Mercwear.com – Curtis Morris

I just finished the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. This was the first Gladwell book that I have read and it has reminded me to always look past the surface on not only people but places and events. All too often I will look at someone and assume that their social status, success or even failure must be related to the decisions they have made in life. I still believe that making sound decisions is critical in all walks of life however, Outliers showed me that something as simple as the day you were born can have a real impact on your life and who you become.

I will not go into a full review here, there are plenty available around the internet but I will say that if you are the type of person who really enjoys the “Ah HA!” moment reading this book will make you happy =)

This is the first time I have seen a wi on a store shelf since it’s release.

The Nintendo Wii was released at 12am this morning, mine was on reserve at EB Games and they opened up at midnight for us to get our systems – thanks EB. Aaron and I went to get the system and hopefully pickup a few extra controllers so we could play some multiplayer games (Madden 2007 and Wii Sports) however EB did not have any extra controllers. We went to a few Wal-Marts before accepting the fact that anyone open at 12am was already sold out of just about everything that had to do with the new system. We spent the rest of the morning (1am – 4am) playing The Legend of Zelda: The Twilight Princess and Wii sports, we gave Madden a try however it’s just not the same with only 1 controller =/.

I woke up at 8am and headed to 3 different Targets in search of additional controllers however it was the same story at every location – sold out. I did manage to get 2 extra remotes (each controller consists of a remote and what Nintendo is calling a numchuck) and 1 “classic controller� however they were out of numchucks. Before calling it quits I headed over to Best Buy and they just happed to open early to let the people waiting for the Wii get their systems, by this time it was almost 9am and I was already considering ordering the additional controllers online.

There was a massive line of people waiting on getting their system so I asked a manager if I could just grab a few extra controllers expecting for him to tell me that the people buying systems were going to get first choice on them – boy was I wrong! The manager told me I did not need to wait in line and to take as many controllers as I want, I remembered later that the controllers are where Best Buy makes their money (I use to work there) so he did not care who bought them just as long as they were bought!

I ended up getting 3 numchucks and 1 more remote, I also grabbed the last classic controller they had too! This left me with 4 complete controllers (the most the system will accommodate) and 2 classic controllers (which are used for playing older games that are downloadable from the Nintendo Wi-Fi service) all in all I am very happy. The only thing I need now is the component video cable so I can play Zelda 480p and that is on the way from Nintendo’s online store.

Click here to see more pictures of the Wii in my gallery

I came across this clip today – it’s basically Mario and Luigi in the GTA world.. Good for a laugh.

Click here to view

I am sure that most of you reading this blog know about the recent release of Sony’s Playstation 3 game console, if not just click this link. Due to the high demand and low supply of the units there were 1000’s of money hungry sleaze bags lined up all around the country with plans to buy the units only to turn around and sell them on E-bay for huge profits. I have to admit, I was even thinking of doing this until I realized that the launch had turned into an all out dash for cash instead of a bunch of eager fans waiting for their favorite new console.

There were reports of people getting robbed at gunpoint and shot and kids getting mugged only minutes after buying their systems. I firmly believe that this launch has driven the final nail into the coffin for midnight releases and camping out to get the first few systems. My prediction is that the next console release (other than the Wii!) will be done exclusively online, which is sad however with the increasing amount of greed in our society I think it’s the only way to go.

I don’t put all of the blame on society – some of it belongs to Sony for being too slow on getting the systems out. There is a bright side of this whole thing – the people selling them on E-bay are not smart enough to realize that by over saturating the market they are going to make nowhere near the profits they are hoping for. I have even seen a few systems selling for only a few hundred dollars more than what was paid.

I have been thinking about getting a hand held gaming system for a while now (ever since the PSP came out) however I could never justify buying one, after all I do most of my gaming on the PC. I have a feeling that is about to change with the Wii only hours away from my living room so I decided to pickup a Nintendo DS lite last weekend along with the game “Club House Games�. The Wii is going to have games that tie in with the DS so this helped me make a decision between the DS and PSP.

Club House Games consists of 42 traditional board and card games that you can play online or with a friend using the WI-FI built into the DS.. Thus far I am seriously addicted to the darts game – fun stuff.

1up.com has posted a preview of their first 6 hours of play in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess for the Nintendo Wii. In short, the game is noting less than magnificent – the game play, controls, graphics and storyline all come together in what can only be describes as perfect harmony.

If all goes well (and I have take measures to ensure that it does) I will be playing my copy of the game at around 1am this Saturday, I can’t wait.

Full Story

Let me start this post off with a statement: Flash programming is hard and so is creating good flash animations.

With that said I would like to share something with you all: The Ultimate Showdown

This is the best flash animation that I have seen in a long time, mainly because it presents figures from both my childhood and present day killing each other but the animation and song are good too!

Click here to visit the site

Although I am super busy today I just HAD to post this article from Gamespot:

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6143114.html

It’s basically this asinine rancher that would like to take political office in Texas, one of his first actions if he did would be to abolish property tax and make up for the last funds by doing the following things:

* $10,000 tax on all abortions
* 100% tax on violent video games
* 50% tax on almost all sodas

You would think that something like this was a joke, but it’s real! Don’t get me wrong, there is no way this guy will ever take any sort of office but it is a good reminder that we (Texas) still have our fair share of idiots.

A buddy at work sent this to me.. It’s a craigslist.org ad for an XBOX 360, there is more to it than that so read the ad!

Xbox 360 for only $100.00

As an avid player, I have to admit that it’s hard to believe a year has gone by since the game was released. If you add all of the hours I have sat at my PC playing the game it would equal days, possibly months – so I consider myself a big fan.

To celebrate the 1 year anniversary the official WoW site has posted a time line of significant events involving the game at the link below, I have also included a link the screen shots I took while playing the beta version of the game.

WoW Timeline

My Beta screen shots

Well it looks like the “360″ was a bit rushed, my friend Aaron sent me the link below that shows it crashing with what looks like some video problems:

Pictures and a Video of the crash

I am still trying to get my hands on a few to sell on Ebay, they are going for $700+ there!

Yep, you read that correctly – I am engaged, I asked Andrea to marry me on September 16, 2005. We have been together for over 7 years now and for the last 2 or 3 months I have really been thinking of how to ask her etc, what I came up with is below.

I took her to a brand new PF Chang’s (opening night) at a new open air shopping mall near our apartment for dinner. I knew she had a big test coming up so I made up a story about winning a free meal in order to make sure she would go. Our reservations were at 9:30 and I had gone to the restaurant earlier in the afternoon to plan things with the staff and pickup a few fortune cookies.

The way I planned to ask her was to create my own message and stuff it inside a fortune cookie, this worked out quite well (I did it without breaking a single cookie!). After picking Andrea up from school at around 7:00pm we headed to our apartment (I had the ring and cookie in my pocket), we took about 45 minutes to get ready and headed out.

Andrea had received a few discount offers in the mail from a store she likes so the first thing we did upon arrival was visit Express. Andrea was totally unaware of my plans so she was as cool as can be, I on the other had was worried that someone was going to bump into me and crush my cookie.

After leaving Express we checked out the rest of the shopping center (The shops at La Cantera) which was very nice (I am sure we will be spending a lot of time there with Andreas shopping habits). Of course all this time I am still trying not to bump into anyone or anything for fear of damaging my cookie.

At last 9:15 rolls around and we head to PF Chang’s, after being seated I headed to the restroom to make sure the cookie survived (it did!). When I got back to the table we both ordered our drinks and food, then Andrea headed to the restroom – now was my chance to hand the cookie to our waitress. I asked her to place it on a plate and bring it to Andrea telling her that in celebration of opening the new restaurant they were giving away prizes and that the cookie was the game piece. Andrea took the cookie, opened it and read my message. I put the ring in front of her while she was reading the note and the rest is history.

We won’t even begin to plan our wedding until after she is done with law school, but rest assured that the engagement party is right around the corner!

I will post pictures of the ring here soon.

I have always been pretty big on the emulation scene, after all the appeal of playing all of the games I grew up with is something that I just cant fight! This weekend I discovered a way to play SNES (Super Nintendo) games in multi player mode over the internet.

This means I can play all of my favorites (Killer Instinct, Mario Cart, Mortal Combat) online with 100’s of other people! Nothing like this has been available since the XBAN era which was over long ago (1997 I think).

It actually takes 2 different applications to play online, the first is ZSNES which is by far the best emulation software for the Super Nintendo. The other part of the combo is zbattle.net which is simply a meeting place for gamers that want to play. If you are serious about your SNES games and want some great online matches I highly recommend you check these applications out.

Now if you will excuse me I am going to go play some Killer Instinct.

ZNES Home
Zbattle.net Home

This dude summoned a creature from a high level area of the game (Molten Core) to a VERY low level highly populated area of the game (the auction hall in Iornforge) once he released the pet it exploded killing almost every player in the auction hall.. This is by far the best World Of Warcraft video I have ever seen – it even made the screen savers tonight!

Watch The Video

www.Worldofwarcraftblog.com is a new site I am working on that will provide players of the Blizzard game World of Warcraft with free blog hosting space so they can write about their character and in game experiences. I have already setup some user accounts and everything seems to be going well, feel free to signup if you are a player.

I reached level 60 in World of Warcraft this weekend below are some game play stats:

Game release date: November 23, 2004
Date I hit 60: January 16, 2005
Total time I have had to play (from release until the day I hit 60): 54 days
Total time spent in game: 15 days and 10 hours
Total hours spent playing since release: 370
Average time spent playing per day since release: 6 hours 51 minutes

Addiction anyone?

I will write more about this later and post a video of me hitting 60 (Damn I am a geek!)

Many of you (including myself) play World of Warcraft, and when the beta ended just before the game went live we all felt like something was missing – this music video really captures those feelings..

Watch the Video
(22MB Windows Media file)

I threw this little app together for the stress test.. Feel free to download it if you want.. It will convert images taken with the default screen shot format in World of Warcraft to *.jpg files

WoW Image Converter

The World of Warcraft closed beta servers went down for the last time on Friday the 29th, Blizzard is going to be conducting a stress test on them soon and then it’s onto release!! All of the closed beta testers will be reunited one last time with the characters we worked so hard on during the Stress test and then we get to start all over again at release!

There is no word as to when the stress test will start, and we (the WoW community) still don’t know if the upcoming stress test and open beta are one in the same, my guess is that they are. The day before the servers went down in preparation for the stress test I hit level 40 and was able to buy my in game mount – It was a black panther/Saber which I feel is very suiting for a Night Elf Rogue (The class and profession of my character). Check out the screen shots of my mount and the end of closed beta celebrations below!

Screenshots