Enjoying Doing Nothing

We've been back home for a few days now and we are all enjoying doing a whole lot of nothing. Our sleep schedule is all messed up (going to bed at 3 and 4 in the morning, and not getting up until noon), but we figure there is no point fixing that until after New Years.

Rock Band 2 was waiting for us when we got home (thanks for the instant shipping Amazon!), so Rhiannon and I have been playing that quite a bit. We finally unlocked Shackler's Revenge by Guns N Roses - now to find where they have hidden away the Megadeth tune. Rhiannon is getting quite good on drums. If we continue at our current rate of play perhaps Todd and I will have a drummer to jam with soon!

So what to do next? I think I'll open a frosty Boddingtons while I think about that. I love the holidays!

Revenge of the Gamers

Well, on one hand I am glad there has finally been someone to come forward and apologize for propagating the outright lies told by various members of the media about the game Mass Effect, but I think Cooper Lawrence got the short end of the stick. Gamers totally blasted her books on Amazon, giving her a little taste of her own medicine, and while she was at fault for blindly spouting off on TV the real culprit should be tarred and feathered in my opinion. Why has he not apologized? Could it be he was just looking for publicity to make himself feel important, or is he really that stupid?

Worst Game Ever

So a loooong time ago I bought Pirates of the Caribbean - At World's End for the Wii. I basically bought it the day it came out because my kids love Pirates and I assumed it was going to rock. I mean, c'mon - swinging the the Wii remote like a pirate sword? how could that possibly not be completely awesome? Well...as it turns out - this is the worst freaking game I have ever played. And apparently I am not the only one who thinks so.

The day we bought it - I surprised the kids and we put it in. We were all excited. This was going to be awesome! Well, after about 2 minutes the reality of just how hard this game sucked was already sinking in and my arm was already sore from randomly wanking the remote around like a madman (if my arm is going to be sore from wanking I expect to be getting something out of it). It was obvious Drew could not play it at all, and Rhiannon lost interest pretty much immediately.

So it has collected dust on our shelf since the day I bought it. I even tried to sell it online and didn't get a single offer. Well, for some reason Drew has been on at me to play it again. I say me because he just can't do it at all; but he loves to watch (he doesn't really comprehend the suck factor) me play. So for the past few nights we have been thrashing the remote around and making progress in the game. I don't know how close we are to the end, but I hope it is over soon because my right forearm is so freaking pumped up from remote wanking I can't take much more. I'll never buy a game sight-unseen again.

More Linux Gripes

So, I thought (according to all the Linux fanpeople) that Linux was so much better than Windows because it never required updates? I have had more automatic updates and reboots on my Linux machine than my Windows machine in the last week!

I still like Ubuntu though and I fully expect more updates as Linux matures. It's just that what a lot of people don't seem to be able to understand (or maybe admit) is that all software is prone to error and needs to be fixed. Nobody's perfect (although some of us are more perfect...err.. quality-conscientious than others), and the more people that use your software on a daily basis will only serve to reinforce that little nugget of reality.

At any rate - I have put my Linux trials on hold for now because my ancient computer was simply too painful to use. I must admit that WinXP ran much better and faster on that machine, but I think it has a lot to do with the graphics card. For now, I am back to my laptop (and XP). Note to self:

Huge resolutions
+ crappy gfx card from the 90's
+ latest and greatest FOS OS
---------------------------------
Poor user experience

I think when I buy my new uber-computer (probably with a new ATI HD2900XT or some other outrageous graphics card) I'll try dual-booting Linux/Windows and continue my evaluation. Although at this point I'm not sure if the latter will be XP or Vista. I guess it depends on when I actually spec out and buy this beast.

Any recommendations on what to buy would be welcome (if anyone actually reads this). I've been out of the hardware game for awhile...

If only there were new Amiga hardware available. ;O)