Epic

Here is a quick weekend recap. Friday night: dinner (chariot chicken) and a movie (Ben-Hur) with the Riches. Saturday: playing golf with Taylor and watching Anchorman with Melissa. Sunday: reading lots of wikipedia and going swimming.

So, yeah, Ben-Hur ... weird. I really had no idea what to expect. Pretty much all I knew ahead of time was it involved a chariot race. Before we got it Melissa reminded me that it was nearly four hours long and that's when the thoughts of epic came into my head. And then when we got it from Netflix and the sleeve had something about Jesus on it and that's when I knew I had no idea what I was getting into. It's a good movie, possibly even great, but the devil's advocate in me can't help but talk about the things I didn't like. I didn't find that the Messala vs Judah plotline meshed very well with the Jesus plotline. It almost seemed like the Jesus stuff was thrown in. I like the concept of having a main story line and having the traditional Jesus story in the periphery, but they just didn't seem to pull it off as well as they could have. As to the epic scale of everything, it's hard to appreciate it 46 years later. At times it was just like, "Stop with the horns already" or "How long is this line of centurions?" but I'm sure it all seemed grand at the time. I suppose epicness doesn't age well. Despite those last two points, I did enjoy the movie and I think it is indeed a good film.

The golf lessons I took finally seem to be paying off. After setting a personal best last time I played, I went out and broke that this weekend with a 93. Sure sure it was the airport course from the white tees, but whatever. It's a shame the place is closing down, though it's nice to know that building was never meant to be the clubhouse. In slightly related news, Mezzaluna is closing as well.

Despite the sand paint incident, the Riche condo is really coming along. It's really amazing what they have done with the place. After they get the sink installed this weekend I'll try to take pictures.

And now for a possibly lengthy ramble about my current computer game obsession, Battlefield 2. If you don't think this will interest you, I encourage you to stop reading now.

Last night I hopped online to play some BF2. I usually go into a night of playing with some sort of goal in my mind and last night was no different. Having already obtained all the kit combat badges other than sniper, one that I may never attempt to get, I decided to play as my favorite kit, the engineer. Now usually I wind up on a server, try to find a squad that is actually playing as a squad, fail to find such a squad, and then start my own. What this means is my total time logged as squad leader is pretty high but my time as a member only is low. Since the Distinguished Service Ribbon requires 10 hours of both, I figured it was time to play as a member.

So I find a free slot on a server, join a squad that appears to look good, and seeing no orders from my squad leader, I decide to just follow him around. Soon enough he makes his way toward a support helicopter and I hop in and man one of the guns. While taking off I asked the squad leader what our goal was. His response? "Points." I had no idea how right he would be.

The guy was an excellent pilot and had at least one other squad member that was committed to riding with him the whole time. We just flew around the whole time, taking points and gunning down anyone we saw with the massive mounted guns. As soon as we took enough damage, he would just fly away and me and the other guy, both being engineers, would repair the helicopter while still in it. It was awesome. If I got shot out of the helicopter, I could respawn inside since the pilot was my squad leader, and when the helicopter got shot down, which was rare, it never took long for the leader to find it again. It got to the point where I would just randomly shot at the ground in case anyone spawned and would take aim at bases way in the distance on the off chance I would hit someone and in both instance got kills. My crowning achievement was, after getting stuck in the back of the helicopter, equipping my grenades, tossing one from the moving helicopter, and actually getting a kill.

So after flag points, kills, assist points, and repairs point, how did I do? Basic Helicopter Badge, Meritorious Unit Ribbon, over 100 points, and the Silver Star. Awesome.

Those guys dropped off after the round so I figured I should try something else for the next round. Since you also need 10 hours of commander time for the Distinguished Service Ribbon I decided to apply for the job of commander. That turned out to be a good call.

Things started off fairly well, a little artillery strike here, setup a UAV over there, toss down a supply box for good measure, but things quickly got nasty. All the points were takable on the map and we wound up switching main bases. That in and of itself would not be a bad thing, but the other side quickly took out the commander assets and would not let me repair then. A lesser commander, or possibly smarter, would have quit but not me.

I sat there and issued orders just like things were normal. I did all I could by dropping supply boxes and spotting with the satellite fully zoomed in. Odd thing was, people actually started to follow what I was telling them to do. All I think of is that they could directly see the results of my actions and occasionally they actually helped. Crazy. It turned out to be a long round with lots of flag switching which led to me getting the Basic Command Badge and the Staff Officer Ribbon.

I love this game.