2005-07-28

Tegan and Sara

Am I insane, or is Walking With A Ghost about the catchiest song ever. Tegan And Sara's website.

This video clears up that Tegan is in fact the evil twin. We should have known that from the lower lip piercing that Tegan has had for a while. I guess that's the female equivelant of the "evil twin goatee".

2005-07-21

The new record is 3!

That's the number of consecutive times someone has called and hung up before I could answer.

You see, my phone doesn't play a "ring" to those who call me, it play's Eric Clapton's "Layla". My family and friends are used to this by now, but strangers are always caught off guard. I've found that most people just hang up and call back. Sometimes they will even hang up after that second call.

It just surprises me to no end that some of them won't stay on the phone the 4 seconds it sometimes takes for me to answer the call. Let's run through the mental dialogue that must go on: "Layla?!? This is not the normal ring that I hear when I call others! Surely there is witchcraft at work here. I must hang up NOW before I am cast into the infernal abyss!!!!" I can assure you all that there is no telecom hellfire portal to worry about. And if there was, Nortel would surely charge too much for it to become a functional part of any major providers client damnation budget.

Every now and then I'll get a new caller who hangs on the line long enough for me to answer. I've noticed that these people are a bit more kick-back than the uptights that hang up right away. I know right away that these people are cool.

Webcomics

I threw up a new page about the 3 webcomics that I regularly read. No idea if my reader-base (Kirsten and Sam) is interested at all, but there ya go!

2005-07-20

Lisa Hannigan has the most beautiful voice in the world.

Don't beleive me? Then I'm gonna punch you in your left ear.

2005-07-17

Arrrrgghhh! I'm a pirate!

I'm a pirate. I really am. And I don't mean a software/movie/music pirate, everybody does that. I mean I'm an actual pirate, with boats and the proper lingo, and sometimes even the lack of bathing! Here's how this came to be.

Tom, Tommy, Tommy's friend, Ryan and I went wakeboarding today on Utah Lake, and there were a good number of other boaters there chopping up the water. I told Tom that we should bring my rifle and shoot at them to get them to leave. If we did that, then we'd be real pirates. But none of us really liked the idea of going to jail, so that idea was nixed. Then Tom said we could chop up the water like they are doing to us, and we could do it very well. And although nobody dies when we do this, it's still very annoying, and very pirate-esque.

And boy did we chop up that lake. Tommy and his friend went tubing, and I turned that lake into the definition of chop! Arrrggghhh!

2005-07-11

Battlefield 2 - another really enjoyable game

I really enjoy playing Battlefield 2. They had the ingenious idea of integrating rewards, unlocks, and goals to strive for in a multiplayer first person shooter (FPS). Now, this isn't unique to video games by any means, Ghost Recon did this years ago with "hero" unlocks, and other games have similar features.

Why I give them credit for this, is because they are the first to do so on such a large scale (MMO). And I don't mean MMO in the sense that 64 people can play on the same server, I mean large scale in the sense that tens of thousands of people have their stats recorded and ranked (here's my stats).

Right now my global score is just under 3,000. I need 11,000 for my next rank advance and weapon unlock. The benefit of the weapon unlock is obvious. But the benefit of the advancement in rank really only matters to leaders. People with higher rank will be able to take the position of commander from those whose rank is lower. I don't play commander a whole lot, I prefer forming my own squad and playing as squad leader. But as squad leader you will sometimes notice that the commander isn't doing a good job. If that's the case, I'll apply for commander at the start of the next round.

Today I got my Basic Command badge. That's not an easy one to get. I'm rather proud of this, and grateful to the group of soldiers that I was playing with today. Without their skilled work (play?), I wouldn't have gotten this.

Saturday night (really it was Sunday morning, but I hadn't gone to bed yet, so it was Saturday to me) I got my Explosive Ordinance badge, and my Basic Transport badge! I'm so happy. The Explosive Ordinance badge is acquired by getting 15 kills with explosives in one round. I had tried to get this for weeks, but was only able to get it by using a rather devious method. While playing Strike at Karkand, I spawned at the USMC southernmost base. There is almost always a HMMWV or two there. Playing as spec-ops I loaded all 5 C4 packs on the front of the jeep, and drove towards the enemy. When I would get close to a group of 2 or more enemy soldiers, I would hop out of the jeep, and hit the C4 detonator. This would send jeep chunks all over the place, killing the bad guys, and myself as well. As I was doing all this, I also earned my Basic Transport badge (24 minutes in a transport vehicle)!

Now I need only the Knife, Pistol, Helicopter, and Aviator badges to complete my full set of Basic level badges. This is exactly what makes this game so good. It's very replayable because there is always something to strive for. After the Basic badges, you can try for the Veteran badges, and then the Expert badges. There are also many commendations that you can earn. Most of them have never been earned by anyone, so nobody outside of EA really knows how to get them all.