OMG!!!

I jsut saw this video that demos physics engine in Crysis by stacking 3000 oil barrels and knocking them down.. It is crazy!! I can't imagine the rig that will take to render this. Make sure you watch to the end to see some insane explosions. I think I am going to attempt to run this game in another 2 years maybe lol.

Forbes has a sense of humor

Prince Peach made it to the Forbe's top 15 richest fictional character list this year. They explained it by saying she married Mario and then divorced him, taking off with half of the fortune in shiny gold coins and mushrooms. Tsk tsk... I guess even fairy tales need legal help these days.

THere were also several other major changes on the list. I quote:

McDuck moves into the top slot vacated by last year's richest fictional character, defense contractor Oliver ''Daddy'' Warbucks. Warbucks was tragically killed by an improvised explosive device during a visit to Iraq in March. The mogul's sudden demise leaves Warbucks Industries--the world’s largest maker of depleted uranium artillery shells and cat food--without leadership. Adopted daughter Lil' Orphan Annie is now in court fighting Warbucks' former wives, bodyguards and mistresses for control of the company and estate.

All told, six billionaires fell off the list, including Atlantic City real estate magnate Mr. Monopoly, who lost everything in the subprime mortgage crash. Archaeologist Lara Croft is missing and presumed dead after her plane disappeared above the Congolese jungle. And narco-capitalist Tony Montana, aka Scarface, was finally confirmed dead by a joint CIA/FBI task force.

Taking their place is a cast of new characters including Ming the Merciless, who ranks second on this year's list. With the existence of this evil alien overlord only recently confirmed by the U.S. government, we've had difficulty separating planetary wealth from his personal fortune, but we can safely say his net worth is at least $20.9 billion, and potentially much higher. Variously described as "control freak," "micro-manager," "vile despot" or "a kinder Steve Ballmer," Ming is best known for his fixation on NASA public relations specialist Dale Arden, girlfriend of astronaut Flash Gordon.

I guess fortune is a rather fickle thing.

AMerican Ex Wish List

Was talking with Kungfucius about Rockband. Alas he said he will not be bringing one to Veg Out sniff. Anyway, if anybody has an American Express card. They have a great deal for rockband at My WishList website. They have 100 on sale for $50. You have to basically log in using your AMEX card and then refresh like mad and hope you can beat the other 5 million people. They also have a Xbox elite system for $300.

http://mywishlist.amexnetwork.com
Rockband is going on at Dec 11th at 12 pm

Xbox is going on at Dec 11th at 3 pm and 7 pm.

How is your luck?? :)

OMG Portal is so awesome!

I just finished Portal and I have to agree with Ender, this is like the best game ever!! It is so innovative and funny. I have to admit when I first started I thought it was too easy. Once I understood the way it works I breezed through like most of the rooms with no problem. I really enjoyed some of the later rooms though. Like 17 took me an hour to do but it was really fun. But most of all, it has this incredible, fantastic ending (trying not to spoil). I burst out laughing while I was also shaking with nervousness, and creeped out by the story all at the same time!!! That was like one of the best game I have ever played! (and actually finished ahem). That was time well spent!! :D!!

ok this is hilarious

Dazzleu sent this to me at work. I burst out laughing, how do they think of these things. The guy was a really good sport too.

a new low point!

I suppose this day is memorable as well, but for a totally different reason. Yesterday was the day when our trivia team, CCP, LOST a tie breaker for last place!!! This is the worst of the worst. Not only that, we lost it twice!! Our night ended with 33 points. We actually graded our rival's paper so we were joking that we tied for 33 points, what if it was last place??!!! And guess what, it was. D and I were chosen to go up there for the tie breaker. At first we were quite confused on whether the $1 pitcher should go to the team who wins or loses the tie breaker but at last it was decided that it would be the team who wins (highly unfair for a requirement for last place if you ask me). The first question was "in which movie did Arnold Schwazenegger uttered the phrase "consider this a divorce!!". Both of the teams said "True Lies" which was of course wrong!! We had to have a double tie breaker for LAST PLACE!!! The second question was "how many of the Seven Dwarfs had beards". at this point I have to say, we totally lost because of D because D then turned to me and said "well sleepy didnt have a beard" and I said "I know Dopey didn't havea beard". D said "well that makes 5 then". and sure enough we were WRONG!! It was 6 and only Dopey didn't have a beard!!! This is totally D's fault, totally!!!

anyway, so we were left with regretting why didn't we just get one more question wrong and avoided this total humiliation sigh sigh...

oh yeah and the box the waiter gave me for my leftovers was WAY too small even though he assured me it will work. Snoopy spent an incredible amount of energy trying ot pack it in and failed. humph....

One more album

I forgot to post about this one.

This is album of pictures taken at Chicken, Alaska and the way back from Yukon. We took the Taylor Highway, which is also called Top of the World Highway. From the name it sounds like it will be a very high up road with gorgeous view. We stopped at a town before we climbed the overpass to ask about this road, the lady at the gas station told us that there is a 45 degree climb, and it is all gravel and it is so dangerous because you can't even see the ground when you climbing over. As a result, we went ahead with much trepidation and also anticipation of the gorgeous view. But in reality, it was a really tame, road that wounds up some hilly landscape, sooo boring. This teaches to believe people at gas stations!! Anyway, the only highlight of the trip is the town of Chicken, which is just hilarious in its own way, and the lone border crossing on top of the mountain. :D

Top of the World Highway

Rest of the picture

I have made two other albums, one is all the wildlife we saw on the trip. I didn't take most of the picture since our friend had a SLR.

WildLife of Alaska

Here is the pictures of Portage Glacier and Denali National Park, Denali National Park is actually really cool, but the day we went was really cloudy and foggy so the picture turned out to be kinda sucky.

Portage Glacier and Denali National Park

FInally!!

Ok, I have finally felt shame for my negligence of my photos, and since I expect a influx of new photos from the Caribbean, I feel like I better get the Alaskan ones out of way, finally! so here I am starting with my absolute favorite part of the trip, the drive to the Arctic Ocean on Dalton Highway (highway 11). This is the most wonderful part of my trip because I have seen things that are just so amazing and so out of the world that I will never see anywhere else. It is also the most exhausting and terrible part of my trip because it took us 16 HOURS( we started morning of the 3rd, didn't get there until 6 am of the 4th) to drive 400 miles on the worst gravel road ever made and I hated every minute of it and every minute I swear to myself, I will NEVER go back. And finally I just have to say, Subaru makes one hell of a car!

Alaska- Dalton Highway
Picasa doesn't allow embed videos so here are videos:
2 am in the Arctic Tundra

Mosquitos, Mosquitos

I am pretty sure they are sheep!

Some of my favorites:
This is the Alaskan Oil Pipeline, Dalton Highway basically runs alongside it. The red flowers in the back are Alaskan Fireweeds, they are everywhere.


This sign is deceptively full of hope. and I don't happen to have any Actic Circle photos for some reason. Must be in the other camera.


We are only 10 hours away...


Midnight Sun, this is right before we drove through the mountain pass into the Arctic Tundra. At this moment, we were still hopeful of getting there before morning. HA!!


The sunlight basked mountains of the Actic Tundra


The pipeline in the sun


The Polar Bear club (yes you get a certificate!)


Our trusty old Outback after the grueling trip back.

Black Friday

SO Anybody going to do some shopping battle for Thanksgiving? The Best Buy and Circuit City Black Friday Ads are now up on http://bfads.net/ Who is going to brave the weather and the crowd in search of a good deal? :D

I will miss this since I will be on a cruise with M in the Caribbean. Maybe they will simulate one on the ship lol.

random TV thoughts

Black Hawk Down has the best soundtrack ever!!

Assassin's Creed is soo sexy looking!

Is Beowulf a completely computer generated movie? I am soo confused by the trailer. and is it a good thing the trailer reminds me of a badly done game trailer?

The game playing on the teeny little arcade screen is actually a real version of Guitar Hero playing to the correct notes in The Guitar Hero episode of South Park!!!

The Rerun's Are Coming!

I was watching The Daily Show last night as I always do when I heard Jon Stewart say "We might be out next week because of the writer strike". Gasp!! I almost forgot about this. The Writer's Guild is staging a huge strike possibly starting next week, unless some last minute deal can be struck to keep them at work. The dispute is over internet broadcasting rights and fees. The writers wants to get paid for each time a show is shown over the internet as well as other new media like cellphones. The companies thinks it is so new they don't even know it will make money, how can they pay the writers. Therefore, impass--> strike. You know what this means, it will be all reality shows for the next six month ( they don't use real writers), "Daily Show" and SNL and "Colbert Report" and other up to the minute scripted shows will be dark for weeks! Network shows like "House" and "Desperate Housewives" will run out of reserve episodes in a month. and in a year or so, we will see a flood of really crappy movies that were rushed out this month to get ahead of the writer strike. The future looks gloomy :(

Halo Kitty Rules!

Happy Halloween everyone :)

Our building organized trick or treat for the kids. You can bring your kids around every office and get candy. So today I put out the candy and the sign that says "you can trick or treat here". Everything is going really well and everybody that walked by is complimenting us on our awesome window poster



Then, this really cute girl about 5 years old came by with her mom. She is in a Disney Snow White costume. She said "hi", and got some candy. I was just thinking "awww she is so cute". When her mom saw our poster so she said to the girl "hey! look it is a Halo Kitty poster, how cute!! you remember this right? we were testing this together the night before it came out, we let you play with the controller and kill mommy!" -_-!!

You can only hear this kind of conversation in our building hee hee.

more ZeroPunctuation

Here is this week's ZeroPunctuation review of Medal Of Honor : Airborne (hint he hates it haha). His review comes out every Wednesday on The Escapist.

oh the pain

I went to see "Lust, Caution" (link contains spoilers) with friend today. I didn't really want to go at first since I already gleaned the major points of the plot from the trailer and I don't like to see movies where I can guess the ending but this is suppose to be Ang Lee's big piece this year and of course there was all this indignation of really naked sex scenes in there so we went to check it out. ( btw, what is with Ang Lee and really naked sex scenes? is he going through some artsy phase? He was actually dismayed by all the fuss over the sex scenes but really if you don't want people to fuss over it, then don't make a NC-17 movie!)

Anyway, some thoughts about this movie without giving away the plot. It is really quite an masterpiece. Ang Lee managed to capture the subtlety in every expression, every movement, every unsaid pause. It is all filmed with a distinct Chinese sensibility. When I was watching it, I did not have a feeling of an "made for foreigner" movie (take notice, crappy Chinese directors with too much money). The actors were absolutely wonderful. The only bad points I can think of is that some of the HK actors (including the main guy) doesn't speak Mandarin that well, so some of the subtlety of intonation is lost during the mandarin dialog and it was a little jarring. But other than that, everything was exquisite.

Now onto the sex scenes, despite the big deal people made of it, there wasn't actually alot of it considering it was a 3 hour movie. It definitely was deserving of the "NC-17" rating though. I saw way more than I wanted to see. Both character was completely naked, although the guy's front side was always in shadows, the backside was very apparent. In other words, it was completely bare and under the light for everyone to see, and there were at least like 5 different positions with big close ups. I have heard some people call it a realistic portrayl because of the fact that there was no cover up, no half hidden views that might have beautified what was basically a very animalistic act. But I have to disagree, yes, it was very raw but it was hardly realistic because it was infused with the desperation, the anxiety and the fear of both characters until the whole act becomes one giant explosion of pain and suffering that the two people tries desperately to be numb to. The only thought i had when I was watching it was it was alot of emotional pain, almost unbearable. So I feel like it wasn't very realistic ( at least for normal people I hope), more like an magnification to the breaking point.

All in all, it was a good movie, I don't think I can bear to watch it again though because I tend to empathize with the main characters in movies and this is just too much pain to go through.

I want to talk about the plot too later, is anybody waiting to see it and dont' want to be spoiled?

Crysis Demo

The long awaited but probably unplayable Crysis PC demo is coming out tomorrow. You can download it at the Nzone website (I would wait a day, the bandwidth hog could be humongous). And just in case you think your PC might meet the requirement, they have a helpful "test your system" button on the website so they can show you how sucky your PC really is :)

In case you forgot what this is, here is the official blurb:

"With mankind facing an alien cataclysm, your elite Delta force and North Korean forces combine, united by common humanity in a battle to save Earth. Graphically stunning, tactically challenging and always intensely immersive, Crysis sets player choice at the heart of its gameplay, with customisable tactical weaponry and adaptable armour allowing instant response to changing conditions. "

Don't burn them

So anybody doing anything fun for Halloween? I guess I will just be home watching scary movies marathon on scifi or something. On another note: Cat Dirt Sez

"Zombies" Reported Coming out of Eastern Hills
I just saw on tv that fire zombies have been shuffling out of an area near a resovoir. It is unclear whether they are 'flesh eating' zombies, or the less dangerous 'vegetarian eating' variety.

I bet they smell bad..

ETA: I wish I brought my camera. We have a new admin this year who has gone all out decorating the hallways (so this is where our morale budget went humph). We have one of those open ceiling stairwells, it is completely lined with real dried corn stalks, then covered with two layers spider webs (different colors) and then sprinkled with spider.s THere are grey rats running up the side of the stairs. our walls are covered with humongous bats and I swear the pumpkins are multiplying every day.

sarcasm rule!

I forgot about the Escapist: Zero Punctuation for a while and today I went back to catch up on his game reviews. It is still as funny as ever. You just can't beat a dry, sarcastic British guy with excellent sense of humor (see House, Dr.). Here is his review of Orange Box

my craziness is self evident

I had planned to go see the Opera "Iphigenia in Tauris" today. It supposed to start at 8:00pm. I am supposed to dress up, pick up my friend at 6:30 pm and meet Snoopy at 7:00pm in front of the theatre so it gives me an hour for any type of unforeseen events. On the surface this plan seems quite simple and fool-proof. But really, here is how it went down:

4:30: Call my friend to double check time of pick up at 6:30pm,was invited to friend's house for dinner so planned to get there at 5:30 instead.
mood: YAY FOOD!

5:30: arrived at friends house to realize that I have brought neither dress nor binocular nor books promised friend. I haven't panicked because as I said before, I have an hour window. So revised plan to go back home after dinner for things I need.
mood: embarrassed but calm

6:30: finished dinner while calmly convincing friend's mom that we have plenty of time. dragged friend back home.
mood: determined

6:50: finally picked up stuff that I ACTUALLY NEED for Opera. Call Snoopy to tell her going to be delayed til 7:15 pm.
mood: perfectly calm..

7:15: Call Snoopy again to tell her we are stuck in small traffic at the highway exit,
mood: still not panicking.. after all, still have 45 minutes to spare.

7:27: While parking Snoopy calls to tell me they are going in and has left ticket with usher. I thought no problem. It isn't nice to make Snoopy wait anyway.
mood: feeling a little bit of urgency

7:40: arrive at Opera House with 20 minutes to spare~!! walks calmly to the Usher who tells me that we are actually late since the show actually starts at 7:30 PM!!!!! Now we have to stay outside and wait for intermission.. at HALFTIME!!!!
mood: =O AHHH!!!! OMGWTF!!! Soul crushed...

7:45: in complete distraction and panic, I made giant papercut on my finger while I was flipping the program.
mood: pain!! :(

8:40 : finally sitting down for second half of opera
mood: remorseful,


So yeah, that was how it actually went down.... I have no idea why I thought the opera started at 8 instead of 7:30... so this is great example of how one piece of bad assumption can cause giant catastrophic chain of event to fall down. :(

oh yeah btw, the second half was pretty awesome LOL.

COD4 Demo Available

You can now download the Call of Duty 4 PC demo. Features one entire map (only single player tho:( 1.4 G.

http://www.fileplanet.com/180530/180000/fileinfo/Call-of-Duty-4-Demo
http://www.h2k-gaming.com/index/nieuws/1186

Give yall's pristine new PCs a work out!

Required (minimum) Specs
CPU: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 2.4 GHz or AMD(R) Athlon(TM) 64 2800+ processor or any 1.8Ghz Dual Core Processor or better supportedRAM: 512MB RAM (768MB for Windows Vista)Hard Drive: 8GB of free spaceVideo card: NVIDIA(R) Geforce(TM) 6600 or better or ATI(R) Radeon(R) 9800 Pro or better


Recommended Specs
CPU: 2.4 GHz dual core or betterRAM: 1G for XP; 2G for VistaHard Drive: 8GB of free spaceVideo card: 3.0 Shader Support recommended. Nvidia Geforce 7800 or better or ATI Radeon X1800 or better