If you’ve never picked up Half-Life 1 yet, fire up your Steam client and drop a whole dollar to help celebrate a decade of Gordon Freeman.

Amazon is offering unDRM’ed Christmas completely for free! http://tinyurl.com/5blosz will get you to the page and you just have to click the yellow button top right and you’re golden! Happy Holidays!

So Obama seemingly took the election by a landslide (is that what you call it?), 349-163 electoral and about 4% more popular vote over McCain. I’m glad McCain is not in the White House next year, but I’m not entirely satisfied by Obama, but we certainly could have been worse off, we could have 8 more years of President Clinton in The House, no longer hiding behind her husband as a proxy any more.

Given all the choices available, I would have liked Ron Paul, but failing him, Obama would have been my second choice.

I know The President doesn’t decide every factor in our nation, like unemployment, but that aside, I do feel very strongly that Barack Obama will help our great nation and have it realize dreams of its adequacy.

Welcome to The Presidency, Mr. Obama, serve our country well and I will serve you equally.

So Blizzard is to release their long-awaited StarCraft 2 . Many hoped, myself included, that this would be an MMO. I loathe the idea of paying for games once I’ve already paid for them, but I would have considered SCMMO.

Blizzard has recently revealed their plans for SC2 and while it does look neat, it really looks like the same old missions and such with pretty new graphics. Yes, there are a couple new units to play with, but it just doesn’t look all that compelling to me.

One thing that they further revealed was the game is going to be released in 3 parts… each race (Terran, Zerg and Protoss) are each going to get their own box on store shelves. This means fans will shell out $150 or thereabouts for the privilege to jump back into the StarCraft universe… Did ActiVision have any influence over how they are coming to market? I’d think yes, but it’s just an assumption.

I’ll likely grab the Terran game so I can get online, because you are apparently not restricted to which race you can play online. I’m mostly interested in seeing how the new UMS (Use Map Settings) maps are created and try to revamp my classic map that has had millions of plays and conversions, Test of Terran Survival. I did make a Protoss version, but the Terrans are more versatile than any of the other races, so I think I’ll focus on that. I hope there is a method to lock your maps in this release, because I’d like a single build of the map to go out there… also, something that recognizes you’ve made a revision of your map and gives the players the most recent would be great, too. I doubt we’ll see this, but I can hope, right?

Aside from the inital Terran release, I think I’ll wait to buy the other mission storylines until the battlechest comes out in a couple years.

I filled up my Scion’s gas tank for less than $30! It’s normally $45! Did someone divide by zero?

I’ve been excited for quite some time about getting a small computer (a.k.a. netbook), but was worried about my large hands on such a small keyboard. I read reviews on such machines as the Asus Eee , MSI Wind and more, but the problem with all these machines is they had moving parts in some fashion. The Dell Mini 9 is complete solid state. Solid state means there’s less that can break because nothing moves.

Here’s my configuration:
Black top (you can get white for +$25 USD)
16GB SSD (SSD means solid state drive, just think of a USB flash drive, except this is the hard drive)
1 gig RAM
Bluetooth module (only +$20 USD)
Windows XP Home SP3 for Low-Cost Computers
Custom Timbuk2 Bag (+30 USD)
Total cost including tax and shipping: Approximately $510

Unboxing:
I get a number of packages sent to the house from time to time as I review a lot of stuff, although I really haven’t posted any of it to my blog before, perhaps I will from this point on. When this box arrived on the doorstep a couple weeks ago, I thought it was a hard drive or some other accessory. It sat in the living room for a few hours because I wasn’t that excited, until I remembered how small this was supposed to be… so I opened it and was delightfully surprised! My mini had arrived! It was well packed and it seems Dell is moving toward a more green packaging and isn’t as wasteful with packaging material as it used to be. Good stuff, less to throw away/recycle.

Love at first touch:
It was heavier than I thought it would be, but I suppose that was the battery. I haven’t weighed it specifically, but it’s advertised at 2.3 pounds. I’m guessing we’re more looking at 5ish. My daughter , who is on the small end of the growth chart, said it was a perfect size for her… I couldn’t argue, it absolutely is. She asked when I was going to give it to her and genuinely thought it was hers… and thought it was a toy, because "real computers aren’t that small!" I didn’t tell her it’s a real machine because I’d never get it back!
My wife, after getting home, asked when I was buying one for her. Well, the anniversary is coming up. This is exactly what we need… another frickin’ laptop in the house! We’ve got in the neighborhood of a dozen already, some prop doors open, but we’ve got ‘em! This would make our fourth laptop… did I mention I’m likely to buy a Mac Mini for myself at Christmas? Yeah, we need that too… then again, if she gets her own mini, I’ll get the Mac, so I think she’s getting hers! Fortunately, my son just laughed at the size. Good, one less I have to worry about.

Powering it on:
The machine performs faster than I expected it to, I’m assuming because of the small motherboard and length of the bus to the SSD. A standard boot takes approximately 30 seconds to accept your commands in Windows… not too shabby. When it came, I had to apply 300+ megs of windows updates and remove the crapware. I normally just format the machine and install Windows fresh, but considering the lack of optical drive, I just had to deal.

Video:
I wasn’t expecting to play Crysis on this or anything, but the video is very lacking. It wants to display in 4:3 mode (think old school monitors) instead of 16:10 (a normal computer widescreen) and I have to leave the driver package install (which I had to do manually after getting the machine) in startup, eating resources, just so it’ll display widescreen. It’s a minor annoyance, but maybe they should have used a different integrated graphics card.
I will say it runs Starcraft quite nicely. I play it on battery with absolutely no problems. it never lags and the video looks crisp… enough. I know it’s a 10-year-old game, but it runs REALLY nicely.

Processing Power:
This is not a machine that’s gonna render 3D scenes with any sense of haste. I literally could not run Skype and simultaneously browse the web. I wasn’t expecting to do major things with the machine, but I at least expected to do this. I’ll just have to relegate it to Skype only during podcasting from now on.

Going to Timbuk2:
Timbuk2 bags are handmade here in the USA, San Francisco to be exact. The bag was very minimal and frankly left me wanting. The bag itself feels thick and padded. While I’m certainly not going to throw the filled bag at the wall, if the machine were to hit the ground while inside the bag, I’d feel better about it. The construction is great, but the little zippered pocket doesn’t do a great job of storing the power adapter and has no little loops for a pen or notepad or really anything else. I keep my cellphone and iPod with headphones in it when I take it anywhere because the battery life, so long as you keep the wifi and bluetooth turned off, is just fine for my purposes.

Power to the People!
I’m pretty darn impressed with the battery life. Only a 4 cell battery can keep this thing going for around 4 hours, 3 if you have wifi and bluetooth on. (Tip: unless you’re using your wireless bluetooth keyboard, turn the module off in the BIOS. You’ll save on battery life!) I generally keep the wifi off when I’m not using it (function 2 brings the menu up) and it really lasts.

Typing:
I was really worried that I’d have a problem typing on the mini, but I got used to it pretty quickly. I wrote a 1,500 word story on it in a decent amount of time and once you learn where the apostrophe key is, you’re doing ok. Yes, I do miss the full-sized keyboard, so that’s why I spent $20 on a cheap Logitech wireless keyboard/mouse combo for when I’m traveling.

Other thoughts:
The low-end model of the mini 9 comes with a lean version of Ubuntu. I didn’t get any kind of disc to install this version as I would have liked to experiment with it. I’m going to email Dell support for an ISO to download so I can play with it, but I suppose I can always throw a standard version on it if I really wanted to. If you don’t have a USB-Based optical (DVD or DC) drive, you may want to pick up the Dell offering for $80 as it’s not bad. You can find it for cheaper from other sellers, but if you’re already there, you may want to get something that matches the netbook’s aesthetics.

Final Words:
I’m very satisfied with this machine and am looking forward to the next version of the mini. I’ll only be wanting better graphics and more RAM, a larger disk would be nice, but I have a 16 gig SD card stuck in the reader as a D: drive, for a total of 32 gigs of space. If you’re looking for something to take the coffee shop or lounging around the house and don’t want to strain your arm or break the bank, the Dell Mini 9 is for you.

Phoenix has begun playing Star Wars: Force Unleashed on the Wii. He loves swinging the Wiimote around and watching the character on the huge TV respond with a similar motion.

Starting out as Darth Vader really took his breath away. I think he’ll be playing this for some time. Thanks, Lucas!

I’m moving all the Kore New Media podcasts away from an old and non-functioning host to a new host that I’ll have much more control over. This will take some time and a lot of work, but I think I’ll enjoy the result afterward.

My wife just did it!

After 6 years together, I’m still learning about her!

Game Shadow is is offering 4 games for free!

• Area 51 [review ]
• Full Spectrum Warrior [review ]
• The Suffering [review ]
• Rise & Fall

I’m not sure the review I found for the Rise & Fall was the correct one, so I didn’t list it. Please note that all these games are ad-supported and may show up as ad-ware to your antivirus due to the advertisements within.