needs food badly

I'd comment about my return to college, but it all went so fast and smooth that nothing monumental came of it. It felt like I was back to the old routine in no time, and campus hasn't changed at all.

At least, in everything but food. My first year's experience with Loyola's food services could be described as good (for a college at least) but expensive. It was possible to get a decent meal without breaking the bank, but careful plannign was required.

This year, I have a feeling budgeting will be impossible. The prices on nearly everything have been raised, with no indication of an improvement in quality. They've also taken to making each order individually, meaning a long friggin wait added onto the wait to even order food. All of these are inconveniences and annoyances, but I could have lived with them.

But they took Taco Bell away, and that I can't forgive.

Not only was Taco Bell some of the best junk food on campus by far, it was also the cheapest. A few TB lunches through the week was essential to keeping the cash reserves solid. Without it, there's nothing beside hamburgers that doesn't cost below four dollars. Throw in a drink and maybe some chips (or appropriate side), and a meal could cost as much as an entree at a casual restaurant, at about half the quality.

"How could they get away with this Christian?"

Easy; The majority of Loyola students have rich famillies and care nothing of how much anything costs. They may notice a price increase but it means nothing to them. But to the average guy, from an average income, its a big deal. I average about $800 a semester out of a possible $1000. That limit isn't just a number, it is real to me. If I were to eat anything I wanted, I'd burn through a grand before finals. Its ridiculous , and I have no idea as to why there is such a drastic increase. All I know is that I'll be learning to cook better very soon....

In other news, I finally got around to trying out the demo for Medal Of Honor: Pacific Assault. AFter the excellent performance of Call of Duty, I was hoping EA would step up and match them with another excellent MOH entry on the PC. Oh how wrong I was. The demo took forever to load, sometimes skipping over huge parts of the intro scene and sometimes simply freezing up. If the game actually loaded (which wasn't a guarantee), it ran horribly slow. This machine runs Far Cry at 1024 with only a few memory related hiccups. It looks incredible. Pacific Assault ran 15 fps at most, and looked nothing better than COD save for some more complex lighting. From what I coudl decipher from the gameplay, there's nothing new here. Lots of scripted sequences and stupid enemies. They actually charge at you. While I understand that the Japanese troops really did this in battle, it is the easiest shot you'll ever have. The only new feature was the ability to order troops around, but there was no indication of it actually making a difference.

I was really hoping for another grat MOH experience, but once again EA has proven their inability to make a quality game. At one point they still made a few really good games, but now they are worthless to me. Considering how many copies the Madden franchise alone sells they won't exactly miss my business, but it only makes me more hopefull that one day gamers will realize their incompetence and stop buying their products.

Challenge everything? The only thing EA challenges is my patience.

Back later if anything interesting pops up.