Alex Can Spell?

Amy was getting ready to take a bath and so Alex wouldn’t follow her, she told me “I’m going to take a B-A-T-H” and Alex quickly shouted, “Don’t take a bath mommy!” This isn’t good, we spell out a lot of things so Alex doesn’t know what we are talking about.

Knights of the old Republic II

I’ve started playing the sequel to Knights of the Old Republic. It is turning out to be a fairly good game, but certainly not as good as the original. I’ve been playing for quite a while, and I still do not have a light saber, not that I can’t defeat the enemies without it, but I just don’t feel like much of a Jedi without one. I am building up my force powers though, I recently defeated this huge tank droid with mostly my disable droid power, of course, and Ion grenade and a few blasts from an Ion rifle did some damage as well. Those Ion weapons work well against droids.

Darth Malak has been Defeated

It’s been a while since I’ve beaten a game, but after about 36 hours of game time, I have defeated the Sith Lord Darth Malak. It was surprisingly not as hard as I expected it to be, I didn’t die and start over once. I did save a few times during the battle, but never needed to reload. I ended the game with over 40,000 credits, and a lot of equipment that I never needed to use. There were a few side quests that I was not able to complete because I did some things out of order, and I didn’t raise my persuade skill high enough.

Of course, I played the light side of the game, which I have heard is more challenging than the dark side. I thought about starting another game and playing the dark side, but I just don’t think I have it in me.

Great game, although not as highly rated, I’ll probably play Knights of the old Republic II sometime soon. Amy mentioned it as a present.

Xbox 360 or PS3

In the news lately, Microsoft will be releasing the next Xbox, the Xbox 360 this fall, and Sony’s Play Station 3 will be out in the spring of 2006.

I’m not a major gamer, but I own a PS2 and an Xbox. I keep the PS2 around mainly to play Grand Tourismo, my favorite racing game. I also have played the Grand Theft Auto games on the PS2, but they are available for Xbox while Grand Tourismo is not. Recently I’ve been enjoying Madden 2005 and more recently, Knights of the Old Republic on the Xbox.

What game system will I buy next, well, probably the Xbox 360, unless Sony really wow’s me. I doubt I’ll be buying right away. The deciding factor on when and which game console to buy will probably be the release of a game title that I really want to play.

One thing is for sure, these game consoles make the current consoles on the market look like an Atari 2600.

I'll probably write more about these later.

Darth Malak pays me a visit

I was playing Knights of the Old Republic yesterday and was in the process of going from one planet to the other when I was captured by a Sith starship. After some fighting on the ship, I was able to escape, but not before encountering Darth Malak himself. Of course, I found out a few things during that encounter, and lost one of my party members, Bastila, the strongest Jedi in my party. I have one more piece of the star map to get, so, I think I’m getting fairly close to the end of the game. I’m sure I’ll miss it.

An entry for Brandon

I was playing Knights of the Old Republic and in one of the cut scenes, Darth Malak dispatched his apprentice, Darth Bandon to kill me. I mistook Bandon for Brandon for a minute.

Playing Knights of the Old Republic

I have once again found myself interested in Star Wars, Knights of the Old Republic game for the Xbox. This game is awesome, even for a guy who isn’t into the whole role playing/turn based combat type games. So far, I think the game is telling a great story, since I’m not much of a book reader, this is the closest thing to a good novel I can think of.

My progress so far:

Well, I started over after killing the Dark Jedi, Juhani, on Dantooine. Since I’m playing toward the light side, I thought that killing her wasn’t the right move, but I couldn’t seem to find a dialog that would work. I soon figured out my mistake, but didn’t have a save that I could go back to.

My new game is going well, I have completed the missions on Taris and Dantooine, right now I’m working on quests and side quests on Tatooine. I still have a long way to go I’m sure, I have been referring often to a walk through, I found online, but I’ve not had to rely on it completely. For example, the side quest where you have to save the guy (Tanis?) from his droids which have been programmed to explode by his wife, I just figured out the simple math problems on my own, with a lot of saving of course.

I find myself getting really into the story of it all, until last night, I have put at least one hour a day into the game, often times two. I’m trying to limit my playing time to no more than two hours per day. Tonight I’ll probably play for two hours, starting around seven o’clock after dinner and up until nine when the amazing race comes on. Amy and I like watching certain TV shows together. Some, like Gilmore Girls, at eight on Tuesdays, I’m not as interested in.

I think this is a game that my mother would like to play, but she doesn’t have an Xbox. There are a few action sequences that fall out of the turn based role playing game genra, such as swoop bike racing and the Sith fighter attacks when you jump between planets in the Ebon Hawk. I’m not sure how she’d like that, but most of the rest of the game seems like something she’d like.

Waiting Around for a Webcast

My afternoon will probably be a busy one, but for now, I have some time while waiting for a Microsoft Webcast on the Exchange Best Practices Analyzer to being. I’m still using the borrowed laptop here at work; I will be stopping by the IT office later today when I am in the other building. I need to go through a lot of basic training on general IT practices, something they call the qualification card, in order to get systems admin access. Its all right, but I have over 10 users computer experience and ninety percent of what is covered, isn’t what I’ll be focusing on day to day.

I’m looking forward to getting into the day to day life of an Exchange engineer again. I’ve already started a little troubleshooting on the system I’ll be responsible for, but I’m still pretty limited with my current access, and computer. I’ll need some admin rights, and a computer with Windows XP SP1 or better before I can be effective. For now, I am just answering general questions about Exchange functionality. Some things will be new to me, since this Exchange system is a hosted solution that will be shared between several clients, I’m sure it will have some unique issues, one being that Outlook Access is only available to premium users, so I suspect many users will be limited to Outlook Web Access. While OWA is good, it will present users with some difficulty, such as not being able to set up a reply to address, a question we have already been asked.

Pictures are online

I manually edited all my previous posts that included pictures to reflect the new URL for the picture files. Wasn't fun, but its done!

Pictures are offline

It seems my personal web space where I store my pictures has changed a little. I got an e-mail a while back saying that the url was going to change from www.cablespeed.com/~username to pws.cablespeed.com/~username. I think it will be a pain to go back and change all the links in my blog, but, I’ll see what I can do. For now, none of my old pictures will display.

I Sort of have a Computer at Work Now

Well, I don’t have my own computer at work, but I was able to borrow a laptop until I get my own. It’s not great, a Pentium III, but, it is a lot better than no computer at all. I was finally able to fill out my benefits forms, and all of that. Very little is done with the old paper method anymore, it’s all online. It looks like I’ll be dropping $165 or so per month on benefits. That will probably go up in January when I start contributing to the 401K.

Almost Two Weeks

I started work at a new job on April 25, 2005. Tomorrow will be May 5, 2005 and I still do not have a computer, or a telephone at my desk. I don’t mind being paid to do basically nothing, but it is rather boring. Hopefully tomorrow will be the day my computer is delivered.