Team Fortress 2 Major Update, Discounted to $10!

Arguably, one of the most visually original online 'shooters' available today, and a personal fav, Team Fortress 2 [Valve software] has now been blessed with even more gaming goodness, a comprehensive patch AND add-on, free of charge from the devs. If you don't already have this game, they are celebrating the update by discounting the price for you! It's now a measly $10 dollars.

To what do we owe this pleasure you ask? NOTHIN', because unlike EA... Valve actually isn't out to squeeze every last one of us gamers out of our last nickel! Nope- they respect us, and reward us for being loyal customers by providing free extras and comprehensive tweaks and fixes.

So game on! Time to fire it up again and see how the newly vamped 'Scout' class does.

List of all the updates & New features :
Added The Force-A-Nature, The Sandman, and Bonk!
Added 35 new Scout achievements
Added crit boosted on/off sound effects
Added new sounds for upgraded teleporters
Added new sound for a fully charged medic dying
Add bonus points section to scores
Scouts earn a bonus point for killing Medics who are actively healing a target
Added several new speech concepts, mostly hooked up to new Scout lines
Added new "Remember last weapon between lives" option to the Multiplayer Advanced dialog
Spies can now control which weapon the enemy team sees them holding. Hitting the "last disguise" key while disguised updates the disguise to show the Spy's currently held weapon
Added several new Arena mode announcer speech events.
Added "First Blood" to Arena mode
Removed 2x item respawn times in arena
Changed backstab handling to fix facestabs
Spies disguised as enemy team can now see player IDs for enemies
New maps [3 new maps!!]
Added community maps: cp_egypt, arena_watchtower, and cp_junction
Updated cp_fastlane with Arttu's new version
Mapmaker requests
Added new input for forward speed modifier to FuncTrainTrain
Added TeleportToPathTrack input to func_tracktrain
Bugfixes
Fixed a bug where players would sometimes gib from non-gib damage kills
Fixed stat screen showing an entry for a class called "map."
Fixed item model panels not using team skins

PC games Vs. Life, a self-check.

So there is a GREAT article in Wired online today:
HERE
And while reading this, between the usual witty/funny/insanely dumb comments below, there was one that caught me..as it sounded as if it were me writing it in. I will excerpt:

"For me it came down to figuring out why I always stayed up so late anyway. With a career, a wife and 3 small children it was so that I could get more free time at the end of the day. If I went to bed earlier, that was it, more work and responsibilities before any chance at leisure time. When my wife started going to the gym at 5am, I decided to try getting up with her and enjoying the quiet time and it made a huge difference! (XBox 360 experience is much better with rested eyes and fresh contacts too) Now I get tired around 10:30pm and I go to bed knowing that I'm going to have 2 hours or so to myself when I get up, so it's something to actually look forward to rather than dreading the normal morning rush. Then on the weekends when the kids wake up at 7:30, it still feels like I slept in.
Posted by: Jason Feb 26, 2009 7:37:07 AM"

I mean...my WoW/Fallout 3,Oblivion characters get more sleep than I do! what does THAT mean?

my reply:
"@ Jason-> dude!- of all these [some funny, some very dumb] comments, yours was an exact replica of what i'm going through. I stay up WAY too late, even though my rotating shifts sometimes force me to get up by 4:45am.. i know i'm dumb, but i fight it every night, and sit on my pc till i literally nod off..wife hates it. don't want to get up even EARLIER though just to jog...maybe i need to re-prioritize, but what do i do?"

I must learn to balance more...sleep/wife/family, is more important than games, makes you feel better, more energetic, which makes you more productive, be a super-star at work, which leads to better and higher paying jobs, which leads to-you got it, more time and money to go back and play those PC GAMES ! !.. see where i'm going with this??

Street Fighter IV ! -Just in time for mid-life crisis!

I think it is finally time to think about buying a stinkin' ps3…Blu-ray.. AND…. Street fighter IV….. [not to mention the new Grand Turismo 5, Final Fantasy XIII, Metal Gear Solid 4, Resistance: Fall of Man, maybe the occasional football game...! ]

Waves of nostalgia…

I remember being a desperate and broke teenager working/stealing/conniving $74.99[!!] to bike all the way to Toys R' Us to buy street fighter II on Super Nintendo the day it came out-the hype was that big. It was also a mile-stone for the SuperNES as it was the first 16MB game cartridge...a whopping 16MB's of graphical goodness!!! wow, how things have changed...today, 16MB might be the README file of a favorite Flight Simulator game!

Shoryuken!!!

Check out the Wired article HERE

Radiohead finally gets a Grammy! -also Mars Volta!

After Coldplay, snuffed in earlier years for the 'album of the year' Grammy, finally took home 3 for their latest album ' Viva la Vida'. Good on them , i've always like them, ever since the Parachutes album [which is still my favorite].

Best Metal Performance: Metallica's 'My Apocalypse' -perhaps the most insanely timed speed jam closing out the perfect 'Death Magnetic' album. Just one of the killer songs on that recording.

Good for my old' fav Zep frontman Robert Plant, and Alison Krauss for their Album of the Year: Raising Sand. Haven't listened to it yet, but i'll have to hunt that down.

And a nice indie-prog-metal band which i've liked upon first hearing, The Mars Volta for their album Wax Simulacra, winning for 'best hard-rock performance'.

BUT, my perennial favorite, my most favorite and utterly cherished band in the world, radiohead, FINALLY got another one for the first time since 2001's 'Kid A', -Best Alternative Music Album for their beautifully colorful album 'in rainbows'.

Maybe there is a little justice left in the Academy...

By the way, if you haven't picked up either of these album's yet, or downloaded them, whatever, you should have done that..like...yesterday. Get with the times man!

I missed the show, but I guess it was full of great performances, and background drama [Rhianna]. For the rest of the story, go to the source HERE. [Grammy.com]

CAUTION ZOMBIES AHEAD!!! HWY traffic signs hacked for my amusement!

I had a good laugh over this one...
More video from MSNBC HERE

from the news:

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Pranks with electronic road signs stir worry
Latest breach came during morning rush hour near Collinsville, Illinois

updated 1 hour, 33 minutes ago
COLLINSVILLE, Illinois - Hackers are messing with electronic road signs in some U.S. states, warning of zombies and raptors down the road. Traffic safety officials aren't amused.
The latest breach came during Tuesday morning's rush hour near Collinsville, Illinois, east of St. Louis. That's where hackers changed a sign along southbound Interstate 255 to read, "DAILY LANE CLOSURES DUE TO ZOMBIES."
Similar pranks have been pulled in recent days near Indianapolis and in Austin, Texas.
The Illinois Department of Transportation's Joe Gasaway worries that such pranks distract drivers from legitimate hazards down the road, perhaps endangering road crews.
In Illinois, tampering with an official traffic control device is a misdemeanor punishable by up to a $250 fine.

Indiana Highway Sign Hacked

CARMEL, Ind. (Indiana's NewsCenter) - Hackers have struck another electronic highway sign - this time in central Indiana. The hackers got in to the sign in Carmel and changed it to warn drivers about dinosaurs on the road. This sign was hit just a few days after a highway road sign in Texas was hacked and changed to warn drivers about zombies.

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So i'm not alone here....i'm not the only one with Zombies on the BRAIN.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009) -Ohhh...Man...

I cannot WAIT to see this... I will probably see it twice in theaters, like I did on the first one.Maybe its just my childhood nostalgia, maybe a fondness for all things special effects/robots/space/Air Force roots...camaro's... but these movies really work for me.

Sure, they are not the deepest, most intellectual movies out there, but who cares? I'm old enough to know by now, some things you just have to suspend disbelief, sit back and enjoy the ride, and have FUN. Life is too short to criticize movies of this nature. Those pundits need to find a girlfriend or graduate writing school or whatever they do to loft themselves up, and just go watch a movie that is only meant, for mindless, childhood, robotic fun...

Check me out, i'm the HD trailer. The longer one will be out sometime next week i've read.

Super Bowl 43 Commercials -$3 Million for 30 seconds!

Regarding this years Super Bowl 43 Commercial Trivia:

Super Bowl XLIII will mark the first time that a 30-second commercial time slot will cost US $3 million. At September of 2008, NBC had sold all but ten of the in-game advertising spots, and could command higher fees for said last ten spots. Many traditional advertisers of the game, such as Anheuser-Busch and Pepsi-Cola, are buying multiple ads at discounted rates.

CHECK OUT the commercials HERE on google video

Two traditional advertisers, General Motors and FedEx, will pass on the game, citing the current economic crisis as their main reason. Doritos is reprising a contest for a fan-created ad run two years ago, but with a top prize of $1 million provided it wins the USA Today Super Bowl Ad Meter's number one position.

A trailer of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen will debut during the Super Bowl, according to director Michael Bay, as well as G.I. Joe “The Rise Of Cobra” due out August 7, 2009. Paramount Pictures confirmed that a preview of the upcoming Star Trek film will also premiere during the game, it is unclear if new footage will be included or if it will just be a recut of the theatrical trailer.

One ad that has been announced will be a promo with SoBe, DreamWorks Animation, Intel and NBC which will feature a trailer of Monsters vs. Aliens and a SoBe lizards ad being done in 3-D, which was announced between games of the NFL Wild Card Saturday doubleheader January 3, 2009. The last time NBC did a 3-D promotion was the "Be-Bop-Bamboozled" halftime show for Super Bowl XXIII twenty years earlier. Hyundai will also be advertising their new Genesis Coupe in two 30-second commercials.

I may not be jock-enough to really get into football, for me, honestly, its about the commercials, and any excuse to drink Beer on a Sunday Afternoon!

Obviously, I am most STOKED about the news of the Transformers trailer! Everyone knew the sequel was coming, and I was wondering how much longer we would have to wait. Hopefully, this movie will NOT be a member of the "Sequels that Suck!" list, but rather, expand, invigorate, and astonish as much or more than its original film. Maybe the Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson can teach Michael Bay a thing or two regarding this...