I'm back in the Carolinas with family for the Thanksgiving holiday, so the note will be short and sweet. Swung back through South Carolina to see my grandfather in the retirement community where I lived with him this spring. I never thought I'd think of that place as coming back to an old neighborhood, but it did feel like that, especially seeing everyone I met in my time there.

It felt like coming back to campus after graduating, actually. Except the freshmen are my senior.

Some highlights:

Swiss Study Documents War Crimes Committed in 19 Games
'Modern Warfare 2 in 60 Seconds' is 1:15 Long
NCAA Basketball 10 Review: Some Shining Moments
The One About the Guy Who Married a Video Game
The NIMF is No More
No Less of a Memory - The Human Drama of Video Game Sports

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Bear, my cat, has been behaving a little weird lately. I think the crap weather here in Oregon is getting to her, because it's darker than California and the wet weather means she's indoors more often. Bear usually would hang out in a kitty bed behind the TV, or in one of my dresser drawers. But this week, she's taken to hanging in the tool closet, up on the towel rack over the commode and, all of today, in front of my keyboard. It's like trying to type around a furry meatloaf.

So if there were any typos, misspellings, errors or libel this week, blame the cat.

Some of what you missed:

Leaked Survey Tips Off MLB 2K10 Cover Athlete
Odd And Odder Mario Sightings In New York
Laser Engraver Blasts Out Super Mario Theme
New Super Mario Bros. Wii In-Game Tips
Nintendo's Temporary Mario Museum, The Video Tour
PS3: It Only Does Kidnapping ...
Jersey GameStops Break Street for Assassin's Creed II, L4D2
Stick Jockey: Maybe the Greatest of All Time, but not In Its Time

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I'm happy to report that tomorrow I'll finally get my car registered, my Oregon license plates, and complete my emigration from California. Believe me, I feel the eyeballs on me every time I drive to the Safeway. Californians have fled north in droves ever since the collapse of the economy, and are largely blamed for taking away jobs, or at least driving up the competition for them. I take pains to explain I brought mine with me. But then, nobody believes me when I say I write about video games, regardless of where I come from.

Some of what you missed:

Northeast U.S. GameStops Selling Modern Warfare 2 Early - Update
Plumbing? You Want-a Aisle 7
Bleszinski: Borderlands is Diablo for a New Generation
Gearbox Boss: Valve is Behaving Like Fanboys
Visually Impaired Gamer Sues Sony
Valve's Multiplayer Calculus: (360 = PC) > PS3
NCAA Football, and the Science of Subjectivity

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Time was, forgetting to adjust your clock back to standard time was like finding an old $20 bill the first time you put on your winter coat in November. You'd wake up, something wouldn't feel right, and remember you had an extra hour of the most blissful slumber awaiting you.

Nowadays, the process is almost fully automated. My computer gets its time from a server. My mobile phone gets it from the network. The cable box from the provider. I even have an alarm clock, though it only cost $10, that has an automatic DST feature.

So when I woke up this morning and shambled into the study to begin work, I sat down at the computer, something didn't feel right and I thought, wait! I've got an extra hour to sleep! On my way back to bed I sat down, picked up the alarm to set it, and realized its time was the same as the computer's. And the cable box. And the cell phone.

Technology's onward march delivers one more convenience, and robs us of one of the simpler, sillier pleasures in life.

Some highlights of the weekend:

NBA Live Micro-Review: More than Pick-Up Hoops
Infinity Ward Removes Modern Warfare 2 "F.A.G.S." Video
Kotaku's Super Huge Pumpkin Patch (Part One)
25 Kill Streak in MW2 Delivers You a Really Big Bang
Strippers or Counter-Strike - Which Gets a Gamer's Attention?
Using Trophies to Deliver Big Game
Valve: Left 4 Dead 2 Demo Did Not Reveal DLC Names
With NCAA 10, EA Guns for Two Shining Moments

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Like my birthday note, this one's gonna be short and sweet. I've worked every day since July 17, and every weekend since mid-May. I've got the coming week off, weekend included, and it starts right about ... now:

Highlights:

OK, This Wiimote Mishap? We're Calling Not Fake.
Modern Warfare 2 Server Petition ... Sigh ... at 21,000 Sigs and Counting
Miyamoto, Asked Why Peach Isn't Playable, Looks to Skirt Issue
No Mercy in Left 4 Dead Hospital "Reviews"
Xbox Live Update Isn't Limited to Just Twitter
New Modern Warfare Matchmaking Service Will "Definitely" Reshape PC Community
Mass Effect 2 is NOT Coming to the PS3
Re-Creating a Stadium Before Its First Pitch is Thrown

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After tomorrow my car is officially like Airwolf. No, smarty, Ernest Borgnine is not coming over to ride shotgun. I mean it will be a vehicle whose existence is not acknowledged by the government.

That's thanks to the California DMV. In mid-August, after I moved here, I started the process of registering the car here. Because it's financed, the credit union back in San Jose has to get the title, send it to Salem, Ore., and then they get an Oregon title and I get my plates. The bank did its job. The California DMV somehow managed to lose the title they'd printed up. And thanks to some law whose purpose escapes me, California won't let you request a title more than once in a 30-day period.

Now, my California registration expired at the end of August. Oregon lets you get two 21-day temporary permits within a 365-day span. So my 42nd dayis tomorrow and then the vehicle will be officially unlawful to operate. I was told the DMV had honored the request for a replacement title on Sept. 28 but it'll still take three weeks from then to print it and probably another two for it to go through the mail twice and reach Oregon.

I'll look on this as a positive, and a way to test out if I really am dependent on the use of a car. Springfield and Eugene have an excellent bike trail system and I take advantage of it regularly. In fact, I have not gassed up my car since Aug. 22. The car is a great convenience, and frankly, the social stigma of not having one is part of why I'm not considering selling it. But it wouldn't be the end of the world if I had no car.

So tomorrow will involve a large laundry run, and a big trip to the grocery to load up on all of the big things I can't stuff into a backpack. And then the car goes dark until I get my plates. Which means I'll be riding a bike to the mall for Brütal Legend tomorrow and Borderlands the week after. Believe it or not I can do this on bike trails, which actually has me fired up.

But yeah, California. I'm not at all surprised. I don't think any state employee there gives a crap anymore. Not that I blame them.

Some highlights from the weekend:

NBA Live 10 Review: Amen for a Revival
Street Fighter, Rendered in 15 Pixels
Last Two Left 4 Dead 2 Campaigns Leaked?
Prop Billboard Gives Up Resistance 3 Date?
NBA 2K10 Review: Ball, You - Man!
NSFW: Topless Weirdo Shows Off His Neo-Geo Collection
It's Bad When The New Yorker Trolls You Over a Game
Fils-Aime on PSPgo: "What's the Benefit?"
Kojima Weighs In on Obama's Nobel Prize
It's Not in the Game - Should it Be?
Kotaku Originals: Porn

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Today is my big brother Fletch's birthday. Yes, it's a week after mine, even though he's 2 years older. I'm certain my father, in a cost-saving move, convinced Mom to conceive on the same dates so that we'd have a childhood full of "and this is for both of you" birthday parties and presents. But I thwarted Dad's evil plan by arriving a week early.

Anyway, this is about Fletch. Readers might remember him from the epic discussion (and illustration) of Pac-Man's BMs not long after I joined Kotaku. He was also the avenging angel on a go-kart when one of the neighborhood little brothers was beaten up by a bully.

Fletch was the oldest on the block, which gave him a de facto leadership position. Around the time I was 10 and he was 12, we'd been playing war down in the kudzu with plastic ratatat guns and tennis balls for grenades, armaments that did nothing. So there was a lot of pew-pew-pew, I-shot-you-no-you-didn't-yes-I-did-punch-hit-cry-MOMMM!!!! controversies, increasingly litigated to the point that we were no longer having good old, fun war. Fletch called a council of the three factions - me and him, the Harrell kids, and then the unaffiliated mercenaries from other neighborhoods, to finally agree to some rules.

In what was the childhood equivalent of the Geneva Conventions, we all agreed that from that point on, war would not be fought on Hawthorne Road without weapons that fired something less lethal than a BB. Could be rubber bands, could be squirt guns, whatever. There needed to be visual proof, not overwhelming surprise, the implication of an ambush, or the infinite imagination of an adolescent boy. Fletch and I figured we had the advantage because, as paperboys, we had an unlimited supply of rubber bands and we'd been shooting those at each other for years.

Most everyone lit off for Dr. Perry's scrap wood pile to hurriedly nail together two pieces in a gun shape, and string rubber bands around a nail in the barrel, firing them with our opposite hands manually. Fletch, however, disappeared for a solid week to work on his weapon. I'm not lying, he constructed a pistol with a functioning trigger at the index finger.

I can barely remember how it operated. Structurally the gun was the same as ours, two pieces of wood, a grip nailed to a barrel. The barrel had a notch cut through it horizontally, that's where you loaded the round. You strung the band back and hooked it on a firing mechanism at the rear of the barrel - the "hammer."

That was actually the extremity of one long piece of composite - aluminum cut from the plates of our father's printing press, wrapped in, of course, duct tape. This vinyl-metal composite was a long thin strip that ran from the hammer, threaded through a deep notch in the butt, so that it remained flush, and down to the grip, where it angled at 90 degrees to form a crude trigger. Basically, it was a flex-mechanism; pull the "trigger" on one end and the "hammer" at the other would slip forward, releasing the rubber band and firing it down the length of the barrel. It was stiff enough that you could rest your finger on the trigger without firing. But close your fist like you mean it, and zap. Fletch happily demonstrated it to me, putting a round in my eardrum.

It was by far the most accurate and advanced weapon of the old Kudzu Wars. Like all the great sidearms of lore - Wyatt Earp's Colt Buntline; Doc Holliday's nickel-plated .44, Billy the Kid's Schofield revolver - this sonofabitch also had a short, mean and very utilitarian service history. But it was similarly possessed of legend, one destined to outlive all who ever saw it fired, and all it ever fired upon.

Fletch kept the pistol in the bottom drawer of the bedside table by his right hand. One day he went off to a boarding school and I went looking for it. But it was gone. I don't know where it is now.

Some highlights from the weekend:

Modern Warfare 2 "Infamy" Trailer: The War Comes Home
Molyneux, Asked About Natal/Fable, Jokes About His Assassination
There's Something in the Box ...
K8
Spies Dig Up 20 of 23 Spec Ops Names in Modern Warfare 2
Eminem on DJ Hero Renegade: "The S-t is Dope"
NHL 2K10 Review: Thin-Ice Capades
A Virtual Golfer Looks Back On - and Ahead to - His Tournament Career

Today is my 36th birthday. Rather than ruminate about what that all means, I'm gonna get the hell out of here and enjoy it. Hope everyone else has a great remainder of their weekend.

Some of what you missed:

Borderlands' Unique, and Semiofficial, Preorder Bonus
Tokyo Game Show King of Cosplay: Day Two
New Street Fighter IV Info "Maybe Monday"
A Nitpicky Easter Egg - and Spoiler - in Halo 3: ODST
NFS: Shift Crashes at PlayStation Store Screen - on a 360
Hands-On With Bayonetta - The PS3 Version

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It's funny what the mind archives sometimes, and the reveries these things inspire. This week I found a 1968 Swiss franc in a pile of quarters dispensed by the laundromat coin changer. I looked it up online, halfway fantasizing I'd found something rare. I've never seen a Swiss franc before.

Turns out 1968 was the first year the coin wasn't minted in silver. The U.S. quarter made a similar transition in 1965. And that reminded me of a guy I knew back in Cooperstown, N.Y. about 12 years ago. He would save quarters he found from 1964 or earlier - in addition to the date, you could tell they had silver because there's a reddish-orange band around the reeded edge. Once he had enough he'd smelt them himself and make something out of it. A ring. A charm. Another lump of silver to be combined with something else down the line.

Pat was his name. I can't even remember his last name, but I can still recall his spaced out demeanor and the deadpan hippie humor he'd toss around. Pat carried himself like a stoner but the guy was a lot more intelligent and resourceful than he projected. He introduced me to alligator - as a food, not a live animal - during a cookout one July. We made sandwiches out of them. Something about reducing a deadly top carnivore to a goddamn sandwich still makes me laugh.

Cooperstown is known as the home of the National Baseball Hall of Fame, but it's unforgettable to me for the people I knew there, like Pat. And Missy, she worked with Pat in the same grocery store over the summer, then went back to Russell Sage and played goalie for them. I think she went up to Seattle and became a physical therapist. And the Pioneer Park kids: Havlik, Ralph, and Lonnie. Havlik was a busboy, and once bragged to Steve Carlton on Hall of Fame weekend that he was going to get laid after work. Carlton gave him a bottle of wine off the table to help the endeavor. I know Lonnie went to the Culinary Institute of America. Not sure about the others. I haven't spoken to them in a decade.

Anyway, here we are. Back at the Swiss franc. I don't know who put it in a roll of quarters. They probably thought they were handing something off to someone else. How right they were:

Some of what you missed:

Buddhist Monk: Games Satiate My Desire for Aggression
Halo 3: ODST Review: The More Vulnerable Edition
Pokémon Menstrual Pad, Yours for Eight Bucks
Help Wanted: Arena Healer/Death Knight, 20 hrs/wk, Apply Within
Seriously. This Should Be Illegal.
Bootlegged Virtual Sex Toys Get Second Life Sued
Where Madden Plugs a Gap, Another Sees a Running Lane

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The dirty secret here is we're all mindful of our traffic. Why not? The running total is right there beside every story, and I refer to it when I write this note to tell you what the big stories were the past two days.

Assigning a number to a big story is not fundamentally a bad thing. In 18 months here, I've found that figure gives me a closer understanding of my readership's preferences, interests and demands than I ever had as a newspaper reporter, when the circulation was a rule-of-thumb guess that rarely moved, and was most likely inflated.

And yet some days, I'm not sure the pageview count creates the kind of relationship that's good for either side.

This weekend's report included a major reveal about a game releasing Tuesday; a peek inside a dead studio working on a sequel to one of the most famous franchises ever, and a neat story about a teenager raising $3,000 to fly a major studio chief to Australia to look at his mod - not to mention a sports column that took a couple hours to report and write.

And the single-biggest traffic winner? Implied tits on a headline roundup. Sure, the image choice was mine, and was deliberate. But I don't know whether the hits make me smug or disappointed.

The news value of weekend posts is always a hot topic on my shift; I'll remember this the next time the subject comes up in discussion. It often does.

Some news you might have missed:

A Final Look Inside GRIN's "Fortress"
Is Left 4 Dead's Crash Course Coming Sept. 23?
'Fly Gabe Newell' Raises $3,000
Nintendo Files the Trademark to End all Trademarks
Got Red Baron Source Code? It's Worth $1,500
All 22,802 Words in Scribblenauts

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This weekend I thought I'd be writing about how I'd decided to re-grow my General Zod beard. Then Dad went bicycling and had a close encounter of the handlebar kind.

Long story short, he went cycling with Mom on her birthday Wednesday and flipped ass-over-teakettle, taking a handgrip to the gut. Because he got stuck right on the scar where he'd gotten an appendectomy 41 years ago - incidentally, an operation for which Mom drove him to the hospital, before they were even married - this created a very bad hernia, requiring emergency surgery.

I called Dad in his hospital room Friday morning. "You think you feel like shit," I said, "Teddy Kennedy just woke up with the worst hangover ever."

"You're lucky that wasn't funny," Dad said. When your abdominal wall's been compromised, it doesn't take much to make you laugh until you cry. "Imagine getting kicked square in the balls," he said. "Now imagine your balls are your stomach."

(Note to commenter ZenGaijin: Explaining over IM your "Fupa PS3" comment, and other synonyms, caused Dad intense pain this afternoon. "God damn you," he told me. "I had to put the computer down when I broke out in a sweat from the pain from laughing.")

Dad told me about hearing all the Code Blue calls coming from the ICU, which were canceled seconds later. And not because the patient suddenly got better. "They got the do-not-resuscitate wristbands on," he said, "so I checked mine to make sure, since I was out of it when your mother admitted me here."

The nurse popped in and Dad said he had to go. "She's listening to the gurgling in my abdomen through a stethoscope," he said. "I so want the Alien to burst out."

Some of what you missed:

MC Hammer. Zombies. Achievement. That is All.
Is PS3 Slim Slower than PS3 Phat?
DJ Hero's DJ AM Found Dead in New York
Kotaku's Top 5 List of Top 10 Lists
Fashion Model Says Beaterator's Coming to iPhone
Stick Jockey: The Art of Calling an Unseen Game

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So I've taken to carrying my passport with me, not that anyone with as little hair as I have should ever be reasonably carded, regardless of what the "We ID Under 65" or whatever card up front says. Haven't had to use it yet.

But it makes me wonder why it is I have to take this much care to be able to prove who I am before setting foot out the door.

Some of what you missed:
Ozzy At BlizzCon: F***ing Amazing
GameStop Brings Forza 3 to PS3
Blizzard: Lack Of StarCraft Lan Is "No Big Deal"
Microsoft Responds to Xbox Failure Rate Claim
Booth Babes, Cosplayers and Mascots: You're Not Doing It Right
BlizzCon Cosplay Round-Up: We've Got Purple Girl
In Moral Debate About Shadow Complex, Both Sides Have Their Say

When I moved in to my new apartment, I knew there was no way my old couch was fitting through the door. And I was right. The frame must have been three inches narrower than its shortest axis. I kept the damned thing in the garage for a couple weeks and finally sold it to a neighbor.

But I really do need one, as much of my ass's day is spent in this desk chair - either facing north to work on the computer, or facing east to play a console.

I need a couch that is about 28 inches at is narrowest, just so I can lounge about like a normal game-playing sloth. Maybe once the U. of Oregon reports back the furniture gray market will open up and give me what I need.

Some of what you missed:

The Best Buzz a Gamer Can Get, And How To Get More Of It
Vick's Madden Ratings: Worse, but Still Dangerous
Kotaku Approval Ratings: Wolfenstein
Chad Ocho Cinco Wishes to be Called "The Black Mexican" on Xbox Live
List of Warcraft Expansion Content Leaves No Rumor Unturned
Madden Launch Returns to Its Roots - for One Weekend Only?

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After a month in Oregon I can honestly say I've never seen any insect population as aggressive as the spiders up here. If whatever you have remains motionless for more than 12 hours, it's getting webbed. And they work fast when necessary. This week, while working, I looked outside my window and spied one frantically wrapping up a fat housefly it had snared. It dined on it for a day, then I noticed the carcass fall off in a light breeze. I'm wondering if the spider was done eatin' on it, or if this was an "aw, come on man!" moment in its eight legged life.

They are resilient, industrious bastards, I give 'em that.

Some highlights this weekend:
Madden Simulates NFL Season; We Offer Predictions, Too
The First Football Game in Cowboys Stadium
Mario was Put in Punch-Out Without Permission
Latency Makes Multiplayer a Real Bitch on Mars
EA Denmark Drops Brütal Legend's Complete Soundtrack
Sports Ads: Everything You Want in a Video Game - and Less
BioShock 2 Beach Event Sends Its Message in Bottles

We had an unusually prolonged service disruption today; I know very little about what the problem was, or its cause, but I do know Gawker Media staff noticed it immediately and were working on it, late into the afternoon on a Sunday. Everyone's frustrated by such problems, but I hope they know that, at least from the writers, that we appreciate the hard work on a day off.

For the readers, we're sorry that many of you had trouble seeing what we had to offer today. Kotaku continued to post normally under the idea that whenever this blew over, folks would join their regularly scheduled programming, already in progress. Please do catch up with us now that everything's back to full strength.

This week is pretty special in my family. Dad's birthday is July 20, an easy one to remember, as he watched Apollo 11 reach the moon on a black and white TV on his 20th birthday, knowing the world would never be the same again. A year and five days later he married Mom, on the first Saturday after his 21st birthday, when they could do it officially and for themselves and with no one else's approval or consent.

Mom was a sorority girl at UNC in 1968 when she strolled into The Daily Tar Heel offices, looking for a gig. Dad was the lecherous managing editor who "interviewed" her, said he liked "women who knew how to use big words," and hired her. Wayne Herder was the editor-in-chief who vowed to fire both their asses if Dad wouldn't stop looking up Mom's skirt while a live edition was on the floor.

We routinely sentimentalize dates like birthdays; there are paper hats and cake and candles and any number of poignant motifs. But for me, the day that has the most to do with my existence, and my brother's, and the 35 years of memories I am blessed to have, is when Mom and Dad got hitched in Washington D.C., 39 years ago Saturday. Since then the family has lived in different houses and across different states, done different jobs and led different lives. I'm not sure that where we are, right now - what we do and how we get by and whatever we can hope for - is anything we ever imagined. I do know the last remaining permanence in my life, from the first day of it, is their marriage.

Evie Stevenson and Rebel Good are today 60 years old. But whenever I think of them together, I always imagine them as college sweethearts. Young forever. Kids, really.

Some highlights while you were out:

Booth Babe Hauls Off on Dante's Fiasco
Marvel Super Hero Sackboys Coming To LittleBigPlanet
Insert Kopeks to Enjoy This Goat-Carcass Polo Game
Comic-Con Cosplay Stories
A Visit To Flynn's Arcade, The Home of Tron
Wii Sports Resort Review: More Motion in the Ocean
Valve's User Forum Foreshadowed "Spitter" Months Ago
EA Apologizes for 'Sin to Win' Booth Babe Promo

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Today we put out our first installment of Sunday Comics, aggregating the best of gaming-themed comics from around the Web. This isn't the first time I've put together a page of strips and panels.

When I was 13, after much pestering, Dad made me the "Comics Editor" of the newspaper he published. I was in charge of subscribing to, managing, cutting out and pasting up the funnies and the features, like horoscopes and "Frank & Ernest." The first thing I sought to do with my newfound power was to completely remake the page, toss out the old cheapie strips that no one knew or cared about, and rebuild the section with ones more familiar.

When I brought this idea to Dad in his office, he listened without saying a word to me making my case. When I finished, he swiveled in his chair to the adding machine, punched up a bunch of numbers, hit the yellow total button and ripped off the tape. He circled the bottom figure with a no-print blue pen and handed it to me. $52.71. It's what the paper spent weekly on syndicated features. "Come in under that," Dad said, "and I don't care what you get."

The next four weeks, I schlepped an Editor & Publisher syndicate catalog to my 8th grade classes and informally surveyed friends and teachers. After school I went down to the office and blind-called sales representatives at the major syndicates - Universal Press, King Features, United Features, North American Syndicate. I was lucky my voice had broken by then; most dealt with me as an adult. I haggled them down to dirt-cheap rates and got them to knock the postage cost out entirely, a tactic suggested by Dad. We were small enough to get a cut rate, and as a tri-weekly, we skirted the exclusive rights the Winston-Salem Journal had to certain strips. I was shopping for comics and could buy any I wanted, so long as I didn't go over that $52.71.

I was close to cementing my two crown jewels - Peanuts and Garfield, at the time the two most popular strips - with a guy whose name I shall never forget: Victor Oelffson, of United Features. I had told him and every other agent not to call me before 3 p.m. as that's when I reported for my shift. Well, one day, Vic did, around 2:30, and got our classifieds manager. "He hasn't gotten off the school bus yet," she told him. When I called back, both Peanuts and Garfield had gone back up to full price. They didn't make the final package.

But we did get a much-improved comics page, anchored by the magnificent Bloom County. For that one, I told the rep at the Washington Post Writer's Group he could name his price. I had promised our sports editor, Richard Craver, that we were absolutely getting that. When Berke Breathed retired that strip, we replaced it with Calvin and Hobbes. And I still have, sitting in a file here, the final camera-ready mailings of both strips, plus some old Far Sides thrown in for good measure.

"Comics Editor" was something of a joke title. They gave it to whomever was unlucky enough to get the job of pasting up the page. When I took over, the syndicates started mailing things to OWEN GOOD: COMICS EDITOR. I always did enjoy seeing, every week, a dozen new envelopes with my name over that title.

Some of what you missed:
Ten Years Ago: "Halo is the Name of This Game."
Sunday Comics
Mario Teaches Typing Warcraft

Game Characters Looking for Love in All the Creepy Places
Discussing a Dangerous Game - for Girls
Yes, I Know About the Damn PS3 Slim Video [Update]

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Since you and I both just finished up epic drives across our great nation, I figured I'd address this to you. I'm curious, however, if your journey with your family was anything like mine:

Did you guys:

• See any "game crossing" signs on the highway, particularly in western states? Still kicking myself for not taking a picture of that. I imagined a family of Final Fantasy carts and discs, trundling across the pavement like ducks.

• Encounter multiple 10-mile, single-lane shutdowns for federal stimulus highway construction? It's like we're trying to road-stripe our way back to prosperity or something.

• Stay in any No-Country-For-Old-Men motels? If not, might I recommend the Capri Motel in Twin Falls. It's $50, and free wifi to boot. But the bathrooms are about the size of a high school locker. I found it quite ironic that, in Idaho, I was unable to take a "wide stance" when using the john.

Some of what you missed this weekend:

The Most Bizarre 5 Minutes You'll Spend This Morning
Toad Revealed to be Ungrateful A-hole After All
Gizmondo Honcho Gets 18 Months in Fängelse
Trademark Troll Is At It Again
360, PS3 Stand Better Chance of Seeing Tatsunoko vs. Capcom Sequel

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This weekend, on my westward push I returned to Boulder for the first time since I was a newspaper reporter here, more than five years ago. Kotaku alumnus Adam Barenblat has put me up in his shanty apartment, where I managed to bomb his commode. Yesterday we visited some of his friends for a cookout, and I found posted in the kitchen that shrine to his inability to finish a beverage - alcoholic or otherwise.

Today I went to Denver and caught up with some folks I used to work with there. Drove around Cheesman Park, my usual run when I was the most fit I've ever been. It's 1.6 miles, and I used to do it three times around no problem. I'll probably give it a shot tomorrow.

Some highlights from an abbreviated weekend
LucasArts Announcing New Old Game On Monday

Taste the Painbow, Belgian Rofl Honored in Gamertag Awards
inFamous Defeats Prototype in Cross-Dressing Playoff
Valve: PS3 Orange Box Players "Got the Stepchild Version"
Donkey Kong Easter Egg Discovered 26 Years Later

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You guys know that I've been in South Carolina for the past four months, looking after my grandfather while he recovered from a rather serious fall and head injury late last year. The good news is that he is well and capable of resuming an independent lifestyle in his home, with the privacy and dignity that he deserves.

The bad news - or at least the bittersweet - is that I have to say goodbye. Tomorrow I am leaving South Carolina. Granddad and I of course have discussed this for more than a month, so the departure is not so sudden as to be sorrowful for us. It's more that I'm melancholy at leaving behind his friends - delightful, fascinating, gracious people, the kind of people whom I never would have taken the opportunity to meet were it not for these unusual circumstances. And as cliché as it sounds, I never thought I would miss them.

Because their generation is given to more privacy than ours, I'm initializing their last names. But I'd be remiss in leaving without a mention of people like Mary B., truly a friend to our entire family, who got the greatest letter of recommendation any Gramercy Park co-op resident ever got; Bob and Rene R., still high school sweethearts after 65 years, and a perfect couple straight from central casting; Jane M., who loves football and the South Carolina heat, and puts up with no crap; Austin and Sally B., a horseman and horsewoman to the last, full of remarkable stories in a life spent with those beautiful creatures; and, of course, men and women of remarkable and humbling devotion to their spouses - Ket, Chuck L., Anne G. and, of course, Fran C., who misses Sam very much.

They're all at least in their late 70s. I doubt they or even their kids would ever have any cause to read this site. But I'd like it on the record that their friendship really does mean something to me. And that I got a little choked up when I left.

Some weekend highlights:
Alright, What Exactly is "Xbox 360 Beta"?
Marvel vs. Capcom 2 not Releasing June 29
There Will Be No "New Game Plus" in Mass Effect 2
EA Might Let You Remap Fight Night - Through DLC
That Hulu That Your PS3 Won't Do

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