If you can't beat 'em, acquire 'em!

So today's big news is, of course, the acquisition of Jamdat by Electronic Arts.
Yes, that Jamdat, the one I work at.
Oh my...

So we're all expecting to be fitted with leg irons and attached to our rowing positions shortly.
Our managers say otherwise but what do they know? We know we'll be rowing the good ship EA soon.

Okay, maybe not. The acquisition needs to be voted on by the shareholders by February.
And the Trade Federation needs to come in and see if this doesn't constitute a monopoly or something.
I mean, EA on one side, the biggest cellphone game publisher on the other.
Personally, I hope we're not moving to the EA complex in Marina. That would be a tough commute for me.
So anyway, we'll see what happens...


In other news, Blockbuster Online sucks.
I don't think I will keep them once my free month expires. They're taking way too long to ship DVDs out.
I've viewed and returned all 3 DVDs I got in the first batch, and they've only sent me one DVD so far.
I have no idea what the hell they're doing over there, sitting on my returned DVDs.
It's been 3 full days since they received the 2nd and 3rd DVDs, and they're NOT SHIPPING ANYTHING OUT!!
I'm putting Netflix back up to 3 movies-at-a-time as soon as I cancel Blockbuster.


Trader Joe's carries Double Rainbow ice cream, which is really damn good, and made in San Francisco.
A few days ago, I bought a quart of their blueberry ice cream, because, I mean, blueberry ice cream!!
It's absolutely divine. It's like blueberries and cream. It's halfway between fruit and flower.
Who can diet when such wonders are placed before us?


Sony sent me in the mail a PS2 disc loaded with various game demos.
I gave "Ratchet: Deadlocked" a whirl and was disappointed by one major aspect of it.
The controls have been changed. Not just that, they gave the game standard console FPS controls:
left stick moves forward and back, and strafes left and right,
right stick is used for look-around.
I absolutely abhor this control scheme! I know it's the standard console FPS interface, but I still hate it!
I like using shoulder buttons for strafing! I have a crapload of PSX/PS1 FPS games that use the shoulder
buttons for strafing, and they're great! Games like "Disruptor", "Medal Of Honor", "Powerslave", "Doom",
"Ultimate Doom", "Medal Of Honor: Underground", and others whose titles escape me.
So anyway, eventhough I have the other "Ratchet And Clank" games, I'm probably not going to get "Deadlocked".
They've geared more toward the Quake/Unreal frag-happy gamers, and that's not me.


Tomorrow is Pascal's birthday. Since he will be DJing at Nirvana in the evening, we decided to go out and
have a little pre-birthday dinner. We were going to get something at Trader Joe's, but I was struck by
sudden inspiration! Why not hop on a bus and head up to Westwood Village for dinner?
So we did. We tried finding "Cowboy Sushi", which was recommended to me by some friends a while back, but it
was not easy. As we walked in Westwood, I mused that the place had changed a lot since the days back when
I frequented it. All the nightclubs were closed, all the gangs were gone, and all the blacks had left.
Westwood used to be craaaazy in the mid-80's to early-90's, then there were a couple of shootings, and the
crackdown began. Today, Westwood is like one big shopping mall. Safe, happy, fun for the whole family.
This impression was reinforced when my brother and I came across what looked like a huge mall directory.
Outside, on the street, corner of Westwood and Gayley (I think).
Cowboy Sushi was listed on it, so we walked two blocks to find it.
It was gone.
So we went to another sushi place, one called "Ami".
The food was good, and all the customers were female, a fact not lost upon these two Frenchies, hon-hon-hon!!
We walked around some more, then bussed back.

And now, to watch our tape of "Smallville"...