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Note: I cross-posted this from Curbside Confessions.
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In theory, when I publish this blog entry, three cogs of the interweb should turn.

1. My Vox blog.
2. My new Dusda.com blog, powered by BlogEngine.NET
3. A tweet to my Twitter.com account, announcing my blog post.

If this works, I shall be ecstatic. Here?s hoping.

This may be a long post.

My earliest memories are of Super Mario Brothers, world 1-1, when I was about four years old. In my life, I have owned (in rough chronological order): an NES, a SNES, two Gameboys, a Sega Genesis, a CDX, a 32X, a Gameboy Pocket, a Nintendo 64, a Sony Playstation, two Gameboy Advances, one GameCube, a Nintendo DS and DS Lite, a PS2, an Xbox 360, a Wii, a PSP, around half a dozen PC's and four laptops since 1996 from an Intel 386 to the Athlon X2, and one Macintosh PowerPC for the express purpose of playing the Escape Velocity series.

I have owned nearly every installment of every major Nintendo IP ever released, excluding the Capcom Zeldas, a few of the Gameboy Mario's, and those other ones we do not speak of. I cut my RPG teeth on the SNES with FFIV and Super Mario RPG. There was time when I was in middle school where I would save up every dime of my allowance (roughly $11 a week depending on chores) specifically for N64 games like Jet Force Gemini, Rogue Squadron, and Super Smash Brothers. Among my GameCube library you'll find the likes of Eternal Darkness, Metroid Prime, and Beyond Good and Evil. Just to name a few. Hell, I even have oddball shit like DDR: Mario Mix. I have been a dedicated consumer of Nintendo for decades, now. Not necessarily because they are Nintendo, but because games on their consoles were always among the best ever made. I knew that I would have no trouble finding a few unquestionably masterful titles, no matter what Nintendo system it was on. Even the GameCube managed to keep that M.O.

But this time, it's different. We got our Zelda, our Mario, our Metroid. The first was basically a love letter to a legend, the second was pretty cool but nothing revolutionary, and the last was the only one of the three to really give a shit that it was on the Wii. But other than that, what is there? I own six Wii games and a few VC titles, and whenever I walk into a GameStop and look at the wall, the only things that interest me are remakes of last-gen stuff.

Here is where I'm conflicted. I understand and share the Nintendo fan’s view of what the Wii could be. Retro’s Metroid Prime 3 showed us what it can do. Nintendo, for the most part, has not. It's like coming home from a long summer vacation and visiting a friend who suddenly isn't interested in the same things anymore. Their conferences and press releases bore me. I don't care about Wii Fit. I don't want to take the time to punch in a billion different fucking numbers so I can play on a shitty overprotective online service, for a 'moderated' shadow of what was once my favorite fighting game series.

I suppose the largest disappointment for me is when I see examples of games that Nintendo now considers "for me." The latest was that trailer for Disaster: Day of Crisis.

I want to want it, believe me. The music sounds incredible, the story is delightfully in the same B-Movie vein as RE4 and Dead Rising, and it's about a guy running around saving people while a bunch of shit is flooding and blowing up. That all sounds awesome. The problem is in the execution. Every screenshot and video I've seen of this game looks, well, outdated. It doesn't look terrible, really, just grossly outclassed by everything else I care about this year.

All of this really boils down to something simple. Nintendo doesn't really compete with Microsoft or Sony anymore. They're doing their own thing, and they're doing it without me in mind. I get that. I'm ecstatic that they've pulled in the older generations; I love that my 78 year old grandma liked Wii Sports.

I just wish Nintendo was still blazing the trail, instead of focusing solely on making it wheelchair accessible.

Greetings. It has (yet again) been a while.

God dammit. I broke Steam.

More specifically, my laptop froze while I was enjoying a round of Team Fortress 2 and now it won't let me play the game. If I start Steam and run TF2 it pops up the usual 'Preparing to launch' dialog and, after a brief bit of puffing, just disappears. If I try it again, a 'Verifiying game files' dialog pops up briefly, then melts away. Trying to get my game on from then...on...is just a repeat of the verification chronicled in the previous sentence. Restarting Steam results in a scene-for-scene retelling of the previous sentences.

I see a pattern. That pattern is plaid. And by plaid I mean this is probably why I don't play PC games much anymore.

Hey everyone, the new site I have been not-so-secretly working on is up. No more redirection to Vox! I will, however, continue posting from Vox, as the new site merely aggregates content from various RSS feeds. Expect new things to show up periodically, including an XNA section for my eventual foray into a series of how-to articles on the framework :). For now, I gotta run. The Coffee Crutch is closing and they're kicking me out!

I am posting from the 520 floating bridge to Seattle, on a King County Metro express bus. The bus has free mobile wifi; How awesome is that? The seats are far more comfortable than Trimet's, and the bus' appear to be on schedule far more reliably. To top it off, my fare was $1.25, instead of Trimet's $1.70 - $2.05. I wonder what they have that Portland doesn't? Sales tax, perhaps?

Anywho, I'm in the Seattle area doing grip work for a Microsoft party in Redmond. Apparently every year they hold a holiday party for the employees. This year it is taking place in the Building 42/43 parking structure. The whole thing has a really industrial vibe, with an elaborate set of trusses and LED's marking the entrance to half a dozen different color-coded hotspots. Most of the loungese will be bars, with one of them (purple I think) reserved for the catering. There will be four Xbox 360's in the Green Lounge.

I worked from 8pm-3am Tuesday and noon to 2am last night, for a total of 21 hours. Tonight I'll be working from 7pm to at least 3am tearing stuff down. The party itself apparently costs between $150,000-$200,000, and will be on from 2pm-6pm today. My mind spins at the thought of this. Two hundred grand for a four hour employee party? Incredible.

I'm in downtown Seattle now, have to get off soon. I'll post again sometime Friday, maybe with pictures of the place if my phone doesn't die on me again.

I'm hanging out in downtown Portland today, at the wonderful little Coffee Crutch, just up Yamhill from Pioneer Square. Its just a dollar for a cup of coffee, and you can refill it for free. I imagine some of their business model revolves around one feeling guilty about such a deal and making up for it by purchasing a pack of Tic-Tacs or a muffin, which they leave conveniently on display. Tempting me.

In addition to the usual Systepic stuff, I am revisiting my work on Project Theta. It is interesting uncovering work one has done before; I rediscovered a bunch of OneNote entries I wrote almost a year ago, many of which I'd forgotten existed. I think I'm going to pick up where I left off, which means I'll have to hunt down my copy of Dante's Inferno again. Judging from my notes, I was somewhere in the middle of the 9th circle...

On the gaming side, I recently picked up Zelda: Phantom Hourglass for my DS, and am having an absolute blast with it. I was initially a bit worried when I read the game would work entirely off of the touchscreen, but as usual Nintendo quietly backhanded my doubts away within minutes of my first gesture. All in all, the game feels like a lighter, more to the point version of Wind Waker; the same look and feel, less text. The world appears smaller, though I've only uncovered half of the sea charts, and explored less than half of one of them. Unlike Wind Waker, which split the world into dozens of small postage stamp charts, the entire map is split into just four large ones. These are all just initial impressions, so take anything about the game's size with a good slab of salt.

Greetings, world. I know, it has been ages since I graced Vox. There is much to explain.

For starters, I no longer call Salt Lake City my home. Matt and I decided that it was time to get out in the world and make a name for ourselves, so we have relocated to Portland, Oregon to found Systepic LLC. Our focus is industry-based penetration software, a method of development where we research what a business lacks in terms of software, and provide a solution to fill that need. I have written a much more detailed summary of what our company is about on the actual company website so if you are so inclined, feel free to check it out.

This of course means that I am no longer an active student at Neumont University. This is not the end, by any stretch; I fully intend on completing my degree. I just don't feel I need to do so right now. I have not 'dropped out' of college! To 'drop out' implies a general disinterest in the major, and a shift away from anything to do with it. Quite the opposite, I'm diving into the industry head first.

It has not been an easy run, getting settled out here. Initially we had a more stable source of funding and thought we would have a place in downtown Portland within two weeks of arrival. Now, it looks as though we'll be residing in Beaverton. It's not far from downtown, as Google Maps will show you. Also, there are a number of public transit options available that can land you right in Pioneer Courthouse Square for only a few dollars. This saves us hundreds on living expenses, as well. Still, I would have liked to be closer. The University District, ideally (good god is it expensive around there).

Portland has changed somewhat since I last frequented it, and not really for the better. Much of downtown is torn to hell due to construction for a new MAX Line. That's fine, but the crime rate in north Portland has spiked quite a bit because of it. There is a lot less car/walking traffic around Union Station, which has led to open air drug dealing, among other things. On 5th and Hoyt, where I used to hop a shuttle to and from Saint Helens back in my PCC days, one cannot cross the street without being...solicited. I truly hope that the situation improves once the construction is complete, but I'm no expert on how effective that will be.

A lengthy conversation with a Portland PD Sergeant revealed that a good deal of the trouble has something in common with irony. Apparently, whenever there is a spike in crime in an area, there is at first an equivilent spike in police reports called in by residents. However, as time goes on people stop reporting crimes, because they see them so frequently that it moves from extraordinary to commonplace. This doesn't help the local PD much, because their statistics show a drop, and less resources are allocated to help. It sounds like a pretty vicious cycle.

That's all for now, my laptop is running low and my steak soft taco is getting cold. By the way, the Yucatan Grill in Pioneer Shopping Center's food court is surprisingly tasty, for mall food.