In addition to being a rarely updating web nerd, I'm also a comic book artist. This weekend, I was going to have a table at a comic show. After gathering all my materials together (pages for sale, original artwork, sketchbooks, signed comics, etc.) I sat down to tweak up my web page. I took the site down with some old graphics, then spent a couple days gathering and updating graphics. When I went back to the computer to try updating the site -- computer crash. Complete computer crash!

So I had to head to the comic show with an old crap web page and unable to update the site.

Ironicly, the EXACT same thing happened to me last year, except I had everything completed and tried to upload the new web site, only to find that Comcast (my internet company) took down the web server upload access for the weekend as they were experiencing network issues.

I do not trust computers this weekend.

This year, I went to PAX with my year-and-a-half old son. After doing some pen-and-paper gaming across the street at the annex, he and I grabbed some pizza in the downstairs food court. As we wrapped up, a photographer/reporter from xbox.com came up and asked to take our picture.

So now, my son is featured on the Microsoft XBox website, wearing his Sony PlayStation t-shirt. Here's the full Microsoft blog post, complete with photo (tech curious readers may be interested that the Microsoft reporter took our photo with an Apple iPhone):

A Family Affair Posted August 30, 2008

I spotted Bruce and his son Christian here enjoying a quiet meal before heading back upstairs to the madness that is PAX. It does a fellow gamer good to see the families out in force, and it cuts to the core of what PAX is all about. The level of respect for ones fellow gamer that runs throughout the show is enormous. You'll find little to no brutish or crude behavior here, and that's a beautiful thing.

This year's Tiger Woods is an incredibly deep, addictive, and entertaining game. The game play is fairly unchanged from the previous year; your on-course performance once again increases or reduces your abilities. This year, the controls are a little more forgiving and a live meter in the lower part of the screen gives you a representation of your swing so you know exactly what you're doing right or wrong (NOTE TO EA SKATE 2 DEVELOPMENT TEAM: Please include this feature!).

The online features (which felt a little hackneyed and buggy last year) are fantastically integrated into this year's game play. As you play along a course, if a player in the world has recorded a record shot on this course, you are given the opportunity to challenge it. Beating someone's shot doesn't automatically replace the challenge, but you get points for doing so and EA servers are constantly keeping track of point totals and rankings throughout the day. So any time throughout the day, you can see exactly who is beating the most records (or who has uploaded the most unbeatable shots of the day).

The only reason, I've dropped the score on this game to an 8.5 from a 9.5 is that it almost seems too easy. Though I'm an average player in previous games, with only a handful of playtime, my simulated golfer was annihilating competition on the PGA Tour and most of my stats were nearly maxed out at 10. It makes me question the replay ability of the game when a poor player like myself is suddenly Super Duffer.

Though maybe it's the because the game gave me good coaching....

It looks like a ton of people are still interested in single player games. I'll throw my voice in for single-player action, too. Though I enjoy the camaraderie of meeting others online and co-op/deathmatch gaming, it's still satisfying to settle down and have quiet solo time in my game of choice. A lot of my online gaming experience has been spent searching for other players or dealing with scheduling and erratic timelines/achievements of others. Frankly, I do enough of that in RL.

Though I enjoy being able to load up an MMO of choice and socialize with other gamers on the planet, I'll probably always prefer soloing at my own pace.

I've been seeing lots of teasers and reading lots of almost new stories on new games thanks to Leapzig, but hoping that the publishers will be sharing a lot more detailed information this weekend at PAX 2008.

I'm planning to spend a lot of time with Wizards of the Coast's RPGA players (hooray for the new Living Greyhawk), but I'm really hoping to get more details on:

• The latest Need for Speed
• Skate 2
• LittlBigPlanet
• the eventual sequel to Uncharted: Drake's Fortune

And maybe even soem shred of hope that Playstation Home will be coming out before Sony starts selling the Playstation 5.... For you other pen & paper folks, I'll also be nagging WotC about when the hell they're going to be giving us all that online play they promised us at Dungeons & Dragons 4E launch.

Now that I think of it.... Can I ask around about why the hell it's so difficult to add Playstation Trophies to game patches?