So I have given up on all my current games except Cosmic Rift. My Half-Life install is broken. The good thing about Cosmic Rift is that it doesn’t require too much horsepower, because it’s a simple 2d game with sprites. It does require skill and it makes me feel old school, which is good. That and I had a birthday bbq, which Tracy did an amazing job of cooking. She really outdid herself, with 3 excellent salads(pasta, potato, and an asian noodle), bbq pork, bbq chicken, and carrot cake and my favorite black bottom banana pie.

My big 29th birthday is fast approaching and the perennial question of: “what do you want for your birthday?” always seems to come up. I’ve decided that I don’t really like buying gadgets. I used to, but not anymore, and I can’t really seem to figure out why. I still like playing with them, but I never seem to buy them anymore. They seem a little frivolous, and unecessarily expensive, but even that’s not the problem. Maybe I’m just getting old, maybe I’m getting cheap(though I don’t think that’s it), or maybe(and this is the theory I subscribe to) I am so enamored by the pace of change, that it seems useless to buy toys that will be out of date in a matter of months.

I know several people that went to E3, including chilipino, nu##, skp, and Emetri, and the reports are in. It seems that Planetside is going to be really cool. Also highly touted from this years show is Star Wars: Galaxies. Both are Massively Mutiplayer Online Role Playing Games(MMORPGs). I read a review on Galaxies and the scope is amazing, they are going to do things that have never been done before. Of course that’s not surprising considering that games have always been the leading edge of technology, but they are going well beyond the scope of anything ever done, and they want to make a true economy and have extreme faithfulness to the Star Wars genre.

I’ve also sort of started playing Cosmic Rift which is extremely similar to the old Subspace that I used to play back in the earliest days I worked at CyberSource. It takes skill and practice and I like it, I feel all old school now. It’ll be something to pass the time I guess.

Well this week is the ever exciting E3 which is the Mecca for all things computer games. This years big features are mostly about the X-Box, but I’m excited about the upcoming Warcraft III of course. I’m up for anything from Blizzard and a few other games as well. I think I’ve officially given up on Black and White, while extremely pretty and innovative, the game play leaves a little to be desired, that and some of the puzzles are frustrating. I never buy consoles, but I actually am tempted to buy an X-box. There’s talk on Slashdot about turning X-boxes into super cheap linux servers, which makes sense, because consoles are always sold at a loss because the companies make money on the games. The economics of it say that each one will cost about $400-$450 to make, and they’ll be sold for $299 each. With a fairly fast processor and builtin networking, it could be pretty cheap and a fun project.

Here is the proof that women are evil.

So I like these new BMW Films, they get big name directors to do 5 minute short movies starring a BMW. It’s a neat marketing trick that seems to be going over well with audiences. It makes me want to buy a new BMW M3, now that is a sweet car. Too much money, but still a cool car.

Tracy is out of town on her first business trip. Not that exciting really. In other news, Ben and Lydia got engaged and we got to see her ring this weekend.

Oh and Geeks should read the 12 things said by Klingon programmers.

Sadly, the Mariners have had a bit of a skid, they still lead the MLB with a awesome 24-9 record, but it is not quite as amazing as before.