But as I'm nearing the end of a three year long project, I wanted to finally get a "project log" of sorts up for the tribute blade I've been talking about on and off again for years. I by no means claim this to be well written, as I just decided tonight that I wanted to get something up to share, and it hasn't even been proof-read. Nonetheless, I thought I'd share the link if anyone cares to read.

Check it out here: http://www.stymietown.com/?page_id=21

Cross-posted from my blog: www.stymietown.com .

This morning I could not help but to overhear a coworker talking about the financial crisis. She was explaining that she did not follow news, politics, or financial markets, so apparently all of the recent financial woes came as somewhat of a surprise to her. She, and the other coworker she was conversing with, began to talk about how everyone would be happier if they "Just didn't look at their 401ks for about 6 months." I have heard others lament about the extent of their financial losses in recent months, due to their major stock holdings for their 401k.

At a recent family gathering, I was discussing market conditions with one of my older cousins and one of my uncles. They lectured me on the principles of traditional investing -- be a long term investor, put the maximum into your 401k, never look at it and assume the market will handle it for you.

I can never buy into that kind of "conventional wisdom." Three or four months ago, I sat down and gave a hard look to the quarterly performance of the different stock packages I had my 401k nested into. I had been doing a little market research at the time, and I was convinced things were going to go south hard and fast by the end of summer. I decided conventional wisdom was not for me, and I took all of my current 401k balance and transferred it to a Government guaranteed income fund. This allocation, of course, gives a very small investment return (3% or thereabout), but you won't be losing money either. I kept my new incoming funds going to the same stock-based plans they had been going to before, so it wasn't a complete withdraw from the market, but I wanted to make sure what I had up until that point was "safe" as possible. Of course, it's still worth investing into your 401k the maximum amount your company will match, because no where else can you essentially get a 50% ROI, but going beyond the max match percent right now is simply not worth it. You're better off paying off debts or setting up some emergency cash, because it's not like the markets are paying out anyway.

Now, I am not a big fan of the stock market to begin with. To be honest, I've always found it somewhat contemptible, at least in the extent to where some rely on it as their sole means of making a living. See, I always liken stock values to monopoly money. After the Wall street Bailout was rejected yesterday, financial analysts have said that the U.S. market lost over one-and-a-quarter trillion U.S. dollars in equity in a single day.

Now, perhaps it's just me, but I always imagined money should be in a state akin to the first law of thermodynamics. You know, energy cannot be created nor destroyed, but it can change forms. How does $1.25tril disappear in a single day? Honestly, that tells you how volatile these markets are. A dollar itself is a meaningless object. Monetary values are kept as promise notes to physical, tangible goods. A U.S. dollar represents a share in a certain amount of U.S. gold. Stocks, however, are held as a representation of value, and therein is the difference. Just because you have $1mil in stocks does not mean you have $1mil, but the market tends to take that representation of value as actual physical financial money. However, it's only worth $1mil if someone is willing to pay you $1mil for it. It was never real money, just a representation of value which can change any day.

Call me crazy, but that's not the kind of situation I want the fruits of my hard work to be in. The work I do is tangible, and the profits should be as well. Let everyone else play their glorified, adult version of Monopoly.

Numerous issues lately have had me becoming a little less content with my job. Of course, in the long run, I don't think I'm the type of person who could ever permanently settle in one job working for someone else. I always felt like I would be better off starting my own company. I was thinking about it today -- I am a very lucky person. I have a lot of simply incredible friends who are all very diverse, and very good at what they do. I really need to sit down one day and kick my creative side into overdrive, because if I can ever get that one good idea, I know I could assemble one hell of a team. It's actually fun to think about -- going through your friends in your head and lining up everyone's strengths. It just reminds me again how lucky I am to know such awesome people.

So, I stayed up last night for all 15 innings of the All Star game. That was a great game (and pre-game). Too bad the National League couldn't pull it off, but they put up one hell of a fight. I feel pretty bad for Uggla, you could tell the kid was just getting more and more shook up as the game went on. But as much as the game itself was good, how cool was it to see the greats like Lou Brock, Hank Aaron, Yogi Berra, et all all together in one place? That was a real treat.

E3 is storming ahead and, to be honest, right now it's hard to keep track of it all. There's been a ton of great looking games coming out of the conferences for every console. I should sit down at some point and try to make a list of what all games actually look like they'd be worth keeping tabs on.

Time to get back to work. And by work, I mean thinking of the idea which I will ultimately drag you all into! Bwa ha ha.

-Steimel, your future CEO.

I finished MGS4 Saturday morning, clocking in at almost exactly 20 hours play time when I did my post-credits save. There isn't much to say, it's the most fun I've had playing a game in -- well, I don't even know how long. But I'm leary to say much more until more people have played / finished the game.

When you finish the game, among other things, you unlock a new difficulty level called "Extreme Boss." Well, Extreme Boss mode is... extreme. I started a few file to try and do a No Alerts, No Kills play through, but I'll be damned it is remarkably hard on that difficulty setting. So I may have to turn it back a notch.

I'm not sure what else I want to play, now. I've made some pretty good ground on my backlog in the last few weeks. I've still never played Metal Gear Portable Ops, which of course would be closer to the mood now. I'm not that far into GTA IV and I still have Twilight Princess unfinished. And then there is Mass Effect, which I never wound up starting.

Oh yeah, I finally started playing FF2 on the PSP. And wow -- it is definitely the worst game in the series! I feel an obligation to try and finish it, because I'd be annoyed having there still only be one game in the main series I have not completed, but I'll be damned if this game doesn't manage to ever go more than 5 minutes without pissing me off. Whether it's the extremely repetitive travel (you seem to spend many, many hours traveling between the same 4 cities, forced to fight the same mobs you could 1-shot many "levels" ago), the ridiculously poor balance (new dungeons filled with a mix of mobs where you one-shot some, and deal 0 damage to others), the usual annoyance of magic in early FFs (some mobs can only be hurt by magic, but you only have enough MP to cast 5 spells), or the ridiculous amount of thousands of gil needed and mobs often only drop 5. This game makes me wish Game Genies were still around.

OK, but enough BS about video games. So, what other fun stuff has been happening. Well, I got caught in a dust storm yesterday. And then an hour later, I managed to hydroplane -through- an intersection. That was awesome! Although I almost died. Last week, AK and I took the john boat out to go fishing on Tuesday (took the day off), and we got stopped by conservation police (who almost tried to "board the vessel"). They made me row to shore since we didn't have life jackets on board. The whole story is actually pretty funny, but it'd have to be told in person!

In a political discussion this morning, someone made the comment "I'm usually a liberal, but this time I believe I'm going to vote for McCain." I promptly told them not to be so concerned, which was returned with a confused look.

I woke up this morning far earlier than I normally do -- which is to say, essentially, that I actually woke up on time -- so I took a few minutes to sit and watch CNN while waiting for my brain to wake up. On the morning edition, they had a brief sit & chat with one Ron Paul, a Republican candidate who, until the last weekend, didn't see much news coverage. I have to admit, a few of the things he said were probably some of the more honest statements I've heard among all the Election 2008 BS so far. Not to say I agree with him on everything or that I think any one President could make some of the changes he was touting, but he at least seemed a little more disconnected from the Hive Mind crap McCain/Clinton/Obama bring to the table.

I'm torn over how to vote. I can say, with conviction, that I pretty much hate the Big Three. Between McCain, Clinton, and Obama, I think they would all be terrible Presidents. Who would have made a good ticket? I don't know, perhaps Paul v Edwards? That's a much more difficult call. I am, however, pretty distraught at the current options.

My personal opinion on Hillary is that if she had a Y Chromosome and a different surname, she never would have been elected in New York, let alone made her way onto the Democratic Ballot. And while Obama is a fine speaker, he's little more than an idealogy spewer -- he has no concrete plans on how to achieve anything he says. Of course, that's enough to get the attention of most younger voters. And McCain, well -- he truly does earn the "Republicrat" badge.

So, then comes the choice. Do I take the "Vote for the lesser of the three evils" route, or if someone else I find more interesting is on the ticket, vote for them out of principle. Or even do a write-in. When I was younger, I didn't like the idea of what I perceived as a wasted vote. However, I can't help but wonder if people voting not based on who they thought was best, but instead on who they *didn't* want to win, is how we got into this sort of situation to begin with.

The amount of kiddy-grade politics going back and forth right now is driving me crazy. November cannot get here soon enough. The Democrats could not possibly be embarassing themselves more (I'm ashamed, honestly, to have ever associated myself with the party), and the amount of water cooler chatter the primaries are still generating is reaching the point of political involvement burnout for a lot of folks. I did find it funny, though, that this morning CNN had a poll -- "Have you heard enough about Reverand Jeremiah Wright?" The numbers, at the time, were somewhere around 70% "Yes, please move on." and 30% "No, tell me more." And of course, they followed that poll with probably 10 minutes of coverage on the Reverand.

I would love to rant more, but I have a lot of work to do.

Awhile back I was sitting at home, thinking about how I'm going to try and pull things together this spring so I can buy a house. I forget what the specific que was, but something got me thinking about the whole concept of the "American Dream."

I hear a lot of people talking about how "The Rich get Richer and the Poor get Poorer." Well, my grandpa used to say "The Rich get Richer and the poor go to jail", although he had a different view on things. I suppose if I were to also alter this old quote for my own beliefs on the matter, it would be "The rich get richer, and the poor get richer but less happy."

No one seems to like to talk about the rising standard of living. You will know see people who proclaim themselves to be barely getting by, but they have a big screen TV, a car less than a decade old, and many other comforts. Americans tend to not like to speak about this. Having a car in America is such a standard thing in many areas (larger cities with robust community travel services, i.e. trains, bus routes, et cetera are different, understandably) that not having a car when you're 16 is seen as being very poor. Of course, in other parts of the world having a your own private vehicle places you among the elite. Perhaps happiness is out of reach for so many people because the media sets the bar so high. There was a day when someone would be the happiest person in the world just for putting food on the table.

I guess I'm thinking about these things today because I have been working with a co-worker from the other half of the world (literally, 12 hour time difference). Unfortunately I had to have him stay pretty late tonight for his time, and he was teasing me that his fiancé was very angry at me. I told him to be safe going home at this hour, and he said it would be awhile before he could go due to riots, which were primarily incited by "racial" (more so, regional) comments by a politician, that politician's arrest, and the subsequent rioting by that politician's supporters. Apparently 4 of my friend's co-workers in the same office had been, as he put it, "manhandled" by rioters just while trying to get to work.

I guess sometimes we forget how well we have it. We are in the middle of what could be considered a fairly intense election, by our standards, but I cannot see there ever being a night where it is not safe for me to go home.

And no matter how many things I think our government does wrong at times, things like that are still worthy of being thankful for.

I hope everyone gets out and votes tomorrow. The primaries are important so get off your ass and vote!

OK, not really, that would take forever. And I am wrong about way too many things to even try and come up with that list.

However, in regards to my comments last week of "Oh gee, Giants versus Pats... who cares." I take it back. 100%. That was one of the best Superbowls, and honestly the best Championship games of any kind in a long time. I wanted the Pats to lose because I was tired of their attitude (Did you see the pre-game interview with Randy Moss? I mean, seriously), and throughout the entire game it just felt like the Giants wanted it more. Great game to watch.

Things are moving along. Ho hum. I've been embracing my insanity lately, it's fun.

Dear Whoever is in charge of commercials for Cadillac: I freaking LOVE you. First you unveil the new CTS with a commercial featuring local heroes Hum. And now there is a CTS commercial out with some music from Justice? You are a ballsy, pop-culture defying hero(ine). I salute you.

It's amazing what you can do with a little know-how in the digital age.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRS9cpOMYv0

So, a couple weeks ago I grabbed a copy of the extended Director's Cut of Kingdom of Heaven. I generally enjoyed KoH's theatrical release, although it felt a bit disjointed at times. I had heard good things about the Director's Cut version and wanted to expand my Blu-ray library, so I decided to give it a shot.

Wow. Wow wow wow. I cannot believe that they didn't release this version in theaters. I would never suggest anyone to watch the original cut now. There is so much more depth to the characters now, so many of their motivational scenes were stripped from the original release that it's easy to understand why it felt to some like one big fustercluck. The extended cut, though... just great.

If you had an even passing enjoyment of the theatrical version of KoH, I really suggest you check out the extended.

So, a lot of people are talking about the recent news that Darth Vader and Yoda will be playable characters in Soul Calibur IV. My initial reaction was positive, but the more I think about it, the more awkward it is. How will Yoda's hit detection work? Shouldn't a light saber kinda cut through other weapons? And, well, yeah. There are certainly other characters who could fit into the "timeline" of the SC series much better.

Anywho, so I got to discussing this with someone today, and I was poking fun at the scene in the trailer where Mitsurugi and Vader clash weapons. Apparently a light saber can cut through a blast door but not a forged Katana. I started thinking about Vader as a villain, and as much as I like Star Wars, you know he is probably the weakest villain ever, I mean considering he has very little accomplishments spanning six movies.

He left his mother for dead.
He was a poor student when in training and constantly put things at risk due to being cocky.
He got his ass kicked by his teacher who he thought he had surpassed. Gets melted alive.
Some 20 years later, he only beats his teacher finally because Obi-wan just stands their and takes it. Coincidentally, the way Vader swings his light saber in that scene is the worst form and goofiest looking sword attack in a movie ever.
He fails to protect a spaceship the size of a moon from getting blown up.
Awhile after, he almost gets beat up by his own son who has only been training for like 1 week. Fails to finish the fight.
Not long after, he does get his ass whipped by his own son who has still had hardly any training and virtually no combat experience.
He meets his maker at the hands of a guy who looks like he's a 300 year old cripple. This is also round 2 of Vader Gets Pretty Much Killed By His Own Teacher.

So let's look at the only fights we actually see the Vader/Anakin character actually win:

1) He mass slaughters a bunch of 4 year old kids who can't fight back.
2) He did technically kill the Emperor. He picked him up and threw him down a shaft. Not exactly a highly skilled combat move.

So damn, why does everyone, myself included, seem to remember Vader as some kind of badass? His track record is pretty weaksauce. There is only one answer: James Earl Jones is that damned good.

On a completely unrelated note... we've had a couple people at work in different departments or teams applying to join our team lately. I got some interesting feedback. When they talked to our PM, one of the reasons they both gave for wanting to join our team was that they were excited to have a chance to work with me. What? When did that happen. Funny thing, though. That one little comment felt like a bigger accomplishment than anytime a manager or director has ever thanked me for a good job.

I got a promotion, it's finally official after a month of it being talked about and a long interview process with some other very qualified candidates. I still plan to slack and not come into work on time, so don't worry, no big changes incoming.

Although it is still my intentions to buy a house in Spring. I guess this will help with that.

I've had a pretty awesome holiday season so far. I got to see the always kickass Red1 before xmas, and on the weekend before the holiday we had our big family get together down near St Louis. Good times were had, beer was chugged. Spent Christmas day with the immediately family and on the all-in-all it was a really good day.

I'm pretty stoked by the teaser trailer for Star Ocean 4 that is out (http://www.gametrailers.com/player/29230.html). Star Ocean II was one of my favorite RPGs, and SO3 was very good in its own right. It's also nice to hear extremely positive feedback coming from Jump Festa in regards to Dissidia. Now someone just needs to pick up the Suikoden I & II PSP re-release for translation and I will be one super happy gamer.

I am really starting to think I should cave and get a PSP Slim, I really want the TV out option. More and more, the types of games I want to play are migrating to handhelds.

The best test of a comedy is how much you laugh when you watch it alone. There are a lot of movies that come off as funny when you watch them with your friends, but when you watch it by yourself you get little more than a "ho hum" reaction. To that point, I finally got around to watching Wild Hogs tonight, and I was laughing my ass off the entire time, all by my lonesome. Pretty surprised, since Wild Hogs got pretty much trashed in professional reviews. By the way -- this may be a good test for a comedy, but uh... it's not the best test for your social life.

I've been playing Call of Duty 4 finally, and the campaign is definitely top notch fun. What it lacks in terms of "modern" shooter conventions (no cover system, can't open doors yourself, et cetera) it makes up for ten-fold in intensity and variation. Each level in the campaign is unique and the game doesn't give you so much as a moment of rest.

That said... it feels weird playing CoD4 sometimes. I have a lot of military friends these days, some still active, some recently out. It some ways, it just doesn't seem right to be playing an effing videogame about fighting Middle East terrorists when I've had some of my best friends over in Iraq for the past couple years. Ever since my good friend Hodson got back from his second tour, it's changed the way I see a lot of things. When people argue about the war and its surrounding politics, I don't feel like I can take part in the conversations anymore. Maybe it's strange -- it's certainly hard to explain. I'm incredibly proud of all my friends who signed up for military duty. I haven't really said that before outside of a few private conversations, but I mean that wholeheartedly and I should have said it a thousand times by now. What I think of the war is meaningless compared to that feeling. And when people want to "debate Iraq" now, all that comes to my mind are pictures of my friends, of Hodson, Johnson, JoeW, and the others... and I just feel like I don't have anything to say -- like I haven't earned the right to say anything. Although this may sound like something negative, it is really not. I'm not down on myself about it at all, it's just more a matter of respect.

I went out and got a Christmas tree at the start of last week. Nothing special, just a tree with white lights on it. Christmas lights relax me so much. I'm pretty excited, I'll be getting to see most all of my extended family this year, like usual. I love our family get togethers, my aunts, uncles, cousins, second cousins, et all are freaking awesome.

Right now, it's damned chilly out and everything is iced over. I need to get out and take some pictures; we had a gentleman visiting our office from India a few months back, and when it got 60 degrees and foggy, he thought that was winter. When I was trying to explain to him about how cold it gets, I used the example of how sometimes you'll wake up and entire trees will be covered in ice. He thought it sounded like the neatest thing ever and really wanted to see it, so I promised him I would take some pictures to show him. It's always funny to me when you have something like winter, which seems to unbelievably common to you, but is a completely foreign thing to someone else.

I should have some good news later this week. And maybe pictures. For now... sleep!
-Steim

I finally saw Rob Roy in its entirety last night, and man, what an awesome movie. Anyone who knows me or my movie tastes is probably as puzzled as I am as to how it took me twelve years to get around to seeing this film, but hey, it was still great.

Forgot to mention, I finally finished FF Tactics: War of the Lions. My save file was around 62 hours in -- I haven't finished the Midnight's Deep extra dungeon, but all other extra things were finished. The majority of the extra time came from my insisting on getting the Dark Knight job for Ramza, which has some insane requirements. Fun fact though -- level 70 Ramza dual-wielding Excalibur + Ragnarok as a Death Knight can pretty much one-shot all the last bosses. Only the last form of the final boss even got a turn, and she only got one turn. :P Balthier was a nice surprise, he was *by far* the most useful of the subquest characters. He wound up being part of my main team.

Vacations from work are starting to feel like summer vacation in high school. You spend most of the last day being amazed it went by so fast. Granted, I only had 5 days off instead of 3 months... god knows how much trouble I could get into if I had 3 months to myself.

I went to dinner with a friend tonight and to see Dan In Real Life after wards. I was actually very pleasantly surprised -- DIRL was both not what I was expecting and much better than I was expecting at the same time. It was nice to see Steve Carrell take on a new role, this was about as big of a departure from his norm as Eternal Sunshine was for Jim Carrey's.

And now, since the new Dexter episode isn't on On Demand yet, it's time for ZZZs.

Turkey day yesterday was pretty much the awesomes. We just had a smaller 6 person dinner at my parents' house. I came home last night and decided to pass on going to the big extended family thanksgiving shindig because, well, I could really use some relax time and I was too tired to drive to Missouri and back after eating one big thanksgiving meal already. We also went ahead with our Christmas presents for this year. Me, my sis, my mom, and my dad all agreed that this year, instead of buying each other presents, we'd take the money we were going to use for that and donate presents to childern's charities. I've put my portion towards Child's Play and my sister is going to work with a charity in St Louis that sounds similar to Crisis Nursery up here. My family is awesome.

Next weekend a good friend is having an art exhibit open up for some of her photography. I am going to try and attend -- and it is in Chicago which I've been meaning to get up there to visit anywho. So if any of you bums who moved to Chicago want to go to the opening of the exhibit with me, you're more than welcome!

I finished Uncharted: Drake's Fortune a couple days ago, I can't say enough good things about it, I really had fun. I also found the soundtrack to it for $10 on iTunes, which is kick ass because 1) It's a great score and 2) anyone who has bought numerous game OSTs knows that $10 is pretty cheap compared to the usual. After finishing Uncharted, I booted up Assassin's Creed next. I wasn't really getting into it so it's been set aside for a round 2 at a later date. I decided that for now, I'll focus on finishing Mairo Galaxy and FFT (last chapter on FFT, huzzah). Mario Galaxy is awesome -- the design, the visials, the music, they're all brilliant. It's gotten some big talk since it took over GameRankings.com's #1 rated game of all time spot, an accolade which, as great as Galaxy is, I think is easily debated. Galaxy is super fun, but at times it suffers from some annoying control issues. Sometimes, on smaller planets, it can be very hard to steer correctly with constant camera changes, centering the camera often doesn't even work, and jumping on an enemy that is standing right next to you can, at times, be annoyingly difficult. Some of the Wii-mote minigame levels are great (Mario Monkey Ball), and some are frustrating (Manta Ray surfing). The control problems that pop up are few and far between, but when they do come around they can be pretty damn frustrating.