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The Gaming Butterfly

    Hey, everyone. It's a nice Saturday here in the green retreat, with partly cloudy skies and a temperature around 70 degrees. My wife and I have prowled around in the woods today and found some signs of a bobcat. It seems to be an active season for animal life and I suspect this is due to the fact that we are finally having a normal year for rainfall. If there is a lack of water animals tend to move on.
    Last night I bought a couple of new games that are on sale this weekend. Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12 and NBA Jam. I haven't played either one of them enough to give a review but I got them for 99 cents each, which is a cool price. I got a free sample of both and played them and liked them enough to spring for the paid version. I was up during the wee hours last night and played the golf game a while. I started out playing at Pebble Beach out on the west coast and I have to say that the virtual scenery is enough to make you want to go to California again. Of course I've wanted to go back to California ever since I left. If ever there was a state dedicated to having fun, California would be that place. There is a lot of fun to be had out there, too.
    There are 8 golf courses included in this game and I was disappointed that Augusta National was not one of them. I lived in Augusta for quite a few years and I liked it down there. I had no interest in golf then. A friend that I worked with would ask me to go to the Master's with him and I would decline. I could kick myself for this every year when I watch it on TV. Stupid!
    Augusta is a nice place to live. It has mild winters and hot summers. My wife and I used to play tennis when it was over 100 degrees. I was really slim then and in great shape; two things I've not been accused of lately. When I left town I was making twice as much money as I am now and that was in the 1980's. Sigh. Every year during the Master's, the locals rent their houses out and go on vacation. They get enough money for a nice trip just for Master's week. All the restaurants and hotels are full and there's no telling who you may bump into. Bobby Jones name is on a lot of things and he is revered, to say the least. It's hard to go in a steak house and not see his picture. It's a golf crazy town 365 days a year. I guess that Bobby was one of the true southern gentlemen and I would have loved to have known him.
    Speaking of tennis and stupidity, I was working about an hour away from Flushing Meadow in New York and could have cruised over to watch Connors and Borg and Johnny McEnroe back in the day. Did I go? No, I did not want to fight the traffic. Do I regret it? Every year when I watch the U.S. Open, baby. This is what I was talking about the other day when I said, "You'll regret the things you didn't do, more than the things you did".
    Well, tonight's the night that Bob Seger is gonna be in Greenville. I won't make that either. Drag.
     Hey, let me tell you about a cool free game I got the other day. It lets you fly a virtual helicopter around and shoot criminals below you on city streets. You have fuel to pick up on rooftops and a variety of weapons. The app is so good that I believe I could climb in a helicopter and get it off the ground. Just kidding, but it is pretty realistic. The name of the game is Vertigo Rogue. There is a free version and the paid version is a reasonable 99 cents. I tried the free version and shortly thereafter bought it.
     I just downloaded the free versions of a couple of Resident Evil games. So far I'm not very impressed but I've not played them enough to give a fair review. I fear that I am becoming a gaming butterfly, flitting from game to brightly- packaged game without taking enough time to drink the full juices of any of them. Sorry, I lapsed into poetic license there for a moment.
    You might want to download a game called Metal Gear Solid Touch. It's a shooter's game by a Japanese company and I like it. You are a mercenary type and you face these missions where you have a bunch of guys to shoot, switching back and forth from a sniper scope to a regular rifle. The graphics and game play are not phenomenal like Rage, but I just like it. There is a free version and I bought a full version for a whopping 99 centabos.
    On the E-Book front I was interested to see a cool dictionary innovation. My wife is a Scrabble guru and she downloaded a dictionary that has an audible voice tell you the correct pronunciation for each word you look up. Free, on the app store, by the way. This type of thing makes it really tough on paper books to compete. I love real books but I've never had one talk to me.
   From the author's green retreat, I'm CE Wills.

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