I got on the Diablo 2 LOD ladder! Pic to prove it

Hello Bloggers. I don’t think I ever covered Iraq in my entries so I got into reading this one guy’s Blog from Iraq and I was intrigued to read all of it. I hear Iraq’s new government a lot on satellite. But you know I didn’t think Iraqis had Internet over there. Anyways, you know American Army has Internet access through their camps. Yeah, they all have portable laptops right? So some of them besides emailing friends and family are doing Blogs instead. Blogs are relatively new to the Internet, right? Since this guy, Raid, quoted, “American radio is very interesting” [http://dear_raed.blogspot.com/ ] The military broadcast’s American Radio in Baghdad at 107.7 FM. It’s called SAWA. So far I know it broadcast’s advertisements that we may hear in Wisconsin. Not odd to us, just odd to Iraqis. I’m sure they have Fords, Chevys, Chrysler and Coca-cola over there. Raid doesn’t get it though, he’s an equal. Saddam isn’t controlling him anymore. The whole blog he writes sounds like he never is equal person to Americans. This is a misconception. He has the life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness now. Hey Raid, go to http://www.UnitedStates.com. There’s a message board I think you should know about :) Who knows, maybe you can learn something.



There is a question I like to ask him. Do they have fast computers over there? Well if you got the Internet than maybe you can order one off EBay or Tigerdirect. That is if you can export to Iraq. Well my question really is, “American’s all know that the Internet is diggin’ it.” Do Iraqis know it though? I realize that Raid has Internet, though is he one of the fortunate few? I don’t know, Iraq is not a 3rd world country. Anyone who wants something can buy it. But I keep hearing how American’s are about 6 years a head of everyone else (as in 1st world countries) in terms of technology because Americans have all the wealth in the world. I can only say this….I don’t see it that way. Although I have all the games and television channels I can possibly watch, I can’t just buy anything.



Look at farming, less then 1% of American’s farm and we stop using DCT (weed/insect killer) 20 years ago. We advanced to genetically engineered crops. For what ever foods we can’t grow outside, we do it in high tech green houses. We can feed everyone in our country 10 times over. Maybe now, it’s closer to 11 times. Canada can do that, though I don’t know any other country that can do that. Iraq is desert as far as the eye can see. They have to import all their food.



Iraq now has a democratic government which will begin to run on it’s own starting today. Iraq is not going to change their flag. Iraq can make a lot of money giving away it’s oil. I don’t agree with our tax dollars help rebuilding Baghdad though. And why when we try to help, do Iraqis think they can loot the Red Cross? Did Germany help rebuild Warsaw, Belgium after World War II? Warsaw was rebuilt by US funds. And who rebuilt Pearl Harbor? US did. Did we ask the UN to fund rebuilding the World Trade Center? No, instead we made it a memorial. With all that money thrown around, somebody’s going to think we are all aristocrats, larger than life figures. Like me, I spent a lot of money on building / updating PCs, and I have no income. Am I a larger than life figure? I still ask my parents for money. I can’t even play Final Fantasy XI because my parents don’t want to though in 144 dollars a year, because it’s a waste of money. I tell you the thing I hate most about home is not having somewhere to work and not having a credit card so I can buy things online and subscribe to online games. But that’s just me.



For some more interesting news is I finally made it on the Diablo 2 Lord of Destruction ladder board.



The text that I circled is my character! It took me 2 weeks to go from 80 - 99. TheWierdSpearII can take out a cow with 3 strikes of her bow. But since I graducated hell difficulty, I just went for those Cow levels which give me the most experience for the time I put in. Now if I could keep my account up forever I'd be really happy. And thanks Gamefaqs.com for giving me a good reference to use, it was very helpful. I got a good start in the 1.09d patch so hell wouldn't be as hard as it would of been. Also I got to in the Aurrit Summit in all three difficluties in Act 5. So I gained 8 or 10 levels because I went dominated at 20, then 40, then 60 for full benefits.

renegade viking 5.0 here now

See my new webpage template! I am very proud of it! Go to www.Renegadeviking.cjb.net See you there!



I am apart of a new gaming IM service called Xfire [ www.xfire.com ] My account is "renegadeviking". Please download the 520K program and I will game with you.



I can play: Diablo 2 Lord of Destruction, Neverwinter Nights, Unreal Tournament 2004, or Diablo: Hellfire online. But you can suggest Quake 3 Arena, Half-life or Unreal Tournament 2003. The easiest way to get to me is using the Modblog instant messenger. Thankyou!

Wild Dog pack around my parts

I got wonderful news. My aunt’s house got struck by lightning. She lives less then a mile a way from us. They live out in the open (corn and wheat fields in all directions) so many houses there were venerable to strikes. Anyways, she came over to our house to wash clothes. She says that the lightning blew apart her chimney (to bits / pieces of bricks everywhere) thus burning every outlet in the house to black streaks. It also ripped the plaster off the wall in her basement about 5 feet vertically were the entertainment center (den) was. The TV had black streaks on the screen….from the blast. I thought that was a little funny. Yeah it was about 8PM and I saw a blinding blue light outside our house. It only took 4 seconds for the deafening boom to occur. I mean it’s the same as a sonic boom that an aircraft makes when it breaks the sound barrier right above you. Her phone line box was blown from the house to the end of the road she said. That’s about 300 feet! The wires in her electrical box were fused together. LOL! She has to replace everything. This was the first thunderstorm of the year. This whole scene was 5 minutes after I said, “Sh*t, I need to unplug my computers.” to myself. After this giant boom passed, the dog was barking, our cats were no where to be seen, and I remembered how right I was for waking up in the nick of time. I, who has hands on experience with power blow outs, knows surge protectors only do so much.



To describe further bad news today. A pack of wild dogs were on the loose. I just found out about this local crisis today actually. This one crazy dog (house pet) was leading other dogs (Lab, Retriever, Collie) and killing Sheep and small house cats. People in this area have been missing cats from what I heard. My aunt, who lives by the Sheep farm, saw the pack trying to kill these sheep, also included three RAMs. The dogs were trying to make a kill. The police come 3 times, as she described to us, and the dogs run away, but they are dumb enough to come back (The wild dogs circle the area like a pack of wolves.) The police brought shotguns though no shots were fired. One RAM was missing from the herd soon found half-alive knocked unconscious by blood lost. “Hmm, I wonder what happened?” You can’t really tell, she says, until you have a change to shave the wool off. The owner of the barn had to put 2 RAMS and a couple of sheep to sleep. The owners of these wild – uncontrollable pets – put them down because they already had to pay for property damage. I just know our dog wasn’t apart of this. The guy who owns the Alfa-dog (which in this case it describes the dog perfectly) got him neutered instead of killing him. So he is still alive and will do this all again probably. Isn’t this a sad story? I think so *sobbing*.



Now to get into some more ordinary news....



I caught The Screen Savers today and a small segment was telling about how to chat with gamers through games they play. And my response was GameSpy Arcade. But they showed Xfire. I downloaded the application myself. Very small download. You sign up for their service and it’s like MSN messenger exactly. Click on any gamer who has a server going on any game and it’ll boot your game up to that server automatically. Problem is there is no one is on your list to start you out. But there is a search buddy option. The big draw back is you need to know your buddy’s username in order to add him/her to your list. I already recommend it to a lot of people. I am hoping to meet someone to play Neverwinter Nights the night with. So far I got no damn luck!



I have never thought that it would happen this fast, but the first 512 MB GPU is available on the market. It’s actually a 3Dlabs card, the Wildcat VP990 Pro. 3DLabs says it can do 200 Gigaflops or 1.3 Teraflops of polygons. It’ll set you back 730 dollars or more, but is it worth it, after all a Geforce FX 5600 256 MB card at tigerdirect.com will only cost $130. I feel bad now. Even my slowest computer can handle any game in existence at 1200/800 (Athlon XP 1.8 GHz 386 MB RAM, Geforce 5400 Ti, 40 GB harddrive). And it looks pretty smooth. I want to upgrade to a 512 MB GPU myself, but I’m going to wait until the a card with that speed goes below the 300 dollar mark, even if it is the Wildcat VP 990 Pro since the first videocard on the market first, falls in price first. I’m guessing in September 2004 the Wildcat VP 990 Pro will be reduced to half the cost it is now. One thing is obvious, anything with 512 MB of RAM will be insanely powerful for 2 more years. Here’s the official site: http://www.3dlabs.com/product/wildcatvp/vppro/specs.htm for the specs. Playstation 3 and Xbox 2 are only going to have 256 MB of video memory, and that is still very powerful. I see that consoles game developers are going to use 100% that amount of memory to make games so console games may just look as good as State-of-the-art graphic cards for PC until 2006. UT2004 already about a generation a head of all the other games in the world developed for PC on the market and it runs on my pc perfectly. Doom 3 is coming out in December, and it’ll be optimized for a computer a little more powerful then what UT2004 mininum stats require .



Website: http://www.3dlabs.com/product/wildcatvp/vppro/

Spring Break Episode III - Seeing David again

Just as I was in the middle of writing this message I saved my mom’s life today by calling 911!!! I won’t get into the details since that will be rude.



Jolly good people! And good morning, I have now brought you in my final chapter of Spring Break 2004. Bob went to Arizona last week & probably on vacation. He’s back now. I didn’t speak to him.



David came over 2 days ago. He’s my cousin that I never see. I downloaded 45 GB from his hard drive via his USB connection. He had 53 feature length movies, 20 Family Guys, 14 Space Ghost Coast to Coasts (not all full episodes), MASH, CSI, and Simpsons. And an astonishing 2.5 GIGS of country music videos. He’s big on country. Each video averaged 40 MB. David works on helicopters mechanical aspects not electrical. David was good at playing Mario Kart Double Dash to my surprise! I burned 16 movies to CD already. We were trying to figure out how to network my computers. Both network cards looked good so it didn’t make sense to me how they were not commutating. My hub was hooked up too. O-well. It would have been fun. He doesn’t want to go anywhere or play any of the console game I want him to play.



And trance was playing at Walmart in the electronic’s section. I was freaking out because the song playing was ATB – Don’t Stop or was it Paul Van Dyk – Another Way? I listen to that song a lot and Walmart never showcased any trance track from what I know of. They’re trying to play trance Best Buy too. Best Buy was playing ahahahah remix from Zombie Nation. Stranger then Britney Spears, I tell yeah! American’s historically strayed away from it.



I have tried out Spellforce. IGN.com was absolutely right about it. Whenever you change your videocard settings to 2x anti analyzing, it will freeze. Well it looks like I’ll be playing Neverwinter Nights until Dungeon Siege 2 comesHowever, I got software acceleration and it played but had a terrible frame rate. Originally, I got spellforce because it had some half naked women on it, looked better than Neverwinter Nights, and the multiplayer is free. Now I’ll set back and name all the games that make you pay: Everquest, Final Fantasy XI, Horizons, and Anarchy Online. I hate to pay more for my games!!!!! I will someday because everyone’s doing it now-a-days.



I got Anarchy Online: Shadowlands for 20 bucks. Anarchy Online is the 2001 RPG of the Year by PC Gamer. At the time it was the best looking role playing game available for PC. It’s a space RPG set 200,000 years in the future. I read on the box that it included full versions of Anarchy Online, Notum Wars booster pack. Though I wasn’t thinking because on the bottom left corner it says, “Internet Connection Required. Additional online fees per month.” That sucks!



While I was in the Woodbury, MN, I got Redhat Professional Workstation, it came out after Redhat Linux 9.0. I think the $110 Operating System will help in school because our class uses Redhat 8, and I would get Redhat’s latest enhancements. I find it interesting that Redhat 8 comes with the student handbook as a free bonus. I will drop this class though, because I got too many 0s. The situation looks grim.

Spring Break Episode II - The Attack of the Ads!

Date: 3/18/04 at 1:29PM



Hello again. David, my cousin from the Navy, couldn’t make it over this week. He is got home on his spring break from Pensacola, Florida. He use to come over all the time until 2001. We played Dreamcast, N64. It was the good ol times. We had played games like Perfect Dark, Mario Kart, Crazy Taxi, and Rush 2049. Last time I saw him was in November 2003 right before he left. I think we both saw Fellowship of the Ring in 2001. David has MSN so we talk through that a lot. But the past week, he hasn’t been online. It just accord to me that we would be home.



Anyways, I was playing Unreal Tournament 2004 online, and web ads keep popping up. It got so bad that I had to reload the OS. I mean didn't I do this 3 weeks ago? What makes me f*cking mad is the popups slow down my connection and happen when I'm using the connection. The game's connection speed wasn't too bad. It ran at a solid 30 frames per second. I waited 3 months, I finally get it, and a few popups are distroying my fun!



Here are some spoilers for gamers. As you can see AMD Athlon 64 FX 53 out performs Pentium 4 EE. I'm going to wait until Athlon 64 FX 55 comes out and than I'm going to get my parents to purchase it for me. AMD stop making the Athlon 64 FX 51 so it'll drop in price quiet sinificently. I"m going to wait until I get 40 frames per second better on my games before I get my new processor for my custom PC. I don't know whether I'm going to get a new pc with all new hardware. Or just buy memory, motherboard/processor and stick the old processor in my Compaq. Getting a new PC from Tigerdirect will definally cut the cost for hardware installation by a professional. But your also paying for things you already have like a videocard, harddrive, DVDRWs, cases, modems and such.







http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/athlon64-fx53_1.html



Anyways, I did nothing this week during Spring Break. It’s been “reel” fun. On Tuesday, I got Alice, a dark platformer, made by Rogue Entertainment. Played that game on Tuesday night until 5 in the morning. The graphics were good, maybe a little less polygonized than I’m use too, but that’s okay. Than yesterday, I bought Unreal Tournament 2004. I couldn’t have gone in Monday because Best Buy was sold out. I was also looking at cd players for my Jeep. I want one with MP3 support, but I can’t afford one, I had 140 dollars total. And a nice MP3 Player ran about $170 which is very cheap. I was looking at Sony or Panasonic or Kenwood though, top of the line stereos. The guy tried telling me what a MP3 was…I said to him, God sakes, if I didn’t know what a MP3 was, I would be kinda computer illiterate, which I ain’t.” I told him those exact words. I was trying to prevent him from asking, “Are you downloading MP3s illegally?” I would have said, “Doesn’t everyone these days….” I also got a game called Spellforce: Order of the Dawn. It’s a new RPG released this year. The quote “A splendid mix of Warcraft and Dungeon Siege” caught my eye. And the specs to run the game were pretty high, and I like high specs. I read off IGN.com that the game is a little buggy later. I usually don’t come to Best Buy this unprepared. I know I heard of Asheron's Call somewhere. IGN.com gave Asheron’s Call 2 a 9.2 out of 10. It’s the other RPG developed by Microsoft. Well there’s Freelancer, but I tend to hate space RPGs, even though Knights of the Old Republic was my 2nd favorite game until I bought UT2004. My PC performance doesn’t seem to affect Unreal Tournament 2004 at all. It’s been sluggish such as ag between opening Directories. I already checked for viruses. Only one exception, someone using Subseven tryied to hack into my PC this morning (around 1am), but Norton Firewall blocked him or her. I have played with Subseven myself once, but I could only get it work on my PC. It’s an older trojan horse, which is illegal spyware allowing the hacker to view directories, upload files to your computer like viruses, and give the victim popup messages, like the infamous “We know you’re name is ___.” Subseven or “Sub7”, to my knowledge was last released in 2000, but isn't a very powerful trojan horse in 2004 because every firewall in the world can block it practically. Some other things Subseven can do is open webpages in Internet Explorer, open CDROM drives, illegally “watch” instant messenger conversations, and talk to the victim through it, and watch other people activities in a LAN situation who don’t have firewall protection.



Tune in for Spring Break Episode III. Coming soon to a blog near you!

Suse 9.0 Pro Impressions (German Distro)

I went to CompUSA, because I had $100 to spend on a new operating system. I saw Redhat 9.0, and StarOffice, and Mandrake Linux lined in a role. Since the technician guy said to try Suse 8.2 over Redhat last year, I get the same thing with more stuff. This one was easy to dual boot on Windows. I installed Red Hat 7.1 on a Athlon 2001 Compaq Presario, because in high school, I had a Linux course. I was the first person from Renaissance Academy to do one over stupid Spanish. Think Babblefish. I got a lot of stuff in it like 35 games, and it comes with Sega Genesis, NES, Commodore 64, and SNES emulators. There is this emulator on the double sided DVD. Frozen Bubble was from Puzzle Bubble and this new platform Super Tux really isn't good at ripping off Mario. RedHat 7.1 seems so hard in comparison. I can play mp3s in XMMS which is cool and Suse 9.0 Pro reads NTFS file system too...

I copied it for Randy! The GUI is faster than before. This has the potential of keeping me dual booting linux with Windows XP forever. I mean I need XP to play Dungeon Siege, Unreal Tournament 2004, and Neverwinter Nights! I have to get good for LAN parties. Everybody should have a copy of this operating system. It has linux kernel 2.6.3! KDE 3.1 Gnome 2.2.





This will get me through 2004! I use it to say I'm there. My friend Bob who lives in Hammond had Mandrake Linux 6.2 in 2000 running on his PC and want to show him whose boss! That's because Windows 2000 really screwed up his computer. He had bad sound issues. He hates Linux I think. SUSE could be the next big thing.

Spring Break Episode I - Xbox modding

Hello and welcome to my next edition of my Blog! Today I am on spring break, which is nice because Dad’s going to bring home UT2004, and I will have nothing to do, which is not necessary a bad thing. I hope Bob gets off school this week. He goes to the UofW so that will be awesome if he did. The topic today is why the heck are some videocards so expensive and others are not so expensive? $150 to $350 is reasonable in my opinion. Tigerdirect sells a XFX Geforce 5200 FX 256 MB videocard for 100 dollars. That’s extremely reasonable, and I haven’t had mine die on me yet. This videocard will let you play Unreal Tournament 2003 / Unreal Tournament 2004 at 1600x1200 with 4x anti analyzing. You’re going to get eye catching graphics anyways with no pixilation. Well, if your videocard can support that resolution anyways, you know that the pixels are so small that they won’t show any distortion. Now you take a Geforce 5600 XT 128 MB videocard, and that’ll cost you as much as a Geforce 5200 FX at 256 MB. I thought that any 256 MB card will produce better graphics over any 128 MB videocard. I mean at least when you look at Geforce 4 technologies. Nvidia has this technology called Nview multi-display. This is Nvidia’s answer to Microsoft’s Direct X 9.0, so Nvidia’s technology improve and do more than Direct X 9.0 or am I completely wrong? I can’t be completely off because I know I can run UT2003 at 1600x1200 with my Radeon 9800. It interests me why this type of videocard manufactured by PNY Technologies costs 2000 bucks. This class is called the Quadro FX series. PNY makes the Quadro 500 128 MB GPU and it costs 300 bucks. That is more then any Geforce FX videocard. Quadro FX 1000, 2000 and 3000 are also available. This is the EXTREMELY highend of videocards. And they probably cost 400 dollars more at places like Best Buy and Circuit City. When the Geforce FX 6000 series come out, I beating they will out class the Quadro 500 and 1000 in terms of graphics. Same thing with Radeons. ATI isn’t far behind Nvidia in technolgy. On reason why all three console manufactures (Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft) are turning to ATI to make integrated graphic cards for their next generation consoles. They’ll look better on screen and cost a lot less. I think that 512 MB of DRR video ram is over kill right now. Maybe in 5 years I won’t think so, but Nvidia will soon after that come out with 1024 MB of DRR video RAM. And my BRAIN will just MELT in AWE! 512 MB will let you play DOOM 3 and Half-life 2, very graphically demanding games, at 1600/1200 res with 4x anti-analyzing. That will definitely out class anything Sony or Microsoft are coming out with next year. For the price of a Playstation 3 ($350 US) you can own a high performance videocard that will make anything look better on PC. That’s amazing. What’s also amazing is that consoles still make money off their games and not their graphics. And you know what? I switched from my Dreamcast out performing my computer to my computer out performing my Xbox so I don’t know. Of course, Bill Gates owns all the PCs in the world and, a console.



Guess what….I was watching The Screen Savers, and there is finally a way to have PC software run on Xbox only if your Xbox is modded properly. Xbox is has a cut down version of Windows 2000 on it so it’s possible to MOD it and put in a 40 gigabyte hard drive to run PC games. But you know what…Microsoft is the least experienced. Although Halo, Dungeon Siege, Project Gotham and Flight Simulator 2004 are very good, Microsoft hasn’t got what Sony has and that is 3rd party support. Also hackers have found a way to even put games on hard drives so that the games have no loading times. Of course, every mod chip lets you play “backups” of your games. Mod chips for Xbox range from 30 dollars to 100 dollars. I want to get my Xbox soldiered, but I don’t know who to ask, how much it’ll cost, or which website sells them. I am thinking that I should wait for PS3 to come out so that mod chips will come out for it, and I’ll be able to legally back up my PS2 games and PS3 games and play them. I have 33 PS2 games, just ask Bob. And how about the new 40 GIGABYTE PS2 hard drive released by Sony this month? I just had to minion it today. You literally can’t fill that space up with game saves. After FFXI is loaded (6GB) you can save approximately 113333.3 300 KB game saves. Compress them with your Gameshark at 50%, than you talking about 226666.6 150 KB game saves. That’s insane. You just can’t save that many games. I was dumb founded when I found out I can backup your memory card data on it. Final Fantasy XI is preloaded on it, and that takes up six Gigabytes of the 40. You can also back up WAV files on it, but no games support music unlike all Xbox games. I’m going to ask bob if he can give up his network adapter for a free memory card so I can buy the hard drive and use it on mine. I have 1 memory card that’s 85% full, and that’s with all my game saves. I want a PS2 hard drive so I don’t have to override a game save in my life. Wouldn’t that be just awesome! I even have the 100 bucks for the harddrive on hand. I hate it how Sony bundled FFXI with it. I would never use it. Sony says the game’s free, but I think Sony is lying. This is why I think so, they preload FFXI on it so they can charge you 14 bucks a month to play it. I remember a time period when Sega allowed you to play Phantasy Star Online, plus Unreal Tournament and Quake III Arena for free on the Dreamcast from 2000 + using your own ISP. I booted PSO v1 on my Dreamcast in August 2003 and I got a server down message. I hear the servers are still up with UT and Quake 3 so you can still find servers on the Dreamcast. Unreal Tournament: Game of the Year will allow Dreamcast gamers play on the same servers as PCs. One reason could be that Dreamcast runs Windows operating system too. In fact there is a logo on my Dreamcast at home that says Microsoft Windows CE. When PSO was re-released on Gamecube and Xbox, Sega now charges for Gamecube and the Xbox version is apart of Xbox Live. At least the Gamecube version allows you to play over a modem. I bought the Gamecube modem 2 years ago because I thought the PSO online subscription was free like it was for Dreamcast. Unfortunately not any more. If Xbox allowed free Internet access, I think that would make a big difference in Xbox sales. Perhaps when Xbox 2 comes out, Microsoft may just make Internet access on Xbox free. It would make a lot of sense to do so.



I ended up spending 40 bucks on Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes for Gamecube at Wal-Mart this morning. MGS: TS has been developed by Silicon Knights (developer of Eternal Darkness and Legacy of Kain) and Konami. I found out it has the MGS 1 and MGS 2 packaged together into one game. It looks like it’s graphically superior to Resident Evil and Metroid Prime. Solid Snake has all the moves he uses in MGS2 at the beginning of MGS 1. IGN.com rated this game a 9.7 out of 10 or 97% perfect. I haven’t played MGS 1 or 2 yet. UT2004 got a 9.6 out of 10 rating at IGN.com. It was a 5 page review too. I am not usually into tactical games, but I recently got into first person shooters for the 3rd time. A new enhancement in The Twin Snakes is you can play this game in first person 100% of the time if you want too. A review will be up within a week at this link: http://www.geocities..._metalgearsolid.html



And lastly, my 8X DVD RW came in today. I'm going to install it once I can figer out how to get the current drive out of my Dell. I'm goign to have a ball Backing Up DVDs. I have everything, a ESD wrist band and screw drivers, and I learned to keep my pc plugged into the wall as I install the drive. I hate to bang around iit though. That could prove disasterious!



Signing off and tune in 4 days from now for my next blog entry!

Hello readers! Yesterday, I went to school, walked around the building and eventually asked a fellow student, he said no classes today. The day went by really quick, nothing really to do. Before I knew it 4 PM blasted by before I took a nap. Than I slept until 4:10 AM That’s 12 hours! I had this dream where I was Conon the barbarian. I was very destructive. And I was fighting off the Romanians. In time of Kings, about 1300 AC, I was this Barbarian King (yes, I wore underwear.) trying to defend Norway. (It sort of looked like Middle Earth though) against the evil Romanian King and his army of the undead. Skeletons, Ghouns, and orcs? They were all 7 feet tall and UGLY with armor with bastard swords. Of course, we all had double edged long swords. And we barbarians were on the losing side. The Romanian Army was gaining ground slowing destroying our army, so I met the one-man-army himself from the game Halo, who went back in time after he defeated the Covenant, and gave us shock rifles and grenade launchers. There wasn’t enough for all of us, so we had to share. Anyways, I woke up right before I broke in the Dark Castle of Normandy. I had a scene there where a barbarian through a grenade and a whole horde of undead got blown to pieces. It was like the matrix! Oh yeah, did I mention I was about to save this beautiful damsel in distress? Yeh, that was part of the dream too. She looked like Kathleen Ireland. Okay, I admit it was kind of strange, but I was really an awesome dream. But a lot of you dream, and have these dreams after movies you saw and slept 12 hours and don’t know why?



Next, I’m hoping to invite someone over from WITC. There aren’t many guys at school that have that time. Some of them seem cool enough. They must like LAN parties and videogames. But I don’t know if it’s homework or they don’t like to go to somebody’s house unless they make plans. I just don’t know.



I was looking inside my Dell, and the DVD Drive, Harddrive, floppy drive is locked in to the case with levers and I just bought a 8X DVD RW and want to install it right a way. But I couldn't figer the lever out. I will have to go to Radio Shack and get an IDE splitter. That’ll make two DVDRWs. I had the other one for nearly a year now, and I haven’t burned one DVD!



Picture of my Dell : Pentium 4 3.2 GHz 1 GB Dual Channel RAM, Dell motherboard, 120 GB hardrive / 40 Gigabyte slave drive, Radeon 9800 256MB DRR, 100/1000 Ethernet / Sound Blaster Audagy II / DVD/CDRW / huge duel fan cooling system







Picture of the other monster : Athlon XP 2600 768 MB DRR 333 MHz, 120 GB harddrive, Geforce FX 256 MB DRR, on board sound on a Soyo Dragon Black Edition Motherboard, 100/1000 Ethernet / 56X CD ROM / 4x DVDRW +





My rooms a mess, I need to clean it up. I mean it has books everywhere. Four Mountain Dew bottles laying around CDs cases. I got dog hair on the floor. I wonder since it's a friday, bob can do something? I have this friend, Chuck, and he did something bad, and he works all the time to help out his girlfriend who he got pregnate. I don't call him anymore except for a few times, but I went to school with him for 2 years, and he was the only one I knew and talked too. I miss the times I went over to his house, and played Unreal Tournament. I don't know if he's a loser, because he wasn' t thinking, but this happened after I went to high school.



Four days until Unreal Tournament 2004 comes out, I'm excited! Can't wait to play online with it. And why didn't I play Unreal Tournament 2003 online? Well I did for a short while, but i was slow, and I got by butt kicked, so I dropped it. It's not worth to play all the time, and be above average on the rouster. Because there are a lot of mean players, who know where all the starting points are in the level I and I hate to be killed right away by them. This is not aways true, not I remember a few times this happened too me. All the good areas are taken, and with expert marksmen to boot.

I was surfing the Internet and I found this really strange website. I know there are stranger…. But a 24 hour TV gaming network? Can it get any stranger? Is the world ready for it? Is there enough games to support a cable channel forever? I didn’t know it was possible! I dunno, a hardcore gamer would even find it odd. It’s called G4, and it’s like Xplay 24 hours a day. Xplay is TechTV’s game show. I knew that Sega tried having a 24 hour channel called Sega Channel or Sega Net, and it didn’t do well, and went off air. You literally watch videogames 24 hours a day! Anyway, I checked out there website and they do have streaming audio on all their shows on their website. I have DirecTV so I don’t get G4. It’s probably not worth it anyways. You get to hear about how awesome a game is or how much a game is sucking all day. It’s not my thing, of course I grew out of this. Still check out their website at http://g4tv.com or go to http://techtv.com/xplay/ to watch Xplay streaming video reviews. I read off the Internet, and there is Game Informer Magazine so it would be too lame to see videogames 24 hours a day. IT is for the couch potato who got tired of playing his PC or Playstation so he watches a cable channel review games all day. I rather play games, and when I"m not playing games, I get out and go to school or hang out with other people. And I thought sometimes TechTV got a little lame sometimes. I guess I was wrong. Still it's interesting what different cable channels there are. I need feedback. What do readers think of G4?

My topic today is what is the best gaming platform? What a non geekish subject. I will cover cost and performance, and quality games. But only one platform will be the winner. None of this double favorites nonsense. I can do this because I own Dreamcast, PS2, Xbox, Gamecube, and PC. I have more than 10 games for each platform.



I wrote this on Cheat Happens, talking about the best console I prefer. I ended the entry by saying it won't matter because next generation consoles will be out next year.



"Cheat Happens is probably the best form in this hot debate on which console is the better. I came hear because I wanted to find out which console I should buy 2 of. I mean the next generation of Playstation will play PS2 games. Xbox 2 will play Xbox games, which leaves Gamecube a stand alone product with no future. Once Gamecube is done, it's done forever, right? So it's what I think, but I wondered if I could get away with getting a another Gamecube. This is not my favorite console by the way. I own so many games for it, 14 in all. As you now realize, Sega is not a major competitor. In 1999, Sega released some absolutely great games on Dreamcast, although it also had a 2 year lead start in Japan (October 15, 1998 release date.) Who could forget Sega's Skies of Arcadia, which I say could be the direct competitor to Square-Enix's Final Fantasy. It was an important game because I knew then how fun RPGs are. Soul Caliber and Dead or Alive 2 were also great fighting games. I also enjoyed Crazy Taxi and Rayman 2. Chu Chu Rocket was a fun puzzle game. Sonic Adventure was state-of-the-art in 1999, and did have good gameplay. After Dreamcast left the market, I knew I would soon have to invest into a newer console. I trusted Nintendo for Quality, but soon found out that I loved PS2 more, which I bought in 2003. After owning both Gamecube and Xbox before PS2. I found out that PS2 is the better of the three. I'm a big fan of Gran Trasimo 3 A-Spec , Xenosaga, Winning Eleven Soccer, and Final Fantasy X. I own copies of Silent Hill 2, Grand Thief Auto Vice City, Timesplitters, and Soul Reaver 2 also were fun. But RPGs give me a lot of time too entertain myself, and rpgs are my prefered genre. PS2 has the most RPGs of any console. No debate there? I try to compete them without cheating, although it's hard. I knew then I soon would invest in Playstation 3 (which I already put a 50 dollars preorder in at Gamestop, only place that lets you do so right now). PS3 is going to sell out in pre orders first day anyway, I already guarantee everyone this is true. Same 3rd party support is going to be supporting Sony, more sequels, I love sequels to games already popular on PS2. The bottom line, why is everyone debating on this generation, when you'll just have to debate PS3, Nintendo Nexus, and Xbox 2? The cell chip is very interesting. Sony is switching to ATI and IBM to make hardware for their system. Playstation I now know is the wisest choice. I sounds like it's going to go up to a 256 MB graphics card, plus onboard flash memory and produce an amazing amount of polygons (1.5 billion), and it will be even a larger online console than PS2, cause online games rule, and in development I heard off IGN.com. Only question is will subscribers to PlayOnline be able to play Final Fantasy XI, Twisted Metal Black, Resident Evil Deadly Aim or Madden 2004 online with it? I have this debate on http://renegadeviking.cjb.net. Also, check out http://ign.com for big updates."



PC 1st place: Cost $500 - $3000 Poor | RPGS – Excellent | RPGS – Excellent | FPS – Excellent | Graphics - Excellent | Racing – Poor | Strategy – Very Good | Features – Excellent | Sports – Very Good | Horror - Good Excellent | Online Support - Excellent free internet gaming |



2nd place PS2: Cost 180 Dollars - Average | RPGS - Very Good | FPS – Good | Graphics – Good | Racing – Very Good | Strategy – Good | Horror - Very good | Features – Excellent Harddrive, DVD playback included, and Psone backwards compatibility | Online support – Good |



3rd place Xbox: cost 170 Dollars Average | RPGS - Poor | FPS – Very Good | Graphics – In-between Good and Very Good | Racing - Good | Online support - Very Good – Features (8 Gigabyte Harddrive, broadband support, Xbox Live, DVD playback | Horror – Poor



4th Place – Gamecube Cost $99 Excellent | RPGS – Poor | First Person Shooters Average | Graphics: Good to above average | Racing: Very Good | Online Support – 1 title, Phantasy Star Online so Poor. | Horror – Very Good | Features – (Gameboy Player and GBA link) Very good.



And the Winner is the PC! The PC is above all the rest because it doesn’t involve immediate upgrading. It is nice to have a state-of-the-art PC, but it’s not required. RPG fans may like consoles over PC because you get a nifty controller. The controller is alright, but the mouse is a lot better in my opinion. Feels better as well. Works better then joystick in most 3D games. Take PS2 for faineance. It has Final Fantasy, the largest selling RPG in the history of the world. I am talking about RPGs because they are my favorite genre. Believe it or not Final Fantasy 7 and 8 can run on PC with graphical upgrades if you can find them. They weren’t really favorite pick though. PC has some wonderful first person shooters and MMORPGs available. All consoles are limited to media space and hardware limitations. Take the 5 year old PS2. It’s like 3 years past the expiration date. Only exception is some games like Gran Tranismo 3 A Spec and Grand Thief Auto Vice City can be played on it. The PC has better graphics. Consoles are reduced to a lower resolution because the PC and 32-bit monitor can exceed the TV’s resolution. Unless you have a flat screen or HDTV. I want one but don’t have the money. To much money going towards upgrading PC for last 2 years.



TOP PC game picks of 2004



Winner – Neverwinter Nights

2nd Place - Half-life 2

3rd Place – UT2004

4th Place Diablo 2



- Unreal Tournament 2004 – Game of the Month

- Half-life 2 – Best First Person Shooter of 2004

- Doom 3 – Second place First Person Shooter of 2004

- Neverwinter Nights Best Massive Multiplayer Online RPG of 2003

- Diablo 2 – Best MMORPG of 2000

- Dungeon Siege 2 – Best MMORPG of 2004

- Metal of Honor Allied Assault – 2002 Game of the Year

- Unreal Tournament 2003 – 2003 Game of the Year

- Knights of the Old Republic – 2003 2nd place RPG of the Year

- Need of Speed Underground – 2004 Racer of the Year



Nominees



- Everquest II - MMORPG of the Year nominee

- World of Warcraft MMORPG of the Year nominee

- Grand Thief Auto 3 – PC game of the year nominee

- Call of Duty – First Person Shooter of the Year nominee

- Grand Thief Auto Vice City – PC game of the year nominee

- The Sims – PC Game of the Year nominee

- Battlefield 1942 – PC Game of the Year nominee

- Elder Scrolls III Morrowind – XBOX 2002 RPG of the Year

I had a mid-term today in one class today. I didn’t have to take it because it’s a snow day! I felt I had to look on the Internet quick for VI commands and EMACS commands, put them on a floppy so I can view them at school. It’s as good as note taking because the teachers will think I was looking at the man pages. Linux is interesting, it is the only OS that can fit on a CD and run off it.



Bob and I want to get together. He’s been taking the day off too. So this morning I’ve been watching Bridge to Far DVD on one PC while I reinstall Windows back on one of my PCs. It’s a timely process. Somehow I managed to delete hardware acceleration files, Direct X 8.1 if you get specific. My OS was kinda messed up for a while there. I blame it all on Microsoft. The installation cd should have fixed my problem, and it did absolutely nothing! Like I said before, I know how to install Windows XP in my sleep so I didn’t get that mad.



I was thinking of bringing two computers over to Bobs so we can play Unreal Tournament (the first one) together. If I bring my 3rd PC, maybe it’ll be a 3 person LAN game. It’s funny though, I have a CAT V NIC on all my computers, and my HUB is only a CAT 4. It’s nothing really, I just loose 90 MB of bandwidth. Dad should have given me a router instead. He said it was his unused hub from work. CAT IV Hubs should be adequate for playing Unreal Tournament or Neverwinter Nights over a server for now. I’m also bringing over Quake 3 Arena because I know Bob has a copy. I have waited 6 months to have a LAN party. I am waiting to kick Bob’s butt at Unreal Tournament later today.



I found a used copy of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles at the game store. I got it for a modest 35 dollars instead of a full 50. So I was playing it for 3 hours yesterday. Everything looks better than Final Fantasy X, which is amazing to me. Now, I technically have all the Final Fantasy games except for Final Fantasy Tactics, Final Fantasy Adventure and Final Fantasy Legend 1 and 2 (Secret of Mana for Game Boy.) I want to bring over Gamecube so we can play that game in multiplayer, that is if he doesn’t want a LAN party. I am also planning to bring over Midnight Club 2 and Winning Eleven 6. Bob told me Midnight Club was one of his favorite games.



This just in, I didn't have a LAN party today. It's a disappointment, but we got 5 inches of snow fall.



On the second part of my blog I realized that there are going to be a dozen RPGs coming out in 2004. Of course Gas Powered Games is releasing Dungeon Siege II [ http://dungeonsiegeii.com/ ] Dungeon Siege will be upgraded to graphics that par up with World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XI if not better. Dungeon Siege, is not your average game because it is a hack and slash title like Diablo in a 3D engine. It looked pretty good in 2001. Dungeon Siege 2 will have the same features, hopefully an improved multiplayer experience. Dungeon Siege was horrible to be played online, ran very slow.



I’m skipping Everquest 2 and World of Warcraft because I can never afford the online subscription. So this leads me to Ultima X Online. It’s been 4 years since Orgin Systems released an Ultima game. Ultima IX was released in 1999. Ultima IX was like Raven (Myst 2) with the exact same graphics, gameplay and a lot more bugs. Ultima IX was reviewed at IGN.com, and it was not your Neverwinter Nights. Sadly, it was below average. Although it made Ultima 3D. I’ve never played IX. Ultima X is a Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game, with graphics as good as Lineage II and Elder Scrolls III : Morrowind. It may even be good, and without bugs! Go to this website to read about it and judge for yourself. [ www.uxo.ea.com/intro.html ] I’m kind of excited for it. Here are some screenshots from the game. Looks original? I hope it plays as good as it looks :)










Hi-Res




Hi-Res




Hi-Res




Hi-Res








Hi-Res




Hi-Res




Hi-Res




Hi-Res