I have no idea at all what I want to write about this morning. So for some back story I am struggling a bit to get my shit together right now. Unfortunately this condition is self imposed. While I no longer necessarily identify as Catholic, I still find myself doing some of the trappings of my upbringing… like my wife and I often go through the motions of giving up something for Lent which officially began yesterday with forehead smudge day… aka Ash Wednesday. Side note… there was a guy in legal who was completely on point with his smudge because he somehow got the priest to give him a Harry Potter lightning bolt. That is a tradition that I do not necessarily miss, because growing up as the only smudgehead in a baptist town… was not a joyful experience. However the concept of giving something up for the roughly month between the start of Lent and Easter is still a useful practice because it sort of helps me do things that I had been contemplating already.
For me personally… I gave up pop and energy drinks… the later being my real crutch that has lead me to my current state of stupor. I was drinking an excessive amount of them… often times I had one on the drive into work after having already consumed my morning cup of coffee. Then if I went out at lunch I would pick one up on the way back to the office. Then at night I would often times start the evening off with one as well. Three a day on average is a lot of that to take into your system… not to mention the actual monetary cost of it given that they are all pretty much $2.50 each (even though we bought flats of them at Sams to blunt the cost a bit). Yesterday I was doing okay for most of the day but hit a wall around 3 pm… then was completely out of it last night. This morning I am feeling groggy as hell, which is in part why I could not come up with anything meaningful to talk about this morning and dove deep into the source of my misery instead.
Right now the wife and I are both trying to do this thing, since she too consumed energy drinks… but in nowhere near the frequency. Most days it was still one of them and occasionally two of them. What we have ruled as “in bounds” are Coffee and Tea, so we can still have that first cup of coffee in the morning. Also any sort of additive to water is also in bounds like those little drink mix packets. Essentially the entire purpose was the exorcise the position Energy Drinks have held in my life and also to keep me from just falling back on Mountain Dew as a replacement by also banning pop. We will see how this goes but the end goal is to get off of them while doing Lent and then hopefully not return to them shortly after? I gave up Monster a few years back… but I rationalized that I was specifically giving up Monster… and not all Energy drinks… and just wound up leaning on the occasional Red Bull instead. This time around however I am trying not to give myself much wiggle room to simply follow the letter of the law rather the intent.
On the gaming front, I spent some time last night working on Chonky Boi and doing the Legendary Contracts. From them I managed to pull two different Masterwork Grenade Launchers that represented the last weapon type that I did not at least have one MW for. Sentinel’s Vengeance is the only one that I can really see myself using in the long run, as the other… Insult and Injury is a bounce type Grenade Launcher. Functionally how the one I like works is that the grenades stick to the target and upon detonation applies an Acid area effect priming the target seeing as the grenade appears to explode three times qualifying itself for a small hit streak in the process and proccing the perk. The one I don’t like bounces the grenade once and then explodes meaning that too often you hit the target with a grenade… it bounces off.. and then explodes in a way that doesn’t actually trigger damage. The core problem I have with heavy weapons right now is how cumbersome they are to reload, and as such I have swapped back to a more normal load-out.
The whole reload thing wouldn’t be so bad if you could reload while sprinting… because the second you hit that booster to get out of harms way it interrupts the reload animation which is maddening. Last night I also pulled a Masterwork Heavy Assault Launcher in the form of Black Powder which is far from ideal but I am using anyways because I like seeing orange rather than purple. It actually does a really good job of mopping up targets that didn’t die from a melee smash. I still feel like I cannot quite get the swing of Colossus, but I also am on this path that makes me not want to stop until I have filled every slot with a Masterwork. At some point I am sure I will be doing the same process on both the Storm and Interceptor… but in part I have been holding off on those for grouping with my friend Grace when she starts the game. I like the Storm and Interceptor far more than I do the Colossus so in theory this experience of gearing up my least favorite of the suits… has been interesting. I like the look of the Colossus and I want to like it as a whole… it just feels awkward and I cannot move in it the way I can with other frames and it feels bad. I mean I think that is the point, given that you are supposed to be this giant immoveable wall… but the way that shields have a cooldown makes it feel like I am left sometimes with no real way of dealing with incoming damage. In a traditional MMORPG… this character would have a healer backing them up and it would make it feel much better than it currently does.
Now however I need to get to work and try and survive another day caffeinated way less than I usually am.
