Freshman year at JMU my roommate Will got me into the computer game Counter-Strike. It’s a first person shooter that is primarily played online with two teams, the terrorists and the counter-terrorists. I was never that great and my crappy computer froze half the time. Flash forward to last Christmas and Katie got me the new and improved Half-Life 2 with Counter-Strike:Source – Basically, Counter-Strike 2. Well in the last few weeks I’ve been playing more and more CS:S.

I think I may have reached some point of saturation. A few days ago I had a dream…I was in a relatively small enclosed area with a few people. Something like you would play paintball in with a few small barriers to hide behind etc. Paul McCartney was chasing me with a pistol trying to shoot me…I don’t remember actually having a gun and shooting back – more just running and trying not to get shot by a Beatle.

Maybe there’s a deeper meaning to this dream….or maybe I saw Paul McCartney during a Saturday Night Live sketch a couple weeks ago and he just got mixed up in my CS:S dream. Anyone have any psychological input on this one? There was a little while during high school when I would write down all the details of my dreams…if I woke up in the middle of the night I would write them down right away, then when I woke up in the morning I would read what I wrote and usually didn’t remember the dreams at all…maybe I should start doing that again and put my whacked out dreams on this blog.

Speaking of first person shooters, Stan sent me a link to a new awesome PS2 game that is right up my alley: “NRA Gun Club”. Here are a few quotes from the review in case you don’t actually read it: “It’s disgustingly ugly, nearly silent, and shallow in a way that will put off anyone, whether a firearms enthusiast or not.”, “The presentation in NRA Gun Club is atrocious.”, “The awfulness stacks up, resulting in a nearly unplayable product.” I guess these are the kind of games that come out when a new generation console replaces what was once the hotness.

After nearly two months of anticipation it has finally arrived. I am now the proud owner of a TiVo fire remote. After I opened the package I thought TiVo made a mistake because all I saw was a regular plain dark grey remote (identical to my current remote)… a second later I saw that the fire remote was indeed a regular remote with a fire decal for the top…a little lame, but better than just getting a regular remote.

I present you with entirely too many pictures of a remote control:

Bonus Micro Blog: I am playing fantasy basketball for the first time ever.  I am in a league with stanus.net (who has his own basketball blog: The Mighty Mavs)and we were matched up for week one…  Well my “Toine Balls!?” kicked the asses of his “Brooklyn Ballas”.  I completely pwned and humiliated him with my superior basketball knowledge and fantasy skill.  It has nothing to do with luck or Stanus himself helping me pick my team…after all I picked up elite players such as Yaroslav Korolev all on my own.

Today I got an email from TiVo notifying me that “Brent” listed me as his referral. After jumping through a few hoops I was able to redeem my 5,000 TiVo reward points!

My options were tivo coasters, a tivo cd case, a tivo sackpack, and different color tivo remotes (red, white, orange, or one with a flames!). While the “sackpack” item sounded comical….it was quite lame. So I of course ordered the flaming TiVo remote for a mere 4,900 points! There were some cooler items like TiVo boxes and iPods…but they cost a lot more than 5,000 points…and frankly I doubt I will get any more referral points soon.

Thanks for the flaming remote b-rent!