Hurlshort

My wife and I just bought a Wii today. She really dug the Wii Fit, so it gave me a decent excuse to buy it. I got Smash Bros. along with the Wii fit, and we are setting it up now.

But how many more seasons is Favre going to play? The issue here is whether you are going to plan for the long term or have one or two great seasons and pay the price after that. If Favre had never retired, it wouldn't be an issue, but now it is. You have a young QB who may or may not be good, and he was told for the last few seasons that when Favre retires this will become his team. Well, Favre retired. Rodgers has been waiting for 3 seasons for his shot, and it looked like he was going to get it. But now Favre is unretiring. This is an extremely difficult situation for the Packers front office. There is no clear choice to be made. Rodgers or Favre isn't about who is better, it's about short term (Favre) or long term (Rodgers). It's made even more difficult by the fact that Rodgers is unproven and might not even survive in the NFL. And they will lose Rodgers if they start Favre. Maybe not from the roster, but the guy would need to be traded. He wouldn't have any reason to play for the Packers at that point, all loyalty would be out the window. Athletes aren't too effective when they don't like the organization they are playing for.

And Dues Ex, Hitman II, Jaws Unleashed, Dikatana , and several other full games are also available. Ah, didn't realize that. Personally I went straight for the paid membership. 99 cents seemed like a pretty fair price to give it a shot for a month, and after that month I realized it was definitely worth the $10.

Ok, I've really enjoyed Hoegaarden. I've had about 4 tonight and it's going quite well.

The free account really only gives you access to arcade classics. That's cool, but you want to get a regular account to access the full games lineup. Take a look and see if it's worth it. Sam & Max sealed the deal for me. The first month is only a buck so if you realize it's not for you, just cancel before the first month is up.

Fallout on Gametap. Fallout 2 and Tactics will be coming out later this year. Also, Gametap just signed a deal with THQ, so they will be getting STALKER, Company of Heroes, Titan Quest, and a bunch of other games. This is an awesome service for $10 a month. Just a huge amount of games that you get access to.

Now that it's summer and I've got some time off, I think we need to get a bit of GTA4 MP madness going.

Wow, your son is 5? I can't believe how fast time flies, I remember you talking about him when he was much younger. My daughter is 15 months now. Grats on 40. I'm turning 30 in August.

In High School, you are supposed to be reading stuff like Salvatore. Don't let any out of touch teachers tell you different. Trust me, I'm an out of touch teacher myself. Seriously though, what stuff are they assigning you to read? I remember a few pretty good books from my High School Lit. classes, and I just got done teaching "The Giver" for the summer. I try to keep our novels fairly good over the course of the year, although I haven't taught Language Arts in a couple years. I covered A Samurai's Tale, The Giver, and Scarlet and Minivier last time I taught LA for a year. And if you mean textbooks, just know that your teachers don't expect you to read everything, they just want you to develop enough skimming skills to sound like you know everything I think the only textbook I really read regularly in High School was my AP European History one, that was an awesome book of history.

Just started playing LotRO a couple weeks ago with some friends and I'm really enjoying it. A nice change from WoW. It also seems to have a better community of players than WoW does. Playing a Hunter and a Burglar right now, both level 19. Think I'll stick this one out for a while. I like how easy it is to enjoy playing alts. There is so much content that it rarely feels like you are repeating stuff (except the epic storyline, but the prologue is different based on race.) Plus crafting is setup where multiple characters really support one another. My high level weaponsmith has single handedly supplied a tailor and jeweler with enough materials to move forward with the profession.

Stephen King is a very interesting writer. His amazing talent comes in the form of being super-disciplined. The guy writes a novel a month, even today when he's extremely rich. Heck, he got run over a car and I think he didn't miss a day of writing. Literary critics are pretty harsh on him though. He has improved over the years, from what I hear. I read The Dark Tower and it was solid. Other than that I haven't read anything since It. Creepy book.

Did he open a restaurant chain as well?

I agree with your points about endgame content, developers need to have it in place at release, but I'm still curious about how many hours you played the game. Would you say 50 hours is a fair estimate? I'm asking because so many people seem to complain about these MMO's after spending an insane amount of hours playing them. 50 hours is a very solid gameplay experience. You got your moneys worth for $50 and maybe another $15 for one month of fees, at least in my eyes. It's totally understandable to cancel your account (I cancelled mine after getting a few to level 20). I just don't see it being understandable to be negative about the game, given that you seem to have gotten a lot out of it. It's also not really you, I just saw sooooo many people whine over WoW after getting their characters to level 60.

Not really. Games like AoC are being ported to consoles and some MMOs are console only (although I cannot think of one off the top of my head). No. The base audience for MMO's is on the PC. AoC has a goal of reaching the 360...they might accomplish it, and they might even succeed on that platform. But the fact remains that they sold about a million units to PC gamers. That is a fantastic number and fantastic for the PC industry. FFXI is on the consoles, but I doubt those users outnumber folks on the PC. This is a genre dominated by the PC. That might change someday, but it looks very far off.

So you two hate PC gaming? Bummer.

I picked this one up at the grocery store tonight based on your recommendation. It has Orange Peel in it? It will be interesting, I'll try it tomorrow night.

My favorite series/author/character. Sorry, but you have quite horrible taste when it comes to books then I wouldn't go that far. I'd say he's probably still a teenager. That's like berating a toddler for being into Bob the Builder. Salvatore is a decent pulp action writer and it's good that he's keeping young people reading. Hopefully as "I want" grows up, he will keep reading and broaden his horizons. I think I read all the Salvatore books in college. They were fun.

Please don't do that ever again. I read my posts from that thread and realized I wrote pretty much the exact thing twice. Now I'm questioning my entire life...have I just been repeating the same tired mantras over and over again? *sigh*

That was surprisingly not as negative as I expected.

Age of Conan is very steep on the hardware requirements. WoW is definitely on the low end, you can play that on almost anything. Still, it requires a functional PC (or mac, bleh) Many are built for a variety of performance levels. LotR Online can run on a lower computer, but it looks fantastic with DirectX 10 on a high end system. EQ2 also has a pretty broad range of performances.

MMO's are actually one of the few genres that are really keeping PC's relevant as a gaming platform. The line of logic here is: 1. AoC requires a powerful PC to play 2. Gamer buys powerful PC in order to play AoC 3. Gamer has powerful PC, so developers are willing to try and release their games on the PC. Without MMO's, the PC gaming market would suffer tremendously. So realistically, if you are a fan of PC gaming, you should hope that MMO's continue to thrive. That doesn't mean you need to play them, it just means you shouldn't be negative about their existence.

It bothers me whenever anyone complains about endgame content in MMO's. How many hours did it take to get to level 50? Did you enjoy those hours? I hear it on every MMO game, but the fact is some folks rush to the endgame and play crazy hours, and no developer can really keep up with those people. People need to be patient and wait for the content to come out, they are working on it. Just take a break for a month or two if there's nothing to do. I've done that for LotR Online and I'm always amazed at what was done when I return.

That Mackeson beer was in my Beer of the World set, it was very good. I also prefer a beer on tap whenever possible. Fat Tire is good from the tap, but I've had it bottled and been less happy with it. It is interesting how different a beer can taste depending on what it's served in. Whenever I go to Outback (there aren't a lot of places for steak in California!) I always order the Hef, I think it's usually Widmer's, and it comes in a large frosty mug. Good stuff. I haven't had beer in a can since college. I'm probably a beer snob, but I think it's more that I drink so little that I figure I can afford to drink the good stuff. My neighbor drinks Bud Light and he told me if he drank my stuff, he'd be fat and broke, because you can't knock back a few of those beers a night and not put on some weight. When I was in college, I bought a keg of Gordon Beirsch's Marzen (a rich red beer) on my 21st birthday. That was a good night, I think.

I reached level 44 as a Captain of Men in Lord of the Rings Online. I also got to see the Fellowship off from Rivendell. Boromir told me I should be a part of the crew, there's too many dang hobbits on the quest. I was THIS close to being a movie star, shucks. The fellowship leaving is in preparation of the expansion in September, which will add the Mines of Moria and some areas past the Misty Mountains.

I'm a big fan of any hefeweizen or wheat beer. I probably drink one or two beers a month, I don't touch alcohol very often. But a beer with a good flavor can really compliment a steak dinner. For the summer I bought a six pack of this Great White beer, http://www.lostcoast.com/. It's pretty good, not too bitter and it has a clean wheaty taste. It migh be better with a slice of lemon, but I haven't tried it. My wif also got a cool Christmas present, a case of Beers of the World. It had a great variety of international beers. We still have a few left.