Shave it or Don't... Poll!

So... Shave it back to the way it was, or leave the beard? it's not 100% grown in yet; but its enough.

I leave it up to the audience!

Poll is down... beard's still there for now!


Leave whatever comments you'd like... gonna review the poll this weekend and go with whatever everyone else says.

WWII in HD

Watching this three part series today.. and does color make a world of difference.

This is one of the best documentaries ever; the film being in color really makes a huge difference... you can see that its not mud on a marines face, instead its blood. The color just adds a certain humanity and humility to what the soldiers had to endure.

Watching this though; you can't help but realize that we live in a completely different "America" now though. The days are gone of sending in 150,000 troops in order to secure a beachhead, all in the name of liberty... knowing damn well that you're sending at least 25,000 to their certain deaths. No longer would you send in 485 planes, full of 9 men each, on a suicide mission just so their escort planes could wipe out the opposing air force. We don't do what is necessary to win any longer, no we only do what is acceptable in order to achieve a semblance of political victory to achieve "peace". During World War II, the entire country was behind the cause, and the military was given a political blank check to ensure the safety of peoples of all nations, regardless of the human cost... because the alternate cost would be tenfold.

Now, guarded by political red tape, humanitarian activist, media, journalist with personal agendas, and a fickel, self-serving nation.. we're no longer the nation that won the second world war. War has changed, as it has ever since its inception, but the basis is still the same... the nation or body thats willing to give up everything for its cause will be the victor. The "Greatest Generation" all gave up a part of themselves to ensure victory; they did whatever it took... even if it meant walking off a ship, onto a beach head with 4,000 rifles aimed at their boat; they would weather the onslaught and they would make it up that beach. Now.. we expect our men to fill out a piece of paper for every bullet they fire, why they fired it, and how they justified their right to fir; and our country scrutinize their every action with judgmental, arm-chair quarterback eyes.

I guess there is no real point to this post... more of just a rant. But I wish they we could get back to that America.. I wish we could get back to where we could raise the Flag, salute it, and sing the national anthem without fear of pissing someone off. Where we could not give a damn if we prayed in front of someone, because thats one of the founding principals we were built on... where we could do as we please without having our president go on an apology tour, begging for the forgiveness of all nations of the world.... cause God help us if we were to remind them, that if it wasn't for us; they'd be speaking German.

I do wish we could get back to "that" America.. but I'm kind of afraid of what it would take to get there.

Project Natal

Because I was talking about it tonight and we were playing the Wii... here's the youtube video for project Natal... this is coming out summer 2010 (they think); and it's some crazy stuff.

This is the crap that people wrote about in the 60's.. about how the year 2000 was going to be.

Voice Recognition

Facial / Body recognition

No Controlers

Sophisticated, Learning and Adapting Artificial Intelligence.

The first video is the promo vid for Natal.. this isn't the presentation that Lion Head Studios demonstrated the full under-the-hood horsepower of Natal (... that's Video #2). This is just the simple, over-the-top view of how Natal is going to change gaming and bring it in to a whole new audience.

With Huge.. **huge** studios chomping at the bits to get at Natal's source code.. big developers like Activision (World of Warcraft), BioWare (Fallout 3 / Dragon Age Origins), Electronic Arts (EA Sports Titles + Gears of War), Lionhead Studios (Oblivion)... with developers like this getting a hold of this technology; they'll be able to further the line where Nintendo and the Wii left off. Remove the 'clumsiness' of a controller from the mix; remove that boundary that prohibits so many from gaming, and open up the genre to even more people that it currently is enjoyed by...

Anyways, I'm very excited about this...this has the potential to be THE innovation in entertainment; potentially the largest innovation since color television; if it's really bought into by the industry and public:

Video #1:

And here's the full E3 presentation with Lionhead Studio's Milo AI:

that's all *real* stuff that's going into living rooms next year. I mean... voice recognition and facial recognition technology has been around for years in security equipment; but its so unreliable and dated.

But Natal's speed of recognition, facial expression reading, voice inflection recognition.. its just all brilliantly swift. If they can get buy in on this... you'll see and Xbox in 80% of all households.

POst

So... I failed at NoBloPoMo. Meh; I gave it a good fight.

Ya see... I got sidetracked, originally on Friday.

Friday night, I came home, changed clothes... then me and Jill went out to eat @ TWO: Urban Licks.. then afterwards went and saw 2012. We didn't get home that night till like, 12:30.

Saturday was busy too.. work @ 8:30, worked till 1:30, came home and ate (could've posted then I guess), back to work at 3:20, didn't get off till 6:30, came home then immediately turned around and went to Jennifer and Michaels UGA vs. Auburn party.. didn't get home then till after midnight.

Sunday.. had church that morning, then did some running around town and a little shopping, then home and straightened up (laundry etc) and then had my parents over for dinner. After that, I was pretty pooped and had work early on monday... so we went and watched a movie in bed and fell asleep.

Monday, went to work and stuff like normal, but then I got home and went and helped Jill babysit... so we didn't get back till 10:30ish or something like that, and I went to bed (it'd been a long couple of days at this point).

Tuesday, work and schtuff like normal.. then my really good friend from my Small group graduated from the police academy for his new job at the capital police in Atlanta, so I wanted to go to his graduation for support... which was in Jonesborough. So I didn't get back from that till 10.. got home, talked to jill for a little bit and hit the hay.

Now we're to Wednesday night and this is the first real time I've had the opportunity to post =/

been a great couple of days tho! Having fun and hanging out with loved ones >>>>>> "winning" at NoBloPoMo

PEace! Off to watch a movie!

Daily Update

Not a ton to really go over today.. worked on getting my new computer setup at work; which I'm excited about... but no real progress on it.

I did, however, sit on a call with a Pakistani man named "Elvis" for 2 hours trying to convince Microsoft that I wasn't a software pirate and that I needed my office key activated... but the key they printed was off by 1 digit. It took a freakn act of congress; I even read them the retailers Invoice number.

Got home... Ran for a little bit; played with the boys (who were in crazy moods) and then chilled in the living room with mah Lovely wife while we watched Glee and a little bit of Mythbusters.. came upstairs and she worked on homework and I played MW2 with Carlton till now.

I think I'm in a WoW rut... I tried to play it a little this afternoon; but quit before I even really started. 77 is like, the last milestone before 80.. and the 77-80 grind sucks. So it takes a little bit of mental prep to push over that hump and finish the drill. Probably will pick it back up once the newness of MW2 wears off a little.

Peace!... off to bed... soooo sleeeeepy

Número once

Or Number 11 in english...

So been playing a lot of CoD:MW2... and by a lot, I mean like 2 days straight. Incredible Multiplayer... the weapon & accessories combos are nuts; and each item that you get feels like it has its place, but isn't overpowered.

There'll be sometimes where you'll focus too much on the heartbeat sensor.. and get racked from someone to your left or right; and you'll beat yourself up for putting that stupid thing on your favorite gun... then there's times where you flash and charge a room, killing 4, cause your HB sensor told you they were in there. It's not like CoD:MW1, where not every accessory really felt like it had a place.

The perks are awesome too... Bling = 2 Primary Attachments... so SCAR-H with a Silencer and Heartbeat Sensor is the ultimate quiet killer. Couple that with Cold Blooded (don't show up on thermal scopes, UAV's, Pred Missle strikes) and you're basically undetectable until they see you.

Best gun to me so far is the SCAR-H... best blend of knock down power, range and accuracy. Fire rate is a little low, for when you gotta go rock-n-roll on someone.. but everything has it's trade offs.

Most disappointing... gotta go with the MP5. I thought they would've brought back the badass MP5 from the first Modern Warfare, but this one just feels really underpowered. You've got to either be ten feet from your quarry, or dump a whole magazine into them.

Coolest part... has to go to either the C130 kill combo reward or the Predator Missiles. C-130 is just sheer awesome; but you've gotta get really lucky to squeeze that reward out. The Pred missile is more easily attained, but still reaps almost the same 'fun' reward. Watching the CNN-Esque nose-cam as you direct the missile towards the earth is just an awesome 'oooOOOOooh' moment.

Ended tonight Rank 26.. which is over halfway of what I was in CoD:MW1. Crazy.

In non-MW2 news; the druid polished off 15% exp today to finally hit 77. Finally get to fly in Northrend.. making questing, grinding... and dang never everything go 300% faster.

Moving to non-leisure/Killing time activities... back @ the Grindstone tomorrow. We're prepping two new software releases; one to our main core processor and any of our redundancy boxes (7 of them), and another to our Scheduling product, which should take care of some "false" reporting we've seen. This'll let jobfile scheduler be a little more accurate when he says a job is "finished"... he'll tell you whether it really did finish, or if finished but with an error code.

No NWeds this Sunday... just regular 'ole church. We do have a party at a NWeds graduates house on Saturday though, after I get off of work.

In non-Greg News... Thanks to all of our Veterans. Americans truly do appreciate the sacrifices you make every day in order to ensure our protection. To all current serving armed forces personell and all past, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

-GTG-

EDIT: For anyone who doesn't know what Modern Warfare 2 is... or what it looks like:

INTENSE

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2... is.. INTENSE. JEEEZ.

Not sure I'm gonna fall asleep anytime soon, despite laying down and trying to.. it's very fast paced, and very frantic. The AI is extremely smart as well.. doesn't look like I'll be beating this on 'hard / veteran' any time soon. Trying hardened, but man that stuff is tough.

Dunno about the story... so far it doesn't feel as "solid" as Modern Warfare 1, to be honest. It's a little sporadic and jumps from here, to there, to here, to there. But I think some of the pieces are coming together.

But man; it is no stop action... defending a Diner in D.C. from waves of airborne troops felt like i was one of the poor little infantry I commanded in World in Conflict (another PC game).. it was pretty awesome.

bed time.. I hope.