You're a dragon. You're smart and cunning, and
enjoy taking risks. Your need for independence
is an advantage, but sometimes it alienates you
from others. As far as *good* and *evil*,
you're pretty neutral--but you may have
something of a wicked streak.


What mythical beast are you?
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Paul Simon - You Can Call Me Al - Graceland

After a six year wait, finally in my clammy claws is Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth. I hope this doesn't have the same problems that plague other games in development for a long time.

Boy, what a surprise

You fit in with: Atheism Your ideals mostly resemble those of an Atheist. You have very little faith and you are very focused on intellectual endeavors. You value objective proof over intuition or subjective thoughts. You enjoy talking about ideas and tend to have a lot of in depth conversations with people. 80% scientific. 60% reason-oriented.

Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com

Eris is finally back from the shop because of its power supply.

I'm not particularly pleased with Apple right now, and haven't been for the past couple of weeks.

I get up one morning, check my e-mail and LJ flist as usual. Go feed the cats and get ready. Come back, nada, nothing zip, computer was off and I certainly didn't turn it off. Bundled her up, bring her into the shop, and they say it's the power supply, a known issue. It's easy enough to replace, here's the URL to order the part. It'll be quicker if I do it rather than the shop (hah!).

Go to the site, and whadda know, no power supply in the parts list. Inverter's the closest, so I pick that, hoping it's the right part. Next morning, the part is sitting on my desk at work, impressive considering that I didn't place the order till about 3 PM the day before. Talk about service.

After that point, service goes to the toilet, and big. I use the service web form to ask how to get the right part and what do I do with this one? This was on the 27th. I STILL haven't heard back from Apple with respect to that.

Now, fortunately, it goes back to good service. No problems at the Apple store, and they even expedite it because I was in before. I had a brief moment of panic after booting it, since the screen was very, very dim, but opening up the control panel and clicking the brightness control fixed it. It was on high, registered on high but for some reason the screen wasn't agreeing.

So for now I still have a moderate bad taste in my mouth from Apple. Three of the four Apple devices (Eris, jenbooks' PowerBook and Shuffle) have all had major problems. My Mini looks like it might soon, I got a scary icon the other day that did go away. I can't convince myself that any other vendors are any better though. I'm definitely not going back to any Windows machine, and I can't build a laptop, nor anything as compact as Eris.

You're Granny Weatherwax;

Rules are things that happen to other people, as
far as you're concerned, but when other people
do something you see as wrong, you're the first
to teach them a lesson. Very smart when it
comes to things like numbers, but you lack
creativity. You usually have one big talent,
which you work at keeping the best. Because of
this you may be a loner, or unwilling to
socialise and are deeply mistrustful of change.


What discworld character are you?
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You are the Emperor card. The Emperor leads the way
into the world that The Empress allowed us to
experience. He is the archetype of the Father
who provides the organization and structure of
the world. The Emperor is the government, and
as such represents control. At this stage in
The Fool's Journey, there is no need to deviate
from the status quo. By participating actively
in society, we come to an understanding of
social structure. The Emperor applies the laws
and rules for us to follow. The Emperor is the
first of the zodiacal attributions in the major
arcana. He shares with Aries a creative energy
and, at his best, responsibility for the
subjects in his charge. At his worst he can
become domineering and authoritarian. Image
from: http://emperor.sierra.fr/fr/


Which Tarot Card Are You?
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Game controversies, or rather the lack of them, are rather interesting.

Take San Andreas. An M rated game, ostensibly for adults. Incredibly violent, drug use, all sorts of nasty stuff. Add a little sex that can only be accessible with hardware (on the PS2), and everyone is up in arms.

Now look at my latest purchase. Sly Cooper 2: Band of Thieves, rated E, for cartoon violence. Full of nice (well, relatively nice, compared to San Andreas anyway) anthropomorphic animals that look like a 3D Saturday morning cartoon. Yet the first level has some bigotry in it that I've never seen mentioned anywhere. You're running across the rooftops of Paris, and about half the enemies are frogs. This seems like something the PC police would've jumped on the day this game came out.

Title: Psychonauts
Platform: XBox
Genre: 3D Platformer
Complete: No
Price Paid: $39.99
Would pay: $29.99

So close, yet so far. For the most part, this game is incredible. The graphics are gorgeous, exploring the camp grounds and people minds are a blast. The story is unique and warped, exactly what I'd expect from the mind that spawned Grim Fandango. The environments are unique, varying from the inside of a black velvet painting to the mind of an extremely paranoid individual, to a dance party/pinball machine.

Unfortunately, the highs are countered by the lows. Places where the camera can't be moved, such as the lungfish boss, are more frustrating than fun. I almost gave up there (as did jenbooks, but I got her past it). The final level takes the cake though. It's an escort mission where each step is unclear until you've tried it a few times. Fail any section, and you're back at the beginning. Repeatedly trying to get a knife thrower to hit the right spot on a rotating board and then swing on the knife is no fun. Game over.