Jay McGavren's Journal

Because I’m lazy, here’s a copy-paste from my post to Morning Cafe:

My wife is so cool - she hit thinkgeek.com for my presents. I got a shirt with Pi to 4493 digits, a set of neodymium magnets (finally, something that will actually hold papers on the fridge), and a cold soldering iron. The clippy iPod Shuffle didn’t come from ThinkGeek, but is still damn cool (and won’t fall out of my pocket like the last one did).

My son (age 4) asked for a “Batman kitchen”. He evidently doesn’t know that they make Dora and Barbie play kitchens, but not Batman kitchens. Well, Santa came though - he got a Batman AND Spiderman AND Superman kitchen. (We found a generic one and some decals to put on it.)

Been playing Secret of Mana with Lenny - he asks to every night. (Except last night, when he asked to play Return Fire. The kid’s got good taste.)

It’s a shame we have to go that far back in the gaming museum to find a good multiplayer adventure. When I am king, every game will feature a multiplayer component. (And while I’m not into censorship, options to turn off blood and gore would be nice.)

We watched the second episode of The Lost Room last night… DAMN, this show is cool. I’m really glad it’s a mini-series, too, because it’s not going to have time to get lame (ahem, Invasion, maybe but hopefully not Heroes).

Of course, this is TiVoed, so everyone but me probably knows by now whether the ending will kill my buzz. We’ll see, as soon as tonight.

Lenny asked to play chess again over the weekend… He’s no grand master, as we have to keep going over how the pieces move, but once he had it all in his head, he was actually thinking a move or so ahead. Remember, this kid’s only 4 1/2.

I actually credit a lot of my strategic thinking ability to the chess games I had with my Dad when I was young, so this is a great sign.

Wow. There’s no way I’d have waited this long to pick up Shadow of the Colossus if I’d known exactly how good it was. It was ambitious enough to attempt even one creature that you actually climb on top of, but they made over a dozen. And then they actually try to shake you off?! Bugtesting this thing had to be a bitch.

The effects are spectacular, too - running for your life on horseback from a towering monster is twice as terrifying when the screen is shaking, the world is a blur from the speed, and the only thing emitting from your stereo is thundering chaos. And the story… I’ve always gravitated toward songs without lyrics, so a story without words is near perfect in my eyes.

On the downside, I’ve been having dreams all weekend where all I can see is those glowing eyes staring down at me…