I would like to offer my comparison between the games Rock Band and Guitar Hero, but first I will mention something about my broken Rock Band drum set.

I bought Rock Band for myself before Christmas, having had a great time with Guitar Hero 2, and wanting to try out the crazy drum setup. I've been playing for a while, and my snare drum (the red one on the far left) has gradually stopped working well. It's at the point now that I have to bang on the drum really hard just to get it to register.

I've seen videos on the web about other people having trouble with their drum sets. Apparently, there were some issues with the early models (which I'm sure is what I have considering I pre-paid for mine) that are fixed in later revisions. EA is being awesome about replacing the broken drum kits. I've visited their site and ordered my free drum kit replacement. Hopefully I'll be swapping out the drums early next week.

That said, let me get into my comparison between the games, and what I think they should do with the next version of Rock Band and/or Guitar Hero.

I should say from the start that I really like both games. I think the concept is simple, but effective, and the music selection has been, for the most part, both top-notch and groovalicious. But there are places where the games don't overlap that I think could be improved.

For example, one of my favorite additions in Rock Band is that you can continue to accrue star power while you have star power activated. I've always thought it would be a great trick if you could make your way from the beginning of a song to the end with star power running through the whole thing, just by hitting the special notes as you go. There aren't any songs that allow this, but there are many songs that allow you to go for long periods by spanning between star power notes.

What I like best about Guitar Hero is that it has character. Guitar Hero 3 has really neat transitions between "levels" that are animated and tell the story of your band as you get more popular. I realize that Rock Band emulates this a bit in band mode when you travel from city to city, but having some flavor other than the game in Rock Band would have been nice. Playing with my brother in a band and chatting like we're actually in a band between sets has made up for this somewhat, but this leads me to my next point.

I realize that it seems odd to say this, but I would really like to play band mode solo, without having to play guitar and sing. Sure, it's supposed to be for multiple players, but up until Pat came to play with me, I had nobody to play with in band mode. And band mode is wildly different from solo play. It would be nice to get through those parts of the game without having to have another willing person nearby. (Yes, I've been forcing all of my holiday visitors to play with me.)

One thing that drives me crazy about Rock Band is that the 360 won't let me easily move my Live profile between instruments. So if I tired of playing drums, I can't easily switch my profile to a guitar. I have to log out of Live, then log back in under the new instrument. This doesn't seem like much of a problem, but it definitely puts a stall in gameplay, and I'm sure all of my Live friends are tired of being alerted every time I switch instruments. (Live pops up an alert to tell you whenever a friend comes online.)

Another issue with Rock Band and profiles is that when you've created a band, your leader must be present to play. That means that it's really your leader who is progressing through the game. If you had all of your members but that guy, then you would have to start over. Plus, if you only have a couple of players to start out and you want to switch bandmates, the leader can only ever play the instrument they first select. This is a real problem with Rock Band.

My only real complaint about Guitar Hero is in the song selection, and I can't complain about that too much because that's what Guitar Hero is all about. The songs are more heavy and metal-oriented. That's fine, but I like the selection that Rock Band offers that isn't so heavy all the time. Although less Weezer would be nice.

The Rock Band music scrolling bar thing has better graphics than Guitar Hero does, too. They're more consistent. It's a bit harder to tell what all the symbols are for in Guitar Hero. Does the lighted circle mean star power or hammer on? And all the little extra symbols in battle mode are silly. Battle mode is silly.

Another thing that could be improved is the hardware. Beyond the "not working" issues, it would be great to have a completely wireless setup. There are just too many darn wires everywhere.

If you're going to have wires, then provide a better USB hub. It's great that they provided one at all, but it would have been better if it integrated better with the 360. Mine hangs out of the front of my entertainment center now because of how I've had to supply power to it. You would what would be neat? A drum kit that has a built-in USB hub. Plug your guitars into the drum kit. That would be nice.

I hope that the franchise does well, because I would really like to see another Rock Band release that perhaps addresses some of the issues here, and incorporates more of the character of Guitar Hero.

It's frequent over the last few years that between early November and mid-January I enter a kind of soul-numbing melancholy. I'd managed to avoid it last year with the new job, and I was doing so well this year, not really thinking too much about it, but I think it's sneaking up on me. I can kind of feel its approach.

Interestingly, I think that it's nothing to do with the holidays, which maybe it used to be. And it doesn't have anything to do with my birthday, which I will once again not be celebrating on the actual day. I guess it's that I'm bothered by work stuff more these days, which is shocking considering what an influence it was last year to staying out of the funk. Now it's most of the cause. If I think about it too much, I just want to crawl into a hole somewhere.

It's a weird mix of feeling underutilized while also feeling ineffectual; overburdened while simultaneously not doing much. For things that I'm supposed to be expert at I frequently feel like that expertise is being eschewed. Things that I've volunteered to learn more about - things I don't already know much about - to help out in areas that we're weak seem to be things that I'm already expected to know, and when I don't, I feel worthless and like I'm not doing my job well.

I'm missing opportunities to work on things that might have a finite scope because I have other work that is consuming me - things I know I'm not great at, don't like to do, and have no end that I can see. It might be nice to start, finish, and be praised for something to have some simple success. My schedule seems to not allow this, I guess. Or I just suck too much to actually be given tasks like that.

I keep wondering if I'm telling myself that I am good at this, but really I'm mediocre. Or worse than mediocre. I'm questioning a year's worth of thinking that I've ever been good at this. Again.

I wonder if there's anything else I can avoid screwing up. It's not fun feeling like this and I hope it passes soon.

I just realized something interesting about rolling dice online. Forgive my geek side for showing for a moment.

I've been messing with modules for JibbyBot (a phenny bot for IRC), trying to pick up a little Python here and there, and something I thought to possibly implement is a dice-rolling module that would let you specify die-rolls in D&D format. I suppose a brief tutorial is in order.

In Dungeons and Dragons (D&D), there are several different polyhedral dice. When the game wants you to roll a specific die, it will specify the number of sides on the die to roll. So for the frequent opportunity you get to roll a 20-sided die, the game will specify this with a shorthand syntax, "d20", which is really short for "1d20", meaning to roll the 20-sided die one time. If the game needs you to roll a 6-sided die three times, the shorthand would look like "3d6". There are also things that let you add or subtract a constant value from the roll, like in "3d6+2", but that's not quite relevant for the interesting thought I have come across.

3d6 is a pretty standard roll in D&D. It (or a very similar variation) is used when you create a new character for each of the six stats that represent that character's abilities. This roll has a certain mathematical property in that the range of numbers is between 3 (the total of dice all rolling 1) and 18 (the total of three dice all rolling 6). When producing characters in the past via automated random number generators, I would simply generate a random number between 3 and 18 and call it a day. As it turns out, this is not an accurate representation of 3d6.

The tricky bit is that 3d6 will result in a more interesting pattern over time. If you roll a lot of 3d6 results with real dice, you'll note that there is a bell-shaped curve to the results. The numbers 10 and 11 are far more common than 3 or 18. This is because there is only one way to roll the dice and get 1-1-1 for a total of 3, but there are three ways to roll the dice to get 4 (1-1-2, 1-2-1, and 2-1-1). The numbers 10 and 11 have the most possible combinations of values, so they appear more often over time.

So if you're creating a random number generator that simulates rolling dice, you need to factor in that probability to your results, or you're going to be very disappointed. 1d15+3 will definitely not yield the same results as 3d6 over many successive rolls.

I'm sure this math is pretty obvious, but it's something that I had not thought about before, and yet was curious about it when I saw that there are die rollers that still go through iterations of rolls to simulate this curve rather than just picking a flat number at random from within the range. Interesting. I wonder if there's an easy mathematical way to simulate the curve without doing iterations.

There is no Christmas shopping done. I think we've just about given up this year. My only enthusiasm for this holiday so far is for it to be over. Of the bazillion lights we bought last year to put outside, we've hung exactly zero.

I think we blew through our Christmas enthusiasm on the weekend after Thanksgiving when we went tree shopping, couldn't find the usual place, and ended up with a decent but pre-cut tree. I wasn't home when Berta and the kids decorated both trees this year. The one in the family room still isn't done being decorated, I think. And thinking about it now, I wonder if I'm going to have the stamina for two trees worth of holiday.

To accompany the live tree in the living room we're getting new furniture on Tuesday. A loveseat. Some form of seating has been on order from somewhere or other since September, and is only now arriving. Note that this is only half of the pieces that were ordered. Some kind of leather chair is yet to have a delivery date.

Thursday is my company Christmas party. We're bowling someplace downtown. Seems like it should be more fun than the company-sponsored parties at previous jobs.

This weekend is the usual trip to Johnstown. Berta's sister Ellen will be in from Idaho, hence the imperative to visit this weekend. As a result, we're missing Stan's annual party, and Brian visiting, and the only full weekend that Pat will be home. I'm not bitter, but I am just turning off the emotion parts or I think the speed of this holiday will shred me. I will concentrate on preparing to keep myself entertained over the weekend, which will all go to waste as we involve ourselves with visiting relatives and Berta's eldest sister's 40th birthday party, all backed into the 39 hour span of a visit.

Also our clothes washer has broken. I realize I'm a lot better off than a lot of people out there, but a little holiday magic/sanity/rest/time-dilation would be appreciated.

Abby: You count and I'll hide, ok? Go!

Riley: 1.. 2.. 3.. 4.. Here I come!

Abby: NO! Count to ten, ok? Go ahead.

Riley: 1.. 2.. 3.. 4.. 10! Here I come!

What makes this more funny is that Riley, although only 3, will routinely count to 20 without much thought, but I guess he doesn't see the point in giving Abby time to hide.

I just wish they'd stop taking all of the cushions off all of the couches in the house. Aye de mi.