I've got a pretty full schedule of things I need to do while not at work this week. It makes me look forward to another day like Sunday.

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Difficult & Defeated

08.17.2005

In my trip to Tennessee this past weekend, while stopping off to see mom, a ferocious thunderboomer came into the area. As is our way in these here parts, we immediately turned the tv to the one of the local stations for some intense weather coverage.

I've lived in the greater Huntsville area pretty much all my life. Even during some important formative years in Florence, the local television stations were all Huntsville stations. I think I've just grown accustomed to the way each station present the weather. Being in the greater Nashville area, I found that the weather is presented in much the same way. The only problem was that when they went to the radar to show the status of the storm, I didn't know where anything was.

I'm spoiled at home. The channel 48 radar is about a mile form my house, so I have really good radar coverage. By the time I'm told the storm has reached Madison, Harvest, or Huntsville, I'm pretty much in the clear. Once the storms reach Hytop, I can safely go about my everyday activities. At Mom's I have no sense of how feared for my life I should be based on the radar and the names of places about to be devastated. I looked at her radar and it told me nothing!

Except we were evidently within range of Difficult, TN and Defeated, TN.

Suddenly lightning thundering down death was far from my mind. These people have towns named "Difficult" and "Defeated"? It's gotta suck to live there. "I graduated from Defeated High." just does not have a good ring to it. The storm passed on, but I continued to wonder what it was like for the fair citizens of these poorly named towns once they ventured beyond their city lines. Well, assuming they've got electricity and horseless carriages to take them that far.

There are lots of places with weird names, but after having Difficult and Defeated pop up on the radar, I bet they're going to stay in my mind longer than some of the others.

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Getaway Weekend

08.15.2005

This weekend I left the cozy confines of home and went out into the world.

In this case the world was the greater Nashville, TN area, but when you live in East Podunk, AL, Nashville can be a big place.

The first leg of the trip was off to see mom in Lebanon to deliver the truck key that the dealership had mailed to East Podunk. Mom's to be coming down later this week, but I needed an excuse to travel to the wily north, and it's always good to see mom.

Afterwards I took Gina (who was not only along for the ride, but moreso along to get away from East Podunk and all the trials and tribulations that go along with it) to dinner at the New Orleans Manor for a seafood buffet feast. It had been a couple of years since I had last been, the previous time going with Bob from Open Bio and mom, and as such all I ever heard from Gina was "you take your mom but never take me". She can't say that any more!

After dinner we headed out for a little shopping at Opry Mills (formerly the Opryland Amusement Park) where I managed to buy.... absolutely nothing! We shut the mall down and headed for some needed rest at the local motel, which was really nice up on the 8th floor.

Sunday we checked out and got a steak from J Alexanders before started the second leg of our shopping adventure at the Galleria. Once again I bought.... absolutely nothing!!!! But thinking back, there was a pretty cool phone that I was seriously thinking baout for the kitchen.

Now I'm back home. Ready for a little vacation after all of that driving around....

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Weekend Update

08.08.2005

This weekend was chock full of games. Friday Jer and I played another exciting round of Star Wars Miniatures, in which he once again managed to pull off a victory. I don't know how he keeps doing that, but he does. Ticks me off to no end.

After trouncing me, Jer started playing the Lego Star Wars X-Box game. I cheered him on as he played his way through Episode 1. The best part was renaming the characters, as the Lego version of Padme looks a lot like Captain Janeway, and Captain Typho, the first one in the game ot have a blaster, was quickly dubbed Captin Blasto!

The rest of my weekend was taken up with finishing God of War. I can't remember the last time I actually finished a non-wrestling game, so it was a cause for celebration! Since it was late Saturday night when I finished, the celebration turned out to be going to bed, but that's to be expected once you get elderly like I am.

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Game Time

08.01.2005

I've been trying to catch up on some on my video game playing of late. I've been in a rut of driving and wrestling games, and I finally came across a couple of games to help get me out of said rut.

Lego Star Wars lets you play through Star Wars Episodes 1, 2, and 3 with everything made of Legos. An odd concept, but fun to watch destroyed items bounce around into their component Lego parts. I still like making Legos, so this appealed to the kid in me. The game is fairly simple, I think targeted toward the pre-teen game player. The puzzles and combat are easy to get a grip on, so the game is quick to pick up and play for an hour or two. Exactly what I was looking for. And yes, you can (eventually) kill Jar-Jar.

God of War for the PS2 is my first venture into the hack-n-slash niche. It may not even be a real hack-n-slash, but it counts for me. Move toward enemy, press button repeatedly. There's enough bad guys, animations, violence, and nudity to make this one fun for a while. My only drawback is there isn't an invulnerability/god mode, so I tend to die a lot. But it is a fun game. I think I've managed to get about a quarter of the way through after playing for a couple of hours. It's addictive, though; very hard to put the controller down after playing for a while. You just want to see what's around the next corner...

I tried to keep an open mind for Wrestlemania 21 on the Xbox. I waited until I was ready to try a new wrestling game. I waited and bought it used, saving about $10. I read lots of reviews putting it down so that all my expectations would be lowered. But it sucks. It sucks because the code, deep inside the game sucks. Why does it suck?

• The game actually locks up after some matches.
• When more than 2 wrestlers are present in a match, characters tend to "jump" around the ring randomly. Oh, they still hit and punch and suplex, but the bodies aren't connected any more.
• There's a lag with the spinning Wrestlemania logo loading screen. I catch about every 10th frame of the rotating logo until it's loaded all the way into memory, at which point the level is about ready to play.
• It may just be my "low level" wrestler, but all the animations run slow.
• After being knocked down, pressing the controller to make the wrestler get up makes him roll around. A lot.
• The settings for camera angles and announcer volume are reset to the default for every match.

There are some good points to the game. The story mode seems interesting (although so far it's a throw back to the old fighting games where you have to win every match). The player models are extremely well done.

.....

Ok, there's a lot more against this game than for it. I'm gonna go back to God Of War and hack-n-slash everything. Maybe the Wrestlemania 21 programmers, if I can find them.

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