Things are amiss.

Yesterday was Thanksgiving. Not much out of the ordinary there. Whole family comes over, wishes my mother a happy birthday, we all eat a big huge meal, most people leave but my cousins hang around another day and a half playing videogames, various members of my family are drugged and abducted by a serial rapist, everyone has a big lunch of leftovers, everyone eventually goes home. Nothing much out of the ordinary, well, except for that middle bit I suppose, but I wasn't here for it.

So anyway, two new Metroid games came out recently. Proving that years of observation and note taking don't really do all that much, they defy all logic. Metroid Prime, the 3D first person game developed by an untested developer based in Houston Texas is an absolute perfect transition of a franchaise thoroughly rooted in 2 dimensions into a 3D world, and totally rocks. Although I'd personally really rather have a 3rd person angle. Fusion on the other hand, a 32-bit 2D game by the majority of the original development team, I can say quite frankly is the absolute worst entry in the series. The only thing it has that Super Metroid didn't is constant dialog heavy cutscenes in the vein of Metal Gear Solid. Meanwhile, Super Metroid has a lot Fusion doesn't, like the ability to explore on your own, uses for all your various powers, the ability to go explore on your own, doors that don't lock for plot reasons, totally blocking off large portions of the game you'd like to backtrack to constantly, the ability to explore on your own, the ability to go back everywhere near the end of the game to make sure you didn't miss anything, and of course the ability to explore on your own. So yeah, I really just have the one complaint but seeing how that's the entire appeal of the franchaise, it bugs me a bit. The game's still fairly enjoyable mind you, just the low point of the series is all.

So yeah... where was I? Ah yes, tired and cranky from having to bend over backwards to help get a feature up Wednesday night because everyone had a manditory day off to relax or somesuch, then having to entertain guests and eat sleep-enducing turkey for two days. That's a pretty stupid place to be come to think of it, so let's have a random change of topic!

I've got a new space heater this year. Every year I end up upgrading since, well, most space heaters aren't up for keeping a 32 square meter area with 5 leaky windows above freezing. This sucker here is the shape of a PC tower, and pretty much the largest electronic device in the room. It handles things quite nicely. Woo.

Speaking of cold, snow in November makes me happy. After the blistering heat of this summer, it's nice to have an early snow fall too. Wildly oscilating teperatures I can deal with, I just don't wanna live in that Twilight Zone episode where the earth's orbit is decaying, you know?

So anyway, this month seems to be just about over, and I seem to have no obligation to update this page for the rest of the year. I almost definitely will though of course, and I'd like to try and get the next Tyranny book out the door too. So hey, I'm ending this rant on a happy note!