Week in Review - Less than Stellar Edition

What a week it's been! The week started off alright, with work going relatively smoothly on Monday, but quickly made a downward turn when it was discovered that we had no hot water at our house. Before our kids, this would be an inconvenience, as two professional adults could make do, and deal with the hassle until we could find proper help. With two kids, and the mountains of clothes they go through, the bottles and dishes that need to be washed, the baths that need to be taken, and so forth, this is a big problem. I went down to investigate the issue. If you were to know anything about me, it's that I'm not very handy around the house, so me looking at the water heater is like a first-grader looking at a rocket. Sure, it looks shiny and cool, but I couldn't tell you the first thing about how it works or where to start troubleshooting the problem. I eventually made my way to the bottom of the unit (the heat in this case is provided by natural gas as opposed to electricity), and found that the pilot was out. Using the directions conveniently placed on the side of the tank, I was able to get the heater working again. My mind registered the dried up trail of what clearly was water leading away from the bottom of the unit, brushing it aside as an old leak...

About an hour later, I went back down into the basement to check to see how the heater was doing, and lo and behold, the bottom of the unit was surrounded with water. Clearly, this is why the pilot went out. That will teach me to ignore the warning signs in the future. To make a long story short, I stayed home from work the next day, and $925 later my problem was solved. The new heater works well, too well in fact. The old unit was becoming less and less able to heat the water, so we've been living with cooler and cooler water. This new unit, even at the factory preset of what should be around 115 degrees, provides water hot enough to cook meat on the bone. I've since turned it down twice just to make it tolerable.

To add to the fun of that day, I then had to attend a planning board hearing in one of the towns I'm working with, to present information in defense of a special permit application. The residents in the area got the wrong impression of what the hearing was being held to accomplish, and 30 or 40 people came in very angry and misinformed. That's a really bad combination. What should have taken less than 20 minutes and been an open and shut issue turned into an hour of unpleasant questions and people ignorant of the issue at hand spouting off about unrelated topics and generally making trouble. That's New England town government for you...

On the upside, I did have the opportunity at some point during the week (it was Wednesday evening, if I remember correctly) to catch an episode of UFC Unleashed, chronicling the fight between Wanderlei Silva and Chuck Liddell. Being a relative novice to the UFC scene, this was definitely one of the better fights I'd seen, from the level of intensity of both participants and the skill displayed by both men. It was also my first experience seeing Liddell fight, after having read about him in magazines and such. I have to admit, the more I watch MMA, the more I enjoy the whole experience, and it's clear that this has supplanted the WWE for people's entertainment dollar. I could be wrong on this, but the buzz around MMA seems to be far greater than around professional wrestling these days. That's another topic, though, to be discussed another day.

The Red Sox pulled off a huge comeback last night to force Game 6 in Tampa on Saturday. I'll admit that I was long asleep when the rally came, and I had fully expected to wake up today to the eulogy of the 2008 season, but live to fight another day. This could end up being just like last year, where the Sox were down to the Indians 3-1, then came back to take the ALCS and then sweep the World Series, but even to force a Game 7 is a tall order. James Shields has been a nightmare for Sox hitters, and who knows which Josh Beckett will show up on Saturday. If any team can do it, though, it's this one, so hope is never lost.

Also during this week, I've made progress in Half Life 2. I currently stand near the beginning of the antlion area in the 'Sandtraps' stage, where I've helped the Resistance forces fight off the attack at the lighthouse and traveled down the cliff path to the beach. The poor schmuck acting as lookout has been killed by the antlions, and I've jumped on a few rocks to get to the beach. It was there I saved and shut down for the night. I'm rapidly approaching where I stopped playing the last time, just after entering Nova Prospekt. If I'm not mistaken, that area of the game is after working through the antlion area. I'm still just as bad at shooters as I always was, but the story and experience are worth working through this game.

It has been written many times about the characters in Half Life 2, and how well they are brought to life and voiced in such a way as to make the player care about them. One example that really stuck out for me during this playthrough was the character of Father Gregori, the hermit who helps you through the Ravenholm area. The voice acting was great, and I really started to care for the guy, so much so in fact that I didn't want to leave him when he held the gate open to the mine for me. As the gate closed behind me, he yelled something about his congregation and laughed. Turning back at the entrance to the mine area, the steams of headcrab zombies could be seen making their way toward him, so many that it was clear he wasn't going to make it. Even though it was just a game, and a scripted event within that game, I turned quickly and entered the mine area, because I didn't want to see what happened. For a brief moment, I had the sinking feeling in my stomach that I couldn't do anything to save him. That moment made me realize just how well-crafted the story and characters are in this game, and gave me a newfound appreciation for the fine art of storytelling in this medium.

So, what are you going to be playing this weekend? I intend to make my way through Half Life 2, and also to finish up Portal, which I started earlier in the week. After that, I'm thinking about a change of pace to something a more lighthearted and fun. This is probably a good opportunity to check out some of the free games on the Internet, as some of them show real promise. I also am looking to 'cleanse the palette,' if you will, with the release of Fallout 3 only a little over a week away. Any suggestions?

Computer Upgrade (and Sickness)

It's been a bit since I last posted, for a couple of reasons. One, I've been fighting a cold that's made me feel like my brain is trying to function in fog, which isn't very conducive to writing a blog post. Second, I've had family here since Monday (they just left today), and one of them was staying in the basement where I keep the computer. He (my grandfather, to be precise) goes to bed early, and I write most of my blogs at night after the kids go to bed, so hopefully you can see my conundrum. Anyhow...

I'm back now, and while I'm still not 100%, I don't feel like I'm viewing the world through bong water, so I felt it safe to post this evening. While I was home sick, my new power supply and video card arrived UPS from Newegg, to my excitement and trepidation. You see, I've had a bad experience while installing computer components myself (burned out an AMD processor because the thermal paste didn't correct contact the chip during install) and the thought of blowing out my main computer while replacing the power supply was a real fear of mine. Fortunately for me, computer component manufacturers have made their products as idiot-proof as they can, and the 'heart transplant' went off without a hitch. The new video card now allows me to play most PC games out on the market, which is a huge improvement over what I had, which didn't allow me to play 5 and 6-year old games, in some cases (due to the fact that my onboard video option didn't have lighting and shading hardware).

To try out my new setup, I launched Hinterland, a game I'd picked up from Steam earlier in the week. It sounded like an interesting premise and it would run on my current machine (pre-upgrade). I'll save my impressions of the game for another post, but in a nutshell the lagging and slowdown I was experiencing earlier in the week vanished when crunched by the 8800 GT. Now I'm trying to decide what game to get next, one that will push the new video card a bit more. I'm considering Bioshock, a big favorite of my on the XBox 360. I'll keep you updated with my choice once I make it...

One other item of note: I was up late on Saturday night, because I'd slept a good chunk of the day and my normal sleep schedule was thrown off. Flipping through the channels, I saw that Kimbo Slice was due to fight that night, and having heard of him and the hype surrounding him, I figured this would be a good chance to see what all the fuss was about. Around 11pm or so the fight got underway (against a relative unknown, because Slice's scheduled opponent, Ken Shamrock, had to withdraw due to a medical reason), and 14 seconds later it was over. The unknown, Seth Petruzelli, beat Slice so badly and quickly the ref called the fight. Wow, I'm sure glad I stayed up to see that.