Made-Up Word of the Moment

dancepionage (n.) -
The act of crossing a dance floor whilst only pretending to dance, in the interest of chasing a target or some other form of espionage.

Mr. Smart's specialty was dancespionage.

Full Disclosure Dept.

A small post on the ZDoom forums in regards to Google Analytics has made me feel a little guilty. To quote Graf Zahl:

Anyone thinking that it's safe to surf without any kind of Javascript blocker should do some research about Google Analytics and similar services. After having read that I even went one step further and blocked all known tracking services in my HOSTS file so that they don't bug me ever again.

To make it absolutely clear: Yes, I do have Google Analytics installed on Blaugh. While I understand the privacy implications, I feel that the benefits outweigh the risks at this point. Graf doesn't seem to think so:

I''m not interested what you do with such data. But I am genuinely concerned what Google may do with it. In any case, you wouldn't get any info from me because even with Javascript on I blocked Google Analytics completely on my computer.

Please also note that, previously, I have not considered Graf Zahl to be a particularly nice person.

I'll just say this right now. If you have a problem with my Blaugh tracking which of my pages you read and what country or ISP you're from, just install NoScript or similar. In the meantime, I do like being able to tell how many views a day I'm getting, and Google Analytics is far better at that sort of thing than one of those irritating web counters.

Morbid Curiosity: Soldier of Fortune Payback

You don't even see this kind of violence in R-rated movies anymore

It's been a mighty long while. Today's MC article is loaded with visual aids for no apparent reason. They actually look good. Do not be fooled. The subject of today's ridicule is not a thing of beauty.

Our target today is Soldier of Fortune: Payback, the long-awaited third installment of Raven Software's ultra-violent Soldier of Fortune series. This entry actually has nothing to do with its predecessors in any way whatsoever - not even the development team, who were apparently busy with Marvel: Ultimate Alliance at the time this game was created. No, apparently this particular entry in the series sucks so much that not even Mr. John Mullins himself wanted anything to do with it. Evidently it wasn't even supposed to be a Soldier of Fortune game until the very last moment.

Colonel Miller, your buddy for exactly 30 seconds of this mission. He'll show up later to kill you and the guy you're supposed to rescue. Bastard.

Professional reviews of the game are not positive in the least. IGN gave it an uncharacteristically low 5.9 out of 10:

"If you are hoping for a return to the glory days of the older PC versions, you are in for a rude awakening."

The reviews only get worse as we travel the 'net, going as far down as PC Gamer UK's 1.8 out of 10 review, which if anything seems to lament the fact that the game wasn't even worse:

"If only it were truly as bad as Soldner, then it would have the redeeming value of being fun to show your friends."

So, of course, I had to go grab a copy for myself to see if this was truly as horrible as they make it sound.

Your character actually grabs a handful of shells, loads them, and then grabs another handful. A neat touch...now if only he didn't do it so slowly.

The very first thing I noticed about this game was that, by default, the game does NOT support my monitor's native screen resolution of 1360x768. I was forced to exit the game and edit the game's config file to make it work with this screen mode, and even then I was unable to go change any further settings without the game reverting back to 640x480. Pain.

Payback doesn't seem to pull any story on you, instead giving you a thrown-together Call of Duty 4 style video briefing that only vaguely tells you what you're supposed to do, plus descriptive text on the loading screen. The game does at least let you select some equipment to begin with, though there really doesn't seem to be much point in picking different weapons, as they all seem to perform the same, except that the SMG's can't sever limbs and the shotguns take too long to reload.

SoF:PB attempts to place emphasis on realism, in the vein of Call of Duty. As such, you have a Sprint key and a button to aim your weapon. Unfortunately the sprint key disallows you from doing pretty much everything while you're in motion (including the ability to turn), and the Aim function just centers your weapon on screen with a mild zoom-in, and no real accuracy benefits. If you ask me, if your game plans on doing this, they may as well go the whole way and give you real iron-sights, because this just looks dumb.

The player character can't aim for shit. Evidently nobody ever taught him how to use the sights on his gun. Mercs these days...

I managed to play about one and a half levels of this game before becoming convinced that the game had nothing else new to offer except pretty graphics. The first mission took place in some Middle Eastern country (presumably either Afghanistan or Iraq, for purposes of selling the game to the people who live, eat, drink, and breathe Modern Warfare), where I was required to go look for a Chinese diplomat. Pardon my asking, Activision, but if I were looking for a Chinese diplomat, wouldn't it be easier to look for him in China? No, says the game, he's in fucking Afghanistan and you're supposed to go rescue him from a perilous traffic jam.

Oh, and when you find said diplomat, the guy that's been helping you for most of the mission shows up and shoots him. Great. Turns out he got a higher offer from some competing mercenary company, so he does a complete heel-face-turn and tries to kill you as well. So it's your job to kill him first, thus satisfying the game's subtitle of "Payback". Thing is, though, this is still only the first level out of about 14. So the story has us tracking our once-friend's footsteps across the world...and we're never told why.

A Chinese soldier, disassembled into his component parts for easy storage.

I suppose I should make things interesting by pointing out what the game does well. There's really only one thing: the blood. Unfortunately, it seems the blood is about the same as that of Soldier of Fortune 2, in that limbs can be severed, heads can be removed, and there is a lot of the red stuff going around (almost more than a human body can possibly carry). To show a screenshot of the carnage would probably set off several web filters, so of course I'm going to go ahead and show it. I haven't seen a game so awesomely gory since No More Heroes.

The game also does graphics pretty well. This makes it seem like Activision's budget went entirely into the graphics, with an engine that shows many, many awesome effects and buzzwords like light bloom. Now if only I didn't have to hack my saved game data to get it to run at the right screen resolution.

I'm dead. I sure do see this screen a lot.

My question for this game was whether or not the "professionals" (I use the term lightly) were correct in their judgment of Soldier of Fortune: Payback. Was the game truly as bad as they said? The answer, I've decided, is no.

It's worse.

The Comfort Gun

I'm a gun-nut. I'm sure I've established that a few times; in particular my love of revolvers. I've got a relatively large collection of Nerf guns and at least three lightguns lying around. Yesterday, a new one was added to the ranks, based on one of the most recognizable revolvers out there: the Colt Python.

The gun in question is the Konami Justifier, the official lightgun of Lethal Enforcers and one of the most controversial video game peripherals of all time. This gun is one of the many things that brought us the media outcry over video game violence in the early 90's, resulting in the birth of the ESRB.

And it's really damned comfortable to hold. I sometimes find myself holding the Justifier in my non-mouse hand, simply on principle of how well it fits in said hand. The only real problem with this gun? It doesn't work on my LCD screen, which means if I ever want to use it (and my two GunCon2's) again, I'll need to hijack the TV downstairs. I was smart and got the Genesis version of the gun, though, which means Snatcher and Mad Dog McCree (I swear to never, ever mention the two games in the same sentence ever again).

I really love lightguns, especially when they feel so great in one's hand. The only lightgun to outclass the Justifier, in my opinion, is the assault rifle on Ghost Squad, which I really wish I could modify into a Wii remote shell. It is an awesome piece of work. I'm sure, with a little bit of work, one could gut a Wii Nunchuck and remove the motion sensitivity so that the selective-fire switch on the rifle could be replaced with the analog stick...but that's a project that is beyond my scope.

The quest continues for a Wii gun shell that actually has front AND rear sights on it. Really...is it so hard to put a couple of pegs on the thing? The ones I've seen either lack sights entirely, or only have the front sight, which is infuriating for games like Ghost Squad which will actually allow you to turn off the reticule and recalibrate the remote sensor.

The Browser Curse, Part Two

I'm actually happily using Firefox again. Not entirely sure what the problem was, though, as it has not cropped up again since Sunday, even after reenabling the extensions and plugins I had previously disabled (which is to say, three of them - StumbleUpon proved not to be the culprit, and no effects have been seen either way in regards to the Quake Live and Battlefield Heroes beta plugins).

As stated in the previous post's comment thread, I also have no idea what caused the Opera site to stop responding. I did confirm that their servers were having issues at the time, though of what sort I am unaware (I conducted a few tests with acquaintances, and through DownForEveryoneOrJustMe.com).

For the record, my computer has had very few problems since the removal of that accursed Creative X-Fi sound card. Not one crash, freeze, or bluescreen. Well, unless you count the time I accidentally kicked the power cord out. I don't count that one.

The Browser Curse

Alright, I'm fed up with web browsing today. It's only through some kind of divine miracle that I already had an old version of Opera installed on here.

Firefox has crashed about 14 times today, every time with not a single thing done to provoke it. All I wanted to do was read a damn forum post. The simple act of scrolling would crash it. Sometimes it would crash while idle. I'd download a file, and once that finished downloading the browser would promptly suicide.

So I've decided now that it's time to stop sending error reports to Mozilla and just try another browser. But here's the thing. Opera's website appears to be completely missing. There is no news about it, no notes on the Opera Wiki, nobody seems to acknowledge it - but it's very clear that opera.com is no longer accessible as of this writing.

This is really a bad moment for me. Can't get at my Firefox bookmarks, can't update Opera to the latest version. Google Chrome lacks some crucial features that I need, like being able to configure the tab bar's behavior. I'm hesitant to try Safari, and no way in hell will I attempt to use Internet Explorer, even with a severely tweaked Hosts file.

Much as I hate to say it, the Internet is going on hiatus today until one of these browsers decides to cooperate with me!

A Valentine's Greeting For 2009

This year I'm doing something different. I'm going to give a valentine's greeting to real girls/women, and not ones that are related to me either (though in some cases I do kind of wish they were). I will not be using full names, for privacy reasons. Don't want people stalking these lovely people. And I honestly don't care if they're all married, because it's the thought that counts. =P This year's greetings go to:

- Ashley, the pretty hairdresser that hacked off my pseudo-mullet a couple weeks ago.

- Tabatha, who I met through my good friend Blain, and somehow completely forgot to introduce myself or engage in meaningful conversation with.

- The chivalrous Atma of Hardcore Gaming 101. I don't care if she's more interested in Agrias than me - she is awesome and deserves respect.

- Heather, the receptionist of a temp agency I deal with on a weekly basis. I don't even remember what she looks like, but her voice is always cheerful and uplifting when I call in to make sure they're still going to contact me when they find me a job.

- Blain's mom. You sure cook a fine batch o' taters.

...Are Never Parted In Vain

I've always been a fan of a good computerized puzzle game. Dr. Brain, Myst...The Fool's Errand. The latter is the masterpiece of one Cliff Johnson, computer puzzle artisan. He did make a couple of similar games, like At The Carnival and 3 in Three, but now he's finally nearing completion of his latest: The Fool and His Money.

Done in exactly the spirit of the original Fool's Errand - characters inspired by the cards of a tarot deck - but with better graphics and amazing sound. And you don't have to wrestle with an old Mac or a Mac emulator to run it. Cliff has a teaser available on the site now that the game is nearing final beta-testing, and if you pre-order ($39.99 plus shipping) you'll be included in the Compendium of True Believers. But you'd better hurry. He doesn't list a release date, so I'm assuming he's going to spring the game on us any day now!

Link to the teaser's download page (for Windows): http://www.thefoolsgold.com/downloads/TFaHM-teaser-WIN.htm

Posting From Some Guy's Powerbook

It's been an interesting last couple of days.

Not too long ago - might have been Sunday or so - my good buddy Blain gave me a call, alerting me to a converted old movie theater in Portland called The Avalon. This place was straight out of the 40's, he said, original marquee and posters outside. But it was more what was inside that had me interested. The Avalon was still showing movies - fairly recent ones at that - but two of the rooms had been converted into video arcades, courtesy of Wunderland.

I had to get in on that, so come Tuesday, I had Blain pick me up and drive the two of us into Portland to visit my personal gaming Mecca. The result wasn't the most amazing game experience I've had, but it's not often that I get to go into a video arcade and goof around for a few hours with a friend.

Arcades being what they are these days, the auditorium was filled to the brim with the most gimmicky arcade games that could be found. Plenty of gun games and racing games, but surprisingly also a pair of unique pinball games, and LOTS of Skee-Ball. Hell, not even the Wunderland in Beaverton still had most of their Skee-Balls left...

Our arcade experience began with Ghost Squad, perhaps the most satisfying arcade gun game experience I've had in a while. A full-size assault rifle, at my finger tips, with recoil and a select-fire switch. Gun-nut that I am, I had to play every single gun game in the entire building. From Ghost Squad, I moved on to Time Crisis 4 (which unfortunately had the recoil disabled on both guns), Let's Go Jungle (which, in lieu of score, ranked my "compatibility" with my partner...which would have been great if my partner were a woman), and finally L.A. Machineguns (the most obviously titled arcade game since Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo).

As far as racing games were concerned, I only played one: Sega Rally 2. If you've read previous posts, you probably already know why I chose to play this one. Unfortunately, thanks to the arcade's relatively high volume, I almost didn't hear that distinctive "Game Over, Yeeeeaahhh!"

After about an hour of Skee-Ball and other redemption games, I made my way to the pinball tables, of which the venue had only two: Indiana Jones and Batman. The Batman table in question appeared to be based on both Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, had some interesting features but probably the easiest skill-shot ever. The Indiana Jones table was apparently the Williams one from the early 90's, so no mention was made of the most recent movie (and thank goodness because I haven't seen that one yet). I think perhaps one or two of the blinkers on that table were not working, because it kept launching balls around without my knowledge. Perhaps this is why arcade operators don't like keeping pinballs around anymore...

The journey was an enlightening experience for sure - though more in regards to how horrible traffic is in downtown Portland than how awesome arcades are these days - but I certainly don't regret the trip. Well, except for the traffic part. And getting lost. Ah well. That's what friends are for, right? (Er, not the getting lost part...)

Lines

There comes a point when even the loosest of bloggers must come out and draw a line. Now that Google Analytics is telling me what people are searching for when they come upon Blaugh, I have to refer to one of these previously-drawn lines when I say...

Will the person who discovered Blaugh using the search term "anna navarre hentai" please stand up?

How desperate can you possibly get when you are looking for naked pictures - or worse - of a Russian cyborg lady who isn't even that attractive, implants or no? And for that matter, why did you think that an innocent, family friendly (cough) internet journal such as mine would contain said naked pictures? Hell, I think I've mentioned Navarre all of once, in a post about being passive-aggressive and staging the death of Juan Lebedev via animal tranquilizer.

This brings me to my "lines" though - below is a list of things I will never do on Blaugh:

- Naked pictures
- Snuff films
- 4chan memes (until they are considered neither memes nor 4chan)
- Misleading links to horrible and gross pictures
- Posts about how much I suck (yeah right)
- Posts about how long it's been since the last time I posted (again, yeah right)
- Quoting the Monty Python "Penis Song", word for word, for lack of a better thing to post about
- Bad Jeremy Clarkson imitations
- Drinking several quarts of blue food coloring before a urine test
- Drinking red food coloring instead, and screaming loudly during the same

The Weasel Ideal: Most Unlikely

I've had a revelation. The following idea only occurred to me about five minutes ago, and this post is mostly written on the spot as I try to gather my thoughts. So I apologize if this post doesn't seem to have a consistent format.

I want to see a pinball table based on the Metal Gear Solid series. Just one.

The overall theme of the table would probably focus more on the first Metal Gear Solid, but with elements drawn from the other MGS games for flavor. The board would look like the iconic Heliport from Shadow Moses Island, with the dominating artwork being the helipad (with working miniature spotlights). The helipad's H symbol is divided into sections to denote modes that have been lit or bonuses to be awarded elsewhere. The spotlights would actively keep track of the ball using special motion sensors - if the player pays attention, the spotlights will flash little "!" lights when the ball enters their field of view. Gameplay-wise this is just superficial, except for special modes which will be elaborated on later.

The layout of the table would feature a healthy amount of holes for the ball to drop into and appear elsewhere, as well as tracks and one ramp looping around the back of the table. A set of three jet bumpers is up top, where the ball will fall into upon it being launched. This is also where the five S-N-A-K-E rollovers are located, which will increase bonus multiplier when finished. The table's skillshot is timing-based. While the ball remains in the launcher, the dot-matrix display will show the view from Snake's sniper scope. If the ball is launched when the scope is pointed at the guard's head, one million points are awarded, times the number of the ball in play (so 3 million if the player has launched ball 3).

MGS Pinball centers around Solid Snake, and the table's main antagonists are Liquid Snake and Revolver Ocelot. All three can be heard speaking as the game is played, as well as occasional Codec messages from Snake's support team. Some special game modes will involve battles against the rest of the members of Foxhound, including Psycho Mantis, Vulcan Raven, and Sniper Wolf.

This table's special modes include, of course, a duel with Psycho Mantis. Roughly once every three or four times his mode is triggered, Mantis stops the action to "read" the player. He will say different things based on the player's play style, i.e. how fast the flippers are flipped in a short amount of time, how hard the ball is launched, how many skill shots are landed, etc. Since this is pinball and not a console game with a memory card system, we'll have to settle for subtle detection of what the player has done. "I see you are quick to panic. You are very jumpy and tend to fumble the flippers...you either have quick reflexes, or you are a coward!" "You are easily frustrated...the table is not a punching bag!" "The owner of this machine will not be pleased with you..." "You are very impulsive, aren't you? You shouldn't keep buying in..." During Mantis' mode (which involves shooting mystery ramps), the DMD will randomly display messages like "INSERT COIN". The flippers will randomly flip themselves.

Another special mode centers around Vulcan Raven. The object of his mode is to hit the jet bumpers as much as possible, awarding 100,000 points for each hit during the time limit. Sniper Wolf's mode involves hitting a sequence of three ramps, in order, during the time limit. If the player manages to complete all of the Fox-Hound modes, a battle against Liquid Snake in Metal Gear REX is begun, where the player must hit the upper loop several times. If the ball goes up but not all the way around the loop, Snake says, "It's no good! I can't do it!"

Spotlight Mode - a short mini-mode triggered by landing the ball in a specific hole - tasks the player with shooting a ramp without rolling it under the spotlights. The ramp in question will be easy to hit from a flipper-trap, meaning the shot itself will be reliant more on timing than accuracy. If the spotlight spots the ball, the signature MGS alert sound is played, and the player must make a different shot to evade the guards (a randomly chosen hole, or the upper loop).

MGS's personality is as clear as day for this table. The ball saver function, when triggered, is punctuated with Meryl shouting "Don't move!" Special modes are usually started with short Codec moments between Snake and his superiors, with the exception of Mantis, whose mode begins with the pinball machine faking a power outage, lights out, and everything. The end-game Match involves a Russian Roulette from Ocelot. Ocelot twirls his gun, spins the chamber, and fires. When the smoke clears, the Match number is shown and then compared with the last two digits of score.

If the player's score is above a certain level, the end of their last ball does not mean the end of the game. This table will feature a "Powerball" mode, in which the table will quickly launch three balls and the player will be tasked with hitting the marked shots within a time limit. Only these shots will score points; jet and slingshot bumpers will not award points during Powerball. The table will relaunch any balls drained during this mode until the end of the time limit, at which point Ocelot will do the Match.

Finally, if the player manages to tilt the machine, Ocelot shouts, "Sorry, but that won't work this time!" and the ball ends. A slam-tilt will result in Snake's support team chastising him (as well as a short lecture from Naomi about taking out your pent-up frustrations on an innocent pinball machine), as well as an instant game over. The speech for this is somewhat louder than most table speech, so that the operator is made aware of your activities.

Great For Kids!*

We here at Blaugh officially endorse Zarathustra Productions' latest platform game, Eversion. Truly a platforming masterpiece and a genius gameplay concept.

* Blaugh cannot be held responsible for your childrens' accidental perusal of Eversion. Side-effects of playing this game will most likely include dramatically increased heart rate and high-octane nightmare fuel. You have been warned.

Silicon Sacrifice

My computer had issues with sound this evening around 10 PM.

Over the three to four years that I've owned my Dell XPS 600 (not nearly as impressive as it seemed in 2005), I've been slowly having parts of it degrade. The video cards were the first to go, exhibiting ridiculous graphical glitches after even 15 minutes of power-on time, following an 8-hour complete powerdown.

Tonight, though, I decided that my Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi was no longer worth using. The issues I've had with it are numerous. Driver crashes, complete sound-outages requiring a total reboot of Windows, minor sound-outages requiring me to use the Mode Switcher program to change to Media Creation Mode and back again (why a sound card needs to switch modes in the first place is beyond me), and crackling sounds that also required a mode-switch to remedy. Also, the microphone port did a horrible job of capturing any audio input at all, at least at a decently audible volume. Even a battery-amplified microphone barely came through unless I literally jammed the mic into my mouth.

The issue tonight was one of the mode-switch variety. I opened Creative Mode Switcher as usual, but upon cycling it to Media Creation Mode, the computer blue-screened and put out a wall of text so long that it would not fit on screen.

Enough of this, I bellowed at the XPS tower, I must now slay you where you stand! Then I promptly pushed the power switch. A little surgery later, the X-Fi was removed, my speaker cable was transferred to the onboard Realtek chip (already an improvement over the $100 sound card it's replacing), and the system in proper booting order once again. The X-Fi is now in suspended animation, in an ESD-proof bag on my desk. I have no plans for it yet, aside from parading it around my local village as a kill trophy, a la Fable. ("I have slain this foul beast!" "Wtf, a sound card?")

The Online Game Hate Post

I may have said at many points how much I don't like playing games online. Today I'm going to explain why.

My first online game was a Half-Life deathmatch server back in the v1009 days. I had some fun with it. The map was Snarkpit, the players usually played in silence without much chat, and I was up against players of similar skill to mine. I actually won a few matches. There were the kinds of people who just spammed the snark pickups, but that was part of the game.

I moved on to Counter-Strike about when it started getting popular, around the Beta 5.2 days - when the silencers were permanently welded on to the USP and M4, the AK sucked, and the XM1014 reloaded at lightning speed. The map was CS_Assault. I was a terrorist. I always bought flashbangs and usually threw them into the air duct above the warehouse, which paved the way for a few quick Glock headshots.

It wasn't until around Beta 6.0 came out when I started to realize just how bad the community could get. I had a close encounter with a player named Malloy, who seemed to be using cheats to get ahead. His score was hundreds of times that of the other players, even on his own team. He only died once, from a rogue grenade that he missed. The rest of his team seemed to encourage him. Attempts to join his team resulted in Malloy's defection to the other side.

I bailed out of the server and looked for another one. This one was alright, the players matched my skill and tactics, but then came the chat messages. Every cardinal rule of the English language was broken in one sentence. A few messages later, the in-game language was now equivalent of an R-rated movie. Soon it would become X-rated, and then far beyond, as the other players made such colorful threats as inserting their genitalia into the gunshot wounds they had just inflicted with their Arctic Warfares. I left shortly before such a snuff-film became a reality.

About that time, I quit playing online for a while. I hadn't bothered playing anything online until the PC version of Halo arrived, and then I mostly enjoyed myself until I came upon a Team Slayer game where the members of my team would jump in front of my Warthog so that my spawn timer shot through the roof. Okay, I thought, I guess they don't want me driving the Hogs. I jumped out and started to press toward the opposing base on foot. Fuel rod cannon to the back, from my own teammate. I couldn't spawn for longer than three seconds without somebody on my team sticking plasma grenades to my face.

That was about it for me. I figured a change of genre would serve me well enough, so I acquired a copy of Final Fantasy XI Online and played that for a while, until about level 18. Along the way, I encountered the worst parties ever, including one that seemed comprised of people that would otherwise stalk me had I not partied with them. One party recruited my Red Mage character - level 15 - as the party healer, but neglected to tell me that their group was made up of level 35's. I could not even access the area they were in. I asked them why they recruited me, and received this in response: "why the hell did you join if you're that level?" You never TOLD me what level you were, I muttered as I kicked out of the party and was promptly slain by a wandering Goblin.

My recent attempts at online gaming have met with similar failure. The Specialists, a mod for original HL, was fun for quite a while, but most of their community frowned upon my preferred selection of equipment: a simple revolver. Granted, it was a Raging Bull, caliber .454 Casull, but the problem they seemed to have was that I was too good at using it. I reasoned with them: TS has options where the server can disallow certain weapons from spawning or being used, so why not use those? None of them listened to me, instead continuing their rallies of "only niggers use bulls". I quote them as directly as possible. If anybody claims racism is dead, they're more wrong than 2+2=10. (in base four, I'm fine!)

These days it seems like this sort of community is only spreading further, especially since the advent of 4chan, the so-called "Anonymous", and the phrase "for the lulz". TF2 isn't even immune, as every single server I join has at least one engineer planting his sentry gun inside a wall where nobody can touch it while it rockets the hell out of the opposing team. Add to this the apparent ability for Spies to backstab somebody from the front, Snipers to gain headshots by shooting people in the foot, and how I can't seem to get a single kill anymore without first being Dominated by the entire opposing team. Maybe my skills are diminishing, but I think this is just plain stupid.

It's not just the community though - my skills never seem to improve. Most would tell me that if I suck at a game that I should just keep practicing. It's hard to practice when my average lifespan online is 10 seconds. If their idea of practice is to repeatedly submerge myself in lava, then by all rights I should be as good as the professional gamers by now, but that just ain't happening. Online games, unlike offline, do not have difficulty sliders; there is no recourse for failure and there is no way to tell what sort of players you're going to be up against when you join a server. Hell, Call of Duty 4 routinely stuck me in free-for-all servers with people ranked as Generals. Generals with sniper rifles and the Martyrdom perk, so every time I manage to kill one, they drop all their grenades and blow me to smithereens afterward.

If anybody expects me to play a game online, I will decline unless the server is comprised mainly of people I actually know. If I don't know them, then I'll have no reservations about quitting if I'm not having fun.

Dr. Crantime, Report To Bioanalysis

Thanks to a good friend of mine, Blaugh is now equipped with hidden cameras that will clue me in to how many people visit the site, what search terms they're using, and where they came from. It's nice to be able to monitor traffic. Thank you, friend, and also thank you Google Analytics for such an awesome piece of equipment.

That being said...who found my site by searching for "80 salsa grandma"?