two player co-op

My birthday present from my mom this year was a Simon gift card which, for all intents and purposes, is basically a credit card with a $50 spending limit. Thanks to some confusion about registration I haven’t been able to use it all until now, but now that it’s tapped out, I thought I’d share my haul.
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While skimming over io9’s posts, Michael Reilly’s rant against an article recently published in The Atlantic stood out. While my knee-jerk reaction is to agree with the headline statement (”Google is NOT Making Us Stupid“), upon reading what Nicholas Carr had to say, I think he’s got a point.

Okay, you have to go read it now. Don’t skim over it, either — you’ll see why I said this shortly. When you’re done, we’ll continue.

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So, I slept on it, and in dreams came to the realization that My Pokemon Ranch was not the game that I wanted it to be. Apparently, Lorelei had the same vision as well.

Lorelei Presents: My Pokemon Ranch, The Review

(The wind picks up for a moment around 0:40 — we were at the playground and it was recorded on my phone, so sorry.)

If anyone knows any game review sites that are hiring, send ‘em our way. We’ve got the perfect gimmick for you.

ADDENDUM: Here’s a transcript of the interview, as requested earlier.

LR: What do you think about My Pokemon Ranch, the game on the Wii?
Lor: It’s boring! You just take a picture and you just watch them. That’s it.
LR: So –
Lor: … and it’s so boring.
LR: Um, so do you think it’s a real game?
Lor: No.
LR: Why not?
Lor: Because you don’t play, like PS3 games where you just play and stuff, like those for the Wii. We’ve got, we have games, and it’s not like those that fight or something.
LR: So you don’t like it because you don’t really do anything with the Pokemon?
Lor: No, you do nothing.
LR: You just sit there.
Lor: Yes, and you make them jump around and they fall down and it’s not even funny and that’s what. You don’t even play.

This is what I will be doing for the next week:

Please, people, don’t let my main source of entertainment involve watching a Whismur ride a Porygon. Save me from myself. I don’t know any better.

At last — the second coming of winter has finally passed, and with it my hellish spring quarter. My stomach’s been bubbling today, literally, and that’s probably a byproduct of all the stress that’s been just lingering. I think that the gastritis is back. Joy of joys.

This week’s been an experiment in… I don’t know, of me, in a sense. I’m finding myself back online in a more social capacity, firing up the various instant messengers on both the Powerbook and the Blackberry. Talking to people that have been just memories for years now has been strange, but nice. Realizing that they not only remember me, but still care is stranger (and, of course, nicer). I mean, wow.

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I went to the college on Thursday to attempt the final for my nutrition class. I wasn’t planning on it, even though I’d bombed the first two exams and had a B-. However, Jeb and his friend Kevin guilted me into it, citing some nonsense about grades and doing my best and blah-blah-Go-Team-Science. I’m fairly savvy when it comes to multiple choice exams, so I marched in there with my Scantron in hand, ready to go.

I swore under my breath. It was an essay exam, on all the stuff I’d banked on using my uncanny deduction skills to fake comprehension of. For a solid five minutes I stared at that paper, trying to figure out how many I’d need to figure out to beat my lowest score, trying and failing.

Finally, I walked over to my instructor. All of a sudden, worry lines surfaced. “I’m just not going to do this,” I told her. “My brain is failing me right now.” And it was. I folded the test in half and handed it to her.

“Wait,” she whispered. “Before you go, let me tell you your final grade.” Papers rustled, slicing through the silence. “You’ve got an 83,” she said.

My mind began to convert numbers into letter — was that what I thought it was? “On Monday, it was an 82…?” I stammered, hoping that it wasn’t a mistake on her part.

“I had to add in a couple of things.” She cocked her head. “Are you okay with that?”

I coughed, trying to stuff down the laughter that threatened to disrupt the class. “I’m more than fine with it.” Smiling, I wished her the best of summers as I walked out of the room and away from Nutrition forever.

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I’ve been reading bits of fanfic here and there of late, mostly via the Doctor Who community on LiveJournal. While most of it I find rather… odd, a couple of particular entries have made me kinda rethink my position on the whole shebang. I actually am finding myself giving real constructive criticism to some of the writers that I think will appreciate it. I don’t know if I ever could write fanfic myself — I don’t know if my sci-fi geekery reaches that far out, but who knows?