Welcome to Not-Summer

I walked outside in my usual summer attire the other night, to grab a quick smoke (yes, I know, I know). I was wearing a t-shirt, baggy cargo shorts, and bare feet. I stepped out onto the front step, and BAM! It hit me! It was fucking cold!

This is St. Louis, people, not Chicago. Chicagoans piss and moan about the alleged 'summer' they get up there, but having lived in both places, I can assure you that while they are experts on cold and losing, they don't know shit about heat. St. Louis gets crazy hot. 95+ degrees with 100% humidity is almost the epitome of uncomfortable.

Personally, I love it. I'm used to it, grew up with it, and don't feel compelled to spend a lot of time talking about it.

The cold, though...ugh. There aren't many things in this world that I don't like. Aside from cold, precipitation, dishonesty, Nintendo apologists, religious beliefs, those who are opposed to science, those that identify stringently with a political party, reality television, mustard, cloudy days, modern hip-hop, IGN, lobbyists, Dave Matthews Band, pickles, fans of the band 'Creed,' Ubisoft, Mac users, Windows, Gentoo snobs, people with hygiene issues, Miller beer, the Cubs, Cubs fans (I do like having sex with female Cubs fans, though), wholesomeness, non-organic food, young people, old people, people who don't like Pearl Jam, wheat bread, Faux News, Jack White, Roger Moore as Bond, Internet Explorer, people who pretend to like using Safari, people who refuse to use Firefox, people who pretend Chrome is secure and just as flexible as Firefox, late 90's pussy rock, people who replaced the word "terr'ism" with "comm'nism," people who argue on the internet, people who post long message board posts in an effort to argue on the internet, people who post long message board posts in an effort to argue about politics on the internet, people who post long message board posts filled with 'facts' taken from a Faux News propaganda blast in an effort to argue about politics on the internet, people who think a man's hand is cleaner than his cock, turkey on a sandwich that is not covered in gravy, people who get lazy when building a standard image, people who pay for non-gaming software, people who work hard at furthering a negative stereotype, Activision, subscription fees, being busy all the time, people that accept that this is all there is, and many more, I really don't have too many dislikes.

Chicago was a very difficult place for me to live. Mainly because it's cold 8-9 months out of the year, always cloudy, everyone's amazingly negative, and it's really like living inside a dome. A dome filled with cold and bad weather.

Aside from the miserable weather and environment, it was a damn fun place to go to college. The bar scene is amazing, and the women...my god, the women are beautiful and not nearly as uptight as the girls here in St. Louis. Chicago girls are better looking and much more liberal with their vaginas than St. Louis girls. I was so taken with them, I had to keep one for myself and marry her.

Anyway...

...things have still been crazy, though markedly less so. I'm in the middle of three straight days of no free time, in which I'm occupied all day and all night, and I am working to put a stop to this bullshit. There are few things I hate as much as having plans after a work/school day. If I've been busting my ass all day, I like coming home, hugging my family, climbing into a recliner, watching some sports, playing some games, running around with my son, some dinner, and then I like to molest my wife. I like being able to fall apart for a few hours after rigidly holding it together all day. If that makes you roll your eyes, please go choke on a spiked dildo and die of a hemorrhage while being skull-fucked. I'm old enough now to have preferences, and I'm probably a stronger man than you, anyway, which is why my life is considerably less complicated and compromised than yours.

Last night, it was the boy's b-day, tonight, it's my Java class (which is totally bad-ass), and tomorrow night, it's the Governor's Cup (Rams vs. Chiefs, final preseason game). My in-laws might be coming in town this weekend, which could be fun.

We'll see how the next two days at work are. Work is really the thing that either lets me post or kills it, since that's really the only time I have for posting right now. That'll change, as I get into a rhythm with each week.

My next post is going to be my hilarious email conversation with EA. You're not going to believe the shit that we've been saying to each other. I still think that there are some very cool folks who work there, but their bloated structure really caused some problems between us. I'm going to get that up before the week ends, so make sure you check it out. It's nearly the best 'awful' thing to happen to me.

Gotta head to my next class. Word.

-Blaine

Whoah.

I've been busy. My 'real' job has taken over my life the last few weeks, but things should be slowly settling down, and I'll get back to my goal of 3-5 posts per week.

I'll be talking about the three corporations that have fucked me over, and I'll be posting documents to back up my accusations, so that will be fun.

I'll be talking about the holiday preview podcast Tony and I will be doing in September.

I'll be talking about the new Mass Effect DLC, assuming it ever actually works w/ the Steam version of the game.

I'll be talking about my continued journey down the dark path of the MBA.

I'll be talking a bit about what's been stalling me in regards to the book, and what my future plans are for the series.

Also, if you're one of the three getting a free book from me, they have not yet been ordered. I apologize for that, but I have my reasons. They'll be ordered in a week. If you have the sense to live here in St. Louis, then you'll get in two weeks. If you live elsewhere, you'll see it in about three weeks. In the meantime, why not tide yourself over with the $1.25 ebook?

I'm going to try and get a 'real' post up before the weekend.

So, to anyone who's read the book or is reading it: what do you think? Do you have any questions? How would you describe it?

-Blaine

Randomness Organized

Late post, I know.

Drove my wife to the airport at 0'dark 30 and spent the day lounging with my son. We hung out, wrestled around, practiced counting, went to check out my buddy's new baby (though the baby wasn't there, conspicuously), then came back, made some of my homemade organic pizza, chilled and watched some Cards-Cubs (which the good guys, the Cardinals, naturally won), as well as some NBA playoff action. I looked over to him at one point to explain who Lebron was, and little dude was passed out and had burrowed into the couch cushions.

Three is a much better age than two.

So, yeah, a day with just the boy and me was one I didn't want to spend banging away at the keys (even if I did sneak a little Mass Effect here and there.)

So, he's asleep, today's sports action has subsided (how 'bout them Magic?), I've gotten Wrex and Garrus to tell me their innnermost secrets, so now I present to you a blog.

GFW Live and What Should Be
Every time I log onto one of my computers at home, I launch Steam and Xfire, as well as Gmail in a browser. I like to open myself up for a few moments for folks to contact for some action, if there's any to be had. [editors note - that's gaming action, not the type-fwap-type-fwap kind]

What's funny is that if I launch GFW Live, I get a marketplace in which I can spend space bucks on now-fixed Fallout 3 add-ons, and little else. No friends list, no profile editing (aside from an option to delete my profile from this machine), nothin'. I've used it to get exclusive Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War 2 DLC, and that's it.

Now, if I want a slightly more robust GFW Live experience, I can launch Dawn of War 2, and actually access my friends list, but I am resistant to having that run in the background all of the time.

Why are these two seperate apps? One need only look at the excellent Steam service to see what's possible. I am ostensibly running Steam, and it is damn near the only thing for which I use Windows (as I sheepishly type this from my Windows partition.)

I mean, after Apple purchased Xerox's GUI all those years and turned it into the Macintosh OS, Microsoft turned around and shifted from DOS to Windows, which was based on Mac. Microsoft launched the Zune to compete with iPod. Microsoft has some skill when it comes to recognizing good ideas and aping them (and I'll take Windows 7 over Mac OSX any day, though I am an Ubuntu man most of the time.)

So, why not launch something that functions similarly to Steam, but ties into XBL? Something from which I can launch games, see who's online doing what, and coordinate with them? Where's that service that truly supports cross-play between 360 and PC?

I know the lack of actual 360 servers must be an issue, since a lotta PCs are utter shit, and couldn't handle doubling as a server, but tell me you haven't been in a 360 multiplayer game that was being hosted by some dude in Buttfuck, Montana with a connection resembling 56k. You find a way to change hosts and move on.

It just seems to me that one could attract a lot more PC players to the GFW flag if you promised that they would be supplied with plenty of console FPS players to devour mercilessly. And, yes, I happily play CoD4 and CoDWaW on 360.

What really burns my ass is that Microsoft announced that they wouldn't be announcing anything regarding GFW at E3 this year. I don't know who is in charge of GFW over there, but either they suck, or they're being told to suck.

Maybe this is being held back for the next XBox launch?


Glee
I am many things, but one of the things I am, first and foremost, is a man.

I'm not saying I'm one of those terrified-of-my-own-homosexuality mouth-breather fucktard screeching-on-XBL bigots that pretends to hate anything gay. I'm saying that I'm a comfortably married heterosexual that revels in certain masculine traits. I'm a problem solver, I loathe weakness, I yell at TVs when the Cardinals or Rams are on, I pester my wife for free sex, I eye laundry duty suspiciously, I maintain the yard, I'm obsessed with old wars, I scramble for cover when my wife and her friends get emotional, I think beer is awesome, and I idolize George S. Patton.

I'm also a mature adult. You might call me 'old.' I'll turn 31 this July (eesh, if I was an NFL running back, my career would be winding down.) Most bands I listen to are made up of members that are in their mid-40s now. I am shocked every time I think about the fact that Star Trek: the Next Generation is now 22 years old.

HA! You were just shocked by that, too! Fucked up, isn't it?



As you can see, I have excellent taste in television.

Almost everything I watch is science-fiction, aside from a smattering of 'about a writer' stuff, Law & Order, and anything fictional about a catering crew (I was restaurant manager/catering manager for a LOOONG time).

So, when my wife, who has 75% excellent taste in TV, suggested we watch Glee, I was curious. All I knew is that it had Jane Lynch, who is the funniest woman ever, so I was in.

Remember, I knew NOTHING about it. I am fucking GRITTY, man, GRITTY, and then I watched this:



I think I hated it. I'm not sure.

I mean, I LOVE music, in all its forms. I'm just as likely to listen to a Pearl Jam album as I am the Phantom of the Opera soundtrack as I am the latest Uematsu-san OSV as I am the latest Nelly (all he has is a .net? Really?) record as I am the soundtrack to Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog.

This shit, though...this shit was unlike anything I'd been exposed to. I really felt like high school glee club nerds had written it, which I suppose is to capitalize on that High School Musical series of films. I've not seen them, but I've gathered from my wife and sister-in-law that they are fairly popular with tweens.

What's interesting, though, is that there is a teacher who is married in the show, and the portrayal of his marriage is so...off. Any married man who's watched television can tell ya that no one quite gets it right, in terms of portrayal, kinda like the birthing process, but that there are some reasonably okay approximations.

The marriage shown here is a hypo-realistic horny tween girl's fantastical mental diarrhea. I don't think it's supposed to be realistic, but the problem that creates is that I don't give a flying fuck what really happens in that relationship.

Anyway, I am so clearly not the audience for this show, but I was shocked that my wife LOVED it. Well, no.

Now that I think about it, she eats this kinda shit up. I love her dearly, but she's still into the whole high school thing, and still hangs with a lotta her high school friends, whereas I picked a select few with which to maintain contact. Any high school story that doesn't involve hardcore realistic drug use or fucking induces an eyeroll from me.

STOP
I wanna talk more about my PC Mass Effect playthrough, but I'll save it for another day, as this has probably gone on a bit long-ish.

Sorry for the late post, but I was really enjoying some 'man' time with my son. I'll be back at my regular time later today.

-Blaine

Whoah.

I know I've been away longer than I said I would be, and for that, I apologize.

I've been charging my batteries, really. I hung here at work for a bit on Friday, then went home and mowed my lawn, to ensure that I would have nothing I needed to do this weekend, then just kicked back and chilled for three and a half days. It was great. I hardly ever wore pants, which is often a strong indicator of how easily I was able to relax (I often find clothing silly and uncomfortable most of the time, though I'm glad for it when I can't see my male friends' tiny penises, or when my wife has a fat friend over.)

I played some games, namely Fable II, Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War 2, and Mass Effect. I blew through a bunch of episodes of Castle. I celebrated the renewal of Dollhouse and mourned the cancellation of Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles. I wanted to see Star Trek again, but arranging for a baby-sitter this past weekend was nigh impossible. I spent a lot of time reading and snoozing, and holy shit, I needed it. I drank with some friends, healed my soul, and finally felt like myself again for the first time in months.

And now, I'm back at work, but I have a good job, so that's fine. I've got some cool projects lined up, I'm getting back to focusing on what I do best (write and create), and I actually feel kind of okay, even if the headaches are still creeping back here and there.

Fable II
I played through nearly everything (both on disc and DLC) that I hadn't already for Fable II this past weekend, and had a hell of a good time. Even after finishing main quests, the game is incredibly fun to just screw around in. I love that I can keep playing past endgame, though I have some concerns over DLC pricing.

While I'm going to use Fable II as an example, it is by no means unique or unusual in its exorbitant price. It's not even horribly overpriced, I just think that Knothole Island + See the Future should've been $5 together, based on the price of the original game.

To be fair, I've had a good time with both of the DLC, even if they were a little light in terms of content. Knothole Island is the beefier of the two, if less diverse, whereas See the Future is more of a variety of things. Knothole Island features three missions that are tied together on Knothole Island, with a key decision at the end. It also has a fair number of new items. See the Future is 2 missions, a a preview of the future, and the Colosseum. It, like Knothole Island, has a fair number of new items, as well.

I really liked the art in See the Future, as well, which I rarely notice in most games.

Etcetera
I'm pretty low-energy today, so I don't have a whole lot more for ya, other than this:



How do you cats measure relaxation? Do you have any qualifiers like my no-pants standard for measuring a good, chilled-out weekend?

What'd you think of the Fable II DLC, if you've played any of it?

Also anyone caught any pre-release screenings of Terminator: Salvation? Curious what people think thus far.

-Blaine

PS - I'll be back tomorrow to talk about doing battle against M$ Vista whilst wielding M$ Windows 7 RC1. Linux FTW, as usual.

Installing and Wine-ing and Random Shite

First, check this out if you didn't last night. Very education, no matter which side of the political fence you sit on. Whether you be a citizen of Gondor or Mordor, you will get something out of this.



I'd advise just to let that run while you read on or open a new tab and surf the net. Seriously, it's good stuff.

Random Gaming Musings
Here's some of the stuff that's come out over the past few days that I thought was note-worthy..

- the PSP's got some exciting stuff going on; I like the redesign, mostly. I wish the internal storage was upgradeable, and I have concerns about them being able to provide their entire library for download. Otherwise, if Disgaea, Final Fantasy Tactics, and FFVII: Crisis Core are available for download, count me in.

- I don't think it's a smart move for Squenix to limit Final Fantasy IV: the After Years to WiiWare. That's not their target demographic for the game, and never has been. Final Fantasy IV came out in 1991, which was before most Wii players were born. I think the smart money would be on releasing it on PSN for play on both PS3 and PSP, and making it so the two systems could share a save. An XBLA version definitely wouldn't hurt, either. I think that quite a few Final Fantasy fans happen to also own a Wii, in addition to their actual gaming consoles, and thus there will definitely be takers on this potential purchase, but not nearly as many as if it were spread across multiple consoles.

- A Mass Effect shooter on iPhone? Pfft. Yuck. Way to start sullying the franchise, guys.

- I gotta say, I am really looking forward to Soul Calibur: Broken Destiny on PSP. However, I guess I'm gonna hold off on buying it until it's available for download on PSP, since I don't wanna buy it twice. Regardless, I've always really enjoyed Soul Calibur, and the PSP actually seems like a good platform for the franchise. I was thinking about the controls for past entries, and this seems like it would translate well, and there wouldn't be the option for the cheesedick button-mapping of throws.

- my favorite NCAA Football feature finally returns in NCAA Football '10: school/team creation. A bunch of my friends and I all went to Columbia College Chicago (an art school) for our undergrad, and I used to always make us as a school/team in NCAA, and then go on to make a horribly obscene stadium, uniforms, players, and on and on. I'd drop us in the Big 10, since no one gives a shit about that conference (as opposed to the Big 12), and then I'd bump someone bullshit (like Northwestern) from the conference to make room for the Columbia College Chicago Killa Beez (no shit, that was the school "mascot" at the time.) Anyway, this feature was stripped from the PS360 versions, for whatever reason, but is returning this year. However, what's cool is that it's all PC-based, so you'll be able to work on your school/team whenever, and then upload it to your actual game. The team editor is supposed to be available starting in June, so that your team will be ready to humiliate the rest of the NCAA when the game ships in July. I am super, super pumped, as I used to go wild with this feature, and having it as an online app could, if properly implemented, open up all kindsa possibilities. Read about it here.

New Games
I've got a bad feeling about this year, guys n' gals. It's gonne be another crazy back-loaded year for releases. This year, I've gotten a handful of games, like Resident Evil 5, MLB09, Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War II, Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor, but almost all that was in February and March. Looking ahead, I know I'm getting NCAA Football 10 and Madden NFL 10 this summer. This fall and winter, though, will feature BioShock 2, Disgaea 2 (PSP), Modern Warfare 2, Dragon Age: Origins, Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Soul Calibur: Broken Destiny, as well as whatever else is coming out that we don't know about yet. I know early 2010 will also see Final Fantasy XIII, Mass Effect 2, and Star Trek Online. Additionally, there are titles like Star Wars: the Old Republic, Final Fantasy Versus XIII, Final Fanatasy Agito XIII, Parasite Eve: the 3rd Birthday, Again: Eye of Providence, Alan Wake, Heavy Rain, and Guild Wars 2 that just don't have release dates yet, but could drop in the next year or so.

The point is that, once again, despite a few publishers pledging to break the cycle, we're gonna get 80% of this year's games that are worth owning all within a 4-month span. Bad. Just bad. August through November is gonna be crammed full of games, and some really worthwhile titles are gonna get crushed underfoot, especially since the Dubya Depression is really gonna limit how much cash we all have to spend on games.

This is stupid. Why not release some of these over the summer, or next summer? It seems like this time of year is totally barren of releases, and would be a great time to position a game for success. Actually, this time last year, GTA4 dropped, and I heard it did okay.

Lame. Just lame.

Open Source FTW
I reinstalled Ubuntu on my main desktop again, and as usual, it went all nice and smooth. I've been an Ubuntu user for about 3 years now, and I really gotta give 'em props and how nicely Ubuntu 9.04 handles drivers now. It used to be a bit of a challenge, at times, getting everything to work drivers-wise, but now ya just boot from a disc or a flash drive, and BAM! Everything installs, and you're ready to rock n' roll.

During that install, I was trying to install OpenSolaris on my second desktop, which has been stuck on Ubuntu 8.04 for what seems like ages. Every time I've tried to upgrade from that release, it's refused to boot afterwards. Every time I've booted it into another OS with a disc, it's started to install, then just hung. The OpenSolaris install was no different, which is unfortunate. I've been a big fan of Sun Microsystems for a long time now (OpenOffice.org and Netbeans FTW), and I like playing with Unix, and I really want to learn more about maintaining a Unix server, but the fucking machine refuses to let me install anything else on it. This is the weirdest issue I think I've seen in ages. I'm gonna play around with it a bit, and see if I get any different results when I boot from a flash drive.

Gaming on a Linux Machine
After installing Ubuntu, I proceeded to blow out a lot of the Ubuntu-provided software (I hate waiting on Ubuntu to get my updates for Firefox, OpenOffice, etc.), and then install the non-Ubuntu versions of Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice, Netbeans, Wine, etc.

After I added the Wine repository, I installed Steam and XFire, then initiated the download for Quake Wars and Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War II.

I haven't tried Dawn of War II yet, since I can already predict some problems getting that to run on Linux. x

I fired up Quake Wars this morning, and it actually managed to not crash during the DirectX install. It made it all the way through the install, which was shocking, then actually started to load the game, when it seized up during the UI loading process.

So, yeah, I'm back to messing with Linux gaming, since everything runs beauuutifully on the new laptop.

Anyway, I'll be back tomorrow with more foolishness.

What's up with you guys? Anything new? Anything ya wanna comment on?

-Blaine