Knuckles Dawson

So, you may have heard about the heavy snow in Seattle over the last week. As you can imagine, Vancouver experienced more or less the same onslaught. Which is good news, because the North Shore Mountains look exceptionally frosted. Having been an avid snowboarder for the last 9 seasons, this, my 10th, is the first time that I've gotten a season's pass. This also is the first time that we've had a high enough body count to reap the rewards of the "Family Package", as opposed to the usual total of just two: my father and I. So, now with our party increasing 150%, and a Early Bird Family Package at Mount Seymour costing a mere 600 total, that comes to about $160 per adult. Definitely a sound investment.

So, this past weekend saw me at said mountain, for a short stint on Saturday, and a full day Sunday. Saturday was good to for getting my feet wet. Sunday, though, was awesome. A good full day of boarding, and honing my previous skills as an instructor, as I made serious progress teaching Skye how to carve after she got the hang of turning. Oly, my previous student has since "graduated" and more or less is going at his own pace.

I brought my Audio Backpack on Sunday, and it faired well, despite not being connected to my iPod. The music selection wasn't as robust as the 48 hours of music I have in a snowboarding specific playlist, but it served its purpose. I can hardly wait until I can go up with my iPod, as the volume, even on the runs, when cranked to 11, is easily audible, and others take notice.

The trip down the mountain wasn't as quick as the one up, as there was a couple trees that collapsed from the added weight of the heavy snowfall, and decided the most convenient place to not make a sound would be in the middle of the road.

Upon arriving at Delta Base, we shoveled the driveway, and rewarded ourselves with a double feature: Casino Royale and Deja Vu. Both were extremely well made and entertaining. CR being a much needed reboot of the James Bond franchise, and Deja Vu almost able to be interpreted as a loose sequel to Donnie Darko. Two great movies at one great price. Or something.

I cracked open Elite Beat Agents while waiting for Deja Vu, and really liked it. I played a bit of Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan at PAX '06, but didn't pick it up that well. That may have to do with not recognizing the music, and thus the tempo for the songs. EBA surprised me with a bunch of instantly recognizable tunes, and that helped me progress through it. Right now I'm just cracking through the 3rd difficulty's early songs.

On the 360 front, I've been playing plenty of Gears, and am trying to get back into Splinter Cell: Double Agent and finsh that up. Unfortunately the impending kickass snowboard season is hindering the time available for me to do so. I'll see how I manage. I played some more Twilight Princess Friday and Saturday before hitting the slopes, and beat the Forest Temple. After some fine tuning of my Wii-mote, I'm pinpointing enemies with incredible ease. Haven't touched it at all this week, though I did order a Component Cable at Nintendo's online store. I can hardly wait for that progressive goodness.

Well, I think that pretty much brings us back up to speed on what's been going on. Also, regarding the KD Experience, the next episode is currently indeed on the agenda, and should be getting a facelift in many respects.

Posted by Knuckles Dawson at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

A horse is a horse
of course, of course
and no one can talk to horse, of course.
That is, of course,
unless the horse
is the famous Mister Ed.

Go right to the source
and ask the horse,
he'll give you the answer that you'll endorse;
He's always on a steady course.
Talk to Mister Ed!

People yakkity yak a streak
and waste your time o' day.
But Mister Ed will never speak
unless he has something to say!

A horse is a horse,
of course, of course
and this one'll talk 'til his voice is hoarse.
You never heard of a talking horse?
Well listen to this,
I am Mister Ed!

That may seem a little random, but trust me, that'll hit home where it needs to.

Posted by Knuckles Dawson at 02:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Having never owned a PS2, I only ever played Guitar Hero once at PAX'06 until last weekend’s console launches. As you may have read, I had a day of chilling at Best Buy in line for the Wii, with not much else there but the demo of Guitar Hero II, I took to it to prepare for the impending Xbox 360 release.

I came back after the Wii launch on Monday and gave it a couple more tries. I did not score perfectly, only missing a couple notes here and there, but I got 104304 at the Best Buy. Armed with my cell phone, I took this shot:



Not bad for someone who doesn't own the game, and only had a days play with it. Mind you, I met a guy on Saturday who could play Expert on any song I picked and watch him kick ass. So, hopefully I'll get to that level some day.

Posted by Knuckles Dawson at 11:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Want to know more about what it was like going to FASA Studios to play Shadowrun? Well, someone equipped with a camera and the time to write about it, Method Director did a great write up on it. Calling me a "walking encyclodpedia of gaming" was also a very heartwarming compliment, so that's just gravy. In any case, he writes about it pretty much the same way I would, and conveys how badass the game is going to be quite well.

Posted by Knuckles Dawson at 12:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So, for day 365 of my achievement streak, November 21st, I finished Gears of War on Insane with APKJester. Apparently, General RAAM doesn't like being shot by the Torque Bow, especially in the knees. I would highly recommend both you and your buddy having full Torque and Sniper ammo for that difficulty. For those of you out of the loop, Jester and I met on PDZ on November 22, 2005, so beating the final boss of the flagship title of the Xbox 360, together on the 365th day of both my streak and our friendship, was a truly bonding experience.

Afterwards, I did some Warzone against a "fan-friend", Double Chinned, whose original Gamertag was Double Chin2. He messaged me after hearing my tag being mentioned on Major's Show #186. We talked for a bit, and I asked him why he had the "2" in his tag. He told me that it was because "Double Chin" was taken. I then asked "Why didn't you just choose 'Double Chinned'?" After about 5 seconds of silence, the next thing I heard was a string of expletives. After that, I told him to go change his gamertag to Double Chinned. Obviously, he did. And even for a while had his Motto "This GT © Knuckles Dawson", or something similar.

But, I digress. Anyway, Jester and I joined in, and on the first round had some lousy teammates, who were friends of Chinned, and one sounded like he was 8 year olds. The fact I was off by 7 years scared me. After a prompt thrashing in what was essentially 4-on-2 in Fuel Depot, I noticed some arrogant remarks from the COG side. Not in the mood to allow for such notions to be made under those circumstances, I asked if I would be able to get my friends on my team, so I could actually coordinate some semblance of strategy. I called iEyeCaptain, got him on, and got TheMan661 over as well, who was more than happy to be on my team this time. From that point forward, Double Chinned and his cohorts knew the true power of KD Enterprises. It was rather cruel. Once TheMan661 had to go, I brought in French Frye to mix it up, and he definitely performed at the exceptional level I expected of him.

Jester and Rhett seemed to hit it off quite well, discussing Wrestling to the nth degree. So much so in fact, that they ended up forming an impervious duo on WWE SVR 2007. Much to the annoyance of those foolish enough to face them in the online arena. At the same time, I finally caught up with Tree , another initial "fan-friend" who added me after my Major Nelson interview. He does the podcast for GotSpeech.net, and only got his 360 recently. So, aside from a friend getting him an achievement on Madden, he's never gotten one himself. We both thought that was due for a change, so I started up a campaign on Hardcore, and we played through the first chapter, nabbing him his first two achievements. Which, to remind you, was also on Day 365 for me.

On the Wii side of things, I played through more of Twilight Princess, completing the first expedition into the Twilight Zone. Heh. It was a lot of fun and the Wolf-Link's control mechanics are really intuitive and cool. This game is going to be great to plug away at. Still on the look out for component cables, though.

Posted by Knuckles Dawson at 09:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)

Friday had the PS3 launch. I was not in line for that, but not by choice. I have this full time obligation 5 days a week, and due to recent events, couldn't call in the "favor" to have the Thursday off to stand in line, and then show up for work an hour late friday. On top of that, the required man power for my "Sell-two-on-Ebay-keep-one-for-me" plan was unavailable because of us all sharing the same obligation's location. Still, the Best Buy in question had a surprising 22 consoles, and I would have been first in line if I, and my entourage (not that one), could get in line on the afternoon of the 15th and had the 16th off work. If it was a midnight launch, like the 360's at that location, that would have sealed the deal, but unfortunately they just opened 2 hours early for this holiday's console commencements.

Anyway, I picked up the HD-DVD Drive for the 360, along with Constantine on the 17th. Even though I'm only viewing it in 720p, the picture quality is truly breathtaking. Hopefully Microsoft is still open to the idea of an HDMI output cable, as the component (game only) and VGA (game/HD-DVD) 1080p options are working, but not everywhere. But, then again, it could be worse.

The next morning I played some Splinter Cell for a couple trophy achievements, then headed to that Best Buy again. This was going to be an extended visit, though. I was getting myself a Wii, and was determined to be first in line. Arriving at 9:00 AM ensured that, and to boot, I was wearing my launch day shirt for the 360, signed by Peter Moore. I thought that was a cool detail, and when others showed up they found it to be very interesting, to say the least. Best Buy opened its doors at 10:00 AM, so I, and some homeless guy looking to profit off of his spot in line, migrated inside.

Once inside, I made a decision as to what constitutes "camping out" and being "in line". Firstly, so long as the Best Buy is open, your place in line is held as long as you are in the store. So, for example, there was a Guitar Heroes II demo playable on the PS2 display, which right in the middle of the shelf with all the PS3 games. Go Figure. I could play that to my hearts content and still be "in line". Homeless Terry made use of my lawnchair in the mean time, so I wasn't too concerned. So, having only played one or two songs at PAX '06, I decided to get acquainted with the game and the controller, as the 360 version was an imminent purchase. The only four songs I played that day were, in order of most played, Strutter - KISS, Van Halen, War Pigs - Black Sabbath, and YYZ - Rush. I got quite good at Strutter on Medium, scoring a 4 star 82,000, and was alright at You Really Got Me at that difficulty as well. War Pigs and YYZ were on Easy since I only played either of them twice.

With the impending Wii line full of Nintendorks (a term of endearment), and PAX'07 always reminding me of how much fun it is, I decided to get myself a DS Lite. Along with that I grabbed Elite Beat Agents, New Super Mario Brothers, Mario Kart DS, and Metroid Prime: Hunters and a slick leather carrying case for the DS. Apparently, I made that purchase not a moment too soon, as over the next few hours the line started to grow exponentially. Most came in groups of at least 4, with the occasional spectator. Everyone found my shirt and its story to be fascinating, and appreciated the humor in my wearing it to the Wii's launch. Much fun was had with the DS as well, with Mario Kart and Star Fox download play games keeping us occupied. I found that with the stylus, like the mouse, I prefer the Y-axis input as normal, as opposed to playing anything with a joystick/thumbstick as inverted.

Best Buy closed at 10:00 PM, and the 20 of us had to go outside for the next 10 hours. Terry had "Terry's Tent" labeled at the front where he and his "brother", Mike, would come and go pass out after getting hammered. We took all the names of everyone there as an "unofficial list", and used it to keep a tally of how many were there, considering there was only 90 units of Wii in stock. Later in the night, I had some of my favorite franchise pizza, Boston Pizza, delivered to the line. It was very tasty.

At about 12:45 AM, the Nintendo Reps showed up to give out free swag. I got a black Wii shirt that has "Wii Play" on the very bottom of the back with the Wii logo on the front. They took pictures of the first 10 or so of us. The first was rather normal, with me in the center, pointing out my shirt. The second, and my idea, was with me on the ground and all of them pummeling me. A Kodak moment to be sure. Over the course of the night more and more people came, including one guy who wanted to see the first person in line and when he finally learned who I was in the Xbox 360 community, asked if he could worship me. I was flattered, but didn't need to go through another stalker situation. A camera crew came by and interviewed me as well. All in all a lot of fun.

By 2:30 AM we had 85 in line. Mike, #84, was friends with some of the first 10, so he hung at the front with us, he and his cohorts were very knowledgeable on Homestar Runner quotes. So we had a bunch of fun with impressions of characters with that universe. Mike, while shuffling around his seat against the glass door, slipped and fell back against it, setting off the alarm. The alarm went off for about 7 or 8 minutes, with no sign of the cops, before shutting off. This was amusing because the Vancouver Police Headquarters is a literal single block north of the Best Buy. When a patrol vehicle finally showed up, it was 20 minutes later, and the officer didn't even leave his car. He just pulled up, said to be more careful, and left.

Staff started showing up around 5:00 AM, and handed out all 90 tickets at 6:00. I filled out what accessories I wanted: An extra Wii-mote and nunchuk, classic controller, 2 1 GB SD cards, and a 2000 Wii Points card (more expensive than MS Points, and also games cost more Wii points than Xbox Live Arcade). As for games, I got The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, and Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz. The next two hours flew by, and the let me in and all the employees there applauded. I grabbed my basket of Wii-tacular goodness, paid up, and took a taxi the 10 blocks home.

The packaging presentation of the Wii is breathtaking. It's on the same level as the iPod's packaging, clean and elegant. I really liked the way they had everything sorted. The Wii is extremely small. Even with the vertical stand, it's shorter than the packaging for its games. I currently have it vertically set up beside my subwoofer in my TV stand's lower level. Unfortunately, the Best Buy didn't have any component cables available, and Wii only comes with composite. Still, even in 16x9 480i, the Wii Channels (aka Dashboard) look extremely clean. WiiSports is a blast, and Twilight Princess is the true successor to Ocarina of Time. I made a couple Mii's too, and they look surprisingly close to their real-life conterparts.

So, that was my Wiikend. I guess I got Christmas early. Fortunately, I can play it whenever I have the time, and not let it interfere too much with my 360 gaming. I'll give more insight into it once I get my component cables and can spend some more time with it.

Posted by Knuckles Dawson at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

My first episode of KDE: The Knuckles Dawson Experience. It's a little behind schedule, but I finally got it out the door. I expect there to be a serious aural improvement once some actual equipment is purchased, but not bad for a first go at it.

Opener/Closer: "Silhouette Serenade" by Vendetta Red, found on the Saints Row station 89.0 Generation X

Episode:
Introduction to the show, and its intended purpose.
Play the Major Nelson Shout out and Interview
Play the win on KOXM's Useless Trivia
Discuss my trip to New York City
Discuss my Shadowrun Preview
Gears of War and Need for Speed Carbon

Get Experienced:
[RSS] Add the Knuckles Dawson Experience feed to your RSS aggregator and have the show delivered automatically.
[MP3] Download the episode. (27:02, 12.85 MB, MP3)

Exposition:
http://live.xbox.com/member/Knuckles+Dawson
http://live.xbox.com/member/iEyeCaptain
http://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/tips/achievements.htm
http://www.majornelson.com/archive/2006/03/27/show-168-the-one-about-gdc-and-xna.aspx
http://pennyarcadeexpo.com
http://www.majornelson.com/archive/2006/09/03/Show-191-The-one-about-XNA.aspx
http://www.gamerscoreblog.com
http://www.xbox.com/en-US/community/personality/trixie/default.htm
http://gamerscoreblog.com/team/archive/2006/11/07/538811.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Moore_%28Microsoft%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadowrun_%28Xbox_360%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gears_of_War
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Need_for_Speed_Carbon
http://www.amazon.com/Playing-Fire-Kevin-Federline/dp/B000IU3YLY/sr=8-1/qid=1163696129/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-4498350-9159850?ie=UTF8&s=music

Posted by Knuckles Dawson at 07:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The blades on the main page of KD.com should now work for IE users out there. Before they were empty div boxes as links placed above the pre-existing blade image. I now have broken the blades up individually, put them into the div boxes and made those the links. It should work throughout, and I'll put that functionality into the Endeavour as well.

Speaking of the Endeavour, I finally updated that with last weeks achievements. I've been busy, as you can imagine.

Posted by Knuckles Dawson at 12:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yeah, I was in NYC for the Fall Showcase event on Monday. It was incredible, Peter Moore was there, he signed my launch Dreamcast+its respective jersey as well as my launch 360's faceplate+its respective shirt. Yeah, 4 items may be a lot, but the guy was CEO of Sega during the Dreamcast's era, so, an opportunity to pay respect to that console's legacy can't be ignored. And as my dad always told me: "Don't ask, don't get." Which is to say, you're not going to get what you want if you don't at least ask.

Anyway, I'm going to keep this brief. But, I'll leave you with this, I will go into full details on the happenings of this whole week in my podcast that will be going up this weekend. The name, naturally is KDE: The Knuckles Dawson Experience. Heh. So, until then, I'll catch you on the flip side.

Posted by Knuckles Dawson at 09:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So, Tuesday, was Halloween. And I had, as you know, an awesome costume lined up for the night. So, I met up with friends of the family, and their kids and I went out trick or treating. I was, of course, the Tech Support Suicide by Hanging (and slit wrists). Skye was a geisha and Oly (short for Oliver, pronounced like the basic skateboard jump trick) was a CTU agent from the show 24. I suggested he go by "Agent Stiles". Which he did. Which was stylin'. Pictures of their costumes can be found at the KD Exposure, my new Flickr section. We headed out around 6 PM and went guising for about 2.5 hours.

Since I was with about 4 other kids, I easily got away with holding a bag in front of the door. I never said "Trick or Treat!" though, I instead would just shout "I'm Deeeaaad!" in a manner that was developed back in PDZ with APKJester, In any case, I cleaned house, and while most had no problems with me stealing candy from all the other children, with the ease being akin to likes of a baby, others would question me on my age, or size so something, and I'd say that the attention to detail and originality in my costume justifies my age as well as them giving me candy. And they eventually would, as no one turned me down. All in all a good Halloween.

So, Bastelyon emails me yesterday at about 9:15 AM with the following:
Do you have a number I can call you at? I've got some good news for you. :)
I shoot him back my cell and not a minute later he calls me. The news is really "good :)". Not only does it trump the other subject-that-cannot-be-mentioned, it also takes place sooner, but is in a location far more iconic, and one that I haven't been to before. On top of that, my attendance is far more valued in this case, which is really cool. I basically spent the rest of my day at work on the ninth cloud of euphoria.

After work, I called up various EB Games locations regarding Need For Speed: Carbon Collector's Edition as well as F.E.A.R. None of them had NFS:C, and only a couble had F.E.A.R.. The local Best Buy did, though, and so I grabbed both of those. So, I've decided that EB Games sucks, again, after I gave them a chance to prove themselves useful. We'll see how I handle Gears of War. I played Carbon a bit on my Alt gamertag, and found it to be very entertaining, I just need to get my hands on a VW Golf R32 as soon as possible, and beat the game with it. As that has been my tradition in various racing games.

The final bit has been moved so you have to click this entry to read it. It's not exactly something someone should be exposed to on a site like this, but you're welcome to read it if you want.

After I was done playing, I chatted a bit with K4rn4ge, and tried to talk with NinjaFish, but his mic was acting up and I couldn't really hear half of what he was saying, maybe next time. I then talked to my friend Cody, or at least, I considered him my friend. The conversation started off well, but that was misleading. In what was intended to be a lesson for being rather cold with him in the beginning of our budding friendship, after I had apologized for my actions weeks prior, he decided to give me a taste of my own medicine. And then multiplied it by ten. Without knowledge of his ploy, I started to feel like a complete ass. I was torn to shreds. The whole ordeal made me question who I was and why I do what I do, both in terms of traits etched into my personality, and things I invest my time into. Yeah, that. I felt inclined to just quit the thing that started as the silly question "I wonder how long I could pull this off for?", that I asked myself around the 25th of November. Then, in true KD Style he says "Oh. That? It was an act, I didn't mean it.". Damn. Daaaaaaaamn. That cut deep. It was the complete polar opposite from that morning. I really didn't need April Fools 5 months ahead of schedule.

Which brings us to my next thing, I generally don't like people 5 or 6 years younger than me, but I always give someone the chance to prove they are more mature, intelligent, or fun to hang out with than the norm. Cody was someone who I made the exception for, but last night proved my point. He was too young to think through what he was doing, and what line is "too far". Looking back, I'm hard-pressed to think that line was crossed. I felt so low that I'd need a ladder to scratch a snake's belly. (Don't ask, the guy who I first heard say that was a Preacher from Kentucky). Anyway, he tried to apologize when he realized what he'd done. And I was too physically and emotionally drained from the experience to give him a straight response. I hate Emo kids. And I was deep down, really pissed that he made me feel like one as a lesson for which I had already learned and tried to grow from. I'm usually pretty good at putting up a wall so that I don't let some voice I hear on a headset have an adverse affect on my mood, but this was one of two instances where I was weak, and actually vented my frustration physically. Anyway, I pretty much walked to and collapsed on my bed, passing out immediately after the conversation ended, even though it was only 8:45 PM. My dreams weren't exactly comforting either. I had my first nightmare about my achievements. Which was weird, especially since the cast of Las Vegas was there. I messed up hitting a potential Gamerscore Milestone. So my streak wasn't even in danger in the dream. Yeah. Okay. I don't even want to consider the relation to Mad World.

Anyway, I didn't feel too hot this morning, but further communication with Tony did brighten my spirits. The guy is a saint.

Yeah, I didn't mean to throw this all at you, but it needed to be said. Or something.

Posted by Knuckles Dawson at 10:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)