At Long Last...

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And at long last, I will get down to business. Though I must say, I fear that all of these stuttering missteps and promises and cliffhangers may have led to a level of expectation that might not be met. It quite possibly won't be, after all, a thrilling story to most people. I will, in the end, only relay what I intended to all along. I am merely telling the events that occurred and which, for me, were quite thrilling.

Having a new PS3 and Zune meant that, even with my pace for learning how gadgets work (i.e. - functions, tools, applications, etc.), I suddenly had things that did...things, with which I was entirely unaccustomed. I was suddenly able to have the PS3 online at all times, and wirelessly no less, having put a wireless router in, some time ago. With this ability, I could not only play online multiplayer matches (as I discussed before, shortly after my first experience with it, and ended up sounding like some old guy that just got a hint at what's up with that whole "internet" thing), but I was able to download demos, PS3 themes, and purchases from the PS Store. With a bit of effort (and some ingéniosité, after the how-to guides I found online fell short), I was able to have the PS3 recognize our computers as media servers, allowing us to stream music, photos, and video straight to the TV! Suddenly, ours started looking like one of those "connected" houses, a house of "the future," as some might describe. It was all a bit overwhelming. But it was only the beginning.

As I mentioned, I also purchased a Zune around this time. It had one feature that I had never tried before, something that scores of people have been familiar with for some time: podcasts. By having that one option listed on the main menu of the Zune, and offering the ability to search for and subscribe to podcasts from within the desktop software, I decided that it was worth a shot.

I started with subscribing to a few random podcasts for gaming and tech stuff, but wanted one that had movie reviews/news, so I did a search and saw The Totally Rad Show in the results and decided to try it out. I loved it immediately. When I subscribed to it, only the previous six months were available in the feed, though the show had been going for nearly a year. I watched six months worth of episodes in about six weeks. And once those were done, and I was caught up to the new weekly episode, I started downloading the rest of them, starting at the beginning, and closed the gap.

The Totally Rad show, or TRS, is a simple idea that works. It's pretty much just three guys (all in their late-twenties, early thirties) who sit and talk about movies, video games, and sometimes television shows and/or comics. It's just three 80's kids, talking about things they think are rad.

What's unique about the show is the aesthetic. It's completely relaxed and people often describe it as feeling like a conversation one would sit around and have with friends.

One of my favorite elements of the show is the opening. They begin each episode with a retooling of a famous movie scene. My favorite example would be the Cliffs of Despair swordfight from Princess Bride, done as a ping pong match.

Well, watching TRS all the time, and constantly hearing Jeff (one of the hosts) mention "the forums," and recommending that I check them out, I decided to do just that. I signed up, started reading and, at some point, started posting. So now, by following a podcast (something I'd never done), I was becoming an active member of a forum (another something I'd never done).

At some time, during all of this...NEW...I was experiencing (and loving), I decided to just jump in and try an online match. Actually, I was a little too nervous for all of that, so I just chose to start some Free Skate in the aptly titled game, Skate, and to see if anyone would show up. I won't go into that experience, as I already have. To read my awkward, fumbling description of it, read the March 20th entry (scroll down, or click HERE).

That was all it took for me to realize what I'd been missing, with the whole Online Gaming experience. I wanted more. This time though, I was ready for the harder stuff**. I decided to try Call of Duty 4.

What followed is a blur, a 2-week blur, a 2-week blur of playing NOTHING BUT COD4! Being a modern-warfare military squad setting, this blur consisted of a lot of sprinting across open ground (or cover, if I was lucky), dropping to a crouch, lobbing grenades, and approaching enemies from behind and disposing of them with my field knife. And it was fast...

This concludes Part One of "At Long Last." Please join us next week for the exciting conclusion, in which Jan finally tells Richard that she's pregnant, and Emily has to make a tough decision about school...***





*This means that there was no clock running or score accumulating, just skating around for fun. In a video game. Yes, seriously. Hey, I can't afford to go breaking any limbs on a real skateboard. I'm a little past the age at which that would work out okay.

**Though that phrase might bring to mind ideas of various unhealthy drug addictions and moving from recreational drugs into something more dangerous, and though that comparison wouldn't be entirely inappropriate, I was in fact referring to the idea of trying a game that required more skill, or at least had a scoring system in place.

***Next week...or in the next few days...or tomorrow.
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Late Start

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Well, I have tons of other things that I intend to write about, and I realize that I'm taking forever to actually get this blog going, but I decided that I wanted to write about something really quick, while it's fresh.

I just had my very first online multiplayer experience. I decided to jump on and play Skate earlier. I saw one guy jump on, we were skating around for a second, and then he hopped off. After a second, he came back. I had a headset on, but didn't know (the first time around) that I had to hit the button to activate chat ingame. I know, blah blah blah.

BUT, when he popped back in, I just hit the button on my earpiece (it's a bluetooth headset like you use for a cell phone). It took me a second to realize that what was happening in my ear was the sounds of this other guy playing the game. What a bizarre experience! We just sat there for almost 5 minutes before it was clear to me that there was someone there. It was this strange mix of the feeling you get when you pick up the phone (a land line, not a cell phone) and there's no dial tone. Like, if maybe you were picking up to dial at the exact time someone had called you. So, you don't say anything because you are wondering why there's no dial tone, and they're not saying anything because they're realizing that it's not ringing. Weird. Just...weird. It was a mix of that sort of thing and some crazy...I don't know, awkward.

So, I made a few audible responses to things I did in the game (like landing a trick or wiping out). Once he did too, I just decided to say something like,"What's up, man?" You know, casual. Well, casual in a situation where two people form a sort of unspoken agreement to ignore the fact that they just had a full 5 minutes of extremely awkward interaction.

You know what it was like? It was like trying to talk to a girl, back when you were in middle school. You simply couldn't trip over yourself worse, or make yourself more a fool, then when you completely lose control of that situation!

Well, anyways, all told it turned out to be very, very cool. We played for some 2 and 1/2 hours or something crazy like that. A couple of other guys came in, some dropped out, some new guys joined us. It just turned out that the two of us were the only ones with headsets, so we just ended up talking about all kinds of cool stuff - entirely about the game, of course. I mean, I will tell you now that I don't know shit about the etiquette of this whole online-gaming-interaction thing, but I can guess that there are some things that would just be retarded to talk about. So, I stayed clear. Mostly.

I just find it really trippy that there is an entire generation of kids for whom this sort of interactions is completely normal. That's just...really F'ed up. I mean, I don't think it's bad or anything, but how freakin' nuts is that? And here I am, this 30-year old guy who just played his very first online game. I was definitely a late bloomer. But, it's cool. Now I can say I've started. Before I know it, I'll have gathered the nerve up to join an online multiplayer, squad-based military game (I own Call of Duty 4, but haven't gone anywhere near playing it online). Soon, I'll be running and gunning and having the time of my life.
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