Yeah, that’s a Cadbury Creme Egg in the middle.

Games I’m most looking forward to in 2008:

• StarCraft II
• Fallout 3
• Mario Kart Wii
• Spore
• Lego: Indiana Jones

I think that’s the order I most want them, too.

Haha, Windows Security Center really hates me…

I’ve turned off my firewall because I’m behind a router.

Turned off automatic updating because I hate the restart nags that pop up after updates are installed.

I don’t have an anti-virus application installed (AVG has issues with the in-game Steam overlay and Steam > anti-virus to me) which is bad, I know.

UAC is awful but I needn’t go into that again. So it’s off.

The only items that are green for me are my malware protection (Windows Defender + Spybot = extra protection!) and my internet security settings (apparently default is good enough for me there).

Back to the Automatic Updates though. If it installs an update requiring a restart, Vista pops up a dialog box asking you to restart. It also has an option to dismiss the message for a short period of time. However if you’re in a full-screen app (like a game) and you’re lucky, it will interrupt your game in the middle of an awesome battle to annoy you. If you are unlucky, it will suddenly reboot your system in the middle of playing Bioshock. *le sigh*

I passed 21 bunnies on my walk to work this morning. On the way home, I was passed by more than that number of drivers talking on their cell phones. This next part is to them:

Please don’t kill anyone else when you get into an accident and die a painful, fiery death.

Do you ever do this? Walk along the sidewalk towards opposing traffic, and stare into passing cars’ driver’s side? Some drivers seem unnerved when they notice.

don’t worry I’ll be gone when the morning comes

For the past three weeks, my sort-of-boss (I have something like 4 or 5 different bosses, each a different level of “superior” to me) has advised me not to work too hard on Fridays and then made mention of this “5% Friday.” Presumably the 5% would be the effort put in on a Friday. At first I laughed politely at the joke but as it has been mentioned every Friday since I started, and by multiple people, I’m starting to wonder if perhaps it’s an actual thing people are adhering to. I should look into this more.

Neil Gaiman is the author who showed me that fantasy isn’t all just orcs and elves (which I’m really not that into) and I recently finished reading his collection of short stories and poems, Fragile Things. The thing I like best about the book is that with 27 different stories to tell, you get a really wide range of different tales. Ghost stories, made-up maladies, stories that are disturbing, stories that seem too rough to not be true and stories that make you think. Yet even though it’s a collection of short fictions, Gaiman really manages to pull you in with really great ideas. Overall, it is an excellent collection of short stories… some weirder than others.

I would rather recollect a life misspent on fragile things than spent avoiding moral debt

Soul Calibur Legends

In contrast to yesterday where I discussed a really good game that I decided I wasn’t going to play, today I have a poor game that for some reason I find myself continuing to play.

I’ve never been anywhere close to ‘good’ at fighting games, but part of me kind of likes them anyway. This explains why I bought Soul Calibur 2 for the Game Cube.

Legends is different from the series usual: It takes the characters of previous Soul Calibur games and puts them in a very simple 3rd person adventure game. It’s a neat concept but when they decided to put it on the Wii they figured it would be a good idea to use the Wii Remote movements for your attacks. This means that throughout the entire game you’re just wildly waving the Wii Remote around. Honestly, I can’t play for more than 20-30 minutes at a time before my arm just gets really tired from swinging around constantly.

Besides the poor controls, the levels are pretty sparse, the story and dialogue are boring and the co-op mode is forgettable. But the ladies’ chests are huge.

It’s a pretty bad game, but part of me still enjoys progressing through the adventure story, collecting new character weapons and leveling them up. Go figure.

Sins of a Solar Empire

Sins is the space RTS that Tycho talks about here and again here. It’s pretty cool and reminds me of Homeworld (in that it’s a space RTS) but with planets that you control and build up while you explore and expand your empire. It’s actually really fun but I’m not so good at it. I can’t even figure out if there’s a campaign and if so, how to start it. But even the skirmishes are awesome (though 4+ hours long).

I felt bad that I was destroyed so completely by the PC but in listening to the Maximum PC and PC Gamer podcasts, it seems most people can’t beat the PC opponents. None of us really know the best build order for our empire yet and the PC most definitely does. Apparently it is much more enjoyable online because no one really knows the best build order yet.

Anyway, it’s a damn cool game but with such long skirmishes and no campaign, I don’t know that it’s really a game for me. Still, you should check out the demo if it seems like something you might like.