| Addendum

- I also picked up a new video card. Apparently, AGP have gone the way of the buffalo as well. So I have a shiny new mid-low range GeForce 8600 PCIe card. It performs the job fairly well!

- Left 4 Dead: For those who don't know, I have never subscribed to the online service with my 360; I have just not had the interest at all. Rudy swears by it and has found a nice little niche for himself in the online gaming world, I prefer to stay away. Until last night.

I picked up Left 4 Dead, which is a co-op zombie action shooter game by Valve. In a nutshell, there are 4 characters that need to get from point A to point B and perform C function to win the mission/campaign. The first campaign which Rudy and I played through last night basically had us travel through buildings, subways, sewers, and a hospital before making a last stand on a roof-top before being rescued by a helicopter.

The game is so much fucking fun, I can't start to tell you. The zombies have a few different classes like standard, tank, fat exploding guy, long tongue guy, sneaky ninja attack guy, creepy weeping woman, etc. The best part is the AI changes the way it attacks you each time you play by analyzing your positions on the map, your weaknesses, etc to launch these coordinated attacks that are just amazing. HORDES of zombies attacking a la 28 Days later in tight quarters with a flashlight for illumination from multiple directions = riotous fun!

I would highly, highly suggest you pick up a copy by hook or by crook (or by rental or gamestop if need be), sign up for the 48 hour trial online session that comes with it, pop in your headset and mic, and let Rudy and I know. Then sit back, and get ready for a ridiculous, fast, bloody, creepy good time!

BTW, we killed over 3000 zombies during our campaign/movie last night...

| An Evil Bass?

I only saw the pilot episode of heroes so I didn't know the show was that "out there.". Was he the fish kind of the instrument kind? And either way, what was the nature of his supervillainy?

| Schhh-Peons!

eLzar :: I went through a very similar drill a few months ago with my rig. Although, I also had to replace the Vid Card too due to the fact that it's teeth were too long to fit in the new MoBo. While processor speeds have not increased much, I have got to say the extra core and the wider bandwidth in the system buses did have a reasonable impact. Still, it seems that single threaded processing has not changed so much. Three cheers to throwing more cores at a problem. Too bad most applications are still lagging in making use of these extra processing streams. Adobe products run real nice now though. The upside to all of this is that my rig is very quiet now.

Funny that you mention the Wayback machine... Coincidentally, after years of not visiting the site, this morning I was showing a co-worker the persistence of ones presence on the web via the Wayback machine. Even if you remove yourself from various incriminating sites, your still doomed. One more reason to leave all traces of our last names off this site. Could you imagine? None of us would ever be employed again.

Ry :: Hopefully the new Trek movie will be sah-sess-ful reboot of the series. The new Spock actor does seem a bit unsettling. Maybe that is a vestige to his hero character that was just an evil bass.

D>M>

| Success!!!

I was silently running a little experiment here on the blog to see if it would wither and die without me adding my constant inane chatter to the intarwebz, and to my delight, I am officially off of the front page of the blog! I was seriously thinking about putting this bad boy to pasture and letting theactionteam.org slip into the annals of the Wayback Machine and move on.

With the recent flurry of posts, clearly our good teammates are not ready for that to happen... yet. We even got a post from PETER! Speaking of which, I need to put a picture up of that guy, I don't think he has actually ever posted here before?

News and Notes:

- The podcast has been totally fun! I feel like I need to get back into gaming more than I am now if I am going to be a valuable member of the team, and in particular the cardboard contributor, and that's not a bad thing. We recorded last night and it is feeling like we are dialing it in a little bit better; it was more focused, concise, and meaningful than our previous outings (IMHO, until I actually hear the episode and remember all the stupid crap I said that invalidates my previous statement). I'm glad the AT has been listening, and of course welcome any feedback, show ideas, etc. And really, the more people on the show the merrier. Rudy and I sort of jumped on this to just get it going and we both would welcome anyone to be a permanent member of the 'cast, just let us know and we can start playing with the Skype conference calls!

- My CPU went kaput and rather than try and find another one to fit my current outdated MoBo, I picked up a new MoBo, CPU, and RAM. A lot has changed since the last time I did that, SATA is pretty much the standard over IDE, I have a dual core CPU which essentially means I am running two CPU's at the same time, and RAM is cheap as a mofo. One day I will get a nice monitor, but for now I will be the only IT guy on the planet that uses an 8 year old 17" CRT at home.

- Grats about Borst! Perhaps we will meet in the Outlands if I break my 4 week long hiatus from WoW anytime soon. I mean I logged in for a second during the expansion weekend JUST to prove a point about how ridiculous a 775 person queue is on my server. I suppose I was proving a point to myself? I dunno, but I just wanted to do it, and then I pretty well logged off after 5 minutes or so, and never saw a death knight because I was playing around with my level 3 shaman. Nice story, jerk.

- Ireland seems like the place to go if you never have to work again, and all you want to do is play games in view of awe inspiring vistas all day long and then feel like you a part of a D&D game every night by drinking at the local pub in a 300 year old building.

- I am looking forward to seeing Star Trek on DVD. I would have no chance of getting Leslie to see it on a rare date night, so I will wait. We took Wylie to his first movie last weekend, Madagascar 2, and he had a blast!

- Deux Ex Man Con Eye Eye is a definite maybe for me. While I have every intention on attending, quite a few things could happen that would make me miss it were I to commit early. So pencil me in, spirit AND body.

That fuckin' dude from HEROES though - ugh.. he looks irritating (but surpisingly like Nimoy.) But yeah, it can't be worse than the last 10 or so Trek movies, I'm pumped for it.

| New Star Trek

Have you seen the trailer for the new Star Trek movie? It is directed by JJ Abrams and Wow! I think it looks good.

Here is the trailer.

| Beer n' Movies

Joke of the day

"An infinite number of mathematicians walk into a bar. The first one orders a beer. The second orders half a beer. The third, a quarter of a beer. The bartender says "You're all idiots", and pours two beers."

Seems suspiciously like Sony is being a bunch of jArks: Apparently all Sony Pictures movies titles have switched to Not available on XBox for Netflix streaming, on the launch day of the new XBox 360 service.

Rude: I like the Spock motif. Nicely done.

D>M>

The New Xbox Experience comes out tomorrow although I got into the preview a couple of weeks back - everyone gets it no matter what tomorrow. Pretty cool. There's my Mr Spock avatar.

Left4Dead is seriously the funnest game. Unfortunately it's basically only co-op (or versus) so playing with bots is un-fun and boring. But you can get it through Steam and play on PC for those who don't like Xbox Live. Seriously, so much fun. (1st person zombie shooting game but it's just super thematic and exciting and fun.)

| Going to bed....

jr0n: I think we talked about Man-Con II and I am definitely in. I should have posted it so as not to leave the others in the dark.

EDIT: During a good portion of February I will not be about, so Man Con would best be setup in January for me.

I have been in a bit of a routine lately and not much has been worthy of Blog chatter. Mostly a revised version of Ry's schedule: Pubic Transit, Work, more Pubic transit, eat, maybe a movie or some ass sitting, sleep, rinse and repeat. Other things: got drunk once, stayed up late a couple times, went to the Hollywood Halloween affair since the Castro Halloween event is a dead (Boo!), downloaded some music on the sly, surveyed and plotted an acre of land, played through Portal... Exciting huh?

Rude: That story of trying to pay on an overdue account with a spider drawing is pretty funny. Only slightly less sweet then when Rich attempted to barter with wrench at a Taco Bell drive through. Curb your enthusiasm embarrassing. God they hated him there. All the employees eventually knew him the minute they saw him.

D>M>

PS. Meh? made it into the dictionary. Next step... Fargin.

| ManCon Eye Eye

Salut! Been back from Dublin for a couple of weeks now. Interesting place. I'm not used to this, but I was surprised at how many tourists there were. Walking around I was mostly hearing Russian, German, etc, not as many Irish accents . My sister said it was like that pretty much everywhere in European cities. Did you guys (who have been to Europe) also have this experience? I was also surprised that the city center was fairly small and relatively easy to get around. Big difference from growing up in the mother of sprawls. And so much history. I can guarantee you that many of those streets are older than the United States. Mostly went to museums and a few tours outside Dublin. Went to Newgrange (neolithic burial mound). Nice countryside, great ideas for gaming terrain.

Did go to Northern Ireland to see Giant's Causeway. If that isn't the ultimate in gaming terrain I don't know what is. Look it up! Our bus did a quick tour of Belfast. It too is very compact. Saw a police station that was a modern day castle, it was surrounded with thick, bomb-proof walls. No mistaking what that was. Also saw one of those loyalist murals (guy in a mask with an assault rifle saying you are entering loyalist territory). Our tour guide said it was going to be painted over to reflect the new times.

Not much shopping for me, mostly books from the museum shops. I don't know how big gaming is in Dublin. could not find a game store. Did go to the Games Workshop. They are all pretty much the same everywhere. I did love the food halls in the basement level of the department stores. Lived off kiwi-apple juice (so goood - they use a different pasteurization process, tastes fresh pressed) and roast beef on baguettes for most of the trip. Mmmmm baguette.....

Bought the WoW expansion. Haven't played too much yet. Made a deathknight character. I don't think it suits my play style though (bowazon is in my blood). Also bought Fallout 3. Since my pc is below specs, all the settings are at the lowest. Even then, after running around for too long, I get nauseous. This is how hardcore I am. I'm simulating radiation poisoning. But it's not as bad as I feared it could be. A few nitpicks here and there. But you can't relive old game experiences I guess. This is currently sucking up all my free time, sleep time, eat time, etc.

ManCon Eye Eye sounds like it's doable for me. Count me in as very likely.

Been listening to the podcasts. Good stuff. Makes me feel like I should be gaming more. Sound and editing are very good. I'm used to hearing the crappy podcasts that sound like they used cups and strings. Music portions are nicely done as well. Mad props to DJ HighEnd.

| If that's what it takes...

I'll guest star for sure!

Thanks for the encouragement to check it out, I'm mostly through the first episode and it's fun reading. Like hanging out with you guys except I don't get to respond! I'm up through Rude talking about the World of Darkness. It makes a great accompaniment to WoW!

Oh man, I wasn't trying to be a dick to Jon. It was more a play on the fact I hardly do these meetup things, even when you guys were in town. I'm lazy as fuck when it comes to trips. The going and "there" part I'm cool with but I always hate the long, boring "coming back" parts. But man-con that shit up boys! I'm there in spirit (but I'm really here in boxers.)

Thanks Ryan! Come on it and talk about Scene It or waterpolo or drumming. It's just a cool way to bullshit and there's no real agenda since we're just nobodies.

I have heard yours and Eric's podcast, and I really like it! I listened to two of the broadcasts so far and even though I am not what you call a "gamer" I like listening to people talk about stuff that they are really into. I am not bullshitting you when I say good job boys!

Wake. Teach. Coach. Eat. Sleep. Repeat.

Creature of habit.

I'm totally going to Man-Con Too right after you totally guest star on our podcast, let alone listen to it one time.

I spent like most of the weekend watching Arrested Development. Oh my god, what an awesome show that I never really watched while it was on. I'm midway through season 2 and totally sad that I'm gonna be out of show pretty soon. God, that whole cast is fantastic. The last episode I watched had a seal with a bow-tie with a hunger for cats. Oh man, that music that kicks in when Gob is doing his shows is SO stuck in my head.. fucking best show, fuuuck.

| Quiet around here lately

Let me shake things up with some earthshaking news: Borst has passed through the Dark Portal. That's right, bitches. Level 58!



Nobody ever responded in any yea or nay manner to my proposal of ManCon II in something like January/February. Good? Bad? Formica?