...you'd know what Section 8 means. I'm currently playing the game on the 360, and without giving too much away I'm actually enjoying it more than I thought I would. I really thought I was going to be disappointed with this title, but so far so good I'm happy to say.

Section 8, btw, is the term used in the military for people that are bonkers, cookoo for cocoa puffs, bonzo, crazy, nutz, no longer in control of one's faculties, WACKO!

If any of you are currently playing this game on Xbox Live, shoot "Man O Warr" a Friend Request this weekend. I haven't tried out the multiplayer yet and would like a wingman or two. My habit has always been to play through the campaign first, then the multiplayer. As soon as I finish playing the game you can expect a review of it to see if it's something you might like.

Later gators,

MOW

I have started playing Defense Grid: The Awakening, and I'm totally addicted to it. If you've never played this game, it's basically a stationary strategy game. And by that I mean that aliens will try to capture some "cores" from your computer at the end of the level. It's YOUR job to set up turrets of different abilities (flamethrowers, lasers, machine guns, mortars, time distortion, etc) to impede and eventually eliminate the thieving alien scum.

Different aliens are affected by some turrets more than others. Part of the fun is figuring out what combinations work best with each other to last the multitudes of waves. You can also pave a path for the aliens by putting turrets in their way...forcing them to go the way that you decide.

All in all, I'm having a lot of fun with this little gem, and isn't that the point of playing a game? If you feel like picking it up, you could certainly do worse.

...is a HUGE game. I've been playing it for a while now, and I'm hoping to finish the Main Quest as well as the new DLC (the latest of which is Mothership Zeta) soon. It may take me the rest of the next 2 weeks in my spare time to finish it, but I SWEAR BY ALL THAT IS HOLY THAT I WILL FINISH IT!

Wait, it's open-ended and technically never ends?

Damn it!

In the meantime, I've got an old buddy of mine that's coming over this weekend and I've got to get some things done to the house, renovation-wise, before he gets here. Wish me luck!

I find that I have less and less patience for people when it comes to things I think they should know already.

For example, a friend of mine just got a divorce. His wife cheated on him, and moved the other guy into the house THEY bought. So what does he do? Gives her the house, everything in it, the new car they bought, and pays HER $5000 for the wedding present her dad gave them from 5 years ago.

How does this play into the whole "things I think people should know" scenario? Because he left the utilities in HIS name, essentially allowing her to use his deposits to pay off her bills, and left his account number on the car payment information to where she posted one of her car payments of $500 using HIS account that she no longer has legal access to.

His response? "I didn't think she'd do that." Ahem. Why? Because she's been so faithful and honest so far??? She's cheated on you, moved another guy into your house, took everything you had except for the clothes on your back (because you were naive enough to give it to her), cashed your tax return money, took your utility money to pay her utilities, conned you out of a $500 car payment plus half of that the month before to make said car payment to prevent your credit rating from going to hell.

Gee....yeah, I can see why you'd trust her. Don't get me wrong, divorces are terrible, but even though you may still love someone you NEED to take some steps to protect yourself from things like this.

So long story short, he's 35 years old and starting his life over with NOTHING but the clothes on his back and the truck he drives. How'd you like to be that old and start fresh as if you'd just moved out of your parent's house?

Yeah, I wouldn't want to either.

They've got some new features that I'm chomping at the bit to learn about. Can't wait to put the new dashboard thru the hoops.

Oh, and don't forget to download the new maps and campaign for Gears of War 2 called "Dark Corners". If you don't already have the other maps, I suggest getting the "All Fronts" DLC which has all the previous maps plus the new ones and the new campaign mission.

I had to go to the doctor just recently. I woke up late at night with a horrible pain in my side. It felt a little bit like someone had just kicked me in my family jewels...and the pain wasn't getting better....it was getting worse.

Finally I ended up having to go to the hospital because the pain got excruciating, and it wasn't going away on it's own.

After waiting to see a doctor, then finally getting in they diagnosed me as having a kidney stone. Prescribing pain medication for it, they sent me home. I waited for the pharmacy to open (which was a couple of hours), and got the prescription filled. Taking the pills, I waited for them to take effect. They didn't. Turned out the pills I was prescribed was the equivalent of children's aspirin.

I went back to the hospital, and had to wait again to see a doctor. By this time I'm having to fight off throwing up from the intense pain. Just waiting to see a doctor I fought off throwing up 5 times. A different doctor saw me, and seeing what the previous doctor has prescribed, he gave me a prescription for something that would actually kill the pain. To give you an idea of what was going on, they gave me 2 shots of morphine, and it killed the pain for 2 hours. Yeah. 2 hours.

Once again I went to the pharmacy, and finally got relief from the pain. By the time this happened practically every muscle in my body was tightened from perpetual nausea.

It had been said to me that a kidney stone was the male equivalent of giving birth. Well I've had several women who've given birth that said they'd rather give birth again than have another kidney stone.

So if I haven't been around a lot lately, I hope you understand why. I'm at the point now where I can function without wanting to rip someone's head off, and I think that's a step in the right direction. :)

I remember when the internet was young, and you literally pulled a phone off the hook, and DIALED UP to get connected to the net. In those days the only things on it were business bulletin boards with the occasional game you could download.

Fast forward to today, and those same modems are built into every cell phone. I had a series of calamities with my connection at home the last couple of days in which my router died (it was 8 years old!), and my ethernet adaptor died. Normally this would require me to buy a new router and adaptor and spend hours upon hours setting things up, and taking my PC a part to install a new adapter.

Not so now. Now I can get back online in minutes. In fact, it took me longer to go to the store and buy the router and adapter than it did to set everything back up. The adapter was one I could just slap into a USB port, so no opening my PC there.

Now I'm connected at such a blazingly fast speed that it makes me chuckle to think of the days when I used dial-up. I'm just constantly amazed when I look at where we came from to where we are now. One of my instructors at college worked on the 1st mission to the moon for NASA, and he told me something that still sends chills up my spine:

"You have more processing power in the calculator you've got in your hands right now than the astronauts had in their Lunar Module when they landed on the moon."

Scary stuff.

It's been said that "Freedom isn't free".

No one can understand that more right now than the thousands of Iranians that are fearing for their lives just for making a peaceful protest about a very controversial election.

To get the full measure of what's happening in Iran, you have to understand their form of government. It's a form of Theocratic Republic where the Ayatollah actually has more power than the democratically elected President of the country. (Although right now the word "democratic" would be a word most people wouldn't use to describe the current Presidential elections there where many Iranians feel that the recent election was fixed.)

Much like America did during its Revolution, you have to fight for your rights. Protests only work if you have a government for the people and by the people. The Iranian government has prohibited any newsfeeds, reporting, or peaceful demonstrations regarding the recent election, and has beaten, arrested, and murdered its own citizens so that the Ayatollah's puppet can remain in power.

With the government cracking down on even cell phone videos being released to the internet or updates to sites like Twitter (which currently is the ONLY way we find out what's going on), the plight of the Iranian's newest Revolutionaries may never be fully known.

It's always amused me when politicians try to take the moral high ground when they themselves don't seem to understand the concept of "morality". You can't say "DON'T DO THAT!" if you're doing it too.

What I mean by this is Republican Superstar Mark Sanford, who wanted to impeach Bill Clinton for sleeping around on his wife with an intern citing a lack of "moral legitimacy", just admitted to cheating on his own wife for the past year. Hypocrite, much?

For some bizarre reason we in America used to look toward our politicians for leadership. We strangely think since we elected them as our leaders that they should act the part. This is why I'm starting to like Sarah Palin more and more. She seems to be hated by both Democrats AND Republicans, so I figure she must be doing something right.

There's no question about it that the end is nigh.