Future Perfect

So I was strolling through Best Buy on Friday looking for a new TV since it was our bridal shower gift from my parents, I just had to do the legwork and pick out one I liked. While I was there I somehow managed to walk into the Playstation aisle. I don't know why this happens it just seems that my brain somehow knows exactly where a store sells video games. I swear I am not doing it of my free will, honest!

So I am in the video game aisle and I see something completely unexpected. Holy Crap! Time Splitters 3 is out! When did that happen!? I quickly call Ryan and he didn't even hesitate once I told him. He told me, "BUY IT NOW!"

You see, back in the steamy summer '02 Ryan and I were hanging out and we decided it was time to buy a new Playstation 2 game for our enjoyment. So we went to the mall and gambled nine buck on a title neither of us had ever heard of called "Time Splitters." It appeared to be a generic FPS (First Person Shooter for those not in the know) according to the back cover, but we were getting sick of 007: Agent Under Fire and wanted a new FPS experience.

We took it home and discovered it had the absolute worst story mode ever. BUT it had the BEST arcade or death match mode Ryan had ever played up to that point. What made it so great you ask? Well it turns out that Time Splitters was developed by the same team that helped to release Goldeneye on N64. So right off the bat the game had the same fast action that made Goldeneye the standard for FPS to this day. Secondly they the main feature for the game was the ability to design your own multiplayer maps! I have never seen this functionality for another console game system. Say what you want about Halo, but does it allow you to make your own map? No? Then what is that hard drive on the XBOX good for? Lastly it had all the ingredients for an awesome video game. These are aliens, zombies, robots, and monkeys. No game can fail if it can pull off all of these elements.

Time Splitters 2 came out Christmas 2002 and it also rocked the casaba. It made the story mode a much more robust and added several hundred new playable characters (each with a comical little description).

So now Time Splitters: Future Perfect is out and I just have to say that it is the most enjoyable game I have played since Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. For the new release they bring the Time Splitter story to a conclusion (but hint that it probably isn’t the last.) They also included online play and map trading. Awesomeness. From what Ryan and I have seen so far we are pretty impressed and quite happy with the game.

So check it out if you like FPS, it is out on all the consoles. I guarantee you won’t be upset.

Pot Luck #2: Live From My Patio

Welcome to my second installment of Pot Luck. No you aren’t going crazy this is labeled number two even though there isn’t really a #1, but I think that the entry entitled “Damn I’m a Slacker” was pretty much in the spirit of this Pot Luck idea. Basically the idea for these types of entries will be to cover multiple little things that might not fit elsewhere. So without further disclaimers here I go.

The Patio:
God is it gorgeous out today! I was so lucky to be able to head home a little early and soak in the beautiful late afternoon while sitting in traffic. So I decided to drag a chair out onto my patio/balcony and do this entry from my laptop. So here I go cracking open a beer right now. If this entry goes downhill fast it is because I have the tolerance of a pre-teen girl (not Drew Barrymore). My apartment is nice and quiet and semi secluded (for an apartment building). I have a great view of the garbage dumpster where the King of the Squirrels sits on his throne. You see the squirrels here grow really large and there is one in particular which I think is most likely their leader as I saw him jump at least four feet up inot a tree with a whole slice of pizza in his mouth. As Kevin put it on seeing him, “Good thing you and Rita don’t have kids. The squirrels would make off with them in the night!”

Pope Reset Switch:
Speaking of God and Kevin. So we have a new Pope. Whoopee. Yay. Rah-Rah. I’m sorry but Kevin and I were talking about the possibility that Ratzinger would get the post and neither of us liked that idea. Kevin was quite worried (since he actually cares about what is going on) and said that he sure hopes that he isn’t as conservative as when he was a Cardinal (The guy wanted to bring back LATIN at the masses because he thinks having it in the native tongue ruins the service). I have to agree with Kevin, but I consoled him by letting him know that if The Conclave picked the wrong Pope, God would just hit the ol’ Pope Reset Switch and they’ll just have to elect a new one.

Podcasts:
So I tried out iPodder for Winblows XP and it worked great! Ok not really. It started to act really flaky and started crashing iTunes and making my iPod act really weird when it updated. So it is gone. I did get attached to several good podcasts though and I would like to share them with you. You can either subscribe to their feeds with iPodder-esq software or you can download them straight from their sites. Here are my favorites:

The Dragon Page is run by two guys that do three podcasts a week. These podcasts deal with fantasy and sci-fi. There is Dragon Page Cover to Cover which interviews fantasy & sci-fi authors, Slice of Sci-Fi that deals purely with Save Enterprise (so far, but it is only 3 episodes old), and my favorite Wingin’ It. In Wingin’ It they just crack open beers and BS with their friends and play skits people record for the show. They range from parodies of movies to a guy that sends in commentary about the Star Wars universe from an Imperial Storm Trooper’s perspective. It is pretty cool so check it foolio (drinks beer).

Vinyl Podcast is a guy with a ton of old records, 45’s, 8-tracks, cassettes, and CD’s. Every podcast he takes one song that you can no longer buy anywhere and plays it with a small commentary. It is really neat to hear these great and obscure old songs.

Evil Genius Chronicles is just a wacky guy podcasting about various things and playing music. I’ve only caught a couple of these because iPodder screwed me, but what I heard I liked.

Wedding Entry:
Ok, I really want to write several entries on this, but it is such a huge task that it has me daunted. Maybe if I get a chance while helping Ryan baby-sit Ella tomorrow I’ll cranks one out. There is so much I want to say that I really want to do it justice. So bear with me. An interesting aside, I really was a wreck for like a month before the wedding. I am looking back at everything that I did during that period, and well its shit.

Well that about does it for this episode. Brought to you by wikipedia. Wikipedia is there anything it can’t find? (No I wasn’t paid for that plug, but I used it so much for this entry I thought it would be funny, so deal.)

PErfect timeing, I just finished my first beer!

XBox Alive

Once upon a time a guy I knew at my last job was looking to get rid of his Xbox for only $100. I had just bought and read through a good chunk of "Hacking the Xbox so it sounded like a great opportunity for me. So I bought what turned out to be a first gen console (Microsoft has released a bunch of different version to try to thwart the hackers). It was in generally good shape and turned out to be perfect for my needs. I promptly hacked a controller cable into a USB hub and installed Linux (Xebian a Debian variant to be specific). I then used it mostly for games until I moved (hey you try using a TV as a monitor and see how much you use it). After I moved to my present apartment I tried to turn it on and it seemed to be dead.

I was a little disappointed, to say the least. It had been a fun project and since I had joined the Linux user group I thought I could do a presentation on the Xbox. Resigned that fixing it would probably be a chore I traded in the few games I had bought for it (except for Halo and MechAssault which is used for the Linux hack).

Well Thursday of last week I decided it was judgement day for the Xbox. I would either revive it or it would go to the dumpster. It only took me abour five minutes on Google and xbox-linux.org to realize that it would probably take me almost no time to revive my fallen Xbox. It turned out the problem I was seeing (a constantly rebooting system) was caused by the Linux menu option I hacked into the Xbox menu system interfering with the Xbox trying to update its clock (the clock was hosed since it had been unplugged during the move). The fix, put a DVD in the drive and it would stop the rebooting process. A one minute fix.

After that I tried Linux but the interface was hosed when I booted into it. So I decided to remove it and start over. I've prepared to do the install, but I need to buy a CD-RW as that is what my Xbox likes to read the best of the writable media I have (another M$ anti hacking attempt). I thought I had some but apparently they, "...went out walking with a Bible and a gun..." (name that tune and win a pat on the back).

Well at least I can play Halo in the meantime.

(If you want another song clue here is another verse: "Now, Jesus, don't you wait up. Jesus, I'll be home soon." It was sung by Johnny Cash, but was not on any of his albums. Ryan, if you don't guess this I'll be greatly disappointed.)

"Its Dead, Jim"

Well, according to slashdot it seems that Paramount will not revive Enterprise for another season no matter how much money the fans raise. (Hey, it was on Slashdot so it must be true, right?)

Sorry Señor Duc and all the rest of you Enterprise lovers, but Rita, myself, and even Paramount agree that it is high time this series was put down like a rabid dog.

At least there is still Battlestar Galactica. That show is awesome and doesn't reverse the polarity nearly as much as Star Trek has been lately. You know that raises a really good point. How many times did Data save the day on TNG by "reversing the polarity"? Hell if I were Picard that would be the first thing I would have done.

Geordi: Captain, the Borg have us traped in some energy matrix that is negating our main stabilizers.
Data: The energy matrix seems to be a highly concentrated cloud of dark matter that is -
Me as Picard: Shut up Commander Data, and reverse polarity already! And after you do that have Dr. Crusher and Dianna join me in my ready room*.
Data: Of course! If we reverse the polarity of the main Ness cells we could force the cloud of dark matter to pull us out of -
Wesley: I reversed the polarity while you were talking and saved the ship! Now I'm off to make out with Ashley Judd, again.

The End (or they could have spent the next 50+ minutes developing the characters).

*Why is it called the Ready Room? Because it is ready for love, baby. Yeah!

**Disclaimer: Despite the really shoddy and almost evil recreation of TNG I just did I think it was and is still the coolest Star Trek series to date. Even though I think TOS movies were (in general) better. Oh and I always liked Wesley. Yeah they gave his character the worst lines, but it was a great inspiration to see a kid (close to) my age not just on the Enterprise D, but driving the fucking thing. Now that rocks!

Now I just hope no Trekkies/Trekkers track me down and beat me with their phasers (since they are just props and can’t actually “phase” anything).

(Rita just read this entry over my shoulder and thwacked me good.)

PROMOTION!

Rita got a promotion! She is now an Associate Editor! w00t! It is so awesome and I am so happy for her. Way to go sweetie!

Damn I'm a Slacker

Wow, I can't believe how lazy I've been about updating my blog since my wedding (as opposed to before it). I will try and do better. I promise you, my loyal spam bots and dead guinea pigs, that I will do better. Starting right now.

OK I don't have the energy to give you the next part of the wedding story. Instead I want to touch on several small things that have gone down in the back week.

Señor Duc:
Duc is a lot like me in many ways. We both are incredibly intelligent. We are both geeks blessed with awesome female companions. And, of course, we are both slackers. I have always wanted to challenge Duc to a slack-off, but I've never gotten around to it. (Wow! I think I just made the spam bots groan!) So why say all this. Well señor Duc gave a presentation this past Friday at the Linux User Group on using X-10 and its compatible bits to create a web based java application that allows a user to turn off his Christmas tree in his living room. Very cool and despite the fact that he put the presentation together at the last minute (and at great expense) he did an awesome job. Rock on Duc!

Podcasting:
Well I am trying this whole podcasting thing out. I've downloaded ipodder and it is currently grabbing feeds. I'll give them a listen tomorrow while working and see how it goes. What is neat is that Battlestar Galactica has a podcast with commentary for each episode so that you can hear the commentary while the show airs on the TV for the first time. That is awesome! On top of that I can't believe Adam Curry (yes the MTV VJ Adam Curry) thought it up and wrote the first Apple Script to do it! That is amazing on so many levels. You rock Adam Curry. (If you want to learn more about podcasting click this link.)

MHS Reunion:
Oh thank God it was raining too hard on Saturday for me to go to my high school reunion. I was looking forward to seeing Lori and my old gang, but the more I thought about seeing all the other people from high school (like that weird Wickersty kid ;) the less I wanted to see them. There is a reason I haven't talked to these people in so many years. I leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine what that reason is (don't you hate it when somebody does that?). Oh quit your bitching Jeff, you know you are my best bud!

Last but Not Least Justin:
Justin... proposed... to his girlfriend (I'm sure she has a very nice name, I just can't remember it right now)! HOLY SHIT! Well I am shocked since I didn't think Justin was the marrying type, but now that he has "started down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny." Just kidding (I'm married I can say that now). Congrats Justin and Justin's fiancee`, but remeber there is only one lord of the rings, and she does not share power (line courtesy of Ryan). Good luck you two.

Quickie #3: w00t!

I just sat down with the latest Knoppix Live CD to try and figure out how to get my laptop to connect to the wireless network here at the Linux user group and I discovered that it was auto-configured and set up on its own! Now I have (almost) no excuse to put Linux on my laptop!

w00t!