Well, it finally happened…  My son passed me in Xbox gamer points.  I know he’s been dreaming of this day for a couple of years.  Surprisingly, it occured with very little fanfare.  As a matter of fact, I’m not even sure if he’s aware of it yet, but he’s 5 points ahead of me!

Honestly, the only surprise is that it’s taken this long.  First of all, I have never played games to chase gamer points.  I play for fun, and if the points happen, they happen.  I rarely even look to see how you earn the achievements on most games that I play.  Secondly, my son plays the 360 literally ten times as often as I do.  He ought to be ahead of me!  I will say that I actually played for an hour tonight.  I was watching him play FIFA 09 “Be a Pro”, and it looked fun.  So later on, I loaded up my Be a Pro.  It had been over a year since I had played.  And, you know what, I had fun!  I still enjoy gaming, it’s just time and priorities in my life limit my 360 time significantly.  Plus, the only real time I get to play is late at night, and I don’t like gaming before bed, because then I get too wound up to go to sleep!  Getting old sucks, LOL.

Playing again was a reminder of how much fun video games can be.  I need to set aside a little time more often.  Of course, between work and vacations, I’m hardly around for the next two months, but maybe I can still squeeze in a game or two.  It’s good for the pocketbook, though, because I rarely buy new games anymore!  Part of me really wanted to get Red Dead Redemption, but I knew I wouldn’t get my money’s worth right now.  Oh well, we’ll see how I feel around my birthday in July.  NCAA Football 2011 will probably get me in the mood to game again, like it does every year.

I’ve mostly been into the manage-only type of games lately, anyway.  I seem to waver between all-out control and no control at all in my sports games.  If I do pick up the sticks, I prefer the “be a pro” style of play, where I control one guy and the computer controls the rest.   That’s my favorite kind of simulation, and the one I feel most “realistically” simulates being a pro athlete (on the field at least!).

On a side-note, I start my one-year “trial” as a web programmer on Monday!  I still have a lot of loose ends to tie up before getting into it, but I’ve been doing a little programming for almost the last year, anyway, so it won’t be “all new.”  It certainly feels like a new position to me, though, and I’m excited about it!  We’ll see where the next year takes me…