Sara’s Weblog – ATEC 3325

My rabbit, Sergeant Truffles, is getting more friendly but not as quickly as I’d like. She run up to you and sniff you, but as soon as you move your hand like you’re going to pet her, she runs away. If she’s in her cage (where she can’t escape) she will let you pet her, she doesn’t seem to mind at all, but if she’s loose in the apartment forget about it. She really needs to get over this fear of being held thing, becuase we have to able to hold her to groom her and clip her nails. It my room mate and I about thirty minutes just to clip her nails. Loren held her in an old towel (which Truffles chewed numerous holes in) while I clipped her nails. But she kept squirming and trying to escape, I feel clipping her nails shouldn’t be such a huge task.

I recently heard an episode of A Prairie Home Companion on NPR. This segment places Garrison Keillor on a road trip with all of the Presidential candidates. This is ab episode from February, so Hilary Clinton is included, as well as George Bush, Al Gore, and Ronald Reagan.

This is where you can find the original audio file and the script:

http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/programs/2008/02/09/scripts/candidates.shtml

To listen to the file you’ll need Real Audio Player, which you can download for free here: http://www.real.com/

I just wanted to take a minute to express my love of the NPR show, Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me! My uncle told me about it late this summer, and ever since I’ve been hooked. It’s clever, funny, and slightly educational. If you like the Daily Show or the Colbert Report you’ll like this program. Best of all you can download podcasts of the show for free. I think the actual program is broadcasted on Saturday mornings, although I’m not sure, becuase I alway just download the podcasts.

I think this is an uderappreciated program and that more people should listen to it.

Left 4 Dead is coming out kind of soon, and I’m not sure if I’ll like it or not. It’s made by Valve, a company I adore (except for Counter Strike), so theoretically it should be awesome. My issue is the horror aspect, I typically don’t like horror movies or games mostly because I hate when things jump out at me. I’m not fond of being startled. But the game looks fun, and maybe when I’m playing with other people I can get over the pop-out-and-surprise-you- aspect of a lot of horror games.

Regardless of how I feel about the game, I’ll probably end up getting it becuase my boyfriend REALLY wants to play it, and the adds even tell you to bring your friends. I know a few other people who are going to get it, so hopefully I’ll at least be in good company.

Sergeant Truffles is adorable, but she’s still a bit timid. I bought a book about house rabbits, and it said it could a rabbit several weeks or a few months to really get comfortable in her new surroundings. Even though she won’t let us pet her just yet, she’s really fun to watch. When we let her out of her hutch she hops around the apartment. It’s the cutest thing. Sometimes she’ll be sitting still then suddenly hop straight up in the air. My room mate and I figured out pretty quickly that she can’t be left alone in a room or she’ll start chewing. She leaves most things alone, but she LOVES power cords. We tried to hide most of the cords as best we could, but you better watch out if you leave your laptop charger lying around.

You know what’s a great game? Team Fortress 2.

My boyfriend forced me to play it this summer and I’m glad he did. At first I didn’t think I’d really like it, since I usually don’t like first person shooters. Freshman year I was forced to play Counter Strike and I really didn’t enjoy the experience, so I was hesitant to try TF2.

The thing that I like a lot about TF2 is the roles, it has slight RPG aspect to it, and isn’t just a spray of bullets and missiles. It completely changes the dynamics of the game; I never thought a FPS could be done in such an interesting way.

A couple of days ago I finished Portal, and it’s one of the best games I have ever played. It was both fun and challenging and very enjoyable to play; I hope there is a Portal Two in production. One of the things I enjoyed most about the game was the dialogue from GLaDOS, especially towards the end of the game. Portal features some of the best writing I have ever experienced in a video game; it’s clever and humorous, but in a dark and cynical way, which is both very interesting and appealing to me.

I found a really interesting article on Digg, written by a blogger about his perspective on GLaDOS. You can read it here [http://www.game-ism.com/2008/04/04/still-alive-shes-free/]. It makes you view her in a different way, you kind of feel sorry for the poor girl, hanging upside down from the ceiling.

I highly recommend playing this game, it’s one of the best out there, and definetly one of my all-time favorites.

“Didn’t we have some fun, though? Remember when the platform was sliding into the fire pit and I said ‘Goodbye’ and you were like ‘Nnoo Wwaayy,’ and then I was all ‘We pretended we were going to murder you,’ that was great.” -GLaDOS