Redwolf's Journal (continued)

Blargh. Those were some crazy-ass dreams this morning, ranging from vivid Walking Dead-ish zombie apocalypse to some sort of alternating playing and being in an 8-bit video game dealing with trying to save people from quasi-immortal mage-types while gathering some strange energy crystals.

Well, I asked for an anime recommendation, and this is what I got. I wanted something to watch after having finished Valvrave. "Maoyuu" has a lot of interesting ideas and perspective, but the implementation is sort of... weak, in my opinion. It shakes up the usual fantasy tropes with a "Demon King" who's female and waiting to meet the Hero (yep, names of major characters are their professions, essentially) in order to convince him to help her establish peace between humans and demons - opposed by those who would use a war between nations to profit. It's a neat idea, especially when her plan is all about macroeconomics and international strategy. While several of the main characters are extremely powerful (Hero can teleport vast distances and level mountains with some of his magic), most of the "action" is army engagements and trade agreements. Unfortunately, that's where the issues start creeping in. Overall, it feels pretty slow. And just ...

Well... a year and a couple months ago I was concerned about having a new manager. It turns out he changed things in my life relatively little and probably for the better. My schedule didn't change. He encouraged taking some time off. He pushed for salary over wage, which hasn't been a bad thing so far. He handled a lot of higher level stuff I didn't really want to get into. And, while occasionally distracting, he was fun to be around. And today, I find out he's leaving at the end of the month. The board of directors for the company wants to cut costs, and the favored way to do that has ended up being cuts in the layers of management, including our IT Directory and the Circulation Director. Along with that, there's some shuffling of people around. My co-tech will officially become my supervisor and take on more managerial duties. I don't have a problem deferring to him, as I generally view his seniority as reason to do so anyway, though I have a little conc...

It feels like all the conversations are elsewhere, but I guess I'm just resistant to change, so I keep posting here... Car registration - taken care of. I seem to have weathered the week off my co-tech has taken without too much trouble, though last Wednesday was hectic as all getout. Probably gaming Friday night, unless something comes up. I sampled a little of the escape from Lion's Arch last night in GW2. There's some impressive and flashy stuff going on, yet I find myself disappointed, frankly. Scarlet has overrun Lion's Arch and started drilling for... something. That's basically the extent of the narrative development in what is supposed to be the penultimate release for this living story arch. It feels to me like there are still a lot of questions, plus a big reveal, that all have to be crammed into the next release in about 2 (?) weeks (or ignored). Mechanically, it's mostly functional. There are hourly raids back into the destroyed city zone with ...

Well, it looks like the NDA is lifted. Of course, the game isn't so fresh in my mind now, but... When I heard about the game, I was exceedingly skeptical. The Elder Scrolls are awesome open world games, but converting that to an MMO? That seemed like a pretty big leap to me. Then I got into playing for my first beta weekend. It worked much better than I expected. Though that weekend was rough, with disconnections and a lot of voice packs not installed (leading a default robo-voice for many NPCs), the game played reasonably well. Most of all, it actually felt a lot like Skyrim with a bunch of real people connected at once. I don't know how best to explain that, but it was about the best overall feel I could imagine for the game. Most of TES flavor is there. There's a central story of conflict against Molag Bal, but when I only got through about 10 levels, I only saw the beginning. There's also a "main" story for each faction, it appears, dealing with its c...

I started my taxes today, which is great and all, but along the way I realize the last vehicle registration slip I have is from the year before. Sure enough, my tags are expired as of the end of November. I certainly don't recall getting any renewal form in the mail. Grrr. One of those things you generally don't think about, but it doesn't take much (one misplaced piece of mail) to be screwed. Gonna need to get into the office tomorrow and get that taken care of, possibly with late fees. Feh! Monday Edit: Mrrf. And today is President's Day, so it looks like the registration office is closed.

Recent talk about some anime series sent me looking for something that felt worth watching to me. While other suggestions were made, they all felt "meh" in one way or another. I finally settled on Valvrave the Liberator, viewable online in subtitled form in various places. This is what you get when you take the core elements of a Gundam series (international war and mecha piloted by high school kids), add in some elements of realism not usually addressed along with a dose of quasi-supernatural, mix in some of the slow-burn mystery elements that have come into TV series in recent years (like BSG, Heroes, or Lost), and yet you manage to tie things together pretty well by the end. I've seen a lot of mecha-based anime put in a little mystery of where the super-mecha come from, then end up going off the rails to existential BS crazy-town at the end, while most of the TV series I mentioned as examples also reached a point of feeling like they were aimlessly adding mystery fo...