White Woman Black Dog

The Christmas fanatic who lives on the block behind me has got to be stopped.

He put up his holiday display in mid October and, as of two days ago, has turned it all on.

Blinking lights, a manger scene, animated deer, and (my personal favorite) Kenny G. blaring over outdoor speakers… from 6 am till 10 pm.

I’ll take pics and add them when I get home. I’m hoping I can sleep at that point (I worked graveyard last night)… but the damn Kenny G. is pretty friggin’ loud. You can easily hear it in my house.

I kinda quit surfing the web for the most part over the past couple months.

Well… that’s only if you don’t count reading the news and the monsterous google image searches that I do on a routine basis.

So… I thought I’d catch up on what’s going on out there in my land of favorites.

Apparently, not much.

Did everyone else get a life too? Could this be the end of teh intraweb?*

*sigh*

Officer Todd encourages you to update your damn websites and update them often.

*that’s my word, I made it up… a long damn time ago. If you saw it someplace else, they stole it from me. Oh… and “teh” is spelled correctly, so back the hell off.

Half-Life 2 has sucked me into it’s sweet, dark embrace.

Food, sleep, family… all secondary to this new temptress.

Well, that’s not excatly true… but it’s damn close. I spent about 12 hours playing it this weekend. Man… I LOVE this game! I must be near the end… maybe… hell, I have no idea what’s next.

All I know is that lying bitch said there would be a box of rocket ammo on the other side of the courtyard. How about telling me WHERE on the other side!

The striders keep coming and I CANT FIND THE FUCKING BOX!!!

*pant* *pant*

Ok… better now.

I’ll try to find the damn box again tonight.

I installed Half-Life 2 last night. 5 CD’s of goodness packed with an eternity of pain.

It took a while, so I had to think of things to do while it ran. Here’s my list of suggestions for filling the time:

• Evolve
• Grow old
• Learn a new hoby

I’m now a master at scrimshaw, can levitate objects with my mind, and am too old to care.

But after installing the game, authenticating via Steam, getting my files unlocked, and updating… I was able to play.

OMG! OMG! PRETTY! PRETTY!

I should have taken some screenshots for posting because you can do amazing things in this game. In the first level when you arrive in City 17, you start off in a train terminal. There are suitcases on carts everywhere. You can pick them up and put them down (or toss them around).

I created the leaning tower of luggage using suitcases and boxes. I also threw bottles at the NPC’s, breaking them over their heads (they didn’t seem to mind much).

After much mucking about, I ran in to my old friend, Barney (the security guard at Black Mesa) and he eventually hooked me up with a crow bar. Why didn’t he give me the damn gun on his hip? Fine. Since Barney was on a ledge above me when he tossed it down and was therefore unreachable, I had to take the crowbar the beat a gun outa someone else.

“Give…” *whack* “… me…” *wack* “… that !” *wack* *thud*

I didn’t get to play long, as we had a meltdown at Casa De Tone (report cards came in the mail for my two sons… bad things ensued). But I did get to kill a veritable cornucopia of bad guys and a large number of “barnacles” (hint to those who haven’t played it yet… red barrels are your friend and your worst enemy at the same time. Stay conscious of where they are in relation to you and the enemy).

The game is beautiful. From the shadows under characters to the physics model to the way water looks (both above and below), this is by far the most eye candy I’ve ever seen. The textures are incredible and give this FPS a feeling of realism that I’ve not seen before.

Someone at ID is looking at Doom3 right now while wiping away a tear at what might have been.

Half-Life 2 came out earlier this week. I got my copy today at lunch.

Too bad I’m the only one in my department who’s at work today, or I’d do the whole *cough* *cough* *groan* “gotta go home” *groan* routine.

Anyway… I’m gonna be busy playing it for a bit… so shoo… go away… plsmktks!