What is wrong with the world?
I’ll just number them:
Month: September 2007
Let It Be True!
Woah!
This is scary! Is it accurate?!
Also, blatant corruption, and a cop with self-esteem problems.
EDIT: This should be illegal!
Server Upgrade
It was down for an hour or so for a good reason: case swap.
My old case was horribly prone to overheating. The fan mounts allowed for pathetic amounts of airflow and seemed somewhat of a joke. The only fan was that in the cheap, possibly overheating PSU. When I get this case all set up, it will have three This case has two fans, not including the PSU. The old case tended to overheat to the point the computer would stop responding around once a month. The last straw was when it did so twice in around three days. I was going to get three 90mm PCI slot fans, (and I now just realized that this mobo only seems to have 2 PCI slots >.<) but ended up just fixing the base of the problem and getting a better case. A better PSU helps too. Hooray for Vertex!
EDIT: The final fan mount isn’t fitting. I’m going to see if I can get a fan that fits.
EDIT2: Oh. It’s not a fan mount. That makes sense, then. I’m glad they let me return the fan.
Team Fortress 2!
I’ve been playing Team Fortress 2 for a while, and I really like it. I may not always be the top of the board, but I tend to be 2nd or 3rd on a good set of rounds. The classes are very, very well balanced, with every strategy having a counter-strategy. Even if the enemy has 5 fully-upgraded turrets, it is possible to, as a spy, disguise as a member of the opposite team, and take them out without ever being noticed. A disguised spy cannot use any weapons of the class they are disguised as. Using any weapons will undo the disguise, and enemy turrets will once again target the spy.
With the exception of the Pyro’s flamethrower, and maybe some others I’m missing, hitting a spy with your weapon will not undo their disguise. The only way to expose a disguised spy is to do enough damage to kill the spy. If FF is on, this becomes much tricker and riskier. (Friendly fire has since been removed from the game entirely by Valve.)
I like being medic, and helping people who run over to cover while wounded. Invulnerability (called Ãœbercharge) has the potenial to completely change the tide of battle in around 10 seconds.
Screenshots:
It looks even better full-size and in-motion. The character shadows are real-time, the colors are vibrant, and the players are carefully shaded to pop out from the background. Your eyes are not fooling you, and players really do have dynamic expressions! This game is amazing!
EDIT: I found a wonderfully done series of TF2 class reviews, with Heavy, Medic, Demoman, and Pyro so far.
EDIT 2:Â They’re finished with all the classes now! Here’s Sniper, Engineer, Soldier, Scout, and that annoying Spy.
Oh No…
Sigh.
Edit: Link broken, I don’t know what this was now.
Aaah!
How could they vote against HABEAS CORPUS?! Good to see all the Democrats and some Republicans voted for. The only sane thing to do, really.
Wait… That Can’t Be Right…
Do my eyes deceive me, or does a panda sneezing get double the views of a well-done roast of our joke of a president? It looks like it – panda gets 8,697,676, while Colbert gets 4,510,040! Date posted can’t be a factor – Colbert went up in April of 2006, while the panda did so in November of the same year!
Zero Punctuation!
The British accent makes it more awesome. This one has an… imaginative ending however. You’ve been warned!
On a somewhat related not, I preordered Orange Box the day it opened up for preorder, so TF2 beta, here I come! I hope that not only is it good, but also that my graphics card can handle it. Valve’s dropping DX7 support, apparently. This makes the lower end closer to my aging gaming machine. Valve seems to assume with their site design that average people are running widescreen or crazy-high resolutions or something – their sites don’t fit horizontally on one 1024×768 screen…
Contact!
Well, it’s happened again. I’ve been spontaneously contacted by someone I had no prior knowledge of who lives in another state…
steve,
i stumbled over your blogspot while doing a search. it’s great! but, what i really wanna know is…did you attend pine forest high school, fayetteville, nc?
jerri olsen
san antonio, texas
Hi Jerri, I’m really glad you like my blog. I have to say I’ve never attended Pine Forest High School – I’ve never lived outside of Michigan.
Just out of curiosity, what were you searching for when you found my site?
Would you mind if I wrote about this email on my blog?
Steve Dougherty
Lansing, Michigan
Thanks for getting back Steve. Hmmm…well, to be perfectly honest with you…it was someone I went to high school with…who has your name! I think I’m having a nostalgic moment. ; ) But he would have graduated in 1970. Yes, we’re old!!!!! hahaha!Thank you! That’s sweet of you to mention this email. It might even find MY Steve. : )
There you have it. First Hawaii, now Texas. I’m amazed.