I'm planning on going out and finishing any shopping that I need to do on Saturday. The goal here is three-fold: Finish getting presents for my family, purchase the things I need to clean my place up for the big day, and purchase food.
The presents thing is pretty self-explanatory. I already have the majority of the gifts that I need. All that's left, really, are a few odds and ends, some gift cards, a card or two, etc. (Making a list, checking it twice...)
The cleaning supplies are needed because I need to spruce the place up a bit. Christmas Day is spend in my place, and obviously I want to exude some semblance of cleanliness. (Not that I'm a slob the rest of the year, mind you.)
As for the food, the purpose there is to gather ingredients to try my hand at cooking. I have two new cookbooks that I recently purchased from Pampered Chef. I'm looking forward to the disaster that is sure to follow.
Thursday, December 02, 2010
Wednesday, December 01, 2010
Me vs. Tire
It snowed last night. It was snowing this morning when I left the house. And it was still snowing when I was half-way to work and got a flat tire.
As you can imagine, I am not having the best of days thus far and it's only 8:30 AM. I'll admit, I quite honestly contemplated driving the rest of the way to work on the faulty tire. A stupid thought, I realize, but you have to understand that it was fucking cold, fucking snowing, and I was on a fucking freeway where people don't give two fucks about other people. I knew that if I stopped to change that tire, my life would be in danger the entire time. But sadly, I was only half-way to work and I could tell the tire was REALLY bad. So I had to do it.
Since the gods offer me no breaks on this fine day, naturally the flat was on the driver's side, and thus I had to change the tire on the traffic side of the vehicle. I was able to pull off the road a rather comfortable amount, but I could be 50 feet away from that freeway and I would still fear for my life when people are driving past you at 80 MPH. In the snow.
I had no choice in the matter. By the time I was finished, my pants were soaked from the knees down, my hoodie was covered in dirt, my right hand was bleeding profusely in two places, and both my hands were so cold I could barely even move them any longer.
But I hadn't been run over, and the tire was changed. And like the trooper that I am, I continued on my way to work and got there only about 30 minutes late (but still an hour before I would even be considered "late").
So now, it's a matter of waiting for Danielle or Jeff to get here so I can head over to NTB and get a new set of rear tires. I'm hoping that perhaps this day will cut me a break at last, and I'll be able to get the new tires today. If not, then I'm going to have a new set of problems to deal with when 5:00 PM rolls around. I'm 35 miles away from home and no one in my family knows the location of my office. Simply put, I'm on my own. But that's okay. I'm used to it.
As you can imagine, I am not having the best of days thus far and it's only 8:30 AM. I'll admit, I quite honestly contemplated driving the rest of the way to work on the faulty tire. A stupid thought, I realize, but you have to understand that it was fucking cold, fucking snowing, and I was on a fucking freeway where people don't give two fucks about other people. I knew that if I stopped to change that tire, my life would be in danger the entire time. But sadly, I was only half-way to work and I could tell the tire was REALLY bad. So I had to do it.
Since the gods offer me no breaks on this fine day, naturally the flat was on the driver's side, and thus I had to change the tire on the traffic side of the vehicle. I was able to pull off the road a rather comfortable amount, but I could be 50 feet away from that freeway and I would still fear for my life when people are driving past you at 80 MPH. In the snow.
I had no choice in the matter. By the time I was finished, my pants were soaked from the knees down, my hoodie was covered in dirt, my right hand was bleeding profusely in two places, and both my hands were so cold I could barely even move them any longer.
But I hadn't been run over, and the tire was changed. And like the trooper that I am, I continued on my way to work and got there only about 30 minutes late (but still an hour before I would even be considered "late").
So now, it's a matter of waiting for Danielle or Jeff to get here so I can head over to NTB and get a new set of rear tires. I'm hoping that perhaps this day will cut me a break at last, and I'll be able to get the new tires today. If not, then I'm going to have a new set of problems to deal with when 5:00 PM rolls around. I'm 35 miles away from home and no one in my family knows the location of my office. Simply put, I'm on my own. But that's okay. I'm used to it.
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Come Fly With Me
I have three stories I want to share. This is the first, and it's regarding a specific quest in Fallout: New Vegas called "Come Fly With Me". I really, really enjoyed the story of this quest chain, and it has prompted me to share it here.
If you've read my previous post about New Vegas, you'll remember that the main storyline revolves around tracking down the man in the bad suit who shot you in the head right as the game begins. The "Come Fly With Me" quest begins as an off-shoot of that main quest line, as most of the side-quests do. There's a sniper in the city of Novac who has information about the man you're chasing, but he will only divulge it once you do something for him. Quid pro quo, Clarice.
His task for you is to send you to a RoboCo test facility nearby and clear out the infestation of ghouls there. If you'll recall my previous, previous post with the video, I mention this briefly and that video is me inside the test facility.
The voice coming from the intercom (mentioned in the video) actually belonged to a human. While I found it odd that a human was inhabiting a building full of feral ghouls, I was even more surprised to find that he was actually living with a bunch of intelligent ghouls. What was even more surprising were the circumstances of their situation, which I discovered by speaking to the ghoul's leader -- a glowing, radioactive creature named Jason Bright. (The humor in the fact that he glows and is named Bright was not lost on me.)
Through conversations with both the human (named Chris), and Bright, I discover that the ghouls are basically a religious cult. They're working on repairing three test rockets inside the facility, which they plan on using to embark on their religious "Great Journey" to reach the "Far Beyond", where they will meet their creator. It's so reminiscent of those cults who make their followers drink poison Kool-aid. I was actually slightly unnerved.
Anyway, to make things even more interesting, I find out that Chris believes he is a ghoul, even though he is a perfectly normal looking human. He believes this because he has gone bald. That may seem utterly ridiculous to you, but you have to remember that it's been 200 years since the Great War, when the nukes destroyed everything. Everyone has grown up in Vaults, and it's certainly possible that he was never taught that humans can go bald at middle-age. He was horrified and believed he was exposed to some chemical that turned him into a ghoul. He considers himself grotesque, just like the ghouls are. So, he joined this cult of ghouls, thinking he was just like them. It is *sort of* far fetched, but does make sense when you think about it.
Even worse, I discover that Bright *does* know that Chris is human, and does not plan on taking him on this "Great Journey". Additionally, he views Chris as a sort of sacrificial lamb. Chris has the knowledge to get the rockets working and launch them, but he will die in the process from the radiation he'd be exposed to during the launch.
This was a tricky situation for my character, as I typically don't play him as someone who feels it's right to judge others. But, given my own distaste for organized religion, I was compelled to interfere in this scenario.
I started out by explaining to Chris that he was a human, and that the ghouls were using them for their own purposes and had no intentions of taking him with them. This took a few lines of dialogue to achieve, but finally I got my point across and he was understandably miffed. My preferred result here was to get him to survive the launch, but still send the ghouls on their "Great Journey". Then everyone would be happy.
Sadly, the sadistic side of me kicked in as soon as Chris mentioned that he wanted to sabotage the launch. I actually tried to convince him otherwise through two waves of dialogue, but the option to sabotage was still there after that, and the temptation was far too great. I probably *could have* eventually changed his mind. Oh well.
Anyway, I then had to collect three items for Chris. Two of them were to get the rockets working, and the other, Sugar Bombs, were for the sabotage.
Now, either someone in QA screwed up, or no one imagined that someone would take this particular path. After the launch of the rockets (where I got a nice bird's eye view of them all exploding gloriously), I went back to find Chris. He was alive and well, but when I talked to him, he asked me what happened.
At first, I thought this was a clever ploy by the game developers -- giving Chris amnesia and not really remembering what happened. But my dialogue choices suggest that it was just broken. I had:
"There was a mechanical malfunction."
"I sabotaged the rockets."
Wait a second...*I* sabotaged the rockets? Given there are always 20 different ways to do one thing in this game, I'm quite sure that it is possible to actually do the sabotaging yourself. But I didn't choose that path. So sadly, this sort of broke the immersion for me. Still, it was a fantastic quest line.
If you've read my previous post about New Vegas, you'll remember that the main storyline revolves around tracking down the man in the bad suit who shot you in the head right as the game begins. The "Come Fly With Me" quest begins as an off-shoot of that main quest line, as most of the side-quests do. There's a sniper in the city of Novac who has information about the man you're chasing, but he will only divulge it once you do something for him. Quid pro quo, Clarice.
His task for you is to send you to a RoboCo test facility nearby and clear out the infestation of ghouls there. If you'll recall my previous, previous post with the video, I mention this briefly and that video is me inside the test facility.
The voice coming from the intercom (mentioned in the video) actually belonged to a human. While I found it odd that a human was inhabiting a building full of feral ghouls, I was even more surprised to find that he was actually living with a bunch of intelligent ghouls. What was even more surprising were the circumstances of their situation, which I discovered by speaking to the ghoul's leader -- a glowing, radioactive creature named Jason Bright. (The humor in the fact that he glows and is named Bright was not lost on me.)
Through conversations with both the human (named Chris), and Bright, I discover that the ghouls are basically a religious cult. They're working on repairing three test rockets inside the facility, which they plan on using to embark on their religious "Great Journey" to reach the "Far Beyond", where they will meet their creator. It's so reminiscent of those cults who make their followers drink poison Kool-aid. I was actually slightly unnerved.
Anyway, to make things even more interesting, I find out that Chris believes he is a ghoul, even though he is a perfectly normal looking human. He believes this because he has gone bald. That may seem utterly ridiculous to you, but you have to remember that it's been 200 years since the Great War, when the nukes destroyed everything. Everyone has grown up in Vaults, and it's certainly possible that he was never taught that humans can go bald at middle-age. He was horrified and believed he was exposed to some chemical that turned him into a ghoul. He considers himself grotesque, just like the ghouls are. So, he joined this cult of ghouls, thinking he was just like them. It is *sort of* far fetched, but does make sense when you think about it.
Even worse, I discover that Bright *does* know that Chris is human, and does not plan on taking him on this "Great Journey". Additionally, he views Chris as a sort of sacrificial lamb. Chris has the knowledge to get the rockets working and launch them, but he will die in the process from the radiation he'd be exposed to during the launch.
This was a tricky situation for my character, as I typically don't play him as someone who feels it's right to judge others. But, given my own distaste for organized religion, I was compelled to interfere in this scenario.
I started out by explaining to Chris that he was a human, and that the ghouls were using them for their own purposes and had no intentions of taking him with them. This took a few lines of dialogue to achieve, but finally I got my point across and he was understandably miffed. My preferred result here was to get him to survive the launch, but still send the ghouls on their "Great Journey". Then everyone would be happy.
Sadly, the sadistic side of me kicked in as soon as Chris mentioned that he wanted to sabotage the launch. I actually tried to convince him otherwise through two waves of dialogue, but the option to sabotage was still there after that, and the temptation was far too great. I probably *could have* eventually changed his mind. Oh well.
Anyway, I then had to collect three items for Chris. Two of them were to get the rockets working, and the other, Sugar Bombs, were for the sabotage.
Now, either someone in QA screwed up, or no one imagined that someone would take this particular path. After the launch of the rockets (where I got a nice bird's eye view of them all exploding gloriously), I went back to find Chris. He was alive and well, but when I talked to him, he asked me what happened.
At first, I thought this was a clever ploy by the game developers -- giving Chris amnesia and not really remembering what happened. But my dialogue choices suggest that it was just broken. I had:
"There was a mechanical malfunction."
"I sabotaged the rockets."
Wait a second...*I* sabotaged the rockets? Given there are always 20 different ways to do one thing in this game, I'm quite sure that it is possible to actually do the sabotaging yourself. But I didn't choose that path. So sadly, this sort of broke the immersion for me. Still, it was a fantastic quest line.
Monday, November 22, 2010
New Vegas, Con't
Okay, so the main story here is that you're a courier of some sort. Your latest job gets you kidnapped by a guy in a bad suit, who shoots you in the head and steals your package. Not nice. What follows is a long trek across the Mojave Wasteland while you follow this poorly dressed casino man, doing enumerable side quests along the way. It's the standard Fallout recipe for fun, and I must admit that after all these years it still hasn't gotten stale for me.
I always play my Fallout characters in a certain way: They are inexorably good, but very independent. They don't like relying on other people or being part of a larger organization. Thus, the additional (and required) faction choices in New Vegas makes me bristle. It's a nice new feature they've added, but I would have preferred if they didn't link them together. What I mean is, when I do a quest I'm going to get good rep with one faction and bad rep with another no matter which choice I make. Obviously I can decide which faction gets the positive rep, but I want to be able to choose to gain rep with NONE of them. Because that's how I play. It feels too limiting.
Putting this minor annoyance aside, the rest of the game is brilliant. It looks, feels, and plays exactly like Fallout 3, and that is probably the greatest compliment someone could give to this game. Because, Fallout 3 was a masterpiece. There are also some areas of the game that have been expanded upon from the original -- namely, companions and crafting.
You can keep the companions feature. As I said, I play my characters to be independent wanderers, and have no use for companions. But I can see people who enjoy Bioware games (Mass Effect, Dragon Age) enjoying this expanded feature immensely. I enjoy it too. In those games. Not here.
The crafting feature is orgasmatic, however. So. Many. Recipes. One of my favorite things to do in Fallout is simply wander around, explore, and scavenge. I'm always one looted body away from being encumbered because I pick up EVERYTHING. And with so many new things to craft in New Vegas, I actually get to USE all these items now! It's a scavengers dream come true.
I would be a lot further through the game at this point, but I ended up re-rolling my character. I didn't like some of the choices I'd made, and wanted to take a different path. If the game is going to force me to choose a faction to side with, I certainly don't want to pick the ones who keep slaves. Unfortunately, before I realized this, I had already won their favor. I didn't mind going through the first part of the game once again though, mostly because it's so damned fun.
I always play my Fallout characters in a certain way: They are inexorably good, but very independent. They don't like relying on other people or being part of a larger organization. Thus, the additional (and required) faction choices in New Vegas makes me bristle. It's a nice new feature they've added, but I would have preferred if they didn't link them together. What I mean is, when I do a quest I'm going to get good rep with one faction and bad rep with another no matter which choice I make. Obviously I can decide which faction gets the positive rep, but I want to be able to choose to gain rep with NONE of them. Because that's how I play. It feels too limiting.
Putting this minor annoyance aside, the rest of the game is brilliant. It looks, feels, and plays exactly like Fallout 3, and that is probably the greatest compliment someone could give to this game. Because, Fallout 3 was a masterpiece. There are also some areas of the game that have been expanded upon from the original -- namely, companions and crafting.
You can keep the companions feature. As I said, I play my characters to be independent wanderers, and have no use for companions. But I can see people who enjoy Bioware games (Mass Effect, Dragon Age) enjoying this expanded feature immensely. I enjoy it too. In those games. Not here.
The crafting feature is orgasmatic, however. So. Many. Recipes. One of my favorite things to do in Fallout is simply wander around, explore, and scavenge. I'm always one looted body away from being encumbered because I pick up EVERYTHING. And with so many new things to craft in New Vegas, I actually get to USE all these items now! It's a scavengers dream come true.
I would be a lot further through the game at this point, but I ended up re-rolling my character. I didn't like some of the choices I'd made, and wanted to take a different path. If the game is going to force me to choose a faction to side with, I certainly don't want to pick the ones who keep slaves. Unfortunately, before I realized this, I had already won their favor. I didn't mind going through the first part of the game once again though, mostly because it's so damned fun.
Sunday, November 21, 2010
New Vegas
Ok! I'm finally getting into this game. Hey, it only took me a month.
Here, have a small video about it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQMJExqFgOE
That should give you a chuckle or two.
Now playing: Angels & Airwaves - Secret Crowds
Friday, November 19, 2010
Getting into the Game
I was quite pleased when I learned the actual Shattering of Azeroth was going to take place a week or two (probably two) before the actual release of Cataclysm. I would have been mildly annoyed if I had to waste an hour or so to go explore the changes before heading into the new areas to level. Yay for that. So, as it stands right now, when the Shattering does occur, I have two things to do:
1. Get the new faction city tabards. My 25-tabard achievement will then be complete.
2. Explore the world, get the new explorer achievement.
And maybe...
3. Start doing the new old world quests? I've no idea about this one, because I've no idea how the new Loremaster achievement is going to work, or whether my current Loremaster achievement will be linked to it in some way. Honestly, I really hope I don't have to do every quest in Azeroth all over again.
Apparently Blizzard is going to release information regarding this some time today, so hopefully I'll find out.
Anyway, that's what's going to be keeping me occupied until December 7th. (In addition to getting my last 5 AV wins.)
Next I'm going to provide some advice when it comes to gaming forums. Any time you want to find more information about a game, chances are you're going to end up in some kind of forum, whether it be the official forum hosted by the company, a fan site, or just a generic forum for gamers. Forums are a double-edged sword. Typically, when it comes to forums, I think of this line: "You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy." Unfortunately, it's also a place where you can find just about any information that you need about a game, if you know how to find it.
Golden rule for using forums: Assume that every single post you read is false. Never, ever, ever think that one post by one person is the answer to your question. Read the entire thread(s). The most frequently repeated answer is then probably the correct one. Forums are filled to the brim with people who want to give you bad information or crave attention, and sometimes it can be difficult to decide if someone is one of these people, or if they are actually trying to be helpful.
My only other advice to you is to not get discouraged. Unfortunately, when you give human beings the tool of anonymity, they will use it for nefarious purposes. They will post false information, flame you, call you a bad player, tell you that something is easy and that they can do it with one hand behind their back while jerking off and drinking red bull while fucking your mother, all because they crave attention, get a high off of the false sense of superiority, or because they are bored.
So, you need to take an entire thread as one piece of information, and use your common sense to process its contents to derive the correct information you're trying to find. It can be challenging, but sometimes you'll have no other means of acquiring what it is you need.
1. Get the new faction city tabards. My 25-tabard achievement will then be complete.
2. Explore the world, get the new explorer achievement.
And maybe...
3. Start doing the new old world quests? I've no idea about this one, because I've no idea how the new Loremaster achievement is going to work, or whether my current Loremaster achievement will be linked to it in some way. Honestly, I really hope I don't have to do every quest in Azeroth all over again.
Apparently Blizzard is going to release information regarding this some time today, so hopefully I'll find out.
Anyway, that's what's going to be keeping me occupied until December 7th. (In addition to getting my last 5 AV wins.)
Next I'm going to provide some advice when it comes to gaming forums. Any time you want to find more information about a game, chances are you're going to end up in some kind of forum, whether it be the official forum hosted by the company, a fan site, or just a generic forum for gamers. Forums are a double-edged sword. Typically, when it comes to forums, I think of this line: "You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy." Unfortunately, it's also a place where you can find just about any information that you need about a game, if you know how to find it.
Golden rule for using forums: Assume that every single post you read is false. Never, ever, ever think that one post by one person is the answer to your question. Read the entire thread(s). The most frequently repeated answer is then probably the correct one. Forums are filled to the brim with people who want to give you bad information or crave attention, and sometimes it can be difficult to decide if someone is one of these people, or if they are actually trying to be helpful.
My only other advice to you is to not get discouraged. Unfortunately, when you give human beings the tool of anonymity, they will use it for nefarious purposes. They will post false information, flame you, call you a bad player, tell you that something is easy and that they can do it with one hand behind their back while jerking off and drinking red bull while fucking your mother, all because they crave attention, get a high off of the false sense of superiority, or because they are bored.
So, you need to take an entire thread as one piece of information, and use your common sense to process its contents to derive the correct information you're trying to find. It can be challenging, but sometimes you'll have no other means of acquiring what it is you need.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Of Love and Family
A co-worker of mine pointed me towards the below story. It was posted by a Blizzard forum poster, and is a story sent in by someone who met their spouse through World of Warcraft. The story reminded him of John and I. The thought that some time in the future I may have a similar story to tell makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
Of Love and Family
World of Warcraft is a game where 30% is the appeal to me is the gameplay and the personal feeling of achievement, and 70% is all about the community and the friends you make. We all know that good feeling we get when we accomplish something amongst friends, rather than with a group of strangers who found you by spamming the trade chat looking for ANYBODY to help them out. It just isn't the same, am I right?
Finding friends on World of Warcraft is great. I've met friends there who I later met in real life and they're still solid friends even after three years -- even if some of them have stopped playing for whatever reason. We are still unbreakable friends, and we have World of Warcraft to thank for that.
I, however, found SO much more than a few friends.
I used to play on Hyjal as a night elf warrior. My friend, Ezekielx, used to ask me to help him out with quests a lot, and one day he asked if a friend of his could tag along. Of course, I said yes, and that's when Vytala came into my life. I helped her and Ezekielx MANY times after that, but I found Vytala to be a very interesting person.
We spoke and played together for almost a year, adding webcam, cell phone numbers, and email addresses along the way! I soon found myself falling in love with this woman and, as one thing led to another, I discovered that my feelings were whole-heartedly returned!
Before I knew what hit me, I was in the airport waiting for her... and there she was. On September 1 2007, I met the woman who would make me the happiest person on the planet. I lived in Denmark and she in Florida, and there were almost 4000 miles between us, but it made no difference to us. Soon, however, the ticket prices were piling up and Vytala decided that she wanted to come live with me. I was incredibly excited and we spent a wonderful year in my home country, running a very successful leveling/questing/PvP/casual raiding guild named Divine Oath (sucky name, we know! -.- We regretted it the moment we took it!)
Things changed, though, when she discovered she was pregnant! She decided to take a break from playing and wanted to go home to be with her mother. She hadn't been home for three years and missed it. (Hey, she travelled to a foreign country to be with me and I was more than ready to do the same for her.)
Today, we still live close to her wonderful mother in Oregon and we've been happily married for a year! We have a wonderful seven-month old daughter named Elena, who is growing faster than we can keep up.
Thank you, Blizzard Entertainment, for helping me find all that I hold so dear!
(I am Sapphirea/Sapherion/Sapphestis(A) *Darrowmere* Ecthelion(H) *Hyjal*, and I found love in World of Warcraft. My daughter is very thankful!)
---
Sapphirea - Darrowmere
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