June 24, 2008

Chains of Olympus

I'm a huge God of War fan, and both the kids have a Sony PSP which I've found myself borrowing a lot for those 'wait in the car/lobby/etc' moments lately. So, when it was announced that Sony was releasing a PSP God of War bundle, I was stoked. It showed up and I've spent a lot of time playing with it already. I had been kicking around the idea of importing a white PSP Slim (or PSP 2000 as they are known (the originals are PSP 1000)) but the red PSP that is a part of this bundle is stunning. And the white screened image of Kratos on the back is just killer.

The new 'slim' version of the PSP is very thin and light. However, I actually prefer the 'bulk' of the original PSP. I have this constant feeling that I'm going to crush or drop/fling the thing and it bothers me. However, I do prefer the new weight as I've found that marathon gaming sessions don't tire the wrists nearly as bad as the original PSP. And speaking of marathon gaming, the battery life on the Slim is amazing. Like, "wow" amazing. I can play solid for over three hours easily on this thing (unless I'm using the wifi to play against someone, then it drops a bit). I totally love how the Slim has a switch right on top to turn off the wifi. I don't like how the Slim doesn't 'open' to remove/insert the UMD like the original did. It feels /way/ too fragile for my liking. The bundle didn't include the headphones that the original PSP did (no loss really) and /still/ doesn't include a memory stick (wtf are you thinking Sony? This is a 'bundle' for $diety's sake! You get the unit, a battery, and a game... everything you need to play from the get-go but you can't save ?!). All in all, I'm really pleased w/ the unit and have taken it along on a lot of 'sit and wait' moments already.

Now, for Chains of Olympus. This game is a prequel to the original GoW and GoWII. And it quite nicely slots into the storyline and does a wonderful job of explaining the back-story and 'filling out' things for us fans. It translated to the PSP really well and is smooth as butter in action. The game also does a really good job of avoiding the UMD as I hardly ever notice it spinning the disc up which means the play is nice and smooth and battery life is excellent. About my biggest complaint is that on 'normal' the enemies don't seem to take a lot of punishment before being dead. Perhaps I'm mis-remembering, but it seemed like they were a hell of a lot harder to kill in GoW. However, that just means you can get a little more creative with the killing, IMHO.

In short, I love everything about this bundle. If you were thinking of getting a PSP, you won't be disappointed w/ this at all. If you have a PSP, then you won't go wrong w/ getting Chains of Olympus either (assuming you're into the genre).

Two thumbs up

Posted in at 12:09:16

June 23, 2008

fitness regime

This morning's workout left me at +.9lbs and a Wii Fit age of 31. While certainly not great at all, I'm not too terribly upset over it since I haven't made a workout session since last Tues. I don't know what was with me last week, but I was severely dragging ass late Tues nite and it didn't really get any better until mid-day on Sat. It took everything I had to actually get out of bed. And then once I felt better on Sat, Tina and I had an argument and I ended up sleeping on the floor in the computer room, which hurt my back. Then, cause I'm stubborn and stupid, I went ahead and hooked up my PS3 on Sunday, even though my back was killing me and the entertainment center weighs a metric ton. I'm actually pretty surprised I did as well in the workout today as I did.

Posted in at 07:42:23

June 19, 2008

more punk ass-ness

So it seems that while the little punk asses didn't steal anything from my car, while breaking the window, they did manage to bend the frame around the vent window. And that frame is all one piece that circles the whole window in the door. So, it's like a $350 part. I'm more steamed now than ever. I mean shit, how hard is it to break a window without bending the frame? Shouldn't be too goddamn hard.

Punks!

Posted in at 16:28:32

June 19, 2008

punk ass teenagers

I'm livid. I went out to get in my car today to grab some lunch and was sucker-punched by seeing that someone had broken out the right rear window of my car. After calming down a slight bit, I went over the car w/ a fine-toothed comb and determined that absolutely nothing had been stolen. My cup full of change, my stack of cds, everything. All present and accounted for. And that just pissed me off even more. I mean, either they got scared and fled, or it was just some random act of violence. I'd actually feel slightly better if they'd have stolen something. At least then I could say "well, i left $whatever in the car, and someone wanted it". Right now, I'm looking at about $190 of window replacement costs for no reason and that really irks me. Of course, I'm also pissed that my car has sat in the driveway of our house since I moved in and NOTHING has ever happened. That's over EIGHT years. I mean, I guess that means I was statistically due or something. We even have a street light in front of our house!

Assholes!

Posted in at 12:33:21

June 17, 2008

Smoky and the Bandit

I was flipping channels on TV a long while back and managed to catch a few minutes of the end of this movie and was sitting there grinning like an idiot and harking back to the simpler days of my youth when the kids were like "what is this movie? who's he?". Realizing that the next generation were missing out on the iconic films of my and my parents generation, I quickly dropped this movie into my queue.

It finally showed up, and we sat down and watched it together. It actually was as good as I remember it (how many old favorites past that test?) and the kids seemed to actually enjoy it as well. Of course, I still have to get them to watch it about a dozen or so more times before they can sing along with "East bound and Down" (stuck in your head now? welcome to the club) but we'll get there. The one thing that didn't hold up to my idealized memories was the Trans-Am. Yes, it's still sweet. But it wasn't totally bad-ass anymore. Eh.

"East bound and down, loaded up and trucking. We gonna do what they say can't be done. We got a long way to go and a short time to get there. I'm east bound just watch ol' Bandit run..."

Posted in at 11:55:14

June 16, 2008

i can has electricity?

The CIA has said that hackers have successfully cut the power grid outside the US and that we need to take action now to protect our own grid.

No shit.

I mean seriously, who didn't know we need to protect our grid? But that's not the real story here. The real story here is this: why are any machines, switches, transformers, generators, whatever connected to the Internet or systems that are? I mean seriously! What kind of genius decides those systems need to be online? What's the logic there? Does it make sense to anyone?

And don't give me the crap about putting intelligence into the grid. Make the nodes aware! Bullshit. You can achieve this goal without putting them (or their support systems) on the Internet. Go back to college. Go talk to the services. Go talk to the generation before you (who didn't have the Internet). They have all solved this problem already (several times over).

Me? I'm buying stock in Coleman camping equipment. :)

Posted in at 12:01:22