Today’s article comes from Autoblog.  Here’s the line that prompted a post:

The economy appears to be swooning, and before we land softly (or crash hard), company’s have begun to circle their wagons and reduce unnecessary spending.

Leaving aside the questionable sentence construction, let’s address the apostrophe problem in the word "company’s".  The correct plural of "company" is "companies".  You can, if you want, use an apostrophe to indicate plurals of letters or numbers: mind your p’s and q’s, x’s and o’s, crazy 8′s, and so forth.  That’s not a hard and fast rule, however; there’s some disagreement among the Masters of Grammar (such as they are). 

The story so far is pretty much “Guild Wars in Space”.  It starts very much as Guild Wars did, with you cast as a soldier defending your people in a post-cataclysmic world.  I thought the Guild Wars story was pretty week, so I don’t know if this one will be any better based on what I saw.

Game play gives you some very third-person shooter style mechanics.  Movement is much more free than I’m used to in an RPG-style MMO.  Targeting is as simple as pointing and clicking, ala Diablo, but in 3D.  Skills and weapons are a left click/right click affair, also much like Diablo, which is actually not a bad way to do it.

Missions so far are anything but epic.  I know, I’m still just getting through the tutorial; what could I really expect?  Well, I’ll tell you.  I expect more than “find this terrible dude you’ve never met who is causing us so much trouble and get him!” type of missions.  There’s no connection to anything I care about there.  Did this guy kill my uncle, and I need revenge?  Nope, just sort of met him when I walked into that area of the map.  It may be that I’m too much a single-player kind of guy; the last RPG I loved was KOTOR.  I think, however, that more effort could be made to giving us single-player depth of story in an MMO. 

I’ll give it a couple more hours of gameplay and come back if there’s anything exciting.  Until then, my thought is that this will probably be good choice if you really liked Guild Wars.  If you felt a little let down by Guild Wars, this is about the same idea (so far) so you may want to skip it.

R2 is now willing to accept your mail.  Lucas et al are getting together with the USPS to celebrate thirty years of Star Wars.  As many of you know, both Rudeboy and I predate Star Wars, but only barely.  Thus, the 30th Anniversary of Star Wars kind of reminds one of one’s age.

Rudeboy commented that these had better be bolted down securely.  I’m already working out plans for (uh, legally) procuring one for Modstomp Headquarters.  If any Federal-type people are reading this, Modstomp Headquarters is on Dantooine.  Yeah, that’s right, Dantooine.

The guys at engadget had a post on these funky TIE Fighter speakers, and I thought they were just the thing for your home theater if you happen to be George Lucas.  I’d like to see a few more models than just Darth’s TIE Advance, but it’s nice that people finally realize there aren’t enough novelty speakers on the market for dorks.  Dorks with a lot of money.  Here’s a link to engadget‘s gallery.

Yep, I’m in Canadia. I made the whole journey with a rip in my Dockers cargo pants, about 7″ right in the seat. Also, the guy at the Delta counter threatened that I would be forcibly removed by the police. I did not balk. I told him to get his boss, and when he said no, I told him I would wait at his counter until he did. Stupid putz. I guess I’d be grumpy too if I was working at the Delta ticket counter at 60 years old.

Here’s a fun link if you ever want to make a fuss. Bankruptcy serves those hosers right.

I’ve wanted a street bike for some time now, but have never really persued it. But with a couple investments that have paid off well in the last month, the chance came to finally get one. I looked around for a few weeks before I found the one I wanted (that was in my price range). It’s not a big bike, but it suits the type of around-town sorta biking I plan to do.

I decided to go with a Suzuki Savage 650. It’s a fairly small bike as cruisers go, but it’s got enough punch to do well for city riding. It looks a lot like a McPrize compared to my father-in-laws massive Yamaha Road Star 1600, but it’s enough for me. It’s a little small for freeway cruising, but I only plan to use it a a commuter. With gas prices at around $2.20, it should save me close to $60 a month in gas compared to my fuel-hog Jeep Cherokee.

I’ll get some pics up later (yeah, right), but for now you can see what it looks like here.