I don’t do game reviews very often because, well… I really have no time for games. But every once in a while I’ll get sucked into playing something and sticking it out until the end (Sid Meier’s Pirates has done this to me more than once, even though I can now consistently beat it – oh how I love driving out the Spanish!).

I’ve been reading Penny Arcade for years and, even though I’m clearly not their target market and I occassionally have to do some Google work in order to get the punchline, I look forward to their updates. When I discovered they were coming out with a game, I was intrigued. When I saw the trailer and learned it was a bit of a mashup of game geekery, Hovecraftian mythos and other hijinks, I was downright excited. And when it finally launched a week or so ago, I dropped the $19.95 and downloaded it. I just finished it a few minutes ago (the song at the end is cool, geeky and entirely apropos. I laughed my ass off).

This was a FUN game. It was short, it took me a bit of time to really get the dynamics of fighting down, and it was chock full of the kinds of in-jokes that PA readers love, but non-readers will be baffled by. Those were really the only shortcomings. Once you get the fighting down, it’s actually pretty slick. Apparently, it’s similar to Final Fantasy in that it’s turn-based fighting – you wait until a party member has either their inventory, attack or super attack circles filled, then select the appropriate action. When it’s their turn, they perform the action and all of their circles empty out. I especially like the D&D style “Roll for Initiative” before each battle, which does occasionally roll a natural 20 which allows the winner to have immediate access to their top attack.

The game autosaves at critical junctures in the adventure, so you don’t technically need to sweat it, but you can save at pretty much anytime. The only time this matters – and I LOVE this aspect of it – is when you just want to save because you’re done for the night. After each battle, any characters that have died are automatically resurrected and brought to full health, even if all of your characters (there are only three in your party at most at any time) get knocked out. For a casual gamer like me, this makes the game a bit easier and more friendly to play and doesn’t create that much frustration. They know I’m just going to save and reload after every lost battle anyway, so they’ve saved me the trouble. For them, it means they can push it a little in terms of difficulty – I ran a bit too far ahead at one point and went up against some rather powerful enemies that I couldn’t quite defeat. The fact that this didn’t hurt my game made it easier to bear when I lost.

You can also call upon three different “friends” who come to your aid and give some amount of damage to all of your opponents at once. They, too, have circles that must be filled before you call them. Most of them fill only once every one or two battles, so you need to be judicious with their use.

But the best part of the game is the humor. There are loads of clickable items in the environment that display snarky, humorous or profane bits of text about them. You collect various items throughout the game – explosive “Hot Toddies”, for example, which are described as “a tragic waste of alcohol” – that are loaded with humor. If you’re easily offended by jokes regarding bodily fluids and wastes, foul language and mildly excessive mime gore (you read that correctly) then you’re probably not a fan of Penny Arcade and, therefore, ought to just avoid this all together.

For the rest of you… I’d at least recommend going through the PA archives first, then getting the game itself if you aren’t already a PA fan. It will make the game far more enjoyable.

And, as I write that last post, my father calls to tell me than a tornado warning has been issued for the city where he lives – in SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA! Global warming isn’t real my ass…

I genuinely think the California Supreme Court’s overturning of the gay marriage ban is a tremendous step forward. I’ve long believed that any two adults who come before friends, family, the law and whatever God or Gods they believe in to declare their commitment to one another do nothing but strengthen the institution of marriage. This is a truly positive, progressive decision for anyone who believes in the sanctity of marriage and I’m glad the courts came down in favor of human freedom rather than more discrimination.

The little Delegate Assignment toy over at CNN.com is pretty cool. It has allowed me to play hypothetical games all primary season long. Now, it’s proving the point that more and more pundits keep making – it is a virtual mathematical impossibility for Hillary Clinton to clinch the Democratic nomination.

Assume first that all of the current Super Delegates will continue to support whomever they have committed to supporting and the remainder are just waiting until the convention in June. Clinton would have to win at least 86% of the vote in all five remaining primaries just to break even with Obama. Not the 67% she won in West Virginia (which I think says more about the state than about her candidacy) – 86%! And this is assuming these remaining states don’t award any delegates to contenders who receive less than 15% of the vote, which effectively knocks them out of the race.

So, what this tells me is the only way she can win at this point is if something dreadful happens to to Obama. Something like him dying or he decided to leave the race because he’d rather spend more time with his family, or the rumors of him studying at a madrassa as a child are not only true, but he is actually Osama Bin Laden in disguise! Even then I’d bet he’d get more than 16% in Kentucky.

She’s within her rights to continue driving herself into deep debt, to continue pushing her campaign faithful on a tedious, fruitless death march toward nothing, to continue arguing her electability while registered Democrats continue to prove her wrong. Had she gracefully bowed out after the loss in North Carolina and disappointingly close win in Indiana, she might still have some political clout. Perhaps she could be vice president or take a high-level cabinet position or something. Now? I wouldn’t touch her politically with a ten point poll (see what I did there?). The win in West Virginia is, well… a fluke. It’s really too little too late, quite honestly. To pin the future of the campaign on one win – albeit a solid win – amidst a raft of crushing losses is embarrassingly short-sighted. And the continued insistence that the Michigan and Florida votes be counted reeks of desperation – they made their decision, they knew the consequences, their votes are null and void. If those voters have anyone they should be angry with, it’s with their state party leaders, who ought to be run out on a rail for what they did.

The bottom line: why would I want to vote for a presidential candidate who can’t do math? Her insistence on seeing this campaign through to the end only makes her more unelectable. I mean, how easy will it be to put up attack ads against her, pointing out that even the Democrats didn’t think she was ready for the position?

While I’m bitching, I’ve got a bone to pick with Howard Dean, the Democratic Party National Chairman. The first party leader who weeks ago said that Hillary ought to drop out because the campaign is tearing the party apart should have been publicly pilloried. Here’s the spin they should be using: We’re seeing a new era for the Democrats and for progressive political change in this country. It would be one thing if we had just one solid candidate who will shine through in November, but we have two amazing, competent candidates who, in addition to being historical, are also fierce competitors against anything the weakened Republican Party can throw at them. Our party is practically deadlocked between these two amazing candidates and the numbers at the primary voting booths, which look an awful lot like the larger numbers we typically expect from the general election, prove how strong this party has become. We shouldn’t call for one candidate to drop out, we should be celebrating the vibrant, healthy debates on policy and the future of the country this primary season is generating. This is a rallying cry for all of those in this country who are tired of the corrupt political gaming and fear mongering that have been a hallmark of the current administration. The Republicans are so weak, in fact, their current nominee is someone Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry extended the vice presidential ticket to in 2004! We have nothing but admiration for John McCain as a politician, as a war hero and as an individual who seems committed to bipartisan resolutions to the problems that plague this nation. But he is supported by the same gang of individuals who used poorly collected and poorly vetted intelligence to turn our focus away from protecting this nation from Al Qaeda’s international terrorist network and instead dragged us into a senseless, endless war in Iraq, a country that had absolutely nothing to do with the attacks that occurred on 9/11 or the organization responsible for committing them.

Howard Dean seems content to let the bloggers and Daily Show do all his work for him while he and his team wring their hands over the destruction caused to the Democratic Party by – yes, I’m going to say it – the democratic process. Good God, man… this is an incredible opportunity to highlight the party’s strengths demonstrated through BOTH of these candidates! It’s entirely possible to do this without endorsing one over the other. Instead, the Dems are doing what they always do – standing on the sidelines like a character played by Woody Allen hoping that it doesn’t all fall apart before their eyes. The Republicans eat our lunch election after election because they are masters of spin. They can lie like mad and never get caught. The Democrats are in a situation right now where the truth itself is sending a powerful message, and they’re just standing aside and letting it play out rather than capitalizing on it, while idiots like Rush Limbaugh and the folks at Fox News denigrate the candidates and bolster their support for John McCain, who looks downright sane at this point.

I’ve already tossed my hat in the Obama camp’s ring. Clinton says he’s all talk, but, frankly, I feel this nation could use an inspiring voice, one that lifts us up and encourages us to be the nation we know we can be instead of the voices we’ve heard for the past seven years encouraging us to hide under our beds and duct tape plastic over the windows. 9/11 made the world a dangerous and scary place – not because of the attacks on the World Trade Center, but because of our nation’s response. We have watched complicitly while our troops are sent to defend us in our name to a nation that posed no threat to us. We have cowered in fear while our government has passed laws intended to spy on us and keep us in line, eroding the personal and civil liberties we had come to value as hallmark rights in the land of the free. What we need now is a voice that encourage us to rise above the dark times and do what’s necessary to bring this nation back to where it was, at the apex of western civilization. I don’t feel Barack Obama is some super hero who can do this on his own, but his words of inspiration – which I hope will follow with acts of courage – will help lift every one of us up and inspire us to make a difference. He seems to me to be like the mythical John F. Kennedy who made a promise to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade, encouraged thousands of young volunteers to join the Peace Corps and make a difference in the world and inspired so many of the current politicians and individuals I admire today. Obama is our generation’s Kennedy, and I’m looking forward to eight years of hope.

So, like I said yesterday, I’ve resisted talking about baby stuff here because, honestly, it drives me nuts when other folks drone on about Jr.’s cute little habits and sayings and whatever. The other reason, though, is because of the suprising sense of terror I’ve felt over this whole thing.

We’ve known pretty much from the moment it happened that Danielle was pregnant. Due to some somewhat minor fertility issues, she had to undergo a round of hormone treatments which I equate to dropping a gigantic target for me to hit. And we did so, clearly successfully. The fact that we’ve known for so long and that it wasn’t a surprise has made it so that we’ve experienced just about every part of this pregnancy.

Recall that the last time she was pregnant, there were difficulties right out of the gate – the hormone levels didn;t quite jive well, the heartbeat was difficult to find (but we found it), her mood swings were FAR more violent than expected and she had a rather impending sense of doom over the whole thing. A mother knows, I guess, becuase we learned at the nine-week appointment that the fetus had stopped being viable not too long after we heard the elusive heartbeat.

In stark contrast, this pregnancy has gone remarkably well. Yes, she’s had mood swings, but nothing completely out of control. She’s been nauseous off and on, but she wasn;t throwing up every morning. And every appointment has been nothing but the best news – strong heartbeat, active baby on the sonogram monitor, everything well within normal limits. Even with all that, though, there’s a raft of things that could’ve gone wrong and, despite my best efforts, I just could not help but worry. Between mom;s death, the miscarraige and various other things that have happened recently, I’ve just not been prepared for more tragedy – we’ve had enough for a while.

So I grit my teeth, tried not to worry and inadvertantly did the worst thing possible – distanced myself from things. I didn;t want to prepare a nursery or look at baby furniture or read past the current week in the baby books for fear that it wouldn’t turn out well and I;d have all of these reminders of it. I’ve tried to be the good husband to my pregnant wife. Don;t get me wrong, I’ve been excited this whole time, but I’ve been tempering it with, “Well, don’t get your hopes too high.”

We tried to do a CVS test a few weeks ago, where the doctor plucks a piece of the placenta, which contains some of the baby’s genes, so we could be sure the kid was all right in there, but, due to an anatomical anomaly, the doctor was unable to reach the placenta. The benefit of the CVS test is that it happens at about week 11, so there’s plenty of time to make any necessary preparations or decisions based on the outcome. It’s not as accurate as the amniocentesis – and it’s FAR more invasive – but it gives you a stronger hint of what may be coming. So, instead, we scheduled the amnio for th 14th week, which is a squeaker.

First off, let me say that both tests were actually Danielle’s idea – I’m not a fan of using my wife as a science experiment, so I wouldn’t dare push or even suggest these things to her. But she was gung-ho on it because, as she says, she doesn’t like surprises.

The amnio was surprisingly quick and easy and, according to Danielle, not at all painful, though a little uncomfortable. The needle was not nearly as big as people say. All told, it was a breeze – the needle they used on the hormone injections caused more problems then the amnio. They told us we’d have the results in 7 to 14 days, but expect 14 days due to the backlog.

This was an excruciating two weeks. The amnio screens for all kinds of things – neural tube defects, genetic drift, genetic abnormalities like various trisomies, some of which can lead to Down Syndrome or, worse, a short-lived baby. You’re required to see a genetic counselor first and, though she tells you the chances of your child having each potential issues (generally 1 in 400 for each of them) all I could think was, “Criminy, 1 in 400! I do NOT like those odds!”

Our friends Claudia and Phil had their daughter Ceci the same day we did the amnio. A couple days later, Dani and I went to visit them. I had looked at the pictures and saw the videos Phil sent us and was very, very happy for them. They have a very happy, healthy baby. I also felt a little jealous – what if our kid wasn’t as healthy? What if something went wrong? It was bittersweet and I had a difficult time enjoying myself during our visit as I could feel all these fears racking up inside.

For two weeks, I prepared for the worst. I’ll be honest with you, “trisomy” was the word I was dreading the most. I’m just not prepared to handle that. Perhaps I’m weak, perhaps I’m narrow-minded, but I just didn’t know how we’d be able to take care of such special needs. I admire those who do – that’s not an easy road. Danielle practically counted the days. When seven days passed, she leaped every time the phone rang. They told us it would probably be 14 days, so I didn’t get my hopes up for a call until Sunday, with two days to spare.

When the call came yesterday, I had no idea who Dani was on the phone with. She ran into the office with a big grin, looking at me expectantly. I finally figured it out and gripped the chair. When she got off, she told me it was a boy and that all fo the tests came back A-OK. I leaped up, scooped her up in my arms and screamed. I couldn;t put her down. Every visit to the doctor when we’ve seen the kid on the sonogram, I’ve been excited. Every test that came back OK was like a small weight lifted off my chest. This one, though… Oh, man. I finally feel like I can be TRULY excited about this. It’s a HUGE stone off my shoulders.

Look, I know that a million things can go wrong from here, but this was a big milestone. It’s more or less the promise I made to myself – you can be all fearful and whatever until you get the amnio results back, then you need to relax and start enjoying this. The results are in, everything’s swell, and I finally feel free to be excited. We rushed out to Babys R’ Us last night to see if they had the bedding set Danielle had chosen for a boy – cute little planes in a pattern called “In Flight”. It’s been discontinued, but still available on clearance at some stores which is why we’re getting it now rather than registering for it. Today, she announced that the baby bedroom set she wants – crib, changing table with drawers, dresser – will cost around $900 and the chair she wants for the room for when she’s breastfeeding the kid will be about $700. Which means I really ought to be getting back to work rather than writing this.

That we’re having a boy is completely secondary to me. As excited as I am about it, I’m more thrilled that, so far, the kid is healthy. Dani’s at the halfway mark and is really the most adorable pregnant lady ever. Grumpy, but adorable. The kid won’t start kicking for a few more weeks, but apparently she should start feeling the “butterflies” any day now.

As for the fatherhood thing, my biggest concern is money, as is typical with every father. Recall that, the last time I learned she was pregnant, I quit my job to start TechKnowMe. We’re doing well, but we could be doing much, much better. I honestly don’t question my parenting abilities – I have plenty of examples or parenting, both good and bad, to learn from in my life and my overriding belief in all things is that, no matter what, I’ll muddle through and persevere. As for Dani, who only tolerates other people’s children and is concerned about her ability to be a good mother, I think of my own mom. The two of them are similar in so many ways (and different in so many others, so it’s not THAT creepy). Mom ultimately only enjoyed being around one child – her own – and she was genuinely the best mother I could possibly hope for. I’m convinced the same will happen with Danielle.

So, with the newfound excitement and all that, assuming I have time, you can expect more baby-related posts I guess.

Even though this is my personal site and blog, I’ve been resistant to talk about baby stuff here. But, well…

We just got the results back gtom the amniocentesis genetic testing. Everything looks good, the kid is healthy… AND IT’S A BOY!!!!

Still sort of debating the name but, based on a dream Danielle had back when she was only a few weeks pregnant, we’re leaning toward Dustin Robert Zazueta.

I’m so happy I could cry, and I’m not kidding.

Yes, it’s odd the causes I get behind sometimes, but the proposed act raising the standards of what is considered “sexually explicit material”, thus banning certain magazines at military bases, including Playboy and Penthouse, is ludicrous. You have young men and women risking their lives for what the government tells them is a patriotic reason, and you want to strip them of the same freedoms we enjoy as civilians? Not in my America, dammit.

I do have a cause: It’s obscenity. I’m  for it.