Left 4 Dead Game Review

Left 4 Dead is a fairly recent game that I have played and found to be a lot of fun. First off, the story line is that some disease has broken out and has infected everyone in the city, except for the four people that are being played by you and your friends. It is just like any other recent zombie movie, they aren’t dead they are infected. If you have see 28 Days Later, or Dawn of the Dead you know what I’m talking about.

Well anyway, you start out in a specified point with your pals and you are walking through the city trying to get to the extraction point. Along the way you encounter large hordes of zombies and sometimes you run into things like little bosses. They all do different things, for example, you have this giant fat character that has growths all over his body and his job is to throw up on you. This makes your life miserable and makes all the other zombies come after you. Along the way you find new guns and ammo, as well as improve your health. If you die, your friends can find you in locked rooms and can save you almost like saving someone that was stranded.

Don’’t fret, story mode isn’t the only thing you have to do, also there is a form of verses. This is composed of two teams infected and regular people ‘er rather victims. As a person, you have the same job as in the rest of the game, to survive and make it to the check point and finally to extraction. The job of the other team (the infected one) is to kill you, the regular people. When you are on the zombie team you are one of the boss characters.  And at certain point in the level you are on, you have the chance to be a tank which is the biggest baddest zombie -like an Arnold Schwarzenegger zombie.

I find the game to be great fun and it is not in the least bit scary because you know when the zombies are coming. I would say 14 and up could play this game and have a lot of fun with it. So check out Left 4 Dead.

Teaching Your Kids About Piracy

I just found out this weekend that two of my kids had just started to download named star’s music from YouTube.com. They had found music videos and had used YouTube MP3 converter software, which they had downloaded free, to strip the music file from the video; essentially getting music for free. Yikes! Not only is downloading anything from the YouTube.com website a direct violation of YouTube’s terms of service, but it is plain and simple stealing song revenue from the artist.

I took immediate action and removed the software and removed the songs from their music players and computers. As I had a talk about piracy with all four of my kids and the reality of what could happen, some topics came up which I thought I would share as you consider if you should have this same talk with your kids.

1. They all said they did not know this was a violation on YouTube.com. I took time to show all four kids where to find the terms of use in the footer and encouraged them to always take time to read this before they assumed that they could do anything they wanted with the content.

2. One child asked “if is is illegal, why did the software maker create a program that allows people to do something illegal?” Well, that actually is a very good question, and truthfully I don’t know why YouTube and other sites don’t make a real effort to squash this type of free software. My question back to my kids was “just because you can, doesn’t make it right does it?”

I made a deal with my kids that I would help them buy music in a legitimate way and that music piracy keeps our favorite artist from making more music that we will love when we steal music from them. That’s what piracy is, it is stealing and our kids need to know that. For us music piracy simply does not match our family values.

Do you know how your kids are getting their music? If you haven’t asked, it’s time that you did. You may be as surprised as I was to find out that they thought what they were doing was okay.

What It’s Like Being A New Blogger.

Being a new blogger is not as easy as I thought it would be. It’s just like writing for my college professors every thing has to be perfect. I thought it was going to be easy when I heard I only had to write between 200 and 300 words. I was like wow, no biggy. But after the first couple topics, I found it was very hard to come up with ideas you know a lot about and are easy to write on. Now, there is research involved and it can at times quite a while.

Also, I have trouble keeping up with the blogs. It’s hard to get myself to write them sometimes, and I know the deadline is around the corner but I just can’t bring myself to write. It’s like gah, I have this blog to do but I don’t have any ideas at the moment. I’ll just wait until later. This is not good, if you do this you have a very good chance of missing your deadline.

I was so eager to blog in the first place because Mrs. McCord made it all look so easy. So, if you are interested in bloggers, McCord Web Services has three levels of service Pearl, Topaz, and Diamond. If you want to learn more about these services check out their website.

Our Kids – Generation Text and How To Deal With Them

I am reading an excellent book right now called Generation Text Raising Well-Adjusted Kids in an Age of Instant Everything by Dr. Michael Osit. I have to say that I clearly see my 19 year old college student and triplet 11 year olds as being Generation Text kids. This book “speaks” to me on many different levels as I try to be the very best Mom that I can be.

The book is excellent and if you as a parent and have ever had issues with your kids not getting off the computer when you tell them, kids performing under their real capability in school, and issues with kids being too connected to games and cell phones at the expense of real world activities, this is a book that you really must read.

My kids hate that I am reading it as I am using many of the no-nonsense practical tips for parents that so far for me are really working. I don’t review many books in my blog, although I am an avid reader, but this book really stands out as a winner.

Dr. Michael Osit give such insight into Generation Text kids and the issues that we as parents have raising them that you would think that the book was written just for you and your family in mind. One concrete thing that I have done to help my own kids breakout of the Generation Text entitlement mentality is to institute a schedule of daily activities for my younger kids, and to help my older kid with real lessons in time management and a procedure on how to push yourself to performance not mediocrity.

So far the entire family has bought in to these new concepts as a team embracing the change. As a result of the new schedule and better time management, my house has never looked so clean and my kids so happy. In fact, homework and music practice was even done before dinner without a struggle!

If you are like my family and you struggle with kids pushing the limits to game constantly either on Fiesta, video games, or DS Games, the chores never seem to get done – as playtime has taken over work time, or your kids seem to just be surfing through school without understanding that a C is not okay in the grand scheme of things, then this is the book that you have been waiting for.

I have linked the title of the book in this post to Amazon so you can check it out. I am not being paid to review the book nor have an affiliate link tied to the Amazon link – I get nothing for recommending the book to you. I just think that you would strongly benefit from reading it if you have kids from age 10 to 20 years of age.