.

Silver Ring - I am not one for a lot of "bling" - but if I do sport any kind of jewelry it is always silver or white gold. I don't wear any other color because it looks awful on me. This was packaged with my animal print duct tape, my mom is a funny lady.

PS3 Move - Another gift from my mom, this thing, I have to say - is actually quite a lot of fun! I didn't think I'd get into motion controls, but I understand now... more on that in a minute.

I also got some nice cigars from my dad for those rare occasions that I smoke them, but it's never a bad idea to have a good scotch and some nice cigars on hand. Additionally, I got some Best Buy gift cards, which I later used to pick up a Kinect and a couple of games to complete my arm waving armada of awesome.


It was a great xmas, and I always enjoy spending time with my family, at least now that I'm older and have become just as ridiculous as they are. It's nice really.

------

Now, my thoughts on motion controllers and gaming with them. I was looking at these things all wrong from the start... these are not here to try to replace the controllers - they're not an evolution of the controller even, the technology is not there yet. It's just a branch off the core. The Wii got the ball rolling and I think in a generation or two it might be more viable, the move is definitely going in the right direction as it's far more accurate than either the wii or the kinect could ever hope to be - but by then I'll be on oxygen and getting around, god willing, in a tricked out hoveround chair. (I *will* have a flux capacitor) There are games now however that are designed to use these things as they are, and you know what? They're fun. Just goofing around by myself with the PS3 and the Kinect, alone in my living room felt completely ridiculous, and I was momentarily overcome with intense shame... but I kept playing because damnit, I was enjoying myself. I wasn't grinding my teeth in frustration, or making loud grunts at the screen at some cheap death. Just simple disc golf, or table tennis. Simple fun.

My experience with the Kinect is still somewhat limited, but I've messed with it enough to say it's a similar feeling... although the feeling of shame was a bit more intense, but in a different way.. Playing Kinect Sports, once again, alone in my living room, was awkward to say the least - but it was fun, and I didn't really care, then at the end of my little soccer game - I got a replay. It showed the hilights of my jumping and kicking and headbutting at the air, and as I watched myself, I started laughing... I keep using the word ridiculous here because that's what it is and oddly enough, that's what makes these things fun. It would definitely be better with a group of people, which I haven't gotten to use the kinect for..... yet.

The Move however got it's first go last night. My New Years Eve began on the early side of the evening with my friend dropping by for some pre commencement celebratory drinks. He immediately noticed the kinect and move hardware now placed perfectly in front and on top of my tv, respectively. The Move was chosen to be first, and there began a 6 hour competition of disc golf and gladiators.... as more people came by, more people wanted to play. Full grown men and women jumping around in my living room slinging lighted balls at my tv screen, and I just sat back and laughed along with everyone else, what added to it was we were all dressed to go out which just made everything funnier. To me, anyway. Watching a friend swing an invisible sword in high heels and a dress while another is dropping a sport coat on the floor so he can move more freely and maybe not lose quite so badly to her is an amazingly hilarious thing to watch. About 10:30 it was time for us all to pile into my suv and get on with our night, but man, what a great way to warm up! The rest of the evening went on as the standard NYE of any other year, happy new year, lots of drinks, lots of laughs, texts from everyone that couldn't join in on my move party which had become legend by the time the clock hit midnight. I am going to do this again next weekend, but everyone will be in t-shirts and jeans this time and not worrying about working up a sweat before going out on the town, plus I'll get the kinect going too, I anticipate many laughs from Dance Central.

Anyways, happy new year to you all, I hope it was a good one. I for one am going to get breakfast in a mild attempt to stave off the hangover that is sure to be hitting me in the next hour or so.

On the bright side, at some point very soon.... I *will* be drunk.

and in that moment...... bliss.

Merry ******* xmas.

As I left my stately mansion this morning, my butler informed me that I was 100% on time and had no need to rush. I took to the air with ease and the earth fell away… Just as I rose to the clouds I heard a call for help, … in China. So I moved at the speed of light to the location only to find that it was a trap and I ended up fighting an army of robot kung fu masters in the extremely choreographed movie style of 'one at a time' -fortunately they were no match for my super strength! After I finished off the last one, I realized that time had just screamed by and I should have been in my office for the last 15 minutes at that point – so, after setting the remains of this metal army aflame with my pyrokinesis, I zoomed back to the states, then a little old lady had a blowout on the interstate and I had to save her and change her tire…. She was very thankful and tried to give me some coupons for cat food, I politely refused as I don't have a cat.

…And that's why I'm a half hour late.

From VPOperations@mycompany.com
Re: Reason for lateness

I had no idea that you were late, and I don't think I ever want to know again.

If life were more like Mario Kart, I'd at least get to throw turtle shells at these people.

My morning commute is not too bad in terms of distance. My office is only about 5miles away from my home, and during the summers it's a quick 10 minute casual drive down the road, and the numerous stoplights are barely noticeable - and this is a very busy street, it goes across almost the entirety of Houston, which if you don't know, is a MASSIVE city, which on top of being ridiculous in size, does not have the convenient grid layout of most other large cities which makes it difficult to navigate foranyonethat hasn't lived theirforan extended amount oftime and makes forcountless intersections, hence all the traffic lights in such a small area.

However, the majority of the year – this otherwise brief 5 mile trip takes me anywhere from 20-30 minutes to travel, which is aneternity for such a short distance. Equate it to walkingout to get your mail and although your mailbox is only a few yards away, it takes you an hour to get there because time and space keep bending around you in order to**** with you all the better.Like a really annoying dream.

So, what could nullify the simple logistics and physics of this trek? Children. Oooh yeah, here we go... hold your hands up, this is the peak, it's pretty much straight down from here.

This stretch of road has 14, that's FOURTEEN school zones. There are 3 churches, 2 elementary schools 12 stoplights and at least 2 sets of traffic cops slowing the **** out of everything, and naturally, there's the moving roadblocks that are school buses. Now, if you have been paying attention to my blog for awhile, you will know that I openly hate everything that I've just listed… and these things stand in my way between the comfort of my home andwhereI make mymoney, which really just doubles down on whatever seething rage lay beneath the surface of my ridiculously charming exterior.I don't have road rage, per se…I'm generally indifferent if I'm not on a schedule...but if I was ever capable of taking human life it would be every morning and late afternoonMonday through Friday on that 5 mile stretch. I've got churchies forever turning into their worship box, waiting for the nonexistent full minute gap in traffic to make their left turn. I've got school buses lumbering along at the blazing speed of 15-20 miles an hour even outside of school zones that are stopping every 30 feet, because god help us if these little ****** all gathered in one area. The traffic lights are timed pretty much the same, so if you get stuck at one, you are officially stuck at all of them, and then of course the 14 ******** school zones… placed as if the city planners had a bunch of extra signs left over and just stuck them all on this road, presumably to annoy me. The worst time of year however, above and beyond all others…. the beginning of the school year.

This is a time where not only are the school buses out rolling around blissfully unaware of their detrimental effect on my life and pursuit of happiness, but the traffic is three fold. Why? It's because at BOTH the elementary schools I must push past have lines of cars wrapping OUT of their parking lots and down the street through at least two traffic lights – who are these idiots? They're parents. These semi-sentient breeders, so enamored are they with their offspring that they deem the bus system unfit to transport their seeds from one place to another, and therefore they must do it themselves. This wears off after a month or two of course, but every year is the same. Oh and it's not enough to take up one entire lane for the use of waiting to let your brat out of the car, but they also use the one remaining lane that would otherwise let the rest of us with places to go pass, for trying to cut into the obscenely slow moving line. It's a big production, these kids getting dropped off – the car gets up to the marked "drop off zone" and EVERYONE gets out… pictures are taken for their first day of school, mothers are weepy saying goodbye to their future fry station operator, while the fathers give exasperated sighs and check their watch before lamenting that the kid will be back home in like 6 hours. I often wonder how any of these kids ever get to cIass what with the days of waiting in line and the broadway play they have to participate in upon departing the vehicle.

Meanwhile I am trying to develop the ability to set things on fire with my mind. Once I've managed past these cesspits, I have to focus though – there are still several school zones to go after all, and there is a denser population of teenage drivers to contend with as there is a high school in the area as well… not on my path of course, but these cretins use this road to get there. It's the standard faire, guys with trucks driving them like they're in a dragster, girls in big SUVs talking on the phone, texting, putting on makeup. Car pools of morons laughing to themselves, and fantasizing about Justin Beiber or whatever it is teenage boys do these days. You have to keep on your toes around here because you can and will get sideswiped if you aren't 100% on the defensive… once I've made it past this area though, it's pretty much smooth sailing on into my office, there's only one more school zone and three more traffic lights to go. The school zone itself is rather pointless, it's about 10 yards, and just barely covers the intersection it boarders. Most people ignore it. After that, as long as the traffic cops aren't stopping traffic for a ridiculous amount of time to allow 3 very distantly spaced vehicles and then wait just in case a fourth one comes, I can usually coast in to the garage. There is an optional route I could take, via the freeway, however it is without fail, gridlocked during the hours I need to use it – so I use it maybe twice a year, if that.

Now, the only thing that can slow me down at this point are the idiots attempting to navigate the apparently mind numbing circular pattern that must be traveled within the garage itself. Some people, for some reason, completely lose their ****once they get into these garages. I can't fathom why, there are giant arrows that say which way to go, which way not to go, and yet – more often than not, I am stuck behind the one person who can't read arrows. Or park. Finally I make it to my spot thankfully reserved for me, and then down the elevator and into my office where the remaining brain cells commit seppuku upon encountering the stupidity that oozes from the majority of my coworkers.

The home trip is basically all that in reverse, except add in that bastard who gets on the elevator and presses '2'.

A tale of love, acceptance, and devastating loss. **Since this is apparently far too technical an entry for SOME of you, (:P) give the vast depth of my computer knowledge, I understand that perhaps it is over the top on all the star trek jargon with all my futuristic techno-speak, so I just bolded the parts that sum it up the best. Jargon free!**

About a month ago, my 100% legitimately purchased copy of Windows 7 told me it was exactly 100% not genuine via a message in the bottom right hand corner of my desktop.

"O RLY!?"

… YA RLY.

"Well **** you, then."

Uninstalled.

The fault, in all honesty, is my own – upon purchasing my copy of Windows 7 Ultimate at a wallet blistering $300+ bucks, I had assumed I would be able to spread the love around a little bit. Specifically, I installed it on my mom's laptop, and then my own. Although I don't live with them, I figured the relationship was close enough to fall under some kind of same-household clause… that apparently doesn't exist, although by all logic, it should. Instead, Microsoft wants me to buy that same software twice, which makes me want to punch it. Or switch to Linux.

So I switched to Linux.

This OS requires quite a bit more know-how than the standard computer user probably has right off the bat. It can be intimidating, it certainly was for me. My days of tinkering with software and hardware are way behind me, and in the interim 10-12 years, I've regressed into technological (du)numbness. I'm not used to things not "just working" as soon as I plug them in. However, this was only at first glance – I find Linux to be every bit as usable as Windows ever was, in fact, once you get settled in – it beats the crap out of Windows. It's far more aesthetically pleasing, and I've never had so much control over my system before. Installing and removing things are a breeze, it handles media and internet just as well as Windows, in fact, I'd argue that t does it better – but I couldn't really prove it and would just be saying it because I'm sick of Microsoft and felt like saying it.

However Linux has one MAJOR drawback – no gaming support. There are some (rather unimpressive) OpenGL games that can run natively in Linux, and there are three or four ways to get Windows (DirectX) games to work as well – but they're all ridiculously complicated for a user like me. The closest I got was running Windows XP in virtual box… I got Spore installed – but you can't virtualize hardware, and I couldn't enable my video card within the virtual box to save my life, so I burned one of my SecuROM installs on nothing, basically. :roll:

My time with Linux is nearing its end; I don't want it to – I like it MUCH more than Windows. It's smaller, cleaner, and far more versatile… but, as much as I'd like to stay forever, my inner gamer has needs that must be sated. This means that having gifted my copy of 7 out, I must deliver my laptop once again into the hands of Vista, Microsoft's basement dwelling offspring, and since I can't find the software that came with my laptop, I have to install XP first, and then upgrade to Vista Ultimate. I know I could try to create a dual boot for gaming purposes, but ultimately it would just be a hassle to me. I'm not the type of person that would switch back and forth. I like things to be uniform, neat and tidy. If Linux ever makes it to the big time, believe me, I'll be all over it – but it seems for now,I am to remain enslaved by the power of DirectX.... I wonder if this is how Al Pacino felt when he did Godfather III, what with the getting out and getting dragged back in....




....and then discovering the script is balls.

This is becoming something of a bad habit it seems... Microsoft I mean.

So here we go again - my second xbox is now showing me graphical glitches that remind me of the days of the mighty NES. In my experience, this will only lead to suffering. It seems it is once again time for me to take Ol' Yeller out back and shoot him. :roll:

This is getting old, Microsoft, and I am so very weary.

**edit**
As of today, (Sunday - October 3rd)my xbox official gave me the RRoD, thus ending the life of my second system. HOWEVER, unlike last time where my version 1 xbox fell through the cracks of MS's early warranty system, (pre-retroactive warranty) THIS one is just *barely* in under the 3 years, and is therefore elligible for a free repair. Tomorrow I shall send it on it's way in a tiny cardboard coffin wrapped in an elegant shroud of bubble paper.

I want desperately to say something like "If this happens a third time down the road I will smash it with a hammer and forget about xbox for the rest of this gen" - but I know damn well there are too many games I'll want to play and I'd most likely just buy a 360 slim. Curse my wanton need of digital destruction.

Side note: Tomorrow marks my 5th year with my current company, 80 more to go and I can retire.

Hell. Population: Me.

Most days, I have my gmail running in the background, it's one those things that keeps me from flying off the handle as I can vent to whichever one of my friends is online. Or just BS with them a bit…This girl has been a friend of mine since high school, she has since been married and has a young kid, and although she is well aware of my disdain for people that can't meet me at a bar, she still tests the waters with me every now and then, and my reactions generally are not what she expects – which sends her into a blind rage… this amuses me. I've deleted most of her name, and censored the few parts that require it, but you can use your imagination. Also, since it's copied straight from gmail, the spacing is a little odd and I couldn't be bothered to fix it. My powers of apathy are formidable indeed.

T: what are you up to this weekend?

me: I don't know.. probably sinning in some way. Your god will NOT be happy come Sunday morning,I can promise you that. What about you?

T: har har. I actually wanna clean funny enough

me: you are always cleaning

how is it you have to always clean?

T: no..i always say Im going to and get sidetracked by other people. and Im always needing to because I have a kid. kids can be messy

10:57 AM me: see? I've been saying that all along. You people never listen to me… so why don't you just clean up after her then.. like… immediately? Or at least rub her nose in it… or whatever.

T: because something always comes up and I never get to just be home and Im not an ocd about the cleanliness of my house like you are. And screw you by the way.

like last weekend

free and clear calendar

me: then... NINJAS!?

T: and 9 pm fri night I get the call...love my water broke

its time

ugh

me: what? Like a pipe in your apartment?

The **** are you talking about?

T: my best friend had her baby.. she was calling me

me: gross

10:58 AM T: how is that gross

me: babies are gross.

children are gross

all the way up until about 21-22

and sometimes they're still gross. I know people in their 50's and 60'swho are gross.

oh… and you telling me about your friends water breaking, thatis also gross.

11:00 AM so, you're "free and clear" calendar actually had you scheduled to clean at exactly 9pm, but then someone's bodily fluids leaked out of them and you had to fly to the hospital to witness the miracle of god breathing life into some goo

11:01 AM PRAISE JEEBUS

T: whats it like to be so ****ing hateful?

me: it's not bad

the hours are great, and no one ***** with you

11:03 AM T: oh...how nice for you

me: =D

T: **** you. Seriously

me: oh please – what do you expect from me? Ooh's and aww's? have you not been paying attention for the last, what? 12-13 years? ****.

T: touché.

11:05 AM me: damn skippy.

Aaron – 8,497,292 T - NOTHIN'

T: shutup.

She signed off after that. I can't imagine why… but later she came back!

3:28 PM T: what is wrong with people?!

ugh

me: the shorter answer would be to list what is right

3:29 PM so far this is what I've come up with:

1) Some of them have girl parts.

that's it.

and 99.999% of the time it's not enough to save them.

3:30 PM T: :|

why do I even bother with you?

me: beats me lady… must be your blond hair and inexplicable attraction to my pants.

T: do you EVER ****ING STOP!??

me: you know the answer to that. (it's no) =D

3:31 PM T: ugh.