Redwolf's Journal (continued)

Ugh. Three owners complain back and forth over group email. Two have always been complaining and refusing to pay dues and assessments. One is way behind in payments, but has claimed that mostly due to loss of work and such. I email the third directly, laying out some concerns we share, and trying to explain some others. My hope is that he can be convinced to be supportive rather than making trouble. He ends up forwarding this back to the list (minus a couple parts talking about the other two individuals), with his response. Our property manager sees this and seems to focus in on the parts where I mention that I have doubts about her and her company (overlooking the parts where I say I think the mistakes were honest and we can get through them). So she responds with a reply to the board members implying I'm trying to go behind all their backs and undermine them or something. So I get to write an apology there to try to sooth her and explain what I was really trying to accomplish

Most of the stuff in my last friends-only post lingers. It's hard to put things out of my head and relax right now. Gaming, in its various forms, provides some distraction at least. I'm trying to look toward a positive future on the HOA front, but it's awful hard when things are such a mess now. I suppose having two or three people ranting incessently balances having at least four people trying to work together and make progress. Still hard to listen to. Work continues to be more busy than usual. The software installations are going okay, though they do take an awful long time. The stressful part remains worry over every bit of lag between here and the remote servers for the system that's now scheduled to go live in about a week and a half (formerly next week, formerly this week). There are so many variables and we're not well-educated in pinpointing bottlenecks. The ISP on the other end said they found and fixed something today, but was that causing the problem

I came out of yesterday's HOA board meeting feeling okay. The situation isn't getting much better immediately, but we're taking steps in that direction, at least. This morning was interrupted by a friend getting threatened with collections over credit card debt. It's not directly my finances, but... 'tis frustrating on several levels. I really do have to put effort into avoiding getting preachy at my friends about money. I don't want to be that pushy. I also don't want to see them making the same mistakes over and over. I'm trying to get a large number of Adobe software packages installed around work. The number is annoying, the working around others' schedules is annoying, and the trouble I run into here and there is most certainly annoying. Progress is being made, but slowly, and I've hit a snag with on computer where the software won't fully install or uninstall. Grrr. This evening, I received an email exchange forwarded to me - basi

So, we of the board of directors had a little meeting today to discuss things. Whee. I guess I feel like we have forward momentum, but it's still a headache... So at the meeting I missed a couple weeks ago, the contractor was officially let go. His stopping work and threatening to put us off 'til fall unless paid by the end of the week didn't go over well. I thought we were past that as recently as a month ago, but apparently not. Doing a little work, then stopping and asking for more money seemed to be his method of operation. There's been very brief, informal talk about lawsuit options, but I doubt he or we shall pursue that, and it looks like a net loss to us from where I sit. Oh well. We have one bid from someone else, and another is supposedly coming soon. We need to get some references with these people and meet with them on-site to go over what's included in the bids just because technical terms are hard to put to practical ones. It will cost more than w

Another Saturday, another raid. With at least four regulars on vacation for the weekend, you'd think we might be short. Well, we were a bit short on healers, but we still had 11 or 12 people with level 80 characters on - too many to fit in a ten-man raid. It makes me wonder if we'll run 25-mans in Cataclysm. We did Obsidian Sanctum first, for the weekly quest. Kyn swapped out for his healer, though it may not have been strictly necessary. The other healer and I (without telling anyone - heh) tested the theory that I could tank a drake through the portal phase without heals. I dropped to about 1/3 health, with no healing and no defensive cooldowns, before everyone showed back up, so that's solo-healable technically. Whether Sartharion himself is, I can't say for certain. Still, we downed one big dragon, then went on to Onyxia. That took us a few tries, one of which was painfully close (155k health left, 2 healers, 1 tank, 1 dps left, then things went terminally bad),

Well, I've had the opportunity to look over the Dreseden Files RPG to some degree. First off, I was a little bothered by the "post-it notes" and frequent comments by in-universe characters. But that grew on me. It actually fits and carries flavor of the series into the rulebook, sometimes even explaining the rules by answering questions the reader might otherwise have. A chapter or two in and I was actually looking forward to the comments and quips between Billy, Harry, and Bob. I'm not familiar with the Fate system, so I can't really speak to any possible differences from the "norm." I can say what I see on paper seems to fit the setting quite well. Characters are made up largely of a skill list, a series of descriptive "aspects," and a balancing act of stunts/powers and refresh. The refresh mechanic is made to work unusually well, in my mind. Characters start with a Refresh score based on the power level of the campaign. They can lowe

Winter's a drag, with long night, short days, and snow to shovel. But once we get into spring, there's the sub-season that really nails me: allergy season. Okay, seasonal allergies vary from person to person and region to region. For me, here, it's usually about this time. Winter's passing and things are blooming. Ugh. So I usually decide that near-incapacitation due to a contantly running nose, watery eyes, and all that is worth turning to the pharmacy for some mitigation. I've tried a few different options over the years and thusfar loratadine (aka Claritin, Alavert, and other brand names) seems the best balance of controlling symptoms without knocking me on my ass to keep me functional. Even so, it doesn't totally stop the symptoms. And despite being "non-drowsy," it does still seem to affect me some. It's anecdotal, granted, but I feel it does cause me to be more inclined to stay asleep longer. It seems to be the lesser of evils, though.

Skimmed through this earlier today and without getting into too much detail, I think I can say I find at least some truth to the analysis. I definitely tend toward the jaded audience type for most things. It is not, precisely, that I dislike cheery fantasy and happy endings. It's more that I don't usually find anything new and interesting to me in such stories. Most of my friends, on the other hand, seem to be more among the fresh category. They're excited by things that I look at and go "Oh, this is predictable. Meh." This makes it hard to recommend reading/movies/etc. and likewise hard to know if I should accept recommendations...

Disclaimer: If you take your movies really seriously and fret over moral implications of them, Kick Ass probably isn't a movie for you. The fact that it's rated R says something itself. I went in expected a superhero spoof-ish movie with a slightly twisted sense of humor. I had seen a few scenes, but didn't know all the details and found a few surprises in how things played out. And I laughed aloud several times. Mostly, it was a blast with moments I found genuinely funny. Once in a while, it evoked other emotions. Overall, well worth the money and recommendable to anyone who won't be put off by over-the-top violence and a cute twelve-year-old avatar of death.

So last night we may have set a new record for closest-to-on-time start. We also had too many people to get everyone in - increasingly common these days. After getting spanked repeatedly last weekend, we downed Mimiron on our first attempt. Almost everyone even survived into phase 4. Admittedly, there were only about four of ten people still standing at the end of the fight, but any victory you can be rezzed and walk away from... General Vezax gave us some problems as people learned to deal with mana regen without dying. I scraped by in our last fight - I think we had one healer down, I'd used Lay on Hands, and survived by the skin of my teeth. It was our... third or fourth attempt when we downed him? Then we went on to Yogg Saron and were overwhelmed a couple times in phase 1. We really need to learn to stay the heck out of those clouds if we're goint to make it any further. That was our allowed two hours, so it was back to ICC. We finished Deathwhisper after only three wa

I'll admit, when I saw the model for the Celestial Steed mount in WoW, still not knowing where it would be coming from, I thought "Hey, that looks pretty cool." Today, it apparently went on sale via Blizzard's online shop ro $25, shortly reaching a queue of over 80,000 . ... ... ... Even if you only count that number and disregard that a queue would be moving, it's like someone at Blizzard flipped a switch and said, "Oh, let's make two million dollars this afternoon in a couple hours." Guh. I boggle at the magnitude of the thing. Edit: Actually, that queue might include both the new mount and the new pet (which costs less), but the numbers still blow me away.

... that even if I have my own financial shit in order (relatively speaking), I'm plagued by others who don't? HOA board meeting tomorrow. It's during work hours, so I'm not sure if I'll make it. I feel like I should. I don't even remotely want to. No available option is good. Everytime I think about the current state of affairs for the association, I want to cry. ... I'm really tired of that feeling, and that stress.

We actually got a reasonable start to the night, and had a plan. Down Mimiron and General Vezax in Ulduar and move on to ICC or ToC. Almost two hours and several wipes on Mimiron, we lost people to technical problems, unknown issues, or girlfriends. And over the next half hour, things just went nowhere and crumbled. Absolutely zero raid accomplishment tonight. I feel sorry for Kyn, having missed a couple weekends already due to his vacation, and now he's sick with something. I'm disappointed we didn't get into ICC, as I'm only about 900 rep from Revered, which means a ring upgrade and access to new blacksmith patterns. Such things make me more frustrated at the delays along the way due to smoke breaks and whatnot. And I still have no idea why one of our regular healers was late and didn't stay long. Definitely an off week. Not much to be done about it, I guess.

I'm tired from training. I'm in a poor mood. I'm stressed to the gills about HOA issues. I'm lingering at work until I can finish a malware scan on one abused machine. And I've been having minor seasonal allergies of late. Gee. Isn't life grand?

The good: Well, I have a new desktop computer. It's a little louder than I'd like (considering I made the last one to be quiet), but it seems to handle everything fine and fast. Most file transfer from old drives is done, though I really need to sort through that crap and delete the large number of duplicate files/folders I probably have. The bad: Contractor's asking for more money to continue work now, when we on the HOA board had the understanding (and had sort of agreed to ourselves at least) that the rest would be paid on completion. I don't know how these things normally work, but I don't think it's unreasonable to reserve what amounts to now less than ten percent of the project price until it's done . This puts me back to considering the possibility he's deliberately screwing us. I just found out this afternoon, and I'm left rather stressed about it because there is no good option here. If we scrape up the money to pay him (which won't b

I think I have acknowledged that I'm simply never going to finish this game. I played the demo and wasn't sold. I think I've borrowed it to play twice now. It's just not happening. It's not actually bad. Sure, it's been overmarketed. I can't really blame a new company for clinging to their big hit, but it seems like they've released the same game in so many new packages I lost count. The controls are okay - not great, but not painful. The visuals are actually very good. The gameplay optionis are, perhaps, a little better than normal with the combat styles as well as spells and potions. The story (what I've seen of it) is okay. But I just can't get into and stay into it. Running around from place to place is a bit of a chore. And that's made much worse when you get into a section of the story/quests and you can't seem to find the next person to talk to (even with the walkthrough packaged in this version of the game). I suppose I'd

Well, I don't have a clear enough memory of either the original movie, or the legend(s) of Perseus, so I can't speak to faithfulness. I saw the movie in 2D, which is probably just as well, and it was... reasonably entertaining. I don't feel robbed of my time or enriched from watching it. It felt rushed and sometimes inconsistent, but enjoyable enough that I wouldn't call it bad. Perseus the baby is found. Next scene, Persus is a kid talking to his adopted father. Next scene (which somehow warrants a "12 years later," when the last one didn't) he's an adult and current plot kicks in. Sometimes you wouldn't think much of that, but the whole movie felt rushed from scene to scene with brief travel scenes interspersed. This often bothers me about movies these days, as if building character/plot has to be done in short cuts. I'm baffled at the inclusion, existence, and point of the djinn. Slight tweaks to the script, and they could have been avo

So... with our guild leader in flight bound for home, we got a raid group together and stepped into Naxx. We downed Razuvious okay, with no off-tank (one of our two healers took an understudy). Then someone went the wrong way and got himself killed while everyone else moved back to the entrance. Silly smokers. ;) After brief discussion, we went with Kyn's posted plan and hopped up to Sapphiron. Again, no offtank on-hand, but didn't need it. A couple people got blasted by frost bombs, but no real problem. I have a key to the focusing iris. Yay. Then Kel'Thuzad, mostly for the benefit of those who hadn't finished Naxx. We had one DPS switch to tanking for this to help with abominations and so we could handle the adds at the end. A bad frost tomb hit nailed most of the melee, but we lived. At least one person bit it to the shadow fissures. When the adds popped up, I left the other acting tank on KT and kept them busy myself - that seemed easiest. Then we went with th

So let's see... My desktop seems to be down for the count. It consistently locks up now. I've determined it's not either of the RAM stick (though it could theoretically be both). I don't really have the spare parts to test the PSU, video card, or motherboard. There is one heat sink/fin array on the mobo that seems particularly hot when running, but I can't say for sure that isn't normal. Not good, all-in-all. So for now, I've got my laptop hooked up to everything - keyboard, mouse, monitor - and thusfar it seems able to handle it okay. I suppose when I get around to running randoms in WoW will be the main test before raiding tonight, to see if I need to turn down graphic settings to make things playable or anything. According to status updated, my new computer is done, shipped, and scheduled to arrive Tuesday. That's faster shipping than I would have expected, and the build time is within the advertised 5-10 business day range. I was worried it mig

Gear isn't everything. But it does count for something... I recently had the joy of queueing my priest up for a random heroic dungeon and being dropped into Pit of Saron. It seemed odd to me that one of the group members was a ghost. And odder still as I started following people around the side, finding parts of the instance mysteriously clear. I hadn't seen a "do you want to join a dungeon in progress" message. And yet, we stacked up before the cave run to the end. Garfrost and Ick were already down. Well... okay, that leaves one boss and since I'm doing it mostly for Emblems of Frost, that should be easy, right? Then I look at our paladin tank. Some items are particularly noticeable, and I recognize the Titansteel Shield Wall. It's a good "entry level" epic shield for level 80 tanks. It's not terribly comforting to see in one of the hardest 5-man heroics in the game. A quick inspect didn't fill me with much confidence beyond that: a f

So let's see what we have today: Google has changed its name to Topeka , rather than the other way around. And Google UK seems to have an animal translation service in the works. Diablo 3 has gamer snuggies and Deckard Cain voiced GPS . For WoW, we have a Battle.net neural interface , the new EPEEN system (love how it filters out those beneath your notice), and a Battle.net matchmaking site . Strangely, I don't see anything up for Starcraft 2. Hmm... yet? I preferred White Wolf's Exalted release last year, but they continue in a similar vein with Dudes of Legend: How To Be Fucking Awesome . WoW.com seems to be going through phases of covering everything but World of Warcraft today. Mass Effect, Twilight, Lady Gaga... Meanwhile, WoWWiki seems to be running with upside-down pictures for the day. City of Heroes announces the option to play a sidekick . "Your character levels up by screwing up." Or in Star Wars: The Old Republic, maybe play a sar

My desktop computer seems to be continuing its march toward official death. Hasn't wanted to stay on and stable since yesterday afternoon. I'm fairly sure it's not just the RAM at this point, but doing a little diagnosis while primarily using my laptop. The new computer I ordered was "assembled" and progressing into install/testing at last update. Even if it finished that today, though, shipping puts delivery probably a week or so out. Bleh.