John's Random Review

During March, Laura and I hit two restaurants as part of the Dine Around Seattle program. From March 1 to March 31, a bunch of Seattle area restaurants do a Sunday through Thursday, 3 course for $30 special offer. Some of the places are pretty high end that you might never go to. Thankfully we found a good babysitter, so we’ve been able to go to two! If we hadn’t gone to AZ on spring break, we might have hit more!

Barking Frog, Woodinville

Barking Frog is located near the wineries and Red Hook brewery in Woodinville. The Herbfarm and Barking Frog are both located in theWillows Lodge hotel area. We went for Laura’s birthday. Everything we had was great, and service was too. Laura had the prawns as her first course, and she devoured them. She thought they were awesome, and could have eaten several more plate fulls as a meal. I had the steak tartare, which was also awesome. We both had the pork short ribs for dinner, and both loved it. For dessert, laura had the Pear and Ice cream, and I had the molten chocolate cake. perfecto! The pace of the meal was a little slow, but we kindof expected that. In places like this they aren’t in a rush to get you out and seat the next group While normally a little expensive, we’ll probably go back for a special occasion. We’re also thinking about staying at Willows lodge hotel as a little stay-cation!

Eva, Seattle

Eva Restaurant and Winebar is located in Seattle (probably technically in the Wallingford neighborhood?). We went for no special reason, other than that we wanted to hit another dine around Seattle restaurant and we had a willing babysitter, which is good enough reason, I guess! This time i had the prawns for my first course, and laura had the baby beets salad. I’m not much of a seafood person, but i thought the prawns were great. They were a little spicy, which probably helped for me. The beet salad was interesting, because it had baby beets that were orange, and blood oranges that were…well, beet red! For the main course, Laura went with the vegetarian option, asparagus and goat cheese crepes with hazelnut pesto, and I had the pork tenderloin. Laura, in summing up the crepes:

Do you think it’s okay if I lick the plate?

The tenderloin was good, you could really smell and taste the thyme. Laura set up a little herb garden a few years ago, so we always have fresh thyme, and there’s no mistaking it! For a fancier restaurant, the portions were pretty big at Eva. For dessert, Laura actually broke up her 3 for 30 dinner so she could get a dessert that wasn’t on the 3 for 30 menu. She’d kinda planned it that way by going with the vegetarian option, as the vegetarian 3 for 30 is actually $25 instead. In fact, she’d even picked Eva because of the dessert, or more correctly, 3 desserts in one, the “Eva Trio”; Meyer Lemon Ice Cream, Maple Pot de Crème with Walnut Praline, and a Saffron Panna Cotta with Watermelon–Rose Jelly. I went with the apricot sour cream coffee cake. All were delicious. the coffee cake was HUGE!

We can’t help but recommend the dine around seattle deals, when they restart them. Or, if you hurry, there’s still a couple days left! It lets you get out on non busy day and get a great deal in some great places. We’d go broke if they did it all the time, though! There are at least a few restaurants on the list that we’re going to hit regardless of the deal, but if we can go to them twice, once on the cheap, even better!

I’ve now had my Spike’s Tactical AR-22 for more than a year. Its now on a different lower than it originally was, has some different accessories, and has lots of ammo through it!

Go to the original review.

In 2009, i put more than 2300 rounds through it, with only 27 failures. And of those 28, 15 were on one day early in February, where i tried to use CCI Mini-mags. Lets just say that it doesn’t like those! I also think i went through a bad batch of ammo in January, where i had ~100 light strikes or duds. It happened with 2 separate lowers, so I don’t think it was hammer or spring related.

Since i got it, i’ve added an Eotech (off an ebay pawn shop ), and a knockoff magnifier. I didn’t spend a lot on the magnifier because i wasn’t sure how well the setup would work, or if i’d like the combination or not. For a cheapo magnifier, it actually works pretty well. I got a used noveske kx3 flash hider, but mostly for looks. The barrel isn’t short enough to really need it, although i am tempted to have the barrel cut down and have the kx3 permanently mounted. Tempted, but not sure.

From March of 2009 to date, i’ve only had 2 failures, both failures to feed, and one bad round in 1600+ rounds.

Statistics

I started keeping really detailed logs a few years ago. I may be off by a few rounds, but not by much!

In the previous review, i talked about how much cheaper .22lr ammo was than .223 or 5.56. Since then, the price of 22 has gone up a bunch, and the cost of .223/5.56 has come back down to a more reasonable (read: non-panic) price. Because of this, i also have an AR chambered for 5.56, so i shoot that too, and shoot my spikes’s 22 a little less often.

I recently received this amazing piece of WWII era history through the Civilian Marksmanship Program:

A Springfield Armory M1 .30 Caliber Rifle, commonly called an M1 Garand.

The serial number is in the 278xxxx range, which, according to Fulton Armory (via Scott Duff), makes its manufacture date in March of 1944.  By the proof marks on the stock (pics to follow!) it looks like the stock is much newer, either HRA or IH from the mid to late 50’s.  Either way, i think it is the oldest thing i own!

It is in great condition, and it is beautiful!  Laura even said, “That’s way prettier than the AK”

The first few hours were very enjoyable, much like the first Overlord was. I didn’t see much new stuff, other than that the minions could have mounts that would let them get to other places. I really liked the original Overlord, and in fact while i was playing it, Laura was pregnant with Easton. In one of laura’s first ultrasounds, easton looked just like the overlord, so that was funny timing. But the new spider mount feature for the green minions is one of the reasons i stopped playing….

I generally don’t “give up” on games after several hours of gameplay. I might give up in less than an hour if i know right away that this game just isn’t my style, like Supreme Commander (never been an RTS guy) or Mirrors Edge (first-person jumping-puzzle game). If i make it through the first hour, i will probably finish the game, or at least the main storyline.

The “point” of overlord is that you’re literally, an evil overlord. You have minions. In the game, you have direct control over the overlord, and partial control over the minions. You point where you want them to go, and they go do what they do. Brown ones are bruisers, green ones are assassins (poison and hiding and backstabbing), red ones throw fire, and blue ones can walk on water and resurrect the others.

I got to a point in Overlord 2 where you’re supposed to “drive” your green minions (on spider mounts) on the wall of a cylindrical room. As they go up and around, they step on pressure points that raise the water level in the room, in order for the platform you are on to float to the top. The problems with this “puzzle”:

1. The puzzle is timed. If you don’t get around fast enough to each trigger, the water stops, and you go back to the last full level.
2. The green minions can die. There was something going on, which wasn’t obvious to me, that was causing the green minions to die from falling or something after the platform went down
3. You have a limited number of minions. Combined with the first two, not only are you time constrained, but resource constrained.
4. Limited/no real camera control. When driving the minions, the camera is always fixed near your original position, and follows where you are “driving” the minions. So you have a very limited range of looking ahead or behind to figure out where to go next. Sometimes you’d get to a point after you dropped back to the bottom that the minions were still on the wall, but now you couldn’t see them to drive them back…There are some points where you’re in direct control of a minion and that was fun, and probably would have made this part much easier.
5. The minions are “walking” on the wall, so the perspective and control is screwy compared to the rest of the time when you’re walking on the ground.
6. horrible control of the minions. You aren’t driving them so much as you’re “suggesting” where they should go. The further up the wall you got the more of a maze it became. As such, most of the time the minions were getting stuck on a barrier or a wall or something and then sticking or stopping there. If you had a group of minions, they also bump into each-other, so that didn’t help either.

I got through the first couple parts of the puzzle pretty quickly, but the third part was insanely frustrating. Sorry CodeMasters, your game shouldn’t devolve into a fight against the controls and the camera. I was to the point i was moving one minion at a time, stopping them (if i could) on top of the switch i needed to trigger, placing a marker there so they’d stay there, then starting with another minion. But even that didn’t work because for some reason they kept falling and dying. After about half an hour of being stuck on this puzzle, i just said “f-this!” (I’d been swearing pretty regularly up to this point, good thing Easton was already sleeping), turned it off, and sent it back to gamefly. There are too many other good games out right now to waste time swearing at a game because the controls suck.

Coded references to New Testament Bible passages about Jesus Christ are inscribed on high-powered rifle sights provided to the United States military by a Michigan company, an ABC News investigation has found. — From ABCNews.com I love how all of a sudden a marking like JN8:12 is a “Secret Jesus Code”, instead of a passage in the bible.

This whole article is fully of quotes so hilarious, it should really have been published by the Onion:

“It allows the Mujahedeen, the Taliban, al Qaeda and the insurrectionists and jihadists to claim they’re being shot by Jesus rifles,” he said.

OMG, since the scope on the rifle has a bible passage book/section number on it, its magical? Do they have the pope sprinkling them with holy water too? Or just the ammunition? I wonder if this will finally put to rest the 5.56mm vs 7.62mm myths to bed. “7.62 has more stopping power!” “Oh, but my scope has 5.56 bullet drop compensation marks and HAS SECRET JESUS CODES!!!!!” “5.56×45 wins!”

“This is probably the best example of violation of the separation of church and state in this country,” said Weinstein. “It’s literally pushing fundamentalist Christianity at the point of a gun against the people that we’re fighting. We’re emboldening an enemy.”

Really? Really? A private company stamping 2COR4:6 on some scopes is the WORST thing that’s ever happened in the separation of church and state? I’d think putting “In God We Trust” on every piece of currency we’ve ever used, or adding “under god” to the Pledge of Allegiance would rank a little higher.

I’d bet the bible markings have a more insidious purpose: anti-counterfitting. Everyone marks production numbers, etc on their stuff, and real ACOGs are not cheap. this is a great way to get that but in a meaningful way. Worst case, Trijicon can just replace the text with the number of the book in the bible, like N4:8:12. (The N for New Testament)

I wanted an ACOG before. Now I need an ACOG. The power of Christ compels you! THE POWER OF CHRIST COMPELS YOU!

Fastest review: Call of Duty 4:Modern Warfare was better.

The AI might have been crappy in the first one, but at least the story made sense. Yes, there was a controversial section in this one. But it should have been more controversial that it was horrible horrible writing. Hey, I’m standing here with a fully loaded machine gun, and the world’s most wanted terrorist and his dudes, I could end this whole story RIGHT HERE and be the hero of the world. But instead, i think i’ll let some terrorists waste a bunch of idiot tourists who just stand there. Um, no. And you’re telling me that airport cops in Russia are armed with pistols? God, i hope not.

Multi player is about the same as the original, but much more complicated. Death streaks are cool, and are definitely the place for last stand and martyrdom, but tactical nukes that end a round as a kill streak reward? Meh. Some idiot who can run full speed all the time and stab you instantly with a knife from 10 yards away? No thanks. Some douche running around with 2 double barrel shotguns? Bleh. Heartbeat sensors? Some huge screen real estate to show pictures and titles and stuff that nobody cares about? I think they spent way too much time thinking of all the things they could do and not enough time thinking about what they should do. The main storyline was like a bad season of 24. No, like 3 bad seasons of 24 rolled into one season.

And the sequel didn’t even have the saving grace of the AC130 mission that the original had! Firing missiles from a drone just doesn’t compare to the AC130. And yet you can shoot from it in multiplayer?

I really liked it! It had a few glitchy things at the beginning, though. You’d think that if you were making a game about ghosts you would maybe maybe write your code in such a way that said ghosts don’t get stuck in the environment. Several times i’d get to a spot in the level where nothing was happening. All of the other ghostbusters are standing around, obviously waiting for something to happen. So i had to run around in the whole level, looking for that one stupid ghost that was stuck somewhere. On one of the first levels, he was stuck between a building and a car. Other times, having the ghosts stuck somewhere turned out to be very convenient, as it meant that there was one less ghost to deal with.

The storyline was pretty good, the flow was pretty good, the acting was “meh”. It has all the original actors in it, but it would appear to me that they recorded all the audio sentence by sentence actor by actor. The conversations between characters didn’t seem like they were all in a room together talking, like it should. One cool thing was how when you got “killed”, the other ghostbusters could come tag you and bring you back, so you only “died” if all of the ghostbusters died. In some of the boss monsters or other places where there were tons of ghosts at once, this meant that you spent most of your time running around reviving the other ghostbusters, and spending what little time you had left actually trying to catch ghosts.

The weapons were mostly cool. I loved the standard proton pack thing, it worked exactly like you’d think it would. The “blue” gun mode thing i hardly used (some kind of freeze ray and a semi-shotgun thing?). The “green” gun was a slime gun, similar to what they used in ghostbusters 2, and towards the end of the game you had to use it far too much. I want to be a ghost buster, wrangling ghosts, not a slime pump! The last gun you unlock, the “yellow” gun was like a ghost-busting machine gun. It was useful in some places, but not many. About the only place i really used it was one of the last bosses.

All in all i thought it was a really good game; it had the feel of the first movie, so it was really entertaining for a movie based video game!

The thing I misses the most since the tragic end of Rosetta Biosoftware will be not having a real Halloween party tomorrow. And not just because someone in the carpool had won either Best Costume, Best Group, or the Golden Frankie for like the last 5 years. The best thing was probably seeing your managers, directors, etc, dressed up in costumes. Microsoft has kids over and trick-or-treating, but it isn’t going to be the same as having Yelena forcing people to wear whatever costume things she brought for the people who didn’t dress up!

Some examples…

Not a winner:

Winner:

Winners:

Winners:

Winners:

(thanks to jay for photoshopping in the background!)

In the end we’re all losers?:

(thanks to jay for that one)

I’m going to need to start emailing around Microsoft Research now that i work at Microsoft…because i’m intrigued by this thing:

Microsoft Research’s Courier

This new device, called “Courier” showed up on Gizmodo today, and i don’t know why it hasn’t gotten more press. Maybe because its still in a “late prototype” phase and everyone assumes there’s an apple iTablet thing due any time now?

I’ve never been a fan of the ebook reader things because they just don’t look right. my laptop, for how small it is, isn’t the right form factor either. My iphone is just too small to read on. I think this thing is about perfect! I had a Vadem Clio years ago, and it was the closest thing to the right size device for what i’d like to carry around, but it was underpowered and the touchscreen wasn’t anywhere near the size or quality as they are now.

Vadem Clio. now ancient technology!

But this Courier device looks like it would work great with the right ebook reader software, and a coworker already said it would be a great machine to fold over, with a screen facing each way to play battleship on . It would be a great meeting computer, surf the web on one side, take notes on the other. I’d never need another paper notebook ever!

In haiku form:

mirror’s edge, the game
it is a jumping puzzle
and that’s about it.

Well, maybe it had other things, but i never found them. I just couldn’t get into it, because it was just jumping puzzles, so i gave up. I’d just finished Tomb Raider before that, and at least it had puzzle puzzles. And swinging puzzles, and fire puzzles and shooting puzzles, etc. There are just too many other games out to play something that pisses me off.