Anonymous Game Developers (AGDInteractive) have finally, after several years, released their remake of Sierra’s classic Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire.  AGDI has, in the past, created remakes of King’s Quest I and King’s Quest II.  However, these two titles have mysteriously vanished from their website along with any information or mention of them along with the links that used to allow you to download the games.  I no longer know how to get copies of these classics which is extremely sad.

Quest for Glory II can be downloaded, for free, from AGDI’s web site.  I downloaded a copy, since you never know when they are going to abandon their work and forget about it, but do not anticipate having an opportunity to play it for quite some time.  I really hope to have a chance to play it though.  AGDI’s version of the games are generally far superior to Sierra’s ancient originals.

Both KQ1 and KQ2 I played through several times from Sierra back in the day along with other Sierra titles like KQ3 and The Black Cauldron.  But I have never actually played any of the Quest for Glory series so having an opportunity to play one remade by AGDI should prove to be a real treat.  I am confused, though, that they chose to begin with the second title in the series and not to begin with the first.

I did some digging around on the AGDI website and in the forums someone asks what has happened to the original KQ1 and KQ2 downloads and the answer was that they have temporarily been suspended from downloading until an update of some sort can be made available.  If you have never played them, keep an eye open on the web site as the games are truly classics in the strictest sense.  In the mean time, join me in trying out Quest for Glory II.  I know that my old college roomate, Jamie Quaderer, will be excited.  He was playing Quest for Glory IV on his Intel 80486 based PC when we first started college in Flint, Michigan in 1994.

I was completely exhausted this morning and forgot to set my alarm.  Dominica woke me up and asked if I was going to Warren today.  I jumped out of bed and got ready with blinding speed.  I actually did alright this morning, as far as getting ready for work goes, and it probably worked out for the best that I got an extra fourty minutes of sleep.  It was necessary.

Nothing special to report about work today.  Very much “the usual”.  For lunch three of us went out to Baja Fresh on NJ22 near the office.  As we were leaving we discovered a new Georgian restaurant that had just opened next door.  We stopped in and checked out the menu.  The place looks really nice and I am very curious to try out the cuisine.  The plan is for us to go there for lunch next Wednesday.

I left work at five and just barely made it to the shuttle that takes me from the office to the Summit Train Station.  I actually had to run a little bit to catch the shuttle.  Then, when the shuttle got us to the train station, there were huge lines for the ticket machines as well as the human-manned window.  So I gave up and ran for the train which was on the platform.  I just made it!

It is nearly impossible for me to catch the express train to Broad Street Station but on rare occassions it actually works out.  The timing has to be perfect and there is no way for me to buy a ticket.  The really annoying bit is that there is no way for me to buy a round trip ticket in the morning so that this wouldn’t be a problem!  Argh.

The express gets me to Newark very quickly as there are no stops whatsoever between Summit and Newark.  The timing of the train was perfect so that I stepped off of the platform and saw Dominica pulling up in front of the train station.  I had to run to catch her as well, it was just that kind of day, but I did catch her and got a lift home to Eleven80.  It was a very convenient day from that respect.  Almost no walking at all.

On the ride home I completed reading John Man’s 2006 title “Attila“.  Before starting another book I will be catching myself up on podcasts from IT Conversations.

We ordered in some dinner quite early from Golden City and watched a little bit of the sixth season of Frasier.  Dominica has been watching Frasier without me so I have actually missed about half of the episodes thus far.

My PacSafe Metro 200 bag arrived today from Amazon even though Dominica had only ordered it yesterday.  I will not have any call to use it tomorrow but on Friday I will be stuffing everything into it that I need for a day in the city and trying it out.  I look forward to being able to bring everything with me that I might want or need while out in the city without having to pick and choose based on weight, plans and weather.  Because I will be able to carry my digicam into the city on a regular basis hopefully I will be producing many more pictures of life in the New York Metro area.

I am hoping that when I get a NetBook that that will fit into this bag as well although there is every chance that it will not.  This is not a particularly large bag and the books that I often carry only barely fit into it.  A NetBook is very small but it would have to be quite small to have any hope of fitting in.  It sure would be great if it did.  That would do wonders for my soon-to-be very long commute from Peekskill to Manhattan.

The Acer Aspire One, which I am interested in, is 9.8″ x 6.7″ which just might fit.  The book that I tried putting into the bag this evening, “Presentation Zen”, is 9.1″ tall and does fit well, but there is not very much room to spare.

While we are on the topic of Peekskill I should also mention that yesterday we received confirmation that the sellers had signed the paperwork for the house and that it was on its way back over to our lawyer so that the house buying process could continue.  By late this afternoon the paperwork had been received by our attorney’s office and was on its way to our bank in Rochester who should have received it before the end of the day.  So hopefully we will have more status information very soon.  The next major step is the bank’s assesment of the house.

After Dominica went to bed, I had some work that needed to be done this evening so I stayed up late working on that.  No rest for the weary, I guess.

If everything goes according to plan, we close on or around October 15th.  Our lease in Newark ends on November 1.

We are very excited.

We dealt with the official pre-qualification for buying a house today because we have a couple of prospects that we are interested in.  We went this afternoon to officially put in an offer on a townhouse in Peekskill but got a stern warning from our real estate agent that we needed to be prepared that our money was very likely to not be good enough for these people [downstaters.]

Apparently the pre-qualification that the banks in upstate New York use causes issues downstate because they want the same letter to be called pre-approval – even though the weight that the letter carries is the same.  They just sometimes refuse to sell houses to people because they don’t like the terms that we use, I am told.  And they may also refuse to sell us the house because they don’t approve of the type of mortgage that we are attempting to use.  This, I am told, is because there is no faith in our bank.

We are told over and over in the news and it is obvious when looking at homes that nothing is selling.  Nothing that we have been interested in has sold since we started looking and all of the prices have just been getting lower and lower.  It seems like people would be a bit desperate to sell.  At least desperate enough to not treat people like their money isn’t good enough down here is rich, snobby downstate New York.

Just getting warned that these are likely to become problems when buying a house (a house that will have been on the market for an entire year by the time we would close, mind you) really puts me off from the buying experience.  Dominica and I are nervous enough about spending this kind of money in such an unstable market but to the then be treated like we are dirt for offering to buy someone’s house that they seem pretty desperate to sell (their agent literally calls daily looking for a status update) is rude and insulting.  It took no more than that conversation for me to already wish we were renting this year rather than trying to buy.

With buyers being treated so poorly and sellers seemingly having no interest in unloading their homes it is no wonder that the entire housing market is completely falling apart.  How can anyone buy a house under these conditions?  Our bank was very impressed that we were doing everything right and felt that we were the perfect home buyers (great credit, cash reserves, low debt, previous mortage with the bank, etc.) and I don’t think that doing things considered “less conservative” for the sake of the seller’s crazy financial sense is a good idea.  There is a reason why they are stuck in a bad financial situation and are trying to dump their home at the trough of the market.

We got called within an hour or two of putting in the office.  The sellers aren’t even willing to discuss the offer with us – no counter offer.  Strange but true.  They are desperate and have been calling every day to find out where we are in the process of making an offer and once we made, what we and our agent thought was a very reasonable starting offer, they won’t have anything to do with us.  Rather cocky in my opinion.  So we just walked away.

We went ahead and put in an offer on another, more expensive, townhouse that we had been interested in.  We will find out tomorrow, I expect, whether or not they are even willing to talk to us about our price.  We had these two in mind and we had a bit of a problem deciding which one we were the most interested in.  The one that we didn’t get (and aren’t even going to attempt to talk to again) did have an extra full bath in the basement which was very cool but the one that we are looking at now is much nicer, newer and in a better location.  It has fewer rooms which makes it a little harder for us to use but it has more space so we will be able to figure things out.

It is hard buying a house without getting emotional about it.  You start to feel attached to the homes that you attempt to buy before you manage to actually buy them.  This can cause really bad buying decisions if you are not being careful.  We need to keep in mind that this is an investment and not something that we are doing for forever.

We spent the evening watching the first season of Frasier which is really interesting as neither of us have seen very many of the episodes from this season.  The sixth episode is the very first one that I can even be sure that I have ever seen.

Dominica picked up food from On the Border on her way home since she didn’t have to go get Oreo from daycare.  They have pretty good food and it is easy for Dominica to reach on the way home.

Much of our night was spent in a back and forth bit of bidding on the second townhouse that we were looking at.  Around final bid was accepted at 9:20 this evening.  So it is “official”, we are now in the process of getting a townhouse in the Chapel Hill neighbourhood of Peekskill, New York.  Now we have to get the engineer and lawyer involved and get everything finalized with the bank and get all of the final ducks into a row.  We spent more than we had hoped but well within our predetermined “safety zone”.  The townhouse is nicer than we had planned but we got a good deal on it, we think, so we are happy.