I was in the middle of a conversation with someone at work when another staff member walked over to us and said "I don't want to interrupt…"

I cut her off. "But you just did interrupt. So I guess the both of us are going to come out of this encounter disappointed".

She gave me a look of genuine shock. "Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize".

She didn't "realize"?! Is she kidding me?! How can you start talking while two other people are already talking and not realize that you've interrupted them? I cannot comprehend how anyone with a fully functioning brain could possibly be surprised by this. So either she's a fantastic actor and doesn't really care or she has some sort of mental problem which prevents her from understanding cause and effect. The thing is, this is about the one billionth time this exact thing has happened to me, which means the world is full of either jerks or morons.

I guess what I'm trying to say is… I hate people.

It's my birthday today. I got a letter in the mail from some place called The Burger Joint wishing me a happy birthday that included a coupon for a free hamburger. This prompted a series of emotions from me.

Sadness. Because I can't really eat hamburgers right now.

Confusion. Because not only have I never been to this place, but I didn't even know it existed until I received their letter.

Anger. Because if I've never been there how the hell did they get my contact and birthday info?

Obviously I need to be more careful when handing out my personal information.

One of our servers needs to be rebooted each month. Management has requested that this be done in the middle of the night to reduce the impact this has on staff. There is no way in hell I'm going to be woken up in the middle of the night each time this needs to be done, so it was decided that the people who man our data center overnight would be given the job.

After telling me to write up a document for the overnight staff that explains each step in the process of rebooting the server, my boss made sure to impress upon me the need to write down even the smallest detail in this document, explaining that the overnight staff is not very bright. So I wrote the document, making sure to spell everything out as clearly as possible, and handed it in to my boss.

Days later, I go into his office and see him making some changes to my document. When I ask about this he explains "I sent this to the after hours managers and they had some concerns, so I'm jazzing it up a little".

I watch as he goes to a section where I wrote 'After the login screen appears, enter your password'. He takes a screen capture of the server login screen, draws a red arrow pointing toward the text field next to "password:" and writes next to the arrow 'This is where you type in your password'. He then pastes the image into my document.

I let this sink in for a few seconds before reacting. "So… when you say 'jazzing up', what you really mean is 'dumbing down'?"

My boss turns away from me so as not to look me in the eye. "Pretty much"

I left his office without further comment.

There's nothing quite like a lengthy, engrossing videogame when you need something to take your mind off pain for a week. Batman: Arkham City performed this role admirably.

I was a big fan of Arkham Asylum, so I was pretty surprised that Arkham City managed to top that game in just about every way. The combat system was already my favorite in any videogame ever, but Arkham City has improved on it with a bunch of new moves and gadgets. Getting around the city was still fun even after a dozens hours doing it thanks to Batman's new glide ability. The large number of new characters and villains managed to keep the game feeling fresh right up until the end. I think it's a shame that Arkham City's trailers managed to spoil so many memorable appearances, but there were still plenty of surprises for me.

Like so many games these days, Arkham City is filled with characters who sound like Nolan North. Not only is he the voice of the Penguin, but he also provides the chatter spoken by many of the nameless thugs that populate the city. I would occasionally stumble upon a group of henchman and decide to flee to a nearby rooftop instead of fighting them. Hearing North, in his Nathan Drake voice, accuse Batman of being too scared to face him never ceased to amuse me.

I'm recovering nicely from the surgery, so I can assure you the game is fun even if you're not on vicodin! Regardless of your interest in Batman, if you're looking for a good action/ adventure game I can't recommend Arkham City highly enough.

What an incredible year this has been for videogames. With games like Skyrim, Uncharted 3, Zelda: Skyward Sword, and Kirby's Mass Attack still in my future I would be occupied well into the new year even if they didn't release a single videogame in 2012. It's almost enough to make me want a career in game journalism. Almost.

We had some good times, my teeth and I. I'll always have the memories of all the delicious food they helped me cut into digestible pieces. But their years of service are now at an end.

They're being mailed to a pathologist to determine what was wrong with them before being sent to that big mouth in the sky. It'll be hard to adjust to life without them, but at least I have the post-surgery pain to remember them by.

Mother Nature has apparently set her clock fast this year. The northeast got its first big winter snowstorm last weekend, dropping eight inches of snow and downing several trees in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. The power went out in my area Saturday night and hasn't returned yet.

I have no heat, no hot water, and no electricity. Having to wear my jacket indoors took some getting used to, but I still haven't grown accustomed to not being able to see in my own home after dark. Shaving by flashlight this morning was an adventure.

On the plus side, I've been meaning to clean out my freezer for some time now. Having all the food in it go bad is as good an excuse as any.

I'm posting this blog from one of those "pay for online access" computers that so many stores and fast food places in New York City seem to have. Several days of internet withdrawal has compelled me to stop in here instead of heading right home after work. You know things have gotten bad when I actually welcome leaving my home to come to this vile place.

My surgery is scheduled for this Thursday. I hope they won't have to operate by candle light.

Hopeless achievement addict contemplating getting rid of his copy of Modern Warfare 2 seeks partner to complete unfinished Spec Ops levels on Veteran difficulty before he gets rid of the game.

Must have copy of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 for the Xbox 360, a moderate amount of skill, and a great amount of patience. Previous experience a plus.

Apply below

During a recent visit to my parent's house, I noticed that Riley wasn't wearing his collar.

When I asked my mother about it she told me a story.

One day my mother was reading in the living room when she heard both dogs yelping outside. Going out to investigate, she found that Rachel had somehow gotten one of her teeth stuck in Riley's collar while they were playing. She was frantically trying to pull her tooth free, chocking Riley and causing herself considerable pain. So now Riley gets to walk around the house naked.

Rachel is not pleased by this.

It was pretty nice out during my visit, so I asked my mother why all the windows were closed. She told me another story.

One day, in the middle of summer, one of the frogs hopped over to the house and decided to hang out between an open window and the window screen, perhaps wanting to peak in to the living room and watch some television. My mother didn't notice the frog when she closed the window, trapping him. When she reopened the window some time later she found the frog, dead. It had dried up with no way to escape the sun.

When I went out to my parent's front yard I saw a group of guinea hens running out of the yard and heading across the street.

My mother explained that the person across the street owned them. They keep coming over because during a recent visit one of them decided that my parent's front yard was an ideal place to lay her eggs.

I went to examine the eggs. This being late October, they were all cold to the touch. There is no way anything alive is in those eggs. The mother hen is completely oblivious to this unfortunate fact. Every so often, she comes back to the front yard with her friends and sits on the nest.

I wonder how long it will take her to realize that her efforts are in vain.

The free Portal 2 DLC that came out a few weeks ago was fantastic. I enjoyed it just as much as the main game. And we're getting more DLC soon in the form of a map editor. If Valve is trying to make other video game developers look bad, they're going a great job.

Speaking of developers that look bad..... if you're like me and were planning to skip Diablo III because of ActiBlizzard's DRM that forces you to be online at all times, you might want to look in to the console version.

Indiana Jones plays Uncharted 3. There's something I never thought I'd see.

Want your own Metroid, but can't afford the expensive trip to the planet Zebes? Then why not get one mailed to you?

In honor of Captain America hitting DVD this week, here's some international posters.

By now I'm sure that most of you have heard that, despite telling fans that Mass Effect 3 would be a single player only game several times over the past 2 years, Bioware has caved in to the demands of their overlords at EA and added a multiplayer mode to the game. Bioware's spin is that multiplayer is completely separate from the main game, and that ignoring the multiplayer won't harm your campaign in any way. But the more I read about this multiplayer mode the more it seems like a terrible idea.

In the portion of the game Mass Effect fans actually care about, you are tasked with getting the galaxy ready to repel an invasion by the Reapers. As you complete certain objectives, some kind of "readiness meter" will fill, showing how prepared the galaxy is to fight this threat. If you mess up enough, the galaxy will not be a maximum readiness at the end of the game and you won't get the best ending. Unless you play the new co-op mode that is! By completing multiplayer missions, you can save the galaxy from your own inept leadership. Each successful multiplayer mission will increase the galaxy's readiness, erasing any bad decisions you've made.

The Mass Effect series is all about choice and consequences. You have to make decisions as you play and you learn the consequences of those decisions later on. In ME1 and ME2, you had to live with those consequences, good or bad. The multiplayer mode in Mass Effect 3 completely invalidates that. If you mess up, all you have to do is play some co-op and the galaxy will be safe again. It gives you a safety net that wasn't in the other games. How can that not make your choices have less weight? The only thing this will do is encourage more people to play an online mode that the majority of Mass Effect gamers didn't want, making the online pass for the game the important feature EA so desperately wants it to be.

I will buy Mass Effect 3. I have too much invested in the series not to want to see how the trilogy is resolved. But there is a very real possibility that this game will be the last Bioware product I play. Now that the Mass Effect series has been herded toward the dark path of multiplayer, it's a virtual certainty that the Mass Effect spinoffs Bioware has teased will also have multiplayer. Bioware has said that Commander Shepard won't be in future Mass Effect games, so I can very easily see the customization and decision making that I love about the series removed from future games in favor of multiplayer friendly one-dimensional characters like Master Chief or Marcus Fenix.

As far as other Bioware series go... they've already killed any enthusiasm I had for the Knights of the Old Republic sequel by turning it into an MMO, sacrificing any chance at story immersion for the sake of monthly subscription fees. I couldn't wait for more after seeing the ending to Dragon Age: Origins, but the disappointing, sequel bait ending to Dragon Age II had the opposite effect on me. An optimist might look for some new IP from Bioware, but with EAs gradual gutting of everything that once made the company great proving to be so successful, I'm sure they'll have no qualms about forcing Bioware's withered husk to somehow squeeze multiplayer into anything new it might come up with.

I'll be playing Mass Effect 3 with a heavy heart. It's likely the end of an era for me. There was a time, not too long ago, that I would look forward to each new Bioware title just because they were the ones making it. That time is just a happy memory now.