Her Last Day

After nearly a decade of fine, upstanding service, today is Mom's last day at work. She helped open the place in 1999. She was there two weeks after it was destroyed in 2005. And helped re-open it in 2006. I think she has done more than her fair share over the years.

She's going to retire. Take care of her mother. See more of the Grandkids. Maybe find something small, part time, for spending cash. I'm happy for her. She doesn't need to be on her feet for forty hours a week, dealing with drunken guests and dealing with petty managerial issues. We're all happy for her. She deserves to take a break. Her work's done.

Unfortunately, I wasn't really there today. I went into the office, sure. But after an hour, I get hit with a vertigo attack from my right ear. Here's a pretty accurate description of today:

Vertigo, often the most debilitating symptom of Meniere's disease, forces the sufferer to lie down or if they can't get to a bed in time, crawl along the floor, even up the stairs. Sometimes the attack is so powerful, that the person falls to the ground "as a bag of sand". These attacks can lead to severe nausea, vomiting, and sweating. It is very important to remember that all of these symptoms are unpredictable.

One minute I'm talking to Keith about too many high-level people getting involved in a minor issue, and the next minute I plant my forehead on my desk, start dry heaving, and sweat like a cold beer under a warm August sun. It was awful. And embarrassing. And humiliating. Eventually, Garry wheeled me to the restroom, to clean up, and Cindy left work to take me home. By 2Pm, the vertigo was gone. But I was weak as a kitten and had to sleep. Finally, around 4PM, it was all over. Aside from the ravenous hunger, I was back to normal. No lasting scars from the battle.

Mom called, to check on me. I told her I was fine. I was just sorry to have missed her last day.

These days

Again with the work work work. Really not enjoying this. Floating from one problem to the next. One conference call to another. Phone calls from Executive Administrators calling in favors for their boss. Phantoms still swirling through the network. The gaming floor packed to the gills and a routine query on a guest's account hangs the dataflow for two thousand plus machines. Suddenly everyone is affected, distracted from their revelry. Waaaay too busy to have such delays. So again with the Executives calling. The culprit? A hung SQL procedure. Nothing within my reach. Had to summon reinforcements. The DBAs released the seized up bits. And there was much rejoicing among the patron hordes. Just another day for your friendly neighborhood network ronin.

On the home front, Meg had her kindergarten recital today. I videoed it with the HD camcorder. Will downcode the footage this weekend and post it for posterity. She was absolutely amazing. Right in the middle of the stage. Loud as spring thunder. At times she was one of the only kids who knew all the words to the songs and all the motions. And I could see the other children following her lead. An amazing performance. Further solidified my theory that she's destined for a bright, flashy future. In some form of limelight. She's a stellar, shining star that drowns out everything around her. The light of my eyes. My little princess. My lovely Meg Bear.

Not to be outdone, Liam has learned his backwards alphabet. Spent a day studying. Now he's flawless at it. And quick. A gift, I told him. I'm thirty seven, and he's already able to do something I've never done. Told him there is nothing he can not do if he puts his heart and mind to the task. He proves it to every day.

(Of course, knowing that her brother has picked up her knack, Meg has raised the bar. Now whenever she hears Liam recite the alphabet backwards, she does it, too. But Meg does it faster. Blindingly fast. In one breath. Each letter barely audible as she tears through it. She's a fierce competitor. Plays for keeps. Howls when she doesn't win. At anything!)

Further away, my buddy Ron found out he is still in the running for a local IT gig. I'm carving off a piece of my karma and beaming it his way. Ron's the type of guy who would give you the last cigarette out of his pack, or buy you a sandwich with his last dollar. So I hope he lands this job. And if my feeble karma can help, it's the least I can do.

And again on the job front, the Teutonic beast, Kimmer, also received some good news. One of those companies up in Atlanta, GA, accepted his resume and a manager is peeping it. More of my weak karma is en route to him. I'm gathering bones and glass marbles to conjure the spirits of my dark computer gods, so that they may also lend their aid. He's a complete villain when he's unemployed. Lives on bile and widow's tears to keep his rage alive. Going on something like the fifth month of his Anger Diet and I'm tired of him knocking my jaw loose during the full moon. Some villains turn into a fuming wolf under such pale light. Kimmer turns into a silver-backed mountain gorilla and gnaws off the limbs of orphans. A wretched sight. It probably made me sterile seeing it. In the meanwhile, between campaigns, he has opened a tattoo shop. Pressing ink to help ease the burden of his pain. Needling the pigments deep into strange flesh. Watching the blood puddle on the skin. Oh, that's Kimmer. A throwback to the last Ice Age when pulling hair and baring fangs were acceptable forms of communication. These days, he's all stabby. At least until he draws a corporate paycheck again.

Steam Vader Helmet

Doing my eBay thing earlier. Looking for something to make me feel exotic and unique and neogeeky all at the same time when I stumble upon this: the Steam Vader Helmet.

Some modern hippy mad hatter in Valdosta, GA, cobbled together a solder helper, a Darth Vader Mask, some gold paint, and a really bad table cloth.

I am not sure how effective it will be during a right proper lightsaber dual, but it will be a great conversation piece during the next steampunk social event.

Let loose the hounds!

Worked out yesterday. Booooooom! Good stuff. Two really intense circuits. An hour of yoga. Half an hour of cardio. Great great great time in the gym. So glad to be back. Why wasn't I this motivated 20 years ago?

Put in 11 hours at work today. Chasing a ton of problems. All four proxy servers in Las Vegas gave us fits. They had to be rebooted before we had decent internet connections. A print appliance blew up and started ARPing like crazy across the entire local subnet. It slaughtered the Player's Club and affected everyone for hours until we sniffed it out. And our WAN optimizer started showing its age, borking up connections for our Citrix-based Property Management System (PMS!) All of that simultaneously making our lives (and several thousand end users) miserable.

My brother, Jason, has strep throat AND a staph infection. Double whammy. Triple whammy if you throw his infant daughter into the mix. Thankfully he is off work Tuesday - Friday. He'll have some time to recover. He needs it.

No job for Kimmer. No job for Romie. New job for Adam. Eventually a new job for Lisa. In today's environment, I'm not rocking the boat. South Mississippi isn't exactly a sprawl technological Mecca. But I'm giving serious thought to tilling the earth and becoming a farmer. Corn production across America is down. Corn consumption is soaring. Simple math.

Had a flashback today. Back in 2004 I had a rare encounter. While walking to lunch in Atlanta, GA, I noticed a commotion proceeding toward me down Peachtree. Lots of people moving slowly. Light dusting of police presence. And fire. Bobbing down the middle of the street, a torch. But not just any torch. The torch. For the 2004 Olympics. I stopped and stared. Less than ten feet away, the runner stopped, too. He held up the iconic symbol, smiled, and passed it to another runner. And the procession continued down Peachtree.

What a difference four years make. Now protests mar the line of runners. The police have to fight off screaming, angry anti-China, pro-Tibet protesters. While I admire their fortitude, the protesters are wasting their time and ruining the dream of countless innocent runners.
Brave, but fruitless. Our government is going to do absolutely nothing to upset the balance of power with China. We need them to supply us with cheap goods and buy our rapidly bloating debt. It is a parasitic relation. But who is sucking the other's blood?

And thus my day draws to a close. Tomorrow brings another battle. I pray for victory.

Meg's Cool Trick

We were driving to the gym last weekend and Meg started doing the most amazing thing! I thought it was a fluke. But she could do it every time. Not only had we never heard her do it before, but nobody else could do it! I think it's pretty amazing for something she picked up on her own. So I recorded it for posterity. Maybe one day I'll get to show it at her wedding reception, for her new groom.

Deluged

Notable events of the day:
Hit the gym this afternoon. I was a little tired after yesterday's adventure with eight hundred pounds of topsoil (x3 sets!) But I continued to return to my former heights on the weights. Did 400lbs on the inclined press. 180lbs on the hacksquat. 160lbs on the bench. 185lbs on deadlifts. Plus everything else on the circuits. Great great workout and I really pushed myself. Concluded with a half hour of cardio. Lots and lots of sweat.

Put Mom and Dad back online with a re-formated PC. Took forever to do the updates. And took me a few minutes to figure out the printer wouldn't work because Dad had the USB cable in the modem port. Plus they are out of black ink. But I dumbed everything down and made it (I hope) simple for them to check their email and check eBay. And I know their new system isn't part of some botnet, now.

Ton of rain today. My front yard has a few lakes. But the holes I filled yesterday appear to have survived. Not that I went, but the Jazz Fest was flooded. New Orleans had a foot or more of water. Pictures of coolers floating across The Fairgrounds litter the 6-o'clock news.

I made the most of my limited weekend. But we all got deluged.

But Kimmer LOVES Spam

A couple of closing thoughts for the night.

First, I watched Indiana Jones & The Raiders Of The Lost Ark with Liam tonight. His first. My seventieth. I forgot that my buddy Kimmer has his Big Screen debut in the movie, waaaaaay back in 1981. His German wasn't so good, but his fisticuffs were spectacular. If it weren't for the fact that he caught a spinning propeller in the face, Kimmer would have made schnitzel out of Doctor Jones! I snapped a clip (click to enlarge!) of him. Man! Was he in his prime, or what?

Funny how time changes. I think Kim is on the wrestling circuit, now. I found a more recent picture of him. He was saying, "You think anybody wants a roundhouse kick to the face while I'm wearing these bad boys? Forget about it! You think anybody thinks I'm a failure because I go home to Starla at night? Forget about it!"

Starla is one lucky woman. Big tracts of land!

Finally, today marks the 30th birthday of my friend: SPAM! The first unsolicited piece of email was blasted out on this day, thirty years ago.

On March 31, 1999, Joel Furr was the first to call a spam a spam. It was an obscure reference to a Monty Python skit. In the skit, an English diner serves its food with lots and lots of spam, and the cross-dressing waitress repeats the word several times in describing how much spam is in the items. As s/he does this, a group of nearby Vikings start chanting:

"Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, lovely spam! Wonderful spam!"

Until the waitress hollers at them to shut up.

And so the meaning of the term "spam" is: anything that keeps repeating and repeating itself to the point of annoyance.

So, Happy Birthday, Spam! Here's a video to celebrate your namesake

Her Feminine Side

My Mom (Nana, to the kids) picked up some new clothes for Meg. Meg proceed to model everything for us. She doesn't like anyone to help her. And she likes to accessorize (sp?) by herself. Mom got a big kick out of it. Meg had a great time. Makes me so proud to have such a radiantly beautiful daughter. It is always refreshing to see her feminine side.

Landfill

When my builder, John, came over to demo the deck and carport in the back yard, we offered to do Miss Dees, my ancient neighbor, a favor by disposing of some concrete yard posts she wanted removed. Unfortunately neither John nor I knew the ground around her fence was a damp sponge. And John's excavator not only sank up to the treads, but it gouged man-sized holes in Miss Dees' yard.

Sadly, Miss Dees' brownie is no longer baked in the middle, and she thinks I should have been arrested for trespassing and destruction of property. Not only does she yell at me to fix it, she thinks every adult male on my property is me, and yells at them to fix it. She's yelled at my father. At my brother. At my father-in-law. I'm surprised she hasn't yelled at Liam, yet.

The other week, I put 2000lbs of sand and gravel in the holes. That settled down into the holes. And of course Miss Dees yelled about it.

Today, I put 20 bags of topsoil on top of the sand and gravel. Considering each bag weighed 40lbs, that's eight hundred pounds of topsoil. And I had to move them not once, not twice, but thrice. Loaded them onto the hand truck at Lowe's. Loaded them into my car. Then dump them on the holes.

After I filled and leveled the holes. I put down a thick coat of seeds. I forget the brand, but it has worked for me and I've filled some really ugly bare patches with them before. After they were down, I watered everything. Hopefully it will start growing in. And hopefully Miss Dees will climb out of my rectum.

While rolling up the hose, I spotted a couple of Cindy's friends. Two tiny green frogs. They were both green when I went to grab the camera. But when I came back, once of them had changed and was mimicking the color of the hose stand. The beauty and grace of nature. Made me smile. I needed that.

GAME: Kill Switch

Somehow, I missed this one back in 2004. It is your basic straight-forward military shooter. Set in the near-future with un-futuristic weapons. You get your basic rifle. A pocket full of grenades. Possibility to grab a sniping rifle at times. Under-barrel grenade launcher in there some where. Not sure who decided it would be interesting to have advanced communication technology (ie: a neural implant with real-time tactical communication) while keeping the weaponry unadvanced, but it didn't work for me.

Kill Switch also has a clever (at least it tries to be clever) twist on the combat shooter genre: it likes you to use "cover" to take out the enemy. Unfortunately, the enemy also likes to use cover. So the battles typically devolves into you hiding behind a column while the enemy hides behind a truck. And you wait for the enemy to pop up and shoot you, so you can shoot him. Not only is it repetitious and boring, but I typically ran out of ammo all-too-quickly and restored to rolling up on the jihadist and get physical with him.

Which brings me to my final frustration. For such a crack trooper, the character has an insanely limited skillset. He has one mode of jumping. He can pistol whip an enemy, but can't punch or kick them. And his ability to throw a grenade looks to be inferior to mine, and I'm not a gifted grenade-thrower.

The graphics aren't bad. The plot isn't anything special but I did like the unfolding storyline with the girl whispering, "Say my name." But overall, it didn't win any awards. And I'm not surprised.

Within an hour, I had deleted Kill Switch. Even if this were 2004, it would have been an under-performer. It did not have any redeeming value and wasn't worth the amount of space it took up on my drives.

However, if somebody is interested in trying it, the game can be found on eBay for $0.99.

The King's Biggest Role

Somebody sent this my way.

Thought I'd share.

"Elvis Versus Godzilla" is an excellent name for a band.

Long live The King.

Un-Illegal Aliens

The Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (S.E.T.I.) has one job. It looks for non-natural signals originating from somewhere other than Earth. If they find signals, they know something, somewhere created them. In theory that "something" is an intelligent lifeform of some sort. S.E.T.I. has been looking at the sky since 1984. Almost a quarter of a century. And they have announced no significant findings. Not one.

SETI@Home is a "distributed computing" project where people donate the spare computational power of their computers to help sift through mountains of received radio signals from space and look for an intelligent needle in that cosmic haystack. The project has been running since 1995. Since that time, three million people from 256 different countries have contributed to the project. I am one of them. I joined on May 19, 1999. I've contributed a combined total of 142,546 hours toward the project. Almost 54B (yes, billion!) signals have been processed by the project in the past decade. But again, they have announced no significant findings. And I've wasted 142,546 hours searching.

Just to further elaborate on the depth of my futility, out of the 1,347,304 active users, I am the #8258 top contributor. That puts me in the top 0.6% of all time. And in the ranks of most prolific daily contributors, out of 1,347,304, I am currently #1416. That means I'm in the current top 0.1% of all active contributors. Which is no small feat. And makes the lack of a discovery all the more bitter.

The scope of the failure is rarely mentioned, only the efforts that have gone into it. The problem is that unless "intelligent life" is purposely hiding from us (a possibility) we can safely say we have no neighbors within twenty five light years of Earth. Not good. Even if we found a signal today, and we replied immediately, our neighbors wouldn't get the call for at least twenty five years. And it would take us another twenty five years to hear their reply.

Twenty five years to say, "Hello?"

Twenty five years to respond, "Is E.T. there?"

And we've been beaming our own signals into space since the 1936. That's when Hitler televised the Berlin Olympics. That means our sporting events have potentially reaching anyone between Germany and Zeta Leporis. Unfortunately, we've been broadcasting for 72yrs, without anyone getting back in touch with us.

If nothing else, I want to cling to this mortal coil until we've confirmed we are not alone in this universe. But we know we've got at least twenty five light years worth of silence to overcome. And the gap grows wide each second.

If I don't do it this May 19th (9 years) I'm going to throw in the towel next year. A fruitless decade of looking at the sky and asking, "Is anybody out there?"

Very depressing.

MOVIE: War

Didn't Jet Li retire? If not, he should have. BEFORE he made War!

I like the guy. He has skills. He impressed me in the past. But he is supposed to be a martial artist. He shouldn't depend on computer generated trickery to try to impress the audience. He shouldn't try to prop the success of the movie up on the use wires to leap around doing fantastic, impossible moves. And if a proper demonstration of butt-kicking were displayed, he wouldn't need to try to crutch the nose-diving awe of him with large, loud firearms.

Take the special effects out of Crouching Tiger / Hidden Dragon, and it is still an excellent movie. Take the special effects out of War, and it collapses upon itself like a log cabin made of steaming ninja turds.

The writing was bad. The acting was laughable. The plot was unbelievable, but managed to avoid being predictable. The ACTION was pitiful. The dialog was pathetic. And not even the special effects could keep me from fast forwarding most of the scenes.

Oh, and somewhere, Jason Statham is in it. Hoorah. He needs to get back to filming The Transport 3: Return Of Pink.

Possibly one of the worst movies I've seen in 08. Not worth renting, even for free. If you watched War with a date, you have my condolences.

BOOK: Crooked Little Vein

My far-distant buddy, Kevin B, sniped Warren Ellis' Crooked Little Vein off my Amazon wish list last month. I finished it this past weekend.

Warren usually writes comics. He is also quite a prolific web celebrity. He is bleak, timely, and extremely knowledgeable about all manner of subculture trivia. He's an Information Age, technophillic, self-promoting Aleister Crowley. And I'm quite fond of his writing.

Crooked Little Vein is Ellis' first novel. It isn't a comic. It isn't for the kiddies. And prudish adults should likely steer clear of it, too. It contains lots of offensive material. Lots of it. Naughtiness at every turn. Right Wing Conservatives and Fans Of Bush should avoid this one.

It is a dark tale of adventure centering around pseudo-detective Mike McGill and his attempt to reclaim a lost tome. A legendary book that has special interest to the current Presidential administration. As is usually the theme, the journey is more important than the actual reward. And what a twisted journey it is. Ellis spins a web of shady characters that would be more at home in Malebolge of Dante's Hell than in the light of day.

Mike McGill is a spewing fountainhead of bad karma. If something bad happens, it happens to Mike. If there's a villain in the area with a raging hate-on, his first victim is likely to be Mike. If there's one plague-infected mosquito in a room full of people with Mike, he'll be the only person bitten. And of course, he'll have TB coursing through his veins before the end of the chapter.

Ellis' writing is very crisp and clean. He doesn't stay in one place too long. He doesn't drag out any points or wax poetic on any deeply philosophical themes. The pacing is quick. The characters are mildly shallow, but entertaining. And while I thought I was substantially well read, Ellis completely baffled me with some of the kinks and addictions he presented in Crooked Little Vein. If I didn't know any better, I'd think he was bluffing. But saline injecting juice monkeys are so unbelievably sickening, they must be real, or Ellis wouldn't torment me with them.

Quick. Entertaining. Funny. Creative. Enlightening. All in all, a very enjoyable read. I hope Warren Ellis produces more dark adventures for my perusal.

Kimmer's inspirational poster

In between cries of, "Woe is me," and pleas for some of my rapidly-dwindling supply of Good Karma, my buddy Kimmer sends me his latest inspirational poster. (click to enlarge)

Fortunately Cindy never views my page and won't confuse the image for something of MY creation. She has a lawyer on her speed dial. She'd put papers on me like fur on a Sasquatch.

Jibber Jabber

My Mom called me Saturday night. Unusual for her. Said she gave her two week notice at work. They took away her day off on Tuesday, so she won't have any days off with Dad. And they tried to write her up for "talking over a supervisor" on the radio. She's been there like nine and a half years, and they want to admonish her for hitting TALK too quickly on the radio? Puh-lease! So she said she'd give them two more weeks and that was it. And the rest is history.

Picked up Cindy from the airport on Sunday. Surprised her by waiting with the kids at the gates. She surprised us with a new haircut. Almost didn't recognize her. Was used to her hair being down by her collar bones. Now it is up by her chin. I've never been picky about that sort of thing. As long as she's happy, and not bald, I'm happy. The new cut does make her look younger, and hipper. And she feels better about this one. She's happy. So I'm happy.

Meg woke up at 0430 Monday, came into our bedroom, and promptly announced, "I threw up." Cindy took her into the bathroom to clean her up, while I made the mistake of going to Meg's room to scout the extend of the damage. I'll spare the gory details save one: there were chunks on the wall. Needless to say, Cindy stayed home that day with Meg. Fortunately, Baby Bear has been much better since then.

Liam got his first stripe in Bazillian Jiu Jitsu last night. It took him a while to get the hang of "falls." He reallllly doesn't like falling. I don't blame him. But he IS on a thick padded mat when he is doing it. So it isn't like he's getting hurt. Still, he didn't like to feign a fall and fought it every step of the way. Finally, after watching other kids get their stripe, he surrendered his fears, performed the falls correctly, and scored a stripe.

Last night, I hit the sack extremely early. Somewhere close to 9PM. Caught up on a lot of sleep. And felt great this morning. Hit the gym this afternoon. Kicked it up a notch and continued to inch closer to my former limits. No problems with my neck. No problems with my back or shoulders. Everything felt great. Followed up a couple weight circuits with an hour of yoga. More relaxing than challenging. And before I left, I checked the scale. Only re-gained gained two of the 8 pounds I lost. 209 right now. Down from 215 earlier this year. Going to work on getting down to an even 200 before I get to the beach in June. Just glad I didn't re-gain all that weight. Makes me less frustrated and more eager to resume my training routine. Pick up where I left off.

Work continues to keep me wrapped up during the day. There's a big political showdown in PA, tonight. I've been touching base with some of my old Atlanta, GA, amigos. Been swapping email with my old childhood buddies. Life is good. But August is approaching. I feel it in the wind.

If ABC News hosted the Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858

After my rant this week about ABC's utter chimpery of a debate, I'm glad to know other folks felt the same. I truly enjoyed Andrew Olmsted's version of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, as performed with ABC News.

Here's an excerpt:

LINCOLN: In my opinion, slavery will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. "A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Excuse me, did an Elijah H. Johnson attend your church?

LINCOLN: When I was a boy in Illinois forty years ago, yes. I think he was a deacon.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Are you aware that he regularly called Kentucky “a land of swine and whores”?

LINCOLN: Sounds right -- his ex-wife was from Kentucky.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Why did you remain in the church after hearing those statements?

LINCOLN: I was eight.

DOUGLAS: This is an important question George -- it's an issue that certainly will be raised in the fall.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Do you denounce him?

LINCOLN: I’d like to get back to the divided house if I may.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Do you denounce and reject him?

LINCOLN: If it will make you shut up, yes, I denounce and reject him.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Do you denounce and reject him with sugar on top?

LINCOLN: Yes.

STEPHANOPOULOS: No takesies-backsies?

LINCOLN: Yes.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Whoa, so you would consider a takesie-backsie?

LINCOLN: That’s not what I meant…

Thank you, Andrew. Good to know somebody is even more snide than I am.

Visit his blog for the rest of the debate.

GAME: Shadowgrounds

Found this from back in the '05. Likely before Katrina screwed up my day. Just fired it up this week and took it for a test drive.

You don't see too many over-head shooters any more. But Shadowgrounds was extremely well done and quite entertaining. It brought me back to my quarter-popping arcade days when a couple of bucks kept us busy for hours. Back when you had to figure out games on you own. Pre-internet. Pre-Gamespot.

Shadowgrounds is about an ornery mechanic on Ganymede who constantly finds himself taking on the crapiest job on the planet. Sure there are likely soldiers and scientists out there better trained and better qualified to do it, but the responsibility always falls on the common man to save the day. He starts with a simple pistol and a flashlight, initially splattering simple aliens in simple situations. But, image this, the plot thickens. Tougher aliens emerge. More weapons are discovered. And the weapons can be upgraded, to a degree. And, as usual, it all boils down to a man and a firearm slugging it out through a barrage of trigger-happy space scum and leaving only a trail of exotic guts in his wake.

What I liked:

• The graphics are actually impressive and better than anything I used to play at the arcade. It isn't photorealistic, but the lighting effects were fantastic and I played with the flashlight through the whole game. Would have been interesting if they could have done something clever with the light!
• The weapons were great! I especially liked the final electric-spewing gun. Endlessly fascinating to fire that thing up and watch tongues of lightning flickers across the screen and enshroud the baddies. The flamethrower also earned big points as well as the secondary firing option on the laser rifle.
  
• Jumping was extremely useful in combat. It pulled my fat out of the fire many times.

What I didn't like:

• There weren't enough upgrade points to REALLY try all the weapons' modifications. If you didn't like something, you couldn't un-do it and use the points elsewhere. Almost everything seemed to be useful, so it was a matter of weighing how much I really wanted a gas grenade vs a sub-nuclear rocket. More points, please!
• The plot was sorely predictable (until the last cut scene.) Some of the story lines (ie: trip through the mines) were completely fruitless. The sub-titles didn't always match the audio. And at one point the game forced me to play some silly ass timing-related challenge when a scientist flipped a switch and I had to hit a button EXACTLY 10 seconds later. Except 10 seconds to me didn't match 10 seconds to the game. I used Liam's digital stopwatch to time it, but the game never conceded I knew how to count to ten! Finally, after 90 tries, an NPC counted to 10 correctly and flipped the switch for me. Why that scene was in the game is completely beyond me. It did nothing but tick me off and waste time.
• Outside of dodging, jumping had no value and the environment rarely (if ever) came into play.
• Small selection of monsters. Very limited variety and by the first third of the game, I had seem everything there was to see, with the exception of bosses.
  
• The weapon I used MOST was the basic pistol (with all the upgrades.) It never ran out of ammo, it shot straight, it shot far, and it did fairly decent damage. The other weapons were great, but it was sad to keep reverting back to the pistol for either the range or the unlimited shots.
• The game TEASED me with powered armor. It should have let me use it, or just removed the suggestion I'd get to use it. The freakin' suits were ON THE WALL, but I couldn't gear up? Maddening.

All things considered, a decent little game. Good for a couple of hours on a rainy weekend when nothing else is available.

TGIF

It has been an extremely long, fatiguing week. Most of the time I didn't know what day it was. I'd blink and it was 3PM. I'd blink again and it was midnight. Morning came too soon. As if I never slept. My bones would protest in the too-early light. But finally, Friday is upon us. A brief respite from the war.

Only a couple of updates tonight. I don't have the mental wherewithal for much more. Still spinning up to full speed and hopefully next week will come with more elaborate entries.

• Cindy is in Atlanta. I bought her a plane ticket and a ticket to see the Braves. They were winning last time I checked. Hopefully she enjoys the trip and the break from the kids.
• The kids are climbing back from colds. Meg from two weeks ago. Liam last week. However they managed to cast their pox upon me. I'm fighting it this week. Pretty bad caught last night. First time I've REALLY been sick since October of 2005. Not a bad run.
  
• I'm really enjoying this last season of Battlestar Galactica. The opening scene of the premiere was staggering to behold. An epic work of art. Not that I agree with the direction or pacing of the current story line, but visually and aesthetically BSG is the finest piece of science fiction ever produced.
  
• My amigos Kimmer & Uncle Ron still hunt the White Whale of employment. I know their pain all too well. Bad time to be looking. And the three of us can tell you, being unemployed is greatly over-rated.
• The new summer heat has brought roaches. As I typed a minute ago, a slow brown one fell off the kitchen wall. Skittered feebly across the floor. The exterminator came earlier this week. And the pests are falling victim to his wares. Those that haven't died are (literally) on their last legs. Like run in confused circles. Until the shoe falls.

It is going to be a long, crazy summer.

The First Great Undebate Of 08

So I was a little busy last night. Watching commercial-free runs of The Ultimate Fighter and DEA and Breaking Bad. So I missed the debate on NBC.

Unfortunately, I watched it today. That's, what? Two hours of my life that I'll never get back? Seriously. What was I thinking! It couldn't have been a bigger turd if it has popped out of the hindquarters of a Super-Sized Eurasian Shaggy Mastodon.

Other than having no discernible effect on any future decision I might make, my major beef is that it was completely irrelevant. Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopolous spent the first hour beating an endless shambling parade of dead horses. I receive no value to further discussion of Hillary's Bosnia story or Obama's link to Rev. Wright. And what is was with the video question questioning Obama's of the American flag? As if the man is going to confess his secret fetish for wrapping himself in the state pendants and rolling around on a bed of lightly sauteed and still steaming grilled onions?

The rest was just noise in my ears. Nothing of any merit or strength. Easily predicted questions receiving easily predicted answers. The captive hearts and minds of half of America in their hands and the only thing Gibson and Stephanopolous can pitch are limp-wristed softballs?

But that is what American politics has become. Softcore Vaudville acts. Spineless hacks afraid to challenge the "candidates." Instead, they trade light-hearted slaps with them. Larry, Moe, and Curly fighting over a bandsaw.

And in eight months, they all have to tango with Shemp.