My laptop is back. I scooped the sucker into my bag and took it to the office. The techie there discovered that it wasn't the hard drive, but the laptop chassis that was faulty. He plugged it into another chassis of the same model and the hard drive sprang to life. I guess the proprietary HDD connector got knocked asunder and just wouldn't read the drive anymore. Luckily, this means that all of my data is intact.

It also means that I can get back to editing podcasts during the week. I'm in the midst of editing Episode 100 and recording some video of the lame bag-o-deuce games we brought up for the 100th Episode Bonus Video. Sword of Vermilion video, here we come! Speaking of podcasts, we did not record today. I am on call for work, meaning that at any point during the day I could get a call from the office to go in and help test or fix something, which would take an unspecified amount of time. Better to just save it 'til next week.

So, E3. I saw so very little of it, because I had no internet access thanks to my dead laptop. I got a glut of info on Friday, and here's what's jumping out at me:

- The Conduit (Wii) - I don't think this game got much coverage outside of IGN. It's a first-person shooter on Wii, and in my opinion, it looks like quite a bit of fun. The controls look dead-on, though with the advent of Medal of Honor Heroes 2, no first-person shooter on Wii should ever come with shoddy controls. I mean, come on -- just learn something from the studios that do it right. (i.e. NOT the Red Steel team.) This game looks like one of the rare occasions in which a third party developer tries to push the Wii's graphics a bit. The environments look a little crappy, but the character models look pretty spiffy, for once using normal mapping -- or something that simulates normal mapping. Their details, then, end up popping off the screen pretty nicely. I expect the environments to get better as development continues, and I'll be a bit disappointed in the lack of effort if they don't.

- Final Fantasy XIII (X360) - Wow. What a big win for Microsoft. As I own a Playstation 3, I would have been able to play this either way -- but if there are any enhancements that come to the game by way of Xbox Live, of course that might sway my purchase decision. There's also the fact that my Playstation 3 sits in the living room, and I usually like playing videogames from the comfort of my bedroom so that my father or roommate can watch television as they please.

- God of War 3 (PS3) - Yeah, it's God of War. Yeah, I'm definitely looking forward to it. No, this wasn't a surprise and nor did I really care much about the trailer. It was like half a second long and just showed him being pissed off. The spoiled brat in me would have liked to see a little more.

- Wii MotionPlus (Wii) - Dual Shock. I hope Nintendo looks this up in the history books. Remember what happened? The original Playstation controller ended up getting completely dumped in favor of this puppy. The dual analog sticks presented a significant enhancement that designers could take advantage of. Splintering the market, though, was a risk. Do developers take the time to develop for a controller feature that not everyone would have? No matter -- by standardizing the Dual Shock as the PSone's controller, Sony ensured that this would become less and less of a worry. In this case, Wii MotionPlus is being bundled in with Wii Sports Resort. That's not the ideal situation, but it's better than what my skeptical side predicted Nintendo would do (sell standalone, and for some asinine price).

(Yeah, I'm taking two paragraphs on this. Sue me.) I'm not sold, though, on one of the Nintendo personnel's contention that "maybe it'd be best to keep the technology limited to a few games". I'm paraphrasing of course. But when I read that, the first thing that popped into my head was, "e-Reader". Remember that thing? Compatible with... how many games? What about back in the day -- Super Scope 6. Yeah. Besides, think of how beneficial Wii MotionPlus would be if used properly in games. Right now, a lot of people complain about the very vague approximation of your movements with the current WiiMote. I found the swordplay in Red Steel mostly dull and clumsy. What about those clumsy, unresponsive gestures that constitute "punching" in Wii Sports boxing? Now, fast forward to something like Top Spin 4, should this game ever surface. Think of it being played with Wii MotionPlus. Think about how much more responsive your top- or back-spin on the ball could be. Standardize this thing, Nintendo. If you're going to wait for a year before you do, at least make it affordable. And for chrissakes, don't make two games for it and let that be the end of it.

- Netflix (Xbox 360) - My sister has a Netflix subscription. I have XBL Gold. 'Nuff said. (For those who are still wondering, those who have XBL Gold and a Netflix subscription can use their Netflix account on their 360s without paying extra for the service.)

-Home (Playstation 3) - I'm not mentioning this because I'm excited about it, but rather because I felt sorry for those eager to hear SOMETHING about the software. Instead, there's a 30-second trailer and no release date. How much did they really progress on it? If a lot, they sure as hell didn't show it. Still, this isn't as bad as my biggest gripe, which as...

- Storage Solution, or lack therof (Wii) - A short story. Yesterday I went online with my Wii for the first time in months to do some WiiWare/VC shopping. I pick Lost Winds, but instead of being allowed to pay for it, I'm told to move my data onto an SD card. Wii, off. Mood, sullied. Yes, I have an SD card. Yes, I've moved data before. It's still immensely annoying, though. I was ready to play some of Lost Winds right then and there, and I really wasn't in a waiting mood. Now, if Nintendo let us play stuff from the SD card -- or if they had a mass storage solution available (like I don't know, a USB hard drive?), I wouldn't have this problem. Was this at all talked about during the conference? No. Instead we were regaled with tales of how much Nintendogs and Pokemon and Brain Age sold. All right. We get it. You're the market leader (at least as of the recent NPDs).You're making grandma happy. Now please make ME happy.

So, almost exactly a week ago, my 60GB Toshiba MP3 player -- a Toshiba Gigabeat S60, to be exact, a great device with a great interface and nearly-effortless Windows Media Player compatibility -- died on me.

Last Friday, the day after I landed back in New York City from my weekly Pittsburgh commute, I went looking for my digital camera only to find out that I couldn't find it. I likely left it at my friend Scott's house the week before, where I had gone to enjoy burgers on the Fourth of July, but I couldn't be sure. Text-message inquiries resulted in no responses.

Well, on the same Friday, I went to Circuit City. The night before, I won the Guitar Hero tournament that my friends and I participate in weekly and Triggy (the grand puba of the McAleer's Pub GH Tournament and all-around awesome hostess) was giving away a $50 gift certificate. I put this $50 to a new 80GB Zune. Problem 1 solved.

On Sunday, I was cleaning up my room -- which was long overdue for a good "put your crap away" session. Among the rubble I found my digital camera, safe and intact. Scott then called me literally minutes after to apologize for not getting back to me sooner -- he had been stricken with a nasty case of the E. Coli that was spreading around, and he had trewn upz on the subway. But he was better now, and even though I had already found my camera I thanked him for getting back to me. Problem 2 solved.

There exists, sadly, a problem 3: The laptop I was given by the company I work for is now brain-dead. The issue began Thursday, when I was waiting for my flight back to New York City in the Pittsburgh airport. Somehow, I got a BAD_POOL_HEADER blue screen of death. A reboot solved it, but then it happened again. Putting the laptop on the floor -- instead of my lap, where it wasn't completely lying flat -- seemed to do the trick for a moment, and I had noticed that whenever the laptop tilted more than slightly due to my very fast and very harsh typing, it would blip. The tilt was in the direction of where the hard drive sits in the laptop, and BAD_POOL_HEADER is -- I think -- a symptom of a few hard-drive or otherwise memory-related issues.

Getting home, the thing seemed to run fine and on Saturday, it withstood over 90 minutes of podcast recording.

Problem was, the podcast was longer than 90 minutes. That's right -- our backup 100th Episode recording was cut due to a Blue Screen of Death. That damned BAD_POOL_HEADER issue again.

Thankfully, as I hinted above, the laptop is ONLY used as backup: All participants record their own voice files on their own computer. In the event that one or more of our voice files gets corrupted somehow, the laptop is there recording a stream of every participant coming in through Skype. It's not as flexible, of course -- I don't get to tweak out someone farting or coughing or saying something to their pets -- but it's a sufficient backup, and this weekend, the backup is all that was lost. IF everyone's voice file is stable, which it usually is, then I should be fine to edit.

Except I can't edit it. That laptop that's used to record our backup recording; that laptop that I use courtesy of my firm; that laptop that blue-screened constantly -- is the laptop I also used to edit our podcasts when I was on the road at work. So why don't I just edit a little, save, edit a little, save, edit a little, save?

BECAUSE THE BLASTED THING WON'T EVEN BOOT INTO WINDOWS ANYMORE. Right after I enter my password and it starts loading up stuff, and yes I've tried it in Safe Mode both with and without Networking, it BSOD's -- only this time only with a STOP error code and no descriptive (but still ultimately useless) words like BAD_POOL_HEADER. Just STOP ERROR X0000B3 (9823498234 2398423984792834789 239842973569729625). Those numbers were made up, of course, but it might as well have been those.

But wait -- that's not the final state it's in. After multiple tries of rebooting, and getting kicked out again, and then trying to run the Hard Disk Drive test from the BIOS (it passed the first "quick test"), it froze. Now, when I press the power button, the fan turns on. But the hard drive activity light stays dormant, and the screen stays pitch black. It's done this 10 times in a row now, and I've given up. It's dead. I have to go into the office on Friday and turn it in for repairs. Along with it MIGHT disappear ALL of my files -- work-related files.

Not only that, but it was my window to the outside world. The client site I work at does not allow access to personal webmail and blocks 90% of the sites I visit on a daily basis (thank god ESPN and Ars Technica are still allowed). So that laptop was my only recourse. You know where I'm friggin' typing this post from? The PC that sits at the bell stand in the hotel I'm staying at. Soon some rotten little kids will want to come by -- and yes I know it's 11:15PM, but it's summer vacation for them -- and look up Sponge Bob or the latest Digimon or maybe even some terrible pornography that no kid their age should be looking at.

So I just left this rant to you, gentle readers and those who don't give a ratt's butt about me but find my ranting halfway-semi-quasi-entertaining, so that you know how annoying dead laptops are. For those who listen to the podcast, well, it'll probably be coming sometime next week or this weekend. For those who don't, well, if I don't answer your emails until I'm just about due for sleep (like right now), this is why. Because I have to play bellhop in order to communicate with the outside world.

Oh yeah -- and Wii MotionPlus: w00t ... that is, of course, until it's revealed that they'll sell it to us for $34.99 apiece and don't standardize it into the Wii's technology as they did the Dual Shock and Dual Shock 3, leaving developers to wonder whether or not it'll be worth their time to actually put the effort into it if no one's going to use it because it's not standardized. (Oh hey Xbox 360 hard drive! Do you think people are learning yet about how not standardizing things can bite you in the left buttock? No? Me neither.) /cynical (I actually love the idea, but I'll be pissed if they -- as I facetiously suggested -- don't standardize it. They HAVE to... even though you know Nintendo will make buttloads of $ even if they don't. Ok, they HAVE to for MY sake. )

In addition to the Top 10 category suggestions for our 100th Podcast Episode I posted to the fellas below, I just emailed them three more categories. Can't think of two more, though... and we have to record 10 hours from now! Oh well, c'est la vie. Here are the other three categories in case you haven't sent in your emails yet. Remember, you MIGHT get a prize if you're the 10th one to email us, so get cracking.

Top 10 podcast moments (if we can remember???) (that's 60)
Top 10 Movies based on games (this one is specifically for Tony to rant about ^_^) (that's 70)
Top 10 STRANGEST games we've played (that's 80)

Also, if you could offer ten (10) words of eulogizing, that'd be swell. My Toshiba Gigabeat S60 died on Tuesday/Wednesday so I'm grieving by playing with my new 80GB Zune.

Remember: please send e'rythang MAILBAG at TRIGAMES dot NET or this form here.

UPDATE: REMEMBER, we record on SATURDAY. That's July 12th, and we start at NOON EST. So get your stuff in WELL before then.

I'm just brainstorming here, but off of my brainstorm you folks could create some nice mailbag contributions. I'm thinking our group comes up with 5 groups of top 10 lists, and have the rest come from you, to yammer on about, as follows:

10 most...

...significant industry happenings relative to our gaming lives. I.e. no "when I beat Mario Bros. for the first time!" but rather, "when the Dreamcast died, it affected me as such..."

...****iest bag-o-**** games. Put out a most memorably crappy list.

...games we wish we played but haven't.

...memorable gameplay moments in our gaming history (positive things) -- THIS is where we'd say "when I beat Mario Bros. for the first time!"

...outrageous reasons for why Ethan is showing up for this episode

Now that doesn't mean I want each and every one of you to email us TEN of everything. Just give us two or three, and get your lazy friends to, too, or whatever. I might also give out a prize for the TENTH person to email us with these things. Don't necessarily hold your breath, but IT COULD HAPPEN! So if you emailed us already before this blog post, email us again with this list After today, though, multiple emails counts as one time only

Feel free to suggest categories too.

Remember: mailbag entries GO TO THE MAILBAG -- mailbag AT trigames DOT net (or this form); otherwise we won't read them on the air.

I've alluded before to the fact that it's a little difficult to hold a 9 - 5 job -- well, in my case, an 8 to 7 job -- and still review games. The obvious results of this are that reviews for long RPGs take longer to post, and perhaps more importantly for the sake of the world, I get less sleep and thus start to go insane at random points during the day.

Ok -- that very last part's not true; I don't go insane due to lack of sleep. Would be cool if I did, though, right? Some dumpy Asian dude rampaging around the city of Pittsburgh, causing death and destruction en masse and leaving smoldering rubble in my wake. All imaginary, of course. Kind of like The Incredible Hulk, but I'm not green, and I'm certainly not incredible.

One side effect that it does have is that I find myself unable to shake the games from my head while at my day job. I just caught myself mentally humming the Guild tune from Pokemon Mystery Dungeon for DS, a game I reviewed over a month ago. While I was washing my hands in the office kitchen, I randomly started thinking about alternative weapons to use in Mystery Dungeon: Shiren The Wanderer, a game that I reviewed in April. On and off, while I'm typing out an email, I'll be thinking about how the hell I'm supposed to beat an FOE in Etrian Odyssey II. None of my daydreaming, by the way, has ever included a game that I'm not reviewing or haven't reviewed while I'm reviewing a game -- only ones that have and will get reviews posted online.

The good thing is that, well, when people say they get worn out on marathoning through a game, I don't feel it as much. It's there, certainly -- playing one game until the end that could potentially frustrate you (if it's a poor title) will wear you the hell out. But given that my day job is certainly not as entertaining as playing even a terrible videogame, playing a sack of crap is actually like a little vacation when I get back from the office. At the very least, I'm not putting up with said game for 17 hours straight.

I said a while back -- I can't remember if it was here, or in a podcast -- that playing games for review might start making me a little more weary of game-playing in general as a fan of games. It's one of the first things that's likely to hit you when you go from just enjoying your games to having to marathon through one for a review. Thankfully the Growing Weary part has happened only a very tiny, tiny bit -- and oddly it's thanks to my day job, which I otherwise don't necessarily have the kindest words for. I shouldn't even be complaining about my damned job -- I'm lucky to have it, especially in this economy, and especially when many of my friends are struggling and working hard for their paper while I sit in some air-conditioned office and accumulating mileage and hotel points. So, thank you, day job, for helping to keep games as a "job" as fun as they used to be.

Oh, and I saw Wanted. Kind of a dumb film, but I somehow enjoyed it quite a bit. It was between that or Hancock this past weekend. You can tell me whether or not I made the right choice.