Booyor’s BLOGgh!

I’ve been working on the district site and delving into PHP programming. I stressed for an hour as to why my logos were showing up but not my links. I even searched some crazy articles.

Then it hit me after dinner. index.php was what I put up today. index.html was from the weekend. I hadn’t removed it from the server and the browser defaulted to it instead of the .php. I had wondered why it wasn’t updating.

I’m sure this has happened to all of you.

Simple solution: delete the old file.

Also, The Conduit may have a publisher. On the Sega ftp site, they had a folder up for The Conduit, suggesting by their web presence that they will be hosting The Conduit.

I think it’s a cool suggestion with the new Tetris Party Wii Ware game to have online tournaments for Wii Points.

Scroll until you find your appropriate portion.
The Star Wars Portion
First, every single time I watch A New Hope, I tear up at The Force theme, the song that plays right when Luke screams, “No!” and starts firing randomly after the Kenobi/Vader duel. Every time.

I finished Force Unleashed today. There are some moments with the Apprentice theme that the same feelings occur. It does capture the Star Wars mood. And a battle damaged Vader versus the Apprentice, with Apprentice screaming, “You should have killed me when you had the chance!” as you are locking Wii Remotes quickly and savagely to push Vader back - yeah, fanboy moments galore (ever want to throw a squad of stormtroopers into a test-firing Death Star chamber?). Nice job on fanboy moments, LucasArts…now to make a classic game. We’ll see about replay value. It’s pretty much paced like a movie.

Today was the funeral for an old student from our junior high and on Sunday I have the funeral for my friend Chuck. If you see me in person and wonder if my heart is worn out, it is. Today was a good day for Star Wars. (On that topic - when are we meeting, paper and pencil friends? (Non-gamers have now assumed that I make origami companions.))

The “Happy Tech Could Help” Portion
Hey, the message from Renaissance Bible Church is up. We put it up earlier this week, but I got distracted by a Legend of Zelda theme that burned my brain. Check out their podcast for the message. Some context: the local church body that isn’t connected to Wachovia is connected to Lehman Brothers, so Matthew 6 is kinda gutsy and needed. He’ll mention how a “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” mentality is like telling someone to not think of something: they automatically think of that unwanted thing. To demonstrate, he mentions some “meal” involving bacon, syrup, and I’m assuming a defibrillator. For my non-Southern readers, substitute a steak (or, in my case, a toss up between sashimi and a Hot Pocket (although the Pillsbury Toaster Strudels bring back good memories)(Did I mention that I lost 10 pounds unintentionally using Wii Fit?)).

The Baked Goods Portion
Really, you should check out that Toaster Strudel website. Flaky crust Flash player hotspots. Peter laughs then cries.

The Proud Father Portion
My oldest got complimented in pre-school today. The teacher sat my wife down to tell her that my oldest is very artistically advanced. Woo! My daughter also has made up a word. To remember which feet her shoes go on, she calls them a backwards butterfly. Her word for that?

doval (n) - DOH-val a backwards butterfly; usage - “To remember which shoes go on which feet, ask yourself: Does this look like a doval?”

The first time she said it I thought she said dovin basal. (Refer back to The Star Wars Portion.)

The “Okay, So I’m Not Quite So Jaded, Just Cautious” Section
I went back to read my reviews of Obama’s Audacity of Hope (Review 1, 2, and 3) Even then I was jaded about this election, it was just in haiku form.

I remember enjoying the book, for the most part, but finding some key parts that bugged me. Check out the 1, 2, and 3 links for more detail. His peer evaluations for teachers has some flaws and he does clump in National Right to Life with the NRA, which makes me kinda cringe. I do (non-sarcastically) like Obama’s megalomania quote.

Innocent blood and a distaste for extremes: I wish we could take an average of the two parties. My big issue is abortion, plain and simple. It’s like a William Wilberforce abolitionist issue with me. Where were the slaveholder’s rights? Sometimes we have to infringe when it’s life-death issues. This is not a Republican/Democrat thing, because you can bet if Giuliani (or, my goodness, Bob Packwood) was the Republican option, I would not stick with party ties. Being a father of a daughter born a month early and the brother-in-law to a guy born two months early, we must be very cautious as to when we determine a person is a person. Yes, I agree with Obama that we need to increase the Family and Medical Leave Act to help with the financial burden of having a child. (Although I have more than one co-worker who is spending way too much money to adopt a child…there’s a disconnect.) Something that I think is forgotten is that rich women have abortions, too.

Check out my good friend from college (Mike, you’ll want to click) who just got accepted to be an adoptive parent.

I’m also a big proponent of feeding the poor (taking care of widows and orphans and all that). The government and big business do not have a good track record with this, both Democrat and Republican. This is why two of my mentors, Randy Alcorn and Don Miller, are sometimes at odds. (Although now seeing Donald Miller’s “Mentoring For President ‘08″, I dig Don even more.)(To add info that Don Miller doesn’t have is that McCain goes to North Phoenix Baptist. I can’t see into either candidate’s heart, though.)

Check the voting records for Obama and McCain for more details.

Check out Alcorn’s and Miller’s blogs for great insights from great writers.

And continue to be annoyed by Internet rumors that smear and/or relate to how Bill Gates will pay me a million dollars for forwarding that e-mail.

Editor’s note: Can anyone do a word count? I may have rambled more than Slade rambling about Shaq. (Messing with you, fool. CAN YOU DIG IT?!)

I keep trying to convince Slade that the Wii can be a game system for my demographic and that it has some games made for gamers on it.

Then Nintendo had to go and do this:

I remember when I subscribed to Nintendo Power and they had the notation for putting Metroid, Mario, and Zelda themes into Mario Paint (although I know Mario Paint never had flats and sharps). That rocked. I was also in junior high in a different era. If this is your competition with Rock Band and Guitar Hero, well… Miyamoto-san, I’m assuming that you have another target audience. (This video is targeted specifically at Slade.)

I’m actually a little afraid of what that target audience is.

So, I’m on Fall Break and I was going to get a WiiWare co-op game to surprise my wife with. World of Goo looks awesome. I love the art style to it. But at $15? This is more like a really addicting Flash game, not Mario Galaxy used at GameStop.

I so want to play this game, but I am also so cheap. I wish WiiWare games went down in price over time.

Badger from Firefly will play Agent Ford in The Conduit.

William Morgan Sheppard (Captan Witwicky from Transformers and the Science Minister from the new Star Trek film) will play John Adams. Lest we forget, he has also voiced in another of my favorites: he played Agent Lawrence Limburger in Biker Mice from Mars (this show is why I used BadMamaJama as my screen name for the longest time before Booyor)(woot, StarCraft - “BadMamaJama has defeated the Protoss!”).

And the biggest of news?
Kevin “Every Middle-Aged Woman’s Hero” Freaking Sorbo

as
Prometheus, Alien Terrorist

I’m loving it. Ford and John Adams taking on the Greek Giver of Fire. All in all, I think it’s quite appropriate.

This one includes:

1. Bel Iblis
2. Mandalorians
3. Cloud City
4. Grans
5. Whiphids
6. Talz mercenary medics
7. Basilisk
8. A Gungan scoundrel missing an eyestalk, with holes in the ears, and the phrase, “Youssa gonna die!!”

All in one level.

Sure, there’s going to be an HD Wii in 2011, or there are new Conduit videos up at IGN (What, High Voltage, you’re not just phoning it in? You’re going to do something no one’s done for years: try?).

Or a new Punch-out?

But the biggest news of all?

My Wii Fit trainer got a haircut. He lost his Highlander/Padawan knobby ponytail and instead has a haircut very similar to a certain ensign.

Mad Monster Party?

“All these nasty monsters…and Phyllis Diller!”

At first when I viewed the link that Peter sent, I thought, “Okay. Wario Land. Looks like a fun game, but why is every comment ranting and raving?” Watch the full video and you shall see Flash movies within movies. Pretty fun advertising, once you see it.

1. Phoenix Mars Lander talks like a pirate

2. Lapti Nek playing over the speakers at a Nar Shadaa cantina in Force Unleashed. (And letting me now wear a Correllian flight suit as my outfit.)

Why are you waving you hand around like that? What, you think you’re some kind of Jedi or something?

We’re not Jedi.

Nor are most Star Wars fans trained/coordinated enough to hang with another Force user in combat. The result of 1:1 would be even more flailing/a wagglefest (wagglefest being IGN’s word, even though they had a lot of fun. I agree that the camera and graphics are annoying, but the controls and immersion are awesome and make up for the shortfalls for me. And the storyline is great Star Wars, as mentioned before.).

The controls definitely do not feel limited. I can chain together combos at will, mixing in Force powers to spice it up/advance subplots I write in my head. It feels a lot like the combat from Jedi Academy and I’m okay with that. (I liked it.)(Jedi Academy was released on Sept. 16? Interesting.)

If you’re one of my graphic design/typography friends, though, you won’t like the instruction manual. No grammar errors upon first glance, but what caught my attention was that they printed all of the screenshots at too dark of a contrast. Many times it’s just a black box with a bright line (lightsaber) in the middle.

These are just some additions to my first impressions as I sit at work. Waiting.

Today is Vans day. I have a picture of the A-Team vehicle attached to my lanyard. Perhaps not the initial intent of the spirit day.

Funny librarian patron stories real quick:

1. A student walked up to me today, no introduction, just, “If you have a problem, and if you can find them, maybe you can call…”
2. A couple of days ago a student walked up to the desk wearing the inner workings of a wall clock and clock hands on a giant chain. I told him it was awesome, since it still kept time. I also told him he couldn’t be late to anything. This is a continuation of junior high library fashion.