I love to play video games and so I have invested a lot of time and money in making sure that I have a kick ass place to play these videogames. While working at Circuit City I had the ability to purchase all kinds of great stuff at an amazing discount. As I started to collect more and more components I realized that I enjoyed hooking up these devices nearly as much as I enjoyed actually using them. I can spend hours behind my television re-wiring speakers and untangling cables. When something stops working I get absolutely giddy because I know that it will require I get back there and start checking those connections. If it's a really bad problem I may even have to make a run to the store to purchase a new cable!

As media enthusiasts on the fringe of the sensible, we're all no doubt familiar with Monster Cable. They have crafted a niche for themselves as a producer of luxury wire, spooking consumers with grave proclamations regarding "attenuation" and "dirty power." The copy on the back always tends to lay it on a bit thick, conferring an almost totemic quality to these strands which are, it would appear, humanity's last bulwark versus nebulous evil. He was just starting to get into home theater when we lived together, and he'd assure me that he was sensitive to the minute fibrillations of audio purity provided by substandard cabling. When he picked up the Monster Cable surge protector yesterday, I had to act.

Reading Evil Avatar this morning I noticed that Gamespot tossed up a review of Steel Battalion. Obviously, we did not agree on many points. It seemed worthwhile to give you another perspective on the game, however.

I was going to respond to Tycho’s comment but I think this e-mail from Ken says it much better than I ever could:

And he always puts me in these situations where I have to apologize to the neighbors.

Q: "Wouldn't you be bummed if you now discovered that modification now prevented you from accessing some new special feature of that console?"

Seriously, wouldn't you guys get bored if I wasn't here to piss you off every now and then;)

If you read News.com you may have seen the article they did on Tuesday entitled "Xbox Live not for everyone." Apparently a bunch of hacker types took a break from giggling with each other about the irony of installing Linux on their M$ Xbox and noticed they can't connect to Live. David Beck actually wrote an article sympathizing with these poor souls who took it upon themselves to totally fuck over the insides of their Xboxes. David reports that "Numerous owners of modified Xbox units reported in forums at the Xbox Hacker site that they were locked out of Xbox Live." I'm sorry, tell me again why I am supposed to care that a bunch of thieves and jackholes can't use their modified systems to fuck up my online games with cheats and hacks? The article goes on to quote one of these winners as saying "All I know is I have two machines--one modded, and the other not. The one that's modded can't connect at all, and the unmodded one works perfectly." DUN DUN DUN! Holy shit this is like an episode of fucking Murder She Wrote. Someone call Matlock so he can solve this mind bending puzzle! News flash Hacker Bob, Microsoft announced months ago that modded systems would not work with Live. Here's an idea for all you poor saps with $200.00 coffee tables now. How about in the future you don't crack open every piece of electronics you get and fill it with illegal hardware. At the very least how about you don't bitch to me when your soldering iron escapades leave you high and dry.

As is our solemn vow, we have produced another strip.

John Tokash wrote in with two comments about Mechassault, both of which warrant broadcasting.

There has been a lot of great stuff to read the last few days, I'm sure you can find it. Much like Stryper, I believe in you.

Playing Metroid Fusion last week, I realized that though I undoubtedly had a very powerful, portable system in the GBA, the only place I ever play it is in my house on the couch. I used to play it primarily in the bathroom, owing to the fact that bathroom lights are somehow the perfect illumination for the machine, but with the advent of the Afterburner I can play it even in a dark cave. Which I sometimes do.

It takes every ounce of restraint I have not to just play MechAssault all day today. The thing is, I actually have quite a bit of work to do on Over Easy and I can't be distracted by the lure of the Madcat. I thought I would give you all a little preview of this month's Over Easy page. Here is a panel from November's page 3 which will be available to club PA members at the end of the month.

I've discussed our friendly rivalry with Scott Kurtz before. We have genuine enough affection, but one of us still has to be the best - and if that means poking a ball-point pen through one side of his face and out the other, so be it. I do think, however, that he might have struck the final blow.

During Saturday's Mechassault indiscretions, a young man persisted in using the Robot voice mask. While I certainly prefer Robot to Child or Cartoon, no voice mask is always the appropriate choice, and we made ourselves clear on this point. It didn't help matters that he was continually singing robot sea shanties or whatever that shit was. I eventually just went and muted him permanently - instructing others in the exact procedure - and the entire server choosing to believe he did not exist prompted his early departure. It occurred to us that perhaps he actually was a robot, in which case it's not really his fault if he sounds like one.

Okay so today is the first day of our gaming weekend and we will be playing Neocron all day. I know that a lot of you are probably having a hard time actually getting your hands on a copy of the game. I'm sorry about that, I guess there were some issues with the CD keys and junk. If you do get a copy I have been told that changing all the plusses in the CD key to zeros will solve your problems. I am guessing that most of the people we are seeing in Neocron today are in the UK. Just so you know we will be playing until about 6:00 am UK time. That's 10:00 pacific and some other time for all the other time zones, you do the math.