Month: November 2009

My next video game will be…

A few of my friends are suggesting I get MW2 since I am wrapping up my second play through of Borderlands.

Borderlands is a wacky video game that I like even more that Far Cry 2 (the fact that Far Cry 2 crashes ALL THE TIME may have something to do with it). I liked the C0D: MW video game but like all CoD games, it was very episodic and you can’t get very creative with the mission approaches. Also while I have not seen MW2 yet, from what I’ve read the airport scene is a little too intense.

I like to play the good guy in my fantasy FPS so I would probably skip that scene. I’m looking for a more friendly game that I can play around the kids.

Lucky for me L4D2 is out.

These people need to get arrested

Honestly, some people do need to be made into an object lesson.

The couple’s lawyer, Paul W. Gardner of Baltimore, asserts that the Salahis had been “cleared, by the White House,” to be at the event, and so were not really “crashing.” Mr. Gardner declined a request to elaborate on his assertion.

But a Secret Service spokesman, James Mackin, said he had no idea how Mr. Gardner could make such a claim.

via Salahis, White House Dinner Crashers, Met the Obamas – NYTimes.com.

When the Balloon Boy’s dad pulled off his stunt, it was clearly because he wanted to get back onto TV. His need for publicity outweighed his need to not make a spectacle of his family. I do not know what the parents punishment will be, but I guarantee that they’ll claim the state is hurting their children. It’s just what you would expect from two people who have abdicated their own responsibility for raising their children.

Now we have these two try-outs for the Real Housewives of DC (which one is the housewife?) who sneaked into a state dinner under false pretenses. Apparently they took the Bravo film crew up to the gates of the Whitehouse.

Since I have no reason to doubt the now embarrassed Secret Service I can only conclude one thing: they lied and maneuvered their way in. They did not have an invitation, period. Whatever that comes under, trespassing, giving misleading information to a federal official, etc. these two need to spend some time in jail if only to discourage other fame wannabes.

Ice cream anyone?

At work I had offered months ago to walk over to Carvel on 2nd Avenue between 24th and 23rd streets.  This was in return for the help I had gotten from the NOC.  It was turning into an on going joke and today when I was reminded about it I said “It’s not too cold, why not today?” and took orders.

I headed out for the ice cream run and this is what I found.

Photo

Nice! They went out of business. Probably just to spite me. I took the photo because no way the guys were going to believe this. My timing is still perfect.

Borderland 2nd Pass through

I completed the game Borderlands and I’ve started the second pass through the game.  It’s the same as the first time but all of your opponents are juiced up to your level or above. It’s hard for a game publisher to keep the game going. It’s still great fun but I can see this getting too repetitive soon.

Beating the bosses is fun. You meet the boss monster, you die, you run and get leveled up completing other missions. Then you go back and wipe out that boss. I have not gotten to a big boss in the second pass through yet but I expect it to be much the same as the first time.

Get your red hot WordPress 2.8.6

WordPress 2.8.6 is out and it’s a security release so update now.

I’m expecting the usual complaints on the support forum but so far it’s been pretty sedate. I’ve been using WordPress since version 1.5.2 and I’ve never had a bad upgrade. Of course, I have a good idea what I’m doing and have never used the automated upgrade process, so your mileage may vary.

As is usual, using SVN only took me a few minutes to upgrade 6 blogs on 3 different machines.

DPReview’s Canon 7D review

I purchased my Nikon D300s for a simple reason: I was sold on the D300 and I’m a stickler for getting the current model. I’ve been very satisfied with it.

Now Canon has come out with the 7D which lines up directly against the D300s. DPReview has a really good in-depth write-up of the Canon 7D. Look at this page for a comparison of the 7D, D300s, and the Pentax K-7. No surprises there, but what I found interesting is that the K-7 is much cheaper and yet competes with the two big boys.

I’ve invested in Nikon and unless they suddenly go out of business, I’m not getting a new DSLR system.  But for new buyers Pentax might be a workable option.