New Links

Here are some links I though people would find interesting.

General Computer Science Information: I could read this all day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Computer_Science

Famous in Computer Science and his contributions to the majority of my homework, thank you

Mr. Dijkstra.....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edsger_Dijkstra

On another topic, Modern Warfare 2 comes out Tuesday. I'm still unsure about purchasing it right now with school. I have excellent self control, but why risk it? I'll have plenty of time after. This intersession I MUST think of a coding project I want to do in C#.

Even more serious lack of updates!!

Oh my god what has happened since July 30, my last blog post. With over 3 months (quarter of a year) behind me since the last post I’m not quite sure where to begin. Let’s just plow away.

So I began dating to a semi-serious degree. I have allowed myself to get walked on, missed some opportunities, left a tad bit sad hearted, made some great friends and had some exciting experiences. Needless to say I still have yet to learn that I should not be dating until I finish school. But I’m not sure if that is quite human either. I don’t know the real answer to that.

So I figure by the end of this semester I’ll either have become some uber computer programmer or I will have exhausted every cell within my brain to be anything useful. I can’t even begin the degree of stress that I have incurred with this schedule (that I really had no choice unless I dropped out). Tons of programs, gobs of research and new things I have never been exposed to all dropping down on me at once.

For our Software Engineering project we decided to create a program that creates random word search puzzles based on settings the user can specify. Sounds fun, were trudging away and hopefully with have a fully working program before semesters end like we are supposed to.

Magic has been placed on the back burner. There is just too much to keep up with right now. Friends and Homework need to come first, unfortunately that means shutting out some of my magic friends whereas that is how I know them. I hope they will ultimately understand but I think their patience is dwindling.

Serious Lack of updates, Magic and Wall-mart!

So I got motivated today and decided to post something. My biggest excuse for lagging in my updates is my laptop was down for a few week. The power cable stopped charging the computer and Dell was prompt to fix the problem. While it did take a couple weeks I can’t complain, it was free and practically painless.

Work has also certainly kept me away also. New owners, new bosses and the like have kept us fairly busy in the past couple months. It pleases me to see were getting our shit back together at work.

As it would never fail to leave me, Magic has certainly peeked my interest once more. A game I have played on a semi serious level for nearly 14 years brings new challenges and deck construction. Grabbing first place in a Magic 2010 Pre-release wave, 3rd at a small town tournament in Lancaster and 2nd in a type II has got me motivated that I have no lost my ability to play this game.

I placed some orders for cards; purchased a few things I’m going to need to revamp the collection my friend and I have struggled to keep updated for years. Eventually I’ll post the lists here once I have tuned them, but for now there not solid.

School has also begun to creep up faster and faster. Much like a poker tournament, I’m going all in now. I’m more confidant than ever that this degree is no longer mine to loose, but mine to take! The difficulties I faced last semester combined with my school schedule and maintaining a passing academic record have me confidant in my abilities.

So I will be taking probably 15-18 units scaling back work to only two days. I plan to take 3-4 computer science courses and two math courses. As crazy as this may sound, I’m entertaining the idea that perhaps I’ll take 12 units at CSUN and 5 units at AVC.

An interesting thing and revelation occurred to me in Wall-Mart peering into a tormented person of my past. Everything is simply a lie. There is no truth in this situation and perhaps I continue to dwell on the subject, but perhaps it is difficult to not analyze something you changed and poured your heart and life into at one time that now makes you feel empty, silly and sorry for such a thing.

What happened was great and was pictured just as I foresaw. Lies could not hide the truth of what I saw and heard today. You simply cannot lie to a child.

Uhg, Lack of Updates… Gaming and Baby Squirrels! DnD in there someplace…

So I’ve been fairly lazy in my ability keep up with my blog, however that does not mean there is nothing to mention. There have actually been plenty of happenings in the recent month!

I re-addicted myself to Call of Duty: World at War. I took the plunge and went prestige mode, which wipes out all of weapons and perks for looks and small bonuses. A small way for me to keep playing I guess. It has made me look at using other weapons and how effective they can be.

Another game I have also maintained an addiction to has been Agricola; however this addiction is much tougher to feed since I have only one person to play it with right now. Not to mention at this point an individual who probably beat me more than most. My copy came in the mail finally and I dumped a good $30 dollars more buying boxes and sleeves to keep all the pieces and cards in good shape for a long time. I have another $30 or so to spend to get the cooler pieces.

So my mom and I picked up 9 baby squirrels from my work. It was a little difficult for me to see the all die on a daily basis from other predators and the equipment we must use around work. I figured if I took them home they would have a chance. So I did the research and discovered we have everything to keep them alive and going. Now they are doing incredibly well and hopefully in a month or so we can release them!

I play Dungeons and Dragons on Saturdays now, officially inducting me into the realm of nerdy-ness. We have a blast every afternoon playing with 6 people plus a dungeon master. A dungeon master engineers a story line and moderates how the non-playable characters (NPC’s) act such as monsters and friendly characters. As of now I’m currently playing a Paladin, the only way I think I will be successful at having fun with DnD is if I play something true to my personality in real life. I enjoy helping others and I tend to be extremely altruistic.

Semester Salvaged! Agricola on the way! Civilization: Revolution…

So much like the cowardly student I am, I’ve neglected to check my grades for the past few weeks in fear of what was a looming disaster. Worst and best cases were both avoided; however, I ended up with the middle case! Which were 3 C’s and a C+. Nobody should be proud of such grades even as a Computer Science major, I simply could have done significantly better.

These grades, however, are satisfactory given the classes I was taking and the first half of an emotionally tormented year. I would have to say given all the obstacles blocking my path I’m actually fairly pleased I came out unscathed. I had never taken two math classes in a given semester and basically two programming classes as well; to top it off I had a general education class to tack on.

Agricola is on the way! I have no one play it with at the present time that does not already have it, but I don’t care, it’s ALL MINE. I’ll be able to sift through the cards and study them better so I’m not reading them so much when I actually play the game with my buddy and other events like an idiot.

I plan to pick up the animeeples (little replacement pieces that add fun to the game) next month. The pieces represent the actual items you receive in game such as Wheat, sheep and so on. The game is highly addicting.

I’m really enjoying Civilization in my free time. I attempted to play a few online games but the people I have been matched up against have been fairly slow and it takes almost 20 minutes to get through the first 20 turns. Even against PC opponents I can limit my turns to at most 30 seconds after the first 20.As of now I bounce between that and Call of Duty: World at War. Warcraft 3 has disappeared...

E3 has arrived! New Articles and I don’t know WTF to do with myself !!

I didn’t get a chance to go this year but I’m sure at some point in my career I will make to this event!!

So finally new hotness has arrived in what has been a depressingly stale game market. With only a few games such as Starcraft 2 and Diablo III on my radar, I was feeling pretty down in video games.

New Hotness #1

Star Wars: Old Republic



I think I jizzed my pants after watching this video. To me there is almost nothing that echoes awesomeness than a bitchen light saber fight. This game will hope fully have a decent shelf-life against World of Warcraft; however it needs to be done right! Time will tell but the irony is this game will probably not need to worry about WOW, but Starcraft 2 and Diablo III.

New Hotness #2

Metroid: Other M



Finally we have a Metroid game leaving the first person perspective. It’s not that I had a problem with a Metroid Prime series; it got old after two games. I failed to finish Metroid Prime: Corruption out of boredom.

Just in time to watch my dad, brother and his girlfriend take my Nintendo Wii to Texas. This was ingenious timing on my part. I don’t think I should be too concerned; the game is slated to arrive late 2010. Just in time to reunite with my loved ones, my nun-chuck, Wii-mote and console!

New Hotness #3

Super Mario Galaxy 2



Super Mario Galaxy was an incredibly fun game. I’m very pleased to not only see a sequel return but it has Yoshi as well OMGWTFBBQ… Mario tends to be one of a few games I’ll purchase that has zero multiplayer.



New Hotness #4 (No video)

New Zelda Game!


The great news here is we have a new Zelda game to finally take full advantage of the Wii. Admittedly I never played the Twilight Princess, but I’ll probably pick this up. I just hope they continue to use the same formula for Zelda games without the funny business.

Nintendo also announced a bunch of garbage for the Wii. Some piece of shit that will take my pulse and yet ANOTHER fucking Wii Fat… I hate to admit that these things are widely popular with the ladies, which has been problem demographic to grab in video game sales.

I saw a new Halo game announced but I have to admit that Halo was never something I was able to play. Gaystation is no ware to be found! Sony did however announce a new portable system called the PSP Go!

The CEO’s at Sony must be drinking something pretty outrageous because there fucking idiots. You plan to put out a new portable system against the DS and DSi in a market that Nintendo clearly has by the balls. Not to mention you’re also competing against the iPhone/iTouch. If Sony didn’t have all the financial backing they most certainly would be in tank by now! They need to crawl back into a hole, lick their wounds and find a new way to redefine their gaming products at a cheaper cost. Oh wait, Nintendo did that!

I got a couple new articles posted on www.gotgame.com.

Not to crazy about this one… But it was a warm up.

http://news.gotgame.com/the-evolution-of-the-nintendo-handheld-family…/32666/

This one got better! The game was really fun; I suggest picking it up if you can

http://news.gotgame.com/revenge-served-blood-lust-style/32875/
I’m currently working on two new ones. Hopefully see those in a week or two. With all of our E3 coverage it might be two.

So I don’t know WTF to do with myself!!!

I’m working full time and writing articles for this site and yet I still get bored and hit my head against the wall… I picked up Civilization: Revolution given the price drop but I cant find any games. I started playing Warcraft III again, that’s alright but I’m only good for a couple games a day. Lalalala is school here yet?

Verizon, Board Games, Gamex, and Gotgame.com!!!

It’s been a fairly busy past few weeks. Let’s start with Verizon! A job offer literally fell into my lap. Little did I know my resume is still floating idle on some database and Verizon happen to pick it up! The job entails customer support optics analyst. This job pays fairly handsomely compared to my current job…

The problem: The Job is in Oxnard and school would most certainly suffer as a result. This places me at a crossroads in life.

Take the job and possibly pigeon-hole myself into it forever and never really finish school, my goals, but get paid, move out, buy neat things and watch my family move! Or stay on track, taking 2 more years to get a real job, possibly move with the family, and get the job I want, build the resume and get a better career? Dilemma indeed…

 

I knew this would happen at some point in my college career, however I would be foolish not to explore the offer and I will certainly do so. We will see!

 

I’ve recently become addicted to two board/card games. Agricola and Dominion! Agricola features you as a farmer fighting for resources and building a farm of all things! The player who’s able to create a better farm wins.

Dominion is a card game featuring players with a similar 10 card starting deck.  Each turn you draw 5 cards and with those cards you buy more cards that increase your deck! Once you run out of cards to draw you shuffle everything together with all the cards you purchased and continue playing. Ultimately you buy points and those get shuffled into your deck. The games ends under certain conditions and the player with the most points in his/her deck wins!

So we went to Gamex! I have to admit I wish I had only gone Saturday. But I still had fun. I must give my friend Avery props for helping me out because with all the bills and obligations I had I could not have made a weekend out of it, so I'll get him back soon. We played some Agricola there, a new game called Amun-Ra (I think). That game was particularly not very interesting. I moped around some, but it was nice to be away from work, school and house.

Lastly I have begun writing again for Gotgame.com. I feel very rusty and I’m attempting to get my groove back. Opinion articles are the directions so hopefully I feel less restricted to say something controversial. The first article, which is indeed one I posted here, I dressed up and submitted it. It’s raising some eyebrows. =).

 

http://news.gotgame.com/battlenet-theory-why-you-will-pay-to-play-starcraft-2-and-diablo-iii/32741/#comments

I know, this was a quick and dirty entry, I’ll make up for it when I can…

Turing Machine’s up the ass, camping and Texas phase 1.

So I completed my last final at 10:00pm last night. I took the full two hours to work on it; however I managed to finish all 10 problems within 90 minutes. So I did cleanup and fixed some of my errors and actually ended up rewriting another problem. Thanks to this man right here, half of our test was on Turing Machines. I was fairly comfortable with them, however they get extremely detailed so a couple mistakes and I could have royally screwed things up. Needless to say, I definitely saved par on that test.

I was glancing around the room trying to get a feel for were everyone was at on the test. I noticed a lot of puzzled faces and saw the 3 people around me stuck on what was one of the more difficult problems on the test.

Find a regular expression for the language a^i b^j where (i ˑ j) % 2 = 1.

Basically what this is saying is find a statement that gives me ANY number of a’s followed any number of b’s given the rules.

Where if I multiply the number of a’s I have by the number of b’s I have then I divide it by 2, I get a remainder of 1. By definition this is an odd number.

This is sort of a trick question as long as you know the definition of an odd number. Note if we multiply an even number times an even we have an even number, which is wrong. Same goes for multipling an even number by an odd number. The only way to get a correct solution is to multiply an odd number of a’s by an odd number of b’s.

So this language produces words (strings for you computer science people) such as…

aaab , aaabbb , aaaaab, abbbbb….. Notice if I multiply the number of a’s and b’s together its always odd. The solution I came up with was (a(aa)*(bb)*b). The * means I can have an infinite amount of those or zero. So I can have infinite amounts of aa’s and bb’s and I attach a single a and b to it to each end. Guaranteeing an odd multiplying another odd. (I guess that math shit is kind of helpful).

I built me 3 of these last night, on paper......

So we decided to scale down our camping trip. Instead of Kern River we are going to a small campground called Atwood Meadows out here some place. Kevo seems to know where it is at and apparently it’s “Tight”. I purchased a tent and cool chair that match the color of my Jeep. I’ll have to get a picture this weekend to post.

My plans for this summer are somewhat up in the air. I’m still debating on taking the last Calculus class I have been putting off for years know and I have an insanely good job offer from Verizon however I risk slowing down my academic progression by taking it. The things I do know for sure are that I need to brush up on my C skills. I need an operating systems class next semester and it is very C heavy programming. Having weak C skills killed me in my Architecture Class.

I also plan to work got http://www.gotgame.com/ once again. Simply having a place to publish more of my written work and add another years worth of skills is only going to help. I also brought home a bunch of game theory programming books from the library I plan to read, but we will see how far that goes.

Texas Phase 1 is underway. For those who are not in the know, our family has been attempting to sell the house for some time now with the intention of moving to Texas. My father has a great job offer out there and the family is honestly quite sick of this communistic state. The people here act like there shit don’t stink and the women are some of the most snobby/bratty/spoiled bitches I have every met.
Texas phase 1 include my father, brother and my brothers girlfriend all going to Texas as of June 1st. They plan to live there and begin establishing their life while my mom and I stay here to maintain the house and I continue going to school. My fate is still uncertain as to how soon I will be going to Texas. If CSUN is going to continue throwing money at me to go there I have no good reason to stop and out of state tuition will kill me in Texas.

An old urge of my past is slowing creeping back into me....

http://paladintales.blogspot.com/2008/03/vial-of-sunwell.html

Finals, Starcraft II Beta and Kern River…

I feel very strong about finals week. Once again, to my luck ALL three of my finals were to land on a single day, but I will have none of that this time around. I asked one of my professors if I could move my Comp 310 final to Thursday night at 8:00 pm. The time is late but I would rather avoid a potential disaster. On the flipside I get two whole days to study for a final that I could probably take today and do very well.

Without warning and barely a week after my Battle.net rant the beta signups for Starcraft II fell upon us! This tells us we have nearly a finished game and in the worse case we are only a year away from its release. But that case is highly unlikely. We are probably looking at a late fall or quarter 1 of 2010 release. Beside the release date we also know there are no plans to release another World of Warcraft expansion probably until at least summer of 2010 and Diablo III is way off in the distant haze some ware.

While on the topic of “game politics” if you will, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is projected to release this November, putting it right in my potential time frame for Starcraft II. Activision, the publishers of the Call of Duty franchise, is partnered with Blizzard. So could this be a possible sign that Starcraft II may come sooner or later than late fall? I do not have that answer however I don’t think the companies will compete on top of each other. Call of Duty and anything Blizzard creates is really the only thing selling big in the game market.

Literally right after I get done with finals, I plan to head to bed, hit an 8 hour work day Friday morning then make a Blitz for Kern River. I’m fairly exited however I am not prepared at all! I still need a tent I got to grab food and all my critter containment devices! I also might go get one of those nifty snake grab thingy’s and go snake hunting at night. I also wanted to get a tube to down the river in, but I think the water is going to be extremely frigid.

Battle.net theory… Why you will pay to play Starcraft 2 and Diablo III

So the anticipation of Blizzards upcoming releases probably has most gamers in quirky funk. By now most of us have known Blizzard to announce a title and on average take about 4 years to actually produce it. It’s been almost two years since Starcraft 2 wasannounced, so were looking at no more than and additional two. But I have high hopes we will see it sometime 2010. But all that is really besides my main point, which has to do with monthly subscription services and Blizzard.

In case you have yet to witness the recent move by Blizzard, they have decided to create and merge all of your previous Battle.net games and your World of Warcraft Account in one happy little thing they like to call a “Battle.net Account.” Of course you don’t have to do this but in the end you will likely have to do it to continue playing. Why would Blizzard decide to do such a thing? Everything seemed to be great and happy the way it was?



Because in the end, Blizzard plans to make you “pay to play” your Battle.net account. Don’t believe me? Of course this is my crazy theory but I have a couple arguments to make that will hopefully get you thinking.

I’ll begin with my strongest argument. Blizzard is sitting on top of a mountain of 11 million players paying an average of $10 a month to play World of Warcraft. The only thing that is going to stop this gravy train is Blizzard themselves! Why would they even think to jeopardize this cash flow with another game they plan to release?

Blizzard knows that it is fairly inevitable that they would loose even a million players at the least to Starcraft 2 or Diablo III. That is 10 million in the minus per month for Blizzard at a minimum; that is an unacceptable business move. The way I see it is Blizzard will get the sales rush from the game, that a guarantee they can count on. So why loose monthly revenue?

The Next not so strong argument is that everyone is doing it, so Blizzard knows they can get away with it. Microsoft makes you pay monthly for Xbox live, If Microsoft can get away with it Blizzard can get away with it.

Lastly, if you remember in the late 1990’s (god I’m getting old) there was this tremendous emphasis on Battle.net being free to play all over www.Battle.net. I can’t say that I have looked hard enough to find the word free on the site, but I used to not have to look at all. I’m fairly certain the terminology is absent from the site. Why remove the word free? Players can easily distinguish between Battle.net and World of Warcraft right?

I could be wrong but it makes to much sense to me. My friends and I have always joked that we would pay to play Starcraft, Diablo or even Warcraft RTS. Then World of Warcraft came out, that’s when the laughing stopped.. While subscriptions to Battle.net would not be the end of the world, you know damn well you and everyone else will pay it!

CSUN, Modern Warfare and Turnoffs!

So we are finally entering the home stretch with regards to finals and the end of the semester. As always, it just seemed to fly by. I’ve been particularly upset with myself as of late allowing one to get carried away with my past relationship and how it has affected my academic performance this semester. I seem to be holding down two B’s a C’ and border-line D to C- in another.




The class in question with the D to C- happens to actually be my favorite class, go figure, Computational theory and Automata. I royaly fucked up the last test, missing about 15 points on stupid questions that I had studied for and I could solve. But of course my brain decided to stop working when these questions came up on the test. So this puts me in the danger zone for this particular class, he has yet to grade the homework so that could push me up.

Why this is all troubling to me is because I received my financial aid for the coming year and was once again awarded 2 more semester of paid tuition. This puts me in perfect place to have not paid really anything for my degree. It’s another reason to not be compromising my education with women, especially those who are going to toss my emotions around. I feel extremely stupid for allowing my ability to reason to diminish since attending CSUN.

It may seem as if I have yet to let go of this past relationship. That could actually be farther from the truth. I'm actually just more upset with myself for not growing the pair to end it sooner and get overly attached. I knew better! There were signs! But for whatever reason, love or raging male hormones I stuck around. /end side rant.

In the mean time, Facebook has allowed me to find an old high school friend. A friend who also plays Call of Duty! He convinced me to go purchase Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, however I was hesitant at first with Modern Warfare 2 arriving later this year. I said screw it, it’s only money and bought it anyway.





I have to say it is particularly fun and offers a different type of similar (if that makes sense) game play than World at War. I was a tad bit clunky with the weapons at first but I think I have finally found mine in the G3 Assault Riffle. Very accurate, low kick-back, moderate damage, semi-automatic and quick reload suites me well. Now it is a matter of splitting my time between the two games!

Even though I spent the better part of this writing explaining why I should NOT be investing my time into women, one can’t help the male portion of me examine and look them over! So I got to thinking and began compiling a list of complete turnoffs when I see even the most gorgeous of woman walking around.

1) An enormous picture of a marijuana leaf on their shirt. I really don’t have to explain why but I will anyway. It sign that this person has totally screwed around with such things, more drama more shit one doesn’t need.

2) Metal coming in and out of every orifice. I never really understood the reasoning to turn ones self into robo-bitch or a clunky Christmas tree. Too many women with nose and tongue rings, and gigantic bar-bell looking ones coming out of their eye sockets. Utterly disgusting.

3) An obscene amount of makeup! I would actually prefer that one doesn’t have on any at all! It’s just the way I am. If you feel the need to play dress up and look like a god damn clown so be it!

4) Finally, A bag or tee-shirt with Barack Obama on it. It’s one thing to have an actually political opinion on such things but sport a shirt or something with a face on it having no clue to what it actually means is just plain silly. Most of the woman I see with shirt like this you could easily pose a political question that lies on conservative grounds to them. Spoof it as Obama’s point of view and they would just shake their head and say, Yep! I belief that to! It screams utter ignorance

Wizard’s Hostile takeover and WOW 3.1 Patch

I was recently debating on going to Magic: The Gathering prerelease next Saturday, I however have changed my mind. In what seems to be another attempt at world domination, Wizards of the Coast has pointed their Death Star towards Magic-League.com. With the rising cost of a pack of cards, $300 Mana Bases and some of the most abstract patents known to gaming, can this company be any more greedy?



Essentially what Wizards is asking of Magic-League is to remove any logos and links to Apprentice and Magic Workstation. For those that do not know what these programs do is they emulate a game of magic to the bare bones and I do mean bare bones. These programs are bare to a point where it is not really that interesting to me. Other players use these programs to get practice before major tournaments in which they plan to fill Wizards coffers.

Fantastic move Wizards! Continue to isolate and push out the veterans that created your game. We all see where you are going; no one wants to pay to play your piece of shit Magic Online. Shame on you Wizards! Charging full price play your game with virtual cards, that have redemption value when you feel it is best. It is absolutely ridiculous that you expect us to pay $4.00 for a pack of virtual cards and with your shit program.

Unstable servers, clunky interface and still no solid mechanism for trading effectively with other players. You continue to enforce this BBS system for trading that is full of bots and requires a monocle to read through. If Wizards keeps this pace up, the game is going to be full of snobby rich kids looking for some sort of fame in playing Magic.

I have a great example, two summers ago I was at the ass-factory we call Costa Mesa Women’s Center playing in a qualifier. I sat across from a kid who couldn’t have been more than 16 years old. I noticed him from other tournaments in the Los Angeles area and began a conversation with him. He went on to brag about how he had been to a Grand Prix in Texas and one in Seattle.

So I asked him how he was able to makes these trips financially. I do admit the question was mildly inappropriate however my curiosity got the best of me. He looked down and never answered and I proceeded to smash his face in 2-0. The kid probably had no hair on his nuts and manages to get mom and dad to fork some green to fuel his Magic trips.

Some new and exciting World of Warcraft news has come out. For those who don’t know the World of Warcraft 3.1 Patch finally arrived. I can easily sum up my thoughts on this topic.

Tritton AX PRO and Newegg.com

Monday came and I finally got my hands on this hefty piece of gear. First I must give mad props to newegg because of the smooth and painless process of actually getting my headset. The shipping was free and they got it here within 3 days. I firmly believe if I placed my order Monday-Thursday I would have had my package the next day only because I live 60 miles from their warehouse.

Having done a hefty amount of research on this product there was almost nothing left to my surprise when I finally opened it. I place everything out on my bed and began rummaging through the instruction to discover what I had ultimately figured would be the case, I needed another cable. I ran out to Best Buy immediately and bought what I though was the right cable.

Microsoft Xbox 360 HDMI AV Cable.

At that point I made plans with a friend to watch a movie so that I never got home to really test the headset until later that evening. So I eventually arrive at home and begin setting this thing up. At first everything fits and seems to work out right. But everything doesn’t.

I would have had the right cable if my TV supported HD. The item I purchased comes with an HD cable and a component sound cable. What happens with this setup is your HD cable is intended to be your video and now your main port (I don’t recall the name of it. The big fat one) is exclusively your sound.

Defeated, bummed out and slightly anxious that there might not be a solution and I could be stuck with a $180 headset, I end up going to bed and plan to deal with it the next morning. I call Tritton and ask them about what I need and if there is a solution. He points me in this direction.

Microsoft Xbox 360 Component A/V Cable Set.

I fly to Best Buy and make the exchange not forgetting to grab some Subway and head back home. I hook it up, after a few minutes of head scratching and flicking a tiny switch on the cable it came alive! I do not plan to write a review kissing Tritton’s ass. But if you’re low on space, money and need to keep the girlfriend happy I suggest dropping your money here. It’s worth every penny.

Pathetic, Annoying and Anxious!!

So I was trudging along my list of internet links and I came across this piece of garbage information. Now who seriously gives a shit how fast anyone clears Naxxaramas? Congratulations to the 25 people have won looser of the year award. Not only do I find the 25 people who cleared it pathetic, but anyone who deems this moderately exciting information needs some sort of evaluation.

To be perfectly honest I have stepped foot in Naxxaramas twice since the release of Wrath of the Lich King and horrors ran through my brain once more. The voices of gamers who have yet to have their balls drop acting like General Patton in what simply a tank and spank dungeon. My favorite, which never seems to fail to exist in any Ventrillo or Teamspeak channel, is the lone female gamer who constantly flirts and gets hit on by a bunch of grease-balls. It just simply never fails.

Now if you’re getting sick of my Call of Duty rants you might want close the page now because here I go again! For those who do not know Call of Duty has a game mode called Search and Destroy. The idea here is to Search and Destroy an objective, I place more emphasis on Search. Now if your team is on offense, that being it is your turn to Search and Destroy, I don’t think that implies sitting in your spawning zone with a sniper rifle. What makes this frustrating is the faggotry of having to find this last person after you have eliminated everyone else. He has no chance to get to the bomb site in time and win the match with a sniper rifle.

Lastly, I’m still anxiously awaiting my Tritton headset. My tracking invoice states it should be here by tomorrow (Monday). I did some deeper research about the headset and I couldn’t confirm whether of not I needed an HDMI cable or whatever it was called to hook this bad boy up. I went back to the Tritton website and it hints that every thing you need to hook it up is in the box. I’m going to be a sad panda if I have to go purchase more equipment to get this thing going.

The great thing is even though I have yet to receive the product, I feel that I made a great buy. I thought long and hard about the Turtle Beach 4X at Best Buy the other day but all the reviews and comparison that I read came to the exact same conclusion I did at the store. The conclusion was that the audio quality that the Turtle Beach 4X spits up lacks because of the wireless. Wireless 5.1 surround has yet to be perfected, supposedly.

Call of Duty..again, Tritton AXPro, WoW and midterms…

I’ve gotten insanely better at Call of Duty. Once again the control scheme still seems to hold me back. I have three major problems I need to overcome to achieve the excellence I once had with the original Call of Duty games. The first issue is I’m having is my brain does not seem to register the idea that I can’t shoot my weapon AND use the 360 degree free-look stick. The second problem I’m having is when I am firing my weapon and try to use the free-look I press it down to hard and perform a melee attack, basically causing me to stop firing. Finally there is one more issue I’m having problems with but that I will actually explain further down the page.

Now that I have reached player level 32 online, I feel I can give a good opinion on the game itself. It has the same feel as the old Call of Duty games, the weapons fire and act very similarly to the originals and the tactical aspect of the game is still intact. There are a ton of new games modes such as War and Sabotage. War is much like Domination except your fighting for one flag at a time in a push situation.

Some of the frustrations I have encounter with the game entail mostly with Team Death Match and War. These game modes get chaotic very fast with players getting up to artillery and dogs which can literary keep you pinned down for half your play time. Dogs are extremely annoying and frustrating in the fact you are unable to listen exactly where they are coming from if you do not have surround sound. Problem solved!

One of the most intriguing aspects of the Call of Duty games has always been sound and how much of a role it plays in being successful. When I played the original I had 5.1 surround setup for my PC and I could catch everything at the drop of a hat. Now I’m crippled in a sense with my dopey TV sound that hardly gives me anything.

I’ve decided to solve the problem with this badboy headset. I plan to purchase them from newegg.com and hopefully have them for in time for spring break. While it is quite a “spendy” purchase its defiantly one I feel is fairly warranted for how much of my free time goes into gaming. The headset will work with my Xbox, Wii and PC which is one of the primary gems of buying it. The Wii unfortunately will not benefit from the 5.1 setup, however it is nice to have the headset work for it anyway.

So once again I canceled my World of Warcraft account. The game is just wash, rinse repeat. PvP has gotten fairly dull and you literally have to have no life to raid. Raiding is simply boring anyway. You have to deal with 9-24 other grease balls who power trip because taking down the Lich King is their life goal. It is highly probable that I will go back to WOW but for now Call of Duty has me totally sucked in.

I had two of my three midterms yesterday; the third will come after spring break. I feel fairly confidant about both tests and how quickly I was able to nail down the problems. One of the most frustrating things that I typically find when I study for tests is I typically do my own online research. To my amazement I find a much simpler, easier explanation and method to solving the problem than my professor or the book explains. I just don’t understand why people have to go to such great length to overcomplicate something.

On Computer Science and World of Warcraft

As Computer Science majors the majority of us want to be Software Engineers on some level. However a lot of students within the major feel there is too much mathematics and not enough programming and abstraction.

I’ll attempt to define what abstraction really is for some people on a very simple level. If I wrote a computer program that could only do this equation, 2 + 2 = 4, this would be the most worthless program in the world. However, if I let the user input his/her own numbers to add them together X + Y = Z, we have a much better program. The idea is to simply take a concept and make it as useful and less general as possible.

This idea gets way more complicated; however I’m not here to scare people or give the impression that I’m some super genius. I’m just here to vent! In the major we learn a ton of mathematics that seem fairly worthless to us. While induction has some minor application in numbers and proving an infinite sequence, to me there is little here to do with abstraction that I could apply in real life.

Why do I need to prove things anyway? Proving (n^2 – 2) is not divisible by 5 is stuff for math majors. To me it seems like a whole lot of worthless work that I see little benefit from. I do understand that problem solving and analytical processes are important, I’m just not digging this stuff right now. Maybe that is the problem.

Lets switch gears, is it me or does World of Warcraft seem incredibly boring right now? As of late I’m rolling a level 80 Unholy Death Knight and its fun for about an hour and then I need to go do something else. I attempted to go level my Paladin but having played a Death Knight, Retribution strikes me as all too boring. You cannot really expect anyone to level as Holy or Protection.


Fortunately we are on the horizon of a patch in the near future. The patch looks fairly promising for Death Knights especially in the unholy department. Paladins can't seem to get enough buffs. I guess pressing having a 2 button kill mechanism is not simple enough. To top it all off, if that does not work for some reason you get 12 seconds to fix the problem.

With Death Knight I fully expected the Glyph of Ice Bound Fortitude to be nerfed. It’s unfortunate but hey 12 seconds of stun immunity seems like something no class should have at the touch of a button, oh wait a second?

Bleh, at any event I got to run back to my Discrete Text Book and finish some boring Big “Oh” proofs!

iPhone 3G vs. Black Berry Storm

The great debate over which phone is better, has more potential and will continue to dominate the phone market will rage on until a new successor has arrived. But for now, we have the iPhone and the Black Berry Storm to play will. Having used both to a great extent I can easily determine my pick!

The iPhone hands down beats the Storm in nearly every category. The Storm is clunky, single touch screen only and lacks the wonder of the iPhone. Even though the iPhone has been out for quite some time, the Blackberry has had plenty of time to refine its model and create a solid product.

Without being biased, it’s difficult to say anything particularly good about the Storm. It almost caused me to not even try the iPhone. The internet was slow nearly every ware I was, single touch press screen thingy was interesting, however does not allow for multi-touch speed browsing like the iPhone does. Even as I write this there still no application store for the Storm as of yet.

My biggest problem is not really a complaint more of a concern is that the iPhone gets fairly warm after lengthy use. I did some research and found a couple of horror stories, however all of my friends say its normal and nothing to be too alarmed about.

My theory behind the Storm is that it is not really intended to be a replacement for the iPhone. Black Berry understands the momentum behind the iPhone and doesn’t necessarily want to compete directly with it. They have plenty of other good phones such as the Curve and the Bold.