Changing The Answers

11.25.2005

Everybody gets emails from friends that force you to pick from a list of options or answer some questions so that you end up learning something new and interesting about said friends. Or maybe it's just prettied up spam. I got one the other day, but I don't think I was the target audience. I didn't like most of the answers. Here are the questions and available answers that the email held:

1. Which one of the following describes the perfect date?
a) Candlelight dinner (4 pts.)
b) Fun/Theme! Park (2 pt s.)
c) Painting in the park (5 pts.)
d) Rock concert (1 pt.)
e) Going to the movies (3 pts.)
I would choose "3 minutes of frantic sex, followed by her going home", but it wasn't there.

2. What is your favorite type of music?
a) Rock and Roll (2 pts.)
b) Alternative (1 pt.)
c) Soft Rock (4 pts.)
d) Country (5 pts.)
e) Pop (3 pts.)
Did R&B die or something? Where's my Luther Vandross? Where's Prince?

3. What type of movies do you prefer?
a) Comedy (2 pts.)
b) Horror (1 pt.)
c) Musical (3 pts.)
d) Romance (4 pts.)
e) Documentary (5 pts.)
I like GOOD movies, I don't care what genre they're in

4. Which one of these occupations would you choose if you only could choose one of these?
a) Waiter (4 pts.)
b) Professional Sports Player (5 pts.)
c) Teacher (3 pts.)
d) Police (2 pts.)
e) Cashier (1 pt)
I guess if I had to choose form the list, it'd be "B":, but I'd like to see "Superhero" as an option.

5. What do you do with your spare time?
a) Exercise (5 pts.)
b) Read (4! pts.)
c) Watch television (2 pts.)
d) Listen to music (1 pt.)
e) Sleep (3 pts.)
Where are the options for "Play Vieo Games", "Surf For Porn", and "Masturbate"?

6. Which one of the following colors do you like best?
a) Yellow (1 pt.)
b) White (5 pts.)
c) Sky Blue (3 pts.)
d) Dark Blue (2 pts.)
e) Red (4 pts.)
I think they should have just listed shades of blue, since they had 2 shades listed...

7. What do you prefer to eat right now?
a) Snow (3 pts.)
b) Pizza (2 pts.)
c) Sushi (1 pt.)
d) Pasta (4 pts.)
e) Salad (5 pts.)
I originally read this at 8:00 in the morning, so some type of breakfast option would have been nice.

8. What is your favorite holiday?
a) Halloween (1 pt.)
b) Christmas (3 pts.)
c) New Year (2 pts.)
d) Valentine's Day (4 pts.)
e) Thanksgiving (5 pts.)
What about Veterans Day!!!!!!

9. If you could go to one of these places which one would it be?
a) Paris (4 pts)
b) Spain (5 pts)
c) Las Vegas! (1 pt)
d) Hawaii (4 pts)
e) Hollywood (3 pts)
Being a man of extremes, I would have tried to pick "Home" for a minimum number of points, or "The Moon" for probably the maximum number of points.

10. With which of the following would you prefer to spend time with?
a) Someone Smart (5 pts.)
b) Someone attractive (2 pts.)
c) Someone who likes to Party (1 pt.! )
d) Someone who always has fun (3 pts.)
e) Someone very sentimental (4 pts.)
Someone Buxom With Quaestionable Morals. Or is that too close to "c"?

Of course, the email had you total up your points to see which cartoon character you were like or somesuch frivolity like that. I probably scored enough to be like some wiseass, anal character that nobody has ever heard of. But I wanted to score enough to be like Jimmy Neutron, dammit!

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Thanks

11.23.2005

This is the time of year that not only kicks off the silly season, but also when one is prompted to look back over the year and recollect on how it's been. So with that in mind, I bring you things that I'm thankful for.

• Not being dead.
• My ever expanding collection of toys due to my single guy lifestyle
• My lack of truly serious debt outside of the house and car/truck/SUV/conveyance.
• Being able to beat Mom at Scrabble about 95% of the time.
• Coke still tastes like "Classic" Coke after that whole "New" Coke debaucle
• My leaky refrigerator was only due to the freezer setting not being warm enough (causing the ice to melt), and not some multi-million dollar replacement part.

Oh sure, there's lots of little things of which I'm grateful for, but these are the top ones I can think of right now. Hopefully these will put the items on my list of things I'm not grateful for out of my mind completely. I'm thankful for that, too.

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Hitachi 60VS810

11.17.2005

As reported earlier, my TV was dying. Being that I don't like it when things start to break (see my car buying history), I decided to investigate the differences in the newer models of television. Plasma, LCD, LCD Projection... what did it all mean? Well, I went to my local Rex Electronics, mainly because they deal with me well, will honestly answer questions, and generally aren't too pushy. Well, they answered all of my questions, weren't puchy, and offered me a deal I couldn't refuse. So with that, I left their store Sunday with a lot of information, along with a 60" TV.

Much to my surprise, I got off the Sony train that I've been on for the past 5 or 6 years and bought a Hitachi. The quality, color, and sound were at least as good as the Sony versions, if not a little better, for a slightly lower price. I'm still getting the TV settled in and used to it, but I think I'm going to like it. I've got to upgrade the cable to digital/HDTV now to realy get the full quality of the TV, but that's just one of those things whose day I knew was coming.

The one thing that's taking getting used to is the remote. It doesn't have the normal buttons for volume and flipping channels up and down. Instead there are two scroll buttons, like the ones found on mice that most of you people use (not the super cool trackball users like me). I'll admit, it's cool and different, but there's a little pause between scrolling the wheel, the TV deciding you're stopped scrolling, and the change in volume or channel to take effect. But it's a gimmick, and I am a sucker for gimmicks.

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Eduardo G. Guerrero Llanes a.k.a. Latino Heat

11.14.2005

For some reason, the cult of us that follow wrestling with the zeal that makes most people mark us as a bunch of loons, we find ourselves enamoured with keeping up with the inner goings on of wrestling and those involved. When something happens, you can see the news spread through the internet at an amazing speed, especially when someone dies.

Eddie Guerrero died yesterday at 38 years old. Like most wrestlers, he didn't live to a ripe old age. Like many wrestlers, he died while still in his prime of physical well being and popularity. Within 30 minutes of learning that Eddie had died, the cult of us wrestling fanatics had tracked down a handful or two of news stories, press releases, and at least 1 video conference with tidbits of information about how he died. The thing that was different about Eddie's death was that it was not just being reported by the wrestling fansites and newsboards, but also along the mainstream news sites. Here's a sampling of some of those reports:

Wrestling star Guerrero found dead in Minn. (Yahoo.com)

Pro wrestler Eddie Guerrero found dead at 38 (MSNBC.com)

'WWE Smackdown!' Star Guerrero Dies (ABCNews.com)

WWE hero Guerrero dies (TheSun.co.uk)

'WWE Smackdown!' Star Guerrero Dies (Star Tribune)

WWE's Eddie Guerrero dead at 38 (North Korea Times)

'WWE Smackdown!' star Guerrero dies (The News and Observer)

WWE Wrestler Found Dead In Minneapolis Hotel (CBS 3 Philadelphia)

Wrestling star Guerrero found dead in Minn. (ContactMusic.com)

WWE Wrestler Found Dead In Minneapolis Hotel (CBS 3 Philadelphia)

As of now, the reason for Eddie's death hasn't been announced.

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Rules Trek

11.08.2005

Way back when I had more time on my hands than I knew what to do with (the 80's, a big chunk of the 90's) I would enjoy learning the rules of various role-playing games, and as is my way, I would have to go out and buy all of these games to learn the rules. Since the core of good RPGs is getting together with friends and playing, and I never thought to ask any of my friends if they would want to play this really cool game I just found, whether it be set in the post apocolyptic world of Poland or secret agents of Earth tryingt o save the universe from the evil alien overlords of some far off planet, I managed to amass a collection of games I never played.

That used to bother me. I had all of these games but the closest I had come to playing a game would be trying to fake a solo adventure after creating a character while reading through the rules. Lately, while trying to formulate some rules for my ever present, snail paced develoment of my PC wrestling game, I learned something about myself from those many years ago. It wasn't so much the story/adventure line and settings of the games that I liked, it was learning the rules of those games. Each game has a lot in common (try to find an RPG where a character doesn't have "Intelligence" listed as an attribute), but the ways in which those common characteristics are used within the game is what makes each unique.

One of the earliest RPGs I remember getting was the FASA version of Star Trek. It had a very rich character creation system which developed a good background for your character, then through in some randomness once you entered Star Fleet Academy. Creating a character was almost a mini-solo adventure, and I guess that's also what appealed to me. I manged to create a bridge crew that was pretty well rounded, and they never got to partake in an adventure since I was the only person I knew with the rules, let alone knew (at least a little) of how to play the game.

This got me to thinking about the different iterations of the Star Trek game. We Trekkies (reformed or not) are notorious for dressing up like a bunch of loons and parading around. 30 years would produce a variety of games, especially RPGs.Amarillo Design Bureau has made a few Trek games: Star Fleet Battles (best known to me as the "1 hour/turn game"), Federation & Empire, and a version of Prime Directive. I had never read or played Prime Directive, but rememebred seeing it long ago in the local gaming store. It seems it was popular enough, at least in idea if not execution, to spawn versions from Wizards of the Coast's d20 line along with Steve Jackson's GURPS game.

The old Star Trek branded RPG has gone through a couple of changes too. After FASA folded, it seems the ST license was up for grabs. Along the way seperate games were developed for each series (such as The Next Generation and Deep Space 9). Interestingly, one of the companies that developed one of the better original series RPGs, along with the subsequent series, Last Unicorn, was bought out by Wizards of the Coast (makers of the d20 line of games). A branch of employees broke off and went to a company called Decipher, where they have produced what looks to be the latest version of the Star Trek RPG universe, having been released in 2002.It's with the Last Unicorn release(s) that came in the late 90's, there also seemed to be a shift in the way RPGs were being played. Back in the old, D&D era, the game was centered around an adventure with a lot of statistic driven hack-n-slash. The emphasis now is changing to a story telling mode. Granted, the story was always important - any good RPG always had a "players guide" and a "dungeon master/narrator guide". Just to find out how different things have gotten, I picked up a copy of the Decipher ST:RPG book over the weekend, taking advantage of Books-a-Million's latest extra discount on the discount card sale. Now I look forward to going through and reading the rules to see what all has changed in the world of role playing over the last 20 years.

And I bet I continue to never play the game.

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