They played the Giants yesterday, again, and won 3-2. It got dicey in the 8th when the Giants scored 2. I was wondering if they would be the Cubbies we all know and love, but they pulled out of it and won. w00t!

Today, they’re taking on the Angels in the last spring training game that we get to see. We’ll have the same seats, so it’s going to rock; it was quite shady there the other day 😀 Yesterday, we were in the bleachers. It was at the Giants’ stadium–nothing worse than being on the hot bleachers with lots of Giants fans around you 😛 lol…

…well, unless they’re Cardinals fans. That would just be downright hellish 😛

So, me and my fam are in AZ to check out a few Cubs spring training games. The flight in wasn’t so bad. It was a 4 hour flight from Nashville to Phoenix. My bro got in nearly 2 hours later. He has the worst luck; they lost his bag. American Airlines is now on his list. lol. He’s become a real pro at dealing with lost luggage, though, sadly enough.

Kerry Wood will probably pitch today, which rocks. I haven’t seen him pitch live for nearly 2 years.

We’re staying at this really cool hotel in Mesa, the Dobson Ranch. It’s a resort where a lot of Cubs players stay (or at least have stayed). They have a really fat internet pipe–free, too. I have 33ms on WoW, which I couldn’t even dream of at home on a consistent basis. They also have complimentary drink pogs on the desk.

It was actually raining here yesterday. In the desert! Crazy! It’s 52 right now, and it looks like it’ll be in the 70s and 80s during the days we’re here.

I’ll be sure to post some pics of cacti for pktaxwench, if she’s still out there and watchin’.

Yep, they’re lookin’ pretty devious.

kitties

<sarcasm>Sure, the Soviet Union is dead</sarcasm>

Idiots (If it’s true. Drudge is kind of tabloid, so can be sensationalist at times)

And people think the Patriot Act is bad–it’s a drop in the bucket in comparison. I don’t exactly feel oppressed in publishing whatever the hell I want on the web. I don’t feel threatened by some secret police that will take me away to prison for 20 years for voicing my opinion against policy. But, it looks like that’s what Russia is reverting to.

Whether their government is communist or not, absolutism is a sure-fire way of causing trouble 😛 They seem to have completely forgotten the likes of Stalin. Putin has been terribly bad about centralization, especially in his second term. Why not pull a Hugo Chavez and declare himself dictator and sing the <moresarcasm>glories of Socialism</moresarcasm>? 😛

Perhaps this is what the Cold War was really all about–absolutist dictatorship vs self-determination and expression. It wasn’t really all about Communism vs Capitalism but it was certainly an element of the “argument”, I suppose a simplified summation of it. Their Communist society just gave them “license” to oppress, and they’ve now found that they can get away with this crap even without a Communist face to it *sigh*

Galactica schtuff

Now this is a bit morbid.

High-Yield Detonation Effects Simulator

I wonder if it accounts for altitude at all. You can’t set it as a parameter, so I’d presume we’re talking about ground bursts. 20 MT takes out a huge chunk of the Chicago area :\

This certainly doesn’t help with all of those apocalyptic-type nightmares I sometimes have 😛

Galactica Craziness

So, I’ve had the 360 for nearly a week. The awesomeness is truly astounding. I got three more games for it: Star Trek: Legacy, Halo & Halo 2.

Star Trek: Legacy is just frickin’ awesome. It’s a very good space sim. Like most of the modern ones, it combines sweeping strategy with individual control–you can command either a single ship or the entire fleet. I’m still in the Archer storyline. I got my booty kicked last night by Romulans. Making progress, though. The graphics are really nice, and the interface is surprisingly good–I had my doubts about such a game being intuitive with the controls, but it’s easy to manage and navigate ships.

Halo & Halo 2 aren’t all that bad, either. Even though they aren’t HD games, they still look fairly slick. It looks like Halo has more plot to it than the PC version.

I’m watching Angel. I hadn’t seen many of the earlier episodes, and I am watching the one where Faith goes to LA. Lindsey had been in the last episodes, and I didn’t know where he came from; he obviously had a past with Angel & Company. It looks like he was a lawyer with Wolfram & Hart. Cool.

It’s frickin’ cold here. It should not be 15 degrees 😛

I’m so glad that today is Friday.