Chock full of calories and beverages we hit the road down to the springs to explore and drive around. Dan showed me the house that he grew up in, and a few of the sweet places he remembered. For instance: if you had a sweet BMX bike you’d ride in a field full of jeep trails. This looked awesome, what was more awesome was that it was behind the saddest titty bar I’ve ever seen. If you’d like to go see something truly epic the sign informed us that Bridget the Midget will be there on July 27th and 28th.

The burger we had was at Conway’s Red Top, which is a fine establishment. We sat, we ordered, the burger arrived and was truly enormous yet somehow magically didn’t last more than 20 minutes. I might add that their chocolate shake is worth writing home to mom about. I’ll probably have diabetes someday; I plan on having earned that disease with food like this. Back on the road we stopped by IKEA to peruse the coffee tables and ottomans. While there we paused just long enough to suck down about a gallon each of lingonberry juice.

What a wonderful way to piss off for a Friday afternoon.

I’m confident that Minecraft is responsible for an entire generation of young males now knowing about port numbers.

— Jeremiah Stanley (@miahorg) June 17, 2012

I found a used 2006 Buddy 125 for a bit more than I probably should have paid. Whatever, the savings on gas that I’ll net this year if I ride it a mere 5,000 miles in the time that I own it it will have paid for itself. From four fill ups I am getting an average of 88 mpg. Aww shucks, I’m even good for the environment with my second mid-life crisis. One shouldn’t try to justify ones purchases when it was on a whim, and this was undoubtedly.

Pros: cheap, fuel efficient, light, easy to park, fun.
Cons: cheap, can’t get out of it’s own way, the brakes make me pee a little.

The teeny tiny ten inch tires on this Taiwanese scooter don’t do much to inspire confidence on the guttered and destroyed Denver streets this spring. The suspension is an afterthought for the most part, useful only on the big rolling bumps. Mercifully my avoirdupois is sufficient to overload the rear end and render it only vague instead of twitchy. As this is an automatic there is no clutch to really speak of and is a blessing and a curse. If you want to go slow, good luck. Under about 10 mph the throttle might as well be a toggle and dragging the rear brake is the only way to stabilize your speed from the snatchy throttle. Scooter people take this as par for the course – it unnerves this rider descending from the lofty steps of sport bikes.

I just clocked over 350 miles this afternoon in just a short month with the count just rolling up. The only dent to this rate will be the bicycle my employer has so graciously offered to sponsor for the summer. Total cost to me: $25. I can’t bitch about that. The worst thing from all of this is that it has only relit the flames of my motorcycle addiction. Now things like taking off road riding courses and looking at two wheeled porn all day.

Why did it take so long for the price to come down? Because I’m a second class citizen in the gaming world as I play on my 13″ MacBook Pro. This isn’t a grumble mind you, I fully understand that I am at the far end of the marketable spectrum for gaming. The second issue that is frequently seen playing ports to the Mac are that they can be very, very rough. Often taking more system resources to run than they would have on a similarly equipped PC. I have been known to run games under VMWare, often it just isn’t worth the trouble for “twitch” games like first person shooters.

Having not played DA2 on the PC I cannot tell you how it performs on that platform. I can however report that I am completely blown away with the speed of the game on my laptop. So many games spend so much effort at “lookin’ purdy” that they miss a vital ingredient: it is a detriment to my enjoyment when I have to wait for bars to march across the screen so I can get back to smashing baddies in the face. I would say that a two minute load time is unreasonable and distracting (I’m looking at you original Dragon Age). DA2 however gets me from splash screen to actually playing in under 45 seconds. This amazes me in every way. Perhaps this is an effect of having been simultaneously for aging console gaming platforms. When you are limited to 10 gigs on a disc and a set amount of RAM and GPU you trim the fat.

As for the gameplay I had played the precursor as a rogue for most enjoyment. It was the role I felt did the most damage and kept the pace of the game fast. DA2 is closer to a more traditional “tank and spank” RPG so you spend more time rounding up the baddies and AoEing them down. The warrior in DA2 is enabled to hit more than one enemy at a time, all the time, in a pseudo-cleave constantly. This makes for delicious splatting when hitting things; the whole point of playing games. It tickles the violent lizard part of my brain. Having played this game before most of the talents you chose upon leveling were standard and/or identical to this series. Some of the more overpowered talent choice have been removed however forcing me to relearn some of my play. No worries there, this kept it fresh.

I am about three quarters of the way through the plot. It is a nice game that is rich in anthropological data, and light on moralistic inquiry. It is merely a story and not a deep work of philosophy. Which is good, I get enough of that shit in school and it would undoubtedly alienate their audience to have to engage their brain instead of mindless clicking. The Metacritic score it was listed at under my Steam page was 91/100. I would tend to agree with this number. The game was well worth the $20 I blew on it, as with most casual gamers I may end up with some buyers remorse for the time I spend playing it.

Enough writing, time to get back to seducing the slutty pirate chick and stabbing dragons in the face.

There is a special place in my heart for white guitars. I don’t know why, I just like them. But, being too cheap for my own good I ended up with a red one. Does the color make a difference in sound? No, but it can affect how you bond with the instrument. A guitar is not merely a tool; the sum of its parts can be the genesis of inspiration. When you don’t like something, you don’t look forward to picking it up and using it. The red color isn’t a cool red – like a Ferrari – but more akin to a Radio Flyer wagon. Being a bottom rung model the pickups are also less than inspiring. This problem affected me the same way as a junkie that doesn’t like his spoon.

I started shopping for a new guitar and found a few things that I like. I had a Stratocaster years ago that, alas was also red, I never bonded with. Despite that there was something about it that I liked. There are certain anatomical and mechanically practical constraints on what can be constituted to form a guitar, obviously. When we consider that fact we see the genesis of what we would consider “classic” designs. Leo Fender gave us two classic designs that have endured for reasons of aesthetic and parts re-use. Having been enchanted by the “vintage mojo” of guitars that age a certain way it lead to seek a guitar with a nitrocellulose finish rather than the polyester based finish that is normally standard for reasons of manufacturing ease. The poly finish holds up under much more abuse and play than a nitro finish does, and it is easier to apply. All net wins, when you want that.

Blissfully for me, Fender has been producing a series of guitars in their Highway One series that had this finish and a few other features that made it unique and attractive to me. Chiefly it was priced to sell. Often the large brands make three levels of guitar: an entry level model that satiates nobody; a mid-level model for the player; and a “custom shop” level for people with more money than brains.This was a decidedly middle of the road player model, nothing fancy. The Highway One series started in 2002 and for two years had a vintage theme with small frets and a 60s style headstock. There were minor cosmetic changes until 2006 when a major overhaul of the series added jumbo frets and a 70s style CBS headstock. The standard shape was enlarged by CBS to be more viewable on television. This gives it a comical, larger-than-life size that just adds to the wonkiness of the guitar. Sadly, they didn’t ever make it in white, so I settled for a sunburst. My sunburst P-Bass has treated me well so I think it is just a trope for me now that I play them.

Fender decided to discontinue this series in 2011 so they are becoming increasingly rare to find new on a shelf. Which is fine by me, if I never buy another guitar new I won’t be sad.  Used is the place to be when you want to “relic” a guitar. It happened that Guitard Center in Maryland had a model on their fantastic used gear site for $450. $17 in shipping and a phone call later I had myself a Stratocaster. I knew from recommendations from multiple people that the Vox amps built in China were a great buy, so I had been skulking for a used one for a while when I came across an auction on eBay that listed an AC15 at $361. A few bids later I ended up nabbing it for $381. The best part was that it was played in a church band until the dude upgraded to the AC30; I get to corrupt it’s soul with hard rock and metal. This pleases me.

One thing you notice when sticking high gain single coil pickups through a tube amp with the gain cranked into overdrive is a rather annoying HUMMM right at 60 Hz. This is probably the only thing I don’t like about the Strat. I like the neck, I like they way it fits my body, and I’ve even come to appreciate the temperamental floating tremolo bridge. The nice thing about a guitar you never intend to sell is that you can aftermarket the hell out of it without worrying about destroying your “resale value”. To me resale value is for cars and ex-wives, when I buy something that I will personally identify with I want it to be thrown onto the pyre of my viking funeral. DiMarzio makes a line of single coil sounding humbuckers that would do the trick. After looking for a while though, and looking at what styles of music I’m playing, a set of “hotter” humbuckers might be more up my alley.

Billy Corgan, of the Smashing Pumpkins and general douche-baggery, has a Fender sponsored guitar that the pickups were designed to his “spec” by DiMarzio. When they say the artist designed it what they mean is that he probably gave some nebulous phrases to an engineer who then made something interesting based on that idea, and then figured out how to make it cheap enough to sell. Engineers are awesome like that. There is a recommended set that goes by the branding High Power. These are some pretty hot pickups. While I wanted some more overdrive, I didn’t want to go so crazy as to limit what this guitar can do. The Billy Corgan setup seems to be a mid-point between the super hot and the hum canceling single coils. While I don’t really like the single coil sound I didn’t want to lose the “chimey” center pickup. I went with his setup ordering the pickups individually instead of on the pre-made pickguard.

I came across a product designed specifically for Strats branded the ToneShaper. Instead of wiring up the three pots to the three pickups with a cap somewhere in the mix this is a prefabbed circuit board with dip switches to change configurations. It is a solderless setup that crimps the pickup leads down to a terminal. This is a nice convenience for anybody who wants to play with a range of cap values for the tone pot as well as different configurations for the knobs. The one I’m most interested in is the ability to blend the third pickup in based on the second tone pot. That will be the first that I’m trying. I went with a black pickguard to steal some Stevie Ray Vaughn mojo and to mix it up a bit.

Due to some shipping problems the ToneShaper won’t be here until the end of the week. I’ll post some more pictures and words when it gets here and I have a chance to play with it. After that will be some video of the beast as initially wired up.