So everyone reading this is probably familiar with Marvel Ultimate Alliance, either through first hand experience, word of mouth, or by having played what I refer to as the first two installments in the ‘series’ – X-men Legends 1 and 2. While these games are really nothing more than updates of Gauntlet with a pop comic superhero twist, their madcap button mashing beat ‘em up antics take me back to gaming days of old. Add to it the RPG elements of leveling up and character customization allowing you to take your favorite character along a somewhat different path – want Storm to be a brawler? Put all her stat points into body and striking! – and you’ve got the makings of a comic/gaming geek’s wet dream.
(more…)

We So PAX day one is over with, and day two begins. I can’t even begin to say how totally fucking awesome it is. Probably the worst part was waiting in line for 2 hours before the show started to get in – we were all packed into this huge room (thousands and thousands of geeks), and it got pretty warm, which is never a good thing in a room full of geeks. At least I can’t smell.

We headed to the exhibit/showfloor room, and wow. The booths aren’t quite as extravagant as those at E3 ’04, but they are still pretty impressive. We spent about three hours in there playing & watching various games – there is just too much awesome in there to write about, but here are a few highlights:

• Pasty played PMS Missy in a game of quake (The final score: 12 to negative 4), but he at least got a free shirt out of it.
• Free shaves at the Brothers in Arms booth – let them shave and tattoo your head, and get a free copy of the game. We will definitely make pope do this.
• Seeing gabe and tycho walking around – we were standing next to tycho and his kid for a few minutes at the Hothead Games booth, until someone asked him to sign a few books. It was down hill from there, as he got surrounded by people.

We headed out of the show floor a bit after 5pm to head to a panel about writing for games, and on the way, I noticed that Felicia Day was at The Guild’s booth with Sandeep Parikh. I picked up a copy of the guild, chatted with them for a few seconds about stuff (like WoW), and got a picture. Mission accomplished for the weekend.

After that we went to the writing panel which was OK – it was interesting to hear some of the answers from the writer’s perspective. I’ve not much to say about the panel. After the panel, we grabbed dinner at Bayou on First, a cajun / french restaraunt down by the Pike St Market, and it was damn tasty.

We headed back, and got there about 15 minutes before they were going to screen season one of The Guild. We headed to the theater it was in, to see an INSANE line already in place. We figured it was a lost cause, but my adoration for all things felicia day made me get in line anyways. So the line starts moving, and we finally get close and the line stops, and they are only letting people in one or two at a time as they find open seats. Then they say “Only 19 more people are being let in”, and I figured we were doomed. They start counting off people, and its getting up into the teens, and I breathe a sigh of relief – we were #s 17-18-19. Last three people allowed in! Pope however misunderstood his #, and left to go to the concert. It was pretty amusing to watch the guild again, and then the Q&A was entertaining. Felicia Day managed to embarass herself again, much like she did at the Comic-con panel earlier this summer. We also heard about how to get Ron Jeremy to be in your show, the Retarded Policeman, Gorgeous Tiny Chicken Machine Show, and the Legend of Neil.

We headed off to the concert after that, and got in just in time to see Freezepop. They put on a pretty rocking show, I only knew who they were thanks to Rock Band, but now I guess I could say I am a fan. After that, Jonathan Coulton played, and I wasn’t expecting much – I mean it is just one guy, right. He put on an amazing show, and I am definitely glad we got to check it out. The highlight? A duet of “Still Alive” with FELICIA DAY. Totally fucking awesome. And he rick-rolled us. Twice.

By now it was after 1am (or 4am in real-people time), and we were all exhausted, so we headed back to the hotel to crash. And now we are awake and getting ready for day two. I’ll upload my pictures to flickr laster, but for now enjoy pictures with FELICIA DAY, and a video from pasty’s phone of “Still Alive”. Peace out!

So, for the most part, the flight to Seattle was uneventful.  What provided the most entertainment was the SkyMall catalog.  We found some true gems in there, such as the Big Foot Garden Sculpture, the Rape Ladder, the indoor dog piss mat, and the doggie portal for your fence.  I will add pictures of these at the bottom of the post, as I can’t work them into the article body very well.

So, our flight first took us to Detroit, where we had a three hour layover before continuing on to Seattle, and since it was still pretty early in the morning (9:30) we stopped by one of the cafes to get breakfast.  That is when the first gem of the trip happened – Pope ordered a beer with his breakfast.  Now, I have to make fun of him for drinking beer with breakfast. Consider yourself made fun of.

The flight from Detroit to Seattle was pretty OK, just long.  Sitting in a plane for five hours is not fun.  We got into the hotel, and then went exploring for someplace to eat, since we were closing in on 12 hours since breakfast.  We settled on a place called Von’s Grand City Café, who proudly advertised having something like 24 different draughts.  We soon came to realize that it would likely take someone 24 hours to taste just a few of those beers.  The food was pretty good, but the service was absolutely awful.

Now were back at the hotel, and its just about to hit 9pm fake time, meaning its at or past my bedtime in real time (or eastern standard time, as some may call it).  I wan’t to sleep, but I also don’t want to be up at 5am fake time, when the show doesn’t start until 2pm.  That’s a lot of fake time to kill.  Or real time.  I don’t know.

And now, SkyMall pictures.

So we got up this morning bright ass early to get to the airport to catch our flight. Well, we fucked up, and missed the damn thing, so now we have to wait until tonight to fly out, and get there at like 4 in the freakin morning. Read on for the whole story! (more…)

I’m not even going to put this post truly on the front page.  I’m going to rant about the U.S. and stuff.  If that’s not the sort of thing you want to read, then don’t click through. (more…)

So for those of you who got my recruitment email back in early July about playing WoW, you may or may not remember this line: “I’m not looking to do some ULTRA HARDCORE RAIDING stuff again, just bullshit around in the game when I’m bored.”

I just wanted to throw that out there before Pasty could, since he is likely too busy packing up his apartment to post here.  His daily outrage yesterday was that I had declined an invitation made Friday morning by ol’ Mandrake to hang out that night, since I had already planned on doing a 10 man WoW raid that night with my warrior.

I’ve not the need to defend myself, though I will admit that I probably play too much WoW.  I just had to beat Pasty to the punch.  If I had returned to the old ‘raid five nights a week’ routine, Brucie certainly wouldn’t be level 60 and I would have been raiding yesterday rather than spending 10 hours helping Pasty move his stuff!

For those interested though, I did join up with some folks that are running the two 10 man raids, Karazhan and Zul’Aman.   I’ve done the Karazhan raid three times now, and it’s kinda neat.  It’s far from bleeding edge content, as I’m pretty sure it’s been in the game since the expansion came out, and was the first raid content people would tackle at 70.  As my brother put it, its just like doing a 5 man instance, it just takes a little bit longer (and has EPIC loot).  In any case, it’s new to me, since I’d never seen the place before.

Karazhan was actually what had me most excited about the expansion back when i was in super raider mode.  The idea of having a smaller group of folks to raid with rather than trying to get 40 people together sounded great.  These days the entire place has been figured out and well documented, and the folks I run it with have no problem clearing it, so that takes out part of the fun.  The old school raider in me would have liked to have run the place when it first came out.

I am glad Mandrake is enjoying SC 4, and if he ever invites me over I would probably play it and enjoy it.  However I will not be buying it.  The Yoda and Vader things is FUCKING RETARDED. 

Man.  Now I lurve SC, Jon can attest to that.  I always made a point of playing it on Ye Olde Dreamcast when I came to visit you guys back when you all shared an apartment on whatever street you lived.  SC 2 was really awesome too.  It was cleaned up and pretty, combat was there and most of the new characters didn’t suck.  Link was awesome, I understood why they used Heihachi (free!), and if weren’t for the stink of McFarlane all over it, it would have been pretty much perfect.  Fuck Spawn and fuck Necrid even more.

(more…)

Come one, come all. Be the first on your block to hear the greatest show on Earth! We’ve spent minutes scouring the globe for the most exotic and freakish topics we could find, and we did it all for your listening pleasure! Step right up and witness the following:

• The bizarre coffee creation!
• Robo-Pasty talks taste!
• Random game talk! A little Megaman 9 here, some Rock Band 2 there.
• Jack Ryan Radio!
• Some of us liked Bernie Mac more than others.
• Random celebrity talk! A little Ashton here, some John C. Reilly there.
• Braid comes up yet again.
• Pasty tries to convince us that there are good games on the PS3.
• CHOCOLATE BACON!!
• Activision hates the Ghostbusters!

Let the excitement begin! (pretend a curtain was just raised and applaud)

Download: tiny-godcast-ep06.mp3

PS. The remaining subjects of the test I tried out at the end of the episode provided the correct response after recording was finished.

(more…)

So, its been two months since my original post about investing. In that time, one of my investments is up about 7%, the other is down about 14%. Even though I invested equal amounts in both, thanks to the wonders of MATHEMATICS, I am down 3.5% in the last two months (Really, this didn’t seem right to me, but the math works). In that same time, the DOW is down about 5%, and NASDAQ is down about 2%, so I guess if you split the difference between the two, i’m pretty much in line with how the US market has performed (ignoring that one of my stocks is an emerging markets fund). I supposed that is acceptable.

In the next month, I’ll be making two more buys, and here is what I’m currently thinking about. (more…)