okay weekend

Went to a bacon-themed potluck/party on saturday. Not bad - especially if you like bacon....

Sunday has been okay.

Slept in; then played some games (Half-life 2: episode one and super smash brothers), played with our cats, then installed an iphone-interface hack on my phone, then went to the gym, then did some shopping, then came home & had dinner, played with our cats, watched the L-word and then south park. Then finished our box of Franzia Sangria, and I played Team Fortress 2.

I guess not productive at all, but I feel pretty relaxed now and should be in a good frame of mind for real work tomorrow.

motorola is really hurting and hearing about why makes me sad for the USA

After reading some news postings about this, I was really sad, in a way - I mean, Motorola was a great company and it is too bad that their CEO was technically incompetent. Consider that the RAZR was a very cool, hot phone in 2004 but they are still trying to milk it even now in 2008.

Letter from concerned insider is here:

http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/26/motorola-insider-tells-all-about-the-fall-of-a-technology-icon/

Discussion is here:

http://mobile.slashdot.org/mobile/08/03/26/2051259.shtml

Seriously, what is wrong with most US-based CEO's that get caught up in pandering to Wall Street?????


Also, to paraphrase one of the comments in the Slashdot discussion..."If this is what Six Sigma can do for Motorola, think of what it can do for your company!"

reflection on differences in life abroad

Had a discussion with an old friend who is still living in China this morning, and I came upon the following conclusion, which hadn't seemed quite so clear to me before:

Socially, when living abroad in China, life in the ex-pat community demands that one is welcoming and inclusive to strangers/newcomers, since nearly everyone is only a semi-permanent resident, friends come and go literally every month, and as such it is clearly to one's benefit to keep one's social circles pretty open.

Whereas, when living long-time in one's own community, the need to include outsiders is certainly lessened. Not to say there is no benefit to being inclusive, but when people get caught up in career, family, existing social obligations + the commitment of a mortgage to a given area, it seems that the amount of time and room to meet new people is lessened.

At least that's how it feels now in Seattle. It's not that the locals are mean or anything, but it seems like most people that I do meet are already well involved in their own social circles and there's little desire or reason to get newcomers involved...seems to just take time.

Seattle is growing fairly quickly, however, and there are a lot of newcomers anyway.

Sins of a Solar Empire

This game has been getting a lot of hype for the volume it has sold and for its unique style of gameplay.

Indeed, the game is very unique; it's something like a cross between Starcraft and Civilization.

Ultimately, it is a bit more of an RTS than turn-based strategy game.

I'm doing terribly in it so far; mostly because (I think) that it has its own style of play that one needs to learn...and the learning curve is a bit steep.

Might be more trouble than it's worth to really bother getting good at...I dislike games that feel more like work to play than actually just "playing".

On the other hand, I might get somewhere in this game if I actually spent the 3-4 hours straight playing it that seems to be required in order to complete a single game. Unfortunately, it's pretty hard for me to do that...even on slow weekends like this one, giving 3-4 hours straight to a game is diffficult.

This is probably one of those cases where I've fallen more for the idea & hype of the game rather than the game itself...but we'll see.

It also still looks & plays very responsively on my old PC system. Will probably still try in the future.

Call of Duty 4

So, despite 2007 being the year of Portal, Bioshock, and Team Fortress 2, Call of Duty 4 came out and was widely hailed as one of the best action games of the year.

I'm usually not into straight military games, and I had never really paid attention to the Call of Duty series before.

But, after hearing all the hype, recommendations from co-workers, and finally seeing a deal to snag a copy for just over $30, I checked it out.

Glad that I did.

The game is beautifully done (looks great on my older hardware), very action-packed, and manages to tie together a bunch of fairly different mission styles with a coherent, mostly plausible story.

I think I completed the game over the course of 3 weekends, which was a little on the short side, but still acceptable.

The multiplayer is reputed to be very good, but I haven't given it much time yet - still will at some point.

Anyway, pretty pleased with that one overall.

The witcher

The Witcher was part 2 of the Christmas gift I gave myself, and my progress on it is considerably less exciting than that on Bioshock.

It seemed like a really cool RPG in concept, and as I've tried it so far it seems pretty good.

Drawbacks? Well, it's really, really pushing the limits of what my "possibly good in 2004" PC can do, and as such it's laggy & slow. Not entirely unplayable, but a lot of time is wasted in loading scenes.

Apparently there's going to be a big update/revision in content coming for the game in May, so I'll hold off on really getting into it until then.

Bioshock - my mini review

I hadn't thought that my PC could handle the requirements for Bioshock; but I was pleasantly surprised to find that the demo ran fine...so for a Christmas gift to myself I picked up a copy of the game via gogamer.com.

Anyway, it ran pretty well and I played through the game (mostly on weekends) for most of January and February.

The game's story & setting about a dystopian objectivist underwater city-state built in the late 40's/50's is pretty interesting & well thought out, and there's enough hidden enemies to keep things surprising.

Your character can get some special powers that are pretty cool, and you have to deal with some "moral" choices - you kill all the bad guys regardless, but you can choose not to kill some little girl mutants. An interesting twist, but not exactly earth-shattering.

The game kept my interest, the plot moved along pretty well, with some fun twists & turns. Some complain that the game is on the short side of things; and I guess that it is - but it was really a perfect length for me as a casual gamer...kept me busy on the mornings of quite a few weekends.

I picked up wired Xbox 360 controller to use with my PC on this game, and that was fun too - a little more comfortable for the setup in my house as I could sit on the couch & play.

Anyway, if you like well-told shooting games, this is certainly worth a look if you haven't tried it already.

more thoughts on a lazy weekend

So it's Easter Sunday, the wife is feeling a little ill, and I find myself with lots of free time but needing to stay at home as we wait to go to a family gathering.

Have played quite a bit of games already, so now it's time to do something semi-productive and blog a bit.

time to myself at 7:40???

Home after work, have had dinner & cleaned up - it's 7:40 and as such I have free time left in the evening.

Weird.

Will probably use this time to study a bit - I'm reviewing to take a PMP exam at some point in the next few months.

Maybe will do a little reading too - I should get back to finishing Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver. I'm ~315 pages into the book so far...(just 600+ more to go).

Maybe can play some games too.

Maybe will get back to working on my book?

We'll see.

Crying nut video!!!

Was thrilled to find this on youtube - I love their music but hadn't really had a chance to ever see their videos.

Very pleased to say that their videos seem just as much fun as their music!

How does one pronounce "sheet"?

Having to try and clarify the difference; and I'm not exactly certified for teaching ESL.

Sheet = "Sh" + "eat"

Shit = "Sh" + "it"

While she knows that people understand her if she's asking for "5 shits of paper", she is a little self-conscious about it. Any suggestions?

Still on the Gaming kick

So yeah, although I could well be talking about anything, I've been recently compelled to write about gaming a lot - I guess that I've often had gaming on my mind for when I have free time to myself.

(This unfortunately, is at the expense of making/playing music - hopefully this is just a temporary setback - but my apartment isn't really conducive to much guitar play & I don't have a band yet)

Anyway - Since we're going semi-chronologically here:

Rise of Nations

- This is an older (2003) game, but I never found a stable copy in China. So, I bought one here last October. It's still a really well-made, fun game; one of my favorite RTS games, period. Not really fun to play at a distance - good on a laptop.

- Although more stable than the sketchy Chinese versions; it still crashes on me fairly frequently, sometimes even when trying to resume a saved game.

Still, the combination of growing your empire, advancing civilization, and attacking invaders/ conquesting more land is a super fun combination.

more game thoughts - The Orange Box

I'm pretty sure I've blogged on this one before, and it's already received its share of love in most mainstream sources, but I'm trying to be complete here.

Great deal for the $50.

I have never been into online gaming before, but Team Fortress 2 provides a very fun experience that is simple, easy to pick up, and yet satisfying for hours at a time.

Half-Life 2 is a well-made shooter with a pretty cool story, and the additional "episodes" 1 & 2 are included in the package as well. I'm actually still working through Episode 1 at present...mostly because I don't have time for a lot of games.

Portal is an excellent puzzle game that tells a story very well, revealing bits and pieces through the process of solving puzzles; the final chapter of the game is very satisfying opportunity to apply all the skills you have learned in the first part of the game. It's also pretty short (in a good way) - which was nice considering that I only had limited opportunities to play

Anyway- this whole compilation is notable in that I first bought it in October last year and I'm still playing through it now in March, which is additionally good as I feel I'm really getting a lot for the money I had spent on it.

game reviews, part 1 - Civ IV Beyond the Sword

Felt like I might as well give my impressions of the few games that I've acquired & played over the past 6 months; I guess I might as well do that in blog post form over the next few days this weekend as I have/find time for blogging.

Anyway, the first game I got since returning from China and getting a household established was Civ IV: Beyond the Sword.

Yes, it was more of an expansion than a full-on new game, but I had heard all the hype surrounding this and thought it would be really worth a try.

Indeed, it gives you a real bevy of options for new game variants to try - you have an adjusted-rules "regular" game with new cultures and leaders to have and fight against, and there are also 20+ different mods.

Considering one game of Civ IV can take at least 2-4 hours to play through (even on "fast" mode), this can get pretty involved.

I hadn't really felt like I played through the "old" version entirely, but this really, really gives me more options.

This sort of game doesn't ever offer much in the way of a narrative story; but it does offer a pretty immersive experience that can draw one in very fully from the start.

As others have said before, it's a "desert island" type game in that if you were stuck with only one game to play, this is probably one of the best picks that one could make.

That being said, I've found that:

1. I like playing games with a story, so if I'm looking for something that is more escapist fare, this isn't always what I'm looking for.
2. The game experience is so immersive that I can't really find a good time to play it - after work is hard as that time tends to be for the wife and I together; before sleep is also not a good time as I'll stay up late playing it. The weekend is good, but if it's sunny I don't really want to be spending all my time inside in front of a computer.
3. My PC set up uses our LCD TV as the monitor - and given that while playing, the screen can get pretty cluttered with a lot of small-font text - and it's not comfortable to play at a distance. This is a game that (for me) works best with a real laptop or desktop setup.

Anyway, it has a lot of replay value and I will play it again and again, just not that frequently.

Apparently the online multiplayer is good too, but I haven't ever tried it.

iphone? - SDK coolness? - I don't know

If you read this article by David Pogue of the New York Times, you may be inclined to believe that the iphone + app store via itunes model that is being proposes is going to be HUGE.

I do not buy into the hype, in that the proposal is sounding pretty restrictive in that apparently 3rd-party apps will be restricted from multi-tasking. Thus, if you are using an app and then need to answer a phone call, text message, or email, you'll actually exit & shut down the 3rd-party app...this is basically the same thing that any piece of software on the Palm platform must do (and that is an OS that was created in 2002) - my point being that this is an old-school model of doing things.

Not that I'm a Microsoft fanboy, but comparatively, with Windows mobile, one can have 5 things running at the same time, which is actually useful - you could be downloading something, writing a text message, and talking on the phone (via bluetooth) at the same time.

I guess I'll likely not be getting a new iphone anytime soon (although the 3g version coming this summer is appealing since it will be shiny, pretty, and hopefully have fast data downloads)...

Neocha - NEXT?

This is sort of cool - a dedicated online player for Chinese indie music.

http://www.neocha.com/-/music_next.html

There is some good stuff on here; although it's certainly not all rock all the time.

Currently listening to a band that seems to have never learned how to tune a guitar (not the first time I've encountered that issue, but a little surprising that they bothered to record it that way, especially on an acoustic track).

Regardless, seeing this site and hearing some of the non-crappy stuff here makes me happy - reminds me of my days in China and I'm thrilled to hear that there are some cool bands making their own original music here!

Was alerted to this via Lostlaowai or danwei.org.

The spice must flow

Just wrapped up viewing the "Children of Dune" miniseries (and I had watched the 2000 miniseries version of Dune prior to that).

Wow...pretty decent adaptation of the books. I am glad that I read the series (Frank Herbert books anyway) prior to watching the adaptation, but I was pretty satisfied with it - they did a good job, and even Marsha got into watching it.

I had been waiting a long time to see the series, since I had heard about it while I was in China but it proved very difficult to obtain.

So yeah, well over half a year after moving back to the US, I'm still catching up on things.

________

Caught a bit of the news while flipping through channels at the gym as I had finished my workout...ever get the feeling that CNN is for children?

Firefox 3 Beta - Yay!

Have installed Firefox 3 beta on my Mac - not too shabby!

Only complaints so far (which are relatively minor) - the scribefire extension doesn't work yet, and my system hasn't yet totally adjusted yet.

Webpage rendering is much faster compared to firefox 2.

Seems pretty good so far. Considering that outside of gaming (at home) and excel sheets (at work), nearly everything I do is based out of a browser now*, it's good to see that things are developing quickly and working robustly.

The extensions on Firefox are also still pretty useful to me; I've started to use del.ico.us (it's blocked in China so I was late in ever trying it out) in addition to Foxmarks, scribefire, and download status bar.

*It's interesting noting really to what extent this is coming true. My company runs their official email application and groupware suite via a web-based client, and most of our internal systems are web-based as well. While I'm running a Vista laptop at present, to me there really isn't a compelling reason for why I'd ever need a windows OS at work (I guess Office for running Excel...that's really about it). At home, I'm running most of my personal stuff on my laptop, which runs OS X but 95% of the time is used for web browsing, which is most often done with Firefox. Anyway, I guess my point is that I have no compelling reason to use Vista, and given the performance hit it tends to require + the need to upgrade to significantly beefier hardware in order to use it for gaming, I do not see any reason to upgrade anytime soon.

seeing the wife off

Well, Marsha has started her new job and since her work start time is earlier than mine, now I'm the one seeing her off to the door in the morning.

Interesting reversal from the status quo for the past 6 months or so - but it's okay.

She was a little nervous before heading out; readjusting and checking one of the professional outfits we had put together earlier in the weekend.

Maybe this is a little bit what it feels like when one first sends their kids to school?

We'll see how things go for her - I imagine that it will be an interesting week for her as she gets introduced first-hand to work culture in the USA.

be kind rewind?

Really liked that movie...cool stuff that has been "sweded".

Made me think a bit. Creativity, making your own films, etc.

'Ghostbusters' theme in my head, and had to revisit that.