After a month's break, I finally got back to Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. I really need to buckle down and finish so I can get started on my XBox 360 backlog and ratchet up my Gamerscore. Again, the game came down to the same old issue. While the playing I did was fun, including one 'follow a guy mission', a 'rail' mission, and a boss fight, sadly it constituted a far too tiny percentage of the total time spent with the game. In a three hour session, no more than one hour was spent actually playing, with the other two spent watching overly drawn-out, albeit incredibly beautiful and detailed, cutscenes (again, there was at least one that was so long that the game lets you save halfway through in case you have a life or something to get to). Anyway, in more ways than one the series has now taken me back to its roots with a clever revisiting of the Shadow Moses incident, which is where I'll pick up tomorrow. Also, I finally found the camera, so I'll find out if taking pictures of certain things will get me some sort of bonus.

I've also delved back into Apple's App Store. It's just unreal all the things that are now available. There's a free music identifier, which at least one other phone has had as a standard feature for a while. World of Warcraft users can download an App that instantly tells you the status of all the game's servers, while pen & paper RPG fans can get a virtual D&D dice set. Sports nuts can get golf yardages, darts score trackers, or a real-time riverflow tracker for kayakers. Some Apps are rather dubious. There's one that makes your iPhone into a level. I have a hard time imagining, "Honey, grab my iPhone, I want to make sure this picture's not crooked," can ever not sound silly and a bit obnoxious. And for the truly stupid, you can spend 99¢ on Tea Timer to time your tea brewing just right; this is most useful for those who've somehow forgotten that iPhone already has a timer built right into the clock area.

That's all for today. Thanks for reading, everybody!

I finally took the time to upgrade my 1st-gen iPhone to its 2.0 software yesterday. It gives my phone most of what the new 3G iPhone can do, but most notably not GPS. However, since I'm not a drooling moron who can't read a map or follow directions, that's really not an issue to me. Email is tweaked a bit to handle attachments better and make it more friendly to use, and some buttons get a shiny makeover. Foreign keyboards and dictionaries are now included. Rotating the iPhone in calculator mode now brings up a cool scientific calculator. While it's nice that the display increases from 9 digits to 16 in the process, honestly I'm not too likely to ever need to figure a cosecant, compute a natural log, or run an x! calculation. The real 'money' addition is the App Store. With over 500 choices, there's something for everyone: games like Super Monkey Ball (that utilizes iPhone's tilt functionality), tip calculators, translation dictionaries, weather widgets, specialized iPhone interfaces for things like eBay and MySpace, and even one that just turns your iPhone into an impromptu flashlight. Best of all—many are free. You do sometimes have to wade through several apps that do the same thing, but seeing posted reviews helps guide you. Interestingly, sometimes many seem to feel a free app performs better than the comparable priced app. It really all cements iPhone as the phone to have.

Yesterday I was also faced with a minor moral dilemma out in town. A woman crossed the street and a $5 bill blew out of a vast pile of stuff she was clutching in her arms. I'd often punish her for her stupidity for putting money in a place that a light breeze would dislodge it, and it would've been so easy to quick step on it, pretend I had to tie my shoe, and walk off a little richer. Instead I quickly grabbed it and called out to her, "Ma'am, you dropped some money!" Christ, what's wrong with me? "Ma'am?" She was probably ten years younger than I. She might've rather just lost the $5 than have me make her feel like she was 80 years old.

Interesting phenomenon noticed early this morning: the promised thunderstorms to break our week-long heatwave started through around 3:30, and since they woke me I went around the house to open some windows to get some fresh air. Looking out front, I saw that some lightning flashes were so vivid, they were temporarily tricking my solar-powered lights into thinking morning had come. They'd wink out for a few seconds, only to turn back on once it stayed dark for a few seconds.

That's all for today. Thanks for reading, everybody!

As I get back to my regular life, I've now had a refresher course in just how much of a toll a weekend of fun can have on your body. Two late nights with my college friend Renée, her husband Scott, and her watermelon nails left me a tired wreck by yesterday evening. A nap at 6:00 seems almost laughable, but after nights up to after 1:00 and then after 2:00 (and way too little sleep), I needed one yesterday, though I did make sure I was up for Big Brother at 8:00. I'm never too tired for that! Our trip to Dave & Busters Saturday was super fun, though the drive back was insanely hot and left us all a bit burnt. The hot pavement put my car's thermometer reading over 100° for almost the whole ride home. The brutal heat wave did allow us to easily get outside seating at a restaurant in town that normally you'd not have a prayer in getting (like my father did, Scott loves heat and humidity). I also discovered they'd missed ever seeing Borat, so we watched that Saturday night and they loved it. It was probably my fourth time watching and I laughed about as much as my first time. They also wanted to see Grand Theft Auto IV, which I happily obliged; along with beng amazed at how real it all seemed, you never heard so much laughter from people watching a poor motorcyclist getting shotgunned off his bike. It was a great time, and I'm sure we won't let too long go by before doing it again.

I also wasn't too tired to catch up on Friday's Doctor Who, "Turn Left". Who knew a comedienne like Catherine Tate had such a powerful, amazing performance in her? It was easily the best episode of the season so far, and just flat-out one of the entire series' best. Though, given how it ended, I'm betting it gets even better for the final two epsiodes of the season. Last Saturday Catherine was on The Graham Norton Show that even then I figured likely aired just after Doctor Who wrapped up its season in England. Mindful of that, my finger was on the power switch. Graham gushed, "did you all see Doctor Wh—?" (click). I was recording, so after DW wraps up here in two weeks, I'll go back and see what she has to say. Anyway, it's going to be a long wait until Friday night for the penultimate episode.

That's all for today. Thanks for reading, everybody!

Three flying rats left in Liberty City

I was dealing with this nitwit named permanantmarker during a Grand Theft Auto IV online GTA Race at Terminal Velocity yesterday. We'd both been caught up in the initial pileup that generally occurs at the first corner or elevation drop and were far back out of the running. He'd been severely damaged by someone else's gunfire and would have to bail out soon to avoid being in car about to blow up, so I figured I may as well finish him off to collect the $100. It took some time, and he almost made it into another car before I clipped him. This led to a tirade of whining and insults from him until I finally just let him have it and laid into him with, 'Yeah, well at least I'm not the one who misspelled permanent in my own username, you ****ing retard.' I didn't expect much response from others (who I honestly didn't expect noticed the incorrect spelling), but instead I was met with a torrent of laughter from the rest of the microphoned competitors and a few claims of "ownage" of my part. Then, at the end, someone chimed in, "Dude, you got served—hard." permanantmarker quit the game like a baby soon after; no word if it was to go spend the 800 Microsoft Points to fix his name.

I also finally evened out my Resistance: Fall of Man online kill ratio, as earlier this week I hit 23,033 kills and 23,022 deaths. It's improved a bit more since then.

I'll be having guests this weekend, as a college friend and her husband (who's dying to hit a local Dave and Buster's) are coming down for a visit. Of course, he's a Redskins fans so he has to put up with all the Eagles stuff in my house in the bargain. Sadly, the trip has one snag, being that we'll be in the grips of a heat wave with soul-crushing mid-90°s expected most of the weekend. With A/C it's really not so bad, but any trek through town will be on the nasty side, though there's luckily tons of places to get stuff to cool off.

That's all for today. Thanks for reading, everybody!

Four flying rats left in Liberty City

It's been over 16 years since The Simpsons aired "Homer at the Bat", where Mr. Burns hired MLB ringers for the SNPP softball team. With tonight being the annual All-Star game, let's look at what's become of the nine players he hired. Steve Sax is completely out of the game. Don Mattingly has moved on to coaching assignments for the Dodgers, while Mike Scioscia now manages—and won a World Series with—the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. Two have entered Cooperstown: Wade Boggs and Ozzie Smith (whose son Nikko was a top ten season four American Idol finalist). Two have been to jail: Darryl Strawberry and Jose Canseco (who's Juiced helped bring MLB steroids to national attention). Only Ken Griffey, Jr. is currently an active player, who were it not for a spate of lengthy injuries might've been the all-time home run king by now. And any or all off the three previous categories may yet apply to Roger Clemens.

Looking to save on gas? Please don't fall for any on these Six Gas-Saving Schemes (People Are Actually Trying) (adult language inside)

Microsoft dealt a huge blow to Sony with their stunning news that Final Fantasy XIII would be on their XBox 360 as well as PS3. If you've yet to upgrade to current generation, that's one less reason to choose PS3, and if you have XBox but were contemplating getting PS3 just for the title, you've no reason to do so now. As to their Netflix news; meh, who cares? The new dashboard interface doesn't interest me a ton, but doesn't agitate me either, though this Primetime mode that will incorporate real TV shows has promise. A related wish—won't someone please put out a Jeopardy! game on current gen with online play? I'd really rock at that.

That's all for today. Thanks for reading, everybody!

Four flying rats left in Liberty City

Big Brother kicked off in typical fashion last night, with an interesting mix of people and a house with a 60s-themed bedroom and 50s diner kitchen. Much like the houseguests, it took less than three words out of her mouth during the contestant intros for me to just wish Renny dead. Like many, I'll be pulling for 75-year-old Jerry, who was not-too-surprisingly voted HoH. I'm already crazy about Angie, but most of the other girls don't do much for me. And what's with Libra and Memphis? There's way too many people out there giving their kids weird names. While there was already one very minor dust-up, I guess the real fireworks won't start until tomorrow night as the threat of evictions looms closer to reality.

As I'd hoped, I hit level 6 of 10 in Grand Theft Auto IV online play yesterday. The great surprise I got is that it will only take as much money ($250,000) to get from 6 to 7 as it did from 5 to 6 in the game. I was about ready to hang it up, but if that pattern holds, it may be worth getting the level 10 achievement. I got access to some cool new clothes I liked better than anything else, so I switched my player model a bit, though sometimes I wear my alternate "Paulie Walnuts" tracksuit outfit. I'd love to have the ER scrubs available, as that's what I'm wearing offline during my pigeon hunt. I think my favorite deathmatch map is easily the Airport due to its good, defensible sniping spots and my corresponding skill with the compat sniper rifle. Nothing's cooler than picking off n00bs who never saw the bullet through their head coming. On the other hand, while I don't know about favorite, I hardly ever lose a race on the Quick Knives course, while Taxiing is possibly my favorite.

That's all for today. Thanks for reading, everybody!