Tales of the Aggronaut – Page 737

Week In Gaming 11/29/2015

November 29, 2015 by Belghast

Leak Testing

At this point it has been raining for roughly four days nonstop, and at the same time been hovering near freezing. This has seriously harmed any desire I had to go out into the world and do anything. As a result however we have a bunch of errands that we HAVE to do today, in order to return to being fully functional human beings in the real world. I also cannot believe tomorrow… we have to go exist in the real world again. This has been one of the most chill holiday weekends we have had in years, but then you realize… the reason why it is so chill. The last decade has had a horrible cost on our combined families, and quite honestly… we just don’t have the people we used to. We are doing good to get a single Thanksgiving or Christmas per side of the family, let alone the four or five that we used to have to hit when we first got married. My mom used to say to us, that we would miss these family get togethers when they were gone… and she was absolutely right. I miss the people… but I do not miss in any way the stress of feeling like we had to appease everyone.

The other thing that is awesome about this weekend… is it is essentially the first time in a month we have not had strange people banging on our house. Wednesday day the contractors did the final walkaround, and there are still a few things… but for the most part we are done. The dumpster has been removed from the driveway, and we can once again park our vehicles in our own damned driveway. The positive about four days of nonstop rain is I feel like it has thoroughly leak tested the house. All of the old leaks are gone, and thankfully thus far we have yet to find any “new” leaks. I like the bedroom with the door in it, because it ends up getting a lot darker during the day which makes taking naps all the more enjoyable. We still need to weatherstrip around the edge of the door, but we can already tell that the siding and insulation have made the house significantly more temperature stable. We set a temperature on the thermostat and the heater rarely kicks on to bring it up to temperature… whereas previously during the winter the heater would almost constantly run making my upstairs office unbearable. Which means maybe just maybe… my office will be comfortable during the winter months, because last night when I had it shut off completely while podcasting I didn’t really get hot at all.

World of Warcraft

This week for better or worse has been all about comfort gaming for me… and with that a return to the World of Warcraft. At this point last week I was mostly fighting the desire to log in… and failing ultimately playing my sub level 20 characters for free. This week I have dove head first into the timesink, and used my free boost to 100 to create a Tauren Paladin for the purpose of playing with my horde side friends. I’ve not really played much horde since the early days of Warcraft, and the only time I had a at level cap character was during Wrath of the Lich King when I was raiding a bit with Batteries Not Included… the raid group that would ultimately form the majority of Facepull the horde guild I am in now. I’ve always said at one point or another I would level another character so I could hang out with some of the excellent people on that side of the fence. Now after doing so for just a little bit I am kinda kicking myself for not doing it sooner. I’ve never bought into the Horde versus Alliance rhetoric… but it just feels like people are friendlier Horde side.

There have been three separate occasions where I have been out in Tanaan Jungle, and got overwhelmed… only to find another Horde healer dropping down from above and healing me. One of them I ended up thanking them and having a forty minute conversation about the various people we know from the early days of Argent Dawn. It always felt like the Horde at least on Argent Dawn was more closely connected than the Alliance side… and I always assumed in part it was due to the fact that they were massively outnumbered. With the grand merging of realms that feels less true, especially since we are in the same battle group as the Alea Iacta Est horde mega guild. That said it does feel like people are more willing to help out other players, especially when you are running around as a giant cow. There is a certain kinship that Tauren seem to have for their other “beefy brethren” as one of the folks that helped me out put it. I still love my Ally characters, but for once I feel like I have a horde character that feels good and natural to me. Maybe I see some race changes to Tauren in my future… because there is just something appealing to being an adorable lumbering bull.

EVE

As a side project I have been playing some EVE on the free trial. I was drafted as an EVE virgin, even though I played a bit during the alpha and beta tests eons ago. My experience so far has not been without issues… namely there is apparently a known bug that can happen during character creation. When you are creating your character, you have to have a piece of clothing selected for every slot… problem being as you can see on the right side bar there is no drop down for “Bottom”. I did not find this out until I had already spent a significant amount of time sculpting my face. I also thought it was a little odd that I only had one hairstyle, but I thought maybe that had something to do with the fact that I was a free account, and that when you purchased an account maybe it unlocked additional styles. However after not being able to move forward I did some digging and this is a bug that has been regularly reported since around 2011. Somewhat shocking that something like that has been allowed to stick around the game this long.

On attempt number two of creating a character… I made sure that every drop down had something in it before really starting the process. I ended up going in a completely different direction … namely my own take on Dave Lister from Red Dwarf. Though I am sure no one would really notice that unless I specifically pointed it out. I named my character “Bel Ghast” and set out into the world to see how the game had changed. Ironically the game works pretty much exactly like I remembered it, but the big thing I did not remember was just how slow the pace is. In many ways it reminds me of the original Everquest where every action has a certain amount of downtime in it. I immediately fell back into my old habits, which were to upgrade my ship… to carry more ore… to allow me to save up money to buy more interesting things. The problem being is I have hit the 5 hour wall that Tam has talked about… where you need to pour about ten more hours into the game before you can do anything interesting. There is a place where the prices for the things you want jump from being 10k isk, to 500k isk… to 2.5m isk. So now I am in this gulf where I am questioning my will to push through it. Additionally I am struggling finding new areas to “hunt” in like the Rogue Cloning Facility. I can oneshot pretty much every ship in that area, but feel like I need to find something bigger to test my weapons on, but not sure where to find it.

Media Consumption 11/28/2015

November 28, 2015 by Belghast

Rainy Morning

It’s been a good morning, albeit a cold and rainy one. I got up and made a beeline to the kitchen to fix some breakfast. We’ve recently had a renaissance with the little triangle sandwich maker thing that became popular during the 90s. Recently we started playing with making pancakes in it, and the resulting tiny triangles of pancake goodness are awesome. So I fixed pancakes and sausage and my wife and I nommed happily. From there I ended up popping into World of Warcraft for a bit to do some garrison stuff, and shortly thereafter found The Goonies on cable. Around about this point my wife and I decided it was a good idea to go lay down and snuggle with the cats. It was around this point where my wife asked me… if I had already done a blog post. It had quite honestly slipped my mind. I live my life based on a sequence of rituals, with each one kicking off the next ritual… and if any of them happen out of order all sorts of mayhem occurs.

So that folks is how one almost breaks a three year streak of daily posting… not with tragic circumstances… but just a charming morning that made me forget that the internet was a thing. As a result I am getting a really late start at the day, but have now officially had some coffee so I believe I can functional properly once more. I’m back on the sofa wrapped in my blanket cocoon and tapping away on my laptop. Generally speaking Thanksgiving is usually this difficult holiday filled with running around like crazy, but this year a bunch of things have happened ending up making it the most chill and relaxed time ever. Firstly we wrapped up the work on the house just before the extended weekend, and with that there was a flurry of cleaning to make the house feel “finished”. Then we were able to load all of our meals into an evening and a morning… giving us the rest of the break just to chill. At this point we are taking advantage of the constant rain and the cold temperatures to simply stay in doors and hibernate.

Jessica Jones

With the hibernation has come a lot of Netflix or equivalent digital streaming. Over the past week I have been watching the new Marvel Netflix series, Jessica Jones. I have to admit that this is a character that I only know of in relation to the other characters she surrounds. I went through my “Kung Fu” phase where I read a lot of Powerman and Iron Fist, and ever since have had a certain affinity for the characters in that chunk of the Marvel Universe. In truth… after the amazing results of the Daredevil series, I would have watched anything produced for Netflix feature Marvel characters. Jessica Jones however took a completely different tone, but one equally gritty. While Daredevil shows the clear physical toll of being a hero… Jessica Jones does a good job of showing the mental and emotional toll. Jones herself is completely walled off from the world in her own emotional bomb shelter, trying to keep as many people away from her… because she is convinced that is the only way she can actually keep them safe.

The show also digs into a lot of themes of violation and betrayal but does so in a slightly different way than we are used to seeing. The Purple Man has always been such a strange character in the comics, and I was not quite sure how they would end up making it work for the screen. David Tennant’s portrayal does this excellent job of walking this razor line between making him completely horrific and likable at the same time. There are times you think that maybe with the proper role model, he could change and be a force for good… only to get those hopes dashed when you realize that this is a person without any sense of a moral compass. The actor playing Luke Cage also does an amazing job of bringing that character to life, and I am hoping we see a significant big more of him in the future seasons and the supposed upcoming Luke Cage Hero for Hire show. My favorite insider moment in the show was when Rosario Dawson’s Clare Temple, and it is setting her up to be the Night Nurse taking care of all the supers in trouble. I could gush about Ritter, but really without her the show would have fallen apart completely. I highly suggest watching it… and I am trying really hard not to do any serious spoilers here.

Inside Out

Last night I also finally got around to watching Pixar’s Inside Out. I have to say that in all honesty there has yet to be a Pixar film that I have not loved, and that is saying something because in truth… I can’t say the same about Disney animated films in general. There is a certain magic that Pixar brings to the screen, and a certain timeless “realness” that they give their characters. This film was a bit of an emotional roller coaster but I guess that makes since as it is kinda the “Feelings Have Feelings Too” movie. There were so many moments where I laughed out loud, and several moments towards the end of the movie where I failed miserably to fight back tears. Maybe the whole nostalgic binge I have been on served to deepen the experience of this movie. There were so many profound messages like… you can’t really be happy without also feeling sad sometimes. There were moments I related to the dad, especially when he was straight up oblivious… because so often I get lost in my own head and forget that I am supposed to be paying attention to the world around me. One of my favorite bits came at the very end of the movie when it showed the inside of the cats head… I am pretty sure that is exactly how it works inside our cats at least. This morning while laying in bed… every so often one of them would go tearing through the house for no apparent reason… only to come back and snuggle a few minutes later.

Heroes Reborn

Another thing that I started last night was Heroes Reborn, which is the reboot of the much acclaimed Heroes television show from a few years back. I say much acclaimed… and by that I guess I really just mean the first season. The show as a whole went tragically downhill quickly after that, and I blame the writers strike on pretty much killing all hope of that show living up to its full potential. I mean I realize strikes have to happen, but that managed to kill a number of would be amazing televisions shows. This time around we have zoomed forward to several years after the events of the first series, to a time where the “Evos” as they are now calling folks with super powers are out in the open and an act of terrorism has turned the public against them. The show has shades of the Mutant Registration act from X-Men, and the first episode centers on the dad from the first series, who has apparently forgotten any knowledge from the event. The first episode was intriguing enough to get me to start watching it, and I figure at some point today I will continue on that process. Will be interesting to see where they go with this one, and I hope that maybe just maybe they can live up to the promise that the first season started.

Thanksgiving Recap

November 27, 2015 by Belghast

Largely Charming

I just had an awesome breakfast of tiny triangle shaped pancakes, with a couple of sausage patties… and finished my cup of coffee so I think maybe just possibly I am ready to exist in the world today. Hopefully all of my American readers had an awesome Thanksgiving, that had minimal if any awkwardness. For the rest of my readers in other parts of the world… I hope you had a good normal ordinary Thursday and are having an awesome Friday right now as well. American holidays have to be really bizarre for anyone living in the rest of the country, because we get so hyped about them… and also dominate large swaths of the internet. For me I had a really charming Thanksgiving but one that lasted quite a bit longer than normal. Several weeks ago we technically had our first Thanksgiving with my wife’s father. Traditionally we have a dual Thanksgiving and Christmas celebration on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, because they head down south for the winter immediately following. For whatever reason they wanted to get an early start, so we had it several weeks ago.

Then this week we started our official festivities on Wednesday night around 7 pm. I’ve been without grandparents for a few years now, and there was this period where most of us simply did not know what to do for the holidays without that glue to hold the family together. That said lately there has been much effort in trying to make it work again. When my Grandfather on my Dad’s side passed away, my Aunt ended up with the house, and she has done this amazing job of renovating it to make it feel modern and cozy again. While Grandfather didn’t really like change much, I feel like Grandma would have loved it and even more than that she would be tickled pink that we were still all pulling together for Christmas and Thanksgiving in their home. The end result are these adorably charming meals that we have with my folks, my aunt and her husband, and my cousins. It always has this feel like we are going away to a cabin or something like that, when I know it really isn’t the case at all. I am really happy that at least a bit of normality has returned to the traditions on that side. On my Mother’s side however things are still sorting themselves out.

The Important Meal

Then yesterday during the noon meal, we met with the family on my Wife’s mothers side. This was a considerably larger group of people, and anytime there are large gatherings my anxiety starts going into overtime. It was however really charming as well, and the food… was amazing. I am really particular about food… and generally speaking I do not like spiral sliced hams, because in my experience they tend to be on the dry side. Whatever they did to the spiral sliced ham they had… it ended up juicy and moist and amazing. From all accounts… all they did was “follow the directions” so maybe that has been the problem all along? Similarly they said they followed the directions on the Turkey and it wound up amazingly juicy as well. I am guessing they may just have some magic touch because seriously… everything we ate yesterday was phenomenal. One thing I do find funny is how recipes that started out on the back of packages… have become Thanksgiving staples. The meal isn’t complete without Green Bean Casserole for example… and we had the cheesy sour cream potato bake thing too that also started on the back of some product package. It makes me wonder how many of these dishes have been marketed to us as simply a way to sell their product in an otherwise slow period of the year.

Another big discussion from yesterday was the whole stores opening on Thanksgiving day bit. One of the questions my wife and I had was that most of the stores didn’t open until that evening. There has been a lot of gnashing of teeth on social media about this practice of opening on Thanksgiving day hurting families. However what we wondered was… is it regional which meal of the day is important? Growing up the only important meal on Thanksgiving is the noon meal, and dinner generally speaking is “fend for yourself” from leftovers. This was the way in both sides of my family, and the same for all sides of my wife’s split family. So obviously in our region the important meal is Lunch, which makes me wonder… are there some regions where the important meal is the evening meal? The other side line discussion was how everyone seems to be concerned about big box stores opening on Thanksgiving… but no one was ever really been concerned about the Walgreens of the world, the Restaurants and the Convenience stores. Those have always been open on Thanksgiving, and none of those folks have ever gotten to spend the holidays with their family. Similarly my nephew has to bail early as he is a Police officer and was just about to work a shift.

Limited Awkwardness

The thing I am most thankful of this year is the fact that I did not have to suffer through any cringe worthy borderline racist or sexist conversations! Everyone was happy and healthy and seemingly stable… and we had a nice meal with some nice conversation all around. There were absolutely zero occurrences of verbal sparring about this sports team or this product being better than another one. We simply had a nice meal, and got lots of hugs from people we don’t see as often as we would like. Once again there wre promises to get together more often, and I really hope we can follow through with them. On the earliest thanksgiving we did make plans to meet up for dinner once a month on the first Friday of the month. I think maybe we are going to make that one happen this year, because we have a timeline to follow. The others… I hope we can sort something out because it is sad that most of the family lives within an hour of each other, but we only ever see them at Thanksgiving and Christmas. All in all it was a pretty great year, and I am hoping that each of you had a similarly great Thanksgiving. My thoughts go out to the folks who are working retail today, and I am hoping you all stay safe and sane.. are getting hazard pay… and didn’t forget to pack your riot gear.

Positivity, Cynicism and Thankfulness

November 26, 2015 by Belghast

On Thankfulness

One of the problems with depression is that your brain lies to you. It tells you that things are going horribly, that no one likes you… and that ultimately you are a failure in everything you do. It is because of these lies that I find it extremely important to give myself a reality check every now and then, and really appreciate how lucky and blessed I really am. The Thanksgiving holiday has become my favorite over the years, and the reasoning behind that… is pretty simple. It cuts through all the pretense, and is just a holiday about sharing a meal and some conversation with your family. Granted my particular view of Thanksgiving may be dictated by the fact that we never host… but for us at least it is showing up someplace with a few dishes of food in hand… and then sitting down to have a lovely meal with folks that you don’t see as often as you might like. There are lots of times I wish we could convince our family to treat Christmas as Thanksgiving 2.0… because for me at least it is the getting together part that is the important bits… not necessarily the often times awkward gift exchange.

Thanksgiving is also a great time to sit down and review the past year. I could look at this year as nothing special, but in reality I was surrounded by my support network of friends and managed to continue releasing daily blog posts and weekly podcasts without missing a beat. That seems like a pretty great thing to be thankful for. More importantly I am thankful for my friends. There are so many of you that I talk to on a daily basis, and you are always there to offer a word of support or sometimes a much needed bringing down to earth. I am also extremely thankful for my amazing wife… who helps to center me… and keep me from going off the deep end sometimes. I’m also thankful for my very excellent work family, because they too make the daily grind thing much easier. I’ve been lucky to be under the same boss now for four or five years of my going on eight years at my current job… and I have to say he makes it enjoyable. I am also thankful to this blog and its readers, because whether or not you realize it… this daily writing routine and the interactions I have with you all about said writing is therapeutic. There is something about reconciling my thoughts and putting it onto paper, that helps organize my cluttered mind, and I thank you all for joining in the journey with me.

On Positivity

I’ve always thought that Thanksgiving made a much better day for reflection and resolutions than New Years. For me at least it has taken on this meaning of looking back at the things you did well, the things you didn’t do quite so well… and the things you would want to change. I am not exactly sure when I set down the path I am currently on, but it has at least been a year now since I started purposefully trying to cut as much negativity as I could from my life. I was tired of feeling bitter and frustrated with the world, and I set down a path of “fake it until you make it”. As goofy as that phrase sounds… it really does work because as time has gone on… I’ve myself become a much more positive person in my interactions with people… and in return my outlook on the world. I am a happier person today than I was a few years ago, and my hope is that I will be a happier person still in the coming year. It isn’t like I have some gauge to measure happiness by, but I know at least that I have less days where I am struggling to drag myself out of bed and confront the day.

I will likely always have the darkness of depression hanging over me, but I am getting better at simply not listening to the little voice in my head that is constantly replaying all of the things that are wrong with me. I doubt I will ever shut that off, but I’ve started to develop better coping mechanisms for blocking it out. I want to be someone that makes the lives of those around me better, not someone who brings others down. So even if that is just a brief message somewhere in the social media sphere, I want to leave a positive effect on those I interact with. I am never going to be a full on Pollyanna, because I am just too jaded for that to ever work… but I do want to be someone who is actively making things better rather than consistently making them worse. While what I do is not really important in the grand scheme of things, it is my hope that at least it is a legacy of good… not one of suffering.

On Cynicism

By all accounts I was an almost painfully happy child, and based on all of the photos I have seen… I am willing to accept that at face value. Something happened along the way however to turn me into a fairly bitter, jaded and cynical person. I am good at what I do, because I plan for failure… because I don’t just accept it as a possibility… I expect it to happen. So being an eternal pessimist has been great for a career in software development… but pretty horrible for my outlook on the world. While I am not a doomsday prepper by any means, my mind just naturally works along the lines of preparing for the worst possible thing to happen in every single interaction. I can tell you the constant battling of my brain is tiresome when you take this instinct and mix it with the depression. My brain can make some pretty insane leaps, as failure to shake someones hand… ends up leading to me being out cold and hungry on the streets. There is a whole irrational segment of my mind that is constantly churning out doomsday scenarios out of average every day occurrences. Maybe I simply took my Eagle Scout training a little to seriously, with the whole “Be Prepared” motto.

Now all of these instincts that I am talking about are pretty deep rooted, but it doesn’t mean I think they are good things. It is my hope over the next year to work towards being less cynical. I write about video games, not industrial accidents. I should have more child like joy about the things I am doing, rather talking about how this or that is a portent of a big coming failure. I am tired of seeing the bad in my hobby, and I am tired of feeling like everything is going to shit… and quickly. I mean the world around us does a pretty good job of eternally bumming me out on a regular basis, I really don’t need my hobby to do it as well. So along with the methodology of faking it until I make it… I am going to try applying that positivity more thoroughly and hopefully root out some of my cynicism towards everything. I want the coming year to be an awesome one, and I want to spend more time enjoying the awesome things around me… rather than worrying about the things that aren’t. I can’t say that I think it will be easy, but I think it will be good in the long run for my own mental health and happiness.

In closing… I hope each of you has your own personal day of reflection upon all the ways you are lucky in your life, and all of the things you would strive to change. I hope you enjoy your time with family and friends, and enjoy the ritual of sharing a good meal. Thanksgiving is this day that has a special meaning for me, and it is my hope that it develops a special meaning for each of you. May you have a very Happy Thanksgiving, and even if you are not celebrating it… may your day be excellent as well.