As you may or may not know I worked on the first Mass Effect. It was I think one of the most taxing projects I’ve ever worked on but in the end the game is in my top 10 of all time. At work I played through the game end to end 15 times and then once at home after ship. I feel pretty confident that I can speak on the virtues of the game and its ups and downs. You know doubt know what those are at this point and if you don’t I suggest you pick up a copy of Mass 1 and then we can talk. Moving forward I’m going to just assume that you also know what those ups and downs were of the game and I will then move on to talking about Mass 2.

I’m not into Spoilers of any kind in anything. I’m of the mind that some how me telling you whatever the “cool part” is regardless of if it will “give anything away or not” doesn’t really help anyone. I mean sure it was “funny” or “cool” or whatever but you (or in this case me) telling me (or in this case you) about the event in said “thing” always leaves this empty space. As once the person in question (you or me…I’m not sure at this point) experiences said event they already know about it and ultimately it has the same impact (figuratively) as a piece of cold pizza. Sure it tastes good and all but its cold and is a shadow of its former hotter self that would have burnt the roof of your mouth. So that’s why I’m not going to tell you spoiler related things as I want the game to burn your mouth.

What I will say is that I was floored immediately by the production value. After working on the first one (see above) it felt almost like a different game. The environments looked way better, the little things they did in various places to make the environments come to life was striking. There was diffinately more life to the “world” in this game. When I was on Mass 1 there was talk that they were going to take your game from Mass 1 and give you the ability to port it over to 2. Well they delivered and everything sticks with your character. To the degree where there will be things that you’ll experience (maybe through a conversation or some kind of message in game) that will come right from Mass 1. Oddly enough sometimes its like getting an email from someone you’d not talked to in quite a while and then the memories of your time with them come rushing back. Its pretty cool.

The voice acting is super cool too. I was surprised how many voice actors were in Mass Effect 2. I’m used to going through a game and maybe having one or two voices I recognize. Like having Liam Neeson in Fallout 3. In this case however its like a who’s who of Sci-fi nerd voices.

I’ve started my second play through and I was the “renegade” last time (read: “asshole”) but this time I’m going through as the “paragon” (read: “Nice guy”) and I’m enjoying it. I pulled down the DLC Stolen Memory and started it last night but it was too late and so I opted to sleep and I’ll more than likely start it up this evening if Alan Wake dosn’t take that spot in this evening’s gaming.

In closing, If you’ve not played Mass 2 you should check it out. You can have a pretty good experience if you just start from Mass 2 but I’d really suggest you play through 1 and import over your characer into Mass 2. Porting your character will diffinately give you a better experience.

So for those of you who have been playing from home you’ll notice I’d not updated in quite a while. That or you stopped coming here because I didn’t really update all that often and so it wasn’t a surprise to you that I’d not updated in a while. Ok so what REALLY happend was that some douche bag hacked my site and it took a while to fix things. There are still a couple of places I need to go to remove the links pointing you to some sort of “Male enhancement” drug of some kind. Just to be on the safe side I suggest that you avoid clicking on the aforementioned links and look elsewhere for your male enhancements…might I suggest your inbox.

Anyway, so yeah…It appears all things are unhacked (for the moment) and I’ll be making sure to try to do whatever it is I need to to so that doesn’t happen again. I’m pretty sure its been like a million years since I posted last so instead of bringing everyone up to speed I’m going to talk about something else.

I’ve been thinking about a way to do some different stuff with this site as its something I pay for and I suppose that since its here that I should do something with it. So the current ideas are as follows.

1. Start reviewing games (specifically). Or at the very least games that I’ve finished which as of late has been more than before.
2. Start reviewing things (games, movies, food, beer…whatever) Ive got a movie review system that I’ve been using for years that I suppose I could translate over but I’m not sure about that either.
3. Get other people to post on the site as well. I’m not sure where I stand with this option as ultimately it feels like it might just be a way to get other posts up here because apparently I’ve got a horrible track record of posting. If you think this is a good idea send me an e-mail and we can talk about it. If you don’t know my e-mail by this point…really…its not difficult to figure out.

I’d like to get a new site design but I don’t really have any money and I’m not good at that stuff…so yet again, I’m going to try to fiure out how to do that. I’ve got no ideas about that stuff either.

Anyway, so here’s to not being hacked! (for the moment).

Pork

So Steph and I were looking to get new phones as mine pretty much sucked and hers was beter than mine however still not super awesome. In looking over the budget and such it looked like we were able to upgrade with no problems. Our current agreement with Verizon, or was it T-mobile…I’m not sure anyway it was done and so we were free to do whatever we wanted. All signs were pointing to AT&T mainly because of said iPhone. So after some leg work on Steph’s part we decided we were going to go to the AT&T store and get it there, kind of one stop shopping. As the last time we went and got the aforementioned crappy phones we went through a 3rd party retailer and we didn’t get screwed over perse more that things just didn’t measure up as we had expected and thus wanted to make sure we went right to the source.

At the AT&T store we learned that all the things she was told over the phone about any kind of deals we could get by going through the AT&T store weren’t actually true, which led to us being frustrated with the whole deal. Not to mention it was getting late and we weren’t sure if we were going to be able to get the phones in time and get the kids fed and such. Not to mention the fact that we would have to order the phones through AT&T which would have taken 7 to 10 days. The manager assured us that no one had the phones and that we should really go through them. I asked steph to call the Apple store and see how many phones they had…the result was quite a few. We shrugged it off went out for food and then went to the Apple store near our house. They had the phones we craved and we got the process underway.

It ended up taking much longer than we would have liked to get the whole process started, I mean you’d think that they would have jumped at a couple who wanted to drop some cash on their new phones. Ivy was (as any 3 year old would be) all over the place and it was getting close to the time to feed Ben. The dude that was helping us was clearly new as he was constantly asking questions to this lady that was also an employee standing next to us (not a good sign). So he starts the sign up process and asks us for our information a few times blaming the need to re-ask on his little info tracking device. Then something happened, the manager came up to him and asked what was wrong, only to find out that the little device didn’t give him the option to transfer our current phone number over and as such assigned us a new number with our new AT&T account (Epic FAIL!). At this point Steph and I were done with that place. I was committed as it was easier for me to hang out and finish it up. So steph went home to put Ivy to bed and to feed Ben, and the manager assured me that it would be fine. The original helper person said he was sorry a few times and then went off to “help” other people, or clean ipods or something.

The Manager lady called up AT&T and spoke with some person there who was going to fix the situation. In looking over the reciept it listed my actual phone number as the one it was changed to. This made no sense to me as I never gave him my phone number. So we talked back and forth a bit and it seemed that there wasn’t really a problem. She hung up with the AT&T person and called her phone from my new phone to make sure that the number was right…it wasn’t. The number that came up was for some dude named Paul Smith or something. With this new hitch in the road I learned something about iphones.

If you go to the Apple store and say you want an iphone and get all through the process of signing up and getting your name and such associated with a phone and then you decide that you don’t want the phone you are still tied to it. Standard opperating procedure is that the sim card is removed and a new one is placed in the phone. I noticed that a sim card was taped to the box but me not living in the Apple world had no idea what that meant. Clearly helper guy didn’t either. So with another call to the AT&T guy (who got the number of the manger I guess they’re going to “hook up” or something…which was a little weird) and an hour and a half later, the phones were all set and I was on my way to being another one of those people with an iPhone. I can say thus far I really like the phone and I’m still not completely sure what it all does but hey…its got a compass…so that’s cool…cialis brands, Cealis And Lopressor cialis pdr
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ok so yeah, whatever. a little over a week now my son was born. His name is Ben Archer. He was 9.1 lbs and 21 inches. He’s totally awesome. I’ve still not really wrapped my head around this whole two kid thing yet. Right now it just feels like we’ve got one kid mainly because Ivy actually does stuff…like walk around and talk to us. The boy however, well, yeah so he does the normal baby stuff that you would do when you’re a little over a week old.

For my birthday I got Fallout 3 I’ve really been enjoying it. I’ve been told and looked at as if I’m some lepar when I tell people I’d not played the first two and that I’d only played Fallout Tactics (which I enjoyed). At the time I was a serious console gamer and a computer was something people had that I didn’t have. I find it interesting now that in a way, fallout came to me on the console. Anywho, yeah so its pretty good. I’m going the way of the good person. I’m “very good” in that I’m not an asshole to people in the game or I don’t just shoot helpless people so I can have their stuff. I have a real problem with “morality” games in playing any way but good. I just feel dirty if I try to play the “bad” person. Its just not me. I got into a big conversation about it with a dude I work with and his idea is that its just a game so why does it matter? Yeah, I understand that point but I guess, that’s not normally how I’d be so why would I want to just start being a prick who ruthlessly kills people or backstabs them just because its a bunch of 1s and 0s. We’ve come a long way since pong I’ll tell you that.

I picked up “Broken Steel” which is one of the expansion packs for Fallout. That one raises the level cap to 30 so its been kind of cool going around and seeing what some of the other skills and abilities are like that I couldn’t have leveled up in one playthrough. I mainly go into places I’ve not been, pop into “hidden” mode and move move around and kill badguys with my silenced pistol…or Lincoln’s Repeater which is areal cool gun…and it was Abe Lincoln’s so…that makes the game educational! See I learned stuff! All in all Fallout feels like an MMO in scope. The game is freakin huge and with every decission you make it directly impacts the game as a whole. So if you should decide to leave the nuclear bomb that hasn’t detonated yet in the center of the town alone…the town stays there. If you want to be a prick you can detonate it and the town is as you’d expect it if a nuclear bomb went off in the center. Help the zombies..don’t help the zombies, whatever you decide the end result shapes the game. Since I canceled my wow account (again) I find this is a nice distraction without the need to go raiding all the time. Oh and Liam Neeson is the voice of one of the characters in the game, so that’s pretty cool!

ok that’s all I’ve got for you now.cialis samples Coumadin Cealis megalis tadalafil
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You no doubt heard about the layoffs at Microsoft, yeah well that’s what has been keeping me from updating. I didn’t lose my job or anything, but it’s just been tough emotionally and I’ve not really been doing anything. I don’t want to get into it all here but yeah…that’s the excuse.

In other news: I’m still workign on the PAX 08 DVD and its really coming along. I’ve reviewed the first run of proofs of the “main theater” (non-concert) stuff. That would be stuff like the Gabe and Tycho panels, the Key Note, The Omegathon, etc… I’ve given feedback and now am waiting on round 2 of the main theater segments and then the concerts. All in all I can tell you that I’m really excited for the DVD this year. Its turning out real REAL good and I can’t wait for people to see it. I can’t tell you dates or cost or any of that, I don’t deal with that stuff.

Hopefully I’ll have a better write up for you about the coming up D&D game. I’ve got all my own dice this time and I’m wearing my 12 sided die shirt. If it dosn’t work well for me, I’m gonna have to sacrifice the 3 legged cat on the altar of evil

“How did the D&D game go?”

Well i’m glad you asked, why don’t I tell you. Ok so, all it went good. Everyone else did what they were supposed to while I seemed to stand around and attempt to cast spells and such only to find that I wasn’t able to…why you ask? Mainly because all my dice rolls sucked ass! I mean really they were bad. The character I play is an elf. Elves get this “re-roll” ability once per encounter. First time..I rolled a 5. I decide, ok I think I should use my re-roll…Roll the dice…5. The same thing happened the second time I attempted to use it. As for the other things I was attempting to do, it must have looked like I was putting on some kind of non-threatening light show as everything failed…I mean everything. There were a couple times I was able to do damage to things and I did kill a “bug bear”. However the rest of the party didn’t seem to remember that and mocked me because of my lack luster “first day”.

I wouldn’t consider myself a supersticious person however when it comes to dice, that all goes out the door.One of the major issues (which I was yelled at for by another guy I know who plays D&D) is that I didn’t use MY dice, but I used community dice that were provided. I replied that it didn’t break any rule as they were provided by the DM and as such the dice were under his jurisdiction and thus, neutral when it came to a positive or negative effect that could come from rolling dice that were not your own. Either way, I stated that I was going to bring my own dice to the next game. So in keeping with that I found my dice bag and this morning I went through the dice. With my past history of playing shadowrun and Necromunda I had quite a few D6 as such I cleaned out a bunch but then I noticed something. I was putting the dice into different groups based on color and type, then I was pulling out dice that I deemed to be bad dice. I sat and looked at the good dice and then as previously mentioned came to the realization and stopped for a second and wondered what the hell I was doing but also…if the decission I was making was right and some of the “bad dice” might actually roll me some good numbers. I feel good about these dice though…gonna get some good rolls out of them…If not I’m going to do what a friend of mine told me about last night.

He was playing D&D with this guy who was getting really bad rolls with his dice. So he took the bad dice and smashed them with a hammer. Then took the bits of broken “bad dice” and placed them in a little container. After that any time he was rolling poorly with the remaining dice he would pull out the little container and shake it at the remaining dice to intimidate them. I’m not sure if that will work but I’m starting to notice that table top gamers are much like those ladies who go and play Bingo with all the fuzzy trolls and trinkets and lucky rocks and such. Ultimately it dosn’t matter because God not only plays dice but decides the outcome. Proverbs 16:33.

So as of tomorrow I’m going to be playing D&D again. I was mainly a Shadowrun guy all through Junior High and highschool and then for quite a few years after that. I always felt like D&D was the starting point that other table top games started from. I have no idea if it was the first I just remember it being the game that devil worshipers played before they sacrificed kittens and put razor blades in candy for kids during halloween. When I played in the 6th grade it was more my circle of other nerd friends creating these super awesome characters and then rolling dice as a friend read from an instruction book or something about a dungeon or whatever. I can say that I don’t think we actually really ever “played” but the game we were playing was super sweet!

I’ve got a few small things I need to do to wrap up my character and then once thats all set I’ll be ready to go! I’m not quite sure what to expect tomorrow as before when I was playing table top games it was in some strange wacked out future seattle. Now I’m going to be in places where people drink mead and fight with swords…like real swords, not jacked up blades that have a monofilament edge. Either way it’ll be good. My plan is to gauge how into the roles of the characters the other players are before I set some kind of over the top precedent and get a one way trip to “oh no it’s a cave in you’re fucking dead” town.

I’ll keep you posted….really. cialis generic pharmacy online Viagra Cealis Cialis en ligne de pharmacie cialis generic viagra rss feed 736.

Ok so I guess there are lots of people who read my site and also not only do you read my site but you get angry and acutally come and tell me to update my site when I don’t as I haven’t given you the aformentioned “Daily Allowance of Pork”. So I’m here to tell you that I’m changing that all now. Just like all the other times when I said I was going to write more but (before) I didn’t, I’m going to start now! And If I don’t I’ll pay you all *5 dollars for every day that I don’t update on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. For now I’m just writing this to put a new post up that dosn’t talk about how I’m all “upset” and “not happy” that Barockstar is our new President.

I hope Barockstar rocks the proverbial house and all that, < scathing sarcasm >I’m really looking forward to all the great things he’s going to do for our country< /scathing scarcasm >! Ok look, Daddy has been busy and tomorrow…well…maybe the next day I’ll write more and tell you all what the F I’ve been doing since the last time I posted.

For now…Happy New year! And Read the Bible! Start In Matthew, and if you really want a kick in the chops…start in Romans.

Hugs and kisses

Ok so I don’t get it. How the hell is everyone saying that Barockstar won the debate? From where I was sitting McCain walked all over him. He pointed out the lack of experience Barockstar has, the fact that everything he’s saying looks good on paper but should Barockstar become Pres, then we’re all going to effectively take it in the shorts.

What so because he said “I agree with what McCain just said, and let me add this other thing” that means he wins? That really dosn’t tell us anythign about Barockstar other than he’s real good at agreeing with things but I didn’t hear anything new from him that wasn’t “Change, Energy Independance, affordable healthcare, blah, blah, blah…” No real substance.

Personally I feel that people just want to say he won so that those that didn’t see the debate (which had lower numbers than the VP debate) will think that he some how came out swinging. Dude, he sat there and took punches left and right, and had nothing to back it up. He didn’t put up a fight, he didn’t even show any signs of having a leadership bone in his body. He really came off as being startled that he was being asked a question, and then you could see the gears in his head scrolling through the talking points looking for something that was a non-threatening middle of the road answer.

I love how he glazed over the fact that Barockstar got the 2nd highest contributions from Freddy and Fanny. Yeah, its totally the republicans fault. Dude, if you take money from them its your fucking fault too!

As if you couldn’t tell I’m not a fan of Barockstar, I completely disagree with his ideas (read the “Blue print for change” on his website). Even though he keeps talking about all the people he’s not going to tax. Dude, he’s going to tax the hell out of everyone. Under his model that he keep talking about there isn’t enough money coming in and that’s what they’re going to find out. So the logical conclusion for that is to tax more, and it will be framed as everyone sacrificing and such, but really, its been the plan all along.

Its story time:

My dad had 5 heart attacks before he ultimately died. He was a smoker and he drank alot and didn’t eat the best food and he used drugs. As you can see quite the formula for a healthy life. In the beginning Heart Attack 1 seemed like a wake up call. Most of the time shit like that is a wake up call. You get the fear of God put in you and you see that “hey, maybe I should change some shit up.” So he did, then he stopped. Enter stage left Heart attack #2. After this one he needed a bit of a reminder that his heart and him were still working some shit out and needed to maybe reconsider the state of their relationship for the both of them. OK so rinse and repeat, everything gets back under way and then as you can guess the story goes…stops. Enter stage right Heart attack #3. Ok so you have 3 heart attacks its evident that you need help with this whole “Staying alive thing”. After this I’m not sure what happend as I wasn’t really in contact with him but suffice to say, he had a 4th heart attack. At this point he proved that he was not physically able to make decissions about his life and in my personal opinion needed to be taken into some kind of care facility. This as you no doubt can guess, did not happen and the end result was his death after heart attack 5.

I feel like where we are at economically is at heart attack 4. And the bail out feels like more beer, smokes, and burgers for the financial groups. Look, I will be the first to admit that I’m still working on understanding all of this. I’m trying to keep a level head about it and not freaking out and wanting to pack up and move to somewhere that I believe is going to some how fix my problem by not staying here. In talking with people about the Great Depression it seems that it didn’t really kick in to full “We’re totally Fucked mode” until about 2 or 3 years after the crash. So think about it this way. You live in New Orleans, only its 2 years before Katrina, and you know what you know now. What would you do? No doubt move right? Ok so for the majority of the people reading this I doubt you’re going to move. Hell you might move out of the states, but with how the financial institutions are all situated, this is going to effect the whole world. We’re all linked, that was one of the primary goals after WWII. If all of our financial institutions and companies and whatnot were in other countries they’d be hard pressed to attack one another, as they wouldn’t want to destroy their own economy. So…What would you do? Lets say that you and your friends and family and all your stuff dosn’t get destroyed at all and no one dies. Everything around you is fine but what would you do to plan for it? That’s kind of the mindset I’m in right now. I’d rather plan for the worst than to not have planned at all. It feels like to me that it dosn’t really seem real for anyone yet. I mean its all happened so fast that its difficult to process all the ramifications of what actually happened. If you’re unsure and if you’d like to know. My friend Julie (Whose going to MIT for her MBA) wrote this paper. Its 8 pages but it will help you to understand it all if you don’t already know. My suggestion is that if you hate reading things that are longer than a head line that you get over it and read it. I suggest you read quite a bit of things on this issue as its going to directly effect your life. Up to this point things like the Original Great Depression and other financial collapse seem to be some shit that happened to other people and they have all these great stories about how they survied and how they had to walk up hill in the snow both ways to get to school 10 miles away and all, but from the looks of it, we have a very good chance of walking both ways in the snow here pretty soon.

I’ll say this, right now I see no need to freak out and I hope this post hasn’t come off that way. Katrina is still 2 years away, we can plan, we can save and prepare for it. I’d also like you guys to think about the communities around you. If you’re in a church or some other group, you’re going to be a really great resource for those in your community who aren’t in said group. Who don’t have the resources you might have. Look, I’m saying, get together with your church or whatever and start talking about this. People are going to need help, walk a mile in their shoes, hell you might have to, wouldn’t you want to have some help? Are there blankets, or baby formula, or clothes, or medical supplies that could be gathered? Are there projects that could be planned that could bring more money into your community? The dollar hasn’t gone to shit yet, so as such we should look at this as a time of plenty and store up what we have to make tomorrow better. I have a feeling we’re fast coming up to the “7 years of famine (as it were). “We the People” are the ones who are going to have to bind together to get through this. If and I stress, IF this is as bad as everyone is saying, if they hype isn’t just there to push news papers but what everyone is saying is true, we’re going to need to bind together and work on making a better future for us all. This could really suck, I mean REALLY SUCK, and all the while we could point fingers at those in the past that made it happen, or we could work towards helping your next door neighbor. There are going to be lots of hands out to the government asking for help (and everywhere else) And this is our chance to step up to the plate. So the burden falls on our shoulders to do what we can.

Most Importantly…Pray. A few years back I was up snowboarding with my buddy “Stick” (His nickname…not a stick that is my friend) and I was hit by a skiier. I had a concussion and a broken collar bone ). I was talking to my Grand Mother about the situation a while after and she said “when God wants you to pray he puts you on your knees.” No doubt. I’m pretty sure right now this is God putting the whole world on their knees and its time to pray. Pray for those that are going to be affected by this, for those in power making the big decissions, pray for wisdom. Pray that if you don’t have a community (read: good church) that God provide one for you. Don’t worry about how to pray, just talk to God. Hell, Ask him to help you how to know how to pray and what to pray for.

Keep your head, Educate yourself, be smart and don’t flip the fuck out about this. I’d also suggest when you talk about this with people that you (after the angryness dies down a bit) talk to them about what they think they can do to help. Get ideas and get them on board.

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