A Facebook game - worth playing?

Ok, so as a young boy, I played a lot of computer games. Small surprise that, really - except that I was doing it in the early 80s. This game was apparently first started in 1971... and believe it or not, Oregon Trail is coming to Facebook on Groundhog Day.

Yes, more time wasted on Facebook - coming your way...

Except, this one might actually be a game that involves more than clicking away - and it might even involved, scary thought, learning.

Rock.. on!

I haven't had a lot of time on the net this weekend. See, it's all about spending time relaxing on the weekend. This weekend I am playing with my new PlayStation game.

Yes, it's true. I broke down and joined the ranks of the music gaming world with the purchase of Rock Band 2. Just call me the little drummer boy! I'm having a blast.

Mrs. Spit wasn't too happy when she came home this afternoon. She was hoping to have a small lie down before jetting off for an evening of music with her mother. And here I was, banging away on my plastic drums. So, in the pursuit of marital relations, I'm downstairs now, about to go and spend some time reading.

Just as well, the "Rock Throne" was made of smaller and younger posteriors than mine! Bring on the couch!

The Return of the Toys

I'd write a great long blog, about how much I am glad that we have house insurance... but I can't. We messed up and didn't insure our house for nearly enough jewelry. I think this is because when we got married, we were poor, destitute, and without much in the way of shiny bits.

Boy, were we WRONG! Several piece of our ex-jewelry (thanks you low down, no worth, smelly feet thieves who violated my house!!!) were from 'away' and as such, we found out after the fact, had a higher quality of gold. Mrs. Spit thought that they had a 'funny' colour. Indeed, when the world is mostly 10K gold, seeing gold that's 21K and higher would lead most to think it has a funny colour.

So, the final result is that we are waiting for a cheque for our jewelry losses to a value of approximately 1/3 of what they were worth to replace. Yeah... so long and thanks for all the fish on that one!!! At least we were able to spend some quality time with our jeweler and pick out some nice wedding bands, and a very nice engagement ring for Mrs. Spit. We're both looking forward to picking up that purchase!

The other good news is that today we were able to stop at our local Future Shop and pick up the replacement electronics:Mrs. Spit is especially happy that we have a camera again. My work camera really doesn't help her when I'm not around. And really, it's nowhere near as good as our old camera - a Canon S5 IS - or its replacement. Unfortunately, the Future Shop didn't have either the Gran Turismo 5 Prologue (stolen with the PS3) or the camera bag (also stolen when the scum took our camera), so we have a gift card for the value of those items.

I picked up the latest Need for Speed and have been doing a poor job driving around in it tonight. Now all I need to do is pay off the Visa of Christmas purchases, and I'll be able to get some fun games off of the PlayStation Network.

Hi. My name is Mr. Spit and I am a gaming geek and I enjoy my electronic toys.

The trials of paperwork...

On the day of the US election, November 4th, 2008, I was driving to northern Alberta for work. Mrs. Spit came home after her normal day at work to find that all was not, how might you say, "normal" at our domicile.

Fast forward two months and a bit, and you have the phone call we had from our insurance adjuster on the home phone when we arrived home of Friday night. "Hi, this is N from Questionably Quick Insurance calling for Mr. Spit. Please call me so that I can finalize the paperwork needed for your claim." (or something along those lines).

I called the agent, from work, last Wednesday, asking her to phone me back, on my direct line at work (where I was 8-5 for most of the week). I phoned on Thursday, same message. I phoned on Friday, leaving the same voicemail. I had also emailed this woman twice last week, asking for an update. On Friday I phoned the toll-free number, got another adjuster, who told me that he couldn't help me much - the data was stored on the agent's local hard drive. Apparently the insurance industry doesn't believe that hard drive failures will happen to them. Haven't learned of the magic of mirrored striped RAID drives... but who am I to suggest IT policy to the people who hold the insurance policy on my house?

So I find out second hand that my claim had been reviewed, and that it appears that the agent is ready to settle. Huzzah huzzah huzzah - and all that jazz...

After several attempts to contact N during the week, imagine my surprise when there was a message on the home phone, as mentioned off the start.

Today I phoned N, and remarkably (after the lack of success last week) I got her on the first dial. We connected, she emailed me the form that both Mrs. Spit and I had to sign, and she even replied in a reasonable amount of time (i.e. right away) to other emailed questions and clarifications.

Good news - we will get an initial cheque as soon as she gets the fax from us, signed, witnessed etc. Bad news - the check will be a lot smaller than we hoped for. It turns out that, unlike what our jeweler told us is typical for a home insurance policy limit - $10,000, our policy was only good for $3,000 for jewelry. Option 2 I'm told. So when the sum total of the replacement cost for our stolen jewelry is about $8,000 - that's a lot of sparkly stuff that's not getting replaced. Even if I get the 'friend' discount from my jeweler.

There is a silver lining to this rather odoriferous formation of cloud. Since we have lost so much money on the jewelry (ack!) we will not be required to pay our deductible for the electronics that were purloined. They will consider that 'paid' by the excessive value of shiny bits that some half-wit absconded with on the 4th. Thus we will be able to walk in, pick up bits, and walk out without further monetary exchanges taking place.

I'm still feeling ill-intent towards the half-wit that absconded with my stuff. The half-wit left me playing on the Wii instead of the PS3 (Playstation 3) over my Christmas holidays. The half-wit that, more painfully, has stolen all of my saved game data from the few games that I had acquired for my PS3. Many hours of whacking the white ball in Tiger Woods. Even worse was the much more difficult leveling-up required in Gran Turismo... that one REALLY hurts to consider re-doing. But I digress...

We will be attending the Church of Best Buy once they get synced with the wonderful agent from QQ Insurance. We will be able to replace the gaming system and, more importantly, the camera. I can always game on the Wii or the laptop. Taking photos without a camera? Much more difficult.

So, here I sit on tenterhooks, waiting for the chance to hook up a shiny new game console to my HD capable TV, so I can make my best impression of Tiger Woods and start beating the snot out of an imaginary golf ball. Truly, the trials of paperwork have left me wanting to really take some extra stuffing out of the imaginary white ball!!!

At least we have the insurance... it could always be worse.

Jumping in with both feet

I have to start off by saying that I've always been a computer gamer. I've had games on my computer ever since my Commodore 64 in 1983. From there I graduated through different PCs with better and better games. But then my funds started to find priorities elsewhere (read 'home renos') and my home computer kept getting more and more out of date. Games on the PC keep pushing the limits of technology, and my computer is well past it's 'best before' date for new games. Of late I've resorted to using my much newer work laptop for my gaming.

In all of this time, I'd been a believer that, since I gamed on my computer, it would be a waste of money to have a dedicated gaming console. And my friends have always been in the same boat with me. As a result of this, I've gotten about zero experience with gaming consoles, other than hearing the hype that swirled in the media when the big new consoles were released - always prior to Christmas when the demand for such silicon crack is at its highest.

As I surfed through Future Shop, Best Buy, or any other store that I've always checked out for computer games to pine after, I'd notice that the real estate given over the consoles keeps growing. This was distressing as it meant that the developers of games were putting more effort into consoles, and less into 'ports' - i.e. games brought over - ported - to the PC market.

Speaking of ports, I bought Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 last year (like the auto industry, they don't understand what year they are in) for my laptop. I've had golf games on every computer I've had since the C-64... it's like an addiction, what can I say? The website extolled the many new features. When I bought it, I expected to see some of them that sounded especially interesting. Imagine my disappointment when they were not there! Checking more closely, I saw that I had been had. The new features were for the next-gen consoles only.

Earlier this year I started to look into the world that is console gaming. It's bloody confusing when you're a total neophyte. First, you have to choose a platform. It's not called a 'brand', it's a 'platform'. I think this is a ploy to prevent people over the age of 25 from getting too excited, we hear 'platform' and think 'elections'. And then it's a question of which one is best suited for me. Words get tossed around like 'casual gamer', 'enthusiast', and of course 'hard-core gamer'. Why does it seem to me like a 'hard-core' gamer is a 20-something guy who lives in his parents basement? And why, to have one of the next-gen consoles, do you have to consider yourself a hard-core gamer in order to qualify for the best technology?

After I had put aside the money to get the console that I wanted - a Playstation 3 (PS3 in the venacular), Mrs. Spit and I paid a visit to our nearby Best Buy location. Imagine my surprise when I was told that "We don't have the 80Gb system that you're thinking of." Huh?!? Turns out that the backwards compatible system is not being sold any more. Good thing I don't have a raft full of old PS1 and PS2 games that I need to maintain compatibility with! After some contemplation over my decision (as the 80 gig was priced the same as the 40 gig machine) I decided to get the PS3.

Alas! There was a fly in the ointment! Mrs. Spit was hoping to play some Mario Brothers when we got the console home. Imagine her surprise when the nice kid (he looked about 16) told her that Mario is only available on the Nintendo systems. Well, this brought around a casual walk over the the Wii section of the store. Aha! Mario is available on the Wii. But this is a whole different console. I had planned on getting one a while after the PS3. There are more 'casual gamer' games on the Wii that Mrs. Spit and I could play together.

So after some more discussions, consternation, waffling (mostly on my part) we broke down and bought the consoles. Yes, you did see the plural there. We bought both the PS3 and the Wii. Plus an extra controller for both. Plus games for both. Plus the service plan for both (in case they break - which the fine kid at the till told us happens a lot). Which games? Well, on the Wii we have Lego - Star Wars Complete, and Super Mario Paper. It also came with Wii Sports. Over on the PS3, I got the game I really was wanting - Gran Tourismo 5 Prologue (actually a demo you pay for of the real GT5 coming out later this fall) and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09.

Yes, you can picture us as a couple of kids in a candy shop that just got handed $50 and told to 'have fun'. But what I want to know is, does having consoles make us cool yet? We asked out new 15 year old neighbour, but she wasn't talking much at that point. I think she smiled shyly though... it could have been the 20 minutes we had spent trying to get her to string more than three words together.

Now we need to go replace our hand-me-down 27" CRT TV with something that will actually let us use the BlueRay high-def 1080p capability of the PS3. Yeah, there's another kettle of fish yet to be cooked!