Wii Internet?

I've been on the internets before. I know the Google and I've played with a Yahoo, I know what I should be seeing and this isn't it.

We spent the $5 on the Wii internet and I have to say I'm not impressd.

Up to...

Not much really. Back to work after the big break. With XMas and New Year's I was able to pull off 11 day vacation with only 3 vacation days, so totally worth it.

I don't think I mentioned it before, but I got my grade for my class, an A as I expected. My next class, a intro to programming in C++ starts on the 7th so that should be exciting.

Me and a co-worker went to the local IGDA meeting last night and it was really interesting and fun. Now if I can just get him interested in making a game with me...

Now playing: Mario Galaxy, Call of Duty 3, Puzzle Quest and Dual Strike with a little Brain Age too. Playing too much.

My Wii Story

I got a Wii!

I went to Target with my 4 year old Aidan for a few supplies before our New Year's Party. We spent 10+ minutes looking for this special butter popping oil to the chagrin of my son and some more time getting other supplies. I'm wasting time inappropriately since there are things to do before guests arrive but I want to get certain things done. Anyway, we move on eventually to the video game isle, specifically the DS they have on display. I coerced Aidan to accompany me by promising he could play some video games. As we approach I do what I always do at Target, look at the Wii spot and see if any happen to be in stock. No dice.

So there we are, Aidan's playing some candy matching DS game and I'm waiting for the video game playing to get over with. Then something happened, a Target employee with a white box and keys. He goes to the glass doors and opens and puts the box in the Wii location. I'm totally stunned. I don't believe it. I manage to say: "Is that what I think it is?" To which he repplies something along the order of "Yes, we just got a big shipment in." My jaw still open, I inquire more and determine there are 30 units in the store at that moment. He walks away to get more, door open. I whip out my phone and call wife, she responds in this gosh!-leave-me-alone-quit-bothering-me-about-how-much-you-want -a-wii-and-just-get-it-already-you-fool way that makes me leap to the open cabinet, grab box and throw it on cart. That's when I realize the isle is slowly filling with people. At least two other men of similar age and likeness have gathered in the isle and are on their cells, presumably calling wife for purchase permission.

So my trip to Target yielded me a Wii in the most unexpected way. I also grabbed Mario Galaxy. Aidan refers to it as a WiiWii which was borderline inappropriate at the checkout. Wife taught him that to make fun of her brother's recent purchase at Thanksgiving.

As for my impression of the Wii however, I'm not all that impressed. It's not really my kind of gaming system since I like a little more violence, smashing, crashing and/or shooting with my video games. I primarily wanted a Wii for the family game system. Aidan is extremely excited about it and strangely better at the boxing than I am. Though I think a untrained monkey could do better than me at the boxing. For now though, I am much more happy playing baseball or whatever with the Wii than the games we have for the PS2. And I am little apprehensive of the 4 year old manhandling of my DS, so this is exciting.

Mean ol' Me

I managed to scare the neighbor girl quite severely today. She's only 4 and was over playing with my almost 5 and almost 3 year old sons. She picked up a foam dart gun and shot the younger one in the head at point blank range right after I explained no shooting each other. I didn't take that well and over reacted. She took it badly and wanted to go home. My heart sank of course because now she's afraid of coming back. She's a pretty good friend to my oldest.

Are video games to blame for my outburst?

Where have I been?

Well, I've been nowhere really. I just realized how boring this would be to read and how I must be following the dozen steps of blogging to a T.

Anyway, I finished my class. Unfortunately I realized I could phone-it-in. My last few assignments were pure shit, one was written in 5 minutes and still got 100%. Kinda sad. That's the one thing that bugs me about it, how lacking the response of the assignments were. It was more like a check of turning in the assignment verses doing it well. Regardless, I got 99% for the class up to the final, meaning I only need a 51% on the final to get an A. I already took the final FYI, it was a 3.5 hr thing you take at home online, just waiting for my grade. Pretty sure I got my A though, even with taking a hour break to play some God of War.

However and also mentionable during the last month of my blogging absence is that I've delved deeper into madness. I've engulfed myself in multiple podcasts, from Sarcastic Gamer and Joystiq, to Game Theory and the Video Game Show (there are two with that title and I listen to both). I went back to September and started listening, totaling about 10 hrs a day. Thank goodness for overtime at work and a 30 minute commute. I'm now caught up to Thanksgiving, which is bad for two reasons. I'm getting lots of news about fun games and I want to play them and I'm running out of podcasts. Luckily there is no shortage of people talking about the game industry but then again, I'm starting to burn out on it.

Also notable: I now own a Nintendo DS too and its sucked much of my life already with much more to come.

Upcoming for me is:
1) Class starts again on Jan 7th. Its a programming course, so should be good.
2) Playing some Nintendo DS. I have 3 games that demand my attention.
3) Play some Playstation 2. Got Call of Duty 3 (very impressed) and still want to finish Half Life (yes, the first one) before I get the Orange Box.

Did I mention its Christmas? Santa came.

Learning is for me

At first, I was frustrated with my class. I didn't like the book, thought the discussions (online forum) were lame, and the class was silly and a waste of time. But what I've found is that I'm actually thinking and reading with comprehension. Something I havn't done in a while. I'm actually learning something I'm interested in.

Anyway, I had to write a report, a game concept document, where I basically pitch an idea. It was a lot of fun. I even made some artwork.

Frustration Engine

About a month back my wife and kids went to Costco and I found this cool box. Inside the box was over 100 classic arcade games. I wanted one. But at over $2k, its out of my pocketbook. So I started a little research and found MAME Arcades. The do it yourself arcade construction. You just need some handyman skills, a computer and monitor or TV and time. So I've successfully made this one of my projects.

The first stage was done, get MAME and figure it out. Easy, tested, done.

Second stage is to resurrect an old PC to live inside the arcade cabinet and this is where everything goes sour. I've spent over 10 hours fixing and testing and rebooting this antiquated 733MHz bastard but I finally got it running. Its video and sound was working, two hard drives (a total whopping space of 30 GB) and CD drives working, with Win 98. No network, but whatever. My son even plays some Ninja Turtles on it, you know, the old arcade Ninja Turtles. The next day, the system is frozen and frozen hard. Reboot, reboot, reboot later and its back. Whew... right? Wrong! About 10 minutes into playing more TMNT the thing makes this pop-flash-pop and goes black. Reboot, reboot, reboot, nothing. I give up for the night. That leads me to tonight.

I go to the computer and press the on button ever so gently and what do I see but the tell-tale signs of a computer actually booting up. It gives some Windows choice which leads to BSOD. Reboot, safe-mode chosen and to Windows credit, it reports something nasty happened to the registry and it fixed it, reboot. Comes up, I get MAME running, grab the camera to take this picture with TMNT glory for the world to see. I house clean a little to spruce up this ugly space and whoosh, monitor goes black.

30 minutes later, dozens of things tried and the computer just doesn't come back. So instead of victory, I've got what is probably a R.I.P. PC.

Work, work, work

Quiz was easy, super easy. The report on the other hand took me a while, partially because I was actually very interested in the subject. I had to write a 1 page report, double-spaced, on the history of video games. The tough part was keeping it to one page.

Work has me traveling to DC Sunday for an early Monday morning meeting, what fun.