Life in Tornado Alley

Closer Call
Life in Tornado Alley

Last night was an interesting night to say the least.  In the morning folks were talking about the potential for serious storms, but in Oklahoma we tend to take that with a grain of salt.  From the months of March through June pretty much every week there is some severe thunderstorm either hitting or looming on the horizon.  Living in “Tornado Alley” gives you a strange relationship with the weather.  It is something you fear at least a little, but also something that you get used to.  There are close calls and then there are close calls so when you hear a storm is a few miles away, you get to the point of being able to look at a map… knowing the general topography and deciding that will never make it to me and going on about your business.  Last night was not really one of those nights, because the storm in question was a bit of a sidewinder.  At first it looked like it would miss the suburb of Tulsa that I live in, so I was milling around upstairs not thinking much about it.  Then I got an urgent series of messages from my wife saying that they were watching it out of the window of the church and that it was coming straight for town.  I of course did the most Oklahoman of all things that I could do… I went out on the front porch and tried to see the storm.  In the above picture I circled the area of the cloud that was starting to lower, and moments after taking this photo I watched it slowly rope its way downwards towards the ground.  It was at this point that I started to take things deadly serious.  The below video that I found linked to a local news site shows the same area as I pointed out in the picture, but as it was actually lowering.

The problem is… if a Tornado hits our house we are probably dead.  The conventional wisdom is that you need to get to an interior room, as close to the center of your house, with no windows and doors.  The way our house is laid out this room doesn’t really exist.  We do however have a very tiny laundry room crammed between the garage and the hallway outside of the bedroom.  From the garage side there is a steel core door, and from the other side a wooden one.  So I proceeded to hang out on the floor of our laundry room crammed between the washer and the dryer with a thick blanket to pull over my head if things went really bad.  I tried to gather the cats, and as any cat owner will know… the best way to get your cats into an area is the shut the door.  So I shut myself in the laundry room and within a few moments the cats were scratching at the door so I let them in and shut it again.  I had the bedroom television blaring so I could somewhat tell where the storm was, and this is when it shifted course drastically again.  This time instead of coming straight for us like it seemed, when it hit the reservoir it shifted go to more straight east than north east and ended up passing just to the south east of us.  Since I mentioned it last night, we are fine just was a much closer call than I was used to.  Had the Tornado continued on its course it would have hit us, but instead it went off and hit a neighborhood about a mile and a half from us.  I spent the rest of the evening watching the weather as the storm picked up strength and hit other communities.  Unfortunately this is going to be the norm for the next several months as we make our way through another “Tornado Season”.  Huge apologies for missing the raid last night, but when shit like that is going on… I kinda need to prep to duck and cover.

Obsessions

Life in Tornado Alley

I originally had a post for this morning talking about “chasing unicorns”, but I feel like I want it to have its own full post, and with the happenings of last night I felt the need to talk about that instead.  So instead I am going to talk about another one of my Craigslist dealings.  I am cheap… and if you have read this blog for very long you will know that I really hate having to pay retail price for something.  I’ve gotten countless laptops, desktops, and gaming systems from Craigslist, but using the local site is an absolute craps shoot.  Some days there are amazing things out there, and then there are weeks or months of absolutely nothing.  When I get something stuck in my head that I would like to have… I tend to start searching Craigslist for it.  Recently one of those obsessions has been a Wii U and I had it in my head that I wanted to try and get one for under 200 bucks.  The bane of my existence however is that apparently on the Tulsa site no one EVER removes anything once they have sold it.  So you always have to start every discussion with the same message “Hey do you still have X thing you posted on Craigslist?”.  Last week I thought I had found my Wii U.  It was not in the Tulsa metro but was within easy driving distance… was $180, came with a pro controller, and I believe a single game.  The problem is by the time I contacted the guy he already had someone coming to look it at 4pm that day.  After not returning a text asking if they did in fact buy it… and the person still not having removed the ad from Craigslist… I was back at the drawing board.

The only problem is at this point the obsession set in completely.  I don’t have a clue why I decided I needed a Wii U, but apparently it was one of the more important things in my life for a period of days.  There was a point where I had text conversations going with four different sellers, trying to talk them down to the price range I was willing to pay.  All of them had positives and negatives… and none of them were willing to go all the way down to $200 for this reason or that.  The biggest problem in Tulsa is that everyone thinks their stuff is worth more than it actually is.  Then my wife suggested that I contact this one newer seller that had a bundle of stuff they were trying to sell for $300.  I had completely ignored it because it seemed so far out of my target price.  Amazingly enough after a few back and forths I got them to a $250 price tag for a very new looking system and four games:  Mario Kart, Hyrule Warriors, Splatoon, and Bayonetta 2.  All of the games being ones that I would have eventually picked up for myself…  except Bayonetta.  I figured if nothing else that game could potentially be traded off for something else, or it might surprise me.  Once I got the unit it actually ended up being a better deal because also installed on the system was Super Mario U/Luigi U and Megaman Battle Network 4: Blue Moon.  So a total of six games and a unit with no scratches that I could see for $250.  While the price was not as low as I was hoping I think the end value of the deal was worth it.  At some point I am going to pick up the title that ultimately made me want a Wii U in the first place…  Mario Maker, but I want to spend some time playing the games I just got before going down that road.  Now I need to keep my eyes peeled as we are junking for some of the Wii titles I never actually played.

 

Season 5 Conquered

Season 5 Conquered

I did the thing.

Diablo 3’s season 5 should be winding down within the next few weeks, so I finally got motivated to make the effort to unlock my extra stash tab. It definitely would not have been possible without the kind assistance of a few friends who helped me grind out paragon levels, legendary gems and gear. The reward of an extra stash tab was too much for a pack rat like me to pass up, but this process pushed me well past my comfort zone. Even after proving that I can in fact complete this level of content, I still believe that it was a mistake for a reward this desirable to be locked so far up the seasonal  progression ladder. Stretching my meager skills to get this far felt like a chore and a relief when it was over, not like an accomplishment. Since I mainly enjoy playing solo it was also frustrating having to ask for help on some of the tasks. Among my more casual friends, many struggled just to complete the main seasonal journey and earn this season’s pet (mostly thanks to having to master a set dungeon). Locking cosmetic items like portrait frames and banners behind difficult content is one thing, but locking away huge quality of life boosts like extra storage space is baffling. I sincerely hope that when the season ends that extra tab will be obtainable some other, easier way, or at very least that next season’s stash tab is at a  much more accessible point in the seasonal journey.

In any case, I’m happy to set D3 aside for a while now. Sure there’s one more tier of the seasonal journey left but I have zero desire to complete it, especially since it requires leveling at least one more character (in hardcore mode no less). The timing of my D3 hiatus couldn’t be more perfect, since I can devote all my attention to WildStar’s new Destination Arcterra patch!


Season 5 Conquered

Iron Banana

Iron Banner

Iron Banana

The strange thing about this week is that we just finished one Kings Fall raid on Monday night, only to start a brand new one fresh last night.  It gave a certain Deja Vu feeling to the whole doing Oryx fight, especially given that it was so damned hard fought on Monday night.  However I will talk about that a little later.  First I want to talk about what seems to be me going completely off my rocker.  If we had talked months ago I would have told you I was a Diehard Carebear, and that if pressed I could probably shoot rainbows out of my belly in a pretty mean Carebear Stare.  Over the last few months however something has happened and I have come to realize that I actually do enjoy doing PVP in limited situations.  Those limited situations appear to largely be “Destiny” and “The Crucible”.  I am not exactly sure what makes this game different… it could be that there are relevant items that I can be earning that help me in PVE content, or it could be that it simply feels like there is no negative to doing it.  Whatever the case doing the Crucible is one of those activities that I mix in when I want to do something… but don’t want to do bounties or be bothered with grouping up for a strike.  The other interesting thing is… that I don’t really mind that I am ultimately bad at the content.

Iron Banana

Now I have heard stories of much toxicity from the Xbox Live community, and folks leaving crucible matches only to have nastygrams waiting for them from other players complaining about their performance and questioning their parentage.  So far the PSN community has been pretty chill about such things, and nobody actually uses the voice chat for public groups either.  The end result is that I can just zone out and play some Crucible without fear of retribution, and this zero pressure setting has made me actually enjoy it quite a bit.  So much so that while I know this is far from the first Iron Banner… it is the first one that I actually care about and will be trying to rank up to level five during.  Largely I am looking at it as a way of maybe getting some infusion fodder, and maybe just maybe a decent legendary hand cannon or machine gun out of the process.  As of last night I am closing in on Rank 2, and have managed to complete several of the pieces of the bounties that I never expected to….  like getting highest score among all the players in a match.  I’ve been warned that I should hold onto my brown weekly bounties until later in the week to turn in, because I guess they become worth more points as the weekend goes on.  I am however trying to complete the three dailies each night, and in theory when I get home from work tonight I should be able to knock those out and put in a bit more work towards the weeklies.

Melting Ogres

Iron Banana

Like I mentioned at the top of the post, it was a little strange stepping back foot inside Kings Fall given that we just finished Oryx the previous night.  Before the start of a new raid I end up with quite a bit of anxiety that is not fully alleviated until we get past both the ships and the piston wall jumping puzzles.  I am just bad at both of them, and end up falling so damned often that I feel like a moron.  I had a significant better run last Tuesday, and was back to my fumbling prime last night.  That said in both cases I was not the last person through either puzzle, so I guess I don’t feel too awfully bad about my performance.  For months I have listened to folks in the Destiny community complain about the RNG in the Kings Fall raid and how it never seems to actually give them any upgrades.  I feel like I have crested the new and shiny portion of the raid and am entering the valley of slow and prodding forward movement.  Which is to be expected given that at least armor wise I have every available drop… but still have a bunch of weapons I have yet to see.  The odd thing there is that I have gotten two of the pulse rifles, and two of the auto rifles…  but the rest of the primary weapon types I have not seen yet.  Given that last night was only my fourth trip to the raid… I feel like I have plenty of time.

Iron Banana Iron Banana Iron Banana Iron Banana Iron Banana

Of the drops that I did manage to get… the only piece of armor that I might use is the chest piece and even then only because it has intellect on it.  The fist and auto rifle will absolutely be used as infusion fodder to push something else up.  The Suros Regime will replace the 280 one that I picked up off Xur some time ago, and the 310 Thunderlord will replace my previous 290 dropped version.  One of the things that I am coming to realize quickly is that apparently my first two times into the raid were flukes.  Granted all of the encounters still for the most part melt before us… but those first two Oryx kills seemed effortless.  They just worked flawlessly without much issue and while they still took a couple of attempts…  they only took a couple of attempts.  Monday and last night both seemed like a battle of wills as we kept plugging away at the fight, only to be waylay’d by this quirky bit or that.  I am not sure if I would truly elevate the problems we were having to the glitch tier, but definitely things felt like a battle and not like a loot pinata.  We managed to get Oryx on what we had deemed was the “last try” because several of us needed to go to bed, and even then we failed at doing the challenge mode variant…  finally deciding to go ahead and finish up “as is” just to get the kill in.  Supposedly I can walk in and do challenge mode at some point during the week and still get the bonus chest.  In any case… content lag or not… I am loving this game more than pretty much anything else right now and looking forward to the big April patch.

On San Antonio, Redux

Relatively recently (okay, not that recently anymore), I spent some time in San Antonio, at PAX South, where I hung out with some awesome people and saw some interesting things. PAX South seems to be at a bit of an awkward time of year for game studios, and the only major video game publisher that was there was Capcom. As a result, there was a lot of opportunity to see indie games. This is a few weeks late, so I’ll skip mentioning Ultimate Chicken Horse, which you should buy. Here are some of the others:

Stories: The Path of Destinies

First, the name of this game makes me really sad, because it’s very generic and unmemorable. The game itself looks like it will be quite good. It’s an isometric action-RPG that is not really in the Diablo-style, although it looks like it at first. The story involves a fox named Reynardo, with choose-your-own-adventure storybook segments between levels. Combat is kind of reminiscent of Assassin’s Creed (the first one) or the Arkham series; countering enemy attacks is the most important element. It feels good to get a hang of the combat, and you’re graded at the end of every combat based on how well you strung together your attacks (more is better) and how much damage you took (less is better). This was announced for PC and PS4, and looks like it has a release date of April 12. Stories

Just Shapes And Beats

Exactly what it says on the tin. This bullet hell-esque game involves shapes dodging other shapes to music. There is local multiplayer, and players can (if they’re quick) revive others. It sounds simple, and in a lot of ways it’s like a bullet hell shooter where you can’t shoot, but the PAX demo was quite difficult. I’m a bit concerned that this one would only be fun in multiplayer, and with a lack of online (citing latency concerns), my personal future with this one is undetermined. Release date and platforms are TBA (it was demoed with a 360 controller). JSnB

Pixel: RU Squared

I actually saw this for the first time at PAX South 2015, and I thought it looked kind of uninteresting, although it had some neat ideas. It’s come quite a way in the year between shows, and now I think its worth a mention. It’s a little unfair to call this VVVVVV with some additional mechanics, but that’s what it really reminds me of. It’s even more abstract (you play as a square) and the player has the ability to jump and eventually shoot. Color also plays a role in the puzzles in the game, and the level can rotate around at times. It’s shaping up to be an interesting puzzle-platformer, and it’s on Early Access on Steam. pixel

Fate of the Norns: Ragnarok

This is not a video game, but instead a tabletop RPG. I was drawn to the theme (Norse mythology) and the mechanics of this one. Instead of dice, this uses a set of runes for action resolution. The composition of this set is based on your character, so a tough character might have more ability to fight things based on what their runes are. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to try the demo while at the show, but I’m interested in taking a closer look. Post-convention researched told me that this is actually a re-imagining of a fairly old game (1993) with this system. This edition is also a few years old, but it was still my first time seeing it. This one’s available in multiple forms from DriveThruRPG. https://youtu.be/TfMrWvEFD_g

Pushfight

Also not a video game, this is a 2-player board game with very simple rules and very simple pieces. It was originally released in 2008, and produced by Penny Arcade starting last year. With 5 pieces, figure out a way to push one of your opponent’s pieces off the board. Actions in a term are limited, so a lot of though has to go into what you’re going to do on a particular turn. When we played, defeat tended to be somewhat sudden, as keeping track of which of your pieces is one turn from being trapped while trying to mount an offense of your own is a lot more complicated than it sounds. It was still fun, and the game can be picked up on the Penny Arcade store. https://youtu.be/hCvms0ATlqE