Redwolf's Journal (continued)

Why, oh why am I this combination of a person who wants to help others and see them succeed, while utterly despising a sense of responsibility for them. I try to lend some outside perspective, to "teach" some of what I've learned. In some ways, on some levels, I've acknowledged that friends of mine are filling the roles of family. Archtypes of irresponsible mate, or stubborn child... I could slot people in those roles at one time or another. It may be a screwed up analogy, but there it is. I try to help and teach, and it kills me when I see them making the same mistakes over and over that I've tried to break them of. I'm not always right by a long shot. My ways are not the best, though I hope rarely the worst. But... guh... time and again, I'm left asking myself why I bother, why I invest the time and emotional commitment. Or even money once in a while. Finances are an area that seems to come up a lot. I'm better off than a lot of my peers/frie

I really need a vacation. Or to stop trying to teach people anything. Or both. Probably both.

Bleh. Yesterday was busy and draining at work. Last night involved the frustrating process of making a point to tashiro . I feel like I shouldn't have had to try to hard to get a practiced roleplayer to see things from another perspective, but things are never as easy as they "should" be. Even those with the capacity for empathy don't always use it. Today I hit the ground running at work with three video card installs before setting up for a web meeting. And complaints about a software system (that I have virtually no control over) being slow. And then I ran into driver conflicts. And then we found that something in the updates on the training machines fouled up existing software. About an hour into my day, I was frustrated, pissed, and cursing. Another half hour or so and I was bitterly amused by it all. Things have calmed some since, so I'm not quite as tightly wound, but I'm left a long way from happy. Closer to that realm of "oh, I'm already i

With the Strength of Wrynn buff up to 25%, that gives us about four weeks until it caps out. I wouldn't mind being proven wrong, but I doubt we'll see the Lich King before that. Noth for the weekly quest and into ICC. We made fairly good time up the ramparts, took out the frost giant without issue, and laid into Saurfang. Our mage lost connection for most of the fight, but we did fine. Still no bracer drops, the bum. He's becoming the new Laj for me (who I downed repeatedly in Burning Crusader trying to get tier shoulders and only did near Wrath's release). Festergut went down in one, though our rogue got disconnected partway through (seeing a theme here?). We subbed in a druid and went on. Rotface wiped us once - but only because the other tank had interface issues, lost control, and ended up running to the edge of the room. Putricide wiped us once. I'm not sure what to blame for that, exactly. I know I fell being on slime consumption, which didn't help and

Haven't gotten much done mornings this week, and today won't be an exception. Just haven't been getting enough sleep, or something. Suspect I'll be up long enough to shower and eat, then crash again 'tis I have to be up for work. Ugh.

"... it's knowing where to go to find out what you don't know." Words of one of my grade school teachers that I otherwise don't remember anymore. At the time, this referred to other people, dictionaries, and encyclopedias (damn I feel old thinking about that). These days, it holds more true than ever, with the ridiculous ease of access to vast quantities of information. I frequently use Google to hunt for solutions to problems, and Wikipedia as a quick reference. Of course, given how easy the internet makes spreading information, I also try to take everything with a grain of salt and look for multiple sources on anything that is important or in doubt. But I find myself with a pet peeve related to all this, too. Being wrong usually doesn't bother me much. But when I look and come up with an answer that turns out to be incorrect, that can tick me right off. Strangely, it seems to come up most in gaming, of all things. I had an online Exalted game prett

We downed Toravon quick-like, then I bowed out to make room for the weekly on Patchwerk and the first three bosses in ICC. Strange to not be involved, but there were plenty of people (including reasonably-geared tanks). It sounded like Marrowgar and the gunship battle both took two attempts to get right. I swapped back in for Saurfang, hoping to get bracers from him. No such luck. Then we went on to the Blood Prince Council to seriously attempt to get past it. That didn't work out. We logged seven attempts and didn't get them much past about 50% health. Our death knight wasn't really comfortable playing Keleseth tank, which is particular in that it requires collecting shadowy spheres that spawn around the room and maintaining aggro on a caster boss. They didn't seem to be taking to that very well, and while everyone else was learning about spacing and movement, we kept dying. We tried putting the other two bosses on our bear tank and having me tank Keleseth. Well, lea

For whatever reason, I find my mind wandering to some of my favorite video games from over the years. Some are groundbreaking in their own right. Some just happened to be awesome when I saw them. Deus Ex : A first-preson shooter with a plotline, and something of a novelty back then for it. In fact, it was a story thick with conspiracies in a near-future and somewhat dystopian world. A lot was made about how multiple approaches could be taken, and for the time I feel it paid off on that promise. Guards at the doorway? Well, you can find a way to sneak around them, you can go in guns-blazing, you can potentially hack the security robots to have them do your dirty work. There were skills to level up, and most of them got use if you so chose (okay, swimming not so much). The story gave some illusion of choice, though in truth there weren't that many variations - a few different possibilities along the way and three different endings that aren't really set until the final push.

Real spellcasting came up for the first time in our brief play time during gaming last night. And... it slowed us down seriously trying to walk through the process. I think adjucating non-combat effects is going to be the hardest part once we get the process down, but I've been thinking today about how it works and going back over the rules.   One thing that strikes me is that I see nothing - not in the general rules, nor in any of the example spells or items - for casting spells that directly grant supernatural Powers. You can grant temporary aspects. You can do some things that aren't well covered in other areas (like Harry's escape potion). But I don't see any example of using magic to give someone "Inhuman Strength" or any other Power (outside of Items of Power, which are a Power themselves).   Spellcasting. Ugh. Offensive/defensive spell effects are laid out in fair detail. Move beyond that, though, and you get into the realm of judgement calls. I both l

Progress, I think/guess. Some tension at last night's HOA meeting, but none of the outright hostility that we had last time. That may well be because we didn't have our property manager present. Some people are really angry at her and convinced she's stealing from the association. As much as I can be frustrated with her at times myself, I don't see any evidence to support that particular claim. I also suspect that hiring a different property management company is not going to make things better in the long term. We're entertaining the possibility, though, as some people feel so strongly about it. Maybe soothing some ruffled feathers will make life more pleasant for a while. We've voted to go ahead with pursuing a loan and a new contractor to fix the buildings. Rather than a lump-sum assessment like last time, we're looking at the association taking a loan that will be paid for by an increase in dues. An additional $50 a month is easier to swallow than $40

"Big" HOA meeting tonight, in that we get to discuss plans to hire someone else to fix the buildings. Joy. I'm not looking forward to the meeting, though I'm looking forward to having it out of the way and hoping we can move on. A few people may be clammoring to sue someone, but I don't see the point, as much as our sinking around $100,000 into a contractor who started a lot of things over a couple years and finished almost none of them does suck. Finished Uncharted 2 and... it was quite good. Better than the first in every way I can think of and pretty cinematic without just being a movie. Even the nasty bad guys weren't as frustrating as the quasi-zombie-horde-coming-out-of-the-woodwork from the first. Of course, everytime I see a character up after grave wounds (Drake himself is back to acrobatic mountaineering a couple days after a gunshot wound to the gut, if I recall), I think "damn, that's inhuman action-hero Constituction at work." Heh

Toravon, Anub'Rekhan for the weekly and back to ICC. Marrowgar through Festergut are getting routine and reliable. Rotface was down in one, but I thnk we lost a few people. We pulled things together and downed Professor Putricide on, I believe, our third attempt. It might even have been faster than that, but we had a few people that weren't there last week to learn from those attempts. Either way, 'tis good stuff. Alas, no drops for me. Then we had what ended up being a forty-minute pause before clearing up through Valithria. Then another twenty-minute pause before a few Blood Princes attempts. Still learning the tricks there. I'll be honest, losing fully an hour (not counting the usual pause after Saurfang) in upper Icecrown because people felt the need to run all over re-enchanting dropped gear was very frustrating to me. Some breaks are unavoidable, but I reall don't feel mid-raid is the time to be upgrading gear. If it's an upgrade as-is, put it on. If it

I've heard a few people complaining or expressing what they see as the problem with the MUCK. Some things I agree with, but I see from a different angle. I find the situation unfortunate, as I don't really see a good solution myself. But where to begin? Tashiro did a lot of work in forging the background of the setting from bits and pieces of different people's visions. It really wasn't cohesive in any sense until that point. And even then, he proceeded along those lines when the MUCK was rebooted to the new site. That was a lot of work, and in many ways helped the MUCK come into its own to begin with. There's a downside to that, too. Not being omnipotent, a lot of his efforts have pulled some of those pieces away from their original design. Things I remember one way are completely different these days. This probably first started to bug me with the sudden declaration that the central area was a port - which was nowhere near being true given the early maps o

My mood this week has had at least one notable low, but is slightly above average now. Today is day 2 of seeing if I can survive without allergy medication. So far, occasional itchy/watery eyes has been bearable. I think I most miss the clear sinuses of daily decongestant, though. Other side-effects are difficult to determine. Strange dreams of late - and strange in that I've been having/remembering them upon waking. Today I recall being in a high school and signing up for the gymnastics team in order to work my way to the Olympics and spoil some assassination plot somehow. It was ridiculously easy due to some superhuman abilities (nanotech maybe? Somehow reminded of Bionix Six ). A freakishly-quickly-earned gold medal and destroyed robots later, life was good. I finished The Gunslinger last night. Short and quick read (somewhere between two and four hours maybe, I wasn't paying close attention). I have a lot of trouble reviewing it. I'm not a big King fan, or even

... it doesn't really pay to get up. Bleh. Definitely been in a depressed and defeatist mindset this morning and I'm not really sure if it was there before or after listening to Alynna go on about things on Faire. Probably doesn't much matter either way. I'm sure it doesn't help that progress on setting up another computer at work has been slow (hampered by getting existing software to work with Windows 7), so I don't feel much accomplishment there. But... ugh...

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. I borrowed the game and played it over the weekend. Spoilery review follows. Not a bad game, though seeing "PS3 Game of the Year" on it makes me wonder what the competition was like that year. Good, but not quite great. The story's fine - well portrayed and about what you'd expect of the adventure theme. The actiony gunplay is... functional, but not outstanding. Cover generally works, but manuevering while aiming and shooting isn't easy. Or at least it wasn't for me. The platforming is pretty good, but suffers from difficulty in some places when trying to distinguish a ledge from background decoration that definitely won't hold you. And falls mean insta-death in a lot of places, which can be frustrating. Early on, the worst thing I had to complain about was when gunfire was tossed into the platforming. You just come off a difficult jump onto an exposed ledge or something and suddenly you're under fire from guys w

Plenty of people this weekend, with a couple to spare. Flame Leviathan went down easy for the weekly. Some people shuffled in alts for the early bosses in ICC. Just watching Marrowgar go down made clear were in much better shape than last weekend. Deathwhisper, Gunship battle, Saurfang, even Festergut - all clockwork. Rotface is still a little bit tricky, but I think we only lost one person at the end. We drew a random weekly quest I hadn't seen before, and perhaps the simplest one - get a debuff from fighting Festergut, and one from Rotface, then turn them in to complete the quest. Then we lined up and faced down Professor Putricide, the wing-boss. In the first attempt, I tanked the boss and Elly took the abomination to eat slimes and slow oozes. In spite of warnings, though, someone removed the 'disease' that is the abomination, and we were overrun by slime in short order. We swapped tanking roles and I went to the table to take on the abomination form. It was not w

They need a better website, with some actual videos and photos. I found more on Youtube than there, I think. 'tis a group of performers with a variety of talents. I'm told they're all local. This performance is based on fairy tales, with a number of scenes. Let's see if I can do any sort of justice while its fresh in my mind... Things started off with the "Fairy Godfather" introducing himself and acting as a bit of an MC. Then to the "Breman Town Musicians," the musical performers of the group who did a little song. Hansel and Gretel was mostly a display of using a... I don't know what those things are called. A little like a large yo-yo that's manipulated by a string strung between the ends of two sticks, spun and whipped around. Chicken Little was a trio of dancers in rather provocative outfits behind fans of large, plume-type feathers. I can appreciate that. ;) 3 Blind Mice was a trio of their talented jugglers. Not all the tricks

Grrr. Frustrating when program installs do not work as presented. Otherwise, the work week has been busy, but not overwhelming. It sure doesn't feel like it was only 4 days, though. Tonight, thanks to gabefinder I get to go see the Saltfire Circus - a group of stage performers. I think they're doing some sort of "twisted fairy tales" thing, though I'm not altogether sure what to expect, honestly. It should be entertaining for the evening, though. Last night, we squeezed in a partial-group session of the Dresden Files RPG. My character creation was crammed. The GM lacks experience. Still, it was fun. A little fast and loose with the character creation phases, are we. At least so far. I crammed in a background, formative events, and first adventure while whipping up an FBI agent who's discovering his inheritted magical talents, thusfar in the area of talismancy. I misread, things, though, and should have left that phase 3/first adventure more open for an

Long weekend, though never long enough. The walk I took Sunday afternoon was nice enough. It's been warming up and starting to feel like summer (and I expect town to be busier in general now). I'm hoping for freedom from allergy meds in the few weeks, but taking the "D" version seems to have alleviated the sleepiness I've noted in the past. It's a minor hassle to have to go to the pharmacy counter and fill a few things out, but I guess lawmakers think the inconvenience is worth the chance that it might keep some (presumably less-determined) people from stocking up on base ingredients for meth. Now, do I blame some of my intense anxiety a couple weeks ago on the psuedoephedrine, or just accept people complaining left and right about the HOA situation gets me worked up to the borderline of being physically ill? Probably the latter, hard to say. (WoW) Saturday was probably a low point for the guild in raiding for quite a while. With half a dozen or so regular