Twev1701.net 2002-2012

I’ve always been a gamer. From the days of the Atari 2600 with it’s fly wood grain finish, to the NES, all the way up to next gen PC games. I play games. I love games.

That is, I used to be.

In the past 3 year, gaming has taken somewhat of a backseat in my life. It’s not that I didn’t want to be playing games, it’s just that I could never quite find the time to actually play. Hell, if you do a search on the site for the term "Doom 3", a game which I literally waited years to come out, you can see how rarely I have played it. In fact, to date, I have yet to beat that game. I’m adding it to my to do list right now.

Up until last week, I can only think of 2 games that I have played for more than 3 hours in the past 3 years. Those games would be Guild Wars and World of Warcraft.

Then something came out last week called The Orange Box. It comes with 5 games, 4 of which I could honestly care less about. Don’t get me wrong, I am going to play them, but the real reason I bought the game was for something I have been watching in development for years — Portal.

I cannot remember the last time I have beaten a game. I beat Portal in 2 days. I could have done it in one if I go to the Korn concert the day it came out. I can tell you this though — it was extremely satisfying to finally beat a game I have paid for. I think the last game I beat was honestly for the Dreamcast. Now that I have a fresh notch in my belt, I’m going all out. I’m about 2 hours into Half-Life 2 right now, and I plan on installing Doom 3 again sometime this week. Possibly on Wednesday since I am off and Jess has to observe a class for grad school.

What this all boils down to is that now that I have my main system up and running, a decent processor, decent RAM, and a new video card, I can now play all the games that I always wanted to, but never could because of hardware constraints. I can be a gamer again.

What about finding the time?

Well, that may still be an issue, but I’m going to try and make the time. My work schedule right now is semi-consistent which is good. I think I can find a few hours a week to sit down and pull down some frags.

Hell, I even went so far as to setup my Steam Profile tonight. Having that really makes me feel like a gamer again.

I am the person I want to be.

Jess and I went out last night to celebrate out first wedding anniversary. While our actual anniversary isn’t until the 21st, Jess has to work that night, so we decided to go out last night instead.

We had an great time.

We started off the night by going to Scranton and having an amazing dinner at Cooper’s. I decided to go a little exotic and avoid the usual steak and lobster. I started off with some fried calamari, followed up with a cup of alligator soup, and finished off some flounder stuffed with a shrimp and crab deviled stuffing.

Looking for something to do afterwards, and sick of going to see movies, we headed to the Clarion in Scranton to Wise Crackers comedy club. We laughed our asses off for 2 hours. We had never gone to a comedy club before, and after last night, we will be going back for more.

After the club, we drove home. While driving home on I-81, Jess suggested we go to the casino. That sounded good to me since neither of us has ever been there. Well, we weren’t missing much. We spent about 40 minutes there, and blew through $20 on the slot machines. Neither of us saw what the big attraction is. Quite frankly, I doubt either one of us will ever go back.

After all of that, we came home around midnight, and spent a wonderful evening together.

We both agreed that that was one of the best nights we have had together in a long, long time.

Jess and I went to the Korn concert on Wednesday (10/10/07). It was actually our anniversary present since we both like the band and neither one of us has seen them live. Our feelings on the concert was mixed.

The show was to start at 7:30pm, and according to the bill, there were 3 opening acts. Dinner ran a little long, and we got there around 7:20pm. As we walked into the arena, we heard one of the opening acts playing. One would figure that if they started the concert early, that would make the night go quickly right? Wrong.

I won’t go into too many detail, but let’s just say that Korn didn’t hit the stage until about 10:40pm. By that time, I was tired from being up at 5am, and was actually looking at my watch like an impatient old man. Once they hit the stage, the energy was at an all time time. Granted, it still wasn’t that much since we all waited over 3 hours for them, but the sad fact of the matter was that the arena was barely half full. Anyway, Korn had an opportunity to make the most of a situation. Instead, they fucked it up. They would play one song, which clocks in at about 4 minutes. Then the entire stage would go black, and there would be some ‘mood music’ from the keyboard player and guitars for about 3 minutes, and then Jonathan Davis would come back out and play another song. Repeat that for about an hour, and that was Korn’s concert. When they were playing, they were excellent. However, they just couldn’t hold the crowd’s attention enough. After about 5 songs, they said ‘goodnight’ and left the stage. This is usually where the crowd cheers for the encore. They did not however. Every there was in a full ‘what the fuck’ mode. Eventually, they started cheering and they came out for a few more songs.

We were both really looking forward to the show, but sadly, we both left feeling like we had been cheated. Granted, when Korn played, they were awesome. However, for $100 for 2 tickets, we expected more.