Shoot One War

Batman Year One
I knew that Year One was one of "the books" you're supposed to read as a new or returning comic fan. Just like I knew Watchman carried that same weight when I picked it up. Unlike Watchman I really dug Year One. Frank Miller's gritty story not only takes on Batman's struggle to find his place in Gotham, but Jim Gordon's as well. The two travel down similar paths ultimately crossing in what is at first confrontation and eventually becomes the start of a working relationship and mutual respect by the end of the book. The art is jaw dropping and Miller's story telling is top notch.

Civil War Mavel Universe
Please note that this book is not the actual collected Marvel event Civil War. It is stories that relate to the event and it is for the most part confusing and terrible. It is my fault for picking up the wrong title, but look at the freaking cover. Even if I picked up the wrong book I would hope that the side stories would be complete. Some have no start or end, you are dropped off in the middle of a conversation and jerked out of it before its over. The art is a mixed bag and I'm not sure a lot of it would make sense even if I had read Civil War.

Shoot Em Up
Clive Owen's follow up to Inside Man and Children of Men, two of the best films of 2006, was a staring roll in this steaming pile. I get that it is trying to be campy and I'm sure a lot of people saw it on the good faith of Grindhouse, as it was released just three months later. Shoot Em Up gets it wrong though because it is a campy film that is not so bad that it turns good, it gets to the bad and stays there. How "writer/director" Michael Davis was given money to produce a Hollywood budgeted movie after working on such classics as Double Dragon: The Movie and not creating anything new since 2003 is beyond me. Maybe he is somebodies nephew.

WoW Fixed
Following the issues I described the other day I reinstalled WoW and BC on Tuesday night and meet a roadblock when I tried to patch beyond 2.0.x (the base patch the BC install gets you to). I would try to login and get disconnected immediately. After sitting on the phone with Blizzard tech support for an hour Tuesday night and getting no where I decided to reinstall windows and get a fresh start Wednesday. At 11pm Wednesday I finished the windows install. At 1am I finished the WoW and BC install and got stuck at the 2.0.x patch again.

/pullhair

Before I threw my computer from the second story of my house I decided to call my brother and get his account info. I had a sneaking suspicion Tuesday night while on the phone with the Blizzard rep that my patching problem had to do with my Blizzard Authenticator. My guess was that the Blizzard servers were looking for me to enter my authenticator code to complete my login, but the game was only at patch 2.0.x so there was no place to enter the code as the game did not include the authenticator functionality back then. I plugged in my brothers account info (he doesn't have an authenticator), it logged me in immediately and started patching to 2.3.x. I wonder if Blizzard is aware of this issue.