Yay for Drugs!*

So thanks to the magic "everyone in the commercials is always smiling in a happy, loving couple" drug, my shingles outbreak is coming to a close. Untreated, it tends to run 3-4 weeks long, but it's already healing nicely. It did make for 4 days of a swollen-shut eye in the morning, fatigue, nausia, and itching sickness, but I'm super-happy to have avoided a month-long concern for being contangious to those without immunity to chicken pox, blindness, and chronic burning pain.

* = Prescribed ones

Kiddies for the Weekend

cuddlyeconomist came to visit this weekend and to show her son around Seattle. With me being sick, it was defintely a low-key weekend but we still managed a number of playdates with jeliza et al, and a number of Seattle sights. All the adults still wanted to spend the time napping instead, but it was a good visit.

The Force Unleashed

Having a few hours to kill over the weekend, I broke out my Xbox 360 copy of The Force Unleashed. This game got a lot of buzz, and has been a number of years in the making. It was developed in-house at LucasArts (unlike say the Knights of the Old Republic series), and was supposed to be the first result of the closer "synergy" between the game and film side of the company.

Now, I already had some concerns since they have released it for every platform on the planet, but have no plans to ship it on Windows. In fact, they laid off their in-house PC compatibility lab after decades earlier this year. After having played it a while, I have to say it's a mixed bag.

The visual look is very cool, and they do have some amazingly dynamic environments, so the artists definitely delivered. The game play and design, on the other hand, leaves a bit to be desired. I ran into numerous collision/geometry bugs, ridiculous amounts of fighting-game button mashing combos, many of the levels are just repeated uses of the same mini-boss and puzzles over and over, and the voice acting/writing for the cut scenes is terrible. Did they get George to direct it? (just kidding :>)

Back in the day, X-Wing and Dark Forces were best-of-breed games and have become classics. Sadly I think this one isn't going to make that cut. The torch has passed to the chimera that is Lego Star Wars and Lego Indy, which are not 'cutting-edge' games. I still long for them to bring back SCRUM, so maybe I'm suspect.

Penelope Swales

Saturday night Penelope Swales played a house concert at Erosong. As cuddlyeconomist had previously stated that if Penelope were playing anywhere on the continent, she would be attending, it was quite convenient that she was already in town. drakemonger took care of the childcare so that jeliza, cuddlyeconomist, and I could attend. She played mostly stuff from her new album, and it was great to finally hear/see her live.

I put Penelope up at my place the weekend before last at the outset of her visit to the States, and had a day of hanging out and chatting with her. A very interesting and dynamic person indeed. Thanks to my Lord of the Rings Online voice-chat-with-the-Aussies habit over the past year, I was mostly inured to the charms of the Aussie accent. Mostly.

Yummy, Yummy Onion

[www.theonion.com]

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