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A round of three shakes from an ice cream place is like $15. A few Blizzards from Dairy Queen is roughly the same. But a pie from Baker's Square costs $12 and gives at least a minimum of six pieces, which for us is two days worth of dessert. I never really thought I'd see Baker's Square as providing economical food, but that's the truth of the matter. And honestly, what seems more special - a shake or a nice piece of French Silk? Today I grilled steak and used up half of a bottle of offensively ...

First off I should warn all readers that as this log progresses the spoilers will begin to pile up. If you're currently playing the game and don't want any surprises ruined I suggest that you may want to steer clear.



Lately I've been running into more and more of the greater beasts that inhabit the land of Gransys. These adversaries are where Dragon Dogma's combat really comes into its own. The fiends tend to have multiple weaknesses. ...

This is the first of hopefully many updates where I discuss the Capcom Action-RPG, Dragon's Dogma.

I decided to start off as a Strider, which is basically an Archer as well as a Rogue. Unfortunately my...errh...Jennique's armor looks like she's saving the land in her pajamas at the moment. Still that hardly matters when I can easily dispatch adversaries with my bow and never-depleting quiver of arrows. The crew I've assembled consists of ...

A restful day so far. My pace over the weekend left me little time to sleep, so my body took the chance to catch up on it today. At least I did do something of import by taking the time to pull out all of the new growth which was sprouting by the perimeter of the house, which threatened to dig its roots into the foundation. In the front of the house there was one stump in particular which had a few feet of length on it and took considerable effort to remove, even after digging around and chopping ...

Games. My copy of Akai Katana has come in, and I've clocked some sixteen hours into Diablo 3 since last Wednesday, which is abnormal for what I usually have done for the last year or two. It's definitely an unsustainable lifestyle for me at this point. Often times I find myself believing that I was born exactly at the right moment in the grand arc of American history, or global history, as I overall am young enough to not be intimidated by technology but old enough to recall how life was without ...

I reviewed Deathsmiles 2 on the main-page so give it the once-over if you haven't already.

Now then...what can I say about the first game? Well it's not quite as creepy as the sequel. Also in terms of atmosphere and level-design it's a bit more cohesive, even if most of the stages feel almost Psikyo-length. I actually feel kinda bad that I threw this game in a forgotten corner for so long because it's better than I remember. It's probably Cave's most accessible shooter thanks to ...

Everyone on schedule arrived to the retail job today, which I wouldn't have wagered on. Between that and other volunteers coming to help the day wasn't too terrible, despite the weather. Earlier in the day there was a carryout which I had to assist with, which entailed taking a five piece unassembled table set out of its package and putting the parts individually into a small Hyundai hatchback of some kind. If that option didn't work, the customer would have been screwed and had to have arranged ...

Another Saturday and another new helper sent out into the wilderness that is our store's parking lot. So here's what I don't get. The woman they send out to help is a thirtyish year old mother who is dressed for her normal workday, meaning no gloves and flat fashionable shoes. In this case, I always do the task of leading the line of carts and have the helper just use the machine; this makes me be the guy to dance around everything and guide it all around, while the helper just has to keep the machine ...

Guwange is an arcade shooter by Cave so you probably have an idea of what to expect. There's some scoring system that's based around an easy to understand gimmick and tons of bullets. These aspects are held together by tight mechanics and heavily refined game-design. Not a single element is wasted so mastering this title calls upon your every ability. What's the most important aspect however? A good intro.

One thing shooter devs have a hard time figuring out is a good intro. There's ...

I need to remember primarily that the weather is anticipated to be rather hot tomorrow and I need to procure a cooler for store use so that I can have some bottled water on hand throughout the course of the day. Staffing is at an anemic three persons tomorrow, myself and another person having the exact same time scheduled, which will lead to break conflicts. Though I can amply juggle some booze, AM radio, and playing early Diablo 3 all at the same time, perhaps I shouldn't combine doing all three ...

This was an excellent game experience in my opinion. The story was engrossing and well written/acted without being overbearing, the combat feels fluid and (mostly) responsive and has a good weight to it, and there's a nice assortment of side missions and things to do outside of the main quest. It kept me wanting to come back to it and see everything it had to offer without ever really boring me, which is a testament to it's strengths because I often find myself bored by games relatively quickly. ...

At least in the very early stages at the default difficulty, Diablo 3 is rather docile and easy to play with a single hand while taking shots of whisky through the night. What I didn't expect was how terrible the script and voice acting would be in the game. I'm curious if any reviews will pick up on that. Speaking of reviews, the reviews of Akai Katana have been rolling in and while there have been a few people who actually did rate the game well, there's still just as many reviews which have the ...

Rather uneventful day so far. Just working on Form 8825 for tax form development, which is more tedious than anything else because it is eight repeated columns of common data, which means that after I have all the names in place and the scripting as I want, I now have to go into the source code and set the bindings as I need them - doing it this way drastically reduces the time required but also potentially wrecks the document, because LiveCycle is finicky enough as it is and doesn't like when the ...

Our house is situated near a maple tree which releases those whirlygig seedlings that get caught in the gutters. I have to go up and clean it out every so often, particularly this time since some of the seeds seemed to have taken to sprout and stalks of green were visible from the edge of the roof. I take the ladder to go up there today, and I notice that there's a shingle missing from the edge of the roof, as if something took a bite out of the surface. I noticed that some wasps were flying around ...

It is now established that I will be playing as a monk in Diablo 3 for purposes of playing the game with some of my coworkers. I do have to wonder how much time we will consistently play together until life circumstances arise that nobody can meet up and the group effectively disbands. All I'm hoping for is that I don't have to undertake a majority of the coordination or leadership, in that this isn't something that I was primarily looking forward to doing in the first place. If my wife hasn't purchased ...