I’ve really got to get off my lazy ass and fix my links sidebar one of these days. I keep finding great new sites that I intend to link to, but my sidebar is broken, so I can’t. It’s probably just a single line that needs to be corrected too…

Well, for now I guess I’ll just have to settle for embedding a great little video from Loading, Ready, Run which parodies the recent Fox “news” story about Mass Effect’s racy sex scenes.

…but I did stay at a Holiday Inn last night.

We went to Quiznos to grab subs for dinner the other night and were greeted with a very strange sight.  The trees in front of the Holiday Inn next door were absolutely full of crows - hundreds of them.  The trees were literally black with birds.  It looked like something out of a Stephen King book.   After a while they got bored and took flight, which was even creepier - a winged wall of birds blotting out the setting sun.

Times like that make me wish I had a camera-phone…  I would have loved to get a few pictures of those birds.

It was raining this morning when I woke up…  Fairly warm out, snow was melting, looked like it was going to be a fairly nice day.

The temperature has plummeted since then, and now the wind is howling.  It’s absolutely horrible out there.

Finished up Jade Empire the other night…  Good game, thoroughly enjoyed myself.  It got a bit repetitive towards the end…  Some sections where I really did not want to fight yet another ghost/assassin/golem.  The final showdown was kind of disappointing, I was expecting quite a bit more…  But it was really pretty decent.

I’ve been playing more Jade Empire…  Finally made it to the palace and confronted the Emperor.

Turns out the Emperor is now a god - he’s stolen the Water Dragon’s power for his own and he’s obscenely powerful.  There was a fairly tough battle sequence…  Had to kill wave after wave of henchmen, then take on the Emperor himself.  That was honestly the first fight that really gave me trouble.  I just barely managed to kill him.

So I defeated the evil God Emperor and rescued my beloved Master Li - generally this is where most games would call it done and start rolling the credits.  And, if you consider how short games are these days, I wouldn’t have been terribly surprised if that had been the end of it.  Actually, I was a little surprised that it wasn’t the end.

In typical computer RPG fashion there’s a horrific betrayal - my beloved Master Li uses some secret technique to kill me pretty much instantly and take the Water Dragon’s power for his own.

Most games pretty much end when you die.  Sure, you’d wind up reloading from a save and trying to survive…but the game is generally over when the main character dies.  Not Jade Empire though - I’m now a ghost.  I had to battle my way through the spirit realm to find what’s left of the Water Dragon, who then took me to Dirge to restore the temple there, so that she can return me to life, so that I can go after Master Li and try to reclaim the Water Dragon’s power.

That’s right - I’m dead and the story is just getting started.