Ty’s Weblog

Well, we had a wonderful Halloween.

Around 4pm, we headed outside to the back yard. We’ve got a few nice trees there that have beautiful yellow and gold leaves on them. Xander noticed that a lot of the leaves were falling off of them because it’s been a pretty windy day.

So I decided it was time to play in the leaves. We took them both out and they had a wondeful time running through all the leaves that had piled up on the ground. We all ran around in them for about half and hour.

Then we came back inside and had some popcorn and watched some race before getting the kids into costume.

Mira was in her skeleton costume and Xander was dressed as a blue pikmin.

We headed out a little after 6pm to take the kids Trick-or-Treating. We expected Mira to last for about 4 house like Xander did at that age. Then Kate would take her back to the house and I’d finish up the rest of the houses on our street with Xander.

Well, she saw how much fun Xander was having and took right to it herself. They both had a great time.

Mira loved getting to do what her brother was doing. She’s stand right beside him holding her bag open and waiting for the person at the door to drop her some candy in the bag. After a few houses, she’d worked up to reaching for the candy herself.

Xander had a great time as well. He loved helping his sister, and he loved telling people he was a pikmin.

After we made it all the way around and back to the house, we sat on the porch and handed out candy to the few trick-or-treaters that were left at that point. I think next year, we’ll do that some first and then head out to collect our own. Xander really enjoys handing out the candy as much as getting it.

Xander’s school has its fall festival today.

Xander had a much better time than last year.

This year, Xander’s costume is a blue pikmin.

We got there a little early, and he had a great time going from room to room doing the different games and activities. He really seemed to get into it this year. We ended up with a nice bag full of prizes and crafts from the various rooms.

After that we went outside and had some lunch. He did a good job eating the different things that were available. Then it was time for the costume parade. he did a wondeful job getting together with his class while we waited on the sidelines for him to walk by. We were very proud of him.

He’s very excited about Trick-or-Treating tomorrow night as well.

I had a wonderful birthday today.

I took half a day off work and had lunch with Kate and Mira.

Then I picked Xander up from school.

Then we went home and had cake and opened presents.

Then I spent some time playing games while the kids had quiet time. Near the end of quiet time I went up and laid with Xander for a bit at his request. We had some nice father/son talking time.

Then Xander, Mira, dan I played some gamesRed Sox win the World Series on my birthday. Pretty sweet.

It’s been a great day.

Our thoughts and prayers are with the extended Hendrick family.

SciFi has announed excellent ratings for Peacekeeper Wars.

Hopefully that’ll mean more Farscape in the future.

Xander starting running a fever of about 101° last night. It was still ar 100° this morning, so he stayed home from school today. He’s got a little bit of a cough and a runny nose and such. Hopefully it’s just a little virus he’ll be over in a day or two.

Just finished watching Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars. It was amazing! The only regret I have is that we didn’t get to see everything that happened in those 4 hours happen over the course of an entire season instead.

The whole thing was very well done. There were a few points here and there that I’m not sure I understood completely, but maybe it’ll sort itself out in my head with time.

GameSpot is reporting the rumor that Half-Life 2 has gone gold pretty much as fact.

Game Gossip is reporting that Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake eater will be out Nov 17th.

Paper Mario came out this week.

Vamipire the Masquerade: Bloodlines comes out the day before my birthday.

Donkey Konga has been out for a little while and Xander and I want to play.

Halo 2 has gone gold.

This is a very good time of year for games.

Irrational Games has announced the development of BioShock, the “spiritual successor” to System Shock 2, which is one of the best games ever.

There are a bunch of IP issues which keep them from doing an acutal sequel, which is too bad, but I’ll take what I can get.

No word on release dates yet, but I’m looking forward to this one quite a bit.

One of Xander’s favorite things at the moment is Pikmin 2. We’ve been playing it for a few weeks now and he loves it. It’s a great game. It improves on the first game in most respects. It removes the overall time limit from the game, which I think makes it a lot more fun to play. We’re done with the first part of the game, and are moving nicely through the second part. I won’t say much about what that means to avoid spoilers. After we are done with that, we still have the challenges to get through, so we should be happly playing Pikmin for a while.

Doom 3 was a fair amount of fun. It wasn’t as good as I’d hoped though. It was beautiful, without a doubt. The graphics engine is amazing and I can’t wait to see what someone like Raven does with it.

The whole game was kind of a one trick pony. Things jump out at you and it scares you. It got kind of old after awhile. The bosses were all pretty easy. I found having multiple enemies to fight much tougher than dealing with any of the bosses. The last boss was even trivial.

I had a good time playing it, but overall I was kinda disapointed with it.