Exposing my socks to the world

I wanted to leave the picture of the stray cat I found up on the page until I was able to find him a home. Since I have done just that, regular updates will now resume.

It’s Christmas.

I’m taking the day off from administering the site.

Please don’t break anything.

I found a cat last night sitting out in the cold and the rain.

So I brought it inside.

Let’s hope that if he has an owner that he steps forward. I’d hate to have to keep this little guy.

I’ve decided that I need to change the format of The Closeout Warrior mostly because I don’t have the time to keep it updated like I would like.

I really liked writing the reviews of the bargain games, and I’ll still be buying them on occasion, but the reviews will probably either show up here or on Stage Select should I decide that a game is worth the time to pen a few hundred words about it.

Yesterday, at the tail end of an all day marathon, I finally managed to finish Double Dragon on an actual NES without the aid of a Game Genie.

I’m awesome.

By now you’ve likely heard of Google Video, the service that lets you upload whatever video you might happen to have laying around. This service has implications that I could only dream of. I could finally see some obscure video clip that had been floating around the Internet for a long time, or I could see new and exciting short videos that I might not have otherwise have access to.

Recently, the ability to view random videos piqued my interest. I was not fully prepared for the absolutely inane videos I would find.

I’m not so much curious why people have these videos as I am why they decided to upload them to this exciting new service.

Some examples (these are the short ones, there are several that are over an hour long where these came from):
Eating a fortune cookie
‘Fun’ at an apartment
Drink water!
The daughter at the Putt-Putt
Walking down the hall of the Mariott
Micro truck race
whatever this is
school hijinks

Oh there’s more where those came from. Lots more. If you watch any of the above expecting something wacky to happen, you’re out of luck. It’s like being stranded in some kind of strange purgatory where all you can watch are videos of babies being babies and the things that people who just got a camera and don’t know what to do with it are filming.

Of course there are also some videos out there that are worth watching but consider it a profound stroke of luck or well-picked search terms that led you to them.

It looks like it’s getting to be about that time. With the launch just one week away, we’re already starting to see commercials that don’t make any sense appear all over the television.

Since I never owned an XBox and don’t have the money (or desire, really) to get a 360, I’ll just sit back and watch the launch unfold from my safe little corner of the Universe.

Sorry, I don’t feel up to talking about video games today.

Last night we had an apparent tornado in my neck of the woods. For those who need to know such things, I’m OK. My county and the neighboring county are now in a state of emergency, and the hospital I work for has been under a ‘mass casualty’ alert since early this morning.

It’s odd. I heard the thunder, the rain, and the distinctive sound of a ‘jet engine’ roaring above my house in the night, but didn’t think anything of it. It wasn’t until my alarm went off this morning that I even knew we had something serious happen. Even on the way in to work this morning, I only saw one downed tree limb, and it wasn’t anything bigger than what I could concievably have ripped off of a tree with my bare hands. Video from local sources is showing me that the damage is not terribly far removed from my house. That’s scary, especially since I largely slept through it.

UPDATE 9:16 AM
It looks like news of the storm has been picked up on CNN as well.

UPDATE 10:24 AM
Some Associated Press coverage.

This past week marked the official 20th anniversary of the NES being released here in the United States. 1up has a series of articles up that detail and celebrate the system that changed the way Americans percieved games and gaming.

I was going to write about the NES and how it shaped my formative years as a gamer. I even started to write about it a few times, but I realized that a look around this site already tells that story, so I don’t need to tell it again.

If you grew up with the NES like I did, just take a moment to reflect on how much gaming has evolved since then. If you missed out on the whole 8-bit experience, you can likely get an NES and a handful of decent games for a reasonable sum at a used game store to see what all the fuss is about.

I’ve been playing a whole lot of games lately, most of them pretty bad.

I’ve updated my alter-ego site, The Closeout Warrior with a review of Phantasy Star Online Blue Burst that you seriously need to read.