"I wanna play Holes," my four year old son will tell me.

"Holes" is what he calls . Valve Software's Portal, which I've been letting him play on my PC in recent months.

I figure it's non-violent and it's a physics-based-puzzle-solving game, so it's reasonably kid-safe and maybe even educational.

IOver the months, through playing with me (observing) and playing by himself, he's gotten quite competent at the game. I wasn't aware of just how competent until two nights ago.

I set Portal up for him on the first level and went to my Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu class. My wife stayed home and watched him and his younger brother.

Two hours later, I came home and found him still playing. (My wife didn't let him play the whole two hours -- we always make him take a break for a while after 20-30 minutes).

He had finished the first fifteen levels (out of 19 total) all by himself.

And I already know he can do the 16th and 17th levels all by himself as well.

I don't know if that's a good thing, but I was pretty stunned regardless. Kids are amazing... :)

My two year old woke up this morning and, standing by my bed in his Batman Pajamas, said:

"I'm Batman -- see," he said, pointing to the Batman emblem on his chest. "He's a good guy!"

Finally got around to taking some pics of The Dominator. I wonder if sticky foam animals count as "modding?"

OK, this just ain't right.

The view out my office window--this is a portion of my back yard.

First: A funny article about stupid people.

Second: More about my recently built new computer (sorry):

After nearly a year of waiting to play Bioshock, I finally got to fire it up last night for about a half hour. I was immediately impressed by the graphics, which I was able to run at their highest settings and at a resolution of 1680x1050.

Prior to Bioshock, the most recent FPS games I've played were Half-Life 2: Episode 2 and Portal. HL2 still has excellent graphics, but it's still based upon a 4-5 year old engine. (However, I've yet to re-install it and try running it at higher settings than I used to.)

It was a real treat to play Bioshock, but it also made me realize how 'behind the times' my old system (and my own gaming) have been. I still remember when running a shooter at anything more than 1024x768 (or maybe 1280x1024) seemed like a needless 'luxury'.

"In my day, we had VGA, and WE LIKED IT."

Happy Friday.

OK, so I'm on Day 3 with my new computer. Everything is running quite well, although...

I did manage to crash the dominatoronce with a Blue Screen of Death, courtesy of some flaky overclocking/system-tweaking software that comes with the motherboard (Foxconn X38A).

Fortunately, I'm not all that interested in screwing around with overclocking -- stability is more important than squeezing out a few extra Mhz here and there.

Otherwise,

modern, faster hardware + a fresh installation of Vista 64 + ditching my wireless connection for a direct cable connection = FAST.

Virtually everything on this rig feels a whole order of magnitude faster than on my old rig -- and my old rig is still a darn decent machine. It was 'cutting edge' -- about 4.5 years ago.

Web pages and downloads are ten times faster. Application start times, system boot times, and virtually every aspect of using my computer feels instantaneous.

It's very gratifying. :) 

Armed with a fresh copy of Windows Vista, I finally powered up the dominator last night, and I was pleasantly surprised. The Dominator powered up with no problems whatsoever. The only initial issues:

• Vista couldn't find my hard drive upon the first installation attempt. I was briefly worried that I'd have to make a driver "floppy disk" for the motherboard's SATA hard disk controller. I never use or install floppy drives any more, and the idea of being forced to resort to that sort of shenanigans in 2008 is ridiculous. Had this been the case, I would have marched over to the Vista developers' offices and gone on a gonad-kicking ragefest. Fortunately, it wasn't -- it was just a a loose hard drive cable, which was easily and quickly corrected.
• No Vista 64-bit drivers for my wireless network card. I had largely anticipated this, although I was a little surprised Vista couldn't install some sort of generic drivers. I ended up running a long cable to my router to get through the initial installation/update period -- and then I noticed how much faster my connection was. My download speeds were screaming -- easily 2-4x as fast as my wireless connection allowed. Ultimately I relocated the wireless router and the cable modem a bit to make the really long cable less obtrusive. I don't know if I'll go back to using the wireless connection for my desktop PC.
• The computer case's LED didn't light up. Not a big deal -- I just hadn't connected a power cable to the LED on the front of the case. I'm using a RAIDMAX SMILODON case, which has cool blue-colored LEDs on the front of the case (and inside the case, too).

Aside from these minor issues, the Vista installation went well, and the Dominator is already about 85% complete. I'm just installing some favorite applications (Firefox, RocketDock, MS Office 2007, and various other freeware apps) and customizing everything to my usual preferences.

So, I built my new PC last night with the help of my oldest son. He was predictably excited and prone to touch lots of things.

I felt kind of bad because I had to make him not touch things, for the most part. Static electric discharge could zap my precious components.

Regardless, I still let him plug some cables in and screw in some screws and such -- oh, and spin some of the many fans inside the computer.

I think he would have enjoyed it more if I could have given him more to do -- the problem was Dad was trying hard to figure out his new toys. Unfortunately, I realized that I was a bit out of touch with these new-fangled motherboards.

For example:

• The processor doesn't have pins that go into a socket. It has connectors that merely "touch" corresponding points in the processor socket, and then it gets clamped/sandwiched into the socket.
• The power supply has a standard 20-pin ATX connector. The motherboard, however, has a 24-pin socket. (The motherboard manual says to just connect the 20-pin connector into the topmost 20 pins, so fortunately this didn't turn out to be a problem.)
• There's another power socket (8-pin) by the processor that older motherboards didn't have. (And, my ATX power supply connectors were again different -- I had to connect a 4-pin plug to the 8-pin socket, as instructed by the motherboard manual)
• SATA hard drives. This system has my first-ever SATA hard drive. Love the cables. :)

Other than feeling a little "behind the times" while I was figuring out how to connect everything, I got it all together last night. I haven't been able to turn it on though... something I'm both anxious to do and slightly afraid of...

To top it off, my big, burly, black computer case -- which I had named The Dominator in my own mind (because it sounded gamery and manly, if that's even possible without it being an oxymoron) was subsequently decorated by my two-year old with little brightly-colored, foam sticker animals.

So now it's the dominator - by Playschool.

Today I eagerly await the arrival of the parts for my new computer -- the first new computer I've built in 5 years (maybe more). My current PC was almost bleeding-edge 4.5 years ago, so it's held up well (and it's still a very good PC).

But it's definitely time for an upgrade, and the new PC will herald my return to PC gaming.

Granted, I'm building a budget-rig, but it will still have far more horsepower than my aging, dead-ended Pentium 4 (single core), Radeon X850-powered current box.

I've been waiting to build a new PC for nearly a year, and though there aren't many games on my "list" right now, there are some (Bioshock and Crysis, mainly) that I've been waiting to play for quite a while.

I'm also looking forward to building the new system with my son Kazu.

My mundane weekend wrap-up:

• I went to my BJJ class Friday night and Saturday morning to get my usual butt-kickings. Good times! And a good workout...
• I puttered around the house and did miscellaneous odds-and-ends.
• I made the boys dinosaur-shaped pancakes for breakfast. Kazu ate a triceratops, and Katsuya ate a stegosaurus. Kazu then ran up stairs and dressed himself (all by himself, and correctly too.) I think Kazu was excited because he knew Grandpa was coming over.
• Katsuya, in full "Buzz Lightyear" mode, was intermittently striking various action-hero poses and shooting me with his arm when I pretended to be a monster -- it is very funny and cute.
• My step-dad and I -- with Kazu's help of course -- managed to mount a yard toy in the back yard, just in time for it to start raining. The toy was given to us for free and we've been waiting for decent weather to get it mounted in the yard. I still need to finish assembling it and do some landscaping around it, but it shouldn't take too long -- if it ever stops raining.

.

Few things rankle me more than idiot fundamentalist Christian Creationists spewing their uneducated bullshit at children.

Watch this short video and despair with me.

The video is pretty entertaining. The reporter makes no qualms about grilling the subjects for the idiots that they are.

First, about my ass:
We finally got some living room furniture installed -- two giant, fluffy, micro-fiber recliners. Very comfy. A bit too big, really, for our living room, but very comfy. Placed directly in front of our gas fireplace, they promise a comfy, warm spot for our butts.

And now, about some Tech:
Also in the near future... finally... is a new computer. After months of poring over tech sites and carefully weighing the advantages and disadvantages of various components, I finally settled on the following:

• Foxconn X38A motherboard: Relatively inexpensive, and it supports both DDR2 (cheap) RAM and DDR3 (the newer standard, but still pricey. Also: A mail-in rebate!
• Intel E8400 Core 2 Duo 3 Ghz CPU: Best bang for the buck right now in its class.
• Western Digital 320GB SATA3 hard drive: Again -- inexpensive, good capacity, fast, and generally quiet.
• 2GB of DDR2 PC800 RAM: Dirt cheap. nuff' said.
• EVGA Geforce 8800GT w/512MB of RAM: Pretty much the best bang for the buck in video cards. And a mail-in rebate! :)
• Raidmax Smilodon Case w/500w Power supply: Purchased this months ago because of a killer mail-in rebate and free shipping. It's just been waiting...

I'll be transferring my Dual Layer DVD burner from my previous PC.

Best of all, I'll get to build it with my son Kazu, who has no shortage of interest in the inner workings of damn near everything -- especially things with gears and/or fans. I fully expect this will be fun (and probably highly frustrating) at the same time. :)

I'm considering -- for sometime in the future -- purchasing a MicroATX motherboard and MicroATX case to convert my current rig (still a very good PC, but obsolete nonetheless) from a mid-szed tower into a small form-factor box -- good for the kids (eventually) and more practical, as I'll have no place to keep or use another full-sized PC. And a MicroATX case+ motherboard looks like it would only cost around $150 total.

My wife and I dropped the kids off with grandma last night and went to dinner at a local Black Angus.

It was actually quite good -- we left with a ton of food, and the whole meal (with tip) came to $50. It was definitely nice to have a quiet "date night" out.

Then we did a little furniture shopping at a Fred Meyers store. We didn't see anything we liked, but we ended up buying some prizes for the kids -- maybe it's a parental-guilt-for-a-night-out type of penance or something.

We then stopped at Reclinerland and bought two swiveling, reclining, micro-fiber recliners for our living room. Come Sunday, we'll finally have a little furniture in our living room. It's only been 2 years since we moved in, after all...

Now we'll just need a small end-table, a console/entry-way table, and (eventually) a dining room set (sigh). At least we'll have a nice place to sit by the fireplace and grow old together.