My brother‘s wife gave birth to their baby boy last week, making me a certified blood uncle. Now, I’ve been an uncle for some time but that is a relation-through-marriage-step-sibling kind of deal which at least in Nikki’s family isn’t drastically different but there is slightly more familial intensity associated with this bout of unclehood since comparatively my immediate family is much smaller (compare two siblings to Nikki’s five total) which means that in terms of child production, the odds are significant that this will be a less common occurrence.

There were some complications during the delivery but after spending a few days in the hospital I’m pleased to report that Joel Aaron is home with (a relieved) mom and dad. I’m very happy for my brother and his wife; they’re some of my favorite people and they deserve to have a happy, healthy and growing family.

The Return of the Bullet

For lack of a better way to catch up with a few of the assorted and really, really uninteresting things I’ve considered writing about, I now re-introduce the loved and hated bullet point, for your summarized reading (dis)pleasure.

• Upon further reflection, I don’t think I’ll be getting all crazy with the re-arranging of the site. I don’t think I’ll be making grand proclamations about the frequency of my updates here or anywhere else, either, but I will say that I’m quietly aiming for at least one update a week. Which I think is reasonable but not stress-inducing.
• Part of my wishing (and don’t forget the washing) about regarding upcoming projects and developments is that I’m working on some severe adjustments in my routine which, sadly, cannot be discussed here.
• You may note that the site looks quasi-normal again. I had to lose the Netflix queue because I don’t know how I’m going to get the code on the server I don’t have direct access into to run something like a cron job to check an RSS feed. It’s probably one of those things that only I’d ever miss, but there it is. Also the archives and links and settings and all that, plus some of the other nifty features I set up are absent. They may just have to stay that way. It kind of sucks but as mentioned above, in an effort to refrain from elevating my blood pressure, it’s probably best that I just deal. And if I can deal, you can deal. Capice?
• I rented Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory with the express intention of playing the co-op mode with Dr. Mac. Stealth games have had a hard time maintaining my interest since I finished the original Splinter Cell to the point where I tried but couldn’t finish either SC: Pandora Tomorrow or Metal Gear Solid 3, both of which were declared as Pure and Good by the almighty gaming press/community overlords. My renting of Chaos Theory was in fact hinged precisely on the belief that a $50 purchase would be unwarranted. It turns out that my appetite for cooperative play is insatiable, regardless of genre. I’ve tried—I’ve really, really tried—to play and get into the single-player game. I just can’t bring myself to do it. Each time I see Sam Fisher against a gorgeously rendered beachside I sit and stare at the lovely water effects for a few minutes and then check the Live Friends list for Dr. Mac again before shutting off the system and going back to watching TiVo. But the few moments we’ve stolen of co-op sneakery have been delightful. Now, I suck at the game (blame my lack of practice in single-player mode) but it is delightful. I’m sad that there are only four missions, but I feel at least as if my hard-truth-facing non-purchase has justified itself and my capacity for self-evaluation has been elevated to “sound.”
• Instead of video games I’ve spent more time working on my Warhammer army than anything else. I picked up the Megaforce boxed set for my chosen army of Chaos Marines which included two vehicles (a Rhino transport and a Defiler walker/ordinance), eight Elite troops, three motorcycle-mounted troops and twelve vanilla troopers. That brings my grand total of individual models I’ve assembled to 59, not counting the vehicles. Most of them are primed, the painting has begun on the newest 25 or so and while this weekend Nik and are have our celebration planned which prevents gaming, I should have enough time to get all the painting done by next week. In Warhammer when the basic points cost of the models you can bring to the table without special abilities and upgrades is X, you are said to be capable of fielding a hard X Points army. Since you can add a lot of points to an army with special add-ons you can sometimes bring an army’s point total much higher than the number of models may actually represent, counting as a “soft” army. I have a hard 1,600 points that I can put out there during a game, although technically I have 1,800+ hard points, except that I have too many of one type and I have to leave a whole unit off each game or else my army is illegal. Without much effort I can get to 1,850 points (legally) and once I get one more set I should have no problem getting to 2,000 points in a soft sort of way. This is all cool because Lister and I are working toward a narrative campaign which we should be able to start once we get up into the hard 2,500+ range.
• I watched an episode of Iron Chef America the other day where they introduced a new Iron Chef, Cat Cora. I don’t want to be perceived as insensitive here, but this obvious PC move to add a female to the Iron Chef roster struck me as less than empowering and rather pandering while managing to further solidify my hunch that the entire show is a farcical exposition and in no way a legitimate competition. As in other discussions of games and sports, we have to operate on the assumption that competition is a worthwhile pursuit. And I happen to believe that with sufficient quantities of sportsmanship, competition is a good thing. Now I was already skeptical of the inclusion of Mario Batali as an Iron Chef since he seemed to be inexperienced in the arena of competition. It seems rather arbitrary to select a “challenger” to compete with a “master” when neither has engaged in this type of competition. I supposed at the time though that it was impractical to get Mr. Batali into a few challenge matches against either the existing Japanese Iron Chefs or the other American contenders who had indeed squared off against the originals. But to now add a new inexperienced Iron Chef to the mix at random is like choosing one of the challengers at whim to be a Fourth Iron Chef. What should have happened is they should have selected a handful (or even two) contenders for the new Iron Chef title and had them face off against at least two of the existing ICs and each other to determine which was the most worthy of being an Iron Chef. It would have been a pretty cheesy concession to fairness, but it would have been better than the idiocy that was watching Iron Chef: Debut Challenge versus Challenger: Debut Challenge. And is it just me or do they really need to fix those ovens? What are those, Blue Light specials they have in there? Good grief.
• I’m thinking of building a cheap PC for gaming. There are a few games that are not Mac-compatible (and likely never will be) which I’d like to try such as Dawn of War and City of Heroes. I’ve noticed that near the end of the life cycle of consoles when publishers start focusing on next gen launch titles and ignoring the existing systems I tend to gravitate back toward PC gaming for about a year while I wait for the next consoles to cool off a bit. In terms of video games I’m not huge on the early-adopter thing. It’s really all about the games for me. I bought the XBox pretty much solely to play KotOR and Counter-Strike, I got the GameCube for Metroid Prime, Wind Waker and the Resident Evil remakes (Eternal Darkness was a delightful bonus there) and the PS2 had Final Fantasy X and Metal Gear Solid 2. Sometimes the games I buy systems for don’t live up to my expectations but I usually find some redeeming games along the way, it’s just that I don’t buy something and hope that someone will release something for it I want to play later. To me, features don’t sell squat. DS has wireless multiplayer. Really? That’s cute. What games are there? Hm. Right… nothing that interests me in the least. So now PC games have attracted my interest. The good news is that I don’t need a complete system; I have lots of RAM sticks, drives, peripherals, monitors, cards and software. What I need is a case, a motherboard and a processor. I figure if I get a 3.0 GHz processor I should be good enough to play all the games I’ve missed over the last few years plus the next six months to year’s worth of new releases. I may need to upgrade my video card but I’ve seen Radeon 9×00 series for pretty cheap on PriceWatch.com and most system requirements demand 8500 series cards so that isn’t a terrible upgrade to get in on. My only concern is that I can find the components that sound good for low prices online, I just don’t know exactly how well they’ll work together. I suppose I need to get a budget together for the thing (I’m thinking like $250 max) and go talk to someone with connections to help me make sure my chosen components won’t explode when placed in proximity to each other.