R. Bemrose

So, I ordered this laptop online during a Black Friday sale... early, as walmart.com apparently put its Black Friday sales up based on UTC rather than a US Timezone. I actually ordered it at 8:39pm EST.

I got an email saying it shipped yesterday at 4:16pm EST.

Today, at 12:40pm, I received a package delivered from walmart.com.

That's right, it took less than 48 hours from the time I ordered it... shipping from Bentonville, Arkanasas to Mason, Michigan took less than 24 hours.

So, all people who haven't been on World of Warcraft recently should have been sent an email that will allow them to renew their accounts for 7 days.

If you haven't, the Battle.Net account management thing should have a link to activate the free time below the Frozen account status for your WoW account.

So, I just found out that Lois McMaster Bujold has finished a new Miles Vorkosigan book, titled Cryoburn.

This is her first Vorkosigan book in 7-8 years.

It's interesting in a sense, because she has also jumped 7-8 years forward in the chronology. I had heard rumors that her next book was going to cover the death of Miles' father... but it sounds like she may have skipped forward past that event; I guess we'll see when Baen actually publishes it.

P.S. I've also been playing Overlord a lot lately... and some Overlord: Minions (hey, it was like $9 new at Best Buy).

For those of you who don't know, the Overlord series is sorta like a twisted version of Pikmin.

So, while looking for other stuff on Steam today, I noticed that Overlord: Raising Hell is on Steam now.

Clicking through to it, I noticed that Overlord, Overlord: Raising Hell, and Overlord II comprised the Overlord Complete Pack, a bundle for $8.75.

I had been boycotting Overlord II on Steam, because Raising Hell never got a Steam release... until today, and the entire series was put on sale to boot!

(For reference, I bought the pack because Raising Hell + Overlord II together would be $10 even with the sale prices).

If The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya sounds familiar, it's because I've written about it before.

Well, it turns out that, when it was re-aired this year in Japan, they added another 14 episodes to it, doubling the length of the series.

So, I now have an additional 14 episodes to watch before The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya movie comes out, on what would have been my brother's 35th birthday.

Oh yeah, did I mention the series is going to have a movie? :D

So, if any of you that play TF2 still haven't done the Halloween achievements and want to farm them, let me know.

4 out of 5 are fairly quick, it's just the last one that takes a while.

old.ocrtf2.com:27015 is running 24/7 Harvest Event (the map needed for 3 of the 5 achievements) until it ends or the server is shut off.

So, Team Fortress 2 had an unannounced update yesterday. Included in this update is a seasonal map (koth_harvest_event), seasonal achievements (only valid on koth_harvest_event), and seasonal items (new hats).

Why do I call these seasonal? They only work around Halloween each year. That's right, you now have hats that can only be worn for a few days each year clogging up space in your inventory.

Also included in this update is the normal koth_harvest_final map, a slightly better optimized version of the koth_harvest that we already had on our servers.

Speaking of which, all 3 servers now have koth_harvest_event in their mapcycle... twice on each server.

Here's a family portrait of the Mann family:
( Family Portrait )
From left to right:
Barnabas Hale (maybe?), Blutarch Mann, Zepheniah Mann, Elizabeth, Redmond Mann, unknown person.

Elizabeth looks suspiciously like The Announcer portrait that someone made before...

( The Announcer image )

...comes out on Friday PDT for the PC. Those suckers people who buy the Wii versions will probably have to wait another month, seeing as how the last episode took a month to get to the Wii.

Oh, and why is the PDT there? Because one of the previous episodes (#2) came out in the last evening PDT, so it was actually Saturday in time zones east of it.

BTW: last episode had the return of Murray, the demonic skull... this time we get... Stan, Stan, STAN!

P.S. If you liked the Secret of Monkey Island Flash Film., make sure to watch the various "I Wonder What Happens?" clips on the Tales page for laughs... they're by the same people as the SoMI flash film, but they basically guess what's going to happen in each game based on the trailers and image galleries available for each game before its release.

So, by Valve's crazy moon logic, pre-loading the Left 4 Dead 2 demo actually only pre-loaded 36% of the demo, requiring you to download an additional 64% before you can play the game.

Prehaps someone needs to explain to them what "preloading" means.

I am displeased. Not only was the demo due out yesterday (see the updates to the Valve Time page on their developer wiki), but because I was at work and class for a combined total of 11 hours today (12 counting transit time), the demo's not going to finish downloading before I go to bed.

So, OCReMix is moving its TF2 server... actually, changing it into a pair of TF2 servers.

They don't have symbolic names yet (whatever.ocrtf2.com), but they can be accessed through their IPs: 208.94.245.227:27050 and 208.94.245.228:27060

Note: They're still being set up.

I have one comment about today's xkcd: If you enjoyed the Star Wars Holiday Special, you're probably White and Nerdy.

So, I've never played a Call of Duty game, despite some of my coworkers bugging me to. Of course, they wanted me to get the Xbox 360 version, just like they want me to get Left 4 Dead for the 360.

Sorry, I digress.

Recently, Activision not only announced that CoD:MW2 would have a price increase of $10, they also announced that the game would not support dedicated servers and you would have to use their matchmaking service.

This also has the effect of eliminating user-created content.

User-created content, particularly maps and mods, are a cornerstone of the PC FPS gaming community.

It's funny, because Valve (one of the major players for PC FPS games) recognizes this. Counter-strike and Team Fortress 2 both thrive on player created content, especially maps.

Oh, but there's more: Dedicated servers also allow you to kick and ban unwanted players. That's in addition to any other mods you might have, like the one we have over at ocrtf2.com that allows players to have reserved slots... and if a player with a reserved slot wants to join the server, it kicks someone who doesn't have one off.

Note that I didn't list Left 4 Dead above. While Left 4 Dead does support dedicated servers, the L4D matchmaking system makes them hard to connect to. Which kind of defeats the whole point. The only exception is if your lobby wants to play a custom campaign... you can (obviously) only connect to servers running said campaign.

Left 4 Dead also has a way of associating servers with a Steam group, but I have no clue how that works.

Oh, did I mention that there was an online petition with over 100,000 signatures on it to get dedicated servers added back to the CoD:MW2? Or that the developer figuratively said "F You!" in response to it?

100,000 at $60 a pop is a potential loss of $6 million USD. This isn't exactly small change.

Apparently I missed a lot at this year's Emmy's.

Not only did Dr. Horrible interrupt this year's proceedings:

but Dr. Horrible also won an award:


So did Kristen Chenoweth (for her role as Olive Snook in Pushing Daisies):

So, apparently the latest dev version of Google Chrome apparently comes with Google's Native Client technology. This technology is used to run code directly on your computer's processor rather than in a higher level computer language.

In other words, it's like ActiveX.

Very like ActiveX.

Google has nicknamed this NaCl... an appropriate nickname, seeing as a salt (assault) will be exactly what's it's used for when it goes mainstream.

Some of you may have heard me complaining about the Internet problems I've been having over the past few weeks.

For those of you who haven't heard, about 3 weeks ago, my ISP changed their routing. Since then, I now see a jump from 10-15ms to 60ms+ within my ISP's network. It jumps again after going out to XO's network (fact: prior to this, it was routed to AT&T's network).

About 30 minutes ago, most of my packets get routed as usual, but large swathes of the Internet are now inaccessible.

I can not only not reach the OCR TF2 server, I can't reach OCReMix's website. I also can't read FMyLife or NotAlwaysRight, to name a few other sites.

So, as of 2:00pm today, I am temporarily laid off.

I am not the only one.

Essentially, anyone who works for the State of Michigan and isn't part of the legislature or considered essential (see what I did there?) has been laid off... until the legislature finishes its 2010 budget.

(The State of Michigan's fiscal year is October 1 through September 30.)

So, Google is finally showing their evil side to the world with the release of "SideWiki"

Sidewiki is a browser plugin for Internet Explorer 6+ and Firefox 2+. It attaches a comment system to sites that can't be accessed outside of said plugin.

So, in other words, Google's now made it possible for spammers to essentially add spam to your site, but without it actually being on your site.

Oh, did I mention you can't opt out of it?

I wouldn't have a problem with this concept if you could opt-out (or even better, if you had to opt-in). Did I mention Microsoft has a product like this, but it does allow sites to opt-out?

Something's wrong if Microsoft's version of a product is less evil than yours.

Since all its competitors have been cutting prices, Nintendo has finally chosen to cut the (US) price on the Wii to $199, effective Sunday.

In addition, they finally gave a date for New Super Mario Bros... November 15th.

On the subject of dates, the Crash Course DLC for Left 4 Dead is now dated to Tuesday, September 29th. And, of course, the game's sequel is due 7 or so weeks after that.

I heard about this movie a few years ago. I just finally got around to watching it.

I'm trying to remember the last time I saw a movie that was a complete mindfuck from start to finish.

...you get all 37 Spy achievements. Including the 1000 sapped buildings one.

Oh, I also have an even 200 TF2 Achievements.

Now, the latest updates have lots of easy achievements. They must, since I suck at Sniper but still manage to have 28 Sniper achievements.

I don't have that many Left 4 Dead achievements yet. I swear I'm missing ones I should have though, like Barf Bagged and Big Drag.