Deraldin

That sounds like our summer here. We had maybe all of a week during the entire summer that it didn't rain every day. Still, it's been snowing pretty much all day and we've only get a little bit of accumulation on the lawns. It's still too warm to get much more than that.

I got up this morning/afternoon and went about my usual routine until about halfway through I just stopped. Something was out of place, but I couldn't quite figure out what it was. As I turned to look out the window, it hit me like the first soggy snowball of the year. It was snowing outside. "It's not even November!" I thought to myself. Yet even as the shock wore off, visions of dollar signs were already dancing before me eyes. It wouldn't be long before our neighbours headed south and left us with a big wad of cash in exchange for keeping their driveways cleared while they were gone. Thankfully our snowblower had just been fixed several weeks ago so it was hopefully good for at least one more year. Last year we had a lot of snowfall and hopefully this is a sign of things to come for this year. Winter can't come soon enough...

Some expanded comments. Your team mates really are slower than the computer players on Hall of Fame. The opponents AI just seems to fly across the ice and can turn on a dime or stop instantly. Your team's AI is able to do exactly the same things however the moment you gain control of the puck, all your forwards make a beeline for the other team's blue line and then just stop skating while they wait for you to catch up so they won't go offside. The leaves you skating in circles in your own end unable to break out against the three super forecheckers that the opponent sends in to harass the puck carrier. These guys seem to ignore fatigue, don't need a running start to check you into the ice and stop any pucks that come within 5 feet of themselves. The only goals I've managed to score so far have been so ridiculously lucky that you wouldn't believe. The most recent one was off the only rebound I've ever seen the AI goalies give out. I just shot the puck and then started waving the Wiimote like mad hoping that one of my guys would be the first to grab the puck and got lucky. The one right before that had one of my AI teammates run into the puck carrier in front of the opposing goal while another teammate magically appeared in the right spot to flip a backhander into the net. The other team in the meantime has been pulling off all sorts of nice goals. The four most recent being a slapshot right off a face off win, a spin-o-rama that totally deked out Markov and fooled price, a between the legs trick shot from someone streaking in off the wing and a signature Forsberg one hander.

uh, roundup... ain't nothing that kills weeds better. Fire works and it's so much more fun!

It's interesting you mention this as Blizzard has taken it a step in a more restrictive direction -- completely removing LAN play from Diablo 3 in order to help prevent piracy. Want multiplayer? You'll have to play through Battle.net. I don't know if they have / will do the same with Sarcraft 2 though. Really? I hadn't heard about that. Blizzard is just full of good ideas these days, aren't they?

Habs season will be one long ceremony. Includes such gems as:

No Half a million corpses in various degrees of decomposing would have been more accurate decoration. I'm not sure you can call "half a million corpses" a decoration.

I went to see Body of Lies yesterday and saw Passchendaele earlier today. Quite enjoyed both of them, although the decorations the theatre had up for Passchendaele were a little inaccurate. They had all these little plastic paratroopers all over the place, but I don't recall many paratroopers in the First World War...

Hah! You found him!

I just finished my first game of NHL 2K9. Just a couple complaints so far: Why is everyone so slow?! Scratch that. Why is everyone on MY team so slow? Oh god! What have they done to my eyes?! The AI is so stupid on anything below Hall of Fame difficulty. The AI on Hall of Fame has only one tactic each for offence and defence. Skate into the net and Have everyone mob the puck carrier.

Heh, I did the same thing a couple months ago. How much did you find it for? $5 including tax, about one-forth of the original price. So far it's both been better than some other shooters that were far more lauded -Crysis and Crysis Warhead for example- and, in some ways, some other Source titles that I could name. Overall, I'm finding it disappointing that there's almost no chance that the sequel(s) will ever get made. My copy was about $2 + tax and it was quite possibly the best two bucks I've ever spent. I know what you mean about the lack of sequels though. I want to know what happens next. Just picked up a copy of NHL 2K9 so I'll probably be playing that soon. Even if it's a crappy game, I also get to watch crappy streams of NHL games online for free for the next two months thanks to the coupon inside the case.

Heh, I did the same thing a couple months ago. How much did you find it for?

PC or 360? If the former, does it use a limited installation/activation system? If it doesn't I'm definitely going to have to buy a copy... PC version isn't out till Monday.

Rangers just beat the Leafs 1-0 in a shootout. Toskala pushed the puck into his own net on the third shot.

No, splitscreen is a major deciding factor for me. As in, if I can avoid it, I will. What's the advantage of playing on half a screen, again? Playing on half a screen means that you have someone sitting beside you playing on the other half. It's the whole human interaction thing. Actually I'm a bit confused why they don't offer that on the PC as well? I mean, you can plug in two controllers. Although most monitors probably aren't very conducive to a split screen. I think this is probably a big portion of it. It's one thing to play split screen on a moderately sized TV screen (Hell even our 20 year old TV had a nearly 24" screen.), but it's another thing to try that on a 17-19" monitor.

1. Kinda iffy. IMO the problem isn't being able to install things on as many computers as you want, but rather being able to re-install on the same computer as many times as you want. 2. I agree. Easy LAN play is a major bonus, but I can't really hold the lack of it against anyone. Requiring everyone that wants to play to have a copy seems reasonable to me. It would be nice if more companies would implement something like what Blizzard did with spawned copies of Starcraft and Diablo that allowed only LAN play and only against the original. 3. I agree with this one. I really don't see what is so bad about this and was unaware that this was a complaint in the first place. 4. Totally wrong. This is not a separate issue and I fail to see how you could consider it one. It may not be the initial intent of DRM to limit resale, but that doesn't mean you can dismiss it as an invalid arguement. 5. Another iffy one. IMO, once the customer purchases a game, the developer no longer has any say over what the customer does with the game except when it comes to redistribution.

No, splitscreen is a major deciding factor for me. As in, if I can avoid it, I will. What's the advantage of playing on half a screen, again? Playing on half a screen means that you have someone sitting beside you playing on the other half. It's the whole human interaction thing.

I'll see what I can do, but know that your Oiler power doesn't scare me.

I know, I know, I should be shot for my blasphemy. I probably wouldn`t have touched NHL 2K9 if I hadn`t gotten in the tournament.

I should probably get some Wii NHL 2K9 in. I just got an e-mail saying that I managed to get in to the Future Shop tournament. Must find, unstoppable goal scoring method...

Yes. Several people have adopted DDRM to differentiate between "friendly" DRM (CD checks, cd keys) and the harsher stuff (Online activations, limited installs).

Everything I've heard has been that Harper called the election because he considered Parliament to be dysfunctional. All the committees were apparently stalled due to disagreements, but the only things I've been able to find out about those pointed to the Conservative members being unwilling to compromise with the other parties on just about everything. The cynical person would say that Harper called the election because all the polls said that he had majority government level support.

There are fixed election dates so that the Prime Minister can't call an election whenever he wants. The opposition can still bring down the government on a confidence motion in the case of a minority government though. Of course, none of this really matters because Harper is god and thus is free to ignore his own laws.

Montreal takes it 4-3 over Boston in a shootout that shouldn't have been needed. Boston tied the game with less than a minute left in the third. Ryder fired the puck in around the net and when Price went to play the puck it took a weird bounce off the end boards, ricocheted up and over the back of the net right onto the stick of Savard who buried it before Price could get back in front.

Quoted from Gamasutra