Finale Thoughts

Seems like most of the shows I watch on a regular basis have wrapped up for the summer...I guess I should chime in with my two cents; after all, everyone else is.

24 - Great conclusion to the best season since the last one. I've posted how much I love this show before, and it never disappoints. Two complaints: the last half hour was secondary to this season's primary plot, although necessary to set up next season, and I could have done without the "teaser" for next season that undid the suspense of "will he or won't he be back" that the aforementioned last half hour set up.

House - Neat two-episode arc that added a lot to the title character, although I can't say I'm excited to see Sela Ward added to the cast full-time. I don't know if I'm showing my age or how little TV I actually watch, but I'm not sure why I was supposed to be excited that she was guest starring in the first place. That aside, House is probably the best character on TV right now, and if you haven't seen this show, you're really missing out.

Law and Order - In a word: meh. Trial by Jury had the best final ep out of the four shows, but it had such a short run that it never had a chance to get going, and it won't be back. The "parent" show had a much more interesting show the previous week, compounded by the fact that the headline that the finale was ripped from had already been "ripped" by Criminal Intent earlier this spring. CI's finale was solid, but felt like just another episode, and didn't do anything to set up the fact that there will be two pairs of detectives, each doing half the shows next season. And SVU? Well, this year's best-in-series had the absolute worst finale, centering around a conspiracy theory that wouldn't have flown on The X-Files.

Fortunately, there are still a few episodes of The Shield and an entire summer season of Rescue Me to cover me through Rerunville until my programs start up again.

The Anti-Minutemen

Call me heartless, but it seems to me that with all the trouble this country is having with illegal immigrants, organizations like this one are making it all the more difficult to properly secure our borders. After all, the more dangerous it is to illegally cross the border, the fewer people will make the attempt. If stories like this become more common and make their way over the border, the pressure on our already overextended border patrol may lessen somewhat before the government has to spend any of our hard-earned tax dollars.

Funny, too...I thought aiding and abetting in the commission of a crime was also a crime in and of itself. Humane Borders exists as an organization for the sole purpose of aiding and abetting people who violate federal immigration law on a daily basis. It's unfathomable to me that they haven't been shut down or even charged with a crime.

Repeat offender

What a surprise.

Lionel Tate arrested in armed robbery

I mean, really, who would ever in their right mind have thought that a person who beat a six-year-old to death would continue to commit crimes? This story can be summed up in four sentences from the article linked above: "He was convicted in 1999 and sent to prison for life without chance of parole. He won a new trial on appeal and went free in January 2004 under a deal that placed him under house arrest for a year followed by probation for 10 years. [...] He was arrested in September for violating probation by being out of his home overnight... A judge added another five years to the 10 years Tate had left on the original probation."

Just so we have it straight, Your Honor...he violates probation, so the solution is...more of the same proven ineffective probation? What a Solomonic decision. Why can't certain people see that some so-called people simply have no place in society?

Badmouthing

Much like Squidly, I'm also getting tired of World of Warcraft, though for very different reasons: Squidly has advanced his character to the highest level possible, and pretty much done and seen everything the game has to offer, while my character is pretty well stuck a few rungs shy of the top of the level ladder, thanks to an ill-advised revamping of their Player vs. Player system. I got the game about six months ago, and enjoyed almost every minute of the first five of those months. In the beginning, our gaming group chose to play on the PvP Azgalor server. This gave players and teams from the game's opposing factions that chance to test their skills and teamwork against one another. And at first, it all worked more or less the way it should. There was a definite advantage to grouping up and watching one another's backs, but it wasn't required...except for a few underdeveloped minds with IQs slightly above the level of cabbage who enjoyed attacking people half as powerful as them, most of the PvP fights were relatively fair, with the majority of folks winning as many battles as they lost. Then came the 1.4 patch, and suddenly everything changed.

With the new patch came a point system that rewarded killing players roughly the same level as you, with in-game equipment rewards to go along with it. Sounds good on paper, but unfortunately, the key words in that sentence are "roughly the same level"...and Blizzard Entertainment and I apparently have very different ideas of what that phrase means. Suddenly, a group of level 60 characters (the highest level in the game) can benefit from ganging up on a lone level 50 who wouldn't stand a chance against any one of his opponents. And it's very ironic that the score is measured in "honor points", because the best way to get kills is very dishonorable--simply attack an enemy character who's already got his hands full fighting a computer-generated enemy. It's reached the point where the frustration factor of not being able to complete the easiest of quests on my own because of interference from roving packs of opposing players has outweighed the fun factor of the times when I am able to play at the same times as my pals. So I've quit, and I post this review mainly as a warning to anyone thinking of joining the fun: it's just not the same game as it was when I was singing its praises. Blizzard believes that this problem will work itself out on its own when their Battlegrounds dedicated PvP areas come online, but I'm simply not willing to continue spending my money while I wait to see if that acutally happens. When my subscription runs out this time, I won't be renewing it. In the meantime, you can find me playing World War II Online.

And just because it has been over a week since my last update, I'll vent a little more spleen your way, dear reader. A couple of updates ago, I promised that I'd write something resembling a review of Ben Folds's latest album, Songs for Silverman once I'd had a chance to listen to it a few times. I'm about as big a fan of Ben as they come (I do believe I have every studio track he's ever recorded, and last year I went to see him in concert not once but twice), but in all honesty, this album left me a little bit disappointed, and I'm not entirely sure why. There's not any particular song that I don't like, but there really aren't any that stand out, either. The instrumental music is as good as it's ever been, but most of Ben's best songs have been about loss and rejection. Now that he's a happily married father, those songs that still follow that theme don't make quite the impact they once did. Take, for example, "Trusted"--it could have been a really great, emotional song, but the strongest emotion it evokes is a sort of mild, detached disappointment. And it's a shame that one of the album's 11 songs is a remix of "Give Judy My Notice" from his Speed Graphic EP. Still, as far as I'm concerned, Ben Folds is like The Simpsons, Law & Order, and Stephen King: a lesser entry from any of them is usually better than a good outing from just about anyone else. My final recommendation is to give it a listen, especially if you can find the version that comes with the bonus CD Songs for Goldfish, which contains a bunch of live tracks and a decent studio track that's neve been released before.

Weekend Fun

Whew...a nice, quiet weekend at home....yeah, right!

I had my semi-regular poker game last night. It's the damnedest thing--it seems like whenever I play poker, I end up with a hangover the next morning. They should research that in one of those medical journals.

Eventually, I recovered enough to go in to work--I had to replace the monitoring card in an IBM eServer. Those are really cool machines--we've got ours configured so that any of us can plug our laptops in and view the system logs no matter what condition the server itself is in. When I was finished, I walked over from my office to the Chapel Street Playhouse to see one of my coworkers play the lead role in a play called Taking Leave. It's about an English professor forced into retirement by the ravages of Alzheimer's disease. There are plenty of funny moments, but I was particularly touched by it given that the disease runs in my mother's side of my family. It will run one last time this coming weekend, so if you live anywhere near Newark, Delaware, I highly recommend you go see it.

Sunday morning, it was time to get up early (at least for me on a Sunday morning) and brave the drizzly weather to head up to On Target Paintball for some games with my friend Squidly. He was trying to get a new marker set up for tournament play, and I was trying to solve a problem with ball breakage inside the gun. My problem was easily solved after I shot through a pod of the Squidmeister's paint--the stuff I started out with was left over from last season. It went against every frugal bone in my body, but once I dumped out a quarter case of 2004's leftovers and opened a fresh box I bought on my way to work on Saturday, they miraculously stopped breaking in the barrel. I'm still having some difficulty with undershooting right now--I'm not shooting the gun fast enough, and two and three balls are dropping into the chamber. That's one of my areas to work on next time--firing shorter, faster bursts so they don't back up in the barrel. Mentally, I still need to work on my timing for moving up and staying back, and also to get better at staying low and wrapping around the bunkers instead of coming over the top to shoot.

It was a great time, though--really, the first time I was able to effectively use my BKO (my first outing was marred by the aforementioned barrel breaks). It makes a huge difference in accuracy, moving from a semi-auto CO2 powered gun to an electronic compressed air model. I got more kills yesterday than in any previous outing--maybe even more than all of last season. I was able to shoot exposed heads, feet, and hoppers with something resembling consistency, something I would only be able to do through blind luck with my old Spyder. One game in particular, a group of five young kids needed a sixth to get a three-on-three match going, so I took the field--and proceeded to shoot all three opponents out in about two minutes. The kids were all smiling when they came off the field, though, so I didn't feel too bad about it. We played from about 10:30 in the morning until about 3:00 in the afternoon--due a shortage of refs and a surprisingly high turnout, we only got about three games in before lunch, but the sun came out a little before noon, and we played almost nonstop for the rest of the day. Then it was back to Casa de Squid for the traditional postgame beer/chat--it's amazing how much his daughter's grown in the past year. It's also amazing how much better shape I'm in than I was at the start of last season--last year, my legs were fixing to fall off by the time I went home, and all I could do was sack out on the couch with McDonald's or a pizza. Last night, I had enough energy to cook myself a decent dinner (orange roughy in a tomato, white wine, and cream sauce and spinach sauteed with butter and garlic), and even stayed awake long enough to watch Law and Order: Criminal Intent on Tivo before going to bed a little after 11:00.

Maybe this weekend will be one to relax at home....but I hope not.

Back from the dead

Wow--an entire month since my last update. King Procrastination--that's me. "Meh--I can update tomorrow" has been my rallying cry.

So what have I been doing for the past month?

-Playing a fairly regular poker game just about every weekend
-Continuing to slowly, ever so slowly march my World of Warcraft character toward level 60
-Took a weekend trip to Alexandria, Virginia to see Pat Carroll play at Murphy's for a friend's birthday (I have pictures to go on my Flickr site this week)
-Took an overnight trip to Philadelphia for a friend's bachelor party (sorry, no pictures of that one!)
-Keeping up with 24, watching Law and Order on the rare occasion that they play a new episode (the exception being the new Trial by Jury show, which so far has been new every week since its debut), and enjoying the new season of The Shield (Glenn Close is good, but Anthony Anderson is stealing the show this season, showing he can be much, much more than just a comic foil to DMX)
-Listening to the new Ben Folds album, Songs for Silverman (see the Recent Experiences section for a link). I'm going to dedicate a future update to reviewing this one--and no, it won't be a month from now, smartass.
-Reading a few books, some good (again, see the Recent Experiences for a good one I'm reading right now), and some not so good (I tried getting into Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, but frankly, the time period it covers is one that I find boring, and I put down the first book in the cycle and didn't pick it back up)

I'm trying to come up with a "hook" for this blog, something to make it more than just a Livejournal site, which is (honestly) pretty boring to write, and probably boring to read, except to a few people who know me. If you've got any suggestions, leave 'em in the comments.

Opening Day

No, not Sawks-Yankees...that's not until Sunday. I'm talking about paintball--my friend Matt and I got out for our first outing of the year on Saturday. We stayed local to me this time, going to ECX, a small field about 20 minutes south of my house.

This field gets a mixed review from our first day of play. The field hasn't been open for very long in its latest incarnation, so I'm willing to give them a little slack, but they seemed pretty disorganized--there was quite a bit of down time in between games on the X-ball field. We played exclusively on the X-ball field--there had been quite a bit of rain for a couple of days before we got there, so the woodsball area was a muddy mess, and the smaller airball field only had half its obstacles inflated, probably so the ECX team could practice on it.

That was the biggest difference between this field and others I've played at. There, most of the other players were recreational players like us. Here, most of the other players on the X-ball field were members of the ECX factory team--semi-pros who eat rec ballers for breakfast. They did a very good job of keeping things even; Matt and I were split between two teams of tourney players, but we still felt a bit like target practice dummies, especially during the early rounds. It was really neat just to watch them play, though--I felt like I learned a lot about the strategy and flow of the game just being out on the field with players of that caliber. I'll definitely go back in a couple of weeks--if they can just cut down on the waiting time between games, this will be a great place to play.

Technical Difficulties

What a night for technology last night. I went to go play WoW for a while--my dwarf hunter is very close to level 51, and several of my friends were online last night and had time to help put me over the hump and then some. But of course, about fifteen minute in, the server started barfing, I got crashed out, and couldn't get back in.

I was a little miffed (these problems have been prevalent lately, and I'm paying a monthly subscription fee to play this game, after all), but went downstairs to watch the NCAA tournament. There was a great game on--West Virginia was taking it to the higher-ranked Texas Tech. I get up, go into the kitchen for a beer, and when I get back...nothing. There's a black screen on the TV. A few minutes later, the DirecTV logo comes up, along with a message saying "Technical difficulties, please stand by." I never did see the rest of the games.

Technology stinks.

Chili Cookin'

I made a nice big pot of hot, hearty chili tonight while I was watching the late-starting NCAA playoff games. A friend asked me for the recipe last week, and plug whore that I am, I promised to post it on my blog when I made it. It's an adaptation of a recipe I linked a while ago off the Beer Advocate website. So without further adieu, here it is.

Beast's Bitchin' Beer and Two-Bean Chili

1 1/2 pounds lean ground beef
1 can tomato soup
1 can red beans
1 can black beans
1/2 can beer
2 tablespoons chili powder
1 tablespoon Tabasco sauce
1 tablespoon buffalo wing hot sauce
6 small Habanero chiles, optional; seeded and finely chopped
1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese

Brown the ground beef in a large pot or Dutch oven. Drain fat. Add all remaining ingredients except cheddar cheese. Stir together and bring to a hard simmer. Once the chili starts to bubble, reduce heat to low and cover. Simmer for at least one hour--the longer the better. If the chili gets too thick, add more beer. Don't worry if it appears too thin--it will thicken when the cheese is added. A few minutes before serving, stir in the cheddar cheese. Serve with tortilla chips and sour cream.

Down With the Sickness

Ugh...another week I've gone without updating this thing. Good thing no one ever reads it.

I caught a flu bug this week--without question the worst one that I can remember. I was fine after my trip to Baltimore, and even had a friend stop by to watch 24 with me on Monday night. I went to bed feeling fine, albeit a little chilly (which is nothing new, since my house dates back to the early part of the 20th century and most of its doors and windows have gaps big enough to put a baby's pinky through). But when I woke up no less than six times during the night in a cold sweat, I knew I was in trouble. Sure enough, when I woke up a little before 7 AM, I could barely get out of bed--I was freezing, sweating, and aching all at once. A quick check of my temperature confirmed I had a fever (right around 101), so I called in sick to work and settled down on my couch to get some rest and catch up on my Tivo-watching. Or so I thought.

I was so exhausted that I was asleep for about three hours for every one I was awake. Unfortunately, when I did wake up, it was because my particular flu bug came with a prize: a stomach component that had me...trotting...up the stairs to the bathroom every couple hours. Or at least it would have if I'd been able to trot. I had to more or less drag myself up the stairs--and more than once, I thought I was going to tumble down them, crash through the window at the bottom of them, and not be found until my carcass started to smell.

Fortunately, the flu portion of the bug subsided by Wednesday morning, and I was able to make it the rest of the way through the week. And even more fortunately, my stomach symptoms went away by the weekend, so I was able to enjoy a visit to my parents' house with them and my grandparents. We ate some good food (I get all my cooking skill from my mother) and watched a lot of good NCAA tournament games. I'm not a particularly big basketball fan (I never watch the NBA, and don't watch college hoops until about late February), but watching Bucknell (my father's alma mater, which made the game even more fun to watch) win a huge upset over Kansas and watching West Virginia knock off Wake Forest in double overtime were two of the greatest hoops contests I've seen in a long, long time.

Li'l Jimmy

I took a trip to Baltimore this weekend with a couple of friends. Our mission: to see Opie and Anthony Show regular Jim Norton at the Baltimore Improv. But of course nothing in my life is ever as simple as it should be.

I booked a hotel from a travel site, following a link to the Inner Harbor Days Inn, bought tickets to the show, and got the directions to the hotel from Mapquest. On Saturday morning, we loaded up the car and hit the road. The first clue that something was wrong was when the Mapquest directions took us past the Inner Harbor exits on I-95. But we soldiered on to the exit specified, and immediately after getting off the highway we were greeted by a "Welcome to Baltimore" sign. After a bit of driving around through some pretty rough neighborhoods, we ended up at the hotel--nowhere near the Inner Harbor area. It turns out that the link I clicked on took me to another Days Inn--right in the heart of one of the bad sections of town.

Fortunately, because we got an early start, we had plenty of time to call and cancel the reservation. (Fortunately, my friends have cell phones--I'm pretty sure I'm the last person I know who doesn't.) Then we drove to the Inner Harbor, and were able to get a room at the right Days Inn, and were able to continue as planned. We did a bit of walking around, stopped for a late lunch/early dinner at the Capital City Brewery, then walked over to the Improv to see the show.

And it was a really great show. It was very different from what Jim does on the O&A show, but was absolutely hilarious. Norton has a great act and great delivery, and didn't miss a beat while berating some loud chatty broad in the audience--or when said broad tripped over a step and hit the deck. I was hoping to get a picture with Jim for this site, but the line was just too long--we'd gone to the 7 PM show, so we hit another local microbrew pub for the next couple hours. We also got a chance to size up the crowd coming in for the 9 PM show, and we chose the right one. As my pal Matt pointed out, "I've never seen that many neck tattoos in one place before." Jim Norton puts on a great show, and as long as your sensibilities aren't easily offended, I highly recommend you take the opportunity to see his act if he comes to a town near you.

Remembering Madrid

Today Spain remembers the victims of last year's Madrid train bombings. And what a great way to honor the victims of a heinous act of terrorism--a group of Spanish muslim clerics (mostly Shiites, representing 70% of the mosques in Spain and over a million Spanish Muslims) have issued a fatwa against America's most wanted, Osama bin Laden himself. Frankly, I'm just surprised it's taken this long for the representative majority to start speaking out against the lunatic fringe that gets all the publicity and paints them all with the same tarnished brush. Kudos, and hopefully the rest of Spain can follow this lead and continue to be an ally in the fight against terrorism.