Redwolf's Journal (continued)

Picked up and played through Mass Effect 2, and I am impressed. The first game had a good story, but the gameplay was lacking. The driving on a planet's surface was poor, the side missions were repetitive in theme and the actual rooms used, and the PC port was buggy. ME2 adopts the third-person shooter gameplay more fully, which isn't my favorite but works perfectly well. Scanning planets for resources still gets tedious - I bet they'll change that in the third installment. Combat is... somewhat predictable in that if you see cover, you're likely to be using it. But the game still plays well and definitely better than the first. The story, though... wow. Bioware gets kudos. Playing the game, I felt I actually could roleplay my character (in this case, very much a "good guy," but still able to take the hard line once in a while) and even the small decisions felt like they made a difference. Importing a ME1 playthrough, I frequently heard about or saw th

I'm tired. So tired. I was exhausted Monday. Things aren't getting any better. Seven hours a day in training. The training itself isn't bad, though I'm trying to cram a lot into my head. But trying to fit it everything else around that is stressful, and connectivity problems during the training are stressful. Normally, if we have any slow internet connection or brief outage at work, it's an annoyance. When the whole editorial system we're training for is hosted elsewhere, however, it becomes crippling. And there's no f-ing reason for things to be this bad now when they are normally fine. Plus there were a number of crashes and minor issues today that seem like they're more on the other end. The trainer here, when asked, said he's not had this much trouble anywhere else. Grand. I just looove upgrades.

So today was half spent in meetings, and the other half scrambling to get actual work done. And this is just the beginning. There's training for the new editorial software Tuesday through Thursday, and more over the next several weeks. This is going to mess with my work schedule, too. Ugh. Meanwhile, my home desktop has been showing signs of instability lately, locking up on occasion, and this after removing the one drive that failed. It seems potentially graphics oriented, but could be the power supply potentially, or almost anything else for that matter. I fear it may be time to start looking for a replacement for that too - not something I wanted to be doing so soon after replacing my laptop. I think I'm disinclined to build one from scratch this time, though. It just doesn't (especially with OS included) seem to be the bargain it once was, and there are always headaches involved even if it's good to learn. Got taxes done, though, so... I may be able to at least

... is hard. For the... umm... several-th week in a row, he's proving the roadblock to us in Icecrown Citadel. That's not fun, and some people are getting frustrated with it. Me, I'm actually fairly happy we can usually get to him. Last night, we had our typical offtank down for a couple reasons, and pulled in another up-and-coming paladin. More experience might have made Ignis go a little smoother (we sort of powered through him on our successful attemp, and I think I have a screenshot of at least four adds pounding on me while I was tanking the boss), but I didn't perceive any tanking problems in ICC. Even on the low end of what's "acceptable" for the place, it might have put a little more pressure on the healers but worked out just fine. Lady Deathwhisper took us three attempts, and part of this seems to be luck as far as add-buffing and where her Death and Decays land. The airship battle was one-shot readily enough, though I got disoriented afte

I've had a couple totally different discussions of late which have caused me to consider just what a MUCK wizard should be for. Technically, a wizard in MUCK terminology is a character with a wizard bit - a flag that allows a greater level of permissions than your standard user. Exactly what those permissions are depends on the MUCK in question. Usually, wiz bits are given to staff , which is a non-technical (in that in doesn't mean anything in and of itself to the code of the MUCK) posting, in order for them to do whatever they're appointed to do. On Furryfaire, a lot of characters have wiz bits, and not just the people appointed to staff positions. The bit allows access to the wizard chat channel, it allows access to commands to manually alter sheets (required reasonably often due to the finicky nature of the system), it allows building of rooms (I'm actually unclear on if we have a builder bit in use, but I know it exists elsewhere), and it allows "clean&

I had a little time this morning, so went again and pugged a random heroic with both my paladin and my priest in WoW. To verrry different experiences, those. My priest waited in the queue a minute or so. I saw the loading screen for Culling of Stratholme and panicked a bit, as it's usually a frantic run, but calmed when I remembered I had the drake on my priest, so I have healed it before. I examined the tank and was a little unsettled to see very familiar gear - ilevel 200 blues and epics, at least one piece not even tanking-oriented. Theoretically, that's okay for tanking heroic 5-mans, but it doesn't exactly say "Hi, I'm an experienced tank." Early on, the mage pulled aggro and died before I could get a heal off. Later, the warrior tank was standing in place after defeated on wave and the death knight and paladin went running off to the next one - and died because they weren't paying attention to the inactive tank (and healer who stayed there to cov

A little over two months since I last looked at my gear planning on the verge of patch 3.3. In that time, I haven't done everything I could at every chance to help out my character. I don't run a random heroic dungeon everyday with my main, much less with alts. On the other hand, I'm not sure I expected to be downing bosses in Icecrown Citadel at this point either... I don't really expect to be clearing ICC bosses prior to Cataclysm, though it could happen, so heroic versions of any ICC drops might be eventual goals. Ignoring the 25-man BOP drops, though, I'm actually a little surprised at how close I am to my "end" goals for gear this expansion. Done Head: Currently Faceplate of the Honorbound , the non-tier Emblem of Triumph helm. This is a solid piece and serving me well. I imagine I'll eventually upgrade to Lightsworn Faceguard , tier 10 from Emblems of Frost, but it's not a major priority. Done Neck: Currently Shard of the Crystal Fo

It's been a while since I've seen a total party kill in a game. Sure enough, though, the little fantasy campaign that has been running for a good while came to a close last night in just such a fashion... I don't believe the finale is up yet, but most of the events are chronicled at http://aeranos.blogspot.com/ . After surviving entangling plants, servitude to a dragon, sneaking in a city, traipsing into the underground, enduring captivity, struggling through winter without gear, and aiding a tribe of beast men instead of going home, going after the necromancer/lich was probably a little much. We were probably doomed about that time, to be honest. I just didn't expect it to be in a 7-to-3 fight against "normal" opponents. The combat went on a long while, but one by one we dropped to good-for-them-bad-for-us rolls. Two action point rerolls and a luck domain reroll weren't enough to save us. And with the main party down, our recent addition (too big to

Not Amusing: Three serious computer problems in about a week. - Last Wednesday, a computer is rendered in operative by malware. - Monday, a computer refuses to boot. This appears to be a blow capacitor on the motherboard. - Today, a computer would not get into Windows. Probably a registry error. Amusing: Watching a quartet of girls (probably college age) enjoy their lunch with giggles and such, announcing they should each pick a fortune cookie and then trade them across the table before opening them... then as they go to pay the bill, seeing two of them are wearing tails. Fortune Cookie of the Day: Remember to share good fortune as well as bad with friends.

Increasingly, I'm feeling like running a tabletop game online is an exercise in futility. Schedules are somehow always harder to coordinate with people scattered all over than a local circle of friends. Normal RPG rules churn online (without heavily coded support, at least). And when everyone scatters at the end of the night, they go back to their lives and don't think about it for a week (or whatever interval) more often then not. Even with regular MUCK play, I enjoyed things most when I felt interested and involved enough to trade a few emails about things during the day or whatnot. So this applies currently to a World of Darkness game that's been going weekly and the Star Wars game I've been doing every other week (except for missing several windows now for various reasons). I'm not sure at the moment what's worth the effort, when I'm scrambling up to game time feeling unprepared. And as far as MUCK gaming itself goes, I've been thinking some thin

It wasn't really a lot of fun, with brief exceptions. Saturday morning, I felt a little "bleh" with a slightly upset stomach. I did, at least, get a little cleaning done and break down several boxes that had been accumulating. This is good, because by midday I had to alter my self-diagnosis from "not eating real well" to "some variant of food poisoning." I was stricken with chills and muscle aches, so I built up a fire and bundled up on the couch for most of the afternoon. By evening, the chills and achiness had faded, at least, though I still wasn't up to par. Over the last day, I've definitely come to feel better, though my appetite hasn't returned in full and I'm keeping an eye on myself. So I wasn't feeling great for Saturday night's WoW raid, but I felt well enough to sit at the computer and push buttons. We had too many people, including someone who I'd heard left the guild recently (no explanation there), but roun

It's been a hell of a week, especially from an emotional perspective, but at least it's wrapping up. - Troublesome computer at work finally back to a functioning state after almost two entire work shifts on it. - Most important data copied off failed hard drive at home and currently copied to the remaining two drives (with the possibility of being copied to my laptop, too). - Laptop's working fine, though. Its Windows 7 makes me look at my desktop and think it might be time to upgrade that. Not nearly so pressing, though. - An unintendedly-stealthy, but otherwise intended, nerf to the Sacred Duty talent caused my paladin to lose a little over 1200 health. This is a little annoying in that now I'm not going to be able to break 40k soon, but I expect this to have close to zero impact on the game. Even raiding, I don't remember the last time when my having less health would be the first domino in a wipe - usually that comes in the form of other people dying.

Okay, this week is getting to be a bit much. Now one of my home desktop drives seems to have failed. It's spinning, but appears in Windows to be totally unformatted. It is the oldest of the three in my case, and thankfully not the primary. In fact, I don't even mind that much the prospect of losing the various art I've pack-ratted over the years there. What hurts is that about 98% of the online roleplay logs I've saved over the last 10+ years. The percentage would be lower, but in replacing my laptop I moved files from there to where they were on my desktop. Mmmf. That's a lot of memories to have snuffed out at once. So... I'm trying to recover data, but not holding my breath. Can this week be over yet? Really...

I should probably feel worse. Strange, that. I clocked in at work just before turning to the person at my door and asking what was up. His computer was infected with something. @whee. And so began my night of futility and frustration. I'm sure I cursed more than I have in quite a while as I worked through my usual fixes only to find myself stymied at every turn. Whatever it was blocked access to just about anything I could use to get at it from Msconfig and the Task Manager to Malwarebyte's Anti-malware. And the thing failed to boot into safe mode repeatedly. I connected the drive as a secondary in another machine, scanned it, cleaned it... and didn't find everything, not even enough to make it work better. I tried manually tracking down files, but the damned thing had made changes to the registry that meant it was even less functional after that. I tried a Windows repair install that didn't benefit me in any way. I tried the recovery function I was sure that compu

So I finished the Night Angel trilogy... last night? The night before? As with the first two, I enjoyed it, but it wouldn't be for everyone. This final book felt more rushed to me, like the author had too much to cover. The earlier ones have their own time lapses, but they still seem a bit much here. As for rushing, we get things like the glimpses of Solon's tale. Returns home for a quick scene, proves himself and marries in a scene, explains the call of prophecy only to have it rejected by his wife, and is shown at the end having gone ahead with things anyway. There's a LOT that could have, and probably deserves to have, been shown there. Durzo's retrieval of Curoch from the woods is totally glossed over, when that could have involved some interesting and exciting scenes - I guess he's more an NPC by showing up at just the right time everywhere to make things work out. In the epilogue, we get "prophetic" descriptions of what happens to people. ... The

I've been debating what to do with this post. In a sense, I want to write things out for my own benefit. At that, I'm sorely tempted to lock it entirely. I think... I'll try setting it friends-only for now, though I worry it may make friends worry. Heh. I've liked Abel as a character, but here... he's my hero or something: http://www.missmab.com/Comics/Vol_1084.php I would not say these thoughts really have anything to do with my birthday, per se, even if they were on my mind through most of the day and have lingered beyond. Rather, they're always around, buried on the best of days and coming to the surface on the worst... I cannot say I like myself. There was a time I did, a time I felt my dreams and principles had value. More and more over the years, that's crumbled. My time in the SCA is sort of a microcosm for this, where my efforts never seemed to measure up and be worthy of notice, so even I stopped finding value in making that effort. I'

Thirty-five years under my belt. It seems like that should be some sort of milestone, but it doesn't feel it. Unsurprising, I suppose. What to say? Birthdays haven't felt special for years. A few gifts trickle in during the rough timeframe, and they're welcome and appreciated. I like seeing character art, it's nice, unique, and sometimes heartwarming. I enjoy dinners out - I got one this last weekend, and I'm told another's coming. Those are nice treats and pleasant breaks from feeding myself. But there's really nothing to make the day itself stand out. I got a couple "happy birthdays" from people who know - nice, but fleeting sentiment. And... well, gosh, I had to move my car this morning so the folks hired to remove snow from the parking lot could get around freely. And... umm... I have to remove malware from a work computer tonight, but that's not even very rare these days. Not that I'd expect different. I'm not sure what I