The Blarg

I’m working on finishing up Fallout 3 (currently 40+ hours into it). It’s fun…but it gets a little repetitive after a while. The main reason I’m trying to finish it is because the best baseball game in the world comes out next week!

Mlb ’09: The Show is only on PS3, and it’s amazing. While it doesn’t come out until Tuesday, a few people already have it and you can read their impressions and see some screen shots and videos at Operation Sports.

I ordered my copy through Amazon because they had it on sale (and without tax I saved about $8 over buying it locally). I have to wait, and that’s both good and bad. Last year I spent a whole weekend looking for the game early, but this year I won’t waste my time.

This is the first version to have PS3 trophies which is really cool. Some of them are super tough and will probably take until next season to earn, like hitting 300 homeruns, or throwing a perfect game.

Another cool feature is that you can take screencaps directly from the game, and even VIDEOS of your replays that you can transfer to your computer and post online.

Here are a couple good links about Obama’s spending bill. Neither is by a famous econ professor, but they’re both good reads.

Just because it creates a job, doesn’t mean it was worth creating…

Link 1 – Ben Shapiro

Link 2 – John Stossel

I haven’t posted pictures since before Christmas! I’ve got a ton I could post, but here are some of my favorites. Pictures of the baby just sitting is fun…but unique situations with personality are a lot of fun too.

My son, the plumber. I apologize to all plumbers who will take offense to this joke.

We tried doing a piggyback ride…and then daddy’s neck hurt for the next two days.

Sometimes we cry when we don’t get what we want.

And sometimes we get fevers and don’t feel good.

I don’t know who taught him this, but it’s pretty funny.

I promise, actual pictures to come later today.

Before the election I saw a lot of posts about how Christians don’t have to be Republicans, and maybe Obama really can change the world. Usually those people never debated the issues at all…it was like voting for President was a popularity contest. It’s much easier to post a long winded letter written by someone else about how they are smitten with Obama than it is to detail how his liberal policies would be good for America.

Now that Obama has been successful on his first major goal (spending even more of our money), I was wondering how those people above feel now? Did you expect Obama to spend nearly a trillion of our dollars, a move that will most certainly prolong our recession? Do you feel $300 million for electronic golf carts is a good way to stimulate the economy? Do you feel Obama’s rhetoric that Republicans want to do nothing is fulfilling his promise of bipartisanship?

There are a LOT of stupid things in this “stimulus” bill. Let’s list them!

I have good news and bad news. The good news is that my second proof copy of Terra Nova: The Search will be here on Monday. For the last month or so Stacie and I have both read it, and I’ve made a number of fixes that should only improve the book. Once it’s here I can approve it for sale if everything looks good.

Now the bad news. You’ll have to wait about another month to read it, because I’ve entered my book into the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest. Basically it’s a contest for unpublished authors to try and win a publishing contract. If you’ve been keeping up with my book posts you’ll know I don’t care much about pursuing a real publishing deal (which is why I’m self-publishing), but this contest was too easy to pass up. I’ve already put in two years of work, so why not enter and see if I get lucky?

They’re accepting submissions through tomorrow (or up to the first 10,000). After that they read the pitch I wrote, and they’ll narrow the field down. Eventually around March 16th they’ll announce the 500 quarterfinalists and post an excerpt from their book (the first 3k-5k words). The reason you’ll have to wait until around that date is because you can’t submit a book that has been previously published, and if I approve my book for sale in the next week, then technically it will be self-published, and I will no longer be eligible for the contest. There’s a good chance I won’t even make it to the 500, and if I don’t, then I’ll hit the “publish” button and move on. But I figure it’s worth waiting another month to take part in this contest, and see what happens!

Stacie also entered Luke in a contest. It’s put on by Regis and Kelly, and while I typically would be against pimping out the baby in photo contests, there is a potential grand-prize of $125,000 in college scholarships, so I figure it’s worth it. Here’s the photo we submitted.

(Photo credits to my brother, geekyweekly)

Wish us luck!

I’ve got two new links for you. One is a new blog for Kevin M. The second is a brand new blogger named Andie. And the third is for Tommy’s blog, which he’s had for a bit, but he just made his first post the other day.