While out of town, I used some spare time to play one of the few games I have installed on my work laptop: Master of Orion 2. This is a classic game. On the surface it hasn't aged too badly. Still, the more I play the more glaring its faults become.

The research system is horribly flawed; a non-creative race absolutely must tech trade or else has no access to necessary technologies. If there end up being no races to tech trade with -- either because the rest were eliminated or their tech level can't keep up or maybe even there exists a perpetual state of war -- the non-creative race ends up with maybe half of available techs. And in this game, tech is life.

In later stages, micromanagement becomes nearly unbearable. Without the ability to record a default build queue, you end up repeating the same steps over and over and over again. The build queue's limited size also adds to the tedium.

Only five ship design slots? There's six ship hull sizes alone! I usually end up sacrificing destroyers entirely not far into the game.

And then there's the AI. Don't get me wrong, I realize how hard it is to create a good AI (one that doesn't cheat, that is). But the AI players never refit their old ships with new tech. When you have limited command points and every ship matters, this is a big deal. The big scary alien fleets turn out to have quite the glass jaw when you realize most of those battleships have Class I shields that crumple like paper in the face of your death rays and particle beams.

It's a shame that Masters of Orion III was such a dismal flop. I'd really love a modern successor to the game that was so excellent for its time. While I've heard good things about Galactic Civilizations II, it lacks the tactical portion of the genre I love so much.

I recently finished up Mass Effect. This Bioware game was originally developed for the console and later ported to the PC. While this is clearly evident in some places, they did make a strong effort to do a proper port. I've heard they did a lot of revision to the inventory system, which I can't comment too much on since I haven't seen the original.

The gameplay is singularly driven by a forceful main story. There are quite a few optional side missions available, though these suffer from being A) a tad repetitive after a while and B) entirely disconnected from the plot, so you need to make an effort to ignore the constant pressure of your primary goal in order to do them.

Combat is typically fast and frantic. You can pause to give orders to your squadmates, though for some reason there is a quite noticeable pause when hitting the spacebar to bring up the orders menu; long enough for the situation to change in certain instances. Squad members are generally useful, as their combat skills are decent and most will have effective powers that your character does not. I found the game's cover system to usually work really well. This is a model you don't see too often in PC games, except for console ports. Running up and pressing against a solid object (wall or battlefield obstacle) will put your back up against it. Strafing sideways to the edge of the wall will let you peek around it and when you fire or sight, your character will peer from around cover.

The main story is fleshed out effectively. Characters all have their motivations, no matter how misguided they may be. The one question never answered is the big "Why?", but the characters recognize this and at least bother to pose the question. I had a lot of fun with the dialog options. There's a system of player "paths" in place. Act like an angel (save innocents, be nice, pet kittens) and you receive Paragon points, which open up certain options. Performing your job ruthlessly, responding brusquely, ignoring orders, and demanding payment will earn you Renegade points. I played a female Renegade and really enjoyed what a bad ass she was. (Voice acting was also really good.) The drawback to the main story is that it felt so short. If you neglect the side missions, the game will go by pretty quickly it seems.

The inventory system, apparently the source of several complaints on the console version as well, definitely could use some improvement. There's a hard limit of 150 items, and with all the weapons, mods, and ammo types you come across, it's easy to hit this limit. The problem when that happens is that you're forced to scrap the new stuff and not given the option to do so with the older items (scrapping an item turns it into "Omnigel", generally useful only for opening locked containers). There's an overwhelming quantity of mods and ammo and weapons and the problem here is that the upgrade process is just uninteresting. I'm a gun guy; I drooled over the options available in the 1.13 fan patch for Jagged Alliance 2. Even with all the varieties of weapons you come across in Mass Effect, they're all just 3 stats. They don't even look any different, aside from color (you can't even see the items in the inventory screen itself). Worst of all, there's hardly any give and take with the weapons. Some seem just better than everything else you've found. So it hardly ever felt like a matter of prioritizing certain stats over others. Equipment modifications are a little better in that respect. They're more interesting, clearly useful, and force you to choose. There's so many though and spread across so many levels (some mod types change names while keeping the same effect at different levels, a real puzzler).

Overall a really good experience. There's clearly been a lot of serious thought put into the game (vastly fleshed out backstory and history are available for reading, though optional). I wish every game was this well constructed.

I'm sure I'm not the only one annoyed by the sensationalism surrounding Hurricane Ike. As I commented to someone who was watching the pre-landfall coverage, "News organizations just love things like this." All-day coverage where they can just repeat the same scant information over and over again? Score! No doubt they pant at the thought of sending some reporter to stand in front of the crashing waves, in the pouring rain, and report on how windy it is and some people are riding out the waves, and some spectacularly retarded people decided to go surfing.

The scare-mongering was so intense that gas-lines started forming around the country by people afraid gasoline was going to run out -- and, naturally, this in fact caused some stations to run out. Prices sky-rocketed, because since Katrina gasoline sellers and resellers are happy to use any weather-related excuse to raise prices.

When we brought Mickey home last night, I knew he was happy to be out of the animal hospital. He'd been sedated for a procedure and was stil a bit groggy, but recovering. He spent most of the day on my wife's lap where she could monitor his IV drip. He wasn't too happy about the cast-like wrap of tape on his right front leg that held the IV in, nautrally. He moved clumsily in the few instances we could let him (such as when he needed to use the litter tray).

We fed him a couple of times last night, adding water to wet food and forcing it into his mouth with a wide-mouthed syringe, about a CC at a time. When it was time for bed, we brought him to the bedroom where we'd set up a cage with a bed and litter tray; a place where we could safely put him without too much worry about him moving away from where the IV hung. When we got him into the cage, though, he was not happy. He used to love being in the bedroom with us. He'd sit on the bed and purr and purr so loud. Then he's walk up and lie on your chest and smell your breath. So of course, feeling at his worst and suddenly having that joy taken away must have been worse than I can imagine. When he realized he was in a cage with no way out, he let out a little cry, the most heartbreaking sound I've ever heard. I keep hearing it play over and over in my head and it's tearing me up inside.

He wouldn't settle down, even while we were both sitting just outside the cage, petting him and reassuring him. He got so worked up, I think, that he started deep, uncontrollable panting. At that point, we had no choice but to take him out. We didn't know what to do. It felt like forever before his breathing began to calm, but it was probably something on the order of 15 minutes. We decided that since we couldn't keep him in the cage. We'd take shifts sleeping while the other sat with Mickey, making sure he didn't pull out his IV or have trouble making it to the litter tray.

When she settled, my wife, that wonderful person whom I love so very very much, decided that she was okay spending the whole night on the floor, cradling poor Mickey. And so she kept him company in his last hours. He had another panic attack in the middle of the night and she comforted him as best she could.

In retrospect, of course, I feel horrid for subjecting him to what were eventually fruitless efforts. And I don't know which is worse, the pain of loss or the guilt. Guilt over the uncomfortable treatments. Guilt over all those days of hunger. Guilt over all the times I was mean or angry with this sweet little animal over the years. Terrible guilt for knowing he was barely eating (half a dozen bites of turkey or cat food at a time) and waiting for his scheduled vet appointment (about a week later) rather than following my instincts that the thyroid meds were a bigger danger than any condition and insisting we take him to the vet right away. So how can I help but feel responsible for what happened? Deciding not to act is still a decision.

And so my last memory of Mickey is a little kitty, belly shaved for the earlier ultrasound and lying on a towel with his eyes half open even though he was already gone. And all throughout the house I keep seeing reminders of our struggle to save him: his pill bottles on the television, the little dish of the one dry food we could find that he'd eat, the cage in the bedroom. I don't write this entry to torture anyone who might be reading it. I'm not writing it to constantly remind me of the pain and loss. I'm hoping that getting this all down, getting it all out, will help me with a little sense of closure.

I'm so sorry, Mickey, wherever you are.