Deraldin

I wonder about some of the day zero stuff. Here in town, torrents have been up for some games more that two weeks before they actually showed up anywhere. PoP was a week late, as was Dead Space. I seem to have the only copy of Mirror's Edge in town (haven't seen it anywhere since I picked up the sole copy from an EB on release) and even Red Alert 3 (which now has 50 copies in every store) had almost 2 weeks before you'd find more than maybe a single copy on the shelf. There's really no excuse for this. It's not like I'm out in the middle of nowhere, this is southern Ontario damnit! Where the hell are all the games? You want to limit piracy? Make sure they actually hit the shelves on release day! Also, where did all these copies of Total Annihilation that are floating around Future Shop come from? I already had the game, but I bought it again anyway because my copy didn't come with a box. No more Steam damnit!

These are my first in about 5-6 years now. Before that I went through a period where I had several almost every time I went to the dentist so I've got a crap load of fillings. I've actually got one that is about 60/40 tooth to filling. I recall my current dentist being taken aback when he first saw it and making some comment about being surprised how well it's held together. Never had a problem with pain except for when the dentist pokes the cavity with his sharp metal tools to illustrate where it is. Honestly, having to get up at 7am again was the worst part of the whole thing.

I got up this morning to go to the dentist again. They discovered three cavities when I went last week so I was called back to have them filled this morning. My streak of "OW! I can still feel that drill!" remains unbroken. Needed a second dose of whatever they use to numb your face for the front two cavities (same tooth). Only needed one dose for the back tooth. The right side of my face from my upper lip to just below my eye is all still numb. It's really wierd trying to blink when your eyelid is frozen.

I finally went back and finished off the final few missions of Red Alert 3. The two EotRS missions were pretty easy, especially the one with the Shogun Executioner. The final mission was a pain because I used my shield before the enemy used his super weapon. He waited until it drained and then fired, blowing up all my power plants. I wouldn't cluster them all like that against a human, but the AI rarely ever comes close to them. The final Allied mission had me dropping the difficulty down to medium to give me some extra time. And extra 3 minutes or so is all that I really needed so the full 10 allowed me to screw around and waste time. Ended up with 6 airbases and 24 Vindicator bombers flying around the map that bombed the crap out of the soviet bases. Split up into two groups of twelve planes gives you two groups capable to knocking out an iron curtain in a single run even with casualties. I chrono shifted a bunch of mirage tanks over to the island to deal the final blow. I'll probably head back to Universe at War and finish that up next. Dunno what's on the schedule after that. Heh. I got Ground Cover in the Subway level of No Mercy on expert. A tank had been waiting inside the second train and it charge out and took out two of the group before we killed it. The director took that moment to spawn a swarm on the two remaining survivors, of which I was one. We managed to get through that, but the other guy was hurt bad and I had been knocked down. This was on the second train platform. A smoker appeared in the hole in the wall and constricted the other guy who was trying to revive me. Thankfully I managed to take out the smoker before it incapped the other guy. We still didn't end up beating the level in the end.

I stopped playing after Chapter 3, because there was just no point for me to spend more time on it. How lucky I only tried a copy from a friend. You guys both suck. Mirror's Edge is awesome. Too short though. I swear I'm the only one that actually liked the cutscenes. If you feel that continuing to play is just punishing yourself then why bother asking if you should keep playing? If you haven't enjoyed the game up until now, you aren't likely going to magically start enjoying it later. Go return the game now.

*Beep* *Beep* *Beep**Beep**Beep**BeepBeepBeep* *Connection Terminated*

I figured that's what it was. I managed to do that once totally by accident. I was trying to jump from one roof to the next and kick a cop in the head, but I misjudged my momentum so instead of dropping down to his height I ended up landing on top of him instead of kicking him.

I'm playing on PC so I don't get achievements.

I've been watching speed runs when not playing the game and some of the moves that those guys pull off are just incredible. I've managed to pick up a few things that allowed me to get through one of the chase sequences without having to beat the crap out of your pursuers beforehand. There were very few areas that I had the questioning the devs in a "you thought that was possibly on the first try" way. Most of the time when I died it was because I did something incredibly stupid, or the game glitched and Faith wouldn't grab on to something, like that damn third post in the last section of heat. She wouldn't grab that stupid thing unless I climbed all the way to the top of the second post and then sort of fell right on the third one. I didn't have too much trouble with that part of the mall actually. I had a worse time in the section just before that. Right after you get to the second floor and into the other section of the mall where Merc tells you to go up, on the top floor in the one corner there is a couple boxes that you are supposed to use to fling yourself up onto the plant box before turning and jumping through the window. I kept screwing up on that jump for some reason. When you do it right, you just fly off that pile of boxes, but for some reason I kept vaulting them instead of jumping up off them. Took me half a dozen tries to get it right, but I haven't missed that jump since then. Escaping from the SWAT guy with the SAW was actually pretty easy in my game. I don't think he hit me once. I let him shoot out the windows, wall ran over to the bar and then had to wait for Faith to stop swinging before I could inch my way over to the centre of the bar so that I could swing over onto the hanging platform. He kept spraying bullets all around me, but I don't recall being hit. The staircase in chapter 8 gave me some trouble with the two SAW SWAT guys standing at the bottom. It was so satisfying performing the flying drop kicks that downed both of them on the run where I finally succeeded though.

It was -35C here with the wind chill the other day. It's been below -20C before wind chill ever since Tuesday. Supposed to warm up over the weekend though.

I've been playing through Mirror's Edge all day. The length of the game is kinda disappointing (I've beaten it twice today), but I've been having a lot of fun trying to improve my times. When things don't go well it seems like a pretty mediocre game, but when things are going right, taking down the cops, bouncing off the wall... Things just click and it's a total blast. Damn I hate those freakin' pursuit cops though. It's so very satisfying to shoot them in the face.

Shanahan signs with New Jersey $800,000 contract. He'll get $400,000 for playing only half the year.

nVidia's Website? At the bottom, under "Other Drivers", the first link is to beta and archived drivers. Alternatively you could try looking here.

"Warrior needs food!" I beat CoD4 again on Hardened. I feel like I cheated on the sniper mission finale by the ferris wheel. Damn that thing was pissing me off. Never missed a shot and half the time I was taking out multiple enemies with a single bullet, but they just kept swarming me. I had my claymores poorly placed which was the main problem. Had them too far forward instead of using them to cover my flank while I sniped anyone in front of me. I ended up hiding in the one shack and being bombarded by several dozen grenades that had no effect in my little open doored bunker. Just waited out the storm in there until the chopper came and I made a break for. Single most infuriating level in the game for me. "Heat" which is supposedly another tough one was a piece of cake. I made it to the bottom of the hill on that one with over 2 minutes left on the clock.

You haven't forgotten, because I've never mentioned what my major is, not that I've officially declared my major yet anyway. I'm currently headed toward a major in Business Administration. There are options to specialize in Human Resource Management, or Indigenous Management & Economic Development, neither of which really seem all that interesting at this point in time. For the second part of your question, a full course load for a semester is 5 courses. I had some trouble signing up for a couple classes so I only ended up with 3 courses in the first semester, but I've got the full five for the spring semester. I'm only half way through my second year right now, so I've still got another two full years + a couple extra courses to make up for the ones that I didn't have last semester.

Contrary to what the Zombie Survival Guide says, fire does indeed solve everything.

I got my marks back for the first semester and it turns out that those mid terms that I bombed a couple months ago really hurt! The dropped my final grades from high 70s/low 80s down to low-mid 60s. At least it appears that I did well on my final exams. I've got three more business administration courses this semester that I'll need to improve upon. At least one of them I really need to study for the test. My Organization Theory course only had three marks, two of which are test that will together determine 80% of my final grade in the course. Bombing a test is really not an option there.

What difficulty were you guys playing on?

If I recall correctly the last Steam survey said the ratio was something like 65-35 nVidia-ATi. For lack of any better numbers and unless I'm misremember and my math is horribly wrong, then you've got about equal ratio of problems to cards being used. Either way, nVidia are not free of their own driver problems and that was the main point I was trying to get across.

Google Fight says you're wrong.

He was German, he's in Munich. Said so earlier. He was doing that THE ENTIRE TIME! The very first map we were yelling at him to turn off the flashlight and he wouldn't do it. If my German were better maybe that would have had better luck. What was funniest about the guy is whenever he went down he'd start yelling "HELP ME, NOOBS!" I made my own share of mistakes in the game, of course. I startled a witch once because I didn't look around well enough before jumping into that field. And one of our failure times I jumped out of the house to try to rescue those two as they died when I should have just left them there. Hah! "HELP ME, NOOBS!" Sounds like the perfect time to put a bullet or two in him. Maybe next time he'll keep a better lookout. I just finished a game with Calax and Zombie Hunter (Deadly_Nightshade right?) that took us over 2 hours. We started out on expert, but dropped it down to Advanced after a couple failed attempts at the subway. We had a couple total party kills after that, but not many until we got to the finale where we died 3 or 4 times in a row. Mainly because we kept splitting up. "Guys! The closet!" "No! The little corner tower thingy!" "Damnit just pick a spot people!" *everyone goes their own way* Finally our 4th member quit out on us and somehow we did better without him. We made it through the first tank with no issues. By the time the second one arrived I was still being helped up by Calax. I quickly healed myself while the two of them fought the tank. Calax went down quickly because he was almost dead already and couldn't outrun the tank. Zombie was the next to be targeted, but I managed to run up behind the tank and crack him over the head with the butt of my assault rifle to lure him away before he could kill ZH. I helped up ZH, but I could see a hunter stalking me, I was sure that it was going to pounce before I could get ZH back on her (Zoey's) feet, but luckily it stayed away. I got boomered just after that happened. I'm not sure how ZH got up on the helipad, but I rifle butted my way to the end of the ramp and back up it with the green goo all over me. The helicopter came in to rescue us and I jumped in while ZH covered my escape. ZH actually went to jump into the copter but got literally snagged out of mid air by a smoker and was incapped before I could do anything so the copter took off with just me inside.

You say that as if nVidia has no driver problems of their own. My 4850 and 4870 both max out PoP just fine. Didn't have a single crash during my play through. Kinda disappointed in the 295. Didn't really have any expectations, but having it only match the 4870 X2 just doesn't seem like that big of a jump.

I spent half the evening wandering around campus. Got to my afternoon class a couple minutes late and ended up taking one of about 5 empty seats in the room. Damn buses were 20 minutes behind schedule today. Class only ended up being 30 minutes instead of the two hours that is scheduled for leaving me with 2.5 hours to waste before me evening class. Ended up taking the bus downtown and grabbing a bite to eat before heading back to campus and going to class. Showed up at wrong class room with about 50 other people because for some reason they mixed up the two buildings when putting up our individual timetables. Someone eventually figured out that we were in the wrong room so the whole group showed up to the right class 30 minutes late.

Yeah. There were a number of levels where I didn't get a single shot in on the witch because someone startled her and then she died before I could get back to help out. I tend to figure that most people are smart enough to sneak past the witch if you don't have to shoot her. Especially when they've just seen two people do it and have been told to do the same. That was a pretty sweet headshot on the hunter. I was standing right behind shape when it happened so I got a great view of the hunter jumping forward then suddenly flying back. I figured out why my mic wasn't working. Either my front mic port is flaky or it doesn't like my headphones. It's fine as long as you don't touch it or pull on the cord, but if you do it seems to lose the connection and requires you to fiddle around with it in order to get it working again.