Arg, my power was out all yesterday evening! I come home from a tiring day of work, and I have no freakin power. And I was all psyched to beat Bioshock on Hard while playing for the good ending. Now my entire gaming schedule is a day behind. Guess I will be up late tonight.

Weird that the power was out. It was a sunny day, no wind, no rain. I have no idea why it was out for 3 hours. Probably some drunk drove his van into a power line. I wish my community had underground wires. The neighborhood I want to move into, once it is feasible to sell my house, has underground wires.At least it came back before going to sleep. I can't sleep when it's hot, so the AC is a must.

I just clicked the Top 10 link at the top right of the page for the most annoying enemies in video games. I must say, most of it was a big question mark to me. So here is my own personal list of the most annoying character's I've ever faced in video games, in no particular order.

10-Zombie Dogs - Resident Evil series - fast, agile, and comes in packs. You almost never escape an encounter with these mongrels without significant health damage. Luckily, they go down easily, but hitting them is not a small accomplishment.

9-Beholders - Neverwinter Nights - Similar to the odious Malboro from FFVII, this bastard caused every negative status effect on the party. Better hope your fortitude check holds up against the paralysis, otherwise it's game over man. Even if you survive the initial attack, the enemies that are often found alongside Beholders will take advantage of your impaired condition to tear you apart. Best if killed quickly and mercilessly.

8-Cliff Racers- Morrowind - The biggest improvement in Oblivion was being free of these sky menaces. At least the devs had the decency to change the music to combat whenever one approached. Still, you could be frantically searching the skys and the damned thing would be hiding behind a tree or outcropping. Try to snipe one from a distance, and it always seemed to move just before the arrow/fireball connected. And that annoying warble-scream...

7-Spider Splicers - Bioshock - Even with all my plasmids and weapons loaded and ready to deal death, I stil shuddered to hear the sound of ceiling rubble falling down. Sure enough, some genetic reject crawling toward me from above. Bad enough that they're so flippy dippy, but also pretty tough.

6-Medusa Heads - Castlevania series - I cannot believe these did not make the GameFAQ article. How many of us have perfectly timed that jump just to get knocked right back in by an eternal swarm of disembodied snake nests? If I never see one again, I shall die content.

5-Lakitu - Super Mario Bros - lob Spinys at me, will ya? Jerks. These guys made me so mad. The later levels of SMB are hard enough without Lakitus hovering overhead. I much prefer the video taping incarnation of Mario 64.

4-Purple Whales - Bubble Bobble - I don't know if that's the official name, but gamers of the 80s will remember these bastards. They bounced all over the screen like a demented ping pong ball, and if you ran out of time, they went turbocharged and nearly impossible to bubble trap. I know there were a lot of enemies like them, but I hated the purple whales in particular.

3-Wall Master - Legend of Zelda series - I gotta agree with the GameFAQ article on this one. To this day, I stay away from walls, at work, in sports, and everywhere else. Nothing like retracing your steps over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.

2-Purge Troopers -Star Wars: The Force Unleashed- Just stomping along, blocking everything I do, and sending rockets up my rear whenever I turned around. Unless you have your Force Lightning maxed out, these guys are going to make you suffer.

1-Marlboro - Final Fantasy 7 - also in agreement with the GameFAQ article, those gawdamned Marlboros from Final Fantasy games. You better hope somebody equipped Ribbon, or your whole team is going down. I remember being infuriated in FFVII, watching as Cloud destroyed my whole team while Berserked. Hates em!

Now that the wifey is gone for her internship, I have a lot of free time. There is much to do, like cleaning, home repairs, and yard work, but still a lot of down time. Of course, everyone here knows what to do in such a situation. I will game, and it will be glorious. I have such a long back log of good games to play. I just scratched SCIV off the list (fun, but still not as good as SCII), and I am eagerly awaiting Force Unleashed. In the mean time, I am blazing through Bioshock on Hard difficulty (with no difficulty, hah!), and after exhausting my meager PS3 collection, I have at least a dozen PS2 games to play. If I have to be a B-class bachelor, this ain't a bad way to do it. Of course, the Wii backlog will not change, since the wife took that with her.

There was another major storm last night. I normally don't mind a storm, but I mind a storm when my neighbor has an enormous cottonwood hanging over my house. Despite being classified as a hardwood, all the branches that have fallen on my property were quite soft. This tells me it is rotting where it stands, which makes sense because it is as old as the neighborhood (60 years),near the end of its normal lifespan. So I really need to talk to my neighbor and see if he's willing to get it heavily trimmed on my side. I do know that if it damaged my property, it would be on him to pay for repairs.

So if I go a few months without a new post, just assume death by cottonwood.