Redwolf's Journal (continued)

Well, I seem to be keeping a decent pace with novels this year so far. There are probably cheaper hobbies, but I still like books. And the library has been uninspiring every time I've been there. The most recent two have left me feeling odd. Green had some mixed reviews on Amazon. I can sort of understand why some people perceive it as "sexploitation" or the like, I found different focus and foibles in the story. A peasant girl is bought, trained as a possible mate for an immortal duke, gets involved with his downfall, and becomes something of a pawn among deities back and forth across a fantasy realm flavored with some vague foreign cultures... That could be epic fantasy. While I like a few parts, particularly the Dancing Mistress, mostly the story just doesn't ascend to what it could be in my perception. I found myself thinking often "this story sort of wants to be a Kushiel's trilogy, but can't pull it off." Not abysmal, but disappointing overa

No WoW worth noting over the weekend. I knew our fearless leader would be off at a birthday party, but sort of expected other regulars to be around. Ah well. In GW we finished up the last couple Winds of Change encounters we had left. So now we're caught up once again until they release more. And I'm wondering about that. Given the (slow) rate of release of these "Guild Wars Beyond" missions, I have trouble picturing more than one or maybe two further sets of quests before GW2 is out. I guess that isn't a big deal. Not sure what we'll do next Sunday. Thoughts on and off on Furryfaire . Still question of system (or lack thereof). Personally, I think PPS had some issues in advancement and the specificity areas. Were I revamping it, I'd probably start by making a set list of traits - both to give players a concrete list to choose from and to give wiz staff a reference for how specific/powerful the "Other" traits should be that would require ap

So... hmm... Finished out my Agent's class quests and Corellia, which seems to be the last PVE world. And... yeah... Strange to have been playing so much and now I'm "done" though I could keep playing. Class finale? Not bad. Closure on the hunt for shadow forces in the galaxy and defeat of what passes for a nemesis. There's still an opening, as the Agent is left in a position to hunt down other threats to the Empire, but there is not much in the way of unresolved threads. That's probably as good as can be expected. Not the ending and credit-roll that you'd get in a single-player game, though. Faction finale? A seemingly-resounding victory on Corellia. The irony here is I'm given to understand the Republic finale pushes the Empire OFF Corellia, and takes place later chronologically. There's more fanfair than any other world I can recall, but it's not a conclusion to the war. I still have to wonder how they're going to add to the game.

Jezra "Moonshadow" Falia Born to the hoomiku Cyra and skole Spiritstorm (and there might have been magic or a blessing involved in that hybridization, but they're not telling), Jezra seems to mostly take after her mother... Her underside, paws, muzzle, and tailtip are a light grey color while the base of the rest of her pelt is more a burnt orange. She bears hoomiku markings, including the darker rings around her plush tail and the rosettes over much of her fur - each one a darker umber color framed in wisps of silver fur like the corona during an eclipse. Her long ears poke up through hair that's a soft powder blue. Bright green eyes hint at the sharp mind behind them. Most of her clothing runs in shades of brown, including a double-breasted leather vest with bright brass buttons, knee-length pants, and high boots. A wide belt circles her waist with a couple large pouches and loops for a number of her tools as well as a sidearm holster. For work protection, she

One little, tiny example of work-based frustration: There's a decision to move to newer software for a notable section of the company. Us: Well, we have this server that now isn't getting used much. Could we put the databases there? Software Vendor: Sure. Time passes as things are slowly figured out and worked on... Software Vendor: We'll need to move from the SQL 2003 setup you have to SQL 2008. Us: Well, okay. ... Done. More time passes as things are worked on further... Software Vendor: Y'know, some of these processes are taking a while to run. Could you get some more RAM in there? Us: Not sure it's a RAM issue, per se, but I suppose we can look into that. ... And to see more than the 4GB there already, we'll need to update the OS as well... RAM and OS update are ordered. RAM arrives and is installed. OS license arrives and... wait... this is Windows Server 2008 Standard. The Revision 2 version sees more than 4GB, but it requires a 64-bit proces

I've been mentally occupied to some degree over the weekend pondering what to do on/with Furryfaire. There's really only half a dozen people I even talk to there. I actually RP with about half that number, and the scenes are... fragmented off-grid things with limited continuity. Some days that's entertaining and fun enough. Some days it's flat out impossible to get into. Either way, it's sort of missing what I've long viewed as the point of being on a MUCK - a fact that is driven home by seeing some people actually playing on-grid these days. When control of the MUCK was recently given over to a new head wizard, I thought "well, I'll see what system shakes out before I look at making any new characters." I truly hate it when I have a character going and a change of rules comes down that alters what they can or cannot do. It's frustrating and fun-sapping. Now, though, it appears there isn't likely to be any real RP system in the foresee

Quick roundup again. WoW saw the finishing out of Ulduar hard modes, and the resulting drakes for 5 people or so. We may do some of it again for others, but it's hard to say what we'll do as the lack of a complete raid goes on. Haven't been spending much other time on there as there doesn't feel a need to cap VP if I don't need 397 gear and I don't like the blue PVP set as much as the red. We got through another couple missions in GW last night, leaving two in the current Winds of Change chain. There's talk about press in the GW2 beta next month, a more open beta around April, and a release sometime in 2012. My SWTOR agent is level 47, so nearing the end of the class story. I'm amused at just how much it's instilled the attitude of "the Sith suck" - my character is fighting a war and uncovering conspiracies while the Sith of the Dark Council keep getting in the way. Had a couple people I know online start characters on the server, to

New author (to me), more shadowy rogue fantasy. And I liked it. I wasn't stricken either way by the writing, perhaps, but the story wasn't padded out with meandering or anything. It told what it needed to. I'm a little sorry that the second book isn't due out 'til July, when this is probably the beginning of a trilogy or longer. Aral works - a trained assassin of a religious order under a goddess of something approaching justice , he was one of the best and brightest until the other gods turned on his patron and the order was destroyed. While he's fallen into drinking and generally lost his way, the book covers a turning point of sorts where he has to face everything he's become. I like that, in addition to the obviously, he has to face that he's in a position to make his own choices now and things are a lot more "shades of grey" without divine direction. And I like Triss, Aral's bound shade familiar that literally inhabits his shadow

It's a little belated, but after receiving The Jedi Code for Christmas, I read through it bit by bit over a couple weeks. Interesting for Star Wars fans, though nothing revolutionary. It's sort of a compilation of all the information on Jedi philosophy built into an in-character manual written toward Jedi. It is written in sections that are sort of "Welcome, youngling, here is what to expect" and "now that you're a padawan, here is what to expect" and so on. The information, as said, is more collected than created, and the previous best sources for such things also included game rules, whereas this does not. The margin notes add perspective from several major series characters that are generally entertaining even if it's a bit hard to believe one text would be passed down between all those characters (and I think I saw an Anakin note that was incorrectly signed Ahsoka). I also recently finished reading a borrowed copy of Side Jobs (compilation th

Some days I wonder if my workplace is cursed. Nothing new EVER seems to go without a hitch. Postponing this week's training a day was bad enough, but as we got into it this morning, it turns out a lot of the data expected to be present isn't yet. That seriously limited what we could go over, so we ended up wrapping and rescheduling after the first couple hours. Whee. It sounds like this may push the overall installation timeline back a month. And for now... looks like I get to work a funky split shift today and probably "regular" evenings Thursday and Friday.

So when I say I don't know what my schedule is going to be like for the week, I sort of mean it. After having gone to bed as early as I could, getting up, showering, starting a dinner in the crock pot, starting up my car to warm up, and getting halfway through a quick breakfast... I get a call saying our trainer's flight was cancelled so we're not doing training today. Feh. Back to bed, methinks.

Let's see... Weekend was okay, if too short. WoW had probably more a turnout than I was expecting since the raid was semi-officially called off. With 5-6 people, we ended up doing 8/13 hard-modes achievements for Ulduar. Flame Leviathan was probably the hardest because the vehicles don't scale up that well and with so few people it's hard to man all the necessary positions, but we pulled that off after a few tries. GW actually had a third person on for the first time in a while, and we got another mission out of the way. More time spent on SWTOR , and I think everything I've said still holds true for my experience. Coming up on one month and my agent is level 44, with a second character (a trooper played with someone else) is about 11. It snowed pretty good over last night and this morning. This is the sort of storm I don't mind, though. Even if I was clearing 5-6 inches of new snow out of my way, things cleared up and the plowed streets weren't much more

Yesterday I pulled a smallish bubble-padded envelope out of my mailbox with a return address I didn't recognize. I had ordered something small from Amazon recently and I figured maybe it was one of those shipped-by-someone-else situations. Instead, inside there was a check for $29.99. It was made out to me, but misspelled my first name. It was from the sending company, it appears. It looked legit. And... that's it. No explanation or anything. I haven't recently returned anything or send for any rebates. I haven't ordered anything unfulfilled for that amount in recent memory. Very mysterious. Now, all the unsolicited check scams I've read about involve a check for a larger amount and a request for a smaller payment back "to cover taxes" or something along those lines. The big check proves to be invalid, costing the victim the smaller amount. This one didn't come with any correspondence, so no apparent strings attached. What would you do? I'm

Y'know, over the years, I've worked with some people I just cannot get along with. Personalities can clash and so it goes. But a little more frequently I run into the people who are incredibly frustrating to deal with not because I can't get along with them, but because I can't effectively communicate with them. No matter how many times I try to explain how our systems work, they just don't get it. And when they come to me with a question, I flounder because they've asked it in such a way that I don't have any idea what they're talking about. Perhaps the worst part of this is such people tend to be found in managerial positions, so they're "senior" to me...

So while some people (who mostly don't seem to be playing it anyway) have taken issue with SWTOR, I'm still finding it an entertaining ride. My agent has gone from foiling internal Imperial terrorists to deep undercover work with Republic SIS and even has a minor Crichton-Harvey thing going on (bonus points if you get the reference). She's also helped the Empire secure holdings on a handful of worlds, but the class storyline is more intimate and more compelling. It's also nice that (partly due to stealth abilities) I can largely play it as a single-player game. The monthly fee is still a drawback, though. WoW feels bleak at the moment. After a couple holiday-induced weeks of no raiding, I've slacked off myself and not capped VP the last week. Saturday we had 7 people show up, only one of which was really a raid healer (and it was a "new" one to our group at that). That... does not make for current-content raiding. It seems we've lost all our previous

I don't remember now when I read Jacqueline Carey's Santa Olivia. It felt lighter to me than her usual work, though had some areas of depth to it with the society of non-citizens in the town and the question of Loup's humanity. Saints Astray picks up the story of Loup and Pilar pretty much from their escape from Santa Olivia at the end. It's a reminder to me of how people love sequels, and how some stories don't need (or outright shouldn't have) them. It's not a waste of paper, but it wasn't very satisfying to me in the long run either. There's a nice story in there as the pair make friends, earn support, and bring about social change. There are some bits of action for the genetically-modified super-chick and her girlfriend as they become bodyguards-for-hire. But those elements are down of drowned out by the two jumping each other pretty much every moment they're alone. I don't recall any of the scenes being explicit, but they are frequen

I'm not offended, or even really concerned with, the ability to play an evil character, unlike some people . What does concern me is whether there are consequences to those (and other) choices in SWTOR. I've already been thinking on that the last few days. Since I'm not likely to play through an entire class a second time to do things differently, it's difficult to be certain, but I have lingering doubts. One of the writers, Alexander Freed, said in a recent interview : Well there is a core storyline, so choices have to eventually weave back into... not the exact same narrative but a similar narrative that ends up dealing with a lot of the same things. You can't make your choices branch into a completely different game. But there are ways to respect the choices while still doing that. It's not hard to change lines of dialogue so long as people eventually come back to the same place they can be having very different experiences in those places. I've seen

It dawned on my at some point in the weekend that it's been a looong time since I went into a weekend, much less a 3-day one, unfettered by time obligations. No requirement to be on WoW, no requirement to be on Guild Wars, no requirement to throw things together and scurry off to parents' abode, no leaving town or places I had to be... It was actually amazingly relaxing for the most part. We'll see this coming weekend how things gear back up for WoW and GW. I want to get raiding again, but... just have to see who shows. - I've been playing some more SWTOR - not obsessively, but with some frequency. My agent just made level 33, has recently acquired a second combat companion, and is at the end of Chapter 1. Time for some more observations... The gameplay is still reasonably solid. I've accepted the lack of auto-attacks, but I still don't know if this is actually better in some way. I still really like the starship combat missions, even if they're rep