It’s certainly a crazy feeling knowing that you want to spend the rest of your life with someone. I’m extremely happy and excited for what the future holds.

Already, in a week, we’ve made a bid on a house and started looking at reception halls. It’s a crazy whirlwind of commitment and money.

Here’s to life! May it be long and happy!

Fanbois the world round are brushing off their insults and lolcatz clipart. The biased insults have already started to fly as coverage begins. It’s like hunting season. Except the deer have guns and are shooting each other.

The comments I’ve read have got me to thinking about the state of gaming and where it could go from here.

—Break—

So I started writing this post a few days ago and I’ve picked it back up.

I would have to say that someone behind the curtain agrees with my thinking.  That is, that we have reached the limitation of our technology.  We can improve graphics, but we are already capable of entering the “uncanny valley”.  The “uncanny valley” is the point where a human representation on screen is so close to life like, while still missing “something”, that we actually start to dislike the character.  This implies that any increase in CPU and GPU power has extremely diminishing returns as far as the gameplay experience is concerned.

Nintendo certainly understood this.  The Wii is extremely underpowered for the technology that was current at the time of its release.  Rather than try to make a more powerful system, they created a new way of interacting.  This clearly is the future of gaming.  Microsoft and Sony are aware, as they have both announced efforts to create movement based interaction with players.  The downside is that Microsoft’s and Sony’s devices are not slated for market anytime soon.  Where as the Wii has an upgrade to movement detection that is to be released later this month.

Micrsoft has Project Natal which is by far the most ambitious and exciting.   If you haven’t seen this yet, you should certainly check it out.  It’s cool, freaky, scary and exciting.  The camera device is a 3D camera.  It is capable of facial and voice recognition.  It builds a live wireframe repesentation of your body.  It is also able to seperate you from background image noise.  I doubt it will deliver as that kind of technology would surely have shown up else where before being seen on a gaming system.

Sony has their upgraded EyeToy which looks to be much more feasible.  It involves a wand as the main source of tracking information.  This should be able to make it to market before Microsoft’s solution.

While all of this innovation is extremely exciting and certainly needed, I foresee problems…

I own a Wii.  I use a used gamecube controller to play every game I can on the Wii.  This is because using movement based inputs is an extremely annoying and inefficient input for many games.  The best example for me is Super Smash Bros. and Mario Kart.  I use the Wii Mote as a form of handicap when playing with family members.  When it comes time to unlock tracks, I pull out the trusty game cube controller and proceed to dominate.

I don’t want to have to swing my arm or shift my foot for every little task.  Can you imagine playing an RPG (role playing game) where every time you interacted with a chest you had to literally open an imaginary chest?  It would get ridiculous.  You don’t have to look to a crystal ball to see this.  How many of you have resulted to flicking your wrist when playing the Wii?  How many of you play Tennis or Bowling while sitting back in your comfy sofa?  Being up and mobile is fun for a while, but it certainly gets to be a chore.  (If I wanted to simulate the real thing, maybe I would, oh you know do the real thing?)

Here in lies the challenge.  How can they create engaging, fun and quality games that use their interaction devices without coming off as gimicky?  My thought is that you will see certain genres transfer better than others.  As can be seen on the Wii, timing based repetitive games fare really well with this form of input.  A ton of crappy wrist-flicking-infra-red-sensor-pointing games have been released for the Wii.  I’d venture to say they are all terrible and not worth your money, but they are certainly out there.  These games provide short intense burst of “entertainment” in a few varieties and then rinse and repeat until you get bored.  Where as a friend and I would sit down and play a  video game for hours on end.  With the Wii you find yourself bored and tired after an hour.

I’m starting to ramble…

The controller will not disappear.  It is a fantastic input device for many many many genres.  Movement should provide growth in a number of genres and perhaps even invent its own genre.  As movement detection technology improves, at what point does the game stop being a game and move into a life simulation device?  That would be the main element I find missing more and more in games.  The “fun” or “game” element.  So many games that are brilliant in nature end up feeling like work or a pixelated version of real life.

I see this ending up in a cycle.  Humans use “Virtual Reality” to react to a virtual world as a means to escape their problems in the real world.  Before long, they will try to create a means to escape the pressures of their virtual world.  How long before we play pong on a simulated Atari in some virtual world that we are interacting with through Nadal/EyeToy/WiiMote?

A little too deep?  Here’s a Kitty.

Who is your Daddy and what does he do?

Kids grow up so fast these days. We are looking for houses and finding!

As a movie it should shine as an example. Well paced, good action, nice plot, logical beginning, middle and end; simply put, it had all the right components. Let this be a lesson for you James Bond series. STOP SUCKING!

Seriously, don’t see Quantum of Solace. Most disappointing movie – ever.

Ever.

Of All Time.

My car was broken into last Friday. They must have been watching and waiting to see specific activity because they knew exactly what they wanted out of my car and where to find it. Pity they weren’t elegant and had to force their way in through my passenger side window.

Happened near Quigley’s residence. So keep your eyes open for suspicious activity. It’s a very upscale area, but I guess that’s why criminals patrol there.

Quigley was amazingly helpful in covering up the window. Thank you quigley for helping out during the sad situation. I’m going to try and post some photos, but I’m on the iPhone so we will see.

Anyway it’s deductible city now. The car should be in working order by the weekend.

1) After a long and tiring day of skiing, it is a moment of complete peace and satisfaction as I drive home. I’ve just had a wonderful day. The heater in the car is starting to kick in. The music on the radio seems to be always what I want to hear. There is rarely another car on the road. It’s nothing but me, the car and the road to reflect on how great life really is.

2) Taking a much needed nap by a fireplace. The world melts away in front of the light and warmth of the fire. Nothing truly gives the mind and soul a break like a nap in front of the fireplace.

What are your perfect moments? They don’t have to be long or descriptive, just moments that are truly perfect to you.

I will be voting for [EDIT].  I really don’t care if he wins, but he certainly will [EDIT] a [EDIT] in how things are [EDIT] done.  I don’t care if he is [EDIT].  He can certainly [EDIT] the Purple Monkey Dishwasher.

P.S. There is a fly buzzing around and annoying the hell out of me!

Who drive, when I am driving.  Seriously stay off the road.  You suck at driving.  Being in the left lane does not make you cool.  Sorry, but I thought you should know.

Fall is a terrible time in my life now.  It’s championship of musical chairs and I am deaf.  (Don’t ask how I got there in the first place.  Blame the French judge.)  In no particular order (ul vs ol), here are the chairs:

• Fallout 3
• Midnight Club: Los Angeles
• Saints Row 2
• Fable 2
• Far Cry 2
• Quantum of Solace (Think Goldeneye in a COD4 engine)
• Shaun White Snowboarding
• Need for Speed Undercover

In addition I’ve been having issues with my spanking new computer.  I get an ATIKMDAG crash/recover when playing World of Warcraft.  It’s fairly annoying and I’ve tried everything short of RMAing stuff.  I’ve decided to just live with it and hope new drivers will fix the issue.  Very naive.  I should RMA the card before it’s too late.  Only issue is that WoW is the only application (including desktop) to cause the issue.  I did get the issue on the desktop when I went to the Cat 10 beta drivers.  That means very little to me considering they are beta drivers.  I have a feeling my sound card may be to blame.  The crashes seem to happen when new sounds or spell effects fire off.  Either graphics or sound related in my book.  (The card is definitely not underpowered.  I’ve got a 4870.  I could run 4 sessions of WoW and still be fine.)

iPhone has worked well since I traded in the POS one for this new one.

New Jack’s Manequin album is out: The Glass Passenger.  Pretty darn good.  My favorite track is American Love.  It’s got some kind of poppy 80s like beat to it that I love.

The wonderful new car broke 2000 miles today.  It received a chip in the windshield about a week ago.  I let a semi merge in front of me, being nice and not 1 second later up comes a rock.  That was a bad morning.

Back to the waterfall of work.  If anyone needs help with Hyperion Financial Management, Data Quality Management or Financial Reports, I’m available.  At the discount rate of $250 an hour plus expenses.

Wish me luck as I try to maintain my youth while I dive into the maw of adulthood.

If I seem a bit down, it’s because it’s near midnight and I’m doing work and not reading, playing games or sleeping.

As some of my readers (Hello all 3 of you!) may know, my best friend Justin recently purchased a home.  He lives there with his wonderful new wife Amber.  There couldn’t be a kinder couple on the face of the earth.  They were looking forward to married life and enjoying the company of each other in their newly purchased house.  They took all the right steps and precautions in purchasing the house.  They had help from experienced home buyers and were fortunate enough to be buying the house from a very nice couple.

During the routine inspections, they had the furnace inspected.  Part of the closing agreement was to ensure that the furnace did not need to be “red tagged” (read: replaced).  The inspector from McQuillan gave them the green light and the house was eventually closed on.

Fast forward a few months.  The furnace has since the inspection not been used and we find ourselves in a frustrating situation.  This is because in an unrelated incident the A/C unit had gone out.  A different company was brought in to replace the A/C unit.  At no cost, the new company performed an inspection of the furnace.  It was at this point that the furnace was “red tagged.”  Keep in mind that the furnace had not been used , if even touched, since McQuillan inspected the furnace.

McQuillan is now fighting tooth and nail to try escape responsibility for poor quality of work.  It’s down right offending to find a company who has no customer loyalty or honor.  They must take no pride in the work they deliver.  If they can’t back up every inspection they do, they don’t deserve to be in business.

If you want to read more about this, make sure you head over to Justin’s site where he gives a much better explanation of why you and anyone you know should avoid ever doing business with McQuillan Brother’s Plumbing and Heating.

shatter terrible business practices

Link to SmugMug with all 98 pics

The new iPhone is a great wonder and a piece of crap.  As I may have stated earlier, my vibrate switch broke the first day I had my iPhone.  That was an annoyance more than anything but everything I read told me to bring it in and they would replace it.  I did that today and I have a new phone that seems to have a working vibrate switch.

However, before today it was able to cause great havok.  As I stated in a previous post, the phone had issues upgrading to 2.0.1.  I had to yoink out the USB cable in the middle of a restore to get it to stop restoring everytime I plugged the damn thing in.  (This did “fix” it.)  A week or two went by and I decided to upgrade to 2.0.2 the other night.  Mistake.  That failed upgrade “bricked” my phone.  Luckily Justin was there to help and provide some insight.  I spent 3-4 hours Tuesday night and Wednesday morning trying to breath life into the phone.  Thank god there is this mode “DFU” (which I think stands for “Definitely Fucked Up”), that allowed me to restore from a software boot (I think that’s what it did.)  It failed 3 times.  2 times trying to go to 2.0.0 and 1 time going to 2.0.2.  One last time before bed I tried to restore to 2.0.2.  I awoke in the morning to find it had succedd and it was looking for a backup image.  That was the final straw.  I brought it in today and told Apple my issues.  They were nice enough to exchange it on teh spot after running some diagnosis programs.

I brought the phone home, tried to restore the previous phones image.  That seemed to succed, but it again asked if I wanted to restore the phone or set up as new phone.  Not having anything to lose I choose to set up as a new phone.  Only this time I named it “Phail” and not “Cube Phone.”  Phail is certainly fitting for as I tried to upgrade to 2.0.2 tonight it again bricked my phone.  I got an error 1602 the first time.  I restarted itunes it saw the phone, thank god (unlike last night), and I tried to restore.  This time I got an error 13.  I fucking hate this piece of shit.  I’m uninstalling itunes and going to reinstall it.  Maybe I have a bad version of something.  I’m also going to switch USB ports.  If that doesn’t work I’m writing Apple a nasty email and I will demand retribution for all of my time.  So far I figure I’ve spent 15 hours, 30 Miles of gas and car use and loss of sleep to try and get this thing to work.   Now to the reinstall and redownload and reimage and reboot and re re re re re re re re re re!!!!

Not happy.

I haven’t had the opportunity to discuss my final choices and ultimate purchase.  Thanks to the constant support of my family and Elizabeth, I came to the conclusion that I don’t need a bleeding edge system.  Instead I choose to opt for a “Bang for your Buck” system.  It you’ve been following the scoping process you will see that I started out with a $4900k price tag (w/o monitor).  From there I moved to a $3.5 price tag (w/ Monitor).  Further thought and research brought the price down to $3k (w/ Monitor).  It was at this time that I had the epiphany and decided to go for a “unique” and more exciting case.  Anyone can do bleeding edge, top of the line, it just takes more money.  To pull off an elegant, cost effective and unique case takes a tad bit more talent.  That said the price of the mouse(G9)+computer+case+cooling/case mods came out to $1630 and I purcahsed a so far wonderful LG 24″ monitor for $350.  Yup, I manage to reign in my spending and come in under $2k.  Here is the part list:

I hope that table shows up decent enough. The parts were all ordered from Newegg, FrozenCPU, Xoxide, Best Buy and Home Depot so far. I’m looking for nuts to fit the Lian Li thumbscrews. Currently I have some #6-32s that were lying around but the thread count on the thumb screws is far higher. The Pops has sent me the location of a store near work that might have what I’m looking for.  Chances are that the thumbscrews are Metric and I just need to find some metric Nuts. (That sounds kinda funny.) Alright enough talking from me, let’s see some exposition pics!

I have 2 case fans that are now 5 years old and they like to make outrageous noises from to time.  Since I’m looking to build a new computer and this one might be going to my parents, I figure I will do them a favor and replace the case fans.

The only thing is that my computer runs perfectly fine right now.  Thus, these 2 small changes could cause it to, in techincal terms, “crap out”.  If that is the case, I will likely not be making any posts for a week while my new computer parts are being shipped.

So here goes nothing!  Also, I realize I need to make it easier to see recent posts so that posts don’t get missed by readers, like the short wedding post last night.

Time to get all Franeknstein on this biatch!

The wedding was amazing.  I’m so happy for the both of them.  Words can barely describe how perfect they are for each other.

The next couple of months will be a fun time as the two of them adjust to married life.  Justin, no longer in his parents’ house.  Amber…living with Justin.

A cool fact is that they are now within Jogging distance of where I am currently living.  Maybe I’ll get to see them more.  If work doesn’t dominate my life, that is.

Ok, short post, tomorrow is the gift openeing and I actually have to wake up earlier tomorrow morning than I did this morning.  So goodnight,  good luck and god speed.  Live long and prosper.

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