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.

Here is a great quote: “There is no magic pill for weight loss and Orlistat is not a magic pill.” said John Dent of GlaxoSmithKline speaking of their new potentially over the counter drug. I guess he wanted to clarify that Orlistat is definitely a weight loss pill and definitely not magic just in case any of us were confused that this drug was for hair and was most definitely magic. It is such a difficult differentiation to make determining when pills are for weight loss and when they are magic. But I suppose when you work for a drug company you get a lot of really confused people and even more confused clients. Many of them probably take these drugs believing that they are delivered by leprechauns riding on sphinxes at the behest of Scientor.

Dad’s car is having an issue with one of its brakes so he needed a lift down to the shop so that he could drop off his car to have it looked at. We took him down a little after noon and then the three of us went up to Texaco Town (yes that is actually its name) and had lunch at the Town and Country Diner.

Andy found out today that he is officially done with his current contract in downtown Rochester on this coming Friday so just five more days of work for him before he is on to working on Waste Watcher 2 full time again. Up until today he had been thinking that there was a decent chance that they would ask him to work one additional week but he lucked out and is on the home stretch now.

Dominica and I came home from lunch and spent about an hour playing with Oreo and relaxing before going up to Rochester to do some shopping. We started off at the Yarn Source on East Henrietta Road. The people who run that store are really nice. They had us bring Oreo into the store to visit with everyone. He had a really good time with that. Dominica managed to find the yarn that she needed too. It is nice to have a yarn store where I am comfortable going in and hanging out with the people that are there while Dominica shops.

Then we went on to Rowe Photo on Mt. Hope to see if they had the Nikon D50 that I have been looking to get. I have priced it out online and it is $513. I figured getting it in person and having a store to go back to was worth something so I would be willing to pay a little more than that. I walked in the door and the unit was almost $650 for the exact same package. No wonder Rowe is able to stay in business. You only have to sell one item per day per employee to be making mad money. I am not planning on ever walking into that store again. Learned my lesson. One way or another I can get anything that they sell someplace else much less expensively. And it isn’t like they are the store around the corner. They are almost an hour away. Totally not worth it. I bought a laserdisc player there years ago. Spent a fortune on it. Really nice high end machine. Ended up taking it back five or six times to get it to work. They were never able to fix it. By the end they were charging me a ton just to have them look at it when the problem was never changing. They would fix a symptom and give it back to me and then it would die again months later. Quite the racket they had going. Guess I am the fool here. But at least they didn’t get my money this time. Lesson learned this time around. Abe’s of Maine it is then. Stupid me for questioning the research that I had all ready done.

On the way home we stopped by Wegman’s in Geneseo to get some needed grocery items like No Calory salad dressing (ugh.) This diet is getting less and less tasty. But having supplies to let us eat at home should help some. I have been needing to go out everyday to get my salads. And getting salads out is not the best way to do lettuce necessarily. And at home I can use, heaven forbid, no calorie salad dressing. Salad dressing is easily 100 calories or more of fat added to a salad which is not very good for you when you are on a low calorie diet. There are much better places to put those calories like protein.

We came home and watched, yes again, TNG Season Three. Made it through quite a bit of that tonight. I finished ballasting the portion of the track that I had put down the other night. So far the ballast work that I have done appears to be going quite well. It is rock solid and looks just like it does in the books. So I think that I am doing it more or less correctly. I am hoping that there won’t be any problem with the train running on it once everything is in place. That is the real fear of ballasting, I guess, is that something will go wrong after everything is solidly in place. Because, let me tell you, it is solid. Rock solid. Not going anywhere. The whole track layer is one very singular piece of metal, plastic, rock and cork.