A late start yesterday — AKA sleep — made for quite a busy day. Catching up on things while staying on top of the new stuff is quite a hassle.

Tomorrow is finally BBQ time, the one that was canceled a few days ago, so I'll be saving myself all day to pack it away in the evening. We'll bring a few bottles of wine for smooth sailing, so a good time should be had by all.

The fall TV season has fully kicked in, and the new DVR is being put to the test as we watched episodes of "Entourage," "House," "NCIS: Los Angeles" and "Sons of Anarchy," and that's only a fraction of what we've recorded this week.

I picked up the new Alice in Chains and Megadeth albums, so I'll be checking those out in a bit, some hard rockin' music is always good for staying awake in the middle of the night.

Today, I met up with some of the CrimeCraft developers, and people who follow my daily whining know by now that I'm an avid fan, so I had to vent. Luckily, several of my issues with the game are known problems and are being worked on, so I guess that's a good thing. The game's great fun, but it urgently needs more people playing ...

Later this week, I'll have to fire up Left 4 Dead and check out the new DLC. Good thing I'm a PC gamer, so I get the content for free. I'm also looking forward to Vandal Hearts on XBL, just the type of game my wife and I like playing in co-op.

How many of you are hyped about the new DJ Hero? If you haven't made up your mind yet, check out our preview!

We have a few more trips coming up in the near future as publishers are slowly starting to ramp up for the holiday rush, so we'll get to see quite a few hot titles in the coming weeks.

Not quite sure why yesterday was such a slow news day. Maybe people were traveling back from the Tokyo Game Show, or maybe everybody collectively decided to take the day off.

Either way, it got me some extra time with CrimeCraft, and I also watched "NCIS: Los Angeles," which wasn't as good as the pilot episode from a few months ago, so hopefully it'll pick up.

Believe it or not, the wife and I played Boggle online through Steam, but damn, some of these people are good! The first bunch of people was easy to beat, but once we breezed through the early competitors, the advanced players really gave us a run for our money. It's a simple game, but definitely fun and addictive.

Well today's message is going to be rather short ....

We went out, and we got drunk.

The weekend is off to somewhat of  a weak start. The BBQ that I was SO looking forward to didn't happen. An odd change of plans stood in the way of my grilled steak, dammit!

I'll have to make up for it when we hit the town with some other friends tonight, Vinnie's, here I come!

Hope you all checked out our Nathan Fillion interview yesterday! If not, you better be on your way right now! It's good, and it's kind of funny to read about a Hollywood celebrity actually being into gaming, unlike other actors who "claim" they are gamers just to promote a game. Nathan, beware, I'll be sneaking up on you with an energy sword or whack you with the (gravity) hammer of doom!

As I mentioned earlier this week, we'll probably be doing a few site updates, little tweaks here and there, and catching up on some Tokyo Game Show coverage, so there'll be plenty to read around these parts of the Internets.

This heat wave that they predicted last week is nowhere to be seen. It's sunny, of course, but temperatures have been normal for this time of the year. Maybe this weekend!

We had plans to head out to an Activision press event to check out one of its upcoming games, but things got in the way, so Adam was all on his own. Much to his delight, the goody bag was actually full of goodies and not just press junk this time around.

Tomorrow, we're heading out for some barbecue at a friend's place, and I just realized that it is the first BBQ we've been to, and summer just ended! Shame on me! I'll have to eat an extra portion of grilled meat just to make up for that omission!

As I teased last week, we finally managed to catch up with Nathan Fillion in between takes on his TV series "Castle" and had a little chat about his voice-over work as Buck in Halo 3: ODST, so check it out.

Over the next few days, we'll have some Tokyo Game Show coverage on the site, as you may have noticed from the Sony and Microsoft articles posted last night.

If our local correspondent comes through, we may even get some on-location coverage, but we'll see what comes in.

Watched the latest episode of "Sons of Anarchy," and it was good stuff. It seems something nasty is brewing between the cigar guru, the local cops and the MC. Henry Rollins looks scary as ever, so that was a good casting choice!

Over the weekend, we'll probably roll out some updates on the site, although they are mainly back-end tweaks, little adjustments we're making as we are learning the ins and outs of the new CMS. Soon, we will work on getting the comments working again, so that should be a nice addition for all you chatterboxes out there ....

Oh boy, we're in trouble! The new TV season started, and there are so many TV series that we want to follow that at certain points, there are three of them on at the same time. Luckily, the DVR can record two at the same time, and we can watch a third one live on TV, but damn, we'll have a lot of catching up to do during the weekend.

Tonight, we watched the two-hour premiere of "House" and the new season of "Castle." Both are off to a good start.

Speaking of "Castle," we're still waiting on Nathan Fillon's publicist to set up a time for us to conduct the Halo 3: ODST-related interview, and while we were hoping to run it before the game's launch, that unfortunately no longer seems possible, since it just shipped. Hopefully soon, though.

Earlier today, I wanted to play some CrimeCraft but got tied up compressing trailers, and since movie editing basically takes up all the CPU power, there was not much left to do. I think I need a third work computer just to play games — for research purposes, of course! :)

We're off to a good start for the week, Monday's over with, so one down, four more days to go until the weekend.

Today was supposed to be scorching hot, but as usual the weather report wasn't very accurate, and while it was quite warm, it wasn't the 95° F (35° C) they had predicted.

We watched "Taking Chance" this evening, and wow — it was not only surprisingly good, but it was also very emotionally charged, powerful stuff. While it's not a war movie, it revolves around a high-ranking officer volunteering to escort home a fallen soldier from the Iraq War, and it shows the respect and honor he receives on his final trip. It's a drama, so don't expect any war footage or stuff blowing up. The only shots fired are the ones from the honor guard.

The latest episode of "Entourage" was good as well, but I wish they would just make a series with Ari Gold as the main character. That would be freaking hilarious.

As mentioned yesterday, we went to the movies to see "Gamer" and "Whiteout," both of which were quite mediocre. "Gamer," which was initially named "Game," was actually filmed a while ago, shortly after Gerard Butler did "300," but it didn't come out until now in order to get the visual effects done properly. The movie was not all that brilliant; while it contains lots of action and heads exploding, I was more surprised by the foul language and major T&A. "Whiteout," with Kate Beckinsale, is a thriller set in Antarctica. It's dominated by loads of snow, and there are a few action scenes in a blizzard, but otherwise, it was rather uneventful and bland.

Did some shopping, had dinner (steamed mussels and fries), and good-bye weekend. It's been a pleasure ....

Another lazy day was had yesterday. After a few updates and submitting a list of Web site tweaks to Ricky, our site dev, the rest of our time was spent on groceries, finishing up "Psych" and "Duplicity," and watching a few episodes of "Leverage." I also decided to give RE5 a break to quickly check out Red Faction: Guerrilla (PC) and Halo 3: ODST. RFG is fun and looks good, but it sure starts chugging at certain intervals in the game, so I guess running it at max settings isn't going to work. Halo 3: ODST is definitely a departure from the old Halo titles, and I think I've died more in the few hours I've played than I did in all three previous games combined, so at the very least, it's more challenging.

Tomorrow we're going to see "Gamer" and "Whiteout." We haven't been to the movies in a while, so we decided to double up.

In case you were wondering about all the movie talk, I've mentioned before that we're big movie fans, and if we weren't already running a video game site, we'd probably have a movie-related site.

Ahh weekend, it's the greatest. There's nothing better than being able to sleep in after a long week of work and insufficient shuteye.

Was watching the latest episode of "Psych," but unfortunately my eyelids were heavier than expected and I dozed off multiple times, on our most comfortable couch ... *snort* *drool* Guess we'll have to resume after breakfast.

Yesterday, we were playing some Guitar Hero: World Tour, and near the end I realized, why are people so surprised about the GH5/Kurt Cobain thing? Aside from the fact that Cobain is dead, there's no difference between him singing Bon Jovi's "You Give Live a Bad Name" or rapping Flav's latest junk and Ozzy Osbourne singing Los Lobos' "La Bamba."

Didn't people see this coming?

So we've decided to use movie quotes as the title for the message of the day. It's not for a particular reason, aside from the fact that we like movies a lot, and it seems like a fun thing to do. That's as good as reason as any, right? Once we have comments re-enabled, you readers can chime in with guesses about the movie title (today's quote is from the upcoming "The Informant!" starring Matt Damon).

To stay on topic, we started watching "Duplicity" with Clive Owen and Julia Roberts, and while it's a bit slow-paced, it is quite entertaining ... well, at least up until the part where I fell asleep.

Gaming-wise, I finally checked out Resident Evil 5 on the PC, and oddly enough, the game doesn't let me play in DirectX 10. I'm sure my quad-core/Nvidia 9 series configuration qualifies, but it only gave me DX9 as an option. Apart from that, the game started out a bit bleh, but once I re-familiarized me with the controls, it's gotten a lot more fun.

I also grabbed Red Faction: Guerrilla, but that will have to wait until I finish RE5.

A little bit of excitement at the end of the day with Microsoft announcing a 250GB Elite Modern Warfare 2 bundle, and all nicely painted. Might have to get one of those suckers ....

Apart from that, the day was pretty uneventful on my end, mostly work. Adam called in with a bit of good news. Apparently we got a call back from Nathan Fillion's publicist, and we are going to do an interview later this week. For the uninitiated, Fillion is an actor who's best known as Capt. Mal Reynolds in the "Firefly" TV series and "Serenity" movie. He's currently starring as crime novel writer Richard Castle in the ABC series, "Castle," but more importantly for us gamers, he's voicing Buck in Halo 3: ODST. Since we're big Firefly fans (as evidenced by the title of this post), we were very excited by this news, so check back in a few days for the end result.

In case you had not heard the news, Patrick Swayze, star of movies such as "Dirty Dancing," "Road House," "Point Break" and the recent A&E series, "The Beast," has succumbed to pancreatic cancer. He was a Hollywood icon and will be greatly missed ....

Not much else was going on today. The wife had the day off, so it was spent working, catching up on a few TV series ("Supernatural" and "Entourage"), and playing some more CrimeCraft (which, btw, is getting new content soon).

We have a few press trips lined up in the next week or two as we ramp up coverage for the holiday season, so be on the lookout for previews and interviews near the end of the month.

We were on an odd schedule today. We slept early, woke up at 6 am, watched some "Hell's Kitchen," had an early breakfast because we had to attend a block party around noon, a Mexican-themed food fest with plenty of margaritas and beer. A good time was had, and after a few hours we rolled away, feeling completely stuffed.

We watched some "Leverage" when we got home, but with our bellies full, it didn't take long before my wife and I passed out on the couch, waking up just in time to cheer for Kim Clijsters in the U.S. Open women's final. While she was off to a great start and was up 2-0, she faltered shortly afterward to barely take the first set at 7-5. The second set started off shaky, but Kim found her rhythm midway and finished off Caroline Wozniacki 6-3 to take home her second Grand Slam title.

Time for a victory dance in the living room!

Ahh, weekend, I'm always glad to see ya. Slept in way late but then had to rush to get our errands done because the wife and I wanted to watch the women's semifinals of the U.S. Open. Of course, we were rooting for Kim Clijsters, who played a great match even though victory came in a somewhat awkward way. Onto the finals!

We also watched "Inkheart" with Brandon Frasier, which turned out the be much better than we anticipated. It's more geared toward the younger crowd but not a bad flick at all.

Also received my latest Gears of War comic books (thanks Dana) so I quickly shredded through those, but I am still amazed at how thin comics are these days, and they're filled to the brim with ads. I used to be an avid X-Men and Sgt. Rock reader 15 years ago, so it seems things have changed quite a bit. It's been a while, so maybe I'll have to dig up my old issues and reminisce.

It seems that the Guitar Hero 5 debacle is far from over, with Courtney Love actually having a point: Kurt Cobain rapping or singing a Bon Jovi song just doesn't feel right. His former bandmates claim that everybody was under the impression that the likeness would only be used for Nirvana songs, but once the character's been unlocked, you can use Cobain throughout the game, which really makes him look less legendary.

I had to visit the dentist today for a routine check-up and walked away with a clean bill of health, apart from the usual "brush more" comment. For people who know me, these visits are a big deal due to some childhood trauma, which I'll spare you the details of, and they always put a knot in my stomach.

Today is 9/11, the 8th anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center and the day that the world as we knew it changed. We remember the lives lost that day and think of the soldiers who have made the greatest sacrifice for our country. As a former military man, I have nothing but respect and admiration for the brave men and women in uniform who were -- and continue to be -- in harm's way and continue to serve our country, regardless of whether you believe that the cause is just.

It doesn't get much more simpler than that, I'm tired, beat, worn out, stick a fork in me. Luckily the weekend is in sight, so I will soldier on and pull through. Some people have recently called me bionic, so I guess I can't let them down now ....

One of the side effects of me being tired, I honestly start acting loopy, as in insane in the membrane. Most of the times, it's a funny crazy though, so have no fear. :)

Nothing too exciting happened yesterday, even the news was sort of blah, a few average  demos, no scandals, no surprising buyouts or takeovers from Disney, although later today a few Euros might get a little excited over the FIFA 10 demo, so keep an eye out on the file servers.

Aside from the exploits that you've been following over the past few days, we've also been playing The Beatles Rock Band, and while the background interactivity is a welcome change from RB's concert hall fare, the game itself is a bit too easy for seasoned players. Read our review for more details ...

Not much else happened today. I was planning to catch up on some "Leverage" and "Dark Blue" but was busy during the day and then watched some tennis in the evening. The wife and I are rooting for Kim Clijsters the day after tomorrow in her match against Serena Williams. It should be a good game.

There are a few "secret" press events happening in the next few weeks, so stay tuned for some interesting coverage, not all of which is positive. :P