I should have all the science lined up by the end of the week, ready to stuff into the piano black lozenge I've obtained to celebrate my return to personal computing. Wish me luck; I've never before had the opportunity to fry four processors at once.

I know things. Specifically, things that may be of interest to you. For example, I know if playing Eye of Judgment online is an onerous as it might seem. It is not! I cannot express my relief.

Well, let's try.

In my last, vast expose, I broke down a card's unique language and expressed some misgivings about online play - ultimately just accepting it, because what they're trying to do is so weird that there's no prior art. Essentially, you "register" your thirty card deck with the system itself, where it is stored and named for future use. This process is extremely straightforward: it is simply a matter of you laying your cards anywhere on the mat, a few at a time. It will probably take two minutes if you really keep on it. Then, you jump online, choose what nation you want to play for, and track down a partner. At this point, the game will "draw" you your five card hand by showing you the card art onscreen. You get one Mulligan (or redraw), but if you like your hand you move into the game proper. We laid out our deck by element, face up, and this smoothed the turn to turn process considerably.

In the build we have, and I hope this is changed for release, it shows you these cards in a single file line without their name or text - just the art. Once you got familiar with these images, slightly modified from their card format, it's pretty quick - but the names should be displayed on this screen. You can use the controller to pull up the names, but let's be serious - at no point should the player be forced to interact with a mundane controller once the game is underway.

You should know that the game really wants a well-lit environment. You don't need a flare gun or anything, but we didn't have what we needed before and certain squares would slow down the game flow with partial reads that would only resolve after several attempts and minute card adjustments. I should state that here in the office, we removed all the overhead lights, installing a single track of illumination that we point at the ceiling, where lights used to be. We tend to transform any place we live into a cave. So, our scenario might be somewhat atypical.

Also, I know if playing Rock Band with all the instruments off of a USB hub is onerous. You will be happy to know that it is not - we played said instruments spread out on an actual stage, and found it more than satifactory. The reality is that the drum kit already needs its own wire, so it isn't as though the future had actually arrived anyway. Plus, the mic isn't wireless either. This makes the contrived brouhaha over wired guitars a fairly transparent traffic ploy.

This is a matter quite apart from Microsoft's reticence to play ball with unique, third party hardware. And when I say "play ball," I'm taking about the shakedown operation they've got going licensing their wireless technology, which either makes products for their system more expensive or (in the salient case of Rock Band) results in them bundling a wired controller for the same price as a wireless one on a competitor's system. This is the last holiday they can get away with this sort of thing... right?

(CW)TB out.

think of all the things we learned

Just about everyone at PA has been sucked into the Pokemon Card game. As usual, Kiko and I have probably fallen the furthest down the rabbit hole (Thanks OCD!). We both study the Pokegym forums and tinker with multiple decks. We even looked into attending one of the local tournaments that took place over the weekend. I'm not sure we're ready for Battle Road just yet but we do want to play some new people. With that in mind, we've decided to try and set up a local league.

If you're interested we're gonna get together Tuesday October 23'rd at the Comic Stop in Lynwood from 6pm to 8pm. The plan is to get together a few times a month so we can all play different people and learn how to play our decks better. I'm also really excited to talk with some other local players. I'd love to know where you guys are buying your singles and see the different strategies out there.

If you've got kids that play feel free to bring them as well. As I mentioned before one of my favorite things about Pokemon is how great it is for kids. I'd really like for the league to be an all ages group.

The plan is to focus on the CCG but if you want to bring your Diamonds or your Pearls to trade feel free. Also I've got a box full of the new Pokemon miniatures. I'd be happy to bring them and demo the new Trading Figure Game for anyone who's interested.

This isn't an official Pokemon thing. This is just something we're doing for fun. If the turn out is good though and people want to do it I don't see why we couldn't make it an official league. I spoke with a couple really nice guys from Pokemon USA back during Comic Con. If I can find their business cards around here someplace I can try contacting them to see what we need to do to make our crew more official. Who knows, maybe we'll spawn a future world champion.

If any or all of that sounds fun please swing by and join us.

-Gabe out

I'm pretty frustrated with the Dunder Mifflin Infinity ARG. The site functionality is just trash. The biggest offense is the piece of shit forum they've got. It's the one way for the whole branch to talk together and it's absolute crap. Also I still can't hire new employees. There's almost 1500 people waiting to join the Spokane branch but trying to hire anymore than two at a time breaks the site for me. I contacted tech support last week and never heard back. A couple people have suggested that the website being shitty is on purpose. I don't know if I'm ready to believe it's all some ironic joke. What I do know is that interacting with their game is frustrating and I'm not sure I want to bother with it anymore.