Oddball Update

Random bloggage is imminent. All hands abandon ship.

So here it is, Friday evening, and I’m about to sit down to a meal of home-cooked chicken fricassee. It’s the (welcome) end of another work week, during which I got a lot done and learned a good deal in the process. This weekend I’m planning to chill out, do some creative writing (a continuation of something I already started on earlier this week), hang out with Apple, play some games, go to Sushi-Thai, watch some TV, maybe do some driving, and enjoy life. It’s what weekends are supposed to be!

In case you hadn’t heard — I understand you midwesterners are busy with the recent snowfall, of all the ridiculous things — we here in Florida have been baking to death. We’ve had next to zero rain since 2006 ended, and that currently has us in what is being called the worst drought in Florida in over 100 years. All of the man-made lakes in the community are down at least two-thirds from their usual levels, and officials are starting to worry about the drinking water supply. There’s still another month or two before the rainy season normaly kicks in, so to mitigate the disaster, the South Florida Water Management District has imposed the rarely-used Phase II restrictions.

What this means is that you can only water your lawn twice a week, for four hours a day between 4 a.m. and 8 a.m. You can only wash your car on those same two days between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. And this time, businesses and golf courses have to play by the rules, too. The car wash rules even say that you have to wash your car on a non-paved surface, or in a place where the water will drain to a non-paved surface so it can soak back into the ground. (That’s not possible in our community, because we’re not allowed to park on the grass, even if we own the property on which said grass is planted.) And local cops have been ordered not to give warnings to first time offenders, but rather to just hand out multi-hundred dollar tickets instead.

So as you can imagine, I’m glad that with restrictions like these, we’re not getting any rainfall — because if I needed to clean my car, the only way I could 100% comply with the law would be to go to a car wash, where they use unrestricted reclaimed water (read: toilet wastewater that’s been treated). And that should be all you need to know, in case you happen to visit Florida and wonder why our car washes smell so bad.

In other news, my diet and exercise program is back on track, now that we’ve returned from Thailand. Since we embarked on our big trip back in February, I’ve lost nearly 20 pounds. More than half of this was due to the kinds of food we had overseas, as well as the way people eat there — smaller portions, but eating more often (as many as five times a day). So rather than crack down on fats, carbs, sugars or any of that other stuff willy-nilly, I’ve embarked on a “portion control” diet. Coupled with eating generally healthier foods (but still occasionally getting to enjoy stuff like cheese, fried foods and desserts in small portions), this is a sustainable lifestyle that’s also good for you.

And I’m back to biking. Now, I’m alternating between a morning ride and an evening ride. The timing depends on the weather, my work schedule, and what I feel like. Today, for example, I’m going for an evening ride. It’s incredibly nice outside at this time of day, and after everyone gets home from work, there’s not much traffic in the community. Plus, the summer evenings remind me of the old tapes I made in our backyard during Michigan summers now long past, which (ironically) I usually find myself listening to on my MP3 player during my rides.

In gaming news, I recently acquired S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl for the PC. This is an FPS/RPG combo that takes place in and around the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station, in an alternate timeline where Unit #4 exploded not only in 1986, but again in 2006 as well. The area is surrounded by strange phenomena, and you take the role of a lone soldier in a military-like world of exploration, trading and conspiracy. Pretty interesting.

Unfortunately, it’s also pretty buggy. The game doesn’t feel polished, and in fact gives off a somewhat fragile air, like at any moment something will fail to work as expected. Some of the bugs were so bad — like the inability to complete side quests and such — that a patch had to be rushed out within a week or so of the game’s release, and I hear another one’s on the way. Last night, after locating an important person from my mission objectives, the guy started to tell me something crucial to the story — and then suddenly stopped, turned around and ran off, shooting at some wild dogs that were coming toward him. Later attempts to talk to him again failed, so I missed whatever message he had to give me. Stupid.

The gameworld is staggeringly huge, though, and fairly attractive, although my 7600GT can’t keep up with the highest settings so I’ve had to disable about half of the eye candy. The lighting is the most impressive — as a thunderstorm approaches, arcs of lightning fill the sky, and the distant flickers cause trees to cast shadows on the decaying buildings and the surrounding hills. I’m also missing a lot by not understanding Russian; most of the NPC dialog is not in English, but Russian speakers tell me that it’s quite realistic and even funny to listen to. Sadly these conversations are neither dubbed nor subtitled, not being crucial to the story.

Overall, I’d give S.T.A.L.K.E.R. (which has to be the most irritating acronym name EVER, though perhaps not as bad as M.I.N.E.R.A.L.) fairly high marks, although it would score better if it had more polish and felt like a really well-finessed product, like the ones released by companies such as id Software. I’ll probably continue playing, because the story is starting to get interesting, but the initial problems I had with the game — which conspired to waste two hours last night when I could have been playing instead — make me glad I preordered the Xbox360 version of BioShock, due out this August.

I smell dinner cooking, so I’m outta here!

Categorized as Games, Life, Games/PC, Randomness