For those of you who’ve finished Half Life 2, but are still looking for more on the story behind the story as it were, take a look at the Half Life Saga Story Guide.

So after the required two years of post-duty “inactive ready reserves” time, the United States Army has finally shipped me my “Honorable Discharge” certificate.

Now I can go wild and move to Mexico and any other number of silly things without the threat of being called up for duty.

… or not.

Here’s a map of the preferred generic name of soft drinks in the United States, by county.

Towards the end of The Incredibles, there are two old guys that looked damned familiar, yet I couldn’t figure out for the life of me who they were.

Now I know. They were Frank and Ollie, two of Disney’s pioneering animators.

Thanks to a convenient birthday a mere week after the release date, I now have a copy of the highly anticipated PC game Half Life 2. Since this was a birthday gift and because the local Microcenter was having a sale on the game, I ended up with the retail boxed version of the game, versus the direct-download from Valve.

While I’m enjoying the game, I can barely imagine how frustrating the installation of the retail boxed game for the average Joe End-User. The box comes with a bunch of CD-Roms and absolutely nothing else, other than an advert for ATI video cards. No manual or even a slip of paper explaining the download and unlocking procedures that will accompany the game install.

The average person must have been dumbfounded to put the disc in and be greeted with a message saying that the install would take up to 60 minutes for the files to be unpacked, followed by another twenty-minute wait for them to be checked, thanks to the online registration and downloadable content system that is Steam.

If I was a reviewer for the game, I’d have to give three seperate scores at the end of the review. The Game Itself: 9/10. Steam: 8/10. Retail Box Set: 3/10.

MSNBC has a piece that applies to many of the technologically-literate:

Next week, millions of college students and young professionals will head home for the Thanksgiving holidays. We’ll sit with our families in warm, candle-lit dining rooms eating stuffed turkey, reminiscing over old photographs, preparing holiday shopping lists and … Please. Let’s be frank. We are going home to fix our parents’ computers.

The rest of the story can be found here.

33 years old. I feel like an old vinyl LP record.