Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving

Going to be a good week. I've got my family coming up with my youngest brother and his family in tow. The guy just retired from the military. Spent a year in Iraq. I did fly out to Colorado Springs last year to visit him but I think this is the first time the whole family will be together in many many years. I can't even remember the last time.

So I've got a half day today, working full day tomorrow. Off Thursday and Friday although I do have to come in Friday morning for about an hour to take care of some time sensitive data my company needs.

Thursday, Mrs. Lock, Baby Lock and I are traveling 90 minutes south to spend Thanksgiving #1 with Mrs. Lock's Mom and her family. After we stuff ourselves there, we're going to drive two hours east to spend Thanksgiving #2 with Mrs. Lock's Dad and his family.

After that visit, we'll spontaneously combust although I'm not sure how spontaneous it really is when we knew we were getting two Thanksgiving dinners in one day.

But wait! There's more.

Friday we'll celebrate Thanksgiving #3 with my own family at the Lock Stronghold. Our metabolism will get quite the work out with three turkey dinners in 24 hours, we'll waste away to nothing, skin and bones when it's all over.

I'm thankful for many things this year.

#1 is Baby Lock. What a joy she has brought to my life, even when she's screaming.

#2 is seeing my family for the holidays, all of us together.

#3 is having a very cool and fun in laws that make our long drive well worth it.

Happy Holidays.

Single Player Heaven

Single Player Heaven

2005 was a big video game year for me. I think I own more video game titles this year than I ever have in previous years. And before you go blasting me that of course I have more video games this year because I'm just adding to my eternal collection whenever I buy a new one, I should tell you that I have given away and sold most of my older titles. I don't keep video games around for long unless I really really like them. When Gamecube came out, I gave my N64 to my brother, all games included.

So anyway, big video game year. I'm partial to single player games and I did several of them this year. It was probably the best year for video games too. Just some very good titles the video game industry is cranking out. Great talent.

Halo 2, my first single player game to kick of 2005. Actually I picked it up in December, but it gets included with the gambit of single player games that took up most of my 2005 free time, even the newborn arriving in February took a distant second.

Halo 2, highly anticipated, I think it was Xbox's #1 seller and still is to date I believe. Has a tremendous multiplayer side to it which I dabbled in. Single player pretty fun, nothing extraordinary over the single player game in Halo, but new vehicles and weapons to play around with. Not sure how long it took me to solve it. Maybe 15 hours? 18? It was shorter than the others. Fun, but if I had to pick a shooter to play over and over, it's a title I'll mention later. Took me several tries to beat the boss. Like a dozen? I went back and played it on normal and beat the boss on first try. HUGE gameplay difference between normal and the skill level one higher that I played on. 8/10.

Next, the controversial title that's been in the news lately and has certain people seething and if you're not in that group, then you're in the group that is seething over the people that are seething over the game. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

Wow, what a great game. Huge. This series has really set the standard for fun loving sandbox games. I had a lot of fun with this game building my thug empire, running over hookers, blowing away old geezers with a sawed-off and doing my civic duty by controlling the gang population with genocide. And all of that was before I started the missions.

I played this game almost daily over a couple of months. I'm not sure the number of hours of gameplay, it seemed endless and since I was having so much fun, this is a good thing. Load screens are a bit much, about the only thing I can dock this game for and given the size of the cities, it's very understandable. Beat the boss (final mission) on the first try. 9/10.

Next, Jade Empire. This actually was my first purchase for 2005, I started playing it but San Andreas came out. Took a break from Jade Empire to play GTA for a couple of months. After I was done with GTA, I came back to Jade Empire to finish it.

I enjoyed this game although the load times were very frustrating and very long. Not so much a Jade Empire as it is a Load Empire. Waiting, waiting, waiting. Once you got into a map though, it was endless role playing fun, until you had to go to the next area.

Save file said it took me about 25 hours to get through the game. I'm going through it again as a Closed Fist (evil) follower to see how it ends for the bad guy. Also, there's a skill you get late in the game that I kept undeveloped during my first run, that I found out on the very last mission is very powerful. I'm going to be pumping it up as soon as I get it on my second run through. Very neat game. Get rid of the long load times and it'd be awesome. 8/10.

Next up, and on the seventh day, God created Resident Evil 4. I never really played the previous titles, so I wasn't sure what to expect. I had more experience with the movies than I did the games, but let me say, this easily became my favorite game this year, possible of all time. There was a small learning curve, the third person shooter if I can call it that, it made aiming a bit awkward but I got used to it after getting hacked by the first few creepy villagers. And there were a few gotcha moments in the game that made me jump out of my seat or scream like the baby that I was. Combine that with the eerie music, dank environment and best graphics for any video game ever to make me feel spooked from start to finish. No game since Doom has affected me this much. I did beat the boss on the first try after exhausting every resource, every health, every bullet I had in my inventory. It was a slobberknocker to the finish.

RE4 took me about 21 hours to complete. After finishing it, a super weapon is unlocked but not accessible right away. You have to buy it and the price tag is very hefty. After finishing this game, I immediately started over and went after the new super weapon. I finished this game for the second time in about 10 hours. Would've been quicker, but you have to save up for this super weapon and I didn't get it until after the half way point through the game. 10/10, not a darn thing wrong with this title. I love this game and I think I'm going to marry it.

After trying Doom 3 on the PC, I picked it up for Xbox. Very good looking game, scary at times, good mood. Good amount of game play. You do a few restarts because some areas are tough to get through. My favorite thing to do was take a chainsaw to one of the "dogs" and slice and dice it up.

So it looked good, simple, scary, a good shoot 'em up gore fest. What more do you want from a Doom title? I beat the boss on first try. Went back and redid the ending just so I could explore the lair since I didn't waste any time the first time through. 8/10.

Lego Star Wars. This is a couple's game. The wife and I like to get these co-op battle games to play together. In that past we've enjoyed the Baldur's Gate series and DND's Heroes. This was to further the tradition. This game took about 35 minutes to finish. Ok maybe not that quick, but it's a pretty darn short game. That's not a complaint though, we enjoy the game (still playing it to unlock other things/characters). It's cute, fun, novel. You can slash Lego Jar Jar with a light saber over and over (he keeps coming back!) if you're into that sort of thing. 7/10.

Another title I'd like to mention, that doesn't really qualify for my 2005 list here because I got into late 2004 and haven't even played it in 2005, is a game Morrowind. After feeling a bit disappointed by the short story line in Fable, I wanted more questing, more role playing, more stat adding, power leveling, more magic using, more everything. Morrowind filled this void for me. It was the super size to Fable's small fry. Morrowind and Jade Empire were purchased to satisfy my RPG hunger that Fable created.

The interesting thing about Morrowind is that I had given it a try the year before on the PC. It was around the time it came out but I did not like it. I thought, simply, that the character moved too slow. Combat was a bit weird, but the thing that turned me off of the game was that I moved way too slow. When I gave the game another try on the Xbox about a year later, I read about an item called Boots of Speed or something like that that added 200 to your speed. The average speed was probably 20? 200, I could go places with those and I did and that got me interested and I enjoyed the game leveling up my mage.

Another cool feature of the game was customizing and making your own spells. If you wanted one spell that could make you fly and turn you invisible at the same time, you could do that. You set the duration, the strength which affected the casting cost and you could name the spell yourself. Very very cool.

There's no way to beat this game. It's huge. Fable had an ending, Morrowind goes on forever, it's a bottomless pit and that's a good thing. 8/10.

Single player games I'm working on today: Half Life 2, Quake 4, Burnout Revenge, Star Wars: Battlefront.

Land of Confusion by Genesis

Land of Confusion by Genesis

Is this 20 year old song out of date?

I must’ve dreamed a thousand dreams
Been haunted by a million screams
But I can hear the marching feet
They’re moving into the street.

Now did you read the news today
They say the danger’s gone away
But I can see the fire’s still alight
There burning into the night.

There’s too many men
Too many people
Making too many problems
And not much love to go round
Can’t you see
This is a land of confusion.

This is the world we live in
And these are the hands we’re given
Use them and let’s start trying
To make it a place worth living in.

Oh Superman where are you now?
When everything’s gone wrong somehow
The men of steel, the men of power
Are losing control by the hour.

This is the time
This is the place
So we look for the future
But there’s not much love to go round
Tell me why, this is a land of confusion.

This is the world we live in
And these are the hands we’re given
Use them and let’s start trying
To make it a place worth living in.

I remember long ago -
Ooh when the sun was shining
Yes and the stars were bright
All through the night
And the sound of your laughter
As I held you tight
So long ago -

I won’t be coming home tonight
My generation will put it right
We’re not just making promises
That we know, we’ll never keep.

Too many men
There’s too many people
Making too many problems
And not much love to go round
Can’t you see
This is a land of confusion.

Now this is the world we live in
And these are the hands we’re given
Use them and let’s start trying
To make it a place worth fighting for.

Baby Lock Turns Nine (Months)

Baby Lock Turns Nine (Months)

Today is Baby Lock's nine month birthday. She's been alive as long as she's been a bun. She's bigger than life, always excited to be awake and playing. She loves to express herself, elation when she's happy, angry when she's mad. She still has yet to fall asleep while in the middle of doing something. If she's tired, she complains until someone rocks her to sleep, otherwise, she will stay up all night.

We're fortunate that she hasn't been sick since she was born. She's as healthy as an ox and ready to take on the world. It cracks her up when you try to scare her. The more you do it, the more manic her laugh. She loves exhilaration.

Anyway, won't be long before the big Zero One.

History of U.S. Warfare by Congress Member

Taken from The Nation

In a remarkable October 7 speech delivered on the House floor, Representative Ron Paul, a maverick Republican from Texas who has long been critical of Bush's misguided approach to fighting terrorism, invoked Reagan's legacy as part of a call for withdrawal.

Supporters of the war in Iraq, as well as some non-supporters, warn of the dangers if we leave. But isn't it quite possible that these dangers are simply a consequence of having gone into Iraq in the first place, rather than a consequence of leaving? Isn't it possible that staying only makes the situation worse? If chaos results after our departure, it's because we occupied Iraq, not because we left.

The original reasons for our pre-emptive strike are long forgotten, having been based on false assumptions. The justification given now is that we must persist in this war or else dishonor those who already have died or been wounded. We're also told civil strife likely will engulf all of Iraq.

But what is the logic of perpetuating a flawed policy where more Americans die just because others have suffered? More Americans deaths cannot possibly help those who already have been injured or killed.

Civil strife, if not civil war, already exists in Iraq-- and despite the infighting, all factions oppose our occupation. The insistence on using our militarily to occupy and run Iraq provides convincing evidence to our detractors inside and outside Iraq that we have no intention of leaving. Building permanent military bases and a huge embassy confirms these fears. We deny the importance of oil and Israel's influence on our policy, yet we fail to convince the Arab/Muslim world that our intentions are purely humanitarian.

In truth, our determined presence in Iraq actually increases the odds of regional chaos, inciting Iran and Syria while aiding Osama bin Laden in his recruiting efforts. Leaving Iraq would do the opposite-- though not without some dangers that rightfully should be blamed on our unwise invasion rather than our exit. Many experts believe bin Laden welcomed our invasion and occupation of two Muslim countries. It bolsters his claim that the U.S. intended to occupy and control the Middle East all along. This has galvanized radical Muslim fundamentalists against us. Osama bin Laden's campaign surely would suffer if we left.

We should remember that losing a war to China over control of North Korea ultimately did not enhance communism in China, as she now has accepted many capitalist principles. In fact, China today outproduces us in many ways-- as reflected by our negative trade balance with her.

We lost a war in Vietnam, and the domino theory that communism would spread throughout southeast Asia was proven wrong. Today, Vietnam accepts American investment dollars and technology. We maintain a trade relationship with Vietnam that the war never achieved.

We contained the USSR and her thousands of nuclear warheads without military confrontation, leading to the collapse and disintegration of a powerful Soviet empire. Today we trade with Russia and her neighbors, as the market economy spreads throughout the world without the use of arms.

We should heed the words of Ronald Reagan about his experience with a needless and mistaken military occupation of Lebanon. Sending troops into Lebanon seemed like a good idea in 1983, but in 1990 President Reagan said this in his memoirs: "…we did not appreciate fully enough the depth of the hatred and complexity of the problems that made the Middle East such a jungle… In the weeks immediately after the bombing, I believed the last thing we should do was turn tail and leave… yet, the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics forced us to rethink our policy there."

During the occupation of Lebanon by American, French, and Israeli troops between 1982 and 1986, there were 41 suicide terrorist attacks in that country. One horrific attack killed 241 U.S. Marines. Yet once these foreign troops were removed, the suicide attacks literally stopped. Today we should once again rethink our policy in this region.

It's amazing what ending military intervention in the affairs of others can achieve. Setting an example of how a free market economy works does wonders.

We should have confidence in how well freedom works, rather than relying on blind faith in the use of military force to spread our message. Setting an example and using persuasion is always superior to military force in showing how others might live. Force and war are tools of authoritarians; they are never tools of champions of liberty and justice. Force and war inevitably lead to dangerous unintended consequences.

--Representative Ron Paul, R, Texas

If you make more laws, you make more criminals.

Violent Video Games

Violent Video Games

Video game violence is in the news again recently because of a douchebag lawyer in Florida is attacking the industry in a way that doesn't make sense. He offers $10,000 to anyone who can make a video game where the lead character attacks people in the video game industry, killing them, chopping their head off, any torturous fashion the programmer sees fit. Someone took him up on his offer, created the game where the lawyer was the main character doing the killing. They wanted to cash in on their creation but the lawyer said, 'I was being satirical. You don't get your money.'

I know why he had this response. He'd have to go after himself if he backed this creation.

What he and others don't understand is that violent video games do not make violent people. Violent people might be attracted to violent video games.

If I chop a tree down with an axe (which I've done), I won't start going Paul Bunyan on people because of my foresting practices at home. You could put a face, arms, legs and a voice box on the tree to simulate a person, and it's just not going to give me those homicidal tendencies the real sickos get.

The truth is, the need to regulate the video game industry is an idea from old farts of another generation that are blown away with the graphic capabilities of these video games and it's as real to them as looking out the window. So they are appalled and if they're appalled, they have an emotional reaction and if they have an emotional reaction, they start restricting rights. Video game violence does not desensitize people to violence. Video game violence desensitizes people to video game violence, so the old farts that see it don't realize it's harmless and so they feel they need to take action.

Serial killers are usually the product of a poor home and a poor home is usually created by some sort of government intervention in raising kids, welfare programs or high taxes to keep families poor. So in actuality, the government makes violent people. Let's put an AO rating on it and shelve it.

A friend of mine said this to me today. Did I mention that I think my friend is certifiable?

"I wouldn't give up playing basketball to have sex again."

He's proud of this. No it's not A.C. Green.

Best Blonde Joke

Best Blonde Joke

Got this from Mrs. Lock so I don't want any hate mail saying I'm a misogynist. I just appreciate a good joke.

...

A blonde calls her boyfriend and says, "Please come over here and help me. I have a killer jigsaw puzzle, and I can't figure out how to get it started."

Her boyfriend asks, "What is it supposed to be when it's finished?"

The blonde says, "According to the picture on the box, it's a tiger."

Her boyfriend heads over to help with the puzzle. She lets him in and shows him where she has the puzzle spread all over the table. He studies the pieces for a moment, then looks at the box, then turns to her and says, "First of all, no matter what we do, we're not going to be able to assemble these pieces into anything resembling a tiger."

He takes her hand and says, "Second, I want you to relax. Let's have a nice cup of tea, and then... *sigh* ...let's put all these Frosted Flakes back in the box."

Firty Free.

Mrs. Lock got me an iPod shuffle.