Weekend Wrap-Up

My mother and brother got back from Belize safely. They had a very rewarding trip this time, as my mom said that she hasn’t been on a mission to somewhere this beautiful yet. She provided me the following statistics from her religious efforts: 132 conversions, 16 contradictions of Science, 8 prescriptions of prayer as medicine, and 2 exorcisms.  In all seriousness, my mom and brother had a very rewarding experience from the trip. As I said before, my mother works the medical clinic they set up in villages, and my brother, well; he does whatever he can since he’s not really into the religious thing. All in all, hey church does a lot of work on foreign countries for people who otherwise wouldn’t be helped. I wish they did it without trying to pressure natives into “Believing in Jesus” but maybe that’s just me.

Played a lot of Ghost Recon for the first time in a while this weekend. It was nice to get down to shooting some people again, as odd as that might sound. I’m still amazed at the visuals and sound in that game. However, I did find the limits of the 360 hardware this weekend. In a “Team Territory” game, where you and your team try to occupy a specific area longer than the other team, we started to throw smoke grenades left and right. After about three of four of them the frame rate dropped substantially, probably to two or three frames a second. Of course, once we all figure out how to slow stuff down so much we started throwing even more smoke grenades to see just how bad it could get. Anyway, it was fun.

In a related note, the big E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) conference starts this week in L.A. I swear that I am going to go to this one of these years. For those that don’t know, E3 is the Superbowl of video game trade shows so to speak. It’s where everyone comes out to show off their new hardware and software for the consoles and PC. The biggest news will be the final PS3 specs/price and hopefully playable demos, since they were absent from last years E3. We’ll see just how jacked up the graphics were on the Metal Gear 4 trailer was last year, and see if the PS3 really can do what they say it can. In addition, we’ll see if you also have to mortgage your house to afford one. Also appearing will be the Nintendo Revolution/Wii. I think the change of the name to Wii is a big mistake, as many people were taking to the Revolution name. Although the “weakest” of the game consoles in respect to processing power, the Wii has a chance to make the biggest impact on the market. I’m looking forward to seeing how the new controller from Nintendo factors into their lineup of games since it really opens up a new realm of game play possibilities.

I started to work on my “Untitled” screenplay again so I could get a first draft finished up. This is the quasi-time travel thing that’s not really about time travel. At any rate, I think I’m going to use the working title “Syndrome” for the time being, since that plays into one of the topics in the story. I want to get this wrapped up before I begin my next project on the Wyatt Earp/Cyber Punk story. I figure it’s probably a good idea I get these “fantasy” themes out of my system now so I can get back to writing some more serious works in the near future. My goal is to have something ready to submit to the Big Break competition next year. I think Bystander is probably my best bet but you never know, “Syndrome” might come together strong enough to be considerable as well. I don’t expect anything to come out of it, but it’s a goal of mine and I would feel a good sense of accomplishment if I submitted something.

-Steve