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And don't think that's in adoration of a Limp Bizkit song or anything.

The good part is that I had a pretty active weekend.

Friday: John Mayer soundcheck and concert. Aside from playing a pretty predictable set, he did a lounge-singer rendition of Maroon5's "She Will Be Loved," busted out with a blues track, and covered Eric Clapton. I have pictures and videos that I'm currently too lazy to put online, but I'll show them to anyone who's curious. Many thanks to Carina for having the ovaries to take me up on the extra ticket and come along. Afterward, the two of us headed to a party at the Casa de Moreno, where I was very happy to see everyone all together at once.

Saturday: Ride&Drive with Ale. It was a test session that lasted a little bit over an hour. We took a Volvo S60, BMW 325, and a Subaru Legacy 2.5 (the brand new one) out on three separate tracks, giving each of us a total of nine short runs. After finishing the runs, they submitted us to a survey and a 'gift bag' that made it clear that the whole thing wasn't really a comparison but an advertisement for the Legacy (Subaru was confident that they would win the comparison test among most drivers). I might be a bit biased, but after taking a little time with FWD and AWD, I've got to say that I love rear-wheel much more. It's a little riskier when you're toeing the line in a RWD car, but in exchange you get so much more control both going into and out of a turn. I know, conceptually you should only get more control coming out of the turn, but the BMW's traction control (and weight balance) and the Legacy's AWD systems together made the Volvo feel like a clumsy American car - it would take almost no effort to understeer it.

After the shameless Subaru plugging, my brother arrived in town and barely set his bags down before we were out the door to Charleston's, a sorta-nice-ish American chain restaurant over in Fort Worth not far from TCU. There, the three of us (Kris, my mom, and I) met up with Kris's wife-to-be-ish girl and her sister. So this story gets more confusing every day, but here's what I've gathered: Kris *is* marrying Jolie-Beth, but they don't seem to call themselves engaged. They both insist on not buying an engagement ring and spending the money on something cooler, like a trip to Europe or something. It's like they're best friends who happen to be getting hitched. It's an interesting story for the gossip freaks of the family (my aunts and cousins) to tell for sure.

The rest of the weekend was spent with Kris, watching strange movies (I can vaguely recommend Kung Pow: Enter the Fist) and spending *hours* on end playing "Horse" in Tony Hawk 3. Thankfully, I learned a couple of new things while he was here:

I CAN TOLERATE SEAFOOD. It was a "WTF, mate" moment for sure. I got dragged to Rockfish on his promise that with his guidance, I'll find something good. I ended up with a plate of blackened tilapia that wasn't that bad. The spices were great, but I've still got to get used to the texture of fish.

And! I got another music lesson. Kris kind of made me realize that I can, in fact, read chords and play those without a whole lot of effort. He helped me clear up the symbols I didn't know how to read (such as suspended and 6 chords) and now it's going to be much easier to read these songbooks I have.

Oh, yeah, I broke some stuff too. I got stuck in a bad situation on the highway on the way to the John Mayer concert. On I-30, almost at the exit for Smirnoff, there was a tire in the center of my lane. A whole, balled-up, tire. Naturally, there was traffic on both sides of me (I was in the center lane), so swerving wasn't an option. I bit the bullet and decided that running over the tire was better than hitting it in the center of my car, so over the tire I went. It took out a piece of trim, half of my front passenger wheel well, and a temperature sensor. So, the money I had almost set aside for a short trip out of town is now going into replacing those parts (and hopefully not $500 worth of labor if my mom will just shut the fuck up and realize that some car labor you can do yourself).

And I have this giant beard. Not a Tim Allen giant beard, but giant for me. I'm scruffy as hell. What perfect timing for me, then, to drop my damn electric razor and put a dent in the sheet metal thing. I could buy another metal cover and replace the blades, because they need replacing, but the razor is apparently old enough so that Panasonic won't sell the parts anymore and they just refer you to two out-of-state retailers that sell *just* accessories for things. So instead of spending $40 on parts, I'll give in and go spend another $40 I had set aside for Quakecon on a new damn razor.

Stupid how this summer worked out. I should've worked instead of going to school. Oh well. Off to go razor shopping I go.

There's a pyramid scheme in the works on the internet, and a *bunch* of Shackers picked up on it really quickly. You provide an email address for spam, take a "free" trial of something (such as AOL) or sell something on eBay, then make 5 people under you do the same, and bam - free iPod mini or 4th-gen 20GB iPod (the brand new one) for you.

We'll have a good indication early next week of how reliable this might be, but early research says yes, this might actually be legit. Aroon and I spent some time going through it last night, and we've created a strategy for getting through it quickly as possible. If everything works ideally, you can get through the system and snag a 4G iPod before it's time to move back to school.

I'm not enlisting everyone in doing this yet because if it's a BS offer (which is usually what happens in these situations), I don't want to drag everyone else into a lot of useless effort and even more spam. By Tuesday we should have that "early indication," so check back then.

Here's some of the latest tidbits on GT4:

There was a new demo version built for a tournament that took place at the 24 Hours of Le Mans recently, which included new physics code and new tracks. The game is now more precise than GT3 was, and two guys walked away with completely tricked-out entertainment systems for winning hour-long endurance races in M3s on the Nordschleife.

Like Toyota did with the GT4 demo disc, BMW released a European demo disc for the 1-series. Toyota's was locked to 2 minutes in a Prius (or the TMRC, but that's rubbish), but BMW upped the timelimit to 10 minutes, which allows a good driver to finish a complete lap on the 'Ring in a 116i. (Yeah, Nurburgring is the demo course. That's nice). I'm looking into picking this up if my PS2 mod discs will run PAL code.

Screw Need for Speed Underground, GT4 will have drag racing. But blakerson, where will we meet to race our keenly modded GT4 cars online? The Las Vegas Strip.

Pics from my Austin trip are up. Click the link to files.snagger.org over on the right. Next up: working on my very own Day in the Life post.

Remember when we passed around the copy of Masters of Doom last summer? Well, this year there's going to be another Doom book, and this one promises to be better.

Steven L. Kent, the author of the awesome books covering the complete history of videogames, was in on the Doom3 development since very early in the process and his book on the making of Doom3 should be coming out soon. I'll be the first in line to buy it.