The one thing I like best about my blog is that hardly anyone reads it, when you consider how many people read a major news site such as CNN, or even a mainstream gaming website like Kotaku.  I like this because it means I don't have to deal with a bunch of fucking morons clogging up the comments section on every post I make.  I wish the ability to comment on articles on the Internet would go away entirely.

And for the record, I'm not against free speech.  I'm against fucktards.

Download ALL the things!

I got my house re-wired today with upgraded internet, phone, and cable TV.  My download speed has more than doubled.  OH MAI GAWD.  


*Pukes rainbows*

I'm now 95% through Black House.  When I reached the end of the chapter there, the book tells me that if I wanted, I could stop reading now and be happy with the ending.  And y'know, I am happy with that ending.  It was excellent.  The book warned me that if I kept reading, I wouldn't like what happened next.  It's like the ending of The Dark Tower all over again.

I shut off my Kindle and went to bed.  I'm not sure I'm going to finish it now!  

It's a cold, rainy Monday morning.  Most people would attribute such a day to depression, or use it as an excuse for why their in a shitty-ass mood.  I, however, feel pretty good this morning.  I got plenty of sleep and I'm not letting anything really get to me today.  It's good.  It's gooooood.

So, what's goin' on?

First of all, I'm 90% through Black House.  I should be done with it this week -- hopefully before Tuesday so that I can dive right into The Wind Through the Keyhole.  Last night, I read probably the most gruesome ending to a villain ever.  The current victim of the serial killer fought back, and grabbed the bastard's testicles.  And squeezed.  Until one of them deflated.  Ouch.  Of course, that wasn't enough to kill him, so the boy then reached into the stab wound on the guy's stomach and pulled out a few ropes of his intestines.

Bluh!

On to more pleasant things.  Well, at least more pleasant than that!  For starters, it looks like there may be some traveling in my near future.  I'm sort of conflicted on this.  For one thing, traveling is a pain in the arse.  Especially when it's business travel, as this obviously is.  I hate going to a strange place, while additionally having to worry about training a customer on a product in which I have no confidence.  Heh.  There's also the annoyance at getting pulled out of my life's routine.  But, on the bright side, I get to see a new place, and everything is paid for.

I have no idea when this'll be happening, or even where I'll be going.  Information will be forthcoming.

I've been giving The Witcher 2 another honest-to-goodness effort.  With the enhanced edition out, I figured now was the best time to do so.  Well, given that the devs have proclaimed the game now "finished", I'm still not impressed.  I just had to close the game because Geralt was stuck in a wall.  I really have no desire to open it back up, either.  It's a bit depressing, because I was actually interested in playing through it all the way.

I suppose at this point I just feel like I'm sitting between games waiting for something.  There's going to be another month of that, give or take.  Diablo 3 is out next month, and that will give me something to hack away at for while, probably until Guild Wars 2 releases in hopefully June.

The good thing is, if the only thing I have to write about is my indecision on what game to play, things must be going pretty damned well.  

Topic number one, if you haven't listened to the new Linkin Park song that was made available on Sunday, go do it now.  It's very good.  The song is called "Burn It Down", and you can find it on Linkin Park's website or on Youtube.

Next, over the weekend (on Saturday, I think, or it may have been Friday night), I set up my seed starter kit.  That included a warming mat for the bottom, two trays, soil pellets, the lighting system, and a clear cover for the trays.  The soil pellets are just about the coolest thing I've ever seen.  They aren't really much larger than the size of a lego, and you drop them into the bottom of each cell in the seedling tray.  Pour a bit of water on them, and the things expand to fill the entire cell with soil.  It's just about the coolest thing I've ever seen.  Though, I'll admit that I'm easily amused.

After I was amazed by the soil, I planted some seeds:  Broccoli, Pumpkins, Green Beans, Morning Glory, Cosmos, and Alyssum.  Most of these were easy, but those Alyssums were freaking hard to plant.  The seeds are about as big as a grain of sand.

It's been 3-4 days now, and I've already got some sprouts growing.  That's pretty cool.  If they do well, I may actually be able to plant another round after I transplant these.  I've just ordered another bag of those freaking amazing pellets just in case.  :3  

I was going to make this post about how fucking stupid human beings are, but I'm honestly a bit bored with making fun of this ridiculously unintelligent species of mammal.  Besides, it's not like I need to continuously remind you of the fact.  Just go outside.  You'll see.

Furthermore, I figured that my first post in a while (Has it really been 24 days?) should be a tad more optimistic than a rant about non-existent intelligence quotients.

The truth is, though, that this post is probably going to be rather depressing anyway, even while leaving out that topic that I keep saying I'm not going to talk about yet have dedicated three small paragraphs to already, anyway.  Oops.  Let's get the depressing stuff out of the way, first.

For the past several weeks, I've been testing the upcoming release of one of our web-based applications.  It's one of my company's many software applications, and I'll refrain from stating which one just on the off-chance that my negativity here is discovered by someone I'd rather not know exactly that which I'm discussing.  I am not in the QA department.  This is not my job.  But I am tasked to do it because I am one of the few people who can.  Sure, I can be egotistical (Have you -read- the above paragraphs?), but this is not one of those times.  These are words stated by my boss.

If it means releasing a quality product on time, I'm all for it.  The sad part about it though is that I have a very strong feeling this morning that it's all going to fail.  I test things, they don't work, and the development team tries to fix them.  But things are not getting fixed fast enough, things still aren't working, and the deadline to get this release out is starting to breath down our necks.

If this release fails, I fully believe that the product as a whole will be in serious jeopardy, and so will quite a number of jobs.  Would I be one of them?  I don't -think- so, but in this day and age, who really can be certain when it comes to something like this?

With that knowledge comes an extraordinary feeling of frustration when I'm left sitting here on a Monday morning unable to test because I have no freaking clue what I'm supposed to be doing.  I got in here to an e-mail from the development manager detailing at least a dozen problems he'd found over the weekend, and that he needs to discuss them with the team "in the morning".  The problem is, "in the morning" will end up being 10:00 or 11:00. By then, my day is half over and utterly wasted because I'm stuck waiting on this meeting to be set-up.

Needless to say, this has be a bit irritated this morning.

I suppose the one good thing about it is that it makes any other problems I'm currently having seem rather small.  It feels like I should post this now, as changing the subject feels a bit abrupt and worth of it's own separate post.  Also, the next topic is going to seem utterly trivial after all of that.  But I also dislike making more than one blog post in the same day, so I guess I'll just keep on typing.

I miss being a part of a community.  That's probably going to seem utterly absurd after my proclaimed hatred for the human race, but I digress.  The one and only thing that I miss about playing WoW is that feeling I would have when I would log on to a few dozen people online that I knew, and either asking them if they wanted to go do something or them asking me if I wanted to join them in some activity they were planning on doing.

Wanting to have that again is the other reason why I tried so hard to like League of Legends.  The first, foremost, and most important reason was to play the game with John.  But seeing all these communities within that game also stirred the desire to be a part of it.  Unfortunately, I'm just not that kind of gamer.  I fully understand why, too.  I've just avoided admitting it until now.  I'm not competitive in that way.  I do not care if I can beat someone at last hitting, or beat them in a one on one fight, or out-duke them in the brush.  I could not possibly care less.  I play a game to have fun, and trying to outdo someone is not fun to me.  For me, exploring is fun.  Working towards a goal is fun.  Accomplishing something is fun.  Sharing things is fun.  I think that I may have exhausted all of my competitiveness when I was a teenager playing horseshoes.  It's all gone now.

Unfortunately, this means that I'm never going to be able to be a part of a community like that in LoL, or any other game whose core is player versus player gameplay.  With MOBAs being increasingly popular and Tribes Ascend also being very well received, where does that leave me in regards to finding a community that can "give me that old time feeling"?

And yes, I just used the title of a Johnny Cash song.  Who says I don't have style?

Man in Black references aside, the answer to this question could possibly be Guild Wars 2.  I've told John that what I am most looking forward to about GW2 is that it will possibly be a game that I will play for the long term.  Part of the hope that I have in playing it long term is that I will become a part of the community in some way.  I'm not looking for something to occupy all of my time -- I still enjoy single-player games, and I don't want to have the same problem I had with WoW where it consumed all of my time and held me back from playing other games.  But I very much would like to feel like I belong to something again, in some form or another.  That would be cool.  Cool like bowties and stetsons.

And c'mon, let's be honest here.  We all know the real reason I'm excited for GW2 is because I can roleplay a gunslinger.

Speaking of gunslingers, I am making good progress on Black House after taking a bit of a break from it while John was visiting.  (Sorry Stephen King, but watching a movie or listening to some commentary with him is more important than the Tower of all existence.)

It's really weird to read about the Dark Tower and Roland within a context that's not the Dark Tower novels.  It's cool.  And I think finishing this book will be a good preamble to the new Dark Tower novel that's coming out at the end of this month.  I'm really looking forward to it.

Aside from that, I do have a few other things I could share,  but I think I will save those for another time.  I should really get back to work now, little of it as I have to do.