I said Babbleage, not Babbages, hear? Anyway, welcome to Oddball. Over the last few days my wife has been telling me that every time she comes to this site, there are lurkers showing up on the user bar at the bottom of the page. At first I just thought I was getting a lot of random dopuses hitting the server, but upon checking into it today, I realized that there was a problem with the template which caused two hits to be recorded statistically every time a page was loading. This was because I was opening two EE statistics tags, one in the menu, and one in the user bar—and I guess every time you open a stat tag, it records a hit! (Not a multi-platinum hit, but a hit nonetheless.) To fix it, I have used some Javascript tomfoolery to keep the page layout as-is, but only use one set of statistics tags. This has had the added bonus of tailoring the user bar a bit more; it won’t even mention lurkers anymore if there aren’t any, and if there’s only one, it will say “lurker,” using the correct plurality of the word only if the number of lurkers increases to two or more.

I don’t know what it is with the traffic down here, but it’s anything but consistent. All week it’s taken me half an hour to drive eight miles to work, thanks to bumper-to-bumper traffic down the entire length of Vanderbilt Road. Then today, suddenly, all that traffic is gone. Then I get to work and see that the parking deck is empty, except for the cars belonging to our employees. It looks like nobody who works in the rest of this eight-story building (most of which is occupied by a bank) is at work today. Is this some kind of holiday I don’t know about? For instance, a Cigar and Cognac Holiday for bankers or some crap like that? Weird.

Last night was one of those nights where you want to rip your own arm off and beat yourself with it. (Uhh…well, I suppose I’m being a bit presumptuous in assuming you know what that’s like, but nevermind.) By 12:30 a.m. I was sleepy enough to pass out standing up, but when my wife mentioned that she wanted her notebook computer in the bedroom so she could surf the web for something, I went out to the living room to get it. On the way back into the bedroom I sleepily bumped the notebook against the doorjamb, taking a chip of paint off the damn door molding. Juuuussst great. Well, it’s a small chip, but big enough to bother (and anger) me, so I went hunting for the touch-up paint to make sure I knew where it was and plan to take care of it this evening after I get home from work. Stupid crap. I hate when that shit happens right as you’re going to bed. As I threateningly joked in some sketch pad years ago, “Going to bed ANGRY!!#@$” is not something you want to be doing very often.

Didn’t play any games last night—Halo 2, GTA or otherwise. Instead, I did some minor remixing of some tracks from the new Knight Rider album, listened to the first volume of the Halo 2 soundtrack (unfortunately, it seems I’m going to be waiting for Volume 2 to hear the game’s best tracks), re-read some old stories, and watched Deep Space Nine during dinner.

What? Yes, I watched DS9. I’ve been TiVoing it off of Spike TV. I told TiVo to only keep two episodes at most, since there are only certain days where I feel like watching this show. I dunno, man…everybody says that DS9 is the best of all the Trek series once you get to know it, and that it’s an acquired taste that’s well worth acquiring. I don’t buy it, not yet. Granted, Spike is still showing the late season one / early season two episodes, which are never that good in any Trek series sans the original, but I just find the whole show to be a bore. Reading the TiVo description of the episode I was about to watch last night, I thought it was gonna be pretty good. The description spoke of a proto-universe that was forming on the station and threatening to blow everything up. Sounded like a classic TNG technobabble disaster romp. But what was it really? A character show about Jadzia Dax and her goofy nerdboy symbiont-host-in-training or whatever the hell. I mean, Odo barely even showed up, man! Auberjoobiedoobiedoobiejoobie is the only thing that keeps this show interesting half the time. Ah well, I guess I’ll continue to check it out sporadically. I suppose it doesn’t really get good until the Dominion War anyway.

Hmm, I just realized that something’s missing from the sidebar of the site here. I used to have linkage over there. Time to put it back! Guess I can use an EE template for that (I like only having a single physical file on the server which controls the display of every page on this site!).

Did somebody say “Grand Theft Auto gameplay stories?” No? That’s unfortunate, because I have one to tell. Got about twenty minutes before my next meeting, so that should just suffice. The other day I was cruising around San Andreas, looking for some idiot to beat up. Then, deciding that my cash reserves were getting pretty low, I decided to (once again) try to complete the Pimping Missions. Much like the Pizza Missions or Taxi Missions of the earlier GTA games, this involves you getting into a special type of car and then cruising around looking for hookers. You shuttle them all over town (to their various “customers”) and for each successful pimp you get a cut of the profits. After ten successful pimps, you get a permanent reward—hookers will pay you to have relations with them. You know how in GTA you can pick up a whore, drive into some back alley somewhere and…um, enjoy some hooker minigames? That used to cost you bucks, but now you get paid. An interesting development.

So anyway, I was attempting to complete the ten pimps, which I had already tried about four previous times without success. (Best I’d managed was 8 out of 10 before I did something dumb like run over the hooker by accident, or get busted by the cops for beating up a guy who wouldn’t pay.) During the pimping missions, when one of your women calls for you to come get her, you have a limited amount of time to make it there. San Andreas is so big, I’m still learning the ins and outs of the freeway system and all that crap, but I decided to try taking the freeway since the girl was all the way across town. Well, the freakin’ freeway sucks because there’s not an exit where you want one, and you can’t dive-bomb off the blacktop because there are concrete walls running alongside. (“Watch out for those barriers…they’ll only slow you down!”)

My time was running short, so I got off the freeway and turned down what I thought was an intersecting street that would take me in the right direction. Turns out it was a tunnel down to an underground rail line…and the tunnel just kept going and going, melting into blackness on the horizon. The car’s headlights came on as I barrelled into the dark. Shit, I thought, I don’t have time to turn around now. I kept going, figuring that the tunnel had to pop up again somewhere—hopefully on the other side of the city, where I was trying to go anyway.

Eventually I ran across a train station, drove onto the platform (startling quite a few people in the process) and proceeded to try to drive up the stairs. But they were too steep! The crappy old car couldn’t make it to the top. I couldn’t get out of the car and abandon it, because then the pimping missions would end unsuccessfully and I’d have to start over. There was less than a minute left now on my timer. Freaking out, I backed onto the train tracks—nearly getting clobbered by an oncoming train in the process!—and continued deeper into the rail tunnel.

“WHERE DOES THIS SHIT END?!” I screamed as the tunnel stretched on forever. Finally I saw a light at the end and cheered—finally, I was about to get out of this place. I doubted I’d be able to salvage the pimping missions, because I now had about 20 seconds and I didn’t recognize a damn bit of the terrain that was showing on my map, but still I held onto some crazy shred of hope. Until, that is, I careened into the light and slammed headfirst into a large barricade that said “TRACKS END HERE.”

I was on a huge bridge over the water, my progress blocked by a barricade, unable to proceed.

After a bit of colorful language, I keyed off the pimping missions, knowing I was done for. But I’d made a lot of money from those hookers in the past twenty minutes, and I didn’t want to lose it—I had to somehow get back to my house and save the game, or I’d lose all those thousands. I couldn’t stand the thought of driving back down that stupid train tunnel, so I jumped out of the car and peeked over the edge of the bridge. Hmm, it doesn’t seem like too much distance down to the water. In GTA:SA you can actually swim (i.e., the water doesn’t kill you anymore), so I leaped for it. “Oh, hell no!” shouted my character as he dive-bombed into the bay.

I started to swim for shore (which wasn’t far away), figuring I’d jack a car and return to the city. I seemed to be out in the country somewhere between two of the game’s large cities, as there were forests, rolling hills, dirt roads and lots of pickup trucks around. I casually jogged over to a farmhouse, waiting for an interesting vehicle to come up the road so I could rip it off.

Then suddenly, I had a three-star wanted level!

Too late, I remembered the threatening phone call I’d received earlier in the game from Officer Tenpenny, a local cop, who had warned me not to leave the city. Well, I guess he meant business. I heard the sirens in the distance, and suddenly there were cops all over the damn place. Chasing after me in SUVs, motorcycles, firing at me from a helicopter…total chaos. I ran like mad, wailing on the X button (which puts you into super sprint mode for extra speed). At this point I was thanking myself for stopping by the gym and working my stamina bar up a ways, otherwise I wouldn’t have had a chance. Of course, as in previous GTAs, when the cops really get on your ass, all civilian traffic seems to disappear…how convenient. So, not having anywhere else to turn, I dove back into the water.

Machinegun fire was pelting me from above. I tried to dive and swim down deeper, but couldn’t remember the controls to do so. Basically I just booked it toward the opposite shoreline, climbed out and ran into the woods. But there were cops even there, chasing after me in Ford Broncos. At one point, one of the Broncos stopped and disgorged a carful of police officers, who began shooting at me. I circled around some trees and then jumped into the Bronco, slamming the door and tearing off into the woods in the stolen police cruiser! Heading for the dirt road which I hoped would take me out of this hellhole, I hit the gas and knocked around the silly motorcycle cops who repeatedly tried to overtake me.

Finally I entered the outskirts of the city, the police still hot on my tail. Thankfully, the Rockstar guys were nice enough to anticipate such a thing happening to the player, because they put a Pay ‘n’ Spray auto body shop right there in the middle of the sleepy country town on the fringes of the metropolis. I pulled the police Bronco into the Pay ‘n’ Spray, hoping for a nice fresh coat of paint to hide my identity so I could sneak home undetected. Of course, I forgot one thing. I was driving a cop car. “WHOA, I DON’T TOUCH ANYTHING THAT HOT!” screamed the message from the Pay ‘n’ Spray. Shit! Now I’ve got to bail and find something else to drive. I ditched the Bronco and hunted frantically for a car to jack; the cops were closing in, the wailing sirens filling the room. Finally, I saw a vehicle I could snatch—a John Deere tractor.

It must have looked pretty stupid, and C.J. must have got his ears pretty full of blue paint, but that tractor emerged from the Pay ‘n’ Spray clad in a nice royal blue color, and the frantic police chase was over. Of course, immediately after a respray, there’s a short time where if you commit a crime and a cop sees it, your full wanted level will be reinstated. So I jumped off the tractor and just stood there on the sidewalk until the wanted stars stopped flashing. Damn, what a trip. Of course, after that I beat up a few bumpkins and took their money, then jacked some woman’s SUV and drove back to down, where I finally saved my game—the pimping missions long since forgotten.

Hope you all enjoyed that semi-entertaining yarn…I’ll be back later with more. (Not necessarily more yarns, that is, just more posts.)