Well, I'm still a Rogue Angel in Tribes.  So far the fun factor has sort-of worn off a bit, but it's still fun.  Like I said before, swooping in on an unsuspecting enemy is quite the thrill.  One thing I'm running into is having my kills taken from me at the last second.  And I mean last second.  I'll be in striking distance when my guy completely explodes or collapses due to another teammate killing him.  But, I suppose I deserve this because I do the same exact thing.  I'll often see two guys going at it, and when the enemy's health gets low, I swoop on in for the kill.  It's certainly a dick thing to do, but hey, it's Tribes.

Anyways, 'The Big Three" is a reference to three websites that might be launching around the same time.  Though, it's more like "The Big 2 and a Half", because one of them is a website I'm not very active at(though I do visit it everyday).  First we have, as always, Xbox-Alternative v.2, though I guess I should start calling it TheXaxis.  I'm actually getting tired of writing about its launch, which I thought would be sometime earlier this month.  God knows when it'll be now.  Each update seems to say the launch could happen anytime now, but weeks go by before we hear about it.  I've given up asking for any updates, and my excitement for the whole site has dropped dramatically since I first heard about it all back in September.  Even though it's the wrong time to worry about such things, I'm not entirely sure how he'll mange to pull it off, finacially-wise. 

Then we have Damn Straight, which moved about a foot closer to...well...I'm not sure, today.  The site is up, and there's content, but I don't think it's what James has in mind for a final product.  All of his reviews, previews, editorials, ect. have finally been transfered over to the site.  It took a week, which is pretty long for just transfering articles.  But it's done.  We briefly talked today about the site, and he asked what I thought about making the site like Penny Arcade.  Now, believe it or not I've never been to Penny Arcade.  I've seen maybe 5 of their comics and that's it.  He mainly wants to have 3 or 4 posts on the main page, with links to everything else either on the top or sides(or both).  WHEN this will happen is up in the air.  Like XA, I've given up asking when things will get done. 

And finally and certainly least we have Zanative.  Zanative is a forum full of (ex?)DigitalPh33r fanboys.  You see, DP had a forum back in July of 2008 that was the main place to talk about his work, while at the same time obsess over DigitalPh33r himself.  Height, weight, moles, dimples, shoe size, sibblings, sexual orientation.  These were all very common-and creepy-thread topics on the forums.  Needless to say the forums were shut down, and the community made their own at Zanative.  It's a temporary place until the new site launces in Feburary(or so we've been told).  I'm not uber excited like everyone else is, but it's still nice to see them all sticking together.  It's actually quite humorous how almost everyone hates Jon(aka DigitalPh33r) now. 

And that's about it.  Time for some Trix.

I'm finding that listening to dance/techno/trance music really helps when playing games online, mainly first-person shooters.  In this case I'm speaking of Tribes while listening to Trance(via a link I found on Twitter).  I noticed a definite change in gameplay and performance from myself, specifically I'm more alert and active.  Of course, it also helps when you find a new way of playing the game altogether(different armor and weapons). 

Super Smash Bros. Brawl isn't a fun game.  To me, at least.  I remember the first Super Smash Bros. game on the Nintendo 64 and enjoyed it quite a bit.  Simple, fun, addictive.  Everything a game should be.  I never got the chance to play Melee, which wasn't all that disheartening.  I mean, SSB was a good game, but it wasn't one of those games I really looked forward to seeing sequels to.  The game is good on it's own merit. 

Then the Wii came out, SSBB was announced and everyone went ape-shit.  This was it!  THE game for Nintendo's online service.  Again, I wasn't excited to play the game like everyone else was.  Just how much further can you go with a game like this without drastically changing the gameplay?  So then comes tonight when I get the chance to play it.  After 5-10 rounds with 2 other friends, I wasn't have any fun.  "What the hell is going on?" was what I was thinking most of the time.  The main thing that bothered me were the levels.  They constantly moved or rearranged themselves, which I didn't like at all. 

I also had a hard time concentrating on controlling my player.  The controls alone were confusing enough, having the camera zoom in and out at random times is a whole other thing.  Just too many things going on at once for me to enjoy it.  Perhaps if I had a day to mess around with the characters I would've had a better time.  But tonight was just lame.   Oh, and whoever designed the Gamecube controller is an asshole.

Well, Damn Straight has apparently launched.  I didn't even see it till a few hours after, which should really say something about my involvement(not exactly sure what, though).  As of now it consists of 119 articles authored by James Pikover.  Spambots have already discovered the site, which sorta sucks but their comments have been taken care of for the time being.  Like I said earlier, and many times before, I'm still not sure what my role is on the site.  Not having a current-gen gaming console really makes me wonder why I was even brought over to the project.  Like always, time will tell(I'm getting sick of saying this).

Also, Xbox Alternative v2, or "TheXaxis" should be launching sometime...this year.  Perhaps even this month, but that'd surely be pushing things.  I've been looking forward to the next incarnation of XA since, well, around this time last year.  This isn't to say it'll be a revival.  I have pretty serious doubts of getting more members, and even if we do it won't be the same as what it used to be.  If we targeted our member recruitment towards Xbox.com veterans, then yeah, that'd be pretty awesome.  Fantastic, even.  But even if we did plan on doing this it'd be near impossible to pull it off.  For starters, 98% of the veterans we'd like to recruit no longer visit Xbox.com.  And even if they do they might be under a totally different username.  Thinking about it, I'd say the best thing to do would be to look at our Xbox Live friends list.  Obviously I can't do this, but our top posters could(all 3 of 'em).  Those who stay in contact with the long time members more than likely have them on their friends list. 

Update:  Well God dammit.  They haven't even finished the design.  So much work needs to be done.  I thought...God dammit.  I need chocolate now.

Well, more like survey I guess.  3 days ago on Reddit someone started a thread asking if a demo ever persuaded someone to actually buy the full game or not.  Fairly simple and straight forward question, though it applies to every gamer.  It has 243 replies so far, which is pretty damn good on Reddit.  I then decided to ask it at the gamespress forums, which mainly consists of of game journalists.  Right now it only has 11 replies, but the GP forums aren't really that active so 11 is pretty good in my eyes.  Then, for reasons unknown, I decided to continue asking the question throughout various game sites.

As of now I've asked this question at 11 different sites, all of which have gotten a good number of responses so far.  At Teamxbox.com it currently has 96 responses, and Xbox.com has 83.  GameSpot has 37, N4G has 30,  IMDb has 19, Zantive has 16, PS3Center has 6, GamerNode has 4, Xbox-Alternative has 3, and WiiChat has ?(page won't load).

What I'm going to do with these I have no idea.  Feel free to ask it at any other game sites you can think of.  I would've at IGN but I needed to be an Insider($), and I'm apparently not at a high enough level at 1UP to start a thread. 

And so the countdown continues to my 21st birthday.  Still have no clue as to whether or not we'll go down to the auto show.  I mean, on the one hand I'd love to go.  It's a once-a-year thing and my dad and I both love cars.  On the other hand, nothing exciting is going on as far as I know.  The public show begins today(17th) and ends on the 25th, so we've still got time to decide.  It's really up to my dad at this point, cause he's the driver.  It's a 2 1/2-3 hour drive from here to Detroit, depending on which site gives us directions.  MapQuest used to be our main source, but they've messed up too many times for us so we switched to Google Directions.

Anyways, if you're interested in seeing a few pictures I took of last year's event, here ya go.

I would've had a blog up here sooner but Live Spaces decided to be gay and glitch up on me.  Anyways, in 7 days I'll officially be 21.  Not sure how I feel about it all, mostly unmoved.  I mean, I'll legally be able to do what everyone else did at 15.  I've never drank, smoked or have taken an illegal substance.  People find this hard to believe for some reason and I'm not sure why.  My friends never offer me anything, which is good.  They understand I'm not into those sorts of things.  I highly, highly highly doubt I'll drink on my birthday.  Even though it's pretty much an insult not to, I just don't have the urge.  I've never had the urge.

I've been around stuff plenty of times, mainly alcohol and marijuana.  Sure I've been curious, but I've never actually wanted to take part in it all.  My day will be like any other, probably.  Present-wise I'm not so sure.  I might go down to the Detroit Auto Show, something my dad and I have been doing for about 4-5 years now.  Overall I'd say that first time was the best, because they unveiled the new Mustang model.  Both my dad and I love how it looks, namely the front.  Though it seems as each year passes we spend less and less time at the show.  We look at the cars we planned on looking at, explore a little, and that's it.  The whole ordeal is quite exhausting really, but totally worth the $12 admission.

I've also thought about asking for this book, though the reviews aren't totally fantastic.  From the sounds of it, the book really doesn't dive into details much.  Other than that I have no other ideas in mind.  I really don't ask for birthday presents anymore.  I mean, there are certainly things I'd love to have, but they're just a tad out of our budget.  Well, whatever.

Today turned out to be both spectacular and horrendous.  Yesterday I received 256MB of RAM.  I've read the tutorials and watched the videos.  This seemed like a very simple thing to do.  I popped off my computer casing a day or so prior to see how everything looked.  While it certainly wasn't easy to get to, removing and placing in a RAM stick should've been possible.  I suppose I should back up and admit I've never installed RAM, or anything physically into a computer before.  I know very little of the inner workings of a computer, so I was a bit nervous, even with something as simple as RAM.

Anyways, yesterday came and the RAM arrived.  To the computer I went, with all the tools necessary for such a project(my hands).  A few seconds into it and I knew this wasn't going to be fun.  Whoever decided to put the RAM under the floppy drive, making it almost impossible to reach, rot in Hell motherfucker.  My hand is full of tiny scrapes from trying to maneuver the RAM stick in place.  The bottom half was fine.  It was the part under the floppy that was the pain.  Unlocking the old one was one of the biggest pains of the project.  I won't tell you how long it took to replace the RAM, lets just say it was "long". 

Now, we actually have to step back a few...hours before going on with this story.  Since the floppy was my main obstacle I though about simply removing it for easier access.  So I unplugged the first cord, then the other, and pulled.  Nothing happened.  The side of the floppy was rubbing against the power box.  It really didn't matter how hard I pulled, it was just creating more force against the power box.  I said screw it and eventually got the RAM in through various hand movements.  I put the casing back on(floppy still not re-attached), plugged in the power cord and keyboard and started her up.  I got a black screen that told me it did indeed read the new RAM, which was a relief.  I was worried about static discharge.  However, it told me there was no Primary Master Drive.  It read the DVD drive, but nothing else.  It suggested I either press F1 to continue or F2 for setup.  F1 did nothing, neither did F2.  I pressed the Numlock and Caps Lock keys to be sure the keyboard was indeed working, and it was.

I thought, perhaps, plugging back in the floppy would do it.  It was the only thing left to put back together, so what the heck.  Back to the work station I went and attempted to re-attach the floppy.  Since it was such a tight squeeze I couldn't plug in the pin-out cable.  The larger one went it in just fine.  Hours and hours of using needle-nose pliers only resulted in a cramped hand.  If only I could take the floppy out, it'd make things 100x easier.  But I really didn't want to mess with the power box, plus I really wasn't sure how it was secured in.  So now what?  I have no precise idea why it's not working, and I could only think of 2 people to contact for help.  Unfortunately they live about 40 or so minutes away, and I really didn't want them to come all the way over here for something that might be a simple fix.  Another big obstacle I ran into was light.  I wasn't able to see what I was doing without a flashlight, but unfortunately all the ones in our house were dead.  So, I went to my last resort.

On the other hand, this is our only computer.  Once my parents found out it wasn't working, they called one of the 2 who was fortunately in town at the time.  He came over and I showed him the screen.  He was puzzled at first, which oddly enough I found reassuring.  He then looked in the back and saw that the keyboard was actually plugged into the mouse port.  He corrected it, pressed F1, and it worked.  I felt like the biggest dumbass on Earth at that point.  I was assuming it had something to do with one of the drives, not a plug error.  He also got the floppy back in, which did indeed result in having to remove the power box.  Stupid design is stupid.

So I now have a noticeably faster computer thanks to a mere additional 256MB of RAM.  What have I learned?  Never even think about messing with the insides of a computer again.  Ever.  I won't even think about it.  This entire ordeal was a huge pain, and seeing as the solution was a mere cable correction only added salt to the wound.  I will now crawl into the fetal position and cry.                                                                         

I know, 2 blogs within such a short time-period is taboo(for me at least).  I mean, 1 blog per day is great, but not when you write one at midnight and another at 1am.  It just doesn't feel right.  But these two shows mean quite a bit to me, the former just a tad more than the latter.

Alright, Nip/Tuck.  What's to say?  The show is epic, in an overly-dramatic sort of way.  It debuted as the highest rated new series on basic cable way back in 2003...holy Christ!  2003?!  It really doesn't feel that long ago, but alas, it is.  Seasons 1 and 2 were...amazing.  Spectacular.  The show had a style that really seemed to work for itself.  It mainly centered around the patients while still occasionally going into the plastic surgeons personal struggles.  As the show progressed it moved away from the patients and really seemed to focus on the surgeons themselves.  While this wasn't necessarily bad at first, Season 4 brought quite a bit of disappointment to the table.  But lets step back a little.  Season 2 was pretty amazing because of the whole Carver storyline.

Well, I'm thinking about going back to a blogger account(blogspot.com).  These Live Spaces don't offer shit for widgets and add-ons.  I mean, I like the layout options, but compared to Blogger these Spaces are a joke.  It's crazy to think I've written 46 here.  For a service that isn't that great you'd think I'd have less.  Or I might just choose a completely different service altogether, but Blogger is pretty well-known and supported, so finding widgets and such is a breeze.  I've dabbled with other services, but found them all to be quite boring and really didn't help me, audience-wise atleast.

That's the big thing for me-having an audience.  If DamnStraight ever gets "big" I might have a few readers at most, but I'm not expecting much.  It'd be nice if I could transfer all my previously written blogs over to Blogger without having to post each one individually, but after doing a quick Google search this seems to be impossible.  In total I've written a little under 400 blogs since I started back in 2005.  I have 362 saved, but more have been written that I wasn't able to save in time due to...technical difficulties. 

If only I could find the XML file for this Space...

Well, I just got back from a party about 30 minutes ago.  Overall it was pretty good, with 99% of the people drinking(that 1% would be me).  I knew I'd be there for a few hours, and the only thing there to drink had alcohol in it, so I stopped by the local party store and picked up a Dr. Pepper.  What could be better?  Once there it was pretty calm, with only about 10 or so people around.  I watched a friend play LotR Online and another setup beer pong.  I then headed to the main room and watched X-Play, Spaceballs and Survivor Man for a little while before the "host" put in SSF2T HD.

This was when people really started showing up.  In total I really can't say how many people were there.  A lot more than 10.  I finally got a chance to play Rock Band, which was quite fun but not a whole lot different than Guitar Hero, which I've played a few times.  Mind you, all I played was bass guitar.  I sorta wish a few more of my friends had showed up, but I saw them a few nights before so it wasn't a big deal.  All in all in was quite uneventful but still entertaining.