Ok so I'm driving back from a meeting this week on the local expressway when an SUV in the next lane clips something and sent it skidding in front of my car. I didn't have time to move out of the way, but it didn't look like much so in that spilt second I thought no big deal...boy was I wrong. I knew when I hit it that I would definatly have a flat, it made a loud ass noise. I ran over it with both tires on my driver side and luckly only the rear tire got a flat. Ok no biggie I thought, just pull over put your spare on and get your tire fixed later. So I'm out changing the tire, the temperature was in the teens that day in Chicago, 3 feet from 65mph traffic, I get the tire off and this is what happened to my rim.



Of the 2 previous flats I've had I've never had anything that went through my tire and my rim. I showed it to my dad and even he didn't believe it. I'm not sure what the hell I ran over so I assume that SUV threw a road claymore at me. Well I ordered a new rim, only $180 which shocked me since the parts guy said they usually run $600 a piece. Takes a week to get and lucky me I get to drive the rest of this week on a skinny ass tire.

Next is my impressions of the DMC demo released this week. While I know its just a demo and I really shouldn't judge the entire game thats coming out on it, but it left me feeling very underwhelmed. Don't get me wrong the game looks very polished and the environments are very detailed and look great on screen. The controls and gameplay were about what I remembered from playing DMC 1 and 2, fast and responsive. And the Berial fight was very fun, he looked great and the framerate stayed steady throught the entire thing. All these things made me think am I nuts? These are all things that I/we look for in a great game, why do I feel like something is missing?

Then I thought about it, is there something about this game that is going to make it stand out over similar games of this type? Will it be just basic hack and slash like God of War or Heavenly Sword? Is there something about this game besides the stylized gameplay of the DMC series that will make people pick this up? Is there just blind devoution to the series similar to Halo that cause people to love it no matter what?

I thought about all these things and I wondered if the final product will be worth my $60. Right now I just can't see spending money on it based on what I've seen. With the recent footage I've seen of Force Unleashed I thought wow some cool stuff there...it brings something new to the table. Does DMC offer something similar? I'm thinking no, but maybe I'll be proved wrong. I just see this being a game that I beat in a week and then don't play again.

This is mostly directed at the article that ran yesterday about the dude sueing Activision for the Wii Guitar Hero 3 game having mono sound when it advertised Stereo, claiming "actual" damages and a bunch of other stuff that he won't be able to prove. When people sue companies for dumb stuff mostly due to their own stupidity we get even better warning lables for products afterwards. You know like when you get a coffee at McDonalds and it says "Caution: Hot" on it. Its coffee, its supposed to be hot.

There is also an article on AOL this morning that highlighted a few others. One for a letter opener had a warning label on it saying you should use protective goggles when you use it to open a letter. You just know someone stabbed themselves in the eye with it and then sued the company. Another for an iron on tshirt transfer that said "Do not iron on while wearing tshirt."

So a simple sticker might have saved Activision some embarassment, but at least they have a disc replacement that will fix it if I remember correctly.

However, do you think a warning label on say mature rated games would get parents' attention more than the rating itself? Like saying..."Warning, if your kid is stupid and plays this game he might try to act it out because you are a dumb ass parent."

I'll post a few I found that I thought were pretty good.





Link to AOL article
http://money.aol.com/news/articles/_a/avoid-death-is-named-wackiest-label/20071213112809990001

Saw this posted on the below link a little while ago.

If its true Target will be selling the Sony PSP for $169.99 with 5 free movies. No word if you get to choose the movies or if they have 5 preset ones. Also not sure if its the slim PSP or if they are selling through their old stock of older ones.

What do you think will you brave the lines to pick one up if you don't have one already?


http://money.aol.com/news/articles/_a/targets-black-friday-deals-leaked/20071109093609990001

There was an interesting article I came upon over at cracked.com the other day that got me thinking. It brought up some good questions, the link is below.

http://www.cracked.com/index.php?name=News&sid=2370

Does all our technology make us feel more connected or does it actually make us more isolated and alone?

How many of your friends could you trust with some VERY sensitive information?

How many close friends do you have? Myspace/facebook does not count.

How do you prefer to communicate with your friends, or co-workers?

How much of the news media, or news blogs do you actually think is true, or partially fabricated in order to get viewers, or internet traffic? We get so many different views of the same thing that we don't know what to think anymore.

Why do people turn the simplest problem or situation into some huge melodrama?

Why do office workers seem to go nuts more than construction workers?

Just some of the questions this artice addresses, and it does a very good job I think. No I don't work for cracked.com, I actually work for AT&T. I'm in your internets stealing your bandwith.