Tag Archives for Guitar Hero

Running out of summer holidays

Memorial Day & Independance Day are gone, Labor Day is only a few weeks away and I can already see myself planning way past it. Summer is nearly over and like always I’m wondering where it all went. I just checked and I’ve got about 3 weeks of paid time off on the books, so outside of my summer hospitalization, I’ve been sitting at my desk at work. I remember when I went canoeing on the Harpeth river a couple times a summer just on principle. My skin is pale and summer is almost over.

What usually dictates my summer schedule is the theatrical release calendar, but I haven’t seen many movies this summer either. I guess I’ve just been looking forward to the fall video game release calendar. I’ve already put aside $120 to purchase Guitar Hero 5 and The Beatles: Rock Band.

I need to make another trip to Memphis and get in some of my daddy’s barbecue ribs before the last summer holiday ushers in the start of Autumn and I missed the whole thing. At least fall weather means camping and football.

renting video games

For the first time in 2009, probably since before even last year, I walked into Blockbuster and rented a video game. Not since I first owned my xbox 360 do I remember renting a game. Today I rented two: Call of Duty 5 World at War & Guitar Hero Metallica. This upcoming weekend is KILANFest in Louisville, so I wanted to have some fresh games on hand. And I also went to Best Buy and purchased Left 4 Dead. I know I’ll love it. When I’m done, I’ll probably trade it away on Goozex.

I still want to play Fallout 3, Halo Wars, the Hellboy game, that Bourne one & the Quantum of Solace game, and it’d be nice to finish playing through Mercenaries 2, despite the fact that it’s an over-the-shoulder game. I still need to do a cost analysis on how much it would cost to buy/trade at Gamestop vs. Goozex trading vs. just renting at Blockbuster. I would imagine that at the end of the day, it’s close to being a wash.

Board, card, & video games

I remember the good old days when I get in on a game of spades any night of the week. I remember finding out the next day about some crazy game, epic hand, or insane strategy the next day. No one was married or had kids or had to work late because they were up against a deadline. Thursday night was as good as Friday night. If you felt like getting a game together, you could always find a fourth.

Now I find that we all watch more television and play fewer games.

But last night several of us showed up at a friend’s for his birthday. We had dinner, caught up on how we’ve been, then dusted off some games. Mission Risk is still just as much fun as it used to be. I still don’t know if I’ve ever won a game of Mission Risk (or world domination for that matter) but just about any game is fun when played among fun people. Case in point, I just bought a game called Munchkin. It brags that it’s all the fun of Dungeons & Dragons but without the pesky roll playing. We started laughing and yelling so loud that the 2 year olds playing in the other room wandered in to see what they were missing.  New Years Eve we’re all getting together again and I hope we can get a game of Munchkin to happen.

Speaking of New Years Eve, Twilight Imperium shall be played. It’s the single most complex strategy board game I’ve played (though I am sure there are others even more complicated). The last time we played it took 5 hours. It’s like a mashup between Axis & Allies and Settlers of Catan but with an emphasis on game politics. There’s a unique game board each time and each player has special bonuses and can build technology for even more bonuses. After 7 games and about 40 hours of game play, I think I have a winning strategy. I’ve actually won twice.

I signed up for gamefly.com recently and the first game I rented was Guitar Hero: Aerosmith. Thoroughly unimpressed with the Aerosmith songs, but the other tracks are fun. I actually played for a little while today and the fun didn’t last very long. I had these great dreams of really getting my money’s worth out of my gamefly.com subscription, but so far, well not so much. I just can’t devote whole days a video game anymore. Although I still contend there’s no better way to break in a new CD than to listen to it while playing Tetris with the TV muted.

This Tuesday I’ve got a game night with some of my oldest friends planned. Indeed, we have a fourth: time for a late night game of spades. The next day (Christmas Eve) I’ll be heading to Memphis which means cribbage and progressive rummy. I’ll always love spending time with my family, if for no other reason than it’s the only place in the world where I can get a game of progressive rummy.

KILANFest

I’ve been camping out 3 out of the last 5 weekends and so far the weather hasn’t let me down. But soon it’s gonna be freezing cold. My weekends will soon be a mix of ramping up on my SQL DML skills, learning all about joins and temp tables. And Fable 2, Fallout 3, and Guitar Hero World Tour all just released. Not to mention I just got an email about KILANFest happening again in January.

The last KILANFest was October 4th & 5th, it was a blast, but only Travis & I drove up to Louisville for it. I’m hoping to bring some more folks from Tennessee with us for KILANFest 5.0, potentially 2 cars. And I really want to stay for more of Sunday festivities. Last time we arrived on Friday night even though the event starts on Saturday morning. But hanging out on Friday night was a good time. We got to help setup for the event, which consisted mostly of crimping network cables, tearing off duct tape, wishing I’d brought my fishtape, holding open doors, and “field testing” the Rock Band setup.

But it was fun spending time with the IT crowd at Summit Energy. Every IT department has to meet unique requirements for the business. I’m in a group of about 40 IT professionals that focus on the development, implementation, and support of clinical applications and infrastructure for over 150 locations. They run a shop focused on corporate user support & proprietery internal enterprise systems. It’s probably just a change of wardrobe, but it’s fun to sit down with them and talk shop and maybe do some networking.

That should be one of the highlights of KILANFest in January. In the meantime, I need to get my Guitar Hero skills up to par. It’s my understanding there will be a GH tourney and I don’t intend on finishing 2nd.