I wish SimCity worked

Wow, too much to talk about so I'm going to throw out some general topics and then bitch about SimCity.

Had my gallbladder removed.  I had been getting gallbladder attacks since November (the night Oregon and Kansas State both lost, paving the way for Alabama to get back into the National Championsip picture).

My dog has been acting up.  He's been increasingly aggressive towards kids - not good.  He is more aggressive towards hispanic and african american kids - not good.  We got him a muzzle and are working on it.  Professional trainers seem useless.  Oddly, he likes wearing his muzzle.  Could I have an S&M dog?

Aliens Colonial Marines - Will someone get this license the treatment it deserves?  The obvious bait & switch between the e3 demo and finished product is horrible.  Couple that with the fact that the game ignores all relevant first person shooter innovations since Rainbow Six 3 and we've got a dinosaur that was supposed to be a rocket ship.

Getting new siding on the house, and it's taking forever.  We're in week 4 now.  Just about done, painters are due to show up tomorrow.   I want my garage back.

I wanted to buy a gun to vocalize support for the 2nd ammendment from the tyrannical liberals who would seek to curtail our constitutional freedoms.  Talked it over with the lady and the kids, and had a security system installed instead.  Neat byproduct, the system supports the z-wave protocol for home automation.  Now, I'm having a blast replacing electronics around the house so I can control them via my tablet.  Both thermostats are now live, I have 2 light switches and a dimmer on it as well.  Having fun expanding the system.

Tomb Raider - I only got to play it a little bit before my surgery.  So far, I really like the game.  Incorporating some open world gameplay helps open up the game's immersion.   The Lara character is well done, and I found the reaction to the first kill to be quite different from typical Tomb Raider games.  I'm going to knock the story a little bit though, it's seems heavily derived from Lost, and with Far Cry 3 coming just a bit earlier, feels like "uncharted island with mysterious inhabitants" is becoming the new video game zombie/nazi fallback.  I guess there's our next hit - zombie nazis on an uncharted island with a mysterious group of inhabitants seeking to eliminate you.

Dead Space 3 - I'm really not sure why I bought it.  I liked 1 well enough, but haven't finished it.  I bought 2 the day it came out, and haven't opened it.  I put this in, played for a bit and then got pissed off that I couldnt melee a goon when he got too close to me.

Ok - SimCity time.  I was very excited for this game, but didn't pull the trigger on preordering as it wasn't available through Steam, and I'm trying to keep my pc collection together.  I read an early review that suggested the small city size was crippling, and was happy to let it be.  Then, the game released.  I heard of the server issues, but noticed the critical reviews were generally very, very good.  With that, I decided to take the plunge.  Of course, I encountered server issues when trying to play, but having been through this type of thing on many other games, I wasn't too bothered by it. I finally got around to playing and it was a generally good experience.  My SimCity 2000 plan of starting with ag and slowly expanding went the way of the rotary dial telephone, and there were some initial "did they dumb it down SimCity Societies Style?" or "did they do something masterful with the snap on building upgrades?".  I started my first city with the intent of starting out as a mining town and slowly expanding through education to eventually become a tech powerhourse.  Things were progressing very well.  It was going along better than expected, and faster too.  I thought "omg, they dumbed it down", but talking to other friends, they weren't having the same results, so I figure I got a bit lucky.  I quickly moved up to a population of about 130,000 souls.  That's when the bottom fell out.

I first noticed that my traffic was getting increasingly backed up.  I made sure all my roads were high density, and added more buses and bus stops.  This didn't really help.  Then, I noticed that I was starting to lose buildings to fire.  This was odd, as my fire coverage had previously been impeccable.  Then, I sound my microprocessor plant was shutting down because my lots were full of processors that weren't being exported.  My recycling center wasn't producing plastic, despite my city having lots of high green bars for available recycling.  My schools weren't filling up.  My grammar school would hit 950 capacity by 4pm, despite copious school bus stops throughout my residential areas.  I followed a recycling truck out of the recycling center for 30 minutes.  It had 0/3 tons.  I saw it pass hundreds of available recycling bins, without stopping to pick them up.  I suspect that it was making it's way to the bottom of the map to begin it's route, rather than taking available resources where it could.  I saw fire trucks sit at an intersection and loop back and forth while a building directly in front of them burned.  I'm now at an impasse.  I can't play this city without a patch for the patching woes, but I do like playing the game.  I played Cities XL for a while last night, and that may be a good stop gap.  I could also play some other cities in my region, build them up to about 100k residents, then move on to another. I suspect an initial patch will be delivered in a week or so, but I am doubtful that it will fix all of the problems.

Then, Starcraft II Heart of the Swarm released this week.  I had forgotten all about it, and decided to load it up last night.  I completely forgot how to play SC2!  I could always get back on that bicycle.