It would appear that Blogger has gone and changed their interface once again.  Hey, messing with fonts is amusing.
 
But, we'll still to normal sized Georgia font, cause it's a good font to use.  And hopefully, damn this new interface is annoying.  Keeps reverting to Tiny when I turn away for a moment.
 
So, as everyone can see.  As soon as I get nice and post links to Jiaz's lovely pictures, he goes and one-ups me by actually blogging, and making all the photo links individual with descriptions.  He's just mean sometimes.
 
Lesson for the week.  If you've created a Note-keeping place inside your Java application that saves and retrieves intself from a SQL database table, it's probably not a good idea to recreate the database from null values if you had important notes.  My uncle and I knew there was a reason we didn't want to have to null-state the database, we just couldn't remember the specifics offhand.  Now we know, and of course we left a reminder in the Note program, just in case we should try it again.
 
In other news, I've apparently got a package at Tech.  But between 2 jobs and a lack of care, I'm not about to take the trip down there just for my package, plus, they probably close the office on weekends, I'll have to check.  Now if only I had some clue as to why I'd be getting packages at Tech in the middle of Summer (well, not really the middle any longer).
 
So, I need to warn the world about a PS2 game that David borrowed from his manager for all of a day before giving it back, it's called "The Getaway". 
 
I describe it as: GTA3 + Winback, with the drawbacks of Resident Evil and Valkerie Profile.
 
But, that description is kinda lacking in the details.  So I'll break it down.  Take a lovely GTA3-esce City, ie:  Mostly unenterable buildings, abruptly terminating streets, yelling pedestrians.  Now take all that and make it British.  Yes, British.  Driving on the other side of the street, profanity in every cutscene with speech.  As for Winback, which I hope none of my readers have had the displeasure of playing.  It's like a poor man's Metal Gear Solid.  You can hide against barrels and boxes, peek around corners, roll, and that's about where the similarities end.  You, and your team of similarly colored, soon to be dead allies, go about through the FPS campaign with no inventory whatsoever.  You get one gun at a time, a few flashbangs, and go about fighting less and less innovative battles.  But enough about Winback.  The Getaway is a real piece of work.  You don't have a radar, or even a HUD for that matter.  You figure out which direction to go while driving by your turn signals.  As if that weren't bad enough, when I say no HUD, I mean it.  You cannot see the status of your ammo, the condition of your health.  But you can, and must, reload, and you can and will die.  The only reasonable way to judge your current status is how badly your character is gimping around.  You have the ability to do all the standard FPS maneuvers:  Rolls, duck behind low objects, take hostages, etc. but the controls are so horrid that you'll have extreme difficulty getting any real benefit out of them.  Moreover, you have to lock on to someone to be able to fire, that or manually aim (Which happens via a diesembodied over the should kind of camera angle that makes hitting buildings difficult).  The vehicle damage system works like GTA, white smoke turns to black smoke, then the car ignites and you burn to death if you don't bail really fast.  Windows can get shot out by gunfire, and I'm not sure about tires but a damaged car performs really substandard, as it should.  Also, the hero cannot run.  There is no run button, there is not speed other than moronic shuffle.  Even better, despite having a whole City, perhaps more, to explore, you don't have the option.  All the missions chain onto one another, and you have to do them, or gameover, no exploring allowed until the end.  I only got through the first mission before losing the thrill but here's how genius your character is.  The game opens with 4 thugs plotting to, and then moving to kidnap a woman and her son.  They screw up when she struggles and shoot her.  You are awakened by this (turns out it's your wife and son), so you run outside, pick up the murder weapon and then put it back down complete with your fingerprints.  Then you carchase the guilty party, shoot a bunch of guys, get clubbed over the head, and wake up faced with the old leader of a rival mob who has a bunch of jobs you have to do or your son dies.  Now David's play Enter the Matrix, I figure he'll have beaten it by tomorrow.
 
I leave you with this quote that I see outside a church I pass coming back from Java.  Is it just me, or does this seem to be the wrong message to be sending to parishoners?
"Salvation is a gift for the guilty not a reward for the righteous."
 
Hmm, I wonder what happens if I change the post date ahead 2 years for fun?