11:08 PM  
What? Someone quoting one of my SA posts?

Yes, all you ex-SAers, I know that the fact I care has moved me one step closer to my inevitable burnout. But allow to bask in the fucking moment, okay?

In other news, today I drove to the Twin Cities and back. Tomorrow, it's back to the Twin Cities again to join the sister and folks for Thanksgiving (though I hope to post to OD from that remote location--those of you homebound should check this page on an hourly basis and email me at my mobile email address.)

Why would I do fifteen hours of driving in two days, especially when that's mainly the same trip twice? A good question; for not-getting-my-ass-sued reasons I can't reveal much of the details, but I got to go along and help/observe the pitching of one of the Head's projects to a potential publisher. 'Twas fun, educational, and we got a pretty good reaction--though you can probably guess how much a good reception at a pitch may or may not mean until ink is spilled in signature-shaped blobs at the bottom of a contract-like document. As a bonus, I got out in the sun for a day, and tracked down a copy of the out-of-print Rune Strategy Guide. K'nifty!

Think I'm going to try and wrap things up here at the office, then go home and try to finish MGS2 and pack for tomorrow's journey. If I don't talk to you all before, have a good Thanksgiving. If you don't eat turkey, at least enjoy a turkey substitute and a good nap.

11:47 PM  
Okay--new cam, as promised. Sadly, it turns out I have a day-long road trip to make tomorrow, so I will not be able to get the archives up as promised. Instead I must go sleep. The cam will reveal why, even if I were not on the express to Dreamland, I would probably have not gotten the archives working anyway.I know, I know--in the big sceme of things it hardly matters, since nearly everything is here on this page, but you know that I don't like to lie to you, Gentle Reader.

See you Wednesday.

5:41 PM  
First car payment in the mail. One down, 59 to go...

In other car-themed news: (some of) the music from GTA3 is now available for download!

4:04 PM  
Okay; weekend recap begins:

FRIDAY

After a workday of cleaning up the detritus of the week (not all, though--I still owe emails to Travis, Mike Ryan, and a few other folks--sorry!), I had dinner with some folks from work, plus Don Perrin (of novel, game, and miniatures fame) and fusion toaster master Kevin Tritz. Good food and good conversation were had. Afterward, we came back to the office and Kevin and I decided to check out the XBox and the co-op mode of Halo for a few minutes...

Nine hours later...co-op mode complete.

My opinions after that marathon on Halo and the Big X:

1) The biggest things Halo has going for it are co-op play and the vehicles. If I had been playing on my own, I think I might have played for an hour or two before setting down the controller. The combination of help and competition that comes through co-op play kept me going--and going. And then there were the vehicles, especially the dune buggy with machine gun Warthog. At first I felt screwed in the driver's seat...and then a half hour passed while I got the hang of the controls, and I never left it behind if it could possibly be avoided. We drove the truck deep into tight enemy complexes rather than leave our source of unlimited ammo and unlimited fun behind...

2) Anyone bitching about the controller hasn't played with it enough. Though I mourn for the loss of two shoulder buttons (or rather, their movement to above the right diamond as the tiny black and white buttons), the triggers rock the hiz-ouse, especially for FPS's.

3) Who cares how big the xBox is? We played for nine hours, and never once did it leap up from the table and crush us under its burdensome size. "But what if I want to carry it to my friend's house?" you ask. I retort: When's the last time you unhooked your Playstation and hauled it somewhere? For most of you, never. Either your friend has their own PSX, you're damn lazy, or you're in the .00001% that has a 'special excuse'. So shut up.

Halo definitely is a title that will sell some xBoxes. But it does have weaknesses that keep it from being a classic in any terms other than 'one of the original launch titles'. First, the textures are pretty darn plain. Worse, geometry is used over and over to the point where Kevin or I would turn to the other and ask, "Have we been here before?" The story, while okay, gets a little overambitious in the third act and might have been better if kept tighter (to be as spoiler-free as possible, just the planet and not the galaxy.) Also, the animations just suck. They're like badly-done QuakeIII engine anims, with footsliding and everything. For as long as it's been in devlopment, the game cries for better animations and better-tuned cutscenes (in addition, in co-op the cutscenes couldn't decide whether to acknowledge whether there were two people around or one.)

SATURDAY

Thought about sleeping in, until my friend Andy Trabbold (check out his awesome online portfolio) called and we went to breakfast at THE CURVE EAT, a greasy spoon near my house so old and in-your-face that there is no web link appropriate and the name has to be put in bold caps like that. Grease, eggs, ham, and grease were ingested, and then I returned to my house and spent the afternoon alternating between cleaning and napping.

That evening, I went to the latest Wisconsin Goon Meet; burritos were eaten, pictures were taken with the most digital cameras I've ever seen at one table (edit to add a link to more pictures), and (since it was clean anyway), everyone came back to my place for some good old fashioned GTA3 mayhem. It was a good time. It's nice to put faces and voices to people you might otherwise only know online--it makes the whole online community thing a little less creepy and a little easier to explain to everyone. Somewhere along the way we lost Chen Kenechi, but reports say he's okay and surprsingly unpissed for someone who drove up from Chicago and then was accidentally ditched.

Took DeathBucket on a fruitless journey in search of Visine or something that would rescue him from his eyes-about-to-burst-in-a-bloody-mist appearance before dropping him off at his car. Then I went home, fully intending to sleep.

Four hours later...Metal Gear Solid 2 had sucked me in completely. I only meant to play for a few minutes, but.... More on MGS2 after I've finished the game.

SUNDAY

Slept for a while, then got up and finished cleaning. Trabbold came over for a little while, then took off just as I made my way over to the regular Sunday night D&D game. The crazy stuff I had injected into the storyline was neatly set aside without being dismissed (thank you, Glenn), and we had a good time--even if I did level and then almost get the level taken away by the undead. More MGS2---about three more hours than I intended--a few hours of sleep, then back to work and almost up to date.

A new cam photo is coming yet today, and I hope to get the archives up and working. Later, skater.

2:32 PM  
Spent the weekend away from the computer, so there were no updates to OD. Expect a flood of posts on a variety of stuff over the next few hours.

First, a complaint: along with my car payment came a little form allowing me to opt out of the program via which the company shares my personal information. Great. However, to get out of the program I need to fill out a form that gives them not only my name and account number, but also my address, home phone, and social security number. Let me get this straight: to not be hassled, I need to give them all the information that would allow them to be a real pain in the ass? That's like saying, "Please don't shoot me; here's bullets for your gun." I never give out my home phone number on forms--I even lied about it on my passport application, for crying out loud. Mail me or email me all you want, but don't call me. If the phone rings, I want to know that it's either a)family, b)friends, or c)somebody working their way through the phone book(and I have no problem being an ass the last (so far as my understanding that they're just poor schlubs in a crappy solicitation job will allow.))

I have no doubt that sending in the form will require them by law to do what they promise, but the means by which I am allowed to crawl through their provided loophole rankles me a bit.