Stargatezzzzz

I've mentioned before, I have the full EV Nova card game though few to play it with, and I used to play Yu-gi-oh though matt whomped me and noone to play it with anymore either. I recently picked up a starter pack on the Stargate Online TCG. The interface is solid, and there are available people to play against. The game is unique in the TCG world, whereas there are several methods of winning, and the focus is on exploration and winning missions not combat. You can perform a variety of actions on your villain turns, and a variety of events on your hero turns. I've been going by Rakden on it, if you get bored drop a 10 spot and stop on. Cheaper than online poker, and twice as fun. Seems there are tournaments and what not as well but I fear I'm too terrible to compete in one anytime soon, they do look like fun for those who like that competitive thang. They cost "event" tokens which are a buck a pop, Tournys range in cost from 1-25 token/tickets as far as I can tell the rewards falling in line with that. Even the smaller ones have decent rewards, get from one to several packs of cards plus special foil cards. Another neat thing is if you collect a full set you can redeem them for a free set of physical cards to play "offline".

Also check out the Nerd Handbook, It's a good read to understanding the geek/nerd mentality.

QQQQQQQ

Went to Avenue Q on Thursday Night. Amazing musical. Touches on the subjects we all think about every day, but are to PC to talk about. Standard Pubs will likely hate it, given the closet investment banker republican. If it comes back to the area I'll def max go see it again. I paid nearly 130 bones for 2 tix to it. Worth EVERY friggin penny. Puppets rawk.


I love Final Fantasy I.

Check out Basilisk Games for classic, CLASSIC style new RPG.

Mario Galaxy is TITS

Got my reserve of Super Mario Galaxy today. It's tittttts. Words don't do it justice. A true sequel to Mario 64, none of that Sunshine BS.
Go buy this now, go buy a wii so you can buy this now. Go sell your cousin off into slavery so you can buy this and a wii now.



Also feel free to enjoy some random shots of all my spiderweb games. Patches also seems to enjoy. I realized that after my Avernum 5 order today I own every single Spiderweb Software game going back to Exile sans the original Nethergate. All the hint books too.

For Freedom

I lean democrat, you all know it. I think the republican party as it stands, stands for corruption, big business, and in recent years are having a sharp inclination toward facisim. I've been rooting for Mike Gravel, and the democrats in general but they are bending over and giving Bush more money. In the last debate none of them said, we are pulling our troops home. They all beat around the question and said well it's hard to tell where we'll be. Wrong answer, I need someone who is going to grow some balls and do the right thing. I will be registering Republican so I can vote for Ron Paul in the caucus. I'll then be re-registering in my current fashion of No-Party affiliation because I am independant, I lean toward the Democrats but I will not blindly follow any party or candidate for any office. America is in dire shape, it was my hope that the Democrats could bring back our flock that has gone astray but I fear they are too worryed about "offending" a donor to put forth any real change. We need Ron Paul as President to turn this ship around before our imperialistic fortitude brings down the wrath of the world on us. We're America, we're supposed to be looked up to, not regarded as imperialistic fools. Lets bring some real freedom and real pride back to this Nation. Ron Paul 2008.

Besides if Ron Paul wins the GOP nomination it's win win, Anti-War vs. Anti-War. Dems will have to grow some balls then and actually debate their issues. Any way you slice it Ron Paul's movement is good for America.

Also I think I got all my Florida Pix uploaded, check out the flickr link off to the right.

Wanted

Call 1-877-4-STEWIE right now. The best phone gag since the Snakes on a Plane dialer.

Back

We're back from Florida. Lots of things to talk about, lots of pictures to post to flickr. Been busy with work since we got back. Nemo says mew.

Always reserve online

We rented a car for the trip to florida and selected the cheapest option

Enterprise

had, economy car. Which is supposed to be a Chevy Aveo. I knew that our local place has very few cars and never had econ cars. They called today said bam u can get a Yukon or a Focus for your econ price. Of course we took the focus but thats like the standard car like 15 bones more a day that we saved by reserving an econ car. Awww yea, lil insurance coverage from State Farm/Discover set kat city. I'll see you all in 10 days. Keep playin those beautiful games. And for the love of Kobal pick up the frackin

Orange Box

for 360 and play some hot Half-Life action

10 Reasons Mitt Romney Sucks

I saw this come across my way a few days ago, passing the jucy info on. I can't say I wrote the reasons but I sure as hell agree with them. Mitt Romney is pretty much one of the worst people I've ever had the pain to know about. The guy is genuinely a grade A douche. Voting for him, and the usual Republican Drivel is literally voting against America. Me, I love America too much to vote Deathpublican. Conservative my butt, try facist. Maybe the Republicans should look conservative up in the dictionary. Oh my, he cut 400 million dollars off of things like social support progams and says hes cutting the fat. We spend 400 million dollars a week in a pointless war in Iraq. Bring our troops home and quit devaluing the dollar by pulling money out of thin air. If he were elected America as we know know and love would cease to exist.......Oh and yea I know there are 11 Reasons, I'm using Bush math. 5+5=Hot Dog

1. He supports torture

: Romney is an outspoken supporter of “enhanced interrogation techniques,” or as the layman calls it, torture.

2. He wants to enlarge Gitmo

: Romney stated at a 2008 Republican primary debate that he would double the size of the prison at Guantanamo Bay if elected president. Would that be before or after he dissolves the Supreme Court, which has ruled that the indefinite detentions of terror suspects at Gitmo was unconstitutional?

3. He supports teen torture camps

: This shouldn’t come as a surprise if you read the two items above. Romney has been

linked to WWASPS camps for troubled teens

, which has had several lawsuits filed against it alleging that teens were “locked in outdoor dog cages, exercised to exhaustion, deprived of food and sleep, exposed to extreme temperatures without adequate clothing or water, severely beaten, emotionally brutalized, and sexually abused and humiliated. Some were even made to eat their own vomit.”

4. He dodged the draft

: Mitt Romney spent the height of the Vietnam War

working as a Mormon missionary

in France, thanks to a draft deferment his Mormon handlers gave him as “a minister of religion.”

5. Gun control flip-flopper

: Romney recently changed his opinions on gun control when he realized he would need to suck up to gun owners if he wanted the Republican vote. When endorsing the Brady Bill in 1994, Romney declared it was “

not going to make me a hero of the NRA.

” In August 2006, he

joined the NRA

.

6. He’s a “life-long” hunter

: By which I mean a liar. An NRA cap-wearing Romney told New Hampshire voters that he had been a hunter for “pretty much all” in April 2007. The truth soon came out that Romney had

only gone hunting twice in his 60 years

. If you’re going to suck up to gun owners, at least spare them the BS.

7. He tricked voters with a fake pro-life stance

: Romney ran for US Senate in 1994 pledging to keep abortion ‘’safe and legal in this country.” As a 2002 candidate for governor, Romney said he would not change the state’s abortion laws. He is now running on a pro-life platform. As his top political strategist said in 2005, ”He’s been a pro-life Mormon faking it as a pro-choice friendly.”

8. He uses goons to intimidate his opponents

: The security staff of the Romney campaign is well known for pushing around people they don’t want near their campaign events. They’ve also been placed under investigation for

impersonating police officers

to make threats illegally stop cars belonging to activists working on behalf of other candidates.

9. His campaign spreads lies about his opponents

: The Romney campaign

has been implicated

in a dirty behind-the-scenes whisper campaign aimed at spreading a lie about John McCain’s views on abortion. If that fails, maybe they’ll claim he fathered black children?

10. He opposes stem cell research

: While governor of Massachusetts, Romney tried to veto a bill that would have promoted stem cell research in the state. Luckily, state legislators were not living in the dark ages, and they overturned his anti-science veto.

11. He abuses animals

: While moving driving his family from Ontario to Boston in 1983, Romney

strapped the family dog to the top of their car

for the entire drive. WTF?

Saddness

Just a note before I leave for teh south "shudder". Spiderweb software is running it's annual sadness sale. When the fall comes it's not a pretty sight in Washington so they run a sale to cheer themselves up. 10% off everything in the Spiderweb store, that includes, discounted bundles, CD's, and hint books. If you've been on the fence about some of the RPG's Jeff Vogel makes, now is your chance to nab a few up at a nifty discount. These games are hella lightweight too, If your computer has been made in the past 10 years you can play these gems. Hell most of them you can probably play on machines made in the past 15 years.

Personally I'm a huge fan of Nethergate, it's got some of the best story around RPG wise. Play as the Romans or the Celts, and get a unique view of the story from each side. Runs on a modified BoA engine which I am a fan of, it's easy to navigate and control via keyboard commands.



Other than that I really dig all the Avernum games, though for whatever reason I tend to like 1-3 a little more. 4 used a new, slightly less retro engine and I tended to like the old Avernum engine. I found it quick for me to navigate with the keyboard commands. Don't get me wrong 4 is still fantastic, but 1-3 for sheer retro content goodness.

FloridaKatCity

I've been plugging through a little bit more of Blue Dragon, but not much. The Fall TV season has picked up and the HD DVR holds about 8 HD 1 hour shows so that's got to be cleared off every couple days. Picked up The Orange Box last night, after a little snafu getting my 5 bones off I was at home playing some hot Portal and Team Fortress 2. This simply has to be the best value in gaming this decade, maybe ever. 5 super hot games, for one low price. Get it 360 style, it looks fantastic, plays smooth. Look me up on the Live, Rakden is my Gamertag.

SD1000 came from amazon yesterday. We wanted something that would fit in a pocket, and as much as I love my A75 in a pocket it doesn't exactly fit. Extra battery and a 2 gig 120X memory card and we are set for the trip to florida. Speaking of trip we are leaving tomorrow for that, I won't be in contact until we get back on the 22. Gaming will be put on hold and Half-LifeCity will be had afterwards. Picking up the car rental tomorrow, and might sign up for Sprint NavGPSCom so we don't get lost.

Alien Hottness

I had the "pleasure" of watching Species IV tonight. Unfortunately I was sober for the experience which was a poorly calculated move on my part. Unless you are a complete Species fanatic, steer clear of this turd burglar. It shares just about nothing with the fantastic pedigree that came before it. Something about a professor chick grown in a lab doesn't know it gets sick has to go to mexico, crazy alien rape ensues. No idea what the hell was going on. While I usually enjoy the B grade shlock on Sci-Fi saturday's this one really didn't do it for me. Not even Star Trek Enterprise's Dominic Keating could bring this one up. Course he had some seriously terrible dialog. "It's time to get your hands dirty" WTF. B grade Shlock needs to be a good time which this was defiantly not. Go watch Escape from New York instead.

I also nabbed Mortal Kombat Trilogy for N64 from a guy on CAG for a song. I had it for the PS1 many many moons ago. Also got a good deal on a SNES cart of Final Fantasy III. Even picked up Breath of Fire II on the ol Wii Virtual Console for 10 bones. Stocked up on RPG's to play for a while

Speaking of which if you are in the mood for some frackin awesome, deep, time consuming retro RPG's Spiderweb Software has you covered. I mention this because while they have very reasonably priced games anyway they are running an October Saddness sale for 10% off everything they offer. Nab yourselves the Avernum or Geneforge Trilogies for a hefty 10% discount. I can't say enough about how great these games are. Yes the graphix are retro, so what I like um that way. The stories are top notch with decent play mechanics. And they run on just about everything made in the past 10 years of computing. Can't go wrong.

There is another Retro Ultima style RPG coming out called Eschlon: Book 1. Looks promising as well.

Ultima, been playing those on the Gametap as well off and on. Something rewarding about these classic RPGs that you had to draw your own maps for. For a paltry 5 bones a month access to just under a thousand games and the Sam and Max games are worth it alone. The Ultimas are playable on the Mac version of the Tap player. It runs most anything except the Windows based games.

Recievers

I'm considering picking up at some point a Sony STR-DG910. I'm looking for a reasonably priced receiver that will passthrough/convert component/composite sources to HDMI to simplify my living room setup. The STR-DG910 seems to fit the bill. It's got 3 Component inputs and a couple of HDMI's as well that all can pass through to 1 HDMI output. Which is what I need, 360, Wii, PS2 throw down component style to one HDMI bitches be sweet hella style. It looks like it will pass through the audio as well, which is key since I don't have speakers for now, not worth it in my apartment to annoy the neighbors like that. I'm also looking at a couple Onkyo models, but this Sony one seems just as good as them for 50-75 bones less. Does anyone have any experience with his model or any thoughts in general?

Dragons O Plenty

I've had some time to sink my teeth into Blue Dragon and I have a few observations about it. First off let me say its great, if you are in the market for that classic style J-RPG this is your game. While the first Xbox had 0 turn based RPG's it looks like this round the 360 has hit critical mass in being the market for RPGs, pretty much all the devs are saying PS3 suck our balls.

The game feels like Chrono Trigger. The play style, the music, the overall atmosphere. Considering Hironobu Sakaguchi was co-founder of Square, and had his hand in Chrono Trigger it's easy to see why. While the story isn't as powerful as the ol CT it's solid. The Dragon/combat system is solid, the customizability of your characters via skill sets is impressive. Since Hironobu has left Square and is now developing for the 360, it's likely that future Final Fantasy games simply won't have the same flair they used too (not that the past few have either, though he had less and less to do with them as well). The game feels like classic square because at it's soul it is. Character Design is by the guy that did Chrono and Dragon ball, it almost feels like playing some 3d anime. Combat is nice, you can see your enemies before you attack ala Chrono. If you sneak up behind them you can perform a back dash attack and get the jump on them. The game touts 50 hours of gameplay, and likley more than that if you want to nab all the achievements. Thats ROI on your gaming buck for sheer entertainment value.

The music, while new, again has that midiretropop feel like classic square. Again the music was done by the original music composer of the classic Final Fantasy games. For all intents and purposes this game is Squaresoft reborn.

There is some sort of obsession with poop. First frackin monster you fight is a frackin Poo Monster, and they come in droves after that. Literally a swirling pile of purple poop. There are even achievements dedicated to defeating these pooply mobs. While not the oddest creatures I've seen in a RPG it's still perplexing to say the least. Some sort of subliminal poop is bad message I don't know?

The boss battles feature some un-named 80s big hair style rock. Absolutely does not fit with the game. I don't know if Hironobu Sakaguchi was smoking crack and watching Fast Times or what but defiantly is some of the strangest music I've seen in an RPG.

And that's the rest of the story.

Nova Nova City

EV Nova, the board card sci-fi game came. Now I need people to play it with, one guy at work actually knows what Escape Velocity is so maybe I can sucker him in. Apparently in a fit of sickened internet rage I ordered the booster packs with it. Hoping tommorow after saturday cleaning to hammer a few hours of Blue Dragon.

Is anyone else as excited about Battlestar Galactica Razor as I am, the little clips of previews that have been on Sci-fi send a chill up my spine. I think next week they are starting some 2 minute clip things of the first Cylon War.

Cats have been xtra cute lately, check out the latest shots of them over at our Flickr Page. Nemo is looking handsome as ever.

I'm talkin marty mcsupa fly

I see there is a new TNG Complete series set out now for a discounted price with all new bonus features. That's gotta grind all those folks that dropped $120+ on each season when they first came out. That's the way of the media company's, and the commercial world I suppose. I'd like to see them sell the new features on a disk for those who already own the items. Lotta them would probably be willing to pay 10-20 bucks for them. The new set is a sliver over 300 bones at amazon, I'd like to see it at 250 or less to interest me though. At that price I'd consider it, being a TNG fan. I've been considering picking up DS9 at some point since it's dropped below 300 for the whole shebang so I'm hoping now they will release a DS9 complete set. DS9 is probably some of the best TV ever, full of drama and action. I can watch that shit every night. Something I'd actually get my money's worth out of owning.

I see now there is also a Stargate SG-1 complete series set which seems to be more reasonably priced at around 230 bones, and that's for 10 seasons vs. 7 in the trek set. Defiantly a lotta entertainment in that bundle. After Deep Space Nine, Stargate is probably third best TV after Battlestar Galactica. Speaking of BSG, Razer is coming up. A two hour tv movie to bring us into the 4th season, well actually it's set in a separate time period but will flesh out some of the Pegasus story. Battlestar Galactica Season 1 is releasing on HD-DVD this December and I'll be first in line to pick one of those up, and by line I mean pre-ordered on Amazon since they tend to have the best prices and free super awesome shipping. But man, BSG in HD is drool worthy. Rumor is if Razer does well, they are going to green light a 2 hour pilot movie for Caprica, a prequel show to Battlestar.

Is anyone else stoked about the Orange Box like I am, I have Half-Life 1 for PS2, and rented 2 for the Xbox but never finished it. For 55 bones get updated Half-Life 2, and episodes 1 and 2, and Portal, and Team Fortress 2. That's a hell of a lot of entertainment for very few bones. 1UP says the new 360 version is the definitive version of Half-Life 2, looks fantastic, plays smooth as butta on the muffin. Again, I know you suckers like playin FPS games all cramped up on your desks but I'll take it on the big screen any day kickin back on the comfie couch. Tuned well, console FPS games are just as accurate as with the carpal tunnel inducing Keyboard and Mouse set up and a hell of a lot more fun. Sorry kids, that's how it rollskatcity.

T-minus under a month for trip to Universal Studioskatcity.

I caught the death, damn kids comin from all over the world to Grinnell, prolly brought back SARS again from cuba or something. Since I'm in almost every building during the week, I get exposed to all the fanwuboulous germs theys spreadin around.

Go Mike Gravel.

More than Meets the Eye

Some of you may remember the hawt Michael Bay movie from this summer, Transformers. It's coming out on HD-DVD, and that's a movie that is meant to be watched in HD. It's a movie I might watch a few times so I pre-ordered it from amazon. I see Transformers 2 is slated for 2009, crank thems sequels out quickins. I suspect the second won't have the same "bang" as the first.

Send me 10 more hours in the day, I need to play Blue Dragon and Eternal Sonata yet and they's is both biggins long games.

Escape Velocity Nova

Picked up the EV Nova Card game. See how it is. If I like it mebby I'll grab some of the xpacs. I've been watching it for a couple years now. I'm sure it was a niche seller, since the game was pretty much a niche game. Figured better grab it before this piece of gaming is gone for good. Check out the Computer Games by Ambrosia Software too. They are top notch.

LameStop City

Well Gamestop is running a Tiered promo right now, just of it is trade in 5 or more games and get 30% bonus credit. Stacks with EDGE for another 10%. I normally throw most my games up on Goozex but I had quite a few games that had dozens of copies available on Goozex without many requests so I figured was a good time to unload. Anyway, went to the local un-lame Gamestop (still freaks me out every time I go in). The nice, knowledgeable manager lady/girl/woman was there we talked Wii for a bit. Oh man I unloaded the Spongebob game for Wii, that game was shit, looked like a PS1 game. Odd since the cube games were decent. Developers have been thinking oh the Wii is a free pass to make shit, well guess what suckers, it isn't. Make a good game it will sell, Metroid, Resident Evil, Elebits, etc...

Shit right, back to the story. I unloaded a few games with 40% bonus credit and netted about 100 bucks in credit. Pre-ordered Mario Galaxy (i know I normally don't pre order at lame stop but I had the credit) and still had 45 bones or so in credit left. Mebby will come in handy when Mass Effect or Ace Combat comes out. Phuck, too many really awesome games in such a short period of tyme.

On my list of games to play, well the first ones that come to mind anyway. There's a stack of 30 or 40 on the shelf yet.......

Blue Dragon (have)
Eternal Sonata (have)
Metroid Prime 3 (getting)
Mass Effect (getting) - Also need to read the book which I have.
Lost Odyssey (getting)
Ace Combat 6 (getting)
Galactic Civilizations II (have)
Command and Conquer 3 Mac (have)
Avernum 2-4 and Geneforge 2-4 (have)

Intense Flavor

Beat BioShock tonight, Phuck Fontaine is kinda hard. I had to go back a bit and nab some more money for First Aid's, actually once I was stocked on those he was easy pickins. Couple security bot plasmids and a few propane tank things to the face made short work of him. Apparently since I was harvesting Lil Sisters for ADAM I got the "bad" ending, I won't spoil the surprise for those who haven't beaten it yet but I'll say this, it's one hell of a twist. Gunna trade it in for Mario Galaxy I suppose.

Thats service baby

Well Rakdette's keyboard and mouse suddenly stopped working last night. I figured something came loose, after work today I made a concierge appointment online for 8:30ish and we headed to Des Moines. Thats hot right there, make a genius bar appointment from home. Anyway we ate at famous daves, went to the apple store around 8, milled around for a while. They took a look said I know what's wrong it's not loose it's broken we can fix it right now if you can wait a bit. BAM waited, hashed with employees, they were imaging for the night as the store was closing up. Talked to the lady for a while said bam, we want Nanos. Picked up 2 nanos, a red and a blue one for me and Rakdette respectively. My nano will get sent to her sister, hand me down ipod city. Here's a terrible shot from photo booth.

The end is finally near.

I'm on the final level of Bioshock. Just need to hamphuck Fontaine and I'll be done. lotta crazy twists and turns in the plot. I stand by my opinion that this game is for sure best game this year, possibly best game this decade. I'm in love with the art deco style, and I'll be sad when it's done but cripes it's one hell of a ride for 15-20 hours of your life. Must play game, pretty much your life is meaningless having not played this game.

Road, where we're going we don't need roads

Well we r taking a big ol trip next month. Greece is under a state of emergency right now so not heading there, but if we don't spend that wedding cash on a honeymoon it'll get spent on something else. We're heading to Orlando to go to Universal Studios and some other events. We've booked 4 days on site as well as 10 days of a car rental so we can take our sweet ass time visiting various locals on the way down and back. Staying on site at partner hotel Doubletree at the entrance to the facilities. We are attending the Halloween bash where we'll get some face time with the greats of horror, Jason, Leatherface, Freddy, and more. Got a couple meal tickets that provide all day meals for a couple days so we don't have to mr wong burger dick around getting meals. Probably head to City walk for a night get a nice meal there. Who knows where else we'll go. Expect thousands of pictures on flickr apon our return

Pink is the new um...Pink

The wife says she wants one of the upcoming pink Xbox 360 controllers, I could use a couple more so I'll pick one up when amazon has them for 15 bucks off.



In other news, our pink pan set from Amazon came smashed all to phuck, lids shattered, solid steel pans twisted like they were rubber. Amazon is sending new ones but did UPS drive a truck over this shit?

Command & Conquer 3

We went to Jordan Creek Mall and Target tonight to get a few halloween decorations. Got some LED orange and purple lights, as well as some indoor things. We lost most of our halloween decs to mold via a broken snowglobe in the fall decorations tote. Swung by the apple store to grab C&C3. Bought a couple copies of it and some ipod in ear headphones. It's crazy now, no checkouts. You just find a guy and he scans your shit n pulls a bag out of his butt. Literally. Emailed me the receipt. Crazy. C&C is copying right now, 6 friggin gigs, must be all thems videos. Nemo just dropped a bomb mega style. Oh lord, the whole apartment Nemo has stunk up. Enjoy a shot of my new C&C3.

HD-DVD

I took the plunge and picked up and

HD-DVD drive

for my 360. Most of the stuff I'm wanting to watch in HD is coming out on the HD-DVD side, namely BSG and Star Trek. For a couple hundred bucks its not a huge price for the next gen device, and my cable is sorely lacking in HD content. Til the end of the month you get 5 free HD-DVD disks so that brings the price down pretty low. I picked it up at the local Gamestop, there's a nice fella in there who doesn't try to shill shit on me. The other girl is pretty nice too. Maybe it's because it's not in a mall but they aren't douches in there. I'll post later on how it works for me. Also got the

mass effect book

, it's a prequel to the game coming out in a couple months.

DragonCon

I'm about halfway through BioShock, it's just such an engrossing, visceral experience. Simply an amazing game. Hard to understand how the minority of folks think its not a good game. Clearly they haven't actually played it. When I'm done with it I might play it through again to rescue the lil sisters and get the "good" ending.

Picked up

Blue Dragon

,

Harry Potter

, and

Galactic Civilizations

today at the local Lamestop. In this one's defense the guy and gal in there never harass me about anything, and are usually pretty up to day on their gaming news. The one in Marshalltown is typical LameStop push push push. Blue Dragon is a classic J-RPG from the masters of the Genre. Hironobu Sakaguchi, the original creator of Final Fantasy has crafted this tale. Should be good.

Harry Potter is for Rakdette, no interest in it myself.

Galactic Civilizations, well I've swooned over it for some time but I tend not to buy Windows games so I never picked it up. In light of the recent BioShock RootKit/DRM fiasco I took it apon myself to reward a company (Stardock) that not only made a great game but threw conformity to the wind and released it like it used to be, just a simple serial code and you don't even have to have the disk in. I also dropped them a letter praising them for their pro-consumer stance and also requested Mac support in future endeavors. They wrote back quickly thanking me for my letter and hoped I would enjoy the game. Of note, the 360 version of the game is the superior version, no DRM, and controls smooth as butta. And I can trade off the game when I'm done vs. the DRM fatality of the Windows version. Which I will be trading it off on

Goozex

fer

Metroid Prime 3

.

Bill Brasky Part Deux.

Full report on trip to Omaha. We left aprox. 2ish for Newton where we signed our lease for the next year and were off onto Hwy. 80 for the several hour trip to Omaha. Lodging was booked at a nearby Howard Johnson @ 55 dollars a night. Should have known that was too cheap. Like the Olympia Resort, on the outside it looks nice, the convention center facilities are very nice too. Take the elevator up and you get to a very rundown hallway to our room. Maybe our section was more run down than others I don't know, our "budget" room overlooked the roof and some satellite dishes. At least there was free wireless net, well who doesn't have free wireless net these days. Starbucks thats whoo, 9 bucks a day for net! Give me a break, Taco Johns has free wireless net. No Joke.

We settled in and scoped out some delivery fliers, apparently a lot of places delivered via this third party service called

u8yet

, which had a website you could order on. More on that l8ter. We decided to checkout the hotel bar and have a brew, 1.75 pints so not bad at all. We ordered a Nacho plate and 2 beers which somehow came out to 6.50 even though the nachos were listed at $ 5.95. I wasn't complaining. After a while we wandered back to the room thought we should get some final supper and go swimming, so we ordered a couple gyros on the

U8YET

website. After 20 minutes I called up the service, what's that old lady on the phone. You don't actually check the website orders? Why do you have website for ordering then. All over your advertising materials. Whatever woman get me a Gyro and Chicken Gyro and get them here 20 minutes ago. Eventually and old guy delivered the goods from who knows what greek hut, there seemed to be an abundance of them. While the meats were flavorfully spiced, the

tzatziki

sauce tasted more like a ranch sauce than anything. Anyway swimming was had, pool was 9 feet deep, pretty deep for a hotel pool. Hot tub wasn't as warm as I would have liked.

The next day we got up, wandered down to the breakfast room for the infamous Howard Johnson "Rise n Dine" breakfast, well there was a couple of bagels and the obligatory waffle machine. What's that? Why no there wasn't coffee or juice, just a note saying No coffee or juice today sorry the management. Also we didn't get our USA today delivered to our door as stated on the website, but whatever. They can't afford coffee how can they afford newspapers.

A Denny's was scoped out a mere 3 minute drive down the 10 lane road of death and soon we were feasting on juice and Moons over some sort of Hammys. Anyway we made it to the zoo, bypassed the main entrance because we are members of the Des Moines Zoo which means we get a half priced reciprocal entrance. And off we went. This place is huge. Also had the hugest grandaddy seal of them all. They have a 70 foot walk through aquarium which we spent a good 15 minutes in watching the sharks, and fish, and rays, and sharks, and small children getting eaten by sharks. Amazing. There's some shots at the

flickr

page but the lighting and environment were less than ideal for getting a good shot. Certainly one that portrays the grand awesomeness of this aquarium. The desert Biodome was pretty neat too.

Needless to say we were there for many hours, and apon leaving were famished and feet were tired as hell. Went back to the hotel for a quick dip in the pool and to scope out dinner plans. We located a place called

Spagettii Works

on Google Maps and were off on another whirlwind adventure. Place was good, had a good salad bar with your meal and reasonable prices. Wanting to walk off some of our pasta escapades we sought out and found a mall to wander a bit, eventually purchasing some food and goods for Nemo's birthday at a nearby Petco or Petsmart....one of those two, who knows.

Alas the vacation was coming to all to short of an end. It was now Sunday, the day of departure back home. But not without a few more adventurous stops. We had heard of a place called

Dave and Busters

many times on the TV, but alas had never been near one til now. There was one a mere 10 minute drive away. They didn't open til 11:30 and it was only 10:30, no fear back to that mall area there was a Borders that we could browse and have a sip o non Starbucks coffee. Right was we went in there was a book, that had a cat on the front.

Intrigued I swooped in for a closer look. Alas could it be? A book, no a series of books about the secret lives of cats with wars and clans and mystical legends? Neat, yoink, grabbed. Patches always sneaks behind the couch through the end table and I often comment that she saw the Cat Signal and is going to the Cat Cave, her secret high tech crime fighting lair.

We should have grabbed coffee right then and there but noooo we had to venture forth in search of Star Trek Deep Space Nine books as we are amidst collecting and reading the DS9 Relaunch books. What's that over there, on the end of the shelves display by the Sci-Fi section. Neil Gaiman, you wrote more books than Stardust? Interesting. SWOOPED. Another book in the bag.

That's enough books for one day you say, well but we haven't even made it to the star trek section yet! My lord, they had the hugest trek section I'd ever seen usually it's just a row maybe two of books but here it was column after column. The wife quickly pointed out that we had Worlds of Star Trek Deep Space Nine Book 3 but not 1 or 2, which they had both of them here. Well that won't do, how can we read book 3 with out 1 and 2. Grab Grab.

At this point our hands were starting to get full of books. But then a BIG HUGE FAT one caught my eye. Is it, no, really? The omnibus edition of the first 5 books in the relaunch, even though I had the first 3 I still needed the other two which are sorta hard to come by these days especially the last novella. Well it's settled Twist of Faith was to be grabbed and the books I had would be thrown up on

Book Mooch.

At this point we were over burgeoned with books and headed toward a register, but not before my damn wandering eye caught the Jim Butcher section, more specifically Fool Moon, the second Dresden Files book which I needed as I had books 1, 3, and 4. POW, you've been booked.

Finally we made it to the register, swiped our Borders Rewards card and took our bounty to the coffee shop to get tanked on mochas and discuss our latest book acquisitions.

(For more information on my tastes in books check out my library @

Library Thing

)

Soon after we left and swong by a place called

Gamers

. There is one in Des Moines over by the Zoo that I always see but never had stopped. So here we did. Pretty nice place, reasonable prices and they carried shluff back to the NES. Lots of games and goodies and pretty helpful staff. Games were in far better condition than Gamestop and the staff was far less pushy. I might have picked something up but having just spent 70 bucks on books and coffee I refrained. As quick as we came off we were to finally hit

Dave n Busterbots.

We got there and looked around, the place was big, bigger than I had expected and the dining area was classier than I thought too. What's this sign, no kids with out an adult, awwwww yea teh adult gamer's place to play. They had a great deal called eat and play. Choose one of 8 entrees and get a 10 dollar game play card for 15.99 or double your fun get an entree and 20 dollars game play for 23.99. We got a couple of the 23.99 deals because we were gunna game anyway, and eat anyway. Might as well do both. I had a chicken parmesan with chunky sauce. Huge plate of food, just because it was a deal package didn't mean they were going to skimp on the plate size I guess. We ate, talked with our waiter, who was fantastically attentive keeping my iced tea full and letting us know about the midway games, arcade games, TVs, and other entertainment items available. The midway games gave tickets, you know the carnies tickets only you could get neat stuff. We played a few arcade games and several rounds of skeeball. We ended up playing this coin drop game that somehow we had gotten the timing down to get it to drop coins. Which in turn shot out 8 tickets per coin pushed off. We ended up with over 2500 tickets (and more in my pocket apparently as I am home now and found some in my pocket) and headed to claim our bounty. We grabbed two actually glass pint glasses and two shot glasses, leaving us with 1500 tickets yet. They store them on your game card so I guess we'll have to go back to Omaha sometime.

Finally came home, petted the cats, gave them their gifts, and passed out from a loooonnnng, but fun weekend.

Back from Bill Brasky

We just returned from Nebraska, Omaha style. Lots was seen, lots was done, places were shopped at. I'll have a full report later. Right now I'm posting 500 or so photos to

flickr

.

Bioshock

Bioshock is one hell of a game. Smooth as butter on my 360, and no RootKits installed like the Windows version. This game is everything an Adventure/FPS game should be. Killer story, oozing atmosphere, and creepy as hell. The game draws you in, sets you on your toes. I say play this on the 360, cheaper system then the 2K PC you'll need, and likely your TV is bigger taboot. I suggest checking it out today.

Going to Omaha tomorrow to the zoo, see some seals. mmmm seals. I'll be sure to post lots of photos to

flickr.

Cats Video

I threw together a small video of the cats. Demonstrating how Nemo spends his days,eating and laying on his back. You can find it over @

youtubio.

Random Updates

I've been very busy, bit of overtime at work. It's been hectic trying to prep for the new school year and distribute technology resources to an entire new building.

Here's another sample speed test, not terrible, my latency is consistent at about 80-90 ms though, thats kinda dhonky.

The cats have been crazy as ever, I've loaded a fresh batch of photos of them up to Flickr, you can find them

here.

I got a new bookshelf and some new lampshades for some lamps, I'll post photos shortly. The bookshelf was a good deal a 5 shelfer at the low low price of nothing. I'd been talking about getting a new shelf and bam right into my lap.

If anyone is looking for a geeky educational job

Grinnell College is hiring a Curricular Technology Specialist.

It involves integrating technology into the classroom, knowing web design, photography, and a lot of other odds n ends skills for that type of integration.

Bachelor Party

I've uploaded pictures from Tino's Bachelor Party over at

Flickr

. You can check them out

here

.

Also going tubing this weekend, expect crazy pictures and even crazier stories out of Benjamin.

They wern't drinking hooch.

All this time I thought my 80 bucks a month for 768/256 DSL was going to buy hooch at the bar next to the telco but it turns out they were in fact investing the money. I checked

PcPartners

website yesterday to my surprise they had bumped up their packages and it was cheaper than I was currently paying. I stopped in this morning on my way to the post and requested the new faster cheaper 1.5 meg package, she said she thought I was on the new OCCAM trunk so shouldn't be a problem. That's good because they have a DSLAM at my apartment building that was full when we moved here and I bet they didn't upgrade it. I get home tonight after a long day of work and my net seemed fast, my speed monitors were indicating my net to be going WAYTOHOT, to my wonderment a speed test showed that indeed I was approaching the 1.5 meg barrier. Ping is around 120 which is normal for here (outrageous but normal). I think the ping stems from the

a. shoddy lines around here.
b. PC partner leases its lines from Iowa Telecom so there's extra hops in between that needn't be. I think fiber runs from Kellogg to Gilman to Newton.

Anyway I'm pretty tickled to see my net up to par and 10 bucks cheaper now only 70 bucks a month for twice the speed. Still outrageous but fairly less outrageous.

You'll note that Pc Partner doesn't even show up as the ISP on speedtest.net. On DSL reports it shows as dsl.partnercom.net though.

Goozex Amps It Up

Just when I thought Goozex couldn't get any hawter they amp it up a notch. For posting in a thread with photos of my

"Goozex Lair"

they are sending me a T-Shirt and a free copy of

Crackdown

, which I had on my request list. I recently purchased a Polo, T-shirt, and some magnets but more is always better. These guys are fantastic, once before when I had helped them net and ban a scammer on the system they tossed me 20 free trade credits. They run good promos for new users and are trying hard to support the current users with some promos and freebies as well. I can't speak highly enough about this service, sure there are a few bad apples, and a few scammers but by and large it's a fantastic community dedicated to low cost gaming. By my estimate based on the games I've sent and recieved and on current trade in values at

estarland.com

they have saved me over $375. Thats a lotta dough. If you're interested use my

referral link

, with your first active trade it will net you 5 free trades and 100 points. Click

here

to sign up with Goozex now. There are some other promos floating around at different sites as well such as

Cheap Ass Gamer

, but in general they are all worth about the same.

In other news I don't mean to spoil any secrets but on p.323 of Harry Potter Dumbledore comes back as a Woman Walrus. No foolin.

City Witty

Went to Des Moines today, visited a place called In Play. It's a bar/resturant/arcade/kids games with tickets place. Pretty neat. They have a Mario Kart GP2 cabinet that was hella fun and will likely draw me back in. The food wasn't terribly priced for being in downtown Des Moines. 8 bucks for a BBQ brisket sandwich with some fries, was pretty good too. 6 bucks was a bit steep for a Java Monster drink (Monster and Vanilla wodka) but their standard drinks were more average priced at 3-4 dollars.

Went to the Mall, played with the iPhone, feels very intuitive thats for sure. At Barnes and Noble picked up a few bargain books including a Bruce Campbell smash

I usually only buy bargain books there or at borders since it's so much cheaper to order off Amazon with the free shipping n shizzle. I do go look at books I want though, there was a hawt Grindhouse book,

Grindhouse: The Sleaze-filled Saga of an Exploitation Double Feature

It's of course 10 bucks cheaper on amazon, even with their scamocard they peddle you save dollars at Amazon. The card nets you 10% off all books or something, so you've got to buy 250 bucks or so worth already to make it worth your while. And then you know, you feel like you should buy books since you spent money on this damn savers card. No thanks, I'll buy the books I want already discounted @ Amazon thanks. I'll still buy your reasonably priced bargain books though. Got both beer and wine encyclopedias. Even nabbed a couple cat books including one on how to test your cat's IQ, that should be good for a laugh with the Nemo. Overall a good trip, traffic wasn't too bad even with all the road construction.

Coulton

Johnathan

Coulton

is an artist that's been doing some covers and other things for a while. Recently he did a song a week for a year. That was pretty neat. He's been available on itunes and some other services but as I think the current prices for music are rather high even at a buck a song(its an ok price not great) plus he's not available on DRM free Itunes plus yet.. I stumbled on his music at a service called

songslide

. This service lets you pay more or less per song or album. I chose 7.50, it netted him 4 bucks about and 3ish for the

songslide

people. It shows you on the scale exactly how much the artist gets and the

songslide

cut. The more you pay the more the artist gets. Essentially after a certain point

songslide

keeps their cut and keep giving the rest to the artist. So check them out and of course this fantastically creative artist. The songs are 192kbit DRM free .mp3 files, well thats the recommended size artists can submit in higher or lower bitrates.

Mugs Galore!

I arrived home the other day to find a note on my door from UPS stating that they had delivered a package. Hmmm I didn't order anything I didn't think. It said they left it at 3B, in the other friggin side of the building. Thanks UPS, for leaving my package in the locked side of the other building. Really, I appreciate it. Anyway I go bug the fella for my package and it says Boston Lager glasses on the box. I'm like WTF is this, It can't be beer glasses can it? Did I order beer glasses drunk? I haven't been drunk for a while, did I order this a long time ago? I get in and open er up and low and behold it's really 2 Sam Adams Lager glasses. Apparently Beer Advocate and the Boston Beer Company joined forces to send these new Slovenian crafted glasses to all Founding Members of Beer Advocate Magazine, which I am. It's a fantastic magazine by the way, if you like a good beer, you should really check it out. Anyway there's a bunch of hullaballo about how it makes your beer taste better but at any rate they are neat looking glasses and for free I'm not gunna complain. It came with a letter from the CEO about how they appreciate us beer connoisseurs and would like us to be the first to try their new glasses, on them.



Next up is a mega ebay beef. So I ordered some perfume that is now out of production that my wife likes. It was a reasonable price with free shipping so I bought 3 of them at the same time. Shit you'd think I'm doing this person a favor you know ordering 3 they can toss them in the same package save shipping make some more moolah. A couple days later I get a note in the mail saying I have a package at the post and that I owe 6 dollars postage on it within 2 days or it will be returned to sender. I'm like this better be some joke A. why the fruck do I owe postage and B. thats not very long to pick it up. No joke, the frackin sender threw the 3 bottles of perfume in the mail with no frackin postage. It somehow made it all the way to me for me to pay for postage. That's not my idea of free shipping. Needless to say negative feedback will be left if the user doesn't paypal me 6 bucks back. Heres a shot of the package as you can see it says liquid which is great but there's no postage at all. Friddly frack. Saw harry pothead in the Omnidome IMAX, however apparently Omnidomes don's show 3D which was kinda lame, but frack that was a big freack screen. I could count the pores on Harry's face. Cost me a bundle, 24 bucks for tickets and 4 bucks for parking damn science center. Sister is coming down this weekend we're thinking of checking out that new place in Des Moines In Play, big bar/arcade/resturant for megadultsgames. Lost.fm baby.