I saw *the* most delicious thing ever on ./ today. This following email complaining to someone at MS about the difficulty of installing something from them on windows XP, from 2003.

I am quite disappointed at how Windows Usability has been going backwards and the program management groups don’t drive usability issues.

When I really get to use the stuff I am sure I will have more feedback.

Now are you ready for the kicker? the author of this email?
Bill Gates
Yes that’s right, Gates himself sent that email to the XP group. When asked about the email, this was his response. “There’s not a day that I don’t send a piece of e-mail … like that piece of e-mail.”

This is his last week at MS.. I think I might miss him a little

So my links block on the righ hand side has been re-organized and updated. Anthony’s amusing blog over at http://www.anthonysullivan.net is still there, as is Stales at http://www.angry-cripple.com and I have also added a few more, including two very good friends of mine. One is Maddy, who is, well, quite insane really, you can check hers out at the link there, which is http://www.maddgoddess.com and finaly I have added Caitlin, who is the very reason I got to met and know all the wonderful girls of PMS and my fellow guy gamers in h2o, and so MANY (were talking 4 digits here) friends scattered around the gaming world now hers is http://www.sun3v.com. Check them all out, as I can assure you they are all far more entertaining than mine likely is! haha

Yes, the weekend was indeed insane. Between friday morning and sunday late afternoon there was a fluctuating number of roughly 25-30 people in my house at any given point.

Stale had several other friends on the Penny Arcade forums who had birthdays, so they came to town as well, plus a large contingency of their little social circle from all over the us (plus a poor guy from Ireland who suffered an 8 hour flight and jet lag just to join in!) The house was a nonstop party and it was fun as hell. Well into 2 thousand dollars in alchohol was consumed, enough food to feed a small nation was cooked in cycles regularly and destroyed in minutes each time. (Chris makes a glorious cheesecake that I would happily move to Seattle to be able to have all the damn time!)

Fortunately there were no casualties of war this time, like last, where one of Dan’s couches was utterly destroyed by the projectile contents of an over intoxicated stomach, however I found out after the fact Kovak did have a little mishap all over the wood floor of my downstairs office, but it was quickly cleaned up (although the carpet outside the door of the room, at the base of the stairs does indeed bear some battle scars, come to think of it.)

Good times were had by all, there was more rockband going on that I think Harmonix ever envisioned, tons of Smash brothers and Mario Kart on the Wii up in the game room, plenty of pool (and weird schenanigans ON the pool table), tons of drinking games (the concept of Zoom still makes my head hurt) and I also learned when trying to find peace and quiet at 6am when everyone else is up still yelling, sleeping in the back seat of a Honda Accord coupe is NOT a good solution.

Then there was my actual birthday on monday… good lord. I must say, I was not looking forward to my birthday this year. It is the first time in 7 years (since the beginning really) that my birthday did not fall right on MML week, so I was not going to be home in Louisville with a few HUNDRED friends around, plus another 1,500 more gamers as well for several days. It was just me, and work, and Dan and Summer around and that was it, I have to admit i was really not planning to enjoy my birthday. However, Dan surprised me with the most insanely awesome present ever that morning at work, two front row seats to see Eddie Izzard live tonight! There is someone very special I would like to take more than anyone else in the world, but sadly she is not available.. but its ok, a great time shall still be had. Also, my facebook profile is setup to text me when someone writes on my wall, I left this on because at MOST I get 2-3 wall posts a week, if Im lucky. I had to turn the damn feature OFF yesterday. I’ve never felt so appreciated by so many people, my wall was literally destroyed with an untold number of posts, as was my myspce profile (by mostly the same people, LOL!) It certainly cheered me up a ton. Thanks to EVERYONE who left me a message on Aim, Myspace, Facebook, voicemail, email, and everything else. I love being reminded how many friends I have scattered all over the country, and the world, thanks to my love of gaming and all my traveling related to it. Its kind of cool to know I could be stranded just about anywhere in the US and know I have great friends not far away in some odd direction

Wohoo! I have overhauled my site as you can tell, if you check it regularly. An entirely new Theme for starters, which was hard for me. I LOVE my old web 2.0 looking, rounded cornered aero stylish black with green and gray. After all, green and black are my favorite colors. However I decided to go with a widget capable theme so that all that nav bar stuff on the right no longer had to be hand coded by me whenever I wanted to add a feature.

This theme, obivously, is. It was hard convincing myself to get away from the green and black, but its really growing on me more and more, and the response from my friends who have been following my site has been universally positive as well.

Also I added a new module that will show a random pic from my picasa gallery, as well as my current twitter feed. Along with that, when I make a new post from now on, an entry will be generate for me to twitter, which by default, will also go into my facbook now! LOL Then it will of course show up here on the site, come to think of it, in the twitter box.

Good lord, I just might cause the internet to fold in upon itself and implode, I should maybe rethink this plan…

One of my favorite sites to check in on daily is Garfield Minus Garfield. They simply take a Garfield strip that includes just Jon and Garfield, rip out any images of Garfield, and you are left with the crazy ramblings of a lonely depraved man..

www.garfieldminusgarfield.net

Today’s I especially like… kinda feels like me today

For anyone who cares, I have a new blog up at http://dnd.sargonas.com which follows the adventures of the D&D 4th Edition campaign I am partaking in, with blogs from the point of views of the characters. Check it out if you are into that sort of thing.

Yeah so two days ago I got pulled over on GA 400 by an Alpharetta cop on a motorcycle, for doing 70 in a 65 zone.. what the hell? Its GA 400.. if your doing under 80 your lucky to not get plowed down by someone in the right lane doing 90… and here I get zinged for doing 70.. and being passed by 20 cars in the 3 lanes left of me!

So he pulls me over, walks up to the passenger side of my car, and with out wasting time hands his Laser gun though my passenger window and says to me “I clocked you doing 70mph.. if you look the left number on this readout is your speed, the right is the distance from you to me.” And I have just enough time to read its 70 alright, and before I can even react he pulls it out the window and says “I’ll be citing you for 5mph over the limit sir, one moment please” and walks back to his bike and fills out the form. Watching him in the mirror I can see he going rather quick about it, as he aparently has most of the form pre-filled out, and just had to add in the info related to me. He walks back up, asks me to sign the notice of reciept, and hands me my copy, says good day and walks off. Whole thing lasted a ridiculous 7 minutes… dont know what the hell the story was here with the drive though pull over but whatever…

So my birthday is in a week and two days, if anyone cares. Dan is having a ton of people into town because between the 21st and the 24th he has 4 friends with birthdays, including me.. should be good times, assuming anyone here remembers I have one too, heh. Aside from that though I expect to spend my actual birthday alone.. I had really big plans this year too.. I was gona take “her” to vegas for a 4 day weekend…

So the subject of my previous post and I had dinner the night I wrote that. We had a really good talk. In short my main theory was right, the sudden actual commitment scared her shortly after realizing it had happened, and she got scared. I cant fault her for that, it happens. At least she was wonderful enough to sit down with me and have a great conversation over it, I walked away from it feeling very good about things, at least, I felt up beat and not destroyed, heh.

Really I was doing quite well, untill the car trip home. 6 hours alone in the car with my thoughts was rough, the first few hours went pretty well actually, untill XM-47 decided, for the first time in my own knowledge, to play some Placebo… her favorite, and that… sucked..

Up in louisville has been hell…. the majority of what I had planned to fill the three days around the time of my sisters party was meant to show her around and have fun, naturaly all of that is no more, so I’m bored out of my mind and lonely, because I intentionally didnt tell anyone I was coming home, so they wouldnt want to hang out with me and divide up too much of my time. Now of course everyone is busy on the holiday weekend and has no time for me. The few things I do go out and do, all I can do the entire fucking time is think about if she was along, what it would be like, where we would go, what I would show her next about my hometown, etc. I spent an hour going though 12 boxes in the garage, trying to condense down all this crap I have accumulated since high school and left home, stuff from living here, in my first apt, Chicago, etc. Going though a lot of old things made me reminisce, and then wish she was around so I could show her all the fun little odds and ends of my childhood.

And now I have a new problem these last two nights I have never had to deal with before, and I dont even know how. She has managed to somehow invade the privacy of my dreams. What is weird is that in them its not some self created lie where we are all happy and things are how they were and i wake up sad, but instead, things are as they are now, but worse.. they are vague to remember, but I think the general gist of each one is shes around, things seem like they are turning for the good, and then suddenly she will knock me down a few pegs and I wake up feeling like shit, and unable to fall back to sleep for a half hour or so. This has never happened before and thrown me for a bit of a loop…  I can honestly say its taken me to the point I am afraid to sleep anymore.. these are not thoughts I want to have. Mostly because she herself would never do these kinds of things to me.. so why the hell am I thinking them..

I’m going to skip the boring and trite “omg its been forever since ive posted.. blah blah blah” shit and get to what i need to vent in the open..

 I’ve spent several months involved with someone. The exact context is debatable. are we dating.. are we not, to what extent. We never really discussed and let it sit as a moot point, we were happy with what we had, what else mattered? Then about a week and a half ago she informs me at dinner, that she is indeed now my girlfriend. What happened in her mind to make this change I do not know, but it was a monumental one for us and something important. She was very clear on the statement of this, actualy having made it while i was on the phone with my father, who overheard it and had a chuckle over it. The rest of the day was quite pleasant, and late that night she makes another monumental leap, informing me that she does indeed love me. For the next several days things between the two of us had a much different context, there was obviously more in depeth, heartfelt emotion than before.

Now I am familiar with the concept of such a huge leap as this, after so long of the prior, making someone uneasy one morning, and this is ok with me, if thats all that happened, I could understand this, and work with it. This girl in question, sits me down for a conversation two days ago, and asks to back out of a long planned weekend trip she was taking with me to my hometown this weekend… and tells me that she needs some time to think, she isnt happy with how her life is going right now, too much chaos, too much confusion, and that “we” only complicated things. She needs to sit down and look at what her future holds, and that really, shes not sure there is room for an “us” in ir. I understand this concept, on its own. But how can someone then continue on to act like “that conversation” the sunday prior never happened. And when I ask about it, she tells me i was mistaken… I must have taken some off handed comment and twisted it in my head into hearing what I wanted to hear. She swears she never would have said that, I am clearly mistaken.

This is hurtfully insulting. I can understand her kinda having a quasai panic attack. The “oh shit” moment where that casual relationship that had no expectations became a commited, locked in deal. I understand this, I have BEEN THERE. But to tell me that, I know DAMN well she remembers this conversation, there is no question in my mind about it. Its insulting, hurtfull. I can accept if she doesnt feelt hat way anymore, I can accept if she has a change of heart. But to pretend it never happened, and to tell me to my face I am imagining it… is just… insulting.

 To make things better, today she chats with me about a few things, and then proceedes, out of the blue, to inform me “I’ve changed my mind.. I will come along this weekend”. This is something my brain is totaly unprepared for.. so i hesitate for a second, and simply tell her “ok I am now confused” which is responded with “i’m so mean… im just kidding!”

My only conclusion is that she somehow, feels the need to drive a wedge between us, because we had such an easy, understanding seperation between our two highly intertwined lives, that she feels she must completely make me want to alienate her in order to put her mind at ease… thats all I can assume.

No, no.. not the PBS childrens show about math from the late 80’s and early 90’s… Im talking about how I am back to square one. My xbox 360 has a fried hard drive. Its tossing up a single red ring segment with an E 67 error. Microsoft’s KB article on it states this is one of the three possible hard drive errors. This particular one is the worst.. and its accompanied with a grinding, scratching sound when the system first fires up. In other words, 2 years of saved files, game data, and 7,000 gamerpoints worth of work are gone. (well i still have the gamer points, but the WORK is gone) the only thing that was on the memory card I have was my profile, and my Mass Effect and Rockband info… I am so sick I could throw up over this.. it really is heart wrenching. I know this is somewhat laughable that I could be so upset over something like this, but from my point of view, this is two years worth of hard work and effort I have put into my biggest hobby.. *sigh* and I was going to buy a new 120gb drive soon and port all my data over.. guess I waited too long huh :\

I’m taking up a collection for donations to buy a new 120gb drive… I need to collections cause quite frankly at the moment I cant afford one.. *sigh again* if you feel generous, click the link below… I’m going to sit in the dark and cry now.

So on black friday I decided to go with my dad and look at cars. When I come home next month I was planning to buy one, since my eclipse most assuredly needs to be retired, horrendously so. I was looking at a 350z (pricey end of my range) or a jeep sahara unlimited ( the decked out 4 door wranglers) and wanted to look at some numbers and get some ideas based on lease rates and trade in value on my eclipse. Instead, I ended up with this….

  Now then, can you actually believe this is a Honda? yeah.. that was my reaction. This is the new (as in, been on the road for about a month) 2008 Accord V6 Coupe. I have always liked Hondas for their reliability, but they are not the “me” kind of sporty little car. This however, changes that. It just plain looks awesome and has every single feature that they make as an option on the accord coupe,  and has 268hp, which, believe it or not, far out classes the old v6 in my ‘00 eclipse GT by about 75hp. (not that I’m all that hung up on engine power, but by god you can feel it in this thing.) It also has a lot of nifty features, like their VCS system that manages the number of cylinders being used in the engine to conserve fuel economy. (ie. if your running on a constant speed on the express way, it shuts down the rear bank so you are only using the front 3, and when coasting to a stop or doing low powerd lane changes or merging, it adjusts to 4, etc) Some of the other nice things is that I finally have XM built into my car, no more using that damn tape adapter for that cheap ass roady I have in my eclipse, heh. I’m happy. Its not at all what I expected to end up with in the least, but I dont regret it one bit at all. its an awesome car, I ended up saving myself some serious chunk of money in comparison to what I was looking at as well, even though I don’t at all feel like I gave up on anything. Along with that, this model, the EX-L V6 when fully loaded out comes in around 32,000 give or take… before you factor in my trade in value on the eclipse… mine was 26,500 or so. It’s good to have my dad’s connections

Oh yeah, here is a stock photo of the interior of mine for those who care.

Only major difference being mine is an automatic, not a stick, aside from that  it’s the same. One thing I love about the interrior of honda’s is that they use a much softer, nicer leather than that viny-like crap that was in my eclipse, meh. Also there is a lot more of that brushed silver metallic trim than it looks like in the pic, which accents the black nicely, you just kind of loose that effect in the glare of the pic. Oh yeah, and it has an aux port for my iphone or any other mp3 player…  thats hot right there Been wanting something like that for a good while now!

So… another post about guitar hero 3. You know, the game I ranted on endlessly about for two or 3 posts and several twitters?

Hm yes, well you see, when the gleeful joy of the early adoption lust has worn down, and you have a moment to sit back and reflect on what you just did, things always take on a new light. As they say, hind sight is 20/20. I for one kind of wish I had been wearing my glasses when I first took at look at Guitar Hero 3. To be honest I did give it a few low marks, well I should say, I made a basic attempt to tone down my praises with a few counter comments at best. In either case, in reflection I didn’t do that enough. I beat the game on Medium, which was for the most part easy. However now I have gone back and taken a stab at Hard and Expert, and let me tell you, here is where they fucked up. Guitar Hero 1 and 2 flowed when you played, even when you worked up in difficult. When you played those songs, even the ones that were tweaked for maximum concentration and dexterity, you still felt like you were playing a guitar, with a natural flow to it. Medium on GH3 felt the same way, so in reality, it was nothing I was looking for, or comparing. It was all a subconcious understanding that I was happy. However now that I took a stab back at Hard and Expert I have learned something, Neversoft said fuck that noise, and just decided to stick notes wherever it looked like it would cramp your fingers and be considered harder.They gave no thought whatsoever to the concept of music and flow.

These are base instincts to Harmonix, a dev studio that has an entire employment roster engaged in one or another personal band. Not a week goes by in the Cambridge area where SOMEONE from the studio is playing a show with their band. Neversoft I think simply does not have the innate understanding Harmonix did to get this concept. It is most evident in the expert songs. You do not feel like you are playing a more complex version of a song, trying to really rock it out like a pro. You feel like your fingers are playing a torturous version of DDR in a futile attempt to keep time with a pack of drunken riverdancers. These are not words based on my inability to beat these songs, just because its hard I dont feel this way. Even the hardest songs for me on 2 and 1 i felt like i was playing real music. This simply restates the obvious, this is an unproven, and unwelcome genre for Neversoft to dabble in, and that Rockband, when it hits the stores next week will triumph over all. (Well goes on sale that is, as it is already in stores, and I set eyes on my own copy of the bonus bundle in person at my regular Gamestop today, although the Manager, in awe as much as his staff and him are of me and my job, had no desire to loose his job by letting my have my copy early, heh. In any case, I sincerely apologize for leading my select few readers who care about my blog astray into thinking the game was a triumph of success for the franchise. It is more like the Episode II:Attack of the Clones of the series. 

Now then, Assassins Creed. I know I said I would reserve judgement untill I have completed this game, and I still intend to, but I will tell you this.It is a rental. It will be the first game ever for the 360 that I intend to trade in when I complete it. I never trade in games, under any situation. I simply deny the fact that such an option even exists to me at a store level. However this one, is being sent back in for sure. If I ever wish to revisit it, I will bring it up in my GameFly queue. The game is NOT bad, and I AM finishing it however I see little to no replay value in it at this time. The rest I will save upon completion, unless I return it to Gamestop before then, and apply its credit towards something more substantial. 

Lastly, there is a copy of Mass Effect at this time sitting at our house awaiting Dan and I. Ok, well, mostly Dan in the beginning, but in either case, don’t hate us too much, we cant help the fact we know people.

5 years ago this week (today actually) Xbox live launched. Since then it has evolved a lot, a WHOLE lot, but its still Xbox Live and the are still gamer tags. Everyone comment and share a memorable live moment, favorite feature, or how about the turning point where you realized your soul was irrevocably sold to Live, or to the advancement of your gamer score

So today I think I have been over indulged in awesome geek stuff! First off Assassins Creed came out today, more on that later as I go into a preliminary first impression on it. 

As to the other piece of hotness, today our first half of our new computers from corporate arrived today. This was, in my opinion, the better half of the batch. Brand spanking new Apple iMacs! They are the 20 inch systems, decked out with all the options on that level and 2gigs of ram. They are HOT HOT HOT. I finally have an apple system to use on a regular basis and I love it. The only downside is that I am going to need to do some serious work to get used to this keyboard it has. Its sexy as hell but I almost have to relearn how to type all over. It shouldn’t be to bad though.Now then, Assassins Creed… With any game hyped to the degree that AC was, you almost accept it defacto that the game is going to be less than stellar. To be honest, as much as I was looking forward to it, I was also equally expecting to be let down, although fully anticipated enjoying the game none the less. Now granted, I am only about 3 or so hours into the game, so I will be the first to state that I have little grounds to bash or even support the game at this point. Consider these ‘preliminary’ thoughts on the game at best, and not my final review. I think Gabe from Penny-arcade said it best with his comment in yesterdays front page blog “Untill you have sat though the credits and watched it all.. you aren’t qualified to say SHIT about this game.”They were very closed lipped about the allegations at this game taking place in the future, AND the past. These sayings, which grew as time wore on, and Ubisoft seemed hesitant to confirm, but also refused to deny, became a known fact, albeit an undetailed one at launch.  I wont ruin the surprise for you, but I will say this. Having kept the plot, and the ‘future story arc link’ in the dark was actually a cool thing ™. It added a little bit of a twist that made you go “well damn, thats neat” in a day and age where major surprises like that in games are rare, and generally only used in the ending, as everything is over advertised in order to sell product these days.

The game does indeed fall short of some of the hyped expectations, but when I say it falls short, what I am saying is, it is your average, standard “holy shit this is awesome” blockbuster hit, rather than the end all gaming experience to solve man kinds problem once and for all, that Ubi made it out to be. They game starts off as well with another unique feature. In most games as you progress you learn new abilities, get new gear, and work towards being the ultimate badass that particular game builds you up to be, that of which you generally don’t even know 100% what you will become until you get there. In AC you start off the first 15 minutes of the game fully geared out with all your abilities. They give you a seductive taste of what you CAN be, and eventually will. Then you are stripped of all of this, knocked down the ladder of progress, and have to work your way back up. To me, I feel this is a novel and refreshing approach at the whole progression concept.  I can see peoples fears that the game may become repetitive in later stages, and I have yet to play enough to reach that point, so I am reserving judgement for that until such time. However as of right now I think I, personally, will not be affected by this issue, from my initial experiences. Then again however, each person will look at this game differently, and I could very well be a deviation from the norm. In either case I will withhold any judgement on that aspect until such time as I am worthy of it. 

Lastly I want to take a moment to tout my buddies over at 360voice.com. Trapper and Steve (ChangeAgent and Fatty Chubbs) have been working hard on a new thing they rolled out, their new Gamerscore Challenge system. It allows you to build a “challenge” to see who can earn the most gamer points in a given number of days. You invite your friend whom you wish to partake, and once everyone in joined up, the initiator launches it, and off you go. At the end of that time the person who acquired the most gamerpoints during that time frame wins. Right now its purely in beta and for fun, but they have partnered up with Old Spice (the backers of the Xbox Live Challenge campaign) to provide prizes and awards for challenge winners in the future, so keep an eye on it. Also fell free to check out the challenge Stale, h2o Banana Hammock and I are in, which I am kicking ass in (as of the time of this writing, hehe). Check it out here.

So I finally got my hands on Eye of Judgement yesterday, thanks to the alert, watchful eyes of Stale. It is impressive, and I see great potential. However the inital mechanics were, clumsy, and I am still learning the proper flow of the game, as well as the true strategy of play. Once I pin down on the strategy, and my lack therof, and better understand the game flow, I think the rest will kinda lock into place and it wont be so bad. All in all im not really disappointed, I just need to give it some time.

Time however is something I don’t really have to give it… Assassins creed comes out next wednesday… I’m currently deep in the throngs of pokemon hunting on my DS, rock band hits stores a week after assassins creed, and mass effect lands at the same time.

And thats just November….

So guitar Hero3 came out yesterday. It is great, indeed it is glorious.

From the very beginning it is clear that Harmonix is not involved in the game, and this is in both good, and not so good, ways. Harmonix is an awesome group, and while they were partners with RedOctane in the Guitar hero I and II endeavors, and RedOctane owned most of the rights to most things,  I will forever think of the Guitar Hero series as a Harmonix game. The changes are subtle but there, most are for the good, but there are a few things that annoy me. For starters, the entire game has a, well, Tony Hawk feel about it. No surprise there, it WAS made by Neversoft after all. My biggest gripe, and its purely cosmetic and just a personal thing, is the bastardization of Judy Nails. She was the character I always used, because in games I and II she could have been a digital clone of Ariel. It’s not that I have some sick twisted facination with my best friend (well ok maybe a little, but its purely sexual attraction, nothing weird) but simply if I am going to stare at the same person rocking around on stage for hours on end, I want it to be someone who’s easy on the eyes.

However in 3, when Neversoft got their grimy little skate board axle greased fingers on Judy, they seemed to have, well I dont know. Its like the squarshed her down a few inches and plumped her out oddly. Her chest is now 2 sizes two big for her body, shes a few inches shorter than before, and now oddly out of proportion because of it, her face seems far too chubby for the rest of her body because of this, and they beefed up her arms and legs to look rather creepy. All in all looking at her in the selection menu made me go running to the next character option, which was Lars Umlaut, and as we all know hes none to easy on the eyes either, but it was an optical reprieve for me none the less.

Aside from that I am so far happy with the game, the song selection so far is kick ass, and when I was unlocking extra tracks I found Kaiser Chiefs “Ruby” which just about made my day. I was disapointed to see there is no Freezepop songs for the first time, but this is none to surprising because they are personal friends of the Harmonix crew, and likely kept their loyalties to them and Rock Band. The song selection so far is great though, but I wont bore with details on that since its highly documented elsewhere.

Thew new multiplayer battle mode is nice with the twist of having “attacks” to use, instead of star power. Their concept of using this mode against 3 “bosses” made of famous musicians is also a nice change for the campaign mode. It eases a new player into the concept for online play, as well as breaks up the monotany of “beat this song… now this one.. ok good now this one” which is otherwise the only aspect of the campaign mode. One other nice addition is that the cut scenes between venue upgrades got a small but awesome tweak. Gone is the simple graphic of a map with your tour bus driving from point A to point B. In its place is a full cut scene, with a nice artistic twist of no vocal audio. It shows things for example, of after the back yard gig, a guy walks up, shows a business card, throws a ad for a battle of the bands competition in you face, flashes some money and smiles. In other words, you just got a manager and your first gig. The animation style is on par with the guitar hero look and feel, and the lack of spoken dialog is actualy nice, plus there is some good visual comedy in each one, and they are each 10-15 seconds at most to keep it short and simple. Again, this was a good twist that broke up the same ole same ole of the past games, without really changing anything.

All in all I give guitar Hero 4 out of 5 stars, now if you will excuse me… I need to go beat Slash into the ground so I can jack his avatar and rock that pimp ass hat he wears myself.

It has been weighed, it has been measured, it has been judged….

IM-FUCKING-POSSIBLE TO FIND!!!

Ok so Eye of Judgement came out today for the PS3. Its the first PS3 game ive been looking forward to actually. Hihgly acclaimed by the guys over at Penny-arcade, my personal heroes when it comes to gaming information. Its like any other CCG card game, but you play it online with your PS3 against others, using the new PS3 camera (included) on a special 9 square mat where you do battle with your creatures and spells on cards to take control of the board (5 squares wins).

The cards are made by the same folks who make Magic: The Gathering, and are recognized by the PS Eye using a special encoded barcode on them.  On screen the artwork comes to life, with a 3d rendering of the creature of your card appearing to stand on said card.

Needless to say, being the afficianado of card games that I am, I was psyched about this. This game was not preorderable, it seemed no one was taking them. 5 Gamestops, a wal-mart,  best buy, amazon.com, bestbuy.com and 3 google searches later I know why. Each retail store, no matter who they were, got ONE copy today… one… uno… everywhere online is showing backordered in terms for 4-8 weeks… I was devastated… until I found a copy on buy.com. They claim to be instock and shipping in 1-2 business days. So I ordered a copy… heres to hoping I have it in by next wednesday or so to satiate my yearning hunger

So i have become hooked with twitter (www.twitter.com) and its a hell of a lot of fun. Basically, you sign up and set it up how you like. When the mood suits you, you can send in a mini blog (max 140 characters) via a text message, an IM to them, or on the web site. Once its been submitted, everyone who has elected to follow your blogs will get a text message, IM, or email, based on their personal settings with the updated entry inside. Its a lot of fun because it changes the whole mindset on blogging.  Rather than sit down and plan out an entry in a journal type point of view, it encourages a person to randomly send off whats on their mind at that moment, say your stuck in a meeting and something funny happens you want to share, or your in line at starbucks and want to vent about the morons behind the counter.. you get the idea. Its fun.. if you want to track me after you have signed up, just search for my usual name… sargonas, and add me!

I’ts a day later and I am on the plane back to Atlanta, and to be honest it still hasnt fully sunk in.I just spent yesterday at EA’s home office, and it was as one of their employees.

The first dose of new-reality was  checking into the hotel. We were each given our own room, none of the sharing that I have grown so accustomed to over the years at work and Event travel. We left the hotel just before 9am and headed over to EARS (EA Redwood Shores) and signed in at the lobby. After waiting around a bit, the head of EA Partners,  (the guys who liason with all the non-ea studios that EA publishes)  who is a good friend of SCI, showed up and took us over the the 250 building, also know as the Studio Building.

Over at 250 is an awesome set of conference rooms, that can be combined to form one hall for 500, or 3 individual rooms each seating 100 or so people, in an auditorium style theater.We had a lengthy 4 hour meeting with the rest of the online groups in one of the rooms, the contents of which I obviously cant share. There were two awesome revelations at lunch: One was the now well publicized announcement of the aquisition of Bioware/Pandemic, theother was the fact that EA apparently has a standard for large conferences. Catered lunch from the cafeteria across teh quad, and cases of beer. Yeah, free beer at work for lunch, apparently the place thrives on its consumption of beer on a regular basis.

After the meeting we were given a private tour of the campus, after being given our new employee photo-id badges, starting with the building we were in. The main studio building has its own mini cafeteria, plus a Starbucks and “the library”, where you can checkout just about any game or movie ever made, sort of their own in-house blockbuster. The studio, as well as every other campus building, has a dedicated “game room” with consoles, pool tables, foosball, pc’s and more. We also had quick tours of the other 3 main buildings, the main offices, or Mission Control, the online building where ecommerce and online stuff is, and the final building. EA cares alot about its employees health and happiness, and this one reflects that. It has an awesome cafeteria with great, healthy food, a 24 hour gym, and a high school sized basketball gym complete with motorized bleaches built into the wall, and the EA Sports logo in the center of the court. The tour was wrapped up with a trip to the EA Employee Store, where we were given free run to snag all the swag we wanted for free. Also, all EA console and PC games can be bough there for $20 and $10 respectivel. (this is after you have used up your annual 10 “points” where pc titles cost 1 and consoles are 2).

After that we had a short sit-down with HR about our benefits, the usual crap, the moved on to the most surreal part of the visit. We went into the EA Partners office where they wanted to celebrate our joining the office, with shots of jack, and beer from an ever-stocked mini fridge.

We then relocated to “the garage” a small conference room that had been taken back to the studs intentionally, with garage band styled artwork on the walls, bar stools, and tables. You honestly felt like your back in highschool in your friends garage for band practice, and thats why were were here. In front of us sat an omninously looking ginormous HD tv with a 360 and a ps3 attached, surround sound, and a full array (plus extras) of Rock Band periphreals. For the record, Jesper sucks, and I rock.

And so that was our day at EARS, finally capped off down the road at Sushi Sams, a small hole in the wall sushi bar all the locals raved about, where we ate $200 in sushi on EA’s dime…

God damn this job has perks…

After months of details, various procedures, and all the hassle involved therin, all the work in secret is complete, and now I and the rest of my company no longer are SCI, but are the newest division in the Online branch of EA Games! Rawk!

June 11^th… that is the last date of a blog on my site. Now as you can see I was a regular poster up until then. Then things got hectic, and a little crazy on top of that. Then once time went by i got more and more out of the habit of posting, and finally, it got to the point where every time i sat down I tried to write and realized SO much has happened in the last two months I didn’t know where to begin. Oh yeah, did I mention I’m currently in another country at the moment?

Shit, I guess I should backtrack a bit eh? K lets see here…. June came and went along fairly wok-dish.. At the end of the month was the WSVG-Louisville event. It went awesomely, aside from a hiccup. 4 weeks before my car was damaged when a fucker in an SUV ran me off the road and was undriveable at the moment. John, my roommate, was headed to cali for 6 weeks for work, so he let me drive his car up to Louisville.

However the night of setup we were in the parking lot of the expo center up in Louisville, and i was driving down the far west side takings some of the guys back across to the hotel. I realized the gate ahead of me to ring road was closed, so i turned left to cut across the entire width of the lot to the main avenue in the middle of it. Now the lot is not perfectly graded flat, there is a small rise mid way across, maybe 2 feet in total height difference from its apex down to the road level at the far end of the lot a few hundred feet away. However in this spot are also some bright ass flood lights beaming down, which shadowed and masked the fact that in the last year a 2 foot wide concrete sidewalk has been installed running the entire ¼ mile length of the parking lot with only a few specific gaps. Totally masked.. no one in the car saw it, and the tow truck driver and my father both saw it when the had to come retrieve my roommates car that i drove over said sidewalk at 30mp, shoving the front drivers side wheel back into the body of the car and denting the quarter panel. Needless to say it was a bad start to my weekend, but that was the worst of it, it went much better from there and the car was quickly taken care of my dads friends at the Volksdoctor. It was also made up for on Saturday night at 4^th street live when Cliff from lintel dropped a stupid amount of money to take some of the girls and my other friends out for a party slash birthday party for me.

So lets move on to July. 4th of July week was WSVG-Dallas and we headed off as planned. However due to business issues it was unsure, the day i got on the plane, if i had a job anymore, regardless of that, it WAS sure that for the next 2 to 8 weeks no one in my company was getting a paycheck. Needless to say yet again I headed off on a bad note. Things went great at the event though, probably one of the smoothest ones ever. I cant remember all of the details of the trip but there was a lot of highlights, however its been over a month, and most of those nights involved alcohol, heh.

August started out ok enough, minus the stress of still not working, Dan had to move back home to his wife for financial reasons, and John was still traveling in cali for work. He was home for about two weeks, and over that time things really began to go down hill. More than once he would bitch about the fact all heather and I did was sit around the house all day. With all due respect though, its not my fault i wasn’t working, but dad was giving me the money I needed to fill in until things were sorted out with work, and so i was ok. I was financially stable, and if i didn’t need to work then so be it, none of his concern. However around the 7^th or 8^th John came home late around 10 or so, just as heather and I turned off the tv to go to bed, and as he came in we heard him on the phone and I hear him say “him ans his girl are probably still just sitting around doing nothing” as he walked in and walked off down the hall to his room. We looked at each other, shrugged, and went to bed. She headed to my room and i stopped in the kitchen to rotate a load of laundry. Thats when I hear him in his bathroom, which sits between the kitchen and my room, on his cell still say “watch this” and he comes out to the kitchen and begins to yell at me because apparently 6 rolls of toilet paper vanished on him in the past week while he was gone…. err.. ok whatever. He really lays into me, ending it with “I’m sorry if its so fucking hard to find time to go out and buy more when your so damn busy sitting around the fucking house all day” and slams to the door to his bathroom again, and goes back to his conversation on the phone. It became clear during this that like always, he was far from sober. I shrugged it off and went back to the living room to show down my computer and turn off the lights, and while there head him come out of the bathroom and start talking to heather. Next thing I know he is yelling at the top of his lungs about how I am a total failure and need to move the fuck back home to Louisville because I am incapable of maintaining my own money so badly that dad has to bail me out, and that I work for a complete idiot, and tons of other rants. I come across the living room and stop by the front hall in front of the door and ask him how exactly my company running out of money constitutes my inability to manage my finances? He turns towards me and comes halfway down the hall ranting more about how i am an idiot, I’m lazy, etc etc. At this point I ask him “you did say you were moving out on the 15^th, right?” Because 3 weeks before he told me with dan gone he wanted to move, and had found a place and needed to move in by the 15^th if he took it. I told him that was fine, but being that rent was due in 4 days, he would still need to pay me full rent for august due to the short notice, and agreed. After I mentioned the 15^th thing, he charged up to me and stops about a foot away and goes “no! I fucking paid till the god damned end of the month” and then takes another step closer and shoves my chest with both hands and i stumble back a step. Now at this point I’m just completely shocked, and go “whoa, hey john, what the?” and he steps up onto the landing next to me, puts both hands on my chest and shoves me with his entire force right into the closet door as hard as he can, walks up to me, rips my glasses off my face and flings them into the patio doors across the living room, gets toe to toe with me and stares me down with this wild eyed crazy stare, and lifts up his right hand like hes about to hit me. So I do the only logical thing, i step off to the side, grab my phone, and call the cops on him.

Longer story short, they come, realize hes so drunk hes telling them a different story every time, plus heather backs everything up I say. On top of that he called both my sister and dad while waiting for the cops, going off on them about me, completely making a total fool of himself. Because of all of that, I opt not to press charges as long as he agrees right there in front of the police to be out by the end of the following weekend. Thats the short version at least.

Move forward a week and a half and I’m on a plane to Toronto for the WSVG-Toronto event. It was good times albeit smaller and drama filled when it came to the WoW tourney. Things went well, although I’ll save a few stories for later, and now I’m at the airport killing 2 hours till my flight.

This more or less brings me up to speed to today, minus things here or there I’ll fill in if i get the urge. Maybe now I can mange to go and start blogging regularly again now that my excuse of “I’m so far behind” is gone,…

I think I have found a resolution to my blog comment spam, well, at least a way to easily control it. Ergo I have turned back off the requirement to register a login to comment again. You still need to provide an email addy to comment, but you dont HAVE to register anymore again…. for now.

to everyone, from now on to comment you will have to register a login on my site. Im sorry, but i have to.  In the last 5 days I have dealt with 217 spam comments. Yes that number is correct, 217.. im sick of moderating them… fucking spam bots found out what a hot hit I am on google aparently and are slamming the hell out of me like the new guy at Rikers Island. *sigh*

sorry folks.

Apple, is the shiznit, as if this was not already known to the masses. I have an Ipod 30g video I have had since last summer, and in the fall it fully drained and refused to charge off of its USB cable to power back on. I setup for a repair on their website, a day alter a nice box with a preset DHL label arrived, perfectly designed for the ipod inside. I packed it in, and sent him off.

It came back to me less than a week later with notes stating they hooked it up to their system, and it powerd on fine, so they reflashed it and sent it back. Since then I have used it off and on, but its alwasy required jiggling the USB cable sometimes to get it to actualy start charging. I ruled it out as being my cable but got lazy and didnt do anything about it. Until it fully drained recently again, and refused to charge all over again…

I hoped on Apple.com, and this time reserved a time slot at the Genius Bar at my local Apple store, and went in after work. He plugged it in, and it fired right up, to my utter shock. He took one look at it and found out my proble, fire wire and USB send power over SEPARATE connectors, go figure. Their docks all use the firewire… and its just my USB that is shot. So naturally I ask why the heck they didn’t check for this when I sent it back in, because now I am way out of warranty, so my only option is to get a separate special cable for charging and one for synching, which is asanine. The apple guy digs though the computer system, and since the notes from my shipment outline the exact same symptoms I have now, there is no mistake its the same issue, so he goes ahead and swaps out my Ipod with a brand new one… RAWK!

I <3 apple… now someone buy me that little black mac book… its my birthday in two weeks!

So I have been playing a copious amount of Shadowrun lately. Its good peoples. The combat is fast, rounds are decently quick, there is a huge myriad of combat possibilities. Spells, weapons, tech.. which ones to use, which 3 to hotkey bind, which extra one or two to take and use as quick use from the bind menu (a tactic i use regularly for resurrect… its not worth binding to one of my valuable 3 slots, but i can hit b, right, and highlight it and pull the R trigger just as fast to make it useful.)

The maps are beautiful, and the public games aren’t bad, however the reason for this post is, I am looking for some decent friends who play that are interested in some nice, organized private matches. I can see where damn good times can be had by all if we can get a large private group together. If anyone is interested, my gamertag is up in the upper right box.