11.30.2004
Pranks 'R' Us
I'm a big fan of nuking things. I guess you could say it all started with two little towns called Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Okay, maybe "nuke" isn't the right word. I think the more politically correct term is "spam." But I like saying nuke, so I'm gonna keep using it.
Whenever I have a small army of people under my command, we have a somewhat random tradition of nuking someone's cell phone. You can feel free to steal my idea, here's how it works:
Get 10 or more people to put the same telephone number into their cell phone at the exact same time. This has to be a cell phone number that you're calling, because land lines will automatically reject calls after one ring. In this well-timed event, everyone has to call the chosen number at the exact same time. Only one person will actually get through to the cell phone (like a land line, it can only deal with one number at a time), but luckily, the voicemail feature on a cell phone can handle much more than one number.
Whoever gets through to the person can feel free to carry on a conversation with the individual as long as they like. The damage is already being done with the other ten or so people who are leaving messages in the background. Keep calling, keep leaving messages, and make the messages as lengthy as possible.
Voice mailboxes usually fill up after 25 or so messages, but they usually crap out much quicker than that when they're nuked. I've had experiences where not even all of the people calling could get through before the cell phone provider stopped accepting calls for that particular number. This has also been known to crash the voicemail software, making it impossible for the cell phone owner to listen to the messages, let alone get rid of them or make it so people can even call them again.
Needless to say, the owner of the phone will not be happy, and I'm sure it can't make the cell phone company happy either. And nothing's better than fucking big companies. Don't forget, boys and girls, big companies are the ones that have been fucking you all along.
Best of all, unlike most great pranks this day in age, this one is 100% legal (as far as I know, at least). Once you reach the ripe old age of 18, Johnny Law doesn't take too kindly to death threats, fake 911 calls, or mail fraud, y'know. Those of us who are reluctant to mature, yet are simultaneously fearful of the consequences of indecent exposure, need all the help that we can get when it comes to the law.
Which reminds me, I heard recently that if you get caught by a cop pissing in public, you can be registered as a sex offender. How fucked up is that?
Anyhow. In case you missed it, just a week ago, I requested anyone and everyone to send mail to the following address:
Dr. Jarae Sacman CEO
Sacman Industries
228 Dixie Drive #1303
Tallahassee, FL 32304-7003
I doubt most casual readers took it seriously, but a few of my friends sure did. As a result, Dr. Jarae Sacman's mailbox will soon be swamped with all kinds of shit. It's amazing how many phonebook-sized medical supplies catalogs are available to be shipped for free on the Internet.
The sad part about this prank is that it doesn't take anything like posting on a Web site or any sort of effort in terms of coordination from multiple people. This is a lot easier than the phone nuke.
That's right, the newly dubbed "mail nuke" is easy as sin. Just travel on over to your favorite search engine.
Try any variations of the following words: literature, mail, list, free
There's plenty of stuff to find, I promise. The best part about this is if they're a college student (as Dr. Jarae Sacman certainly is), the mailbox you get at an apartment or dorm is small as shit, and can't even fit a majority of the stuff that gets sent to it. The result is a ridiculously stuffed mailbox that can't even contain the mail that's meant to be sent. In short, an analog alternative to the digital phone nuke.
Amazingly enough, the following literature was sent to the good Dr. Sacman himself yesterday (Monday, the 29th), only six days after it was posted here. And remember that last week was a busy holiday week too.
Something about seeing the name Dr. Jarae Sacman written out in hand makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
Enjoy the mail, Sacman.
I'm a big fan of nuking things. I guess you could say it all started with two little towns called Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Okay, maybe "nuke" isn't the right word. I think the more politically correct term is "spam." But I like saying nuke, so I'm gonna keep using it.
Whenever I have a small army of people under my command, we have a somewhat random tradition of nuking someone's cell phone. You can feel free to steal my idea, here's how it works:
Get 10 or more people to put the same telephone number into their cell phone at the exact same time. This has to be a cell phone number that you're calling, because land lines will automatically reject calls after one ring. In this well-timed event, everyone has to call the chosen number at the exact same time. Only one person will actually get through to the cell phone (like a land line, it can only deal with one number at a time), but luckily, the voicemail feature on a cell phone can handle much more than one number.
Whoever gets through to the person can feel free to carry on a conversation with the individual as long as they like. The damage is already being done with the other ten or so people who are leaving messages in the background. Keep calling, keep leaving messages, and make the messages as lengthy as possible.
Voice mailboxes usually fill up after 25 or so messages, but they usually crap out much quicker than that when they're nuked. I've had experiences where not even all of the people calling could get through before the cell phone provider stopped accepting calls for that particular number. This has also been known to crash the voicemail software, making it impossible for the cell phone owner to listen to the messages, let alone get rid of them or make it so people can even call them again.
Needless to say, the owner of the phone will not be happy, and I'm sure it can't make the cell phone company happy either. And nothing's better than fucking big companies. Don't forget, boys and girls, big companies are the ones that have been fucking you all along.
Best of all, unlike most great pranks this day in age, this one is 100% legal (as far as I know, at least). Once you reach the ripe old age of 18, Johnny Law doesn't take too kindly to death threats, fake 911 calls, or mail fraud, y'know. Those of us who are reluctant to mature, yet are simultaneously fearful of the consequences of indecent exposure, need all the help that we can get when it comes to the law.
Which reminds me, I heard recently that if you get caught by a cop pissing in public, you can be registered as a sex offender. How fucked up is that?
Anyhow. In case you missed it, just a week ago, I requested anyone and everyone to send mail to the following address:
Dr. Jarae Sacman CEO
Sacman Industries
228 Dixie Drive #1303
Tallahassee, FL 32304-7003
I doubt most casual readers took it seriously, but a few of my friends sure did. As a result, Dr. Jarae Sacman's mailbox will soon be swamped with all kinds of shit. It's amazing how many phonebook-sized medical supplies catalogs are available to be shipped for free on the Internet.
The sad part about this prank is that it doesn't take anything like posting on a Web site or any sort of effort in terms of coordination from multiple people. This is a lot easier than the phone nuke.
That's right, the newly dubbed "mail nuke" is easy as sin. Just travel on over to your favorite search engine.
Try any variations of the following words: literature, mail, list, free
There's plenty of stuff to find, I promise. The best part about this is if they're a college student (as Dr. Jarae Sacman certainly is), the mailbox you get at an apartment or dorm is small as shit, and can't even fit a majority of the stuff that gets sent to it. The result is a ridiculously stuffed mailbox that can't even contain the mail that's meant to be sent. In short, an analog alternative to the digital phone nuke.
Amazingly enough, the following literature was sent to the good Dr. Sacman himself yesterday (Monday, the 29th), only six days after it was posted here. And remember that last week was a busy holiday week too.
Something about seeing the name Dr. Jarae Sacman written out in hand makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
Enjoy the mail, Sacman.
11.25.2004
Overheard
C: Seriously Neil, the only places I get my news are Fark and your blog.
J: Really? What about CNN.com?
C: Real news? Fuck that.
C: Seriously Neil, the only places I get my news are Fark and your blog.
J: Really? What about CNN.com?
C: Real news? Fuck that.
11.23.2004
For your entertainment...
Well, I've been busy as hell with all kinds of shit, but I'll be back soon enough.
For the time being, I ask that you send the worst things you can to the following address:
If you can't read that, that's:
Dr. Jarae Sacman CEO
Sacman Industries
228 Dixie Drive #1303
Tallahassee, FL 32304-7003
Enjoy.
Well, I've been busy as hell with all kinds of shit, but I'll be back soon enough.
For the time being, I ask that you send the worst things you can to the following address:
If you can't read that, that's:
Dr. Jarae Sacman CEO
Sacman Industries
228 Dixie Drive #1303
Tallahassee, FL 32304-7003
Enjoy.
11.17.2004
Blow off some Steam
Okay, I've got a few topics to cover here before I get into a bit of a rant, so we'll do this bullet-style.
-Halo 2 - Basically, it's everything you could have wanted and more. After the hype, I'm still playing way more than I should. I beat the single player in two days, but have played multiple levels over again on legendary and in co-op mode. No complaints about the single player here. Meanwhile, Xbox Live play is smooth as silk, setting a new standard for online gaming as a whole - not just for consoles. The only complaint is the waiting during the matchmaking process, but Bungie claims they're fixing this, along with the 480p widescreen glitch. Can't complain. As predicted, about a million people jumped on Xbox Live, including a number of my friends. If you're gonna test out your free two month subscription you get with the game (and why the hell wouldn't you?!), my gamertag is linked on the right side. And if you've got a Microsoft .NET account, check out my stats on Bungie.net. Seriously, the stat-tracking and specific match stats might be the coolest. Fucking. Thing. Ever.
-G4 Blows - Comcast has just about finished their raping and pillaging of TechTV. Just as I was starting to warm up to host Alex Albrecht, the network decided to can him along with Dan Huard, Yoshi, and Martin Sargent, along with his show, Unscrewed. Only Kevin Rose and Sarah Lane remain. What bullshit. I guess Comcast expected to keep TechTV's decent ratings after canning most of its shows, then got pissed when the ratings went down. Hmmm... I wonder why they went down... Maybe it's because you alienated the viewers who were there in the first place. I seriously don't understand business practices when pride matters more than profit. Comcast wants G4 to succeed just because it created the network, and I guess that's worth wasting a lot of money on buying TechTV and destroying it in hopes of making G4 a successful network. Note to Comcast: G4 will never succeed, because it is terrible.
-Week of heaven (or hell?) - There honestly hasn't been a better time to be a gamer. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. Two weeks ago, GTA: San Andreas. Last week, Halo 2. This week... Half-Life 2, Metal Gear Solid 3 and Metroid Prime 2. As if finding the funds wasn't hard enough, what about the free time? The stamina? And the ECW DVD came out this week too. Talk about overloading my geekiness. Note to videogame companies: I know your goal is to consume my life, but it works better if you spread the good games out so I can devote all of my time to one game at a time.
-And more Half-Life 2 - Half-Life 2 is THAT good. Yeah. I actually stopped playing Halo 2 online for it. Much like the first title, this is a new benchmark by which to compare PC titles.
So yeah, with that out of the way, let's get on to something that has really struck a nerve with me. Even a 10 page paper on Cicero and St. Augustine couldn't keep me from staying up until 3 a.m. (midnight PST) to unlock Half-Life 2 from Valve's network software, Steam.
For those of you not familiar, two years ago, Valve introduced a revolutionary piece of software to deliver content and patches to gamers. What Steam does is consolidates all of your Valve games and Half-Life mods into an icon in the system tray. It automatically updates your games for you, makes it easier to find games to play online for Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat, or Team Fortress, and it's pretty cool.
Pissed off and involved in a legal wrangling with publisher Vivendi Universal, Valve pretty much created Steam with Half-Life 2 in mind. More specifically, Valve wanted to cut out the middle man so they could get a bigger piece of the Half-Life 2 revenue by selling the game online via Steam. Instead of going out to the store and picking up your copy of the game, you could buy it online through Steam, download it immediately from Valve's blazing fast servers, and receive instant gratification.
It works nicely. Except Half-Life 2 requires online authentication in order to play, even if you bought a hard copy at the store. I would have liked a hard copy for backup purposes, but Valve gave incentives to buying on Steam - buying via Steam was the only way to get the original Half-Life running on the new Source engine, and it was also the only way to get Day of Defeat Source. Plus you could play Counter-Strike Source ahead of time.
So some stores started selling Half-Life 2 early this weekend, but Vivendi Universal refused to let Valve unlock the activation of the game on Steam. So, imagine this: you go to the store, you see Half-Life 2, you pick it up and take it home, but you can't play it. It's locked on your hard drive because it has to authenticate online, and you can't authenticate it.
The idea is to cut down on piracy. Much like Windows XP, if every copy has to register itself online, nobody can steal the game. But if it's much like XP, perhaps Valve should have learned from XP, because pirates will always find a way.
I had a pretty smooth experience with Steam at 3 a.m., despite the fact that the servers were slammed with millions of gamers trying to unlock Half-Life 2. Unfortunately, apparently some gamers did not. Some still couldn't unlock their game, well into the day after 3 a.m. EST. Meanwhile, pirated copies of the game, allegedly hacked so that it would install without authenticating via Steam, rolled out rampant online for anyone to download without price or penalty.
Where's the logic here? Someone who legitimately buys their copy of the game at the store can't play it because of piracy-prevention techniques, yet the pirates are already playing the game. This whole thing reeks of the Sims 2 fiasco from earlier this year, where people couldn't install the Sims 2 if they had CD burning software installed on their computer. Piracy is indeed a problem for software companies, and it is also an enticing avenue to take for a gamer, but alienating people who go out of their way to pay for your product is not the right way to go about doing business.
So I guess the moral here is that the pirates will always win, and if you try to stop them, all you're going to do is hurt those who actually purchase your product, which could, in turn, make them pirate any future software you make. Good going, Valve and Vivendi Universal.
Okay, I've got a few topics to cover here before I get into a bit of a rant, so we'll do this bullet-style.
-Halo 2 - Basically, it's everything you could have wanted and more. After the hype, I'm still playing way more than I should. I beat the single player in two days, but have played multiple levels over again on legendary and in co-op mode. No complaints about the single player here. Meanwhile, Xbox Live play is smooth as silk, setting a new standard for online gaming as a whole - not just for consoles. The only complaint is the waiting during the matchmaking process, but Bungie claims they're fixing this, along with the 480p widescreen glitch. Can't complain. As predicted, about a million people jumped on Xbox Live, including a number of my friends. If you're gonna test out your free two month subscription you get with the game (and why the hell wouldn't you?!), my gamertag is linked on the right side. And if you've got a Microsoft .NET account, check out my stats on Bungie.net. Seriously, the stat-tracking and specific match stats might be the coolest. Fucking. Thing. Ever.
-G4 Blows - Comcast has just about finished their raping and pillaging of TechTV. Just as I was starting to warm up to host Alex Albrecht, the network decided to can him along with Dan Huard, Yoshi, and Martin Sargent, along with his show, Unscrewed. Only Kevin Rose and Sarah Lane remain. What bullshit. I guess Comcast expected to keep TechTV's decent ratings after canning most of its shows, then got pissed when the ratings went down. Hmmm... I wonder why they went down... Maybe it's because you alienated the viewers who were there in the first place. I seriously don't understand business practices when pride matters more than profit. Comcast wants G4 to succeed just because it created the network, and I guess that's worth wasting a lot of money on buying TechTV and destroying it in hopes of making G4 a successful network. Note to Comcast: G4 will never succeed, because it is terrible.
-Week of heaven (or hell?) - There honestly hasn't been a better time to be a gamer. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. Two weeks ago, GTA: San Andreas. Last week, Halo 2. This week... Half-Life 2, Metal Gear Solid 3 and Metroid Prime 2. As if finding the funds wasn't hard enough, what about the free time? The stamina? And the ECW DVD came out this week too. Talk about overloading my geekiness. Note to videogame companies: I know your goal is to consume my life, but it works better if you spread the good games out so I can devote all of my time to one game at a time.
-And more Half-Life 2 - Half-Life 2 is THAT good. Yeah. I actually stopped playing Halo 2 online for it. Much like the first title, this is a new benchmark by which to compare PC titles.
So yeah, with that out of the way, let's get on to something that has really struck a nerve with me. Even a 10 page paper on Cicero and St. Augustine couldn't keep me from staying up until 3 a.m. (midnight PST) to unlock Half-Life 2 from Valve's network software, Steam.
For those of you not familiar, two years ago, Valve introduced a revolutionary piece of software to deliver content and patches to gamers. What Steam does is consolidates all of your Valve games and Half-Life mods into an icon in the system tray. It automatically updates your games for you, makes it easier to find games to play online for Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat, or Team Fortress, and it's pretty cool.
Pissed off and involved in a legal wrangling with publisher Vivendi Universal, Valve pretty much created Steam with Half-Life 2 in mind. More specifically, Valve wanted to cut out the middle man so they could get a bigger piece of the Half-Life 2 revenue by selling the game online via Steam. Instead of going out to the store and picking up your copy of the game, you could buy it online through Steam, download it immediately from Valve's blazing fast servers, and receive instant gratification.
It works nicely. Except Half-Life 2 requires online authentication in order to play, even if you bought a hard copy at the store. I would have liked a hard copy for backup purposes, but Valve gave incentives to buying on Steam - buying via Steam was the only way to get the original Half-Life running on the new Source engine, and it was also the only way to get Day of Defeat Source. Plus you could play Counter-Strike Source ahead of time.
So some stores started selling Half-Life 2 early this weekend, but Vivendi Universal refused to let Valve unlock the activation of the game on Steam. So, imagine this: you go to the store, you see Half-Life 2, you pick it up and take it home, but you can't play it. It's locked on your hard drive because it has to authenticate online, and you can't authenticate it.
The idea is to cut down on piracy. Much like Windows XP, if every copy has to register itself online, nobody can steal the game. But if it's much like XP, perhaps Valve should have learned from XP, because pirates will always find a way.
I had a pretty smooth experience with Steam at 3 a.m., despite the fact that the servers were slammed with millions of gamers trying to unlock Half-Life 2. Unfortunately, apparently some gamers did not. Some still couldn't unlock their game, well into the day after 3 a.m. EST. Meanwhile, pirated copies of the game, allegedly hacked so that it would install without authenticating via Steam, rolled out rampant online for anyone to download without price or penalty.
Where's the logic here? Someone who legitimately buys their copy of the game at the store can't play it because of piracy-prevention techniques, yet the pirates are already playing the game. This whole thing reeks of the Sims 2 fiasco from earlier this year, where people couldn't install the Sims 2 if they had CD burning software installed on their computer. Piracy is indeed a problem for software companies, and it is also an enticing avenue to take for a gamer, but alienating people who go out of their way to pay for your product is not the right way to go about doing business.
So I guess the moral here is that the pirates will always win, and if you try to stop them, all you're going to do is hurt those who actually purchase your product, which could, in turn, make them pirate any future software you make. Good going, Valve and Vivendi Universal.
11.10.2004
Halo 2: Midnight Madness
Alright, I admit it. I'm a sucker for marketing ploys. If I can buy a game or see a movie at midnight, and it's something I'm into, I do it. Because I... JUST. CAN'T. WAIT... that extra nine hours 'til the store or movie theater would normally open. But it's not just for the games and movies; it's the adventure of it all. The bonding with other geeks, the comradery with your fellow losers. It makes me feel like I have friends, even if just for one night at midnight.
I figured I'd stick with the photos for a second post in a row, because I love making this page load slowly, and I love the free bandwidth I get to leech from UF even more. Plus most of you don't know how to read. And I already rambled about my love of Halo, so I'll save you the justification for the following... as if it were necessary.
And so we arrived at the Oaks Mall at approximately 11:50 p.m., November 8th, to be among the first to snag a copy of Halo 2 for Xbox.
Apparently over 600 other people had the same idea. So, after scrambling to get to the mall to actually make it there by midnight, we quickly realized that we weren't going to be leaving with a copy of the game any time soon. The crowd you see above is actually two lines for two different stores...
The line to the left, for the store GameStop, which wrapped around one side of the mall...
And then the one for EB Games, which went to the right. I, of course with my luck, was in the longer line: EB Games. We arrived in line and were given a ticket. Number 275.
Of course, the bitching commenced on behalf of everyone about how I should have preordered at GameStop. Unfortunately, when I tried to preorder the game in the beginning of September, GameStop was already sold out of the special edition copy of the game.
So stuck we were, waaaay at the end of the line. In the cold. Surrounded by smelly geeks.
Actually, I take that back. Halo is one of those games that has managed to go beyond the nerd population. It's the rare crossover game, like Madden or Grand Theft Auto, that anyone who claims to play games has to be a fan of. It's just a rule. And the launch of Halo 2, as the lines would dictate to any of you not familiar with the game, was an event. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas will sell more copies than Halo 2 will in the end, but Halo 2 is the only game that stores opened at midnight for. Three of them in Gainesville alone (with Rhino Video Games across town doing it also). Sure, you have to be a nerd to turn out to get a game at midnight, but was a less geeky crowd than a comic book convention. And the game apparently will make around $100 million in its first day alone - more than any movie has ever done. Not too shabby. But anyhow...
When we arrived, some security guard who looked like the type of guy who got the shit kicked out of him when he was younger walks to the end of the line to tell everyone that we can't storm the doors when he opens them.
"If you run, scream, or push, you will not be able to purchase the game, you will be escorted from the mall, and you will not be able to return until the mall opens tomorrow," he said.
So apparently if you incite a riot, you won't be arrested, fined, or banned from the premises... in fact, you'll be able to return in 9 hours. Good thing he was talking to a bunch of nerds who REALLY wanted this game, because otherwise he could have had some trouble on his hands.
And so he carefully opened the door, all the while thinking to himself "Oh God, oh God, please don't hurt me!"
And the horde of gamers quickly entered the building, but not as rambunctiously as they would have liked, for they were subdued by the intimidating threats of the Oaks Mall security guard. He may not have a gun, but he has a badge... and a license to threaten... to call the cops. And those guys have real guns!
So the SMART folks who thought to get to the mall an hour early got to the store first, and came out with their copies at their respective stores.
As we waited outside and the temperature steadily dropped, the lucky first people to get their copies ran out of the mall in an unbridled frenzy.
"I got it! I GOT IT!" one guy yelled as he hung out the passenger-side window of a car, clutching his limited edition copy as dearly as a precious gem while the driver sped off.
Words would not suffice for another man, whose maniacal laughter was all we heard as he taunted those of us who were waiting in the cold to get our first taste of the Master Chief's latest adventure.
Sigh.
Yeah, it was cold. Yeah, it was boring. But we were troopers. We stuck it out.
As the hour became later and the moon rose up into the sky, the wolves came out to feast on those helpless and tired who waited outside like sitting ducks, easy prey for the taking.
We narrowly escaped with our lives as we made it into the sanctuary of the mall. We showed concern for our bretheren who were still stranded out in the wilderness, but we had to press on, for we had travelled so far and were too close to the end of our quest to turn back. Plus it was cold as shit outside.
Hooray! That's me at 2 a.m. clutching my copy! And those are my backup dancers behind me. That's right, after two long ours of dicking around at the mall, I finally walked away 55 dollars poorer with the right to say that I'm a consumer whore.
Well, that was fun. After catching the flu, I came home to enjoy four hours of gaming bliss before passing out, stricken with exhaustion. I woke up in a pool of my own filth, bruised, sore, and half-naked. And you'd think I'd sit around and wallow in my sorrows, lamenting that I am forever trapped in my life of despair, but no! Not today, friends. Because today was spent playing Halo 2. And that, by any man's account, is a very good thing.
Alright, I admit it. I'm a sucker for marketing ploys. If I can buy a game or see a movie at midnight, and it's something I'm into, I do it. Because I... JUST. CAN'T. WAIT... that extra nine hours 'til the store or movie theater would normally open. But it's not just for the games and movies; it's the adventure of it all. The bonding with other geeks, the comradery with your fellow losers. It makes me feel like I have friends, even if just for one night at midnight.
I figured I'd stick with the photos for a second post in a row, because I love making this page load slowly, and I love the free bandwidth I get to leech from UF even more. Plus most of you don't know how to read. And I already rambled about my love of Halo, so I'll save you the justification for the following... as if it were necessary.
And so we arrived at the Oaks Mall at approximately 11:50 p.m., November 8th, to be among the first to snag a copy of Halo 2 for Xbox.
Apparently over 600 other people had the same idea. So, after scrambling to get to the mall to actually make it there by midnight, we quickly realized that we weren't going to be leaving with a copy of the game any time soon. The crowd you see above is actually two lines for two different stores...
The line to the left, for the store GameStop, which wrapped around one side of the mall...
And then the one for EB Games, which went to the right. I, of course with my luck, was in the longer line: EB Games. We arrived in line and were given a ticket. Number 275.
Of course, the bitching commenced on behalf of everyone about how I should have preordered at GameStop. Unfortunately, when I tried to preorder the game in the beginning of September, GameStop was already sold out of the special edition copy of the game.
So stuck we were, waaaay at the end of the line. In the cold. Surrounded by smelly geeks.
Actually, I take that back. Halo is one of those games that has managed to go beyond the nerd population. It's the rare crossover game, like Madden or Grand Theft Auto, that anyone who claims to play games has to be a fan of. It's just a rule. And the launch of Halo 2, as the lines would dictate to any of you not familiar with the game, was an event. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas will sell more copies than Halo 2 will in the end, but Halo 2 is the only game that stores opened at midnight for. Three of them in Gainesville alone (with Rhino Video Games across town doing it also). Sure, you have to be a nerd to turn out to get a game at midnight, but was a less geeky crowd than a comic book convention. And the game apparently will make around $100 million in its first day alone - more than any movie has ever done. Not too shabby. But anyhow...
When we arrived, some security guard who looked like the type of guy who got the shit kicked out of him when he was younger walks to the end of the line to tell everyone that we can't storm the doors when he opens them.
"If you run, scream, or push, you will not be able to purchase the game, you will be escorted from the mall, and you will not be able to return until the mall opens tomorrow," he said.
So apparently if you incite a riot, you won't be arrested, fined, or banned from the premises... in fact, you'll be able to return in 9 hours. Good thing he was talking to a bunch of nerds who REALLY wanted this game, because otherwise he could have had some trouble on his hands.
And so he carefully opened the door, all the while thinking to himself "Oh God, oh God, please don't hurt me!"
And the horde of gamers quickly entered the building, but not as rambunctiously as they would have liked, for they were subdued by the intimidating threats of the Oaks Mall security guard. He may not have a gun, but he has a badge... and a license to threaten... to call the cops. And those guys have real guns!
So the SMART folks who thought to get to the mall an hour early got to the store first, and came out with their copies at their respective stores.
As we waited outside and the temperature steadily dropped, the lucky first people to get their copies ran out of the mall in an unbridled frenzy.
"I got it! I GOT IT!" one guy yelled as he hung out the passenger-side window of a car, clutching his limited edition copy as dearly as a precious gem while the driver sped off.
Words would not suffice for another man, whose maniacal laughter was all we heard as he taunted those of us who were waiting in the cold to get our first taste of the Master Chief's latest adventure.
Sigh.
Yeah, it was cold. Yeah, it was boring. But we were troopers. We stuck it out.
As the hour became later and the moon rose up into the sky, the wolves came out to feast on those helpless and tired who waited outside like sitting ducks, easy prey for the taking.
We narrowly escaped with our lives as we made it into the sanctuary of the mall. We showed concern for our bretheren who were still stranded out in the wilderness, but we had to press on, for we had travelled so far and were too close to the end of our quest to turn back. Plus it was cold as shit outside.
Hooray! That's me at 2 a.m. clutching my copy! And those are my backup dancers behind me. That's right, after two long ours of dicking around at the mall, I finally walked away 55 dollars poorer with the right to say that I'm a consumer whore.
Well, that was fun. After catching the flu, I came home to enjoy four hours of gaming bliss before passing out, stricken with exhaustion. I woke up in a pool of my own filth, bruised, sore, and half-naked. And you'd think I'd sit around and wallow in my sorrows, lamenting that I am forever trapped in my life of despair, but no! Not today, friends. Because today was spent playing Halo 2. And that, by any man's account, is a very good thing.
11.01.2004
A Life in the Day: A Virtual Tour
WARNING: DISTURBING PHOTOS TO FOLLOW
I'll make this my obligatory photo post, since I've got lots of cool pictures to dump on you, and I'm sure most of you like looking at pictures more than you do reading. And to accompany you through this, I've provided the Dolans on Demand. Enjoy.
So life stopped for awhile. Or maybe it just temporarily started or something. It all depends on how you look at it. Anyhow, just over a week ago, I went to Jacksonville for a cousin's wedding. I'll spare you the hilarious details, and instead just point you to my brother's brilliant retelling of that weekend's events. Then something called Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas came out. And then I had three tests.
But even before all of that, the fun started, which is why I'm here to catch you up.
We'll start with the ingrown toenail, or probably more adequately, the gangrene I managed to contract.
In case you didn't get a good enough look at it, here's a better shot. Makes a great wallpaper for your computer.
After a few shoeless days and sleepless nights, I decided to earn my honorary degree in self-surgery by using scissors to remove a good portion of my toenail. It was a painful process, but I took comfort in the fact that if I had gone to the doctor's, they would have done the same thing, except charged me for it.
GTA: San Andreas, as most of your probably already know or could have guessed, is amazing. For some reason they decided to go overboard with the use of the F-word in this one. I suppose it fits somewhat well when the point of the game is to kill people, but it did catch me a little off guard when the game kicked off with Samuel L. Jackson cursing at me. I'm sure I'll devote more attention to the game in this very space in the coming days, at least before Halo 2 hits stores in a week.
So I thought you might enjoy some sights from this past weekend's Halloween festivities, as it served as a nice way to get away from a stressful couple of weeks.
"How about a nice cup of shut the fuck up?"
That's about 10 of us dancing around a bucket of dry ice at the Townhole with a live DJ at around 5 in the morning. For some reason, the party never died, and its spirit still rages on to this very day... two days later.
Things even extended to the roof.
Brian and Greg, planning their shots for their first feature-length porn. Their aim: to become the Wachowski brothers of porn... without the sex-changes.
You know it's a good time when an impromptu hockey game breaks out in the hallway.
For those of you ladies (or fellas) wondering what Brian looks like when he's having sex with you... You can still wonder.
So with the help of the Dolans, I attempted to make this as "unscripted" as possible. While the Dolans are available daily, I'm more of a weekly thing here in this humble home. Unfortunately, Ken Dolan does not approve. I apologize to any of you who bothered to read this post which can only be described as a disaster.
WARNING: DISTURBING PHOTOS TO FOLLOW
I'll make this my obligatory photo post, since I've got lots of cool pictures to dump on you, and I'm sure most of you like looking at pictures more than you do reading. And to accompany you through this, I've provided the Dolans on Demand. Enjoy.
So life stopped for awhile. Or maybe it just temporarily started or something. It all depends on how you look at it. Anyhow, just over a week ago, I went to Jacksonville for a cousin's wedding. I'll spare you the hilarious details, and instead just point you to my brother's brilliant retelling of that weekend's events. Then something called Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas came out. And then I had three tests.
But even before all of that, the fun started, which is why I'm here to catch you up.
We'll start with the ingrown toenail, or probably more adequately, the gangrene I managed to contract.
In case you didn't get a good enough look at it, here's a better shot. Makes a great wallpaper for your computer.
After a few shoeless days and sleepless nights, I decided to earn my honorary degree in self-surgery by using scissors to remove a good portion of my toenail. It was a painful process, but I took comfort in the fact that if I had gone to the doctor's, they would have done the same thing, except charged me for it.
GTA: San Andreas, as most of your probably already know or could have guessed, is amazing. For some reason they decided to go overboard with the use of the F-word in this one. I suppose it fits somewhat well when the point of the game is to kill people, but it did catch me a little off guard when the game kicked off with Samuel L. Jackson cursing at me. I'm sure I'll devote more attention to the game in this very space in the coming days, at least before Halo 2 hits stores in a week.
So I thought you might enjoy some sights from this past weekend's Halloween festivities, as it served as a nice way to get away from a stressful couple of weeks.
"How about a nice cup of shut the fuck up?"
That's about 10 of us dancing around a bucket of dry ice at the Townhole with a live DJ at around 5 in the morning. For some reason, the party never died, and its spirit still rages on to this very day... two days later.
Things even extended to the roof.
Brian and Greg, planning their shots for their first feature-length porn. Their aim: to become the Wachowski brothers of porn... without the sex-changes.
You know it's a good time when an impromptu hockey game breaks out in the hallway.
For those of you ladies (or fellas) wondering what Brian looks like when he's having sex with you... You can still wonder.
So with the help of the Dolans, I attempted to make this as "unscripted" as possible. While the Dolans are available daily, I'm more of a weekly thing here in this humble home. Unfortunately, Ken Dolan does not approve. I apologize to any of you who bothered to read this post which can only be described as a disaster.
|
2003 - 2005 Reverend Hughes |
