The Recycle Bin

Let me save you the time and effort of reading up about Madden 2006. Here’s the synopsis:

“Madden sucks!”

“Madden’s not that bad!”

“This [insert new stupid EA Sports gimmick]-mode is really silly.”

“We can tweak Madden!”

Two or three weeks of slider creating, testing, etc.

“Can I get a copy of Bill [insert Harris or Abner]’s sliders?”

“Man, I hope they fix [insert running game, passing game, or franchise mode] next year!”

That’s it. Repeat and wash for Madden 2007. You can also insert just about any EA Sports game or formally SEGA sports game for “Madden” in the above.

Congratulations to Tony Stewart on an awesome 2005 Brickyard 400 win! I only got to watch the last third of the race, but what I saw was very entertaining. It was great to see the emotion pour from Stewart – he really appreciated what he did today, and appreciated all that has come before him at the historic track.

My PSP has not gotten much play of late, but that is mostly due to not playing much of anything lately besides NCAA Football 2006. This fall I plan to beef up my PSP library via the UK PSP launch – TOCA Race Drive 2, F1 Grand Prix, Colin McRae Rally 2005 Plus, and World Rally Championship look delicious. Of course I also need some football, and well, that is the point for this post.

I know that a preview from GameSpot via EBGames is not actually a lot to get excited about, but the quote works for me:

“The good news is that the PSP version isn’t simply a console port with all the cool features missing. One of the best inclusions in the game is the ability to transfer files between the PSP and PS2 versions of the game. If you own both the PS2 and handheld versions of the game, you can share a number of different file types between the two games, including rosters, profiles, and spawned games. Rosters and profiles are well and good, but sharing spawned games may be the best reason for the PSP version of Madden to exist. In a nutshell, transferring data between the two versions of the game will let you take your franchise mobile, play your franchise games on your PSP, and then resync your games with your PS2 once you get home.”

The game sounds like more of what Madden fans need, but now we have to play the waiting game to see if the development team can work out the frame rate issues.

This time last year I wrote about Atlanta’s Matt Schaub being a starter in the making. After watching Schaub play in today’s preseason match up vs. Indy, you have to wonder if Atlanta just gave too much money to Vick.

Sure, sure, sure – I still love me some Vick; he is exciting, he has a massive arm, and I think Vick may turn out to be a heck of a QB before he hangs up he helmet. But – have to get in one of those – Schaub will be the man somewhere, someday soon. Today Schaub went 11-13, good for 115 yards and 2 TDs. I know it is just preseason, but man on man does Schaub look like he could be a hell of a QB.

Well, the hardware portion of my upgrade is complete. The final system configuration is:

ASUS A8N-E
AMD Athlon 64 4000+ (San Diego)
1 MB PC 3200 RAM (from my old system)
NEC 3520A DVD Writer
Leadtek Winfast PX6800 GT
Western Digital 320MB SATA Drive
Maxtor 200 GB EIDE Drive (from my old machine)
Antec Truepower 2.0 550W power supply
Thermaltake Armor Black Tower

It took literally one hour for me to put this together. There were 15 minutes of panic because after I assembled everything, turned on the machine and it wouldn’t “post” (no video, no sound) and wouldn’t turn off when I pushed the off button. At first I thought it was my memory, but it’s good to have backup access to google while performing an upgrade. A quick search and I discovered there are actually two power connections to this motherboard and I missed the 12V four pin connector. Thanks goodness I’m not the only one who doesn’t read the setup instructions!

Loading the software is extremely painful – in fact a day later and I am still loading software. We’re not even talking about games, since I haven’t started the torture that is installing World of Warcraft. Loading Windows XP took a while, the updates took a while, the video driver and audio software took a while, etc. I’ve got a brand new copy of Battlefield 2 to load, but I’ve spent most of the day updating Nero 6 Ultra Edition through it’s incredibly slow FTP server.

The big decision during the upgrade was to return to NVidia’s warm embrace. My patience with ATI drivers and their updating process came to an end with the Catalyst Control Center piece of junk. The problem with moving to NVidia dealt with price points. When I started my upgrade, the 6800GT was in the upper $300, $400 range. The 6800 Ultra was in the upper $400/$500 area and the 7800GTX were all mid to upper $500. The 7800 GTX looked like the best bargain when it dropped to $499 (these are all retail prices) and the 6800 Ultra wasn’t moving. Then the 6800 GT started to drop, and the final tally was the Leadtek 6800 GT at $299, $200 cheaper than the 7800 GTX.

I’m a fan of FPS, but not enough to drop an extra $200 on it.

So another two years until the next upgrade. I may get another MB RAM at some point, but that will be long after all of this software is installed.

There’s a nice video card comparison at ExtremeTech that does a good job discussing the relative performance of all the available products except the 7800GTX. The prices are a little dated, but the information is still valid. Currently, I’d say that the best value can be found at the NVidia 6800GT level. I recently jumped off of the ATI bandwagon (more about that in a later upgrade article), but the X850 XT seems to be price sensitive at the moment.

The price of the PCIe Leadtech WinFast PX6800GT dropped $40 in less than seven days. There are even better deals for AGP video cards.

Oh yea, PC gaming is dead. Geoff suggested that I check out the Battlefield 2 demo last night and 546 MBs later, I am hooked. Yet another drain on my precious time. I will post more about BF2 after I’ve mastered it a bit. It’s a hardware hog, so good thing I just upgraded my PC.

Youth sports can be wonderful teachers for our children. There are many “life lessons” that can be taught through this vehicle, such as teamwork, how to handle success and failure, setting and achieving goals, self-worth and self-respect, sportsmanship, humility, unselfishness, and the list goes on and on. Youth sports is a wonderful teacher, until ass-clown-parents like Mark R. Downs get involved…

Allegedly, to field the most competitive team possible, Downs bribed another player on his T-BALL team with $25 to drill a development-disabled player in the head, so he wouldn’t have to play him his requisite 3 innings. First of all, why would any T-BALL coach be worried about competitiveness? Kids that age are so far removed from understanding the game of baseball and being able to use the skills required to play it competitively that even beginning to worry about the score and trying to win is inherently moot. Secondly, the purpose of recreational youth sports is to accomplish what I discussed in the first paragraph; not to bring glory to some has-been dad who wants to prove his worth through his T-BALL winning percentage. Ultimately, he got his wish, as the developmentally disabled child was indeed intentionally hit in the groin with a baseball, and was not able to play. I guess Downs had a better chance to win, at the cost of the self-image of an innocent child already with serious issues in life to conquer.

Mr. Downs deserves a Louisville Slugger to the testicles, and then one upside the cranium, for good measure. There are too many idiot-parents like this one in the world of youth sports today, and they’re stealing the rite of passage of many kids to participate in youth sports to help them grow into quality young men and women, all for their own “glory.” I only wish every child the opportunity to fondly remember their successes on the athletic field, no matter how big or small, and how those successes impacted their growth, and ultimately, their desire to provide the same experience for their children.

Not really, but it is another Friday night, and another drunken blog – hey I do what I can.

First, the number one spot this week is Aspen Edge. I know beerpals.com thinks it sucks, but it works well to chase a night of Harp and Shiraz. Besides beer flavored water rules.

What about recent music? I picked up New Order’s “International The Best of New Order” from iTunes. So I love me some 80s’ music; sue me, whatever. I am also in love with some Gwen Stefani pop; no apologies. I even downloaded some JoJo the other night, but I have to admit that I am a little ashamed to amid I paid for pop. I know Chris thinks it is pretty trite, but I am still enjoying the Killers – good stuff.

On the home front my pool room (AKA the garage apartment reconstruction project) is almost ready for me to do the refinish thing. Thankfully my wife is all about getting a pool table and a refrigerator full of beer to recoup some of the construction costs. I suck at pool, and never really played, but I am looking forward to building out the game room. Have to give a shout out to my wife; she actually suggested the refrigerator full of beer. Tonya is a great wife!

Renovating my grandmother’s house has been a heck of a learning experience. I am sure if she was still here my grandmother would be pissed about the wall we took out, but overall I would like to think she would be happy to have kids running and sliding on the floors again. I am pretty excited about moving into the house this fall!

Gaming has been non existent this week, but who needs gaming when the duckets are flying left and right for the pool room.

Hope everyone has a fantastic weekend of gaming!

I greeted this ExtremeTech article about Windows Vista and gaming the same way that the French dabbed watery eyes and blew kisses at the liberating allied forces during Word War II. “Long live PC Gaming!” Many of the old timers that I know have remained strong and resisted the call of the console box. “See how easy it is to play me.” “No configuring me for anything.” “Aren’t I just as expensive as a new video card?” Let me tell you, it’s been tough.

Hope is on the horizon! The resistance will win! Windows Vista will be a true PC gaming platform!

I’m not going to re-hash the many reasons why I don’t like console gaming. To each his or her own I say. But I was getting very tired of reading and hearing how the PC was dead as a gaming platform, despite the fact that I am playing many more hours on the PC right now than I ever was back when consoles were these jaggy silly primitive products.

There are simply better PC games these days. World of Warcraft and Out of the Park Baseball are really the only titles I play right now. OK, I just started Halo. I literally don’t have the time to play much else. But it’s all PC all the time. I stopped playing console games when I stopped reviewing them.

So get ready old timers! Start thinking up new excuses to tell your wives and significant others! Now we can blame a “mid-life crisis” on our hours in front of the monitor. And we can even afford to buy all of the games that we shouldn’t be playing!

Here we go again. I know the sex stuff buried in GTA:SA is old news, but the washingtonpost.com has a great article about the story.

“So — the justification for this use of our tax dollars is that Take Two misled the public by promising a game featuring enough violence to make Sam Peckinpah blush, but instead sprinkled it with near-hardcore pornography. (I use “near” as there isn’t any display of genitalia, at least as far as I could see. And it’s a cartoon graphic, not real people…)

Good heavens, citizens! What’s going on here? Oh yes, of course, we’re getting all bent out of shape over nothing again. I keep forgetting that this is a proud American tradition, on the same display shelf as the controversy over “Darling Nikki” and the fuss over video games in general from the early ’80s. I bet some of the folks who thought our children’s brains were turning to mush over too much “Centipede” aren’t looking at it this way today.”

My sentiments exactly! But it gets better, much, much better.

“Lauren Charbonneau didn’t worry about purchasing Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas for her son, Luke, in October when he was 11. Luke is ‘pretty mature,’ his mother says. She figured he could handle an M-rated video game. Then news broke last week that explicit interactive sex scenes were discovered hidden in the code of the game that touts intense violence, blood and gore. … Luke says he never accessed the hidden scenes, but the news of their existence upset his mother. ‘I’m shocked and angry,’ says Ms. Charbonneau, 47, of Plano. ‘They deceived the public.'”

Wow! The GTA series is an easy target, but why not go after parents such as Lauren Charbonneau for not actually following the ratings guide? Why not make parents responsible for actually supervising their children and (I know this is crazy talk) actually watching what their kids play?

I could go on and on with this one, but enough for now.

I feel like such a fool, spending $676 for my Dell 2001FP LCD monitor! Visit SlickDeals or Techbargains when you have cash to burn and want to maximize pennies spent. There are even iPod deals for Jonathan!

So says Elton John, and who cares if no one is really keeping track of Friday night (tonight)? Since I am already done, I figured now would be a good time to post – my best prose always comes after a few cold ones, and the Harp at the Tap is delicious.

Seriously, a weekend of gaming is in the works – all NCAA 2006, all weekend. Plus my mom is watching the kids Saturday night, so I think the weekend should be awesome. Hope everyone has a good one!

Sometimes developers outdo themselves. Just when you think you’ve seen all of the crappy ideas for games, a new one surfaces that is quite amazing. Here is what Sony planned on competing against Madden with according to Gamespot:

“Road to Sunday wasn’t just about football–it featured some elements that, while incredibly venturous, could alienate the hardcore football crowd. The storyline saw gamers take on the managerial position of a football team after the former owner, the protagonist’s father, mysteriously died in a yacht explosion. The gambling-addicted son owed a truckload of gambling debts to a Jamaican kingpin and saw the team as a way of recouping some of his lost cash and digging himself out of a financial hole.”

Grand Theft Auto: Meadowlands? Good grief. Fortunately somebody at Sony finally put down the pipe and canceled this abomination.

For the first time ever in the NCAA series, I just played a game where the CPU actually won the all important time of possession battle. Anyone that follows my exploits will know that this is damn near impossible! Not only do I tend to play games where I ground things out on the ground (3 yards and a cloud of dust and all that jazz), the CPU seems to always pick up a few quick scores on long TD strikes or some such broken play.

Last night, I managed to beat Troy 28-3. North Texas has two studs at HB (plus yours truly at QA) so I like to give those guys the ball as much as possible. Say what you will about North Texas and my style of offense, but Patrick Cobbs and Jamario Thomas have led the country in rushing the past two years, so it would be fairly ignorant of me to just start chucking the ball all over the field. Besides, I am a Heisman hopeful, and a scrambling QB to boot, so I have to keep the ball on the ground as much as possible.

I am getting completely off track here. At the start of the 4th quarter, despite being up 21-3, Troy still had me beat by 3 minutes in overall TOP. By the end of the game, Troy was up 9:30 to my 8:30. I find that simply shocking, but in a good sort of way.

I did fumble twice, including one time at the 1 yard line – I leaped into the endzone, but apparently I forgot to take the ball across the goalline. I also hit one of my TEs for a 71 yard TD strike (about 50 yards after the catch). I also held Tory in check with a fumble recovery, an INT, and I stopped one fake punt attempt.

I am still not sure how I managed not to win the TOP battle, but I am pleasantly surprised that NCAA 2006 is giving me something different. My pride has been wounded, which means I am going to try to beat the crap out of Arkansas State later tonight!