Solitaire games and local plane crashes!

I've just figured out that AisleRiot Solitaire isn't a type of patience game. It's just the collective name for a program that runs all these, most of which I can't even play properly: Agnes, Athena, Auld Lang Syne, Aunt Mary, Backbone, Bakers Dozen, Bakers Game, Beleaguered Castle, Block Ten, Bristol, Camelot, Canfield, Carpet, Chessboard, Clock, Cover, Cruel, Diamond Mine, Doublets, Eagle Wing, Easthaven, Eight Off, Elevator, Escalator, First Law, Fortress, Fortunes, Fourteen, FreeCell, Gaps, Gay Gordons, Glenwood, Golf, Gypsy, Helsinki, Hopscotch, Isabel, Jamestown, Jumbo, Kansas, King Albert, Kings Audience, Klondike, Labyrinth, Lady Jane, Maze, Monte Carlo, Neighbor, Odessa, Osmosis, Peek, Pileon, Plait, Poker, Quatorze, Royal East, Saratoga, Scorpion, Scuffle, Seahaven, Sir Tommy, Spider, Spiderette, Straight Up, Streets and Alleys, Ten Across, Thieves, Thirteen, Thumb and Pouch, Treize, Triple Peaks, Union Square, Valentine, Westhaven, Whitehead, Will O The Wisp, Yield, Yukon, and Zebra.

It doesn't help that it doesn't save my stats from restart to restart: Corey thinks I spend too much time worrying about these things. He says that I should try finding a different solitaire program instead, or ask around Linux forums / that program's site about how to set it up right or make it work right in Ubuntu. On another note, I think it's a good thing I am staying (close to) home today since a twin-engine plane crashed into an apartment building at Cooney / Saba. No fire, not enough fuel, and could be tragic! YIKES! (nearby roads like Westminster are closed in certain sections, which would be where I'd want to go to get to the 410 bus route :P) Corey thinks I'm a dork for "missing all the action" - I think I'm good, thanks. :P Maybe I can tag all my Blogger posts, too!


(04:10:03 PM) Flami: what's going on? anything of note?
(04:10:38 PM) Corey: Portal! which seems pretty damn cool so far :P
(04:11:02 PM) Flami: what's that?
(04:11:58 PM) Corey: it's made by Valve (the Half-Life people), and is somehow related to the Half-Life series... I think you find out how during or at the end of Portal... but anyway, Portal is a puzzle game, not a shooting game
(04:12:32 PM) Corey: you wake up in this testing lab, where they really don't explain much, and you get this portal gun thing after a while... there's a red portal and a blue portal. they're both linked together
(04:12:56 PM) Corey: so basically you get through stages by opening portals to warp stuff / yourself around
(04:13:37 PM) Corey: so if there's a red portal off on a wall somewhere, by a platform you need to get to, open a blue portal basically anywhere, and walk through and you're on that platform..
(04:14:17 PM) Corey: or if a ball is bouncing around a room, shoot a portal at a wall where it's going to come out, and maybe it'll come out the other side somewhere else in the room or even another room, wherever the other side is, and hit something it needs to hit :P
(04:14:47 PM) Corey: I just got the upgrade to be able to make both types of portals, so I won't be relying on pre-placed portals anymore... so I imagine it's going to get harder :P
(04:15:27 PM) Corey: it's really hard to wrap your head around this sometimes :P like I just solved the first bit right after I got the orange portal side....
(04:15:48 PM) Corey: I was stuck on a platform with muck around it that kills me, with a button. the button opens a door that I can't get to.
(04:16:52 PM) Corey: and it only stays open for a few seconds.... so I had to open the door and shoot an orange portal in there (it's actually orange, not red I guess :P), and then I shot a blue portal at the nearest wall, and jumped across the stuff that kills me, and just barely made it through the blue portal... taking me to the orange portal which was on the other side of the door :D
(04:18:18 PM) Corey: and there's this momentum stuff too... like if you need to get on top of something.... shoot a portal up at a wall as high up as you can, and then shoot a portal into the floor. jump through the one on the floor and the momentum from falling should carry you across the pit or whatever and get you on top of the thing... so if you can shoot one into the floor down in a pit, and jump down there, you have more momentum from falling, and will go farther once you come out the other side
(04:18:59 PM) Corey: you can shoot portals into walls and stuff and see yourself on the other side of it walking around the room, if both sides are in the same room :P
(04:20:28 PM) Corey: this is probably really the first dedicated puzzle game using a first person 3D game I've seen... it can be pretty tricky to get your bearing in the area when you're warping around it through portals all the time
(04:26:12 PM) Flami: wow... sounds like quite the game.. I'm imagining a perspective like DOOM or GOLDFINGER, though I could be wrong
(04:29:44 PM) Corey: you mean Goldeneye
(04:30:15 PM) Corey: yes, those are 3-D First Person perspective, but this is a puzzle game, not an action game
(04:31:05 PM) Corey: sounds like people think they may include this portal gun into future Half-Life games or something... where it WOULD be an action game. I don't know if that'd be good or not... it could easily be awesome, but that could be too confusing too
(04:31:28 PM) Corey: this one is some testing facility.. so they just lead you through puzzles which take you to the next testing room and stuff
(04:32:24 PM) Corey: so far, no story... aside from that I woke up in this place, and the power seems to keep crackling out for a second now and then, so maybe after a few big puzzles the facility place will shut down and I'll be on my own or something :P
(04:34:46 PM) Flami: I knew it was related to James Bond somehow :P
(04:35:46 PM) Flami: I get the difference... portal guns in future Half-Life games sound interesting, but then I'm not an expert in those! maybe it will shut down, who knows..
(04:41:05 PM) Corey: well, if you get Windows again, you should try this game :P you might like it. not sure if your computer would run it well though, it does have fancy 3D graphics :P maybe on lower settings, it'd run okay though... it's a modern 3D engine that takes some power, but the graphics in the game so far are fairly plain, and the game wouldn't really suffer any from lower settings...
(04:48:10 PM) Corey: well the signs at the start of the rooms now say /19.... so I'm at 15/19 now. hopefully that's not the whole game :P I have heard it only takes a couple hours to beat this though, so it might be...
(05:10:02 PM) Corey: oh great :P now there's live-fire androids in this level.... which means these things will probably attack me as I'm trying to portal around :P
(05:23:04 PM) Corey: now they're calling ME an android :P
(05:23:24 PM) Flami: WHAT?! THAT IS CRAZY
(05:23:26 PM) Corey: which may be true... my character has glowing purple eyes if you set up portals that let you see her from the front