Disney 2008 is Done

It's always a bittersweet occasion upon leaving Walt Disney World to return home. It never last long enough, but after a week I'm also ready to sleep in my own overly comfortable bed, and pet my cats. This year was certainly no exception.

We stayed at Coronado Springs Resort for the second time this year. We miss Animal Kingdom Lodge a little, and having outdoor-entry rooms at Coronado isn't as comforting/private as it could be, the convenience of travel to the parks is really unequaled at CSR. Ten minute or less bus rides from Animal Kingdom, Disney's Hollywood Studios (yes, the MGM name is no more), and Epcot makes mid-day rests or swimming (weather permitted) much easier. Just don't bother eatting there.

The Weather this year was certainly an improvement. Though a large overcast and low visibility ceiling in Atlanta resulted in flight delays leading to an Orlando arrival hours after scheduled on Sunday, Monday through Saturday provided the sunniest days we've ever had in a week at WDW. There was an almost negligibly fine mist Saturday morning that dissipated by 10 am, leading to a reasonable warm, partly cloudy day.

The highlight of the trip was, by far, Toy Story Midway Mania. When we first arrived at DHS on Wednesday a mere 20 minutes after the park opened, the standby line was already up to 50 minutes, and Fast Pass distribution had already worked it's way in to the 12 o'clock hour. Obviously we grabbed Fast Passes and ran for the other side of the park where we were treated to walk-ons at Tower of Terror, and a surprisingly long 30 minute wait for Rock'n Roller Coaster. After several turns on each ride, we made our way back to use our Fast Passes for Toy Story.

The standby line was now up to 80 minutes, and Fast Passes were completely distributed for the day. By 11:30. Sorry Soarin', but it was looking pretty bad for your reign as most popular ride at Disney World. After riding, the case was closed.

Toy Story Midway Mania is the most fun I've had on a ride at Disney World. Instead of the slow meandering tour of it's cousin, Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin at Magic Kingdom, TSMM zips you along on a quick run through of a number of stationary midway styled games enhanced by 3d glasses. You'll stop for a short time at each game before being whisked quickly along to the next one. Instead of firing visible spectrum lasers in a mess of blinking lights where you can't tell your dot from the guy 10 cars down, the 3D screens provide the virtual projectiles launched from your spring action shooter attached to the front of your car. And you are only competing with the person in your car. It's a fast paced 3D video game ride that appears to appeal to almost EVERYONE. Disney Imagineering really outdid themselves on this ride and with it's addition to DHS really increased the appeal of that park.

Since we only got to ride one time on our main DHS day, we went back Saturday morning for Extra Magic Hour after checking in for our flight at the resort. We were one of the first 50 people in the park and when the rope finally dropped letting us in, I looked back and discovered that nearly the WHOLE crowd that arrived after us was following the leaders back to Toy Story. We walked on for the first ride, and by the time we got off, Fast Pass distribution was again already three hours into the day, and the standby line was up to 60 minutes. I'd call it a hit. We only ended up getting to ride it three times while we were there - my top score was only 195,500, a little shy of the 291,000 posted record of the month. But given such little practice I think I did ok. Most people I watched around us were posting scores under 100,000.

No trip to WDW is complete for us without a lot of pin trading. This November saw the release of what is likely to be the most popular series of Hidden Mickey cast lanyard exclusive pins (pins which you can't buy in the parks, they begin their lives on cast trading lanyards and you have to trade with cast members to obtain them) - each pin in the series represents a letter of the alphabet and a character whose name begins with that letter. All week we were only able to find 6 letters. Six. Hopefully by next year they'll be in better circulation and we'll be able to find the other 20. We also managed to complete a number of sets from last year including the princess eyes, the muppets, the fast passes, the villain crystal balls, and the feet. Out of last year's sets, the ones that we want but are still missing are Figaro (the black cat), Uncle Sam Donald, the Pineapple, and Goofy and Donald driving. From this year's set (October releases, November releases) we still need the Pie, the Tomato, the DDP symbol, and 20 (cry) of the letters (shown on page 2 of the November releases).

It was, as always, a wonderful time. We're pretty sure we're going back again next year, but you never know what the future will bring, especially with the economy in the sad state it's in now. It's always a long year, but it's always worth the wait.

We were pretty bad about getting pictures this year. Truth to tell there wasn't a lot to photograph. It seemed like the Christmas decoration was a little on the light side this year. I did get some decent pics outside of Toy Story, which I should have online sometimes soon.

Timewaster of the day - Hoshi Saga 3

Every stage has it's own mechanics, part of the fun is trying to figure out how exactly it works. The goal is to find the star(s). Please to enjoy. Just be patient, it's a small japanese site, so the loads can be rather slow.

Hoshi Saga 3

Also found Hoshi Saga 1, and Hoshi Saga 2.

Yes, I got a PS3

So yeah, I finally got a PS3, on Wal-mart's free $100 giftcard deal. Not quite as good a deal as the credit card deal when the 5 free blu-ray disc deal was going, but I'm not down with opening new credit cards just for a special deal

So no games yet, mainly got it for a blu-ray player. Now let's see those Supernatural and Battlestar Galactica seasons out on BD already.

If anyone has any games they'd like to play multiplayer online, I'm open to suggestions.

Jack Thompson sinks to new low, still accomplishes nothing

Having failed in both courts of law and the court of public opinion, Jack Thompson has chosen a new tactic. He's telling your mommy.

Thompson wrote a finger-shaking letter to the mother of Rockstar games exec Strauss Zelnick shaming her, among other things, for raising her boy to sell murder simulators to teen boys. No doubt these instructional sessions took the place of Sunday school classes and summer bible camp. This would make Zelnick a victim of his own upbringing, right? Jack, I thought you were a victims' advocate! Well, so long as you are now after the one who's REALLY responsible.

My Current Problems with World of Warcraft

My first MMO was Everquest. It was a pretty hardcore environment in the endgame; character death resulted in experience losses making it possible to lose entire levels, and every raid boss in the game was a timed spawn shared by the entire server. When the Avatar of War was up, it was a race between the top guilds to get to him. You always had to be ready to grab your gear and get to the spawn if you wanted your guild to get the kill.

When World of Warcraft started up, their answer to raid targets sounded like a dream - all encounters would be instanced, there would be no competition for big bosses, every guild/raid group would get it's own shot at it on their own time, when they wanted. The only catch being that once you killed it, you had to wait a set amount of time before going after it again. Sounded PERFECT. No more competition with people who had less of a life than me. And for a time, it was.

Now I'm experiencing the flip side. I've started playing again, and back in a guild consisting of old RL friends, and people from my old guild on Alleria (Aftermath/Tolerance). The guild's time, as it turns out, isn't really my time. The main raids are started at 8pm eastern, and typically last until midnight... on Tuesday and Thursday. I go to bed at 10pm. Gruul/Mag are done on Sunday night, starting at 10pm so those are right out. So needless to say, I'm missing out on most of the good stuff. Tuesday I got in on two boss kills, Thursday I got in on one. Out of 7 killed between the two nights.

I'm not angry at the people in the guild, this was their schedule long before I started playing again. I wish I could be there for more, but I understand that's the schedule that works for them. In Everquest, I played whenever I could, and whatever bosses came up while I was playing I made the most of it. Those that spawned while I wasn't around, I didn't worry about much, because you just can't be around for everything all the time. In WoW... I could be around for everything, but the ability to schedule your raids are actually making me miss a lot.

So this is what I did.

I ended up ganking a 2 GB stick from Anna's computer till my RMA goes through.

So after a few days of grappling with faulty hardware and a screwy Windows install, I've finally gone from this...


to this...


So for now I'm satisfied. Yaaaaaaay.

Computer Build Fail

Not completely though. One of the memory modules is bad, so it has to be RMAd. Unfortunately both were in a kit together so all the memory has to go back, so I'm SOL for probably a week. BAH!

New Computer Incoming!

So I started playing World of Warcraft again recently. And for some reason my computer starts hating life at the worst possible moments. When I was playing last year it was still ok, but now, not so much. At seemingly random times frame rates will drop, graphics will completely disappear... and worse case is that the graphics card completely stops feeding a signal to my monitor. I could probably fix it with a new graphcis card, but the machine is already three years old. It's time to move on. Plus I was already craving a new machine after building Anna's last month. The components I ordered for mine are mostly the same as hers just with a better processor. I got the one I originally wanted for Anna, but which was OOS everywhere at the time; demand was much higher than initial supply on the recently released CPU but it's fairly easy to come by now.

So here's what we have coming.

Ultra Black Aluminus tower case - I love this case. It's not as accessible as my old one which featured latches and a hinged side panel. But this one has a lot more space inside, and has a double hinged front door allowing easy access to drive bays or control panels. One of my biggest frustrations in building a new machine is usually working the front panel off without breaking anything. No longer an issue!

Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3l - A no frills Intel P35 motherboard. Don't need SLI or anything fancy. I'll be sticking with the onboard sound as well, as long as it isn't complete crap.

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Processor (3.0 Ghz) - It's really the current sweet spot for gaming PCs. Quad cores are overrated for gaming, and the new E8000 line of Duos features 45nm chips (uses less power and runs cooler than earlier lines) and a cache bumped up to 16MB. Supposed to be fantastic for overclocking, with many users breaking 4 Ghz. I'll be leaving it at stock speed for the forseeable future though. On a sort of sidenote I'm a little uneasy on this purchase just because I ordered through a new (for me) company. But Newegg was OOS again, and TigerDirect was overpriced by about $26. Hopefully FuturePowerPC comes through and gets it to me soon - both the Dell (monitor) and Newegg (everything else) orders have already shipped. FuturePowerPC lists the order as "To be shipped." Here's hoping it ships soon. From the looks of things everything will arrive on Wednesday but the proc is up in the air. And now that I look up a link for the item on Newegg... it's back in stock. *sigh*

EVGA GeForce 8800GT, 512MB of DDR3 RAM - Another sweet spot, at least to me.

4GB (2x 2GB) Corsair XMS2 RAM - RAM is so inexpensive right now (only about $85 after rebate), I was tempted to get 2, and go up to 8GB. Reined myself in a little as that would be overkill.

Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM 250 GB SATA3 drive - No need for a billion drives and terabytes of storage. Cool and quiet, all I need.

Samsung SATA DVD+/-RW drive - was going to use the old one, but why hang on to an IDE device when the new drive is only $27?

Corsair 450W PSU - Not filling up the box with a lot of power consuming extras. 1 drive, 1 low power consumption processor, 1 graphic card. 450W is plenty. It's quiet and runs cool.

Dell 2208WFP - 22" widescreen monitor. It's a TN panel which makes many people cry ("Oh noez lightbleed!") but my current Samsung is a TN and the bleed doesn't bother me much. Same monitor we got for Anna and I couldn't be more pleased.

Hardware is rounded out by a couple of quiet 120mm fans, and that's that. I'll be installing Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit edition - so far I've not had the issues with Vista that I'd feared. It runs smoothly, and hasn't caused any problems with any older games we've played on it so far, and WoW runs beautifully.

Looking forward to all the parts coming in. We've been very happy with Anna's computer in both power and noise level. Her old PC often sounded like a jet airplane under load. Next to her new one, my current machine now has taken on the jet airplane role. My new one is basically the same with a little more oomph in the processor, so the computer room should soon taken on a peaceful atmosphere.

Hers was also far easier of a build than my last machine was, so I'm hoping this one goes as smoothly. The only problem I experienced with Anna's was that on the first boot the CPU fan didn't want to spin up, but that problem magically disappeared. I freaked out, but I expect it this time. Hopefully no other bizarre problems will present themselves.

Ikaruga is totally awesome...

... and I totally turned my wife on playing it this evening. Not kidding.

God I love my wife.

(image stolen from Kotaku, who probably stole it from somewhere else, but they at least deserve the link back)

KOTOR II: Oh what could have been....

I've put off playing Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords for several years now. I finally purchased a copy about a month ago, almost exactly three years to the day after the game was released. This was no normal lazy delay. No, from the minute the game was released, it's been the target of complaints ranging from rampant bugs to incomplete content. And so I decided to bide my time and wait. I still hold the first Knights of the Old Republic to be one of the best RPGs I've ever played, and one of the most significant pieces of work in the entire Expanded Universe canon. At the time I was confident that bugs would be fixed, and content patches would eventually appear to correct the mistakes made by an overly-eager publisher (LucasArts) wanting to get their product on the store shelves in time for Christmas. I was willing to wait for a perfected experience in the follow-up to the game that renewed my love for Star Wars which had largely been killed by the Phantom Menace four years earlier.

Some bugs were fixed, many were not. LucasArts outright denied a request by the developer, Obsidian Entertainment, to reintroduce the deleted content. There was much crying and gnashing of teeth. However, there was some hope given in the form of a fan effort to restore the missing content. Unfortunately that project is still underway to this day and has yet to release anything (but I'm still cheering for them).

Why now? Mass Effect. BioWare's (BioWare developed the first KOTOR) latest epic lovingly caressed many of the KOTOR buttons in my brain, without ever pressing them - after Anna played Mass Effect and listening to my endless litany of comparisons between the two she decided it was time for her to play KOTOR for the first time as well. She played it first (and agreed that as good as Mass Effect is, KOTOR is far superior), then I replayed... for the tenth time.

I decided it was finally time to stop waiting on KOTORII. Fresh off the original, I ordered the sequel and dove right in. And it was buggy, oh yes it was buggy. Pathing errors, problematic scene changes, equipped items disappearing in the middle of cut scenes (only once, but that was enough), poorly implemented transparencies, buggy cameras in cut scenes... and I stopped counting the number of times it locked up - both in the game, and while loading an old save.

Even with all that though the game was playable. And it was an entirely serviceable sequel to the original. What hurts so much is how obvious it is that the game was gutted. Plotlines removed, endings excised, a whole planet no longer playable, and on and on. The worst part of it all is that after reading about exactly what was removed... I think KOTORII could have been a much deeper experience than what was offered in the original which, as I said, I hold in very high regard.

I can also say that it leaves me wanting a KOTORIII more than I would have thought possible, and that's a real accomplishment. Perhaps we'll get one eventually. Maybe even developed by BioWare. I can only hope, it would be a shame to leave it where it stands.

Phew... it's over

As we've all heard by now, the format war is over. Even NPR covered it. Absolutely the best situation possible, and a much earlier conclusion than anyone thought possible. As I said at the time, the Warner Bros exclusivity was really what got the ball rolling... it just got to the bottom of the hill about 5 months earlier than I thought it would. I would have been fine with combo players becoming the norm, but this is obviously much better.

SO. Now I have some things to contemplate. Obviously a PS3 is going to be on the to buy list soon. Before that happens though, I need to decide on a receiver. Which is going to be difficult... the one I want (see Alan's post about his Denon 3808CI) just isn't going to happen right now. Or in the forseeable future, with Anna going back to school soon. I've considered a few models from Onkyo, but I've read of lip-synch issues on the models I was considering; most of which are correctable, but apparently with the PS3 video games are fine but BluRay playback needs an adjustment (which throws off video games once changed). It's a frustrating situation, but basically... I HAVE to get a receiver sometime soon. Our current set only has one HDMI input, so I'm going to need a receiver with at least three, and I'm not looking to break the bank - I don't need monstrous sound either, just something with decent volume and good clarity. I'm sure this will be an issue that will puzzle me for months until I make a decision compromising.

Mo Betta @ Mojito

Tonight we made our second visit to Mojito, second establishment of chef Fernando Martinez of Havana Rumba, in the Holiday Manor shopping center. I'm actually amazed that it took us this long to make it back - our first visit was in mid-October of last year. On that first trip we shared about eight tapas, three sandwiches, and a vegetarian paella between six people. Every single dish was a delight, from the guacamole served with fried plantain chips to the paella prepared with walnuts and raisins (which I admit I was highly skeptical of). And the bill was an obscenely low $106 before tip, and we left horribly stuffed with a sizable portion of the paella left over.

Previously we'd made the selection of the vegetarian paella out of consideration for the actual vegetarians dining with us that night, and we promised ourselves when we returned on our own that we would try the carnivore's variety. So when our drink orders were taken, we immediately put in an order for the Paella Valenciano (order the paella immediately, it takes up to 45 minutes to prepare). Shortly thereafter we ordered a Plata de Chimichurri (grilled skirt steak with a chimichurri sauce and bits of fried onion), some sweet potato fries (served with a smoked honey), and a pair of empanadas.

The chimichurri and the sweet potato fries were carry-over favorites from the last visit and again did not disappoint, but the winner from our trio of tapas this time was clearly the empanadas. I was doubtful at first - my favorite empanadas in the past have been those filled with pork and/or chorizo, and ground beef did not sound like an appetizing option to me. But they hadn't let me down on any of the previous 12 dishes I'd tried, so I gave it a shot. Thank God I did; it was a real treat. I wouldn't have thought the blend of seasoned beef, pearl onions and raisins could have been so perfect. This one is definitely going down in our favorites for next time.

Somewhat disappointing was the meat filled paella, featuring large portions of chicken, some chorizo, fish, shrimp, and mussels. There wasn't anything wrong with any of it, though I could have done without the large pieces of chicken completely. The meats were all perfectly cooked and well seasoned. But astonishingly, I found myself missing the very non-traditional combination of walnuts and raisins found in the vegetarian version of the dish. I think we'll be going back to that on subsequent visits. This one came out to a bill of $55 plus tip, owing to a larger ratio of food ordered to diners in the party this time out - we just couldn't say no to a paella tonight (which incidentally must be ordered for two or four people, at $16 per person for the traditional version, and $14 per person for the vegetarian).

As much as we love the food at Mojito, there are some criticisms that I feel like I have to levy at the restaurant. In several places of the restaurant it is ridiculously crowded. The initial two-top where we were seated was next to a 4 top that had a gentleman placed on the end in the small aisleway between our table and his. That's not an unacceptable solution in many cases, but this gentleman's back was approximately 4 inches from our table. It was very awkward for us, and thankfully the waitress seated us at another two-top which was open only two spaces down, but she was clearly put out at having to do so; and the request was phrased very politely by Anna, so this wasn't a case of my occasionally gruff personality tainting the exchange.

A problem which unfortunately persists is the crowding around the bar during busy hours (which is most of them). The bar is placed directly along the path leading to the kitchen, which creates a severe traffic problem; it's a bad situation for both guests and servers. On our last visit, we were given the table directly next to the bar and my dad spent fifteen to twenty minutes trying to avoid another gentleman's rear end directly in his face.

Fortunately for Mojito, the food is excellent, and many are willing to put up with these at-times-ridiculous space issues. I only hope the discomfort of forced sardine impersonations won't end up overriding the pure joy we get from the food, because it's one of the tastiest spots in town, and it can be a heck of a value.

They don't take reservations but will do call-ahead seating if you call 30 minutes before arriving. I'm told this system works well, but both times we've gone it's been early enough (less than thirty minutes after dinner hours begin) that we are seated very quickly. By the time we leave though, the number of people standing by for a table is astronomical so be warned. The food is excellent and can be very reasonable if you stick to just tapas, but the paella is something special.

Brand New Day, Brand New Opinion

Ok, it's been one month now. One month since Marvel decided to toss out twenty years of stories rewriting the entire Spider-man mythos with little to no explanation other than "It's Magic! (*jazz hands*) We don't have to explain it." at the end of the One More Day storyline . My reaction to the story was tempered greatly by the fact that I hadn't really read a run of 616 Spider-man comics in years. Ultimate Spider-man has been the best Spider-title published in the last decade, owing much to the talents and dedication of Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley... who together set a new record in American comics by putting out an uninterrupted run on USM for 111 issues. ( Yes, that's right, 111 issues. Many of them produced much more frequently than monthly.) It's by far one of the best runs of comics of all time. It features a teen-aged Peter Parker much as he was when he was created in the 60's; a teen aged hero with nothing but problems.

Anyway, Joe Quesada (Marvel EIC) didn't like the Parker marriage. He, as do many other writers, to be fair, feels that a married Peter Parker loses much of what makes Spider-man an interesting character. So he decided to chuck it. By having the Parkers make a deal with the Devil (ok, Mephisto, but same thing in the Marvel Universe). Yes, that's right, in the world where no one smokes because that's bad, it's ok for the hero to make a deal with the Devil. Mephisto saved Aunt May's life in exchange for the Parkers never having been married. But they don't remember it either, so it's not like they know any different, right? Oh, and Harry Osbourne is back alive. And Peter never had organic web shooters now. How did the deal to break the marriage affect those two completely independent things as well? You want an explanation? "It's magic! (*jazz hands*)" There ya go. Count me among the eye-rollers.

Now, however terrible that plot device to destroy the Parker marriage may have been, at least the results aren't that bad. I just finished reading Brand New Day, the first storyline in the new Spider-man status quo. And I admit, it feels kinda right. Peter can't get a job, isn't a registered hero, lives with Aunt May, and apparently the only people who actively like him now is the mob. That certainly sounds like Spider-man, even though my entire comic reading life has taken place during the marriage (it originally happened in the early 80's). My initial reaction to the decision was that we already had a perfectly good book about an unmarried Spider-man in USM. I see now that the result is different enough such that it doesn't matter; each maintains a separate identity still, and I can live with that.

I do somewhat miss the marriage from an idealistic stand-point; Peter Parker was a true nerd hero, he married the super-model! Of course, I haven't needed that kind of inspiration for a long time, but the 14 year old inside me is screaming.

Star Wars: The Force Undone?

I've been looking forward to Star Wars: The Force Unleashed for quite some time, but with reservations. In certain respects the game appears to be more fanboy circle jerk than an earnest attempt at expanding the Star Wars universe in a manner consistent with what has come before. Witness the character features to the side wielding Lightsaber tonfa. Let that sit in for a second. Lightsaber tonfa. Placing a three foot glowing blade that will cut through pretty much anything severely hampers the versatility for which a tonfa is usually appreciated.

Lately these doubts in the games worth have been contributed to by the unending discussion coming out of the developers about all their efforts to make the physics and AI technologies work together. Most of the promo material we've seen has droned on and on about Havok this, DMM that, and Euphoria the other. I have no real issues with promoting the software technology behind the game. But with such an emphasis being given to the technology I'm starting to wonder if we are getting a game, or a glorified tech demo.

However cautious my enthusiasm for this game is it would be nothing but deception on my part to imply that it isn't enthusiasm which drives my concern. The game does look great, there's no arguing that. And I certainly look forward to playing it. But I haven't played a truly great Star Wars game since Knights of the Old Republic; and the potential is there for Force Unleashed to be the action RPG equivalent to KOTOR. That's what I WANT it to be. But the doubts continue to mount.