I Don't Play Videogames Anymore

Seriously, I don't. Not like I used to atleast. I have just about every major console that's come out in the past 20 years, PS3 excluded. I have a WII and 360 collecting dust. The last time I really played anything was my slight obsession with guitar hero 2 about 3 months ago.

Now I've gotten back into WoW, but the people that drug me back into it don't really play it, so I'm losing interest, fast.

I've barely played through Zelda: Twilight Princess.

I have no idea what's going on with Halo 3.

GTA 4 came out of nowhere.

I don't know what to say about it really. I'm kind of glad I have something to talk to other people about other than videogames. It used to embarass me that that's all I had.

A big reason is that Shi doesn't like to play console games all that much. It's my fault, really. I tried to teach her to play Halo one time and couldn't help but throw head shots her way the whole time; and I don't play Tekken with her anymore, because she's just going to win. It's a tense stand off.

We do play WoW together, however. I think it's the cooperative spirit of the game that does it. Maybe Halo on co-op mode would help out.

I'm kind of sick of WoW, though. Especially on this fucking RP server I somehow got talked into playing on. I like PvP too much. I really miss UO, but could never go back to that cluster fuck. I miss finding games like Fatal Frame, that no one else seems to fucking know about. I miss playing a game without having to watch a 10 minute fucking cut scene, or seeing some anime bullshit, or dealing with another GTA 3 clone.

Alot of what I think the whole gaming scene is going through has to do with longer development times. Games are taking longer to make than most movies. We'll get a slew of great fucking games, then go through a 2-3 year drought. That's most of an entire fucking console cycle. I mean, the last game I was really excited about, and actually impressed with after playing it, was Oblivion. That came out when, the end of 2005? Halo 3 should be out at the end of this year, and hopefully it will be a satisfying experience. That adds up to a 2 year wait between games I look forward to and want to play.

I know, I know. Gears of War. It was ok, I'll admit, but nothing I really said "I can't fucking wait for this shit to come out" and really nothing I've ever spent a weekend playing. I know all of this is toally subjective to my own tastes. But, it's why my tastes have dictated that I'm not playing anything lately.

Ideally, I'd like to get a group of my real life friends together and play WoW, casually. Casually being the keyword. The problem is, would it be enjoyable? Probably not. Unless I can twink everyone out, and I have the ability to do just that on one certain server. Then comes the problem, is it even fucking possible to play a game like WoW casually?

3 years ago I'd have fucking slapped somebody for suggesting casual gaming, but then again, 3 years ago there were some great fucking games coming out.

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Childhood's End?

You know, every once in a while something comes around that really validates this whole human race thing. Something that says, "This is why we've been trudging along all these eons. This is the fucking prize."

The universe, in all it's infinite wisdom, does not hand out these prizes with a light heart.

The last time we were awarded, as far as I know, was when the incomparable Mr. Telly Savalas busted out onto the scene and brought a little light to the cold hard bitch that was the 1970's.



I have no idea how much I watched Kojak when I was a kid, but lets just say I had a slight obsession with dressing in nothing but the most swinging of threads, solving crimes, and lollypops.

I mean, it's got everything; Action, adventure, class, and candy. What the fuck kind of cultureless fuck can deny that.

It takes a lot for shit like this to come into being. My personal belief is that the universe throws us a little something as a way of saying, "there's a fucking reason you guys need to keep this thing going." A little light at the end of the tunnel kind of deal.

So, I've been feeling the vibes. I've been feeling it coming, like something was there just beyond the horizon. You know what I'm talking about, I'm sure. Jungian social consciousness sort of shit, you know?

Well folks, I'm not the first to break this news by any means. Its been out there for a few days, but I haven't been in the right frame of mind to accurately present the gravity of this fucking situation. I dunno, maybe its the fact I was up all night writing code. Maybe its the fact that my face has a sort of glazed over look like a waitress in a Chinese restaurant who is working off her passage to our great nation here. Maybe it's the zombie like stoicism I've had all day. I don't fucking know, all I know is its all coming together. The puzzle pieces are finally falling into place for our little global community. The day is very fucking close where we will finally, as a whole, look up to the skies, and beyond, a rise above all the negativity.

I can see it, the proverbial lighthouse in the storm. It's hope. It's evidence of a greater purpose. It's a sign of our impending greatness, our ultimate benevolence.

I'm sorry, I just don't have the words to justify the awesome holistic power this event will have on our world. So without further ado, my 4 loyal blog readers, here it is.

Here's what this whole thing's been about.

They're bringing back the Commodore

annnnnnddddd.... bliss.

Someone over at Commodore has been reading their Joeseph Campbell =)

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My Night in the Lab

It's 2:13 am and there's a part of me that wants to throw my laptop against the wall.

That part of me is very fucking submissive to another, greater part of me.

The latter part of me is addicted to what engineers since Ancient Greece have called the "Eureka" moment. It's that moment when, through all the hard work, the trial and error, the 2 or 3 times you go back to the drawing board everything comes together and works. It all fucking works. It's got to be something akin to what a heroine user feels the first time using. They get fucking sick, uncomfortable, shaky. But then they feel that high, and they're hooked forever; always chasing that high again.

The compiler keeps spitting error messages at me. It's trying its best to let me know what I did wrong.

I go back, re-write my code, save, compile.

There it is again; that fucking error message. Only this time it's accompanied by a few more. These are weird ones you can't really decipher - parse errors. The kind that takes a guy whose been writing code his entire life to know what they mean. Those code gurus, with their short sleeved button up shirts and the pizza gut and the beard.

I just started my beard. The gut came preinstalled. The shirt is non-standard compared to those who came before me, as is the flavor of my generation of technologist.

A normal person would succomb to that part of themselves that want to give up; they don't understand what it feels like to get your creation going. To give your code life. It's the difference between having someone else make your computer do something, and you making your computer do something.

Somewhere there's a guy waiting outside a mechanic's shop for his car, and another guy is driving past in his mint Hemi Charger smiling at him. It's that ancient smile that places the former into a lower caste within the tribe.

It's right there, and I fucking know it. Something's fucked up with the syntax, but after hours of staring at a glowing monitor it's all starting to meld together. 9 times out of 10 it's a missing semicolon. This time it was a missing bracket.

Save, compile, eureka.

A few chairs to my right a guy yells out "no, no, no, why won't you work!" and slams his keyboard a few times.

I give him that ancient smile, pack up and leave for a night's sleep. I'll make sure to help him tomorrow, but I have to keep up my own place in the tribe.

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Who'd a Fucking Thought

So on Tuesday, I wake up at my usual 7 am, take a shower, shave, drink a cup o' coffee... fuck, who cares.

Anyway, I leave to go to class. I walk up to campus, make it most of the way to the Comp Sci building, and am promptly stopped by what can only be described as a mustache with an automatic rifle.

Immediately I assume that this is it. I'm in the middle of some Red Dawn shit, and this guy is obviously a Soviet Spetznaz guy whose sole mission is to destroy wholesome middle American life. But, just as I'm making plans to gather a rag tag group of students and haul ass into the hills, armed with hunting rifles and a picture of Ronald Regan, I am told that campus is closed due to a security situation.

Don't give me that look. Everyone who has any memory of the mid 80's had the same shit going on in their head.

So there I was, the unknowing victim of a terrorist attack, up at 8 am with a backpack full of finished homework and nowhere to go but home.

See how I slid in that terrorist attack gimmick? That's called foreshadowing. Yeah, I'm that fucking good.

Anyhow, so I go back home and get on the interwebs so I can find out what was going on. The story was all over the news, but they didn't know anymore than I did. Something was going on in Rolla, campus was closed, and it was under lock down by law enforcement.

So I get on the school's unofficial message board, and its absolutely a buzz over all the excitement. Tales of sleeper cells being activated in order to destroy the valuable infrastructure of a tier 3 (if we're fucking lucky) school in Missouri are being posted. Concerns over the nuclear reactor, hostages, and mooninites are being shared. Lewis Black jokes about Rolla being afraid of anthrax are being cited. It was fucking chaos, let me tell you. Traumatic even. Think Waco circa 1993.

I was panic stricken about my trying situation, having to endure freeze packed coffee and a slightly warm apartment. Hey, whats that thing called? A dangling modifier? I love those.

I finally understood what people in places like Isreal and Iraq go through. I just couldn't believe that I wasn't able to get any Starbucks this morning, or thumb through the New York Times. No, I had to sit there stuck in my apartment, watching stuff I had on the DVR.

Somewhere between the Daily Show and Futurama I caught the news conference from Rolla City Hall. Finally, information to help me get through this nightmare situation. Appearently there was a student who threatened to blow up the civil engineering building, engaged the police, and threw white powder around. There were 23 people under quarantine. The FBI, Homeland Security, Missouri Highway Patrol, and U.S. Army were there to handle the situation.

A reporter asked, gently, if the suspect was an international student. The guy from Rolla PD said yes. No one said anything about the reactor. The 7th Civil Support Group was being called in to test for possible anthrax hazards.

Oh noes!

Then 4 hours later it was common knowlege that some Indian guy freaked out over his first bad grade, wanted to commit suicide by cop, powdered sugar got thrown around, and I found out that the school's police department has a sweet ass Camaro for a squad car.



Who'd a fucking thought.

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