I have Halo 3 and I'm looking for some new friends to play ranking, social, and custom games with. Add me as a friend if you are playing Mon. - Fri. evenings (Eastern Standard Time). I also play a lot late Friday and Saturday night.

My Gamertag is: Spidey008

See you on Xbox Live!

I slowed down the video from the Bungie site and made a little Montage of some of the Halo 3 Beta videos. 

 

Click the link below to watch it.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVkey8F43Zw 

I finally got a Nintendo DS.  Here are the games that I have for it so far:

• New Super Mario Brothers
• Metroid Prime Hunters
• Brain Age
• Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow

This is really a great system.  Thanks to all who recommended it.

I've been playing Dead Rising (Xbox 360) a lot lately, and for some reason I dream of Zombies every night.  Is this a normal thing?

I don’t watch the news much, but I think the media has beaten this dead horse until its brains are coming out its nose.  No, I’m not a huge fan of Bush or Cheney, but for God’s sake give the man a break.  It was an accident. There is no huge cover up.

I watched a South Park last night and it really had me thinking about how stupid the media can be.  The South Park boys were running a news show for school.  At first, the news show was simple and they reported only news that mattered.  After the show, their teacher said that they were going to be cancelled because they had only four viewers.  This enraged them and due to their ratings going down they had to go to the “Idea Room” to come up with something better.

The next show was an extravaganza of outrageous stories of how dangerous it was to be alive.  Most of the news story was untrue.  There ratings did go up, but they were still being beat in ratings by a show called, “Close-up of Animals Using a Wide Lens.”

So the boys went back to the idea room and had a hard time coming up with ideas.  One of the boys suggested that they take a large amount of cough medicine because the 6th graders said that they could come up with ideas easily.

After chugging plenty of cough medicine each of the South Park cronies began to trip out.  After a long night of psychedelic events, they began watching the “Close-up of Animals Using a Wide Lens” show over and over again.  They ranted about how “Cool” it was.

In the morning after waking, they realized that they had come up with no ideas for a new show other than a drawing of a stick man.  They also realized that everyone at their school liked the silly dog show because they were high on cough medicine.  Finally, they had something to report about on their news show. The next show was dedicated to uncovering the true concerning the high level of cough medicine use in their school.

The morale of this story is:  Don’t drink an overdose of cough medicine to come up with ideas.

 

The morning of Monday, November 21, 2005 was just like any other morning. I got up, fed my baby, and hopped in the car with my wife for the 30+ minute drive to work. The Xbox 360 was going to be released at 12:00am on Tuesday morning (the following day). As I got to work, I began to call around to see how the new system would be distributed to shoppers at different stores. I began to worry when I called our local Wal-Mart and was informed that people were already starting to line up. Best Buy had gamers camping out since Sunday morning.

I had preordered a copy at EB Games, but they informed me that I would not receive the system until after Christmas. This was unacceptable due to the fact that I would have a few days off for Thanksgiving and they were all dedicated to gaming.

I’m really the only gamer in my family. I have a nephew that I planned to pass my old Xbox down to if I got the new system. To my surprise, my lovely wife was very supportive and exited about the new Xbox. I had only one comrade that wanted the system as bad as I, and his name was Donkey.

Donkey and I played phone tag and debated about what strategy we would take to get the system. After a few hours of worry and fret, Donkey made his move. He had his sweet old mommy go down to the local Wal-Mart and wait in line. Donkey’s mom waited for a few hours after being replaced by Donkey himself.

After work and making sure that I was still assured a copy of the 360, I made the trip to Wal-Mart to wait. I got to Wal-Mart about 5pm. I was tenth in line and Wal-Mart had 34 premium units. The next seven hours were spent between cheap shoes and the craft section waiting for the Xbox 360.

At 10pm we received tickets straight from Microsoft that assured us a copy of the hardware. By this time there were about 40-50 gamers waiting in line. Many did not get a card and were highly ticked off. A police officer was present to make sure that nothing got out of hand.

I had one nerd that offered me $525 for my ticket. I didn’t accept it because I had waited so long, and I really doubted that he would really give me $525 for a ticket with no system.

The next day many folks asked me if it was worth the wait. For all of the features and Next-Gen games that the Xbox 360 brings, I said yes. I guess you really have to be a true gaming geek to really understand.

I kinda like the new Unions feature that Gamespot has created. I'm in the Halo Union and the Capitol Union. If anyone wants to join PM me.

I've been developing a Halo 2 Clan site for the clan that I'm a member of. I'm basically doing it to learn some ASP.net and for fun.

The Address is: http://www.alankford.com/cj

Archived stats are pulled into an Access database. This allows Clan Members to view their summary stats and judge where they need to improve in the game.

I wonder if I will get Metroid Prime for Christmas? I would also like the Halo 2 XBL headset since I broke my original Headset because I was drunk one night.

Out on the forums today there was talk about the Next Gen systems. I wonder to myself, where is gaming going? After hooking up on XBox Live and playing PC games online, I can only say this games are going anywhere that supports online play.

The reason that I think this is true is because of the huge success of Halo, Unreal 2004, Quake, and so on. There are so many good online games and the AI is never smarter than humans.

The only thing that I can think will be in the Next Gen systems is more power, more online support, and more theatrical games. Games are becoming so much like interactive movies, it is just amazing. 10 years ago we were pleased with low quality platformers, and now we have games like Doom 3 for example. Full of cut scenes that are great CG quality.

How far are from full fledged Matrix type Vitural Reality. I feel that it is a lot closer than we can imagine.