CE Wills

    Hey, gamers. As I mentioned yesterday, I bought the new game for the Padster called Modern Combat 3: Fallen Nation . This game is the third installment in the war shooter by Gameloft. It sells for a hefty $6.99 and 'weighs' a chubby 1.05 gigabytes. The first thing you think when you see the file size is wow! This game must have serious graphics or serious length. Well, it has both. It is an intense shooter that will have you talking to yourself until your wife laughs at you for getting so into it. Who cares?      Here's the recipe. You are an American soldier. The USA has been attacked by a trio of foreign nations who have established 'beachheads' in major American cities. There are reports that there are nukes stashed in several cities. Your first mission is to go to NSA headquarters in LA. (I thought that they hung out in Washington DC or Maryland?) and retrieve important intel about where the nukes are. You are basically a small Seal team or Sp...

     Hey, everyone. It was a neat day, here at the green retreat. Carley (my wife) found the smallest feather, as you can see. I thought I'd tell you what I did today so you would see how boring life will be for you when you get old.      We were both off today, which is a good start on any day. I got up and spent an hour drinking coffee and looking at the news and gaming reviews on the Padster. Then we ate bacon, scrambled eggs, toast and jelly. Then I played a bunch of songs on keyboard and sang along with several of them. Carley and I did some typing on the newest western I've written called Notch 4. It should go live this week sometime on the ebook stores.     We walked in the woods. It was about 42 degrees F and misting rain. I told Carley that when we got home I would sing her the old song by Jay and The Americans called Walking In The Rain. They do it a lot better than I do but they probably don't love her like I do. That...

    Hey, everyone. I forgot to mention something earlier,due to my rant. The other day I was outside and happened to look at the side of the house, next to one of the doors. There was a rather large bear track on the wall about five feet high. He had evidently stepped in dirt and then had stood on his hind legs, leaning against the wall. The print was pretty well defined, though light. I took several pictures but none of them showed the print really well.     I measured the print. From toe to heel it was 8 inches. Across the widest part it was 5 inches. It was 5 feet off the ground, which means he was probably around 6 or 6.5 feet 'tall'. So, good size, but not huge. I have seen a small black bear in our woods several years ago. He ran away when he saw me. Since then I have seen many tracks and various signs of his presence. This is the first time any bear has leaned on the house, next to my door, as far as I know. It was, of course, the merest chance that...

    Hey, everyone. Shadowgun is a great game for IOS but I've decided to give it a one star rating on the app store. The reason why? The Driller . At the end of the 4th level, John Slade (Alias, me) is deep in the bowels of the planet. A huge drilling machine chases him through the cavern as he flees and tries to shoot out these lights. So far I have failed to pass this level about 200 times. The driller crushes me again and again. 200 times I've dealt with this ignominy. This is after choosing what is supposed to be the 'easy' difficulty level.     You buy a freakin' game for $7.99. You play, you work, you strive. You even kill the dreaded Cyber Lobster . Then you don't get to play the last half or more of the game because some geek does not understand the definition of the word 'easy'. Let me read to you from Webster's dictionary. Easy-Not difficult. Free from anxiety or pain. Comfortable, restful. Free from constraint. Not severe. Unhurried. Gra...

    Hey, everyone. I had the pleasure of reading a really different and entertaining book this week. It is by John Locke, one of the handful of people who has sold over a million ebooks. The Wish List is another in the popular series about Donovan Creed. Donovan is a paid assassin, a retired CIA guy, former mob hit man. He has confused morals and certainly has some good points as well.  For one, he is loyal to a fault. A former friend, now deceased, has a loser brother who has gotten himself into trouble. Donovan goes to his aid. The dude's name is Buddy Pancake; yeah, Pancake. His wife Lissie is great, he is a loser. A friend tells him to go to a website and fill out a form to receive 4 wishes. He wants a date with a certain movie star, a million bucks, his boss dead and tickets to a Bruce Springsteen concert. See what I mean about being a loser? I mean really, couldn't he think of something better?     Up to this point, the story is not so unusual...

    Hey, everyone. It's a privilege to talk about a movie that deserves 6 stars out of a possible 5. That movie is called Incognito . It is on Encore movie channel this month. I saw it years ago but I watched it again this evening.      This movie stars Jason Patric as Harry Donovan, an art forger. No, that is not quite right. He is a master painter in his own right and the best forger on Earth. The actor is superb, as are all the actors in this film, which always proclaims great direction. Harry is commissioned by some powerful and unscrupulous people from the art world to forge a painting. Harry is to be paid $500,000 for the painting, which will net 5 million on the black market or 50 million at auction. Harry accepts the commission and chooses to paint a Rembrant. The depth of the movie as it relates to the devices used to forge a Dutch Masters painting is amazing. His search for lead that had to be hundreds of years old, the stealthy theft of res...

    Hey, everyone. I heard an odd story the other day. It seems a lady was cleaning her flower bed. She was on her hands and knees and she was wearing flip-flops. (Sandal-like shoes with no heel.) She felt something wet on her heel and discovered that a snake was licking her heel. This story is so weird that I must assure you that it is true. Of course, the lady freaked, as would I. She had her husband come and kill the snake.      I don't intend to take the snake's part on this dispute. But here are a few thoughts on this odd event. 1) This snake could have been an ambassador for snakes everywhere. Knowing the historic bad feelings between ladies and snakes, he came to make peace. He humbled himself to the point of licking a woman's heel. What was the thanks he got? He got chopped up with an axe. 2) He could have been sitting around the snake bar, talking with the guys and heard someone say, "Hey, they taste like chicken." 3) He may be wanting to ...

    Hey, everyone. Since I updated to Apple's new operating system, the games on my I-Pad keep asking me to allow them to send me notifications. Almost every game and every time I play every game. The new system is also pushing game center down your throat. Some of us don't want to play on line and don't like to be bothered all the time. If playing games on the I-Pad ceases to be fun, we may cease to do it. Steve Jobs seemed to understand that you shouldn't irritate your customers. Does anyone else at Apple understand this fact? How long will it take for Apple to go the way of the dodo, with someone new at the helm?      Sorry for the rant. I did this in the faint hope that somebody from Apple might read it.     From the author's green retreat, I'm CE Wills.

    Hey, everyone. What an interesting week! IOS 5, Apple's new operating system has arrived and that means goofing around with updates for our devices. They take forever and are not without their baggage. For instance. They take everything off your device, then, in theory, put it back on. 'Cept they don't. They didn't put Shadowgun back on my I-Pad 2 and when I reinstalled it, I lost my progress and had to start from square one. By the way, the update for this game was supposed to fix the unbeatable driller problem on level 4. It did not. Any helpful hints from etherland?      Warm Gun is the new shooter game out this week. I bought it. I haven't tried the online part yet, but if you buy it for single player, you may be disappointed. More on this later. By the way, this is another app that IOS update failed to reinstall.      I have made some progress on all those games that I was stuck on. No, not all, but several. I got past th...

    Hey, everyone. Despite the modest rainfall of the summer, we have some decent fall colors, though not so brilliant as I have seen it here at the green retreat. The last picture is of a deer who is hard to see. He was a bit of a ham and hung around a while. When he finally ran away, I saw several others which I had missed. They camouflage real well.      If you can see the squirrel in the first pick, you probably can't tell that he was really mad. He was chattering away and squawking at me.      The big leaf next to my foot is a poplar. The yellow leaves whose leaves are directly across from each other on the stem are hickory leaves. The leaves outlined in red that are star shaped are maples. On a good year they look like 'scarlet battalions' like the old Simon and Garfunkel song mentions.     I took 77 pictures today but it would be tedious to upload them all. Back in the day, folks would take a Saturda...

    Hey, everyone. The weather has been just lovely all week, here at the green retreat. Sunny, blue skies and the leaves starting to turn a lot more. I noticed today that even the hickories were beginning to turn yellow. The oaks are turning, but not as much as the hickories. All told, it was an easy day to be happy. These turkeys seemed happy, making their odd, little 'Put,Put,Put' noises as they cruised the woods behind my house. Perhaps they haven't heard about their buddies down at Wal-Mart and the whole Thanksgiving holiday thing. Well, it's not my place to tell them.      My wife worked today and I was off. I commend myself for doing a dreaded chore. My driveway is 300 feet long and made of gravel. It is up a steep hill and pavement would be tough to ascend in the winter. Ice can't really cause a problem on gravel, except in extreme situations, because there is no flat surface. The weight of a vehicle busts the ice and snow against the gravel. ...

    Hey, everyone. As many of you probably suspected, I bought the new Rage game for PC. I have never tried a PC game but I wanted this game so bad I decided to try it. I bought it off Amazon and they did a good job of having it here on the first day of availability.     The first surprise for an elderly guy like me is that I have to have an account on Steam , a gamer's site, before I can even play this game. ???? What business  is it of Steam's if I play a game at my home? So I get a Steam account which entails swearing an oath to their list of demands and allowing them access to my computer. Then I start to put the game on my computer and the codes don't work. There are three codes in the box and none of them work. Invalid. Cool, and so much fun, so far. I give them credit, though, they actually had a phone number on the flyer for tech support at Bethesda. Not toll free. The guy at Bethesda was courteous with me, as I was with him. But he wanted a...

    Hey, everyone. When you click the video, turn the sound up. I wanted to give you a feel for this place when it's breezy. I'd rather listen to this than traffic, fussing, fighting and sirens. This particular section of woods is mostly oaks and maples. They haven't turned color much, as you can see. Carley took these with her Sony Cybershot (no relation to the cyberlobster of the preceding post).     Check out this really long leaf. I have long arms. This is a leaf from a mountain magnolia. Looks like a tropical tree, like a banana tree or something. The woods are full of cool stuff if you will look.       Just for fun, when you watch the video, imagine what you would feel like if you saw a huge mountain lion trotting off that hill and he were coming to eat you and your wife. No one to call for help and no gun with you. Not a cool feeling but it puts a little spring in your step. Check out the true story of that day, for free, i...

    Hey, everyone. I had not planned on posting tonight but I have to make something right. I gave Shadowgun a good review last night but I didn't do it justice. Tonight I got past the vicious Cyber Lobster and went on to play a lot more. This is a terrific game! Last night I would have rated it 4 stars out of 5. Tonight I give it 5 stars out of 5. By the way, here's a spoiler alert. If you don't want to know how to kill the lobster, don't read any further. I say this because I had several people come to the blog that were looking for the silver bullet ( figure of speech from old Dracula movies, not literal weapon for lobster) to kill this behemoth.      When the monster appears, he starts firing missiles at you out of his mechanical mouth. Don't run and hide behind a barrier. Get close to him and run back and forth, dodging missiles until you can blast the lime colored ball of light that appears periodically over his head. I suspect that this is hi...