Andy Laub

Instead of releasing the actual game, Sony instead decided we would like this trailer they made for Gran Turismo 5:

0:12 – That’s a city. It looks… okay.
0:17 – Headlights in a tunnel? Kind of neat, but not something I’d want in a racing game.
0:23 – Why do these cities always look abandoned?
0:34 – Nurburgring. Eh.
0:38 – Car commercial shot.
0:54 – From that previous comment to here, this trailer is awesome.
0:55 – And now I’m bored.
0:55 – Mercedes’ should not be red.
0:58 – That’s better.
1:06 – ACTIVE AERO.
1:12 – Is the front plate really necessary?
1:20 – Stock cars…?
1:29 – Pit crews – that’s cool!
1:36 – That damage is fantastic!
1:40 – Ferraris should be red.
1:55 – They have all these gratuitous glamour shots when really you’re either going to be seeing the back of your car or the steering wheel 100% of the time.
2:25 – Gran Turismo 5: coming… some day?

So in summary:

1. Active aero is cool.
2. Pit crews are cool.
3. More detailed / extreme damage is cool.
4. I don’t care that much about GT5.

While I’ve made it clear that my love for the Xbox 360 and next generation gaming in general is nearly boundless, I’ve also harbored a resentment towards Microsoft (and Sony for following suit), for using this latest technology as an excuse to bring back $60 games. If that sounds like a lot of money, don’t worry – that’s also what it feels like as it leaves your wallet.

I can think of at least ten titles that lightened my bank account by at least $60 in 2008. Sadly, I feel that only about half of them were worth the MSRP, which means I probably could’ve saved a hundo or so by being a little more patient – money that could’ve been spent on more games/car parts/hookers/groceries. I tweeted earlier this year about my resolve not to fall into the $60 game trap again, and so far Skate 2 has been the only game to test that.

The thing is, it’s not that hard to find games for less. Half.com and Amazon are obvious places to look, but you have to give it some time before they start to reach the “worth it used” threshold (I consider this to be about $40-45, depending on how desperate I am). Skate 2 has actually reached that point, if you want it for (cringe for effect) the PS3.

I’m not NOT buying stuff.

But a place I’ve found great success in the past is our local Family Video. Since I hadn’t been in awhile, I decided to stop in and browse over the weekend – and ended up with the latest Prince of Persia. Thus far I haven’t been disappointed – it’s a fun game with good mechanics, and I’ve found that it works really well in short bursts – maybe 30 minutes or so.

This week also marked the release of some classic hotness: Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection landed, bringing with it over forty full Sega Genesis games in high-def with achievements. I have to thank Sega for realizing that nobody in their right mind would pay $60 for disc full of 15-year-old games, and instead pricing the whole thing at half that. As the owner of either two or three Genesis..es(?) (but only one while they were actually relevant), playing the original Sonic the Hedgehog series brings back a lot of memories, while making me wonder how I ever played this stuff as a child.

Finally, I know where my next $20 in gaming will be spent, and it really is probably pretty obvious. Not bad for $80 total.

Yesterday I mentioned that two devices that I tend to use frequently would benefit from the addition of one more wireless standard (infrared). When I made this statement, the general consensus (okay, two people) was “why?”

It’s a Blu-ray player!

Everybody knows this about the PS3. And that’s because Sony has been shoving that information down your throat since well before it launched. But if you’re going to send your console into the world masquerading as a home theatre component, then the very least it should be able to do is conform to the standards set by other components. If you have to sell a proprietary remote for it because other “universal” remotes don’t work, that may be a hint that you’re doing it wrong.

As someone who is enthusiastic about home theatre, it strikes me as an obvious omission. No matter what I do, I can’t avoid having two remotes on the coffee table – one for the PS3, and the other for everything else. Even the PS2 gained an IR port in the middle of its life, and the Xbox 360 has had one forever.

Fortunately the PS3 is a stationary item with ample USB ports, and one would think it’d be relatively simple to design a small USB dongle with an IR receiver. Of course, Sony won’t do it because they don’t care.

It’s a phone…?

The reasoning in the iPhone’s case is not so obvious. I don’t know how many current phones have IR these days (is it even a “thing” in phones anymore?). But wouldn’t the iPhone be the most amazing universal remote ever? Plus, it has Bluetooth, so it could even talk to the retarded PS3.

I was extremely happy to reach the conclusion of Dead Space for a number of reasons:

1. No more monsters jumping out of vents
2. I can play another game without feeling guilty

I had initially started playing Far Cry 2 while in the midst of Dead Space, and all the freedom it offered had the interesting effect of making me long for the more structured missions of the very game I was avoiding. I managed to put about five hours into it before giving it up and returning to the land of linearity.

And so with the conclusion of Monster Zombies in Space™, Far Cry was forgotten in favor of a new contender: Metal Gear Solid 4. I’ll be honest; I didn’t have high hopes. I’ve played games in the series before and not done overly well, but given that this is the flagship game for the PS3 and beat out my favorite game ever for GameSpot’s Game of the Year, I expected that it would at least provide for an interesting and entertaining experience.

I was not wrong.

Like other games in the Metal Gear Solid line, MGS4 has a healthy serving of dialogue and cutscenes to accompany the gameplay – there’s a pretty good chance you’ll be watching just as much as you’ll be playing. But the Metal Gear universe is so deliciously convoluted that every bit of dialogue becomes important to understanding just what the hell is happening. Before playing through I had only a passing knowledge of the series, and even I wasn’t completely confused.

That’s not to say it’s brilliant or clever; more appropriate descriptions would be weird, or twisted, or just plain crazy. Still, it’s definitely interesting and keeps you intrigued. And you’re rewarded for your wait with some really good gameplay. Metal Gear games have always relied heavily on stealth elements, and while this one certainly is no exception, you’re provided with adequate firepower from the get-go that will make the occasional skirmish less of a punishment.

There’s not much else I can really say about this game except that it’s really fun, and you should play it if you have a PS3. After a stream of averageness, this is the first game I’ve played that really gives me hope for the console.

I mentioned on Black Friday that I had taken advantage of a couple of Amazon’s video game deals, among them PS3 staples Resistance: Fall of Man and Motorstorm. I figured this would be a cheap way to beef up my library and get to know some of the franchises that laid the groundwork for this newest generation of PlayStations, and after playing them both I can see why it’s selling the way it does – poorly.

Motorstorm

Motorstorm is an off-road racing game. I’ll be honest – I wasn’t expecting a lot, and at $15, there wasn’t very much it would’ve had to do to make me happy. I played it briefly on a demo PS3 last year it seemed perfectly acceptable – all it had to do was provide some fun multiplayer and not crash. Fail.

Local play is limited to one (very bored) person. I think they made the excuse that the all-powerful God that is the PS3 couldn’t handle split-screen multiplayer. So you’ve spent months (years?) talking about how the PS3 is the be-all, end-all of console gaming, but it can’t let two people in the same room play a racing game together? Nice.

After that, I was pretty much done. The gameplay was fine, if a little unforgiving, but it’s not a game I feel like playing alone.

Resistance

There is no argument that Resistance is the better of the two. It received decent marks on release, probably because it was the only vaguely playable game available at the time. Also, it seems like it should be pretty easy to make a first person shooting game, since all you have to do is decide where and when you want it to take place. The controls are pretty much decided for you, and should never change. I am not trying to say Resistance runs contrary to this formula – I am just making an observation.

From the beginning I had intended to play through the game with Abe, much like what we’ve done with the Halo series. The story, from what I had heard, never struck me as particularly compelling (it isn’t), and so it seemed like a good “play a level here and there” type of game instead of bombing through it like I tend to do when playing alone.

And in that regard, it is good. But it’s not as good as the games it was made to compete against. The whole experience is, well, generic. The story is generic. The one class of enemy is generic. The settings are generic. And they look okay, but while the graphics go through the motions of telling you this environment is one ravaged by war and infection (broken walls, conveniently placed debris), it doesn’t hold a candle to the same style as done by Gears of War, which was released at the same time.

In both cases, multiplayer was/would have been the saving grace. Both games control just fine, and there really isn’t anything technical to complain about. But there’s nothing genuinely exciting either. I suspect that’s because I’ve seen some amazing things on the 360, and both of these games are version 1.0’s that are two years old. I hear the new Motorstorm has local multiplayer now too, so there’s that.

But as games that were marketed as AAA titles, they left a lot to be desired. I know I would’ve been pissed if I had paid $60 for either game, especially after having paid $500-$600 for the console to play it on. I’m still chafing at $15 for a racing game with no local multiplayer. Sorry. I had to.

Last month I spent some time rambling about Microsoft’s new dashboard for the Xbox 360, and the general verdict was that I liked it more than the XMB used by Sony’s PS3. But the slight preference exhibited here was just that – slight. The two experiences are both consistent, attractive, and refined enough that you can’t complain too loudly about either.

Which is a good thing, because that means I can save all the complaining for whatever that crap is that I see every time I power on the Wii. Honestly – Nintendo can do product design. They can do packaging. Even the DS GUI isn’t bad. So how did the crapshoot that is the Wii dashboard even happen?

I admit, this started out as some sort of diatribe but turned into an excuse to play with FancyZoom.

Microsoft blessed the Xbox 360 faithful with a dashboard update this week. But this wasn’t just any old update – this was a complete rethinking of the interface from the ground up. Their moniker for it – New Xbox Experience (NXE) – is certainly apt, and I for one find it to be a welcome change. There was a lot to like about the old dashboard, but as time wore on, it started to suffer from feature creep to the point where the once-logical layout became cluttered and somewhat confusing. A big contributing factor to this was the Xbox Live Marketplace (XBLM), as it added a completely new section to the dashboard, and was never particularly well laid-out to begin with.

But after spending a couple of days with the new dash it’s safe to say that it’s a solid improvement over what was there before, both visually and functionally. They took a page from Sony in terms of an overall metaphor – both the NXE and Sony’s dash, the Xross Media Bar (XMB), use one axis for your main navigation and the other for sub navigation. That’s pretty much where the similarities end, as the PS3’s nav stretches horizontally across the screen while the 360’s scrolls vertically.

They both seem to operate in a reasonably snappy fashion – there was a bit of slowness (mostly in the marketplace) when the NXE launched, but now it performs at a speed that feels faster than the original. Even better, it doesn’t feel like an afterthought anymore. It’s clearly intended as part of the dashboard instead of feeling like an added application on the PS3. It matches everything around it and makes great use of the new interface.

But what about the other content? The NXE presents the information in big bold boxes, so there’s rarely any guesswork to be had as far as what exactly you’re getting into. The information is the hero, and it’s provided in easy-to-read type on a pretty blue gradient. It also just seems to relish the ability to give you that information. Sony opts to use small, monochromatic icons for most functions, which doesn’t really hinder anything, but it doesn’t really make things easier to find either; I sense that most either rely on labels or memorize the icons that they most frequently use. It’s kind of like comparing Web 2.0-style information delivery to that of a 1337 Flash Developer from the early 2000’s.

While that my sound like an insult, I think it’s just very indicative of Sony’s style of doing things. They’re giving you an icon and a title; consider it a bonus if you get more information than that as it would be an aesthetic sacrifice to do so. Microsoft clearly doesn’t think that way, and never has. Their information delivery has always been dictated by space on the 360, and now they’ve given themselves much more flexibility in that regard.

All in all, I think Microsoft hit it out of the park here, and has the best dashboard experience of any console.

I think this will be the last of this series, as I’ve covered everything interesting that I can think of. We played some Little Big Planet for the first time on Saturday, and it was a bit overwhelming. They throw you right into the action and start explaining things as you’re wanting to do other things, which makes it easy to miss some of the tutorial stuff.

The game plays decently well – controls are straightforward as one would expect for a platformer, although the surface that you’re moving along generally has 3 different “tracks”, for lack of a better description, ranging from closer to further away. Obstacles and platforms respect these tracks which makes for some interesting little puzzles (moving things in the foreground and the background and then using them as steps, for example). And while I respect the idea and agree that it adds to the gameplay, sometimes moving between the different lanes can be difficult or impossible for no good reason. And sometimes you’ll find the opposite is true – you’ll have switched lanes unintentionally, causing you to end up somewhere you don’t want to be.

But overall it’s good. Customization and creation are the true driving factors here, and the options abound. I haven’t been overly compelled to create any kind of level yet, but the stuff that you can do is truly epic. I am pretty sure that all the different elements within the actual game levels can be recreated with the level editor, which is impressive. What I’ve been enjoying is the levels that people have already created and shared online – my favorite so far has been a marathon level that starts you in a prison cell and lets you gradually work your way out, ending in a police chase! The only major fault I ran into (and I believe Sony has acknowledged this) is that playing online with other people in the same level is incredibly laggy, to the point of being essentially unplayable.

Unfortunate

One of the few other games I’ve been looking forward to trying was Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. I was happy to find a demo available for download, and in retrospect it saved me a bunch of dollars. The game plays fine – there’s not really anything technically wrong with it – but it just felt off. So for now I’ll continue to chip away at LBP when Abe has free time, and explore the user-created stuff when I’m on my own.

Super Summary

The PS3 is a respectable piece of hardware with some really cool and impressive features and interesting games that I still wouldn’t pay $400 – $500 for. That money would get you much farther if spent on an Xbox 360, which has many of the same games and more attractive exclusives.

Yesterday I watched Prison Break. On Hulu. On the PS3. So there’s that. The browser seems to work well – a bit laggy at times but considering it’s essentially a bonus over all the other capabilities the hardware has, I can’t complain too much. I did also have a minor freak-out yesterday morning when I thought the second controller wasn’t charging, but as it turns out it can only charge when the console is powered on. I’m not sure how I feel about that, but I think Sony is operating under the assumption that PS3 is going to be an always-on sort of console (see below).

Making Connections

Today the HDMI cable and adaptor that I previously mentioned arrived, so I could finally see the PS3 in all of its 1080i (that’s the best we can do right now) glory. What a difference! Text is crisp and clear, and everything looks so much more right. Another side note – I had originally ordered the component cables from Walmart using the gift card that came with the PS3 – but when I returned them they gave me cash; I found that odd. Great, but odd.

I also picked up an ethernet hub, as our router is completely used up when it comes to wired ports. Everything worked immediately as it should on both the 360 and PS3, so I was happy not to have to play network troubleshooting.

Customization

I still have not played any games, but I downloaded some themes. Like the 360, you can change the backgrounds and such to better suit your mood, but the PS3 takes it one step further and includes a new icon set with each theme as well as some wallpapers. And like the 360 (again), you can mix and match somewhat, so you can have a certain set of icons tied to a different background image.

Even better, you can download images via the web browser and use those as your backgrounds – there’s a whole Flickr group dedicated to it.

Life With Playstation

There’s one other interesting tidbit, and then I’m off to play some Little Big Planet for the first time – Life With Playstation. Picture the channels that the Wii has – weather, news, etc, and you’ll already have some idea of what this is. There are two sections right now – the Live Channel, which provides a global view of weather and news headlines on a regional basis (served by Google!), and more interestingly, Folding@home, which adds the PS3 to Stanford University’s Distributed Computing Project, intended to “research protein folding and misfolding to gain an understanding of how these are related to disease.”

As weird as that sounds, it’s really quite an amazing feature to include in a video game console. I’m not sure what the project has accomplished thus far or will accomplish in the future, but the fact that Sony has contributed to the effort with the PS3 is really pretty cool.

It’s no secret I was amazingly reticent about Sony’s PS3 when it first launched. There were a lot of things wrong with the picture. Over time, my coldness became more of a lukewarmness – still not completely satisfied but more impressed with particular aspects of the experience. As the price dropped and software/hardware updates became a regularity, ownership became a real possibility and I added it to my list.

So when WalMart in all of their WalMartiness offered a $100 gift card with the purchase of an 80GB PS3, I jumped on it. I opted to order it from their website rather than drive out to the store (which is kind of a lose-lose, really) and it arrived yesterday, in the midst of a million other things I really should be doing instead. So far I’ve only spent about an hour with it, but it’s such a different feel from other consoles I’ve experienced that the initial impressions are probably some of the most interesting.

Packaging and Pack-ins

Since this is just a base-model, 80GB unit there’s nothing really to write home about. It includes a DualShock 3 controller (finally) and… not much else. There’s no power brick as there were with the Wii and 360, which is nice, but seriously, Sony? Composite cables? Those are worthless. I initially decided to get the component video adapter ($20) since our TV doesn’t have HDMI, but I remembered that it does have DVI, and so instead the plan is to use a DVI/HDMI adapter with a standard HDMI cable – it’s about half the price and we can continue to use it when we upgrade to HDMI eventually. The cables are all still in transit, which means that all of my experience thus far has been through the included cables.

Setup

Physical setup: no different than any other piece of hardware, so it’s worth skipping. Except that when you first turn the unit on you have to plug in the wireless controller… okay, whatever. The initial startup process begins with an orchestra tuning their instruments (this is the startup screen?), then guides you through establishing the date and time (can’t this be pulled from the network?), giving your name, and optionally connecting to the internet. Nothing particularly difficult, though it felt more tedious than setting up the 360. Or a computer, for that matter.

Which brings me to an interesting point. The moment you’re launched into the dashboard (Sony calls it the Xross Media Bar, or XMB), you’re bombarded with stuff. Not visually – the layout is very clean, but there are sooooo many features and they’re all much more apparent than on the current 360 dash. It seriously does feel like Sony was out to design some kind of living room computer and decided that they might as well add games to it and call it a PlayStation.

After this, I left, because it needed to download a software update (140MB!) and I had an appointment. An interesting side note here: you have the option of downloading the update on your computer and sticking it on a thumb drive for the PS3, instead of getting it on the machine directly. Anyway, when I came back, it was done, and I only had to spend 5 minutes scrolling through the EULA to get it to install. Then I created a PlayStation Network account (for free, which is great), where I had to do the same thing. I was almost worn out from all the scrolling, but then I got giddy that I could actually use the unit and not have to install anything further (for now).

It still looks terrible, thanks to the composite cable. Type is blurry, and it’s just not the crisp HD that it wants to be. I’ve played with the XMB with a proper video connection and it’s downright gorgeous. It needs to be that when you first turn it on. But other than that, it’s fine for now. Like I said before, it’s very computer-like, which means there’s a LOT of stuff there. Some of the options in the settings, while nice to have, would benefit from a line or two of explanation.

Surfing the Net on the Information Superhighway

The PS3 includes a web browser. I like this. I was anxious to find out if it would work for the only things I would really use it for – watching videos. So I tested it with a couple of sites, with cautious optimism:

• Adult Swim: Because I never know when I’ll need to watch some Aqua Teen Hungerforce or Superjail. It works!
• Hulu: Because watching Prison Break and Chuck when they’re on TV is too much work. It works! (I think)
• YouTube: Because the world needs kitten videos. It works! (Probably)

Everything seemed to be functioning. I want to go back and play with it some more once I have it on a proper ethernet connection, and then I can give final impressions. But still, I was delighted to see that Hulu apparently works, because we had been debating the purchase of a cheap media center PC for similar purposes.

And that’s all I know. Next time: I don’t know yet. Maybe the PS Store or something.

…that I have found myself looking for in the past month, but cannot bring myself to move beyond that stage for any of them.

• A road bike
• A PS3
• A motorcycle
• A convertible
• A digital SLR
• A piano or keyboard
• Acoustic drums
• An iPhone
• A television
• Peace & quiet

That is all.

It’s been about a year since the ol’ Xbox RRoD‘d on me, and while I’d like to think that issue has been taken care of once and for all, it was still “fixed” before the days of the more reliable (as far as I can tell) HDMI 360s so I’m wondering if it will resurface.

If it were to resurface, I have a sneaking suspicion that it will decide to do so on the morning of April 29th which would easily be the worst possible time. Given this, I have mentioned (only half-jokingly) that I have a requisite amount of dollars set aside for a replacement should the need arise.

However, this would result in two Xbox 360s, and technophilic as I may be, that’s just silly. And redundant. And unnecessary.

So instead, an emergency trip to Best Buy WalMart would be in order to procure a replacement of a different kind. I am terrified of this Plan B. I hope dearly that it doesn’t come to this.

Well, here is the finale for 04. It was what I would call a moderately exciting year. Here’s the best stuff:

Events:

• January – I bought my Powerbook and became a full circle Mac user
• February – after months of waiting, we finally move to our new apartment
• March – I got promoted at work, bought a PS2
• August – I decided I couldn’t function without a car
• December – CellOne is done, and I am happy with Sprint

Music:

• The College Dropout – Kanye West
• Franz Ferdinand – Franz Ferdinand
• Super D – Ben Folds
• The Spine – They Might Be Giants
• Pressure Chief – CAKE

Movies:

• The Incredibles
• The Butterfly Effect
• Napoleon Dynomite
• Kill Bill
• Shrek 2

Games:

• GTA San Andreas
• Half-Life
• Burnout 3: Takedown
• Katamari Damacy
• Sly 2: Band of Theives

Cars:

• Acura TL
• Chrysler 300C
• Land Rover LR3
• Porsche 997
• Ferrari 612 Scaglietti

Stuff We Bought:

• Herman Miller Mirra
• Sony Grand WEGA
• Apple Powerbook G4
• Sony Playstation 2
• Car Insurance
  

andylaub.com has changed yet again. I think I am finally happy enough to leave it alone for awhile – I don’t think quarterly relaunches should be necessary. It ties in nicely with LaubJournal and for that, I am thankful.

I bought Ratchet & Clank awhile ago and while it took me awhile to get into, I can now say I like it very much. The same goes for Prince of Persia. It has a Max Payne-like quality to it in that the levels are relatively brief, which means that I’ll continue to play, saying, “OK, this is the last level then I’m done – wait, that next one doesn’t look too bad, I’ll do that one,” and so on and so forth.

I also recently procured a copy of The Spine. Very good album.

A coworker brought in Laffy Taffy this morning which resulted in a barrage of absolutely awful jokes flying back and forth via email:

Why were the baby strawberrys crying? Because their mom and dad were in a jam.

What did the baby horse say to the mean horse? Be kind to your neigh-bors!

Where can a monster always find friendship? In the dictionary.

What did the volcano say to the other volcano? I lava you.

How are a clergyman and a small blender alike? They’re both mini-stirs.

What do you get when you cross a chicken and a spaniel? Cockerdoodledoo.

Where do cows go to have fun? The moo-vies.

Why did the farmer feed the cow money? He wanted rich milk.

Great. So I also decided to pick up Sly Cooper and Max Payne over the weekend, which cost me a not unreasonable sum of $26. I am pleased with both – Payne because it is a Rockstar effort and therefore there’s no possible way not to like it, and Cooper because it’s a lighter side of stealth, which is really pretty fun. At this point I am more addicted to the latter because I tend to tear through platformers if I really enjoy them. Max Payne is, of course, a lot darker, which will keep me from moving through it too quickly. I also want to continue Driv3r and MGS2, which I haven’t touched for awhile. I was tempted by Ratchet & Clank at the game store so I foresee that one in the near future as well.

An article about Sony’s upcoming “iPod killer” led me over to their store today, where I was sidetracked (again) by their limited-edition X505 notebook. This is quite a machine, and looks are in the “to die for” category, but it’s hard to believe that it’d make a good everyday computer. I have to wonder what kind of person would spend 3 grand on system like this. I certainly couldn’t justify it. It’s a great-looking package but I don’t think it could surpass my laptop in any aspect but portability, which itself is a mixed blessing. With every pound dropped you lose some features critical to the overall experience. I’m not even sure it has speakers. With the X505, Sony is apparently out to prove that a notebook can be cool or practical, but not both.

My internet explorations also brought me to Alfa Romeo where I spent about 20 minutes drooling over cars that will never make it here (and some that won’t make it anywhere). I wish Alfa would come back to the States. Same goes for Seat, Peugeot, Citroen, etc. Maybe I should just go to Europe again. The biggest shock for me the last time I came back was how much rattier the cars here are. In Munich, every other car is a BMW. They’re not all new ones, but they’re in spectacular condition because of Germany’s stricter maintainence laws.

February 28th is going to be an even bigger day – our TV is coming then. We had a slight problem in that the TV we were looking at (the 42-inch Grand WEGA) didn’t fit on the shelf we were going to put it on. The logical solution? Get a bigger shelf or a smaller TV, right?

WRONG!

We got a bigger TV – in the form of the 50-inch WEGA. Rockin. Can’t wait.

Also, I love Expose.

Well, I’m reaching entirely new plateaus of slacking in 2004. I have to say I’m quite proud of myself. I should be looking at scripting stuff right now, but I am lazy and it’s hard. I bought a pair of pretty pants today – just some adidas ones to wear around the house because the Nike ones I bought a couple years ago just aren’t very good and our store had a big sale. The Powerbook is happy after a brief font issue (a particular installed (corrupt?) font was preventing Safari from working at all), but I don’t honestly think it’s Ray Ban outlet enough to be my main system. I like it for now, but I’ve officially made the decision to buy a G5 in a year. That will give me time to recover my funds and I won’t feel like I’m spending way too much money at once. I am, however, going to buy a cinema display if it’s the last thing I do. And it very well may be, if Apple delays their updates (there’s talk of the casing being changed to aluminum-esque to match the G5 and Powerbook – I want that) for any longer. First there was nothing good at MWSF and now they’ve completely ignored the 20th Anniversary of the Mac. 2004 is shaping up to be a boring year, so far.

On a non-related subject we move in 30 days. I am more than a little excited. I can’t wait to be in a much, much larger place than we are now. I’d also really like to know what happened to my remote, because it’s not on my desk. It makes me sad because it does lots of important things, like tell me what CD is what in my very large CD player. I guess I am done now because the laptop is melting my lap top.

I’m kidding.

It is the 7th of December today, and still no snow. Normally I wouldn’t be even remotely disappointed by this (because of commuting), but since my drive each day has been cheap oakleys reduced from 45 minutes to, well, 4, the snow is now OK in my book. It’s kind of disappointing and weird to get up and think “hey, it’s December,” but then look outside and not see any snow. We had a little bit very briefly in November but it’s gone.

Also, being that it’s December and almost Christmas, here is my 2003 Want List:

1. Herman Miller Aeron PostureFit Chair : $850
2. LaCie d2 160 Gb : $200 (ed. discount)
3. Apple PowerMac G5 dual 2Ghz maxed out : $10400 (ed. discount)
4. Sony Grand Wega 42″ LCD Projection Monitor : $2800
5. Sony PS2 : $180
6. Mario Kart Double Dash : $50
7. Infiniti FX45 : $50000
8. $$$$$ : $?