September 2007 Archives

One of the greatest video game months for me is coming to a close with Halo 3.  It has been almost 3 years since the release of Halo 2.  There is an assumption that many have waited until now to purchase Xbox 360 consoles, we will see once the September NPD numbers come out or sooner via VG Chartz.  The pre-orders alone for the game top 1 million and may be closer to 2 million.  There is an expectation of 3-4 million copies to be sold in the first week.

The hype machine for Halo 3 has been in full effect since about the E3 timeframe this year.  Hype had been happening even before but it was revved up to full speed this summer.  Everything from TV commercials to branded Pontiac cars and pre-order sales at 7-Eleven stores.  If you want Hal0 3 Slurpees, Mountain Dew, Doritos or several other items you are also covered now.  Also if what is out now isn't enough there is more coming like action figures and other branded merchandise.

The madness will truly start Monday night as people start to lineup for all the midnight launch parties across the country.  I pre-ordered my Legendary Edition just after Thanksgiving last fall.  I got my shipment notice from Best Buy late last Thursday.  Unfortunately it is being shipped via the UPS /USPS combo method.  The last time Best Buy did this it took quite a while to actually get the package, I am hoping to just get it by next weekend.

See you in online on live in Halo 3 multi-player!  Maybe I will actually play a few more games online than I seemed to on Halo 2 according to my stats.

Originally I was going to put this in with my birthday post but I felt it deserved its own post.  Some small spoilers ahead if you haven't played Bioshock.

I didn't think I had time to play Bioshock on my birthday.  I didn't start playing it until the night of Wednesday Sept 12th and kept playing on a day off I had on Sept 13th.  I have played it quite a lot since then until yesterday when I got the last of the achievements I was going to get.  I actually got all but one achievement which is for beating the game on the hard difficulty level.  I did all but 3-5 without any help from a walk through.  In the end there was a few things that I didn't notice or realize.  I went back and found some audio recordings and one upgrade station I missed to get some achievements.  I also had to restore and redo one part because I bumped off a character too early on accident which would have eliminated about 5 different achievements for several reasons.

I have to say Bioshock is one of the best games I have ever played.  At its core it is primarily a shooter with some interesting weapons (powers).  The thing that really makes the game great is how it is all tied together.  The story is really good and well told using numerous methods.  The design and layout of the underwater world of Rapture is quite amazing.  Also little details like sound effects and music seemed to always be there when you expected them.  There were a few powers and weapons I rarely if ever used other than to see how they worked.
My order of most used weapons:

1. Wrench
2. Research Camera (helps you learn how to attack enemies)
3. Grenade Launcher (primary weapon against big daddies)
4. Shotgun
5. Pistol (rarely used)
6. Machine Gun (rarely used)
7. Crossbow (never used)
8. Chemical Thrower (never used)

My order of most used plasmids:

1. Electro Bolt (my favorite by far)
2. Security Bullseye
3. Incinerate
4. Hypnotize Big Daddy
5. Telekinesis (mostly used to get stuff and every once in a while against nitro splicers)
6. Enrage

I never even acquired (bought) Winter Blast, Insect Swarm, Cyclone Trap or Target Dummy.

The story had some pretty good twists in it and made you think about what you had done and why.  The ending boss seemed a little out of place in the way the fight went.  The ending while very short seemed satisfying, there are two primary endings and one slight variation.  I would highly recommend this game if you area shooter fan at all or just want a really well done atmosphere and story.  You can see what others think on Game Rankings, it seems most liked it.  One small hint, don't attack Sander Cohen when you have the chance, it will allow you the chance to get several achievements.

This year my birthday was an all video game one.  First, Kelly got me a Nintendo Wii.  She actually gave it to me in early August.  She says she did this because she was worried I would buy one for myself, I think it was because she wanted to play it herself and beat me in various Wii Sports games.  She also got me Wii Play mostly for the same reason everyone else does it comes with a controller so you get a game for $10 essentially.  She also got me the Wii version of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.  It was a very complete package of a system and games to enjoy.  We went out and got an extra Nunchuk which was the only missing piece.

We first played a bunch of Wii Sports and Wii Play.  Kelly seemed to really enjoy virtually punching me in boxing.  Kelly has also had friends come over and play some games with her.  I have spent a while with Zelda already but I am probably only 10-15% done so far.

My brother also got me Super Paper Mario for my birthday.  Lastly, my parents got me Bioshock for the Xbox 360.  I think in both cases Kelly gave some advice on what to get me.  I was surprised she knew I wanted them both.

One of the final additions to the living room that Kelly wanted to make was getting an area rug.  She had been looking for almost a month and subjecting me to viewing her selections during that time.  We thought we liked some from Crate & Barrel but the stores close to us didn't carry the rugs.  When we went down to Leesburg for Jerry and Karri's wedding we were close to the store in Tyson's Corner and we went to look.  We finally decided on a rug at the store.  Yesterday I went to pick it up at the warehouse since delivery was a confusing option from what we could tell.  I placed it yesterday and then this morning Kelly and I moved it to its (hopefully) final position.  Some pictures below.  The first shows the overall color better but the second shows the multi-colored streaks and has our demo model cat who seems to be in living room pictures often.

Kelly has been working hard in August and September trying to get the area around the house more presentable.  The other goal was to make it more manageable.  A bunch of pictures are available in this set.  She is still working on it so there will probably be a few more pictures posted later to the set.

Some of the things that have done is ripping out some bushes, whose roots extended about half-way across the yard.

Cleaned up and mulched around the bushes at end of driveway.

Really trimmed back the bushes in front of the porch and added a new bush.

The really big work was in the front of the house.  There Kelly weeded and removed small dead plants.  Then added some new bushes and finally mulched.

The previous owner had a lot of large rocks in a circled off area in back yard.  Kelly wanted to move them to the rock area we already created along side of house.  I moved about half of the ones I could lift to one section and will move more later.  Several are gigantic hunks of granite that I am not sure how we are going to move.

Over the first weekend in August and a few days afterward Kelly and I filled another dumpster full.  A large part of it was the leftovers from the construction of my basement.  There was a large pile of drywall, wood and other trash that immediately went into dumpster.  Then we threw in other odds and ends that were scattered about yard.  Things like an old table, a keg with stand, a ladder and some old broken tools.  Next we tossed in some yard waste that had been rotting in the yard much too long.  The last thing we tossed on the top was the deck that was ready to collapse in back yard.

It was scarily easy to tear apart the deck.  It was really being held together by the carpet / astroturf that was covering the main floor and steps.  The steps crumbled as we pulled of the covering.  As we loaded the bits into the dumpster Kelly got up and jumped up and down on the pile to squish it all in.  Even with that you will see some of the deck sticking up a bit.  We haven't yet built a new deck, hopefully soon.

The other addition that Kelly wanted to make to my house was a new range.  The one I had was about as old as she and I and didn't not work well (or at all in some cases).  When I had first moved in I had been looking at a Maytag dual oven range.  She also liked that one.  We found it on sale at Home Depot and then were able to price match at Best Buy to get some of the deals they were offering like free delivery.  We bought it on July 15th and they were able to deliver it on Thursday the 19th since it was Kelly's day off.  We had to pay extra for gas install to make sure everything was done right.  The install went fine and it works great.  Kelly has cooked many things in it and they have turned out tasty as usual.

After we got the range the old hood looked really sad.  We decided we would replace the hood as well.  We wanted to get a Maytag hood as well to make sure it matched.  The problem was that we couldn't find any place that actually had the hoods on display.  We tried the Maytag Store, Home Depot, Lowes and a few others.  The last one we tried was a Sears near us.  When we went in we saw an open box sitting on the shelf that looked like the one we wanted.  We went home to make sure it was the right model and it was.  We got it for about 50% off because it didn't have a box or anything just a bag of parts.  It was in perfect condition though and looks great.  The only downside is the lighting is almost too good and makes it so you can see how dirty the black range top looks if not cleaned carefully.

There are a few pictures in this set.

As I mentioned back in early June Kelly ordered a couch over Memorial Day weekend.  The couch arrived at the store even faster than expected.  We got a call at the end of June that it was in.  On July 4th we paid the second half and setup delivery for Saturday July 7th. 

In preparation for the couch delivery Kelly decided we should paint and remove the carpet in the living room and go back to the original hard wood floor.  First she painted the walls in the living room.  A few days later she removed the first half of the carpet one night and then I removed the other half the next night.  The hardest part was pulling out all the tacks, nails, staples and tack strips around the floor.  We also had to clean some areas of the floor where the rotted pad had bonded to the hardwood floor.

Kelly had to work that Saturday so I was there to take delivery.  They came pretty early (maybe first stop) about 10 AM.  Since the couch comes assembled and pillows attached it didn't take long to deliver.  The delivery guys just had to position and attach the pieces to each other.  It took about 20 minutes total.  Kelly ended up coming home early from work because she was sick and helped me position it perfectly.  Some pictures of the new room with paint and couch are in this set.

In an effort to drum up publicity for this summer's big screen release of The Simpsons movie 11 7-Eleven stores were converted to Kwik-E-Mart stores.  It just so happens that one of these stores is on the way from my house to Roger's.  On the 4th of July I stopped there and got a Squishee (Slurpee) and took some pictures.  All the ones I took are in this set.

This post is oh about 2-3 months late. The summer is a busy time for me so, um, sorry.  All the pictures I took are in this set.  I have some smaller sets that I will link to below.  There will likely be a revision of this later with Kelly filling in my memory blanks.

The Disney part of our trip started on Friday June 8th, 2007.  Kelly went over to our hotel which was the Animal Kingdom Lodge around noon.  Her trip was greatly complicated by the incompetent people in the hotel.  They had resort "specialists" that couldn't be bothered to help her.  She ended up taking a shuttle that got her to the transportation hub and then made it to the hotel.  She found out later that there was much easier methods of getting there.  Once she got to the hotel the experience was much better, it is a really nice place to stay.

My TechEd day ended just before 5 PM and I took the last shuttle back to one of the Disney resorts.  On the way over Kelly and I decided to just meet at the Magic Kingdom.  We had some confusion about transportation again but we managed to meet up near the entrance gate.  I went through Port Orleans on the way there since that was where the TechEd shuttle went.  Kelly had gotten my pass when she checked into the hotel.  After having my bag searched we headed over to the lockers.  While I was getting a key for the locker (which was $5) I got a Magical Moment and they gave me the key for free which was cool.  I left my camera in the bag so there are no pictures of the first night.

Kelly had gotten some books about Disney that serve as route guides and she read or at least looked through them before we went to the parks.  She had one in particular that was really good that gave you suggested routes and we used it throughout the trip to best utilize our time.  One of the good things about Kelly not liking to ride the coasters is she could use her card for fast passes for me.  This allowed us to get easy entry to twice as many rides.

Friday night we walked around and rode a bunch of rides.  I honestly can't remember which exact ones.  There were a few that were memorable for very different reasons.  No matter what someone tells you do not go on Stitch's Great Escape, even though we just walked on it is 5-10 minutes of my life I will never get back.  The other was more special for me than anyone else.  Monsters, Inc. Laugh Floor was really cool, it is mostly an animated crowd interaction.  At several points during the show they would show the crowd on the screen and ask questions or put captions up.  Before it started they showed Kelly on the screen and said "sitting next to stinky" I think.  Then several times throughout the show they would say something like "everyone is great except this guy" and show me on the screen.  They did it about a half dozen times throughout the show.  The last one I remember is Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin.  It is a moving light gun video game.  The first time Kelly got a better score and the second time I won.  We got a really good picture of us intensely  trying to shoot the bad guys.

Friday night was magic hours for people staying at resort hotels, which means it was open until 1 AM instead of 11 PM.  We got armbands for it but didn't really take advantage of the ability to stay that late since we wanted to get up early.

On Saturday morning the Animal Kingdom had magic hours which meant it opened for us at 8 AM instead of 9 AM.  According to the book it said to get there 30-45 min before opening.  As a result we got up about 6 AM and I got coffee as best I could for Kelly.  The cafe at the hotel had a cappuccino / espresso machine but didn't really have anyone who knew how to work it.  We got the park about 7:30 AM.  They started letting people in a few minutes before 8 AM.  They had a moving rope carried by Disney people to ensure there wasn't a stampede to get to the rides.  We first headed over to the Expedition Everest roller coaster.  Since it was early I could just walk on and we could get fast passes for later.  We then headed over to some of the kiddy like rides, even those Kelly wouldn't ride.  After the kids section we went to DINOSAUR.  This was probably the scariest ride Kelly rode and she wasn't too happy about it.

Next we went into the Tree of Life for It's Tough to be a Bug, which was a lot of fun.  We then spent a bunch of time walking some of the animal trails and seeing the wide array of animals.  We also rode the Kilimanjaro Safaris which is where a large amount of the pictures I took came from.  Lastly we went to Conservation Station.  There was a train ride to another section to get there.  There was a petting area and some other interactive activities.  We ran out of steam around 4 PM due to it being quite hot and humid.  We managed to see and do everything we wanted to do in that time, but we were really moving.  For all the pictures check out this set.

We headed back to the hotel.  We took showers and a nap.  Later in the evening we headed back over to the Magic Kingdom.  We tried to go to the rides we had missed the night before and walked around and saw stuff we had missed.  We remembered the camera and actually took some pictures this time.  The ones from this part of the trip are in this set.  We got trapped by the nightly parade as you can see in some of the pictures.

Sunday was Epcot day pretty much.  The pictures of the day are in this set.  I think there were Magic Hours at Epcot that morning meaning it opened at 8 AM instead of 9 AM for us.  Again we got up early and headed over to get there at opening.  We used a pre-determined path for the most part to try and optimize our visit.  I rode Test Track and Mission Space pretty quickly, both I would highly recommend.  We then headed over to The Land Pavilion.  In there I got Kelly to ride Soarin', which she wasn't to sure about but ended up enjoying.

We ended the morning in The Seas with Nemo & Friends Pavilion, which had some more animals to see.  I took a few pictures but most didn't really turn out.

My feet had been deteriorating over the first days and it was about this time I really started limping.  I had worn the wrong shoes at TechEd and messed my feet up and even after switching to better shoes I was getting worse and worse.  I was in pretty bad pain and became grumpy due to it.  Kelly finally convinced me to go back to hotel and try and deal with my feet a little after noon.   At hotel I got some flip flops to make sure my feet were no longer squished by shoes. Kelly bought some band-aids and other things to repair and protect feet.  You can see my feet later in the day after Kelly attempted to patch them here and here.

While we were at the hotel we took some pictures out our window of the animals that were roaming about.  We also took some pictures of the massive entry area for the hotel.  It was really pretty.  It was about the size of a football field and 3 stories high.  The pictures we took can be seen in this set.

After fixing up my feet and resting a bit we decided to head back to Epcot about 4 PM.  As were riding the bus to Epcot it started to rain (and lightning).  The bus driver thought it would just blow over in a few minutes so we got off the bus under a loading area with a roof but no walls to wait it out.  Within minutes the wind picked up and then hail started coming down.  Soon it was going almost sideways and hitting us even though were under 10-15 feet of roof.  The hail was as big as grapes at points and it was really starting to hurt.  We got on the next bus that came not caring where it was going.  We ended up in Port Orleans (second time for me).  Kelly and I were freezing so we went to the gift shop and bought a beach towel as a blanket of sorts.  There is a picture of us here as drowned rats.

After the rain finally ended (so much for blowing over in minutes) we got back to Epcot a little before 7 PM.  Our goal was to make it around the international lake shore and visit all the pavilions.  We stopped and saw a few shows, there aren't really any rides in this section.  As you can see from the pictures in this set we also took pictures along the way.  We pretty much made it and even managed to exit the park before everyone else after the nightly fireworks.  We got back on the bus and were back at the hotel by 10 PM.  We promptly passed out at that point after two and a half days of Disney running.

The next morning we got up and flew home.  We were able to see almost all of 3 of Disney's parks in the time we had, which is pretty good I think.  It could have been a bit better if my feet weren't destroyed and we didn't have the hail hurricane, but it was overall a lot of fun.  Next summer we will be going to Disney Land thanks to Kelly going to ALA there.  In case you missed it above all the pictures are in this set.

This spring I finally got around to building a new desktop.  The last time I had done any real upgrades to my desktop hardware wise was in late 2004.  I decided it was time to start building a new one in April / May.  I waited for some price cuts around that time and started ordering.  A bunch of pictures are here.  The machine I built is as follows:

Antec P180B Case (Although it seemed to have some of the features of P182)
Antec Phantom 500 Power Supply
ASUS P5B Deluxe (Originally bought Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 but it didn't have PCIE x4 slot)
Intel Core 2 Duo 6420 2.13 GHz 4 MB
Crucial 2x1 GB DDR2 PC2-6400
eVGA 8800 GTS 640 MB
LSI SAS 3041E-R SAS RAID
Seagate Cheetah 15K.5 73 GB SAS 15K RPM
Western Digital Raptor X 150 GB SATA 10K RPM
Lite-On LH-20A1H-186 DVD-RW
Plextor Premium CD-RW (From old machine)
Scythe S-Flex S-FDB (4 quiet fans)
Dell 2007WFP (Vertical widescreen)
Dell 2407WFP

Well with my 2nd Gen Mini dying I have once again committed sacrilege and offered monies to Steve Jobs. Just moments ago I have sent to production an engraved 3rd Gen Nano in stylish black to hopefully be delivered post haste. I am curious to see how much space a DVD in 320x200 takes up and how it will look. I held the new Nano at an Apple store and found it to be still smaller and lighter than my mini in all ways but yet having even more features. I wish they had stuck with the total aluminum enclosure of the Mini and 2^nd Gen Nano, but no they went with the shiny silver back again of the 1st Gen Nano and the iPod Classic.  I shall report the findings on this new player next week as I begin to use it.

2/18/2004 1^st Gen Mini 4 GB HD (stopped playing music, still works as 4 GB HD)
5/5/2005 2^nd Gen Mini 6 GB HD (Battery died and the hold switch stopped working reliably, may still work as HD)
9/13/2007 3^rd Gen Nano 8 GB NAND Flash

Apple has now gotten almost $750 dollars from me in 3.5 years, I feel dirty.  At least I didn't blow it all on an iPhone at launch, suckers.  Oh and did anyone else notice the passing of the iPod Hi-Fi, guess now one else liked it either.