That's a mid-range system?

$1,931 is the cost of a midrange system to Tom's. I guess between their tee times and their squash matches, $1931 must seem like a reasonable price for a new system. They also list that they will have their top of the line system tomorrow. What will that be, the newest diamond encrusted IBM mainframe?

59 Levels to Play Before You Die?

I don't think so. The list makes no mention of Serious Sam. If levels full of skeleton bulls and headless kamikazes doesn't make your list there truly isn't much point to your list.

Safari on your hard drive

I don't agree with this Firefox guy who says Safari is malware. I thought malware was placed on your system without consent, this Safari browser is given to a person as an option for installation. When I saw this update for Safari appear I simply closed the window and didn't update any of my Apple software. Sort of like what I do when a Firefox update is first put out and I'm told to update it. Never trust a brand new patch for a system. Let the uber hardcore tech people put it on their system first in case it craters their box.

Sleep at Work

This article makes me feel better about what happened last night and about what is soon to probably happen. I come home from being out Tuesday night and even though its getting late and I have to get up at 4:30AM I decide to fire up EQ2 and check out if anything is going on with my teammates. There isn't anything going on so I start up a group and we don't get done until 11:30 clearing out a zone that gives some good gear.

So, I think I'll take a nap. The nice thing is that I have an office with no one coming in or out and no one else is here yet.

Yeah, I was out, now I'm back

Okay, I was away for a while, or at least not posting. No excuses. As consolation, I'll give you all a brief review of the various games I've been playing.

1. Portal -- By far the best game of the past year. The end credit music and final boss fight are their own reward.

2. Half-Life 2: Episode One -- Meh.

3. Half-Life 2: Episode Two -- About 1000 times better than Episode One. Car chases, lots of rockets, and an epic end boss fight. However, having Valve continually wave their programming arms around to make sure we notice their physics engine is growing tiresome. Look, we get it, you made a physics engine that is pretty close to reality. Stop it already.

4. Team Fortress 2 -- I didn't think I'd get into this but for those times where you don't want to depend too much on your teammates ability, it is a pretty glorious romp full of explosions and often times a server full of trash talking assholes. Can't go wrong with that.

5. Everquest 2: Rise of Kunark -- They give you a massive amount of solo and group content but there aren't enough uncontested group instances to keep you interested once you hit the level 80 threshold. There's some pretty nice raid zones too but I haven't been able to hit all those yet. I realized I was starting to get a little bored with it when I started rolling an alternate character to pass the time. That's about the same instant that I put the game aside for a little while. They recently added epic and mythical weapons too for each class which was nice. But of course the super hardcore types of the class I play (Inquisitor) think the epic/mythical weapon blows. It probably does but since I don't raid seven days a week and I am not completely fabled out in gear I think it is not bad. But, I can see the hardcore folks point too: since it's epic that means it should probably be more than "not bad."

6. Quake Wars -- I haven't played this in months. My friends aren't crazy about it and pub hopping just doesn't hold the appeal it once did. Graphically it is gorgeous of course but I still find myself going back to BF2142 with my buddies instead.