oh, lots of issues at work...for those of you who read the second post I had from yesterday before I deleted it, that crap is still going on...now people are starting to discuss a class action lawsuit...which will go nowhere....but dont' tell them that or they will start mis-quoting things they saw on Wikipedia as sound legal advice....anyway, I just keep watching that kitten in the video below...he is so cute, I can't stand it....so I started looking for Scotish Fold kittens....and what I learned made him a whole lot less cute...I found an adult, male, nutered....right at the end of it's life for $100. and many many kittens ranging from $500 for ones with straight ears and ones as high as $2,500 for the folded ear ones....I don't see us getting one of them any time soon. but there are a few nice young cats at the Humane Society....
If the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of Shaun White Snowboarding are the open-world side of the sport, the PSP version would be its little brother: scaled down with a redirected focus and a more traditional setup. The hunting, searching and exploring of the other versions is gone. In its place are a series of events – taking place over five mountains and dispersed one at a time via menu screens – that are much closer to a typical snowboarding game.
Her Name Was Anna Log
With only one analog stick to utilize, the PSP scraps the dual-stick controls of the PS3/360 version in favor of mechanics that’ll make the average player say, “That feels just like an EA BIG Sports game.” But the change isn’t unwarranted, nor is it unwelcome. The four face buttons execute most of the stunt performances; when jumping, L and R are used for left and right hand grabs.
Focus powers, the character-enhancing feature of the PS3/360 versions, is available much sooner in the PSP game and is used primarily to multiply your score. The coin-collecting challenge has also been changed: now you’ll hunt for a series of golden crowns, most of which are highly visible and easy to snatch.
Four Scores and Seven Events Ago
Before progressing through each mountain, players must complete four primary objectives: Speed, Trick, Slide and Carve. XP, the stat-enhancing treat awarded in RPGs and many action games, can be used to upgrade each of these abilities or to purchase new boards.
Speed is more than a time trial – in this game you must achieve a speed quota from a certain position. While holding the triangle button, your boarder will duck down to speed up. It’s at this time that the Speed meter will begin to fill. The longer this position is held without stopping, crashing or shifting to something else, the higher the Speed reward. When the meter is full, your objective is complete.
Trick is the usual challenge. But instead of requiring a specific point total, you must once again fill a meter – this time by performing tricks. Slide is SWS’ answer to the grind: find a pipe, the edge of a surface or any other thin object and slide around it like there’s no tomorrow.
Carve is the one mode you may not have expected. During these challenges, the player must use the L and R buttons to steer. This allows you to dig deep into the snow, thus creating a trail behind your board. One of the two buttons must be held at all times – if you’re switching from left or right, the transition must be quick so that the two buttons are not held down simultaneously (this could cause your boarder to stop). But if both buttons are lifted for even a second, you’ll lose your Carve and have to start over. Current progress will be saved, however, and added to the appropriate meter at the top of the screen.
Players must complete these objectives (as listed for each event) in order to open additional mountains. But these are not the only requirements: you must also complete a one-star objective and collect a set number of golden crowns. Crowns are dispersed everywhere; it doesn’t matter how many you collect in each event so long as you achieve the required number for the entire mountain. One-star objectives, however, are individual challenges (ex: Carve a certain number of points without incurring a near-miss) assigned to each event. With a minimum of four challenges per mountain, this could be the thing that forces you to return when all other objectives have been completed. The good news is that, unless otherwise stated, none of the objectives have to be completed together. Even the golden crowns can be collected out of order.
SSX minus the X-Treme
Shaun White Snowboarding isn’t quite the SSX clone it looks, sounds and plays like. The controls are certainly there, and the environmental designs are not too far off the SSX path. But while EA’s game is about thrill-seeking race and point-based events, SWS is all about completing the listed objectives. It’s a fun but short game that doesn’t explore any new territory, which could leave players a little unsatisfied when it ends. Worth a rental or in-store kiosk time – but make sure you play it before making a purchase.
This is the first in a series of how to's aimed at helping you become a better artist. I hope this helps and Game On!
Cats can be very hard to draw because of their complex markings and varied poses. Often a thin cat will look very fat when sitting (which is why famous author James Thurber once wrote, "cats sit fat and walk thin"). Sometimes when you try to add the body and legs, it just doesn't look quite right.
But we believe that drawing a cat can be pretty easy if you break it down into some simple steps. If you have a cat of your own, watch it when it's sleeping or sitting and try to think of the body position in shapes such as circles or ovals. Once you can take a hard-to-draw shape and think of it more simply, you're on your way to being a better artist.
Step 1 -- Yup, just a circle.
Step 2 -- At this point our cat looks something like the way people describe aliens from another planet. Cats can have almond-shaped eyes or round eyes. Note that the eyes are placed about in the middle of our circle.
Step 3 -- We've added a V for the nose. For the mouth we've placed a straight line under the nose, with two lines on each side. The ears are placed on each side of the head; they look a little like leaves.
Step 4 -- We've added some detail such as whiskers, and stripes. We also filled in the ears to make them look more realistic. In this drawing we made the nose V into a triangle, and turned it slightly to the right, but you can keep yours straight if you want to. I hope yours came out as nice as mine, if not just keep trying.
Okay, so putting aside my personal experience with customer service, the 360 is still pretty awesome. Unlike in previous console generations, I don't feel like there's some other console than can offer anything close to the same experience.
So, what are the pros of a 360?
It has best online interface in a console ever, the most games I'm interested in, the best online store, the most new content, the greatest diversity in new content, controllers that don't desynchronize, updates that take less than a minute rather than hours, etc.
The cons of the system have more to do with the pitfalls of the greater number of services offered than with overall poor planning. You can't make a more complicated product without also creating more end-user issues. The biggest downside as far as I'm concerned is their support system's total inability to acknowledge any contingency other than the 2 most common user errors or the known RRoD issue. The product and the network of services it provides access to are sufficiently complex that unusual issues that are not user-generated should not be an unexpected (or a denied) occurrence.
While their roaming account option is by far the most lenient DRM scheme in place, it is also the most technically challenging and, therefore, the most likely to have problems.
You cannot avoid ads for other products and services while enjoying your previous purchases if you want to use the product the way it is intended to be used (online.) This is a big con if you happen to dislike the aggressively hip, young, irreverent, and overall loud tone of their branding. Because it is so specific in the type of person it courts, it actively discourages potential players from outside the current expected demographic in a way that previous console generations did not. The commercials for a Genesis were loud, but the Genesis itself remained silent once it was in your home. This in-product branding could prevent the game market from expanding into new demographic markets.
Because of the way in which Marketplace is set up, consumers have no recourse if a service or product is not as described or flat out doesn't work. Consumer laws protect people who buy things with money, not with Microsoft-brand space bucks. When asked for support on an Arcade game, Microsoft reps will often say you should contact the developer because it's their responsibility. The developers say that it's Microsoft's responsibility. Everyone claims to have no power in the matter. Microsoft has even told me that the faulty printing on an MS Points card was the retail store's responsibility. They said that I should return the opened card to the retailer. Obviously, that didn't work.
So what does this all add up to? There's not some magic formula to determine how much BS it's worth putting up with for a leisure activity. For now, I've decided not to use the paycheck I just got to buy a replacement 360 (which was the plan until my most recent customer service experience.) The pleasure I get out of a 360 isn't worth the grief I have to put up with right now. But it's really a shame that the customer service link breaks the chain for me. When you take the time to think about it, the hardware and software engineering feats on the console are stunning.
The 360 is my favorite console of the current generation, and I'm happy with the DRM, hardware, interface, and (in the case of MS Points Cards) manufacturing changes that Microsoft has made in response to mass demand. It's too bad that they are currently unable to deal with any unusual customer service requests. Given the millions of units they sell and the thousands of programs that must interface, there's bound to be some unusual issues.
There seems to be no capacity for individual customer service among agents who are frantically reading support articles for the first time while I'm on the phone with them, and who are completely unfamiliar with Microsoft's own terminology. Based on their inability to understand physical descriptions of the Xbox and it's GUI, it is apparent that many customer service agents have never even seen a 360 in person.
If they improve their customer service, I'll be back on a 360 in no time. Until then, I'll be playing a Nintendo DS. It has way fewer features, but I've never had any issues getting the console or any game to work. I've heard that Sony and Nintendo's customer service is just as bad as Microsoft's, but I've never needed to use it.
Seriously, you thought Bush was bad? How do you feel about your godsend president elect's proposal of taxing our citezens to feed the hungry of the world to the tune of 65 billion a fucking year???Not to mention slipping in Gun control laws and giving the UN more power than Zeus over our people???You think this is right wing propaganda or simply untrue? Uh uh, follow the links or look it up yourselves, this is an actual piece of legislation from your messiah. You wanted change, I don't think this shit is what you had in mind.
According to David Bossie, President of the group 'Citizens United for American Sovereignty', based out of Merrifield Virginia , website: http://www.citizensunited.org/
The above-mentioned Senate Bill (S. 2433) is a piece of legislation in the works that all Americans need to know about and know now!
This bill, sponsored by none other than Sen. Barack Obama, with the backing of Joe Biden on the Foreign Relations Committee, and liberal democrats in Congress, is nothing short of a massive giveaway of American wealth around the world, and a betrayal of the public trust, because, if passed, this bill would give over many aspects of our sovereignty to the United Nations.
The noble sounding name of this bill, 'The Global Poverty Act' is actually a Global Tax, payable to the United Nations, that will be required of all American taxpayers. If passed in the Senate, the House has already passed it, this bill would require the U.S. to increase our foreign aid by $65 BILLION per year, or $845 BILLION over the next 13 years! That's on top of the billions of dollars in foreign aid we already pay out!
In addition to the economic burdens this potential law would place on our precarious economy, the bill, if passed in the Senate, would also endanger our constitutionally protected rights and freedoms by obligating us to meet certain United Nations mandates.
According to Senator Obama, we should establish these United Nations' goals as benchmarks for U.S. spending. What are they?
The creation of a U.N. International Criminal Court having the power to try and convict American citizens and soldiers without any protection from the U.S. Constitution.
A standing United Nations Army forcing U.S. soldiers to serve under U..N. command.
A Gun Ban on all small arms and light weapons --which would repeal our Second Amendment right to bear arms.
The ratification of the ' Kyoto ' global warming treaty and numerous other anti-American measures.
Recently, the Senate Subcommittee on Foreign Relations (where Sen. Joe Biden sits) approved this plan by a voice vote without any discussion! Why all the secrecy? If Senators Obama and Biden are so proud of this legislation, then why don't they bring it out into the light of day and let the American people have a look at it instead of hiding it behind closed doors and sneaking it through Congress for late night votes.
It may be only a matter of time before this dangerous legislation reaches a floor vote in the full body of the Senate.
Please write or call, email your representatives, the White House, the media, or anyone you think will listen, and express your opinions regarding this Global Tax giveaway and betrayal of the American people at a time when our nation and our people are already heavily burdened with the threats to our freedoms and economic p rosperity.
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Step 1 -- Yup, just a circle.
Step 2 -- At this point our cat looks something like the way people describe aliens from another planet. Cats can have almond-shaped eyes or round eyes. Note that the eyes are placed about in the middle of our circle.
Step 3 -- We've added a V for the nose. For the mouth we've placed a straight line under the nose, with two lines on each side. The ears are placed on each side of the head; they look a little like leaves. 
Step 4 -- We've added some detail such as whiskers, and stripes. We also filled in the ears to make them look more realistic. In this drawing we made the nose V into a triangle, and turned it slightly to the right, but you can keep yours straight if you want to. I hope yours came out as nice as mine, if not just keep trying.