Like virtually none of my peers, I was raised on John Wayne movies. Dear Old Dad is probably the Duke’s greatest fan. In the wee hours of the night, when I was just an mewling wet ball of need and remained inconsolable regardless of how many bottles, diapers or pacifiers I was presented with, Dear Old Dad turned on the TV and found John Wayne Presents: The War Movie. I was immediately calmed, so the story goes (I was kind of young at the time) and thus my status as a John Wayne Fan was cemented from an early age. I was raised on El Dorado, McLintock and The Comancheros. (Indeed, it is told that, when preparing to slide down a slide, my two year old self would bellow “Charge Mon-soor!” before riding down.)
When our first was born, those late inconsolable evenings were soothed in like fashion. North to Alaska, The Comancheros, Rio Bravo. These are movies that I soothed my daughter to sleep with when acid reflux made her cry.
If I wasn’t a fan of The Duke before, believe me I would be now.
In later years, I would go see westerns in the theatres. My father won tickets to the local premier of Unforgiven. When Tombstone came out, we were all over it; and I maintain to this day that Tombstone is the finest western ever made that didn’t have John Wayne in it. My father and I even went to see Wyatt Earp, which was Kevin Costner’s failed attempt to make a movie as awesome as Tombstone. (He knew he failed too—Tombstone was released by a small studio because Costner got the bigger studios to drop it so it wouldn’t provide so much competition).
So my history with the American Western goes way back. Way back before I was born, in fact. As you can imagine, the dearth of western based video games cuts me deeply. I’ll try just about anything with a cowboy hat on it (well, except Damnation. I still read reviews, after all.) I owned Outlaw on the Atari 2600. I’ve played Outlaws on the PC. I’ve played Mad Dog McCree in arcades. I’ve even owned Red Dead Revolver for the PS2. For the most part (Outlaw and Outlaws being two exceptions), they all disappointed.
I’m not sure why the Western is so hard to pull off in video games. I suspect it has something to do with the lack of variety in the environment. Designers of western games almost always fall back on the dusty, half-abandoned town with maybe a foray into a monument valley type environment. That’s a whole lot of brown, and there are only so many brothels/saloons/general stores a player is willing to tolerate.
The problem here is the games are almost always based on the works of Sergio Leone. Sure, we all love The Man with No Name and a Fistful of Dollars, but there isn’t a whole lot of stuff going on there, from an environment standpoint. The movies basically all use the same caricature of the American West as a backdrop. At the end of the day, that makes a serviceable demo, but not a full game.
An antidote might be to watch The Searchers. In that movie, the Duke’s quest to recover his stolen nieces spans snowy mountainous regions, desert flats, monument valley, and yes, the odd dusty town. It’s rare to see a pine tree; or indeed any kind of living tree at all; in a western game. Let alone a snowflake.
This is where Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood does something right. While the game spends a fair amount of time in dusty towns, the environments your characters will venture through include wheat farms, mining camps, mountainous regions, a monument-valley-esque region, and lush pine forests. At one point you even get to blow up a dam and ride down a river in a canoe whilst being pursued by American Aboriginals.
The enemies are likewise varied. A lot of western games shy away from injun fighting. Call of Juarez: BiB gets around the PC objections by having the whooping aboriginals motivated by being rivals to a tribe that you’re working with. You’ll also spend a little time fighting the war between the states; wearing grey, if you can believe it. The main characters are Confederate soldiers who desert to defend their family farm in Georgia as General Sherman makes his famous ride to the sea. The result of your desertion come back to haunt you years after Lee turned in his sword, and any qualms you have about shooting Billy Yanks should be salved by the fact you also get to shoot Johnny Rebs later in the game. Oh, and while you’re at it, you get to fight Mexican bandits.
So I think Call of Juarez does a serviceable job if cheesing off just about everybody, from a stereotype standpoint.
And while we’re on the topic of variety, I should mention the variety of weapons. In the game, you get to play as one of two brothers, each with his own style of combat. Ray, on the one hand, is brash and impetuous. He can dual wield revolvers, or hold a revolver in one hand and a stick of dynamite in the other, or use a long gun (rifle or shotgun). Ray’s brother, Thomas, takes a more measured approach. He only wields one weapon at a time, and while his brother might kick in a door and shoot everybody before they can stand up, he would rather find a good vantage point and pick the inhabitants of the room one by one. Be that with his revolver, his rifle, his throwing knife, or his bow. He also carries a lariat that can be used to scale buildings to get the drop on his foes. Throughout the game you’ll have the opportunity to replace the weapons in your inventory, either picking up new versions of what you already have, or buying better quality versions of them at a store. Weapons come in a variety of grades, from Rusty (not so good) to Superb (take out a hummingbird’s eye at thirty paces) and there are different versions of each. You have, for example, your standard revolver, your ranger (longer barrel, longer range) your quickshooter (lower accuracy, fast firing and reloading) your hybrid (sixshooter with a shotgun built in—and yes, they really made those) and your Derringer. For long guns you have your rifle, your sniper rifle (again, they did have them in those days) your shotgun and your sawed off shotgun.
Oh, and I should mention that you will have the opportunity to fire any and all of these weapons from horseback in the middle portion of the game. Horseback controls are handled rather like they were in Oblivion, only better. And if that means nothing to you, I don’t really have the patience to describe it better. (EDIT: Oh all right, Steering and movement are handled with one stick, looking is handled with the other so you can shoot the guy next to you without your horse trying to run through him.)
Also, you can ride your horse to death, so go easy on the spurs. You’ll rarely need to go anywhere at a full gallop.
The plot centers around three brothers: Ray, Thomas and William. William is a preacher who is trying unsuccessfully to save his brothers’ wayward souls. After their mother dies and General Sherman burns their family farm, Ray and Thomas vow to rebuild. But years later, not much progress has been made and the brothers are outlaws. They hear of a legend that tells of an ancient city buried underground and full of enough treasure to buy all of Georgia, let alone the family farm. So a prospecting they go, where Ray and Thomas share an uneasy truce regarding a woman. On the way they’ll fight bandits, aboriginals and their old commanding officer who refused to lay down his sword after the war and vowed to hang the deserters he believes cost the south the war.
I won’t spoil it more than that, but a lot of people get shot and/or blown up on the way.
The gameplay itself is your basic first person shooter. Nothing done wrong, but not a lot of standout moments. Unless you count the quickdraw boss battles. Which you really shouldn’t, because while they are interesting they aren’t all that fun. Basically, you and your foe circle each other, the camera stationed to keep your right hand and the revolver on your right hip in the foreground and your opponent in the background. With the left analog stick, you move your character’s right hand. When you hear a bell, move your hand to the revolver and shoot when the crosshair reticule moves over your opponent and turns red.
On paper it sounds good. In practice, your character’s hand moves too sluggishly and you’ll find yourself dying. A lot. Eventually you’ll catch a lucky break and take down your opponent, but this minigame really serves to break the illusion of your character as a western bad-a** outlaw.
Other than that, though, the game is a lot of fun. It’s unremarkable in a lot of ways, but the environments are well crafted, the hit detection is spot on, and all of the weapons feel exactly as powerful as they should given the technology of the era.
You won’t get the feeling you’re playing a John Wayne movie. But a game will never capture that, and I will beat anyone who tries it.
That includes you, Bethesda.
Yeah, I saw what you did with Dick Marcinko. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Wrapping up the decade.
So, 2010 is upon us. We just figured out how to refer to what year it was in shorthand (sadly, “oh 9” beat out “ought 9”) and now we have to figure out how to refer to the teen years of the current millennium.
My vote is for the “oh’s” to continue. So I christen the new year “Oh 10.”
A whole lot of crap went down, didn’t it? The United States suffered the biggest sneak attack since 1941, and today there sits in the white house a black president.
I wonder what science fiction writers will do now to indicate that the future is a bizarre, far flung place outside the realm of our experience? I'm going to go with Jewish lesbian.
But enough politics. This was a momentous decade for geek culture. We may not have flying cars, or crazy red-eyed computers that break and try to kill us (oh… wait.), but we got a lot of great stuff with in-jokes a plenty. So let’s have a look at what the first decade of 2000 brought The Geek.
1) Firefly and Serenity. Sure, it only lasted one season, but the affect on the geekiverse was massive. Joss Whedon made a space western with actual horses, and managed to remember that sound doesn’t travel in space.
2) And while we’re on the topic of Mr. Whedon, Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Weblog came out during a writers’ strike and completely blew our socks off. Plus, Ben Edlund finally got to use Bad Horse in something. Everybody wins!
3) Felicia Day. The Guild, Dr. Horrible, and Sears all discovered Ms. Day at the same time. ‘Nuff said.
4) Comic Book Movies. The first decade of the 21st century was very good to comic book fans. We got a watchable Superman movie, two good Spiderman movies and a third one that’s watchable if you skip the ending, two good X-men movies, two solid Incredible Hulk movies, two watchable Hellboy (of all franchises) movies, a decent Ghost Rider movie, and a really good Iron Man movie, two excellent Batman reboots and two Frank Miller originals in Sin City and Thermopylae. If you like comic book movies, this has been a good decade.
5) Speaking of Movies, I simply cannot let the passage of the Lord of the Rings movies go buy uncommented. Peter Jackson took a rich and complex world and brought it to the silver screen in a way that, honestly, I didn’t think possible. I went to see the first movie fully expecting it to stink, but it didn’t. Not only didn’t it stink, it was awesome. The movie trilogy is proof that a good book-to-film translation is possible; it just takes someone who’s invested in the core material. On behalf of geeks everywhere, I must say: thank you, Mr. Jackson.
6) Television shows. In the last ten years there has been a surprising amount of good television. House M.D., Monk, Chuck, Mythbusters, the aforementioned Firefly. And that’s just the stuff I’ve watched. The last ten years have also seen the establishment of the “Reality Show” which, for good or for ill, is now part of the cultural landscape. Or wasteland, depending upon your perspective.
7) Video Games. This has been the Mother Lode of all decades. Nostalgia for the 1990s (aka: the decade of a thousand side-scrolling-platformers) notwithstanding, let’s just consider what this decade has brought us. First off, we’ve seen EA go from being a blight on the industry to the friend of gamers, while Activision has won the title of corporate succubus and convenient target for corporate haterade in the gaming forum community. We’ve seen the creation of new and phenomenal intellectual properties (Bioshock, Mirror’s Edge, Mass Effect, Far Cry, God Hand, God of War, Sins of a Solar Empire, Dead Space, Portal, the Pixeljunk series, Katamari Damacy) and the competent and loving continuation of old franchises (New Super Mario Brothers, Sam and Max, Fallout 3, Tekken 4 and 5, Half Life 2, Team Fortress 2, GTA 3, all the new Zelda and Metroid games) and some truly excellent uses of existing IPs from other media (Batman: Arkham Asylum, Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, Spiderman 2, Ghostbusters). This decade has shown us that the independent developer can do wonderful things (Sins of a Solar Empire, Dwarf Fortress, Runman, Audiosurf). We’ve seen the resurrection of forgotten genres with the return of Sam and Max and the Monkey Island reboot. We’ve seen the merging of multiple genres, mostly with RPGs (Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, Borderlands) but also with RTS games (Brutal Legend). We’ve learned that it’s possible to have games where you can go anywhere and do almost anything (GTA3, Red Faction: Guerilla, Far Cry 2 and pretty much every open world game out there). We’ve even become rock stars in the comfort of our own living rooms (Guitar Hero and Rock Band). And if that weren’t enough, we’ve learned to play games on two screens (DS), with a stylus (DS, iPhone) and they’ve finally tapped the potential of the Power Glove… sorta (Wii). Sadly, not all the news has been good. We’ve also learned that console games can and will need patches, and the DRM isn’t just something PC gamers have to deal with. We’ve also learned that most of the people you’ll meet playing online console games are not the sort of people you want to, you know, meet. Taken as a whole, though, a positive decade.
8) Three Words: World Of Warcraft. This one is so big it deserves its own slot in the list. Since 2004, WoW has amassed millions of subscribers, making the MMORPG such a staple of gaming that nobody even calls them MMORPGs. They’re just MMOs. In fact, Wow has become so big that I am willing to bet that you’re surprised it only came out in 2004. Fess up: you thought it was older than that, didn’t you?
9) Lemon Demon. So let’s follow up something that everyone has heard of with something that almost nobody has heard of. Neil Cicerega started his musical career in 2003 under the name Trapezoid. Following some dustup over copyright infringement and who came first, he changed the name of his one-man band to Lemon Demon. Boasting influence from multiple sources, notably among them They Might Be Giants, I remain convinced that young Mr. Cicerega is a genius. An actual, “I could get into Mensa if I wanted to” genius. I have no proof, but I would gladly bet money on it. His lyrics are delightfully clever and he has a bizarre knack for poking fun at things in such a way that he really shouldn’t be insightful enough to do. The song “White Bread Boyfriend” is a prime example—nobody who began his musical career in high school should be able to write something that bitingly satirical. Likewise “Geeks in Love,” which I suggest you Google immediately, reveals an old soul while still retaining a healthy dollop of whimsy. And while you’re Googling, look up “Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny.” You won’t regret it.
10) Schlock Mercenary. And speaking of obscure things that cropped up this decade, Schlock Mercenary started up in 2001 and hasn’t missed an update since. I’ve already written about that, however, and you should go read my earlier thoughts on the webcomic.
11) And do you think I could possibly forget to mention that the 4th edition of Dungeons and Dragons was released in this decade? I have a copy of the books (Player’s guide, DM’s Guide and Monster Manual) sitting in my bookshelf awaiting the day when my daughter and son are old enough to participate in a quest. Having no experience with the previous editions, I can’t tell you what’s different. What I do know is that, from a beginner’s perspective, 4th edition is very accessible, and the books are just a good read even if you’re not planning on playing anytime soon.
And that’s just a taste of what happened back in the first decade of the 21st century. Imagine what I could have written if I’d have taken the time to do any research at all!
Of course, the most important thing that happened in this decade, from the perspective of the author, is finding, marrying, having children and buying a house with The Missus. We met in 2003 thanks to the power of the internet, and have been inseparable pretty much ever since. We got married in the fall of 2005 wearing Converse all-stars (mine were formal black, hers were pink). Our first child was born in 2007, and our second was born in 2009. Who knows what wonders the next two years may bring us? I look forward to sharing that adventure, and the rest of my days, with her.
That two geeks from different states can find each other, fall in love, get married, start a family and put down roots in the space of ten years is truly the wonder of the decade.
My vote is for the “oh’s” to continue. So I christen the new year “Oh 10.”
A whole lot of crap went down, didn’t it? The United States suffered the biggest sneak attack since 1941, and today there sits in the white house a black president.
I wonder what science fiction writers will do now to indicate that the future is a bizarre, far flung place outside the realm of our experience? I'm going to go with Jewish lesbian.
But enough politics. This was a momentous decade for geek culture. We may not have flying cars, or crazy red-eyed computers that break and try to kill us (oh… wait.), but we got a lot of great stuff with in-jokes a plenty. So let’s have a look at what the first decade of 2000 brought The Geek.
1) Firefly and Serenity. Sure, it only lasted one season, but the affect on the geekiverse was massive. Joss Whedon made a space western with actual horses, and managed to remember that sound doesn’t travel in space.
2) And while we’re on the topic of Mr. Whedon, Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Weblog came out during a writers’ strike and completely blew our socks off. Plus, Ben Edlund finally got to use Bad Horse in something. Everybody wins!
3) Felicia Day. The Guild, Dr. Horrible, and Sears all discovered Ms. Day at the same time. ‘Nuff said.
4) Comic Book Movies. The first decade of the 21st century was very good to comic book fans. We got a watchable Superman movie, two good Spiderman movies and a third one that’s watchable if you skip the ending, two good X-men movies, two solid Incredible Hulk movies, two watchable Hellboy (of all franchises) movies, a decent Ghost Rider movie, and a really good Iron Man movie, two excellent Batman reboots and two Frank Miller originals in Sin City and Thermopylae. If you like comic book movies, this has been a good decade.
5) Speaking of Movies, I simply cannot let the passage of the Lord of the Rings movies go buy uncommented. Peter Jackson took a rich and complex world and brought it to the silver screen in a way that, honestly, I didn’t think possible. I went to see the first movie fully expecting it to stink, but it didn’t. Not only didn’t it stink, it was awesome. The movie trilogy is proof that a good book-to-film translation is possible; it just takes someone who’s invested in the core material. On behalf of geeks everywhere, I must say: thank you, Mr. Jackson.
6) Television shows. In the last ten years there has been a surprising amount of good television. House M.D., Monk, Chuck, Mythbusters, the aforementioned Firefly. And that’s just the stuff I’ve watched. The last ten years have also seen the establishment of the “Reality Show” which, for good or for ill, is now part of the cultural landscape. Or wasteland, depending upon your perspective.
7) Video Games. This has been the Mother Lode of all decades. Nostalgia for the 1990s (aka: the decade of a thousand side-scrolling-platformers) notwithstanding, let’s just consider what this decade has brought us. First off, we’ve seen EA go from being a blight on the industry to the friend of gamers, while Activision has won the title of corporate succubus and convenient target for corporate haterade in the gaming forum community. We’ve seen the creation of new and phenomenal intellectual properties (Bioshock, Mirror’s Edge, Mass Effect, Far Cry, God Hand, God of War, Sins of a Solar Empire, Dead Space, Portal, the Pixeljunk series, Katamari Damacy) and the competent and loving continuation of old franchises (New Super Mario Brothers, Sam and Max, Fallout 3, Tekken 4 and 5, Half Life 2, Team Fortress 2, GTA 3, all the new Zelda and Metroid games) and some truly excellent uses of existing IPs from other media (Batman: Arkham Asylum, Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, Spiderman 2, Ghostbusters). This decade has shown us that the independent developer can do wonderful things (Sins of a Solar Empire, Dwarf Fortress, Runman, Audiosurf). We’ve seen the resurrection of forgotten genres with the return of Sam and Max and the Monkey Island reboot. We’ve seen the merging of multiple genres, mostly with RPGs (Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, Borderlands) but also with RTS games (Brutal Legend). We’ve learned that it’s possible to have games where you can go anywhere and do almost anything (GTA3, Red Faction: Guerilla, Far Cry 2 and pretty much every open world game out there). We’ve even become rock stars in the comfort of our own living rooms (Guitar Hero and Rock Band). And if that weren’t enough, we’ve learned to play games on two screens (DS), with a stylus (DS, iPhone) and they’ve finally tapped the potential of the Power Glove… sorta (Wii). Sadly, not all the news has been good. We’ve also learned that console games can and will need patches, and the DRM isn’t just something PC gamers have to deal with. We’ve also learned that most of the people you’ll meet playing online console games are not the sort of people you want to, you know, meet. Taken as a whole, though, a positive decade.
8) Three Words: World Of Warcraft. This one is so big it deserves its own slot in the list. Since 2004, WoW has amassed millions of subscribers, making the MMORPG such a staple of gaming that nobody even calls them MMORPGs. They’re just MMOs. In fact, Wow has become so big that I am willing to bet that you’re surprised it only came out in 2004. Fess up: you thought it was older than that, didn’t you?
9) Lemon Demon. So let’s follow up something that everyone has heard of with something that almost nobody has heard of. Neil Cicerega started his musical career in 2003 under the name Trapezoid. Following some dustup over copyright infringement and who came first, he changed the name of his one-man band to Lemon Demon. Boasting influence from multiple sources, notably among them They Might Be Giants, I remain convinced that young Mr. Cicerega is a genius. An actual, “I could get into Mensa if I wanted to” genius. I have no proof, but I would gladly bet money on it. His lyrics are delightfully clever and he has a bizarre knack for poking fun at things in such a way that he really shouldn’t be insightful enough to do. The song “White Bread Boyfriend” is a prime example—nobody who began his musical career in high school should be able to write something that bitingly satirical. Likewise “Geeks in Love,” which I suggest you Google immediately, reveals an old soul while still retaining a healthy dollop of whimsy. And while you’re Googling, look up “Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny.” You won’t regret it.
10) Schlock Mercenary. And speaking of obscure things that cropped up this decade, Schlock Mercenary started up in 2001 and hasn’t missed an update since. I’ve already written about that, however, and you should go read my earlier thoughts on the webcomic.
11) And do you think I could possibly forget to mention that the 4th edition of Dungeons and Dragons was released in this decade? I have a copy of the books (Player’s guide, DM’s Guide and Monster Manual) sitting in my bookshelf awaiting the day when my daughter and son are old enough to participate in a quest. Having no experience with the previous editions, I can’t tell you what’s different. What I do know is that, from a beginner’s perspective, 4th edition is very accessible, and the books are just a good read even if you’re not planning on playing anytime soon.
And that’s just a taste of what happened back in the first decade of the 21st century. Imagine what I could have written if I’d have taken the time to do any research at all!
Of course, the most important thing that happened in this decade, from the perspective of the author, is finding, marrying, having children and buying a house with The Missus. We met in 2003 thanks to the power of the internet, and have been inseparable pretty much ever since. We got married in the fall of 2005 wearing Converse all-stars (mine were formal black, hers were pink). Our first child was born in 2007, and our second was born in 2009. Who knows what wonders the next two years may bring us? I look forward to sharing that adventure, and the rest of my days, with her.
That two geeks from different states can find each other, fall in love, get married, start a family and put down roots in the space of ten years is truly the wonder of the decade.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
The Christmas Post
Author’s Note: Yes, I realize this post should have happened on the 23rd. The problem was sheer absent mindedness. I had queued up some posts to make sure that the blog was updated without interruption, not realizing that the queue overlapped Christmas. So instead of a post about Christmas, you got a post about Felicia Day.
And you’re complaining?
The hallway is dim in the early morning light. It’s just a little past seven in the morning, and the forecast called for rain. There’s a strange flickering in the living room. It’s colorful, but quiet and regular. Not at all like the glow of the usual morning cartoons.
She steps out of her room, a little bleary but smiling ear to ear. She doesn’t know it’s Christmas, she just knows that she’s awake and both Mommy and Daddy are in their pajamas, which means Daddy is staying home all day. This morning is a little unusual, because Mommy changed her in her room instead of the living room where the diapers are kept. But that’s okay, because it means she can go straight for the kitchen for breakfast, which she always tries to do but is always cut off by one parent or the other to change the diaper she’d been wearing all night.
Breakfast is pancakes, bananas and Reese’s peanut butter cup cereal. Her favorite. She eats each course in order, happy to finally be sitting at the table like a big girl instead of her high chair. As she eats, she looks across the table at her infant brother, who Daddy is feeding. He’s looking at Daddy, watching Daddy eat his own breakfast and wondering why everyone gets to eat brown gooey things but him.
He is, after all, almost three months old. He could totally handle cinnamon rolls.
After the last Reesey puff is deliberately crunched and swallowed, Daddy brushes her teeth and says something about going to the living room.
Who is this “Santa” and why should she care what he brought?
She holds Mommy’s hand as she walks down the hall she’s walked dozens of times before. Breakfast is over, that means it’s time for cartoons. The strange string of festive lights gives her pause, and she hesitates at the threshold. On the shelf sits a tiny tree, no more than a foot high, which was all that Mommy and Daddy had time to unpack and decorate. It wasn’t there when she went to bed.
The seven foot artificial tree sits sullenly in the basement, biding his time. Next year, he tells himself. Next year will be mine.
With some mild coaxing, she steps into the living room, and she sees it. Under the tree sit a menagerie of Fisher Price Little People animals, along with a purple SUV, a farm and a Noah’s Ark. If she remembers that she was given them when she was too young for them, and they were then packed away for a year, she doesn’t let on. Instead she sets upon them, smiling even broader than before, if that’s possible. She picks up each individual figure, regards it, and puts it into a line that has an order only she understands.
Then comes the box of puzzles. Another gift from last Christmas, and she’s thrilled to see them. She enlists Daddy’s help to slide the puzzles out, and she immediately takes out all the pieces, puts them in a pile on the floor, and then gets to putting them back into the puzzles.
Puzzles have ever been her favorite.
Then comes the truly new. Sliceable fruits and vegetables held together with Velcro ™. Mommy and Daddy palmed the little wooden knife that comes with the set, which is technically for an older child, but she doesn’t notice or care. She takes apart each item and lines the pieces up.
Last, comes the wrapped presents. Four large boxes, each part of a set, containing playsets of licensed PBS characters from the show It’s A Big Big World. There’s Snook’s treehouse, Madge’s library, Smooch and Winslow’s bedroom and Birdette’s nest. Mommy struggles with the packaging, muttering unpleasant things about the lineage of whoever thought a plastic treehouse needed eleven billion twist ties.
Seriously, it’s a child’s toy with maybe three moving parts, not a working model of a hadron supercollider.
She waits impatiently, but is tempered by the other goodies spread out under the miniature tree. Finally Mommy frees the molded Snook figure, and hands it to her. She’s thrilled.
While she’s playing with her bounty, Mommy and Daddy present a few gifts to her infant brother. He gets a Bumbo chair, which seems to amuse him and alarm him at the same time. It also enrages him if he’s left in it for too long, but such is the life of a three month old. He also is given an Ugly Doll (Jeero), and it’s the first thing he ever grabs and snuggles with his own hands. Well, he grabs it and smashes it into his face, which sort of looks like snuggling provided you spot him to make sure he hasn’t blocked off all the air to his face.
Mommy and Daddy then exchange gifts with each other. Daddy gives Mommy the new Professor Layton game for the DS. Mommy gives Daddy the latest Schlock Mercenary book.
It’s a light Christmas, but she doesn’t know that yet. All she knows is the living room is awash in fun stuff, and that Mommy and Daddy are both home to play with her. She couldn’t be happier.
After the presents are unwrapped and the paper bagged up and set aside, Mommy and Daddy put in some DVDs. They’re not the usual DVDs. The first one involves an orange cat that eats a lot. She likes him. The second features a kid with a big round head who looks a lot like Caillou, but isn’t as annoying or boring and has a fun dog. One has a kid in glasses who wants a rifle for Christmas. The rifle bears a striking resemblance to one that Grandpa brought with him to give to her when she was first born, but she doesn’t know that yet. Another one involves a tall man in yellow tights getting hit by cars and singing a lot. He’s funny. Later, she falls asleep on the couch while Mommy shows Daddy “It’s A Wonderful Life” for the first time ever.
Yes, really. Daddy is surprised to find that he likes it, even if he’s disappointed that Potter didn’t get his.
That night, after she toddles off to bed, Mommy and Daddy open the presents that they bought themselves with money they’d received earlier. Mommy gets a Pokemon Training Deck, which has enough cards to play a short game with half a deck, or to build a beginner’s deck. Mommy and Daddy try a game, in which they have some fun and manage to misinterpret enough of the rules that they’ll have to start from scratch next time they play.
Daddy gets Batman Arkham Asylum for the PS3. After they play Pokemon, Daddy fires up the PS3 and installs the downloaded content he’s had on his hard drive for months in anticipation of getting this game. It’s better than the demo.
The next day, Mommy leaves the house in the morning to do some grocery shopping and comes back with two additional theme decks for Pokemon, as well as a number of booster packs. In addition, she buys Katamari Forever and Eat Lead; The Return of Matt Hazard for the PS3 as well as Cooking Mama 3 for the DS, which Mommy didn’t even know was out. This finishes off the Christmas money they each got this year, and gives them both a queue of games that should last them for months given how little time there is for gaming with a toddler and an infant.
Mommy and Daddy are big geeks, but so far she doesn’t care. She’s just happy that everybody’s home.
Later that afternoon, she is asleep and Daddy gets a phone call from Grandma and Grandpa. They won’t be able to visit as they had planned, because Grandpa has a cold and the weather is going to make the three hour drive too difficult. Grandma and Grandpa tell Mommy and Daddy to go ahead and have a second Christmas Morning without them. While she sleeps, Mommy goes to the basement and gets the presents from Grandma and Grandpa.
When she wakes up, the room is full of colorful boxes again. She’s starting to get what this means. Grandma and Grandpa got her books. Her favorite thing in the world, except for puzzles, and maybe even above them. Two board books that appear to be made of MDF (Grandma and Grandpa are no fools), a lift-the-flap book, and a bundle of Sesame Street “magazines.” The next morning, on getting out of bed, she will immediately make for the living room couch and look at the magazines one at a time.
Mommy and Daddy got mostly clothes, which they seem to like quite a lot but she can’t imagine why. She’ll understand when she’s older and has to pay for her own clothes, but that’s a long ways off.
And that’s it for Christmas this year. She doesn’t even know the word yet, but next year she will.
I’m already looking forward to it.
And you’re complaining?
The hallway is dim in the early morning light. It’s just a little past seven in the morning, and the forecast called for rain. There’s a strange flickering in the living room. It’s colorful, but quiet and regular. Not at all like the glow of the usual morning cartoons.
She steps out of her room, a little bleary but smiling ear to ear. She doesn’t know it’s Christmas, she just knows that she’s awake and both Mommy and Daddy are in their pajamas, which means Daddy is staying home all day. This morning is a little unusual, because Mommy changed her in her room instead of the living room where the diapers are kept. But that’s okay, because it means she can go straight for the kitchen for breakfast, which she always tries to do but is always cut off by one parent or the other to change the diaper she’d been wearing all night.
Breakfast is pancakes, bananas and Reese’s peanut butter cup cereal. Her favorite. She eats each course in order, happy to finally be sitting at the table like a big girl instead of her high chair. As she eats, she looks across the table at her infant brother, who Daddy is feeding. He’s looking at Daddy, watching Daddy eat his own breakfast and wondering why everyone gets to eat brown gooey things but him.
He is, after all, almost three months old. He could totally handle cinnamon rolls.
After the last Reesey puff is deliberately crunched and swallowed, Daddy brushes her teeth and says something about going to the living room.
Who is this “Santa” and why should she care what he brought?
She holds Mommy’s hand as she walks down the hall she’s walked dozens of times before. Breakfast is over, that means it’s time for cartoons. The strange string of festive lights gives her pause, and she hesitates at the threshold. On the shelf sits a tiny tree, no more than a foot high, which was all that Mommy and Daddy had time to unpack and decorate. It wasn’t there when she went to bed.
The seven foot artificial tree sits sullenly in the basement, biding his time. Next year, he tells himself. Next year will be mine.
With some mild coaxing, she steps into the living room, and she sees it. Under the tree sit a menagerie of Fisher Price Little People animals, along with a purple SUV, a farm and a Noah’s Ark. If she remembers that she was given them when she was too young for them, and they were then packed away for a year, she doesn’t let on. Instead she sets upon them, smiling even broader than before, if that’s possible. She picks up each individual figure, regards it, and puts it into a line that has an order only she understands.
Then comes the box of puzzles. Another gift from last Christmas, and she’s thrilled to see them. She enlists Daddy’s help to slide the puzzles out, and she immediately takes out all the pieces, puts them in a pile on the floor, and then gets to putting them back into the puzzles.
Puzzles have ever been her favorite.
Then comes the truly new. Sliceable fruits and vegetables held together with Velcro ™. Mommy and Daddy palmed the little wooden knife that comes with the set, which is technically for an older child, but she doesn’t notice or care. She takes apart each item and lines the pieces up.
Last, comes the wrapped presents. Four large boxes, each part of a set, containing playsets of licensed PBS characters from the show It’s A Big Big World. There’s Snook’s treehouse, Madge’s library, Smooch and Winslow’s bedroom and Birdette’s nest. Mommy struggles with the packaging, muttering unpleasant things about the lineage of whoever thought a plastic treehouse needed eleven billion twist ties.
Seriously, it’s a child’s toy with maybe three moving parts, not a working model of a hadron supercollider.
She waits impatiently, but is tempered by the other goodies spread out under the miniature tree. Finally Mommy frees the molded Snook figure, and hands it to her. She’s thrilled.
While she’s playing with her bounty, Mommy and Daddy present a few gifts to her infant brother. He gets a Bumbo chair, which seems to amuse him and alarm him at the same time. It also enrages him if he’s left in it for too long, but such is the life of a three month old. He also is given an Ugly Doll (Jeero), and it’s the first thing he ever grabs and snuggles with his own hands. Well, he grabs it and smashes it into his face, which sort of looks like snuggling provided you spot him to make sure he hasn’t blocked off all the air to his face.
Mommy and Daddy then exchange gifts with each other. Daddy gives Mommy the new Professor Layton game for the DS. Mommy gives Daddy the latest Schlock Mercenary book.
It’s a light Christmas, but she doesn’t know that yet. All she knows is the living room is awash in fun stuff, and that Mommy and Daddy are both home to play with her. She couldn’t be happier.
After the presents are unwrapped and the paper bagged up and set aside, Mommy and Daddy put in some DVDs. They’re not the usual DVDs. The first one involves an orange cat that eats a lot. She likes him. The second features a kid with a big round head who looks a lot like Caillou, but isn’t as annoying or boring and has a fun dog. One has a kid in glasses who wants a rifle for Christmas. The rifle bears a striking resemblance to one that Grandpa brought with him to give to her when she was first born, but she doesn’t know that yet. Another one involves a tall man in yellow tights getting hit by cars and singing a lot. He’s funny. Later, she falls asleep on the couch while Mommy shows Daddy “It’s A Wonderful Life” for the first time ever.
Yes, really. Daddy is surprised to find that he likes it, even if he’s disappointed that Potter didn’t get his.
That night, after she toddles off to bed, Mommy and Daddy open the presents that they bought themselves with money they’d received earlier. Mommy gets a Pokemon Training Deck, which has enough cards to play a short game with half a deck, or to build a beginner’s deck. Mommy and Daddy try a game, in which they have some fun and manage to misinterpret enough of the rules that they’ll have to start from scratch next time they play.
Daddy gets Batman Arkham Asylum for the PS3. After they play Pokemon, Daddy fires up the PS3 and installs the downloaded content he’s had on his hard drive for months in anticipation of getting this game. It’s better than the demo.
The next day, Mommy leaves the house in the morning to do some grocery shopping and comes back with two additional theme decks for Pokemon, as well as a number of booster packs. In addition, she buys Katamari Forever and Eat Lead; The Return of Matt Hazard for the PS3 as well as Cooking Mama 3 for the DS, which Mommy didn’t even know was out. This finishes off the Christmas money they each got this year, and gives them both a queue of games that should last them for months given how little time there is for gaming with a toddler and an infant.
Mommy and Daddy are big geeks, but so far she doesn’t care. She’s just happy that everybody’s home.
Later that afternoon, she is asleep and Daddy gets a phone call from Grandma and Grandpa. They won’t be able to visit as they had planned, because Grandpa has a cold and the weather is going to make the three hour drive too difficult. Grandma and Grandpa tell Mommy and Daddy to go ahead and have a second Christmas Morning without them. While she sleeps, Mommy goes to the basement and gets the presents from Grandma and Grandpa.
When she wakes up, the room is full of colorful boxes again. She’s starting to get what this means. Grandma and Grandpa got her books. Her favorite thing in the world, except for puzzles, and maybe even above them. Two board books that appear to be made of MDF (Grandma and Grandpa are no fools), a lift-the-flap book, and a bundle of Sesame Street “magazines.” The next morning, on getting out of bed, she will immediately make for the living room couch and look at the magazines one at a time.
Mommy and Daddy got mostly clothes, which they seem to like quite a lot but she can’t imagine why. She’ll understand when she’s older and has to pay for her own clothes, but that’s a long ways off.
And that’s it for Christmas this year. She doesn’t even know the word yet, but next year she will.
I’m already looking forward to it.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
World of EverHammer
Let me preface this by stating that I have never played World of Warcraft, Everquest, Lord of the Rings Online, Warhammer Online or Maple Story.
I’ll pause while those of you who know what I’m talking about recover from having thrown up in your mouths at that last juxtaposition.
Back? Good. I tried FreeRealms for approximately two hours in total and didn’t see the appeal. My wife and I played around with Toontown Online for about as long as it took to realize that there wasn’t much to do if you weren’t willing to upgrade to a paid membership. I have even, I’m ashamed to admit, installed Second Life on my laptop before I remembered that Second Life was developed as a kind of honey trap for griefers and perverts to keep them from intruding on real games.
So my MMO experience is essentially nil. I know enough of the jargon to fake my way through a conversation with someone who has a WOW subscription. (“So, how about those instances, eh? Those goldfarmers sure stink.)
So I’m not what you could call the target market for Felicia Day’s web show The Guild.
If you haven’t heard of Felicia Day, you have no business reading a geek-centric blog. I bid you good day sir.
If you haven’t heard of The Guild, I couldn’t say I’d blame you. The only reason I heard about it was because “Julian” Rabbit “Murdoch” interviewed Felicia Day in the aftermath of the googlebomb that Joss Whedon threw at us with Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Weblog. They discussed this webshow that she’d been producing, which was how Whedon found her to fill the role of Penny in HMDSAW.
The Guild is a show about a group of highly dysfunctional people who are members of a guild in a Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game that bears a striking, if not actionable, resemblance to World of Warcraft. The group is a cross section of the kinds of people who get obsessed with MMOs: There’s your fussy, 40 year old loser, your snarky power leveler, your faux confident teenager, your sheltered late bloomer, your bad mother and your mousy redhead with self esteem issues. Apart, they’re a bunch of losers without friends. Together, they’re a bunch of losers without friends known as the Knights of Good.
The drama of the show stems from the fact that a catalyzing event thrust the nature of their relationships with each other into meatspace. Not one of them knows how to deal with people in the real world, though each of them fails to deal with people in their own way. Vork, for example, is a shutin while Tinkerballa is a user. Their interactions with each other are the reason you want to keep watching.
Felicia Day writes the show, and it’s clear that there’s a little bit of Codex in her. She’s clearly had dealings with all of the characters she’s created, though I’m sure (I hope?) the characters on the show are exaggerated for comic effect. (If Clara is based on a real person, someone should call child services immediately.)
As I said, I’m not the target market for the show. To me, Aggro is something farmers do and a mob is something that involves Marlon Brando and Italian American stereotypes. But the show has appeal to the wider geek market; and not just because Felicia Day has become kind of a nerd sex symbol (Sure, she’s attainable. Just not by you.) My wife, for example, knows less about MMORPGs than I do, and my lack of EXP with the genre is clearly evidenced by the fact that I’m the only person who still appends the RPG to the MMO when writing about them. She has become hooked on the show, and is eagerly awaiting the next free episode drop.
And there’s a bit of a rub. Having devoured the last two seasons and been consistently pleased with the writing, I’m not entirely sure I like where the season 3 storyline is going. This season’s Big Boss, the Axis of Anarchy, just makes me want to put my fist through a wall every time I see them. From the moment they cut in front of the KOG at Gamestop, I wanted to personally curb stomp every last one of them.
Maybe games do make you violent. Or maybe it’s just that I was bullied as a kid and have less than zero tolerance for bullies. I don’t just want them stopped; I want them obliterated and their lines striken from the face of the earth. (Let that be a warning to anyone harassing my son or daughter ten years from now.)
And that was my reaction to them after just the first episode. Their transgressions have only escalated in the ensuing episodes. My wife and I have seen up through Episode 7 (Coping and stuff), and with so few episodes left in the season I am concerned. To date, Felicia Day’s writing has shown none of the trappings of the Sci-Fi channel nihilism that insists on putting sympathetic characters through the nine circles of hell only to flush them down Lucifer’s toilet to live in a kind of sub-hell where all demon offal coagulates to form the tenth through eighteenth circles of hell . However, I fail to see how sufficient justice can be rendered to the Axis of Anarchy to satisfy me. To simply destroy their status as a guild would be inadequate. The Knights of Good would have to take everything they hold dear, kill them, take a dump on everything they held dear, and have the befouled items delivered via singing telegram to the grieving families during the funeral. Then the harm the Axis of Anarchy has rendered unto the Knights of Good and countless other fictional characters in the fictional history of the AoA might begin to be atoned for.
I don’t think the Knights of Good have it in them. My lone hope is Tinkerballa.
UPDATE
Okay, so we watched the rest of the season. I won't spoil the ending, but I suppose it worked out okay.
No, the KoG didn't kill the AoA, take a dump on their computers, then send their computers to the funeral via singing telegram, but I didn't really expect that anyway.
I eagerly await season four, and I'm putting season 1 and 2 on DVD in my Amazon cart to be saved for until I have spare money to buy frivolous things (owning a new house is expensive)
I’ll pause while those of you who know what I’m talking about recover from having thrown up in your mouths at that last juxtaposition.
Back? Good. I tried FreeRealms for approximately two hours in total and didn’t see the appeal. My wife and I played around with Toontown Online for about as long as it took to realize that there wasn’t much to do if you weren’t willing to upgrade to a paid membership. I have even, I’m ashamed to admit, installed Second Life on my laptop before I remembered that Second Life was developed as a kind of honey trap for griefers and perverts to keep them from intruding on real games.
So my MMO experience is essentially nil. I know enough of the jargon to fake my way through a conversation with someone who has a WOW subscription. (“So, how about those instances, eh? Those goldfarmers sure stink.)
So I’m not what you could call the target market for Felicia Day’s web show The Guild.
If you haven’t heard of Felicia Day, you have no business reading a geek-centric blog. I bid you good day sir.
If you haven’t heard of The Guild, I couldn’t say I’d blame you. The only reason I heard about it was because “Julian” Rabbit “Murdoch” interviewed Felicia Day in the aftermath of the googlebomb that Joss Whedon threw at us with Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Weblog. They discussed this webshow that she’d been producing, which was how Whedon found her to fill the role of Penny in HMDSAW.
The Guild is a show about a group of highly dysfunctional people who are members of a guild in a Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game that bears a striking, if not actionable, resemblance to World of Warcraft. The group is a cross section of the kinds of people who get obsessed with MMOs: There’s your fussy, 40 year old loser, your snarky power leveler, your faux confident teenager, your sheltered late bloomer, your bad mother and your mousy redhead with self esteem issues. Apart, they’re a bunch of losers without friends. Together, they’re a bunch of losers without friends known as the Knights of Good.
The drama of the show stems from the fact that a catalyzing event thrust the nature of their relationships with each other into meatspace. Not one of them knows how to deal with people in the real world, though each of them fails to deal with people in their own way. Vork, for example, is a shutin while Tinkerballa is a user. Their interactions with each other are the reason you want to keep watching.
Felicia Day writes the show, and it’s clear that there’s a little bit of Codex in her. She’s clearly had dealings with all of the characters she’s created, though I’m sure (I hope?) the characters on the show are exaggerated for comic effect. (If Clara is based on a real person, someone should call child services immediately.)
As I said, I’m not the target market for the show. To me, Aggro is something farmers do and a mob is something that involves Marlon Brando and Italian American stereotypes. But the show has appeal to the wider geek market; and not just because Felicia Day has become kind of a nerd sex symbol (Sure, she’s attainable. Just not by you.) My wife, for example, knows less about MMORPGs than I do, and my lack of EXP with the genre is clearly evidenced by the fact that I’m the only person who still appends the RPG to the MMO when writing about them. She has become hooked on the show, and is eagerly awaiting the next free episode drop.
And there’s a bit of a rub. Having devoured the last two seasons and been consistently pleased with the writing, I’m not entirely sure I like where the season 3 storyline is going. This season’s Big Boss, the Axis of Anarchy, just makes me want to put my fist through a wall every time I see them. From the moment they cut in front of the KOG at Gamestop, I wanted to personally curb stomp every last one of them.
Maybe games do make you violent. Or maybe it’s just that I was bullied as a kid and have less than zero tolerance for bullies. I don’t just want them stopped; I want them obliterated and their lines striken from the face of the earth. (Let that be a warning to anyone harassing my son or daughter ten years from now.)
And that was my reaction to them after just the first episode. Their transgressions have only escalated in the ensuing episodes. My wife and I have seen up through Episode 7 (Coping and stuff), and with so few episodes left in the season I am concerned. To date, Felicia Day’s writing has shown none of the trappings of the Sci-Fi channel nihilism that insists on putting sympathetic characters through the nine circles of hell only to flush them down Lucifer’s toilet to live in a kind of sub-hell where all demon offal coagulates to form the tenth through eighteenth circles of hell . However, I fail to see how sufficient justice can be rendered to the Axis of Anarchy to satisfy me. To simply destroy their status as a guild would be inadequate. The Knights of Good would have to take everything they hold dear, kill them, take a dump on everything they held dear, and have the befouled items delivered via singing telegram to the grieving families during the funeral. Then the harm the Axis of Anarchy has rendered unto the Knights of Good and countless other fictional characters in the fictional history of the AoA might begin to be atoned for.
I don’t think the Knights of Good have it in them. My lone hope is Tinkerballa.
UPDATE
Okay, so we watched the rest of the season. I won't spoil the ending, but I suppose it worked out okay.
No, the KoG didn't kill the AoA, take a dump on their computers, then send their computers to the funeral via singing telegram, but I didn't really expect that anyway.
I eagerly await season four, and I'm putting season 1 and 2 on DVD in my Amazon cart to be saved for until I have spare money to buy frivolous things (owning a new house is expensive)
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Greg’s 2000” TV
So as regular readers may have surmised from my last post, we’re moving. I learned many things about myself while moving all of our worldly belongings from the third floor of an apartment building with no elevator to the basement and garage of our new ranch-style home. Mostly they’re lessons like “I don’t like carrying heavy crap” and “I really don’t like carrying heavy crap down stairs” and variants of that.
But I’m not going to talk about that this post. What I am going to talk about is my bitchin’ boss new TV set.
During the course of the move, I had to disconnect and reconnect and disconnect again the cables connecting my DVD player to my old TV. My old TV is a 27” Sharp CRT. Nothing fancy, but it got the job done. I bought it in 2002 or thereabouts, and it has served me well. But when I disconnected the RCA cables from the back of the set, one of the connectors (the yellow one—you know, the video input) pulled out.
It still works, but I took that as a sign to make this the secondary TV, relegated to the basement and dedicated to the PS2 , Gamecube and other assorted obsolete consoles (YAY! Somewhere to hook my Jaguar up again!). With digital broadcast a federally mandated reality, it was time to upgrade the primary set. And boy howdy, did we upgrade.
The first thing you need to understand is that our living room is enormous. It’s a good ten paces from the place where the TV is to the nearest place where someone can sit to watch it. In a situation like that, it’s time to go big. Fortunately, big TVs are on sale these days because retailers are desperate to sell anything in a down economy. So I moseyed on down to Best Buy and picked up a 42” plasma screen. Yes, it’s HD: 720p. The reason I bought 720p is because 1080i is much more expensive and I have doubts about the capability of the human eye to really tell the difference, even at 42 inches.
Plus, I’ve spent the last few years playing PS3 games on a classic cathode ray tube television; and not even a flat-screen CRT. No matter which resolution I chose, the difference was going to blow my socks off, so why spend the extra money?
Since I mentioned the PS3, I might as well mention that I bought an HDMI cable to use with it. The lads at Best Buy recommend a cable that costs $60. I bought one that cost $30 and it’s gorgeous. So a word to the savvy media customer: When it comes to cables, copper is pretty much copper. Don’t waste your money on premium cables.
I also sprang for an antenna so my wife could take advantage of the new broadcast choices afforded by the digital era. We get about a dozen channels, most of them variants of PBS, which means we can watch the annual pledge drive on seven channels instead of just the one.
We’re still using our old, SD DVD player, and the picture looks fine to me. At last count, I have something like 420 movies and TV shows in my DVD collection, and if you think I’m scrapping that for blue-ray you’re crazier than my hair when I got up this morning.
I would like to take a moment to talk about TV stands, because finding a decent one was more trouble than it should have been. First off, who the heck decided that it was a good idea to make the shelf you’re putting a heavy, expensive piece of electronics on out of glass? How does the design meeting for something like that go?
I imagine it went something like that.
The other thing I’d like to know is why the bases are all so short. This isn’t a universal condition, but at my house we have small children. As a result, we cordon off large, heavy, expensive things like televisions with baby gates like the Superyard. The problem is that the Superyard is 24 inches tall. Most TV stands on the market (that don’t cost more than the TV, at any rate) are 22 to 24 inches tall. That means that you’re likely to have the lower portion of your screen obscured by the baby gate. At least if you plan on sitting down while you’re watching TV, which I’m pretty sure nobody ever does.
Yes, we could mount the TV to the wall, but that requires finding a stud, and that would require finding a stud finder that actually works, which I don’t believe exists. Plus, if you decide to move the TV, it’s much easier to move a cabinet than to remount a wall bracket. And anyway, who wants to look up to see a TV screen? You know who mounts TVs up on a wall? Emergency rooms. Do you want your living room to feel like an emergency room? Me neither.
That minor aggravation is, however, well worth enduring for the ability to finally read the text in Fallout 3. I imagine it’s a completely different game when you can read the on-screen instructions.
It was a platformer, right?
But I’m not going to talk about that this post. What I am going to talk about is my bitchin’ boss new TV set.
During the course of the move, I had to disconnect and reconnect and disconnect again the cables connecting my DVD player to my old TV. My old TV is a 27” Sharp CRT. Nothing fancy, but it got the job done. I bought it in 2002 or thereabouts, and it has served me well. But when I disconnected the RCA cables from the back of the set, one of the connectors (the yellow one—you know, the video input) pulled out.
It still works, but I took that as a sign to make this the secondary TV, relegated to the basement and dedicated to the PS2 , Gamecube and other assorted obsolete consoles (YAY! Somewhere to hook my Jaguar up again!). With digital broadcast a federally mandated reality, it was time to upgrade the primary set. And boy howdy, did we upgrade.
The first thing you need to understand is that our living room is enormous. It’s a good ten paces from the place where the TV is to the nearest place where someone can sit to watch it. In a situation like that, it’s time to go big. Fortunately, big TVs are on sale these days because retailers are desperate to sell anything in a down economy. So I moseyed on down to Best Buy and picked up a 42” plasma screen. Yes, it’s HD: 720p. The reason I bought 720p is because 1080i is much more expensive and I have doubts about the capability of the human eye to really tell the difference, even at 42 inches.
Plus, I’ve spent the last few years playing PS3 games on a classic cathode ray tube television; and not even a flat-screen CRT. No matter which resolution I chose, the difference was going to blow my socks off, so why spend the extra money?
Since I mentioned the PS3, I might as well mention that I bought an HDMI cable to use with it. The lads at Best Buy recommend a cable that costs $60. I bought one that cost $30 and it’s gorgeous. So a word to the savvy media customer: When it comes to cables, copper is pretty much copper. Don’t waste your money on premium cables.
I also sprang for an antenna so my wife could take advantage of the new broadcast choices afforded by the digital era. We get about a dozen channels, most of them variants of PBS, which means we can watch the annual pledge drive on seven channels instead of just the one.
We’re still using our old, SD DVD player, and the picture looks fine to me. At last count, I have something like 420 movies and TV shows in my DVD collection, and if you think I’m scrapping that for blue-ray you’re crazier than my hair when I got up this morning.
I would like to take a moment to talk about TV stands, because finding a decent one was more trouble than it should have been. First off, who the heck decided that it was a good idea to make the shelf you’re putting a heavy, expensive piece of electronics on out of glass? How does the design meeting for something like that go?
Johnson: So, we want to design a stand that people can put TV sets on. They typically weigh 50 to 100 pounds, and cost a lot of money. What’s a good, sturdy material that can take a lot of weight?
Schwarz: I dunno, wood?
Johnson: Schwarz, get out. You’ve been warned about your flippancy. This company isn’t made of money. Do you think wood grows on trees?
Butterbin: How about glass?
Johnson: Butterbin, that’s the best suggestion I’ve heard all quarter. Glass is a fine, sturdy material that hardly ever breaks when large amounts of force are applied to it. Build the shelf out of glass. Just don’t forget to focus the support beams into as small an area as possible. I don’t know what PSI means, but more of it must be better. Okay gang, get to work. I’m going to lunch!
I imagine it went something like that.
The other thing I’d like to know is why the bases are all so short. This isn’t a universal condition, but at my house we have small children. As a result, we cordon off large, heavy, expensive things like televisions with baby gates like the Superyard. The problem is that the Superyard is 24 inches tall. Most TV stands on the market (that don’t cost more than the TV, at any rate) are 22 to 24 inches tall. That means that you’re likely to have the lower portion of your screen obscured by the baby gate. At least if you plan on sitting down while you’re watching TV, which I’m pretty sure nobody ever does.
Yes, we could mount the TV to the wall, but that requires finding a stud, and that would require finding a stud finder that actually works, which I don’t believe exists. Plus, if you decide to move the TV, it’s much easier to move a cabinet than to remount a wall bracket. And anyway, who wants to look up to see a TV screen? You know who mounts TVs up on a wall? Emergency rooms. Do you want your living room to feel like an emergency room? Me neither.
That minor aggravation is, however, well worth enduring for the ability to finally read the text in Fallout 3. I imagine it’s a completely different game when you can read the on-screen instructions.
It was a platformer, right?
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Movin’ Out. IIIIIIIIIIIIIII’MMM Movin’ Out!
In a previous installment of this blog, I discussed the process of buying a house. Well, once you’ve bought the house, now you have to move into it. You have several options.
The obvious choice is to hire movers. They can even be contracted to pack your things for you so you don’t have to worry about figuring out how to load a tape gun. The downside is that you’re hiring large men you don’t know who probably make too little money for the amount of work they’re doing, so you’re irreplaceable antique curio shelf might arrive at your new home in more pieces than a bookshelf from Ikea, but without the handy allen wrench to put it back together.
If you’re hiring movers, you want a binding estimate, not an hourly rate. A binding estimate is when someone comes to your current place, looks at all of the stuff you want to move, and gives you a sheet of paper that has the words “shall not exceed” written on it somewhere. The number at the bottom of that sheet is the number you pay. Period. Hourly rate means the movers come to your house and charge you based on how long it takes to move everything.
If you’re a lunatic, you can move everything yourself. This requires a number of understanding friends or family members who can help you. If you don’t have local family, and are a social misfit, it means you’re going to be lifting an awful lot of boxes.
There are three ways to move everything yourself.
1) You can load up your car and make fourteen thousand trips back and forth. This works if you’re moving within the same town or neighborhood. Not so much if you’re moving across the state. Rule of thumb: If it takes more than 10 minutes to drive to your new place, you need a bigger truck.
2) You can rent a truck. This is by far the most common method of self moving. Each moving company is different (Budget, for example, tends to be operated by businesslike people, while Uhaul appears to be owned and operated by a grue) but the basic process for renting a truck is pretty much always the same: First, you reserve a truck in the size that you want. Second, you arrive at the lot and find out they don’t have any of that size, so you rent a different size.
We rented a truck from a rental company that rhymes with “Aragorn.” We asked for a 16 foot truck, and they gave us a 25 foot truck. I have never driven anything that large in my life, and I knocked over at least three buildings and several old growth trees in the process of learning to back that thing up. Which brings us to an important point about renting a truck:
Insurance. Is. Not. Optional.
People will tell you that your insurance covers damages and all that other stuff. These people are idiots. Yes, your insurance does cover you in the event of an accident. But then your premiums go up, and you have to spend half your day on a phone trying to convince your insurance company that you have coverage for whatever they’re denying you coverage for. If you buy the rental agency insurance, as long as you can walk away from the scene of the accident, it’s not your problem.
So take my advice: get full coverage not only for the truck you’re renting, but also for liability. It’s only a fraction of the cost of the rental, and it makes your life so much easier if you do have a problem.
3) The third way of moving yourself is to rent something called a POD. PODS are relatively new innovations. Basically, somebody comes to your house with what looks like a moving truck. Only instead of loading up your stuff into the truck and driving away, they leave the back of the truck in your driveway. You can load it at your leisure, have it picked up and delivered whenever you want (except Sundays, because what kind of freak tries to move on a weekend) and driving it isn’t your problem.
The downside of renting a POD is the fact that you can’t really trust anything fragile to it, because you’re not driving it and the crane that lifts the pod back onto the truck isn’t the most elegant device you’ve ever seen.
Finally, if you’re made of money, you can just throw out all your old stuff and start over from scratch at the new place. This has the benefit of being extremely low hassle, but eating spaghetti-Os with your fingers directly from the can while you’re waiting for the new microwave to be delivered gets old very quickly.
You can also do a combination of these methods. For example, because my wife and I are social misfits with no family nearby that can be expected to carry heavy things down four flights of stairs; we couldn’t do a pure self move. So we hired movers (with a binding estimate) to move anything that required two people to lift (EG: our couch). Then we rented a POD to carry non-fragile, non-essential things. Finally, we rented trucks for two weekends. The first, aforementioned 25 foot truck, took all of our essential, gotta-have-it-in-the-house-now stuff. The second was a 10 foot truck rented to take care of the leftovers that weren’t gotten by the 25 foot truck.
As of the writing of this post, we’re done. It took four weeks of intensive lifting and stair climbing (my backside will never be this firm again—seriously; you could bounce a quarter off me), but it’s done.
Now for the unpacking. I predict we’ll be done somewhere around Christmas.
In the year 2014.
The obvious choice is to hire movers. They can even be contracted to pack your things for you so you don’t have to worry about figuring out how to load a tape gun. The downside is that you’re hiring large men you don’t know who probably make too little money for the amount of work they’re doing, so you’re irreplaceable antique curio shelf might arrive at your new home in more pieces than a bookshelf from Ikea, but without the handy allen wrench to put it back together.
If you’re hiring movers, you want a binding estimate, not an hourly rate. A binding estimate is when someone comes to your current place, looks at all of the stuff you want to move, and gives you a sheet of paper that has the words “shall not exceed” written on it somewhere. The number at the bottom of that sheet is the number you pay. Period. Hourly rate means the movers come to your house and charge you based on how long it takes to move everything.
If you’re a lunatic, you can move everything yourself. This requires a number of understanding friends or family members who can help you. If you don’t have local family, and are a social misfit, it means you’re going to be lifting an awful lot of boxes.
There are three ways to move everything yourself.
1) You can load up your car and make fourteen thousand trips back and forth. This works if you’re moving within the same town or neighborhood. Not so much if you’re moving across the state. Rule of thumb: If it takes more than 10 minutes to drive to your new place, you need a bigger truck.
2) You can rent a truck. This is by far the most common method of self moving. Each moving company is different (Budget, for example, tends to be operated by businesslike people, while Uhaul appears to be owned and operated by a grue) but the basic process for renting a truck is pretty much always the same: First, you reserve a truck in the size that you want. Second, you arrive at the lot and find out they don’t have any of that size, so you rent a different size.
We rented a truck from a rental company that rhymes with “Aragorn.” We asked for a 16 foot truck, and they gave us a 25 foot truck. I have never driven anything that large in my life, and I knocked over at least three buildings and several old growth trees in the process of learning to back that thing up. Which brings us to an important point about renting a truck:
Insurance. Is. Not. Optional.
People will tell you that your insurance covers damages and all that other stuff. These people are idiots. Yes, your insurance does cover you in the event of an accident. But then your premiums go up, and you have to spend half your day on a phone trying to convince your insurance company that you have coverage for whatever they’re denying you coverage for. If you buy the rental agency insurance, as long as you can walk away from the scene of the accident, it’s not your problem.
So take my advice: get full coverage not only for the truck you’re renting, but also for liability. It’s only a fraction of the cost of the rental, and it makes your life so much easier if you do have a problem.
3) The third way of moving yourself is to rent something called a POD. PODS are relatively new innovations. Basically, somebody comes to your house with what looks like a moving truck. Only instead of loading up your stuff into the truck and driving away, they leave the back of the truck in your driveway. You can load it at your leisure, have it picked up and delivered whenever you want (except Sundays, because what kind of freak tries to move on a weekend) and driving it isn’t your problem.
The downside of renting a POD is the fact that you can’t really trust anything fragile to it, because you’re not driving it and the crane that lifts the pod back onto the truck isn’t the most elegant device you’ve ever seen.
Finally, if you’re made of money, you can just throw out all your old stuff and start over from scratch at the new place. This has the benefit of being extremely low hassle, but eating spaghetti-Os with your fingers directly from the can while you’re waiting for the new microwave to be delivered gets old very quickly.
You can also do a combination of these methods. For example, because my wife and I are social misfits with no family nearby that can be expected to carry heavy things down four flights of stairs; we couldn’t do a pure self move. So we hired movers (with a binding estimate) to move anything that required two people to lift (EG: our couch). Then we rented a POD to carry non-fragile, non-essential things. Finally, we rented trucks for two weekends. The first, aforementioned 25 foot truck, took all of our essential, gotta-have-it-in-the-house-now stuff. The second was a 10 foot truck rented to take care of the leftovers that weren’t gotten by the 25 foot truck.
As of the writing of this post, we’re done. It took four weeks of intensive lifting and stair climbing (my backside will never be this firm again—seriously; you could bounce a quarter off me), but it’s done.
Now for the unpacking. I predict we’ll be done somewhere around Christmas.
In the year 2014.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
How to buy a house in 25 steps!
In August of this year I started a new job. In September, my wife gave birth to our second child. So naturally, my wife and I decided to buy a house in October.
Because, hey, our lives weren’t already complicated enough.
For the past couple of months, my wife and I have been spending our Saturdays looking at other people’s houses and trying to decide which one to buy. We made four offers. One of them was outright rejected, another was ignored, and the other two were accepted. The first of the two that were accepted fell through because of legal reasons having to do with large pills and lots of water.
No, wait. That’s prostate. The problem with the offer was probate law. My mistake, though it’s understandable. Both problems are painful but would be largely preventable with some common sense.
If you’re reading this, it means we’ve closed on the other offer that was accepted and we’re in the process of moving into our new home. If you’re not reading it, it’s because we got screwed over by a combination of bankers, realtors and lawyers. Or because you don’t visit this blog. Either way, I’m pissed off.
But assuming that you are reading this, I’d like to share some of the lessons I learned while shopping for a house. First off, you should know what the steps are to buying a house, because nobody in the whole process; not the lawyers, not the bankers, and sure as heck not the realtors; is going to tell you. So here are the steps to buying a house:
1) Find a house you like. You think this is the hard part, but it’s not.
1A) While you’re looking for a house, get a preapproval letter from a bank saying that you can afford to buy a house. It’s a worthless scrap of paper that will be of no use to you ever, but seller’s agents like to see them.
2) Make an offer on the house you like.
3) Wait for somebody to acknowledge that you offered them hundreds of thousands of dollars for a large wooden box. Sign and initial two more offer letters because the seller let the first two expire.
4) Find out that the seller thinks there weren’t enough thousands of dollars in your offer to purchase his large wooden box that he doesn’t want anymore.
5) Make a counteroffer on the house.
6) Get a verbal acceptance that means precisely jack.
7) Sign and initial at least three additional offer letters saying exactly the same thing but with different expiration dates because the seller dragged his feet on signing the one he said he accepted.
8) Hire a home inspector to make sure you still want to buy the house.
9) Take the home inspection results and make a new offer on the house because at least some of those thousands of dollars you offered were based on the assumption that the roof wouldn’t cave in on you during the first winter.
10) Repeat steps 3 through 7 until you arrive at a price and set of conditions in which nobody is really happy but everyone just wants to be done with it. This is called compromising.
11) Get a lawyer to draft a Purchase and Sale agreement that won’t be acceptable to either you or the seller.
12) Apply for a mortgage loan and pray that the bank says yes in time for the closing date on the draft of the purchase and sale agreement.
13) Review and make changes to the purchase and sale agreement because the lawyer put in some language requiring you to perform the rite of Ash Kaban in the nude every solstice or forfeit the house and any equity to the lawyers.
You think I’m kidding.
14) Review and make changes to the changes that the sellers made while you were making changes to your draft.
15) Hold a gun to the seller’s agent’s head until he or she takes the agreement that you and the sellers came to and gets an actual, you know, signature on it.
16) Have the house appraised so the bank will loan you the money to buy it, and hope that the bank thinks it’s worth the money you think it is.
17) Provide the same employment and bank information to another person at the same bank you applied for the mortgage loan at because bankers don’t trust other bankers either.
18) Buy homeowners insurance. You will be allowed to think that someone else deals with this until it’s almost too late to do it.
19) Wait around thinking everything is lined up and squared away.
20) Receive a letter from the lawyers informing you that you need to do something that involves spending a lot of money to do something you didn’t know you needed to do, but probably involves either something to do with the title, or something to do with “points.”
21) Wait around hoping everything is lined up and squared away.
22) Do your “final walkthrough” to make sure the sellers didn’t take the light fixtures or toilets.
23) Get a call from the lawyers telling you how big of a check to bring to the closing ceremony.
24) Sign away most of your life’s savings and a large chunk of your income for the next few decades in exchange for a large wooden box.
25) Move into the wooden box and live there.
That’s a lot, and I’m probably missing some steps. And yet nobody will tell you what you have to do until it’s almost too late to do it. No other industry could survive by taking so much money and providing so little information about the actual product.
And that's it for this week. Next week, maybe a post!
Because, hey, our lives weren’t already complicated enough.
For the past couple of months, my wife and I have been spending our Saturdays looking at other people’s houses and trying to decide which one to buy. We made four offers. One of them was outright rejected, another was ignored, and the other two were accepted. The first of the two that were accepted fell through because of legal reasons having to do with large pills and lots of water.
No, wait. That’s prostate. The problem with the offer was probate law. My mistake, though it’s understandable. Both problems are painful but would be largely preventable with some common sense.
If you’re reading this, it means we’ve closed on the other offer that was accepted and we’re in the process of moving into our new home. If you’re not reading it, it’s because we got screwed over by a combination of bankers, realtors and lawyers. Or because you don’t visit this blog. Either way, I’m pissed off.
But assuming that you are reading this, I’d like to share some of the lessons I learned while shopping for a house. First off, you should know what the steps are to buying a house, because nobody in the whole process; not the lawyers, not the bankers, and sure as heck not the realtors; is going to tell you. So here are the steps to buying a house:
1) Find a house you like. You think this is the hard part, but it’s not.
1A) While you’re looking for a house, get a preapproval letter from a bank saying that you can afford to buy a house. It’s a worthless scrap of paper that will be of no use to you ever, but seller’s agents like to see them.
2) Make an offer on the house you like.
3) Wait for somebody to acknowledge that you offered them hundreds of thousands of dollars for a large wooden box. Sign and initial two more offer letters because the seller let the first two expire.
4) Find out that the seller thinks there weren’t enough thousands of dollars in your offer to purchase his large wooden box that he doesn’t want anymore.
5) Make a counteroffer on the house.
6) Get a verbal acceptance that means precisely jack.
7) Sign and initial at least three additional offer letters saying exactly the same thing but with different expiration dates because the seller dragged his feet on signing the one he said he accepted.
8) Hire a home inspector to make sure you still want to buy the house.
9) Take the home inspection results and make a new offer on the house because at least some of those thousands of dollars you offered were based on the assumption that the roof wouldn’t cave in on you during the first winter.
10) Repeat steps 3 through 7 until you arrive at a price and set of conditions in which nobody is really happy but everyone just wants to be done with it. This is called compromising.
11) Get a lawyer to draft a Purchase and Sale agreement that won’t be acceptable to either you or the seller.
12) Apply for a mortgage loan and pray that the bank says yes in time for the closing date on the draft of the purchase and sale agreement.
13) Review and make changes to the purchase and sale agreement because the lawyer put in some language requiring you to perform the rite of Ash Kaban in the nude every solstice or forfeit the house and any equity to the lawyers.
You think I’m kidding.
14) Review and make changes to the changes that the sellers made while you were making changes to your draft.
15) Hold a gun to the seller’s agent’s head until he or she takes the agreement that you and the sellers came to and gets an actual, you know, signature on it.
16) Have the house appraised so the bank will loan you the money to buy it, and hope that the bank thinks it’s worth the money you think it is.
17) Provide the same employment and bank information to another person at the same bank you applied for the mortgage loan at because bankers don’t trust other bankers either.
18) Buy homeowners insurance. You will be allowed to think that someone else deals with this until it’s almost too late to do it.
19) Wait around thinking everything is lined up and squared away.
20) Receive a letter from the lawyers informing you that you need to do something that involves spending a lot of money to do something you didn’t know you needed to do, but probably involves either something to do with the title, or something to do with “points.”
21) Wait around hoping everything is lined up and squared away.
22) Do your “final walkthrough” to make sure the sellers didn’t take the light fixtures or toilets.
23) Get a call from the lawyers telling you how big of a check to bring to the closing ceremony.
24) Sign away most of your life’s savings and a large chunk of your income for the next few decades in exchange for a large wooden box.
25) Move into the wooden box and live there.
That’s a lot, and I’m probably missing some steps. And yet nobody will tell you what you have to do until it’s almost too late to do it. No other industry could survive by taking so much money and providing so little information about the actual product.
And that's it for this week. Next week, maybe a post!
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