General Articles

I’m not what you’d call obese or chronic fat, but like many women after another Christmas binge eating and drinking (was on the seafood diet, I SEE food and eat it I’ve put on a lot more weight, especially belly fat and my ass looks HUGE, move over Beyonce

I look flabby around the waist which I HATE SO MUCH, I plan to vacation in Turkey this summer and have to tone up before then!

A work friend (who is very fat and needs to loose weight) suggested I try a fast weight loss program called Fat Loss for Idiots that she told me she is using to loose weight FAST with their dieting program!

Did I actually once say that I thought that I wouldn’t buy World of Warcraft?

Call me a fool. Please.

As you might have guessed I fell utterly, deeply in love with the World of Warcraft. Any time not spent researching (generally in the wee hours of the morning) was spent exploring and leveling in the amazing world that the guys at Blizzard have created.

Everything about this game is phenomenal: the quests, raids, the scenery (early in the game other players routinely said things like, “Wow, this game is beautiful”), the interface, and even the music. Sometimes I would go into a building owned by the Alliance merely to admire a certain theme in World of Warcraft.

Well, my college begins fall semester classes today.

First up: Creative Writing for Game Design.

Then later tonight I have Graphics File Format and Data Compression Techniques.

Well, the writing class is going to be odd as hell, it’s with an English teacher who has some wonky ideas

And as for the graphics file format class…I swear, that teacher always turns CS classes into math classes

Up for today, I get Design and Analysis of Algorithms, Advanced Mechanics, and History of Film and Animation. I’m pissed off at the latter, since in addition to being a 3 hour class on Wednesdays, I also apparently have to go in every Friday and watch more films!

Here we are toward the end of 2004, and what a gamers power year it has been with huge gaming releases. It will be a few years before we see the big game releases so close together like we’ve seen in the past several months. But, is this a good thing for gamers? Would gamers prefer having them spread out so they have a chance to enjoy each one? Or, do they like getting flooded just before Christmas?

Perhaps, an even better question, is if gamers prefer gameplay or graphics in their games? I believe there have been several releases that have allowed gamers to provide an answer to this very question. My analysis of Half-Life 2 and also an outsider’s impression of World of Warcraft (WoW) are below.

Half Life 2 vs FarCry – Final Round… or is it?

Ok, I managed to finish Half Life 2 a few days ago and had time to digest the whole experience, now let’s do final comparison between these 2 games.

In the first round, FarCry totally dominated Half Life 2 on the graphical enhanced features like water and heat distortions. Althought FarCry had a nice physics engine, you could tell that it wasn’t fine tuned and released kind of sloppy. This was evident in watching how dead bodies would be all limp and sliding down slopes (no matter how steep or not it was).

I had breakfast this morning with my friend Paolo from Milan Italy. Paolo teaches screen writing and the business of television in Milan and we had a wonderful conversation about the state of television both here in America and over in Europe.

What was perhaps even more interesting, however, was to discuss the state of politics in Europe. One of my biggest concerns in this country is how divided we’ve become. It scares me that my republican friends hate the democrats so much and my democratic friends hate the republicans so much.

There’s a chill in the air and almost all the leaves have dropped off of the tree outside the door to my apartment building. Winter is arriving.

And with the change in season, it’s time for a change in cocktail. Last winter was all about bourbon, but while bourbon should retain a place in your holiday season’s imbibing (mix a couple fingers of Maker’s Mark in with your ‘nog as you sit by the tree this Christmas Eve), it is the martini that will get you through the office holiday party this year.

I really like Allen-Edmonds dress shoes. They are amazingly comfortable, cut in a sort-of timeless style and they are built to last. They are traditional leather dress shoes with leather soles and yet I frequently walk home from work in them (about 4 1/2 miles) and they’re totally comfortable. So, ok, they’re incredibly expensive. But unlike some shoes, they really will last a long, long time and do I’d argue that over the long run they’re not much more expensive (maybe even cheaper) than buying several pairs of cheaper dress shoes.

Maybe it was the walking 4 miles a day on concrete in them, but after a couple years I finally wore through the soles. I was crushed, but I had heard that you could have them “recrafted” by Allen-Edmonds, so I dropped them off at the store to try out this service.

I went to Starbucks for coffee yesterday and I went to Caribou for coffee this morning. Both have their holiday cups out in force, which is just wrong. It’s not even Thanksgiving yet and I am not ok with this premature holiday celebration. Don’t get me wrong. I love the Christmas season. I love everything about it. But I’m not ready for it yet. Can’t we enjoy Thanksgiving first?

In any case, I have to say I hate the Starbucks holiday cups. Way, way too red. So Caribou, with cups in several pleasantly muted colors, wins on cups. Also in Caribou’s favor: at least in Chicago, they have pastries from Deerfield’s bakery which are very, very yummy.

Every strong, quality relationship, from time to time, is beset with arguments. So it was last night with one of my closest relationships.

I had a fight with my TiVo.

I know, I know. Everyone who knows me knows that I usually have nothing but praise for my TiVo. We’re such a great couple. How could we be fighting? After all, TiVo changed my life. I no longer watch commercials and now look at the rest of the world and wonder how they can bear to watch television without TiVo.