Easter and Guns.

This week I figured I'd better get started on collecting donations for the Humane Society's Walk for Animals. We were there this weekend and I realized I haven't collected a cent.

Usually we just ask friends and family, but this year we put up a contest on the PB blog, and so far it's going pretty well. Today at the gym, however, I realized I was going to have to figure out how to mail posters and prints to all the donors... Oops.

No big deal, really, but it's just more cost and work for me.

I went out for diner with Natalie on Monday, to hear the scoop on her recent string of interviews. We went to Cafeteria, and she told me all all the good and bad news. The good news is she's lucky enough to be finding plenty of places to offer her a job, but that probably means she'll have to move.

Portal 2 showed up in the mail yesterday. I popped it in and played about 45 minutes of it, and it seems great. It's quite funny already, and I forgot just how magical Portals are. After so long, it's still a bit mind bending backing into a portal and watching yourself come out the other side.

I started writing this a week ago and forgot to finish it. Damn. WTF, me?

This weekend was full of labor. Friday was nice, though, because we met Mary, Francesca and Adam at Quangs. We all squeezed into a booth and it was a nice time.

I had an awesome time at the gym on Saturday, but then I was a bit worn out for the rest of the day. We went to Ikea to grab some things for the new studio, and ended up with a pretty big haul. We took it back to the office and assembled some of it, but then we decided to hit up the store and get a new computer before they closed. We went to Best Buy, since we are planning to get some big ol' monitors as well, but they didn't have the computer we wanted in stock so we just said forget it. There's 2 Apple retailers within walking distance of the studio, so we can just grab it later.

Lindsay was super hungry, and there's a Don Pablo's next door to Best Buy. She decided it would be a good idea to eat there... I'm not sure why. We've eaten there once years ago, and I think we both though it sucked, but there's not much in that part of time and Lindsay wasn't willing to wait. She should have though, because she hated it. Oops. Never again, I guess.

I was supposed to do a bunch of design-work for my brother, because he had a big presentation on Monday. But he was assembling some materials, and I didn't end up even starting until Midnight. I worked until about 4, and I went to bed out of duty. I wasn't tired, but I knew staying up any later would throw me further out of sync with the real world.

I woke up the next morning thinking about it. It was Easter, and I would have liked to enjoy it. But I also couldn't leave him hanging. So I started working and spent most of the day doing so.

I took one break to make some bad-ass chili, though.

Lindsay got sick of waiting around and went to have coffee with Atom. She ended up hanging out for a long time. I finished my work and cleaned up a bit, and then sat down to play some Crysis 2 multiplayer with Ryan (that's probably the last time, it's ok but nothing special).

After a couple rounds, I got a call from Lindsay, who was shaken up because when she left Atom's house and headed to her car, a kid started shooting a gun at a car that was driving down the street. He just took the gun out, fired a couple shots, tucked it and kept walking, albeit it much faster. When he shot, he was about 5 feet from Lindsay.

What the fuck is wrong with people? That shit pisses me off to no end.

So I told Lindsay to call of police, and I didn't much feel like shooting fools in Crysis anymore.

Towers, pet rants and work.

Last night I was in bed and it was late. I had my computer, and wanted to play simple game (since I was in bed and without a surface to mouse on). I browsed my Steam games and didn't feel like playing any of those, so I downloaded the Anomaly Warzone Earth demo.

I had heard some good things about it, it's super cheap, and it works on Mac, so I didn't have to reboot to Windows. Despite it's lame name, that's good enough for me.

It's been called a Reverse Tower Defense game, because you're a small fleet of vehicles making your way through the streets while massive alien towers blast at you. And it works super well.

I'm not a huge fan of Tower Defense to start with, either. They have to have something unique about them for me to be a fan. I liked PixelJunk Monsters a fair bit, with your little dancing player character. And Swords & Soldiers was a fun take on a 2D side scrolling Tower Defense as well. Toy Soldiers was a blast too. But in every case, there's a point I always hit that I just quit. When it get hard. It's not that it's too hard, really, it's that it take too long to get the point where you lose. You make your plan and if it's the wrong plan, there's usually not a ton you can do about it, but you don't know that until you're 10 or 15 minutes in. And I hate that feeling.

But Anomaly is much more reactive. You can change your path, reorder your troops, buy new units and, like PixelJunk Monsters, you have an avatar. He's can't attack, but he can run around to grab powerups as well as throw down concealing smoke, decoys, repair kits and call in air strikes.

So it's a bit like a tower defense game, a bit like a tactical puzzle game, and even a bit action-y, since you can't be everywhere at once.

Anyway, it's really well done, with really nice graphics and slick presentation. I went to buy it and throw the developers a few bucks for their solid effort. But Steam didn't have a record of my credit card... it seems like ever since you have to enter a code to authorize a computer (which it makes me do every time I switch from windows to mac), it takes out all my info.

Since I'm too lazy to reenter it... I guess maybe I won't get that game. If the mood strikes me and I actually have my wallet on me that there's a chance.

Today was busy. I got up kind of early, actually, and got ready for the day. Lindsay and I went out to breakfast, but there were massive lines everywhere. Of course. Sunday morning. We almost resorted to Old Country Buffet, but decided to just grab something at noodles instead. Too bad I was really looking forward to some eggs, toast and bacon.

We ran to target and bought a ton of crap, and then made a surprise trip to the Humane Society. The were having some sort of Rabbit Meet-and-Greet, so there was a large room with about 40 or 50 rabbits running around and playing. There was bridges to climb over, boxes to hide in, and a swarm of people around the perimeter watching. It was really funny, and I'm surprised at how social they all were. They were playing with each other, and running up to strangers to be pet.

We took a look at the dogs and cats, not because we need anymore, obviously, but just to see what's going on in the animal rescue world. I was shocked to see that there wasn't much. There were about 15-20 dogs, but at least 1/2 were spoken for already. And the cats were even more amazing! There must have been 10-15 cats, and of those only 3 hadn't been claimed. Crazy! Usually in the early spring that place is FILLED with cats needing homes. They must have had a good weekend or something.

It's still sad to see some of the older dogs and cats who were put up for grabs. The reasons people leave pets make me really angry. There's a lot of 'moving' or 'landloard issues' but c'mon! Fuck you! You got a pet and you have a responsibility! Figure it out! Move to a different place! Make arrangements to take it!

But maybe there's something more to the story that I don't know (although that's such a common reason that in most cases, I doubt it). But then there's really bad ones, like an 11 year old dogs was given up because "he wasn't active enough."

I swear, if I met the person who gave up an old dog for not being active enough, I would punch them in the dick and the face at the same time.

Sorry, not I'm all worked up. But pet's are obviously a big deal to me and I hate to see people treat it like a joke.

After the Humane Society, we grabbed some materials from the hardware store and went to the studio. Lindsay coated our new desks in polyurethane and painted the wall dividers while I worked on a project I need finished by Wednesday. It's actually went smoothly and was pretty relaxing, so no big whoop.

Cleaning and Shopping.

I had hoped to work on some art today, personal or otherwise, but it was not meant to be, I guess.

I got up feeling pretty good. This week was a long week and it felt pretty good to sleep in, even though I didn't go to bed all that late, surprisingly.

I worked out and listened to the jams really loud. I started cleaning after that, and kept cleaning and cleaning and cleaning. Lindsay was teaching in the AM, but went out with Francesca and Atom and didn't end up coming home until 5 or so. I just cleaned the whole time... I did eat some cereal at some point, too.

When she did get home, we had to go sign our final papers for our taxes. So we drove over to our accountants office on the other side of town.

On the way back, we went to pick up Francesca again and we all went to the Mall of America. I had cleaned out a massive amount of old clothes while cleaning, and decided it was time to get some new duds.

I'm usually pretty good about just getting something here or there, but I've been so busy that I've got nothing lately. And all my ish is junk. So I had a list, mainly consisting of shirts and jackets/hoodies.

I scored big on the shirt and came away with 5 or 6 plus a couple ties, but we were there too late to really find anything I liked for hoodies/jackets. The one I did like wasn't in my size, and it was too late to have anyone check in back for more. So no dice.

I didn't realize I hadn't eaten since the cereal I had in the morning, we eventually stopped for some Sushi, which was amazing. I was totally starving and I couldn't have thought of a better food.

Taxes and Far Cry 2 returns

Today was pretty crappy. Or at least, it started out so.

I had a bunch of work to do, that I was supposed to deliver to a client in the afternoon. Waking up was a pain, but we had a phone meeting in the morning, so we had to get to the office.

I'm not sure why all three of us needed to be involved in the phone meeting, as the client mainly just recited grammatical changes to the text is a book we laid out. But whatever. As we did that, I checked the files I needed to work on, and realized everything was wrong. I had help starting the files, and I was just going to put the finishing touches on and be done with it, but I slowly realized I was going to have to start from scratch.

Just as I was hanging my head in my hands, Lindsay threw a packet on my desk and told me to call our broker and set up our IRA's for the previous year. We met with our accountant the other night to do our 2010 taxes, and the only thing that was left to do was to set up these IRA's. Our taxes took into account the money we would be putting away for retirement, so if we didn't get these accounts set up, our taxes would be way off.

I called and I was told "it's too late to set it up for the 2010 year..." I hung up and tried to get our broker's name, but he's no longer with the company. So I had to deal with people totally unfamiliar with out child-like understanding of finances.

But basically I got it figured out. I set up the account but we had to A) have ID, and Lindsay's Drivers License is expired. And B) Wire the funds immediately. And Lindsay had to teach at 1 pm. And it was 11:45.

So we raced home, grabbed her passport, set up her accounts in the car on the way to the bank, where we wired the funds. After a lot of problems at the bank. They didn't understand what we were trying to do. They didn't understand the urgency. They didn't want to transfer the funds because the IRA wasn't through them. They didn't want to transfer the funds because we didn't have an account number.

I had to call our IRA provider and have them make up a fake account number because the accounts aren't created until the money is in them...

But we did it and I dropped Lindsay off at MCAD before returning to the studio... Too late to finish that project and get it back to the client. So I let them know, but then Lindsay called, because she forgot some books she needed for class in the car. So I drove them back to her.

Now the day was gone. And Twink peed in the new studio, twice. Francesca had thrown him in there because the usual studio was freezing thanks to a wild weather shift. And I guess the dogs got pretty worked up about being along in a new place while we were gone.

Once I was finally back int the studio, it was all good. I cranked on that project and got further than I expected. Francesca and I talked about Jason Rohrer's videogames, which led us to somehow talk about Far Cry 2 and how totally amazing it was.

Once Linday was finished teaching, we all went to Pho Hoa and ate some delicious food. Then we came home. I played through the Lost Hobo King DLC for Stacking, which was super short, but also really good. I'm ok with short DLC, it was just enough to have a good time but not enough to get old.

Then I popped in Far Cry 2, because Francesca wanted to get a mental picture of it.

I spent a few minutes reorienting myself to the game. Then it all came flooding back. I LOVE Far Cry 2. The most. It is one of my favorite games ever. Maybe my very favorite. It is the best, and it is exactly what I want from every game ever.

I put the game down because I was sad thanks to an end-game mistake where I saved at a point where I wasn't free to explore anymore. It's a weird point, because it's unlike the entire rest of the game. So fair warning! Once you go to the Jackal's compound in the finale of the game, don't save over your older saves.

So I lost all the diamonds I'd found, checkpoints I'd scouted, safehouses I'd liberated, weapons/tools that I'd unlocked. Just because I accidentally saved over my most recent multiple saves.

I still had a save that was at about 54% (that's specifically story related, so finishing the game does put you at 100%, unlike a GTA or other open world games that count side-quests and other content).

At the time I first realized my mistake, just after I beat the game, I was pretty bummed. I couldn't go back and loose those hours and progress, even though I wanted to clear every safehouse and scout every checkpoint and do every side mission. But going back 1/2 way through a massive game was too much of a momentum killer.

But time has healed all wounds, and I'm hungry for Far Cry 2 again. I spent a while raiding checkpoints, and looking for diamonds, and even completing a mission or two. And it was grand. The game holds up amazingly well, the world is dense and believable and the lighting is still some of the best I've seen.

If I could have any game in the world, it would be a Clint Hocking-created Far Cry 3 preferably with the destructibility of Battlefield's Frostbyte engine (Far Cry 2's pretty good as far as that goes, but if it could take it as far as the Bad Company 2, that would be even better).

So there's a big, long post about boring crap and videogames. Just like the old days!

Playing catch-up.

Hmmm, a two or three weeks since my last post? What has happened in a few weeks?

I played through, and beat, Crysis 2. It was pretty good. I'm not totally in love, although it was probably the best FPS, singleplayer-wise, I've played in a long time.

I'm always into shooters that are more open. I've never been into the tightly scripted CoD-type campaigns, but lately it's been tough to find anything outside of that mold.

Crysis 2 does a pretty bang-up job of presenting wide-open areas in an otherwise very linear game. The suit powers and weapons help with that, too. There's no 'best weapon' to take, or best course of action, it's just what you feel like doing.

I might even go back, since I think there's a new game + option, just to replay the opening levels with of the freedom and power you get by the end of the game.

But really, the slightly wider corridors really just make me want to go back to Far Cry 2. I swear not a week goes by where I don't think about booting that game up...

We had art in ARTCRANK. That was cool to see. It was a massive party, and there was a lot going on.

Also, CVA arranged a studio visit for about 20 freshmen to visit Paper Bicycle studios. So last Friday a bunch of kids came in and we talked at them for about an hour or so, letting them know what we do.

In honor of the school visiting us, we decided to really bust our asses to get the 2nd studio painted. We started the first coat with a purple that ended up being too dark, so we went back with a much lighter color, using the paint that was left from painting the first studio. That was a full day of suck, but we did it. Besides finishing details, that is.

Also, one friday we somehow decided to get out of our over-worked mindset by doing some Darklands fanart.

We did dinner with the Schons' the other day, and Isara is looking mighty pregnant. It won't be long until we're having some quality baby-time with a mini-Schons.

I'm trying to catch up with SAAC but I feel guilty working on something that's not due for a client. But I'll do it. I swear I will get caught up.

I've also been spending a bit more time getting back into shape. The ungodly amount of work we had to do this winter, combined with the bitter cold has made me soft. So I've got a gameplan and so far I've lost about 7 lbs. I expect to lose another 10 or so before I'm through.

Most nights have been too busy for much but I'm chipping away at Dragon Age 2 when I can. I'm still liking it a ton, maybe because I can't play it long enough to see how repetitive it is...

I got to finish a design tonight. I'm excited, though, because I spent the day working on it, and I was pretty lukewarm on it. But then I switched up the colors (there's only 2) and it made all the difference in the world.

Oh yeah, blog, I haven't been ignoring you for twitter. I've been finding it even harder to post anything over there... maybe I just don't have a ton to say lately...