jikado's Blog - 2old2play

Rewards of not smoking

My wife and I both quit smoking about a year ago. About 3 months ago we got her a new laptop as a "reward" for quitting, although I must say that not smoking is it's own reward. So, she's got her laptop and that was that. Then, the other day, she asks what I want to get for me as a "quitting" reward. My ears pirked up. I hadn't even really considered it, but now, since she asked, it's all I can think about.

We're not rich, but we ain't broke, either, so I figure she got an $800 laptop, I can figure about a $500 reward area. I hardly ever spend any money on myself, even less now without the smokes, so the idea of being able to get myself a "big ticket" item is pretty exciting. The last time I did something like that was 4 years ago when I got my HDTV. I don't even buy many games, really. So, what to do with about $500?

1. PS3 w/LBP, and a second controller? Probably not...

2. $500 Best buy shopping spree? This sounds fun. The "money" is actually a reward my wife got from her work. It's basically a blank gift card. There's an amount, but no retailer attached to it. They have a list of participating retailers, and you assign the card to one, and Best Buy is one of them, as is amazon.com. The best buy option would allow me a good amount of damage. A turtle beach headset, L4D, Fable 2, Fallout 3, an lcd pc monitor, couple of dvds that I've passed up on...

3. Amazon.com pc upgrade. I think this is what I'm going to end up doing, but this is where I need help from 2o2p. I built this pc a couple of years ago. It was the first I've ever built by myself from scratch. I built it cheap, getting some parts used, and from all over the internets. What I want to do is get it up to speed so that it could comfortabley run vista, not that I would install vista, but as it is now, I don't even think I could. Here's what I htink I need to improve; New, 200-300 GB HDD, at least another GB of memory, a current-gen video card, hopefully a capture card, a light-weight decent looking lcd monitor, probably even a new processor. Then, maybe a new case with some kind of wicked quiet cooling system. What I DON'T need is some awesome gaming pc.

Thing is, I don't even know where to begin. I mean, I did this once, but now, I can't even figure out if my mobo would support an upgrade. I can't figure out what type of socket the processor is, it took me a few minutes to figure out that I'm currently using an AGP graphics card, but I'm not sure if that was because it's what I had, or if it's all that was available on the mobo. Where do I go on my computer to see who made my motherboard? I've lost all of my instrucion manuals and boxes. I could just opne it up, but I don't think tha't sgoing to tell me anything, other than "You need a can of compressed air". How can I tell how much memory it will support, what socket type the processor is? All of this work that goes into it just makes me want to just keep trudging along with the pc I've got now, keep dealing with it's sluggishness, keep trying to manage my files to fit on the HDD, etc., and just go back to option #1.

I ran dxdiag and this is what I got;

       System Manufacturer: NVIDIA
       System Model: AWRDACPI
               BIOS: Phoenix - AwardBIOS v6.00PG
          Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2800+, MMX, 3DNow, ~2.1GHz
             Memory: 1024MB RAM

Ugh, just reading this now is giving me a headache. I hate the pre-packaged compaq stuff you see at best buy, loaded with all it's ad-ware that they charge you to remove. I don't need all the stuff that comes with a new pc, I've got the perfect mouse, a good, solid keyboard. They always want to throw in a printer that I don't need, to replace the one I don't use now.

I miss my "computer guy" friend I had back then. When I say I built my pc from scratch, what I mean is I asked him what to do and just did whatever he said. I think what I did was build an uglier, cheaper clone of his pc.

[1 Comments]

Go. Do.

http://www.metallica.com/index.asp?item=601119

New Metallica Single "The Day That Never Comes".

That is all for now.

Go. Do.

[4 Comments]

Good daycare is hard to find, unless you get lucky.

I think one of the toughest challenges of having children is when the time comes for you to leave them in the care of another person. For about 10 hours of the day, that person, or people, are your replacements, responsible for raising your children as you would. One needs to find someone that connects with your family on many levels, agrees with certain principals and morals. A daycare provider needs to understand the levels of discipline needed for your child to have a continues set of boundries, even when you're not there.

Until recently, my kids had been going to a childcare center. One of those 'stores,' where there are teams of women, each focusing on a specific age group in seperate rooms. This worked pretty well for my wife and I. We never had to worry if one of the women needed a vacation, there'd be other women there to watch our children. Our kids were getting plenty of social interaction; with so many 'watchers' there, they were able to have plenty of kids running around, playing together. All of these things came at a cost, however. We learned that we had been paying more for just 2 days a week than our neighbors were paying for an at-home childcare for a full week.

We had to get in on that. We started our search in the regular classified section of the paper, didn't really find anything. Online searching seemed more promising at first, until we realized most of the online information was beyond out-of-date, and if we wanted better search results, we'd have to join one of the pay sites. Eventually, we came across one lady who was just resuming her business after hanging it up for a while.

She seemed to have her ducks in a row, so we decided that we could leave our kids with her for a few hours every day. I won't say that I regret ever doing so, but looking back on it now, I wish had continued to look a bit further. Not that this first lady is completely a terrible person, I just don't think she was ready to resume her business of in-home daycare, or to handle a 5 year old boy. All of her experience seemed centered around infants, which is fine for my 1 year old. One of the problems, I think, is that she didn't have any other kids there, aside from her own 1 year old girl. So my 5 year old, the one had spent his whole life in a day care center full of other kids to play with, was now stuck spending his days with only 2 babies for company. I'm not trying to make excuses for his behavior, just pointing out possible causes. Most of his behavior problems here are just a matter of listening to the adult in charge, and eating his vegetables. I had never heard any complaints about his behavior in the almost 5 years he had been at the center. After less thana month, this lady gives us a 2 week notice that she will no longer care for our oldest child. She's fine with the youngest, but not the oldest. Well, we're not going to split our kids up between two daycare providers. I really thought we were about to get into a pretty hairy pickle. We now have two weeks to find affordable daycare, when it took us almost a month to find this one, and I thought that was by just dumb luck.

Luckily, however, I was able to strike gold on my first call yesterday. At least I believe so. The first number I called was a woman listed on the state's website of liscensed providers. I said she had an opening for my 5 year old, but not my one year old. Knowing that these things aren't always up to date, I called and asked. She confirmed what I had thought, and said she had openings for both of my children, and agreed to meet with me last night at 6. I arrived a little early, and ended up staying for over half an hour, with my youngest in tow (my wife had stayed home to take the oldest one swimming, we though it best if he didn't know about all of this, so he couldn't hold it as leverage with his current daycare provider). This new woman is perfect for our family. She's got 3 other kids the same age as my oldest, all starting kindergarten at the same school in the fall. One other kid already goes to that school, he'll be starting second grade. She's got 2 other kids about the same age as my youngest. She's got a big, huge yard with trees for the kids to climb on, a little wooded area where they build forts, a playground area with a swingset. She's been in this business for over 20 years! I called 2 references so far, one of them currently has 2 children enrolled, and the other had her kid there from the time it was an infant to the time it was 11 years old. Both were just pouring out praises for this woman, and her helpers. Her helpers consist of her mother, 2 'adult' ( 18 and 19) daughters and her 15 year old son. All of this, plus her rates are actually less than our current provider.

My kids won't start there until after the fourth, but I can't wait. If I were a kid, that's where I'd want to be.

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First 48, tonight at 8 p.m. Central time

Just want to put up a word to let people know that tonight, at 8 p.m. central time ( 9 eastern) on A&E's show "The Fist 48," they will be covering the investigation of the murder of Kristine Larson, my wife's cousin. I've blogged about it before. Most of the family is unsure if they're even going to watch it. There's going to be some information on here that the family is not even aware of.
I hate asking for money, but while I've got your attention;

A memorial fund has been set up to help with funeral costs and for her 2 year old son Darion: of which Kristine's mother, Deb, and her husband, Dan, are in custody of.

If you would like to help the fund is located at:

Anchor Bank
1030 Hastings Ave.
St. Paul Park, MN 55071

Just to add to that, this family is in the middle of a real bad series of events, starting with the murder of Kristine, then last week, Kristine's grandmother passed away, and just yesterday, Krisitine's step-brother (Dan's 16 year-old son (Dan, by the way, was once a member of this site as Lester Ziggs, and a founding member of GSN) had to have open heart surgery to remove some stuff that had been covering the outside of his heart. The same kid may also possibly have thyroid cancer. The financial costs of all of these events is really mounting.

Thanks for reading, sorry it's such a downer of a blog, I'll try to post something more cheerful later, maybe some pics of nekkid chics, or something.

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Entering the WoW

    No, not World of Warcraft, but the world of wireless. I've always shied away from wireless networking, but now that my wife has her shiny new laptop, with a built-in wireless card, she wants to be wireless. I agreed, on the one condition that she purchases the wireless version of the router I currently have; The D-Link Gamefuel 4100. So, now I've got the 4300 sitting here on my desk, and I'm not really sure what to do next.
    She purchased the 4300 used off Amazon, so it didn't come with any software, but I shouldn't need it, should I?
    What do I do to really lock down the network once it's installed? The only wireless connection I want to allow is my wife's laptop, I'm still going to use cables for my pc and 360.

[11 Comments]

A day off... finally

    Not a day off of work, just a day off. Last night, my mother-in-law called unexpectedly, and my 5 year old answered the phone. Not long into the call, he asked his grandmother if he could spend the night at her house. From his reaction, I could tell she had said yes. Then he asked if his baby brother could come, too. Again, I could tell she said yes. Already I felt like a 75 pound vest was being lifted off of my torso. He then gave the phone to my wife and they set it up for my mother-in-law to arrive within the hour to pick up the boys.
    I love my boys, with all of my heart, and I wouldn't trade them for anything in the world. Riley is getting so big, and so smart, I couldn't be more proud, and he's exceeded any expectations I've had for his development. Henry is still a baby, so I know to cherish these times with him. Already he's learned a lot. Just recently, he learned how to clap, after only a few times trying to teach him how. He can even give high-fives. And he's finally figured out how to get back down after pulling himself up to standing.
    My days get so long, though. My week goes like this;
    Sunday: Work all day.
    Monday: Sleep the day away, spend the evening with the family, stay up too late playing videogames
    Tuesday- Thursday: Spend all day with the boys, evenings with the family, stay up too late playing videogames
    Friday: Work all day.
    Saturday: Work all day.
There's never a lot of time in there where I can just relax in an empty house.
    Thanks to the best mother-in-law in the world, though, I have that day today. No one here telling me they're hungry, they're thirsty, they're bored, they banged their toe, they can't open something, they can't close something, etc. I can be loud. I can be lazy. I can sit at the computer for more than 5 minutes. I can play RockBand with 5.1 surround sound!
    The only honey-do list I have for the day is to clean the microwave, which I'm about to take care of in the next 5 minutes. Then, I don't know yet what I'm going to do, but I don't care.

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Hitting close to home. R.I.P. Kristine Larson

    I never know how to appropriately deal with these types of things, I'm always worried I'm going to say the wrong thing, or become too insensitive.
    Those of you in the Twin cities, or around the Minnesota area may have heard about the 19 year old woman who was found dead in her burning car Wednesday night. That "woman" was my wife's cousin. To me, she'll always be "the little drummer girl". When I first met my wife's family, she was 9 or 10, and was learning to play the drums, so that's the name I gave her. To me, she's not just some random 19 year old woman.
    It's a terrible tragedy, completely senseless. I don't have much more information than what's now on the local news. No one really does. While she had a difficult relationship with the father of her 2 year old son, he's not a suspect, and has verification of his whereabouts that night. It's not a suicide, and the police are investigating it as Minneapolis' 46th murder. She was dead before the car was set on fire, and the fire department that arrived on the scene was able to pull her body before it caught on fire. We've been told that she was strangled with a white rope. The police have no one held in custody as a suspect yet, and now the news programs are labeling it as a "baffling" murder case. We may never know who did this, or why.
    The entire family is very close-knit, and all are taking it very hard. Christmas has been canceled.
    It's hard to watch the news, and I realize more than ever why so many people choose to not watch it at all. It's hard to see someone you know, and will never again be able to see, being referred to so anonymously, so coldly.
    Kristine was very cheerful, very caring, very trusting. She leaves behind not only her infant son, but so many other family members that love her, and would give anything to have her back home.

[3 Comments]

Is it so difficult?

    Is it so difficult to like two things at one time? Is it so difficult to allow others to enjoy the things they do?
    The motivation behind this blog centers mostly on the Halo 3/ COD4 bickering I see sometimes (more specifically, the time I was booted form a COD4 lobby for mentioning the 'H' word), but it can be applied across the board to so many things.
    I'll just get this out of the way right now; I prefer to play Halo 3 over COD4. Does this mean I think COD4 is a crappy game? No. Does this mean I think Halo 3 is a better game? No. Does this mean that I will never play COD4? No.
    I'm going to avoid listing the reasons the two games are different, or why, exactly, I prefer Halo 3, for now, at least. The point I want to make is that it's okay to not like the same one as me, and it's okay with everyone if you like both of them. There's no point, really, in completely trashing someone over their preference, though. What purpose does that serve? Do you think that lambasting me over my choice will convince me to join you in COD4? Quite the opposite, really, and even if I did, what good does that do? I think the reason people, or let's just get it out there and call them 'fanboys,' do this sort of thing is because they're trying to make themselves feel better about their purchase. The only reason they would have to do that is because they have insecurities about it.
    Can't we all just play to have fun, whatever the game is?

[8 Comments]

I'm back online! W00t!

Well, ten days since I mailed it out, and I'm back online, with I what I believe to be a refurbed 360. I'm pretty sure it's not the one I sent out. It also came with a new faceplate, which is cool, because I scratched my original when I put a Halo 3 one on, then my oldest son accidentally broke the Halo 3 one when I took it off to ship out the 360.
You're damn right I'll be online tonight.

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Day 8

    A call to 1-800-4myxbox today granted the best news I've heard all day; My work order has been completed and shipped. Good. Now, I hope against hope that at the very least I don't become one of these horror stories I'm reading about in the hardware forums. bigagp, who sent his box on the same day as me, has already received his back, but was unable to get it to power up. According to Tank and others, it seems like this happens fairly often, you get your console back, only to have to ship it back right away for some other problem. Or, perhaps the update will re-brick it. I wonder if they already updated it while it was there?
    Other stuff:
    My oldest son has been staying with Grandma since Monday night, and he'll be there until tomorrow night. She has the week off work, and wanted to spend some quality holiday time with him. It's been very weird not having him around, but it's good for him. My 6-month old baby has been sick all week with a heavy cold/teething/diarrhea thing, so he's needed twice as much attention as before, and I think had my oldest been home, he would have felt severely neglected by now. Without him here, though, it only makes me wish that much more that I had my 360 here, to take advantage of the extra free time during the day that I have.
    We got a light snow again yesterday, which makes me glad I only have to drive to work 3 days a week, sounded like traffic was brutal last night. I loaded up my iPod with some Christmas music and went out to shovel, after the wife got home, while she stayed in to wrap the presents we got for the oldest son. Again, I missed him, because he enjoys playing in the snow so much. He like for me to shovel all of the snow into one pile, his "mountain," and he's very particular that it's in the same exact location as last year. I think I did the best I could without him here.
    I realize I have very little to gripe about, and that for many on this site, the lack of a videogame system seems petty, considering so many are going through tough times at work, or being laid off or fired, some even have medical emergencies that have yet to be resolved. I never know what to say in these situations, that's why I hardly ever reply to those types of threads. I think it's because having been there so many times, having wanted so badly for someone to say just the right thing, I don't want to disappoint. Looking back, though, at some of those times in my life, I realize that I remember every single well-wish I received, and that those did help, knowing that there were people out there that cared enough to take the time to say so. So to everyone here who may be reading and feeling down, facing hard times; I wish you all the best this holiday season, and going forward through the next year, I hope you find the comfort and happiness you need.

[1 Comments]

Without a 360, day 7; a call to customer support

    It's been a full week now since shipping off my beloved white box, with it's festive red lights. I called the 4MYXBOX number today, hoping to get some kind of status on the poor thing. I'm greeted by a friendly, recorded voice notifying me that I have an 'open repair order,' or something similar. It's not really a status update at all, it's so vague, so I say, "Operator," and I'm put on hold. It's quickly apparent, as well as expected, that the guy asking me for my information was not raised speaking English, perhaps even only learning it within the last year. I tell him my first and last name, and he asks if it's okay for him to refer to me by my first name. I oblige, only to notice that at no time during the entire conversation is he able to remember it or pronounce it correctly. A few times, he refers to me by the first few letters of my last name, and other times, it's as though he's creating names on his own. The following is a rough outline of how my conversation went. I want you to know that I'm rarely ever short, or demanding with these types of calls, my wife does something similar, so I understand that these people have lives after they hang up.
    I ask him, "Has my xbox360 been repaired?"
    He replies, "David (not my name), I can give you the tracking number of your xbox360".
    "So you're saying that it's already been repaired, and the tracking number you have is for the return package?"
    "Alan (nope, not it, either), I am seeing here that you shipped to us in Texas your xbox360 because you were experiencing 3 red flashing lights?"
    "Yes, that's correct, and I'm calling now to find out if it's already been repaired and shipped back, or if it has yet to be repaired."
    "Ja-rem (ooh, that was close to my actual name), give me a moment for my system resources to pull your information, please?"
    "Sure." I wait on hold, with some club-techno music playing for about 2 minutes.
    "Andrew (no), I can give you the tracking number for your xbox360."
    I've given up already. "Okay, give me a second to get a pen and paper," which he doesn't. Instead, he instantly lists off all 18 digits of the tracking number. Even if I had been ready, there was no way I was going to be able to write all of the down. "Wait, wait, wait, hold on, start over, slower," and he does, and I get it all down. With it, I log into the UPS site and see that my package has arrived in Texas, but that's all the information I'm able to get at the moment.
    I'm so tired of calling any customer support numbers. I went through a similar ordeal with sprint, trying to see if I qualified for a new phone rebate. It's so hard getting someone that actually understands what it is they can do to help you. I know they're real people, with real lives, but it's as though they've got a sheet of possible responses, and they just pick one to give to any question you have. I've worked a couple of customer-service jobs in my life, and one thing that sticks in my head was an anagram called ACE, which stood for Accuracy, Clarity, and Empathy, when speaking with customers, and I just don't feel I'm getting any of those things when I call these numbers. I think a lot of it is the language barrier. These people on the other end of the phone are not stupid. The inability to fluently speak English does not make one stupid, I know that. It's hard not feel that way, though, when I can't get a simple question answered.
    Why is it when I call comcast customer support, the first option is to press 2 to transfer to a Spanish speaking line, but when I'm on the English line, I get someone who only recently learned English, or has a thick Latino accent? Where's the option to speak to an English-speaking representative? If my xbox is being repaired in Texas, isn't there someone there who speaks English that I can talk to? Argghh, it's all frustrating.

    So, I will continue on without my 360 for a while longer, it seems, or maybe not, who knows. In the meantime, I've rediscovered my workout routine, so I'm slowly ramping myself back into that habit. I used to have a light workout schedule that came out to doing 200 sit-ups and 200 push-ups a week, along with working out my arms every other day with free-weights.
    I'm cleaning up my pc hard-drives for no good reason. I've discovered a lot of good music I've had on here for a long time, so that's been enjoyable. I discovered I'm a big fan of Theory of a Deadman. Found lots of videos of my oldest son, when he was little, and discovered I need to start taking more videos of my youngest son. Same goes for digital pictures.
    Oh, and I've been shoveling snow. Yeah, lots of fun there, who needs Halo 3, when you've got 6 inches of snow in your driveway?



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Without a 360, day 2 (and other stuff)

    So, my 360 finally red ringed again yesterday, after I towel tricked it on Halloween. I knew it was coming, and was actually hoping for it to happen so I could ship it out to get repaired or replaced. Still, I was a bit disappointed when it did. Monday morning, I got home from work at 3:15 in the morning, played a few levels of the COD4 campaign, then some Halo 3 lone wolves. Turned the machine off, sat a the computer for a while, then go the boys off to daycare for the day. When I got back home, I seen that I had a few friends that were playing COD4 MP. I hadn't played the MP since the beta, so I thought now would be as good of a time as any to jump in with them. Fire up the box, turn the television input, and see only a black screen. One look up at my box tells me everything I had suspected. After debating for a while over weather or not to towel trick it again, I unplugged everything, took off the faceplate, and packed it up in the coffin that had arrived a few weeks ago. The last time I had the RROD, I was covered under the Best Buy warrnty, so it was a quick trip in and out to get it replaced. This time, though, no such luck. So, here I sit, without a 360, and it's now that I realize how much time I've actually been putting into the thing.
    It was a strange thing last night, during my normal gaming hours, to not be online playing. Instead, I caught up on Chuck and Journeyman, then went to bed, about 3 hours ahead of my regular bedtime.

    My best friend had come into town over the Thanksgiving weekend, and luckily I had Friday off, so we were able to hang out most of the day. It was good seeing him, and my oldest son loved having him here. While he was here, he gave my a couple of late birthday/early christmas gifts. One was Call of Duty 4. The other was a second wired guitroller. We pushed through the co-op campaign on GH3, and played through a couple of songs on GH2. I invited another of our mutual friends over, and we bounced around a couple of Halo 3 social games, and a couple of local ninjanaught games. Ninjanaught was the choice because there's an inside joke amongst us from a halo 2 game of it, where my friend, who was looking at my other friends' screen, quietly whispered across the room, "He's behind you," just a second before I took a rocket up my nether regions. I'm quite a bit better at Halo 3 than I ever was at Halo 2, so there weren't many times where I was the victim of any similar scenario, this time, but we had fun. All in all good times, like the old days.

    When I do get my box back, I'm going to jump right back into Halo 3, I'm pretty sure. I've got this COD4 thing sitting on my table, but I just don't see that it's going to be as much fun as Halo 3, especially considering that I'll be starting out on the bottom. I don't like the idea of having to unlock certain gametypes, and the campaign has seemed like it plays on rails. The first couple of levels, when you're playing as 'Soap,' is pretty much a interactive movie to me, seems like I hardly fired a shot. Then, I get thrusted into the television station, where I can't even tell where my teammates or enemies are, or where they're coming from. With no co-op option, I don't see myself ever going all the way through this game, it's just not my kind of game. I will give the MP a shot, though, as I did have an enjoyable time in the beta, but I don't think it's going to last as long as Halo 3, for me.

[2 Comments]

My good deed for the week

I was late for work Friday afternoon. Only the third time in the ~9 years I've worked for this company. Only by 15 minutes, but late enough to miss the part where the boss hands out the paychecks. Instead, he gave it to my leadman, who later that night gave it to me.
So, it wasn't until after midnight that I finally got around to looking at it. Now, I knew going into this that my check was going to be a little bit bigger because of the overtime I had put it that should have been paid double-time, for a higher paying position. So, that was the first thing I was going to check.
First line: 16 hrs regular @ Base rate. Looks good.
Second line: 2 hrs double-time @ $**.** (you didn't really think I'd show you people how much I make, did you?)
Third line: 24 hrs regular @ $XX.xx. This XX.xx comes out to be over 3 times that of my normal base rate!
To be clear, it should have been a pretty simple pay period, just 40 hrs regular @ base rate/hr, then the two hours double time at the $**.**.
Obviously, I now have a very fat check sitting in my hands, and it's pretty clear to me that this was not intentional. I mean, I know I'm good at my job, but not that good.
At this time of day, there wasn't much of anything that I could do. I did quickly make up my mind, though, that I would call my boss at home in the morning to bring it to his attention and find out where to go from here. I certainly didn't want to cash it, then have to write my employer a check to cover the difference, that just doesn't seem right, having to pay someone to get paid.
I talked to my boss in the morning, as soon as I woke up, so that I wouldn't forget. It sounds as though while he's not directly responsible for payroll, he does have a responsibility to check it over each week, and he was surprised he had missed this error. He told me to hang onto it over the weekend if I could, or I could cash it and be prepared to write the company a check. We agreed that I would hang onto it, and that he would have the payroll guy cut a new check first thing Monday (today), and then I would get a call when it was ready. Still haven't received the call. Before our conversation ended, my boss thanked me for my honesty. If you knew my boss, you'd understand how uplifting even that little compliment is, as he's not one to hand them out very willingly. I kind of think he did it because he realized I might have saved his ass here a little bit.
Maybe not, though. I know nothing of the laws regarding this sort of thing. Odd thing, too, is that I never even really considered not telling someone about it, it just seemed like the right thing to do immediately. I wonder now how things would go down if I were a less honest person. What are the laws regarding such matters? Say I had said nothing to anyone, cashed the check, but months down the line the company finds their error. Would I be required to write a check, or could they just start taking it out of my current pay? I wonder, too, what others around me might have done in this situation. I seemed to get a mixed reaction from my co-workers.

[2 Comments]

What cake? How does it lie?

Someone want to explain to me why it is I keep seeing references to a cake being a lie, or lying? Most commonly, I see "The cake is a lie." WTF? Am I not supposed to eat cake? My son's birthday part is in a couple of weeks, is it okay to eat the cake?

[3 Comments]

random Halo 3 related items

Just blurting things out;

Today will be the 25th day I've fired up Halo 3. According to 360voice, I only played GoW on 24 days. I'm really liking Halo 3, and I'm getting better at it, too. Looking at my stats on bungie.net, I've noticed that once my AR kills passed my melee kills, my K ratio started to improve. This might also be because I had read Fetal's tips, and cut back on my bunny-hopping quite a bit, instead choosing more strafing evasive maneuvers.

My two favorite blogs on this site right now are Fetal and Mrs. Doublefire.

My wife, in jest, changed her myspace name to Halo 3 Widow.

I wish bungie would keep track of a stat I call a 'hood ornament'. When you kill a guy in a vehicle by hitting the vehicle with a plasma or spike grenade. It's now one of my favorite things to do. I've got a clip called banshee stick on my fileshare from when I timed a man-cannon jump on Valhalla just right to take down a banshee with a plasma grenade, then followed it up by sticking a warthog upon landing.

Why do people play team objective or team tactical without mics, and why do I always get matched up with them? Hopefully, I can avoid a lot of that with MVP, a new clan on 2old2play. Some of these guys are really good. I don't know that I'd ever want to be considered a 'competitive' halo player, but it's certainly a lot more fun when you're on the winning team, and have contributed in doing so. I've got to learn to stop charging in to a room full of enemies, though. With Halo 2, and almost every game I play, I'm just playing to kill time, really, but with Halo 3, I want to step it up a bit, and learn how to be good at a game. I think MVP will be a good fit for that, allowing me to team up with people that are willing to 'bring a guy up' through the ranks of matchmaking.
I enjoyed my stay in 2old2pwn, and have played with some people there a few times in Halo 3. Played a cool variant called Air flag, where someone had taken the time to create almost an entirely new level on the beach of Last Resort, where the flags are on crates that are suspended in mid-air. Right off the start, I had the music and blippy noises from the old 8-bit Super Mario Brothers running through my head.

Unfortunately, I've had to delete a lot of people from 2old2pwn off my friends list. After having been on this site, and site clan GSN, for more than a year, and also joining another, similar site, my friends list had finally met it's maximum capacity. I had to make room for these MVP guys. So, if I didn't send you a xboxlive message when I did it, I apologize to all of you that I deleted. I understand now more completely why clan support is so important for games like Halo 3. What I still do not understand is how people can justify having a second gamertag to cover this omission of clan support. I'm starting to think it only feeds the problem, not cures it. At the moment, I have 5 people on my friends list that are listed twice, under two different tags.
Hopefully, the fall dashboard update, as rumored, will do something to alleviate this problem. Even if it doesn't, I'd still like it to arrive soon. I like new, shiny things.

I apologize for the structure of this blog, just felt like blurting some of this stuff out. I've been awake for more than 20 hours, so that probably explains a lot of it.

Here's a picture that always makes me laugh, for some reason;

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