There is nothing worse than waking up on a Monday and not feeling good. I suppose the day doesn’t really bloody matter, I was just hoping my illness would magically go away with the new week. Apparently this cold/flu didn’t get the damn memo. Maybe I can get a lawyer to either evict the thing or start paying rent, PatMan is supposed to be our illness guru around here not me.

The big pro rodeo was in town this last weekend and I avoided it entirely. I doubt highly I would of gone even if I hadn’t been sick. My local home town rodeo has lost a lot of it’s appeal for me over the years and it was only this weekend I started to question why. The first reason is pretty easy and requires little explanation. I get really sick of a group of local ranching and farming families spending the three days patting themselves on the back. It gets really old real fast, watching these schmucks try to convince people they are what makes this region great. In all honesty I don’t so much care that they do it, as the arrogant way they go about it. It’s easier for me to avoid that silly mess entirely. In fact it may be the text book definition of big fish in a little pond syndrome. You combine that with the fact the rodeo has kind of lost it’s mystic with me. I think any time you have been a part of or inside the workings of a sport that can happen. I rode and worked rodeo’s for six or seven years in my youth and so they don’t captivate as me much now. It’s not my home town rodeo’s fault really, I have been to the National Finals, Calgary, Denver and Houston. Once you have been to those fine rodeos it’s hard to get excited about anything else. For my money if you only go to one rodeo in your life go to Calgary. The city in excellent and they have the most enthusiastic crowds I can recall.

You may of heard me talking about IceWind Dale on the podcast. I tired to finish it last night and I suppose technically I did. I say technically as I beat the final boss and then the fugging game glitched. Ah just like the old days with Baldurs Gate. My plan is to make one more attempt at it and then move on to the expansion pack. Which I can’t import characters to because the fucker out right crashes. I remember that shit from back in the day too. Almost a decade later and they never made a patch for that ? Don’t get me wrong that is one of the facets of playing old games. I have just learned to work around it and go from there. Talked the crew into picking up Monday Night Combat when it was on sale for 600 MS points. They may actually let me live this time as the first night we played it, we had a lot of fun. I suspect we will be taking in more rounds as the week goes on. I also picked up Snoopy Flying Ace thanks to PatMan. He reminded me about the game and I love it. I will warn you, if you get motion sickness at all avoid the game. Otherwise I recommend shooting at your enemies upside down and never pay attention to the ground. It will just confuse you.

It took writing this whole update to realize the following fact. I am sick at home, so I can hop on my 360 and see if the Gears 3 beta is up and running for us Bulletstorm folks. I found it kind of amusing the last week watching codes for the beta flying around on twitter. I don’t feel quite as special for my early entry after witnessing that. Mind you I get in a full week before the rest of the mob, but it was kind of an ironic thing to observe. The good news is I don’t really care either way. I am the only gamer on the planet that isn’t super interested in the Gears of War franchise. I was never that enamored with the single player in the last one. Again I am pretty sure I was doing it wrong as I appear to be the only one that wasn’t. My manager PatMan has told me I need to play the beta to talk about it on the podcast and since Pat seems to understand our audience, I shall now go do so. I may even give you some impressions later.