Tuesday, early in the AM

    As it happens my visit to have my venerable Jeep serviced was indeed painless and quick. Afterward, I went to visit Mama and Papa Joker, and spent the afternoon hanging with them and trying to retrieve some items needed for home, without as much luck as I had hoped. No matter, there's always another day, lol. My Effie and I are in this for the long haul, after all.

    On the gaming front, I did get back to Call of Duty 4 after all. I played some free-for-all and team deathmatch, my laptop huffing, puffing, and stuttering all the way. I had no great success stories to tell. I actually had to bail out of the only game where I was doing well, lol. But there was one incident I enjoyed that I'll pass on: I'm old, see... And my reflexes are poor, and my laptop is underpowered, so it's usually just chugging along barely displaying images fast enough to keep in the game. So, on a FFA match on Overgrown, some douchebag thought it would be cool to dance around me, while I tried to shoot him from the prone. It wasn't working for me, he was way too fast, so I cunningly started cooking off a grenade. Douchebag tired of his sport and knifed me... And then he ate my grenade. I typed a quick 'Hah!' and logged off to let the cable guy do his stuff on our line. There's still some life left in the old tiger. Just sayin, lol. 

    Recently, I mentioned Tribes: Ascend, so I was interested to note that EuroGamer is giving the free-to-play FPS a 10/10 in its review piece, linked below. If Activision was smart, they'd make Call of Duty 4 or some such a free-to-play title and suck in lots of potentially money-generating players. It worked for Valve on Team Fortress 2, tho, of course, Valve is a much better developer, community-wise and finished product-wise than Activision and it's CoD sequel-generating bastard children. Moving on...

        Featured Modern Warfare 3 Video

• [Feature] Call of Duty Elite: The Future.
• Whither fourzerotwo? To White Castle for a business lunch, lol...

• Crysis 3 release date and screen shots on Rock, Paper Shotgun.
• [Review] Tribes: Ascend gets 10/10 on EuroGamer.

• [Preview] Sniper Elite V2 gameplay impressions on Violent Game Reviews.
• [Mods] Black Mesa Source soundtrack to be released soon, with full Half-life 2 mod following two weeks after.
• Electronic Arts to lay off 500+ employees. But apparently, EA is denying the layoff reports.
• Free Witcher 2 PC back-up available from Good Old Games. If you own it, no matter where you bought it, you can get a back up online at GOG.
• [Op-Ed] How Valve 'devalued' video games, and how that's great news for developers and players.
• [Image] Portal GLaDOS papercraft sculpture. (Original image link credit: actonesceneone on Reddit Gaming.)
• Bonus cosplay link: Another pic of the human GLaDOS at the New York Comic Con. (Original image link credit: Altrieth on Reddit Gaming.)

• [Images] NASA space shuttle Discovery in extreme detail.
• NASA flight readiness review for SpaceX mission under way.
• [Only mostly dead] Researchers claim evidence for recent lunar volcanic activity.
• Unemployed game designer makes PC solar system exploration app.
• Silly putty for potholes.
• [Image] Huge hailstone from Kansas hailstorm. (Original image link: derrtydenim on Reddit Pics.)
• [YouTube] Obesity: The epidemic for every body.
• Advice for diet soda dinkers: Skip the chips.
• MPAA just won't quit: Jumps into legal debate, saying embeds and links are copyright infringement.
• All five living Star Trek captains to unite for an London event appearance.
• [Image] What the alien from Alien really looked like. (Original image link credit: StencilPrinter on Reddit Movies.)