Burnout: Revenge

Y'know, I don't post a whole lot about games. I do mention that I'm a gamer, but really, in order for me to post about something, it has to make a big impact. Not many games do that anymore. But that has changed recently, as I discovered Burnout: Revenge.

The first "race" I played, it wasn't about getting first in line with the other guy, there weren't even any other racers on the track. Just traffic. Rush hour traffic. The timer gives you forty seconds to wreak as much havoc on the streets (designated in property damage costs) as you can. Each time you ram another car, you get a boost in time, so you can ram more traffic. I first played that after a mean commute, and it was a magnificent release.

The next "race" was a crash. That's it. Nothing else. Your goal in this one is to run at top speed into a busy intersection and cause as much property damage as you can. You get a massive pileup pretty quickly and can rack up millions of dollars of damage (primarily because cars keep ramming the pileup, and then you can explode your car which is hopefully in the middle of the junk heap).

They do have actual races, but even though the goal is to get across the finish line first, the methods are frequently to ram the other car off the road and see him crash spectacularly in slow motion. It's also fun to bounce another car into your opponent, causing him to crash and burn in the same manner.

The locations are beautiful as well. They aren't exact depictions of actual cities, but they clearly evoke the city you're supposed to be visiting. The first one is in "Sunshine Keys," a very Miami-ish setting. The next one is "Motor City," a very Detroitesque city. I've also gone through something that completely resembles northern LA (complete with going over the Hollywood hills at speeds exceeding 100mph), a Roman-ish city and some Swiss mountain area.

No other game in recent memory has given me such sustained glee. I found myself laughing frequently, not so much because something was funny, but because it was just an insane amount of fun. Heidi even played two sessions (the beat-down-traffic one and a crash), looked over to me and said, "Great, just what I need; crack."

This is a great game for anybody who hates traffic (and who of us doesn't). Right now it's a rental, but I've already decided to save up enough to buy it.

Brew #2: A Christmas Adventure!

Yesterday Mattox was over and we brewed a Christmas Ale. It was a good time to hang out and the first time we had seen Matt since the wedding. It was a bit of an adventure, though. This was the first time I brewed in the new place, and the brewing in the new environment thing seems to be an interesting experience. Schaumburg water tends to taste a bit like chlorine, so I had to buy a gallon of water and then fill that jug with filtered water, but that was a small matter. I think the biggest thing that made it an adventure was the fact that the kit was improperly packed, and didn't include hops or the right spices. The spices aren't much of an issue, the lack of hops is a pretty big one. Unfortunately, I didn't realize the hops thing until we were almost to boiling. Fortunately, there's a brew shop in Schaumburg, unfortunately they had just closed when I called. Here's where you rely on the kindness of strangers, at least strangers who brew. I explained that I was right in the middle of a brew and needed to get hops. They asked how soon I could get there, and we were off. Not only did I find the place, but it was a nice one. They had already won a new customer when they let me buy stuff after closing time, but they would have won a new customer just by being the shop that they are. Neato!

We also figured out a new heat transfer tool. I have a copper-coil "heat sink" (not sure what it's actually called) that goes into the pot for a quick heat transfer to cool the wort down after the boil, but it requires hooking it up to a nozzle, which I don't have in my kitchen (the sink doesn't have that kind of faucet). In my old place, we used this by holding the nozzle over the faucet, and that's what I expected to do for the 15-20 minute cooldown process this time. However, Matt, being the ever-resourceful guy that he is, looked around the immediate area and saw the right kind of nozzle coming off the washing machine. We managed to pull the pot over to the dryer, and started the flow, and the tube connecting to the copper coils promptly popped right off, spraying water all over the place. A little screw tightening later (combined with turning on the water a little slower), and we were transferring heat quickly, cleanly and with little fuss.

I have a good feeling about this brew. The last one was a hit with friends, and there's still plenty of it left, but I think this one is going to be even better. I'm not sure if I'll have enough bottles to do the third brew this year, but we'll see what-all comes of it.

And now, the details:
Extract:
8 lbs, Ultralight Malt

Grain:
8 oz, Crystal 120L
8 oz, Caravienne
4 oz, Honey Malt
2 oz, Special B
2 oz, Black Roasted

Hops:
1 oz, Northern Brewer Hops (bittering)
1 oz, Willamette (aroma)

Spices:
2 tsp, Cinnamon
2 tsp, Pumpkin
1 tsp, Ginger

Yeast:
White Labs California Ale yeast

And Whirfloc as a clarifier.

Original Gravity, approximately 1.068

Officially a Suburbanite

I like the city. I miss being in the city. Whenever I go into the city, I want to be there for a while. It's the vibe, the closeness, the depth of the place. Moving out to the suburbs was a change of pace, one that was not particularly welcome, but made a lot of sense at the time. I do love the home we've created, one that we couldn't have created in the city for twice what we're paying now, but it's in the 'burbs.

I figured I'd be able to maintain a tie to the city by staying at First Free, my church in the city. But the sense of community was difficult to maintain when I was living there, and being this far out, it would be borderline impossible. As if to say a semi-permanent "goodbye" to the city, we've officially decided to go to Willow Creek, a much more local-to-us church (and I believe it to be the largest church in the world as far a building square footage). It's a great church for creative people, but small group community is practically essential with a population greater than some towns. I'm hoping it will be less of a challenge to maintain friendships here; meh, we'll see what happens.

Fortunately, like most suburbanites, both Heidi and I like going into the city. Unfortunately, it's going to be a challenge to maintain the city-relationships I do have, as city folk tend to fear the suburbs. Two of the most adventurous people I know in the city both said, on separate occasions, "Here there be dragons" about areas pretty darn close to where I now live.

Sure, the best relationships will stay, because that what good friends do, but I expect to lose touch with a lot of people whose company I really enjoy. Admittedly, I'll be creating new relationships at the new place, but I guess I'm just not ready to let go of the old ones.

So my last real tie to the city is gone, one that I've had since I moved to the Chicago area. I'll miss it. A lot. Might as well buy an SUV now.

Back to the schedule

Yes, I know, I haven't posted anything in a while. Let me 'splain. I like being married. It's a good relationship that has developed a lot over the past month-and-a-week, and I see our lives developing into something bigger than our individual parts. The byproduct of that is that I want to spend a lot of time with my wife. This is a good thing.

However, the new TV season is upon us. Of course, Heidi and I can watch TV together, so that's good. But it does suck up a lot of time. So far, Heroes is a maybe, but this week's episode gave it a one-episode credit. Lost, Doctor Who and Battlestar Galactica are gimmes (Doctor Who primarily because of its history... by itself it's a good, but not great, show). Most other shows I've seen are catch them if I can. I might include The Office into the must-haves, but that will wait. In any case, that's a lot right there.

However, there's still a lot to do with the post-wedding crap. Family wants a lot of time. Friends want slightly less time. We still need to decide on our pictures (you can see a lot of them at www.pictage.com). We still need to get the house in order. We still need to do thank-you cards.

However, I'm a gamer. It's what I do. I've prayed about it, and felt God say, "No, it's cool." I need a good bout of gaming on a moderately regular basis to keep myself relaxed and sane. I can do that with friends or by myself... doesn't really matter. But that is a rather large time sink in which I'm not socializing with my wife. She's OK with it, but it's a time sink.

However, we also have little bits n pieces that suck up our time. There are movies we want to see. There are plays we want to see. There is an art show we want to hit. We want to carve a pumpkin. I want to brew some beer. We want to have parties.

All this is to say that finding time to blog is moderately low on my priority list. Work is pretty active, so I don't have a lot of time to sit and blog, and it ends up getting pushed by the wayside when I'm home, as I have other things vying for my attention.

This isn't an excuse, it's an explanation. I'll post more shortly. There's more to muse upon very soon.

Goal Update 8

Continuing on with the goal postiness, I'm going to inform you of where I am with the goals.

1. Get Married: Done
2. Move to a new place: Done
3. Get a different job: Still an active goal, but doing OK with the job I currently have.
4. Get back in the gym, and establish a regular routine: We've determined that the Schaumburg Park District has a couple gyms that, while very reasonably priced, we really wouldn't continue working out at. Still working on it.
5. Get at least one Voice-over gig: Working on it.
6. Brew at least three batches of beer: Brew #1 worked out pretty well. Two more will happen shortly. There's a brewing store here in Schaumburg that I want to check out. Otherwise, there's always morebeer.com.
7. Travel at least four times: Done
8. Write a script: Nothing. This goal probably won't get done this year.
9. Read the Bible from beginning to end: I didn't develop the discipline like I should have. I've got way too much to read in the next few months. This goal probably won't get done, but the year ain't over yet.

Pictures

We got our pictures a couple days ago. All 1567 of them. We went through a few on the computer, but the system was responding poorly, and ultimately froze up. Then we got the idea to show them on the Xbox. Wow, what a difference. First off, it seems to have a better DVD drive, and can read the pictures quicker, second, they're on a 56" screen. Dang! That's the way to look at pictures!

Anyway, it'll take us a while to get through all the shots, but I've already found several that I want to put up on Flickr. They should be there by the middle of next week or so. Meanwhile, if you haven't checked out the honeymoon pictures, they're there now. Click on the picture link on the right.

The Illusionist

We saw The Illusionist last night. This will likely be an Oscar contender. The story is brilliant, but it's really the acting that sets it apart. The film is about a great stage magician, who does amazing tricks that can't be explained through any natural means. Considering The Prestige is coming out shortly, I didn't expect him to be an actual, true magician, but the film has you guessing until the end. Whether or not he is, I'll let you see the movie. Anyway, he has a duchess as a childhood friend, and as children, they fall in love. They are forceably parted, and he travels, eventually coming back to Vienna to do his truly incredible show.They meet up again, unfortunately now, she's almost-engaged to be married to the Crown Prince. They quickly acknowledge that they've been thinking about one another ever since they were parted, and drama ensues.

It's a complex and excellent story, but the acting was freakin' amazing. Paul Giamatti plays the detective inspector who is in the employ of the Crown Prince, and it's one of the most amazing performances I've ever seen him do, possibly one of the more amazing I've seen anybody do. He was entirely different from his usual persona, and displayed his thoughts and feelings with a subtlety I haven't seen in a long time. Edward Norton, in the title role, developed a complex and dynamic character, portraying an exceptional showman with a depth that is pretty impressive. Edward Norton typically portrays deep characters, and is an impressive actor, but his performance was pretty much par for the course. This doesn't mean it wasn't good, just not exceptional. Another brilliant, but probably underrated, performance was Rufus Sewell, as the Crown Prince. I like Rufus Sewell, I think he's an interesting presence, but I never really considered him a great actor. I'm glad to see this show, because, much like Giamatti, he had a subtle performance and was completely unlike his usual role. Jessica Beil, as the duchess in question, was even pretty impressive, based off her usual performance. It was a moderately generic character, but she played it well.

I highly recommend this film. See it as soon as you can.

The 23rd anniversary of the world not being destroyed

Wikipedia is one of my favorite sites. In its pages are an impossible wealth of information about darn near anything. For instance, on September 26th, 1983, Stanislav Petrov, a Soviet soldier monitoring his country's satellite early warning system, averted a fullscale nuclear war.

A few weeks before, their air force had shot down a Korean airliner that had strayed too far into Soviet airspace. 269 passengers had died onboard that plane, many of them American. The KGB at that time sent out a message to all their operatives, telling them to prepare for a nuclear attack. The entire government was on edge, preparing for a quick retaliation from an attack, and had a hairtrigger mentality. At 12:40 in the morning, Stanislov Petrov saw on his early warning system an American missile (which was a glitch in the computer). He had a few moments to inform his superiors of an imminent nuclear attack, but figured that if America was going to launch a nuclear attack, they'd send a lot of missiles all at once, not just one lone missile. He saw another one, and another, a total of five missiles being launched, all of which were computer glitches. He chose to trust his intuition and his instincts over his training, and saved the world from a nuclear cataclysm.

For disobeying orders and avoiding Armageddon, he was not rewarded, but neither was he severely punished. He was given a reprimand for improper filing of paperwork and reassigned to a less sensitive post, as his superiors found him to be unreliable. He now is retired in a small Russian town, and does not consider himself the hero that he is.

This information was made public in 1996, but very few people know about it. In 2004, he was awarded the World Citizen Award and given US$1000. In early 2006, he recived another World Citizen Award in a trip to the United Nations. A documentary will be realeased shortly (late 2006), called The Man Who Saved the World.

Incidentally, three months before was the movie WarGames, in which American missile command was given over to a computer, and through a series of apparent glitches in the program, a nuclear disaster almost happened. A few months after the event, ABC released the miniseries The Day After, in which people were suffering from the aftermath of a American/Soviet nuclear war.

Auditioning

I just finished my first audition in my "home studio." It's somewhat limited, but between the equipment Heidi already had, and her skill in figuring out what exactly else we need, we now have a limited home studio. Since my current job isn't flexible enough for me to duck out and audition in the traditional sense, and I'm sending my voice around, I'm able to do my auditions via email. Here's the thing, though. I did a good job with it, I think, but not a great job. I really need to regularly doing my vocal warmups, and that's where our schedule is kind of a challenge. We both are somewhat in-demand at this stage in our lives, and having an evening to ourselves is a bit of a luxury. Evening is pretty much my one available time to do my warmups, and frankly, I'd prefer to spend time with my wife when I'm home.

I know, I know, sucks to be me in a very microscopic way, but life hasn't really slowed down much from when we were planning our wedding. Now, between our various auditions and our general lack of social downtime, we're pretty much as busy as most of our wedding-planning time was (not so much the couple weeks leading up to the wedding, but most of the rest). Meh, I'll cope with it.

Well, Blow Me Down!

Shiver me timbers! It be International Talk Like a Pirate Day, and I didn't even remember it until about 3 o'clock today. I had been plannin' a whole mess of promotions ahead of time, but with the nuptials and bein' away and all, I plumb fergot. Ah well, can't win em all, and this next year will be one to remember!