Author: Doyce

I’m having such an interesting day today.

The main-stream alternative radio station (yeah, I get the irony) in town just played Tenacious D’s “Tribute”.
The greater irony: it’s in the playlist from their “new release rack”… how long have they been doing that song?

NOW SHOWING:
Bourne Identity: Entirely enjoyable, through and through. I highly recommend.
Minority Report: Imagine Bladerunner with a (sometimes jarringly upbeat) John Williams soundtrack, and you have a pretty good idea of the feeling you have after the movie.
TO RENT OR BUY ON DVD:
This is what you should do when you have 7 hours to kill:
Get Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Iron Monkey, and Jackie Chan’s Legend of Drunken Master.
Watch them in that order. CTHB will give you mythic China and remind you that a fun movie can also be a really good film. Iron Monkey will give you an “origin story” of one of the most well-known Chinese folk-heroes — pay attention to the “wow, my kung-fu’s pretty good” kid in the movie, because he grows up to be Jackie Chan’s character in Legend Drunken Master.
Lots of good wire-fu action, followed up by Jackie Chan at possibly his very best. You’ll be talking out of sync with your lips for weeks.

I haven’t played a first person shooter (Except for occaisional wrestling matches with Halflife) since Doom2, but the movements are all basically the same.
Also, Doom2 is almost all indoor, REALLY indoors, and the outdoors stuff is so ‘close’ it might as well be inside.
So I found out last night that that’s what I’m still really really good at… indoors. Outside stuff messes me up (which is too bad when 98% of Tribes is outside in MASSIVE zones), but I logged into an indoor “Deathmatch” thing last night and had a 12 – to – 1 kill ratio so fast that they booted me out of the game.
*Pout* I’d just found something I was good at. *Pout*
(Last Tribes post on the main page, I promise.)

A font modeled after Palm Grafitti would be kinda cool.
[stares off into the middle distance for a bit]
Right. Next topic.

So a “friend” loaned me one of his two legal copies of Tribes 2 a few weeks ago. Last night, after faithfully completing all the solo training missions, I finally logged onto the chaotic free-for-all that is the online Tribes 2 experience. Since I was already on the phone with this “friend”, he coached me through finding a decent server.
My impression — a really kick-ass Halflife interface (without some of the really good stuff like kneeling and crawling on your belly), crossed with the Pure Crack Insanity of the Nox Online battles.
To be more specific: there is no plot to these online sessions, people. By and large, there’s no plot anywhere in the game design at all except during the training missions (just slick graphics and good effects) — after that, it’s “Kill em all”.
Unless you’re into (and capable of pretty fast) multiplayer, there’s absolutely no reason to own this game.
I was still muttering such thoughts under my breath at 2:15 am while I drew a bead on {DM}HntrKllr from about 1000 meters out — rat bastard was going down — it’s what he gets for sitting still with a sniper nearby…
Then Jackie came and slapped me to my senses.
I don’t know when my “good buddy” logged off — but I’ll bet he was chuckling to himself when he did.

Got a call on the machine yesterday during my convalescence that almost made it worthwhile: it was a recording from the cable company.
Don’t get me wrong: I love my house, but the neighborhood we live in is about 15 years old, and is one of the only places in the greater Denver area that hasn’t had it’s cable system “rebuilt”. “Rebuilt” means that the company has SOME basic control over the channels that you can see — ours isn’t rebuilt, so regardless of whether you pay for the Basic, Extended, or Gawdawlmighty packages… you’ll get Basic. Period.
The only way around this is to get Digital Cable.
My guess is that there hasn’t been any hue and cry over this in the neighborhood because in addition to being older, the area is also sort of snooty/wealthy (suffice it to say we are an anomaly at best), so everyone just pays for the damn Digital Cable. (So did I, in fact, until I lost my old job and couldn’t justify 45 bucks a month just to watch Farscape.)
And yeah, it pretty much boils down to how much I’m willing to pay for Farscape. Of all the channels you can and can’t have on Basic, the ONLY ONE on the “can’t” list that I care about is Sci-Fi channel.
Which brings us back to the recorded call I got — the cable company, apologizing for the Cable being intermittently out for the next week from 9am to 6pm.
Because they’re finally rebuilding the area.
Which means I can get my damn Sci-Fi fix for a pittance of the previous amount. Hoody-frickin’-hoo.

This one won’t mean much to everyone, but to those few of you…
Tonight was the the premiere.
Huge success.