10

One of the more amusing things about Tiger Woods 10, unfortunately not featured prominently, is that it includes all of the USGA Rules and Decisions. Much of it is comprised of gems like the following:

Q. A player's ball came to rest overhanging the edge of the hole. The player walked up to the hole and cast his shadow on the ball, believing that this would cause the grass to wilt and his ball to fall into the hole. Was the player in breach of Rule 1-2 (Exerting
Influence on Ball) when he cast his shadow on the ball?

A. No.

of another place and time

I finally stopped playing Spore and have been playing Fallout 3 instead. I picked it up just because everyone else was raving about it, but I was really more interested in Red Alert 3. However the night I got the games my internet was down, which means I couldn't activate RA3 (thanks, brave new world of PC copy protection) so I got a jump on Fallout. And I have to say I'm impressed.

I beat the main storyline fairly handily but that's not really the point of the game. It's an open-world RPG and they want you to explore so much that the secondary quests have the same achievement scores as the primary ones. I never played the first two games so I'm having a hard time getting a feel for the game. I keep expecting it to have scary things jump out everywhere, like any other game or movie. (Particularly window scares) Of course you have to fight baddies, but it's not like that. A lot of the horror is not that something horrible is going on wherever you're at, but that something horrible happened long ago. It doesn't even come out and say what happened but you can pick up pieces of evidence to put it together. I guess if they took cheap shots like window scares, people would be less inclined to explore and try to learn about this world. This game is a master of immersion. Part of that is just the stillness. If you stand still and listen there is almost nothing - the Capital Wasteland is very tranquil. So any unusual noise at all means you'll be on edge. Even if it's just you tripping over empty bottles on the ground.

Incidentally I did finally get RA3 up after Qwest fixed my damn internet, and shall we say I'm less than impressed.

In other news, Top Gear just did another America show. It started off kind of slow, and since their visas were only for producing factual shows and not entertainment shows they couldn't do any interesting side challenges (lest Bruce Willis show up in a Dept. of State helicopter gunship). It finally started picking up when they got to Bonneville as they pursued speed targets at Speed Week. Top Gear Top Tip: when driving on salt, pump up your tires until they almost explode. It was interesting to see them look at a new aspect of car culture and it makes me more excited about the Genesis Coupe, though I'm still wondering which loadout would be better - Grand Touring or Track.

failing to recall what i was missing

Well that was a bust. I went to go look at a Firebird from Craigslist. It sounded pretty good online. The engine and transmission had been rebuilt which I'm not big on but I figured this meant the owner took car of the car like the rebuilt Camaro I had seen.

This was not the case.

Just walking up to it was pretty bad. The guy had put a bunch of go-faster decals on it so it was covered in fake bullet holes. Getting closer it was appallingly filthy, with leaves and stuff inside the car. And then he started walking me through the car. The driver's side door handle doesn't work. Speedometer doesn't work. Stereo was stolen. Hood won't stay up so he has a big stick. The shift stick is just a bare metal bar. And the battery won't hold a charge. This combined with the fact it had been sitting there for two months meant it was particularly start-resistant.

Mind you the Craigslist listing doesn't mention any of this.

So it's back to square one. And I guess I need to screen these cars more thoroughly. For now it's back to creepy Fallout 3. Also: daylight savings tonight!

no rocket no heat

I just finished my car control course. It starts in a classroom and the instructor talks about understeer and oversteer and what you should do. Everyone then goes outside and breaks into groups for the skidcars, which are Camrys mounted on a steel frame with pneumatics at each corner. I was with a UO student who had once spun his car and has several speeding tickets, so his family "encouraged" him to come to this, and a high school kid who had an accident involving a mailbox and some trees and ended up needed two brain surgeries. So I apparently get points for being proactive.

The instructor first set up the car so it would understeer at 15 mph and we all had some practice doing figure 8's with that to see how steering less can get you to steer more. Then the car was set up for oversteer. I was the first in the series to go and I spun the car several times before I could get it to go around a corner at all. We did some figure 8's like that, then widened up the driving area to add some different corners, and then took the widened course in the opposite direction. By the end of the day we were all doing pretty good. The instructor even asked me if I was sandbagging at one point, but that just made me start spinning again. Overall I think it was a worthwhile experience.

Now I'm going to go play Midnight Club Los Angeles and do the opposite of everything I've learned today.

where you'll be i'll know

Boss squared wants to change my role at work. I like my role at work.

We also have some pilot builds of a new pacemaker at work and we can't get rid of the damned things. We have tried four times to ship them and failed. There is nothing wrong with the parts - it's all paperwork.

I am still playing Spore but I have pretty much played the crap out of it. I have been rereading some books but I only have relatively few books with me so I'm kind of sick of them. Prodrive is weeks away and there are no good Firebirds online.

the weight of storm on memories

I finally finished reading The Fabric of the Cosmos. I got the book when it came out several years ago, but it came at as bad time as I was working out how to exit physics at that point. The first time I didn't even make it through the first chapter before I got fed up with the theories Greene brought up; fortunately after forcing myself through they turned out to be crap in the end. The book is OK - the first section is kind of annoying because Greene has to build up the current picture through history. The middle section is pretty good and has some interesting ideas. The last section of the book is pretty much just a rehashing of The Elegant Universe. The book is now four years old but I don't know how much further the new theories have gotten since they've just been finishing LHC in that time.

It's the time of year when a bunch of new games come out and I have been occupied with Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09 and Mercenaries 2. Which are pretty much exact opposites. My 360 was in a bad way the day I got Tiger Woods, but it somehow got over it and hasn't had any troubles since.

As for the games themselves, they are both sequels and don't seem quite as good as the previous incarnations. Tiger Woods 09 is just an evolution of last year's game. It does feature a new dynamic attribute system, but since I don't play like a normal person at least one of my attributes will take a whack after each round. Mercenaries 2 is more of a letdown - the original game was more organized and focused with the 'deck of cards' and the story was deeper. Mercs 2 also seems easier and shorter than the original. It's still pretty fun but won't be something I play over and over.

seems the sun had gone too soon

I did a thorough cleaning of my car today and found the original window sticker. To my surprise I discovered the Malibu has independent rear suspension with multi-link geometry. I knew it wasn't tuned at the Nurburgring or anything but I didn't expect even that much.

Also, the Delorean apparently had a weight distrubution of 35/65, which is rubbish. On the plus side, there is apparently an achievement in PGR4 for driving a Delorean at 88MPH when lightning flashes.

Speaking of games, a new racing game called Grid comes out this week. It has the Challenger and Camaro, but only in concept form. I tried the demo and it seemed like an OK game, I don't know if I will get it though.

homework

I have homework. I have to give a presentation tomorrow about MRB instead of being able to work in MRB and actually do something partially useful. They drag me into these meetings and then wonder why MRB doesn't get done. The presentation is for another of the endless string of Germans that seem to get shipped over here to learn how we are doing things, but I am still whipping some slides up. I hate homework.

I finished the story of GTA IV last week so I went around grabbing a bunch of relatively easy achievements. I started playing a little bit of the multiplayer mode and it is pretty fun. The maps are so huge that you can find yourself well out of the way of the action.

a fabrication of our own

I finished that awful book. The ending was even worse than the body of the book so I pretty much didn't read any of it. They end up failing in the end anyway, which wasn't a surprise because the characters pretty much failed their way through the entire book.

I am now indulging in another awful book, but one with some history - I bought a new copy of the Hardy Boys/Tom Swift crossover book, which when I was a kid I thought was the most awesome book ever.

I only have about 6 story missions left in GTA IV and an hour and a half of game time left to do them in. I have to say this achievement is extremely un-GTA because it emphasizes not screwing around.

but at that time i couldn't see it

My stupid cold dragged itself out much longer than I would have expected, and I'm still working on the last 1%, but I am much better now. Finally having a weekend where I could sleep in helped - unfortunately it is back to the grind tomorrow. San Diego in less than three weeks though, even if my overall plan is still half baked.

I picked up GTA IV and so pretty much dropped off the face of the earth for a few days. I have to focus on the storyline now because there is an achievement to beat the story missions in 30 hours, and I do not ever want to play this game all the way through again. It starts off really slow and never seems to open up the same way previous games did. I pretty much forced myself to keep going to open up new areas. The graphics make GTA IV look like it's been taken to a new level but in terms of actual gameplay it's actually been brought way back from where Vice City and San Andreas were - at least in the parts that mattered; we have traded car customization, side businesses and jetpacks for in-world internet spam.

I've not only been playing GTA IV - I also picked up Consider Phlebas, the first book in the 'Culture' sci-fi literary cycle. The setting for the book seems very interesting but the actual events of the book are petty, overdescribed or downright uncalled for. I am finding myself pretty much skimming the book for the parts where they talk about the setting as a whole. Unfortunately this book was described as the best in the series, so it may be downhill from here.

Not much of what I would consider interesting car news lately, although there was the story about the "Return to Vanishing Point" Challenger. The very first preproduction Challenger was rescued from the crusher, painted white and entered in a race under a Vanishing Point theme...unfortunately reality seems to have mirrored art too closely, as the Challenger met a tire wall during a time trial and seems to be out of action. At least for that particular race.

the runway lights are the deepest blue

Everybody at work is getting sick. There was something going around and then my boss brought something back from his trip to Oklahoma. I have managed to avoid it so far as I do a lot by email and I'm wearing a mask half the time anyway. It may have finally caught up to me though, as I have a bit of a sore throat. I don't want the Oklahoma Flu.

I recently bought Command & Conquer: The First Decade. I already own almost all of the compilation except for the expansion pack to Tiberian Sun, which I have just finished playing. I thought the compilation would just be 10 CDs, but they've actually packaged everything from the original to Zero Hour on one DVD, which is extremely convenient.

Buying that game was interesting. It cost $24.99, but the first time it came up on the debit card reader it said $24,990,000,000,000.00. I'm kicking myself that I didn't take a picture on my new cell phone. I told the cashier I wasn't feeling generous enough to pay off the national debt. The second attempt was $0.02, but I didn't get to keep that.

I've pretty much sorted out the artwork in my music collection, but I haven't really sorted the collection itself. I did just get the Ace Combat 6 soundtrack, which some blog had packaged with the Halo 3 soundtrack for some reason. As far as the new iPod goes, I got an acrylic case so the stupid edge that kind of annoys me is covered up altogether. The menus are still a bit laggy at times though.

you looked surprised as it all went up in smoke

Xbox Live is finally recovering a bit from the holiday surge so I played some Tiger Woods with my parents. At least the Xbox has some redeeming factor.

I'm in a bit of a quandary about the Xbox. I'm within striking distance of hitting 10,000 gamerscore, but I don't want to get any of the games out there, and I've gotten most of the doable achievements in the games I've got. I also can't buy anything on Xbox Live Arcade because I am trying to get Microsoft to disassociate my credit card and it won't go if I use it. So I am pretty much just playing for fun now, except Orange Box keeps locking up in the middle of TF2. Maybe I will just reinstall SimCity 4 on my freshly reformatted computer.

My brother showed me where NBC streams online so I have been watching the new writerless Conan shows. They're pretty amusing. I'm also cruising Amazon.com. I was originally going to get a new remote thermometer unit, because mine died after being left outside over Christmas, but I can't find a separate unit. I did find the pistol-grip laser-sighted infrared thermometers though. And some other neat stuff.

I'm also thinking of finally upgrading my cell phone...probably just get a basic RAZR like everyone else.

As seen below, another official Camaro picture surfaced recently.

template

More screwing around, this time I upgraded the template that governs this site. I have no idea if that actually did anything.

Still working on the labelling. I have 344 posts to get through. I was also going for a couple more achievements in Orange Box.

Last.fm is gone now.

and i need you to recover

My neighbors have started some kind of passive-aggressive battle amongst themselves over phone books. For some reason we get at least three different types of phone books and the last two put a big stack in the front lobby instead of distributing them properly. So someone left a note saying they shouldn't put garbage there, and then someone else wrote an annoyed note about how these are new phone books, and I haven't really been paying attention except when I got home from work today someone had left three phone books at my door, including the annoyed note. I don't know why these people think I am involved in their petty battle, as I don't care about them in general, but I might just throw all the phone books down the garbage chute if people can't resolve their phone book issues.

I finally finished Mass Effect after three weeks. All 1000 points. I think I'm taking a break from serious gaming now - although screwing around in TF2 is not out of the question.

I made some fudge for tomorrow's Christmas potluck lunch at work. Of course I couldn't do it without incident. Peanut butter fudge is the Alfa Romeo of food.

it might change my memory

More new people at work. One started today who is in process/manufacturing and apparently he's into car stuff too, which I found out after lamenting that my Camaro will be difficult to get up and down the narrow back roads near Oswego Lake as it will be almost a foot wider than the Malibu.

MasterCard is running some contest where one prize is dual cars - one for you, one to give to someone else. The cool thing is it isn't prepicked, it's your choice, up to $70,000. That's an interesting problem. Obviously that isn't going to get you a Ferrari F430 or a DB9, at a price tag of around $170,000. The Camaro, besides not existing yet, is aiming more for the Mustang price range, so you wouldn't be taking full advantage of the win. What would be the best pick for 70 grand? Corvette?

I got Mass Effect this weekend. It's pretty cool. I haven't really played any RPGs other than Final Fantasy so it was interesting getting something different. Apparently it's the first part of a future trilogy - can you say timesink?

I had high hopes to get things in order today, and while I didn't get far for the most part I did mail my brother's birthday present. I also mailed back the mistaken Amazon.com package. It feels good to get that damned thing out of my life.

I finally got my webcomic shirt today some ten weeks after originally ordering it. They claimed they mailed it out over two weeks ago but it's clearly postmarked Wednesday. They just couldn't help being incompetent to the bitter end. And of course it's now too cold to show off my F15 shirt.

think of all the things we learned

Work is pushing hard to get this week's shipment out because of Thanksgiving, so they ran production all weekend. I wouldn't care except they wanted to have enough lead time for reworks so I had to come in on Saturday and Sunday for a few hours and process them. It wasn't a big deal but I am not exactly used to having to schedule around things on weekends.

When I wasn't at work this weekend I was trying out the last piece of Orange Box, Team Fortress 2. It was fun for a while but I think I've already hit the point where I've had enough.

I was almost set to go ahead and build a new computer but then it turns out Intel is launching a quad 45nm 2.5GHz processor in January, so I guess I'll put it off some more. That's unfortunate because my computer has really had about enough. I saw the new SimCity came out and even though it's probably been ruined I wanted to give it a shot, but my computer couldn't possibly handle it.

black and white picture of her on my wall

I have one achievement left in Beautiful Katamari (not counting the downloadable content that isn't available yet) which requires me to play 200 levels on normal. I've already cleared them all and gotten 100% collection so I didn't really have any reason to keep playing, but I started again anyway. I started playing the same level over and over and kept getting a little better each time, and as a result I also starting climbing the leaderboards. I finally got to 8th place out of about 3400. I'm pretty happy about cracking the top ten, even if it's just for one level.

I was hoping to get actual work done at work this week with my bosses out - hence no crazy meeting days - but for some reason a lot of component issues have been cropping up and as Component Quality Engineer I have to take part in them. The new manufacturing system is also taking up more time as it creeps closer to going live. So I've been quite busy just trying to hold down the status quo.

a place no spaceships go

Ever have one of those days where you haven't thought about something for months and then it comes up several times independently in one day? I've had that feeling twice today - about space elevators and the tale of Prometheus. Very odd.

Incidentally I was also reading about Atlas, who was Prometheus' brother, and in fact it was not the Earth he was punished to hold up.

I beat Ace Combat 6 for the fourth time this morning (after getting it upon release on Wednesday) so I'm taking a break - hoping one of my friends will get a copy as well so I can try some of the online features. Instead of Xbox this evening I have been watching new episodes of QI on YouTube.

Lots of car stuff. First and foremost, I saw an Enzo on the road yesterday! That is by far the rarest car I've seen here, with only 400 made.

The Nissan GT-R has been making a lot of news lately. It was just officially shown off recently at the Tokyo auto show. It's already been to the Ring, where it posted a lap time of 7:38, which puts it above a Z06 or a 911 Turbo. The GT-R is apparently going to be the poster car for at least two new racing games, NFS ProStreet and Gran Turismo 5. The former I tried the demo for and found to be awful; the latter will be PS3 only.

GT5 is also going to have the Top Gear test track. That makes me almost want to buy it. Maybe with the current trends of PS3 price drops, the console will be $50 by the time the game comes out around Christmas next year.

Top Gear is back today after a week off so the BBC could televise snooker, and it looks to be an awesome episode. It isn't going to have one film that takes the whole episode like some of the latest shows have. Unfortunately the torrent is crawling so I won't be able to watch it until tomorrow.

i can't feel you there

My iPod has been working OK for a while, but now it's started a new game - locking up when I try to sync it with iTunes. Fortunately I can use the power cable to keep it powered, but that means I can't load up the new Gobeski/Wallace Report podcast.

I've been spending some time cleaning up the kitchen. The plume of ash got tiny carbon flecks everywhere, so I now have to clean every surface. I did get the stove cleaned up nice, and now I'm enjoying some frozen pizza. I also bought a fire extinguisher to curtail future incidents.

I blew some money this weekend and some of it was on a Halo 3 wireless headset. Note this in no way implies my endorsement of the game. Another $20 got me a receiver for the computer, so I can now use Skype with it as well. Adam and I tried that for a little bit, and now that Skype usage is starting to proliferate amongst our circle of friends a multi-way podcast may appear in the future. We have to commission a technical feasibility study first though.

Sunday night again, so pulling down the next Top Gear. Someone posted a lower resolution one so I should be able to get that before it gets stupid late and let the full size one run overnight.

fire, brb

I accidentally started a fire today while trying to boil water. I still have no idea how it started. My initial theory was that a towel was caught under the pot I was heating, but whatever the hell I pried off the stove was more white and rubbery. So I don't know what the hell it was. The more pressing concern after getting the fire out was the fact that the entire apartment had filled with smoke. And yet didn't set off my smoke alarm, come to think of it. I should probably check up on that.

I opened up all the windows, got the fans going and drafted my ionizer to clear the air, and I went out. I didn't have anywhere to go, so I went to Fred Meyer, where they had copies of The Orange Box which I have been looking for but had not been able to find. So when I got back I cleaned up some of the mess and then played through Portal. It's an interesting game. I then started HL2: Episode 2, but I was too used to playing with the portal gun to deal with it.