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Depends on what you were shooting.

 

All different flavors of vodka mostly, we were in a vodka bar called Revolution, couple racks of flaming sambuca, a rack of aftershock (blegh) and a row of gas chambers. Gas chambers where final call for me, awful concoction. Of course this was my early twenties when I was far more seasoned, if I tried to drink like that now I think there is a genuine chance I might die lol

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So, it's probably been a while since I made you all a bit hungry. It took me a while to get back into the swing of things with my PAX meds mishap, but I got back on the horse last night and made my chick pea curry. A bit too much salt, but still tasty. And to get back on form and try some new things here's what the meal plan is for the week:

 

 

I'm making Ahi tuna steaks for my brother and I this weekend, since... well, I saw it at the supermarket and they rarely have it. If you've never had Ahi, it cuts like butter, with a wonderful salty taste and costs more than prime rib. Just have it kiss the pan to sear in the seasoning and flavours... Outstanding.

 

 

It's a heavy seafood week, since... I like seafood and there is so much that I can do with it that I haven't done yet. Like mussels. Never cooked mussels before, so why not try? Cook them up in a chili tomato sauce with a side of spinach gratin (just a baked spinach puree topped with parm). I also have a miso glazed salmon that I want to try cooking, and I have some great salmon fillets vacuum packed in the freezer that I really should make use of.

 

 

Speaking of making use of the things in my freezer, I usually have something planned to make use of the chicken in my freezer. Buy a box of chicken breasts and it will usually last me two months and gives me a lot of things that I can get creative with, like black bean and chicken jambalaya or curried chicken. This week, I have a broccoli and chicken casserole planned. The temperature is dropping, so I can cook more things in the oven without making the house uncomfortably hot. So, why not experiment with more oven meals.

 

 

And let's round out the week with some pork schnitzel. I make this a lot because it impresses and is stupidly simple. Take some pork chops and pound them flat. Use a mallet, use a rolling pin, just make them as thin as possible and as wide as possible. I remember when I was in Vienna, the schnitzel was wider than the plate. Season them with salt and pepper and let them sit while you get everything else together. You'll need three bowls. Put some all purpose flour in one, a beaten egg in another and some breadcrumbs in the last one. Season the breadcrumbs it you want, but it really isn't needed. First coat the pork in the flour, then the egg and finally the breadcrumbs. Let them sit while you heat oil in a pan. Nothing fancy, I just use canola (rapeseed for the Europeans), and wait until the oil is very hot so you get the nice crispy coating. You don't want the coating to go soggy, after all. And what about the topping? I seem to recall talking about cheese sauce before (heat milk, add in some shredded cheese, stir in a little flour to thicken and add some spices), but want something more interesting? Butter chicken sauce. Smear that on your schnitzel for a nice spice. I'll probably be topping it with a simpler creamy paprika sauce and fresh mushrooms.

 

 

And what of dessert? My local Food Network has been showing more how to shows lately, one of them featuring a remarkably calm Gordon Ramsey. At one point he made simple brownies and I realized that it has probably been years since I made brownies. And I'm not sure if I have ever made them with out the help of Betty Crocker. So, found a recipe online, using apples. Sold. But let's turn it up a notch: Apple brownies (technically they are blondies) with crushed walnuts and caramel drizzle. Who am I kidding? Those won't last the week...

 

 

So, Sonic... I'm reminded about one of the things that Sonic really didn't do well in the later Genesis games. In Sonic 1, you got the Chaos Emeralds in those wonderful almost pinball looking things, where the world rotated and it was all about breaking through barriers. In Sonic 2, you had the half pipe where you were trying to collect as many rings as possible. But in Sonic 3 and Sonic and Knuckles, which I am currently playing, you have the 3D globe, where you are trying to collect all the blue orbs. I don't think I ever played this back in the day, aside from maybe at a Toys R Us display, but I remember it looking and being really cool. But now it just seems like a gimmick, and a poorly executed one. And that's the problem: a lot of gimmicks just don't hold up, particularly since 3D gaming is the norm now. Now that I think about it, Sonic has never handled the 3rd dimension properly. Anyway, think of Final Fantasy VII. It's a good game, not saying it isn't. I have fond memories of it, but that nearly seamless cutscene just doesn't have the same spectacle. And when you know not to get attached to Aeris... The bonus levels are like that. It's more about a point in time, reminding yourself that 10 year old Doug was mystified by it. Or would have been, if he had played it.

 

 

Until next time.

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So, Sonic... I'm reminded about one of the things that Sonic really didn't do well in the later Genesis games. In Sonic 1, you got the Chaos Emeralds in those wonderful almost pinball looking things, where the world rotated and it was all about breaking through barriers. In Sonic 2, you had the half pipe where you were trying to collect as many rings as possible. But in Sonic 3 and Sonic and Knuckles, which I am currently playing, you have the 3D globe, where you are trying to collect all the blue orbs. I don't think I ever played this back in the day, aside from maybe at a Toys R Us display, but I remember it looking and being really cool. But now it just seems like a gimmick, and a poorly executed one. And that's the problem: a lot of gimmicks just don't hold up, particularly since 3D gaming is the norm now. Now that I think about it, Sonic has never handled the 3rd dimension properly. Anyway, think of Final Fantasy VII. It's a good game, not saying it isn't. I have fond memories of it, but that nearly seamless cutscene just doesn't have the same spectacle. And when you know not to get attached to Aeris... The bonus levels are like that. It's more about a point in time, reminding yourself that 10 year old Doug was mystified by it. Or would have been, if he had played it.

 

 

Until next time.

 

Going to have to disagree here man, Sonic adventure 2 battle was amazing and handled the 3D aspect perfectly.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Good morning, all. Been a while since I made a blog post. Actually, it's been a while since I did anything on the site. I had a workplace accident a few weeks ago, leaving me with a concussion. Essentially, a garage door came down on my head because of a safety mechanism that wasn't working right (I'm too skinny to set off the sensor to stop the door), so I've been dealing with all those wonderful symptoms like exhaustion, confusion, headaches and the like. Left me with some scary moments like not being able to remember how to dial a phone. Mostly I was just sleeping a lot. At this point I still have a few symptoms, but they are light, so I'm able to function pretty well again. But that was just the start of a very bad few weeks.

 

 

I actually learned a few things about my credit card this month. As many of you may know, PAX is not a cheap vacation. Hotel, meals, the convention, the merch... Not cheap. And it all went on the credit card. Now, what I didn't know is that my credit card will actually let me go over my limit so that it can pay everything that was promised. Hotels preauthorize for everything, which pushed my card way over the limit, and when it goes way over the limit, the card gets shut down. Ok, no big deal, I have money in the bank account, I'll pay everything off. Would have been fine if the payment actually went through, but instead it got lost in the internet ether for a while. So, no ability to use the credit card, no money in the bank account until payday... Fun. But that's all sorted now.

 

 

So, broke and injured.... What else could go wrong? My grandmother passed away on the weekend. Because of my continuing health issues and hers, I hadn't seen her in a while, so I'm feeling kind of bad about that. I'm not one to have many regrets, but that one might be one that lingers. Nothing I can do about it, though.

 

 

But what's been going on around the site? I really don't know how I feel about GSL this year. It's going to be odd watching from the sidelines, but t wouldn't really be a retirement if I was still doing GSL. That and the fact that I kind of have to help run it... We can't benefit from the rules we create and enforce. Oh yeah, and I finally have a new minion after a lengthy search. That was all set up before the injury. Can't really claim that bringing in Metabolic was a product of the concussion ;). Anyway, that allowed me to take a little time off to recover.

 

 

But the streak is alive and kicking, so what was I playing? I played through The Walking Dead Season Two when it all first happened. The fact that I didn't need a guide of any sort and that each episode lasted about as long as I could concentrate on this was perfect. It isn't as good as the first one, though. Not that it isn't good, it just isn't as good as the near perfect game that the first game was. There's a reason why I put it in my staff club. The first game is near perfection where there really seemed like there was no right choice. But in the second game, they were clearly trying to point you towards one choice. That really showed in the fat that most of the choices were overwhelmingly going one way when you got to see how other players chose. I seem to remember wanting to do an entire blog post in a spoiler tag comparing and contrasting the two games, but... well, that never happened. Concussion and all.

 

 

I've since moved onto Diablo 3, which... So many numbers, so much loot... Bliss. The story is a little thin and I'm really having to stop myself from trying to do every challenge in the game, since there are a lot and they are kind of complicated, I think. Achievement wise, the game is pretty straight forward. I need to grind out the rest. I've gotten through the story on one character which got me to level 64 or so. Need to get that character up to level 70 and then do that 5 more times. I'm working through my Hardcore playthrough (once the character dies, it can't revive) and am about halfway through and at level 38 or something. After that, it's all Bounties. I think... Have to consult the list. Either way, it's grinding. But it's a fun game, so I don't mind. My Crusader isn't as fun to play, but my Monk is not that strong. Going to have to see how the other classes play. Going to have to leave it there. It's tempting to just do a content dump for all the time I've been away, but I won't.

 

 

Until next time.

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Geez Doug, sounds like you've had it pretty bad recently! I've had a few reasonable concussions and I can't stand the nausea that goes with it. Hopefully your symptoms don't hang around too much longer. Must have been a pretty hard blow to the head for the concussion to be hanging around this long though!

 

I'm going to have to agree with you on what you said about season 2 of TWD. While I thoroughly enjoyed it, I did too prefer season 1. Really looking to the re-releases on Xbox One in the immediate future. Playing through that first season again for fresh achievements will be nothing less that a pleasure! Wonder if the achievements will be worth more Gamerscore on One?

 

Anyway, condolences for your Grandmother, Doug. Losing someone close always hurts and finally, I think Metabolic was a fantastic choice to be added to the site staff. :)

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Good morning, all. For those that don't get the reference, Murphy's Law is "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong." I really should start a petition to have the government repeal that law... Anyway when last I left, I was dealing with a concussion, financial ruin and the death of my grandmother. Well, as you can see, I have my financial situation sorted and I am largely symptom free. Not completely symptom free, but mostly. Anyway, all that was let was the funeral.

 

 

A little background on my family. My brother has usually been hanging out with a less than reputable crowd. Roommates that would ask to borrow money for their share of rent because they blew their money on pot or something. Anyway, in those days, he was the responsible one. So when a friend that he hadn't spoken to in a few years asked for help getting into rehab and government programs, he jumped to help. Turns out it was a ruse. It wasn't his friend on the other end, but the friend's boyfriend who had somehow convinced himself that my brother owed him money.

 

 

So, when he showed up, he was greeted with a man with a knife asking for money as he hopped into his car. So, while the family was getting ready for the funeral, he was dealing with this. Drove him around at knife point and had him get as much money as he could to pay off what he felt he was owed. At one point my brother was told to calm down and ""smoke this." Turns out the unsavoury fellow gave my brother pot laced with heroin to calm him down. He called us a few times, asking for help with a "fender bender" and just needed money for the deductible. He did eventually get the money and the guy let him go, at which point, he called the police.

 

 

Anyway, when we got home from the funeral, we were greeted with police cars at our house and was told that they couldn't actually do anything until he came down, so I was tasked with making sure he didn't choke on his own vomit all night. Oh, and the guy continued to send him threatening messages all night, so we had the police in and out all night seeing if long term protection was needed. By the next morning, we had more messages and were given protection, so we had police in the house or outside the house all day. Well, most of the day, anyway. At one point, after a few messages of "I'm coming to get you" the police informed us that it was not safe for us to stay in the house and I was given about 5 minutes to find somewhere to go for the night. This wonderful thins was made possible by the fact that we don't live in the city that the crime was committed in. So, when he was passed off to the other department for further investigation, we lost our protection and I was ordered out. Fortunately I already had my achievement for the day. The things we focus on... So, it was a while before I could go home. But it turns out that the guy is known to police and they knew where he was, so it didn't take long to get t all over with. I was still sleeping with a pitching wedge by my bed, just in case.

 

 

And to top it all off, my first real dinner back at the house kind of fell flat. My quiche was a bit too moist, so the crust fell apart, leaving me with something that ate more like a Denver omelette. I needed to let the crust cook by itself for a lot longer to firm up. Or dry out the ham a bit instead of just cooking it up with the leeks and mushrooms. And the dessert... Sticky date pudding. Well, I used an Australian recipe and it turned out tasty, but the whole thing was in metric. Which is fine, I can do the conversions in my head for weights and volumes to deal with my American cooking equipment. But my American stove, on the other hand... Yeah, I messed up the temperature because I was trying to salvage the quiche and cooked it just a bit too hot. So, it got a crust on it that was just a bit too dense instead of the thin crust that just contains a soft, sweet, gooey centre. Both still tasted outstanding, though.

 

 

And for Diablo, which I really attempted to climb inside while all this was going down, I am getting near the end, I think. I have 3 of the 6 classes up to level 70, including my Hardcore character. I have 300 or so bounties left to try for, and I have about 17 more Treasure goblins to kill. Oh, and I have all sorts of Legendary armour that I need to find. So... Could take me a while. But my monk is so much fun to play and my Hardcore crusader just kicks so much ass. Hardcore wasn't too bad, really. I barely needed to use healing potions, let alone risk dying (since the character only has one life). I'm really having to stop myself from going for all the challenges in the game, since it will take a long time to get it all done. And only a few are related to achievements. So... soon, I think?

 

 

And that's the kind of month it's been.

 

 

Until next time.

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Good morning, all. So... Only one piece of bad news today. I use Bing Food a lot. It's a great app with more recipes than I could possibly need, and it's pretty easy to figure out the last little thing that I need for my freestyle creations. Like, how long do I need to cook this meatloaf? Mix ground beef and ground pork for a tasty mixed meat creation, but how long does it need to cook. And of course just finding interesting recipes. I think I had over 200 recipes saved that I liked, had tried or just wanted to try. It was my own little cookbook. But on October 1, when Microsoft revamped the MSN homepage, they also rebranded Bing Food as MSN Food. This included making it easier to access the recipes that I had written myself. But in doing that, it deleted every saved recipe I had. My red beans and rice? Gone. My chick pea curry? Gone. My potato and leek soup? Gone. Every single recipe I had is gone. Granted, most of my specialties I can do from memory, but still... So many recipes that I have to find again...

 

 

Anyway, I'll get to the titular incident later, I want to talk about Minesweeper first. They added a year long grind to the game in the form of the Daily challenges, if you weren't aware. So, they took a game that was supposed to take about 20 minutes and turned it into a year long grind. Now, I was able to get around a few of the issues using some fortuitous glitches. Things like setting the date back to a previous month to play previous challenges. That saved me two months. And then in March, the game glitched and gave credit for each award twice, meaning that I was given credit for 8 gold, silver and bronze medals instead of the four I had, so, that cut the amount of time I needed to spend each month in half, since I didn't need any more golds, just silver. And this month, I just had one more bronze medal needed. Which was good, since I was at a point in Diablo where I probably wasn't getting an achievement that day. So, now it's done. No more year long grind needed. It's all over.... And I have my 100% completion rate back for Windows 8.

 

 

But what of the game that I have been playing for the last month? Diablo is done as well, and in an amusing fashion. The achievement that gave me the most trouble was the one for having all your equipment be Level 70 Legendary. So, I made one big mistake: I was doing my bounty grinding with my Hardcore character. He was so much faster than my monk and virtually invincible. But I wasn't willing to risk going up to a difficulty where the drop rate was increased and risk having my character die permanently. This also meant that I could only play with other Hardcore characters. So even if a friend had the equipment I needed, it would need to be on their hardcore character. I'm in serious trouble now. The game just wasn't giving me the equipment I needed. Now, this also means that I could only get gifts received from my friends' hardcore characters. Every so often you will pick up an item that you can't use, you have to send it as a gift to someone on your friends list that the game assigns. I have gotten a grand total of two gifts, despite sending out dozens. So, I go and ask a few people if they have Level 70 bracers, which is the last one I need. Mostly I got, "not on Hardcore." But Metabolic goes and checks and no, he doesn't. But, he has a gift from me sitting there on his Hardcore character. When he opens it: Level 70 bracers. So I got the set, got the achievement and then went about going for my final bounties. Of course I held back that achievement for streak purposes, just in case. I only needed 4 bounties, and on bounty 499 of 500, what do I pick up? Plans to make Level 70 Legendary bracers.

 

 

So now it's on to a new game. I only have 28 games left on my tag that I haven't finished, but I don't really want to try them, though pushing that completion rate higher would be nice. I kind of want to play an XBox One game to bring my number of completed XB1 games up to an even 10, but at the same time, my 360 backlog looms large. So, I think I'm going to try starting up de Blob 2, since it doesn't seem too long and I've had it a while. That or I may try and stack Ducktales. Haven't decided yet. I asked the Duck Chat for a random number to select the first letter of the game I was going to start. They picked D.

 

 

Until next time.

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  • 2 weeks later...

So, let's start talking about gaming first this time. I don't think I've done that in a while. Actually haven't done much in the blog for a while, but that's already changed, I suppose. Anyway, I finally got around to starting the new Dance Central game a few days ago. In terms of completion it won't be easy. You have to get a flawless on every move in the game. Not easy, but not impossible. I've already got one of the songs fully 100%ed, so I have just 9 more to go. The good news bout all this is that the high energy aerobic workout that you get from a game light Dance Central: Spotlight has not set off any concussion symptoms. Vigorous or prolonged exercise is supposedly very bad for concussion recovery. Add this to the fact that my voice was declared healthy and I'm feeling pretty good.

 

 

So... Kinect on the One... It does indeed work. And it works well. I had only one issue so far and that involved me forgetting to turn down the volume on my stereo. I had been watching the West Wing while cleaning my game room and jacked up the volume so that I could hear it in the other room. When I switched to Dance Central, I didn't turn the volume back down and enjoyed Avicii at about 100 decibels, give or take. Song's kind of catchy, or maybe I just have the Stockholm Syndrome. But at that volume, Kinect can't her me. So I'm screaming, "Hey DJ, pause" at the top of my newly recovered voice and it just won't listen. It eventually occurred to me to turn down the volume so I wasn't being drowned out. Anyway, after that, I had no issues. Well, aside from the fact that I occasionally am just not fast enough to activate practice mode and get the rewind that I need to make my completionist life that much easier. I like it. I feel like I am talking to a real person sometimes. But maybe that's just because I can drink again.

 

 

Oh yeah, and I've been binge watching the West Wing on Netflix. It's a show that I could probably quote from memory, well, the first four years anyway. It's an amazing show, brings up some great issues and really tried not to become all about liberal wish fulfillment after January 2001. I own them all on DVD, but not having to get up to change discs is awesome. The by-product of the binge watching is that I am up to 27 days watched. I should get the app completed on Saturday.

 

 

So... I don't think I'll be completing Dance Central before Fantasia drops on Tuesday. And I'm not sure I'll be able to get Fantasia completed since finding someone who can get gold notes in co-op might be tricky... Not that it's impossible, just that it might be tricky. But that means that I may not get my 100% completion on the XBox One back. I'm fine with that, since it's a game I want to play, but it was nice while it lasted.

 

 

Until next time.

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Sorry to not comment on the entire post, but holy shit, you had/have 100% completion on Xbox One? That's pretty awesome, dude.

 

Really, I had only played 7 or 8 games, so it isn't as impressive as it sounds. My One has not been getting the workout that it deserves.... Though they were all entertaining games. Highly recommend Child of Light.

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Really, I had only played 7 or 8 games, so it isn't as impressive as it sounds. My One has not been getting the workout that it deserves.... Though they were all entertaining games. Highly recommend Child of Light.

 

Definitely agree. Not only was it a fun throwback RPG, I enjoyed the rhyming scheme, and it was an easy 1000g. Solid recommendation! I return yours with my own in Super Time Force ;)

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Definitely agree. Not only was it a fun throwback RPG, I enjoyed the rhyming scheme, and it was an easy 1000g. Solid recommendation! I return yours with my own in Super Time Force ;)

 

I own that one since it was free, but haven't played it yet. Got too involved in Diablo 3 and then started Dance Central. Although, seriously, when fantasia comes out, check it out. I spent most of the day playing it at PAX and there are far too few rhythm games that include classical music after all.

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Good morning all. Well, I realized this week that it's going to be a while before I play anything out of the backlog. I have three new games coming out in the first half of November, meaning I'm going to have to really work to make sure they don't fall into the backlog. Add that to Fantasia which I will be starting today and I have my completionist work cut out for me. But with both Assassin's Creed: Unity and Assassin's Creed: Rogue coming out on the 11th and Dragon Age: Inquisition coming out on the 18th, these are not small games I'm looking at.

 

 

On the plus side, I got Joe all set up yesterday to be my co-op partner for Dance Central: Spotlight, giving me the last two achievements that I needed and the completion. I had originally dragooned my brother into helping me today, but using Joe just seemed appropriate after the events of yesterday. To understand Joe, you need to understand Canadian culture, which I don't really feel like getting into. But there is a picture of Joe and I elsewhere on the site. Sufficed to say that he's my Team Canada Olympic jacket on a coat hanger and his name is Joe and he is Canadian. I'm only going to say this once, because I know it skirts the rules of the site, but what ever the crazy man wanted doesn't matter. You do not make change through violence in Canada. We will have tanks rolling down the street before we allow that. I'd expect that despite what happened under the Peace Tower yesterday, the Parliament and Legislatures will still be open to the public.

 

 

So, back to pleasant stuff. Completing Dance Central: Spotlight means I am back to 100% completion on the XBox One. Since I actually count the Apps, I haven't had that since I started Netflix in February. So, that's nice. I've sort of been working through a guide for the game as I went, which is going to be the first guide I've written in over a year. At this point, one achievement is taking up two pages of the word document, since mastering every move is not easy. I feel really good about the completion, which is a feeling I've been having more and more since retirement. It's also partly because of the fact that I don't have a ton of time to game anymore. I only played for about 25 hours over the last 11 days.

 

 

So, on to Fantasia. After all, I have the full series completion on Dance Central, I may as well make that every Harmonix Kinect game.

 

 

Until next time.

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