Bob Kjelgaard's Space

Put up some new photos of the new “old homestead”.  I’ll be heading out there soon.  I also added the most recent books I read (Still working on the Federalist Papers- I’m about halfway through- I’m just not in the mood for the serious stuff a lot of the time of late).

I got past my block in Legendary, thanks to Jeremy.  I made it almost to the end unaided, then got into a similar bind with the twin Minotaurs near the game’s end.  Jeremy to the rescue again.  Looks like barbecue time, if I can locate the flame thrower (if not, I can back up a bit and locate it at some earlier point, I’m sure).  Sometimes it’s good to turn to someone a third your age for sage advice…

I’ve also played much of the way through Fable II’s latest expansion (See the Future).  On top of which, I added some gamerscore (I’ve ALMOST got all the silver keys, finally- I’ve also only got one variation left for the main quest).

Hadn’t mentioned it earlier, but I’ve been covering a lot of my Thursday evenings playing on XBox Live with people from work: Patrick, Shyamal, Niraj, and Brandon.  We started with Halo 3, then moved to Gears of War 2 (trying to get Horde achievements for the rest of them, as I already have two level 50 achievements (but there are more I’d love to go for- I like Horde).  I think we’re back to Halo again, soon- so it will be back to watching myself get killed a lot.  So sad, truly…

Jeremy keeps thinking he’ll have good broadband.  If that happens, I’ll probably move to Resident Evil 5 and a few more zombie type games (hey, that’s life), so we can do some more co-ops.  I may even cross one of my boundaries and pick up GTA IV, after all.  I’ve decided that if it’s just play, the dark side isn’t necessarily that bad to explore.  But I have to admit- even in games, I’d rather play the goody-goody.  Suppose my moral sense is just too ingrained for 21st century gaming…

I’ve also put in more hours playing Bejeweled 2 while listening to all my old music, courtesy of the SanDisk Cruzer USB thumb drive I got as a freebie at WinHEC 2008.  It’s become my favored accessory- stick it in the XBox or my Focus (via Sync) and I’ve got my “hey that’s me playing that stuff” tunes.  At work, I’ve got those on my main machine- but I just plug it in and enable ReadyBoost (even if it’s just cache, it adds 50% to my memory- I run kind of lean when someone else is paying for my stuff), and things zip along nicely on my main development machine.  Hard to beat it for size and utility.

Been a really long time since I said much here- things get like that for me…

I have a book or two to add to my read list, and I’ve been playing plenty of games, of course.  Star Ocean The Last Hope I really liked and thoroughly enjoyed.  Shell Shocked 2 was a true disappointment (more on that in a minute)- Legendary has been OK, but I think I’m stuck- I’m getting killed repeatedly by the Nari when I try to take care of the final EMP device- I’d expect there’s a way out of there without trying to kill a never-ending supply of them, but I’ve yet to find it.

The problem with Shell Shocked is one of my pet peeves in gaming- the “let’s do a puzzle where the user has to push the buttons on their controller in a particular order really quickly” idea.  In this case, I’m trying the game on easy, I’m up against the very first enemy, and after a half dozen tries and failures, I’m thinking, “So why did I waste good money buying this piece of crap?”.  Granted, this happens on many other games I’ve played- but in those it can either be avoided, or it isn’t quite so severe.  Here, it’s “do it, do it right, do it fast, do it right at the start, or you’re never even going to see the rest of the game”.

Guess I’ll never see the rest of the game.

Problem solved.

Still have to crack open Viva Piñata- Trouble In Paradise…

Occasionally I check to see if anyone has been looking, and if so, how they got here.  So one occasionally picks up the interesting Google search.  This time, someone was looking for my sister-in-law Michelle.  But out of curiosity I clicked the link and looked at the search (for various reasons, I rarely get to talk to my sisters-in-law).

Surprised, I noticed this link:  http://en-gb.facebook.com/people/Josefine-Brix-Kjelgaard/1054671799

Now, my family has been in the USA since the mid-19th century, as far as I can tell, but the name Brix has been a part of the family tradition- orally, anyway, most of my own lifetime.  When my father was young, it was his nickname.

For those who don’t know me so well, it happens that our names are virtually identical- mine is Robert Brix Kjelgaard.

Not much other similarity, probably- she’s a pretty young woman with a lot of friends who can no doubt actually read and speak Danish.

Well, Ms. Josefine- if some traffic comes your way because of the above link and it is unwanted, my apologies [let me know and I’ll remove it]…

I've had my share of disappointments of late, just thought I'd get one off while I'm waiting for other things to happen here in drizzly Redmond this fine gray December morning.

I enjoy playing Gears of War 2 quite a bit, particularly with the Rogue Hunters.  One of them has some problems connecting to many of the others, but my system can connect to his, so we had been doing things like co-op campaign, co-op battles against bots, and some Horde levels.  But the lag was ghastly.

Now there is a minimum lag to be expected.  This young man lives in Pennsylvania (I believe- somewhere well to the east of here, anyway).  So let's say that's roughly 3000 miles away.  A round trip is then 6,000 miles.  The speed of light [in a vacuum] is roughly 186,000 miles per second, and as I hope most budding physicists realize, per Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, it represents a maximum rate at which information can travel out and back.  So, the round trip delay is at least 1/31 of a second- roughly 32 milliseconds.  This is noticeable, but just barely [you can see displays refreshing at 60 hertz- which is 1/60 of a second- flicker, and this is almost twice as slow].

But then add some processing time at each end. and add potential routing and switching delays, ISP throttling, lost packets and retries, and you begin to see much more pronounced effects.  In this case, they were pretty severe.  I'd run, get somewhere on my machine, and then get a position refresh from the host and suddenly be back where I started, and then my position would receive a refresh from the host system again [after it apparently processed my movement or some of it], and I'd be somewhere else still.  I'd pull the trigger on the big guns, and it would take a second before I heard the report [and of course, most of the time, my target had moved, so I missed quite often].  On automatic weapons like the Lancer, I'd see a stream of fire hit an apparently invincible opponent.  Sometimes I'd get a status update and suddenly they'd be dead, or moved, or partially damaged.  Forget the chainsaw- attempts to use it usually wound up with me being beat down or sawed in half myself.

But I like a challenge [particularly those that require thinking] and some strategies helped.  Grenades used as proximity mines (although they took a second or longer to register), once there, had their position and effect maintained at the remote system, so they were effective.  Of course, it took a couple of seconds to pick them up because of the lag, but that was one solution.  Tossing them, though, was a more of a hit or miss proposition than usual.

Sniping relatively stationary enemies with the Long Shot worked about half the time, so that too had some payback.  At close enough range and against the Boomers, Maulers, Butchers, etc., the Boom Shot was good.  Torque Bow if straight on and they couldn't move much left or right (such as if they were coming face on while you're on a Balcony on Day One) was also good.  Hosing an enemy with the Lancer often worked, but ate up a lot more ammunition than it normally would, and fast moving enemies simply weren't where you were aiming.  Since ammo pickup was slow, and you can be attacked while doing so, this had defects, particularly on the tougher Horde levels.

Mortar was also good in some cases- Mulcher worked, but again, used a lot more ammo than normal because of the slow updates, and it also missed the fast-moving enemies.

When I ran out of ammo- usually near the end of a Horde level, and when I was usually facing the fast moving stragglers- it was shottie time.  If I was the only one left, I might be able to handle one or two opponents [on a normal system, playing casual difficulty, which I also have to do when lag is pronounced, I can easily handle more- I may be slow, but I'm not THAT slow].  But three or more- just didn't work, the local system can update the three of them multiple times while waiting for an update to arrive from my end- meaning I'd be surrounded, beat up, and quickly disposed of, no matter how wildly I shot or how many perfect active reloads I could muster.

So alas, recently it got to me- we were doing a co-op on the level with the razor hail, and I failed several times in a row to make a short run into a doorway through the hail.  I kept winding up glued to the wall next to the door [in the hail], and no matter how fast I tried to pull off it and get through the door, I wound up dead.  I began complaining volubly about the lag- and my teammate decided he'd had enough of my complaining.  Haven't heard from him since.

It reminds me of the time Melissa was complaining that people were cheating on the first Gears of War game, and I was trying to explain to her that it was the effect of the network lag- one of the members of the other team- no doubt a world class physicist and expert in all things scientific and technical- called me a liar and said I just couldn't handle the fact that my skillz were inferior to his team's awesomeness.

Trash talking moron.  Scary part is he actually believes that stuff.  His problem, though- I'd rather understand the world about me than stoke my ego with something as ultimately meaningless as being able to click a button at just the right moment- an ephemeral moment that then only lives in boastful tales people get tired of hearing.  Of course, it's not like programming triumphs are that much better [except they pay more in most cases]...

Oh, well- perhaps I'll get some time in this coming weekend.  Played through Call of Duty: World at War once already, then had something weird happen the second time [might have some thermal hardware problems developing].  The Last Remnant gave me the same headache most RPGs do- I forget to save often enough, and eventually wind up dying and having to redo the last several hours of the game- that gets old fast.

But I still enjoy the company of the Rogue Hunters when I can.  Maybe I'll blog more about that at some future time.

I came in the morning of the 25th to find someone had traversed a link to my music list from here.  Hardly a complaint- it led to some interesting reading for several minutes and fine reminiscing about past Dead concerts, and a mental note to see what I might be able to procure of RatDog material [I prefer the sort where the artist gets royalties, of course].

Gives me some nice spots for future lookup, and a reminder that people do occasionally read my blog.  I suppose I should feel some chagrin for admitting a song brought a tear to my eye, but I've been thinking I might do a booklist or TV episode list like that, so it's not like I'm particularly reticent in that regard.

Hope (at least for those in the US) people enjoy this upcoming Holiday!