Curry.

We made curry tonight. It was pretty awesome.





Now I'm hungry again.

Clients have been particularly frustrating lately. I have more personal projects that need attention, but I just can't get away from the endless demands of more pressing clients. It's annoying, but I guess I shouldn't complain. Maybe.

Lazy weekend.

On Saturday, Lindsay and I went to the Walker Sculpture Garden. It was hot and really nice out.



Lindsay had never been there, somehow. I've been there for pleasure, and for drawing classes. So I guess I just assumed everyone at MCAD had... It was cool, we also spent about 2 hours in the gift shop looking at their enormous, amazing selection of books. I was fine just looking, but Lindsay walked away with a few hundred bucks of new reading material. Or, looking-at material, maybe.



There were some baby ducks, a wedding and a homeless man all hanging out the general vicinity. Good times.

We grabbed some food at United Noodle, and picked up some groceries of the Asian variety. We ate some of those delicious foods and watched a new TV show on netflix. It's ok.

Sunday was a lazy day. I went running, and then we went and grabbed a hot dog on the way to the Studio to drop some crap off.

At the studio, neither of us worked. I played some Deathspank, and Lindsay played some King's Quest 3 until Chris and Isara showed up and hung out for a while. Eventually, Lindsay and I met up with Adam and went to Pho Hoa. When we got home I just played some more Deathspank. I'm starting to like it more and more.

When I started, I thought it was OK but a little annoying. Now I like it a lot, and still think it's a little annoying. But less so.

Limbo.

Today we I busted my hump to get a project done at work. Lindsay, Francesca and Mary all chipped in to help out. We had Pee Wee's Playhouse running in the background all day, we must have made it through 10 episodes.

At the end of the day Andres brought his cat, Boo, to the studio. It hung around for a while, but we had to bring it to Francesca, since she was on bike. Boo was freaked out and hid under the couch until it was time to leave. Lindsay and I fought for 15 minutes trying to get it into it's carrying kennel, and I came out with some nasty scratches.

We dropped the cat off and picked up Ryan. We were going to go to Ikea, but instead we got coffee walked to Lake Calhoun and fed ducks until it got dark.

We went to Sakura for some bad-ass sushi, and Ryan told us about his new plans. Then came back to our place, where we eventually played Limbo, the new XBLA game. I had played it for a couple minutes while I was waiting earlier, and really liked what I saw. Ryan was curious to get a peek, and a peek turned into Ryan, Lindsay and I solving puzzles together for a good hour or two. Probably two.



Limbo is pretty fantastic. It's atmosphere is amazing. It's creepy and quiet and foreboding, but also a little bit cute. The graphics are simple but layered with just the right amount of detail. The sound is outstanding, even more outstanding than the graphics.

We made it 17 out of 24 chapters (although I didn't know that, the game is seamless, with no loading screens, text or dialogue from the moment the game starts. I just went back to look at the chapter select menu and counted) before Ryan was so tired he could barely keep his eyes open.

I'm sure I will wrap it up in under an hour. So it's over really quickly. I don't think it should be longer, the length seems perfectly suited to the game and the mechanics, but I do think 15 dollars might be a bit on the expensive side.

I feel silly saying it, especially because I go out of my way to support indie game development as much as I can. I try to show a lot of support for products I feel should be rewarded. And Limbo should be rewarded. It's fantastic, and it's worth my 15 dollars. But I'm not sure other people will feel the same.

But maybe I'm wrong.

Awakening.

The week's over? That was fast. Another good week in the Paper Bicycle studio. I'm feeling more and more comfortable there. This week I started, and finished, a new project. I had some nice trips to the gym. I got the Xbox all hooked up although I've yet to play anything. I've mainly just downloaded all my arcade/indie games. I have a lot of them.

We got a new bird for the Studio. It's a yellow canary names Hank (maybe Hank 2?). So Dean has a little yellow friend. He's got a lot of personality for a bird. I'll post a picture if I can snap a good one.

Last night I beat Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening. I'm a little sad, because now Dragon Age is really over. Like, really, really over.

With both Dragon Age: Origins and Awakening wrapped up, all I can do is wait for Dragon Age 2. But honestly, I'm slightly worried that the next Dragon Age will be made a little more mainstream and will loose the hardcore complexity that really kept me into it for so long.

I'm not usually the fanboy screaming out for the developers not to change a thing, but an RPG like Dragon Age is a rare thing indeed, and if it becomes more streamlined, bombastic, slick and action-y, then the genre might as well be extinct all together.

But Bioware makes damn good games, so I'm sure they've got a vision to keep Dragon Age from being Mass Effect in the past.

I was actually a little disappointed in Awakening. I was expecting something longer and more meaty. Something I could really sink my teeth into tactics and combat-wise.

I knew it was supposed to be like Dragon Age 1.5, the same engine with new characters and story. But I felt more like it was Dragon Age 1.1. Or 1.2, maybe. I did pretty much all there was to do in the game and it took a relatively quick 12 hours or so.


I guess I expected roughly 1/2 of Origins, but it seemed much, much less. 12 hours is an eternity in most games, but in Dragon Age, it feel like your just getting warmed up.

I was also expecting, bigger, tougher combat scenarios, since Awakening is made for Veterans of Origins, but I felt it was much, much easier, actually. Which was a bummer.

I kept waiting for those moments where I felt like the game was bordering on impossible, only to use some hard thinking to overcome the odds. It happened fairly often in Origins, but in Awakening it never came.

Even the massive, optional, electro-dragon was a pushover. I tore him a new one.

It might have something to do with me carrying over my character from Origins. Maybe since I did EVERYTHING in that game, I was slightly over-leveled from the get go in Awakening. Then I did EVERYTHING in Awakening too, so I just stayed a head of the curve for the entire game. I don't know, but I feel like I should have pumped the difficulty up to hard, because I felt no challenge what-so-ever.

And you might remember that challenge was one of my favorite parts of Origins.

Anyway. It was still great. I love, love, love me some Dragon Age, that's for sure..

And who knows, maybe I'll play Dragon Age all over again from the very start.

Road trip.

We went down to Milwaukee this weekend. It was planned, but kind of surprised me because I've been so busy.

We didn't leave until 8 or so, I think, and it's about a 6-7 hour drive. Luckily since it took so long to get out, the roads were pretty open.

We got to Milwaukee near 3 am. We walked around and looked outside to find some animals. We found frogs, cats and a deer. This frog was hanging out on a light about 6 feet up.



I slept pretty dang hard and didn't wake up until noon or so. I tried to do some work, and hung around with Lindsay's parents and thier cats. They rescued 2 cats from Texas. One is Mr. Nightly, who is the more social of the two. He hung around with us constantly.





Then there was Emma, who was more shy. She was always sleeping someplace all alone. She didn't like being held but was still pretty friendly.



Later in the afternoon we went to the wedding. It was actually the blessing of Lindsay's Aunt's current marriage. From what I understand she found a new sense of religion, so this is her affirming her marriage in the eyes of God. Or something.

The ceremony was at their neighbor's house, and it was outside on the deck, and it was hot. It was an interesting wedding reception. There was a DJ who would play a few songs, but then switch over the Karaoke, then DJ, then Karaoke.

So I sang Every Rose Has It's Thorn, and then did Summer Loving as a duet with Lindsay. We rocked the house.



We left the next morning at noon, and drove all day. When we got home, I immediately went running. Then I jumped in the shower and we ran to the studio to work. We swung by Target on our way, and ran in just as they were closing. I picked up a new 360 for the studio. Shiny.



I didn't hook it up or anything though. Instead I just worked until midnight or one. When we went home, I took the 360 and transferred the data from my old hard drive to the new one. I decided to keep the new 360 at home.

A week of what? Dogs?

This week was kind of a blur. I remember the dogs came in one day, since I have photographic proof.













I got my filling replaced on Tuesday, which went really smoothly. They gave me some headphones which helped ignore the horrible, terrible drilling sound. So that's behind me and I don't have to worry about my teeth anymore! Perfect!

I had two meetings at the old office. One was infuriating, and I nearly swore them off forever. But I kept a cool head and it's find now. The second went much better.

I am super excited because I got Dragon Age: Origins- Awakening... or something. Too many breaks in that title. It showed up in the mail and so far so good. I've only done the opening quest, I'm about to leave the first area, but that's a big chunk of game.

Although I already ran into a (known) glitch. I imported my character, who was decked out in some sweet gear. Unfortunately, this was sweet gear I collected in Warden's Keep or the Stone Prisoner... one of the DLC add-ons that came free with the game. And I guess, for whatever reason, that you cannot carry items from the DLC over to Awakening. So instead of having my Sword of Mighty Awesome and Shield of Blocking Power, I had... a bow and arrow.

I am a Warrior, specializing in Shields and One-Handed Swords. All my abilities are tied to having a shield and sword equipped, so I had no weapons and no abilities.

The game opens with pretty big fights since the game assumes you played Origins and you don't need any tutorials or baby steps. For a while it was rough, until I finally found some new weapons to equip. Which took longer than it should have.

Other than that, cool. Oh except I died in Origins, so I shouldn't have been able to import my character. But I went back to see how it ended if I let someone else die, and I guess the Autosave is what Awakening reads when importing the last character. But whatever.

I've also played a bit of DeathSpank. Like, a tiny bit, maybe a 1/2 hour or so, but I like it. The humor isn't really my thing, and I think Lindsay hates it, but it's a cool little hack-n-slash, loot-based adventure game. I really like the Point and Click logic elements.

I worked all day Friday and then left town kind of unexpectedly. I knew there was a possibility, but I kind of forgot. So that was kind of a surprise. More on that trip soon...

Fresh Studio.

I couldn't remember the weekend for the life of me. Then it all came back to me. We spent all of Saturday painting the studio. Atom, Francesca and Adam helped put on the first coat in the early afternoon. It took a while, that studio is way bigger than I thought, thanks to the high ceilings.







After the first coat, Lindsay and I went home and I slept for a bit. Then we went back over and did a second coat. Only Adam helped out this time, but it seemed to go just as quickly.

On Sunday I got some work done. I worked on I'm Organic, and then I worked on my Super Awesome Art Challenge piece.

I played some more Dragon Age, despite having finished it. I'm going through and playing all of the Origin stories. There's 6 different Origin's, each one taking between 1/2 hour and an hour. I'm not going to continue any of the characters, so some of the interest and drama is lost, but I just wanted to see how they all start. It's a fun little thing to do, because they're very different.

Only one of the stories is kind of a dud. But I expected the Dalish Elves to be lame, since I found them to be lame in the game.

Dragon Age: Orgins concluded.

Last night I beat Dragon Age: Origins. I was going to write about it in the last post, but I got too wordy about my foot.

So Dragon Age is pretty hard. There were a number of times in the game where I ran into something that seemed impossible at first blush. But figuring out hot to play smart enough to make it through was always fun and made the game a lot more interesting and enjoyable.

The last section of the game, however, tried my patience. There was a point where swarms of seemingly infinite enemies swarm you, and you just have to keep taking the punishment. It came very near the end of the game, and I died a couple times and thought "huh. I'm so close, but maybe I won't be Dragon Age after all." I went to bed and tried the next time, but really thought hard about how bad I lost (very badly) and I came up with a way to approach it completely differently. And it worked like a charm. That was a moment where I ALMOST thought the game went overboard, but then it turned out to be a satifying moment.

The final boss, however, is just kind of a pain. It's a long, long fight against a giant enemy and it's a hassle. I had to attempt it 5 or 6 times, and when I finally beat it, I was down to 2 Warrior characters with a couple lesser healing items. It was CLOSE. And it's cool that it was so nail-biting, I guess, but it would have been a lot cooler if it was nail biting the first or second time, and not the 6th, considing it's a 15-20 minute boss fight...

But it's a great game. I might even like it more than Mass Effect 2. Combat/tactics wise, I do. Story, presentation, character-wise, I don't. It's certainly a game I can see myself coming back to in a few years.

And in crazy coincidence, the day I wrapped up Dragon Age, they announced Dragon Age 2. They must have been waiting for my to wrap it up. I guess they forgot I still need to play through Dragon Age Origins: Awakening.

I had a meeting in the morning that took a bit of time. I did lunch with Natalie, then worked on wrapping some stuff up for the old office. Lindsay had to go to class, but I stayed at the studio doing some personal art before heading to the gym. I should be ready to post of SAAC piece soon.

My foot problem.

I've had a thing in my foot for a couple weeks now. At first I could only feel it if I stepped weird and hit the front pad on my left foot directly. It wasn't a big deal. It didn't really hurt but it was kind of a gross feeling, like there was something under my skin.

After a week or so it got more pronounced. I could feel it whenever I walked. It still didn't hurt, but something about the feeling made me feel uneasy. I could see a callus forming with a small 'pucker' underneath. The pucker had a tiny darkened dot in the center.

Lindsay's first instinct was to dissect it and dig it out, or at least stick a needle in it, but the thought of it made me shake and convulse in disgust. I decided to just keep an eye on it. My worst nightmare would be planter's warts. A certain friend has a case of them, and it makes me queesy.

Finally, I could feel it all the time. Walking, sitting, laying down. Pressure or no pressure, I could feel this hard bump under my skin, and I hated it. My foot got tired and cramping from me walking on the inside of my foot trying to avoid any pressure. I couldn't stand it. It still didn't 'hurt' but if I squeezed it, poked it, or thought about poking it it made me a bit nauseous. I have sensitive feet. It just feels gross.

So last night I cracked. We didn't have an exacto knife at the house, but we had a tweezers with a sharp needle tip, so I used that to dig through the callus. I got down to the center and pulled out a tiny, tiny ball. A ball of nothing, as far as I could tell, just skin. I'm guessing I got a tiny shard of glass or wood in my foot, and my skin started to grow around it.

It was so small, and not attached to anything, just kind of embedded in the callus. There was no blood or pulling or cutting. It was just kind of tucked into my foot. It left a perfect little hole but nothing more. As soon as I pulled it out, I knew I was cured. It instantly felt better. I jumped up, walked around, stomped my feet. Good as new.

There are people who feel like their limbs aren't supposed to be there and want them amputated. It's as though their leg or arm is not a part of them. I feel like that indescribable wrongness is, in a small way, similar to how I felt about my mystery foot thing.

Dental Gloss.

This post exists mainly to share this amazing picture I took of Jade as she started to yawn. Ferocious.

But while I'm here, I'll share what's up.

I spent a big chunk of the day at the dentist yesterday. It started as just a consultation at a new dental office. I haven't been to a dentist in at least 2 years, mainly because I didn't like my old one, and I finally stopped putting it off.

I was sure I would have a cavity-ridden mouth and the doctor would scold me for my lack of self respect. I was positive I would have gum disease and maybe need some drastic surgery or something. Even though I've only had one cavity in my life, and that was more due to over-aggressive brushing.

But I can't help it. I'm paranoid about dental care, so I feel like 1 minutes isn't enough. 2 isn't enough. I usually ending up brushing for 5-10 minutes straight every time I brush, even though I've been told that it's wearing on my enamel.

Much to my relief, I got a clean bill of health. Except, the one cavity I had wasn't filled properly, and now i have to get the old filling removed and a new one put in.

So I had my consultation in the morning, then went to the old office for a meeting, which took a couple hours. I went out to lunch with Natalie, and then headed back to the dentist for the second time, this time to get my teeth cleaned (the first was just the a consultation).

On the way back to the studio I went to the gym in Uptown. The Uptown YWCA sucks compared to the Midtown one. It's actually kind of devastating because I was really excited to be so close. It will do just fine, but when I can, I'm always going to try to get to Midtown over the Uptown location.

I'm still making progress on Dragon Age every night. I feel like I'm soooo close to the end, but it will still probably take a while. Nothing in that game moves quickly.

Blogs and games.

I spent all Saturday working. Then I played some Half Life 2 while Lindsay started making some graphics for her blog.

I quickly remembered 2 things about Half Life 2. First; Half Life 2 is awesome. Totally awesome. Even by today's standards, it's phenomenal. The second thing is that Half Life 2 gives me a giant headache. And makes me nauseous. It's strange, because I can only think of a couple other games that do (and a couple are other Valve games, L4D and L4D2, although to a lesser extent than HL2).

Anyway, after a Half Life break, I helped Lindsay build and the new Paper Bicycle blog. I was trying a bunch of different setups, and was pretty frustrated. Which is always what happens when I do web stuff. I can figure out what I want to do, but only by banging around for a while, first. Finally we had something workable, and went home a bit after midnight.

I stayed up way too late playing Dragon Age.

Today was a lazy day. I did some laundry and worked out, but mainly we hung around. I helped Lindsay with her blog and played more Dragon Age. I'm totally back into the game, and I was a bit sad to realize I was closer to the end than I thought. Of course, in Dragon Age time that could mean I won't finish it for weeks, but I have a feeling I might...

Bad Night.

I went in for a meeting Friday morning that went well. I spent the rest of the day working at the Studio. I took a break to fire up the demo of Half Life 2 on my Mac, just to see how well it worked because it was on sale for 3 bucks on Steam.

It worked great. So I grabbed HL2 and Episode 1 and 2 for a song. I've played them all on the 360 but I've been dying to go back, especially after listening to Rebel FM's Game Club series about it. It made me realize that, as much as I loved it, there was a lot I didn't see.

So now I've got that on my hard drive. I'll probably only ever fire it up once or twice, but it's a classic and it was 3 bucks...

Ryan came by at 5 and we all headed to a friend's house for a surprise party. Ryan was a complete stranger, having met the birthday boy (once) and never anyone else, so he was a sport for tagging along. I didn't know what to expect, but since it was actually at her parents house, I didn't expect anything too rowdy. And I was right. It was a nice time, despite only knowing a couple other people.

Last night I was pretty tired, and pretty early (before midnight, I remember) Lindsay and I both dozed off fully dressed. I woke up at 2 am, soaked with sweat. It was freaking hot, and I as super uncomfortable. And so tired my eyes hurt to even attempt to open. But I got up, shut all the windows, turned on the AC, and took a shower. It was still uncomfortably hot when I got up, I just sat on the cool leather couch.

By this point, I was wide awake. I had slept 3 hours and that's pretty much enough. I played some Dragon Age hoping to get tired, and I kind of did. But not enough. I went back to bed and had no luck sleeping. For hours. I should have got back up but I get angry when I can't sleep and I just try harder. Which doesn't help.

So I tossed and turned wide awake until 5 or 6 am, when the sun came up. I finally fell back asleep. I hate that.

So I feel OK today. Not terribly sleep deprived, but also just a little bit off and achy.

I have a lot of work to do, so Lindsay and I came to the studio, got some lunch at Uptown Cafeteria which just opened a couple weeks ago. It was pretty good. So now I've been working for a few hours, but I wish I was playing Half Life. Or sleeping. Or something.

Writing about Half Life 2 made me think of Full Life Consequences.

Hardcore Onslaught.

Last night I played Battlefield with Chris C and Ryan. We were just going to play the only map I had yet to complete. We played on normal and pushed through it in about 15 minutes.

It was late and we were about to go our separate ways, but then we decided to just TRY one of the easier levels on Hardcore. No radar, no spotting, friendly fire on, increased weapon damage. Just to see.

Wow. It was awesome. With no radar and spotting, even knowing what you're up against is a huge challenge. Each person's class (Chris C was Medic, Ryan was Assault, I took Engineer) was much more crucial, and everyone had to be on point the whole time. It was a slow, tense, hard-fought battle to the end (I had about 40 deaths) but we managed to keep it together. Although there was a moment or two where it was pretty questionable.

All-in-all, it took 45 minutes to finish (it took 10 on normal) and a everyone was cheering as the final point was captured. There's not much in gaming that's as stressful as fighting for 40 minutes only to feel like you're about to loose everything inches from the finish line.

Right now I can't even imagine the harder maps, but when we have our fourth it should be do-able. Right, Jesse?

A puzzling Quest.

Another pretty productive day at work. Kind of long. Technically I have more work now from my former employer when I worked there, so I might have to re-adjust that balance. Maybe Lindsay and Francesca could help, but they're even busier.

I was excited to go home because Puzzle Quest 2 came out today. I had to get it. I loves me some Puzzle Quest.



It might look silly, but it's damn fun.

Also, Blur showed up in the mail. It was Amazon's Deal of the Day a couple days back, and I've been waiting for the right price to come along.



Neon car racing with power-ups.

I gave both games a quick spin, and both were surprisingly more difficult than I expected. But I was only 1/2 paying attention. What I really wanted to play was more Dragon Age: Origins. Unfortunately, I didn't have much time. So I literally talked to two people in the Dwarfish Kingdom and had to turn it off.

What a tease.