Random Things

The term ended about a week ago here at Dominican and as most "break weeks" it's been slow. I've had a few calls and such, but nothing too severe. The big news has to be that the Pepper Construction trailers are not at the Parmer Hall site anymore which means we're closer to the building being handed over to Dominican. This summer will be very busy, exciting, and full of getting the new building ready for classes in the fall. Once there is some shape to the interior, I'll do a new photo album for the blog and for my Facebook profile. By the way, if you've not seen it, check out the links section on the right for some of the photos I've taken of the work done at Dominican over the past year. You can also find a link to out wedding site.

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Gears of War - New Maps / Annex

In the world of gaming, Epic released the Annex expansion and four new maps for Gears of War. I do like the new maps, with Subway being my favorite. All the new maps are based off of sections of the single player that we're represented in the original maps:

Garden - Probably my least favorite of the new maps, but I've played it the least. This map looks like the greenhouse you fight the 2nd Berserker in. In line with the free set of maps from last year, this map has an environmental hazard; to go into the greenhouses you have to turn off the gas or you will choke and die.

Bullet Marsh - This looks a lot like the areas outside the start of Act 4. It's a multi-level marsh setting with the environmental hazard being a generator you can turn off and then the Kryll will attack anyone stuck in the dark. Most matches seem to end up on the top middle of the map near the Boomshot. Watch out for snipers on the ends of the bridges.

Process - This uses the graphics from the end of Act 4 when you battle the Corpser. All the Imulsion around the level looks dangerous, but I haven't found a way to fall into it...yet.

Subway - My new favorite map. It's large and works best in 4 vs 4 matches. There is a large subway tunnel to fight in with derailed subway cars and a large above ground area with concrete guard rails to hide behind. Be you a sniper, a torque master, or a shotgun surgeon...you'll find something to love in Subway.

The game mode Annex adds a new spin to Gears. The other game modes rely on you sneaking around and taking cover as best you can to not get killed and then have to wait for the next round to help your team. In Annex, the goal is to hold a specific spot on the map, similar to King of the Hill in other games. After 60 seconds of being held, the hill moves to another location. To make it easy to find, the hill only appears at weapon spawn points. You also get a nice new part of your HUD so you can find it easily. Also, you respawn in between 2-15 seconds depending on how your previous life went. It seems the more good you do (killing opponents, taking the hill, etc) the quicker you respawn. It breaths a fresh air into Gears. Execution and Warzone were still good, but having Annex in the mix makes it feel new again.

Feel free to send me a buddy invite to my GamerTag - GrzeTim

Lots of Stuff...Guitar Hero 2, Dominican Happenings

Wow,

Haven't done a post in a while and it shows since I have tons to write about now:

- Kathy and I got Guitar Hero II last week for the X-Box 360 and it is A LOT of fun. I never thought I would get into a game like that, but it's very challenging and most likely the closest I'll ever come to playing a real instrument. I would highly recommend it.

- I finally got to get inside of Parmer Hall at Dominican today (4/16). I thought the building looked big from the outside. It's even BIGGER from the inside. I took a whole bunch of pictures of the inside and I have a link on the side for both pictures of Parmer and the new Parking Pavilion, which is now complete and cars have been parking in it for about a month now. You can find the links to the pictures on the right of the blog in the Links section.

- While in the Links section, you can visit out wedding site as well. Six months and counting as of last Friday. Kathy maintains a lot of that page and she updates from time to time.

Well, I have to get back to Raw...

The Plague

Well,

Raw was fun back in the first week of April. It was a good show and it was great to see it. Sadly, the day after I developed what can only be described as the worst cold / flu / ill I have ever had. I was DOA from Tuesday after Raw all the way though until the Wednesday before Easter. For the first time in my life, I got medicine from the doctor (two things, a five day antibiotic and a prescription level cough medicine). I, of course, forced myself into work Wednesday and Thursday of that week and then spent my three day weekend in bed. I'm about 100% again, almost a month later, but I still have a bit of the cough.

Of course, this pretty much made anything beyond watching TV and trying to breathe impossible. You know I'm sick when I'm off for a week and I don't get online or turn on the X-Box once. Some people at work thought I must be dead since I never miss that much work unexpectedly. But, here I am, almost back to normal.

A lot happened here while I was away. The head of my department had announced he was resigning and moving to a new job in Connecticut about a month ago. His last day is this Friday. My direct supervisor is moving up to fill his position. We're not sure if she is going to stay there full time since the original head's boss (the Provost of the university) is ALSO leaving at the end of April. The new Provost won’t start till this summer, so it's all up in the air. What do I do? Keep on truckin...

I started playing Madden 06 on All-Madden recently. Man, it's tough. The DBs and LBs seem to know where the ball is going before I decide. Has anyone played with the sliders in the AI section and found a good setting where they are challenging but not psychic?

I'm working on a post to recap the past few weeks of WWE and some Backlash predictions, which I'll have up by Friday (hopefully...).

Wish me luck kicking the rest of this cough.