Battlefield 2: Modern Combat for XBOX (and PS2, but I play the XBOX version), has gotten a bad rap from people. Personally, I think it’s an awesome game and better in many ways than its more complicated PC cousin, although graphically it is very, very rough. Still, it captures the feel of the PC Battlefield games, while streamlining things so players don’t spend all their time running to get into the fight.

It also has the distinction of being one of the games out there where I’m actually pretty good. Last night, I earned the Bronze Star medal for 20 kills with onboard tank weapons without dying, an accomplishment of which I am especially proud.

Here are my stats:

I am getting five years older every day. I look in the mirror, and I see a middle aged man staring back at me, his eyes pleading: “Help me before it’s too late.”

Last Wednesday, I went home at lunchtime to move the car. One minute I’m walking down 17th Street, scanning the curb for empty spaces, the next I’m rolling on the pavement, unsure of how I got there. My arms and knees still hurt from the fall, though there’s no visible sign of damage — no brusies, swelling, or anything like that. Only one other person saw me go down, and she was kind, almost apologetic.

I love our girls, but they’re taking their toll on me. The lack of sleep is having a tremendous effect on my work, on my time, on my ability to carry on a coherent conversation. I wish I could say that every moment of fatherhood has brought me a bottomless well of joy and inspiration, but the reality is that I feel more like a baby manager than a parent. Feedings, changing diapers, and desperate attempts to rock one or either girl to sleep consume my spare time. I wonder if things would be easier if Tina and I were younger.

Whenever I hear singleton parents complain about their one, easy little baby, I want to tell them that it should be harder for them than it is. If the world was fair, it would be harder. I’ve never felt more jealous of anyone in my life than I feel about singleton parents. They can spend real time with their children, the quality time that makes parenting so worthwhile. Having one child would be a luxury.

Before the girls were born, I read a book called “The Poo Bomb” in which the father of a newborn baby offered endless complaints about the basics of parenting — dirty diapers, spitting up, having to clean his daughter’s private parts. He saw his daugther as a filthy little monster and made a lot of obvious and bad jokes about her.

In my case, our little girls are beautiful, and nothing they do makes me sick. I love them both so much. And we struggle to keep up with their discomforts, their colds and flu’s, their terrible teething pains. If only I had the luxury of time that he took for granted. Two parents for one child. Easy as pie.

If I can survive long enough to get them to five years old, I will consider myself a success. But if they don’t start sleeping solidly through the night again, I don’t know how I’ll make it.

So, it’s nice to see that Microsoft is so flippant about the fact that most of its customers can’t purchase the XBOX 360.

Money quote from 1up.com:

1UP: So, you guys launched in North America and Europe. How did that go? What are your thoughts on that?

Peter Moore: Spectacularly well.

1UP: Spectacularly well?

Moore: Unless you’re a guy who hasn’t got one, and then you’re anxious, frustrated–

“Anxious, frustrated.” I’m not anxious, because that implies I fear never buying one of those “magical” silver boxes, but I am frustrated, Mr. Moore. Annoyed, yes. After supporting the XBOX and XBOX Live for years, I look at how the company purposefully held back supply to generate demand, and I see that there is little to no concern for the gamers who fiercely supported their system throughout the last generation. Our word of mouth could have carried the system, but it was more important they you make us “anxious” and “frustrated.”

I’ve said before that I didn’t buy a PS2 for four years because of their artificial shortage. I’m seriously beginning to wonder if my old XBOX won’t hold me over until I at least see what the PS3 and Nintendo Revolution have to offer.

As I recently reported, Restaurant Fuel was just knocked out by a hacker. Being lazy, I never got around to updating the old content management, PostNuke. As a result, my custom theme system got corrupted, and problems with the content management system made it so I couldn’t patch it.

As a result, I’m moving everything into MovableType. For the next week or so, I’ll be migrating content, so you’ll see old stories popping up on the blog. After I’m finished with that, I’ll begin work on rebuilding the RF theme. It will take time, but eventually the blog will be a much better place to visit.

In the mean time, please update your RSS feed to the subscription link on this page. The old backend.php link will not be up for long.

Is there any doubt that the problem with the XBOX 360 shortage is compounded by the damn re-sellers?

Ebay is now requiring photographs of sales receipts (to be sent along with the XBOX 360), along with photos of the sealed XBOX 360 packaging. Bravo to them! This after someone sold a hand-made replica of an XBOX 360 box for $1500. Glad to see they’re responding to fraud.

One fine gentleman in Toronto, Canada showed a photograph of no less than 12 XBOX 360’s with Toys R Us receipts. How he got so many from Toys R Us is beyond me. People who really wanted one system to play can’t get it, but that asshat managed to score twelve. Disgusting.