The New Louis C.K. Special

It's funny. Pay the $5 and buy it.

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

Zelda is my mistress.

I haven't finished all of the Legend of Zelda games. I never owned a Nintendo console until the Nintendo 64 came out, so Ocarina of Time was the first game in the franchise that I owned and finished.

The expansion into 3D was a real eye opener for me. Until Ocarina of Time I had only played Legend of Zelda games in the top down game format, and only on a friend's console. So my experience was limited to brief periods of play, usually the game was just demoed for me on the way to play something more multi-player oriented: Like Tecmo Bowl, or Donkey Kong Country. Once I owned Ocarina I was hooked, and I've owned every Zelda game since. I have not finished them all, and I haven't loved them all equally. I still harbor a huge grudge towards Wind Waker. I got stuck on one puzzle after days of game play. Finally after repeated attempts to solve it (I even resorted to a walk through) I gave up. I still would have not changed a thing, because up until that point I was really enjoying the game.

All of this should help to support my credibility when I say that The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, is the best Zelda game since Ocarina of Time. It might be the best game on the Wii, to date!

A lot of hardcore gamers laugh at the lack of hi def graphics on the Wii, but even if the graphics are not on the same level of a PS3 or XBox360, who cares! It's should be about gameplay, and Skyward has the best game mechanics using the Wii MotionPlus that I've ever experienced. You can't just "waggle" the wiimote and hope for the best or you will fail...miserably. You must show determination when wielding your sword. Deliberately using the visual cues on the screen to hack and slash away at your enemies. I'ts not easy to get used to, but when you get it, the payoff is awesome.

There are some things that are definitely different this time around. You aren't limited to the opening world as long as in other games. The last Legend of Zelda, Twilight Princess, if felt like it took forever to actually get out on a quest! Not in Skyward Sword. After 30 minutes of gameplay I was on a quest. There is a tutorial, but after you complete it, you are in a cave attempting to complete your first mission.
The game is not easy, but it's one of those experiences that makes it totally worthwhile.

If you own a Nintendo Wii, this game is a must have.

And don't tell my wife that I have a mistress, although I suspect she already knows.

Retirement Heist

When I saw the author of this book, Ellen E. Schultz, interviewed on The Daily Show I knew I had to try and get my hands on a copy. It didn't have anything to do with the amount of charisma she showed (very little). I'm just getting to the age that I'm thinking more and more about how to finance our retirement. I was also kind of curious why pensions are no longer very common. It seems like you used to be able to put in 20 years with a company, and be pretty certain that your pension would keep you comfortable. That no longer seems to be the case.

So I checked it out of my local library. (Do you have a library card? You should!)

It's a slow read, and I'm going to confess that some of the math that companies use to turn employees retirement accounts into a revenue stream, goes right over my head. That statement alone, should give you a pretty good idea how companies have exploited loopholes in our benefits system, for their own gain.

I had my original question, "why are pensions no longer common", answered early on in the book. Corporate leaders, mostly in the late 80's and early 90's, misled their shareholders/employees into thinking that the retirement plans could not continue to survive, because they were underfunded based on how many retirees there were expected to be. This was what caused retirement plans to switch from being pensions, which are secure and safe; to 401(k)s, which are tied to the stock market. Anyone with a 401(k) knows how poorly they have been doing.

There is a lot more in this book that will kick your outrage in to high gear. Like the way that retirement plans are used to finance lavish executive exit bonuses. That's one of the worst parts. Corporate execs said that pension plans were under funded, the reason they were saying that is because they couldn't pay top execs huge payouts when THEY retired, while continuing to pay regular retiree pensions.

This book is well written, and has lots of references backing up the claims it contains. It's pretty dry reading, but the author does a great job at the daunting task of addressing the layman. It prompted me to make sure that I keep a closer eye on my 401(k). My employer automatically invests part of my retirement in company stock. In the past year that stock lost 23% of it's value. Since I'm 40 years old, it's time for me to start monitoring that, and making sure that it's not money I'm just pissing away.

It's Official, My Son No Longer Thinks I'm Cool

The Parent Teacher Organization was having a fund raiser at my son's school today. It was a walkathon, they got pledges from people to walk for an hour. There was no minimum number of laps. As parents we were invited to come out and either walk with the kids, or just stand along the path and cheer them on. I decided to head out to try and be supportive. My father-in-law and my mother-in-law drove from an hour away to join in the festivities.

My 6, soon to be 7, year-old son completely ignored all three of us! We tried to walk along with him, but he completely blew us off to walk with his friends. I told my father-in-law that I couldn't believe he wasn't excited to see us. His response, "You get used to it".

On the ride back to work, I realized I was the same way when I was that age. I guess I should be glad that he has friends that he would rather spend time with than me. Let's face it, I'm "Dad". As much fun as he and I can have together when it's just family, I'm no substitute for someone in his own age group. Having friends outside of your family is a sign of maturity, I should have been more concerned if he wanted to walk around the circle with us the whole time.

Still, the truth hurts.

Lucky Me!

I was buckling Piper into her car seat yesterday, just like I do every weekday morning, and I set my travel mug filled with delicious piping hot coffee on the roof of my car. Once I got her all buckled in, I jumped in the car and drove off. I made it to the intersection of Landis Valley Road and Oregon Pike when I tried to take my first sip of the coffee I had so carefully prepared, when I realized it wasn't in my cup holder.

After cursing my stupidity quietly, since my innocent baby girl was in the back seat, I decided to jump out of my car just to see how it spilled. To my surprise, it was still sitting on the roof of my car!

So I had traveled almost a mile with it on my roof, and it didn't spill a drop! The early morning frost had frozen it securely to the roof of my car, and that's the luckiest I've ever been.

RAGE Review

Let me just start out by saying that RAGE is not a great game. It's a good game, that could have been great.

The setting is similar to lots of other games out there. You are trapped in a post apocalyptic wasteland. Yada, yada, yada. If you've played Bioshock, Fallout, Borderlands, Resident Evil, Half-Life 2, Portal 2 etc. You know the score. Lots of decrepit buildings, roads, and machinery. Of course you have good guys, that look like humans, and bad guys that look like horribly deformed mutants/armored thugs.

Various inhabitants of the towns that you visit give you tasks to do. They usually require you to visit an area, make your way through it to a particular item (maybe defeat a boss), fight your way out of the area, and then take the item back to whoever asked you to retrieve it. The story progresses in mostly a linear fashion. There are some side quests that are pretty entertaining. The first few I did were sniper missions, which is always a nice change of pace after killing things in close quarters.

There's a racing component that is a nice addition. Winning races allows you to earn certificates to upgrade your vehicle. The racing is not great, this is no substitute for a good racing game, but it's a nice change of pace from the first person shooter part of the game. It's also a nice way to let you upgrade your vehicle besides dropping a lot of your hard earned cash.

There are also some mini games thrown in. The one I like the best is a game show. Set in a series of treacherous arenas, you have to fight wave after wave of bad guys managing your ammo along the way. If you make it to the end, you are awarded a very nice prize.

While working your way through all of these quests, you can visit Outfitters. These stores allow you to purchase ammo, armor upgrades, and schematics to build things with items that you have found along the way. I won't go into too much detail here, but one of these build-able items is REALLY cool.

It's a Pipe Bender...and it hurts.

A lot of reviews that I read before I bought the game said that it was not a very original concept, and I can see why people would say that. Luckily I hadn't been playing alot of this type of game, so that didn't really effect me.

Most importantly the Game LOOKS amazing.

ID Software has created a new engine, id Tech 5 that allows developers to really utilize the horsepower blah blah blah. It looks awesome!!! Just like the 4 versions before it, this is going to be the best in class gaming engine going forward, and RAGE is the first showcase for it. I can't wait to see what developers do with it going forward!

This is a good game, that looks amazing.

Reamde by Neal Stephenson

Yes, I spelled that right, it's Reamde. It's a purposeful misspelling of the readme.txt file that is often found in a computer directory. It's the first thing that most computer users should read when they are having difficulty with a program.

I've read most of Stephenson's books. I never made it through all of The Baroque Cycle trilogy, I found his style in those books to be a little dry and slow moving. That being said, I have enjoyed many of his other novels. My favorite is Cryptonomicon. I really enjoyed that book for its mixture of technology and action. I'm glad to say that Reamde is a great return to that style!

The novel starts out focused on a group of people running a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game, called "T'rain". Think World of Warcraft. If there is anything Stephenson does REALLY WELL, it's exploring a complex topic. In Cryptonomicon, it was encryption, in Reamde, its how payment systems in gaming work, and how someone could exploit that to turn in game money into real money. By using a virus, hidden in an addon that the game uses in Microsoft Outlook in a file, called REAMDE some clever hackers encrypt their victims hard drives. Then they require the victim to meet them in a certain location in T'Rain with in game credits to receive the key to unlock their hard drives. Basically holding all of their data for ransom.

Unfortunately, these hackers pick the wrong person to infect with the virus.

There are lots of twists and turns in this book. It takes awhile for the action to kick in, but when it does, this is a first rate thriller. It's far from perfect, but still a great read.

Like most of Stephenson's novels, the audience for this book is probably people that know something about technology, but I think it can still be enjoyed by a pretty wide audience.

Sometimes I Forget I Even Have A Blog

Wow. Over a year since my last post.

I guess that Facebook and Google+ sort of took over for me when it comes to sharing.

I'm not sure if that is a good thing. So many of my posts on both of those sites are so short, that sometimes I think that my ability to share ideas in a longer format have suffered. It's not my attention span, I can still read a book for hours and maintain the thread of the story, but I'm pretty sure my written communication has suffered.
Besides this post, the longest thing I have written in quite some time, has been a work email, or some technical directions for something. That is communicating, but I'm not sure it's really expressing any original ideas. Writing down step-by-step directions for making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich is not really saying anything original.

Verbally, I think I can communicate ok, but even then it feels like I have a hard time getting my ideas out sometimes.

I'm just saying that I don't think that there is any substitution for actually putting your thoughts in writing.

On a side note, I REALLY like the new Blogger templates, and the customization you can do.