Oh man! I finally get my grubby little hands on a next-gen gaming console and NOW I can’t even find the time to play it! It’s kind of eating me up inside. I do have certain family-related responsibilities so it’s an eternal battle between good and evil, yin and yang, Vader and Luke! On the lighter side, the kids are getting great use out of it because of our Netflix subscription. They have an endless library of kiddie shows to consume. The wife and I can watch old movies and whatever else is available in my “instant queue”. On the darker side… I’m just not playing as much games as I’d like.

As of date, we have a couple decent games in our collection (my son and I):

• Grand Theft Auto IV
• Lego Batman
• Lego Star Wars: The Complete Collection
• Pure

My main motivation to get a next-gen system was to experience GTA IV. The irony of my purchase is I feel very outdated whenever I post a microblog or status update about it. So; all the fun I’m having with GTA, I have to keep it to myself. The Xbox came with Lego Batman and Pure. We presented those games as a present to my son, Alex, for his birthday (over the weekend). So; now we’re playing those games.

I’ve also tasted the sweet nector of “Game Demos” with such titles as:

• Mass Effect 2
• Batman: Arkham Asylum
• Just Cause 2
• Split Second
• Forza Motorsport 3
• Iron Man 2

I first tried Iron Man 2 with the thought that maybe this could be a good mini-game for Alex to play with. Wow; what a god awful game! I quickly removed it from my system. It actually felt nice cleansing my system of such a badly created game. My brother ranted on and on about how awesome Arkham Asylum and Just Cause 2 is. I can certainly agree. Arkham Asylum is a lot more fun that I thought it would be and the darkness of that world is very engaging.

Funny; while writing this post I realized that I actually have played a lot of games, but in my head… I want MORE!

Rub it in Why Dontcha’

To make my late purchase even worse, about two weeks after I finally bought an Xbox 360… the NEW Xbox 360 was announced at E3! It has 250 GB of hard drive space compared to my 120 GB AND it has built-in wifi. I paid $100 for that stupid wiki adapter I have plugged into my console! Damn I feel more and more outdated!  So; we’re going to see if we can give back the outdated Xbox to BestBuy and get the new console. It’s releasing this week.

Engaget has a good article explaining what’s new with this slim version of the console.

I haven’t kept up with E3, but I do listen to the EUCast at SoloSound.net.  I heard their interview with Matt Higby of Sony Online Entertainment for a FREE MMO coming out this fall.  It looks like something I can really get into with my kids. Now I just need to find them a computer besides my personal desktop. It’s not The Old Republic, but I guess it will have to do. Keep feedin’ the fanatics!

Today, May 25th, is known by many devout Star War fans as “Day of the Jedi“.  Yet after doing a little bit of research I now know that today is really “Geek Pride Day“. I like “Day of the Jedi” better! I missed posting something on the epically-coincidental “May the fourth be with you” Day (May 4th) so I made sure not to miss this opportunity.

What is “Day of the Jedi”? For those poor Star Trek souls that don’t know, I’ll shed some light on the subject. Or you can look it up on Wikipedia like I did.

The Profound Meaning of Day of the Jedi

The release dates for the original Star Wars series were Episode IV: May 25 1977, Episode V: May 21 1980, and Episode VI: May 25 1983. So; choose the common denominator (May 25)… and there you go! Now go out side or on the Internet and show Star Wars even MORE love than you already do!

Rights and Responsibilities

What really made me want to write a post were the “rights and responsibilities” of Geek Pride Day. You can find it on their Wikipedia page.

A manifesto was created to celebrate the first Geek Pride Day which included the following list of basic rights and responsibilities of geeks.

Rights

1. The right to be even geekier.
2. The right to not leave your house.
3. The right to not like football or any other sport.
4. The right to associate with other nerds.
5. The right to have few friends (or none at all).
6. The right to have as many geeky friends as you want.
7. The right to be out of style.
8. The right to be overweight and short-sighted.
9. The right to show off your geekiness.
10. The right to take over the world.

Responsibilities

1. Be a geek, no matter what.
2. Try to be nerdier than anyone else.
3. If there is a discussion about something geeky, you must give your opinion.
4. To save and protect all geeky material.
5. Do everything you can to show off geeky stuff as a “museum of geekiness.”
6. Don’t be a generalized geek. You must specialize in something.
7. Attend every nerdy movie on opening night and buy every geeky book before anyone else.
8. Wait in line on every opening night. If you can go in costume or at least with a related T-shirt, all the better.
9. Never throw away anything related to geekdom.
10. Try to take over the world!

Why is this Post Categorized as Linux-Related?

That’s a very good question. 1.) I put this paragraph (or disclaimer) here because this post will be picked up by Planet Fedora. 2.) I could be over-generalizing, but I’m assuming that there are more Star Wars fans within the Linux community than in Windows, Mac, or whatever non-Linux community is out there. 3.) After posting this I realized that TODAY is the release date for Fedora 13 Goddard! Now that must tell you something about the Fedora Project folks. They know how to release a distribution in style! Enjoy this very special day of the Jedi and go install Fedora!

So; I’m on Windows 7 doing a search for themes and I came across two Star Wars sets that have some real nice backgrounds and icons. I found them on the SWTOR forum. I thought I’d share. Thanks Paulius for creating them.

• http://www.mediafire.com/file/gymhnwnknmd/tor001.themepack
• http://www.mediafire.com/?mmg2ittdzmg

I stumbled upon this site after seeing a tweet from @emperor, “This is not according to my design…” These are the coolest set of pictures I’ve seen for stormtroopers… and even better, TOY stormtroopers!

What Stormtroopers Do On Their Day Off – Part 2

Here’s a list of other related sites:

• http://wildammo.com/2009/08/09/what-stormtroopers-do-on-their-day-off/
• http://actionfiguresbuff-jon.com/star-wars-the-secret-life-of-toys/

I really don’t know how to date these entries. We’ll see how long it takes me to no longer write “day n”. Well; I’m making some subtle moves into completing my childhood dream of becoming a video game developer. Two nights ago, I came up with a rough plan, I’m hosting that document on Google Docs, and last night I did some more research. I’m reading this article from GameDev.net on Game Programming Beginners Guide, and luckily for me, they are suggesting C/C++. I really wished they’d suggest that language. It was the first system-level programming language I learned and I really have some kind of loyalty to it.

So; based on that GameDev article, I logged on to my local library’s web site to see if I can check out some C++ books. This was my first, maybe second time, visiting their web site. I asked my wife what my login information was and it was some generic password. Of course, the first thing I do is change my password. Yah, that didn’t go so well. I saw two books I wanted them to hold, but when I went to click on the button it told me that my session was messed up in some way. It seems that I needed to log off/in with my new password. In the end, I couldn’t log back in. So; now I’ll have to go to the library (so old school) and look for the book there.

The Force is Strong with Me

How fitting that Star Wars would interact, in some way, with my dream. I believe in things happening, in due time, and recently I stumbled upon an emulation project called SWGEmu. This is a group of volunteers that are creating a ligitamite Star Wars Galaxies engine emulating the first Star Wars related MMO. Sony killed it by not listening to their core users, but these fine folks are building the engine from scratch and my goal is to become apart of this group to sharpen my C++ skills. So; it’s perfect time. So far, I’ve been familiarizing myself with the community and I think they have an awesome website.

What a day! Today we had a small birthday party for Alexander, our 4-year-old son. His birthday was during the week, so we threw something together and invited some friends over. It was a good event, but very tiring. At the end of it, my wife and I were on our last leg.  Alex is really maturing and I’ve been enjoying him more for the past two weeks or so. He still has a temper, but when he’s not in “Hulk-smash” mode, he’s a great kid! My wife works really hard with him on rationalizing things so that forces me to do the same – it’s hard work thinking things out!

Right now, he’s into Star Wars (clone wars era) and Spiderman. So; we got him those kind of toys. I have some pictures posted on Flickr, but I have more to upload. Happy Birthday, son!

Achievements… That I Can Recall

• Has a healthy marriage. So far we’ve lasted 5 years and plan to continue.
• Somehow- I’ve obtained three beautiful children (3, 2, newborn).
• Had a vasectomy so I don’t obtain any more beautiful children.
• Home ownership – My wife and I bought a townhouse in Fairburn, GA on May 1st.
• Very low debt rate. I can only account that to my wife. I like my tech toys and pleasing my insatiability impulsive  characteristic.  Because of my wife’s discipline, I’ve been able to not get into frivolous debt.
• I have a real career! I’m actually considered a “professional” at something. My overall trade is web development and right now I work as the “Web Team Lead” for the National Center for Zoonotic, Vector-Borne, and Enteric Diseases (NCZVED) at a government agency, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). That looks pretty cool on my resume.
• I’m running Linux (Fedora) on my desktop as my full-time operating system. I dual-boot with Windows to play video games though.
• Found out that Star Wars Day is two days before my birthday and the original Star Wars was released May 25, 1977. Good things happen in May!
• …

Overall; I’m happy. My wife is talking about getting me a big screen television soon, so I’m even more happy. Things are looking up. So; enjoy yourself on my birthday. Everything’s on the house!

How do I start this off?  My son and I are having a Star Wars weekend.  He’s grown very fond of Star Wars: Battlefront II for the Xbox and at the age of three I’m watching anything Star Wars related.  He seems to like it, especially the clone army and/or Stormtroopers.  So; Friday night I watched Star Wars: Clone Wars the movie.  I bought it from Columbia House.  Saturday morning, after breakfast he watched SW:CW too.  Then we all watched some cartoons and Seaseme Street, then it was on to Battlefront II.

Besides that, my wife purchased the two pack DVD set of Star Wars — episodes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 from Walmart online.  We also got Alex a Clone Trooper outfit (helmet and blaster rifle).  It’s a Star Wars weekend, no doubt!