Ramada Inn getting $2 million make-over is a Beloit Daily News article that appeared on the 25th of this month. It covers a lot of ground, which makes it an interesting read. Here are some amusing bits, well amusing to me.

Tejany said he had been looking to invest in the hospitality business in this area and liked the location, but he also admitted the project has been a challenge.

“I couldn’t find anything right,” he said of the facility’s initial condition. “It was hard to know where to start, the parking lot, the roof, the signage …”

How about the air conditioning? That would be my suggestion.

The big news in this article is the part where it tells about the new hotel restaurant and bar. The name (and I’m not joking here) of the place is called Cattails. And no it’s not a titty bar. Here is a bit that tells about the menu of Cattails:

The food is described as new American with an infusion of Asian, French, Hispanic and Mediterranean.

“It’s fine food served with a flair in a relaxing atmosphere,” Thompson said.

Some of the house specialties include steak Dianne, chicken Marsala, pork tenderloin thermidore, veal Marsala, chicken Parmesan and pecan crusted chicken. One entree with an intriguing name is “devils on horseback” or sauteed veal scaloppini and cappriccola ham wrapped shrimp.

Flaming desserts also are served and salads prepared table side.

I’m not sure who their target audience is with a selection of fine cuisine like this. But I can tell you I sure as shit won’t eat there. Not with a menu like that. And what the fuck does “new American” mean exactly? Of course me being a “common” employee (peon) I have yet had the opportunity to sample this selection of “house specialties”, which makes it hard for me to recommend Cattails to the guests. They ask me I tell them to go across the street.

One last bit from this piece and I’m done. This is an example of how informed employees are of the goings on at the hotel.

The conference area will be renamed the Rock River Valley Conference Center with each of the five rooms named after the counties which have come together to form marketing strategies, including: Rock County in Wisconsin and in Illinois, Winnebago, Ogle, Stephenson and Boone counties.

News to me. It’s a good thing I read the paper or it may have been ages before I knew about this one. This kind of thing is nothing new. Follow the link at the beginning to get the bits I didn’t cover.

Here is a neat little program I found. Here is the info on what it is and what it does (cut and pasted from the site):

IECapt is a small command-line utility to capture Internet Explorer’s rendering of a web page into a BMP, JPEG or PNG image file.

You can use IECapt for example for batch processing, to make screenshots of the entire web page rather than the currently visible area or in a CGI script hosted on a Windows web server to provide access to IE’s rendering engine from non-Windows computers.

I can’t think of any real reason to use this little program. But it’s handy for taking a whole screenshot of a webpage. It does seem to default at a screen width of 800. I say that only because most sites are best viewed at 1024×768.

Ok I don’t often reveal secrets regarding myself. But today I am. Here it is. I hate being called buddy. I just can’t stand it. Nothing annoys me more. I really mean it. Even my friends don’t refer to me as a buddy. And my friends would be the only people I would allow calling me buddy. Of course people who don’t know me just won’t know this. If you read this you can consider yourself warned.

Of course there is nothing I can do to stop people from calling me buddy. It is a free world. I just wanted to make sure that this is known. An example of the usage buddy in a sentence (just so everyone understands what I’m talking about):

“I’m sorry for being late to work Buddy.”

There I hope everyone is on the same page now.

So I’m playing the Xbox game Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and I’ve been enjoying running around in this rpg. It’s a game made by Bioware, the same folks that made the great Baldurs Gate games. Kotor (as it will be refered to here on) plays more like the above mentioned Baldurs Gate games than Bioware’s other rpg Neverwinter Nights.

And this is a good thing. Really it is. I mean come on who doesn’t want to have fake romances with computer controlled npc’s? And this little point is were I may have a problem with the game.

First let me explain the setup here. As long as you haven’t had your head buried in the sand for twenty years you will probably guess a Star Wars game is going to let you be a Jedi. And I say this because I don’t want to ruin anyones experience with the game.

My biggest problem is I want to be evil. I like being evil. I’m not Gawain evil, but I enjoy taking candy from babies. So I want to become a Dark Jedi. No problem there right? Wrong. I picked this goody two shoes Jedi chick and she constantly rides me about my “so called” evil deeds. And some of the things I do don’t really rate high on the evil meter.

How bad is it to threaten a weakling npc vendor with death so I can get a discount? Not that bad the way I figure it. But oh no, the game gives me a Dark Force Point! Bad me. And the nice Jedi chick tells me she’s so disappointed in me. This should be no big thing, right?

Well I notice that I reload my game and I go and be all nice with this little puss vendor. I pay full price for my purchase and everyone is happy. Except me. I didn’t really want to reload my game. It was some kind of guilty reaction to a stupid computer game character. I mean how bad is my life that I have to worry about how computer characters think about me?

Not a lot really is the answer I expect I will get. But of course I do plan on murdering this nice Jedi bitch and getting some nice Dark Force points for it. Of course the damn game probably won’t even let me kill members of my own party. But hey I wouldn’t be truly evil if I didn’t try.

Originally appeared at Digitalalloy.com

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is everything I hoped and heard it was. Wow what a game. If you dig Star Wars and you have a Xbox go and get this game. You can see the influence of Baldur’s Gate in this game. The boys at Bioware have another hit on there hands.

I’ve already become a Jedi and I’m working through Dantooine right now. The D20 rules work perfect here and my guy is one duel wielding bad ass. I need to find another saber. Right now I’m using a lightsaber and a vibro sword. A cool thing they did with items is allowing some items to be upgraded. Kind of like the way items are handled in Diablo 2.

I guess I’ll be on vacation from Dark Age of Camelot for a little bit. But don’t worry I’ll still check in now and then while I enjoy my time in a good Star Wars rpg.

It appears the isp provided to the hotel is picky about what you try to view.

Funny how it lets my site get past it’s blocking filter. I wonder how long it will take for my domain to be blocked?

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is a game that I must have. It is a game I want. It is a game I need. Yeah I’m a geek. More to the point I’m a Star Wars Geek. But this game has what a Star Wars fan wants and needs in a rpg. Forget the mmorpg based Star Wars game. Buy this one.

If you don’t believe me read this. Yeah it’s just an IGN review. But if what this guy writes is true, well I will find myself very busy with this game.

And it looks great. I just can’t wait to get it. It’s in stores today. And I will be camping out the local Gamestop if I have to. I may even need to take a break from Dark Age of Camelot for this one. But not for to long of course.