JohnnyBGamer

Random

Working the front office of an architectural firm, I don’t often get the opportunity to talk to many people. The fact is, besides the phone, not too many people walk in the front door. Coming from a customer service background, this minimal contact with the public has been a shock to the system.

Today I had one of the contractor’s assistants come by, a female, to pick up some drawings. In the course of conversation, she started telling me about how her and her husband play Call of Duty Black Ops. This made me smile. As a gamer since the early NES days, I am not the best player at shooters on a modern console. Shooters are complicated controller messes that require far too much finger agility. I’m just not game. She went on to tell me that sometimes she schools him with a higher kill ratio. Made me laugh.

Gamer’s are everywhere in today’s world. Never know if you’re talking to one.

Little Big Lunch

Over lunch I had a chance to sit down and play some Little Big Planet. Ended up getting stuck on a level where I was flying with a jetpack and having to transport dynamite. Let’s just say that I didn’t pass the level and my wife and I were left laughing over the explosive results. Notice that the word “results” is plural. 🙂

Below is some music from the game to enjoy.

Titan

There is a place that I have always wanted to visit just south of Tucson, Arizona, the Titan Missile Museum.

As a student of history, especially The Cold War, I can think of nothing better than being able to visit one of America’s destructive atomic silos. Just imagine what would have happened had the United States had to actually fire against a Soviet target:

World War III
The End
Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD)

Kind of puts life in perspective, to think that everything we know could ended at the push of a button. Thankfully, we had leaders with cool heads that prevented us from going to the brink.

Anyone out there visited the museum. Is it worth the trip for a history buff?

A Night with inFAMOUS

Last night, my wife told me to sit down and play some video games. So I listened. Without losing time, I quickly launched inFAMOUS on my PS3. In the hour and a half that I played I:

Liberated hostages/ parts of the city
Fought massive onslaughts of Reapers
And restarted power stations below Neon City

All of the above contributing to the awesome feeling of being a super hero. Towards the end of my play time, I ended up fighting the games first boss, Sasha. She came across as a bad ex-girlfriend… Below is a video of the encounter uploaded by someone on youtube. Please note that I am not playing through the game as evil, as the person in the video is. Instead, I am the people’s champion, a good guy.

Sasha put up a pretty mean fight!

Note: One thing that bugged me about this encounter was the amount of language coming from both Sasha and main character Cole. The cuss words seemed out of place.

After the fight, I decided to call it a night. My left hand was slowly starting to go numb and my index finger (used to hold down the targeting button) wasn’t working like it should. Funny, I haven’t played a game that has caused both of my hands to hurt like that in quite sometime. Minus the occasional language, inFAMOUS is proving to be a fun game that really makes you feel like a superhero.

Preoccupation

During my morning devotional I read this:

¹ After these events, King Xerxes honored Haman son of Hammedatha, the Agagite, elevating him and giving him a seat of honor higher than that of all the other nobles. ² All the royal officials at the king’s gate knelt down and paid honor to Haman, for the king had commanded this concerning him. But Mordecai would not kneel down or pay him honor.

³ Then the royal officials at the king’s gate asked Mordecai, “Why do you disobey the king’s command?” ⁴ Day after day they spoke to him but he refused to comply. Therefore they told Haman about it to see whether Mordecai’s behavior would be tolerated, for he had told them he was a Jew.

⁵ When Haman saw that Mordecai would not kneel down or pay him honor, he was enraged. ⁶ Yet having learned who Mordecai’s people were, he scorned the idea of killing only Mordecai. Instead Haman looked for a way to destroy all Mordecai’s people, the Jews, throughout the whole kingdom of Xerxes. – Esther 3: 1-6 (NIV)

Notice how distracted Haman is with Mordecai. Instead of focusing on what he had been given, Haman became preoccupied with a single man. This preoccupation with Mordecai and the annihilation of the Jews would eventually lead to Haman’s downfall.

In the age of social media and instant/constant communication, I find it easy to get preoccupied with other peoples lives. I end up wondering why I can’t:

Buy a new house, car, toy, etc.
Travel with all expenses paid by parents or relatives
Eat out five times a week (not that I’d want to)

In looking at everyone else, I fail to realize that God created something special in me. I am not like everyone else nor meant to be.

—————-

Interesting thought: The word preoccupation has the word “occupation” in it. Now, we all work different occupations, there is certainly that definition of the word. But the use of occupation related to Haman’s preoccupation makes me think of this dictionary definition:

possession, settlement, or use of land or property.

When we become preoccupied with something not of God (like lust or greed), we are giving up pieces of our very hearts and souls to things that shouldn’t be entrenched in our lives. We end up becoming occupied territory; slaves to our conquerors.