The Ballad of Yusuf.

I feel like I'm the only one at work this week. While I'm slaving away at zombie-related product, everyone else is out doing fun stuff and playing games and getting bubble teas. I guess I shouldn't complain, though, since I'm only really working this week because I took more than a week off to go to Mexico earlier in the month...

But last night we went out with Chris C and Jessie to a Thai place in St. Paul. We got a few different things, and some were amazing while others were just so-so. It's been highly recommended, and while I'd go back, I'd wouldn't say it's become my new #1 hot spot.

Afterward we went back to our place. Jessie and Lindsay made jewelry while Chris C and I got down to biz-nass with some games. I showed him Killing Floor, and he agreed that they'd make a good deal of dolla dolla's if they put that up on XBLA.

Then I schooled in in Marvel VS Capcom 2 for a good 10 rounds or so. I picked it up while it was on sale, but thankfully he hasn't been practicing so I destroyed him a lot. I did mix it up and pick lame characters like Servebot to give him a fighting chance. But I rue the day that he picks that game up for real and learns a thing or two...

They hung around until 1am, at which point I was watching the clock, since I had to work the next day. But once they rolled out, I convinced myself that, work be damned, I'm going to beat The Ballad of Gay Tony TONIGHT!

And I did. I was only 3 missions away from the end, but they were long, kind of hard, missions. So I wrapped it up an hour and a half later. Oops.

Overall, it was quite good. At times it was great, but Lost and the Damned still easily takes the cake as my favorite GTA game ever.



However, there was one character in the game, Yusuf, who struck a chord with me. He started off a little grating, but by the time the final scene in the game played out, I really liked him a lot. He reminds me a lot of my friend Doug, who is always so happy, goofy and awkwardly lovable. And occasionally says inappropriate things that just sound wrong coming from a guy like him, in an awesome way.

There's a great moment in the last mission of the game where Yusuf makes an important appearance and even though everything was going to hell, I couldn't help but smile...

Killing Floor won me over.

I mentioned in my last post that I'd been playing some a few PC shooters that I'd bought on the cheap during Steam's ongoing holiday sale. I've been cycling through 5 or 6 games worth of online multiplayer, and I came to the (probably pre-mature) realization that I just don't dig the online PC gaming scene. At all.

I don't like the obtuse server browsing, I don't like the mods, the unofficial maps, the tweaked rule sets, the annoying sound clips, the pace of play... basically I don't like the inconsistency.

My feeling grew slowly and subconsciously, until a conversation with a co-worker turned into a rant. At that point, I was struck with the realization that I just wasn't having a good time. So I figured maybe I'd play my newly purchased games every once in a while, but pretty much avoid the scene for the most part.

Then I went home and saw that Killing Floor was on sale for 5 bucks. And I couldn't resist. I've been interested in the game since it came out, and now was my chance to try it for next to nothing. I threw aside my misgivings and bought it instantly.

And I'm glad I did. It's a blast, it runs great on my very, very modest laptop, and I'm having little to no issue with all the things that had bothered me previously. I was able to play quite a few great games with good people, and I had a whole lot of fun.

I can't say if it will have a ton of lasting power, but I do wish I was playing right now. And that's certainly saying something.

Plus, you can't beat 5 bucks.

But I wish it was an XBLA game.

Happy holidays...

It's my birthday, and ooooh, what a day!

I started it off on a high note by playing Borderlands with Chris S. I do like that game. I've put in on hold until more friends have it, and sure enough, now EVERYONE has it.

After that I finally got around to shoveling my car out of the garage. I had parked it there Wednesday night, before the Christmas Blizzard o' 2009. But by today there's loads of iced over snow blocking me in. So I got to hacking that shit away. It was a HUGE pain. But I got out. It took an hour though.

Lindsay and I headed out to the Tea Garden. I finally got around to sorting through ALL 1000+ pictures from Mexico, then I ordered them correctly. They were very unorganized since they came from 4 different cameras.

Becky stopped by and wished me a happy birthday and brought some sweet treats. But otherwise I've been sitting here looking at photos, resizing photos and organizing photos for about 4 hours.

The holiday was a lot of fun. The snow wasn't too bad, so we spent Christmas Eve at Chris S and Isara's place. We played Clue and Taboo and ate Taco Dip and Fish Tacos. Yum, and festive! They are also babysitting a Pomeranian named PonyBoy who is so funny and strange. He's like an unaffected old man.


poof!


random dude on Last.FM enthralls us all.

Once we got home, we went ahead and opened all our presents. I got some sweet stuff.


Atari comes in from the cold blizzard for some present opening action.


gimme gimme gimme.


i want chicken, i want liver...

We didn't do too much Christmas day. We played some games and cleaned out house. Lindsay started a Deathknight in WoW, and spent most her time playing getting out of the starting zone. I played a bunch of Modern Warfare 2 and a bit of GTA IV's The Ballad of Gay Tony.

For breakfast Lindsay made Eggs and Chorizo, and for dinner we made turkey with stuffing and asparagus. It was all really good, but we made a huge mess.

Atari also broke his toenail in a pretty bad way. He was running up and down along the chainlink fence when the neighbor's dog was out, and he must have cought his toe. It was bleeding a whole lot. He didn't act like it hurt, so it took a minute to realize that he had done it. There was a trail of blood around the house that tipped us off. So we spent some time bandaging him up. Gross, gross, gross.

On the 26th we took it slow again. I went to the gym, and then we ran some errands and ended up eating Indian food, which was amazing.

I've been following the deals on Steam, and ended up buying a bunch of stuff I didn't need. But it's so CHEAP! So I've been playing random old games like Battlefield 2 and Counterstrike: Source in quick little 10 minute spurts here and there. Damn you Steam! How can I resist prices so low? I CAN'T!


oliver is skeptical about the great savings on Steam; how can the prices be so low?

This weekend was mostly spent at the Tea Garden working on my website. I needed to update it with some new work ASAP because I had submitted some work that may (but probably not) end up on a fairly widely read design blog and I wanted to make sure I was a little more up to date. Since I haven't updated in about a year.

But anyone who reads my art blog has already seen it all...

It went smoothly once I remembered what I was doing, it just took some time to sort and prepare all the content.

Right at the end, as I was doing my final pass for errors or changes, I realized I had made a sizing mistake. On everything. I had not taken into account one little number, and it pretty much made everything wonky. So I had to go back and recheck 3 numbers on every piece to make sure they added up correctly. Fun.

It actually is fun, though. I always have a blast and really get into the groove when I'm re-upping that ish.

Other than updating the site and hanging out the Tea Garden with the likes of Chris C, Jessie, Francesca and Keith, we didn't do a whole lot. Lindsay felt sick most of the weekend, so we hung around the house and took it easy.

I had been playing Red Faction: Guerrilla for a couple hours and it's fun but not gripping. So I put that aside for now and started The Ballad of Gay Tony, the expansion for GTA IV. I have high hopes, since I lovedLost and the Damned so much. So far it's good, but the characters and mood of LATD resonated with me more. But I'm definitely enjoying it so far.



Ryan stopped by to grab the Mexico pics from me (I'm working on it! I had to do the website first, and there's 4 gigs of photos to sort through) and he was itching for some Rock Band, so we played a couple sets in The Beatles Rock Band. We played the last set and the first set. Ryan really likes the late Beatles stuff, and so do I, but something about the youthful energy of the early stuff always sits well with me, so I prefer that. It was fun.

I also picked up Alien Breed: Evolution. It's a pretty generic XBLA game but it reminds me of overhead Dead Space, and it's Co-Op so Ryan kind of talked me into it. So far it's alright. It's got great graphics and mood, despite not doing a whole lot with the character design...

There's also a new Arkedo Series game called Pixel! that hit the Indie Games section of Xbox last night, and I had to download and try it out really quick. It's the third game in the Arkedo Series and I'm totally digging what they're doing. They basically put out one simple but super stylish game a month. It may be simple but it's always crisp, polished and fun. I'm at the point where I don't even download the demo. They can just have my 3 bucks...

Back in Action.

I am back from Mexico. We actually got back late Wednesday night, and I took Thursday to get some stuff in order and run some errands.

I was surprised to find my Skating Santa gift card at Target, which was awesome. I kind of thought they were only using it regionally since I hadn't seen it in the wild yet.

I have a bunch of photos from the trip and I've already written a day-to-day blog while we were there, and I'll be posting those as soon as I can. I'll probably end up back-dating them so they fall on the days they actually happened. So look for those to be dated December 9-16, or something like that...

Mexico: Day Six

The last day in Mexico was just Lindsay and myself, and it ended up being the greatest day of all. We took a ferry to Ilsa Mujeres, a 5-or-so mile long island off the coast.


waiting for the ferry.


not the ferry.


our hotel. view from the ferry.

There’s no public transportation, so we rented a moped. The guy who gave it asked for my driver’s license. I didn’t have it. So he asked for my room key. Then he asked if we had ever driven moped. We said no. So he asked if we’d ever driven a motorcycle. We said no. He just looked at us a second and finally said “turn this handle to go.” And that was all the instruction we got before pulling off into a super packed street.


once bad mutha eff'.

There’s a small town on the island, but the rest is coast and countryside. So we spent the day cruising the roads alone. It was amazing. I guess it was pretty much the only ‘real’ experience of the trip. One that wasn’t hosted, guided, produced or paid for.


someone's house. it didn't look like there were real windows or doors or anything.


the place next door.

Everything was very rural, spread out and the houses seemed very poor. They ranged from run down to shanty, basically. There was the town side, which had hotels and shops and packed streets, but out in the countryside I doubt they even had electricity or plumbing. But they lived right across the road from the ocean, so I guess that’s the trade off.

People just opened their front door and put out whatever they had. Old shoes. Shells, handmade trinkets. We stopped and got some guacamole, and we found an iguana. We found a sculpture park on a cliff, and we’d just stop anytime we wanted. We’d see a spot on the coast, and I’d just look for some gravel to pull up on.

The roads were rough and there wasn’t any ‘lookout’ signs or ‘stop here!’ signs. Once I wanted to stop at a beach and I pulled off the road onto some gravel. But the gravel was mainly sand underneath, and when I pulled the break the moped tipped and slid. I jumped off and grabbed Lindsay, afraid he leg would be caught underneath, but she had already jumped off to safety. It wasn’t a bad crash, we weren’t going more than 15 or 20 MPH, but it still scared the crap out of me for a minute.


i think that's a zipline in the distance.


public art.


cancun in the distance.


it's nice to be away.


the bike key is like fine jewelry.


lighthouse? something else?


iguana! do-rag!


ahhhh, no hotels.


rocks and tide pools, lindsay's favorite!


all alone.


waves!


i find something gross.


what i found. there were tons of them.


across from the rocks and tidepools.


i'm thirsty. ocean water is like spring water, right?

The whole time was just amazing. Although driving back into town and stressful and totally sucked.

When we got back to the hotel we started packing. We met up with Ryan and Adam. Everyone was tired, and ready to go home. After spending the afternoon alone with Lindsay in paradise, I was a little annoyed, Annoyed with the hotel. Annoyed with the guests, even a little annoyed with our friends. It was a good time, but I’d had about enough vacation for one trip.

Just in time for the trip to end.


the end.

Mexico: Day Five

On Monday we woke up at 7:15, quite a bit later than expected, to go to Chikin Ha. I set my alarm, but the volume was set to zero… luckily I just woke up. We met Ryan and Adam in the lobby. They were running late, as well, thanks to their new found rashes. Adam had a little bit of a rash, Ryan had it bad. All over. Ryan was not having much luck, so far.


a big ol' cenote.


niiiice hat.


on a mission.


everyone i saw that day shouted 'batman!'


into the depths.


it's breezy down there.


spooky.


spooky party.


go on brush your shoulder off.


the cenote crew.


zipping across the treetops.


amazingly, the helmet doesn't help you feel cool.


the zipline crew.


so comfortable. especially around the crotch-al region.


graceful dive.


less graceful dive.


cannonball.


self-aware cannonball.


this is a terrible picture. i should not post it.


shot from the perspective of a sea monster...


sneaking out of a cave.


hold that breath!


emerging from the murky depths.


skimming the surface.


inside looking out.


lindsay has amazing balance.


my glasses!


this inner-tube is too small.


lazy train.

At Chikin Ha we biked to an underground cave and cenote where they had a luck-bringing ceremony. Then we did a few zip-lines, and finally went snorkeling in a cenote, which was very cool. There were some passages you could dive through, and most of the did the first one, but only Ryan and I tried the second, deeper, longer passage. The pressure was actually really painful, and I kicked my foot on a rock and cut it up a bit, but it was totally cool.

We went to another cenote where everyone got an inner tube and floated around. I was more into snorkeling a little more, but I lost my goggles and snorkel underwater. I borrowed Lindsay and I actually found mind, which was amazing. They provided some food that was actually probably the best food (besides the midnight sandwich) that we had the whole trip. Plus, there were lots of wild dogs around, which was very cute.


long day.


loooong day.

When we got back to the hotel, Adam went jet skiing. He fell off and swears he almost died. But like I said, he has a tendency to exaggerate a bit. Lindsay and I read our books on the beach while he was doing that.


large and in charge.


blissfully unaware of adam's peril.


adam recounts his brush with death.

We did diner at a kind of fancy restaurant with a very silly seating policy. Basically, they only seated people 2 or 3 times a night. Once at 6:30, once at 8:30, and maybe once at 10:30. So you add your name to a list, but you still have to be in line when your time comes. Putting your name on the list does not guarantee you a seat at the restaurant. It pretty much made everyone who came up to the host irate instantly. Smart.