I’ve loved videogames since I was about five. Whether it was playing my dad’s Atari, or going over to a friend’s house just to play Super Mario Bros., they’ve always brought me a lot of entertainment.

I’ve had a PS3 for about three years now, and in that time my love for games has really increased, and it blows me away how awesome current games are. Back in the day it was rare to find a game that could keep my interest until the end, but that’s common fare now.

I think a big part of this is trophy support, and having those accomplishments recognized. But I also think game developers have reached a new level of quality. Check out some videos of God of War III. It’s amazing what they can do now.

I just finished Modern Warfare 2′s single player campaign, and now I’m working on Uncharted 2. I have never played the God of War games, but I have the first two coming for PS3. They remastered them in hi-def, added trophies, and it’s only $30 on Amazon.

But there are so many great games to play. Heavy Rain looks awesome, as does God of War III. And who can forget FFXIII.

It is a great time to be a videogamer.

I forgot that they had enabled new updates to the PSN Portable ID in the last firmware. Actually, it took them a while to update the portable ID so it shows trophy info…but it’s finally all working! Now you can track my trophy progress on the right, and even click on it to see what games I’ve played, and how many trophies I’ve achieved!

Right now I’m working on Platinum for Uncharted, and then I’ll be moving on to Uncharted 2. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 looks pretty sweet…but I think I’ll be waiting on that for the time being. The God of War collection looks cool too.

Too many games, too little time!

Ever since the boy turned one I’ve been promising my thoughts on being a father, and I’ve finally been motivated to do that.

This morning I stepped onto our small back porch to water the few surviving green plants of winter. As I did, Luke crawled out onto the prickly mat just outside our sliding glass door and stared up at me. I walked over with the water nozzle spraying and sat down next to him. He stood up, held onto my shoulder, and grabbed the handle with me. We stood there, watering the backyard together, and it was perfect.

While a lot of work at times, I wouldn’t trade this time for anything in the world. Watching Luke grow and do new things is priceless. It gives me an appreciation for life and family that I otherwise wouldn’t have. I get to see how loving and caring my wife is, and what a great mother she is. I now understand the joy my own parents felt when I was a child, and what it was like from their perspective as I grew up. I realize what an important task God has given us as parents to raise and nurture our children. I’m sure it will be tough at times, but it is all worth it.

Being a daddy is awesome.

I’m not sure I can make this a completely non-baby post, but I might be able to go half and half.

Last month we drove up north to Turlock for my Grandmother’s 89th birthday. This was a place we went several times a year for my entire childhood, and I have very fond memories of those trips and the people we went to see. I bought my video camera just in time to take it on this trip, so I shot some video to help me remember the place. If you’d like to watch it then go here:

Turlock Almond Orchard

For the geeks out there, I’ve decided to render all my videos twice. The first is a super high quality 1080i AVC/264 that can be played back beautifully on the PS3 (or the htpc if I can get 264 material hardware accelerated), and the second is a smaller 720p version that can easily be played back on a modern computer using quicktime. That should give me the best of both worlds with just a little extra rendering time and storage space.

So this baby of ours is a fussy little booger. He likes to eat all the time, and rarely sleeps for big blocks of time. He also loves to be held, and 9 times out of 10 if you lie him down to sleep he’ll wake you up with his cries a few minutes later. The worst part is that it means very little sleep for mom because she is getting up constantly to feed him. She’s upstairs sleeping right now and I’ve got the baby entertained (and quiet!) downstairs.

I think God knew he had to make little babies cute so that people would put up with the lack of sleep and crying. Every time this little man poops it is fart city. It’s like he can’t poop without making massive amounts of noise, it’s great. And his little sneezes are the cutest thing in the world. How they go from cute little baby sneezes to obnoxious adult sneezes I have no idea. His mouth even made a smiling motion this morning, but I think it was more of an accident than anything. Shortly after though he sounded off with a loud fart, so maybe the two were connected.

I still have some more Turlock video to edit, but after that I’m on to some of the baby footage.

Child has surgery to keep her a "child."

Discuss.

Sorry for the absence of postings this week. They will return to normal very shortly.

Denise’s blog is broken. I think God got mad at her.

Heroes is so freaking cool. Here’s a website Angelo sent me that is also cool.

I’m planning on doing a proposition/voting guide series of posts pretty soon since we’ve only got a couple weeks to go, so look forward to that! Woo Hoo!

Below are several character traits or states of mind that people may find worth striving for in this life. The idea behind this exercise is that you are to rank the following traits for yourself, from most important to least important.

This is supposed to be done privately, so don’t think you have to post your final ordering in your comments. Hopefully you’ve never done this, and I will deliver the "punchline" after everyone has had an opportunity to rank their most desired qualities, and maybe a good discussion will follow. The qualities up for ranking are:

1) Money
2) Happiness
3) Integrity
4) Power
5) Hardwork
6) Selflessness

I’ve purposely excluded a quality such as "loving God," because while it is important, that love should be manifested in tangible ways. If there are any glaring qualities I have omitted that you cannot have meaning without, feel free to let me know. This exercise was performed in Mr. Bradbury’s chemistry class when I was in 11th grade.

I encourage everyone to at least think about those five qualities and have an idea which are most important to you, and which are least important. And while you may not need an update from me to understand the significance of your ranking, I will be back to give it to you. Post if you’ve thought about these so I know people are reading.

Update: I’ve added selflessness to the list of traits at the suggestion of Mike (servanthood seemed restricted to religious meanings, so I thougth selflessness was a little more broad). Selflessness seemed different enough from the rest. This is not the "moral of the story" update, so keep thinking about your rankings.

Update 2: I think Amy actually touched on the whole point of the exercise in her comment. The point this is trying to make is really a matter of priorities, and that when push comes to shove, the way you value the above traits will impact the decisions you make. For example, if you were to come across a lost wallet with $100 in it, the qualities about money and integrity would come into play. The point Mr. Bradbury was making is that if you truly value integrity more than money, you would turn the wallet in. The "big idea" is that your choices are driven not only by the qualities you value, but the order in which you value them. I would say that you cannot place equal priority to all the above traits, because at some point or another in your life one will conflict with another. When that happens the trait that you value more will win.

Are these actual traits or desired traits like Amy posed? I think it can be both. While we can have a desired priority for our values in life, always living up to them is a tall order. I think when I took this "test" I put down happiness as my number one, and I can see how my life has been impacted by valuing that above other things like money and power. I think it impacted the career path I finally chose. There are flaws in this of course (money and power CAN have an impact on one’s happiness), but pitting the values against each other really makes me think about what’s most important to me in life, and the choices I will make because of them.

So was it everything you hoped for? Curious to hear why people picked what they did, if you’d change your choices, and whether or not your life has been impacted by the values most important to you.

History has taught us many things over the years. The horse drawn carriage was lame, and the car much cooler. WWII was worth it, and France hasn’t changed at all. Some things like ovaltine will apparently never go away even though I’ve never heard of one person to ever buy it. Since we have learned so much from our past, I think it’s about time we started learning something from our future.

This column will feature predictions about the near and distant future. I would prefer the distant future, like things that can’t possibly happen until we’re all dead. This way I can never actually be wrong, but potentially right, because potentially right is definitly better than actually wrong. If anything I predict does come true and you make millions of dollars off a new business venture directly related to my ideas, you owe me all the money. This column should not in any way be considered heathenistic, because I will not be consulting any dead souls or entities named the devil. Every idea will come directly out of my brain, so I think God will be cool with it.

The Blarg Predicts