Steam: 1, Microsoft: 0. WTF Internet?

Steam came forward and released information about a new family share feature they are adding.  This all sounds really great.  I'm kind of excited and look forward to the feature.  I know it may take a while to roll out of beta and make it to everyone, and I'm cool with that.

The baffling thing about this announcement is how the internet responded.  They fucking loved it.  Most people though it was a great idea, others thought it was the best idea ever.  And... well... then there is me.  In response to this, all I have to say is: Fuck you, internet.

Microsoft and Xbox came to you months ago and told you about something they wanted to do that was almost the fucking same.  THE.  FUCKING.  SAME.  It was actually kind of better.  Sure, you didn't have access to the game, but you could let your buddy borrow it and enjoy it until they finished... not just until you decided to show back up and force them to log out.  Microsoft got skewered because they told you that you'd need to be on the internet, because they wanted to track some things with DRM to make sure we all aren't just stealing everything.  The internet is a fucking up beast.

Steam is being bathed in praises, Microsoft was looked at like some kind of monster.  Sure, there were other things that Microsoft was a little weird about, but this was solid.  The fact that people either didn't understand or forgot about it that fast is fucking insane.  Again, I want to reiterate, I love the idea.  The idea is solid and I am a fan of both Microsoft and Steam.  My disappoint lies in the "internet".  The way people freak out and bitch about one thing, just to turn around think the others are innovators and geniuses.  IS VALVE THE APPLE OF GAMING?!

Have internet users become so indoctrinated into the huge, hulking games giant that they lose sight of what others are trying to accomplish?  I fancy myself a very proud PC gamer, but I don't let that blind me when console makes are taking the initiative to implement great stuff.  I will be the first to bash a console for it's lack of power or awful UI, but I think we have finally stepped over a boundary that I am no longer comfortable with.  I feel like the internet really got it wrong on this one and I hope more people open their eyes and we see articles like this, instead of blind fanboyism all over the place.

Guild Wars 2... again.

Just over a year after the game's release I am ready to go back and give it another shot.  Hopefully this won't be another awful letdown.

I got GW2 the day it came out.  I went and picked it up in the BOXED version from GameStop at midnight.  I was kind of excited.  I looked forward to it.  I brought it home, went through the steps and installed everything and fought with my account.  God forbid an account you've used for half a decade and the previous game actually work with this one, that'd be too fucking easy... right?  Once I got online it was everything I had hoped for... only slower.

I played during the beta weekends and just played enough on a couple of classes to get the basics.  I stomped around in a couple of "zones" and enjoyed the look and feel of the game.  I took in the differences between it and the original game and then the things it had in common with other games that have been successful since then.  The original game was fantastic, but was easily overshadowed by the huge behemoth of a mega-hit that is WoW.  I took in the world and was pleased.  I didn't get all crazy and put in a ton of hours, I wanted some mystery and majesty left when the game release.  And then.... the game released.


I don't know that I've been more disappointed in a game in a very long time.  I loved the idea of dynamic questing.  It was great in Warhammer and it really helped to break up the boring quests.  The quests, however, were important in progression.  Not only in terms of experience, but also in gearing.  The quest system has been used and done will for nearly a decade now, we don't need to break away from that system and hope that this new dynamic system works.  Mostly, because it doesn't.  I found myself quickly bored of the game.  By the tender age of level 15 I had maxed all of my weapon skills on my Assassin/Thief/Rogue/generic agility or dexterity based class.  The only thing I can hope to do from NOW UNTIL LEVEL CAP is to make abilities more powerful.  How lame is that?  I don't get new abilities.  I have them all.  I can do all the sweet moves, I'm just gonna add some flavor to the mix.  OH BOY!

I gave a couple other classes a shot, but quickly got bored.  The lack of actual direction in the world and the fact that on my original character I had to go to another continent to try and find quests to do because I had outleveled where I was and was too low to move forward.  It was boring and brutal.  SUUUUUUURE, I got to explore the world, but at what cost?  I was now sick of the game and quickly losing interest in everything it had to offer.  Trading gems for gold or gold for gems made me even angrier.  Watching people very literally pay to get some of the better gear or make a mockery of the trading channels in the game with real life money.  Ugh.

My brother has expressed interest in playing on the weekend nights when he stays up a little later.  I am going to give it a shot.  I really hope the experience is more magical this time around.  If not, it's not a big deal.  It isn't like I've never spent 60 dollars for a game that ended up being a huge disappointment.  I'm looking at you Battlefield 3.

Indecision.

I have been talking to a friend of mine about trying to "move in together" and create an actual site.  I think I'm scared.

I've always wanted a place where I could put my stuff for other people and share my opinions and thoughts.  However, sometimes I am very abrasive.  Sometimes when I don't like something... I call it a huge fucking piece of shit and pretty much spend 1000-words talking shit about how it could have been great, but some lazy fucking developer would rather cash-in on shit work instead of making less and providing a better experience.  This goes for apps, games... pretty much everything.  I am not sure if this is something that I can maintain.

HOWEVER, I do want to do stuff.  I want to go to GamesCom, I wanna visit QuakeCon, hell I want to go to DragonCon and have a good fucking time and read about all of the cool new shit that is happening in our world and being made better by and/or with technology.  There is more to life than my cell phone.  Laptops are making drastic changes to what they were.  Ultrabooks are on the rise, Netbooks are dead, tablets are taking over the world, the PC hardware race is a constant see-saw.  I love it.  I love ALL of it.  I don't know how to focus what I enjoy.

I want to make sure that I can do three things, but I'm not sure I can do them all well.  I love gaming.  I wanna talk about it.  From top to bottom and back again.  I love hardware.  I'm huge tech nerd and have a fucking raging hard-on for GHz.  The more the better.  Who needs 4TBs of storage?  Probably me.  Why? BECAUSE I WANT EVERYTHING!  I just love it.  I'm old school enough to remember single-digit MHz PCs that I had and hard drives that were less than 25 MBs.  Huge, loud MFM drives that were the size of 2 5.25 drives.  Shit, I remember 5.25 drive and not even the high density ones....  These are things I love.  I am great with mobile tech and I really enjoy it, but I don't want to give up on things I truly love and enjoy.  Can I do it?

I know that I want to and I know that my buddy wants to.  I could easily pull my brother on board and I've got another good friend who would love to contribute fingerwords to whatever I did.  I think this is something I am capable of, I just want to make sure it is something that I can commit myself to.

The Galaxy Note Tablet (2014 edition) is the tablet that was designed for me.

As soon as I saw it, I knew.  I knew I had to have one.  I cannot afford, but I fucking want it.

The new Galaxy Note tablet is a thing of magnificent beauty.  It does all of the things that the Note 3 does, but it is a tablet.  Cataloging and saving videos, pictures and notes into folders for things, multiple apps on the screen with windows, geo-tagging, cross-device cloud storage and file sorting, notes on the go, NFC-enabled actions.  OMG!  I have been waiting for a big boy tablet from Android for a long time and this is finally it.  The size, resolution and impressive spec sheet all lend themselves to how awesome this device will be.

Sometimes we freak out about the next big thing in mobile and forget that tablets are just as mobile.  You can take them anywhere and everywhere.  The iPad has long sat among the top as the kind of the tablet.  It is flexible and works well.  I admire how well Apple has managed to take advantage of it's position as king of the hill for tablets.  The day is coming, though, when Android is going to show up and bring something to the party that makes you re-think mobile all over again.  The Nexus 7 has shaken up quite a few things, but for people like me... it isn't big enough.  I need something big.  I need something that feel nice and expensive and like some real R&D went into it.  This is that tab.

Between specs and features I just can't get over how awesome this tablet is.  I am not a fan of Touchwiz or all of the gimmicks, but they find a very nice niche here.  Taking notes on a tablet makes sense.  Watching videos and and combining notes and videos actually makes sense here.  Using that split screen to work on two apps at once is useful in this form factor.  So many things come together so perfectly.  It is hard to see this tablet doing great things, but I think that if enough people tried it... they'd love it.  I assume the price tag is going to be rather hefty.  Part of what made the Nexus 7 so successful is the availability of the device.  This device will carry a price that is much closer to what Apple would charge, and it should, but that doesn't mean it will land it in a lot of hands.

I have been considering for some time getting a nice, big tablet and a Chromebook as a laptop.  Something I can put down and use as a real laptop that does things specific to my productivity, but without all of the weight and load times of a typical laptop.  Then I could use a tablet for entertainment.  Watching videos, playing games, goofing off.  It makes sense.  I could ditch a traditional laptop and use both of these items, pay about the same amount and get a much higher return.  Sure, a traditional laptop might stay more useful for a longer period of time, but Moore's Law never stops.  By the time that 18-36 month mark is upon me, I'll be ready to dive into the next things.

I want a Note tablet.  Bad.

Kit Kat?

The new version of Android.  Wow.

I'm not even sure how many words I can even make for this... it just... it is weird.

We all though Key Lime Pie was the next big release from Android.  In a weird turn of events they contact a candy maker and then... well, this happens.  It's really kind of odd.

If you want in on some of the fun that Android seems to be having with this (not to mention marketing genius), you can head over to the Kit Kat website and get more information about the promotion they are going to be running and eventually enter your sweet codes for phat lewts.


Update:
As soon as I have actual information about what will be in the next version or a better idea of when we may see it in the wild, I will update.  Fear not, I know this didn't have a lot of substance.
9/6/2013

This is why we can't have nice things.

My wife and I came to an agreement: She had to take care of her smartphone from now on.


My wife has been hard on phones since she got the OG Droid.  The all but destroyed that phone.  Thankfully she worked at Verizon back then and ten months later she was able to get another phone.  She ended up falling in love with the Fascinate (Galaxy S).  She loved that phone to death and ultimately... she murdered it by taking it on a swim.  I convinced her to get Galaxy Nexus, because I loved mine.  She hated it.  It wasn't easy and friendly like her old phone and it didn't have the Touchwiz shortcuts she liked.  She got a Galaxy S3 just after release and she LOVED it.  She loved this one so hard that she shattered the screen, cracked up the back and dinged all of the corners up.  This all occurred in a period between July of last year and March of this year.  That's not even a year!  I had to pry it away from her after the second time she sliced her finger on the screen.

I had recently auctioned off all of our old smartphones and doo-dads to get myself a new phone and have a little extra cash to play with.  I picked up an iPhone 4 for her, because I thought she'd like it.  She HATED it.  She complained with regularity about it.  She did a better job taking care of it, though.  She understood that after this there was no Facebook on the go, she was going to be relegated to the cheapest and shittiest thing I could find on e-Bay.  After about 5 months I found a great deal on Amazon and picked her up a Galaxy S3, again.  The Galaxy S4 is a bunch of shitty gimmicks and isn't that great, in my opinion.  She doesn't need all of that shit, anyway.  I bought it and picked out a case and had it shipped.

She was shocked.  She was so excited to get rid of the iPhone and get back into a phone that she enjoyed.  It hasn't even been two weeks.  She lost it tonight.  I don't mean like she sat it down and asked me to call it.  I mean she LOST it.  Yelling, kicking stuff, nearly crying.  Thankfully, I'm fucking awesome.

I went into action.  I jumped on the Play Store, found the app I needed and had the phone located in 10 minutes.  Android Lost is GREAT for this kind of thing.  It isn't the best app for locating the device, but if you've already lost it... it's hard to beat.  I installed it right from the Play Store.  I then fired up the website for it and sent off a text to her phone.  The text activated the app and allowed me to remotely access parts of it via the features menu on the website.  I turned on the alarm and went looking.

There it was.  At the bottom of the garbage can.  Covered in the nastiest, stickiest, shittiest stuff my house has to offer.  Not ALLLLLL the way at the bottom, but damn close.  I dug through and found it.  I pulled it out and my wife snatched it away.  Determined to use it, she wiped it down and went to work.  I've since had to disassemble the Otterbox and pulled the phone apart.  It will need a good wipe down and I might want to dry out any wet and sticky nastiness on it, but I think it will be fine.  I think this will make her very happy, which makes me happy.  I don't really wanna spend $150 than I paid for the phone to replace it.

Android Lost is great.  Before you freak out, give it a shot.  Let this serve as a PSA to all of those nerds out there who have wives that just don't get it.  Stay calm and use this as a bargaining chip for sex later on.

I'm willing to give the Moto X a try

I might talk a lot of shit about Motorola.  I might even be a little disenchanted with the steps Android has been taking.  That doesn't mean that I'm not secretly excited about the Moto X.

Motorola has been making handsets that piss me off and remind me of a brick for years now.  Style hasn't been something that Motorola has been very good at since the glory days of that sexy flip phone (you know what I'm talking about).  I take for granted some times how good the phones are in terms of signal quality, too.  Especially when compared to Samsung.  However, I do see a good flow of "Yes, just hold down the volume down and power" issues with the device.  A lot.  It might come from people using their phone to download shitty apps and play on Facebook all day, but that is also what the phone should be designed for.  The components aren't normally bad, but they rarely command the same respect as what HTC of Samsung put into their top-tier devices.  Nothing has changed.

That being said, I'm still excited.

The device has some decent specs.  I don't think it is a game changer and I'm not sure that it is a phone that I'd want to live with for two, entire, years.  As a 12-month device, yes.  The device seems to hold it's own against some of the big dogs we have seen lately.  This isn't a win by any stretch of the imagination and it isn't pushing any boundaries.  Let's be honest for a second, there isn't a whole lot out there that is pushing smartphones anymore.  We are now getting to the point where low power and optimization are going to play key roles in development, as opposed to sheer power and speed.  As a hardware guy, that hurts my feelings.  As a mobile enthusiast, I've got a tech boner.

Do you know what happens when it uses less power and maintains a similar speed?  They add more cores.  They add a different architecture that is not only faster, but can do more things.  They pave the way for the next generation of power hungry beasts.  Then... we shrink it down, keep it cooler and figure out how to maintain the same performance at a fraction of the price.  We are close to turning a mobile corner here and I'm pretty excited.  I think this might be good for Motorola.  They are done with the "Droids" as we know them and this is the end of that part of their history.  Google is now ingrained, releasing stuff and pushing them in a direction that could be awesome for everyone.  Tech.  Boner.

If I have the chance, I'll give it a shot.  If the prices are decent or I feel like financing it would be feasible, I'd be willing to try it out.  Customizing the device in the color or flavor of my choosing ain't so bad, either.  If nothing else I feel like the device will function for an acceptable duration and will allow me to trade in that OG Atrix for a respectable smartphone to use for Google goodies (my WP8 phone would still be my go-to phone).