PAgent’s Progress

as best I can recall

PAgent:“Hey, Nintendo is going to release ‘Animal Crossing’ for the Wii.”

Mrs. Agent: “You’re kidding. Will you be able to catch insects and fish?”

PAgent: “I assume so.”

Mrs. Agent: “Oh my God. My life is over.”

Okay, rather than try to come up with something erudite or moving, or even coherent, I’m going to throw out a handful of little things I’ve been meaning to mention.

I’ve become hopelessly addicted to Chain Factor. Seriously. I play in Basic Mode, and my high score is 196,000. I need a 12-step program.

Nitrome makes some beautiful games. I’ve only played a couple of them, but the artwork is beautiful, and the gameplay is interesting. If you want an example of one of their games that has particularly clever gameplay, try YinYang. It’s cool.

My latest favorite webcomic is Truck Bearing Kibble. Like most of my favorite webcomics, it runs headlong right up to the line of being truly disturbing.

One of my very, very favorite food blogs is The Scent of Green Bananas. I wish I could take pictures like her, and I wish I could hang out in her kitchen for a week or so. Yum.

A recent find (courtesy of No Fat Clips!) is the absolutely wonderful short film Our Last Video Ever, in homage ofABBA’s 30-year anniversary of winning the Eurovision song contest. It features four astonishing ABBA puppets from the Jim Henson Creature Shop. Puppets that are at the same time adorable and a bit disturbing. It’s well worth watching, particularly if you are an ABBA fan. The story behind the video can be found here.

Finally, I’ve come to really look forward to the wonderful odds and ends that show up at Futility Closet every day.

Check it out. That’s all for now.

via videosift.com

These should be particularly helpful for new or expectant parents.

See the rest of the collection at Do’s and Don’ts with Babies.

via Neatorama

In one of the chapters of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, you play as a member of a two-man sniper team, sneaking through the ruins of Prypiat, Ukraine — the ghost town created by the Chernobyl disaster. As you work your way toward your objective, your Captain demonstrates how to take out a sentry quietly by sneaking up behind him and whispering “Oi! Suzie!”, then knifing him when he turns around. It’s one of many little cinematic moments that elevate the gameplay in COD4. And it’s amusing to think of the poor hapless sentry, clueless cannon fodder that he is, getting fooled so fatally.

Except, now I’m the Suzie.

I’ve been playing COD4 on XBox Live with some of the folks from 2old2play. And I enjoy it, don’t get me wrong. There are some aspects of the game that really shine in multiplayer mode. It’s just that my gameplay isn’t one of them.

A typical game session involves signing into a game lobby with other folks in my clan, the host selects a map for the match, and what type of match it will be. Then you get a few seconds to select the particular weapon load-out you wish to use, and the game begins.

Okay, from that point on, my participation is largely limited to following the other guys, and getting killed. Repeatedly. There are tactics being used, and general strategies being followed, but they are largely lost on me, because by the time I’ve gotten oriented to where I am on the map, and where the good guys and the bad guys are, I’m usually dead again.

The disparity between my abilities, and those of the folks I’ve been playing is amazing. It’s not uncommon to turn a corner and come face to face with an opponent. But whereas I will be spraying bullets in his general direction, he will be putting 3-4 precisely aimed rounds into my torso. How do they DO that?

If you find yourself really close to someone, you can melee them (knife them) quickly and silently. Except by the time I’ve realized I’m next to an enemy, remembered that I should knife them, and remembered which button to depress, they’ve swung around behind me, stabbed me, and have moved on to the next pigeon. And it’s not like I’m terribly slow, they’re just terribly fast.

And the game won’t permit you to cherish any illusion that you’re doing okay, either. You can’t just say “They got lucky that time!”, because each and every time you die, the game shows you a short movie of your death from the point of view of the player who just offed you. Called the “Killcam”, it’s a valuable tool for improving your gameplay. At least, it shows you what kind of a buffoon you were as you walked out into the open and into a set of crosshairs, or spun frantically in place as you got neatly perforated, or exactly how far away the sniper was that popped you in the forehead.

Don’t get me wrong, the guys I’ve been playing with haven’t said a word about my lack of ability. They’re good guys, they know I’m a n00b, and I think they know I’m trying. What’s getting to me is that I don’t seem to be getting any better. Oh, I’ve been promoted. But you can’t lose points, only gain them, so any idiot will eventually get promoted if he’s participating at all. A couple of times I’ve run out of ammo, which is actually a good sign, because it means I’ve stayed alive long enough to run out of ammo. I just need to get better at staying alive while actually participating in the action.

In a related topic, I’ve ordered a Turtle Beach X1 gaming headset. This will route both the game audio and the headset chatter to a set of headphones, so I can play in the evenings without my wife being subjected to a steady barrage of explosions and gunfire. It’s an entry-level headset, because although there are some headsets out there with 5.1 surround sound within the headphone, they are hellaciously expensive. I’m hoping that being able to hear the game audio more clearly will help me out. I’m also hoping I’ll be able to understand the team chatter a little better, because right now it seems really garbled.

The nice thing about the Internet is, it lets people with the same interests find each other and interact.

The sad thing about the Internet is, it lets people with the same interests find each other and interact.

For example, we have dating sites like eHarmony, and Match.com, where people who are looking for a long-term committed relationship are able to search for their soul mates.

But say you are obscenely successful, or incredibly attractive. People like you shouldn’t be forced to look through screen after screen of losers in the hopes of finding someone worthy enough to be with you. After all, if you’re a millionaire, you need to have some arm candy by your side. And contrariwise, if you’re a hottie, you deserve to be taken care of.

For these people we have SeekingMillionaire.com:

SeekingMillionaire is a website catering specifically to “Millionaire Dating” – i.e., dating between wealthy, rich and successful singles, and beautiful or attractive singles. In any such a relationship, at least one individual is wealthy, rich and successful. In short, this is a dating website which caters to singles who possess and care about two important qualities – namely, WEALTH and BEAUTY.

Oh, God. I wanted this to be a parody site. I thought, surely this is satire. I looked for the punch line, but alas, never found it.

“Regular dating websites are for regular people. I’m a wealthy man who wanted to date a beautiful woman. On other dating sites, I had to compete with a multitude of ordinary singles. On SeekingMillionaire, I was the selected few and found the relationship I wanted painlessly.” – Wealthy Male Member

So, it’s kind of a ShallowMatch.com. But let’s say, hypothetically, that SeekingMillionaire was still too much of a commitment for you. Let’s say that you have a couple million in the bank, your stock in Microsoft has split a couple of times, your wife has put on a few pounds, and you just want to make sure that you’re getting regular head from a sexy young blonde, and you’re willing to pay for her apartment and boob job in order to get it. In that case you should hie yourself over to their sister website, SeekingArrangement.com, the dating service that hooks up Sugar Daddies and Sugar Mommies with Sugar Babies:

Let’s face it… It’s human nature for people to want younger and more attractive partners. It’s also natural for younger men & women to seek out more experienced, sophisticated partners, specifically those who have the means of providing them with comforts and luxuries.

Wow, I think I just threw up in my mouth a little.

“Men my age are too immature. My current arrangement is wonderful. Unlike other cash strapped students, I am pampered with expensive gifts. My sugar daddy is the sweetest man I know. He is my mentor, my benefactor and my lover.” – College Sophomore

So, I guess I’m wondering exactly when this becomes prostitution. I’m pretty sure if I was setting up coeds to have sex with middle-aged men in exchange for money and other favors, I’d get nailed for pandering.

I don’t know why this bothers me, exactly. This sort of thing has been going on since the dawn of time, and will continue to go on until the end of our species. And putting it on the Internet doesn’t really change it in any way, it just makes it more efficient. Maybe it’s the idea that the participants aren’t even bothering to pretend that there’s anything meaningful in the relationship.

As archaic as it sounds, maybe it bothers me because it is, literally, shameless, and I just think these people should be ashamed of themselves.