Wesley’s Personal Blog

(This whole thing is as spoiler-free as I can make it)

So I got Fallout 3. I liked Oblivion (From the same studio, Bethesda) but didn’t love it. I quickly got bogged down by the sheer size of the world, and never liked any of the weapons. Ranged weapons were a pain and melee weapons were worse. And you simply could not get through the game without fighting durn near everything.

Regardless, I wanted to try Fallout 3 because I love the theme. I tend to prefer SciFi to Fantasy so I was hoping that, at least, would get me through the game. Did it? Read on…
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Wesley Games

It’s a bit later in the year than I usually do this, but I was planning on not doing it at all.

That is, until the sweltering heat caused my brain to boil in my skull, causing temporary insanity.

Here’s the first pic, and just click below for more:

Like I'm going to shower right *before* doing this.

Read more…

Wesley Stuff

My friend Jonobie said at the end of her most recent blog post to consider myself tagged on this one. So I am considering myself tagged.

Instead of doing the 5 greatest heroes, I’m going to start with the earliest memory of a “hero” or a good guy or at least a main character, and go up from there. So, these aren’t necessarily the 5 greatest heroes, and they aren’t necessarily the 5 earliest heroes in my life, but I think this list will be a fair combination of the two.

1. Han Solo - I saw Star Wars in the theater, and even though it’ll prove that I’m not actually 30 like I always say I am, I will tell you that I was 6 at the time. I obviously don’t remember that much from the movie, but I remember a bit, and one of the things I remember from that first viewing was that Han Solo had a big, hairy friend. I wanted a big, hairy friend. As I aged, and watched Star Wars again, I realized that Han Solo was the most ass-kicking good guy available to my as-yet limited exposure to fiction. He wasn’t the hero. He wasn’t the farmboy-turned Jedi. He wasn’t the royalty figure who’d lost her… everything. He wasn’t the wizened teacher. He was the guy with the gun and the ship, and the total lack of desire to be included in the action. He was the one who thought not with his big head or his little head, but with his pocketbook. Rescue the princess? Never! For a reward? Now we’re talking. But in the end, our soft-hearted rogue came through, and it changed his life forever. It’s easy to be a hero when your family (or your entire planet) is dead. but when you’re high-tailing it out of the system with a cargo bay full of credits? Yeah. That’s a hero to me.
2. Indiana Jones - I make no apologies for Harrison Ford being on this list not only twice, but as the first two entries. Just feel lucky that Decker’s not on the list too. Indiana Jones oozes hero. He gets punched. He falls down. He gets dragged behind cars, shot, burned, and left for dead in a pit of snakes. But he never, EVER gives up. He doesn’t even consider it. When he’s bloody, burnt, staggering, and has moments before his girlfriend will be consumed by fire, and a big bald guy with treetrunk arms forces him into an unfair fist fight, Indiana Jones merely sighs, resolves himself, and steps into the fray.
3. Groo - Back in my youth, I was mildly addicted to a couple comic book series, and none were more addictive than Groo the Wanderer. Groo was not a smart man. It was just slightly possible that he wasn’t actually a man at all, as he lacked the cranial capacity to survive in the modern world of whatever BC year it was in the comics. But survive he did, mostly at the whim of a veritable smorgasbord of characters who would use Groo’s one skill - his unerring ability with the two Katana swords he always had strapped to his back - for their own ill purposes. In the end, though, Groo would always put it right, or at least destroy everything in the vicinity so nobody profited off of him. Then, usually, he would flee the area as the villagers chased him with torches and pitchforks. But he always meant well.
4. The Doctor - Jonobie put this one on her list, though she’s talking about the newest Doctor, and I want to talk about the older ones. I *loved* the Doctor in high school. He was smart, witty, brave, and never made a mistake. And he knew he wouldn’t. His sheer confidence was a thing to witness. I’m watching the show now as the DVDs come out, putting each one at the top of my Netflix queue as it is released. I have loved every one.
5. Vic Gentry - I won’t feel bad if you don’t know this name. I created this character in high school as kind of a mix of #2 and #3 on my list. He was a super-soldier type adventurer with one crippling flaw: Total lack of coordination and mental acuity. Looking back, I see that he was actually “Sci Fi Groo,” especially because his first appearance was in a comic that I drew instead of paying attention in class in my senior year. I don’t look up to Vic, but his effect on my life is unmeasurable. His story is the direct ancestor of the Crimson Lien, which is for a great part the reason for the existence of the Stargate Cafe. The Universe I built around Vic Gentry is the Universe that I spend my creative time in. It’s where the Crimson Lien flew in the podcast, and it’s where the Crimson Lien flies in the book I’m working on (Or not, but eventually I promise!). And Vic - in some form - is a part of that universe and eventually we’ll meet him. And trust me, this new Vic’s a hero in every sense.

Okay, now it’s my turn to tag people. You! You there, reading this. You’re tagged!

Wesley Films, Memes, Stuff, Writing

I make no excuses for being an Xbox Live Achievement whore. I can’t get enough Achievement points and will go to fairly great lengths to secure a couple lousy 5-pointers in a game. Generally, if the game is fun at all I’ll stick to it until I’ve gotten all of the achievements that are even remotely worth it.

Recently, I completed Tiger Woods 2009 completely, including every single Achievement. They weren’t that bad except one that required me to play the bulk of the game over in its entirety in order to unlock a particular clothing item that you MUST be a male golfer to get¹. It added probably 2 months to my playing of the game, and I really didn’t mind because the game is quite fun and mindless.

Before that, I got all the single-player achievements for Grand Theft Auto 4².

Before that, I played some Lara Croft game³ twice so I could pick up the easier achievements that I missed the first time through. That game wasn’t fun enough to play the levels over and over for the timed achievements, but I was happy to go silver and gold hunting for a couple hours.

Enter Mass Effect.

Mass Effect is a HUGE game. And it’s a FUN game. I really don’t mind playing it for what is now my third time. It’s like watching a movie⁴ over and over: If you love the movie⁵, you WANT to see it multiple times. If you love the game, you want to PLAY it multiple times.

But there’s one facet of Mass Effect that I’m not all that hot on: The utter repetitiousness of the non-story quests. The story is awesome, challenges your morals and forces you to seriously consider your actions both on and off the battlefield. The non-story quests - in short - do not.

• Go to a planet. Invade a base. Kill all the minions. Kill a boss.
• Go to another planet. Invade a base that looks disturbingly⁶ like the last base. Kill all the minions. Collect something.
• Go to a third planet. Invade a base⁷. Kill all the minions. Blow up an installation.
• Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

But the worst part of the repetitiveness is one singular phrase. One thing you hear over and over. Over and over and over⁸. Every base, every warlord, and every pirate outpost has a guy who - as you’re slaughtering his friends and comrades - repeatedly screams “Enemy is everywhere!”

And it drives me freaking NUTS.

1. In any game that you can see your character, I tend to play as a female. If I’m going to stare at a digitized butt for 20+ hours, you better believe it’s going to be a female digitized butt [↩]
2. The multiplayer part of the game was very not fun. All through GTA3 I wanted multiplayer. In GTA4 I was sad to see all that I thought would be great turn out to be garbage [↩]
3. See above about digitized butts [↩]
4. Or, with the investment of time, more like TV series [↩]
5. TV show [↩]
6. And by “Disturbingly” I mean “Exactly” [↩]
7. Seriously, is there some equivalent of an Ikea catalog for space merchants, warlords, and pirates? [↩]
8. And over [↩]

Wesley Games

So Amazon.com sent me this nice email, saying that because they love me so much they’re giving me $5 in credit to buy mp3s from them. Awesome, think I, free music!

So I quickly pick up Sting’s “All This Time” from The Soul Cages and promptly can’t think of anything else I immediately want.

Then I get it in my head that I’ve got this wish list FULL of CDs that I want, but just can’t justify buying. I mean, Siobahn Donaghy is awesome and all, but $33-before-(international)-shipping awesome? I don’t think so, missy!

But why not spend my other $4 on mp3 tracks? Not only would the whole album only be like $10, I can get $4 of it free! And I can just get the free ones, and wait until the next time I get $5 free from Amazon and pick up the rest! OMG OMG OMG that is sooooooo awesome!

So I check the horribly priced album to see what I can get for free, and I notice that the album is available stateside, used, for $4. Now, they kill you with shipping, but still the total’s only $7. So *plunk* I buy the CD. I’d rather have the CD anyway so I can rip the audio myself. And plus, i can just get MP3s from one of her other albums, or one of the other myriad CDs I have waiting in my “I’ll never buy them” queue.

The next CD of hers is *also* available more locally than England, and is only $6 ($9 with shipping). Well, it’d be a shame to not take advantage of that too, no?

10 minutes, and 2 more CDs later, I’ve purchased, for $25, 4 CDs. I still have $4 in free MP3 credit and I’m scared to try to use it.

You win this round, Amazon!

Wesley Stuff

I’m playing with the idea of entering the Florida Citizens for Science Stick Science Contest and I made a comic that fails to actually follow the rules of the contest and I figured I’d unload it on you all instead of just throwing it away.

(Click for the full thing. It may not fit on the page perfectly)

You may notice that the image is named “001.png”. Yeah, I’m toying with the idea of making more. Too bad XKCD already does this, and does it far better than I could.

Wesley Sticks

One of my defunct podcasts, the Good Music Show, is officially dead. The site name lapsed yesterday and I did not renew it, as I have no plans on ever posting another show again. I was surprised at the amount of work required to find at least 5 podsafe songs a week. My hat is off to all of you who do it, but I think I’ll stick with my talk shows for now :)

The files are still on Libsyn but there are no links to them, and I likely won’t provide them. If you really want them, feel free to ask but I suspect nobody will miss their absence.

Wesley Meta, Podcasting, Tunes

Recently, I’ve been reading some opinions that the AIG bonuses are not a big deal, because the company is getting $170 billion dollars in bailout money, but giving $165 million of that to the executives who are costing us those billions.

The argument, as best I can figure it, is that everybody’s freaking out because they see:
$165 Million in Bonuses
$170 Billion in Bailout Money
And the numbers look so similar that people think that most of the bailout money is going to bonuses. In fact, a little less than one out of every thousand dollars is being used for bonuses. That doesn’t sounds so bad, now, does it?

The problem with this argument, at least for me, is that it is not addressing my problem with the bonuses. I think that the executives should not be awarded ANY percentage of MY money as a “reward” for screwing up their company.

However, if you must harp on the 1 in 1000 number, think of it this way: Imagine you’re an AIG employee. Not a bigwig making horrible decisions, but an in-the-trenches employee doing your job and doing it fairly well. You earn, say, $50,000 a year. Or, you did until the day you got laid off.

What would you think if you were asked to give your former employer $50 a year, as a “bonus” for saving the $50,000 they would have spent paying you your salary? I mean, $50 is only 1/1000th of your previous salary. That doesn’t sounds so bad, now, does it?

Wesley Stuff

After a full day’s drinking yesterday¹ I woke up this morning² chipper and vibrant³, and was ready to take advantage of falling on the sunny side of today’s 50% chance of rain⁴.

That’s right. I went disc golfing.

I didn’t keep score because not only was it mostly a warm-up round, but the wind was blowing quite fiercely and the thought of recording successive double-bogeys just didn’t sound all that fun to me. However, I didn’t do all that bad and got par on most holes, with a few bogeys and only one double-bogey that I can remember. I also got one wonderful birdie: A 10-foot putt for my second shot when my first shot rolled perfectly up to the hole after the wind knocked it down sideways.

Not every shot that landed on its side rolled, however, as the picture here shows. This drive off of the long par-4 fourth hole, where you have to drive high to clear the trees, landed with quite a bit of force and had to be extracted - and cleaned - before moving on.

All in all, I’d call today a win.

1. Saint Patrick’s Day’s festivities, which I hope to get to in another post but probably won’t, were good. [↩]
2. By morning I of course mean afternoon [↩]
3. I actually was. Jenny, who didn’t drink so much as a sip of alcohol all day, was more hung over than I [↩]
4. Plus mid-sixties temperatures. Beautiful! [↩]

Wesley Games, Outdoors, Stuff

My friend Bob the Cynical Optimist posted a very interesting meme on his blog, and I figured I’d join in. The rules are simple, if a bit constricting:

• For the band name, hit Random on Wikipedia and use the title of the first article as your band name.
• For the album title, grab a random quote from The Quotations Page, and take the last four or five words from the last quote.
• Finally, for the album art, take the third picture on Flickr’s Explore the Last Seven Days page.

Take these 3 things and make your album, then describe the band and album, and finally link to where you got your “inspiration”

90’s punk-industropop trio Rheinisches Industriemuseum, who previously shunned any releases outside their homeland of Germany¹, this month unveiled their reunion album Action That Would Create It to every nation that would take it.
Over the past decade, the group fell from smash-success to has-been, and many have suggested that this newfound desire for increased distribution is a last-stab effort at fame, or at least enough money to make next month’s rent.
The album was produced on a shoestring budget and among those things that could have used a bit more care was the translation. It is currently unknown what the album title actually means, but it has been suggested that they originally intended it to be Buildings.

• Rheinisches Industriemuseum is actually the “Rhineland Museum of the Industry”
• The full quote is from Lois McMaster Bujold: His mother had often said, When you choose an action, you choose the consequences of that action. She had emphasized the corollary of this axiom even more vehemently: when you desired a consequence you had damned well better take the action that would create it.
• The picture (Of Seattle!) is called “Look Marge…its the City!” from WestonPhotography28

1. They even went so far as to sue Amazon for shipping their album Leinknostraad overseas [↩]

Wesley Memes, Stuff, Tunes