Over the years, “Nerd Central”, as my office was once known, has slowly gone from 3 computers, 2 monitors, 2 printers, a television, surround sound receiver, a small mixer to manage the sound output to one set of speakers, and a huge random assortment of other electronics down to just a single desktop computer and xbox with a single monitor and computer speakers, and the 2 printers (one inkjet, one photo)

and now that setup has been slimmed down to pretty much the bare essentials.  computer, monitor, printer, and 360.

Since this pic, some books and other assorted stuff fills in the empty shelves, but its working well so far.  When I work from home, I can pull out the shelf above the keyboard, put the laptop there, and plug it into the monitor and network, and use the laptop keyboard and mouse separately from the desktop.  It would be nice to have a usb+dvi kvm switch so I could use just one keyboard and mouse…It also looks like I could get a much bigger monitor to fit inside there, that would increase my productivity immensely!

There’s also a small shelf up against the wall (behind that door) that has some other assorted stuff, including the photo printer.

The nice thing is that when it is all closed up, it looks rather clean.  I’m sure it will get a lot messier inside, but at least I can close it up and keep little people fingers away from all those tempting buttons and blinking lights.  At this point, it doesn’t lock, so I’m thinking about adding a little lock to the top, so that Easy can’t open it up. 

I also had to go back into the crawlspace yet again to run cat5 to that wall so that I have wired network access there. Wireless is fast, but it isn’t gigabit fast like everything else wired in the house.

So where did everything else go?  Over the years, a lot of the “headless” stuff, like the webserver and the home media server have migrated to the garage, where the fiber comes into the house.  The old CRT television was recycled years ago.  A bunch of the books went to my office at work, I’ve kept some, recycled a huge amount, and have 2 stacks to go donate either to the library at work, the library, or whoever will take them.  A lot of the other stuff is still in the process of being thrown out or being recycled. 

About the only thing we don’t have a plan for so far is the huge collection of bobble-heads we have.  There are shelves along two whole walls that are full of mariners, brewers, and assorted other bobble-heads.  There hasn’t even been space for the 2 we’ve gotten this year!

Updating my office, again! was originally posted at John's Random Review.

Friday night planning session. just me, some notebooks, a tape measure, and a roll of thin mints.  the little notebook is my construction projects one, the big notebook is one I do other stuff in.  The metal template is for drawing phone software user interface elements, but I was mostly just using it as a ruler and straight edge.  I originally designed it without a center divider and having fixed shelves, so I’m glad I slept on it before starting it.  I think this way turned out a lot simpler.

The carcass, and the face frame on top.  The carcass is 3/4” birch ply, the face frame is whatever oak home depot had.  the back cleat is cut at the center at 45 degrees to make it a “french cleat”.  You screw one half of the cleat onto the wall, and then other half of the cleat gets attached to the cabinet.  that makes it super easy to install and remove.

tongues and grooves! grooves and tongues! this always takes forever to set up, but once everything is ready, things go pretty quick.  Getting the dado at the exact right height to make those tongues exactly centered and the right size took forever.

done!  the windows are plexi, with the back sanded to make them semi-opaque.  The inside of the cabinet is stained, the outside painted “sweatshirt gray”, the same color as the walls of the theater room.  We decided on the gray color, as it would hopefully make the shelf blend in and seem smaller than it is, instead of black (to match the other furniture) or white (to match the trim.) Painting is always my least favorite part of these escapades.  I’d much rather be doing the rest of the project than any of the painting.  I used to dislike staining things, but now that is sooooo much simpler to me than painting.  And I think that most of the stains smell better than latex paint, too.

You can’t see it, but the sides and center have shelf pin holes for adjustable shelves.  I had to buy a jig to do that, so the jig and the self centering big that went with that were the one new tool I ended up buying for this project.  I kindof wish I would have gotten the shelf pins that have the fancy sleeves, as the holes aren’t super clean in the plywood.  Next time

here it is, installed.  I still have to make some shelves to go into it, but that’s just a bunch of straight cuts, and maybe some biscuits.  If I’m feeling fancy, I might use the router to route little slots for the shelf pins to fit into so the shelves can’t slide out.

I might also have to find some super rough sandpaper and scuff up the windows a little more, as from the picture above you can still mostly see into them.  With the overhead lights off (they’re on for the picture), you can see a lot more than normal, but it’s still a little too clear. 

I also have to find some hardware for the doors.  I was originally looking for knobs the same size/shape as our entertainment center, but since this cabinet is a different color, it doesn’t need to match exactly.  With the really tall doors, it might need some thinner, taller pulls instead of knobs too.  we’ll see what I can find around… With the area in the corner, I’m thinking about putting some hooks/hangers on the left side, to hang xbox/ps3 controllers or something in that hidden space between the cabinet and the wall.

Project: Theater Cabinet was originally posted at John's Random Review.

Alan Wake was one of the most interesting games I’ve played in a long time.  The story was an actual story.  Well, it was really a story about a story, in the form of a game about a story.

A lot of companies have tried to do some kind of “episodic” game, and of any, I think this game could have actually pulled it off if it had been released that way.

The game was set up as several distinct “episodes”, that had a setup of “Previously, on Alan Wake…” and then re-told important parts of the previous chapters.  It was a fantastic way to get you back into the game when you start a new chapter.

As the game went on, the episodes got longer and longer, so it wasn’t as episodic as the first few.  Every time I thought “this is going to be the end of this episode,” it just kept going.  And partway through, I thought I had part of the story figured out based on something a character said, but the story totally went another way.  I really enjoyed finding pages of the manuscript, which explained little things in the story that were happening or were “shadows” (pun intended!) of things to come.

Gameplay wise, it was different than almost anything I’ve ever played.  For most of the game, you have 2 weapons: a flashlight, and a gun of some kind.  And yes, the flashlight is a weapon!  This might also be the first time that a game had a flare gun that was truly truly useful.  It was like the game’s equivalent of a rocket launcher, and it was fun to use!

The story completely set up DLC and a sequel, so this is another sequel I’ll be excited for!

Random Review: Alan Wake was originally posted at John's Random Review.

During the install I’m forced to watch a dude on screen chain smoke the whole time.  Some of the “hints” it gave during this install (emphasis/commentary added):

• konami is not responsible for any damage resulting from misuse (misuse of what?)
• this game is intended for use exclusively with the PLAYSTATION3 system. (no crap, really? is that why its only available on the PS3? where else would I play it?)
• cigarette smoke has detrimental effects to you and those around you, particularly infants and children.
• put litter in its place.  dispose of ashes in ashtrays.
• ensure that you play in a brightly lit room and sit as far away from the screen as possible (except sony makes this impossible, as I need to charge my ps3 controller, and the cord they give you for that is like 3’ long, and apparently the controller only charges if the PS3 is on!)
• avoid playing when you are tired
• be sure to take a 15-minute break every half hour
• if you begin to feel ill, stop playing immediately

THANKS MOM, for the life coaching while waiting for your game to install.

I’m really hoping that smoking is an integral part of the game now.

[72 hours later, waiting for install #2 to complete…so I’ll post more. Yes, this makes 11 minutes of install time now.]

The second install also features the life coaching that the first install did. Nice.

I wouldn’t call smoking an integral part of the game, I’d almost call it a character. Mr. Cigarette appears all over the place, as a usable item, as a major plot point in most cut-scenes. There’s even a cigarette smoking monkey. That’s just awesome.

Another very strange thing is that whenever you start the game, before anything else you get an empty black screen with the standard console “this game uses autosave, so don’t unplug your console while its saving” message.  You have to press X before you even get to  the title screen.  This occurs every time you start the game.  Lame.

The game is also more like a soap opera with an interactive video game between scenes.  Every time you move into a new area, you get a phone call from someone.  A general, your psychologist, your friend’s former fiancé.  There’s a drama about how the colonel is the father of one of the female protagonists, but she grew up thinking he was her uncle, and now he’s married to your shrink, who calls you when you’re stressed out on the battlefield…

[And another hour or so in, I gave up on it.  There are just too many other good games to play, and MGS4:GotP just isn’t my style right now.]

Random Review: Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots was originally posted at John's Random Review.

The first gun I bought was a 1911 pistol.  It is still my favorite handgun to shoot, although shooting a lot of .45 gets expensive!  So I bought a Marvel Precision .22 LR conversion that allows me to shoot .22 LR,  and then I bought another (used) 1911 so that I didn’t have to keep swapping the conversion on and off.  The collection has grown, but I still shoot both of those pretty often.  I’ve even used the 45 in pistol league a few weeks, and it’s a lot of fun! 

The 1911 is used in some of my all-time favorite movies, used by Robert De Niro in Ronin (I also love the car chases!), by Benicio Del Toro and Ryan Phillippe in The Way of the Gun (I also love the realism of the tactics they use!), and by Tom Hanks in Saving Private Ryan, shooting at a tank! (the last 5 minutes of Saving Private Ryan and Monsters, Inc get me teary eyed every time!)

A couple weeks ago, the M1911 officially became the state gun of Utah, more because J.M. Browning was a Utah native, and to celebrate the centennial than ay other reason.

So thank you very much, Mr. Browning, for your innovative work!  So innovative, that after selling the 1911 design to Colt, he had to design an entirely new pistol, the Browning Hi-power, to get around his own patents!  The hi-power’s centennial isn’t until 1935, so I have some time to get some of those before that rolls around!

Happy 1911 Day! was originally posted at John's Random Review.

In what has become an annual tradition, we went again this year during spring training. But this year, instead of rifles and revolvers, this year was all about: Shotguns! 

Jim and Art used over/under Browning shotguns, and I used a browning single shot.  We then each shot ~60 birds of trap shooting.  Ben Avery is a huge place, with something like 18 trap fields, so the 3 of us had a trap field to ourselves. This was good since neither Jim or I had shot trap before, and we didn’t want to slow anyone else down.

The range was all automated, with voice activated release.  So there are little speakers on stands in front of you, and when you say “pull” (or whatever you say loud), it flings out your target.  So once you’re up there, there’s no talking, or it will fling out some more targets that nobody will be ready for!  And since the range is all automated, there’s no free targets if you accidentally screw up!

We did all of our shooting from the 16 yard line, which is the closest spot, and for first timers we did really well.  It took Jimbo a little while to get warmed up, and once he was warm he was on fire!  I started off pretty well and stayed pretty consistent.  The only ones I had trouble judging were the ones that fired straight away, with no left or right movement.  I think I shot over the top of those more than anything.  Of around 60 total birds, I think I missed 7, so I was feeling pretty good!  I wanted to try moving back and see if I could still hit anything, but by then, our cards were up!

(If the embedded video is missing, you can see it here)

I think both Jim and I expected a lot more kick from the shotguns, but the trap loads were pretty light, and the shotguns pretty heavy.  I had a tiny little strawberry bruise on my shoulder, but that was probably from one round that I didn’t have the shotgun pulled into my shoulder all the way.  The next day my shoulder was a little more sore, but that could have been from the shooting or from chasing Easy around the pool all afternoon, or most likely both.

The next day, Jimbo was ready to go again, so we know that he enjoyed it.  I had a great time, and can’t wait to see what art has planned for next year!

(If the embedded video is missing, you can see it here)

By some freak coincidence, I think both times I took video, both jim and art missed.  You can’t blame the camera, as in both cases, neither of them noticed .

If we lived closer to Ben Avery, I’d be there all the time; it’s most definitely good for my wallet that we’re a thousand miles away!

Ben Avery Review #2: The Shotgunning Edition was originally posted at John's Random Review.

It wasn’t the best story ever, but I thought the story made more sense than Borderlands!  The side quests were ok, but I think I “broke” some by going through the area and doing something before I got the quest for it.  There were other things where I swear I scoured the whole level, and the thing that was supposed to be there wasn’t there.  And I wasn’t going to spend a lot of time looking when there was so much other stuff to do.

The controls were pretty good for a PC to Xbox port, although I think some things, like inventory management, could have been simplified.  I accidentally sold or equipped things lots of times because the selection outline and the equipped outline were very similar at first glance.  The text in some areas still seemed to be set up for a PC as well, with a really small font that only used up a small area at the bottom of the screen, with the torchlight logo covering the other 70%. 

But I can easily overlook any of those nitpicks for this one.  About 3/4 of the way through, I felt like I was cheating.  Once I started getting really good equipment and skills, I was just destroying things.  In most games, as you get stronger, so do the bad guys, so even though you’re now doing 10x the damage at level 10, the bad guys are 10x stronger, so there’s not a lot of difference from level 1.  While that was somewhat true in Torchlight, I felt like my character really was a hero.  Hacking and slashing and fireballing zombies and dragons and such was awesome fun.  I didn’t die until the very last boss monster, as health potions were pretty easy to come by.

The verdict on this one is 100% clear.  Spend the points and buy Torchlight.  The only thing that would be better would be co-op multiplayer, so here’s hoping for that in Torchlight 2. And here’s to double hoping the Xbox port comes sooner for the sequel, with how well it has done in sales!

Random Review: Torchlight was originally posted at John's Random Review.

Like the Call of Duty series, I played through MoH on the hardest difficulty (until I saw the “Tier 1 mode” or whatever that I didn’t go back through and play).  But unlike recent CoD games on hard, I didn’t see any real “bugs” with the “good guy” AI.  And the special forces guys in this game could shoot.  While you, as the player, still have to do the majority of the work, the computer controlled players could at least draw fire and provide cover so that you could flank the bad guys.  So for this game, I don’t have to write a version of my “letter to my idiot squadmates” posts.  The effectiveness of my squad did make the game feel a little easier than CoD, but it did make me feel like a good player on a great team, instead of the great player on a crappy team.   However, the game not being as hard didn’t make the game any less enjoyable.

The scenarios and script of the single player campaign seemed very realistic. In fact, some of it seems to be loosely based on the real life situation that was documented by Marcus Lattrell in his fantastic book Lone Survivor. Some other parts of the game were so engrossing that as things started to unfold, I actually was getting worried.  In one section, you’re fighting your way down an Afghan mountain with a small squad of soldiers, vastly outnumbered by the Taliban.  You’re trying to call in close air support, but things just aren’t working out.  You’re hiding in buildings that are slowly getting destroyed by small arms fire and RPGs, and you continue to fall back.  All the while, your squad-mates are counting down ammo.  Soon, they start firing kill shots only.   Then you start hearing “last mag!” and other not good commentary.  When the radio guy tells command to use the air support to help another group because we’re about to be overrun and it would just be a waste of time… At this point, like my squadmates, I’m also getting very low on ammo, and I’m starting to freak out…back in the real world, on my couch, my heart is racing!

There was also a section where you get to be the gunner in an Apache (my favorite helicopter of all time).  Surprisingly, on the hardest difficulty, I got through it pretty quick, and I was only using the main gun.  When playing through again later on easy to pick up some achievements I missed, I realized that the apache also had rockets, and I never used them on hard!  I died a lot more on that section on easy than I did on hard.  But it sure was fun!  Now someone needs to make a game featuring my favorite airplane of all time, the A-10 Thunderbolt II, aka “The Warthog”, but that’s a discussion for another day!

The multi-player was Ok.  I liked some of the progression aspects, but I think the Call of Duty franchise has a better overall system for that.  As a new player unfamiliar with the maps, I was getting sniped far too much for it to be a lot of fun though.  In the Call of Duty games, after you get killed by another player, you see an instant replay from that player’s point of view, so you can at least see where the person is camping as they kill you over and over…

There was a lot of hub-ub when the game was coming out that in multi-player, one side was good guys, and the other side was the Taliban.  There was a huge negative press that you get to be the Taliban.  After EA changed the name to the more generic “OpFor” (opposing force) that is used by militaries around the world in war games (and used in the Call of Duty series of games set in modern day), the rhetoric didn’t seem to calm down much, and Exchanges on military bases still refused to sell the game.  I wonder if they ever sold “Counterstrike”, or the Call of Duty games.  In counterstrike, one side was always the “Terrorists”, and the other was trying to rescue hostages or defuse a bomb planted by the terrorists.  The Call of Duty games always had one set of players being the Axis and the other side the Allies.  Personally, I don’t see the big deal, particularly since the game is rated Mature.

All in all, I thought it was a really good game, and can’t wait for the sequel (bring on lucky number 13 in the franchise!)

Random Review: Medal of Honor was originally posted at John's Random Review.

It had a very interesting psycho-drama going on, with the main character being captured and interrogated by someone, causing flashbacks. The missions occurred in the flashbacks, not entirely in order, and interestingly, sometimes without clear beginning or end. I liked that. Several times you’d be what you’d assume 3/4 of the way through something, and then you’d see something that didn’t make sense, and you’d get shocked back to the interrogation. I thought I had figured out what was going on, but I hadn’t. I like it when a game keeps me guessing.

But, like all of the recent call of duty games, i have to complain about the computer controlled characters. There were many many cases where a bad guy would “rush” wherever the good guys were, and would either kill me, or all the good guys in that vicinity, without the other good guys ever firing a single shot. It was if the good guys never saw the bad guy at all. I always play through the CoD games on the hardest possible difficulty, and maybe that’s what exposes me to the worst flaws. I assume as the difficulty goes up, the good guys in your squad become less effective, requiring you to do more, and makes the bad guys more effective. I get that, that’s fine. But its inexcusable to let a bad guy run across 50 yards of open ground uncontested into the middle of a group of what is supposed to be highly trained special forces soldiers. At least in the previous games, most of the time the offending soldiers were just regular soldiers. In this game, they’re supposed to be operators! The elite! If you’re so elite, do something, other than stand there and die!

Random Review: Call of Duty: Black Ops was originally posted at John's Random Review.

Even so, I can say that I hated herding cattle.  Seriously.  One time is enough to show me the hardships of the old west, but one time is more than enough herding cattle for me . 

The interesting (no spoilers!) thing about the story is that while it might have been a little predictable, I think part of that predictability came from really understanding the main character and his predicament, and the helplessness of the whole situation.  There were certainly things that I personally wouldn’t have done in that situation, but I know that John Marston would have.  I saw most of what I’d call “Act III” coming, and yet when things started unfolding I was not disappointed at all.  It was somehow…fitting.

The dead-eye system worked really well for shooting, especially from the back of a moving horse.  The duel thing was ok, but I didn’t realize until real late in the game that there was a rhythm factor to the shooting that I didn’t notice (or missed in the first tutorial), so a couple of the story related duels I failed and had to do over and over and I never noticed that there was a specific indicator to watch for while aiming.

My only other real complaint (aside from the frigging cattle rustling!) was some of the voice acting.  It seems like a ton of the dialog was just yelling.  Yelling for no reason.  Yes, people are riding horses so you might need to increase the volume of the dialog, but that doesn’t mean the actors should just be yelling all the time.  That just decreases its impact when people really should be yelling.

The hunting/gathering/treasure quests were ok, but what made me stop completely stop dong them was the last gathering one.  Get 15 of x, fine, I’ve been doing that the whole game.  But “get 15 of plant x, and 2 more of every other plant?”  Screw that.  Get your own plants you jerks!

Random Review: Red Dead Redemption was originally posted at John's Random Review.

Assassin’s Creed:Brotherhood just came out, too, so I’ll have to add that to the top of my gamefly list.  I know the new one has some multiplayer, so I’m not sure how much the story continues, as it doesn’t have “3” in its title anywhere…but I’m definitely going to find out!

Random Review: Assassin’s Creed 2 was originally posted at John's Random Review.

There’s a very simple reason that i’m buying it: Easton can play it. He’s only 2, and doesn’t have the dexterity to do anything with a wii-mote or an xbox360 controller, but he can run in place, and he loves to play Kinect. Supposedly, the recommended minimum height for players is 3 feet, but for the most part he can play some stuff.

In our part of the beta, we only got to keep the kinect sensor for a week, then had to return it, and check it out again later, library style. The first week we had it, we played a little bit of everything: Adventures and sports, mostly. We played it for the week, and i returned it. A couple days later, Easy is just standing in the living room, pointing to the TV and saying “Boat? Boat?” We had no idea what he was talking about. We asked him all kinds of questions, and you could tell that he was frustrated because he couldn’t explain what he wanted and we obviously didn’t understand. The next day, he did it again. Only this time, after we didn’t understand what “Boat?” meant, he pointed at the TV, said “Run? Run?”, and then ran in place. Eureka! “Boat” was the rafting game in Kinect Adventures, and “Run” was the 100 meter dash in Kinect sports. A couple weeks later after we’d had kinect for another week, he was doing it again, so i got it on “tape”:

Towards the end of the beta, there were enough Kinects available that the “library” would let you have them longer than a week, so we had it for a while. Easton figured out that in Joyride, he could put his arms out to start driving in a stunt mode game, and then just lean back against the couch and do absolutely nothing and he would just rack up the points. He’d end up with like 300k points, to me getting 60k working my butt off. He figured out that you generally control Kinect by waving to start, so he’d stand next to you and wave to try to steal control. He figured out that you have to put your arms up to signal that you’re “ready” to run in the running game. He hasn’t figured out that you have to keep running, though. he’ll run in place for about half the race, then he sees that you’re done running, so he stops running too. So even though you’ve long since finished the race, you have to keep running so he keeps running.

We were pleasantly surprised when we realized that Kinect can track you pretty well while holding a toddler. As long as you’re not playing the wierd bubble game where you have to use both of your arms, you can play most of the Adventures games while holding him, although 20,000 leaks is hard to get some of the leaks. A lot of the games work just fine with him on your shoulders too!

Is the Kinect aimed at more “hardcore” gamers like me? probably not. Is it aimed at more “casual” wii-like gamers? definitely. And if there’s one thing that Nintendo has shown with the wii is that there are a ton of casual gamers out there. We’ve had a 360 for 4 1/2 years. how many times has laura turned it on? Until we got the kinect, she’d turned it on twice to play tetris. Since we’ve had the Kinect beta, she and Easton have played a bunch of times without me. She even invited the neighbor kids over a couple times to play. In fact, she posted about kinect on facebook tonight before i even posted this.

stuff we played and our notes:

1. Kinect Adventures: we played this one a lot. Easy likes the rafting game (boats) and 20,000 leaks (fish), and sometimes likes rallyball (ball). Leaks is fun, and i like the rail game (can never remember what its called!). having to jump to go faster takes a lot of energy.
2. Kinect sports: the beta rotated the games available, so i don’t think we even played them all. soccer was surprisingly fun, for how simple it was. i really like the volleyball. pingpong was ok, never got javelin. easy loves 100 meter dash. bowling was pretty good.
3. Joyride: i really like the “stunt” game. It seems to have some kind of “autopilot” mode for kids or something, as it seems that easton can get really high scores by just standing there with his hands behind his back!
4. Dance Central: i think i was the only person to play it, and i thought it was pretty good. definitely a party game.
5. Fitness Evolved: the demo was pretty short, but i think i might try the full game out.
6. ESPN “The Ocho”: this one is all about content.
7. Voice Control: i didn’t use it a lot, but it did work. i mostly used it to start games before i picked up the controller
8. Video Kinect: i think this one is going to be pretty big. It could be huge if they would/could integrate it with the FaceTime video chat stuff on iphones/pods, and/or Skype. We video chat with laura’s mom sometimes, but doing it on the big TV instead of a laptop you have to keep open and pointed.

Why I’m buying a Kinect was originally posted at John's Random Review.

• “Zune” is easton’s word for “phone”. I really wish i had my zune still (lost it on an airplane…) so he could be even more confused.
• “Bean” is easton’s word for “beer”. “Daddy’s bean” is what he says whenever he sees a glass bottle of any kind. even though he says other words that end with the “r” sound, he will not say beer, he just says “bean” louder if you try to correct him
• “Coshee” is easton’s word for “coffee”, although i think last weekend he started saying it right. He loves to run the coffee machine weekend mornings, and seems to enjoy the taste of even black coffee. I don’t know if its because he likes to copy me or if he really likes the taste. He does like raw garlic and onions though, so it wouldn’t surprise me if he likes the bitterness of coffee.
• “Shark” is easy’s word for “fork”. sometimes its just “sark”. The weird thing is that he can say the “f” sound, so i don’t know why he won’t say fork.
• “Fi-fi” is what easton calls Felix Hernandez. But most of the Mariners call him that too, so that’s okay.
• “Pay-pay” is what easton calls Peyton Manning. I’m generally pretty anti-Peyton, but he’s my fantasy QB this year, so i root for him, but against the Colts in general.
• When he sees cats, or squirrels or other small animals outside, he will generally say their name, then say “eat”. The conversation goes like: “Meow. Cat! Eat?”, “no, we don’t eat cats.” “eat? no eat.”

Funny things Easton says: Part 1 was originally posted at John's Random Review.

There are 3 events every week, and you shoot each event twice.

The first part is called “zombies”, and is worth the most points.  10 rounds, 9 targets.  the back row of 3 poppers pops up, and is up for a few seconds.  Then the middle row of 3, then the front row of 3.  The zombies are scored on distance;  the back row is worth 20, 18, 15, middle 12, 10, 10, putting the front row at only 7, 7, 7.  Most people will use as many rounds as they can to get the back row. 

The second part is called “blackjack”.  only 3 rounds, all 9 poppers pop up and stay up 8 seconds.  The object is to get 21 points (without going over!).  All of the targets are again assigned point values:  Ace, 10, 9 in the back row, 8, 8, 7 in the middle, and 6, 5, 4 in the front row.  Most people aim for the middle’ish area, doing 8+5+8.  Depending on a miss, you might try something else, like 8, miss, 10.  With all of the poppers up, seeing and hitting the back row can be a challenge though!  8 seconds seems like an eternity, so almost everyone is going too fast.

“Stop and Go” on the dueling tree is the last part, and this part is timed!  10 rounds, 7 targets. When the green popper in the background falls (it pops back up instantly) time starts: shoot the 3 green targets on the tree, then the green popper in the background, then the three red targets on the tree.  Time ends when you hit the last red target, or when you’re out of ammo. Scoring is 5 points per target hit, minus one point per second on the clock when you’ve hit the last target or are out of ammo.  This one is everyone’s favorite, it seems.  The fastest people (I’m not one!) are doing it in around 5 seconds.  I think I’ve been in the 7’s mostly, although one week I did have a 5.66.  The fastest people are doing bottom to top, so that you follow the recoil up to the next target.  Although I think people are still working down the red side after shooting the popper though…

The theoretical maximum number of points each week is ~320.  After 6 weeks, I’m averaging ~185 with a high of 241 (I was #1 last week, but only because most of the high scorers were gone ). The highest person in the league is averaging 256 with a high of 291, so I have some work to do!

Here’s a phone video of me doing one run of stop+go:

Random Review: Pistol League @ SSNW was originally posted at John's Random Review.

Hey, that rhymed!  The story in Bioshock 2 wasn’t as quite as good as the original, but was still very good.  Helping the little sisters harvest was pretty cool.  The big sisters were a clever idea.  the most interesting part was the part where you see what the world looks like through a little sister’s eyes.  That was pretty cool.   Like the first game, the art direction and theme were magnificently done.

The creepiest part wasn’t actually in game, though.  We went to a birthday party during the time when I was playing through the game, and at the party there was a bouncy house.  So easton and I are bouncing in the bouncy house, and one of the little girls comes in.  And she wanted her dad to come into the bouncy house.   The little girl’s voice and what she was saying were right out of the game.  “Over here daddy!”  Every time she talked I just got chills!

Now I see that there’s a “Bioshock: Infinite” coming out.  Instead of being underwater, this one takes place in the clouds!  That should be fun!

Random Review: Bioshock 2 was originally posted at John's Random Review.

The Mariners 2010 Commercials:

Last, and most recent result:

Of all of these commercials, the only ones you can really still air are the bullpen and hyphen…and maybe the junior one.  I bet the Mariners’ marketing department didn’t plan on that!

Mariners 2010 Commercial Jinx? was originally posted at John's Random Review.

None of those had the kind of character development that Origins had though.  It was simply amazing to me how many conversations a pair of characters would have in the background.  I’d be walking around town or the woods or whatever, and two of the characters in the party would start bickering.  so I’d have to stop and turn around so I could watch the full conversation.  Some of the characters did not get along at all!

And during conversations with other characters in the story, the decisions you made in conversation, and even the way you said things affected how the other characters looked at you.  In some games, like Knights of the Old Republic (also a bioware game), your decisions shaped the whole party, if you were evil, they were all evil, or if you were good they were all good.   In origins, everyone had their feelings and their goals and history, so if you were too good, they’d get pissed off and not be as effective as they could be.  If you were bad enough to them, they’d up and split on you.  You could even become romantically involved with characters, and others would become jealous, or extremely disapproving.

Each of the possible party characters also had their own personal quest line, where you had to help them do something, or fix their past, or their future.  The sad thing is that I didn’t realize that, so I only stumbled into a couple of them by mistake.  I did a couple more in a second play-through, but I really wish there had been something in the game itself to indicate that the person had a quest, like other quest givers do.

It was also interesting how every main quest line had at least 2 possible endings.  In one of them, (the dwarves one), I ended up getting “used” by the dude that I ended up getting installed as king.  By the time I realized what was going on, It was too late.  I had to follow through with the chain of events I had set in motion.  In all my years of playing RPGs, this is one of the few times I’ve felt real remorse for doing something in a game.

I started a second play-through to try some of the other options and quests, but gave up about a third of the way.  The game is just so huge, I didn’t have another 50 hours to play it again when there are so many other good games to play!  There has been a fair amount of DLC released for Dragon Age already, so it may be one that I pick up a used copy of the game later on in the year during a dry spell to continue on in my second quest to see if I can get through the game with the other choices… but we’ll see.

Random Review: Dragon Age: Origins was originally posted at John's Random Review.

• I’ve installed Windows a lot in a year. 2 different versions of Windows 7 a total of 9 times, 2 different versions of Server 2008 3 times. (And 3 Win7+1 Server2K8R2 installs at home!) Although i haven’t installed windows in several months, though.
• I’ve installed Visual Studio 2010 even more.  Probably something like 20 different internal builds on 3 machines and several VM’s. Although since the RTM version was available, i haven’t had to install that anymore either. Visual Studio 2010 is so much better than 2008.  After using Eclipse for years, i’ve gotten used to so many of the built in features there that i was really surprised that visual studio doesn’t have similar functionality.  There are some add-ons that add a lot of the refactoring things and other tools, but like visual studio, most of them are not free.
• It’s amazing how many IM conversations i have. At rosetta we would have just gotten up and walked over there instead of using IM. Communicator at MS works way better than it did at Merck.  Even the desktop sharing works really well.  At Merck, the old version of netmeeting we were using was pretty finicky.
• I’ve had 4 different offices (not counting the conference room we worked out of for a week+)
• There’s an email mailing list (or 2) for anything and everything.  The email alias often has a name that makes no sense unless you know what the codename of a product was 5 years ago.  And with all the email, there are still a ton of people with no email etiquette whatsoever.  And there are people that have 30 lines of crap in their signature.
• Across 4 computers and 2 VM’s i’ve had exactly one bluescreen, and it was in the windows2008 server installer. (apparently it didn’t like the USB headset i had plugged in!)
• I use OneNote all the time to take notes.  I’d never used it before.  And the 2010 version of OneNote makes some other things even easier.  I only write on paper now when i go to meetings and don’t take my laptop, or if i’m sketching out paper prototypes.  Sadly, it looks like the mobile version of onenote is pretty crippled compared to the full version.  i only see numbered and bulleted lists, when i use the other tags like checkboxes and colors all the time.
• C# as a language (and the .net framework in general) is pretty awesome.  Especially LINQ and lambdas.  Likewise,  WPF + the xaml language and bindings makes it trivial to do a lot of things without much (or any) code. The visual GUI designer tools in VS2010 and Blend are the first ones i’ve used that don’t generate horrible horrible code.  And the binding functionality makes hooking data up to controls trivial.
•   Expression Blend + SketchFlow are pretty awesome.  I need more time to learn them both, as they’re way more powerful and useful than i’m using them.   But there are some things that take like 2 seconds in Blend that are painful in visual studio.
• There is a HUGE amount of available training.  Classroom, online, books, everything, and most of it that i have used as been very very good.
• like half the people I know have iphones.  windows phone 7 looks cool at all, its just so far behind/away.  Apple has released 4 hardware revisions and major OS versions in the time its taken MS to do 1?  Since my first gen iphone is effectively a dead end now that it is no longer upgradable, I’m waiting for it to be worth my time to buy a new phone…
• The company meeting at Safeco field is crazy.  Last year had lots of great stuff, with Windows 7 and Office 2010 coming.  This year’s should be interesting, with Win Phone 7 and Kinect coming soon.  It would also be cool if they gave some more Windows 8 details.
• I’d say like 33% of the people I know/have met are hardcore pro MS people.  Another 33% are just there for a job that pays the bills.  Another 33% are pro MS but realistic about the areas where we could be doing better.  That last 1% is a crazy rabid anti microsoft bunch that thinks we’re on the wrong track completely about everything we do no matter what it is.  We could be curing cancer and they’d still be upset.

Random things about working at Microsoft for a year was originally posted at John's Random Review.

Recently, film critic Roger Ebert said (again!) that “video games can never be art.”  He has obviously never played Uncharted 2: Among Thieves.  It was one of the best games i’ve ever played.  If I’m not going to say it was the best i’ve ever played, because it did have some repetitive things and some other weird issues.  But this game is art.  There’s no way it can’t be.  As much as I respect Roger Ebert, he’s just plain wrong on this one.

The voice acting was probably the best in any game I’ve ever played. The story was pretty good, part tomb raider, part Indiana Jones (minus the aliens).  The story telling was awesome.  The transitions between “chapters” and sections was great.  It really did feel like a movie that i was in control of.  There’s a PS3 commercial that makes fun of it looking like a movie, and when i started playing Laura even asked what i was watching, because she didn’t think it was a game.

Some kinda spoilers, so…the font’s going white on white background here, so highlight it to read it.  not sure what RSS feeds and/or facebook will do with this, but I’d presume you’ll see it…

potential spoilers:

What the hell is up with going through all these puzzles that nobody else has ever figured out only to find that a bunch of nazi’s got here before and left all their ammo with their dead bodies?  and its all still good?  yeah.

Or i have to figure out some complicated puzzle, and it just opens a frigging window so i can see somewhere else, and that area’s out in the open and bad dudes are already  over there looking for a secret entrance?

And why is everything all rickety, but the badguys can just walk over there?   As soon as a good guy wants to go there, stuff starts falling apart!?

And what is with train scenes?  don’t bad guys know you just unhook the cars you don’t need? Why do the bad guys always take trains?

My biggest complaint is about load times before the game even starts. Why do games these days take a full minute to get to the actual game?  when you start uncharted 2, you see an empty black screen for 5+ seconds, then like 15 seconds of a spinning dagger.  Then it shows you the logo for the developer.  Press start a few times, and you wait for it to load with that spinning dagger again!  Thankfully, once you actually start playing, you never see that stupid dagger in that context again.  Load times pretty much disappear, or are invisible to you because they’re happing during cut-scenes that you actually are interested in seeing.

I was tempted to bring down my NES and a little TV, put in Mike Tyson’s Punch-out and see if i turned them both on at the exact same time, could i enter the code to jump to Tyson (it has been burned into my muscle memory since i was in like 6th grade) and beat him before i could actually play in game in Uncharted 2  Some games, like the call of duty series, have always been awesome about that.  there’s little or no waiting, you can skip through all of the title screens, etc. you press A a few times and you’re loading or matchmaking in multiplayer.  Valve (Half life, Left 4 Dead, etc) is always one of the worst offenders on this. why the hell do you waste a minute of my life loading some animated 3d scene to show in the background of the title screen that i’m only going to see for 2 seconds before i press start?!?

Random Review: Uncharted 2: Among Thieves was originally posted at John's Random Review.

I’d buy an ipad if it had “case” that made it like a my old clio. my horrible ‘shop:

It lets you hide/protect the screen, and yet lets you use the keyboard when you want, or use it as a stand to watch stuff without holding it, but you can pop it out when you want the lighter screen to do stuff with.

The closest thing so far, is this ClamCase ipad dock thing:

It’s kind of sad that one of the most exciting ipad accessories to me turns an ipad into a laptop But all of these things are expensive, and i could just get a new laptop instead for like half the price.

OR, i could get a new touchscreen laptop, an extra touchscreen, some screwdrivers and a piano hinge and some glue and make my own courier? If only i had the time and effort required to do that…

I would buy an iPad if… was originally posted at John's Random Review.