Game On

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The past three games have been very encouraging for the Oilers. We're battling through some pretty intense injury trouble, but with last night's win in LA, we're now just one game shy of .500, and a pair of points out of a playoff spot. The two wins against Anaheim are HUGE for a couple of reasons. The first is obviously that wins are important against any team. But beating down Anaheim means that we are more likely to finish above them in the standings - meaning the draft pick we have from them is worth more than the one we gave up for Dustin Penner. The Kevin Lowe vs Brian Burke war seems to be evening out a little more. If the oilers can turn this season around, I think the Dustin Penner offer sheet was a pretty good move for Kevin Lowe - particularly since Penner has been playing better and better over the last few games.

The Edmonton Oilers, in the past couple of years, have been a frustratingly fun team to watch. Even in 05/06 when we made the run to the cup, the Oilers just squeaked into the playoffs. They did so by beating the good teams, and losing to the bad teams ... which made no sense. Last year's season was a terrible disappointment, but the team had so much trouble scoring. Add in the injury troubles that plagued the oilers in the late season, and it really was a recipe for disaster.

I still think the experts are crazy to think they can just write off the oilers as contenders. Anything can happen in the new NHL, and the oilers have a lot of the right ingredients to turn things around. Granted, they have a lot of young and unexperienced players on their team, but there is a lot of skill there, and if the elements click into place, I wouldn't be surprised to see this team playoff bound.

Heraldk

Rock Band First Impressions

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This past Saturday I had the chance to play rock band for the first time. How was this possible? Rock band doesn't come to Canada until December?! Well one of my friends managed to convince his friend to bring a copy up from the states with him when he came for convocation last week. So ... they had it at the party I was at on Saturday. I've enjoyed most of the guitar hero series. I played through guitar hero I and II and managed to pass all the songs on expert. I bought guitar hero III when it came out, and have enjoyed it to a certain extent, but the game has driven me mad on a number of different fronts. The first issue is the game seems to be hard for hard's sake. Rather than focusing on making the experience as realistic as possible, it seems to be catering to the people who enjoy showing off that they can pass a wicked impossible section at 100%. What this does is it makes it nigh impossible for a more casual player (which I think I fall into) to pass the game in a reasonable amount of time and at a reasonable frustration level. The other part of GH3 that I can't stand is the guitar duel mode. To me, the game is at it's best when it is you versus the challenge of a particular song. It's hard enough to pass some of the more difficult tracks, so why do you need to throw in a random element with an opponent making it yet harder?! Maybe this is just me being frustrated, but having passed GH1 and GH2 on expert, I have yet to even come close to passing GH3 on hard due to the final boss battle. Ugh.

So what do I think of rock band? It's awesome! The most obvious difference between the games, of course, is the added instruments. The drums are, in a word, sweet. The guitar requires a larger abstraction to make it accessible to a more general audience. That abstraction comes in the form of 5 buttons instead of 6 strings. The drums, on the other hand, require almost no abstraction. You have things to hit and a kick pedal, and that's all you need for a basic drum kit. So where skills in guitar hero won't likely transfer to a real guitar, I have a feeling skills on the drums in rock band will transfer okay to a real drum kit! Of course, there are things about real drums that aren't emulated, but a lot of the stuff looks like it should transfer. The drums are also a lot of fun, which doesn't hurt!

The vocals is the other obvious addition to rock band. On this spot, the Harmonix crew took it easy on the people who have trouble with pitch. The easy difficulty level is amazingly forgiving, which means that the biggest barrier to entry for the vocalist is just the potential embarrassment factor - which karaoke seems to have solved in a lot of places (with some help from some liquid courage). After you get over that, you don't really have to worry about failing your band mates by failing a song. The more adventurous singers can up the difficulty level to get a challenge. The one thing I don't like about the vocals part of it is the interface is a bit awkward. I'm used to reading music, and that might help me out quite a bit. I found it was almost a requirement to know a song pretty well before attempting a song or I had no hope to figure it out as it went.

There are some tweaks to the game that just feel right. One simple one is the game shows you how many stars your current performance is getting, and how far away you are from the next star. No more wondering how close you were to 5-starring a song! The other biggest change I noticed is you can still collect star power even when you are currently using it. This change just makes sense to me.

Anyways, I got a chance to play a few songs on each instrument, and I was thoroughly impressed. I especially can't wait to give the drums more of a try at some higher difficulty levels!

Heraldk

The passing of a good person

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I was out most of yesterday. My Aunt Eleanor Bayne passed away recently after a very full 87 years of life. So yesterday was her funeral. There was two parts to this funeral, the first was the viewing at the cemetery early-ish in the morning, followed by the internment. Then in the afternoon there was a memorial ceremony. Aunt Eleanor was a very good person, and I'm sorry I never really got to know her as well as I probably could and should have. The bulk of the time we spent at her house was when I was too young to appreciate good conversation over tea and her wonderful baking. Well ... I appreciated the baking, but not so much the conversation. I do know that she was well loved and that she was quick to give her love out to the people who were a part of her life in any small way. She will be sorely missed. I (thankfully) haven't had to deal with death very often in my life. There have been a few funerals I've been to since I was old enough to start to understand what death meant. Each time, particularly for the three that were untimely, you kind of have to think about how short life is, and how precious it is. It makes me wonder if I am doing all I can with my life. Is it enough to just be happy and comfortable? What else is there to make life worthwhile? Twice in my life I've had to deal with someone in my grade or university year pass away in an untimely fashion. Both times it was a shock - how can death come to someone so young? How is that a fair way to go?

As much as we will miss Aunt Eleanor's presence in our lives, I am very thankful that she lived a very fulfilling life. In the past couple of years she has been suffering a great deal due to health problems, and in the end this may be for the best. I really don't like to see people suffer for long periods of time. I certainly wouldn't want to go through that much suffering.

The funeral was nice for the most part. I had a few complaints though. The internment was held in the cemetery which is a naturally wide open area. The wind was blowing, and it was pretty cold (although at least the sun was shining). The pastor drew the service out much longer than I thought was appropriate for the several older people in the crowd (and really for my comfort level too). My Grandparents were of the same opinion, so I wasn't alone on that score. Later, the same pastor did the Devotional near the end of the memorial service, and I was none too pleased with the full three point sermon he gave. It felt entirely inappropriate to me. But I will attempt to delay that rant for a future post because this is not really the place for it.

Other than my complaint about the pastor, the memorial service was excellent. We got to hear from several of the people in the family. Their memories, stories, and gifts of music were shared, and it really was a lovely ceremony. Very fitting for someone as lovely as my Aunt Eleanor.

Heraldk

Super Mario Galaxy

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Wow. This game is awesome. I've been spending every chance I get working my way through the latest Nintendo masterpiece. It isn't often I have trouble putting a game down, but this is one of those times. The game is fantastic! I never really played super mario 64, though I may have to at some point since there's a lot of people who say that it was really well done. I did get super mario sunshine, but I really didn't enjoy it. The controls were all wonky and I really didn't like the whole water backpack mechanism. So Super Mario Galaxy is my first real 3d mario title. Before this, my only experience with mario titles has been through Super Mario 1,2,3, and World -- all of which are excellent games (I played 3 the most out of all of them).

Galaxy is incredible. The worlds are varied and rich and full of an inventiveness in level design I haven't seen in a long time. The controls, while a little hard to get used to at times (especially in swimming levels) don't get in the way of enjoying the fun. There's a lot of levels, and all of them are simply beautiful!

Besides the main levels, there's also a bunch of challenge levels and mini games that are a lot of fun. The inventiveness continues throughout all of these games.

One of the things I've noticed early on as well is the music is wonderful. I am quite enjoying the whole experience, and this is probably one of those games that I finish way too fast because I play through it too quickly! Oh well, it'll be fun!

Heraldk

Maddening Oilers

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Man, I just can't shake the feeling that the Oilers have some chance to go on a stretch of wins. They've got so much talent - they just can't seem to put it together. Of course, the crazy number of injuries isn't helping. If the Oilers started getting healthy all of a sudden, I think we'd be looking at a particularly good team. The game last night against Vancouver was a lot of fun to watch. It was also a nail-biter, and every time Vancouver got some pressure on us I got nervous. But Mathieu Garon managed to put on A SHOW and stopped everything that Vancouver sent his way - including three shootout attempts! The Oil looked dangerous for parts of the game, but they seem to have this bad habit of giving the puck away in the neutral zone (or worse, in their own end). I don't know how to get them to do this, but they need to be able to maintain control of the puck for longer parts of the game or we're going to continue having trouble maintaining any pressure.

Tonight's game was worse for that score. We just couldn't keep constant pressure on the puck and it seemed like every second shift we'd give the puck away several times. Ewww. Hockey like that is maddening to watch for the fan. Glad to see Jarret Stoll get a couple goals though. They were a bit ugly, but I'm glad to see him snap his goal drought. Let's hope he continues to recover last year's form!

Maybe their play tonight was due to the back-to-back schedule. I sure hope they can start building some consistency into their game ... if they do, and start to get healthy ... I seriously think we've got a playoff bound team. Until then though, we're in some trouble.

Heraldk

Reorganization

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Every so often I feel the sudden urge to reorganize the furniture in my room. Today was one of those days. I don't know what it is - maybe it's a fresh perspective on something I see everyday, maybe it's a chance to try something else ... but it seems that whenever I do it, I am almost always completely satisfied with the result. This time is no different. Several of the elements in my room were moved around and the room feels like a totally different place - and the organization is altogether better (in my mind at least). I completed the furniture move before the hockey game (that's another post), and then sorted out a bunch of crap that had accumulated. I'm going to be spending some time in the near future sorting through paper that I've accumulated and trying to discard as much as possible. It seems pretty unlikely I'll need my high school financial management course work, don't you think? (Oh yeah, I kept a lot of crap). Something tells me I'm going to need a couple of boxes to take all the paper I'm going to discard to the recycling bin.

I love it. I find a reorganized room refreshing and different - and yet familiar in the same way. So it is nice to be able to get that feeling here.

Heraldk

Catchup

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Okay, it seems these catchup posts are getting to be the norm. I hope they aren't though - so I'm gonna try and get caught up here and start getting myself back in the habit of posting here. First up, the big thing lately has been my return to poker. I started playing a few weeks ago to catchup on some PSO promos that they've been adding with remarkable regularity. I started with Carbon Poker where I jumped right in at 100nl and did quite well and banked a $500 profit plus my $120 PSO bonus. Next was Action poker, which I didn't do quite as well at. Even with the $100 deposit bonus, I was only able to claw my way back up to even a little after finishing off the $120 PSO bonus. I didn't really like Action poker - there wasn't enough tables, and I never really felt comfortable. So I was quick to move on. My next promo though was Cake Poker, and it feels much better. Being up $500 plus the $90 PSO bonus doesn't hurt in that respect ... but I'm also rather enjoying the fast bonus clearing rate. So I think I'm going to stick around at Cake for awhile before I move on to my next PSO bonus.

Work is going well. I just moved offices, and have started to get familiar with the code that produced the bots that played in the man-machine match this past summer. I'm super excited to work on the next iteration of these bots ... and even more excited to pit them against the world's best players. At the moment we're trying to lock down some money to challenge some players with. Any ideas where we could get that money? We'd ideally like something on the order of $50K or more to use as prize money. I don't have many ins with people, but if you have any ideas I'd love to hear them.

Diane and I are doing well. We're currently in the midst of wedding plans which are going pretty smoothly I think. We've got several months to go, but we've got a lot of the important things locked up and several others in progress. Hopefully we can have invitations out in a month or so. We've been pretty busy with social stuff too - attending quite a few fun events over the past month. Too many to really recount in a short space here, but the latest was a Chili cook-off. We made some pretty awesome bison chili (if I do say so myself) along with some skillet cornbread, apple crisp, and cookies. Mmm - it was quite a cooking day! We had a lot of fun in the kitchen, and it's making me want to force myself to spend more time cooking on a regular basis. I'd certainly eat better (and healthier) if I did.

The Oilers are maddening to watch at times. The most recent game against the flames was sweet to watch though - now if only we could put together an effort like that on a more consistent basis. I see a lot of potential on our club. If we get a few key members back and contributing, we could have a contender on our hands. I realize it's a lot of ifs, but what else do we have? In particular, I'm really impressed with Robert Nillsson's play. He's been fast, creative, and strong with the puck - I'm starting to get excited every time I see him get the puck. One last thing: what the hell is with the hit on Hemsky? That should've got a suspension for sure! He could've been badly hurt on a play like that!!!!

Not bad for an update post huh? If you've got questions, let me know - I'm feeling a bit lonely in blog land!

Heraldk