jill of all tirades

Out past the Outlets in Gilroy there is a handful of wineries that enjoy the peace and quiet of being on that side of town.  Most of the other wineries are on the Hecker Pass side of town, but if you make the drive to Gilroy, I suggest exploring the other side of town for a more personal tasting experience.  Thomas Kruse Winery is one of the best ones to try; with the good wine, laid back atmosphere, and beautiful view it is easy to spend hours just hanging out there.

After traveling down a gravel drive past Cabernet vines you arrive at the tasting room, which is also the main winery building.  Don’t expect fancy lighting and decor to distract you from the wine; the bar is a rough table and most of the light is natural sunlight.  I have 3 favorite wines from this winery, but I have been told that I will add a fourth once I try the Apricot Desert Wine (which is not released yet).

2006 Chardonnay – If you like an oaky, buttery Chardonnay this is not the place for you.  In fact, don’t even ask for one, unless you are joking.  This wonderful example of a Chardonnay had the aroma of kiwi and fresh apples.  I could smell this wine all day long, assuming I did not drink it all.  Sipping the wine the first thing you notice is a fresh crisp green apple flavor with pineapple following as a gentle finisher.  Sitting outside in the beautiful California weather is the perfect setting for this excellent wine.

Isn't the Port a beautiful color?

Gilroy Red – This is a blend of Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon that goes down very smooth.  I think that this is a quintessential table wine for any sort of meal, and a good wine to bring to a dinner party.  Smelling this wine gives hints of leather and blackberries while the taste brings up memories of black cherry with a slight hint of pepper.  This is currently the most popular wine, so get some while it lasts.

2006 Estate Merlot – This Merlot manages to be very smooth without sacrificing anything in the way of flavor.  It has the aroma of plum and tobacco with the flavor of blueberry and light tannins.  It has a beautiful color when held up to the sun, if you can leave enough in your glass to actually look at it.

Along with these wines, TK Winery also makes a wonderful Port wine.  I am generally not a fan of Port; the ruby ports are too sweet and the tawny ports are too strong.  This port is made from Cabernet grapes, rather than the Zinfandel grapes that are normally used.  I do not know enough about Port to say more than “I like it!”  If you get a chance, try the Port before it is gone!

Xbox Live has a new online multi-player gaming idea.  They get the players to participate in huge live game shows that are scheduled to air during “prime-time TV”.  The only game that is currently being offered is 1 vs 1oo and it is still in beta.  What this means is that if you have an Xbox Live Gold account, you can join in on the beta and maybe win some prizes.

To play the game, you select it on the dashboard and enter the lobby.  Once you are there you get partnered up with 3 other players and then get sent into the game.  You can get placed in the Crowd, the Mob, or as the One.  The object of the game, if you have never seen it on TV, is for the one person to “knockout” all the mob members by getting all the questions right as the mob gets them wrong.  Hence the One vs 100 (the mob).  If the One wins, they get MS Points and/or game download credits.  If the One answers wrongly the Mob gets to split the winnings between whomever is left.  At certain times the One can take the money and run; which is pointless in the beta because they are not using real prizes right now!  Sorry, that drives me nuts!!  If you are playing in the Crowd, you get to answer the questions to improve your stats and win a small prize if you are in the top 3 for score.

On to the fun stuff.  You get chosen as the One or Mob by having a quick answer time and a high correct answer percentage.  I like this method of selection because it ensures a competitive game that goes on for a while; but I do not like it because I will probably never get selected with my 82% correct answer rate and 1.2 second time to answer.  Even though I will always be in the crowd, I enjoy playing this game with Jack and laughing at some of the people that I see playing.

The questions are a mix of everything you could imagine in a trivia game.  From pop culture to chemistry to sports, it is all there.  If you do not watch TV at all, you will be at a big disadvantage (trust me, I know).  Some examples of questions are:

• What is the 24th letter of the alphabet?
• What is the scientific name for the study of birds?
• Where was the Indy 500 race held from 2002-2008?
• Who of these was never married to Madonna?
• In what city would you find the Prado Museum?
• How many numbers are on the XBOX 360 controller?

Remember that all of the questions are multiple choice, I just can’t remember them all to list them here. As you can see, it is a wide range of subjects.

Currently there is one Live game offered Fri and another on Sat for 2 hours of game each.  On the other days there is Extended Play where everyone is in the Mob just answering questions.  This is where you get the chance to raise your rankings to be selected for the One or Mob in the Live game.  There is also going to be special themes for the Extended Play sessions such as: community written, he said – she said, and current events.

Personally, I enjoy playing this game and have encountered no bugs so far.  Finally, the reason to play the beta; for each answer you submit you get an entry into a sweepstakes drawing.  The top prizes are a TV or a laptop or a Zune.  Not a bad reason to play a game that requires no commitment other than a little time, right?  I think that this is a great way to be interactive couch potatoes rather than a standard vidi-it!  Nothing will stop people from sitting on the couch in the evening and staring at the TV, but maybe this will encourage socialization with those sitting in the same room.  Wishful thinking, I know.

 Fallout 3 is my pick for Game-of-the-Year.  Wait!  It already won that in 2008: I nominate it for Game-of-the-Decade!  Having never played the earlier Fallout games, I was able to come to this experience with an open mind.  Although, I was slightly predisposed to like it having played Oblivion and enjoying it.  Fallout 3 is a Western RPG set in post-nuclear America with lots of guns, ammo, and mutants to shoot.  Fallout 3 was released on October 28, 2008 by Bethesda Softworks and is available on PC, XBOX 360, and Playstation 3.

I have recently finished the main storyline but still have a few quests to complete.  The biggest thing that this game has that others don’t is DLC.  Fallout 3 is one of the few games that offers DLC long after the game was released; DLC that is actally a whole chapter added to the game, rather than a new armor set or weapon only.

Fallout 3 DLC offered

• Operation: Anchorage – January 27, 2009
• The Pitt – March 24, 2009
• Broken Steel – May 5, 2009
• Point Lookout – June 23, 2009
• Mothership Zeta – late July 2009

Pros 

My number 1 pro for this game is VATS.  For a un-coordinated person like me, FPS games are not an option if I want to keep my self respect.  When you activate VATS in the game, it shows the enemy and gives you the % chance of hitting each body area.  You then select which ones you want to try for and the game does the rest; is usually adds a cool slow motion video of the action too!

The next pro that I have is the ability to wander around Capitol Wasteland looking for quests and shooting animals/bandits/mutants.  It is much like Oblivion in this sense (no surprise there) without the plant gathering for potion making.  I can spend hours finding new places to burglarize. . . errrr explore . . . and new people to help or not.

My final big pro is the different ways to end quests.  Most RPG games have the go here, do this, go back to quest-giver, get reward format for quests.  Fallout 3 allows you to decide to kill the quest-giver, keep the special item, talk the quest-giver into giving you more money, etc.  In the very beginning of the game, you can choose to blow-up an entire town or not.  If you do, this ends many quests that you might have gotten.  Many RPG games do not allow you to shoot yourself in the foot in this manner (but it does make such a pretty boom!).

Cons

My biggest con would be the dialog.  The general, non-quest giving people have very repetitive dialog that I believe could have been expanded on.  It just gets annoying after a while to listen to the same 3 phrases given in a thick Minnesota accent for hours on end.

There are some points where you can explore too much area and find part of the main quest without following the normal progression of it.  This is nice at times, but you end up missing some major exploration and the quest is not very good about updating your progress (as Jack found out).  This is where a strategy guide or the GameFaqs site comes in handy.

The third con I have is null and void as of the Broken Steel DLC.  I did not like that after you finished the main quest, the game was over and you could not finish any leftover quests.  Broken Steel allows the game to go on and it raises the level cap from 20 to 30!

As you can tell, I am a big fan of this game.  If you like RPGs I would reccomend purchasing it, but if you do not I would reccomend a rental.  It has a gripping storyline, a ton of character customization, and a butler robot that tells jokes; you can’t get more RPG that that!

Take a drive on Watsonville Road and you will see a winery with palm trees lining the driveway and wildflowers growing between the vines.  You have reached Jason Stephens Winery!  We heard about this winery from family friends and were very happy with our experience there.  It is so nice to see a younger winemaker out on his own and being successful.  Jason Stephens Winery has a modern feel to it compared to other wineries.  The tasting room is the the barrel warehouse which is very clean and open.  Lighter colored walls, open space, and high ceilings make it a nice place to be after all the small and cramped tasting rooms.

2007 Estate Chardonnay – This was a nice complex Chardonnay that managed to be very fruit forward while still being oaked.  It smelled of pears and tasted smooth and fruity without being buttery.

2006 Merlot – This was my favorite wine of the ones that we tasted.  It was much more flavorful and complex than other Merlots I have tasted.  It had a good amount of tannins but still was able to be extremely smooth drinking.  I smelled tobacco and berries and tasted earth and more berries.  Now let me say that this is definitely not a fruity wine.  It is still a good strong Merlot for all the berries I tasted and smelled.

2006 Dorcich Estate Cabernet Sauvignon – There were 2 Cabs to taste and this one was our favorite of the two.  This wine had a very dark color, a beautiful purple-red that you would expect from a Syrah.  When I first saw the color of the wine I thought, Ohhhhhhh pretty!  In this wine I smelled cherries and black pepper and tasted smooth tannins and cherries again.  I am not a huge Cab fan, so they have to be extremely smooth for me to be able to enjoy a whole glass.  With this Cab, I could enjoy a whole bottle!  If Jack didn’t drink it first, that is.