Laptop: The Next Generation
In my life, few purchases (besides an automobile) are more exciting than a new computer or some other piece of electronic gadgetry. So I was particularly geeked today when I finally pulled the trigger on my new mobile workstation — a laptop for business, in other words. My last laptop purchase was in 2006, and looking back, it seems that most of my machines are bought during the summer months, though not as a result of any conscious design. Perhaps it’s an internal biological clock that still remembers when I spent every summer playing the latest games, pushing my systems to their limits!
Sony Vaio F Series
As with everything these days, I tend to buy the best equipment that I can afford and make use for it for as long as possible, until it either just plain craps out or my needs significantly eclipse its capabilities. Today’s purchase was no exception, as I decided to choose a loaded-to-the-hilt Sony Vaio F Series, a 16.4″ Core i7 beastie that I optioned with enough equipment to stave off obsolescence for a good long while. What’s perhaps most significant about this purchase, for me, is that it’s the first laptop I’ve ever bought from someone other than Dell.
Excluding the first laptop I ever owned — a 486-powered Canon Innova Book — which was a gift, I’ve only purchased Dell Inspiron or Latitude systems for myself. The quality of these machines got progressively worse; the Inspiron 3200 was a solid (literally!) notebook, but the 8600 that came next was creaky, flaky and hot. Worst of all was the Latitude D620 I bought in 2006 for business use, which turned into a complete heap of slag in two years’ time. Its LCD backlight became dim and uneven, the lone monaural speaker blew out, the battery was reporting imminent end-of-life within six months, and the system gradually slowed to a molasses-laden crawl that even a full reformat and reinstall of Windows couldn’t cure. (This makes it all the more ridiculous to read my glowing impressions of the D620 on my first day of owning it…I shall endeavor to remember this and temper my review of the Vaio F accordingly!)
Although I have since heard that 2006 was perhaps a perigee for Dell and that the quality of their current line of notebooks is much better, I honestly just can’t stomach taking the chance. For the last few months I’ve been quietly looking at various notebook manufacturers, from Sony and HP to Lenovo and Asus, searching for the perfect configuration for my needs. I kind of expect my laptop to do it all: It needs to have a high-resolution screen for my design activities, sufficient RAM for heavy Photoshopping, dedicated graphics for gaming and video playback, a great keyboard for speed typing when I’m writing, and good thermal management so it doesn’t turn into a furnace beneath my wrists. Try finding all of that in a notebook, and at an affordable price — it’s not easy.
Whistlin’ Dixie
Dixie Buick GMC in Fort Myers
Over the past decade that I’ve spent in southwest Florida, I’ve seen my share of ups and downs. One of the definite downs of my residence here has been the service offered by the local area’s Pontiac dealerships. From that fateful day in 2001 when Naples’ big-name Pontiac dealership of note first got its claws into my Trans Am, I’ve been on a roller coaster ride of poor workmanship, damaged parts, rude service writers and flat-out brainless employees of every conceivable position. Imagine my surprise, then, at finding a Pontiac dealer nearby that doesn’t flat-out suck donkey nipple.
That dealership is Dixie Buick Pontiac GMC in south Fort Myers, part of that area’s “big row” of car dealerships lined up as far as the eye can see. Formerly known as Galeana Pontiac, a dedicated PMD shop, the dealership was bought out by Dixie Buick GMC when GM was doing their big consolidation of those three brands under one roof. I took my GTO there for some routine work in 2008 — tire rotation, alignment, and brake fluid replacement — which was performed competently as far as I could tell, though for some reason the techs felt the need to put an inordinate number of miles on the car while it was in their care. Back then, I drove away with a few nagging concerns in the back of my mind, but no evidence to support them other than the trip odometer. The car’s ride had improved, there was nothing damaged and the cost for the work was reasonable.
Fast-forward to last month when I changed the oil in the GTO and discovered, to my heart-stopping horror, a thin film of oil coating the bottom exterior of the oil pan. Although GM cars have been derided endlessly over the years for leaking oil like a sieve, none of the ones I owned have ever leaked so much as one drop. (From the engine, anyway — my Trans Am did leak a few drops from the differential at one time.) I went immediately to the online encyclopedia of all things goat, LS1GTO.com, and discovered that leaking oil pan gaskets were a relatively common issue on the LS2. In my case, it did indeed seem to be coming from the oil pan gasket. I found one bolt on the pan slightly looser than the others, snugged it up, cleaned up the oil and hoped for the best.
Checking back a couple of weeks later, I found the sheen of oil had returned. Welp, that was it. I had six months of my extended 5-year / 50,000 mile GM Major Guard warranty left, and it looked like it was about to get its first use whether I liked it or not. The leak was so insignificant that there wasn’t even any oil on the garage floor after two weeks, but I wasn’t going to chance it.
Retro Gaming Anniversary: Star Wars: KOTOR
Damn it feels good to be a Jedi gangsta
Seven years ago today — July 15th, 2003 — Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic was released for the original Xbox console. Now, I normally don’t go around spouting off release dates of games; I happened to run across this one a couple days ago only because I am once again playing this game. Since I have been so completely addicted to it in recent days, I thought it might be an appropriate subject for one of those elusive Oddball Update “Retro Gaming” posts. And so here we are.
Star Wars: KOTOR (as it shall henceforth be called, since I don’t want to type out that whole name again) has the honor of being the first game I ever reviewed here at Oddball Update. It was, in fact, the subject of my second post ever on this blog. Reading that old post from 2003 is somewhat disorienting today, as it talks about the old Xbox console and its hamfisted controller, and makes comparisons to other games of the era that I have long since forgotten. But the overall bent of the review still holds true: KOTOR is an amazing game, even today in 2010, and now — as then — it’s an absolute pleasure to play.
Today’s post won’t really be a review of the game (hence the absence of the word “review” from the already-overlong post title). It’s more a chance for me to discuss the technical fine points of going to back to such old software on a modern computer. This is a process which is typically fraught with compatibility nightmares, driver hacks and other stuff-and-nonsense that makes you wonder why you even bothered in the first place. However, thanks to Valve Software’s inestimably helpful Steam digital delivery platform, playing KOTOR on your PC is now as easy as plopping down $9.99, downloading 4GB of data and firing it right up — natively — on your Windows 7 box. Yep — KOTOR is on Steam.
Well, That Didn’t Quite Work Out
Today’s prospective home buyers showed up 45 minutes early (while we were still here), flustered us thoroughly and then decided they hated the place, turned around and walked out within literally thirty seconds. Nice.
Let the Showings Resume
After trying to chase her down for weeks, Apple and I finally cornered one of her former co-workers. Some time back, she learned that we were selling our home and expressed interest in taking a look at it, since she wanted to upgrade from her small condo that wasn’t even garage-equipped. Being a somewhat well-off widow who already lives in the local area, she seemed like the perfect buyer. And, because she’s going directly through us instead of a real estate agent of her own, if she ends up buying the property we’ll save money on the commission.
Proving the old axiom that it never rains but it pours, we were just an hour away from meeting her when our own agent called and said that she had someone wanting to come show the house at the very same time. Why does that just figure? Unfortunately, that buyer was not able to make it at any other time, so we had to let them go. I figure it’s better to court the prospect you know you have a good chance of landing, rather than the one you know nothing about.
“Don’t stress over it,” Apple told me. “There will be more buyers where that one came from.”
It didn’t take long for her to be proven right, for during dinner I received another call from our agent who had yet another buyer wanting to stop by tomorrow afternoon. This time I was pleased to accept, and so we’ll scurry out of here and have lunch elsewhere tomorrow while the prospects are visiting. After almost three weeks of zero activity, it’s nice to finally start seeing some new buyers coming in for a closer look.
Our agent shed some light on that three-week lull, incidentally. For the last several weeks there have been two other homes just like ours for sale in the community that are foreclosures, and as such were better spec’ed than ours and with lower list prices. But both of those homes recently went under contract, so once again our place is the “deal” of the community, so we’re going to start seeing more business. We don’t have the lake view that so many covet, so the going has been tougher for us, but I’m sure we’ll get an offer before long.
As if on cue, my boss this evening regaled me with half an hour worth of instant messages about how great Frisco is, how awesome the people are and how much stuff he has discovered to do. Living in the suburbs of a major metro area like Dallas has its advantages: there’s an absolute load of restaurant, activities and culture all around you. Planetariums, zoos, aquariums, historic train rides, huge arcades and bowling alleys, excellent local libraries with great kids’ programs (my boss said his son was given a free stuffed animal for reading a certain number of books)…it’s all stuff you don’t realize you’re missing until you live somewhere with a complete dearth of any of it, like our current place of residence.
This, again, reminds me of the metro Detroit area where I grew up, just as driving on Frisco’s roads did. Up there, likewise, you were surrounded by suburbs, each with its own raison d’être, restaurants, shops and places to go. If you didn’t feel like seeing a movie in Livonia, you could go to Northville. Or you could go out to West Bloomfield. Or Farmington Hills. You could plan a whole raft of shopping, dining and doing stuff in a different locale each day. Down here in southwest Florida, there’s just…here. I mean, you could go to the big mall in Estero, but it’s just one mall. You could go to Fort Myers if you have all day, but ugh…who would want to, when it’s just the same stuff you have at home but in worse condition.
The problem with the Detroit metroplex, of course, was that the anchor of it all — downtown Detroit — was somewhere you never wanted to go, at least not in the era in which I grew up and certainly not now. I hope downtown Dallas will be different.
One way or another, we’re looking forward to the adventure ahead.
Oddball Review: Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life (2003)
Oh boy.
I may have taken this Tomb Raider thing a little too far. See, it was the first film being played at a friend’s house last weekend that made me decide to pick up Tomb Raider: Underworld (reviewed here) for my Xbox 360. But I have to be honest, here: Going a step further and renting the first film’s sequel, Lara Craft: Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life (Two colons? Really?) was a mistake.
This film is simply horrible. Oh, I tried to watch it through to completion. Tried and failed — two nights in a row. I’ve come within 40 minutes of the end, but I just can’t sit there and watch the minutes tick by on the clock when I realize that I could be doing something more productive with my time instead, like watching paint dry. Or to be more serious, actually playing — not just watching — an actually good bit of Tomb Raider goodness in the form of Underworld. Because let’s face it, Cradle of Life has about as much to do with Tomb Raider as 2008′s Knight Rider reboot had to do with the original series. (That’s “zero,” for the uninitiated.)
Both of the Tomb Raider films star Angelina Jolie, in case you hadn’t heard, who herself is a very good approximation of the fictional Lara Croft. The first film, released in 2001, mostly saw her exploring vast ancient ruins in a variety of global locales. It was, in fact, much like the games themselves — albeit with more than a little Hollywood suspension of disbelief required. While that film looked and felt a lot like some of the recent Tomb Raider games, 2003′s Cradle of Life looks more like a crazy quilt of bad action movie cliches and homages all smashed together in completely incongruous ways — a crazy quilt that just happens to star Angelina Jolie with an English accent. On a Tomb Raider level, the feel is all wrong. On a compelling movie level, the feel is just plain AWOL.
Speaking of accents, I basically can’t understand half of the dialogue in Cradle of Life. Part of it is the fact that the 5.1 surround audio downmixes horribly on my TV’s built-in stereo speakers, burying what was formerly the center channel dialog so far below the soundtrack and hard effects that it’s almost impossible to hear. (I’ve shelved my home theater system for the purpose of uncluttering our house while we try to sell it, a decision that becomes more grudging each passing weekend.) Complicating matters is the brogue of Scottish co-star Gerard Butler (300), making it almost necessary for me to turn the subtitles on. But as I explained to my wife earlier today while discussing this cinematic abomination, “Every time I’m tempted to reach for the subtitle button, I decide not to bother because it doesn’t matter what anybody is saying anyhow.”
Oddball Review: Tomb Raider Underworld (Xbox 360)
Lara Croft stars as the heroine of Tomb Raider: Cleavage.
I haven’t done a review in a while. Sadly, since the rise of the HD era, all of my vintage video capture equipment is no longer sufficient for the purpose of grabbing screenshots of high-res video games and Blu-ray movies. Nevertheless, I’ve been spending far too much time consuming media and far too little actually producing anything of value, even a schlocky video game review on a blog that no one reads. Consider, then, today’s review of Tomb Raider: Underworld a first step toward rectifying that.
One way that the frugal (a.k.a: cheap-ass) gamer can enjoy his video gaming pastime for very little expense is to buy games a year or two after their release. Although I’ve always been a “mild fan” of the venerable Tomb Raider series (who can trace his lineage all the way back to 1996′s very first installment on the PC), I never bought Underworld when it hit store shelves in late 2008. I did, however, download and play the free demo and liked what I saw. So when a friend popped in the DVD of Angelina Jolie’s first Tomb Raider film over the Independence Day weekend, I got in the mood to revisit this storied video game franchise on my own time.
Tomb Raider: Underworld is a direct sequel to 2006′s Tomb Raider: Legend, which I bought (at full price) and enjoyed that year, but quickly traded in as it was quite short and had essentially no replay value. By comparison, when I picked up Underworld a couple days ago, I paid eight bucks and change. I can say with certainty that Underworld would have to suck pretty hardcore for me to feel ripped off after a transaction like that. That’s the advantage of buying old stock, friends. After hitting up Xbox Live for the free DLC packs (mostly costumes and such), I fired up the game and decided to see what my eight greenbacks got me.
To be honest, I don’t remember much of anything about Legend, the previous game in the series. My memory of it is very flash-in-the-pan, like a recollection of a dream I had five years ago. So I was a little bit (okay, a lot) confused when the game dropped me right into a scene straight out of an action movie: Croft Manor was burning, Lara was trying to escape from it, and all kinds of shit was hitting the fan. None of this made any sense. I thought I at least remembered the climactic final scene from Legend, and it hadn’t involved burnin’ down the house (with apologies to the Talking Heads) whatsoever. What’s going on?
As it turned out, this little “teaser” scene at the beginning of Underworld is precisely that: a teaser. In other words, it’s actually a snippet of action that comes later in the game’s story. Shortly after the teaser reaches a climax of sorts, we cut to a very cinematic title animation, followed by a date card reading “One Week Earlier…” Yeah, thanks for throwing me for a loop right out of the gate. Oh, and that teaser? You earn 25G for completing it. It basically consists of walking around three corners, jumping twice and crouching once. If you’re wanting to powerlevel your Gamerscore, this game is looking like a promising way to do it.
