So TempleCon was a great first experience for us convention virgins. We learned some new games, met some cool people and overall had a great time. If you ever find yourself in Warwick R.I. make sure to get off at exit 10, take 117 East and ask someone where Nick’s Diner is… there’s no sign. Nick makes some awesome food and his one man operation makes the costs just as great. 

The Biltmore Hotel was neat. It has some great architecture and really nice Valet drivers. Overall though, for being as historical, expensive, and famous as it is, it felt rundown. The Convention pretty much dominated the entire hotel. Some of the cool vendors were Rivendell Games, Heather V. Kreiter; C.J. Henderson to name a few. There were also some really cool guys working a place called the Tomb, they make custom fangs all kinds of art, and sold games. 

A quick look at some of the games we played (because Blindman LOVES his lists):

Munchkins- always a classic!

ZombieFluxx- this was really really fun and I recomend the Fluxx games for anyone.

Gloom- Ever wanted to kill your whole family? Gloom lets you do just that! In fact, you have to kill them if you want to win.

Shadows Over Camelot- One we were already familiar with but was great to join in on and play with a full cast. Fckin traitors won.

In order to avoid the hell that was NYC, we drove an extra hour out of the way and went west on I84 and cut down home from Scranton, PA. As a side note: Scranton is a really pretty area once you get past the city and back into the mountainous countryside.

Coastal Beach in Warwick, Rhode Island

So we left at around 6pm EST Thursday night to head out on the 8hr drive to Warwick, RI. The route took us up through Maryland, over and east through Pennsylvania, on to New Jersey and then… well then we entered the twilight zone, the seventh level of hell and Abadon all in one- also know as New York. 

Now for those of you who have never had the pleasure, the thrill, the glory of risking their life by driving around New York City… don’t. We got on I78 and dumped on to I95. The list of things that are horrible:

1. Horribly riddled road system- the exits appear and disappear at the drop of a hat.

2. 8 dollars to go over a gddam bridge!- Why in the F Scott Fitzgerald anyone should pay 8 dollars to go over a bridge is freaking beyond me, it’s unfathomable. 

3. NY drivers WANT TO KILL YOU- They refuse to use blinkers, they go 80mph in a 45mph zone, they cut you off, they don’t move over on merge lanes EVEN THE FREAKING TRACTOR TRAILERS SWERVE AROUND LIKE A FLAG IN THE WIND!!

4. Hope you get gas before you get to the city- the only real gas stations take you off the interstate and into the city, yeah… you have fun with that.

Then there is Connecticut… in mind’s eye Connecticut is always with pristine and beautiful state with glorious countryside… until you get into a bathroom that tells you to beware the sanitation due to hookers. The other problem with Connecticut is THEY DRIVE LIKE FCKING NEW YORKERS!

Rhode Island is kind of refreshing, it seems rather sprawling. However, like the rest of the region known as New England the roads make no sense whatsoever and they refuse to say words with an AR combination correctly. It’s a MART not a MAWT.

More to follow as I post up pictures and information about the gaming!

Probably one of the funnier “commercials” out of SNL or Saturday Night Live in quite a while.

Enjoy:

Ok so I am a first-person gamer at heart, I started there with Wolfenstein back in the 90s, and have played virtually EVERY FPS released since then (on PC, not consoles, gamepads FTL).  My favs have usually been Online team based games like TFC, Tribes (1,2), BF2142, Planetside, you get the picture.

 I enjoyed the Call of Duty series quite a bit, starting with the original and CoD2, I skipped CoD3 because it was made by a different dev shop, but CoD4 was awesome.  Fast Forward to Call of Duty: World at War and BAM! they make a very smart move (in my opinion) and go back to the WWII genre. 

Well I haven’t finished the single player campaign, but I am quite far in.  The game bounces you between two characters, one is an American Marine PFC that participates in assaults on targets in the Pacific, and the other a Russian that starts out like a Vasily Zaytsev (a la Enemy at the Gates) in Stalingrad.  

The missions are very diverse covering sniping, forward assault, sabotage, squad combat and moving to a few vehicle missions like tanks and aircraft.  Following in the footsteps of the Call of Duty franchise, you get a very immersed feeling of war in the game with comrades falling and the death cries of the enemy when you shoot them in the gut.

Graphics are on par with CoD 4 but I feel the scenery is a bit more refined. All in all its a spectacular game, and I am enjoying every aspect of single player mode. 

Webcomics are great. When you find yourself bored while online but with nothing particularly better to do (especially on a slow work day) web comics provide a world of entertainment to get lost in.  Best of all, there is pretty much a webcomic for every genre of interest that can be imagined.  Here’s a quick list of some of my favorites:

Ctrl+Alt+DEL- This is a great gamer comic that has been around a LONG time, which means plenty of archives to read when you’re bored.

Little Gamers- obviously a gamer comic as well, although really they don’t discuss a lot of games so it’s kind of like Seinfeld a comic that’s not really about anything.

AFBlues- A military comic about the world of pilots, a great comic, but even better if you’ve been in the military.

Cyanide & Happiness- Foul, vulgar, and freaking hilarious. There really isn’t a running story here, but it’s definitely funny.

Looking for Group and Least I Could Do- They are completely unrelated EXCEPT that the guy that writes LFG is also part of the LICD team.  The first is an RPG comic, the second is a story about a manwhore. Both are great.

So that’s my quick list, if you’d like to find more you can search by your favorite categories after you sign up (free) for an account at this site.

Ok so I updated my “Myspace” page and finally signed up for “Facebook”.  I’m really not much into these types of sites but I guess if everyone else is doing it, I better get with the program!

Anywho (I say that alot don’t I?) go ahead and see what they look like, feel free to comment and whatnot.

Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/gmoooney  

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1000607052&hiq=gregory,hubey
Meanwhile here is a pic of me at the New Years Eve party we had at East Islip Bowl in Long Island:

So we got back from our trip to Long Island, NY on Saturday.  We visited my family on both sides, a few parties and LOTS of food later, I probably gained 10 lbs all told.  Traffic/Weather on the way up was crap, snow/wind storms in PA and NY.  On the way back it was a detour on i-81 in PA due to an accident so we had to take rt 15 from north of Carlisle all the way through Frederick, MD (added almost an hour).

Anywho, we got back safe and sound, quite tired but happy to be home!

Here are a few pics I snapped with my Iphone, just downtown Manhattan as seen from the BQE (Brooklyn-Queens Expressway) and the Sesame bagel with Nova Lox (smoked salmon) and cream cheese YUMMY!

So I finally decided to put aside GH:WT, Rockband 2 and WoW to take some time and dive into Fallout 3.

Initially I was enjoying the game, the opening sequence of events is well done and really sets the scene for a great story. Then the boredom sets in, you make your way out of “Vault 101″ to the outside world. You are told to go to a town nearby called “Megaton” and as soon as you arrive you are left with the same “talk to everyone and get as much info as you can” game that I was NOT expecting.

I guess being a newb to the Fallout series probably didn’t help. I tried to complete some missions, I really did, I just got bored very quickly.

I felt like I was playing Oblivion but in a post-apocalyptic north america. Sure you can walk around and pocket just about anything, but don’t get caught or it pisses off lots of people. The combat system seems ok and the “retro-ish” feel of the environment (a la Bioshock) was neat at first, but it just didn’t make up for the lack of real action that I crave, but that desire probably comes from being an FPSer at heart.

If you are into single-player RPGs with a sci-fi aspect, you will love the game, it just wasn’t for me.

On a very unrelated note, below is a picture of all the Christmas bread my father and I made before the holiday. Its the same recipe/method that my grandfather used for probably 40 years. This was the 4th year my father and I made the bread. Its a sweet flaky bread with cognac soaked raisins (white and dark), chopped walnuts, poppey seed and cinnamon sugar. Mmmmm so gooooood!

This just proves, you need to make sure there are NO breakable or kick-able objects in a given space when trying to show off your mad dance krew skillz!

Right, so as we all know, its that time of year again.  Yep its CHRISTMAS!, no I will not keep it politically correct or “religiously neutral” or whatever they are saying now.  I celebrate Christmas and it’s my website so there. /end high horse.

Anyway, I got a list from the wife of things she wants… some small, some big.  One of them is actually a new car (lol inorite?).  I haven’t done diddly squat in the shopping department so this weekend I have to dive in to the outlets and mall to find all (some) of the items on the magic list.  We shall see what I come up with.  In the mean time I leave you with a video snip of one of my favorite Christmas movies. (NO NOT A CHRISTMAS STORY)