Saturday, November 13, 2010

Call of Duty: Black ops initial thoughts

I love this game, the opening is a little weird (the whole marathon man/24 vibe it's got going on) the flashback missions have been fun so far, and like I said short learning curve and I'm loving online.


As with most war games the first mission is basically an introduction to the controls. They run you through aiming, firing, attachment usage, weapon swapping, weapon pick up/exchange, item usage, and a little bit of driving. In black ops you play a dude called macon, you were part of a 3 man team who was assigned to kill castro. After some Cuban guerillas come into the bar and start throwing their weight around you are on a mad dash out of the bar to escape for the "kill castro" mission. In all honesty killing castro was the easy part, I didn't die til we tried to escape. Word to the wise close up that light machine gun chews up and and all people in front of you, once you are fighting the long distance foes, ditch it for the AK-47 to your right. It may be on single fire but thats all you need to head shot most of Castro's special protection force.


Oh and keep your ears open for the "lets keep going cues" I took quiet a few shells in my kiester behind not listening to those. Now if this is your first call of duty game, get ready unlike Modern Warfare 2 there is no "we're gonna train you in the safety of a firing range" tutorial, it's figure out what is the same and what is different and get to it. Oh and by the way those cuban police cars do not blow up quickly when hit with a grenade from your gun, just warning you if you roll out there like your name is Leroy Brown they will bury you on the spot.


I also finished the russian labor camp mission, let me just say the russians cheat BADLY, you start out with a knife and will be able to pick up other guns along the way(and trust me you want to do so, oh and stay out of Sergie's way just trust me). You get to use quite a few interesting weapons dring the Russian labor camp mission.


Now let's be honest ain nobody that interested in teh campaign, it's a first person shooter in 2010 yes some Trophy collectors may play through the whole mission, but what you want to know about IS THE ONLINE PLAY. Man I love this game online, it took me a little bit over an hour to start getting as many kills as I had deaths in a match, but I think I mostly got it down. I am having a kvetch moment though I can't figure out YET how to place my C4, past that I have gotten a few care packages, called in a few spy planes got the ability to change my kill streak rewards and have been captain Rc car killer a few times, I mean they give you a verbal warning that it's coming but you still ain ready when it does. By the way hit R1 to get the car to explode, I damn near had 4 people but I didn't know how to make it explode yet.


Just like in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 the "base" configurations Give you access to guns you won't get til later in the game as well as some ordinance. They have also gone from 2 of everything to 3. I mean it's still a primary and a secondary weapon, they haven't given you three weapons, or let you go all I got it all like in Halo:Reach, but they have gone from 2 grenade types to 3 carry along slots, you get a Lethal(you frags, Semtex and one more that slips my mind right now I've only played it through the one sitting), a tactical( willie pete, concussion, nova gas, one more).


Let me pause for a second, to all my Willie Pete, or White Phosphorous users in previous online games this ain the blow them up as set anybody nearby on fire Willie pete's that you are used to. This one does a LITTLE bit of damage and obscures the view instead, of course this is supposed to be a more covert game so I guess the big explodey damage of the old willie pete was a little much. Okay back to the online discussion.


You  also get an item, C4 falls in the item category(where before it would take the place of your main grenade)(camera spike and 2 more) so you roll out with 3 ways to distribute death on people besides your two main weapons. So if you've seen someone toss their one lethal and their one tactical don't get too happy they may be on their custom configuration and may have sucked you in for a trip to ride the C4 train.


You also get 3 perks now and they have broken them into separate sections So now you can not only do Scavenger and Ninja at the same time, you can add on one more bit of fun past that. Remember these are my first initial thoughts after playing for about 4 hours before I went to sleep last night, I haven't really gotten in depth yet.


Another new change to online play is "cod" points. Not only do you still gain experience and level up but now instead of having to WAIT to level up and complete challenges earn a lot of you add ons, attachments, and new equipment types each match you points instead so wait that red dot scope? Kill enough people to buy and and you can have it. By the way you can buy a flamethrower attachment right out the box now after you play a few matches in the early levels. I have bought some crap haven't really gone through and decked out my weapons like I did in MW2 yet, I have shot up to level 11 quick as hell though. You still will get in some rooms with people with lousy connections(yes the red dot kings will still exist, why don't you folks get some real broadband so we can all play evenly) but this game is a lot more frantic.


Warning to my fellow new players, Nuketown is a kill box. It doesn't matter if you like close in maps if this is your first map expect to get spawn raped(for those who don't know what spawn raping/camping is basically it's when someone is waiting in your respawn point after you die to RAPE YOU WITH BULLETS repeatedly, yeah just enjoy that) if you don't know all the doors, windows and openings(and no you don't so don't even mention your superior skill right here) somebody is either gonna team up on you or else they are going to rush you and it's going to get real ugly real quick. The online pacing was good though. They have spread out maps, they have close in maps they have medium maps as the campaign seems to jump through various points in recent(last 40 years) history some of the maps I have played are: Hanoi, Nuketown(think Indiana jones and the crystal skull, yes THAT type of NUKETOWN), Firing Range(which really is a training firing range, with moving "targets"), WMD, Jungle, and this weird kind of looks like an oil refinery place so far. lots of places to sneak around and get snuck up on.


As you level up new options are available to you(you don't get to create a custom class until you hit level 4), new ways to tweak your configuration(I believe you get 8-10 custom classes now), you get access to challenger, contracts, new ways to customize your online characters look. The contracts system is fun, bet a little bit(or a lot if you are feeling froggy) of you already earned COD bucks that during the next match or series of matches you can complete up to 3 types of contracts:number of kills over a period of time, Number of wins over a period of time(or ranking in a match, during a win over a period of time) and I forget the last one.  And by period of time the counter is on the body and it says "In game life", which means actually playing missions, so if you have a long drawn out match with not a lot of kills and you took a "kill" contract expect to lose your money(or have to hustle in the next match). The harder and more detailed the contract the more money you win. So the just 20 kill contract doesn't pay as much as the 25 kills with the dragonov contract, or the 75 with the shotgun(which I'm not touching til I get the spas-12). You also have to level up to unlock certain weapons before you can buy them, but once bought got the COD dough you can trick it out.


So far I have tried 3 weapon classes SQB, Assault, and the one with the shotgun as the main weapon, oh did I forget to mention that shotguns are no longer secondary weapons, you can use shotgun as your main and have a pistol, a launcher or a "special" as your secondary weapon. The special I saw was a bowie knife and something else but you get a single canister launcher, an RPG, and a china lake as your launchers now, your basic pistols I have access to a makarov, m1911(I think) and the one you start with, it's nothing special. You can add attachments to your pistols.


They've made the AUG an assault rifle now, it's dropped in class from an LMG. Oh another nice new feature you can upload your "favorite match moments" (up to 6 of them) to the community theater, as well as clips of your favorite matches(did you go on a 6 kill or 17 kill run, cut that clip out and load it up to clips) or if you have a funny screen shot from when you got somebody hey snip that and let folks see that too. So it seems they have gone along with everyone else and included some bragging rights items into Black ops it's kind of fun, you can actually watch your whole match over again and see it from other peoples angles see how you got somebody and how they got you. I was trying to get some sleep last night so I didn't go through and super parse any of my matches yet, I'm at a .66 ratio so yes I had died lots but I'm starting to either even up or else stand kills on top of deaths in many matches now(it's been 4 hours and I haven't played every map I'm still gonna be under for a while). Oops by .66 ration I mean kill to death ratio: when you divide my kills by my deaths I have more deaths than kills, I've had a few matches where I had a bunch more kills then deaths(haven't run the table and not died yet, who doesn't die in a FPS). I've been playing team deathmatch I haven't engaged in a lot of trash talking yet because I'm still getting my feet wet, there are folks who have had this game since 12:01am Tuesday morning(NEEEEEEEEEWBS) so there will be some spankings I am going to take, but again it's only been 4 days you ain that far ahead of me yet, and it's a first person shooter point and shoot, Aim Down the Sight and it's all gravy.


Okay word of warning I know some have seen the scenes where you can sick dogs on people, well you can also shoot those dogs to keep them from killing you. So while it's not a MAIN portion of the game yes you may hear some dogs whimpering. that means somebody almost got the jaws of death and weren't having it. I just got to the level where I could switch my kill streaks(not too long ago) so while I have gotten the rc car(3 kills once you can switch) I haven't doused anybody with napalm YET, I did get a Valkyrie missile though from a care package, gotta learn how to use those better supposedly thats a remote control missile.


Aiight I called this initial thoughts so that I could get some sleep last night and then finish playing it today to get a more in depth take on it, the full review will be coming in a few days but I just wanted to talk about what I liked.

Here come's trouble

I got black ops, I got the free pre order map pack, its about to be on and poppin. I'll do the review for black ops after I've finished the first mission and popped a few heads online.


Again I want to tell folks it ain personal its just black ops. Yes I'm going to head shot you, yes I'm going to toss grenades at you, I can't wait to use the napalm on folks. I never used the nuke anyway but meh who cares. Aiight cueing up black ops baby bro needs a ride so I only have enough time for the first training mission


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Friday, November 12, 2010

SOS-Save Our Signal

Don't ask me why I am thumbing this one out too(even though I guess my fingers are smaller because before I had to use my thumbnails so hooray, I think) I have no signal here so just like last time when I was bored as all hell, well dude, there you have it(rip off of a ludacris skit from his first CD).

Thing is I'm here, no chair(though sleeping on a site is frowned upon), no laptop(but hey its not like I can surf the good porn there are ladies present), the puter for all intents and purposes seems to be a wash(which is why though ran a quick scanner it really could use a full scan)

And just as I say that poof I fixed it(for now) 5 scans and 17 trace removals and we have picture which makes me think I need to run the full scan and get it all. Now my favorite comments from customers when I do what I do are "we didn't touch ANYTHING" and "the last guys who were here did that". First if you didn't touch ANYTHING 9 times out of 10 you'd be seeing the wire/hardware repair team instead of me. Yes hard drives crash, memory can go bad, and computers can need analysis from time to time. 10% of the time it had nothing to do with the user.

The rest of the time yup somebody went somewhere and downloaded something. Another tell tale sign of this:the computers browsing history is non existant. Yup, there is a common misconception(hell it ain a misconception its a CYA move) that if you just "erase the history and POSSIBLY the cookies your PC will be all better. That's false, insane and the worst lie ever.

All erasing your history does is make it harder for me to discern WHERE you got the virus. Hell, if you leave your history alone it may not have been the site itself but an ad or a hijacking script added later(yes just like folks tap into other peoples cable they hijack things on peoples websites) is not a bad or malicious site. Most people don't even have a "virus" per se they have malware a program that is hijacking processes, functions and data from you computer for whatever nefarious purpose. When I get somewhere with a signal I will go ahead and update the proper definitions for virus(as per computers) and malware(or malicious software you know us techies hate long useless names) right her ----> computer virus and Malware

But yeah it gets mad annoying because you're looking at the person like "do you really think I am that stupid". It could have been an accident, another victim of a FB buddy who couldn't resist clicking that brand new cool link(hell some of them look cool to me to, but I have "THE DISK" and you do not and I still control my clicky), or everybody's favorite somebody got file shared a virus/malicious code.

I will say this about our customers most of them will feed you, I may not have my cookies but hey a free footlong subway club can't beat that. It seems this owner has some businesses in Chicago and my dad would love to expand a little bit further. I mean it'd be nice to hit another major city, but I'd be working most of the time so don't know how much "sight seeing" I'd get to do past to and from the site.

I guess I never realized how gruesome part of my job can be. While the shooting I saw on camera did not result in a death, I have seen people shot and shot at a few times. My younger brother just "witnessed" his first, granted usually I get a heads up. Unfortunately the customer told him it was a robbery, so his head wasn't prepared to see a man lose his life. I can't remember the last time I was physically present when that type of extreme violence happened. I was younger then him and while there were times when it shook me I guess as I grew older it was just, meh okay.

Kinda sad when you think about it not cringing when someone is beaten, shot, or stabbed. Now where I grew up at in jersey wasn't that rough, nor were the places I USUALLY hung out(I've hung out in some rough places too I was young and trying to live a life worth remembering within reason). But life isn't always about being in a bad part of town when something bad happens to you, sometimes chance just sucks.

Okay enough about that morbid subject, most times if I get a phone call its because someone broke in, gave themselves a 5 finger discount, or else claimed "injury". I also like the folks who try to play the "return an item I stole scam". I've seen quite a few and have video of a bunch on top of that, just don't think I can legally post it anywhere. Unless of course I find a way to edit out faces, I should really look that up.

Be nice to add a "funny thing happened on the way to the " dunno which title I'll bite off for that yet. But then you could see why on some of my later nights I'm not always in a crappy mood:cause sometimes my job is straight comedy.

Okay I'm putting this blog to bed. If any readers know any decent affordable video editing software let me know

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Sitting at a gas station

And what do I see with my little eye? Why a rolling shoe carnival. Now whether these are knock offs, drop offs or what I have no clue. Like I said I was testing the ability to send photots and as that is kind of interesting *camera flash sound* and sending it in.
I didn't take a photo of the proprietor in his "KREW" hoody and his "VENOM" hat because I'm not mad at dude, no idea what his story is, and I'm not about to patronize his business. It was just a "wow, this is not something you see everyday". And since a cop just rolled by I guess it isn't completely illegal because they haven't bum rushed his spot, grabbed his merch, and gave him party bracelets.
Aiight back to writing my original friday morning blog entry(do I even have cell signal out this piece)
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Another friday what shall I do

Man I wish I had remembered to eat breakfast this morning. My stomach is grumbling, okay just bummed a deuce off baby bro so I got a lemon pie and a Dr. Pepper. Yeah yeah what am I 5 (8 1/2 actually) its not the breakfast of champions but it will take care of the rumbling.

Didn't get paid yet so you know how that goes, besides baby bro gets rides to see his girlfriend, hits me up to take him to the movies(his attempt to bribe me with subway later let's me know he's got a whopper of a request coming up), take him to the gamestore, and gets me in trouble when he ditches work by staying at his girlfriends house instead of coming home(NOOOOT that being who I USED to be I have much room to talk. I've called out for the coitus illness before, hey finding a way to talk about sex without using the regular verbage should get points).

So I'm just sayin 2 bucks ain that big a deal plus knowing him it will be "come on buy my ticket or my concessions" time at the movies AGAIN. He can be captain cheapskate sometimes, I mean I know about being young and wanting to spend all ya free cash on your lady but dude, we both grown and you are a stingy and expensive date(what, he keeps a death grip on those damn reese's pieces and always has).
Speaking of movies(and video games we on a decent distance road trip and my presumed excuse to get to best buy: picking mom up from work was defeated !CURSES!) Don't know what came out today but I may try to sneak RED in again or else walk down the block to whatever new opening comes out.

I need to go buy scott pilgrim vs. The world on DVD. Loved it at the theatre NO IDEA if I did a blog about it(I'm not that Chris dude on AOTS, so I don't do a DVDuesday thing, I could I do tend to buy a lot of movies if something I liked came out) after watching it. It did come out about the time I was all flighty when it came to blogging. If not I may revisit it when I buy the DVD, well the bluray. I have resorted to buying movies on bluray because what do you know not that many people I know have bluray players thus movies don't walk out the door.

Ain that sad? You have to switch to the new medium so that you can always watch your favorite movies. I mean its no knock that the picture quality is awesome too, sound is pretty good as well its a waste that they don't put more extras on the disk though. Maybe as they go forward they will

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Thursday, November 11, 2010

Looking at my portfolio

I don't know when my last check in was so I'm not even going to ATTEMPT to claim a how many month journey this is. For all the stocks I had last year the 3 that remain are Sirius XM satellite radio, E-trade financial and FMCC(formerly freddie mac)

This is a recounting of stocks that I OWN and I OWN only this is not a recommendation for purchase nor do past gains foretell future results

One of these days I'm just gonna go ahead and figure out a macro for that, maybe make it flashing. Anyway disclaimer on the blog, yup disclaimer right up above okay anyway lets star with the "Homer"

SiriusXM Satellite radio(Siri:Nasdaq) for a stock that I took a chance on at .13 cents a share even being "down" today at 1.44(if I would have done this last week I would have been bragging about it being 1.55 a share but I forgot to do it again so meh a home run is a home run) but that's $1.31 a share more then I paid for it, more then a 1.00 a share in the money(how much I paid for the amount of shares I purchased + brokerage fees minus how much I would make if I sold it today). This was a long term investment when I made it, I got lucky there were no reverse stock splits(grr we'll talk about that with the next stock), the stock didn't cater and as it seems to be strengthening it's brand now my only decision is when do I want to exit. Personally THIS is what you hope for as an investor a stock to have made enough money that you aren't worried about how long you gotta wait to get your money back you just wait to decide how much profit you want to make.

E-trade financial (ETFC: Nasdaq) now some may see E-trade at 15+ a share and be like yay homerun, eeeeh wrong answer. Etrade pulled a reverse stock split a few months ago. A stock split is basically a company makes an announcement there are going to "dilute" the amount of shares they have out in the market. So for every share that already exists they are going to create X amount more. and X is the split so if it 2-1 for every 1 share of their stock you own you now have 2. Well a reverse stock split is the exact opposite, to STRENGTHEN a companies position (stock price) they are going to buy back X-amount of shares and eliminate them from existance. And anybody else who owns shares current holdings will be reduced by the amount of the ration, in etrades case it was 10-1. As the two links I provided will show it is all about the share price if a share price is too high(and the company wants more investors) they will divide their shares (thus as I said diluting the price) making it easier for people to buy more. If they have a low share price (or are being threatened with delistment basically being kicked off a major exchange NYE, Nasdaq, S&P) to make the share price look better the reduce the number of shares out their thus increasing the price. Doesn't add any value to me and just made it harder for me to cash in profits later if say I didn't want to COMPLETELY exit my position but I did want to profit take. So yeah it's up but it's not REALLY up.

Federal Home Loan Mortgage Company (FMCC: OTC bulletin board) Remember that delisting I talked about yeah it happened to freddy mac. The housing market deteriorated some more and while they aren't dead(benefits of being a government run publicly traded company *shrug*) lets just say all the people who made a boat load in the mortgage bubble are now asking for freddie and his sister fannie to be put to death. Now I can choose to sell(like I did with GM) and take another loss forward(though just like GM and ford that loss ain gonna be enough, I ain complaining the fact that I don't have enough loss to cover my  potential gains when I sell Sirius isn't a bad thing in my eyes) and be like oh well thats a couple whatever bucks down the drain(I don't have my purchase price sheet in front of me), or I can double down and hope it pulls a Sirius, or I can do nothing. I'm in a do nothing sort of mood right now. I mean yeah 100 shares at .36 cents is like 50+ bucks after I pay the commission on it which you know isn't terrible, but I don't see the housing market improving just yet(just like I didn't see it getting horribly worse either I thought it was gonna remain stagnant for a while so yes the market makes a genius out of you with one stock and a fool with another) so I'll have to be in a good mood to double down in the case of freddie, or even getting back into fannie(or both).

Technically thanks to Sirius my investment portfolio is way up(just like ford had done to it last year) so my spiel about "taking a chance" is already hedged but then again I haven't sold Sirius yet so all that money I am counting is still imaginary at the moment. Potential gains are potential gains, and call me greedy if you want but I'm not selling Sirius this year unless in the next month or so it gets north of 5 bucks. Okay Investment update blog done

Meh previous title was too melodramatic

I was gonna title this "Ooooh Nooo! The world is gonna end primal didn't do a morning post" but the ham on me is either sleeping (lucky bastard) or else just wasn't feeling it.

Favorite thing about loading a computer:

When having mismatched memory installed causes your board to go AS(haywire use your imagination). It keeps getting later and later in the day. Today has been pretty boring, I've trained troops in Evony Age II, in kingdoms of Camelot, have ignored my fish on tagged, and have had a nice conversation with a good friend about the stupidity of shaming a young to preteen girl into having a child. (By the way anybody who is legal and gets somebody underage pregnant deserves to be under the jail)

So yeah goofing off wise this has been a pretty productive day, work wise not so much. I've even drained my cell battery down to two bars(about to run and plug it in now). Really don't have my mind wrapped around much right now. Thinking of going to make lunch, possibly more of my delicious buffalo strips(you wish you could taste this sauce perfect bite to it with just a hint of *this information has been stricken as it is proprietary information*). Think we have a couple of wraps left if not guess I could make a salad.

Its mid season so thursday night football starts. That's about it just popped in my head really ain thought much about this pre pre weekend edition. Like I said was goofin off hadn't blogged yet and want to kinda keep the flow going just in case later on tonight I'm not in a blogging mood. I mean looking at how much and what I've blogged about its doubtful but as we know capricorns are mercurial by nature and if we know anything about me I AM a Capricorn (CAPS ROCK) so somedays just gotta head of my natural tendencies.

Aiight putting another one to bed holla back lata

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