Soul Kerfuffle

Best of the Decade - Albums

2009-12-04T12:08:00.004-05:00

As another cross blog venture, my good pals at The Philosophy of Time Travel and LastBestAngryMan have invited me to participate in a number of top 5 lists as this decade draws to a close. We have very different musical tastes in terms of our favorite stuff, but I also think we all are willing to listen to a lot of different stuff so there is some crossover.

Lists like this are by their very nature completely subjective, but the point has always been to simply tell everybody they are wrong about everything.

5) Kid A by Radiohead

This album represents for me the height of Radiohead's greatness - better than everything that came before and much better than everything that has come since. They take their first steps here into really stretching into experimentation but still keep some pop hooks, and the result is just tremendous. Everybody knows at least one or two songs by Radiohead just from osmosis, but what is interesting is that all these years later, you still have a chance of hearing something from The Bends or OK Computer on your radio but very little chance of hearing anything from this album which surely must be their best.

4) Yankee Hotel Foxtrot by Wilco

This album is for Wilco what the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock must have been like for T.S. Eliot: once you produce something this good, how can you live up to it again? Keeping with that analogy, we still haven't seen Wilco's equivalent of The Waste Land. They are still making great music (and I just saw them in concert this year incidentally), but they've never been able to replicate the heights of fancy and genius they hit with this album early in the decade. That's not a knock against the band as few have ever hit heights like this. From the very beginning lyrics: "I am an American Aquarium drinker" you know you are going to get something a little bit different - but through it all it remains a coherent, sometimes heartbreaking but ultimately hopeful work that stands as something to be listened to from beginning to end.

3) Good Apollo, I'm Burning Star IV, Vol 1: From Fear Through the Eyes of Madness by Coheed and Cambria

Rock Band was basically the greatest thing to happen to these guys in terms of popularity as the fantastic track "Welcome Home" from this particular album is featured in the game, and was also featured in the preview for the movie "9". But more than just that particular single, this is the 3rd album in a series of 4 that comprise an entire sci-fi rock opera by the group, telling a singular tale that, while often clumsy/impenetrable in terms of narrative, serves to tie the whole project together in a single thread. This 3rd volume is in my opinion the strongest with so many great tunes that stand alone, but in particular "Ten Speed (Of God's Blood and Burial)" and "Apollo I: The Writing Writer" rise to such bizarre heights of creativity in subject matter while at the same time keeping coherent metal hooks - it's just brilliant stuff all around. All 4 albums are terrific, but this one for me is the best of the project.

2) Takk.. by Sigur Ros

Sigur Ros stands alone in their own category of music making right now for me insofar as I firmly believe they are the most important band out there today. You could argue there are other bands that are better but the reason Sigur Ros is so essential is they are in the unique position of being legitimately popular. How this, by pop standards, weird group from Iceland became pop icons is completely lost on me but I'm totally okay with it because it really shows that all is not lost - people WILL listen to truly great music given the opportunity. If you had told me when Agaetis Byrjun was released that "Svefn-g-englar" would feature prominently on an episode of the TV show "V", I would've told you that was patently absurd. It was very difficult to choose between this album and () (also called "Two Sausages Kissing" in jest) only because () was probably more important for the band's development, but I've listened to Takk.. too many times not to make this the album I choose. I remember hearing Glosoli for the first time when I saw the band in concert - they were touring just before the release of Takk.. - and having my mind utterly blown. When I think of the Platonic model of "hope", I think of that song.

1) Lateralus by Tool

This is bar none my favorite band, and this is my favorite album by that band. I get it that Tool isn't for everybody (just people who know what they're talking about), but it is tough to find a musician anywhere who won't at least admit that these guys are all absolutely ridiculous when it comes to the technical talent on display at every instrument in this band. Perfect Circle is a nice project for Maynard and I enjoy them, but this is where Maynard's home is, and this is where he does his best work. It's amazing that this album came out in 2001 and nothing has come out that has been better, including Tool's own 10,000 Days which, while awesome, didn't quite hit the level of Lateralus simply because track for track there are absolutely no weaknesses on Lateralus. Perhaps the way I can most easily sum up the level of this band is to relay this story: after seeing this band in concert with one of my friends who is a musician, he simply turned to me and said "Well, that was intimidating." Indeed.

Chat Log

2009-07-31T13:59:00.003-04:00

Some context for below - tonight the local minor league team, the Wilmington Blue Rocks, are having "Cowboy Monkey Rodeo Night", which involves monkeys dressed as cowboys riding on dogs.

This led to the chat below with a good friend:

me: tonight is awesome

  Cowboy Monkey Rodeo night + fireworks

  Monkeys in cowboy outfits riding dogs

Friend: shouldn;t they be called Dogboy Monkies?

me: Cowboy Monkey will lasso you good for suggesting this

  they don't round up dogs

  they ride them

Friend: yeah true

  what do they round up? Squirrels?

  COWS???

me: what they round up are good times

  Goodtimeboy Monkeys

Friend: now that would be illegal - making monkeys round up squirrels while riding dogs

  then - you feed the losing team to a shark

  THAT'S good times

me: I don't want to live in a country where you can't watch monkeys dressed as cowboys riding dogs herding squirrels tossing them to sharks

  and you can quote me on that

Harry

2009-04-14T10:50:00.003-04:00

One of the many things that makes baseball the greatest sport in the world is that it represents stability - every March, players start training for April. Every April, thousands of fans show up for Opening Day at their respective ballparks, filled with the hope of possibility - even if their team is predicted to lose 100 games this year, it hasn't happened yet: everybody starts 0-0.

As the oft maligned former commissioner Bart Giamatti said: It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone.

In other words, it appeals because there is so little about the game that ever changes. It is as familiar as the spring, as familiar as the sun rising and setting.

When Harry Kalas died yesterday, it surprised me that it hurt. It didn't seem to me at first like I had any right to really be affected: after all, I didn't know Harry personally. I never met the man. I was just a Phillies fan, one that probably took him for granted too often like many others, so used to him calling the games that it didn't even cross my mind that someday, he wouldn't be around to do it. Harry called every Phillies game of my entire life - his presence was as ubiquitous as the Phillies themselves, as baseball itself.

I stare out the window at what is a gloomy day here in Delaware, and I know the spring will come. I know that everyone will eventually move on, myself included, because baseball, like life, goes on.

But for right now, for this moment, Harry is gone, and with him the spring and the promise that both it and baseball bring. The promise they represent - that there are windows of opportunity in life where anything seems possible - for now seems to have disappeared.

The feeling will pass, as all things do, and no matter how much we might want things to stay the same, no matter how much we might want to turn on the game tomorrow night and hear Harry call it, comforted by the familiarity of it all, it won't happen. We learn to adjust.

Baseball represents that too, you know: the game may not change, but the people do. It's not a bad thing or a good thing, it just is.

Right now though, I just want it to feel like spring, the way it did on Sunday when the Phillies won and Harry called the game, and everything was exactly as I thought it should be on an afternoon in April - and now can't ever be precisely the same again.

5 Most Anticipated Films of 2009

2009-01-08T09:23:00.003-05:00

I absolutely love movies, but I dislike going to the movie theater. In the past 2 years I've seen maybe a half dozen movies in the theater, and very rarely will I go on a busy movie day (like a Friday night) if I go at all. I like a nice Sunday matinee, but really with TVs and DVD players being what they are, with all of the easy access we have to movies via Netflix, movie channels, TiVo, Netflix on TiVo, etc. it just seems kind of silly sometimes to go to a movie theater when I (personally) can be guaranteed to enjoy the experience at home. Going to the movie theater is not a sure good time, mostly because of the occasional rudeness of other movie-goers.

But sometimes you just can't avoid the hype and you find yourself unwilling to wait for the DVD release.

My buddies at LastBestAngryMan and The Philosophy of Time Travel agreed we would all post our top 5 most anticipated films of 2009. Here's the top 5 movies I'm most likely to see in the theater in 2009, which by proxy means they are the most anticipated:

5) 9 - This film will mark the real feature film directing debut for Shane Acker, who really cut his teeth doing animation with Weta during the Lord of the Rings films. Here's the deal with this one - Acker made a 10 minute or so short film around the concept a few years ago. The movie is embedded below. The film coming out in theaters this year is the whole story. The visual style is super cool and I'm always a fan of animation in all its incarnations.

Short film "9":

Feature Film Trailer, featuring a terrific song by Coheed and Cambria:

4) The Lovely Bones - There are two big reasons I'm looking forward to seeing this. Number one, the book is absolutely terrific and for me exceeded the critical hype. Number two, Peter Jackson is directing, and the material from the book is something I think he could prepare a feast with. No trailer available yet.

3) The Wrestler - This movie is technically out right now in the US but only under limited release. I check every weekend to see if it is out around Delaware but so far no luck. The number one reason I want to see this: I haven't seen a Darren Aronofsky movie yet that I haven't loved. I also have a soft spot in my heart for the material here because when I was a kid I was a huge fan of pro wrestling. There's a lot of Oscar talk swirling around Mickey Rourke's performance in this one, if that kind of stuff matters to you.

2) Public Enemies - It's a 1930s crime drama starring Christian Bale and Johnny Depp directed by Michael Mann. If you need any more explanation than that I have no idea what to tell you.

1) Watchmen - I'm worried about this movie. Really, really worried. There is a very good reason that Watchmen is the only graphic novel on Time's 100 greatest novels list: it is an absolute masterpiece. It is also really, really complex and has always seemed like it would be a nightmare to faithfully translate to the big screen. We already know that at least one key element (the Tales of the Black Freighter framing device) will not be in the movie. There are more and more reports suggesting that the ending has been changed. The director's original 3 hour cut was apparently loathed by the studio and who knows if it will survive tampering. The whole thing is a recipe for a colossal disaster.

But I had a lot of the same skepticism with Lord of the Rings, and boy was I completely wrong there. This easily gets #1 because it is probably the only movie I will definitely see this year in the theater, and that's because there's no way I'll be able to avoid it. A great deal of my friends love the graphic novel as much as I do, and I'll be unable to avoid discussions of this movie when it is finally out.

Hopefully they will be discussions about how we were totally wrong about all our concerns over the movie.

The Peace Team

2008-08-27T08:23:00.002-04:00

You don't need to know the ins and outs of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to know that it's bad. In fact, it has been so bad for so long that whenever another bombing or act of terrorism is reported, it just seems to roll like water off a duck's back for most folks.

It says something when a story of cooperation is more unexpected and surprising than a story of people blowing each other up. It says something sad about the way things are there. But it also says something awe inspiring at just how far some people will go to try to change things, even on the tiniest of levels.

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When you say "football", people from different parts of the world will think of different things. Most, of course, will think of what we call in America "soccer". In Australia though, they think of their own variation of "rugby" - Australian rules football.

In 2002, Australia hosted the first ever Australian Football International Cup. The idea was to promote interest in the sport in other countries by hosting a tournament that Australia itself would not participate in. It's the kind of thing I can't imagine America bothering to host - we'd want to win our own tournament, after all. But since Australia has the only professional league for their unique sport, it made sense to sit out this tournament because winning was almost guaranteed. Why not give other teams playing their sport in other countries a chance to compete and measure their talents?

The tournament was enough of a success that it was hosted again in 2005, and now it will happen a third time here in 2008. This year 16 teams from around the world will compete for the trophy, the most since the tournament started.

When you look at the list of teams competing, one jumps out at you: Peace Team.

A strange name for a side participating in a rough and tumble game.

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In January of 2008, Australian football legend Robert "Dipper" Dipierdomenico, along with some other league representatives, presented the rules of the game to a room full of 100 young men. Out of that 100, 40 were selected to participate in a 3 day clinic to learn the basics of the game.

The unusual part of the story: these young men were a mix of Israelis and Palestinians, and the clinic was in Jerusalem.

Perhaps crazy enough was the idea of getting a team of men completely unfamiliar with the sport ready to compete internationally in just under 8 months.

But even crazier was the idea of trying to do it here, with these men.

The team faced complications trying to train that would be completely unheard of elsewhere. The coach's instructions needed to be translated to both Hebrew and Arabic. The team was shut out of their Israeli training facility for 4 days during a visit by President Bush when all Palestinians were denied access, including Palestinian members of the team. Team members received threats from both sides of the conflict, either enduring the usual hate from one side or being called "traitor" by the other. Palestinian team members needed to obtain work permits for every training session, sometimes traveling upwards of 4 hours through various security checkpoints.

The pressure was too much for a number of the players. Some of them, facing threats from their own friends and neighbors, left the team.

In spite of all of this, a few kept practicing. A few kept playing. In spite of the lack of a proper field (they played on soccer fields) with proper goalposts (they had none), they kept learning.

The first time the team had seen real goal posts was when they arrived in Australia a week ago.

They play their first match of the tournament today against Great Britain.

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New Zealand and Ireland will be the favorites going into the tournament. The Peace Team will probably be lucky to win a single match.

But win or lose, they will do it together.

"Everyone knows the story in Israel and Palestine, the occupation, the killings, bombings, we came here to show the people, we came for the peace, we need the peace," says Palestinian ruckman Fares Switte.

In January, it's not likely Fares Switte knew what a ruckman was.

But then again, in January, the whole notion of a team like this was pretty unlikely too.

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After the tournament is over, the players on the Peace Team will return to their normal lives. They will return to face the same strife and conflict they faced before they started playing together.

They might even return to find themselves reviled in their own homes.

But they'll return changed in this small way, knowing this simple thing: if we can play together, we can live together.

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Note: For a tremendous introduction to the various factions and pieces in play in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I can't recommend the game Peacemaker enough. It is easily the most engaging introduction I've ever seen, better even than any book I have read on the topic.

And yes, it has a Mac version.

The Olympics, and Liquor

2008-08-15T09:29:00.007-04:00

It's an ever shrinking world.

On the one hand it means we tend to fight a little more over resources that we all need.

On the other hand, it means we have a better opportunity than ever to learn to live with each other.

I'm a big fan of the Olympics. I'm talking about an event where we get to see sports that we probably won't see for another 4 years, but with a built in rooting interest. We root for our country. We root for the human interest stories. We root for the ideal that we can all, just maybe, get along for a couple weeks.

Of course the ideal is not reality. The Olympics are bringing some of China's questionable government practices out into the world spotlight. The games are sometimes overshadowed by stories of the conflict in Georgia.

In spite of these things, sport goes on. The beauty of sport as a fan is that, for the duration of the match, game, whatever, you aren't thinking about those things. It is not a good idea to ignore what goes on in this world. But it's not a bad thing to set it aside once in awhile.

-----

Imagine you've got a tumor in your belly growing so large that it begins to push all of your internal organs, liver, intestine, kidneys... all to the sides of your body.

Imagine that the hospital that is trying to treat you has just been taken over by a group that is likely to kill you if they see you.

Imagine that it doesn't matter anyway, since the doctors have told you there is nothing they can do to save you.

Imagine you are two years old.

This boy exists, and he lives in Iraq, the child of a Sunni family whose hospital had been taken over by Shiite militia.

On the other side of the world, in Boston, someone hears of this, a wealthy, 85 year old liquor tycoon whose own son died of an incurable form of cancer.

The world is shrinking.

The elderly fellow from Boston pays for the young boy's family to fly to Jordan where there is a very dim hope of treatment with the tumor so far advanced.

The doctors in Jordan do not know what will happen, but it is the only hope.

It is not a miracle what happens next. A miracle would be something that defies all explanation.

I don't yet believe that acts of human kindness defy all explanation.

-----

The pursuit of athletic excellence is an ideal, just like the pursuit of global peace. They may both be fleeting things sometimes, but that doesn't mean they don't occasionally exist, even if only in very small batches.

For just a few moments, when Michael Phelps breaks another world record, for a fleeting moment he is the pinnacle of athletic excellence.

For just a few moments, when a young Iraqi boy walks out of a hospital in Jordan after treatment paid for by a elderly man in Boston, they are world peace.

The world is shrinking. And it is not a bad thing.

The Big 3-0

2008-08-06T08:41:00.004-04:00

Aaaaand we're back.

So as of today I am 30 years old. Things couldn't be better.

I've written before about what I think the advantages to getting older are and I still stand by those things. Bill Watterson once suggested that people who remember childhood as an idyllic time were probably never children, and that's a statement I agree with. It's not like being a kid was bad (it wasn't), but it's a pretty amazing (and sometimes scary) thing to have a modicum of control over your life.

I also maintain it is awesome to be able to have the authority to scold those younger than you are. Age is the type of completely arbitrary authority that just increases with every passing day. Just this morning I pulled into the parking garage at work and there was a young fellow blasting music out of his car. Just the fact that I could legitimately think to myself: "That young punk, what's he doing playing music at that volume this early in the morning" and actually have a small part of that thought be automatically accurate (the part about him being "young" compared to me, not necessarily the part about being a punk, he's probably a real swell kid, I mean after all he is arriving at work at 7:30 AM just like I am, probably during his summer vacation) is the type of thing that I find internally amusing enough to keep me in a good mood.

So, where have I been these past several months? Well, I haven't been doing anything particularly epic. Since getting married, Jules had been busy studying for the Delaware Bar Exam (a 3 day test which she finished taking last week, results in October) and I've been doing... whatever it is that I do.

And frankly that's what I LIKE doing. There was a time in the heady days of my youth (you know, like 8 years ago) where I would have been terrified of the notion of working a 35-40 hour a week job, settling in to some kind of routine. Now it's really what I enjoy most. Some of my best times are just relaxing at home talking to Jules, reading a book or watching baseball on the tube together. I'm a much more boring guy than I used to be, but I consider that to be a good thing.

So why haven't I been updating the blog then? What's the excuse? Well, there really isn't any. But I've been thinking during all those months I haven't been writing about what this blog is exactly. Is it a journal? Is it a blog about games? Shouldn't it have a theme of some kind?

And I've kind of decided that there are enough blogs out there that spend their time discussing games, and enough blogs out there that are just journals. There are enough blogs out there that complain and mock various things, and really I'm not as good at any of that stuff as they are.

So as of today, I'm going to try something new with the blog. I'm going to go for a general theme of optimism. A general theme that says "life can be pretty cool." That may still involve games that I think are fun and self-deprecating personal anecdotes and some of the other random stuff I throw up here... but the gist will be the type of kerfuffle that puts a smile on my face.

We'll see, maybe it will put a smile on yours. And if you got this far, thanks for not unsubscribing from this thing.

I Can Prove It With Google Results

2008-03-28T12:47:00.006-04:00

I'm starting to see the following expression used more and more in various publications these days, particularly by journalists:

Searching for X on Google produces Y results in Z seconds.

If you haven't seen this before, let me give you a couple of examples:

From Law.com:

Online virtual worlds are wildly popular, attracting millions of people every day, and a recent Google search for MMORPG yielded approximately 32 million results.

From the Toronto Star:

Partner new Blue Jay shortstop David Eckstein and the word "scrappy" and a Google search will advise you of some 5,300 possibilities. In just 0.38 seconds, too.

From Jose Canseco's new steroid book, Vindicated:

Put in 'Alex Rodriguez' and 'infidelity' and you'll get like fifty thousand hits.

The gist I guess is that there is supposed to be some correlation between X and Y.

People, please stop this madness. Maybe you think it's a cute gimmick and a nice alternative to the old stock "Meriam Webster defines 'infedility' as..." type of intro, but all it does is expose you as a complete idiot. For the love of god, there is no correlation between X and Y. It's a firk ding blasting search engine, it goes and gets as many results as it can.

Allow me to demonstrate via the following examples of my own.

If there was any question that more dinosaurs are wearing pink hats now than ever before, just pair "pink hat" with "dinosaur" in a Google search. You'll get 635,000 results in 0.17 seconds.

I always thought bananas were funny looking, like they're from another planet. You might be surprised to hear that a Google search of "aliens plant bananas" yields 526,000 results in 0.29 seconds. Bananas may be the proof we need that we are not alone.

Recycling for the planet is one thing, but what about recycling what our own body produces for ourselves? A quick Google search of "lose weight by drinking raw sewage" gives you 153,000 results in just 0.32 seconds. It's obviously an idea worth considering.

To writers everywhere, I am begging you this last time to please stop this insanity, or so help me I will Google "[your name here] is completely brain dead", thus proving forever that somebody needs to pull your plug.

The Great Game Throwdown: RPGs

2008-03-20T09:14:00.011-04:00

Both the LastBestAngryMan and The Philosophy of Time Travel are way ahead of me here, but this marks the final installment of the Great Game Throwdown.

Being nerds of the highest quality, we have saved the best, Role Playing Games, for last.

5 - Planescape: Torment (PC)

One thing you'll find in common with most of these choices is the quality of the stories told.

What's kind of sad is that not many heard this particular story.

Made by the RPG kings at BioWare (now a part of the EA conglomeration), Planescape: Torment was designed on the same Infinity Engine on which the Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale games were built. The world of Planescape, however, is a far cry from the prototypical stuff one associates with the Dungeons and Dragons franchise, and I think this probably hurt sales of the game.

Correction: Astute reader Dhruin correctly points out that the game was actually made by Black Isle Studios using BioWare's Infinity engine, not by BioWare itself.

The Nameless One, pictured here with his sidekick, Morte the floating skull
But that's too bad, because the story is nothing short of awesome. One of the major themes deals with "consensus reality", the notion that if enough people believe in something it becomes real, and that's really what the Planescape universe is all about. The game capitalizes on this in very clever ways, and in the end it is one of the more tragic plots I've played in a computer game.

A terrific game, and one I wish I could play again.

4 - Final Fantasy VII (PS1)

One of the things I've kind of been struggling with when doing these lists is what exactly the notion of "great" is.

For the most part I've been posting games that are great to me personally. Games, like music, are usually a matter of personal tastes.

But there are certain bands that whether we like or not, we can't deny they had a major impact on music in general. The same holds true for certain games.

Final Fantasy VII isn't my favorite game in the Final Fantasy series (that would be FF IV, which was actually FF II here in the US. I know, it's confusing), but it has to be considered one of the most important games in the history of RPGs, if not video games period.

The game had such enormous impact and such a complex storyline, unprecedented at that time, that it introduced an entire generation of gamers to the possibilities of the video game medium. When critics attack video games as nothing but murder simulators, it is games like FF7 that gamers present as their defense.

The iconic moment of Aerith's death in the game is one that anyone who has ever played the game remembers perfectly, and is often cited as the moment people realized that video games could be so much more.

Aerith, a gaming icon

Final Fantasy VII proved that this is a medium that can move people, and a medium that can move people can surely be considered art.

Yes, art. And I don't think the importance of FF7 in this argument can be understated. It's a game about which people have written books and graduate theses. Countless articles have been written about the game's impact. People still write fan fiction and chat about the game.

Is it a great game? I don't know. It's not really a sandbox like some of these other games, and you're kind of forced step by step through the story. But the story was unprecedented, the emotional impact real, and the significance, I believe, yet to be paralleled.

3 - Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (PC)

The Elder Scroll games have built their reputation on being insanely open-ended. On the one hand that usually means the main story isn't particularly tight (at least I found that to be the case with Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall). But it really doesn't matter because the game is more like a huge sandbox anyway.

Portals to other dimensions are great space savers for your closet or garage

I know LBAM picked Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind on his list but I've got to go with Oblivion for the following reasons:

- Story felt tighter and more interesting.
- The side stories/quests were better quality for me.
- Game was significantly less buggy.

They're all great games and you can easily get 100+ hours of gameplay out of any of them.

2 - Chrono Trigger (SNES)

The best game ever to come out on the Super Nintendo, hands down.

Chrono Trigger has a terrific plot line that actually uses time travel and makes it not suck. Wonderful, clever characters. For my money the best soundtrack a video game has ever had. Multiple endings. A mode where you could start the game from the beginning with all of your existing experience and gain access to even MORE endings by beating the game at different times in the plot line.

I've always wished they'd release an updated version of this game for the Nintendo DS or something. I'd buy it the second it became available.

You know it's the final battle because there are, like, LASERS in the background

A sort of sequel, Chrono Cross, was released on the PlayStation and was a decent game in its own right, but it didn't capture the pure magic of the original. If you can find this anywhere, even on an emulator, I really encourage you to do so.

1 - Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn (PC)

Here's the thing about BG2: everything I said about every other game in the list applies here, and then some.

Did BG2 have the incredible cultural impact that FF7 had? I highly doubt it. But for me it's the coming together of dozens and dozens of other great design ideas into one flawlessly executed package.

Great story? Check. Great characters? Check. Great soundtrack? Check. Open ended enough to feel like you're not boxed in? Check. It goes on and on.

The hand painted backgrounds still look good

Even the expansion pack, Throne of Bhaal, which ends the story once and for all, is incredibly satisfying. But BG2 is capable of standing alone. This is BioWare at the height of their powers.

Worst Ever - Neverwinter Nights

Maybe it's harsh. Maybe the game wasn't really that bad. Maybe it's simply crazy for me to criticize the same company that produced the Baldur's Gate games.

But I remember sitting at GenCon in Milwaukee the year this game first got demoed. I remember being blown away by how easy it looked to create your own adventures, control your own story, etc. BioWare was selling this as the game that was going to be able to bring the tabletop experience to computer gaming. I left absolutely convinced that Neverwinter Nights was going to make it possible for my friends to play D&D together forever, wherever we might end up.

I realize now that translating the tabletop experience to a video game is just an impossible goal. The developers probably knew it too. It was probably just a marketing ploy. But none of that makes the end result any easier to swallow.

It's not just that the multiplayer aspect of this game fell way below the hype and expectations. The single player game is actually several steps backward from games like Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale, games the same company made.

The storyline is cookie cutter. The combat is elementary. You can only control one character plus one sidekick. The initial release of the game had a horrendous bug that crashed your game after the 4th chapter. The dialogue trees would repeat themselves. None of the attention to detail and careful QA was in Neverwinter Nights that we say in every other game made the company up to this point.

BioWare would bounce back with Knights of the Old Republic, which barely didn't make this list (it would come in at 6th). They made another classic with Jade Empire after that. Now that the company has been purchased by EA, I'm skeptical that they'll ever release a really excellent game again, but I'm willing to wait and see.

But Neverwinter Nights was truly a low, low point for me. Not only did it fail to deliver on what was promised, it failed to deliver on anything really fun.

RIP Gary Gygax

2008-03-04T15:23:00.003-05:00

The "Father of Dungeons and Dragons", and really tabletop gaming period, died today.

I don't think Gary Gygax's influence in gaming today can be overstated. Along with Dave Arneson, the man basically helped invent an entirely new way to play games, and in the process, an entirely new way to make friends.

It may seem nerdy and cheesy to those who have never sat down with others to sling dice, enjoy good company, and hopefully tell a good story together, but his impact on my life is, as one friend said when he heard the news, "greater than any of us might care to admit."

But it was huge. When I got married a month ago, the guys that were standing up there with me were guys I had played Dungeons & Dragons with.

Even today, modern computer RPGs use systems that Gary Gygax helped pioneer. They use design paradigms that we take completely for granted now, but somebody had to invent them. Mr. Gygax was that guy.

Part of getting old is seeing your heroes pass away. Here's hoping the hobby he created lives on for a long, long time.

The Great Game Throw Down: First Person Shooters

2008-03-02T10:42:00.004-05:00

There is no genre in gaming that kicks the crap out of me like First Person Shooters. For reasons unknown, I am just not very good at these. That's kind of a funny thing, because I've played quite a few of them, and college was full of FPS sessions on the campus network. There was a game or two where I became competent, but at some point these games got too fast and confusing for me to handle, and I now spend most of my time getting fragged.

Seriously, I've gotten so bad at these games that there are some of them I can't beat even with cheat codes.

I'd also argue that this is a genre that has stagnated worse in the last few years than any genre we've covered. The Philosophy of Time Travel does a good job in his list of going through some of the landmark games innovation-wise, but you'll note that most of the "innovation" is really just graphic improvements and quality storylines. Those are nice things, but they're not innovative. With First Person Shooters however, I'm not sure how you really take them anywhere new because I think this is also a genre where people have very definite expectations now about how the game is supposed to work. Improvements to physics engines (I can blow more stuff up) and graphics (it looks really pretty when I blow stuff up) are as close as it gets.

But I'm also far from an expert in this category, so I could have it completely wrong. Here's a look at my list anyway, a list that will probably appeal to people who are also terrible at these types of games.

5 - Heretic

This game was built using the Doom engine (we'll get to Doom in a second) but was set in a medieval setting. The engine was modified to add the ability to look up and down. I liked it because you got to shoot things with a magic staff, although I constantly ran out of ammo. Fortunately that's where cheats come in.

The game was successful enough to spawn some sequels, but I really can't figure out what the order is supposed to be. The incredibly hard Hexen, for example, was based in this world (Hexen, incidentally, was strongly considered for the "Worst Ever" award due the crippling difficulty of its puzzles/key chases. This is the kind of thing that hard core FPS players probably consider one of its strengths).

4 - Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast

This was a really cool game but another one that was tough to beat without cheats (for me). But any FPS game where you get to swing around a light saber has to be considered reasonably awesome, and this one was better than the first in every conceivable way. This was developed by the same company that made Heretic, incidentally, and a lot of critics still consider it one of the best Star Wars games ever published. I might agree with that if I was any good with this genre, but the ability to deflect blaster shots with the light saber was pretty great.

3 - Duke Nukem 3D

Probably not the greatest game, but it was one that I was actually good at for a short period of time. This was the shooter of choice my first year of college. I don't think it really introduced too many innovations (except possibly the jetpack, but I don't know for sure it was the first to do that), but it was a well executed game that was certainly fun.

The sequel to this game, Duke Nukem Forever, is something of a running gag on the internet. The game was officially announced in 1997 and has been in development ever since. It received the Vaporware Lifetime Achievement Award from Wired in 2003.

Ever hopeful, 3D Realms put up a new teaser in December of 2007. They just don't ever stop making this game.

You can read all about its hilarious, tortured history here.

2 - Doom

This game provided me with two very important developmental moments in my life.

1) The first time I killed something in a game with a chainsaw.
2) The first time I played real live mutliplayer against somebody.

The days of Doom were the days of 2400 baud modems and the like. All the modems were so different that it took heroic efforts to get them to talk to each other for games like this. My buddy and I spent an entire day back and forth on the phone trying to adjust the settings on our modems, attempt to connect, reconnect, etc. The problem also was that neither one of us had a dedicated phone line for the modem... the notion was considered real extravagance back then. So we'd try to connect, then have to hang up and call each other back, often getting busy signals as one guy was trying to call the other guy or still attempting to connect.

It was worth every second though, because I'll never forget how excited I was when we could actually see each other walking around on the screen. For awhile we didn't even shoot, we just ran around in circles and chatted, almost unable to believe it actually worked.

Thinking about Doom reminds me just how far technology has come. It's pretty awesome.

1 - Quake

I can certainly appreciate this game's significance. It's basically a standard now against which other FPS games are compared. Even the sequels are measured against this game (some favorably, some not so favorably).

I have to wonder if Quake got it so completely right that there was really nowhere else to go? I mean the physics are basically perfect in terms of deathmatch. The weapons are all awesome and basically get copied in every game since. The modding community has made it so you can play it so many different ways. I mean, what's left really to do?

Worst Ever - Extreme Paintbrawl

The most hilarious video game reviews I have ever read to this day remain written about this game.

In fact, they were so funny it made me actually want to get the game just to witness the spectacle. So I ended up picking it up one day out of a bargain rack.

This isn't just the worst shooter ever, it's absolutely the worst game I've ever played in my entire life.

The AI is coded up like this:

1) Run straight
2) Goto 1

I'm not kidding. This means that your teammates just end up getting stuck in corners.

But that's if the AI is actually working. Otherwise they just end up sort of violently twitching in place until they get shot.

"Practice" mode consists of dropping you into one of the game's five fields and leaving you there - no targets, no practice opponents, nothing. You can basically practice running around in circles.

Paintballs often get stuck in midair.

Keep in mind during all this that since this is paintball, you're out as soon as you get shot.

Ironically, the game actually uses the Duke Nukem 3D engine.

Read TPOTT's list here.

Read LBAM's "list" here.

Dwarf Fortress for Mac

2008-02-26T14:38:00.002-05:00

I'm a couple days behind on this, but a Mac version of Dwarf Fortress is now available.

If your last excuse for not having tried this game is that you own a Mac, you are now out of excuses (unless you still have one with a PPC processor, in which case you are still out of luck).

The Great Game Throw Down: Sports

2008-02-15T14:15:00.010-05:00

After the thorough stomping I administered in the Strategy/Sim category, we move on to Sports. With no ado whatsoever:

5 - Mike Tyson's Punch Out!

Which do you think Mike Tyson is better known for? Biting off half of Evander Holyfield's ear or Punch Out! on the 8-bit NES? The way you answer this question can sort of define you as a person.

An altogether great game that just about everybody has played at some point or another. Everybody remembers certain annoying fighters in the game that were their nemesis too. For me, it was Soda Popinski, who kept me from the upper tiers more than most of the other fighters. He had this horribly annoying laugh and was also purple, the color of pure evil.

It's very satisfying to watch this video where the guy houses the purple jerk in 1:08. I wish I knew this trick back in the day.

4 - Excitebike

I'm a sucker for any game that allows a high degree of customization. Excitebike was way ahead of its time because it allowed you to build your own tracks, which was by far the coolest part of the game. The gameplay was ridiculously simple so that anybody could learn it quite quickly, but the real fun was making impossibly hard tracks by stringing gigantic jumps and obstacles together and just trying to figure out how to make it to the finish line.

3 - Football Manager 2007

Known here in the states as "Worldwide Soccer Manager 2007", the story of this franchise is actually pretty interesting.

The company Sports Interactive used to release their soccer sports management game under the title Championship Manager via publisher Eidos. However, for the 2005 edition of the game SI signed on with publisher Sega while Eidos held on to the brand name of "Championship Manager". This led to a lot of consumer confusion, especially when SI's release of the latest version was delayed. Eidos wasted no time releasing Championship Manager 2005 which wasn't put together by the same team.

Since then SI has put out its regular yearly edition of what is now called "Football Manager" (except in the states where "football" isn't played with your feet), and this was the version that got me hooked.

I'm probably behind the curve compared to European players of the game, who have almost certainly jumped to FM 2008 by now. In fact, critical reception of FM 2007 overseas was really not that great. But it was the first version of the game I've ever played and I'm still playing the darn thing.

I've always dug sports management games like this where you don't actually PLAY the games but are in charge of every other aspect of managing a franchise. Baseball Mogul and Out of the Park Baseball are two great examples of these types of games in baseball. But there is something magical about the beautiful game, especially when you see your carefully considered tactics play out on the road to a trophy.

The English football league system is much more complicated than in the US also. In English football, the bottom teams get "relegated" to lower leagues, while lower tier teams that finish on top of their respective leagues get "promoted". This means that if you don't perform, you won't be in the same league next year, which is a pretty serious incentive to do well. Imagine, for example, that this system was in place in American baseball. The Kansas City Royals would be playing in the minors.

So it's particularly fun to try to build a lower tier team into a top tier contender. Playing the game has given me a much greater appreciation for soccer in general, and I watch it avidly on weekends now.

2 - Tecmo Super Bowl

Video game football reached perfection with this game. It's just that simple.

This game is so awesome that people STILL release roster updates for it (check out Tecmo Bowl Repository).

Madden had a few years there back in its early days where it was fun. NFL 2K5 was the last really excellent football game to come out in the past several years. But none of them were ever as fun and entertaining as Tecmo Super Bowl.

You've probably seen this before, but here's a video of Bo Jackson lapping the field a few times.

1 - MLB Power Pros

This is not the best game ever. In fact, I'm going to fully admit that in a few years this choice might end up looking silly.

But I can't stop playing this game, and it's existence has pretty much single handedly kept me from going out and buying a PS3 or Xbox360.

I could pretty easily make a top 10 of just baseball games, I've played so many of them. This game is a combination of everything I love about all of them.

It has the player customization and development of Baseball Stars.

It has the career mode style of MLB The Show.

It has the incredible stat tracking of a baseball management game like Baseball Mogul.

It has all of the pure FUN of playing the game like RBI Baseball.

In a word, it's perfect.

I do question whether we'll ever see an updated version of this game because from what I understand, sales in the US have not been great. And that makes me sad. But if you are a baseball fan and you haven't played this, you are doing yourself a great disservice.

Worst Ever - Madden 2005-Present

Around 2003, EA Sports and the Madden franchise stopped trying very hard. They were content to release small amounts of new content, comfortable with the fact that people would be willing to shell out $50-$60 for a yearly roster update.

Then NFL 2K5 came out for $19.99. And the gameplay was years ahead of Madden.

Rather than deal with a coming franchise war as people figured "Why not?" for the $20 price tag, EA made the most sensible business decision possible.

They went to the NFL and negotiated an exclusive contract to produce video games.

Now, with absolutely zero motivation to make improvements to what was already a stale franchise devoid of any innovation whatsoever, the Madden games really are nothing more than roster updates.

And why should they ever be anything more? Without any competition, people still line up to shell out $60 a year for these sorry excuses for "new games". Madden 2009 will still be Madden 2004 with shinier graphics and a roster update. And that's annoying, especially since there was at least one other franchise out there that would have pushed football video games forward.

Taken individually, none of the last 3 Madden games are BAD. But taken as a collective, taken in the context of what MIGHT HAVE BEEN, these games are an example of why exclusive deals suck for the consumer.

Update - LBAM here. TPoTT here.

The Great Game Throw Down: Simulation/Strategy

2008-02-12T11:42:00.000-05:00

I'm a bit behind the others on this one, as I just returned from my honeymoon a couple of days ago.

Imagine my surprise that in my absence both The Philosophy of Time Travel AND LastBestAngryMan got their lists so horribly, horribly wrong, particularly their egregious choices for worst game. I'd almost think they were doing it just to spite me, if I didn't respect their integrity so much.

Yeah, probably spite.

5 - The Sims

Anyone who doesn't have this on their list has either never played the game or is lying. It's that simple.

What looks, on the surface, to be the absolute dumbest idea for a video game ever is actually one of the greatest. That's Will Wright for you.

The object of the game... well, okay there is no object really... but you control the lives of some "Sims" through their daily routine... kind of like real life, except not... including making sure they get to work on time, decorating the house, cooking meals, etc.

Yeah, there really is no way to make this game sound particularly fun. You just have to play it. This is the one game that I've ever seen my wife (that felt kind of weird to type) get completely addicted to the way I've gotten hooked on many other games in the past. She got completely caught up in trying to get her Sim all the way down the legal career track that she almost forgot about her real legal career. It was awesome.

While she enjoyed helping her Sims succeed, I mostly enjoyed tormenting them. One of my favorite tactics was to somehow lure a Sim into a room, then pause the game, sell the door, and replace it with a wall so they would be trapped. Sometimes I'd put a picture of a clown in there with them or a mirror or something to make it extra creepy. Most cruel would be putting a phone inside because the increasingly hungry Sim would repeatedly call for pizza over and over again.

I realize this is starting to sound pretty sick, so I'll just stop now. Anyway, it's a great game and one you can play pretty much anyway you want.

4 - Armageddon Empires

Look, I've mentioned this game a couple of times already, and if you haven't been persuaded to try it by now you probably won't just because I mention it again. But this is a game that is starting to pick up more and more acclaim, and thanks to a recent mention in Penny Arcade I suspect it will get even more success than it already has. It really is a stunning achievement for a development team that small... heck, it would be a stunning achievement for a large dev team.

Seriously, with a free demo version available you have absolutely nothing to lose. Except hours and hours of free time.

3 - Starcraft

One of the things that made this category tricky was that we lumped these two genres together after repeated arguments about where certain games should go. Starcraft is the only RTS (Real Time Strategy) game on this list, even though that's one of my favorite genres. In my opinion it's the best in that bunch and therefore worthy of a spot. It has three very different but amazingly balanced races, plus a terrific single player campaign that is a ton of fun.

But with RTS games, multiplayer is where it's at, and one of the things that made this game so great was the free play over the internet via a service called "Battle.net". This was pretty revolutionary for its time, and meant that you could find a game anytime you wanted. It also meant that you could perform all kinds of immature, jerk internet moves that have become all the rage now.

For example, one of my favorite things to do in this game was get in a 3 way free for all, but secretly one of the 3 would be a friend (often my buddy Ed down the hall in my college dorm). Either Ed or I would create a "secret alliance" with the hapless third person, moving our armies into his base for "protection". Then, we'd cancel the alliance and launch an all out assault against the fellow whose defenses had already been breached. You'd think this would get old after the 100th time you do it, but it really doesn't.

2 - Civilization IV

Easily the best series on this list, every single one of the Civ games is great. But this is a series that has gotten better with every single version, and Civ IV is the latest and greatest. I've played this game way, way too many times and every time has been a blast. There are few things more satisfying than starting with a single settler at the beginning of the game and building a mighty empire from there. This is one game that makes you say to yourself "just one more turn" over and over and over again until the sun is coming up and your eyes are bleeding.

1 - Dwarf Fortress

To spite me, my compatriots put this as their worst game ever. So now is where I win the argument for once and for all.

Yes, the graphics take some getting used to. Yes, the user interface takes some getting used to. But the gameplay is so good, so deep, so completely unparalleled by anything else out there, at times you can't even believe what you are seeing.

Let me give you an example by way of a story.

During the building of my second fortress in the game, I had survived my first winter and with the first batch of immigrants I had about a dozen or so dwarves. At this point I was attacked by a horde of goblins, and I was woefully under prepared for the assault. The goblins went marauding through my petty defenses, slaughtering dwarves in their wake.

But then one brave dog came to the defense of one of my crafting dwarves. The dog was perfectly positioned in a chokepoint of the fortress and started killing the goblins one by one. Eventually it had killed all but one or two goblins before falling to the ground, bleeding to death. This drove the dog's owner (the aforementioned crafting dwarf) into a grief fueled frenzy, and he killed the remaining goblins with his bare hands, sustaining a horrible wound of his own in the process.

The assault being over, there were only a few dwarves remaining. The dog died, and the crafting dwarf who killed the last couple of goblins was hauled off to bed by the survivors. There he stayed for many weeks, and I assumed that he would likely die of his wounds.

Unbelievably, he survived. When he came to, though, he was mad with grief, and he immediately killed a fellow dwarf who was bringing him water. He then went on a kill crazy rampage. Checking his profile, it appeared that the horrors of war had broken him, and I watched sadly as he killed every last survivor of the goblin invasion before drowning himself.

The last dwarf he killed was an engraver who commemorated the terrible goblin invasion by making an engraving of a dog fighting a goblin in the dining room wall.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg of the kind of stories this game is capable of producing.

Worst Ever - Master of Orion 3

This is the only game I have ever purchased that I took back to the store the next day.

Imagine Microsoft Excel came in a box that said "Master of Orion 3" on it and you've got this game.

Excel, you have found your long lost brother.

What's so unbelievably horrible about it is how crippling disappointing it is. The first two games are absolute classics of the genre. This one should have been bundled with Office. It's "Spreadsheets in Space".

And Microsoft Excel has more competitive AI than this game. The enemies are so colossally stupid that even though you often have no clue what you're doing, you'll still win. Meanwhile Excel can find all kinds of ways to trick you. People who think the Dwarf Fortress interface is complicated have obviously never played this game.

The Great Game Throw Down: Adventure

2008-01-25T11:08:00.000-05:00

This was the toughest category to narrow down so far. There was a time when adventure games, particularly in the point-and-click style, absolutely dominated computer gaming. Nowadays adventure game fans are lucky if one decent adventure game gets released a year, and even luckier to actually be aware of its existence.

But these were the types of games that really got me into computer games in general. I remember staying up late during a sleepover at a friend's house playing the first two King's Quest games. I can remember trips to my Dad's office to play King's Quest V, because our home computer wasn't speedy enough to handle it. And I remember back in the day before the internet calling the Sierra hint line since I couldn't just Google up a walkthrough when I'd get stuck.

There's also a ton of great adventure games I've never played, and I'm actually pretty excited to see the other guy's lists because a lot of these old games have become abandonware and you can download them, legally, for free.

5 - Space Quest II: Vohaul's Revenge

My favorite game in the hilarious Space Quest series starring Roger Wilco, the janitor. This particular game involved a plan by the evil Vohaul to unleash an army of cloned vacuum cleaner salesmen on an unsuspecting universe.

This was also the first game I played that paused when you typed your commands. This was a huge step above frantically trying to bang out the correct phrase in previous games of its ilk (I was killed many times in the original Space Quest trying to figure out the right combination of words to get Wilco to crush a deadly robot with a rock).

Vohaul is fat

The fine folks at Infamous Adventures, who provide free, graphically updated versions of some of these types of games, have recently announced they're working on a remake of this game and I'll be looking forward to taking the trip down memory lane.

4 - King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow

In my opinion the best of the venerable King's Quest series, which took a sharp left turn towards awful immediately after this game (King's Quest: Mask of Eternity is a lot like Highlander 2: The Quickening in that you try to pretend it doesn't exist).

Yeah, well, I didn't like that boat anyway

I like this one best because it had my favorite story of any of the KQ games: in the end it's a classic "hero rescues the princess" story, but the stuff you did to get there was a lot of fun. It also featured the song Girl in the Tower which actually got popular enough to get some radio air time. That might have been a video game first (I have nothing to back that up).

3 - Maniac Mansion: Day of the Tentacle

If anybody were to put this game at #1, I would have a hard time arguing with them. Not only is it the sequel to the venerable Maniac Mansion which could also qualify for top 10 lists, but included in the game is a computer where you can play the original Maniac Mansion.

The game has a wacky plot and was developed when LucasArts were at the height of their adventure gaming prowess.

The gist of the story is this: a nerd and his two house mates travel back in time in a Port-a-Potty (called a "Chron-o-John") to turn off a toxic waste producing machine that an evil Purple Tentacle drank in the present day, giving it terrible powers. By doing this they hope to prevent said Tentacle from ever having to chance to drink the waste and become the dread beast the toxins morph it into.

You can see the Purple Tentacle means business

It gets better, because the "Chron-o-John" requires a diamond to operate but the one the heroes use is a cheap imitation diamond, and so the machine malfunctions and sends one person 200 years into the past (where you interact with George Washington and the like), one 200 years into the future (where the Purple Tentacle reigns supreme), and leaves one stranded in the present.

It's an awesome game and one that made me laugh many times.

2 - Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers

It's tough to pick a best game in the Gabriel Knight series, which remains my absolute favorite adventure series to this day. There are only three games in the series and each is very different in terms of the graphics and controls since they were produced so many years apart, but the original GK sticks with the classic point and click model and for my money tells the best story.

And story is where the GK games really, really shine. All three of them are compelling, ranging from hunting lost Wagnerian operas that cure lycanthropy to solving the mystery of the holy grail (in a game that had a story that bore startling similarity to the Da Vinci Code 4 years before that book was published).

You can tell Gabriel Knight is a badass because he walks right through police tape

Fans of the series have been hoping beyond hope that a 4th Gabriel Knight game will happen someday, somehow, but it seems increasingly unlikely, which is sad because the two main characters were left in a very interesting place at the end of the third game and I'll probably never see how it all turns out.

1 - The Longest Journey

Without question one of the best stories I've ever seen told in this medium. It's as close to a perfect game that can be produced in this genre. It's a combination of fantasy and sci-fi with truly interesting, believable characters. I play this game and can't believe Neil Gaiman didn't write the novel first.

Just get it.

Worst Ever - Phantasmagoria 2: A Puzzle of Flesh

The fact that I even have to mention this game and not just extend the adventure category to a top 10 makes me sad, but them's the rules.

The original Phantasmagoria was written/created by the same woman who did the King's Quest series, which is really surprising since the game was a major departure from the kid friendly KQ games (it included grisly murders, "adult situations", and even a rape scene). Phantasmagoria was part of the "full motion video/interactive movie" craze that swept this genre when designers though it would be awesome to use real actors and bundle a game across a zillion CDs instead of just plain old graphics (incidentally I think the only game I ever played that executed this remotely well was Gabriel Knight 2: The Beast Within). Most of these "interactive movie" games were horrible games, and this mode of design I believe had a huge hand in bringing down this genre to the niche market that it is today.

Phantasmagoria was bad, but Phantasmagoria 2 was a million times worse. The game starred a hallucinating computer tech who keeps having horrible, bloody visions of awfulness. What that means is the game tries to give you cheap scares because random blood/gore/other nonsense would happen whenever you performed the most trivial action. This wore thin because something violent/horrible would happen every time you did anything.

I don't remember the context of this shot from the game, but that might be because there wasn't any

Add to that the fact that the plot made absolutely zero sense (aliens were somehow responsible) and the puzzles made less than zero sense (combine the fungus with the blue alien, combine the starfish shaped alien with the horseshoe... if you don't get it it's because it MAKES NO SENSE) and you had an exercise in frustration that spanned across FIVE FREAKIN' DISCS. I think it was grim curiosity that kept me playing all the way until the end, much like when I saw Apocalypto in the theater. With every scene you just couldn't believe it could get any worse, but gosh darnit it did and when all was said and done you wish you could carefully drill the portion of the brain that was storing the memory.

Here's a great example of a cheesy scare scene in the game. The music really adds to the whole ambiance of suckage:

Here's a death scene. The acting, the music, the cheap effects... I mean my lord they combine to create an absolute cornucopia of awful:

See The Philosophy of Time Travel's list here.

See LastBestAngryMan's list here.

The Great Game Throw Down: Platformers

2008-01-23T09:36:00.000-05:00

5 - Pitfall! (Atari 2600)

I have fond memories of playing this game obsessively because if you sent in a snapshot of the elusive "gold bar" to Activision, you would receive a Pitfall! poster.

I don't remember what the poster looked like, but the box for this game was magnificent:

What's great about this box (besides the rainbow coming out of the protagonist's back) is that it is truth in advertising. What you're looking at on that box is the entire game. Go from one screen to the next and you will see the same thing over, and over, and over again. That kind of audacity is just not something you see in video games anymore with people requiring things like plot and context and endings.

4 - Rygar (NES)

I debated putting this on the list because I don't know that any game brought me closer to tears of frustration more often than Rygar. But I kept playing it anyway because there was something hypnotic about just bashing things with a flaming yo-yo.

That's right, a flaming yo-yo.

Look at how bad ass this dude is. He is vaulting over what looks like some orc while wielding his yo-yo.

Actually my brothers were much better at this game than me (not surprising since my brothers are better at everything than me). I remember marathon sessions of this game because unbelievably, there was no save or password feature despite the game's absurd length. So basically you'd have to break for lunch and possibly dinner to have any hope of getting to the end. It's that kind of "screw you" to the player that makes this one a classic.

Hardcore Gaming 101 has a detailed analysis of Rygar, if you'd like to learn more about the game's historical significance (which I still believe can be summarized simply with "flaming yo-yo").

3 - Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (PS1)

The Castlevania games are probably the best platforming series out there (with apologies to Mario and Mega Man), and Symphony of the Night is still the best of the bunch.

The game introduced a leveling up concept to the series, and as World of Warcraft has ably demonstrated, there is nothing more addicting than leveling up. Add to that the fact that when you complete 100% of the game, you discover that there is an additional 100% of content you need to finish, and you're locked in for awhile.

A lot of what puts these games on my lists has to do with fond memories, and I remember visiting my buddy Jay in the Bronx one weekend during college. We played this game for about 48 hours straight while rotating turns at the controller. Anything that inspires that level of insanity has to be good, right? Now based on that logic go out and buy yourself some crack.

2 - Contra (NES)

Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A Start.

'Nuff said.

1 - Cave Story (Doukutsu Monogatari) (PC)

I'm going to be accused of being obnoxious for putting an independently made, lesser known, free game as my #1 choice, but I'm telling you it deserves it.

Cave Story has a surprisingly complex plot, terrific gameplay, a wonderful cast of characters, and you can download it free on PC or Mac. When thinking about this list and this game I had to go fire it up again and it is just as awesome as ever.

I mean c'mon, the main character's name is "Quote" and the female friend is named "Curly Brace", you know you're in for something original.

Go try it now.

Worst Ever - Captain Novolin (SNES)

Many attempts have been made to make video games educational tools. Some of them have succeeded. Captain Novolin is the Hindenburg.

The game was targeted towards kids with diabetes to help teach them about taking insulin and staying away from sweets. Actually playing the game however teaches you nothing but a desire to throw oneself out of the highest available window to end the pain.

Fast forward a couple minutes in to see actual gameplay. The controls are so bad that it is difficult to avoid actually getting hit by the enemies (such as the evil bouncing donut), and you have no obvious means of attack to aid your chances of survival. Imagine if you're a kid with diabetes and you're thinking "Hey, this superhero has diabetes, it can't be all bad." Then you play this game. If I saw a box of Dunkin' Donuts after playing this mess for a couple of hours I would just curl up into the fetal position.

See The Philosophy of Time Travel's completely wrong choice for worst game ever here.

See LastBestAngryMan get so angry he refuses to even name a top five here.

The Great Game Throw Down: Fighters

2008-01-22T16:31:00.001-05:00

Over the next several weeks, two of my fellow friends and bloggers from LastBestAngryMan and The Philosophy of Time Travel will be listing our top 5 all time favorite games in a variety of categories.

Games on any type of platform are acceptable. I will also be using the blog space to rip their selections to pieces when they don't agree with mine.

To get the ball rolling, here are the Top 5 Fighting Games:

5 - Dead or Alive 4 (Xbox 360)

So the first game I'm going to mention here is a game I have never actually played. However, judging by the almost anatomically impossible females in this game (a quick search of "Dead or Alive" in Google Images will explain) you know that this game must be awesome. The girls are so popular to drooling teenage geeks everywhere that they even made a volleyball game featuring the Dead or Alive girls in tiny bikinis.

Incidentally a movie was also made based on this series, and it netted a whole $270k or so at the box office before being yanked from the theaters and relegated to bargain bins everywhere.

4 - Mortal Kombat 4 (Arcade)

This makes the list because my friends and I used to play it all the time in college under the name of "The Kick-Punch Game", since mostly all we did was mash buttons and never bothered to learn to many of the moves.

One move we DID learn, however, is the most hilarious fatality in Mortal Kombat history:

3 - Super Smash Bros. (N64)

Playing this game is like trying to pull a pack of rabid squirrels off of you while running from an angry swarm of bees. You really don't have much idea where you're going or what you're doing because you're too busy just trying to survive.

I do however have fond memories of getting pummeled repeatedly over the holidays by my younger brothers in this game.

2 - Street Fighter 2 Turbo (Arcade/SNES)

Probably one of the best, most balanced fighting games ever (by reputation, I really have no clue) and certainly one of the best ports to the SNES. I spent a ton of time playing this game, even conducting tournaments with all of the characters with my brothers. I don't know that I ever really got any good at it but it was an awesome game.

Sadly, the last film the great Raul Julia ever appeared in was the movie version of "Street Fighter", which was just a terrible shame.

1 - Mortal Kombat 2 (Arcade/SNES)

This was the only fighting game I ever played obsessively in the arcade mall when I was a lad. I got good enough at the game that I could often hang out at the mall for an hour or so just on fifty cents, as the rules of the arcade floor made it so that you were forced to queue up against the jerk who was winning and knock him off the machine before another could step up.

With Mortal Kombat 2, I was that jerk.

Worst Ever - Shaq Fu

If you have never heard of this game before, nothing can prepare you for the horror.

The LastBestAngryMan's top fighter here.

The Philosophy of Time Travel's top fighters here.

Quick Hits

2008-01-22T08:38:00.000-05:00

With the wedding now 12 days away, as you can imagine things have been a little busy. Add to that the fact that I'm trying to get a big project done at work in the middle of all this and you basically have a situation where when I do have some free time available I haven't been spending it blogging.

In lieu of some meatier updates, I'm just going to do a real quick rundown of some things I've wanted to blog about but haven't done so yet.

***

Last weekend I spent about an hour or so putting a bookshelf together. It's one of those "no tools required" bookshelves so that anti-handymen like myself may end up with something that has an outside chance of actually holding up books when completed.

I used to love to play with Lego when I was a kid, but I have zero skill (or desire to develop skill) when it comes to building things. I have no idea why this is. I love design when it comes to writing software, which a lot of people seem to think is like building. I say anything you can do while eating M&Ms is not really "building". Building to me requires some kind of physical component, and it's that lack of ability to make my hands do what my brain is telling me that usually results in the problems I have on any type of home improvement project or sport.

The bookshelf sat in the box for several weeks before "Build the damn shelf" ended up on last weekend's honey-do list. Obviously I complained as much as possible to avoid more construction projects ending up on future lists, but I dutifully built the darn thing. For me there's not even a sense of satisfaction when I finish putting together a piece of furniture because I usually end up with four or five critical pieces that I missed putting in their proper place; I'm more concerned with the structural integrity of what I've just "finished" than any feeling of accomplishment.

At any rate all of my comics and tabletop gaming books are on the new shelf, so if it collapses the worst thing that will be hurt is my pride, which I'm pretty sure consists solely of scar tissue at this point.

***

Speaking of the "building", I've been using ASP.NET as the back end for this web based project at work that's been monopolizing my time.

Is there any company that so has so thoroughly screwed itself lately as often as Microsoft? The mess of a release that was Vista has been well chronicled. The Xbox 360 had unbelievable failure rates: even though the console has sold well it's difficult to tell if Microsoft has made a single dollar yet on the console due to having to replace so many of them. Their developer tools are the best in the business, but they release new versions of their languages too often to be comfortable keeping up with the latest and greatest, particularly since the backwards compatibility from one version to the next isn't always there.

ASP.NET is just a mess in terms of how it expects you to design. My problem with the very basis of the thing is that it tacks on too many new tags and components and they don't ever seem to render quite the same across browsers. When you are doing web design there is only ONE thing you really should be thinking about: making the app cross browser compatible. ASP.NET is the absolute worst tool possible for doing that if you use it the way Microsoft seems to want you to use it.

Instead of using all of the special stuff that comes with ASP.NET I've just been writing small web pages that will never get seen by the user that handle all of the heavy lifting (database calls, etc.) and writing the whole front end in plain ol' HTML and Javascript. I'm using Prototype to make all of the calls to the back end. I've basically taken away everything that makes ASP.NET special and that seems to be what works best.

***

Prepare for the most annoying two weeks in American sports. Seriously, does it get any worse than the build up for the Super Bowl?

Also, when is it going to be okay to start suggesting that the Packers may have won another Super Bowl by now if Brett Favre had retired?

***

Jules and I went car shopping last Saturday and got her a new ride. Car shopping is another experience that I have found pretty unpleasant in the past as well, but this time with some good research and a target price in mind the whole thing went reasonably smoothly. The downside is that it made me want a new car, as the Hyundai Accent I'm driving right now runs fine but is missing some amenities, like door handles.

***

There's a lot of buzz starting to build around the latest Wii game: Endless Ocean. It's being praised for being "innovative", which I think these days means that it isn't a first person shooter.

I haven't played the game and probably won't because I sold my Wii over the holiday, but after reading some reviews it looks a lot like the space exploration simulator Celestia, which similarly has no goals, plot, etc. but is just a gigantic sandbox. It also came out several years ago and is free.

Point I'm making here is I'm not really seeing the innovation angle on Endless Ocean. It looks like it might make a nice screen saver though, and the soundtrack does feature at least one tune by Hayley Westenra, who can flat out sing.

***

Somebody needs to take away my copy of MLB Power Pros. The debate about whether or not to get a PS3 or Xbox 360 this year has been put on hold indefinitely by this game.

You know how when you were a kid playing baseball games you would make a team with all of your friends on it? That's basically what I'm trying to do with MLB Power Pros right now, which means I've been playing Success mode nonstop trying to assemble what will be the most awesome team ever (still working on a name, but it's a tossup between the Juicers and the Djerkababalash).

***

Andy, who is basically the reason people find this blog, started one of his own. Make sure you check it out.

***

Finally, if anybody has some book recommendations toss them out there as I'm almost at the end of my reading queue and I'll want to stock up for the honeymoon.

American Gladiators is Awesome

2008-01-07T09:48:00.000-05:00

I don't watch too much TV. I only say this because if a picky snob like myself endorses a TV show, you know it has to be awesome.

So let me just say right now that the new American Gladiators which debuted last night is a shining example of just what is possible with the medium of television.

If you're not familiar with American Gladiators, it's a contest between 2 reasonably athletic but otherwise average schmoes against gigantic roid monsters who could snap a loser like me in half with a menacing glance. They're so badass they don't even have normal, god-fearing Christian names. They've got names like Stealth, Titan, Militia, Fury, and Hellga. These are names that let you know they mean business.

The contestants play various games against these gladiators. Each game is worth points and the objective is to build up a lead against your opponent which translates into a head start in the final one on one showdown between the contestants in the Eliminator. The Eliminator is what an obstacle course would be if it was designed by Lucifer and the Marquis de Sade on a bar napkin over a couple of cocktails. People limp across the finish line of this thing looking like they've just run 4 marathons in a row while being beaten with a shoe.

Let me just summarize the high points of the debut episode last night:

1) Five minutes into the program, one of the female contestants blows out her knee getting tackled into a wall. She further destroys it attempting to hobble back to the home base and twisting it awkwardly. She ends up on crutches and is out of the competition.

2) About seven more minutes after that, Gladiator Militia blows out his arm swinging from rings, attempting to catch a contestant also swinging on rings.

3) Over the course of the next half hour, at least 4 piledrivers are executed on the contestants across 2 different events. We get to see the replays from the contestant's perspectives thanks to cameras mounted in their helmets (you didn't think the helmets were actually there to prevent head trauma did you?).

4) A guy has such a huge lead in the Eliminator that it appears over until he reaches the final obstacle: a treadmill that is on a very steep angle up. You have to run up this thing against the flow of the treadmill to get to the finish line. Completely exhausted by the rest of the Eliminator, the dude falls down at least 6 or 7 times trying to make it up that last ramp, giving the other contestant time to catch up and win the match. Watching the dude try to get up the ramp was what I imagine it would be like to watch Sisyphus try to push that boulder up the mountain: you feel bad for the guy, but not bad enough to stop laughing.

5) A woman cracks open her forehead on one of the first obstacles in the Eliminator by leaping into a steel beam. Blood running down her face, once she passes that obstacle she then has to get on the "barrel roll". On this thing you are standing at a great height looking at a barrel on a ramp lying horizontally. You have to grip the thing and then a helpful fellow pushes you down the ramp, spinning you at a rapid rate while you struggle to hold on. Confused and bleeding, the woman does not hold on very long and falls, landing almost head first. She tries to get up but falls down again from dizziness and disorientation. Undaunted she eventually finishes behind her opponent with her face covered in blood. Her daughter screams in the audience when she goes to hug her.

The show is on again tonight and I absolutely can't wait.

If Golf Looked Like This, I'd Play It Every Day

2008-01-04T09:31:00.000-05:00

Okay, it's pretty well known that I'm not real good at golf.

Yesterday gaming website Kotaku announced that Konami would be porting terrible coin-op game Target: Terror to the Wii as what is apparently a never ending parade of horrific third party ports continues.

What these two things have to do with each other is that in the spirit of Wii game publishing standards, the port will include several mini games (nobody loves mini game collections like the Wii). One of those is a golfing game that looks like this:

Look at that thing for a second. This is the most spectacular screenshot I think I have ever seen for a video game. As near as I can tell those are hooded terrorists on those golf carts. Some of them in the middle appear to be sinking into the earth. The guy actually hitting golf balls looks like he is standing on the driving mat but is actually hitting the balls off the grass at the terrorists in an effort to defend his right to appear in a game this horrendous.

Let's not overlook the attention to detail as well. Next to the whimsical sign "Replace Your Divots" you can see a shadow effect. What makes this fantastic is there are no other shadows to be seen anywhere else on the screen.

If I hadn't sold my Wii over the holiday, you can bet Target: Terror would be on the very top of my list of games to purchase in 2008.

Top 10 Favorite Things About 2007

2007-12-31T08:56:00.000-05:00

At the end of last year, I did a top 10 list of my favorite things that was probably of interest to no one but me. Well tough noogies. I'm doing it again.

Before I do though, it's kind of interesting to take a peek at last year's list and see that some of those things still rank pretty high. I still play Dwarf Fortress (#10) and Guitar Hero (#6) like crazy. I haven't read a book this year that was better than last year's conclusion to the Prince of Nothing series (#3). But there were plenty of highlights from 2007 that made it the greatest of years so far.

10 - Armageddon Empires

Earlier this year I mentioned a couple of games that were taking up my allotted gaming time. Armageddon Empires was one of them and it still is my favorite computer game of the year (Dwarf Fortress being disqualified due to inclusion on last year's list). It's a single player game and you can get an entire session finished in a couple of hours, but the number of permutations is so crazy that you'll never play anything resembling the same type of game twice. It's a wonderful strategy game made by an independent developer and if you haven't tried it out I encourage you to do so.

9 - The Fountain

This movie came out in 2006 but was only in the theaters for a couple of weeks due to absolutely terrible box office performance. I didn't see it until it arrived via Netflix in May of this year.

The history of this movie is tortured. Originally it was budgeted for huge amounts with Brad Pitt slated to play the lead, but as folks started to realize just how outside the norm this thing was going to be the money began to disappear. When the money disappeared, Brad Pitt disappeared.

Despite all of these setbacks, Writer/Director Darren Aronofsky would not stop finding ways to keep the project alive. And we're lucky he did.

The film spans three (sort of) separate plots in three separate time periods, but they're all connected by a man coping with death by trying to find a way to prevent it. Hugh Jackman gives the performance of a lifetime in what is without any question whatsoever the best movie I have seen since Lord of the Rings and one that in retrospect I wish I had seen in the theater. There are space sequences in this movie that rival Space Odyssey: 2001 in terms of sheer beauty.

I don't mind admitting I cried like a baby at the end of what was an unbelievably fast 90 minutes. Julie was fast asleep though, so be warned that this probably isn't for everybody, but I have never seen a movie that dealt with life and death in such original and profound terms.

8 - MLB Power Pros

The second of two video games to be featured on the list (available for PS2 and Wii), this is the most fun I've had playing a baseball game since Baseball Stars on the original 8-bit Nintendo.

It's like the perfect combination of my favorite features from baseball video games over the course of eternity. There are an unbelievable number of different ways to play this game, and what really sets it apart is the "Success" mode which allows you to take a made up player through college in an attempt to get him a minor league contract. To make it through Success Mode you need to balance your studies, a part time job, potentially one (or three) girlfriends, and make sure you get enough practice in to increase your skills. It's a total blast, and if you get through Success Mode... um... successfully, you can then register that player as a free agent in an already existing season OR make him part of a team that you assemble yourself.

The cartoony graphics might disguise what is the deepest baseball game I've ever played. Hopefully poor commercial sales of this long running Japanese series don't prevent a port next year as well.

7 - The Diamond Mine

Once back in college I finished a first draft of a novel. It was called Stick Figures and was basically the most pretentious and boring piece of drivel anybody could ever have been cursed to read. Perhaps fortunately, my computer caught fire a few months after I finished the first draft. The coup de grace on the hard drive would be performed when the landlord tossed it (along with a lot of other stuff in the house) into the basement while I and others were in the process of moving out.

During 2006, I finished National Novel Writing Month but didn't actually finish the novel. To this day this is a source of major disappointment to me and a serious indictment of my motivation considering there are two video games on this top 10 list. It would have been better to have two drafted novels.

On the bright side though, this year for National Novel Writing Month I did a children's/young adult book called The Diamond Mine. It wasn't as large in scope as the previous year's project and I was actually able to complete an entire first draft. In fact, I finished it a few hundred words shy of the required 50,000 which led to some wacky results involving zombies.

I did a little bit of work over the weekend editing, and it felt good. It's up to me to stick with it and finish a final draft, which would be a first for any piece of written material for me since college (this blog does not count).

6 - Dodgeball

Yes, I'm still playing dodgeball.

This year Julie and I joined a new local league with rules that match the infamous Dodgeball movie a lot more closely (catches bring back a teammate, for example). It's less competitive/serious than the old league which I think makes it a bit more fun overall.

Typically teams are named with some kind of double entendre involving "balls". Our team bucked the trend by naming ourselves "Smarter Than Sexual Innuendo". Sadly, this proved too many words for the organizers to handle and they started calling us "STD" in an alphabetically challenged attempt to abbreviate our name. Depressing.

What wasn't depressing was capturing a division title with two playoff wins, including one against a previously undefeated team. Our run ended in the finals against a team that had a coach. You heard that right. A recreational dodgeball team with a coach. They had a very intricate rotation system that probably rivals that of Liverpool's soccer team. I'd laugh if that wasn't so sad.

But it was always a blast, and I'm looking forward to the next season starting up in a few weeks. It's a great stress reliever and an excuse to hang out with friends.

5 - Burning Empires

At the beginning of the year, I started checking out some independent tabletop RPGs. The problem was that our Shadowrun group started to have more and more trouble meeting (not anybody's fault, just people's situations/availability changing), and the amount of work that was required by the GM (me) to prepare for games that may or may not be happening was starting to make things a tad wearying.

Enter Burning Empires, which would change the way I thought about tabletop games forever. I even did an interview with the creator of the game to try and learn more about it.

Shortly after that a couple of my buddies and I started playing an almost weekly three person game of Burning Empires, and it has been some of the most exciting tabletop gaming I've done in years. My only regret is that we haven't had more time to play because we could be starting a second campaign now.

4 - Wedding Season

It was a big year for weddings, with some of my closest friends tying the knot. It's just cool to see people so happy, and I'm grateful to still have such fantastic friends for these many years.

3 - Wednesday Nights

If you're wondering where such wacky ideas as the infamous pickup basketball game and the Mitchell Report Pool have come from, it's from the crew of local gents that I have the pleasure of hanging out with regularly on Wednesday nights.

The story of this crew goes back to when Julie was doing a clerkship for Family Court in Wilmington. She worked with several other girls there and they all became very close friends. By proxy, the boys associated with these girls were forced to hang out.

And a good thing we were. Perhaps more shocking than being able to stand each other, we have actually genuinely become friends.

We all have been getting together on Wednesday nights for almost the entire year now at a local bar (Wednesday is half price pitchers and burgers). We have spent most of those Wednesdays arguing about sports, in particular baseball or our fantasy football team's starting lineups. That's right, we actually shared a fantasy football team. You can imagine the number of arguments this produced. It was glorious.

But much like the Burning Empires game, it's good to know that you're going to see friends on a weekly basis.

2 - Phillies Win Division

It's sad that my beloved Phils got swept in the playoffs, because it's made a lot of people forget just how awesome it was that they were there at all.

In one of the biggest comebacks in history (or one of the biggest collapses depending on your perspective), the Phils made up a huge deficit against the hated Mets at the end of the season to capture the division pennant for the first time since 1993.

The thing that made it so delightful wasn't just that it was my favorite team coming back to beat my least favorite team. It was that, for once, the collapse wasn't us.

I'm looking forward to seeing what the Phillies can do in 2008. There's no reason to believe they shouldn't be major playoff contenders again.

1 - Trolley Square

This year's award goes to my move with Julie to Trolley Square in Wilmington, Delaware.

A few months ago Jules and I moved in together. We moved into a neighborhood near a lot of our friends, and it has been fantastic. It's great to actually be sharing a place AND be able to walk down the street to see people AND be able to walk to restaurants/bars in the area. It's been a bit of a lifestyle change, but one very much for the better.

It's also great, with the wedding coming up in just over a month now, to know we're going to really enjoy where we're going to be.

Here's hoping that in 2008 wherever you end up is where you want to be too.

The LOTR Effect

2007-12-27T16:25:00.000-05:00

During my Christmas visit to my parents in Georgia, I saw my second movie in the theater of 2007: Sweeney Todd.

Now if you like Broadway musicals you should just go ahead and see this immediately. Ever since Chicago it seems like Hollywood rolls out a couple of musicals during Oscar season for folks who can't make the trip to New York City to see one in person. Sweeney Todd is getting great reviews and if singing is your thing you will almost certainly dig this.

I, however, fell asleep about 20-30 minutes into it. I think it was right around the time that Johnny Depp starting singing a love song to a razor blade that my brain just shut down defensively. I remember bits and pieces because it is hard to sleep completely soundly in a chair and I think I snored myself awake once or twice, but in one man's opinion this thing was about as dull as it gets.

The last movie I had seen in an actual theater though prior to Sweeney Todd was 300 back around March. The only other movie I really planned to go see in the theater this year was Transformers, but that got derailed due to an impromptu visit to Hades.

I used to go to the movies on a fairly regular basis, and the realization that I had only seen two films all year got me thinking about why it was my zeal for the movieplex has been on the wane. The Christmas season made it abundantly clear: Lord of the Rings.

During those glorious three years when the Lord of the Rings movies would come out around the holiday season, I saw the 3 best movies I will probably ever see on the big screen. That doesn't necessarily mean the LOTR movies are the best 3 movies ever (Editor's Note: They are), but these were legitimate movie-going experiences. Epic in scale. Epic in length. Special effect whizbangery and ass whooping combat sequences. I mean these movies had it all and you got twice as much for your movie dollar due to the length as pretty much anything else out there.

What can possibly compare to that now? When I see a 90 minute movie now all I can think is "Boy I'm glad I didn't shell out the bucks for that in the theater." That's a ridiculous and unfair standard, but that's just the way it is now. Everything is left wanting compared to Lord of the Rings. Even when I saw 300, which I actually enjoyed, I couldn't help thinking when I left: "Not as good as Lord of the Rings."

Again, that's an absurd and unfair standard. But with a decent TV at home and a Netflix subscription, why would I want to shell out the money to go to the movies these days? The odds are very good when you go to the movies now that:

1) The movie won't be as good as LOTR.
2) You will hear somewhere between 5 and 8 cell phones ring depending on the length of the film.
3) You will end up sitting in front of some idiot who will not stop postulating about what's going to happen next in the movie.
4) You will end up sitting next to some idiot who will not stop asking questions about the movie because they are confused.
5) You will sit behind two people making out to complete the circle.
6) The floor will be sticky.
7) You will drink too much soda and have to get up (no pause button in the theater).
8) The whole experience will just be a mess but you won't ask for your money back at the end of the movie because you don't want to be that guy that finishes his entire meal at a restaurant before "sending it back" because it wasn't cooked right.

There's just no angle I can think of that makes sense when it comes to going to the movies as opposed to just waiting for the darn thing to get released on Netflix. Then if it stinks you have the option of fast forwarding it, turning it off, getting up to make a sandwich, or mocking it out loud with whomever is watching it with you.

The amount of pressure on a movie is greatly lessened when you are watching it at home also. After having finally seen Transformers on DVD, I'm pretty sure I would have despised this movie if I had shelled out the big bucks to see it in the theater. But in the comforts of home I was able to just fast forward all of the horrendous exposition (have Turturro and Voight ever been more desperate to cash a check? They must have had some serious gambling debts to have agreed to appear in this mess) and get straight to the part where robots beat each other up real good.

That's not to say there aren't any movies in the theater I'm interested in seeing. There are quite a few I'd like to see (No Country For Old Men, There Will Be Blood, and even The Mist come to mind). But I don't know that there are any I can't wait to see like I couldn't wait to see LOTR. And there aren't any I'd rather see in the theater than in the comforts of home where not only will there be no chance of any of those things listed above happening, but I can also make as many obnoxious remarks as I want (unless Julie is enjoying the movie, in which case such a remark would be tantamount to suicide).

Mitchell Report Pool - Results

2007-12-13T14:53:00.000-05:00

The Mitchell Report is released to the general public. After days of speculation and even a bogus list that appeared on nearly every major sports site and even WNBC in the hours leading up to the report, the wait has come to an end.

Keep in mind in that just because a name existed in the report, it doesn't mean they are actually discussed in terms of using steroids. The report is over 400 pages long and very detailed. The parameters of the contest however dictated that the name merely had to "appear" in the text of the report. All I've done is scan the report for the names in our pool to determine a winner.

Team Youk(s)
x - Jason Giambi
x - Rick Ankiel
x - Scott Schoeneweis
x - Brian Roberts
Ivan Rodriguez
x - Jerry Hairston Jr.
Rafael Betancourt
Mike Piazza

Team Jordan
x - Jay Gibbons
x - Jose Guillen
x - Troy Glaus
x - Roger Clemens
Mike Cameron
x - Eric Gagne
x - Sammy Sosa
x - Andy Pettitte

Team Kobe
x - Miguel Tejada
x - Gary Matthews Jr.
Aaron Rowand
Milton Bradley
David Ortiz
Josh Beckett
Craig Biggio
Carlos Delgado

Team Bird
x - Paul Byrd
x - Gary Sheffield
Juan Salas
x - Guillermo Mota
Neifi Perez
x - Ryan Franklin
Dan Serafini
Aubrey Huff

That makes Team Jordan (yours truly) the winner with 7 out of 8. I get a free bottle of the clear.

I can't wait to read the entire report over the next couple of days. The stuff on Clemens is particularly juicy (see what I did there? Because the report is about juicing? Man, I am hilarious).

Merry Roidmas

2007-12-13T07:57:00.000-05:00

The Mitchell Report comes out at 2 PM today. It's possible somebody will get an early, leaked copy of it, but really, can you even trust that until 2 PM?

Seriously though, last night I was like a kid waiting for Christmas. The latest reports say that 60-80 names will be on the list, including All Stars and MVPs, names that will rock the baseball world.

This is worse than the Christmas when I snuck a peak at my presents and knew I was getting a Nintendo.

All I want for Roidmas is Roger Clemens.

Word of the Year

2007-12-12T08:07:00.000-05:00

Merriam-Webster recently announced the winner of 2007's "Word of the Year" award, which was determined via the always reliable internet vote.

This year's winner was "w00t".

The article mentions that "w00t" is not currently listed in a regular Merriam-Webster dictionary but this award "might just improve its chances." If you ask me, that is awesome.

I get into a lot of debates with people about language, particularly at work. A lot of people are driven crazy by the newest slang or even differences in regional dialect, but I think it's cool, or possibly even "pimp" (the kids are still saying that right? Somebody help me out here).

I've always just thought that the entire point of language is the free flow of ideas. You're expressing yourself and trying to convey your thoughts. As long as you are able to do that and the person you are talking to can basically get what you're trying to convey, then language is fulfilling its primary purpose. How you pronounce the word "water" makes no difference whatsoever to me as long as I recognize the word.

However, not everybody agrees with me on that. There are plenty of people out there who think that putting a word like "w00t" into the dictionary just serves to further "dumb down America". I disagree with this for a number of reasons.

First of all, words go in the dictionary. "w00t" is a word. If you don't think it is then look up the definition of "word" in the same dictionary you are ostensibly trying to "protect" from "dumbing down".

word (noun)
1 - something that is said
2a - a speech sound or series of speech sounds that symbolizes and communicates a meaning usually without being divisible into smaller units capable of independent use
2b - a written or printed character or combination of characters representing a spoken word

I think that "w00t" qualifies based on any of those definitions.

Second, a dictionary is not some static text in a vault. It is supposed to be a reference, and as such needs to be updated to keep pace with that which it references. Disagree? The dictionary itself doesn't.

dictionary (noun)
1 - a reference source in print or electronic form containing words usually alphabetically arranged along with information about their forms, pronunciations, functions, etymologies, meanings, and syntactical and idiomatic uses

See that? It's a document containing words and a bunch of crap about words including where they came from and how they are actually used.

The dictionary is a reflection of language, not the other way around.

Third, new words get into the dictionary all the time without people making a stink. It's only weird looking words that the kids say while listening to their "rock music" and playing their "video games" that get people upset. For example, the word "nanoscience" isn't in the Merriam-Webster dictionary yet either, and yet universities are teaching classes on it and the National Science Foundation has a whole section of their website devoted to it. I don't hear anybody making a stink that they shouldn't be using that word because it isn't in Merriam-Webster, and if they do put it in next year I'm sure nobody will then either. But "w00t", a word I'd wager is being used a lot more often than "nanoscience"? English professors everywhere start weeping.

To me, the bottom line is communication. That's the point of language. If people are inventing new words and new slang, that means that there are new ideas and new ways to express those ideas out there. I'm not saying "w00t" is representative of some new age of enlightenment, but people are using the word a lot and therefore it should probably go in the dictionary.

How much sense does it actually make to only use a dictionary when reading an old book that uses words you've never heard or seen before? Doesn't it make just as much, if not way more sense, to be able to use a dictionary to look up words people are actually using regularly?

Anyway, even if you don't like it, "w00t" will probably be in the dictionary in a year or two. And there's one very obvious thing to say about that: w00t!

The Mitchell Report Pool

2007-12-07T14:49:00.000-05:00

Even if you're not a baseball fan you have probably heard of the Mitchell Report. Former Senator George Mitchell has been putting this steroid investigation together for over a year and half now and it is expected to be released sometime in the next week or so, and will supposedly feature many, many names of Major League Baseball players involved in steroids. The report will apparently include some big names too.

In the spirit of gleaning entertainment from the cheating and public humiliation of others, a few of my buddies and I decided to put together a special Mitchell Report Pool to celebrate what is sure to be one of baseball's darkest hours. The rules were as follows:

1. Each participant (total of four) drafts a team of eight players.
2. Draft lasts eight rounds, serpentine order.
3. Players must have played in 2007 at the Major League level.
4. Barry Bonds is ineligible for the draft.
5. Participant with the most names featured on the Mitchell Report wins.
6. In the event of tie, total combined salary of the players featured on the list wins.

These rules made Jason Giambi the consensus number one pick. With his robust salary and already admitted steroid use, PLUS the fact that Giambi actually spoke to Mitchell as part of his investigation, you could say Giambi is the LaDanian Tomlinson of fantasy steroids.

The draft order was determined by an evening of Texas Hold 'Em.

This was a particularly interesting exercise because nobody really knows what the parameters are for inclusion on the Mitchell Report. The biggest question I have is whether or not guys that already have been suspended by Major League Baseball will be included in the report. If so it makes sense to cherry pick from the list of guys suspended since the steroid policy went in place. If not, however, those guys just turn out to be wasted picks. Add to that the fact that most of the suspended guys so far have turned out to be middle of road players and in the event of a tie your salary total isn't going to be high enough, and you can see that there was some serious strategy (guesswork) going on.

Some of this cast of characters you may remember from the pickup basketball game that settled the argument once and for all about who the greatest basketball player of all time was (Editor's Note: Game settled nothing). In addition to the three from that clash of titans was a fellow who I shall refer to as Kevin Youkilis only because of his affinity for the Boston Red Sox and not at all because of the similarity in facial hair or because the gentleman in question dressed as this player for Halloween.

Round One
1. Jason Giambi - Youks
2. Jay Gibbons - Jordan
3. Miguel Tejada - Kobe
4. Paul Byrd - Bird

Number one and two weren't surprises, especially with Gibbons just this week being suspended for steroids after years of claiming he would never touch the stuff. Tejada could be considered an outside risk as a first rounder, but with his significant dropoff and power it probably isn't much of a stretch.

Round Two

1. Gary Sheffield - Bird
2. Gary Matthews Jr. - Kobe
3. Jose Guillen - Jordan
4. Rick Ankiel - Youks

Again no major surprises. Sheffield claims he never knowingly took steroids although he has admitted to taking them in the form of a cream. All three of those other guys have had their names mentioned in connection to steroid investigations, with Guillen being nabbed alongside Gibbons earlier this week.

Round Three

1. Scott Schoeneweis - Youks
2. Troy Glaus - Jordan
3. Aaron Rowand - Kobe
4. Juan Salas - Bird

A shocker in the third round by Kobe as he throws out not just a former Phillie, but a beloved one who famously ran into a wall while making an over the shoulder catch, breaking his face. Rowand would incidentally be the only Phillie taken in the draft.

Round Four

1. Guillermo Mota - Bird
2. Milton Bradley - Kobe
3. Roger Clemens - Jordan
4. Brian Roberts - Youks

Bird went with back to back relief pitchers as the crafty veteran started to cherry pick off of the already suspended players list. I wanted to take Roberts here but went with my heart and took Clemens. Man I can't stand that guy.

Round Five

1. Ivan Rodriguez - Youks
2. Mike Cameron - Jordan
3. David Ortiz - Kobe
4. Neifi Perez - Bird

It was at this point abundantly clear that Kobe was rolling the dice in this draft and going for the shockers. The choice of David Ortiz garnered an unkind response from Youks. When I politely pointed out that Ortiz's numbers skyrocketed between 2002 and 2003, Youks became even more agitated. Meanwhile Neifi Perez was taken for the first time in a fantasy draft of any kind.

Round Six

1. Ryan Franklin - Bird
2. Josh Beckett - Kobe
3. Eric Gagne - Jordan
4. Jerry Hairston Jr. - Youks

In response to the remarks from Youks, Kobe fired another shot by selecting Beckett. Not wanting to miss the fun I snagged Gagne, which made 3 Red Sox in 5 picks.

Round Seven

1. Rafael Betancourt - Youks
2. Sammy Sosa - Jordan
3. Craig Biggio - Kobe
4. Dan Serafini - Bird

I have to say that I believe Sammy Sosa in round seven is the steal of this draft. Bird makes a very tricky pick by taking Serafini, who pitched 3 games in the entirety of the 2007 season.

Round Eight - Final Round

1. Aubrey Huff - Bird
2. Carlos Delgado - Kobe
3. Andy Pettitte - Jordan
4. Mike Piazza - Youks

Wanting to complete the Clemens-Pettitte love connection, I took ol' Andy with my final pick.

Looking back over the teams, it was clear that crafty old Bird had assembled a team of middling players, many of whom had already been suspended for steroids. If it comes down to a tiebreaker he is toast.

Kobe took the most risks with names like Ortiz, Beckett, and Biggio that would absolutely rock the baseball world. They are all fan favorites and any one of them would be a PR nightmare.

Youks diversified nicely with a couple of guys already caught and the rest featured prominently in previous investigations. Youks even included a flier on Piazza with his last pick.

As for me, when I took names already suspended, I took recent suspensions hoping they would still be immediate/relevant enough for inclusion in the report. Otherwise I stuck with guys that had already been named in investigations.

Now we just wait like kids before Christmas for the report. Hopefully Santa brings plenty of needles, Jose Canseco told me it's a bad idea to share.

28K Words Later

2007-11-30T22:58:00.000-05:00

Note: Thanks to Andy for the title.

Ridiculously, I left myself in a position this year in NaNoWriMo where I needed to write 17,000 words on the final day.

Fortunately for me, I've got a few extra vacation days I have to burn before the year ends, and today was the perfect day because there was no way I was going to be able to write that much if I went into work.

With one hour to spare, I reached 50,093 words.

The problem came about fifteen minutes before that though when I reached about 49,700 words.

I had actually finished the entire story, and I was 300 words short.

It was my first crack at a children's/young adult novel, so I knew it would be shorter than past attempts, but I cursed my ill luck at falling just under the mark. I had to pad it somehow with at least 300 words of filler to reach the finish line.

The obvious solution to this, of course, was a zombie attack.

Please enjoy the last few hundred words of my novel. They will not be included in any draft after tonight. Please keep in mind that I have been writing for awhile and I'm frankly stunned I am not weeping blood from staring at this screen all day.

Some context - the story is about an immigrant family from Germany. One of the characters is named Franz, and he lives on a horseradish farm. That should really be all you need. None of this is about to make any sense anyway.

------

Franz walked over the crest of a hill. The world was his to explore now, and he had been traveling for many days.

Never could he have anticipated what he would see on his first trip off the farm to another town.

“Hello there,” he shouted. It looked a nice town and the people approaching seemed like normal, good-hearted folk.

Until Franz realized that one of them was gnawing on a human arm.

“S&*%,” Franz muttered. “I knew it would come to this sooner or later.”

Zombies.

Franz pulled out his 12 gauge. With a click-clack he cocked it.

“Time to do some horseradish farming, m%th$rf&#@ers. And by ‘horseradish farming’, I mean zombie killing.”

Franz charged down the hill, the battle cry of “JIBBLY JIBBLY” spewing from his lips.

Zombies, of course, know no fear. But if they did, they would have feared the sight of Franz and his 12 gauge tumbling down the hill.

Franz gave both barrels of business to the zombie gnawing on the arm. The zombie head exploded in a spray of blood and brains.

“I’m f%&#ing Jackson Pollock,” Franz said, “and I’m here to make some abstract art.”

Three zombies rushed him from the right. He turned and shot the first one clean through the neck, the head landing on the ground and spinning like a dreidel. “Happy Hanukkah,” he cried. He then did a full flip over the head of the second zombie in the group, shooting straight down as he did into the top of the skull of zombie #2. “That’s my Gallagher impression, b%&#h,” he shouted as the head popped like a ripe watermelon.

Franz realized as he landed that he was out of ammo. “Why the hell did I only pack six shells?” he wondered allowed. Then the zombie ate him.

Unfortunately for the zombies, they didn’t know that an elite force of ninja warriors was already on the way.

------

I smell a Newbury Award.

Congrats Everyone, We Did It

2007-11-28T11:54:00.000-05:00

In a previous post where I listed some of the crazy searches that were bringing people to the blog, one of them was "beaten with a shoe".

Well I just wanted to let you know that a spike in traffic has led to this blog being #1 on the Google results if your search is "beaten with a shoe". It is also the #10 most popular search that leads people here now.

Congratulations, you depraved weirdos.

Cat Update

2007-11-27T11:31:00.001-05:00

I've gotten a couple of emails since I posted about the poop machine, er, I mean cat.

To quickly recap, Jules and I got a previously traumatized cat with some wacky problems. I even went so far as to drop some money on a cat behavior consultant, thereby earning myself some of the most palpable shame I have felt in years.

Anyway, the update is this: the cat has had two teeth extracted by the vet, one which was cracked and the other which was abscessed and was one of the most gnarly things you will ever see. Pumpkin also is constantly on some kind of medication for her ears which get this gross goopy buildup if left alone for a couple of weeks.

The cat at this point has cost us more money than I even want to think about for fear that I will start lighting money on fire in an effort to ensure a greater degree of value/amusement for my dollar.

In all seriousness though, the cat has been better behaved since those teeth came out. She still poops next to the litter box, but we have at least mitigated this problem by putting the boxes in the basement where nobody goes anyway. Of course, having said that, the cat did decide to drop a bomb in my office this morning after I didn't close the door the previous night, so I don't know that there's really progress so much as there is rationalization.

But at least the cat doesn't yowl and holler nonstop and is definitely much more low key than it was before. She's also the most affectionate cat I have ever seen.

This much headache over a cat and some of you actually have kids. I can no longer tell which of us is more insane.

The Novelling Continues

2007-11-27T11:25:00.000-05:00

This is not going quite as well as last year.

In 2006 I wrote pretty consistently every day. The goal is 50k words in November is easily attainable if you just hunker down and spend an hour or so every day plugging away. In the big scheme of things 1,667 words per day isn't that much.

However, you can make it very challenging on yourself if you only write 9 days out of 27.

As you can see from that report the days that I have actually sat down to write I've cranked out some pretty good totals. However I've now put myself in a position with 4 days to go where I need to average 5,500 words the rest of the way.

It's doable. I'm going to give it a shot.

I could make excuses: wedding planning, holiday travel, blah blah blah. But that's all they would be: excuses. The bottom line is that there are definitely a few days in there where I could have gotten writing done and haven't done it.

That changes today, and I'm going to do my best to hit the target. I even took Friday off for a last minute push. It's like school all over again!

The Flawed Machine of Memory

2007-11-13T07:39:00.000-05:00

The most horrifying idea is that what we believe with all our hearts is not necessarily the truth.

-Dr. Elizabeth F. Loftus, Professor of Psychology

My future mother-in-law came for a visit last week and through the weekend to help finalize a lot of the wedding plans. It was a very accomplishing weekend and I think everybody feels that things are coming together nicely.

During lunch yesterday before she left for the airport, she asked me a very simple question. "How long have your parents lived in Georgia?"

Without too much hesitation I answered that it had been over ten years. For the last few years I have distinctly remembered them moving to Atlanta right around the same time I left for college.

The problem with this is that it is patently false, and I realized that as I said it yesterday at lunch. I suddenly remembered that I used to go home to Exton, Pennsylvania to visit every now and again for the first couple years while I was in college.

My parents are probably reading this and are horrified. How could I forget something so simple?

It's weird because I didn't forget going home. What got screwed up in my head was the timeline.

It was a pretty disturbing thing though, and my mouth kind of hung open there for a moment as I realized that there is a lot of fuzzy stuff during those first couple years of college. It was an altogether stressful time, but forgetting/misremembering something so basic really shook me up as I tried to reconstruct just what the heck happened during those couple years. As I said, I had a lot of memories but the order of events is all jumbled up.

I've always had a curiosity for human behavior. Things like mob behavior and memory, particularly as it applies to law, are really revealing about what we are. There are all sorts of examples of people being absolutely convinced that they remember something, and that memory becomes witness testimony, only to have completely contradictory evidence surface later that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the witness was mistaken in what they recalled.

One of the most famous cases involving memory is the Mary Bowman case in the UK. The short story is that in 1978, 44-year old Mary Bowman was found dead as a result of a lethal mix of alcohol and Valium in her body. Open and shut. Twenty years later however, her daughter, Diane, begin to vividly remember details about her mother's death, details which contrasted starkly with the simple explanation of an overdose.

Diane was five years old when her mother died in 1978. But now she remembered her father had abused her as a child and that he had murdered her mother. She recalled him punching her mother, hurling her against the fireplace, and force feeding her sleeping pills and alcohol.

Despite having no actual evidence to back this up, the police took the allegations very seriously and performed further investigation. They exhumed Mary Bowman's body, and the pathologist who performed the examination declared based on bone samples in the original autopsy that there was no doubt Mary Bowman had been strangled.

Keep in mind that Diane Bowman's new memories didn't suggest that her mother had been strangled. Not only that, there were a number of serious issues with the pathologist's declaration.

Regardless, on the basis of this Thomas Bowman was arrested, twenty years after his wife's death. Thomas Bowman had already been convicted of an unrelated sex offense involving an underage girl, so there wasn't a lot of sympathy for him.

Thomas Bowman was found guilty of murder in 2002 and sentenced to life in prison.

The whole story is incredible and I encourage you to read all about it. I can't seem to find anything after 2005 regarding the case, so if anybody knows anything I'd be interested to hear.

The whole point of this is that we rely so much on memory, and yet it has been shown to be an often deeply flawed device. Take for example the "lost in the mall" technique developed by Dr. Elizabeth Loftus, quoted at the beginning of this post.

In this experiment, Loftus read narratives to subjects supposedly provided by family members and asked the subject to describe memories of the event in as much detail as possible. What the subjects did not know is that one of the "memories" was completely false, conjured from thin air. About 25% of the subjects would recall the made up event in vivid detail, regardless of the fact that it never happened.

Initially the study was criticized since getting "lost in the mall" is something pretty innocuous. But since then the experiment has been recreated with much more outrageous false memories, such as hot air balloon rides, near drowning, and animal attacks that never occurred. Amazingly, the results are similar.

So I suppose there is some small comfort that my jumbled order of significant events during a 2 year period at the beginning of college isn't an entirely uncommon occurrence. It still has me pretty spooked though. Your memory isn't just an extension of yourself, it's pretty much one of the most important things that helps define you. It strikes me as a very human thing to create a narrative out of your memories, a story that says you've made progress, you've grown, you've overcome some obstacles and prevailed. If you can't trust the order of events though, you can't trust the narrative. You can't trust yourself.

But on the other side of the coin, being aware of just how flawed the memory mechanism can be can help you from being fooled. It can force you to be more critical. It can force you to keep a more open mind. And these are all good things.

For now, though, I'm just trying not to think too hard about it. After all, I've got a novel to write, and at least that's one narrative entirely in my control.

----

It should be noted of course that scientists do not universally agree over Loftus' results or any of this stuff I've discussed.

Turn Your Poop Into Cash!

2007-11-01T11:14:00.000-04:00

In a chat earlier today with the LastBestAngryMan, he informed me of a new drug that may be sweeping the nation.

Perhaps the cat's pooping habits may be of some use after all!

I don't want to think about what two straight posts on feces is going to do to my search statistics.

The Scoop on the Poop, or How I Became a Yuppie In One Transaction

2007-11-01T09:54:00.000-04:00

Remember Pumpkin?

Unfortunately our emotionally scarred cat has been causing some troubles at home. Troubles in the shape and smell of poop.

Not using the litter box is apparently a common problem for cat owners, so for the first couple of weeks we just figured it was a matter of figuring out the combination of factors that would make the cat comfortable.

For the first few days Pumpkin used the box consistently, but then one day for reasons unknown she dropped the kids off on the kitchen floor instead of at the beach. Despite a thorough scrubbing of the area (using ammonia free products), she would just pick a different spot near the box to do her business.

Obviously we took the cat to the vet assuming there was some kind of problem, but the vet found nothing medically wrong that would explain the behavior. He suggested we confine the cat and retrain her.

We did this and sure enough the cat started using the litter box again. For 4 days. Then the poop started appearing on the floor.

Another visit to the vet and he prescribed Valium, saying it had to be a behavioral problem. Valium for a cat already seemed pretty odd to me, but hey he's the doctor.

It certainly seemed to calm the cat down at night, but didn't stop the poop machine from continuing her habits.

Since then we have tried dozens of things, including:

- Larger litter box
- Multiple boxes
- Multiple litters
- Feline pheromone relaxers
- Thorough cleaning of all boxes
- More toys
- Aluminum foil in places where cat has gone outside the box
- Food in places where cat has gone outside the box
- Vinegar in places where the cat has gone outside the box
- Leaving TV on while gone with birds playing in continuous loop
- Night lites
- Cat Behavior Books
- And Many More!

Absolutely nothing is working, and I'm starting to get concerned that all these efforts might just be exacerbating the problem.

The latest in this long list is keeping the cat in our bedroom since it seems to suffer some separation anxiety when it doesn't know where we are. This is probably a product of past treatment before we got her. We've made sure to play with the cat regularly and give her some catnip about twice a week (as per cat behavior books) to try to get her more relaxed. It's difficult to tell whether any of this does any good with the Valium right now, but overall I do think the cat seems more relaxed than she did on her first day home.

However, last night Jules caught the cat using the litter box to pee, after which she calmly stepped out of it and went to town right there on the floor of our bedroom.

At this point I don't think I've seen Jules this upset and stressed out since taking the bar exam. I know that there is some reason for the cat's behavior and she's not doing it to intentionally enrage us, but it just never seems to get any better.

Most info suggests that the cat is "middening", which is an extreme form of marking the heart of a cat's territory if it feels threatened. If that is what's happening, the frustration is that we can't figure out what is threatening the cat. It seems that it is just a lot of built up stress from past treatment and possibly fearing that our long absences during work hours mean we are abandoning her. I'm grasping at straws here.

Now, about five years ago I would've just suggested giving the cat back to the foster home or dropping it off at the SPCA. However, this particular cat has been in several homes before ours and dropping an adult cat off at the SPCA is basically a death sentence. We've spent a lot of money at this point trying to pinpoint the problem and we've grown attached to the cat, and the programmer part of me really wants to debug what is wrong. Finally, I don't want Jules to be upset that we somehow failed the cat. That probably sounds pretty lame, but the look on her face when we took the cat to the vet and they told us they would need to keep her overnight for testing was pretty heartbreaking. I don't want to imagine what her face might look like giving the cat away permanently.

So, with all of this in mind, I finally made a move that firmly places me in the category of "psychotic yuppie pet owner". I went and paid for a cat psychologist.

For $165 you get a 1-2 hour phone consultation followed by a month of daily follow up. The pragmatic part of me says this is a silly way to spend money, but when I consider the fact that we've probably spent 3-4 times that already on vet visits and trips to the pet store trying to solve this, I figure the worst that happens is the problem doesn't get fixed and we're no worse off than when we started.

A friend rightfully pointed out to me the following: "The You of five years ago would kick your ass for this." I assure you the shame is palpable.

But I also believe that one of the internet's greatest purposes is to make all shame public. And so it is in that spirit that I present myself for your mockery.

NaNoWriMo II - The Noveling

2007-10-30T08:16:00.000-04:00

In two days it will be National Novel Writing Month again and I encourage readers to participate if possible.

Last year was my first year in NaNoWriMo and I crossed the finish line with a couple of days to spare. Problem was that after 50,000 words, the novel I was working on wasn't close to finished. I had resolved to finish before moving on to other things, but the truth is I wrote myself into a corner and I can't figure out how to get the characters out. It is said that Tolkien took years of time away from writing Lord of the Rings while thinking of ways to get the Fellowship out of Moria, but in the time in between he invented like half a dozen languages. I don't think battling pixellated zombies is quite on the same level.

This year I have a new plan. I came up with a new idea for a children's/young adult type novel that shouldn't end up being nearly as long as last year's project. Although I was satisfied to finish NaNoWriMo last year, I must admit to serious disappointment in not finishing the novel. This time 50k words should put me a lot closer to finishing a full first draft of the entire book, what with the scope being much smaller.

This year I've got a couple more writing buddies as well, including my mom. Writing buddies are great because you end up pushing each other to actually reach the goal of 50k words as you see each other's word counts increasing. As World of Warcraft and other games have taught us, there is no greater motivation than an incrementally increasing progress bar.

This will be extremely fun because my mom and I actually worked together writing a children's story when I was much younger. It was called Frankie the Fabulous Fighting Ferret. My mom had the idea for this tale after watching ferrets wrestling in a pet store, and imagined a professional wrestling league consisting entirely of ferrets. The tale followed sort of a Rocky arc, with Frankie being an unknown and fighting his way up through the ranks. I'm not sure I contributed much more than "technical" names for various pro wrestling maneuvers (yes, I was actually really into pro wrestling when I was a kid), but it was a lot of fun.

There's still a couple of days for stragglers to sign up and I encourage you to do so. Even if you get in a couple of days late, you can still catch up with one solid weekend of writing. It's going to be tougher this year with wedding planning, an extended visit from Julie's mom, and of course the ever present Thanksgiving travel, but that's sort of the point of NaNoWriMo... it's always busy and the trouble with writing is people (myself included) always talk about doing it at some distant point in the future "when we have time."

If anybody does decide to sign up and needs writing buddies, feel free to buddy up with me at robustyoungsoul.

Cool Games You May Not Have Heard Of

2007-10-17T08:37:00.000-04:00

In between furniture shopping and wedding planning I've been playing a pair of games that I heard about on various blogs I read. These two games aren't topping any best selling games charts, but I'm having as much fun with them as I've had with any games this year (certainly more consistent fun than Resident Evil 4).

First up is a game for strategy gaming types. Before you ask, yes, there is a Mac version. This should pretty much go without saying since I own a Mac (the exception to this rule is the incomparable Dwarf Fortress, which remains the sole reason I still have an XP partition). I first saw the game on the excellent blog Dubious Quality.

The game is Armageddon Empires, and it reminds me of some delicious hybrid of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, Risk, and Magic the Gathering. The game is made by small outfit Cryptic Comic and they offer a free demo as well.

One word of advice if you give it a spin: READ THE INSTRUCTION MANUAL. This is not a game you can just pick up and expect immediately to know what to do. It doesn't come with an in-game tutorial, so reading the manual is absolutely essential. Dubious Quality also has a Six Part Play Guide which is extremely helpful as well.

Another word of advice: once you get the hang of this game, prepare for some late nights. The level of detail and the various options available to you are insane: with 4 different factions, 75+ unique faction heroes, and 200+ unique units, there are a TON of permutations for replayability.

The second game I've really been having a blast with is MLB Power Pros. This is, hands down, the most fun I've had playing a baseball game since Hardball 3 on the old PC. MLB Power Pros is a port of a venerable Japanese game series called Jikkyō Powerful Pro Yakyū, which has been around since 1994. This is the first time the series has appeared in US.

And what a shame that is, because this game is an absolute dream come true for baseball fans. It has several different modes of play to appeal to any type of baseball gamer you may be. If you like to get in there and play the games, you've got Exhibition and League mode. If you like to handle GM style duties (player management, trades, salaries, etc.) you've got Season mode. If you like to do both, Season mode can be tweaked so that you play the games or interrupt them in the middle if your team is losing and you want to take control. If you want to create an expansion team, you can do that in Season mode complete with expansion draft.

That's only the tip of the iceberg. There is "Success" mode, in which you control a college player through his 3 year college baseball career. You're not just playing baseball though, you have to balance studying, dating, earning money at a part-time job, practicing, upgrading equipment... it's absolutely mind blowing. If you can get your created player through to the majors, he becomes available in other modes if you want. You can put him on the free agent list in Season mode or make him available in the next draft. OR you can create a whole team of players that you've taken through Success mode and make them into an expansion team. OR you can create an entire league of made up characters.

Get the point here? The game has absolutely everything you can think of if you are a video game baseball fan. I have a bad feeling though that the US audience is going to be put off by the weird, childish graphics of the players. The players are very cartoony, but they exhibit all the mannerisms of the MLB players they represent. The cartoony Ryan Howard points his bat at the pitcher before squatting into his stance. Cartoony Dice-K has his funky delivery. Cartoony Gary Sheffield jerks his bat around wildly and flings accusations of cartoony racism.

Seriously, if you have even a passing interest in baseball you have to get this game.

Both of these games I've mentioned are available for $30. That's a darn sight cheaper than the average game. Armageddon Empires is available for PC or Mac, while MLB Power Pros is available for your trusty old PS2 or your shiny new Wii (Wii version $40).

Falcon Faulty Pick: Week 6

2007-10-11T12:46:00.001-04:00

I've been a member of a head-to-head pick 'em league for the NFL for several years running now. The way it works is you and your opponent pick every game and whoever gets more right wins. The scheduling is easy because there are as many players as there are teams in the league, and everybody represents a team. I happen to be the Falcon.

Pretty simple stuff except for the fact that I stink at NFL prognostication. So a few years back I started writing a semi-regular column for the league called the "Falcon's Faulty Pick of the Week". The way it works is I pick one game that seems like it should be a lock, and then watch with dismay as somehow the pick goes sour. My inaccuracy has been almost uncanny in the past.

-----

Going into the start of the season, LaDainian Tomlinson ranked #1 on every single fantasy football player's cheatsheet. There was an excellent reason for this: he put up 1800+ yards rushing, 500+ yards receiving, and scored an absolutely absurd 31 touchdowns.... make that 33 actually, because he passed for 2 touchdowns also.

That Chargers team was so ridiculous that it won 14 football games last year. That's a winning percentage of .875. To put that in perspective, let's see what an .875 winning percentage would approximate to in other leagues:

MLB: 142-20
NBA: 72-10
NHL: Nobody cares

Despite this, the Chargers decided to fire their coach. The reason given was that they needed to take the "next step" in the playoffs. What the Chargers seem to have forgotten is that in order to actually WIN in the playoffs, you need to qualify for them in the first place.

I think there's more to it then just the "next step" however. You see, I think the Chargers understand what the NFL is all about: PARITY. This often requires IDIOCY. I believe I will henceforth call these types of dubious football decisions PARIDIOCY, and by hiring Norv Turner the Chargers demonstrated this necessary NFL trait in spades.

This week the Chargers anticipate some relief against the Oakland Raiders. The Raiders currently sit atop their division at a robust 2-2. This is a result of them playing one fewer game than everybody else in their division, who all chime in with 2-3 records, making them the most PARIDIOTIC division in the league.

Despite the Chargers' woes, they should have no trouble handling the Oakland Raiders. We're talking about a team that was silly enough to not only hire Norv Turner, but to replace him with Art Shell. This is a team that splashed record breaking money for a rookie quarterback only to hand the reigns over to everybody's favorite bumbling QB, Daunte Culpepper. This is a team that no matter what can call their season a success because they already matched their entire win total last year. They are a team that has won 17 football games in the last five years. They don't even qualify as a team that demonstrates paridiocy, because they are just bad.

So bad, that the struggling Chargers are currently favored to win the game by 9 1/2 points.

FALCON PICKS CHARGERS
YOU PICK RAIDERS

Last week I actually got the pick right by taking the Patriots. The Patriots will almost certainly proceed to make me look foolish by going undefeated this year... although now that I have said that, they will probably lose this week to Dallas. Such is the metaphysical nature of the Falcon Faulty Pick. You plumb these depths at the risk of your very sanity.

Why Are You Here?

2007-10-11T10:25:00.001-04:00

Since I finally got around to setting up Google Analytics to track the visitor stats on the blog, the narcissist in me has had a grand ol' time looking at what folks are reading here and how they're getting here in the first place.

It comes as no great surprise that the old Warcraft addiction post is how most people find the blog. There is something pretty humbling in the fact that the most popular piece of writing on your own blog isn't even written by you, but it's cool that people still read it. That post alone gets about 50+ views a day, and the two related posts rank 2 and 3 in views.

After that though things get kind of interesting, with the old Pac Man Online post on gaming theory coming in next. I can only assume that this is because the stats say some people land on the blog doing searches for "pac man online". I suppose the title is slightly misleading.

Which transitions nicely to how people are getting here, which is where the real fun is. First, check out the top 5 Google searches that land people here:

1) wow addiction
2) trade mcnabb
3) addicted to world of warcraft
4) world of warcraft suicide
5) pac man online

The first one comes as no surprise... but how in the world does my year and a half old post entitled Trade McNabb warrant the top spot on the results page of that Google search? Seems sort of silly.

But when you dig really deep, things get hilarious. Check out some of these awesome and... unique... searches that lead people to the blog:

- old man body
- transformers shower curtain
- beaten with a shoe
- being a large bodybuilder, i was shocked when i found out his penis was larger than mine
- daunte culpepper desktop wallpapers
- hitler's fecal love
- if i'm clean and taste cocaine will it come up in any drug test?
- using modafinil to go clubbing

I mean, I get in a roundabout way how "transfomers shower curtain" could lead you here, but I must admit being completely perplexed regarding "beaten with a shoe".

Any ideas?

Falcon Faulty Pick of the Week

2007-10-05T10:27:00.000-04:00

I've been a member of a head-to-head pick 'em league for the NFL for several years running now. The way it works is you and your opponent pick every game and whoever gets more right wins. The scheduling is easy because there are as many players as there are teams in the league, and everybody represents a team. I happen to be the Falcon.

Pretty simple stuff except for the fact that I stink at NFL prognostication. So a few years back I started writing a semi-regular column for the league called the "Falcon's Faulty Pick of the Week". The way it works is I pick one game that seems like it should be a lock, and then watch with dismay as somehow the pick goes sour. My inaccuracy has been almost uncanny in the past.

Here's this week's column, the first of the season for me. The reason I haven't written the previous 4 weeks is I didn't get to make any picks due to the fact I lost a wager regarding the Colts in the Super Bowl, the penalty being that the loser had to let the winner make their picks for them for the first four weeks.

Yeah, I picked against the Colts. Like I said, I am very bad at this.

-----

For all of the criticism that baseball receives for being imbalanced between the "haves" and the "have-nots", people seem to forget that when it comes down to crowning a champion, the NFL has not been the bastion of parity that it makes itself out to be.

The consensus has pretty much been that the AFC is far and away better than the NFC and has been for the past 6 years or so. If you were forced to pick the 2 best teams in football the past few years, the Colts and the Patriots would be the obvious choice.

Take a look at the list of the last 6 Super Bowl Winners starting with the most recent:

Dungy's Colts - Steelers - Patriots - Patriots - Dungy's Stolen Bucs - Patriots

That's 4 out of 6 for the teams everybody agrees every year are the best in the NFL... 4.5 if you give just half the credit for the Bucs to Dungy, who built that team in the first place.

How exactly is this the model of parity? Everybody points at the Yankees and Red Sox and says they make the game unbalanced, but take a look at the list of the last 6 World Series Champions starting with the most recent:

Cardinals - White Sox - Red Sox - Marlins - Angels - Diamondbacks

That would be 1 out of 6, including a win for the Marlins who had a payroll of about $14.83 that year.

I don't point this out to trash the NFL. I point this out to explain that after the top tier of teams in the NFL, it is just one big mess which provides the ILLUSION of parity the league so desperately wants to sell. I tell you this so that you won't be fooled when you think about picking AGAINST the Colts or the Patriots on any given week.

So, now that I've said all that, my first FALCON FAULTY PICK OF THE WEEK:

PATRIOTS OVER BROWNS

Last I checked the Patriots were favored by about 52.5 points, and with good reason. Most agree this team could go undefeated. I don't know about that, but I know that Randy Moss has been a stud because he is on the fantasy football team I share with my Wednesday night drinking buddies. And since fantasy football is an absolutely accurate barometer of how good someone is (Ronnie Brown is obviously the best player in football right now, the stats say so), there will be no stopping the Pats.

And usually it is bold, uninformed claims like that which put me in all kinds of trouble.

So, in case you have forgotten how this works:

FALCON PICKS PATRIOTS
YOU PICK BROWNS*

After all, the Browns have Braylon Edwards who is almost as good as Moss according to some fantasy football depth charts.**

This year I will not be using a computer to make my picks after how badly that went last year. Instead I will be taking the cheap route and picking the favorites every week (sorry Texans). Fellow nerds will be pleased to know, however, that I used a computer algorithm with last year's stats to produce my fantasy depth charts and draft orders in my triumphant return to the fantasy football arena. I also promise this will be the last time I mention fantasy football.***

-----

*You probably shouldn't pick the Browns.
**Edwards probably not as good.
***Probably won't be the last time.

Wedding Cake

2007-09-25T13:53:00.000-04:00

This afternoon I returned from lunch to a full email inbox. I thought somebody had spammed me, but it turned out to just be Julie with a plethora of wedding cakes to look at. Through the miracle of Gmail chat I was able to provide instant feedback on the many designs.

Me: holy crap I am getting email bombed
halp

Jules: tell me if you like any of these cakes

I attempt to pause long enough to provide appearance of careful cake perusal.

Jules: oh yeah there is one more
sent

Me: magnificent
a marvel of cake design
I love it
best of the bunch
saved the best for last
the apogee of cake achievement

Jules: it was a grooms cake in another wedding

Me: never before has the world seen a cake of this excellence
this will be the gold standard of all cakes to come
this cake is the zenith of the wedding cake field
like TS Eliot's "Prufrock", it will be a standard that will haunt this designer their entire career

Pause, I assume I am off the hook.

Jules: do you have access to a color printer?

Another pause as I consider how best to answer this question.

Me: yes

Jules: oh, can I send you the cakes and have you print them?

Another pause. Panic. I choke and leave the door open.

Me: how many cakes are we talking

Second flood of cake spam begins.

Felis Silvestris Catus

2007-09-25T10:52:00.000-04:00

So last week we got a cat.

We couldn't just get any cat though. Jules and I had been searching for weeks on Petfinder and whatnot for orange, already declawed cats.

"Declawed". Yes, a word rife with controversy and consternation. I had no clue.

When we went to the National Adoption Weekend being hosted at the local Petsmart and mentioned that we were looking for an already declawed cat, I immediately had several pamphlets and accusatory looks thrown my way. Apparently cat lovers do not take kindly to the declawing process.

Naturally Julie tried to hold her ground with the ladies at the Petsmart who were explaining to us how cruel the whole thing was, and equally naturally I made it my job to make the situation even more of a mess.

Jules: We're looking for an already declawed cat so we don't have to declaw a kitten.

Me: Babe, look at this pamphlet. Did you know that they cut the whole bone off? This looks terrible!

Helpful Cat Lady: Yes, it's so cruel what they do to the poor kitties.

Jules: We don't have a choice, it is in the lease. We have to get one declawed because of the hardwood floors.

Me: (gesturing to the pamphlet) And look at this!! It's not even legal in a lot of European countries! It's considered animal cruelty in England!

Helpful Cat Lady: Yes, we're working hard to see if we can't make it illegal here too.

Jules: This is the landlord's decision, not ours.

Me: Look at this list of countries it is illegal in: England, Israel, Australia...

Jules: (getting angry) We're not declawing one, we're getting one already declawed...

Me: ... Turkey, New Zealand... did you know capon is illegal in England too? Aren't we serving that at the wedding?

Helpful Cat Lady: (narrows eyes)

Me: Japan and Brazil too, and they'll let you get away with a lot of stuff there. It must be really bad.

I was about to mention to the lady that Julie had wanted to declaw the cat because it makes them more tender when you cook them, but I thought that might be going too far and clearly I was already getting in hot water.

Anyway we eventually were able to get a nice older cat named Pumpkin through an adoption agency called Forgotten Cats and the ladies were very nice.

Here you can see her plotting whether to poop inside the litter box or right next to it.

Like I said, we couldn't just get any cat. We had to get one with a sordid past.

Apparently Pumpkin first lived with an owner who became an alcoholic and got rid of her. Then she lived with a family whose kids tortured and tormented her, including keeping her from getting to the litter box on purpose. For the last sixth months she had been with Forgotten Cats in a foster home in a large cage and had licked/chewed most of the hair on her back legs off due to stress. I think they had largely given up hope that she would find a permanent home because she is an older cat and folks typically adopt kittens.

Naturally with this sad story I immediately wanted the cat because yes, I am a sucker. When we were at Petsmart I wanted the old blind cat that probably had about three months to live and the gigantic diseased one that had kitty AIDS (I was prevented from doing so by the claws).

So anyway Pumpkin is old, overweight, missing fur on her back legs and has some dependency issues due to past treatment.

Needless to say, I love this cat.

Resident Evil 4 - Amazing Progress

2007-09-25T09:21:00.000-04:00

After a tactical lesson on how to properly play the game from one of my kindly neighbors, I managed to finally get past the opening sequence of Resident Evil 4.

I racked up somewhere between 50-100 pitchforks to the face before making it into the first town. I then racked up about a dozen chainsaw decapitations before finally finishing the sequence.

All told it took me a little over a month to get past the very first combat sequence in the game. The satisfaction was palpable.

And then, like the beginning of a movie, the words "Resident Evil" appeared on the screen.

Yes folks, the sequence it took me all those hours and deaths to get through was the INTRODUCTORY SEQUENCE, designed to take a few minutes to get you acclimated to the controls.

This is going to take awhile.

Four Things Meme

2007-09-18T07:43:00.000-04:00

Got tagged by DM Osbon for this blog meme all the cool kids are into. Now that I am doing it, that almost certainly means it has ceased to be cool but I'll give it a shot anyway.

Four Jobs I have had in my life (not including current job):

Shopping Cart Pusher - I collected shopping carts in the lot part time one summer at a grocery store. I actually witnessed more rampant drug use at this particular job than any other place I worked, including waiting tables. Once I also saw a couple guys throwing boxes of cereal up into the ceiling fans in back. That was absolutely spectacular. Me, I just pushed carts for four hours straight with a fifteen minute break somewhere in the middle. Time has never, ever moved more slowly than it did that summer.

Waiter - Did this for years at various establishments after my first stint with a defense contractor. The funny thing about waiting tables is working in cash all the time. You kind of worry walking home late from the bus stop that somebody is going to rob you and take all your income for the day. Fortunately I only ever got robbed once and that was on the way TO the bus stop, and all I had at the time was a couple bucks for bus fare and some smokes. So there's a handy tip for all you prospective thieves out there - rob the waiters AFTER their shift!

Help Desk Guy at University - I worked sometimes on the weekends as one of those help desk/computer lab guys at college who basically sits there and can't answer any of your questions when your paper gets destroyed by pieces of junk that pass for computers. In case you can't tell from editorializing, yes, that job was frustrating. I genuinely did want to be able to help people out but the computers in the labs quite literally could potentially catch fire at any point and the garbage laptop that the school recommended (along with the garbage setup package for connecting to the school network) made certain that every last person who didn't know computers inside and out would have to call the help desk or bring their laptop in. The only upside to this job was that very occasionally you'd make a house call to some cute girl's room. Unfortunately any remote chance of getting a date was crippled by the fact that you were the "computer guy" the second you walked in.

Sacristan at a Catholic Retreat House - Before the job I have now, this was definitely the coolest job I had. I got this job when I was 13 or so, and it involved staying for the entire weekend at the retreat house while all these older folks (usually men only) from various groups/churches would come up to pray. All I had to do was set up microphones and other stuff for the occasional Mass/talk and the rest of the time I could do what I pleased. I could eat whatever I wanted from the fridge in the gigantic kitchen, and there were plenty of spaces where you could set up a TV to watch movies.

The coolest part of this job though was that the place was so big they usually had TWO sacristans there, which meant it was basically three days of raising hell with whatever buddy was there for the weekend with me. At night we would take the golf carts they had there for the older gents that had trouble walking and we'd race those carts up and down the hills of the place.

Sometimes though, there would only be one sacristan and those weekends were just as cool: you had time to sit and chill on the beautiful grounds and catch up with a book or something. I'm not a religious fellow but there was definitely a sense of peace on those weekends at that place (except when it was time to race the carts or if the Charismatics were coming... that was just odd and frankly a little creepy, although the people were usually pretty friendly when they weren't twitching on the ground and speaking in tongues).

Four Films I have watched again and again:

Blade Runner (Director's Cut) - I've watched this movie more times than any other. I used to actually watch this movie on a weekly basis my second year of college. Still waiting for the super deluxe special anniversary edition which has been rumored to be in the works for awhile now.

Lord of the Rings (Extended Editions) - The best movies ever. EVER. The only reason I haven't watched these more than Blade Runner is I haven't owned them as long.

Ali - This one might surprise. I'm a big Michael Mann fan and this is definitely my favorite movie of his. I am almost guaranteed to put this on if I am home on a sick day or something. For a variety of reasons I find the movie to be extremely uplifting and inspirational, and the boxing choreography is very true to the original fights if you compare them with old footage.

Downfall - I can't stop watching this movie. If you've never heard of it, it's a German film about the last hours of the Third Reich. It is based on an eyewitness account from Hitler's secretary of the final hours in the bunker. You can watch the actual interview with Hitler's secretary in the documentary Blind Spot, but the actual bringing to life of the events is both disturbing and riveting. Julie is constantly making fun of me for always watching these World War II movies, especially the ones about Hitler, but it is just so fascinating to me to see how easy it is to fool yourself into believing you're doing the right thing. I think it's important to remember that as we get older and more set in our ways, we don't necessarily get wiser: it's more likely that we get tunnel vision.

Tommy Boy - Okay I know this is #5 but honorable mention has to go to this hilariously idiotic movie. I don't actually own this movie but I'll watch it every time it comes on TV.

Four Places I have lived:

Richmond, Virginia

Bethlehem, Pennsylvania

Exton, Pennsylvania

Storage, USA - For a couple months there I was in such disastrous shape financially that I actually technically lived in a storage garage. Now that's a bit misleading because I very rarely slept in the box, but I was sort of in between places to live and... actually, the less said about this, the better.

Four Programs I love to watch:

Battlestar Galactica - Best show on TV. Nothing else is even close. Of course I say this watching very little TV of this kind (usually only sports), so perhaps my opinion on this matter is worth even less than usual.

Simpsons

CBS Sunday Morning - C'mon, who doesn't love Charles Osgood?

Uh.... - I seriously can't think of anything else not sports related. I used to watch Baseball Tonight almost nightly but that hasn't been true this year - the new lineup on that show is absolutely terrible. I like Scrubs and Law and Order, but I don't go out of my way to watch them, they just always seem to be on whether you want to see them or not.

Four Places I have been on vacation:

London, England

Various Cruise Ships - This is really my vacation of choice these days. You get to visit a variety of destinations, everything is taken care of for you on the boat, and you don't have to worry about trying to organize your schedule because they'll do it for you. Plus it is just extremely relaxing to sit on a boat and read a good book. I sleep better on a cruise ship than anywhere else. Let it never be said I have crass tastes!

Williamsburg, Virginia - I know what you're thinking. "That's not even remotely exotic or interesting," you're mumbling to yourself right now. Well, knock it off. Somebody might catch you mumbling to yourself and have you committed, and then where you be? Well, in an institution I suppose.

So yeah, Williamsburg. This place is awesome. There is an amusement park here with a ton of roller coasters, there's cool historic nonsense so you can claim you went there for a reason OTHER than roller coasters, and last but certainly not least there is this unbelievably sweet Wine and Cheese shop there. I would like my ashes stored here at this shop in the off chance I could come back as a ghost and just consume everything in the store. Not like Slimer in Ghostbusters though, I'm thinking more of a badass ghost like the one in the Grudge that just killed everyone for their wine and cheese. (Note: this may not have actually been depicted in the Grudge, but I believe it was implied.)

Hershey, Pennsylvania - This place rocks in the winter. First of all, you've got a town that smells like chocolate. Second of all, everyone there wants to feed you chocolate. Third of all there is a ride you can go on that explains how chocolate is made. Fourth of all they give you chocolate at the end of this ride. Fifth of all the ride is free and there is no limit to the number of times you can receive free chocolate.

I love going to this place around Christmas time. My parents used to take the family there at Christmas and I have a lot of great memories at the Lodge. The last time Jules and I went to the Lodge the place was completely overrun with screaming kids, but I would still go back again because there are other places to stay besides the Lodge. Plus the Candy Lane always looks right purty lit up with all those lights.

Four Foods I love to eat:

Jambalaya - Julie makes this awesome jambalaya with chicken and sausage. I could eat an entire pot of this stuff.

Green Curry - I am completely hooked on this green curry at a nearby Thai place called Sweet Basil. If you ask for it to be made so that smoke is coming out of your ears, they will actually oblige. Sure, the morning after is slightly painful, but that doesn't matter when it tastes this good.

Pizza - Here's one of the great things about pizza: the boxes can double in a pinch as furniture. I once lived in a house with four other people and we used to host the weekly Dungeons & Dragons game at our place. We'd play in the basement. There were so many pizza boxes down there that I stacked them up and actually used them as a table for my dice and books.

Mac & Cheese with Tuna - This is still probably my favorite thing to eat. This is especially good with Velveeta. Funny story about Velveeta, in that same house with the pizza box table I once lived for a week on a jumbo block of Velveeta cheese. Like the storage garage, the less said about this the better.

Four Drinks I love to consume:

Beer

Maker's Mark - Rather than list "bourbon" I'm just going to list this because it is my favorite hard stuff.

Coffee - I drink more coffee than water. It should be fairly obvious at this point that I lead a very healthy lifestyle.

Mountain Dew - It's like liquefied Pixie Stix. How can this possibly be a bad thing? By the way, that sound you are hearing is my heart struggling to free itself from my ribcage.

Four Places I would rather be right now:

Baseball Game - I love baseball. When I retire I want to be one of those old dudes that shows people to their seats at a minor league ballpark. I'll get to complain with the other old men about how the kids today don't play the game "the right way" while getting paid to watch.

In Bed - It was a pretty rough night last night. I think living in a town with a lot of bars in walking distance is starting to take a toll. Hmmm, you know, I'll bet a little nip of something would take the edge off...

On a Cruise Ship

Nowhere - Maybe it's cheesy, but actually I really love where I am right now. I love my job, love my neighborhood, love my friends... I'm loving life. Seems like it would be pretty silly to mess with that right now.

Okay, so now I'm supposed to tag four other people. That means LastBestAngryMan, chornbe, jclark, and Mansorium, you are all it. Get crackin' or the collective karma of the internet will hurl its mighty weight at you.

The Full Review of Dragon Wars

2007-09-17T11:56:00.001-04:00

A full review from one of the gents who saw Dragon Wars. I can sadly take no credit for this.

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If it were possible to award a movie Zero Star, I would have done it. This review is to serve more as a dire warning than as an assessment: avoid this stinking pile of garbage covered crap at all costs.

The characters are distant and their actions as convoluted as the confuddled plot line (or lack there of). They seem devoid of all human emotion (other than selfishness) and motivation. I don't know if it was just sub-par performances, direction, or casting (or all of the above), however the poor writing (luuk mawmy, I writez uh moovey 4 duh 3ird grayd showkase) does nothing to pull this haggard shell of a "too-long video game cutscene" out of a kamikaze tailspin into the Ocean of Despairingly Bad Movies.

The story is great!!! "Great" if, say, you enjoy being cinematically lobotomized by a highly caffeinated, rabid wolverine wielding a rusty turbo-charged chainsaw with the word "plot" on it. It seems to me that the writer frequently got himself into situations while devising the script where he would ask himself "I wonder where I should go with this" or get himself into jams and say "wow, I wonder how I can get the characters out of this mess?"

The answers apparently came from the world famous writer's reference "How to Avoid Writing in a Coherent Manner at All Costs." This valuable treatise, of course, suggests frequently inserting large computerized cobras to take the attention away from ridiculous plot holes and unbelievable scenarios.

The aforementioned ridiculous plot holes and unbelievable scenarios are so atrocious in nature, in fact, that they are actually truly truly insulting to the movie-goer's intelligence. The director makes such insane requests for suspension of disbelief that it actually makes the audience cringe at points. Several times throughout this film I heard others around me gasp or giggle at the shear nonsensical madness taking place on-screen. I also heard many of them talking about trying to get their money back after the movie. Several questioned how it got funding to be produced in the first place.

One shining ray of light in this movie, however, was oh who am I trying to kid, there wasn't anything even remotely redeeming about this asphyxiatingly fecal production. Nothing could have salvaged this train wreck Power-Rangers meets "Reign of Fire" meets Dr. Seuss disaster save the Movie Execs handing out $1,000,000 to all twelve people in the audience who made it through the entire showing.

-----

My anticipation for the film could not possibly be any higher at this point.

Stirring Movie Reviews

2007-09-17T10:39:00.001-04:00

A couple of my weekly gaming buddies went to see Dragon Wars over the weekend and came away with the following reviews:

"This movie made the Dungeons & Dragons movie look like Lord of the Rings... the second Dungeons & Dragons movie."

"It left me wanting something more: a high powered rifle to end it all."

Obviously I've immediately added this to my Netflix queue.

Blood Bowl - The Original Fantasy Football

2007-09-12T11:01:00.001-04:00

I will never forget one year for Christmas as a young lad I asked for a copy of the enormous board game Blood Bowl. The first edition of this massive game was released in 1987, so I was probably about 9 or 10 when I asked for it.

I never did get a copy of the game, possibly because:
a) It was probably somewhat difficult to explain the high price tag for this board game when your parents are used to buying bargain copies of Monopoly and Life
b) The cover of the box indicated a delicious level of violence that probably would have clashed mightily with the Christmas tree
c) A game called "Blood Bowl" doesn't exactly scream "healthy pastime for a 10 year old" to most parents

To this day I still don't have a copy of the board game. It can cost over $100 if you try to get it online. You can't really get a new copy, you need to buy it secondhand off someone.

The basic gist of this game is that you put together a team of elves, dwarves, orcs, and other fantasy staples and have them play a game of bastardized American football against each other on a huge game board. There are rules for playing entire seasons where you have injuries, player aging, and even fatalities. There's a great summary on the basics on Wikipedia.

A combination of classic fantasy and American football? How can you possibly go wrong?

Well, the learning curve is a little bit on the tough side for the average Joe, and even if I were to finally get a copy of the board game now I have no idea who would actually play the game with me. It takes about 2 hours to play an individual game, and with "campaign" options and the like it would have to be a regularly weekly occurrence. There are online leagues and whatnot that have Java clients, but those players really know what they are doing and just end up destroying newbies like myself.

There is hope, however. A French developer called Focus Home Interactive is developing a PC version of the game.

Perhaps, almost 20 years later, I will have a chance to sink my teeth into this one.

Furniture Shopping, or the Fourth Circle of Hell: Part I

2007-09-12T09:04:00.000-04:00

Thus we descended into the fourth chasm,
Gaining still farther on the dolesome shore
Which all the woe of the universe insacks...

Here saw I people, more than elsewhere, many,
On one side and the other, with great howls,
Rolling weights forward by main force of chest.

They clashed together, and then at that point
Each one turned backward, rolling retrograde,
Crying, "Why keepest?" and, "Why squanderest thou?"

Thus they returned along the lurid circle
On either hand unto the opposite point,
Shouting their shameful metre evermore.

-- Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy - Inferno

About a month ago Jules and I moved into a new place. I'd use that as an excuse for not having posted in awhile, but the real reason is that I've just been extremely lazy.

So yeah, we moved into a bigger place into a cooler town. You can tell it is cool because people like to actually go there, as opposed to the apartment I used to live in where people tried to go the other direction.

You have one or two shootings and a carjacking and all of the sudden everybody thinks you live in a dangerous area. Sheesh!

Anyway with moving into a larger place comes the problem of having to furnish the new areas.

Different Tastes

I discovered the hard way just how different Julie's and my tastes are in furniture a few months ago. We were out on a Saturday afternoon running some errands. Normally I'd try to weasel out of running errands on a Saturday afternoon, but in this case I was persuaded by the possibility of going to see The Transformers movie.

We had taken care of all chores except one with about an hour to spare before the movie. Jules wanted to go to Bed Bath & Beyond to put a couple of things on the wedding registry. The movie theater was right next door so with an hour to spare I figured it wouldn't be a problem.

First, let me just say that Bed Bath & Beyond is really not a bad store when other people are paying. In that sense it is like Williams & Sonoma. It is one of those stores I would never, ever, in a million years spend my own money in because you can find the exact same items for half of the price with a little legwork, but the selection adds a lot to the convenience factor and I think that's why you pay a little extra. They also have some cool square china, which I'm a big fan of.

Julie, however, is not. Julie is very into traditional designs when it comes to furniture, plates, and... uh... well pretty much anything from an aesthetic standpoint.

Me, I hate traditional stuff. I like to be reminded when I walk into a room that I live in the 21st century, not 1950. If they sold robots or jetpacks in furniture stores I'd put them on the registry.

Julie had put a shower curtain on the registry via the internet that she wanted to take a look at in person. One look was all you needed to tell you this was the ugliest shower curtain in the store. The puddle of vomit and various clawed out eyeballs nearby were also a tipoff. It was like Medusa, except looking it in the eyes provoked a gag reflex, immobilizing you as you tried to expunge from your body all trace of having seen the monstrosity.

Also, nothing else that Julie had picked out matched this thing, probably because "Projectile Vomit Inducing Ugly" was SO last year.

However, we were approaching a half hour or so until Transformers started. The question became: do I mention this to Julie?

In the end I couldn't help myself. I mentioned that the towels she had picked didn't match that shower curtain.

With those words any possibility of attending the afternoon screening of Transformers vanished. Like the tortured souls in the Fourth Circle pushing great weights up against each other for eternity, we held dozens of different colored towels up against different shower curtains in an effort to find the elusive perfect match, ever just beyond our tortured grasp.

At one point we were becoming so frustrated that we started asking hapless, unsuspecting nearby shoppers, who looked at us with confusion and horror and we proffered them towels and curtains, tears streaming from our eyes.

I still have yet to see Transformers, by the way.

Maybe It's Mii

2007-08-21T07:59:00.000-04:00

My troubles with my Wii have been well documented (ZING).

I've struggled for several months now with the little white box, trying to figure out what the heck I should be doing with it. I've tried several games at this point, all of which have been either sent back to the store or traded for another game.

Yesterday it became starkly clear to me that I might just be the problem here with this system.

-----

I just finished moving into a new place a short while ago. There are still a lot of boxes lying around and lots of things to unpack. My poor computer is hooked up to the internet but sitting on a small TV stand next to another TV right at the entrance of what will ostensibly be my "office" someday. In other words, the place is still a bit of a mess and although things are starting to take shape a room at a time, getting all of the various games up and running has not been a priority.

However, I also recently had a birthday. As part of that birthday I received a gift certificate from my brother, with which I realized I could finally buy Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition without stern looks from the fiance who has made it clear money is to be saved for purchasing furniture. Although her approach is far more practical, it does not result in me shooting zombies wirelessly.

I'm sure anyone who has been/is married is nodding sagely. "Ah yes, the old zombies vs. furniture argument, you'll learn someday sonny!"

My brother had neatly solved this problem for me with the gift certificate. I happily placed my order and would check back at the website every day to see if it had been shipped yet.

You have to understand, my enthusiasm for this game was pretty high. I have been a huge fan of the Resident Evil series, and Resident Evil 2 was a game I probably played through about 50 times on the original PlayStation. I had never played RE4 because I didn't have a GameCube when the game was first released and it slipped off my radar when it came out for PlayStation 2 several months later. I had initially planned on picking up an old GameCube copy when I got the Wii... then it was announced they were remaking it specifically FOR the Wii.

Resident Evil 4 is one of the best reviewed games of all time. It is considered a landmark game by many gaming magazines and also regarded as one of the best (if not THE best) game that ever came out on the GameCube.

The Wii Edition of the game has also received acclaim for being the best version of the game on any platform yet. Naturally I read every one of these reviews and got myself worked up into a fever pitch from all the hype. I had been keeping the Wii dusted off the last several months, I thought, for this game.

In anticipation of the arrival of Resident Evil 4 I unpacked the Wii and hooked it up. My PS2 remained on a chair in the office... the Wii would get a prominent hookup to the much larger HDTV in the living room.

Yesterday morning I received notification that the game had left the Philadelphia post office. This meant it would almost certainly be waiting for me at home. I watched the clock intently, like a fat kid waiting for the lunch bell at school on pizza day.

Sure enough when I arrived home it was sitting there on the front porch. Oh bliss! Oh happiness! Oh gore soaked zombie shooting mania! At last it was mine!

I wasted no time firing it up. It had been awhile since I played the other Resident Evils but I still remembered the basic gist of things. I was greeted with a sweet opening cinematic... apparently this time I was a special agent tasked with saving the president's daughter. Whatever. The point was I had a gun for zombie killin', and I had no doubt all plot paths would soon lead to undead.

I took a few minutes to run around in a circle and get the control scheme sorted out. There was a handy guide inside the actual game, and I tried out all the moves. It was not nearly as complicated as Zelda or Madden, which was a good sign. Full of confidence, I sent my guy on screen straight into the first mysterious village. A rather predictable cutscene played as the character stumbled across his first zombie. Now we're talking.

It took approximately 10 seconds for the screen "YOU ARE DEAD", dripping with blood, to appear.

I blinked. I really had no idea what just happened. I must have screwed something up pretty badly. That's okay, I thought, just the learning curve kicking in. I hit "Retry" and away I went again.

Same cutscene, blah blah blah ZOMBIE. This time I unloaded about 19 of my 20 bullets on this guy and brought him down. Ah, satisfying!

Unfortunately, you really need bullets in this game. I walked down the next hill and was beset upon by about 3 more hulking monsters who tore me and my remaining bullet to pieces.

Things went on like this for about 20 minutes. I couldn't seem to figure out how to look around and shoot at the same time. It was actually IMPOSSIBLE (as in, not allowed by mechanics) to move and shoot at the same time (actually not that surprising, the other RE games work that way). The combination of being a stationary target and fumbling with the Wiimote/Nunchuck combo lead me to be torn to pieces by hungry zombies at a rate of 2.5 times every 60 seconds. "YOU ARE DEAD" began to get burned into my retinas.

At least three times I got killed without even seeing who or what it was that was attacking me. I would hear a threatening "GRRRR" from somewhere, try to turn around to see where it was coming from, and then my head would explode in a spray of blood followed immediately by "YOU ARE DEAD".

Now, I expected to die a few times. Resident Evil is one of those games where you die a lot, especially the first time through a new area. But I wasn't even getting close to making progress. I thought I had mistakenly put the game on "Hard", but sure enough I had it on the easiest possible setting.

Eventually I was forced to give up before going blind with rage and frustration. It had only taken 45 minutes for me to be beaten into submission.

-----

Are my motor skills really that out of whack? I'm good at these games, dammit! I can still hold my own against my coworkers in Quake. I can play Guitar Hero, that requires a bit of dexterity. What the heck is going on here?

For whatever reason, I just can not seem to wrap my head around this freakin' Wii control scheme. At one point I was trying to run away from a large group of zombies and instead of running my guy took out a knife and gave it a swing. I didn't even have enough time to scream "RUN YOU IDIOT" before I got a pitchfork in the face from one of the zombies and that firk ding blastin' "YOU ARE DEAD" screen.

It's got to be me at this point though. I've played and failed miserably at the two games on the Wii that are supposed to be the best the system has to offer right now. I don't get it, I'm usually at least passable at these types of games.

Am I really just completely falling behind the curve? Am I ever going to figure this stupid machine out? Or do I really just need a cane and a rocking chair to go along with my complaints about these kids and their new fangled technologies?

Whatever the case, that little white box is making me feel pretty old and slow.

I'm going to hang on to the game a little while longer and see if I can get a little better with the controls, because if I don't learn how to handle my Wii now, I might not be able to call myself a man (ZING).

I also really, really want to kill zombies.

In conclusion, here is a link to many of the ways you can die in this game (pretty graphic). I've really only seen the same death over and over again because you need to actually make progress in the game to see some of these other animations, but it certainly doesn't appear things get much easier. Maybe I should stick to checkers.

Lord of the Rings in the 21st Century

2007-08-15T09:26:00.000-04:00

The LastBestAngryMan and I had an extended chat about what Lord of the Rings might look like if it was written by a contemporary fantasy author.

Some highlights:

- It would be 18 books long, and counting.
- Legolas would be a gay vampire trying to redeem himself by joining the Fellowship.
- Saruman would be renamed "Gorlax the Malevolent" to keep readers from getting confused.
- Every peripheral character would be shoved to the forefront and given plotlines. Everybody at the Council of Elrond...Erestor, Galdor, Glorfindel, Gloin...would have their own chapters.

He's compiled the full Top 25 here.

Soul Kerfuffle Meets Higher Education

2007-08-10T11:10:00.000-04:00

Check it out, the infamous View from the Top is being featured in a class at Calvin College.

I'm a little disappointed the counter articles are not featured. One of the things I am pleased about after so much time has passed since the articles were written is that at least one author, Neils Clark, understood what I was attempting to do: provide a somewhat balanced perspective on the issue of gaming addiction to get dialog moving. (The link goes to page 3 of the article where the blog is mentioned, however the whole article is a very good read.)

It's still kind of amazing to me how much buzz those posts generated. This little blog was featured in a segment on Yahoo Buzz at the time, as well as hitting digg and slashdot.

I still prowl those old posts and read the comments, as amazingly they still get some (I also go there to delete the occasional spot of spam, particularly from Warcraft gold sellers).

I'm glad, however, that time has passed. It was amazing and sometimes horrifying to see things that you and your friends had written get dissected, analyzed, and sometimes completely misinterpreted. But such is the way of it: I don't believe we can read anything objectively. We can strive for it, but our personal experiences will always interfere in subtle ways.

At best hopefully it helped add fuel to a dialog about gaming addiction.

At worst, hopefully I picked up a few new readers.

The Golf Outing: Part II - Reckoning

2007-08-01T16:31:00.000-04:00

Now that I'm home from work, I can finish what I started in Part I.

-----

Sunday Morning - The Big Day

After nearly killing Jeff, we spent the remainder of the day relaxing and drinking some beers. Figuring my task was not nearly difficult enough, I stayed up until about 2 AM chatting and drinking beer after beer. By the time Jeff and I stood up to go to bed, the ground was actually spinning.

Real smart move. I went to bed and woke up with a well deserved headache.

A couple of aspirin, two bottles of water and three cups of coffee later, it was time to face the hour of my reckoning.

Sunday Afternoon - Meet Your Partner

The format for this 9-hole, 2 man team extravaganza was best ball off the tee followed by alternate shots. I was paired with one of the best players in the area, a fellow named John. He was a really nice guy and he made me feel a lot more relaxed right away: if I screwed up miserably, at least this guy wouldn't make too much fun of me.

The drawback to such a good partner was this: if we had a bad outing, it would be pretty clear whose fault it was. That same morning while I had been downing water and coffee attempting to become semi-human, this guy was playing 18 holes in a local tournament and winning. I'm not kidding.

Teeing Off

The other pair we were playing with (also a nice pair of gents) suggested I go ahead and start things off.

They must have been licking their chops when they saw my tee shot duff off the driver and barely land past the women's tees a couple dozen yards away.

John said not to worry about it before stepping up and crushing a drive 300+ yards straight down the fairway.

It was pretty obvious that I would be taking all of the second shots today.

Fortunately, this played to my "strength", if it can be called that. I'd been pretty comfortable with the irons prior to nearly taking off my brother-in-law-to-be's head the previous day. I knew if I just focused and remembered my fundamentals I could perform pretty decently.

Of course, I've also learned that's the whole trick with golf. The fundamentals are many and difficult. I sent the thing about 40 yards straight behind a tree.

This guy was so good though it didn't matter. It was obvious I had been paired with him for a reason. After he knocked the ball on the green with the third shot, I sheepishly looked at the other pair and said, "The fix is in, eh?" They chuckled but I'm pretty sure they were contemplating smashing my face in with whatever club was handy.

Hacking Away

All told I really didn't play too badly, but it was obvious that without John I would've been a total disaster. He kept leaving the ball in such great locations all day long that it was easy to keep it moving forward.

I eventually did get back to fundamentals however and remembered my iron shot. Nothing spectacular, but at least I wasn't threatening any hubcaps out there.

We even managed to score par on a couple of holes and I was starting to feel more confident.

It was then I had the crazy idea: This guy is so good, I thought, I may as well just go for the money on every shot.

This turned out to be a terrible plan, as I tried to actually play a draw shot on one hole around a tree. Why I thought I was capable of doing this I have no idea: I'm not even sure how you properly execute a draw shot. I ended up hitting it pitifully a few feet right behind another tree.

Time was running out for the day to be considered anything less than a mockery. Sure, with John on my team we wouldn't end up in last place, but all anybody would be talking about was "the fix".

The Eighth

After another magnificent tee shot, I put the ball in another lousy spot in the rough with our second shot.

John was obviously getting tired (your shoulders would've been sore too). He hit a decent enough shot for our third into the fairway, recovering my bad ball, but left it short of the green.

It was then that it all started to fall into place.

I hit a chip waaaay too hard. As soon as I hit it, I knew I had put it over the green and we'd be lucky to double bogey this mess. Once again I had blown it.

But then there was a clatter as my ball hit the pin and dropped 2 inches from the hole.

There was scattered applause from the group who at this point was likely feeling sorry for me. I knew I had gotten insanely lucky: the ball was coming in hot but was absolutely saved by striking the pin halfway up.

The encouraging words from the other gents out there though started to give me a little confidence. I still had one more chance to make a shot to be remembered, and the 9th hole coming up provided the perfect opportunity: there would be a prize for whomever hit the longest putt on the final hole.

The Ninth

The 9th hole contained really the only water hazard on the holes we played. The hole was surrounded by a river that should prove reasonably easy to hit over if you left yourself in a good spot off the tee. With John on my side that shouldn't prove too much of a problem.

Sure enough John knocked it short of the river, but just to the right of the fairway in the rough. It would be up to me to make a shot to get it on the green.

Fortunately the pressure was immediately off as the pair we were playing with put it in the water on their second shot. I would find out later this was a general theme out there that day. I guess the presence of water is enough to make you think.

It certainly made me think. I hit the thing and got enough of it to get it over the stream, but it landed right on the steep edge of the river and was essentially unplayable. I may as well have hit it in the water, because any attempt to play the ball would've resulted in falling into the stream. John said not to worry about it, he was sick of that ball anyway, and he took a drop.

His chip from the drop left it about 30 feet from the hole and about twice the distant of the current longest putt on the hole.

So this was it. My last chance.

Problem here is I have no idea how to really read a green. When I see a guy make a putt that rolls in from several feet to the right or left, I can't figure out how the heck he did it. How did he know it would break that much?

John was there to save me. He made the read for me and pointed to a spot about 3 feet to the right of the cup. "Hit it here," he said. "Nice and easy."

By which I'm pretty sure he meant "Leave me with a halfway decent putt that I can make, it's hot out here and I want a beer."

Damned if I didn't hit that thing perfectly. It rolled and rolled and started to curve to the left.

"He's got it!" John cried out, and the other pair watched tensely.

Perfect. Right in the cup. From 30 feet.

I pumped my fist and started to stride off the green in excitement. "Stay there, we have to mark it!" shouted the others.

Aftermath

Despite almost killing both of his progeny in a single vacation, when Julie's dad announced the winner of the longest putt later in the clubhouse, I could tell he was excited.

In the end we shot a 42, one stroke off the lead. Although it felt like I was hacking all over the place I guess it wasn't ever quite as bad as I thought. Golf is a funny game, and I guess veteran golfers know that you tend to remember your bad shots. I certainly had plenty of them that weekend.

But everybody else seems to remember your good ones.

So, in the end, despite all my efforts to make a total mess of the situation, I actually ended up having a pretty good time.

The question people have been asking me is: Will I keep playing golf now that it's over?

Let me put it this way. I don't think I'm ever going to be the one who suggests "Hey guys, who wants to spend the afternoon playing 18?"

But if somebody else were to suggest it, I'd be a lot less likely to come up with an excuse.

The Golf Outing: Part I - Pregame

2007-08-01T12:55:00.000-04:00

Yesterday afternoon I arrived back from a very eventful trip to Illinois.

Before you go any further, if you haven't read what was at stake this past weekend, I encourage you to do so.

If you know me however, you know that I've been concerned about this trip because I was expected to play golf with my future father-in-law and many of his family and friends. When informed of the trip by my fiance, I started to try and practice for the two months leading up to the excursion so I wouldn't make a complete fool of myself.

Enough introduction. On to the story.

-----

Wednesday Night

We had intended to get on the road around 5 PM so we could get a jump on what is a pretty lengthy drive. Unfortunately that morning one of the production servers at work suffered a hard drive failure.

You don't really need to know what that means beyond it being very bad. I didn't get out of work until later than intended while trying to deal with the day's issues as a result of this mess, and suffice it to say it was an ill omen to the start of the trip.

When we finally did get on the road, Julie did the driving for the first few hours. This gave me plenty of time to get a clear picture of my impending humiliation.

I took over driving around 10:20 PM. By 10:30 PM I had killed Bambi.

Yes, I managed to hit a deer. We were in the middle of western Pennsylvania (aka "Pennsyltucky") when a family of 5 or so deer decided that the turnpike would be an appropriate place to go foraging.

I jerked the wheel to the left to try and avoid them, but the baby in the bunch took a final leap into the side of the vehicle. This sent the car slightly out of control, and I struggled mightily to get it driving straight again. Shaking, I pulled off to the side of the road, terrified that Julie might have been hurt.

She had never stopped sipping her soda.

Some friendly locals pulled up behind us to inspect the damage and make sure we were okay. The passenger side headlight was demolished, the bumper bent, and the quarter panel on that side nicely crushed. As a bonus what was left of the bumper was covered in deer hair.

Fortuitously the folks that stopped also brought tools with them to cut the bent bumper away from the tire, which amazingly had not been punctured. While this was going on one of them regaled me with great enthusiasm about how many times the baby deer spun around on impact (seven) and how many pieces it was in (many).

After a call to the Turnpike Authority and the insurance company, we were on our way again. Obviously it was decided we should pull off to the next hotel and assess the damage in the morning.

Forty miles later we found one, and I fell asleep, my dreams haunted by headless deer driving Chevy Impalas at me, like Ichabod Crane fleeing hundreds of Headless Horseman.

Friday

Thursday was uneventful, being spent finishing the drive and arriving in Kickapoo, Illinois later that evening.

Friday afforded me a chance to spend some time with Julie's dad. The day started out well enough with a trip to the local Riverboat Casino, where I won $100 at the Blackjack table despite a lady doubling down on a hard twelve with the dealer showing a 6 and later staying on an 8 Austin Powers style ("I also like to live dangerously").

So far so good, I thought. My luck is turning around.

In the afternoon we drove to the course I'd be playing so I could hit a bucket or two of balls and get a little practice in.

Three buckets and two blisters later it was pretty clear I was actually regressing. I know my strategy had initially been to hit my 4-iron off the tee, but I was being paired with a fellow who reputedly routinely hit 300 yard drives and shot lightning bolts from his arse, so I figured there was little point since we were playing the best ball off the tee. This turned out to be a huge mistake because my miserable drives on the practice range shook my confidence to the point where I was concerned I would not make it past the ladies' tees.

My father-in-law-to-be tried to offer me some pointers but by the end of the third bucket I was so tired and discombobulated I was averaging about 4 feet per swing.

Not good.

Saturday

Julie's brother (Jeff) and his girlfriend arrived on Friday night, so it was decided that the three men (myself, Julie's dad, and her brother) would all play 9 holes on Saturday afternoon to warm up for Sunday's event.

I was very much in favor of this idea after my performance at the practice range, and hoped that I'd be able to straighten some things out.

Things were going reasonably well until about the 4th tee when I smashed a shot about 60 whole yards into some rough on the left of the fairway. Jeff and I were sharing a cart and we rolled up to it. I pulled out an iron, confident that I could impress by getting it out of the rough and toward the green. My irons have been the one reasonably steady part of my game since I started playing a whole 2 months ago.

Jeff pulled the cart up to the right of the ball, about 20 feet or so away. I lined up and took a mighty whack.

Unfortunately I hit it right off the toe of the club, mishitting badly. Jeff threw his hands up in defense. The ball screamed straight right and clunked off the golf cart, taking the front left hubcap with it.

I was pretty much a wreck for the rest of the round, fearful that I had now not only slaughtered a baby deer but almost added my future brother-in-law to the body count.

How many more would have to die for me to get through the bridal shower golf event?

To be continued.

Approaching Doom

2007-07-24T11:40:00.000-04:00

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

- Bill Shakespeare, Sonnet 116

Tomorrow night, I will step into the car, and every passing mile marker will be as the footsteps of doom.

For tomorrow night we head to Illinois for Julie's bridal shower being hosted by her family. The ladies will be opening presents.

The men will be playing golf.

No longer will I be able to avoid the fell day where I must take to the links with men far better suited to such a game. No longer will I be able to flee past memories, like a child afraid to go back to sleep because he knows the circus clown in his dream is waiting to kill him.

No, I must face my fear. I have practiced for this day. Friends have prepared me as best they can, one of them going so far as to bestow upon me a set of clubs. Like Arthur receiving Excaliber I shall wield them in battle, making sure to turn over my wrists with every swing. I shall not fear men who hit the ball further than I, choosing instead to focus on hitting it straight. I shall unabashedly play the 4-iron off the tee. The woods and sands of the place shall remain a mystery, unexplored.

I'm ready for this. I am ready to play golf.

I am so dead.

Once a Nerd, Always a Nerd

2007-07-23T11:03:00.000-04:00

I originally had this post wrapped up with the CraigCon 6 post, but I decided to break it out in its own separate space. I didn't want it to get mixed up with the great fun that was had there.

While hanging around outside discussing a game with some of the folks at CraigCon this year, some people drove by and actually screamed "NERDS!!!" out their window at us.

Now, being almost 29 at this point, I figured it wouldn't bother me.

But I saw some of the folks, old and young alike, clearly wince a bit. Obviously they laughed it off with some remarks, but you could kind of tell that it still stung to hear the word, to be called a name for no reason by somebody you didn't know.

It would actually happen a few more times during the weekend, including one tirade that was checkered with plenty of profanity.

I continued to maintain it didn't bother me until I started writing this.

One of the things that makes tabletop gaming fun for me is the idea of crafting stories, keeping your imagination in shape. When you're a kid it's very easy and natural to use your imagination, but as you grow older it really takes some work. I like tabletop games because the rules exist to help put you in that space mentally, the same sort of space you need to be in for any creative endeavor.

However using your imagination to "play" starts to go out of style at a certain age. Playing real sports starts to take the place of playing Cops and Robbers. Hanging out at the mall (or whatever it is kids do) takes the place of getting together and pretending to slay dragons.

The moment you step onto a basketball court and don't say "I'm [insert favorite player]" is the moment you have irrevocably grown up, gone to a different headspace. And once that happens it can be hard to get back, to go from serious to play, from malls to spaceships, from offices to castles.

Somewhere along the line the pursuit of dragons changes you from just another kid to a "nerd". And when you're a kid it can really hurt to get made fun of for something you enjoy, because it's difficult to understand why it's happening.

Now of course we're older and wiser. Those old barbs don't hurt like they used to, don't open up fresh wounds.

But sometimes they can remind us of the old ones.

So let me conclude by saying this: I'm Michael Jordan.

Update: Almost uncanny in its timing, but Penny Arcade has a story today about entering a Pokemon tournament after intense preparation... and finding a bunch of little kids who just like to play. It's the post called Pokemon, second one down, and I encourage you to read it.

CraigCon 6

2007-07-23T08:53:00.000-04:00

This past weekend I headed up to New Jersey for the sixth annual CraigCon.

Back in college, I made a few great, lasting friendships playing D&D on a regular basis in the old "Conshohocken House". I lived in this house with 4 other people, 2 of which were gamers like myself. We started a game that I ran for close to a year.

One thing you have to understand was we played this game in the basement of that crowded house. The basement was such a mess by the end of that game that I was literally using a pile of old pizza boxes as a table to keep my books and dice. In retrospect it's amazing we didn't contract bubonic plague.

Even though I've played many games since, all a lot of fun, there was something about that particular campaign in the "Conshy House" that made it special. It was the perfect storm for a lot of us: we were at a transitional point between college and trying to figure out what the hell we were going to do with the rest of our lives (for my part I was in between college attendance at all). There were a lot of other things people were working through, things that put us squarely, forcibly in the realm of "adulthood". It was quickly becoming clear as these realities mounted that "things", whatever they were, were changing, and once they did, there would be no going back.

The characters in the Conshy game were an outlet as we coped with that. I'm sure if we had recorded those games and had a psychologist take a look at them now it would be an absolute treasure trove of analytic goodness.

Eventually the game ended, and time marched on. We all gradually moved away to various parts of the country. Whenever we talked we all agreed we missed gaming together. But more importantly we missed our friends.

Thus CraigCon was born (named for my pal Craig, who essentially hosted the first one at his hosue).

Now, many CraigCons later, the thing is a full fledged event. This year it was hosted by an honest to goodness gaming store (thanks go out to Reality's Edge), complete with a CraigCon discount on D&D goods. There were tons of new faces, and although turnout from the old Philly crew was minimal this year (only 3 of us counting myself), turnout was very good in terms of sheer numbers. It's pretty amazing to think this thing started as an excuse for old friends to hang out.

Altogether it was an absolute blast. It was great to see some younger faces in the crowd as well. Even though a lot of kids were in the store just to play the Magic card game, it's still cool to see people gaming and talking to each other face to face, especially with MMOs and their like gaining increasing popularity. I can't help but feel like something gets lost when these types of games get moved to a computer.

At its best CraigCon provides a chance to introduce people to different playing styles. At its worst it gives you a stomachache when you are walking into IHOP for your sixth straight meal.

The highlight for me was getting a chance to introduce Burning Empires to a new audience. The gents I ran the demo scenario for really took to it quickly, complete with a tremendous monologue by one of the players that had to be one of the best pieces of RP I've seen in that kind of environment for awhile.

Here's to six more years of gaming (and no IHOP for a year).

Clip Art Shouldn't Be This Difficult

2007-06-28T08:04:00.001-04:00

I'm not a Microsoft hater. In fact, I like Microsoft quite a bit. I think Surface looks pretty cool, Excel isn't that bad of an app, and .NET is waaaaay fun to code in.

However, I can certainly understand why people get so frustrated with them. Whenever I do web work, for example, I discover some new bizarre behavior in IE 6. Sometimes the way something is implemented in .NET will make you scratch your head. It is frustrating that Office doesn't play that well with other products. Etc etc.

Earlier this week I was working on a presentation. This is not something I do that often these days, spending most of my time happy and content inside of a code window. But in past jobs I had to do this sort of thing on a regular basis so it doesn't bother me. I popped open good ol' Powerpoint and got cracking.

At one point I needed to insert a bit of clip art. I was putting together a diagram that required something to represent a client. I wanted a little guy in a suit, but all the prepackaged clip art was cheesy and lame and not at all what I was looking for.

Fortunately on the Microsoft Office website you can go download additional clip art for free! That's kind of cool, I thought to myself. It even had your standard "shopping cart" style interface where you pick and choose what you want. After finding a couple dozen pieces of clip art that were exactly what I was looking for, and I hit the download button.

That's where the trouble started.

Immediately the website wanted me to download an ActiveX component to handle my clip art download. Hmmm. Well, I suppose I can understand why Microsoft does this sort of thing. They want to be able to check if you have a legit copy of Office. But it is still extremely irritating.

Next it prompted me to open the downloaded "clip art collection" file with "Microsoft Clip Organizer". Um, okay. I guess I can see where a helper app like the "Clip Organizer" makes sense... I guess it handles indexing and what not for searches...

Attempting to open the file, however, yielded an unknown error with a helpful octal code. Great. All I wanted to do was download some clip art.

No problem, I'm supposed to be pretty handy with a computer. By which I mean pretty handy with Google. I went ahead and punched in that error code and eventually found my way to a Microsoft article explaining what can cause that problem.

Apparently the Clip Organizer requires the latest copy of Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC).

Think about that for a second. It's a frakking CLIP ART ORGANIZER and it uses MDAC?!?!?!

So to review, in order to get clip art from the Microsoft Office website, you need an ActiveX component, a helper application built for the sole purpose of handling clip art, a set of proprietary Data Access libraries, and a partridge in a pear tree.

This goes way beyond over engineering into the realm of sheer stupidity. It's CLIP ART. It's a bunch of images in a folder. This is not rocket science. I could accomplish the same thing by making my own folder somewhere and saving a bunch of images in it.

An analogy: if I were to drive up to a Microsoft gas station, I wouldn't be able to just pump gas. I'd have to first talk to the fellow inside to get a special card, use that card at a nearby phone to dial corporate headquarters, who then may give me permission to pump the gas. Once I had the permission, I would have to attach the special "Microsoft Tank Access" pipe which connects to my gas tank, hook that up to the pump, and then, maybe, I could actually start filling the tank. Unless I had last year's version of the pipe which is square and doesn't connect to the new trapezoidal pump pipe, in which case I would need to go back inside, get another card for permission to talk to corporate headquarters, ask them for permission to get the latest helper pipe, and then try again.

All I want is some frakkin' gas.

The best part of this is even after jumping through all these hoops just so I could get the clip art I wanted, it still didn't work.

So now, instead of an actual image of a cartoony little guy, I will be using a box labeled "guy".

If I encounter any more problems, I'll get a stack of bar napkins and a pen and just run with that.

Quick Game Roundup

2007-06-18T15:14:00.001-04:00

American Badass Day 2 (sequel to Day 1) is forthcoming pending a couple of edits.

In the meantime there are a couple of games I wanted to talk about real quickly. The first is one that baseball fans are probably already familiar with: MLB 07 - The Show for PS2/3. Since my next gen console of choice right now is the Wii, the old PS2 has been seeing the lion's share of the game time, especially with this game recently.

It has all the bells and whistles you'd expect out of a baseball game these days (franchise mode, season mode, etc.), but the thing that really makes this fun for me is the "Career" mode, which might as well be called "Baseball RPG". You control one player that you make up through the course of the minor leagues, potentially all the way to the Hall of Fame.

What's interesting about this mode are the unique situations you find yourself in. If the organization is deep at a position you are playing, for example, they'll throw you in a different position you might not be as good at. When you first get called up, you may find yourself on the bench with only the occasional pinch hit opportunity to prove yourself. And the manager will sometimes give you unique "goals" which give you a bonus to your development if you accomplish them ("bunt this guy over", or "drive in the run").

It's one of those things I can't believe hasn't been attempted before the MLB series. The "carrot on a stick" gameplay inherent to RPGs combined with baseball? The combination is like some less harmful variety of crack.

Second, I've been getting a lot of mileage out of a game called Peacemaker. It puts you in charge of either Palestine and Israel and tasks you with bringing peace to the region. I studied the Middle East in college and still follow the news there very closely out of habit, and this game does a great job of demonstrating how unbelievably complex the situation is without making it too intimidating to digest. I could see this game being a terrific learning tool in the classroom, and it would be a great way to introduce some of the issues in a way kids can more easily connect with.

You can download the demo for free, but the whole game is only $20 and it works on Windows or Mac. If nothing else it's worthwhile to spend money on it just to support a project like this.

Interesting note about this game: I purchased it a few months ago, and when you won the game you were awarded the Nobel Prize. However, in May the Nobel Foundation demanded that the makers of the game remove their name from the software, and it has been removed from subsequent updates. That's an extremely disappointing move by the Nobel Foundation, who probably saw "video game" and little else.

Father's Day

2007-06-18T09:32:00.000-04:00

I don't usually post much in the way of family related items on the ol' blog. But there's a particular story about my dad I wanted to share that still has an impact on me to this day.

I was a dreadful kid. I was constantly getting into trouble, and there was more than one occasion when my parents had to come pick me up from the police. Despite the fact that I had very good grades in high school I was pretty regularly in detention also. My school operated on a demerit system, and due to a change in that system since I graduated it is unlikely my record for "most demerits" will be broken any time soon.

I gave my parents more headaches once I went to college. I dropped out twice, one time not even bothering to fill out the forms properly which resulted in incompletes in every one of my classes for that semester. This is one of those topics that is decidedly "off limits" at family gatherings, and it got to the point where my behavior was so questionable that I have heard I was actually used as a cautionary tale about what could happen to you if you didn't buckle down and study hard.

To this day I can't really explain why I acted the way I did. I mean, when I was a teenager I was pretty much angry all the time, but I can't imagine that is very different than most people when they're teenagers. As for college, I can say quite easily that some of those years were the most miserable of my entire life. I made a lot of great friends at college and I met my fiance there, but the actual process of going to class and dealing with the environment there made me physically ill. I can't imagine what it must be like to get depressed enough to actually commit suicide, but I'd be lying if I said the thought never crossed my mind during school.

Yeah I know, cry more emo kid.

Anyway, the point of this tale is that eventually I did get my act together and now I'm comfortable with my life and my situation. And I find myself thinking of one particular incident with my dad a lot and find that it still helps to this day.

When I had been in Boy Scouts for a few years, I started to get sick of it. I didn't like going to the meetings, sometimes the older kids were mean to me, and I was basically a whiny priss. I really just wanted to play video games all day. I had quit every other activity I ever participated in. Looking back I realize that I basically had a habit of quitting anything that was actually hard.

Boy Scouts was becoming one of those things, so I figured I'd quit that too.

My dad would have none of it.

I'm sure it was one of those breaking points for him. He had watched me quit soccer, baseball, basketball, and pretty much everything else growing up. Who the heck was this whiny wimp, and how did he come from his stock?

My dad told me in no uncertain terms that I would not be quitting Boy Scouts.

I remember arguing and throwing a fit. What could he do to stop me? I'd just sit outside at the meetings. He couldn't make me go. Etc etc.

That man gave me a look I'll never forget. It was a look that seemed to say, "If you quit this, any lingering shred of respect is gone."

I didn't quit. In fact, I made it all the way to Eagle Scout. And some of those memories in Boy Scouts after the argument are some of my favorites from growing up. I still smile when I think of the awards ceremony and my dad pinning his old Eagle badge to my uniform.

I learned something that day that took several years, I think, to sink in: nothing worth doing is easy. College is hard and you don't like it? So what. Man up and finish. Applying for jobs is hard? You don't have enough experience to get the job you want? Man up and take a crap job and get the experience. Life not going the way you want? That's your problem, pal.

It's very easy to blame everybody else. I did it for a long time, even after earning my dad's Eagle badge. But it won't do you a damn bit of good.

Some of us just aren't that bright, I guess, and we need to learn a thing two or three times before it sinks in.

So Happy Father's Day, dad. I think I may have finally gotten the message.

Civ IV - American Badass: Day 1

2007-05-29T16:51:00.000-04:00

Inspired by the often hilarious chronicle of one man's 20 day long game of Galactic Civilizations II, I got a hankerin' to fire up good ol' Civilization IV.

If you've never played a Civilization game before, you are truly missing out. The Civ games are some of my favorites, paragons of superb design by any standard. The basic gist is you start in 4000 BC with a budding band of nomads (by which I mean two guys, a settler and a warrior), and over the course of many centuries hopefully advance to a booming paragon of culture, military supremacy, and intellectual thought.

I've probably played hundreds of games of Civ IV, but usually I play on "Quick" or "Normal" speed, which allows you to finish a game in one or two sittings (takes a few hours). Never have I cranked the speed higher than this.

For the purposes of this experiment, I jacked the speed to "Marathon". I also chose the highest possible amount of landmass, which means that this game could take a few weeks to complete.

Naturally, I also chose the American civilization with FDR as my leader of choice. I'm pretty sure to do otherwise would flag me at the department of Homeland Security (the terror alert IS yellow, right)?

------

The Dawn of Man - 4000 BC

Look at me there, smiling at the bright future ahead. Not only does this picture make me look thin, it makes it look like I'm standing up under my own power.

In the early part of the game there ain't much to do except build that first city and start exploring a bit. So I quickly built good ol' Washington DC. Roads that go only in circles will be built later.

I also poked about the surrounding area and made sure to steal technology from any surrounding villages. I intend to populate that space, after all. Manifest Destiny, beotch.

It was when I saw how many turns it would take me to complete my next settler that I realized how ridiculously long this might take. "A few weeks" may be a gross underestimate. Usually it takes a few turns and I just bang on the enter key repeatedly until things get hoppin'.

It took something like 40 turns to build something.

I briefly pondered abandoning this ridiculous enterprise, but then I remembered FDR. He wouldn't have taken this lying down. (Sitting down maybe. Okay that's the last joke I'll make about that. Maybe.) He would've come to a "New Deal" with the people.

The New Deal - 2530 BC

By now, I'm sure you've guessed that I instituted "Slavery". Now that those shiftless, lazy workers were getting things moving, I went ahead and made a couple of scouts to start exploring this place.

For those of you looking at that year and wondering what I'm whining about, it should be noted that in Civ IV the early years go by in larger chunks: each game turn represents a decade or so as opposed to only one year later in the game. Make a note of it.

I had already met a couple of my neighbors who were kind enough to introduce themselves and not attack me. These included Mansa Musa from the Malinese Empire, good ol' Bismarck and his pointy hat from those plucky Germans (definitely a trustworthy sort), Hathshepsut from Egypt (I think the smoke coming out the back of my computer is from spell checker trying to cope with that), and Elizabeth from England. Good stuff.

Shortly after I introduced the "New Deal" to the American people, guess who decided to show their face.

Catherine and those commie bastards from Russia. Look at her there, winking at me. The hussy!! I'll be damned if I'm going to let some lousy red into MY house.

Problem is, at this point my military still consists of only one guy with a club.

So for the time being I don't declare war... yet. It makes my democratic... err... slaving blood boil just thinking about those Ruskies walking around, snug in their finery...

And Here Come the Wild Animals - 1930 BC

In preparation for impending war, I started reinforcing my club-based army with troops carrying bows and spears. That Commie Temptress will never know what hit her!

Unfortunately, my invasion was delayed by rampaging panthers. Eating my scouts. And my settlers.

I sent a fellow with a spear out to get revenge (and a warm coat!), and ended up getting ambushed by a pack of lions.

Okay, clearly I needed to start expanding a little more quickly here if I wanted to get these wild animals under control.

I went ahead and built Philadelphia, making it the fourth city in my budding empire. I made sure the city was heavily fortified with the finest pointy objects technology had to offer.

In the meantime, that luscious Catherine was after me again with an "Open Borders" proposal... Did I say luscious?! I meant heathen!! Good God, who knows what she could mean with such an offer! And why is she winking at me again?!

Clearly what I'm lacking is some kind of spiritual guidance, but I was in a bit of bind. If I remembered my history, the American Empire wouldn't actually place their trust in God until 1954.

But wait a minute... what did I give a damn about history? For Pete's sake Washington D.C. was my northernmost city and Philadelphia was southwest of Boston in the middle of the wilderness!

Spiritual Guidance - 760 BC

So I went ahead and built the Oracle.

Unfortunately that didn't tell me what to do about my rampaging panther problem. Instead it just doubled my production speed with marble.

Drat.

It didn't seem to matter much though, because by the time I finished construction on the Oracle the wild animal attacks had stopped.

To be replaced by organized barbarian attacks.

Drat.

Things looked very grim for Philly, but I fortuitously learned how to make swords. I sent as many swordsmen as I could to guard the place, and fought off the attacks. Philly would survive to lose another championship!

The entire time, Catherine the Red continued to proposition me, this time with an offer to trade "fish" for "wheat". Like I don't know what that means, lady!

A Major Edge - 60 AD

I continued to chug along, building Wilmington, Atlanta, and the great tropical city of Chicago.

By now I had met over a dozen different factions, which is about 6 more than I'm used to dealing with. I told the French, like the Commies, where they could stick their "Open Borders" and demanded tribute from the quivering cowards. All they did was get mad. Like they're doing anything with that food anyway.

In 60 AD, however, I came upon a major, major edge. By... uh... subduing a major terrorist threat (by which I mean destroying the last remaining nearby village), I discovered machinery.

That's something that puts me higher on the tech tree than anybody else and gives me the edge I was looking for. Time to start cranking out troops, and hopefully by the end of Day 2 those Commies will get what's coming to them.

Wii're Waiting

2007-05-08T08:10:00.000-04:00

When I picked up a Wii a couple months ago I never bothered to do a "first impressions" type post. The reason for this was twofold: 1) there are already a million glowing, feverishly ecstatic "Wii First Impression" articles out there, and 2) it seemed sort of pointless when I only had one game.

And what a game! Wii Sports had me AND Julie hooked for awhile. We'd fire up that Wii and swing our Wiimotes around to Wii Tennis. I'd fire up the baseball and sock dingers. I'd stay far away from Wii Golf! Just like real life!

Then I discovered some tricks. For one thing, you really don't need to be standing up to play some of these games. You can sit there on the couch and casually flick your wrist playing Wii Tennis. In fact, playing this way actually makes you better because you can get unbelievable force on your shots by making quick jerky motions as opposed to "proper" sweeping motions.

Similar tricks apply for baseball. Instead of performing a full swing, you are guaranteed to hit 600 foot blasts out of the stadium on every swing if you give the controller a quick flick. Same thing for pitching: 93 mph every time.

That doesn't mean these games aren't still fun. And it actually is more entertaining to do a full swing. But you're handicapping yourself if you do that.

Keep in mind though, there's only so much mileage one can get out of Wii Sports before you start to wonder if you really just paid $250 for a one game console. I picked up Zelda for the Wii at the same time as the system, and I'm sure if any Nintendo fans out there read this they will kill me on sight... but I fail to see what the fuss is about.

First of all, the graphics on this game. I'm the first one to say over and over again that graphics shouldn't matter in a game. This is almost always true. But in the case of the Wii, when you can buy a pimped out Xbox 360 with full HD capability and everything for the same price, it is really tough not to feel serious inadequacy. I mean, Zelda looks like it could've been made at least 5 years ago.

None of this would matter if the game was fun. A lot of people seem to think it is. But for me it consisted of between 2-3 minutes of fun, followed by an hour or so of trying to figure out what the hell to do next. When you're in the forest temple and those damn monkeys are squawking at you for over 60 minutes, trust me, you're not thinking about how neat it is to swing the Wiimote and watch Link swing his sword. You just want the monkeys to shut up and the pain to end.

But don't worry, once you solve the madness of the maze and the puzzles, they will be quickly replaced with another!

Ugh.

I quickly traded Zelda for Madden 07. I really should have known better than to do this. I haven't enjoyed a Madden game since the 2002 version. But I figured messing with the controls on the Wii would provide some good fun.

Wrong. Most unnecessarily complex control scheme ever. There are some great ideas here: running the football is pretty cool and intuitive. Jerking one of your controllers left will make the running back spin or juke left, etc.

But defense. Not even Mike Martz would find this level of defense acceptable. The controls just can't seem to figure out what your intent is. When I try to tackle, the guy leaps to... deflect the pass?... well there goes the running back. Touchdown. When I rush on the line or spin out of a block... my guy dives?... well there goes the running back. Touchdown. Okay, this time I'm just going to sit back and try to deflect the pass, I know I can do that. Here comes the pass, my guy... tackles the wide receiver?... pass interference, ball on the one yard line.

It doesn't get much better from there. I tried out Super Paper Mario, which got decent reviews. Folks, this is a game suited for the DS, not a "next-gen" console.

I hate to say it, but the games that are coming out for the Wii just flat out suck right now. Look at this list of recent games with their Metacritic rating:

- Spider-Man 3: 56
- Bionicle Heroes: 49
- Heatseeker: 67

It goes on like this. There are only 10 games that are well reviewed enough to even garner ratings above 75:

1) Zelda
2) Super Paper Mario
3) WarioWare: Smooth Moves
4) Madden 07
5) Trauma Center: Second Opinion
6) Godfather
7) Rayman Raving Rabbits
8) Wii Sports
9) Elebits
10) Super Monkey Ball

Three of those games on the list I have played and didn't like one bit. Two of them are essentially DS games ported to the Wii. Three of them are mini-game compilations. If this is the best the system has to offer, my purchase is starting to look dubious.

Compare that with the Xbox 360 which boasts 83 games rated over 75. Folks, the Wii doesn't even have 83 titles available for purchase yet.

During the last console war, I managed to back the wrong horse by going with the XBox. I got some decent mileage out of the system (the Star Wars RPGs were awesome), but it is now pretty clear the PS2 was (and still is) the way to go. Since picking up a PS2 I've played at least 20 superb titles, and I've only had the console since November. A buddy even loaned me God of War 2 recently, and this thing looks and plays better than anything on the Wii I've seen. I'm talking about a PS2 title here, folks.

I'm still holding out hope. The Wii has a cool control scheme and the possibilities seem staggering. But they have not even come close to being realized yet, and all of the goodwill and market advantages Nintendo has managed to grab for themselves aren't going to mean a thing if they don't have the games. Every console war in the history of consoles has been decided by the games.

Nintendo has chosen to market "fun" ahead of "graphics". That's a worthy strategy, but they better come up with some more "fun" games and pronto. My idea of "fun" is not playing Wii Sports for a year.

Anyway, I could always sell the Wii now and get my money back for it easily enough. But I'm sure, like my Dad when he refused to admit backing Beta may have been a mistake, I'll go down with this ship, flailing my Wiimote all the way.

Note: Most of the links are to Penny Arcade, which is basically like the Oprah Winfrey of the video game crowd in that they have an army of slavish followers that will obey their every whim. That's not their fault though, and besides, their comics are funny.

For the Truly Dedicated

2007-05-04T16:04:00.000-04:00

Next time I have one margarita too many, perhaps I will at least wind up with 0% Introductory APR.

"That Kangaroo Stole My Ball!"

2007-04-18T14:35:00.000-04:00

Let's get this out of the way right now, because this entire post is based on this simple premise: I HATE GOLF.

I hate everything about it. I hate lugging a pile of metal around in the hot sun on a summer day. I hate trying to whack some stupid white ball into a hole an inordinate distance away. I hate the macho attitude that I associate with roaming bands of male golfers. I hate the clothes. I hate the shoes. I hate that the sport represents a ridiculous economic divide in that the equipment required and fees to play are cost prohibitive to a large segment of the population. I hate country clubs which are still surviving relics of an era of elitism that is better off taken out behind the barn and shot dead forever.

Most of all though, I hate that I suck so badly at it.

I am man enough to admit that at least some of the above reasons are possibly unfair. Yes, I know there are public courses out there that are reasonably affordable. Yes, I know you can pick up used clubs at a decent price. Yes, I know you can rent a golf cart.

But the fact remains that golfing is my absolute least favorite activity. It is pure torture. There are probably some things that are worse than golf, but I haven't personally experienced them. If there is an afterlife, I am almost certainly going to Hell, and it will be 18 holes for an eternity of Saturday afternoons in the middle of July.

Before I get to why I bring this up, let me tell you a story...

-----

Several years ago, my fiance and I were planning a trip to Illinois. I would be meeting her parents for the first time, so I was a little bit nervous and wanted to make a good impression.

At the time I was living in an apartment with two other fellas. We had a balcony, which I enjoyed stepping out on for the occasional smoke or to relax on one of the chairs we had out there.

Unfortunately, shortly before we were going to be leaving for Illinois, I stepped outside and sat down on one of the chairs as usual. Little did I know there was a hornet's nest underneath, and the movement angered up their blood. I was attacked by the raging swarm and stung over a dozen times. A lot of attention was paid to my left foot, which was apparently perceived as a major threat by the marauding beasts.

It didn't take long for my foot to start swelling. Just in time for the 14 hour drive! My foot swelled up to such a size that I had some serious difficulty wedging my shoe on.

The pain and swelling got so bad that about 10 hours into the long drive, I had to take my shoe off in the car. My foot was so big that my toes resembled protozoa an amoeba might use for locomotion more than real human digits. It was bursting with fruit flavor.

The worst was yet to come though, as my fiance's family had planned a golf outing during my visit.

Let me reiterate: I am absolutely terrible at golf. I'm not so obtuse as to discount that my unbelievable incompetence at this game contributes to my terrible perceptions of the sport, but the fact remains: I HATE THIS GAME.

My performance that day wasn't just a mockery of the game of golf, it was a mockery of athletics and sporting events everywhere across the world. I don't think I hit a ball more than 20 yards at any point, and there are baseball players in the minor leagues that could hit a Mariano Rivera cutter with more regularity than I made contact with a stationary golf ball on this particular day.

I lamely offered up the excuse that my foot hurt. This was a bad idea. The tough, Midwestern MAN'S men who were already glancing at my northeastern ways with suspicion began to regard me with genuine distaste. My fiance at one point asked one of them if they could help me with my swing, to which he replied:

"I don't even know where to begin with that mess."

Eventually the crushing shame led me to give up. It was obvious that my pathetic attempts to keep pace were just holding back the game, as I had to take somewhere between 5 and 400 shots for every single shot for the other members of the group. My foot really did hurt, but it was nothing compared to the weight of my failure crushing down upon my soul.

I like to pretend that the rest of the visit went reasonably well, and that I have since earned the respect (or at least somewhat lessened the loathing) of my fiance's family.

But I know, deep down, that every time they look at me they see that sissy programmer from the northeast who doesn't know how to handle a club and ended up with a sunburn as red as Hester Prynne's own mark of shame.

-----

Last night I was nice and relaxed. I was watching baseball on TV and enjoying a drink. Everything was good... a great end to a long day.

Then my fiance turned to me and said: "By the way, don't forget we've got the bridal shower coming up in July in Illinois."

I nodded. No problem, I thought. I'll hang out with the menfolk and throw back a few.

"Also, you're going golfing with the boys."

I began sobbing.

-----

Author's Note: If you didn't immediately recognize it, the title of this post is a quote from Caddyshack, which is probably one of the only good things ever to be produced by this damn sport.

Also, if anybody knows of a good place to get emergency golfing lessons in the Wilmington/Philadelphia area... HELP.

A Good Cause

2007-04-13T20:30:00.000-04:00

I don't usually plug like this, but the excellent blog Treasure Tables put up a post about something called Ziggurat Con. It's a gaming convention being organized by some troops in Iraq.

They are looking for donations of RPG books, since it isn't exactly easy to go down to the local gaming store when you're in the middle of a war zone.

It's a cause that isn't going to save the world, but sending a couple books to some of the troops so that they can relax and game for a few days seems a worthy cause to me.

Luke Crane: Author of Burning Empires

2007-04-10T07:58:00.000-04:00

Luke Crane graciously offered to answer a few questions for the blog. The interview was conducted over chat, and I've cleaned things up a bit for continuity/clarity.

------

SK: First things first... how did you get into roleplaying? Because I can't imagine D&D prepared you to write something like this.

Luke: I have a funny story for this! I am prepared!

I was at ICON a couple of weeks ago, and I bumped into a rather damp and disgruntled Greg Costikyan on the LIRR platform on the way home.

It was raining, and he was huddling under the pedestrian bridge to get out of the rain. I introduced myself -- we'd met before, but I never assume anything.

We chatted for a while on the train. Finally, I had a fanboy moment.

"Greg, I gotta tell you: Paranoia was my first game. So you're sorta my game design hero. The essay on dramatic play changed my life."

He smiled and nodded, "We were trying to get away from the crazy rules of Dungeons and Dragons."

"I have a terrible secret to admit," I said.

"Oh?"

"We played Paranoia straight! As dark science fiction! No comedy!"

He gawked and laughed.

So there, that's my first RPG experience. My friend Aom Isabell introduced me to gaming in the 6th grade.

Then came Marvel Superheroes 1st Edition. Then D&D. In pretty short order.

My first MSH character was called Blue Streak, I think. My first D&D character was a dwarf with chainmail and an axe. I walked into a room and killed a goblin.

My life was forever changed.

SK: I think we all have a similar story of the dwarf with the axe.

Luke: My life was changed only because I'd never played a fantasy RPG up to that point. ;)

SK: What was the first game you GMed?

Luke: First game I GMed? The first thing I did once I played those games was go home and design my own. I used the Avalon Hill game Wizard's Tower (I think that's what it was called), and made my own fantasy RPG.

I ran my friend Joe Howard through it. He was a big fighter dude with a spiked helmet. He killed some gremlins and stuck them on his spike. I must have been 11 or 12. He even drew a picture of it at the time.

Man, what I wouldn't do for that pic!

Anyway, I like intense games. I like to play rough. Some of my friends are very aggressive as well. We tend to get worked up. I've gotten into my fair share of screaming matches over the years.

SK: Burning Empires definitely looks intense. Do you consider things like the scene economy (which I figure would lead to some of that intensity) as a natural progression from Burning Wheel?

Luke: No. Completely unnatural. An experiment really.

I realized that Burning Wheel doesn't instruct you on how to tell a story or how to construct a narrative or the conventions of the genre. It dumps a pile of interesting bits in your lap and says, "Build a car, go fast."

People who know how to build cars get excited and end up going really fast. People who don't, get frustrated and don't go fast.

SK: That's interesting, because I have a copy of Burning Wheel and was really excited by a lot of the things I saw there... but for some reason it was things like the Infection mechanics and scene economy that really thrilled me about Burning Empires. There is a lot in Burning Empires that seems to take Burning Wheel further. But you consider them separate entities?

Luke: Completely separate. We do not play with any bleed over from Burning Wheel to Burning Empires or vice versa.

There are things I like in Burning Empires better than Burning Wheel, and things in Burning Wheel that I like better than Burning Empires.

SK: Now you must give an example!

Luke: I like Perception better in Burning Empires -- I fucking hate open-ending now. And I like Linked Tests in Burning Wheel better -- I think I fucked them up and broke them in Burning Empires.

And what's more, I KNEW I was going to break them when I changed them. But I did it anyway.

SK: So would you change it now, or do you think it all still works?

Luke: Change which?

SK: Let's say Linked Tests in Burning Emipres.

Luke: Well, of course I'd change them in hindsight. But they are what they are. It's a minor thing.

SK: In your Treasure Tables interview, you talked a bit about some of the differences between running a convention game and a home game. You said you wanted people to play your demos and be confident bringing home a different attitude to their home game (I'm paraphrasing).

Luke: Sort of, yeah.

SK: Do you think there is a particular level of intensity/excitement required to drive a game like Burning Empires as a GM? Or is it something you hope comes out through the mechanics?

Luke: I like all my games to be intense and have a certain edge to them. But that's just my style.

I design my games to put difficult choices in front of the players. Otherwise, you can play them in your own style.

SK: I've noticed on the message boards that the Infection mechanics in particular seem to rankle some players when they first encounter them.

Luke: Hate isn't too strong a word. But the Infection mechanics aren't really the problem.

SK: Is it a misunderstanding of their purpose?

Luke: It's all about expectations. My games are ridiculous in that they ask you to jettison your play style and think in a new mode. It's a lot to ask people who just want to play a game.

Some folks are up to the task. Some folks aren't and know that from the beginning. But some folks get involved thinking that they are going to change the way the game is played to their style.

Carnage ensues.

SK: You'll have to forgive me, I've only just discovered Forge theory, but the mechanics seem to lean towards the "Narrativist" approach.

Luke: "Narrativism" just means making in-game choices that are about story/character/theme, rather than about a particular game mechanic or the overall situation transpiring within the game world.

The Infection mechanics can serve all three priorities. They are designed to create a story arc and give all of the players at the table input into that overarching story arc.

SK: Is Burning Wheel/Burning Empires something that came from Forge theory, or was the development of the games more organic than that? Were there other games that really influenced your design, or did it come from your own play experience?

Luke: Burning Wheel Classic was an untainted product of Game Headquarters, developed in isolation. You can check out the bibliography in the back of Burning Wheel Revised, it tells the whole story.

Anyway, after playing Burning Wheel Classic hardcore for 1.5 years with hundreds of different players -- some of them being top flight game designers themselves -- I wanted to clean the bitch up. So I revised it and re-released it.

But if you compare the two editions, you'll see that the additional materials are both pretty traditional and pretty unique to BWHQ.

What I found as I played all these excellent games was that we were estranged sisters and brothers. We were all designing from a similar standpoint, striving for similar goals using different tools and materials.

I think the only thing I wholly lifted from another game was the Linked Test from the Victory mechanics in Sorcerer. Other than that, the other games just largely helped me clarify my own thoughts on various design elements.

SK: Here's kind of a wacky question that some of us have been debating -- do you think that the popularity of games like World of Warcraft and other massive online games could actually help interest people in tabletop games? Or do you think the activities are too dissimilar? I ask because of the social element involved in something like World of Warcraft.

Luke: I think the sun has set on tabletop RPGs as a mainstream hobby.

SK: Really?

Luke: Yup. Barring some ridiculous innovation that hooks adult players, I'd say it's relegated to the hobby market for eternity.

SK: That makes me sad.

Luke: Doesn't make me sad at all.

SK: Why is that? You like the fringe?

Luke: I do! It's fun being part of the cool, weird kids!

I'm not saying that RPGs are going to go away. But the Serenity RPG, for example, won't be a mass market hit.

SK: Do you think a game like Burning Empires can bring an experience that simply cannot be captured in an online game?

Luke: Of course! There's NOTHING out there that has the depth and richness of a tabletop.

SK: I know many have tried and failed.

Luke: And will continue to fail until one of the current crop of game designers makes it into the electronic side.

The electronic side is now a victim of its own success. It's got to follow a formula to be successful. And that formula has little to do with the awesome that you and I experience on a regular basis.

SK: Whereas, on the fringe, you have the freedom to try new things?

Luke: Sure, but when you count free/chat players and WoW/MMO players, we table toppers are a small, weird minority.

SK: It was thought in the giddy days of D&D 3.0 by some that we would see a resurgence of tabletop gaming. Do you think Wizards of the Coast was a good thing for the hobby?

Luke: Are you kidding? Peter Adkison's vision for D&D was a great thing!

Even if WotC's intent was malign, they still reinvigorated the hobby. And I don't believe they had a malign intent!

SK: I've heard it said that open d20 diluted quality.

Luke: Blah blah blah. RPGs are more popular now than ever!

SK: Would you rather play Burning Empires with someone who is gaming for the first time, without any preconceived notions of how it works? Or would it be more satisfying to you personally to see an old gamer come to the table, bitch and moan, but eventually get it? And which do you think would lead to the better game?

Luke: They both lead to the same type of game, actually. But the new players often get the mechanics and concepts much faster than the old players.

New players don't often have the irrational mechanics-hate that old players demonstrate. New players can more often walk away from a game and say, "That was weird and complicated and it wasn't for me."

Diehard RPGers often get angry at me personally and start bitching about how the game is broken.

My favorite player is a skilled one with an open mind. I play Burning Empires and Burning Wheel with a lot of n00bs. It's fun, but the system is designed to be mastered and gamed. I love it when someone can give me a run for my money!

SK: Why do you think it is that the diehards have such violent reactions to the game? People either love it or hate it!

Luke: Expectations. There seems to be little middle ground with my games.

SK: You like it that way, don't you?

Luke: I do. Good or bad, and I can't say which, but at least my games are different than what else is out there. They challenge you in ways that many other games do not.

SK: Any parting words of wisdom for other game designers out there?

Luke: Never give up, play test, be honest, hire an editor, and never trash talk another game or game designer.

------

Luke will be attending Origins, Dexcon, and Gencon this summer.

Check out Burning Wheel here.
Check out Burning Empires here.

My Sister's New Show

2007-04-04T17:16:00.000-04:00

My sister, being much more socially adept than myself, lives in the big NYC. When she was talking to me over the holidays about the new show she was in, I was excited that her acting career was going well but was having a difficult time visualizing what she was describing.

The theater company she has joined up with is called 3LD, short for "Three Legged Dog", and they are experimenting with a nifty new piece of tech called the Eyeliner, which is a holographic projection system. In conjunction with a software package called Isadora (made for the Mac.. nice), you can create some incredible effects with this.

Her upcoming show, Losing Something, will be the first use of this tech by an American theater company. Since the NY Times picked up the story, the show and the company have been getting a lot of attention, which is really exciting. I encourage you to read the article and check out the slideshow to get an idea of the really cool stuff they're doing.

I'm definitely looking forward to seeing it. The show runs April 6 - May 5, and you can find ticket info and whatnot on the 3LD website.

21 To Rule Them All

2007-03-30T14:33:00.000-04:00

It was a cool and crisp late afternoon, the kind that spring provides with a promise of still warmer days to come. For the poets, it could be described as an April day come early: The sun was warm but the wind was chill, in the words of Robert Frost. Or perhaps Emily Dickinson was more applicable to our particular enterprise: A little Madness in the Spring/Is wholesome even for the King.

For truly it could only be madness to assemble three of basketball's most towering figures of talent and athletic prowess on one small, lumpy court in Wilmington, Delaware. Although the sun was out and there were only a few clouds in the sky, for a basketball fan it was the perfect storm.

This would decide, once and for all, who was the greatest of all time.

Note: If you haven't read the previous post, what follows will make even less sense.

Guns and I showed up first, already feeling the energies that Bird and Jordan were channeling through us. I almost challenged him to a game of "HORSE" just to help get into character.

Of course, this was impossible because we didn't actually have a basketball. We were waiting on C-Mart for that. Just like Kobe to arrive late. These young athletes have no respect.

When Kobe did arrive, we spent some time warming up, and it quickly became apparent to me that dribbling a basketball is not exactly like riding a bike. Or perhaps it is for me, since I can't actually remember how to ride a bike either.

When we finally did get started though, I felt positively vigorous. Harnessing Jordan's chi, I jumped out to an early lead. I was sinking shots and playing ferocious defense.

Action shot of me guarding Guns

At the "free throw" line (which we actually moved back to about the 3 point line), however, it was a different story. Somehow I started channeling Shaq by mistake whenever I was taking my one point shots. I didn't manage to hit any of them. What could have been a sound lead that would have allowed me to coast to victory was squandered.

Unfortunately, I also realized too late I should have paced myself. After what must have been at least 4-5 minutes of top form, my legs began to shake with the strain of going into my 2 inch vertical leap for my jump shot. Everything started coming up short. My chest and lungs caught fire, and I think for a second I even felt tingling in my left arm.

Kobe and Bird seized the advantage, cruelly ignoring my possible medical emergency. They nailed shot after shot, and Kobe began pulling a spinning jumper on the right side that proved to be nigh unstoppable.

C-Mart Takes Control

Eventually I was reduced to mere spectator as they started to pull away. I did my best to hang in there, but eventually Kobe got to 20 and had only to make a single one point free shot to win the game.

But then Kobe missed. Twenty-one is a fickle mistress, and that knocked his score back to 17.

Bird, who will always be more clutch than Kobe, took advantage.

I think I felt a breeze stir as perhaps some basketball deity came down and put a graceful touch into Guns' final shot...

... and it was over.

In typical fashion, Kobe immediately began to explain that despite the loss, he was the most skilled player on the court because he had made the most shots.

Bird just shook his head. Being from the old school, he understood that thing that seems to be lost on all but the greatest of athletes: it isn't how many shots you make, it's when you make them.

Aftermath

We actually went on to play two more games before I collapsed and begged for mercy. I knew that Julie, being a Bulls fan, would be less than pleased with my performance and my soiling of Jordan's legacy, but at that point all I could focus on were the simple actions of breathing in and out. I knew I shouldn't have eaten that piece of pie at lunch, I thought ruefully.

But alas, too late. And to think, that Jordan has done so much to maintain the greatness of his legacy after his time with Bulls, and I had to go and ruin it all.

Except for the comeback on the Wizards.
And his tenure as President of the Wizards.
And the gambling problem.
And the messy divorce proceedings.

Relative Greatness

2007-03-29T10:27:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago, a couple of buddies and I were at a sports bar talking about today's athletes versus the athletes of the last generation.

Specifically, we were talking about basketball. One of the arguments being made by my buddy who we will call "C-Mart" for the purposes of this discussion made the claim that even a second rate NBA player could absolutely dominate in the time of Bird, Jordan, etc.

C-Mart is slightly younger than myself and the third gent in this discussion (who we will call "Guns"). Both of us strongly disagreed with this notion, claiming that Jordan and Bird would still dominate in today's NBA, particularly with the way the game is played now.

It was as if ESPN was eavesdropping on our conversation that night, because just a few days ago Jemele Hill wrote an article making C-Mart's exact claim. Bill Simmons, also writing for ESPN, responded with the exact argument Guns and I were making (you have to scroll down a bit to see it: point #5 in his links).

After further debate via email, the three of us have decided to settle this nonsense once and for all.

Tonight we will be playing a game of 21 (basketball, not blackjack) at a local park. I am hereby dubbing the event:

Twenty One to Rule Them All

Featuring....

Guns as Larry Bird!

C-Mart as Kobe Bryant!

And me, Yeager, as Michael Jordan!

It will surely be a fabulous display of athletic prowess.

Don't worry Jordan, your legacy is in good hands. I'll even make sure to bet at least $50,000 on the game to get into character.

A Look at Burning Empires

2007-03-19T10:44:00.000-04:00

In my last full length post regarding game innovation, I hinted a little bit at the idea of tabletop RPG rules really only existing to mediate combat.

That was only the tip of a very large and formidable iceberg of RPG design theory.

D&D - The Standard

I would venture to guess that when the overwhelming majority of people think of tabletop RPGs, they think of Dungeons and Dragons. This is for good reason, since it is clearly the most widely played based on sales and licensing.

The D&D rulebooks (currently in "version 3.5") encompass a wide variety of rules related to character creation, combat, rewards for combat ("experience points" or "XP"), and character advancement (using that XP).

Now under the covers of those four things, there is a LOT going on, but if you understand it in those terms you'll have a pretty good idea what the aim of the rules in D&D are meant to mediate.

Given the basic rules of D&D, you can engage in entertaining combat using a very well thought out and detailed system that covers everything from swinging a sword, to hurling a fireball, to turning into a dragon if your character is powerful enough. It's why it is so easy and natural to make computer games based on D&D type mechanics: it provides a nice combat engine around which you can wrap a story.

Now, Dungeons and Dragons is historically built on the precepts of a Tolkien type universe. This is a world of elves, dwarves, orcs, and other fantastic creatures. As such the character you play is typically going to be from a fantasy type setting. Many players enjoy "acting out" these roles to add an extra element to the game, and this is where the real fun of playing these types of games comes for me. This type of "in character" speaking/acting lends itself to interesting storytelling and makes the stakes of combat and other mechanics seem that much more important, as we become emotionally attached to the characters.

This is a matter of setting, however, not system. The elves and dwarves and whatnot can easily be replaced with Vulcan and Borg. The important thing is the idea that players can become attached to their characters through storytelling. Which brings me to my next point.

There is nothing inherent in D&D (and most other systems of this type) that actually lends itself to storytelling.

Think about that for a second. One of the major reasons many people play D&D and tabletop RPGs is to involve themselves in a story, and yet most of these games have no rules or mechanics that encourage/mediate this sort of play.

Now, it's obvious rules to do that are not necessary. The folks I've played these types of games with over many years have all been excellent storytellers, and I like to think we've spun some good yarns. But it does give one pause: did we do all that in spite of the rules, just throwing out/trimming down complexities that got in the way of our storytelling?

The Forge - System Does Matter

I have heard a certain notion about role-playing games repeated for almost 20 years. Here it is: "It doesn't really matter what system is used. A game is only as good as the people who play it, and any system can work given the right GM and players." My point? I flatly, entirely disagree.

- Ron Edwards, System Does Matter

On the Adept Press forum known as "The Forge", Ron Edwards posted this shot across the bow of traditional thinking about RPG systems.

In that same article (and later ones), Edwards expanded upon ideas put forth in the Threefold Model of RPGs, which divides players (and therefore games) into 3 broad buckets:

1) Gamist - Players who like having a chance to win. They need mechanics interested in resolving contests. Things like D&D and Shadowrun are good for these types of players.

2) Narrativist - Players who like participating in a good story. They need mechanics that will help drive a story forward. Sorceror and Dogs in the Vineyard are good examples of this.

3) Simulationist - Players who want a system as realistic as possible. Edwards suggests that GURPS and Pendragon fall under this category.

Most of you are probably looking at that breakdown and thinking one of two things:
1) No category can define me, man!
2) Yeager, you are a huge nerd.

I agree with you on both points. Obviously these categories aren't going to define any one style of player precisely. I myself prefer a game focused on story, but sometimes you just want to lead an army onto the battlefield and split the skulls of a battalion of imaginary orcs in twain.

BUT, based on these categories and what I just said I like in my games, it should be apparent that I'm not playing the right type of game to really nourish the preferred style of play. Keep in mind here that I'm not criticizing D&D or Shadowrun or any of those games with this statement: I've been playing them for years. Clearly I really enjoy them. But it still makes one curious about the possibilities of a system that makes efforts to get mechanics that go beyond simply: "Roll to see if you hit it with your sword."

You're Having Fun, So What's Really the Problem?

When you are playing a "Gamist" style game, but what you're interested in playing is the "Narrativist" style, you run into some pitfalls.

Any "Gamist" style game is capable of supporting RP. If the players are into their characters and the setting (again, not to be confused with system), good RP is going to result.

However, it can be difficult to make sure that everyone gets time in the spotlight. There are no mechanics in place to stop that guy who wants all the attention to be on him. If he has a forceful personality, outside of telling him "Shut up", nothing in the rules can really stop you.

If you have a twink player who loves to exploit the rules for every possible edge, his character is going to become unbalanced with the rest of the party. The problem here is as a GM you try to create challenges and situations that involve everybody, but again nothing can stop that guy from owning every dragon you throw at him while everyone else stands around and watches.

In other words, a disproportionate amount of the onus falls on the GM to drive story forward. Not only is the GM responsible for putting together the scenarios, if you want a good story with everyone involved and invested you really need to go out of your way to make sure that happens. You need to intuit what it is the players want from you based on how they react to certain things and try to give it to them.

This goes back to Edward's hypothetical "Herbie the GM". If Herbie is a good GM, he'll make it all work regardless. But it sure would be nice if the system helped make it work.

Um... You Were Going to Talk About Burning Empires, Right?

First, let's talk about something in Burning Empires that is sure to get every player emotionally invested in the game right from day one.

World Burning.

Before you get too excited, I probably should have mentioned that "burning" is interchangeable with "creation" in the lexicon of this game. So when you see things like "world burning", "technology burning", "character burning", etc., you are not actually lighting things on fire. I understand your disappointment, but trust me, it's still cool.

The first session of your game will consist of World Burning and Character Burning, in that order. World Burning is a collaborative effort in which you choose the type of planet your game will take place on in terms of climate, available technology levels, quarantine rules, and a host of other things. This isn't just an exercise in creativity: the choices made will determine starting disposition pools for the good guys (the humans) and the bad guys (Vaylen, parasitic worms that take over your brain and steal your body). Disposition is part of the macro story economic of the game: by using maneuvers (segments of play time), you are trying to reduce your opposition's disposition to zero. We'll touch more on maneuvers in a bit, but for now it is enough to know that the choices you make about your world have a tangible effect on your game through mechanics right away.

Next you make characters. Burning Empires uses a "lifepath" system which is very different from anything I've seen before. The more starting "lifepaths" a character has, the more powerful she is. Each lifepath that you take opens up traits that you can take to enhance your character, in addition to opening up more lifepaths with more traits. It's like a spiderweb, but the genius of the process is the lifepaths will give you a really great character history right away as part of the mechanics of character creation. You'll have to fill in the blanks of how she went from one lifepath to the next, but it still provides a pretty detailed baseline.

Also as part of character creation is the crux upon which this game appears to revolve: character beliefs. You must come up with 3 beliefs that define your character, and I'm not just talking about "I hate the worms." A good belief explains what you're going to do about your hatred of the worms: "I hate the worms, and I will persuade my brother to fight by my side against them." Now we're talking.

These beliefs are important because they drive the artha system, which is like the "experience" system in Burning Empires. Every time you perform in a session in a way that jives with your beliefs, you earn artha. What this means is that players have a mechanical reason to develop their beliefs and perform actions towards fulfilling them.

Scene Economy

There's lots to talk about in this game (without even getting into the conflict systems), but I want to touch on the concept of scene economy as a final example of how this game is different from traditional RPGs I'm used to playing.

As I stated before, one of the problems in story driven RPGs that are using gamist systems is the issue of "spotlight". It can be difficult to make sure everybody is getting a chance to shine when playing Shadowrun or D&D, and players with strong personalities are more likely to steal spotlight time for their characters from folks who may not be as assertive. As a GM I've always considered it part of my responsibility to make sure it doesn't happen, but with Burning Empires there are actual mechanics to help prevent it.

Game sessions in Burning Empires can consist of one or two maneuvers. This is a unit of measurement for a chunk of playtime. In each maneuver, the player and GM choose a maneuver type they hope to accomplish from the list of options. (There is a very clever mechanic here as well, since some maneuver types provide bonuses/advantages against others, but it is a bit much to get into here). The players (and GM!) then have a certain number of "scenes" allotted to them to accomplish their maneuver purpose. The scenes are defined as follows:

- Conflict: This type of scene is anything that requires BE's combat rules, which include "Duel of Wits" for verbal arguments/debates (important ones with something at stake, like the Council of Elrond and what to do about the One Ring, for example, or persuading your brother that his wife has in fact been taken over by a Vaylen worm) and "Firefight!" for shooting guns (duh).

- Building: A scene where you do something specific towards your goal which requires a roll of some kind. This encompasses a huge variety of options: you could do research on that mysterious NPC, you could hack into the bad guy's computers, lay groundwork for a future conflict, etc.

- Color: A scene where you are fleshing out your character or the game world with details, usually through RP.

- Interstitial: A scene where you exclusively interact with another player or character.

At first I thought this was sort of arbitrary also, but the more I thought about how typical games run, this is how things happen anyway. By limiting how many of these the players and GM get, it provides some serious focus/pace to the gameplay, because you have a limited amount of time to do what you need to accomplish your maneuver.

Think about that for a second. This means that the splotlight hog really has to think about how important it is that he gets that twentieth tattoo or the eighth engraving on his sword or whatever. It doesn't limit the possibilities, it just forces priorities. Combine that with a belief system where players need to move towards their beliefs to earn artha, and you've got yourself a pretty tightly wound mechanic to drive play.

Enough Already!

Obviously there's more to this, but I've gone on long enough I think to highlight the things I found exceptionally cool about Burning Empires. I hope I also provided some context as to why this game is so interesting to me.

Now, on the downside: this game definitely would take some adjusting. I can imagine it might be tricky for the first couple of weeks for an entire group to wrap their heads around some of this stuff without resistance. It also doesn't look like it would be easy to do right away with large groups: I can't imagine trying to run this game with more than three players on a first campaign.

Most importantly, in the old style games I've described to you like D&D and Shadowrun, for the most part the players are reactive. They react to situations the GM presents to them. In a game like this, the players must be active. They must use their scenes to advance their beliefs and earn artha.

However, it does via mechanics address a number of the things that I take for granted as just "things you deal with" when running a game. And if nothing else, it's really made me think about the genre of the tabletop RPG and how it can distinguish itself in very real ways from MMOs, because games like this one really highlight things that would be exceptionally difficult to duplicate using a computer.

This May Require Burning Edge

2007-03-09T07:58:00.000-05:00

I hate to link and run, but with the chatting I've been doing about Shadowrun lately, you might get a kick out of this story spotted on the Burning Empires forums.

Elf defence for 'lingerie thief'

Innovation, or Change for the Sake of Change?

2007-03-06T08:49:00.000-05:00

It's not much of a secret that I enjoy trying out new game concepts. In a lot of cases, the ideas surrounding a new game concept are a lot more interesting to me than the actual execution, which sometimes ends up leaving me disappointed.

A couple examples of this to illustrate.

I remember several years ago seeing the original Neverwinter Nights at GenCon. There was an hour long demonstration of the DM tools in action. During that hour the fellow put together a small dungeon, populated it with monsters, put together some scripts/dialog trees for a couple of them, and even populated the place with some traps and treasure. When the adventurers arrived, the demonstrator was even able to add things and tweak encounters on the fly.

I was completely blown away by this. At last, no longer would distance be a factor keeping the gaming group together. I would convert old campaigns to Neverwinter Nights games, and it would be awesome. We'd finally be able to see on a computer screen, with a modicum of effort, all those things we had envisioned over our years of weekly gaming.

Needless to say, this was sheer foolishness. The tools, while not too difficult, were certainly not as easy to use as they appeared in the perfectly rehearsed demo. The game at the time didn't run that well over a network. Trying to tweak stuff on the fly was extremely tough. Altogether the entire experience was disappointing. Even the single player game wasn't as good as the predecessor, Baldur's Gate 2.

Another example would be a tabletop RPG called Engel. I got this game while the d20 bubble was not quite ready to burst. (For you uninitiated, "d20" is an open rules system designed by Wizards of the Coast, the owners and creators of D&D in its current form.)

The idea is pretty cool. It's a post-apocalyptic world where angels do battle with demons in a sort of sci-fi setting. The problem is that the rules completely suck. Even though this thing is based on an already existing system, they still manage to feel incomplete. I remember reading the flavor stuff for Engel and being psyched to run a game, then realized I didn't know how I'd actually do it because things like character creation aren't even spelled out properly.

Pretty lame.

In both of these cases though, I went out and spent the money because the idea just seemed so cool. I own a Nintendo DS because the games are completely unique. I have a Wii on order (arriving in another couple weeks) because I'm interested in the possibilities of a system based on such a unique control scheme. I have a Windows XP partition on the Mac for the sole purpose right now of playing Dwarf Fortress simply because the gameplay is so strange and wonderful. Even at my job, I sometimes have to take a step back and ask myself if I'm designing something using a certain paradigm or technology just because I think it's cool and want to try it.

Did curiosity get the better of me last week when I reinstalled Warcraft? Did the hype of change and "new stuff" bring me back? Or was it just booze, stupidity, and a weak will?

Probably the latter. It took under an hour of playing Burning Crusade, the shiny new Warcraft expansion, to remember why I quit that damn game. In a social game like that one, if you can't keep up with the people you want to play with, you're going to be very, very lonely. Logging into WoW and making a new character, I entered a ghost town... in my (albeit very short) time playing the day after the reinstall incident, I encountered one other person. I assume everyone has made the rush to Outland, but it does rather defeat the purpose of an MMO if there is nobody else to play with, doesn't it? Given the mechanics of WoW's solo gameplay, I might as well be looking at this:

On the tabletop front, my Shadowrun game continues to be a lot of fun. There is no substitute for sitting down with friends and slinging dice face to face. But even though the rules for Shadowrun are different than the D&D d20 system, they still foster the same type of gameplay, and that gameplay is based on combat.

The overwhelming majority of the rules in these games are built to support combat resolution. RP and storytelling are things that happen if you have the type of group that is interested in them, but the rules certainly do not encourage this sort of play.

Enter something like Burning Empires, and other games of its philosophy. The rules are built around character development. The rules are built around resolving storytelling conflicts. Naturally I've been devouring this rulebook (which is a hardcover beast of a book that could dent a person's skull if hurled at them from under 30 yards).

It's a completely different idea that requires a completely different type of play, however, and that's why I wonder if I'll ever actually play it. Some of the concepts are extremely difficult to wrap your head around when you've been playing the "I rolled a 17 to hit the orc" style for over a decade.

In the next post I'll get a little more into how Burning Empires works as opposed to the traditional tabletop RPG, so if you're not into that sort of thing I won't be offended if you skip over it.

NOTE: Quick shout out to defective yeti who has a terrific post about replacing old cliches with new ones via reader submissions. If you follow the link, look for "get on the nut foot", which is my small contribution.

Dangers of Alcohol

2007-03-01T11:12:00.000-05:00

I debated yesterday whether to post this or not.

I told myself what had happened was just too sad, too embarrassing to even contemplate.

Of course, I realized today that makes it perfect blog material.

On Tuesday night this week, my fiance and I went out to dinner for Mexican food. This particular place makes a tasty margarita, and I proceeded to help myself to a sizeable quantity.

When she dropped me off at my place, already well on my way to being sloshed, I poured myself a nice glass of bourbon.

Now, I'm not the type of person that likes to be drunk by myself. I'm a social drinker. So since it was 8 PM on a Tuesday night, I decided to fire up iChat and see if any of my coworkers were available for a little Quake 4 action. Unfortunately no one was on line.

Fast forward to Wednesday morning. I woke up, feeling pretty good, and grabbed a shower. Eventually I noticed the pulsing white heartbeat of my Mac in sleep mode. That's odd, I thought. Usually I shut it down at night.

Bringing the computer out of sleep mode revealed a window that said (and I'm paraphrasing):

World of Warcraft Patching Complete

It all came flooding back immediately. In my desperation for social interaction the previous night, I had pulled out the dusty WoW discs and reinstalled the game. I had even gone online, opened a new account (the old one no longer... *ahem*... belongs to me), and paid for a digital download of the Burning Crusade expansion pack!!!

The only thing that had stopped me from actually playing was the patch and expansion download times. Eventually I tired of waiting for the downloads and went off to do something else, leaving the download in progress. When I went to bed I obviously left the downloading in progress.

Today I went on to the WoW account management and canceled the account again, but now I am left with a month of time already paid for. I've also just dropped a total of $55 as a result of this tomfoolery.

So a warning, friends: excessive drinking may lead you to play MMOs. You won't find that disclaimer on the bottle.

Let the mockery commence.

Pansies Paralyzed by Snow Army

2007-02-14T09:39:00.000-05:00

I greatly fear the day when invading forces allied against the United States land on the shores of the northeast.

If they're smart, they will replace all guns, missiles, cannons, and trebuchets with giant snow machines.

It would start with word that the Snow Army was approaching. Instead of preparing their defenses, people would all drive simultaneously to the grocery store for bottled water and canned goods. Thousands would die fighting for the last can of Spam. Thousands more would be killed in the subsequent car crashes and traffic jams.

Those traffic jams would be so bad that some people would actually still be in them when the Snow Army landed. Having squandered the chance to muster a response, people would begin calling out of work and attempt to wait it out in their homes. The call to arms would go out, but everyone would have excuses to avoid reporting for duty.

"They don't plow my street in the neighborhood I live in."
"My house is near a hill."
"By the time I get there, I'd have to turn around and come back home."
"I'm not driving out there with those morons."
"I'm a huge pansy."

You get the picture. Left with no defense, the Snow Army would roll over everything in its path. The angry inch of powdered death would leave nothing untouched. Governments would fail to respond at every level, elected officials having already chosen an excuse from the list above.

It didn't used to be this way. George Washington and his army spent a brutal winter at Valley Forge, and they didn't call in sick. They used the time to get their asses out there and retrain.

Damned if I was going to dishonor their memory.

This morning I walked out at quarter to 7 in the morning. My car was covered with an inch of pure ice. I couldn't get the door open.

Instead of picking one of the excuses above, I gave the car a few swift kicks. That knocked enough of the ice off to get the door open. I started the car, got out the scraper, and got to work.

Turned out I was better off wielding the scraper at first like a baseball bat to crack the ice. I used this tactic for awhile before using old fashioned scraping techniques. In the process I sliced open my finger.

No time to deal with the blood. The freezing rain and snow were still falling and covering the work I had done so far. I kept at it, and eventually enough space had been cleared on the windshield to see out.

Tossing the scraper back in the car, I went upstairs to my apartment to get a bandage for my finger when I noticed I had gotten blood all over my shirt.

That's when the power went out. Undaunted, I went back to the car. Unfortunately, the 2 minutes I had spent not scraping ice had resulted in the car door freezing shut again. I gave it a tug... and pulled off the handle.

Now my keys were trapped in the car, but I used a credit card to pry open the tiniest bit of plastic left on what used to be my door handle. This time I left the door open as I retrieved the scraper and got the freshest coat of ice off.

I eventually made it in to work to a half empty office and emails from friends and coworkers who were staying home.

When it snows, you can choose to be a huge pansy. That's your right as an American. That's a choice that you live with.

But just remember that you are dishonoring the proud history of this country.

And that you suck.

Gaming's Many Forms, or the Burning Shark

2007-02-05T08:06:00.000-05:00

Last Thursday's Shadowrun game was a ton of fun. It was odd not having one of the group's stalwart players there, but we soldiered on.

I imagine most gaming groups have their ups and downs. But after reading this post from Abulia Savant, I can certainly count myself lucky. Our group has never had problems of this magnitude.

Perspective is a funny thing like that. Sometimes one forgets that things are never so bad that they can't get worse.

On a somewhat related note, the momentum for the Warcraft expansion pack has been picking up everywhere I look. Some of the folks who work on my floor are avid WoW players and I hear them chatting about it once in awhile. Most of the Thursday night gaming crew also plays the game (including, I suspect at this point, the infamous Andy), going so far as last week to bring a hardbound copy of the artwork to the table to ogle in pre-dice slinging reverence.

A little perspective helps here, too. For starters, the last thing I need right now with Final Fantasy XII remaining yet unfinished is another game, particularly with the siren song of Dwarf Fortress calling to me from the ugly, demon spawned XP partition of my iMac. It also helps that one of the new races in the game was apparently re-imagined as a famous Star Trek character, complete with spaceship. The shark, people, has officially been jumped.

The required time commitment remains a big factor. Although everyone insists that the smaller instance sizes have eliminated the time consuming need to carefully organize for six hour dungeon treks, I remain extremely skeptical that it will stay that way once everyone maxes out again at the new level cap. At that point it would only make sense for Blizzard to make larger raid instances again in an effort to stem off the inevitable tide of player boredom and angst.

Another factor is the core gameplay mechanic itself. If not for the social aspect, the game would, frankly, be a dull graphics update to Dragon Warrior. Even Final Fantasy XII, now that the new car smell of the gambit system has worn off, is exhibiting some of these same traits.

I must admit that the thing I find most comical (and satisfying in a snarky way) is that everyone who spent the last several months of their lives raiding for hours every night found their gear obsolete seconds after installing the expansion pack. The fact that regular, solo quests now yield gear greater than anything which you acquired with the aid of 39 other stalwart companions just a month ago is a design move that has either slipped the notice of the players, or been offset by gear so unbelievably l33t that it has blinded the good sense for which hardcore WoW players are universally renown.

It was the social aspect of WoW that I thought I wanted. Before the first Christmas of WoW's lifespan, I was completely sucked in by the level of RP and graphical whizbangery to complement it. Post-Christmas, when the average age of the player dipped by a decade or so, things became markedly less amusing. I now realize that although I still want that kind of game, it is not be found in WoW.

Where it is found is at the table with your friends. Whether you are playing a pen and paper RPG or just a board game, the experience there just has not been captured in a computer game. Perhaps trying to do so is a foolish design goal anyway: after all, shouldn't you use a new medium to accomplish new things?

I guess MMO video games have provided us something unique: a chance to get "pwn3d" by kids 15 years our junior.

Oh, and a new reason to kill each other.

Ode to a Gamer Friend

2007-01-26T09:27:00.000-05:00

In 1999, I started playing D&D with some guys that I met at school.

Over 7 years later, some of us still play together.

Sure, the group of players has changed. One of the guys has dropped in and out of the group as schooling allows. Some drop by for one week stints whenever they're in town.

I miss those folks that I don't get to play with regularly anymore. But there are four of us that have been there almost every week for seven years running. That's pretty amazing.

For the past few months, we've been playing Shadowrun on Thursday nights. We've got a few additions to the table for this game, including some of the friends I met playing WoW, but that core group was still together.

Until last night. One of the players informed me after the game was over that he needed to spend more time with his family. Obviously it's a decision I respect and understand completely.

We've all seen a lot of changes in seven years: new jobs, kids for some, engagements for others. We've been through a lot of strange and wacky times together. I lived with this fellow in particular for 3 non-sequential years, in 3 different places.

But throughout all those moves, all those triumphs, and yes, sometimes arguments... I could always count on seeing him every week, like clockwork.

Already we don't see enough of each other anymore. Our lives have taken us in different places... good places, mind you, but different. There will be opportunities to hang out, even if they are reducing in frequency.

But it still feels strange, and a little sad, knowing that next week, such a constant in my life is going to be missing.

So here's to the paladin that took up the sword of prophecy, only to destroy it to save a nation.

Here's to the rat bastard thief in his snake skin hat.

Here's to the feared and misunderstood warlock who surprised everyone by sacrificing himself to save a girl he barely knew.

Here's to all the characters that you made me and everybody else you played with love.

Here's to one of my best friends.

Here's to you, Gary. There will always be a chair and some dice for you at the table.

Five Things You Don't Know About Me

2007-01-09T13:23:00.000-05:00

You may have seen this post title circulating around other blogs. It appears I have been tagged for this now by DM Osbon, so as a good blogging citizen it is my duty to comply.

1 - I used to design video games when I was a kid. Using pencil and paper I would draw up game designs and mail them to video game companies. This last Christmas while visiting my parents in Atlanta, my mom actually dug up this box of old junk that I did when I was a kid and I got to page through the stuff (my savvy mom having made copies, anticipating the potential for future hilarity).

I made a game called "Rushan Special Forces" (I'm not kidding on the spelling), which was basically a blatant rip off of "Rush'n Attack". Later I designed a second game called "Valcor", including primitive level design. Perhaps in a future post I'll scan the pages of my masterpiece and put them up for mockery.

2 - I had a recurring nightmare for over five years. When I started going to college, I would have the same dream once or twice a week. I'd dive into a swimming pool, with friends and family standing around the outside. I'd swim around underwater for a bit, but when I'd come back up for air, there would be a thick block of ice on the surface. I'd scratch and claw at it, trying to get out, but to no avail. The creepiest part was I could see everyone standing around the outside, looking in the pool, watching me drown. Bet an analyst could've had a field day with that one.

3 - I once had a hamster named General Zaroff.

4 - I played the Phantom in a sixth grade production of Phantom of the Opera. This was basically the first time I did any acting, which I continued to enjoy for years afterwards. I think my parents still have a tape of this thing lying around somewhere though: it was hilarious because no one had ever actually seen the show, so there was some guesswork as to the actual plot. We (the thespians) also lipsynched all the songs.

On top of that, I wore white socks with my black pants, cape, and shoes during one of the performances leading my mother to call me "The Phantom in White Socks" for years afterwards. By far the coolest part of doing the show though was getting out of class for an entire day to make the mold for my Phantom mask, along with the piece of latex they'd attach to my face to make me look deformed.

5 - I was a semi finalist in the Nintendo World Championships. Some of you may remember this event in 1990, which was basically an excuse to charge people money to play a machine that, if they were attending the event, they likely already owned. The competition toured all over the country. At any rate, you paid the entry fee and then played in a group of a hundred or so. If you finished in the top seven, you played again, this time in front of the crowd that was watching the competition on big screen TVs, including a play-by-play announcer. I remember the whole thing being slightly nerve wracking, but if you finished in first place out of that group of seven, you became a "semi-finalist", which meant a certificate and a VIP sticker that got you in the door for free the next day.

I got absolutely smoked during the semi-final round, but the cool thing was I got to play all the demo games with a lot fewer people in the convention center. Plus I have a certificate signed by Mario himself.

I now tag Motorcycle Manifesto, Cross Thoughts, jclark.org (get off your lazy butt and update), Last Best Angry Man, and The Uber Dude.

Top 10 Favorite Things About 2006

2007-01-03T13:27:00.000-05:00

You gotta love a New Year.

Even better than a New Year, you gotta love stealing tired old ideas for blog post topics.

This list is pretty simple: these are my favorite things from 2006. They come from a variety of categories with no real connection, rhyme, or reason. They may be things, they may events, or they may have just made me laugh.

10 - Dwarf Fortress

The fine blog Dubious Quality was where I first heard of this little game back in September. At first I didn't pay it much mind, but in December I finally reinstalled XP for the sole purpose of giving this game a whirl.

Holy. Crap.

Never you mind that the graphics are borderline pukeworthy. Once you get over the craptacular ASCII, you realize that the focus in this game has been all about *gasp* gameplay. Trying to summarize this game is nigh impossible due to its incredible complexity, but at the basest level the game is about trying to keep a bunch of dwarves alive through harsh winters, attacks from various beasts, and even personal emotional crises.

The whole thing is still in an alpha stage, which is absurd for how polished the game actually is. I encourage you to download the game (it's free) and take it for a spin. You'll definitely want to look over some of the wiki for some tips on starting out... the game and interface can be overwhelming at first, but I promise you it's worth it. If my endorsement doesn't persuade you (and why would it really?), I encourage you to read some of these stories from player experiences in the game in the Dubious Quality archives (or just search for "Your Dwarf Fortress Stories").

How does this little game make the top 10? Because it is everything that mainstream gaming isn't right now (with the possible exception of Nintendo). It is gameplay focused, ambitious, and is willing to believe that graphics should be secondary to complex, detailed gameplay.

9 - 10,000 Days

Being a Tool fan, this was an easy one. By far my favorite album of the year (with the Decemberist's Crane Wife coming in second), Tool went to strange new places on this one, to the chagrin of more than a few folks.

But I like it when a band isn't afraid to try something new. Besides, at its core, 10,000 Days is still Tool: the melodies and lyrics are still complex, the songs still challenging, and the song lengths epic. Yay!

8 - Guitar Hero

Had I actually received my copy of Guitar Hero for the Playstation 2 sooner (technically I got this just after New Year's) this may have ranked higher. In fact, an argument could be made this shouldn't be on the list.

But the game is just too damn fun to leave off. No matter how silly you might think it is to buy a controller for the sole purpose of playing one game (in this case two if you have the sequel), once you try this game you will find it hard to stop.

There is something unbelievably satisfying for a schlub like me who cannot play a real guitar at all to rip through "Sweet Child of Mine", even on a video game. The whole experience is incredibly immersing: from the sound of the crowd responding to how well (or how poorly) you are playing, to the "Star Power" game mechanic, which gives you bonus points when you hold the guitar vertically like a rock icon, the thing really makes you feel like you're the real deal.

Plus it's just hilarious to watch other people play it.

7 - The Departed

The best movie I saw this year was Martin Scorsese's Departed. It was nice to see him get back to formula that has always worked for him: foul language + violence + gangs + ass kickings = good cinema entertainment.

When I heard Scorsese was doing a remake of Infernal Affairs, I thought it would be okay (since that movie was just okay). I was wrong. The Departed is like a rabid, snarling pit bull let off the chain running amok in Williams & Sonoma.

6 - Dems Take Congress

I tend to sit on the liberal side of the fence on social issues while leaning towards the conservative side on economics, but in the end I like it best when government is split.

It just seems to me that things run a whole lot more smoothly in situations like these because it is harder to pass crummy laws that only a few people actually want. The checks and balances work best when no one party has all the power.

I have no illusions that anybody will get much done in the next couple of years before the next Presidential election, but I actually prefer deadlock to insane laws like the Patriot Act.

5 - Quitting World of Warcraft

Let me preface this by saying, AGAIN: I did not write "The View From the Top".

My own story of quitting WoW was much more tame than Andy's now (in)famous guest post.

I started playing Warcraft when Julie (my fiance, then girlfriend) was studying for the bar. Having recently moved to Delaware, this left me with some free time, and a buddy persuaded me to try out WoW to do some gaming with him.

The whole thing got a little out of control. I played the game constantly and found myself thinking about it all the time. I persuaded other people (Andy included) to try the game out. I didn't even mind anymore that I was barely able to see Julie... the game was just so damn fun.

Long story short, Julie passed the bar. And I was still playing the game. In the end a number of factors combined to result in my quitting. Primary among them was getting to spend time with Julie again, which made me want to play the game less. When you are level 60 and play the game less, you fall behind your friends and guildmates, who are able to get better gear/stronger characters. It wasn't long before I was basically left in the dust and the decision became pretty easy.

Since quitting Warcraft though, with that newly acquired time I have lost 40 pounds (which was not due to WoW, although I'm sure it didn't help) and participated in NaNoWriMo, successfully writing 50,000+ words of a novel.

I still play games and still love them. The novel isn't done, and I still slack off when I go home. But quitting WoW freed up the ability to do a host of other things (some useful to personal growth, some just other ways of slacking off) that I wasn't able to do while playing and keeping pace with my guildmates.

I don't hate WoW. But I like doing all the other stuff instead.

4 - Nintendo DS

Which transitions us nicely to another time waster: the Nintendo DS. This thing made me completely rethink what was possible on a handheld platform. The games like Brain Age and New Super Mario Bros. are clever and can be played in small doses. Games like Final Fantasy III and Castlevania can waste hours of your time.

Altogether the unique methods of input (writing with the pen and actually talking to the thing in particular) make this thing second to none. The PSP has better graphics capabilities, but it was the DS that made me realize once and for all that graphics are really at the point where they should be a non factor when we are talking about games. What the DS provides is a great platform to try some new ideas (Elite Beat Agents, anyone?) and get designers out of the FPS/RPG/RTS rut.

3 - Prince of Nothing

If you haven't heard of this trilogy by R. Scott Bakker, do yourself a favor and at least check out the first book, The Darkness That Comes Before.

If you don't like it, stop right there. If you do, pick up the next two because the books get progressively better, unlike certain other series.

I didn't pick up the first book until the end of last year, but this series makes the 2006 list because the final book of the trilogy, The Thousandfold Thought, was released in February.

In my personal opinion, this series is even better than George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire. A lot of folks will disagree with that due to some of the hurdles in Prince of Nothing (I initially had a lot of trouble keeping the complex names straight), but those who stick with it I think will find it very rewarding and above all, quite original.

2 - iMac

At the beginning of the year I bought the Intel iMac, my first Apple computer.

At the risk of sounding like a frenzied fanboy, it has completely changed the way I think about my home computer.

I'm not a Windows or a Microsoft hater. In fact, Microsoft platforms are part of the reason I have a job in the first place.

But the whole Mac experience is different in so many subtle ways that it is sometimes hard to explain to the average PC user why it is better.

The whole thing is just so seamless, simple, intuitive... and damned if it doesn't all just work the way you'd expect. Is there anything the average user needs that a Mac can do that a PC can't? I can't really think of anything.

But it's like the difference between driving my Hyundai Accent and a BMW. My car will get you from point A to point B (well, probably). But the BMW will make you enjoy it.

1 - Getting Engaged

Yeah, I know, cheesy.

But if this didn't rank number one, I think I'd have to reevaluate a lot more than this silly list.

Seriously though, how could I not be excited about marrying a great girl like Jules?

If 2007 is even half as good as 2006, I'll be in damn good shape. Here's hoping that 2007 brings all of you happiness and prosperity.

The New Mob Rule

2006-12-20T14:23:00.000-05:00

One of the impressive things about the current age of technology we're in is how quickly information can get around.

One of the even more impressive things is how quickly misinformation can get around.

Let's look at examples of both.

First, let's take a look at an article on Digg today. For those of you who don't know, digg is an extremely popular "social bookmarking" site. People can submit stories and also vote for (or "digg") other stories that they find interesting. An algorithm on the site determines which are the most popular (I assume via some function of how quickly an article receives diggs and the number of those diggs, but I don't know the details) and puts them on the "front page". When an article makes the front page, the site in question gets absolutely hammered with visitors, because a lot of casual users like myself only browse the front page to visit interesting things.

Today featured an article about a small town Snohomish. The citizens of Snohomish love their high school football team. Even more, they love the tradition of firing off their cannon before football games and after touchdowns.

Well, unfortunately a student got badly hurt by the cannon some time ago. A member of the high school ROTC, the student was part of the team that fired off the cannon, and it exploded, almost taking off his leg. At one point it looked like they were going to have to amputate his leg entirely.

Based on the article, it looks like the kid didn't get a lot of sympathy from the town. In fact, he actually got threats.

It would appear that, afraid they might lose the tradition of firing off the cannon due to safety concerns, the town went a little nuts. Some folks threatened to "blow off his other leg", and a collection to help pay the steep medical bills (including putting a titanium rod in his injured leg) yielded a sum of $200, nearly all of that coming from other schools.

Enter digg. Once the article got on the front page, the enterprising commentors discovered the school's football website. An innocent poll there asks visitors how many games they plan to attend.

So far over 100,000 (and rising fast) have replied "none".

Will any of this do any good? Who knows. Is the article biased? Probably. I would've liked to have seen more reaction from kids in his class.

But is it funny to see that many people (along with, I'm sure, more than a couple of scripts doing the voting) visit a little homegrown school website and express their displeasure through a pointless poll? Yes.

Second, let's talk about internet hoaxes. If you have an email account (that should include one or two of you), you know that people love to circulate chain letters containing erroneous information. These may include a gent from Nigeria claiming he wants to send you money. These may include people encouraging you to buy a junk stock.

They also may include completely falsified rewritings of history for the purpose of a political agenda. An example of this would be the Oliver North "testimony" which claims that Ollie identified Osama Bin Laden as "the most evil person alive".

Osama Bin Laden is evil. I'm not disputing that. But what is easily disputable is the testimony. The blasted thing was circulated so much that the US Senate even thought to include a refutation of the entire thing on their website.

But that's the internet for you. Perhaps for better or worse, the internet allows us to see "news" now already filtered through the lenses we prefer. There are plenty of bloggers and "news" websites out there that will tailor to your political views, whatever they may be. That's nice because it is often pleasant to read things that we already agree with.

But it's a heck of a lot more challenging... and more important... to read points of view we don't agree with. And as more and more people turn to these alternative news sources (and for the love of all that is holy, chain emails should never be considered "news"), the responsibility falls on us to do our fact checking.

Frankly, that's not something at which people have proven particularly proficient.

Update: It appears the poll has been taken down. Too bad, I would've liked to see just how high the count got.

Update 2: It should be noted that Fark.com was on this story first. Credit where credit is due.

Lessons Learned Losing

2006-12-05T13:54:00.000-05:00

Back in June, I posted the story of my dodgeball team and our Cinderella run to the finals after a regular season filled with losing.

I still proudly display my medal at work.

My fiance and I decided to join dodgeball again for the Winter season (that's right, there are actually multiple seasons of this thing), but due to scheduling conflicts we had to join a different team this time around.

Our former team (Average Jay's Gym) went on to completely dominate the competition all season long.

Our new team (The Hurlers) won just one game.

I wasn't particularly concerned. After all, in the previous season with Average Jay's, we only won two games before going on our improbable streak to the finals. Every team makes the playoffs, so really the only point of the regular season is to determine seeding. The important thing was to get everybody some time on the court, and we'd get better every week. Right?

Well, not exactly. Last night our team got absolutely pounded in round one of the playoffs (by a team named "The Chins of Chuck Norris", no less). We got shut out 4 games to zilch.

As for me, my dodgeball technique actually regressed this season. I think I lasted a total of 30 seconds in the games I played last night.

What's the point of all this? Simple. Failing teaches you things. When you do something you're good at, you don't tend to learn much from the experience. It's only when you do things that fall outside your comfort zone that you really learn. In fact, you learn a lot more about a person when they lose... especially if that person is you.

In fact, I think there's something rather strange about a person who is only interested in winning. That type of person is unlikely to participate in activities where they perceive they have a weakness, and that means that they stop developing at a certain point in their lives. They put an artificial cap on themselves and their realm of experience.

I am not a talented athlete by any stretch of the imagination. I know it might be hard to believe, but writing code for a living doesn't translate well to activities that require a great deal of physicality.

But for the past few years (largely due to my fiance's influence), I've tried out things like flag football, dodgeball, and hopefully basketball in the near future. I'm actually playing racquetball tonight with a fellow from the team.

It should make for good comedy. But you can't be afraid to get a beatdown once in awhile. You can't be afraid to lose. Because once you are afraid of failing, you stop learning.

In the link above about the old dodgeball team, there is a quote:

If it wasn't for failure, we wouldn't have succeeded.
- Lucas Hellmer

I don't think that's always true. There are a lot of talented people out there that are just good at certain things. But if they don't try things they might not be good at, they'll never realize their full potential.

So I encourage you to get out there and try something you've never tried. Better yet, do something you know you're not good at. You'll learn from the experience... even if all you learn is that a dodgeball to the face doesn't leave a mark (unless you consider shame a mark), that's something.