November 2004 – The Recycle Bin

The Complete U2

So U2 and Apple (via iTunes) have teamed up to offer The Complete U2 – 446 songs for only $149.99. Ouch!

I love U2; have for years, and I guess I will for years to come. I have all their albums and their early EPs, but I do not have $149.99 to get The Complete U2. Why would I care to get the collection if I have most of the band’s music? Because there are a good number of unreleased songs that are not available anywhere else. I do not have any “un-purchased” music; I have paid for everything on my iPod, either through my CD collection or via iTunes downloads.

Scam? Not really sure, but Apple and U2 have to realize that their fans will pay for these unreleased songs despite having most of the rest. So instead of paying $.99 per song, Apple and U2 are asking us to pay around $3.75 per unreleased song. The catch is that you cannot just download these songs; you have to pay the whole $149.99.

In this case I would not mind paying $40-50 for these never before released songs, but $149.99? That is just too much for me to stomach. I am not going to blame Apple or U2 for trying to make a buck, but why stick it too the fans that matter the most? The fans that have been with the band for years are the same ones that will own all the previous music and will want to own these new unreleased songs?

Maybe someone will realize that this is a terrible mistake by making a the unreleased songs available in a cheaper bundle? Maybe just maybe, but I doubt it. Or maybe Santa will bring some iTunes gift cards …

High Cotton

I have not had a whole heck of a lot of time for gaming lately, but I still get by. Hopefully I will get to pay a little something in the next couple of days. If not, I should have plenty of time (20 hours to be precise) to play GBA games. I am flying out to Frankfurt, Germany this Sunday, and back home on Friday December 3rd. Plane trips suck, especially these long Europe trips – they drag on and on and on and … well, you get the picture. Thankfully my GBA and iPod are there to get me through the experience. Too bad the new Final Fantasy I and II GBA title is not going to be out in time to help me with this trip.

My Seinfield Season 1-3 DVDs arrived a couple of days ago. Man, my wife and I love this show. I know it is on all over the place, but there is nothing like getting to watch something when you actually have time to watch that something. I probably have too many DVDs, but these are absolutely worth owning.

I hope everyone that celebrates turkey day had a great Thanksgiving! What a wonderful day we had at the Calvert household. We had the meal catered in – turkey, dressing, sweat potato casserole, and some great BlackStone chardonnay (1999) for starters. Plenty of other good stuff including champagne to go with pumpkin and chocolate chess pies. All in all, a very good meal – too bad the football pretty much sucked. Even if you are a Colts fan – Payton was awesome – the game sucked. The Dallas game really sucked. Oh well, maybe Texas will play well today and I hope that Georgia beats the living snot out of the bumble bees tomorrow.

The holiday season kicked off, but we stayed home. Tonya and I did our shopping via the internet. You have to love Amazon – you can get pretty much anything you need to pickup for Christmas presents. EBGames online had some pretty solid deals – the same ones they were advertising in-store. It is pretty unusual for stores to honor sale prices online, and even with the sales tax added, I saved a good deal. Joshua has been asking for Kirby Air Ride since forever, but I have not wanted to spend $50 on it because I have read such poor reviews. I got it on the cheap this morning, along with the newest Midway Arcade Treasures – hey I had to get me something! Arcade Treasures for $9.99 was a major bargain.

The Frankfurt trip will suck the life out of me, so do not be surprised if the content is fairly sparse this week.

Gran Turismo 4 Slips into Obscurity

Another email update from EBGames, and another Gran Turismo 4 delay. This time we learn that GT4 will not even hit store shelves in time for Christmas.

We are writing to let you know that we have changed the projected ship date for Gran Turismo 4 to 2/5/2005.

How disappointing.

I know there are hundreds of thousands (dare I say a couple of million) of casual fans will still buy the game and will not care about the delay, but one really has to wonder “what is the point?” At this point, why not scrap the game altogether and wait for the PS3 (or whatever it will be called) and use GT4 as a launch title? Who am I kidding? There is too much money to be had for Sony, but surely they are disappointed that they missed the Christmas window.

I am seriously disappointed that Sony cannot get their act together on this one and get the damn thing released already.

Falcons Thrash Bucs

Wow, what a game! Atlanta beat Tampa Bay 24-14 in a game that had a little bit of everything. For starters, the crowd was really into the game. I would like to think we were responsible for several false starts, and in some small way a great defensive effort that produced 7 – yes, count ’em – 7 sacks. I am not sure what the final tally was, but Atlanta easily held Tampa Bay under 200 total offensive yards. Simply impressive!

Vick continues to be an enigma. At times he has flashes of genius, which usually results in an amazing highlight reel scramble or a great pass that makes you wonder “how in the heck did he pull that off?” Then he does something pretty boneheaded like throw the ball to a wide open defensive back. Vick has amazing talent, but lacks anything that you would call consistency. It is pretty frustrating, but as long as the Falcons are winning, who the heck cares?

The Dome does not usually rock and roll except for the SEC Championship game, but today was different. Right from the start the crowd was into the game (especially when the Falcons were on defense), and we kept it going full blast for most of the game. I have seen enough Falcons games where the visiting team has as much fan support as the good guys, which is always disappointing, but I guess it has something to do with the nature of Atlanta. When I lived in Atlanta six years ago, everyone living in Atlanta was from somewhere other than Atlanta, and they were always proud to show their non-Atlanta colors. Anyway, except for the preseason this was the first game I made it to this year so maybe the crowd has been this supportive all year long. I am not sure if it came across that way on TV, but it was a raucous performance; the 12th man was alive and well.

Perhaps Atlanta’s defensive lineman Ed Jasper said it best “There’s not a lot of rah-rahs and cheering going on just because we beat the Bucs. We’re trying to get to the Super Bowl.”

Unless things go really bad down the stretch, the Falcons should win the division going away. Right now at 7-2, the Falcons have a commanding three games on second place New Orleans. Things are indeed looking good.

Auburn Rules the Plains

I am not too sad about yesterday’s complete and total ass kicking at the hands of the Tigers from Auburn. After all, I am not sure that I *really* expected Georgia to win. I mean I wanted them to win, and I thought maybe they did have a chance, but I think maybe that was my heart talking to me. I did go on the record and state that the game would come down to the play of Jason Campbell and he delivered with an almost perfect day: 18-22-1-189. What an impressive box score!

Auburn was the better team and they deserve the accolades that they should receive from such a complete victory. So my hat is off to Auburn, and I have to say War Eagle!

I am sure other college football fans agree with me that it is a major crock of stinking crap that Auburn is not ranked in front of USC or Oklahoma. Well, maybe only Auburn and SEC fans agree with me. Say what you will, but the SEC is much tougher (from top to bottom) than the Big-12 or PAC-10. One can only hope that Auburn, Oklahoma, USC, and Utah all run the table. Not that it would change anything because the college presidents are not going to relent on their “no play-off” stance. There is just too much money to be made, and the presidents want total control over the bowl purses. It really has nothing to do with academics, lengthening the season, or any of that other nonsense.

I am about to pack up and take Joshua and my brother to the Falcons’ game. Hopefully we kick the living crap out of Tampa Bay!

Football Manager 2005 Arrives

Thanks to GamePay, the UK Royal Mail, and our own fine US Postal workers, my copy of Football Manager 2005 (FM2005) arrived today (now yesterday as this gets posted fairly late), only a week after it shipped. Not too bad, but is it worth the wait?

The manual is as tick as can clocking in at 60 some odd pages, but being a veteran of the Championship Manager series (CM) that was more or less what I expected. Gamers new to the series may be in for a shock – FM2005 is not a casual Sunday affair. I have never been what I would call an expert when it comes to CM, but I do my best. I am sure I will eventually read the entire manual, FAQs, and of course the obligatory message boards (already doing the message board thing) to try to get the most out of the game.

On to the game … not so much, but you will see why if in a minute.

To get things started right, I dove right in and decided to start a new game; selected several leagues (England, Argentina, Mexico, MLS, and the like) and made a decision to start off unemployed. In retrospect I am not sure if that was such a hot idea since the only manager job opening was for DC United, which I applied for, but I was unsuccessful in my bid for my first job.

After simulating a few days, I decided to go on “holiday” and have the game auto apply for jobs. The first one to be available was for San Jose, but once again I was unsuccessful. I simmed until late July (my game started in February) and still do not have a job in hand.

Enough is enough. My first experience with the game did not live up to my expectations. Is it too much to ask for a job? Then again why would anyone hire an obscure manager from America? Maybe I need to read the manual to see if I did something wrong. Not enough lower level clubs? No idea. I think I will just call it a night and start over tomorrow, this time selecting a club to manage instead of waiting for the game to let me play.

OK, OK. I know I suck. I do not even get to the important stuff like the match engine. There is always another day.

Random Stuffs

I have not had a whole lot of time to write of late, so I figured I would start the week off with a little bit of everything. Funny that I put this together Monday and it is now mid-week. So it goes, and so I go, and so will you soon I suppose (with apologies to Billy Joel).

2004 Election Musings
I continue to be amazed at all the fall-out (err, crap) from the recent election. Conspiracies on all sides. Bush cooked the electronic voting machines to give him a +5% margin, while Kerry cooked the exit pools to discourage Republicans from voting. It is really just short of astonishing that people have this much time on their hands.

I could go on forever, but I will spare everyone the grief and horror. I do find it funny that CNN kept stating that this “election is too important for us to rush to judgment” after several networks finally declared Bush the victor. I also thought it was funny that the Kerry camp was not going to concede the election because “we believe there are still some votes out there.” WTF were they going to do? Shake the election tree? Freaking ridiculous.

UGA vs. Auburn – Comes Down to Campbell
Not that it matters much because it is easier to say after the fact, but I predicted to my step father that UGA would put a hurting on Kentucky, 56-10. The actual score was 62-17, which really does not matter since the Auburn games looms large this weekend.

Speaking of which, no prediction yet but it comes down to one simple fact. If Jason Campbell plays well then Auburn wins, if not, then the Georgia ends Auburn’s dreams of a Championship season.

Football Manager 2005
While I wait for my copy to arrive from GamePlay (hopefully today) I have been reading the sigames forum to pass some time, and to be entertained. It is always eye opening to read what different gamers complain about.

The known bugs list is pretty long and worth reading. Some of these issues are very minor, while others are more significant. Luckily sigames is know for quality support via patches. And then there is the MLS …

The list of MLS issues from this MLS issues thread is nothing short of eye-opening (now transferred here). If the MLS is really this cooked, then I will be one disappointed gamer. I just hope that sigames decides to address some of these problems in a patch, and not wait until FM2006.

Katamari Damacy – Take Two
I continue to be impressed with Katamari Damacy, which has to be a candidate for non-sports game of the year. Well, maybe GTA: San Andreas will win that, but Katamari Damacy is easily the most addictive and original game that I have played in years.

As I described a few nights ago, the concept is amazingly simple – you roll around your katamari (ball) to make it bigger and bigger. You play in different levels and roll over all manner of items in order to “stick” them to your ball to make it a certain size within a set amount of time. My description may sound stupid, but it is amazing fun.

I was trying to think of a game that contained the same sort of whacked out graphics and addictive sound track. From a graphics standpoint, I think Jumping Flash for the PlayStation may be a good starting point. If you ever played that game, then I think you have a decent idea of the approach Katamari Damacy’s developers took. As far as music goes, there is no comparison; all tunes are completely original, catchy, and full of fun.

I will try to do a more detailed write-up later this week, but suffice it to say that I am addicted to this game. If you want to try something completely different and cheap ($19.99)

All for now …

Football Manager 2005 Ships

For “text-based” sports management fans, the Championship Manager series is about as good as it gets, and thankfully, it looks like Football Manager 2005 (the true successor to Championship Manager 4) shipped today. I have a pre-order in with UK based GamePlay. Hopefully the game will arrive soon since I paid for priority shipping.