Okay? Whatever; I’m not a roofer, nor do I have any clue whether to believe the Rube Goldberg explanation this guy is giving me. The only thing I really understood was that he recommended taking up 250 square feet of the roof back there to see where the problem was. Oh, okay! Let me head down to the bank right now so I can take out a loan. He said he’d get a written proposal to me in the mail today.

Well, I’m not made of money, so I walked around pulling my hair for a while before Apple was kind enough to calm me down and point me toward a course of action I otherwise probably wouldn’t have taken: Call the president of the HOA board and ask for advice. Seemed like going a bit above my station somehow, but hey, the board does work for us, so I gave it a shot.

It turned out to be an excellent idea. I was recommended to contact one person after another, and called each in turn, until I finally got somewhere: The original contractor who installed the roof of every home in this development. I scheduled an appointment for them to come out and give me an estimate next week. I figure if anybody knows this roof, it’s the people who built it, and I’m more likely to trust the recommendations they’d give me. And for the record, I don’t believe for a second that this company does a shit job, unless half the homes in this county have shitty roofs on them.

Now I’m just waiting for a callback to confirm next week’s appointment. Otherwise, that concludes the roofing excitement for the morning. This afternoon I’ve got to meet with our CPA to do a mid-year tax analysis and see if we should make any changes to our estimated tax payment schedule with the IRS. I also just got the green light on a side project that I need to start now — 6 hours worth, minimum; probably more like 10 — in addition to the two other open projects still on the docket.

I feel kind of stupid complaining about being busy, because this whole week so far has been very quiet. But I was easily frustrated by the roof issue and by the ongoing traditional lack of effective communication at my day job, which made the whole week seem like a living hell instead of the peaceful breather that it was actually closer to. Which sucks, because judging from what next week looks like, I could have used that breather. But it’s interesting, because sometimes being busier makes you feel more satisfied, in an odd sort of way.

At least it’s Friday, and the good news is that my day job’s email inbox is empty for a change. Apple has the day off, and this evening we’re going to try a new sushi bar and Teppan grill restaurant we’ve heard about. Both of us have to work this weekend, unfortunately, but I’m going to see if I can do all of my tasks on Saturday so I can have Sunday off. That’s the day my dad gets here for his impromptu Florida vacation, so maybe on Sunday night we can watch a movie on the big screen TV or something. I need to take a trip over to Blockbuster and see what’s on Blu-ray these days.

So today, naturally, we got our dose of karma-balancing payback. I should preface this by saying that it’s been raining here for the last week straight, and in the last four days especially, it’s done nothing but pour down this unrelenting, drenching rain. It was at precisely the same moment this morning when Apple and I both looked up at the ceiling in our bedroom and blurted out, “What is that spot up there?”

There was a weird discolored spot on the ceiling right above the bed. I felt it. It was cold and wet. Not coincidentally, there was also cold, wet stuff raining out of the sky outside. That’s a great big whopping dose of Not Good. So I get a huge ladder, crawl up into the attic access over our bedroom and start poking around with a flashlight. And then I see it: Water dripping off the pointed end of a crossbeam. About one drop every two seconds.

There’s just a small portion of wood that looks wet, right where the beam comes to an end, and for the life of me I can’t find any other wet spots anywhere in the attic. But it’s been dripping long enough that it’s soaked into the insulation in this one very precise spot, and has now made a corresponding spot on our bedroom ceiling. Actually, there are four spots, all right near each other, one bigger than the other three. I have no idea why there are four. There is only one drip point.

Anyway, I called a local roofing company that does free estimates, so they’re coming out at 9 in the morning on Friday. For the meantime, I’ve stuffed a folded towel up in the attic, right beneath where the water had been dripping. Since the attic does not have a floor, I can’t put a bucket up there for fear the weight would…well, cause an even larger problem. It’s since stopped raining, thank God, but we’re likely to get some more off-and-on between now and Friday.

Based on the downward angle of the dripping beam, the water is probably entering at an elbow-like corner of the roof, where two planes intersect. A typical leak location. Hopefully it will not cost a fortune to fix. I really don’t have a fortune right now.

1. Shift into neutral when slowing down or when stopped.
Yeah. Let’s all go ahead and take our cars out of gear while we’re still moving, so that we will be completely unable to react quickly in the event of an emergency situation. Let’s even put additional wear and tear on our cars so that we can pay all the money we saved on gas toward rebuilding our transmissions. And correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t cars with an automatic transmission generally idle at lower RPMs when they’re in gear than when they’re in neutral?

Almost as if to prove my point, I was listening to a radio show today where a caller was promoting this idea, and in the same breath admitted that she accidentally put her car in reverse while attempting to go to neutral once. Great! I can’t wait to be the guy behind the next idiotic suckface who grenades his transmission by popping it into reverse at 45 MPH!

Use cruise control on surface streets.
Again, let’s break another cardinal rule of driver’s ed and set our cruise control at 40 MPH while we’re on a surface street — you know, a street with actual intersections, residential areas, school zones and other things that we may need to continually adjust our speed to navigate safely through. This is just one more excuse for American drivers — who already have a problem discerning between the gas and brake pedals — to zone out behind the wheel.

Drive at 35 MPH on all roads regardless of conditions.
Yeah, I have actually heard of a guy who does this. If you drive slow, you’ll burn less fuel, right? Right, but what you fail to realize is that driving 35 MPH on a road with a 55 MPH or higher speed limit is more likely to get yourself and others killed than jumping out of a perfectly good plane. Adjusting reasonably to the flow of traffic isn’t about kowtowing to the nutbars doing 20 over, it’s about creating an overall safe environment in which to travel. If you’ve got a dozen cars moving at 70 MPH and suddenly there’s one guy in the road doing 35, I’ll give you one guess what will happen if just one of those dozen drivers isn’t paying attention.

Please, people: Don’t throw the rules of the road out the window because you want to save a damn buck. If you’re that hard up, get a friggin’ bicycle.

Edit: Seems AAA has the same opinion, particularly about taking your car out of gear while in motion. I swear I did not see that article before I posted this rant.

I was also going to add a link to an automotive forum I visit where I just found this article posted. However, as is typical of automotive forums, it only took until the third post in the thread before somebody started a flamewar, so I’m not going to bother. Suffice it to say, the flaming troll’s argument was that he’ll put his car in neutral when he slows down if he wants to, since he should be “comfortable while driving” and not “stressed out about whether his engine is going to die” as he slows to a stop (presumably from bogging, as he has a manual transmission).

All I can say is, the guy must have just learned stick yesterday if he is still worrying about that. I think I outgrew that fear on the first day driving my first stickshift car.

For example, when Macromedia Flash first hit the scene, a lot of “cutting edge” web developers rushed to create websites designed entirely in Flash. These websites were mostly usability nightmares, full of a lot of pointless animation, like 10 seconds spent flipping some ridiculous panel onto the screen just so one paragraph of text could be displayed on it. Back then, I had trouble figuring out what the point of Flash was, because that’s all I saw it being used for, and that, to me, is a spurious use in 90% of applications. Interestingly, although Flash has gotten even more powerful over the years, it is being put to much better use today.

I’m seeing the same kind of thing in the rapid explosion of video content on mainstream websites. It’s a relatively new phenomenon, because until now, only a small fraction of the American public had the bandwidth necessary to watch video. Now that broadband is becoming more commonplace, major news websites like CNN and MSNBC are adding video of news stories, rather than just written word, to their sites. But just as with Flash in its early days, they have yet to figure out how to use this rich media effectively.

This irritates me. Because when I visit a site like CNN, I want to scan the headlines, find a story that interests me, and then skim through the story to see if it interests me enough to warrant further research. This is known as the inverse pyramid model of navigation. CNN screws this hopelessly up by making certain stories video only. So if you want to just click a headline and read quickly to get the details, you can’t. You have to sit through a video segment on it.

A video where there’s usually some buffoon reporting on the story by using lots of “ums” and “uhhhs” and “aahhs” and who takes forever to get to the damn point. And he strings you along like you’re brain dead because that’s how the mainstream media works: By deliberately withholding details and delivering the news like a drama, so that you sit on the edge of your seat and won’t want to leave during the commercials.

And when all you wanted to do was skim through the news story, you get to enjoy all of this video hyperbole only after a 15, 30 or even 60 second commercial rolls, ostensibly to pay for the bandwidth your evil self is stealing from CNN by having the audacity to watch their video.

Earth to CNN, MSNBC and you others? Put your precious video in a box on a sidebar, and let me press a “Play” button to watch the segment. In the main content area of the screen, print the news story IN WORDS so that I can digest the content at my own pace, if I decide I don’t want to sit around waiting for someone like Mike Galanos to interrupt delivery of the facts to inject his vapid opinion in that irritating, falsetto “outrage voice” of his. Even “po-dunk” local news organizations like Detroit’s ABC affiliate have figured this out — y’think you big shots can gather enough of your vacuous digital media personnel in a single room to collectively generate the intelligence necessary to come to the same conclusion?

Although I do surf the major cable news networks’ websites for headlines, I mostly rely on other, low-tech sites that do aggregation — like The Detroit Report, for example. It’s far more efficient. The cable networks’ continuous addition of irritating fluff only hastens my departure from their houses of dreck.

Ten years ago, after that graduation ceremony had ended, I embarked on what I fondly dubbed “The Long Summer,” so named because I wasn’t starting college until October. I chose the late-fall starting date because I figured I deserved an extra month or two of relaxation, after the four years of hell I’d just been through. That summer turned out to be everything I had hoped. Looking back, it’s become my Woodstock, my “good old days.” I’ve experienced even more wonderful times since, but you know how it goes — nothing will ever quite recapture 1998 again, when gas was 89 cents a gallon, I had a brand new girlfriend, a brand new Trans Am and a whole calendar of lazy days stretching before me.

(Actually, without much creative license, the preceding description of my heyday could easily pass for that of a guy much older than me!)

In a recent email conversation with my high school buddy Pooch, I remarked that I’d planned to dive into my old Oddball Update archives and post a commemorative entry, featuring some snippets of journal entries I’d written back in those days surrounding our graduation. Unfortunately, my busy schedule kept me from getting around to it, and now the anniversary date (June 7th) is nearly one month past. Despite the belatedness, I thought this opportunity was one too good to pass up, so here we go.

As some of you probably know, Oddball Update has existed long before this Internet-based incarnation went online in 2003. As far back as 1994, I’ve been keeping journal entries called “Oddball Updates” in documents on my evolving timeline of personal computers, until eventually I converted the whole mess into a private, Web-based blog that runs locally on my home workstation. With my entire junior high, high school and college history indexed in a searchable, non-linear format, I can now go back to nearly any time and see what kind of stupid music I was listening to, food I ate for dinner or pissy emotional spells I was going through.

Today, though, I’ll commemorate the 10-year anniversary of my Freedom From Hell™ by selecting a few choice paragraphs from that very time. Even if you previously weren’t aware of how much I loathed high school, you’ll no doubt sense a strong hint of that sentiment in these snippets.

WELCOME TO JUNE, 1998!!! Okay, okay, calm down jusssst a little…June is truly a wonderful month, no matter what year it is, but there is just a bit more school garbage to deal with before we can truly, honestly be free forever. Here’s the deal. Tuesday and Wednesday we have our exams, Friday is the senior breakfast (to which we received more of the school’s infamous “inviations that we literally cannot refuse”), and graduation rehearsal, and Sunday is the actual graduation ceremony. And after that…it’s a done deal. The last nail will be pried out of the coffin lid that was nailed shut on that formidable first day, August 23rd, 1994, and we will be home free. And what a glorious day that will be.
Oddball Update: June 1st, 1998

WE HAVE FINALLY ARRIVED AT THE OFFICIAL END!!! That’s right, on Sunday, June 7th, 1998, at approximately 5:00 in the afternoon, the 4-year battle for our sanity at high school officially drew to an close. And my friends and I have won. Now we’re on our victory lap, and there’s nothing those sons of bitches at that infernal school can do about it. Ever again.

I have to admit, the graduation ceremony was very nicely done. After it was over, we went to Mountain Jack’s for dinner. And after that, we had a little celebratory cake and orange sherbet punch for dessert back at the house. Overall it was a great day. And I believe it was just one great day in what is to become a long line of similarly great days. Tomorrow I’m going to run a few errands, work on my Wolfenstein game, and think about (and write to) my lovely girlfriend Apple, who I am rapidly beginning to think I will never be able to do without ever again. In a couple weeks I’ll get my new car, and in a couple of months I hope to spend time with Apple in Australia. Overall, things are really looking up. And I think they’re just going to keep getting better.

So here we are, not seniors in high school, not even in high school at all anymore…we’re high school graduates. Even dopey old [Big J], who pranced up there to get his diploma like some kind of nutbar, with a huge dopey smile on his huge dopey face (while everyone snickered quite audibly, I might add). Even [S], that jerkass….even [L], who thinks he’s such hot shit, but is really just plain shit…and all those other assholes, some of whom got what they didn’t deserve…they’re graduates now too. But you know what? I don’t care anymore. I am cleansed of them. They are off my hands, things of the past now. And they can stay there.

And there are lots of other bonuses, too. This is the year of The Long Summer™. We aren’t just temporarily free from teachers, from idiotic busywork, and from those beyond-idiotic rules and regulations. We’re permanently free from them. Never again will I arm my alarm for 6:00 a.m., tie a tie, set out a blue Oxford shirt and blue Dockers pants, and go to bed worrying about what sort of persecution might be brought upon me the next day… Never again will I scrape ice off the windshield of a black ‘93 Grand Prix while its engine idles reluctantly in the painfully cold Michigan air at 7:20 a.m… Never again will I have to worry about dodging insults, taking crazy directions, assuming responsibility for the many errors of the administration, wondering what I’ve missed…it’s all done, folks. No more, ever again. It seems almost hard to believe now, as I sit here at 1:30 in the morning on this glorious eve of my ultimate freedom…but it is the truth, and whether I believe it or not, it is fact.

And now, because this year, the year before it, and indeed all four of my years here have dragged on far too long with more harm done than good, let us revel in slamming the door on high school for all eternity. God willing, may The Powers That Be prevent such a catastrophic educational institution from getting its hands on me again. And this is the last we shall mention of it, for it is now time to move on — but before we move too far, let’s pause for a few months to rest, recuperate, and most importantly, enjoy our time off.

Oddball Update: June 7th, 1998

The funny thing about these ancient entries is, while I can still easily recall the jubilation with which I shut the door on my high school “career,” part of me wonders if all the vitriol was really worth it. Okay, pick your jaws up off the floor. Sure, I went through several periods of extended hell at that school. But I’m not sitting around here today still letting that get to me. Now, if I should happen to cast a snarky or disgusted tongue back upon those days, it’s done largely in jest — a dismissive ridicule of days lousy enough that they’re not worth remembering.

Now, understand: I’m certainly no master of Zen, but I’m trying. Oh yes; in the years immediately following my exit from high school, any reminder of those days would have quickly turned me into a bitter, percolating cauldron of anger. “Holding a grudge” doesn’t begin to cover it.

However, largely thanks to my wife (the very same Apple whom I mentioned in those decade-old snippets above!), I learned how to cool out and make peace with those memories. A few years ago, if the subject of high school came up, I would have remembered the schedule change disaster and psychological witch hunt of my junior year, or the belittling names Mister [S] used to call me, or the number of classmates we lost due to expulsions for drug use and crime. Nowadays, by contrast, I fondly recall the weekend evenings spent hanging out with my friends, or think of the Duke Nukem 3D gaming sessions, or remember the exhilarating freedom of driving my first car. I can call upon those other, shittier memories in my old Oddball entries, if I want to — and when I do, I usually just laugh.

Make no mistake, though — I would not be so complacent a second time, if I were faced with another controlling power like my high school that tried to mind-fuck me and place the blame for everything, even the actions of my peers, at my feet. Among the two common camps of operant conditioning, positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement, I am a person who absolutely does not and will not respond to the latter. Unfortunately, my high school — an old-fashioned Catholic institution every bit as modern as it was when it opened in 1958 — treated negative reinforcement like gospel.

I imagine you know the drill. Your teacher or principal makes your life suck until you do something right, at which point they’ll consider making it suck less (negative reinforcement). This approach is chosen rather than presenting some kind of praise or reward when exceptional work has been done (positive reinforcement). In my own life experience, I find that I am much more motivated to perform exceptionally to earn praise, than I am motivated to perform solely to avoid punishment. When the latter methodology is used, I tend to stop caring altogether. Removal of aversive stimulus alone is not sufficient reason for me to put my heart into a task.

In my school, they even took punishment to the next level — giving detention to every student in a classroom for the antics of a couple jokers in the back. The idea, I suppose, was to get us to police ourselves — to get the good kids to gang up on the bad kids and make them behave, because everyone had to suffer for the mistakes of a few. Instead, because the bad kids were usually the same ones who could beat us good kids to a pulp, those of us who strove to behave ourselves quickly wondered why we even bothered.

And so, being confronted by negative reinforcement on a daily basis in high school, I quickly fell into a pattern of disgruntled apathy, more so with some classes than others (the more negative the instructor, the more apathetic I became). It could be argued that I was only damaging myself (and my grades) by reacting this way, but even with my apathy I averaged a 3.5 GPA. Believe me, I never once lost any sleep over those remaining points — life is too precious to micromanage to the Nth degree.

I tell you all of this to provide some context to the discussion my friend Pooch and I had just recently. 2008 marks the 50th anniversary of our high school’s opening back in 1958, and Pooch emailed me to say he’d received a newsletter from the alumni office that spoke of a commemorative event. “All alums are expected to attend!” the newsletter barked, in underlined print.

We had a good laugh, Pooch and I, about how very much like our high school those words were. Not “we hope you’ll attend,” or “we look forward to seeing you.” With that place, it was always about issuing orders — even now, when they’re addressing men and women who could be nearly twice as old as I. “We expect you to be here.” Were I to reactivate the dusty, discarded synapses of my brain that were last used ten years ago, my gut reaction would be to wonder what the repercussions would be if I failed to show up, even knowing full well that punishing me now would be well outside the bounds of their authority.

After Pooch and I had a chuckle over that, it occurred to us that news of another commemorative event would probably soon be gracing our mailboxes — our own 10-year high school reunion. To be honest, the very idea of the much-vaunted Class of 1998 having a reunion makes me want to laugh myself into a coma. Our class was so utterly filled with lawbreakers and misfits, and so devoid of spirit — we were actually the first senior class to lose the annual Spirit Competition in many years — that few scenes could be so depressing as stuffing that morose group into the same room some ten years on.

But — as is always the way of the world — there’s always that one person in your high school class who, despite the passage of time, never seems to change a bit. When you were in school, he (or she) was the type of person who hung out with the preps or the jocks, was an all-important A-lister, and carried himself with a sort of Nomex-like invincibility. He would mouth off to teachers, dismiss rules and regulations as not applying to him, and usually get away with everything. He was either the kid you wistfully looked up to, or secretly hoped would get struck by lightning. It’s this same person who, years on, will be the one who contacts you and begs for you to help prepare or at least attend your class reunion.

Despite being a very below-average class, we were not deprived of our resident up-sucker. And there he was, ten years after the fact, printing a call for help in Pooch’s alumni newsletter, looking for people to assist with planning our 10-year reunion. Appropriately, he even has his own email address at the school’s official web domain, proving that some things truly never change. He was in love with the high school experience and he probably never outgrew it. He still takes some sort of identity from the high school he went to, ten years later.

The funny thing is, the thought of attending a class reunion doesn’t immediately make me run for the exits (or a firearm) as it would have 5 or 6 years ago, back when I had trouble keeping the vitriol from spilling anew whenever the subject arose. It used to be that I wouldn’t even know how to be nice to those people, particularly those who cut me down because I was overweight or hung out with the art types, the smart types or the other quiet kids. But now, I feel different. Not different in a positive way — more like different in that there’s an absence of emotion.

I think that if I went to a high school reunion, I would just stand there and smirk. Smirk like a mofo at how comical those four years seem, looking back on it all. About how we thought our entire lives hinged on whether or not Mister Klamponowski gave us an A or a C. Worried about getting yelled at by a crotchety old nun because our Oxford shirt wasn’t one of the approved colors. Pinning all of our hopes and dreams on whether our football team won Friday night’s game. Looking back, we were all fools, in the same way that every high school student is. We had yet to be shaped by untold years of life experiences, social interactions, love gained and lost, successes and failures. We had yet to understand anything about what life really is.

We’re completely different people now, all of us, for better or for worse. And I think that must inevitably be the point of a high school reunion — to demonstrate to those antiquated memories of people from your past, those static shadows of human beings who, in your mind, haven’t aged a day, how undeniably different we all are now. And it’s the ones who are still exactly the same as we remembered them, 10, 20 or even 30 years out, who are the sad ones — because they’ve climbed off the ladder of evolution at age 18 and taken a seat in the corner.

Nevertheless, fear not — I won’t be attending a high school class reunion, neither now nor ever. For me, the ideal class reunion is a get-together with my high school friends Pooch and Reaper, enjoying some activity that has absolutely nothing to do with those years. Because it’s not 1998 anymore, it’s 2008 — and fond memories of long summers aside, this is where I’d rather be.

While Metal Gear Solid 2 was a disappointment to me (and to many others, apparently), and I never touched the third game in the series, I am starting to become interested in the final installment. The reviews are through the roof, and the gameplay videos look captivating. The problem is, I would have a hard time appreciating most of the story in MGS4 because I’ve only played a small fraction of the games that came before it, and the storyline is of utmost importance in this series.

Deciding to remedy this, last night I dug through boxes in my closet until I found my original PSone copy of Metal Gear Solid, the same one I bought ten years ago, and threw it into my PS3. It looked pretty dated, but I was surprised at how much of an improvement the PS3’s “smoothing” feature made on the picture. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find my copy of MGS2 — I think I probably traded it away for something a long time ago.

Today, though, I discovered that Konami has released a Metal Gear Solid: Essential Collection, which, for a mere $30, gives you Metal Gear Solid, Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance and Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence in one box. The perfect primer for Metal Gear Solid 4.

Now I’m seriously thinking about buying this.

Not only that, but I’m actually getting closer to 2 megabits in real-world speed on FTP uploads, even though I should be getting 1. Now that’s service! (Actually, that’s PowerBoost - a Comcast feature wherein you get double your cap for the first 10-30 seconds of an upload or download.)

It was a hard road getting here, though. The upgrades supposedly went out to all areas a few days ago, but by this afternoon I still hadn’t seen them and was starting to become concerned. I discovered that Comcast has tech support guys on Twitter who actually respond to questions and problems with your service, so I actually got a Twitter account just so I could message them and ask when we were gonna get the upload speed bump. They responded with an email address to send my account info to so they could look into it.

To my surprise, a Comcast “Digital Media Outreach” executive actually called me personally not 30 minutes later and told me he had actually looked at my modem and confirmed that my signal levels are good and that I have the upgraded speeds. This was great customer service, but it still didn’t explain why I wasn’t seeing those speeds. The Comcast exec suggested a few things to try and told me to give him a call on Monday if I still hadn’t resolved the issue, and he’d get the local Florida techs involved.

I remained thoroughly perplexed throughout the rest of the day. I was too busy to deal with the problem further, but it remained stuck firmly in the back of my mind until I could no longer take it. Already feeling a surge of energy and industriousness after some other events that occurred today, I laid around in bed tonight for a while, thinking about the problem, before I decided to get up and try some experiments.

In the end, I solved the problem and learned it had been my own fault from the very beginning. I run a custom firmware on my wireless router that does QoS; this ensures that important data packets from my VoIP phone and Skype aways receive priority over things like BitTorrent and FTP. At some point in the distant past, I had manually set my connection’s upload bandwidth limit at 330k for QoS purposes — which actually limits throughput at the router level. What an idiot!

Long story short, the self-imposed cap has been removed, my router firmware has been upgraded for good measure, and I am now flying along at 1.5-2 megabit upload speeds. Fantastic!

This, I suspect, will provide the catalyst I’ve been needing to convert and upload the videos we shot in Thailand, so our family there can see them. I can also toss some more photos up on my Flickr account, enjoy far greater responsiveness when working remotely with terminal services at my office, and, of course, treat my peers to faster shares of Torrents if the need arises.

Now I can go to bed satisfied.

In short, GTA IV tells the story of Niko Bellic, a Serbian immigrant with a troubled past who arrives fresh off the boat (literally) in Liberty City Harbor. He’s come to America looking for something — or someone — very specific, but he finds that his demons are already waiting for him here. Things don’t look very positive for Niko or his naive cousin Roman as they constantly run afoul of Russian mobsters and other enemies from the old country.

GTA IV changes little about the “sandbox”-style gameplay of its predecessors. And as usual, the voice acting, plot and level design are all AAA-quality, almost transcending the “game” realm and entering the “film” realm. But old hats like myself were expecting all of this. What I came in looking for were the details, the little things the game developers have added to make this game really special. Those little things that make you go “Oh, COOL AS HELL” and cackle like Dennis Nedry from Jurassic Park’s Dodgson scene.

I wasn’t disappointed — GTA IV is absolutely brimming with little details, many of which are made possible by the current generation of console and computer hardware that didn’t yet exist when the last GTA game was made. Here are some of my favorite “little things” that I noticed…

The cars. Clearly, somebody at Rockstar Games likes GM cars from the ’70s and ’80s. While GTA does not use authentic licensed automobiles, opting instead for made-up creations of the developers’ own design, the last few GTA games have all had their share of GM lookalikes. In GTA IV, the graphic detail has improved so markedly that you can now quite clearly see resemblance — cars are packing so much detail that you can actually read the badging on the deck lid and grille.

There are approximations of tons of classic GM iron, including lookalikes of a 1970 Buick GNX (the Sabre GT), a mid-’80s Camaro/Firebird amalgamation (the Ruiner), a mid-’80s Monte Carlo (the Sabre), a sixth-generation Pontiac Bonneville (the Esperanto, which Roman uses for his cab service), and an ‘85 Buick Grand National (the Faction). There are also hints of other mid-’80s GM fleet in the random vehicles on the road, with cars reminding you of a Buick Century, a seventh-generation Bonneville and a ‘73 Buick Centurion. In fact, somebody at Rockstar must have an absolute Buick fetish.

What’s even more funny is that several of the real-world cars these things resemble are actually cars my friends have owned — the Esperanto looks like Pooch’s old Bonneville, and the Sabre resembles Doug’s Monte Carlo. Supposedly there’s an Subaru Impreza / Nissan Skyline lookalike in the game too, although I haven’t seen it yet. Even the vehicle makes are parodies — there are at least two cars made by a company called “Imponte,” which even uses the mid-’80s Pontiac font for its name and accompanies it with an inverted arrowhead logo!

Of course, whoever designed these things, his or her taste in cars is almost exactly equal to mine, so I’m finding the vehicle selection especially delectable.

The car details. There are just all manner of these, and I seem to discover a new one every day that makes me go “squee!” with delight. Here are a few:

• Shut off your car and step out of the driver’s seat, and you’ll hear the engine ticking as it cools down. Or, get out without turning the engine off, and listen to the radio keep blaring on as you stand nearby. The radio even sounds tinny and muffled, as it would if you were standing on the outside of the car.
• Open the car door, and the dome light will illuminate.
• When you make a sharp turn, Niko manipulates the steering wheel hand-over-hand.
• Many cars are available with different variations of optional equipment, much like in real life. Some Ruiners come equipped with T-tops. Some sport the distinctly-Firebird “power bulge” cowl scoop, while others have flat hoods.
• Every car has badging indicating the make and model, as well as other features. The Blista Compact (a Honda CRX lookalike) has some unintelligible Engrish like “Hyper Dynamic Sports” emblazoned on each side, and an “Invariable Valve Timing” badge on the back. The GM-esque muscle machines proudly sport badges for their 450 and 550ci turbo V8 engines (I guess gas is cheap in the GTA universe!).
• I swear I once heard a “door ajar” courtesy chime when I got out of a convertible Manana and left the door open with the engine running. Since then I haven’t been able to reproduce the effect, but that would be another completely awesome detail. Anyone else heard this?
• Steal a police car and roll it over. If you damage the light bar on top, the next time you turn the siren on, it will start making random wailing noises because you damaged the electronics! Check out the video demo.

The vehicle damage. Admittedly, thanks to the analog triggers on the Xbox controller, I’ve been driving in a fairly sane fashion for the most part. But I once got into a harried chase while on a mission, stole some guy’s Lexus and completely trashed it while trying to escape. The vehicle damage model is amazing. Car models deform exactly as you would expect, depending on where and how you run into things. Paint comes off, bumpers hang loose and lights go out. I once struck a curb with such force that it shattered the left front suspension, and the collapsed wheel started dragging, leaving a molten streak of rubber as I tried to force the car down the street.

Damage a car enough and you’ll kill the engine. Keep tugging on the accelerator, though, and Niko will fruitlessly turn the ignition over and over, muttering things like “Come on, start!” while black smoke curls up from beneath the hood. It adds an amazing dose of realism (and keeps your adrenaline up) when you’re in the heat of a chase.

The smoke effects. It’s a really minor point, but I have never seen an idling car’s exhaust look so good. At night, the exhaust cloud even glows red as it’s illuminated by your taillamps. And while we’re talking about smoke, the other night I took my friend Little Jacob out for drinks, and on the way home he was smoking a joint in my Ruiner. The whole time, there was a plume of smoke wafting out of his window — the window that I broke earlier in the day when I stole the car in the first place. Nice touch.

The cinematic feel. This isn’t such a little thing, but the cinematic way in which the game moves the story along is simply breathtaking.

When I first started playing the game, I picked up a Willard Faction — a near-perfect replica of an ‘85 Buick Grand National, black paint and everything — and parked it in the reserved space outside my flat. The game lets you hang onto your favorite vehicle by “saving” whatever car is parked in that space. All throughout the game’s early missions, I kept my Grand National parked there, only taking it out once in a while to run it through the car wash and keep it looking nice.

Spoiler Alert: The next paragraph references pivotal events that take place in the mission “Roman’s Sorrow,” after which you get your second safehouse.

Eventually, I was forced out of my safehouse when an old enemy learned I was staying there and burnt the place to the ground. With Niko and his cousin Roman having lost everything to their names, the only hope was to skip town and hope we weren’t followed. The apartment was engulfed in flames, but I realized we could still save my prized Grand National. Abandoning Roman’s cab, we piled into the Buick, quickly making our way across the bridge and out of the borough. In the passenger seat, Roman was having a complete breakdown. The game does such a good job of pulling you in, I felt strangely sentimental over losing everything and ruining Roman’s life. Now I had only my Grand National left, but it was like a beacon of hope that everything would turn out okay.

At our new safehouse, there was a reserved parking space waiting for me, and my Grand National went right into it. Seriously, I’m going to see if I can keep that car throughout the whole rest of the game without putting a scratch on it.

The radio stations. The GTA games have had a history of featuring some really choice music on their fictional in-game radio stations, and GTA IV is certainly no exception. Tune into Liberty Rock Radio and catch classic hits from ZZ Top, Heart and even Genesis. Hear emo kids being lambasted in between their favorite moody numbers on Radio Broker. Give Niko a taste of the old country on Vladivostok FM. Or listen to one of the talk radio stations and hear hilarious parodies of both liberal and conservative talk show mainstays, including a Sean Hannity-like blowhard who is such a caricature that he’s an absolute riot. As icing on the cake, each channel is peppered with farcical commercials for fictional products like “Sprunk” soda and some ridiculous company selling mail-order babies. This is one game where I rarely feel the need to use the Xbox’s built-in MP3 streaming feature and listen to my own music — the canned stuff does a better job of completing the total immersion!

The TV and Internet. Amazingly, there are entire TV shows you can sit and watch, and an entire fake Internet you can browse, all within the game. Absolutely unreal. For a laugh, check out the Burger Shot website and actually read the text!

I’ve got plenty more to see and do in Liberty City, but clearly, Grand Theft Auto IV is the next milestone in the franchise, and sets the bar to new heights. I can’t wait to dive back in.

During my last trip out in the GTO, I realized that it’s been months since I actually changed the CDs in the car’s 6-disc changer deck. As if to prove the point, when I cycled through the discs to see what was what, I found half of the catalog was still left over from last October’s road trip to Michigan. I was feeling like some new tunes, so when I got home I ejected everything and went into the house to whip up some new mixes.

I don’t know if this ever happens to you, but when I get started on one of these personal projects, one thing leads to another and then I find myself completely sidetracked and into something else. On this particular day, I was assembling a disc of my favorite latter-day Genesis tracks when I realized I wanted more of the “B-side” stuff from the Invisible Touch album, specifically “Domino,” “The Brazilian” and the full album cut of “Tonight, Tonight, Tonight.” It was also right about this time that I realized the tracks from my old CD of Invisible Touch sounded like garbage compared to the remastered tracks I was pulling off the Turn It On Again: The Hits album.

So that got me wondering, is there a remastered version of Invisible Touch out there? I’d sure like to have it.

Off to the Internet I went, and learned that only just last year, Genesis’ entire catalog from 1976 on was digitally remastered and re-released in dual-format CD & DVD packages. Awesome. But I really just want the songs from Invisible Touch as a start, so I went over to iTunes to buy and download them.

But of course, there was a problem.

I learned that my favorite song from Invisible Touch, “Tonight, Tonight, Tonight,” was supplied only as the 4-minute and 28-second radio edit if you bought the downloadable copy of the album. The only way to get the remastered edition of the song’s full album cut (clocking in at 8:53) was to buy the physical CD on Rhino Records’ label. Since the album cut of “Tonight, Tonight, Tonight” is vastly superior, and perhaps the biggest reason for my wanting the remastered album, I decided to go retail.

Time for the next problem. None of the stores in the area carried the remastered Invisible Touch. I searched Best Buy, Circuit City, FYE, all of the usual dumps where one has to buy music now, before I remembered some sage advice given to me by my music aficionado friend Pooch: Borders bookstores usually have a very respectable catalog of music on hand. Finally, success — Borders had the album in stock. So tonight, I went and picked it up.

And for a blog post ostensibly about the remastered edition of Invisible Touch, it certainly has taken me long enough to actually get to the point where I talk about the album. Oh well.

In short, the remaster is everything I had hoped for. Just like the tracks on Turn It On Again: The Hits, each of the eight songs have been given a new lease on life. They sound strong and full, and are far more richly defined than their counterparts on the old Atlantic label release. The new mixes have also brought the guitar and bass up from the depths of the synthesized mish-mash, and in some cases I find myself actually hearing the guitar for the first time (like during the last two minutes of “The Brazilian”). The percussion pounds with great force when it needs to, with the lower frequencies actually standing out for a change.

And here again is “Tonight, Tonight, Tonight” in all of its nearly-nine minute glory, reminding me again why the radio edit is such a shadow of the album cut’s greatness. The half-length edit seems downright vapid by comparison, as it almost completely fails to capture the haunting mood of the full-length track. Must have something to do with that weird and wonderful bridge. More importantly, my favorite part of the song — between 6:00 and 7:00, where the bass line is at its most ominous, and the percussion starts to get creative — is completely absent from the radio edit. I’ve been listening to the radio cut for too long, apparently, because I’d forgotten how good this song is. (Incidentally, it wasn’t until recently that I learned the song is about scoring a cocaine fix.)

Speaking of “Tonight, Tonight, Tonight,” this is one of the very first songs I remember actually liking as a kid. When I was young, before the age of six, I never paid attention to music at all. Just didn’t care. But in ‘86 I gained a taste for several hits of the day, including Pseudo Echo’s cover of “Funky Town,” Billy Joel’s “Modern Woman,” and “Tonight, Tonight, Tonight.” I remember hearing the latter on the radio one night and being mesmerized by it. And does anyone else remember that Michelob beer used it in their ads that year? Apparently they also used Phil Collins’ “In The Air Tonight”; check out this vintage commercial that has a real Miami Vice look going on. (Or is that just an ’80s look?)

So far, I have found only one flaw with the remastered edition of Invisible Touch. Apparently all of the songs were also remixed for 5.1 surround sound, supplied on the accompanying DVD. I think, however, that some of the 5.1 mix made its way into the two-channel stereo mix on the audio CD, perhaps accidentally. In the synth-heavy instrumental track “The Brazilian,” there’s a point where some metallic percussion notes sound for a few bars, and it sounds to me like they’re trying to make the sound pan around you 360 degrees in a clockwise fashion. Except that on the 2.0 audio mix there are no rear speakers, so the percussion drops almost completely out for a few seconds during the pan.

It’s rather jarring, considering I’m a percussion guy, have been listening to those notes for years (on the old Atlantic release) and can hear them in my head every time the song plays. Not hearing them here is like watching a car hit a wall at 80 MPH and not hearing any sound. I can’t imagine that this was done intentionally, but then, I’ve been surprised before. With a little audio post-production tomfoolery, I could likely restore those notes from my original copy of the song, but that’s a bit more ambitious than I care to be right now.

Overall, I’m exceedingly happy with the purchase of the remastered album. Of course, since Invisible Touch is one of my favorite albums of the ’80s, with almost every second of every song committed to memory, if there were more flaws, they would immediately stand out. The fact that none do is a testament to the quality treatment these songs have received. On the whole, this remastering is a job well done. And I haven’t even taken a look at the included DVD yet, with its 5.1 surround mixes of all the tracks and other goodies.

As an aside, I scored a Borders “15% off” coupon for taking a phone survey, so I’m going to use it to buy the remastered re-release of Genesis, the group’s 1983 album — containing such well-known tracks as “That’s All,” “Mama” and…yes, even “Illegal Alien.” (Can you believe the latter was actually a single? Insane.)