The Save Spot

GAUGE VII Post-Mortem: Rock Band

 

 

 

One of the most interesting things that came out of this year’s GAUGE was the most prolific Rock Band performance I have had the pleasure of being a part of. This is not to say that I have not had fun playing the game up until now, but it’s a whole lot different when you play with two other people on the hardest difficulty level and begin to make headway. This not only sets up next’s years event but also shows that we have the potential to excel in any potential sequels (e.g. Rock Band 2, Guitar Hero 4).

For my own experience, warming up the week before became frustrating. I had made plenty of progress during the past month and I was starting to crack the songs in the final set on Expert. I’m far from being considered an elite player in the game, and odds are I will never achieve that distinction, but it’s still fun to work on techniques and improve my ability to handle the 5-button plastic guitar. The frustration wasn’t that I was one song away from completing lead guitar before the trip started, but that my scores were not improving the final two days before GAUGE.

Please understand that I wasn’t nervous about being able to play the lead once we started playing as a group, but I did not feel as though I was ready to carry the band if and when it was needed. This turned out to be far from the truth, but there is this disturbing thought in the back of my head that I’m on a rather large plateau before being able to make a noticeable bump in my fan count again. 6.3 million fans isn’t anything to be unhappy with, but until I crack 9 million I’m probably not going to be satisfied with my abilities.

“Say It Ain’t So”

Early e-mail discussions were flying around to identify our band name. Most suggestions weren’t sitting right with everyone and the tide turned from gaming into coming up with many ways of making a negative commentary on everyone’s favorite FFVII character - Yuffie. Most people enjoy making disparaging remarks about her, but our goal of forming a band name was still incomplete after two weeks of fighting over e-mail. On the plus side, once we finally gathered together we came up with our band name - The Wutai Clan. Sure, it didn’t insult our favorite character, but it was a delicious pun that proved too hard to resist.

“In Bloom”

As we started with the earliest of songs we were all a little nervous about whether we could handle this game as a band on Hard. We (not everyone, but more than none) chickened out on even the easiest songs before things starting rolling. Song failures didn’t happen once, and when our scores consistently ranged between 92 and 100 percent on songs we knew we were ready for everything else.

“Learn to Fly”

Most songs were easy to get through on Hard. In fact, consistently sticking to the first 20 or so songs in the game (as ordered in career mode) was a good recipe for gaining confidence and executing almost every section of every song. Like any good team, we were starting to gain an almost purely instinctive timing on when to activate Star Power to gain a ton of points or insure that a difficult section of a song wouldn’t sink one of the band mates.

“Go With the Flow”

In a solid effort to easily garner cash and fans we kept plowing through the smaller song sets and easier songs. Most of our set lists didn’t change over a long period of time. This aided our efforts in achieving our goal of maxing out fans on Hard difficulty but also not getting a dismal amount of stars on multiple song sets. With rare exception all songs were 5-starred over days two and three of the event. The coasting proved to be a good thing because having a relaxed demeanor while switching games every couple of hours proved beneficial for all goals on our docket.

“Enter Sandman”

Late into night number 3 we started hitting some of the harder songs, and my inability to make quick movements between end notes began to become exposed on the Metallica song. Still, this was the night we finally hit our fan limit on Hard. This was a golden moment for us because it was probably our biggest achievement for GAUGE. Unfortunately it was short-lived.

“Flirtin’ With Disaster”

In an attempt to push for permanent glory in the game I decided that we needed to go after our Hall of Fame Induction on Hard. The song set we went through wasn’t all that surprising, but on song #6 we hit a brick wall on the Molly Hatchet song. It wasn’t a surprise that we failed that one because it is a nasty song on Hard, especially if you have never seen it before (which our bassist had not). Not only was the failure spectacular, but we lost a ton of fans that put us back under the Hard fan limit. My band mates did not let me forget this fact for a while.

“Won’t Get Fooled Again”

We decided that rather than slamming our heads into a wall trying to get into the Hall of Fame that we should start playing the easier songs on Expert to see how many fans we could get back on the hardest difficulty level. A couple thousands fans here and there were not helping much. After switching to the later cities that still provided easy songs we started getting fans in chunks of 100,000+. This proved to everyone present that the better we did at the highest level the more fans we would get. Ending the Wutai Clan experience for GAUGE VII on this note proved to be the absolute right thing to do.

There will be plenty of off-season training involved, and it looks like Rock Band 2 might be out before our next event. Even if it is not we still have plenty of time to enjoy the downloadable content to keep this game giving us fresh and fun experiences.

GAUGE VII Performance Report

 

 

Our gaming and entertainment extravaganza GAUGE VII is now in the books.  A fantastic five days in Seattle, we have all now returned to our ‘normal’ work and lives as busy gamers.  We wrote about our gaming goals previously, and since performance measurement and tracking is very important an update is warranted!  As you can see from this performance report, the overall success of the event can hardly be questioned.  We had base goals and stretch goals for each of our achievements, and scored ourselves up to 100% for accomplishing a goal and up to 150% for a strech goal.  Based on this scoring methodology, our GAUGE VII performance was 110.8% - in other words on average we accomplished all our goals and over 20% of our strech goals!  Considering the large quantity of goals we set for this year, we consider this a major success.  Some key performance highlights are noted below.

Rock Band:  Our band The Wutai Clan (guitar, bass, and drums) was formed and performing for just five days and achieved over 1.5 Million fans.  This met our stretch goal of beating the world tour mode on ‘hard’ difficulty.  You can bet we’ll be reuniting the band at GAUGE VII to play more on ‘expert’ difficulty.   

Futurama:  We successfully decoded the alien language in futurama over the first half-dozen episodes of the first season.  We overcame several obstacles in this project.  The first in-episode alien alphabet symbols, five of them forming one word, appeared on an advertisement for the beverage “Slurm“.  As a reasonable working hypothesis we tried to decypher other signs by assuming the alien word was also Slurm.  Several episodes in, however, this started to appear less likely.  A second obstacle, we watched several episodes with no alien alphabet appearing at all!  Finally, we caught a break when a sign on a shop door had the word “Open” in english and four alien alphabet characters below it.  Using these four characters as a key, we were able to puzzle out several other signs including “Venusians Go Home”, “Tasty Human Burgers”, and “Don’t Drink The Emperor”.  Looking back to that first sign, we see that the alien word was “drink” and not “Slurm” - doh!  With these signs translated, we feel confident that further signs in the game will be decypherable - we’ve got all the vowels and most of the common letters.  We’ll put it to the test in GAUGE VIII, no doubt!

A few points where we came up short are worth noting as well.

X-Men Legends II:  We had high hopes of finishing Act 5 of this game, which we started playing in GAUGE VI.  Unfortunately, we kept running into disk read errors on the Xbox I’ve had since launch in 2001!  We were almost able to cleverly circumvent the problem by booting up to the Xbox Media Center and loading the game to the hard drive, but unfortunately we couldn’t get the Media Center to boot again afterwards!  We had to pass on this goal after making it about 25% of the way through Act 5.

Gauntlet:  With so many other good games to play, we just didn’t sit down with this classic.  A failure of gaming or goal-setting?  Either way, we had to score ourselves 0% for this one.

You can expect more coverage of GAUGE VII in the days to come, and a facelift for the site as well.

 

‘Twas the Day Before GAUGE VII

 

 

 

Twas the day before Gauge VII
and all through the day
My thoughts had been racing
through the games we’d soon play.

The drum set was placed
in the living room with care
with hopes that Rock Band tunes
would soon fill the air.

The beer fridge is stocked
and our goals have been set
My DS is charged and
the steaks will be a hit!

Everything is in place
or so I had thought
as I spring bolt upright
realizing one thing I’d forgot!

Tournament prizes!
How could this be?
I meant to go get them
last week don’t you see?

Good thing I remembered
today not tomorrow
I thought as I went out
to buy, beg, or borrow.

I strolled down the isles
noting several nice items
and finally picked out
two prizes - I’ll buy them.

Crisis averted!
I returned to my day
and tried to hold thoughts
of GAUGE VII at bay.

It was no avail, though
I couldn’t stop thinking
of all the fun games
the food, and the drinking

We’ve X-men, and DS,
and MUA to play
There’s Rock Band, and Iron Man
and Indy’s latest crusade!

Good thing that only
twenty four hours remain
until we kick off
GAUGE once again!

 

GAUGE goals

 

 

 

 

In previous posts we’ve talked about our (roughly) annual gaming binge and mini-reunion we call GAUGE.  With the start of GAUGE VII just two days away, we have finally locked down our gaming, entertainment, and food and beverage consumption goals for the event.  Yes, you read that correctly.  Starting with GAUGE VI we took our nerd factor up by an order of magnitude by establishing a set of specific, measurable goals around the major GAUGE activities. 

Why?  Mostly because it’s been a fun way to plan together, and to build excitement for the event.  Also, though, we are busy gamers and we don’t have this kind of chance regularly to set aside large blocks of time for tackling challenging gaming goals like these.  Plus, we have performance metrics and stretch goals in our mundane, real-world lives at work - why shouldn’t we treat our recreation with as much respect! 

Some of our goals are straightforward, for example to beat X-Men Legends II (a game we started playing last year), others are a little more unique (like making it to level 30 in Gauntlet, while enjoying a beverage whenever “Warrior needs food badly!”).  We’ll share our full suite of GAUGE goals in a future post, but a few of our other goals for this year are:

1. Succeed in Rock Band world tour, Hard
2. Decypher the alien language in Futurama
3. Beat the final boss in Final Fantasy Ring of Fates DS on the first try
4. Dominate the food chain in a single meal by feasting on beef, pork, chicken, fish, and shellfish.

 If you’ve set interesting gaming or entertainment goals with your friends, let us know in the comments.

 

 

 

You’ve got mail!

 

 

 

 

If you’re like me, you probably have a bunch of old computers lying around your house, office, or car.  So what do you do with all of those old PC’s? 

Well you could be responsible and recycle.

Or you could be responsible and recycle it yourself…

EA a Bad Company?

 

 

 

The older I get, the more interested I become in marketing.  I’m not sure there’s actually a relationship between age and interest.  Well other than the fact that I keep seeming to get older.  But that’s for another day.

 

So when Kotaku pointed out EA’s new promotional website, I had to chuckle. 

In a company the size of EA, how does the URL badcompany.ea.com make it past the marketing department?

GTA IV: Running Diary Part II

 

 

 

(originally written on Thursday, May 1st)
——————

The level of detail in this game borders on sickening. I’ve spent 4 hours just watching TV in the game. That’s more than I spend watching network TV on a normal week. This should bother me, but it doesn’t. What you can watch is very concentrated and meant to be funny. If you have played a GTA game before, or are just enjoying the heck out of this one, you owe it to yourself to watch CNT.

Now for the basics. There has been far too many things to note, so below is an itemized list of everything I can think of after being up for 2 days and being completely buzzed on caffeine.

- The first topic to note, and probably most important, is that the default brightness and contrast settings in the game suck. The first night they were giving me a splitting headache on a mission where I needed to follow someone hogging a corner selling dope. I did manage to find a door to another alley to follow the prick, but it was simply by doing the House of Mirrors trick to find my way out. Do yourself a favor and up your brightness and contrast to 75%. Thank me later.

- I’m about 35% of the way through, which seems slow. It is. I get easily distracted in these games with people who cut me off while driving. Thanks to the addition of the cellular phone for all contacts, which is a big plus, you have to be careful walking on the street because idiots will slam into you. If you need a physics lesson then let me just state that the conversation ends and you have to start the whole thing over again. When this happens in the middle of a mission it is quite frustrating.

- Killing pigeons is always fun. Finding 200 of them will not be.

- I identified two highly annoying characters to date in the game. They are now dead as a mandatory plot point. Okay, that may need clarification. Mandatory in this sense means scripted, not “JD is pissed so he’s going to make it his life’s work to take out someone annoying”.

- A choice in the plot was to kill a poser or someone who managed a successful strip club. This wasn’t one of the tougher decisions I’ve made in my life.

- Roman is family, but he is a hopeless loser. He’s going to cause problems throughout the game and, as much as it would please me to dump him, toss his body into a river, or whatever, it just would not work. I have a feeling that as long as he tries to be loyal to family then the game will punish me if I try to do that. Chronic gamblers never seem to get their cards in order.

- The artwork for the buildings in this game is nothing less than awe-inspiring. If I could get rid of the main UI I would have a ton of pictures by now. I never liked action bars or anything else clogging up the scenery. Oh well.

- GTA has reaffirmed another one of life’s valuable lessons. Wanna guess? Nevermind. In a nutshell, you cannot trust women. Maybe I’m just bitter.

- Seeing a cop car driving into a notably stationary car fire was quite amusing. Okay, seeing the cops get out and run around while on fire was better. This makes me wonder how cops with the ability to shoot you from a quarter-mile away with automatic weapons could be so horrific at driving.

- Fire hydrants are sources of fun.

- Dragging people while they hold onto the door of a car you just jacked is also a source of fun.

2:31 - The bank job begins. We shall see how this compares to the Vice City bank mission and the San Andreas casino mission. I never did finish the latter because gaining rep with that psycho female employee who was into bondage was just too damned aggravating.

2:33 - Okay. Anybody who doubts the ability of Rockstar to write a script or to make good cinema with voice acting and character animation needs to watch this Three Leaf Clover mission. The stare-down between Niko and Patrick’s older brother is something that Hollywood actors need to study. How many current movie stars could pull that off? Is three too high?

2:35 - That took way too long to type.

2:37 - This Patrick character is voiced almost perfectly. I can’t say for certain because I was laughing too hard during the conversation in the car on the way to the job.

2:51 - Do bank jobs ever go perfectly in games? It may never happen. I’m not going to give it away, but when you don’t plan out your conversations accordingly really stupid stuff can happen. Maybe being called Mr. Pink isn’t such a bad idea.

2:56 - This mission is blowing my mind. Aside from surviving 2 minutes with blinking red health, the level design and how the cops close in on you is top-notch. If I was tired right now I wouldn’t need Red Bull because so much adrenaline is pumping through me that caffeine is pretty much irrelevant.

3:00 - If I was nodding off that oncoming train probably would have been a bigger issue.

3:03 - Dammit! I really thought I had this mission bagged. It really stinks when your death costs you $7000 to be resuscitated at a hospital. Maybe dumping some guns would be a good idea. Somehow these 1500+ pistol rounds might seem excessive.

3:05 - Hrmmm, I just had an evil thought about the subway. If this works I’ll be scared.

3:08 - It took a heck of a long time, but congratulations Michael McReary. You are the first gaping chasm in the game. Your voice acting could be described as excellent… as in Bill & Ted excellent.

3:16 - During the firefight in the streets there was some body armor lying around. It is nice that the game hasn’t been littered with weapons and items in the strangest spots. The realism added a whole to the city. This feels like one of those “we feel sorry for you” moments from the developers. Hey, I think this horse had its tonsils removed.

3:20 - I feel ashamed. I found a disgusting loophole in getting rid of the wanted level. Still, finding an underground homeless shelter in the subway is a nice touch. I’m going to spend several minutes exploring this area before heading back home.

3:26 - Must avoid traffic collisions. Must avoid traffic collisions. Must…

3:29 - Toll booths. I mean, avoiding the wanted level is so easy and paying the $5 toll is just morally reprehensible. However, there’s this whole “sitting on a gigantic pile of money” thing in a topsy-turvy pickup that has me thinking twice.

3:32 - Mission is over. $250,000 for the mission. Thank god toll-booth restraint went into effect. It somehow seems worth it now. Still, that’s like making excuses for using a potion in Final Fantasy. I’m going to have to consult a few friends to see what the line is for it being okay to pay a toll. This may be the only acceptable circumstance. Escaping a 5 star wanted level with that much cash should be on the short list, right?

3:50 - Forgive me, I just spent the last several minutes staring off into space and drowning myself in the stats menu in the game. Then again, the Red Bull consumption rate is also going up. This could be leading me to the conclusion that I may in fact be tired. These all-nighters used to be so much easier. I would say that this sounds pathetic, but the reality is that I took the week off from work to do this. On the plus side we passed pathetic in September of last year when I reserved this game, so that is no longer an issue.

3:59 - By the way, Brucie is a massive lunatic. Sure, he is a funny lunatic, but anybody who routinely smashes their head into things and causes blood spatter should not be alive by the time they reach thirty. Of course, there’s a lot of stuff in this game to be scared of.

4:00 - I just love setting up missions to up rep with players only to have plot-related phone calls come in and nuke them. This should have been worked on a little. Missions should not interrupt other missions. It seems wrong.

4:03 - Everyone in the McReary family is now in the address book. At what point can I file for citizenship? Shouldn’t Russian mobsters have a lot of Russian contacts? Apparently most Russian mobsters are jerks worthy of a bullet in their forehead while the Irish ones are fun to party with. Hey, maybe we can turn this into the first civil suit in the game. I wonder if the Vice City Haitians wouldn’t mind passing the torch on this one?

4:08 - Brucie is just one-dimensional. I have yet to find anything besides the strip club that ups the rep with him. Part of me is wondering why this is worthy of a complaint.

4:12 - It is so comforting to know that bowling in video games is always 400% more difficult than in real life. Is this true for all video games that aren’t exclusively bowling? Someone should research this.

4:15 - Out of the blue I can now get helicopter rides from Brucie. Maybe that’s enough to not make him a complete waste in the game. Cab rides and ammo would have been enough. This makes me wonder how long before there’s a bonus for getting extra cars. This needs to happen in the worst way.

4:16 - It dawns on me that it probably won’t happen.

4:16 - I’m mad.

4:18 - Driving cross-town in an SUV is slow. Being too lazy to take the train or get into a faster car has its drawbacks.

4:26 - A small correction is in order. The bowling difficulty percentage may be off by a decimal place.

4:30 - Having normal in-car conversations while flying in the air may be the best part of the game. Then again, there are a lot of oddities to choose from.

4:35 - Smoking cars and grenades are a good mixture.

4:36 - It just occurred to me that maintaining rep in this game makes GTA a lot like the Sims. Caffeine is preventing me from deciphering how good or annoying this is.

4:38 - Irishmen and whiskey. I feel my real name should be mentioned any second now.

4:38 - Odds are that revealed how little I know about alcohol.

4:39 - Derrick doesn’t think Niko is a complete tool anymore. This should be a positive, but it does eliminate the possibility of another staredown. Maybe dating the sister can provoke something? Let’s hope so.

4:43 - You would think driving with a bomb in the car would turn me into a careful driver. Two lanes of oncoming traffic just realized how wrong that assumption was.

4:45 - Flipping bikers into the air never gets old.

4:45 - If the detail of the city was not highly praised yet, let me do it again. Even the gigantic neon signs that are not in downtown Algonquin are blowing my mind. The graphics team over at Rockstar North should get a lifetime achievement award for this game alone.

4:48 - I’m being asked not to get too close to a car that refuses to obey the traffic laws. Following it with a car spitting out black smoke probably is not too smart for trying to remain inconspicuous.

4:50 - The jokes involving babies in this game, from a completely moral perspective, should not be funny. The soda stain on the monitor, however, is evidence to the contrary.

4:53 - Basic cleanup skills involving care while caffeine is coursing through my blood stream like a raging river are not accessible. This monitor will never be the same.

4:57 - That warehouse explosion was very cool. Having failed to mention it yet, it’s time to point out that the particle effects and explosions in this game are some of the best I’ve seen in any game to date.

5:00 - The mission is over. So is this running diary for today - but you were wondering how much longer this could go for anyway.

GTA IV: Running Diary Part I

 

 

 

I should point out that this log is over a week old, but after some grammar-related edits and checking for overall flow it looks like it is finally ready to be. The second half of this event will be saved for later in the week. The third and final part will involve overall game impressions now that I’ve played many hours past the end of the story.

(originally written Monday, April 28th)
——————

11:25 - Apparently pre-ordering the game isn’t enough. Now I need a ticket number to stand in line. When did this trend start? People who haven’t paid for the game in full still get it before I do? Someone needs to explain this to me.

11:41 - I’m already talking about my next planned gaming addiction 5 months from now with other people in the store. For reasons of a non-GTA nature I’m not going to bother revealing its name here. All I will say that it rhymes with MC Hammer Online.

11:50 - Someone in line mentions Marvel vs. Mortal Kombat. Wait, maybe it was DC instead of Marvel. Who cares. They’ve had too many stupid ideas for fighting games in the past 2 years. I’m convinced this is the only way Street Fighter IV can sound good right now. Anyway, I mention being a holdout for MK vs. Pokemon. Half the people in line keel over. This is my grenade throwing practice – only with jokes. It’s as close to a near riot as the night gets. In a certain way it’s disappointing.

12:12 - It’s taking 10 minutes for 5 people to get the game. This proves once again that people are idiots.

12:37 - I finally get the game started. I’d tell you more about what happened between the last note and now, but I think I blacked out ignoring traffic lights on the way back home.

12:38 - Giggity, giggity ….

12:44 - After a brief scare of my controller somehow being in the wrong assignment port (2 instead of 1), things get resolved, and we’re driving again! Wouldn’t you know it - the controls are exactly what I’d expect them to be.

12:46 - They’ve still got a knack for dialog too.

12:51 - TV in this game is actually more entertaining that 95% of regular TV. It really makes you think.

12:56 - I spotted my first planned murder victim. You’d think that would have taken longer.

12:57 – Okay, that probably didn’t fool anybody.

1:03 - Not long after I see for the 5th time that my cousin’s an idiot (in the game) I get a pedestrian to dive in front of my car. Driving’s going to be sweet.

1:22 - First date mission and she’s already annoying - just like real life!

1:42 - Aaaah, clobberin’ time. I think it surprises everyone it took so long to get here. On the plus side targeting is still a mystery.

1:46 – After some live target practice targeting and hiding is making a lot of sense. Nice to see I am becoming an idiot in my old age.

1:58 - Oh no, I must avoid cops (sarcasm is a problem with me). After driving around for a little bit (in a shopping cart) it turns out not to be all that challenging. I guess that shouldn’t be surprising considering I have yet to not play a GTA iteration. A couple people were run over in the process. Considering the detail in the game to date with the pedestrians I’m surprised I didn’t see any ambulances in the area.

1:58 – I spoke to soon. If they can save the one that hit the telephone pole on a rebound they definitely know what they are doing.

2:06 - Time to spend a ton of time scrolling through the menus and looking up stats. Who knows, there might be an insane amount of detail in there.

2:10 - These phone calls while driving around really make life challenging when trying to score dates. What, how am I honestly supposed to choose between those two? The save and load carousel begins!

2:20 - Getting lost driving around looking at the city itself. Rockstar seriously needs to be proud of itself for the looks of the city alone. After finding the rock station in the game a classic R.E.M. song pops on. I’m starting to wonder if this is the best game ever.

2:21 - Cars with GPS’s! It’s dumb with the map, but in a good way. The speaking part of the GPS is a nice touch.

2:26 - I went on a date dealing with paraplegics and missing babies. I’d be more uncomfortable, but I’ve seen dates go worse. In real life.

2:28 - Huh, you’d think a police chase on the way back to her house would be a positive thing. What is this world coming to?

2:44 - The aiming system with the guns is second nature now. What’s interesting is that aiming with your fists is a lot like playing darts games with a stylus, in that it’s completely obtrusive and annoying.

2:54 - Catch and take out the drug dealers. That took all of 4 seconds. Always think of your car as a bowling ball - that’s my motto.

2:55 - I’m hungry. Huh. It’s only been 12 hours since I ate last time. It’s almost as if something’s been occupying my mind in the meantime.

3:00 - Round 1 of the log’s in the book. I’ll be taking notes in the meantime and getting ready to get back to you once I’m a little more sleep deprived. Cheers!

The secret of GAUGE?

 

 

 

Some of my best gaming moments came surrounded by friends. 

Sometimes they involved finally winning a deathmatch (Quake).  Or the thrill of destroying a hoard of rampaging Orcs (Warcraft II).  Other times it was a successful alliance to control the world (Civ IV).

But whatever they were, it was always more exciting with a friend.  And that’s really the heart of GAUGE. 

As you can see, we have an extensive supply list.  We use everything from movies to video games.  This year we’re actually planning on using no less than six different gaming systems.  Why?  Because we can!

But even if we only had an Atari (which would be sweet), we would still have a blast.  Because as much as we love playing with new toys, trying out new games, and over eating, what really counts is that we do it as a group.

Look at it this way – we all eat, we all play games, we all watch movies.  But there’s something about GAUGE that draws us in, and makes us look forward to it.  There’s a reason we take a week of our vacation time to hold GAUGE - and it’s not because we can’t play video games at home! 

Now don’t get me wrong, there are lots of cool features in any GAUGE experience.  But the one essential to creating a GAUGE experience is to have friends that you want to spend some time with.  Cheesy?  Perhaps.  But that doesn’t mean it’s not true.  And deep down, I think we all know gaming is more fun with friends.

GAUGE VII Supplies

 

 

 

GAUGE VII is just fifteen days away, and we’re having fun pulling together our plans and preparing supplies.  Here’s some of the supplies we’ll be putting to use over Memorial Day weekend:

1. Xbox 360
2. PS3
3. Wii
4. Xbox
5. Sony 50″ LCD Projection TV
6. Marvel Ulitmate Alliance
7. Rock Band, wired guitar, drum set
8. Extra wireless guitar for Rock Band
9. X-Men Legends II
10. (3) 24 ounce porterhouse steaks
11. (3) Tickets for Indiana Jones
12. (3) Nintendo DS (DSes?)
13. (3) Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates DS
14. (4) Cases of cold beer
15. Trigun, first season
16. (3) Tickets to see Iron Man.  Again.
17. Futurama, first season
18. DVD - The King of Kong
19. Blu Ray - Hitman
20. 8′ billiards table
21. (3) Xbox 360 wireless controllers
22. (3) PS3 wireless controllers
23. 19″ PoS CRT TV
24. NESp
25. Donkey Kong
26. (14) AA batteries
27. DVD - the Indiana Jones Trilogy