Getting pwnd

So this weekend I went to Best Buy with my fiancee and we got Rock Band and Guitar Hero III. This started because I played Rock Band at a friend's house and after being successful at it, we decided it would be fun to play ourselves and have our own band.

While we were standing in line there was this middle aged couple that looked to be in their early to mid thirties off to my left checking out. The guy looked at us and his eyes got big and he gushed, "Ohh are you guys getting Rock Band? Can I come over to your house?" While he had a silly grin on his face his wife was rolling her eyes and probably thinking, "Oh my god, do you have to do this everytime we come to this store? You aren't getting it. I don't care how much you want the game. I.don't.care."

He continued, "Oh did you know that you can use the Guitar Hero guitar on Rock Band? Yeah, and they got sued by Activision for using their propertiary stuff but then it got settled because it wasn't being sold with the game, and was only usable with a free downloadable patch."

Then as he was about to go he said, "Man, you guys are so lucky. I know what you're going to be doing all night."

Poor guy has a wife who doesn't appreciate the games. Lockdown!

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I saw this article today. It says that if you disprove a myth that people won't remember it as a false statement later. They will mistakenly remember the information as a truth.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently issued a flier to combat myths about the flu vaccine. It recited various commonly held views and labeled them either "true" or "false." Among those identified as false were statements such as "The side effects are worse than the flu" and "Only older people need flu vaccine."

When University of Michigan social psychologist Norbert Schwarz had volunteers read the Center for Disease Control (CDC) flier he found that within 30 minutes, older people misremembered 28 percent of the false statements as true. Three days later, they remembered 40 percent of the myths as factual.

Younger people did better at first, but three days later they made as many errors as older people did after 30 minutes. Most troubling was that people of all ages now felt that the source of their false beliefs was the CDC.

Repetition seems to be a key culprit. Things that are repeated often become more accessible in memory, and one of the brain's subconscious rules of thumb is that easily recalled things are true.

So instead of saying, "The world is not flat, it's really round" you should not even mention the flat part and only say, "The world is round". It is a wonder more politicians don't know this. They usually use the first type of phrasing rather than the second. It would be great for sales and marketing too. Instead of saying "Brand X is really bad, you should buy Brand Y instead" they should just never talk about Brand X.

Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer

I love Bioware. This game made me very happy. I beat it yesterday and anyone who likes D&D style RPG's should check this out.

Minor spoiler but you learn this in the first 10 seconds - you are cursed with the spirit eater disease. It will devour you from the inside and kill you unless you feed it with spirits. In the game you can choose to be good and supress your desire or be evil and feed at will, letting your craving run wild.

You start the game as level 16 and can reach a max of 30. Upon reaching level 21 you have access to "Epic" feats and abilities. This game really lets you become a complete bad ass.

The characters were all very interesting and there are two optional characters you can get to join your party. One of them is best suited for good characters and called "Okku". He is a giant bear god and he hits like a ton of bricks in addition to having a lot of hit points. The other character you can get is called "One of Many". He is a collection of damned souls and the One is the dominant soul that speaks for the many. One of Many is an undead abomination and likes to be evil. The cool thing about him is that you can change what person you want to be the One at will. He can be either a thief, a barbarian, or a warlock. As you gain influence with One of Many he gives you a special power also that makes you even more evil and intimidating.

I like One of Many because his rogue is better than Kaji and you can make him a barbarian if you need him to get on the front lines, plus his warlock is ridiculously powerful. He was doing 80 damage to large groups of people with his warlock's eldric blast ability, which can be cast an infinite number of times a day. Almost all of the people who wrote walkthroughs mistakenly said One of Many is weak, but only his rogue is a weak fighter and I think they didn't stick with him till he got his barbarian or warlock ability. Some said it is hard to gain influence with him but it was easy for me - I just devoured everyone I could and was an evil bastard. What really ticked me off the most was that a gamespot reviewer said that you couldn't heal One of Many. HE IS UNDEAD. Any D&D person knows that heal spells hurt Undead and that harm spells heal them. If you cast Harm on him he is healed 150 points. He has regeneration anyway, so it isn't hardly necessary. Okku doesn't have regeneration but is a better tank. It just made me angry that people were bashing my favorite character unfairly.

Excellent story, cool spells like "Vampiric Feast", and interesting new classes and feats make this game worth getting. The ending also changes a lot depending on who you have in your party, how much they like you based on how you've treated them over the course of the game, and what choice you made once defeating the final boss.

"Aperture Science: We do what we must, because we can"

Portal is a unique experience.

The game consists of throwing portals which let you teleport from one location to another. Pretty straight forward and logical. Don't let the trailer scare you with how mind bending and confusing it seems. Anyone can do this game.

You will notice that the game is full of 1984-ish "newspeak" and chock full of mockery for various groups. Personally I love tongue in cheek dead-pan humor and this game had me rolling at the end. Most of the jokes you won't get in the beginning but as the story progresses you'll remember what you were told before and laugh, and laugh, and laugh.

The story: You work for a government miltiary contracting group called Aperture Science that is in direct competition with Black Mesa. Black Mesa charges more and gets more contracts than Aperture Science so in response to this they have developed a testing facility that will aid in their research to design better products. You are the test subject. You will use your logic and amazing intelligence to navigate each test area until you have completed the test. Upon completition you will be served cake. I heard the cake is very delicious and moist.

You can download it for $19.95 by clicking on the link I provided at the top of page (what a bargain). I'm telling the truth. Seriously.

Lists are fun, especially if indexed and sorted!

How do people find things when they aren't sorted? I really don't get it. Like those people who have the insano desktops on their PC and there's 500 million icons on it and they have no organization to them whatsoever yet somehow they can find everything. Wtf? Maybe I just have an awful short term memory but I can't do that. I need things to be organized or I can't function. So back to the lists...


List of some of the stupid things I have done in my life:

1. Dropped out of college my sophomore year to get an entry level job making chump change, just so I could live with my boyfriend (now ex-boyfriend)
2. Dated a person who was certifiably crazy (major depression and schzio)
3. Had sex with a model (wasn't very good and was lacking in most areas aside from looks)
4. Quit a job without having something else lined up (very dangerous)
5. Pushed my parents away (they didn't deserve that I just felt a strong desire to be independent)
6. Tried to drive from VA to FL on no sleep and almost killed myself when I fell asleep at the wheel

List of some of the smart things I have done:

1. Gone back and finished college at night while working full time
2. Started selecting people to date with sanity high on the priority list along with intelligence
3. Decided to go for programming instead of sticking with IT support despite the fact that both pay about the same but programming is harder, because I knew I would have more job satisfaction in a challenging position
4. Quit a job without having something else lined up because I value my sanity more than money and have faith in my ability to find new work - this always resulted in getting a better job making better wages and was found within less than a month each time.
5. Told my parents how much I appreciate what good parents they were - and they really were a shit ton more patient than I would have been to myself, but seeing that what they did actually works makes me willing to be nicer if I ever have kids and much more confident in my abilities
6. Stopped eating things with trans fats and high fructose corn syrup

I love my little doggies

They are so happy. So loving. I can't help but look at them when their tails are wagging and start to feel good. I even feel happier if I hold my dog close enough that I can smell her distinct scent. The boy dog not so much, he just smells bad. But the girl doesn't smell bad, she just smells like her.



Here is Sarei the girl:



She needs the black legendary strength toys because anything else she destroys within 5 minutes.



I love her muscular chest and shoulders. She is such a beautiful dog.



And here is Buster the boy:



He is a face humper.