A Final Word With Chester

I don't know quite how to explain this. Since the NES days, I've been coming home from school or work and unwinding with some sweet video game action. Also, I'm pretty cheap. So I guess that's how you explain a forced retirement of your video game football coach after 60 seasons.

During Wednesday's snow day, an unfamiliar plaque was presented after the season ended.


And a popup message followed




It was quite a run. Coach Chester Reboulet began at a school he built, led them to the promised land, and then moved on, winning 25 national titles. Due to some memory card issues, I can only account for those below - I think I'm missing one school:

Fiery Furnaces
Mississippi State Bulldogs
Duke Blue Devils
2017 Pearl Harbor Kamikazes
2021 Stanford Cardinal
2022 Iowa State Cyclones
2025, 2026, 2027 Fiery Furnaces
2031 Bowling Green Falcons
2035, 2038 Boston College Eagles
2040, 2041, 2043, 2044, 2045 Minnesota Golden Gophers
2051, 2052, 2053 Idaho Vandals
2058 University of Louisiana Ragin' Cajuns
2062, 2063, 2064 Notre Dame Fighting Irish

Farewell, Coach. You're in heaven now, leading the angels to collegiate football championships.

Quietly, The Most Annoying Thing

So, today. Work. Another post about work. What else are you going to read? Nick's blog? Unlikely.

Today I had to do one of those, "Okay, highlight the text, now go to FORMAT, click PARAGRAPH, and adjust both of those to ZERO PT and click OK." Followed by a, "There's a typo in the METHODS slide, in the title text box -- no, before this... keep going, another one... this one. You're missing the word CHILD. And you need a capital N. No, down. Down further. Yeah. There."

Excruciating. Missed opportunities for shortcut keys. Mouse misdirection. So hard to watch. Like watching a novice control Link, wandering around the map, attempting to burn Zelda bush after Zelda bush looking for a staircase. Exactly like that. Perfect metaphor.

Small Ball

I'm still progressing in a EA Sports' NCAA Football 2006 dynasty, as Coach Chester Reboulet. The year is 2047, and the Idaho Vandals just won the MPC Computers Bowl!

More interestingly, I discovered a glitch in the game I hadn't seen in my previous 41 seasons of play. The left guard on my offensive line is listed at 0'8", but he plays like he's a full foot tall.


I tried putting him at tight end, but passes sailed over his head. I handed off to him in some short yardage situations, even though the ball dwarfed him, but he couldn't bust through the line, or sneak underneath it.

Laugh all you want, but that little bastard made first team all-WAC. Seriously.

A Word With Chester

Last night, it finally happened. Chester Reboulet, the legendary EA Sports College Football 2006 coach, lost a game.

It was the first loss in over 60 consecutive games for Coach, and it came only after winning titles with Duke, Mississippi State, and Pearl Harbor University. It came only after increasing the CPU's ability to do nearly everything; it seems I finally found a level of competition where the cover three won't successfully defend a great running team.

And "great" is just the word to describe #14 Colorado's rushing attack. Led by a young (he's actually very young - not even born yet, because the Playstation is currently simulating a season circa 2020) man named Porter, CU punished the PHU defense for over 200 yards on the ground. Combined with unfortunate decisions from the PHU quarterback, and a devastating injury to PHU's #1 receiver, CU's home crowd and game plan proved too powerful.

Coach Reboulet will struggle on - he's been down this road before, winning 52 consecutive games before losing a heartbreaker, only to regroup and string together the latest record streak.

The coach is a winner.

So This Is The New Year

Gavin and I decided that this year is going to be three times better than 2005, so we grabbed some triple Whoppers today at Burger King. We always wondered what kind of a person gets the triple at Wendy's, and now we know - people that like indigestion.

Actually, Gavin was the one that felt ill afterward - I felt like a million damn dollars. I even had some double-dipped chocolate peanuts from the Nifty Nut House for dessert.

Now I'm on the couch. (I've been here all day, watching the Twilight Zone marathon, meaningless NFL games, and one excellent episode of MTV's Next.) Bobby, looking good for a guy who passed out in a closet last night, is playing Super Mario Brothers on my NES. Here's a fun fact: I've never beaten Super Mario Brothers. Not that I can remember, anyway. I don't think it's due to lack of skill - I don't recall ever struggling to beat it, I just don't think I had the desire to do so. Not when there was Tecmo Bowl to be played.

It was 60 degrees today, and I was outside for a total of 30 seconds. Sweet.

Hysteria

Andrea Mitchell was in the news today for the Darfur bullshit; as a result, I learned that she's married to Alan Greenspan. She was born in '46. Greenspan is 77 years old. Gross. Chalk one up to the maestro.

* * *

Switching frequencies on the drive home tonight, I paused when I thought I heard Def Leppard's "Rocket". A few moments later I realized my error - it was Pink Floyd's "Learning to Fly" - and promptly changed the channel. Two things:

1.> Has anyone ever, in earth's history, confused the bridges of those two songs? It's a unique personal event - the first of its kind since last week, when I was the world's only twentysomething male drinking shiraz while winning a game of EA Sports' NCAA Football 2006.

2.> Does my "Oh no, it's NOT Def Leppard" reflex (especially considering my simultaneous rejection of Pink Floyd) disqualify me for anything important, e.g. heaven or planetariums?

ghsdlkjfsa

I have little to say today and little time to write a post. See, I'm got to watch Episode III tonight, because I bought Lego Star Wars - The Video Game. The game is exactly what it sounds like, and covers episodes I through III. I don't want to play Episode III before I see Episode III. You know, because I'd hate to spoil the movie for myself - God knows what the plot could be.

Today I read an AP article about killer bees in Oklahoma, inching ever closer to my home state:

They can sense a threat from people or animals 50 feet or more from their nest, sense vibrations from power equipment 100 feet away and may pursue a victim for up to a half a mile

I could make a joke about africanized bees not being Kenyan, because they'd be able to chase you for much longer than a half mile, but I won't, because that joke sucks. Remember back in the early '90s when killer bee talk was everywhere? Made for TV movies about swarms of killer bees? Bagwell with a healthy shoulder? That jokes sucks too. This is what happens when I don't edit a post.

I read this article, too...ok, well, I read the headline. I wonder - how long until everyone has written a children's book? Is anyone not qualified to write one of these things? How do publishers distinguish "good" children's books from "bad" ones? Is someone out there writing children's books with gory plots of revenge and murder? Does anyone stray from the animal-gets-in-an-adventure tale? ... okay, I just read the McCartney article to see what the plot was - lo and behold, a frog and a squirrel get into an adventure. Fantastic. Let's all quit our jobs and write these things.

Famine Has Never Been This Fun

A few months ago I e-mailed Floyd:

Floyd,

I know you and I have had a longstanding disagreement regarding our comparitive skills as a United Nations aid worker. Here's our chance to settle the score - we'll each play one game and post our scores. Winner gets mucho Honor, loser is Ronin.

The game is at www.food-force.com
Let's have this done by Monday.
I am serious.

His computer froze before he got to complete the game, which makes me the winner. I scored as follows:

Mission 1 - Pilot a helicopter over the famine-ridden country to determine the locations of the hungry - 09608860

Mission 2 - Create a balanced diet for the hungry that also falls within your budget - 05211218

Mission 3 - Push food out of the back of a plane - 05850632

Mission 4 - Buy food from other countries and transport it to the country in need - 09327328

Mission 5 - Drive a convoy full of supplies through the country's warzone:


This was my favorite mission. 07006582

Mission 6 - Sim-Cityesque teaching agriculture, AIDS prevention, and so on to the now slightly less hungry countrymen - 07081628

Total score: 044086248. I have nothing more to say about this game.