Dave Arneson passed away yesterday. He played a critical role in the development of Dungeons and Dragons and role playing games in general, though he never received as much of the credit as Gary Gygax did. Both he and Gygax died relatively young. I spent my formative years playing games inspired by the work Arneson did, and to this day the fantasy computer and strategy games I play owe a debt to his imagination. My thoughts to his friends and family, and thanks for a life well lived. There’s a nice obit/writeup over on the escapist, and here’s Dave’s entry on wikipedia for those curious about his work and life.
kids rocking out
Bella and Simon rocking out
Bella and Simon rocking out
Posted via Pixelpipe.
Friday fun: Ferrari Virtual Racing
Apparently Ferrari‘s marketing budget is so large they can afford to give away a quality racing sim for the PC to help sell their cars. I doubt anyone reading this is in a position to buy a new Ferrari, but you can make your way over to their site and register to get yourself a copy of their racing sim for free. This is not a quick knockoff, this is a quality release comparable to a commercial title you’d pay $40-60. Definitely worth checking out. Some video to give you a sense of it (fast forward a couple of minutes, the demo shows off the menu system in the beginning. The actual racing starts after a bit):
Their plan is to continue to enhance this as time passes with new tracks and cars, including historical Ferraris.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](https://i0.wp.com/img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png)
Game finished: Monster Madness
This is possibly the worst game I’ve ever finished. Susan and I played through the action game Monster Madness, finishing last night after a couple of weeks of chipping away at it level by level. If you’re familiar with the old arcade game Gauntlet, or more recent action brawlers like the Xmen series of games on consoles, you have a general sense of the gameplay – top down camera, 1-4 players romping through the gameworld bashing the badguys.The best thing I can say about the game is that the concept was solid – fight your way through a modern day world overun with all the monsters from horror movies and legend colored with a satirical spin. Everything else? Terrible. The audio was apparantly downsampled or recorded at a really low bit rate, the voice acting was awful, the plot itself (4 heavily stereotyped teens out to save the world) was terrible, and the game was full of bugs – your character gets stuck on and in things, you randomly warp around the screen if the game gets bogged down, the framerate is highly variable but trending towards too low, and while it featured a ton of variety in weapons I ended up spending most of the game just whacking things with my default melee weapon because it was just overkill with the gadgets and dozens of alternate weapons.
Why we managed to finish this thing is hard to say. We like playing through coop together in games and we didn’t have any other handy options is I guess the main reason why. Anyway stay far away from this even if you find it cheap is my advice. I think I paid around $15 for it and that was too much. It’s available on PC, XBOX360 and PS3. We played on the PS3. Here’s a brief video to give you a sense of how the game plays:
Friday Fun: Diablo meets Doom
If you took one part Doom, one part Diablo, and mixed em up in a pc-only piece of freeware, you’d end up with Doom:Fall of Mars:
It’s exactly as fun as it looks – if you loved Diablo you’ll like this. It’s a tiny download and should run on pretty much any modern machine, its needs are modest. Definitely worth checking it out.
dogs waiting patiently
Soolin and Nori wait for us to get coffee
Soolin and Nori wait for us to get coffee
Posted via Pixelpipe.
Hot pellet stove action
8 months after we ordered it, our pellet stove is finally installed.
8 months after we ordered it, our pellet stove is finally installed.
Posted via Pixelpipe.
A triple double
2 days in a row, 3 eggs, all double yolks!!!
2 days in a row, 3 eggs, all double yolks!!!
Posted via Pixelpipe.
Latest in the Mazda 3 saga: Mazda USA does me a solid
The check engine light came on in my car for like maybe the 30th time last week. Mid-week, I dropped it off. I didn’t know it at the time, but my car was out of warranty based on date – I haven’t passed the mileage limit but the time had expired. They called the next day with bad news – I had a vacuum leak, they thought it was a sensor attached to the exhaust manifold and it was going to cost me at least $350, but could cost at least another $800 if there was something wrong with the exhaust manifold itself. Ouch! (the prices are high in part because it’s a modern car – they had to disassemble half the engine to get at these parts). Anyway they call back a day later with more bad news: it’s not the sensor, BUT – am I willing to risk another $250-300 to have them disassemble the exhaust manifold to check it, but not replace it?
At this point I was starting to wonder if they might be scamming me, but I took the gamble. Their thinking was, they had almost never seen an exhaust manifold in a car with mileage this low that had a leak, and that maybe something was fixable on the manifold itself by grinding it down/resealing etc.
At this point I’m looking at ~$500 with the possibility of another $800 hanging over my head, so I’m not happy and praying for a happy ending. Of course when they next call it’s nothing of the sort – they can’t fix the manifold, they have to replace it. Now I was half convinced they were scamming me, and I’m looking at ~$1300. Double ouch! They mention that they’re going to try and get Mazda corporate to reimburse some of the expense since while I’m technically out of warranty I have not exceeded the warranty miles and I have an unusual part failure issue. I don’t count much on this and at this point am pretty pissed. Poor Susan gets a couple of earfuls about this. Meanwhile I’ve also been in a rental all this time and since I’m not in warranty this is also on me and they won’t be able to get the car back to me until the following week. To sum up: all bad news.
When we return the rental (because Susan is back from Boston and can bring me to work) they tell me Mazda USA has agreed to pick up all parts costs plus most of the labor – all they ask me to pay is the local dealership’s time spent diagnosing, which amounts to ~$300. They even cover the cost of my rental.
!!!
Talk about a dealer doing you a solid. There’s no better way to earn customer loyalty than this kind of stuff, and they just earned mine bigtime. This car has been a pain in my ass with the constant check engine light stuff, but they definitely did the right thing by me this time around. Kudos to Mazda USA and Balise Mazda in Springfield MA, I owe a debt of gratitude to both of them.
Meanwhile I still can’t decide what to do with this car. It’s proven a constant source of reliability issues which are very out of the norm for the model and model year. I don’t figure I can continue to count on the dealership doing me solids when it has issues, so I feel like I ought to get out of the car now, but the situation kind of sucks – buying into something new means car payments again, just as I made my last payment! On the other hand, when this latest issue cropped up I was cussing myself since I swore after the last time that I had had it and it was time to trade the thing in. I dodged the bullet once, how many more times will I be able to? Susan and I will be debating this over the weekend, no idea how this will play out.
Nori in the bath
Shocking photo eh? It’s not nearly as bad as it looks. This is Nori getting a tomato juice bath after a skunk attack this fall. It’s such a striking photo I had to post it.
Dave's Place/Metamusing 