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Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was released earlier this week and I bought a copy even though I had said that I would hold off buying it for a while. It’s a fun game so far. One thing going around is that some people are saying that they won’t play the game because the main character is black. That just seems ridiculous to me. I think the main characters in most video games that I play are white, but I really don’t think about that sort of thing. I admit that when I’m given the ability to customize my character, I do tend to make them look somewhat like me. But that’s because I want to play as a projection of myself, not because I don’t like playing white characters.

It’s official. Everquest II will be shipping on Nov. 8, which is a week earlier than previous estimates. It looks like they’ll be getting a headstart on World of Warcraft. Though they still have some problems to fix, Sony thinks they’ll be taken care of by then. I can’t wait.

Update: It looks like Nov. 22 is the official release date for World of Warcraft.

I like to play video games a lot, but there are people out there who play way too much. One of the worst things about playing games online is that there are little kiddies out there who you can’t even begin to compete against. I think a lot of this comes from many hours of gameplay. These people know all the tricks to playing the game. They memorize the location of everything on the map (weapons, spawn points, hiding places, etc). Even when I used to play more, I wouldn’t have remembered most of that. I guess that’s why I didn’t do well most of the time.

I played in The Screen Savers LAN Party last night. We played the Battlefield 1942 Desert Combat Mod and I was terrible. I didn’t get any kills and I had died about 10 times when I last checked the score. Maybe one day I’ll find a game that I’m good at.

I got an email concerning The Matrix Online Beta this morning. I think that’s all I will say about that.

Earlier tonight I played City of Heroes for the last time. I decided that I would quit once I got to a certain level and my goal was to get to that level this weekend. I was in the beta for this game and I bought it shortly after it’s release in late April. When I was in Ohio I hardly ever played and when I got back I would sometimes go many days without playing. However, over the past couple of weeks it’s been a lot more fun and I’ve been putting more hours into it. This is definitely one of the best MMOG’s that I have ever played.

Tonight I gained the ability of flight (better than the hover ability I had before) and took a little trip around the area before I left (see above pictures). During my last session, I played with the best group I had ever played with, so I started to have second thoughts about canceling my account. Now that I’ve thought about it, I think I’ll just go ahead and quit and devote my time to other things. Also, if I cancel my account by the 6th I can avoid getting charged another month.

Over the years I have avoided getting hooked on Everquest. I’ve been tempted a few times to buy it, but always decided against it. I played the beta of the PS2 version for about an hour but never got into it. Yesterday, I reserved my copy of Everquest II. When I reserved it, I got the Starter Kit, which has a character creation tool and an account key that gives you boots for extra speed when you start the game. It also has discounts on PC upgrades and some videos and mp3’s. The guy at the store gave me a box like the ones that most PC games come in and a separate CD sleeve. It looks like they both contain the same thing except that the box has an extra card that gives you access to some information on their website. I don’t know if the guy did that on purpose because I’m in there all the time or if he didn’t realize that they contain almost the same thing. Or maybe he’s supposed to give everybody 2 kits. Anyway, I’ll probably work on creating my character sometime soon. I told myself that if I ever played another MMOG I would be a healer. There never seems to be enough of them around.

I was annoyed by how many people were on cloud nine this past week after the football team beat Tulane last weekend. It didn’t take long for everybody to realize just how much improvement we still need. Auburn beat us 43-14 today.

Last night I tried to use my dryer and it wouldn’t come on. It was working fine last weekend when I last used it. The thing is only 2 years old. That’s what I get for going with the cheap brand. Too bad I didn’t get the extended warranty because the one that came with it has expired. The repairman will be here Monday to look at it.

Next week is the beginning of the Fall Video Game Barrage. I’m looking forward to it, but I’m not sure I’ll have enough time to fully enjoy it.

I had a pretty good holiday weekend. At least it was different from the norm.

Friday night I went to a cookout at the Moorheads. Pretty much everyone that works for Dr. Moorhead was there, as well as his family, and some of their friends. I like to eat.

Saturday before the game I went tailgating with Alex, Sacha, Derek, Jean, Joel, and some of their friends whose names I can’t remember. They were friends of D, J, J and at least one of them used to work for Dr. Moorhead. We even went back there after the game for some more eating/drinking.

The game was a really good start to the Croom era. They gave away free t-shirts at the game that say “Maroon is all that matters,” which is based on a quote from his first press conference as head coach. MSU beat Tulane 28-7. We were sitting close to the visitor’s section, so I had to listen to them the whole time. It took a while for the offense to really get going, but at least it eventually did. I was happy about the low number of stupid mistakes on offense and the low number of penalties. I’m not optimistic enough to think that we can win 6-7 games, but at least we may be able to compete.

Sunday and Monday were spent playing video games and doing chores around the apartment.

Oh well, back to the grind tomorrow.

A couple of days ago I reinstalled Linux on my PS2. I messed something up the first time and I never got a chance to do any real stuff on it before. I was able to get some simple OpenGL programs to run. I’ll be making the next Final Fantasy in no time.

I installed Windows XP Service Pack 2 on my laptop. It only took about 2 hours. I hope I don’t have any major problems with it.

I’ve been playing a lot of GTA 3 lately since I never beat the game and the sequel comes out soon. I’m a little behind on the video games.

Check out these links when you have time:
Halo 2 gameplay footage – I can’t wait to play this game.
How to Write Unmaintainable Code – Jason sent me this one. It’s a little long, but I thought it was pretty funny.
HomestarRunner – Really cool Flash stuff. Check out the Strongbad emails if nothing else. Thanks again to Jason for telling me about this a long time ago.

I finally got my desktop machine up and running again. Since I had been getting a lot of random crashes over the previous few weeks, I decided to do a repair on Windows a few days ago. During the installation process, I kept errors that always repeated when I restarted Windows. After thinking things over and trying some suggestions, I finally decided to wipe the drive clean and reinstall Windows. Luckily, I was able to get the important data off of the drive. Now that I had taken care of that, I could finally play my new game that’s been sitting around unopened for a week: Doom 3.

Doom 3 seems like an awesome game so far. I’ve only played through the first few missions. It looks great. My only complaint is how dark the first area was, but I’m sure they meant for it to be hard to see. I was worried that my system wouldn’t handle the game so well, but I haven’t had any problems. The people that say this game is scary aren’t kidding. I’m eager to try it out online even though I’ll probably get beaten.