Uncategorized

Sickly Weekend

This weekend really didn’t turn out how I had hoped.  I’ve picked up this crud in my chest and the amount of general lousy feeling seems to vary heavily.  Today for example I feel like death warmed over.  Sunday however I was feeling fairly decent and hopeful for the start of a new week.  I think maybe I simply did too much and should have rested, because I fell for the traditional trap of “feeling a little better” and then starting to try and behave like a normal human being.  I am not sure if this is an actual illness or just allergy overload, because both could be going on.  However my boss did complain of having a big of a cold that he brought home from London, and I am thinking that maybe he passed that on to me.  In any case I spent a good chunk of the weekend sitting around and playing games…  badly.  I also spent a good deal of time sitting on the back porch watching the birds and flowers.  A few days ago I wrote about the nest of baby robins that we had found in our bush.  It turns out that as my friend Thalen suggested, they were just about to leave the nest because as of yesterday morning they were completely gone with no trace.  I keep hoping that we will see baby robins hopping around and looking for worms, but have not so far.

A good chunk of my weekend gaming was spent replaying Dishonored, which was the May AggroChat Game Club game.  You can listen to our discussion of the game over here.  I remembered this game fondly but upon a second playing there were a lot of details that I either overlooked or simply forgotten.  Primarily it was the games setting that stood out, because everything we know going into it… makes it seem like the Empress Jessamine Kaldwin was a fair and just ruler.  However if you look at the sort of kingdom she ruled… it makes you wonder just how just and fair it really was.  I mean why would someone need the Arc Pylons or Walls of Light…. or the spooky mask wearing Overseers if the world the game inhabits was a good one?  We don’t get to see much of the world before the assassination of the Empress, so I guess in theory depending on how long you were imprisoned all of the police state trappings could have sprung up afterwards when the slightly more evil forces too power.  My first play through I thought I was doing the right thing by quickly dispatching everyone I happened to come up against…  however when I got the “bad” ending it made me completely rethink things.  This time around I managed to complete the low chaos ending, which simply means I didn’t kill that many people in the process.  The ending felt much more fitting for the sort of person I was trying to be.  I had thought I was bringing justice to this broken world, when in truth I was just inadvertently killing a bunch of civilians whose day job just happened to be the City Watch.

Spreading the Madness

The other interesting happening of the weekend is that I convinced my friend and fellow AggroChatter to play some Destiny.  Not surprisingly she is playing a warlock, and at first she tried out being an Exo…  but has since re-rolled to Awoken.  That was honestly the class and race combo that I assumed she would play, but I have been trying to keep at least a step behind in this process. I want to make sure she actually is enjoying the game, rather than me trying to force it upon her.  Yesterday was pretty fun however with us tag teaming a lot of her missions.  The big takeaway from yesterday however is that I had forgotten just how bad that first strike was.  Both the Fallen Walker and Sepiks Prime feel like the most bullet spongey of bosses especially compared to the missions that I am used to on a regular basis.  I walked into the strike with my level 40 and 333 light hunter… and even then it took forever for me to push down the walker.  I actually ran out of ammo on several occasions and had to go running around the map hunting for ammunition.  That feels like it is not the best possible way to introduce someone to Destiny strikes, considering the later ones are way more enjoyable and have more moving parts.

We have also been working on the recruit a friends quests, but it seems that it has abruptly ended with a quest telling her to level to 40.  I think after that the quest continues with a Heroic Daily, or a Nightfall or some of the harder content.  I’ve picked up several doodads along the way, but I am not sure if Grace has actually seen anything from it yet.  I am going to be supremely disappointed if the rewards are only for the mentor.  That has always been my frustration with these programs, because it always feels sketchy if all the rewards go to the person who is being recruited.  The other thing I played this weekend was Chroma Squad which is the June AggroChat Game Club title, and was a pick by Thalen.  Essentially this game is a tongue and cheek take on the Power Rangers, and involves a group of stunt people leaving their crappy studio to go off and found their own.  This is a bit of a cross between a tactical combat game and a “tycoon” game in that you control both the action of the “episodes” that are being recorded, and the layout and crafting of your studio as you fight to gain viewers.  A lot of the dialog is really funny, especially if you were like me and a little too old to fully get into the demographic of the Power Rangers.  It is definitely worth looking into, but at this point I have not played a ton of it.

Cold Days

This weekend was extremely interesting.  Firstly from the whole not blogging standpoint… I guess maybe it is getting a bit easier and that scares me.  Secondly was the travel…  which meant I spent a lot of Friday and Sunday behind the wheel.  I think maybe I found a hack around this process that makes it easier for me… but unfortunately significantly harder for my wife.  Over the course of the two days of driving I used it to catch up on the Harry Dresden series… or at least get closer to caught up.  I had not read Cold Days or Skin Game, and on this particular trip I listened my way through the Cold Days audio book via the audible app.  I have to say there are a bunch of awesome things about how the app works.  Anytime I would flip the car over to Bluetooth audio it would magically start back up the app from where I left off.  This made the whole stopping the audio for a pit stop effortless because as soon as I killed the car it paused the book, and upon coming back in I just had to fire the car back up and flip the audio mood to get back going.  It even seemed to do a small bit of rollback which was useful as well for helping get back into the process.

Having a book to listen to made most of the drive fly by with me being able to take long stretches of road without really noticing it.  This is absolutely a good thing given that the route we chose to get to St Louis was a crazy long one.  Google kept trying to route us around accidents Friday afternoon, so the end result took us to Kansas City and then over to St Louis and wound up being something silly like nine hours on the road including the food stops and such.  The drive home however seemed just as long with us getting home around midnight Sunday evening.  However it overall worked its magic like we hoped it would and allowed me to spend two nights in my own bed to recharge and be ready for coming back to work today.  I am one of those people that needs a day to chill before going back to work after a long trip.  There is just so much of that process that is draining to me.  The biggest take away from the weekend however is that we really need to not let seven years pass this time before making a trip up to St Louis to see our friends again.

As far as what we did on the trip…  we ate way too much food at a whole bunch of different places.  St Louis apparently recently got an Ikea and since we don’t have one of those anywhere near us we had to make a pilgrimage.  There were a bunch of things we were looking for and wound up loading up a bag full of little things here and there.  We went to the Microcenter and I managed not to walk away with anything, even thought I drooled heavily at the presence of the Nvidia GTX 1080 cards they were showcasing.  I really want one, but if I consider getting one… I am going to wait a bit.  I’ve heard that the reference models have some significant issues with thermal throttling.  Generally speaking with any video card release it is better to wait for the second batch of cards to release with the awesome non-reference coolers like the Asus Strix or MSI lines.  We also hit up Trader Joes just because it was convenient, even though we do now officially have them.  We tried out the Cookie Butter that everyone has been raving about, and while it is good… I am not sure if it is the sort of thing I would ever make a trip to go get.  I did pick up something called Bacon Jam… which tastes like a jam… with bits of Bacon in it.  Sounds nasty, but is actually shockingly good on crackers.  At their half priced books, I managed to find the treasure pictured above.  For those that have no clue what it is… it is a Rifts system book…  not published by Palladium.  It came out sometime in the early 90s and eventually it seems like the license was revoked because I think there is only this one print run.  Super limited number of books were published and the system isn’t that good… its just more of a novelty.  I had to pick it up because at $8 I figured that was a steal even though I already have a copy somewhere.

Spindle Days

Once upon a time I had reached a place in Destiny where I simply was not playing it much.  I had several months of bliss with the launch of The Taken King, but once my friends faded away from the game I was left with the uphill grind to try and get over 300 light… and failing to do it.  One of the items we tried several times to get was the Black Spindle, and if you have read my blog for very long you will have known about my frustrations on past attempts.  What you might not know is that the Black Spindle is essentially the reason why so many different things have transpired in game.  Squirrel and I have been friends and guildies for years now, having played lots of games together in the past.  Several months ago on a Black Spindle day he courted me to attempt to get it.  So I spent time and got to know his friend Jex in the process, and even though we failed to get it in the end… we had a lot of fun doing so.  It was through these two that I was introduced to the Axioma Clan, a group that has helped me immensely through me learning the ropes of modern Destiny.  It was the Black Spindle that ultimately lead me to take up this banner but it continued to elude me.  Every time the Black Spindle was available, either I couldn’t play… or we seemed to be unable to get the resources to make it happen.

Yesterday I had no real intentions of doing anything other than chilling on the sofa, and playing some Final Fantasy XIV.  However Squirrel and Jex pinged me over twitter to see if I was around… or more so they thought that I was still on my trip.  As it turned out we were able to get a group together and make it happen.  After a few screw-ups, largely from me not having touched a controller in about a week…  we managed to get through the ship and down all of the taken mobs with about 30 seconds left.  So finally I had the damned spindle in my inventory, and happened to have a 335 hereafter ready and waiting to infuse into it.  I cannot tell you how much it meant to me, to finally do this with the group that helped get me back into the game.  It was Squirrel and Jex who’s siren song coaxed me back into Destiny with the promise of candy, and ultimately it was that same group that won the day and got the spindle.  That said I cannot thank Axioma clan and our leader Wet enough for giving me a place to hang my hat and introducing me to so many other opportunities.  Here I am sitting at 335 light and there is no way that could have happened without the clan as a whole.  The frustrating part is that I often times cannot reliably join in clan Shenanigans on a regular basis, even thought I wish I could.  Most of the activities happen after 9pm my time… and since I get up at 5:30 in the morning for work I just can’t handle many late nights during the week.  I tried it for several weeks, falling back into the habit of getting to bed after midnight, and it destroyed my ability to function.  I am hoping that once the time shifts once again I can get back to regularly joining in.  It might not seem like much but that hour makes all the difference in the world.  Until then I will have to keep joining in when I think I can handle having a late night.

This is apparently the year of us getting our acts together a month late.  The whole Developer Appreciation Week thing… was supposed to happen in March but instead we did it in April.  Similarly the Newbie Blogger Initiative generally kicks off in May, but instead this year we are shifting it over to June.  Honestly June probably makes a lot more sense, especially for those folks with families because May means the insanity that comes with the end of the school year.  This years event is being marshaled by Doone of XP Chronicles and will contain a lot of the features that we have seen from past years.  However you might be asking yourself… why NBI?  Well to be honest, it is this incubator to help bloggers get started.  We all make the same sort of blog posts we make every year, but what it does a great job of is breaking down the barriers between those who used to only be readers, and are now starting out on their own.  Bloggers are this well that needs to be replenished every so often, because so many folks set out with good intentions and for whatever reason end up leaving the community.  Even us grizzled veterans need a fresh infusion of spirit every now and then to keep going, and in many ways this yearly event does that.  We begin to remember why we started our own blogs and why we got into this mess in the first place.  The biggest take away for me however… is that we have this long list of bloggers who have participated and are still actively blogging today.

Here is a big ole dump of some of the blogs that were once in a Newbie Blogger Initiative Class and are still active…

• Chaotic Pixels
• Gamer Girl Confessions
• Imperial Intelligence
• Lair of the Wolf Dragon
• Light the Beacons!
• Memoirs of a Lady
• Ramblings of a MMO Gamer Guy
• Pleasant Gamer
• Randark’s Review
• Soultamer Gaming
• The Legacies In SWTOR
• Tyrannodorkus
• Waiting for Rez (very recently retired)
• Sparks In The Horizon
• Sygnus
• Aywren Sojourner
• Gaming Conversations
• Nexus Nightly
• Rambling Thoughts About WoW
• Grimoires of Supremacy
• 7 Days a Week
• A Hobbits Journey
• Ash’s Adventures
• A Freckles for Your Thoughts
• Gamer By Design
• Cogitationes Astalnaris
• Null Signifier
• Thinking Play
• JVT Workshop
• MegaDirge
• Occasional Hero
• The Sofa is Waiting
• Cheap Boss Attack

I feel like I probably missed a whole batch of blogs in there somewhere while crawling through my back posts about the Newbie Blogger Initiative, but regardless you can see this process has an effect on our community.  I support this notion largely because when I started blogging I had something like this to help me out too.  The “Blog Azeroth” forums were a similar incubator of excellent blogs related to the game World of Warcraft, and through them I found the support structure I needed to take my first steps into this world.  Now a bit over seven years later I am still blogging… and until recently doing it every day.  As a blogger you are going to need a community to bounce ideas off of, and if nothing else to tell you that you are doing an excellent job.  It can be extremely draining to sit down at a screen and unburden your soul in post form.  The other bloggers that I interact with on a daily basis, are my support structure and they can be yours too.

So You Want to Be a Blogger

You won’t likely find fame or fortune, but you will find is a great outlet for all of those thoughts that keep collecting dust in your brain.  I personally started out as one of those folks that rabidly posted on game forums.  I would create great walls of text about the things that I was passionate about.  I never really thought about creating a blog until I read one that made me realize… this is the sort of stuff I already write on a regular basis.  You’d think it would be simple as that, but in truth it is a lot easier to post a comment on someone else’s site than to create one of your own.  That is why we are here to help.  During the month of June the good sponsor bloggers in the NBI are going to be helping you out with writing prompts, and events that cause you to come up with content to post.  Folks like me will be mining our brains trying to come up with posts that might be helpful about the technology behind blogging, and that sort of thing.  All you need to do is…

• decide where you are going to blog
• come up with a catchy name
• create social media accounts on every platform
• set a posting schedule
• come up with cute artwork
• take lots of screenshots

wait…  I’ve overwhelmed you.  The truth is there are more aspects of blogging than could ever be dumped into a single post, but what we are really offering you is a hand up.  It is hard breaking into any community, and it is hard doing anything for the first time.  It is my hope that we can serve as Sherpas to climb this Everest.  What you can do is check out the various resources, and from there we can get you started in the right direction.

• Newbie Blogger Initiative Forums
• Newbie Blogger Initiative Twitter
• Newbie Blogger Initiative Discord Server:  010P8D7OwikLYq3nx

As always if there is anything particular I can help with as you start your journey, post a comment and I will help as best I can.

Incomplete Saturday

Morning Folks… it’s been a bit since we talked.  Well in truth its been two days… but it feels like it has been much longer.  Now is the time for me to see if I remember how to write a blog post.  In truth this was an odd weekend for me, and in ways that I didn’t quite expect.  For three plus years now my mornings have centered around writing a blog post.  So when I suddenly removed it from the equation…  the morning felt somehow without meaning.  What I mean by that is all of Saturday it felt like something was missing, and in a way that I find it hard to articulate.  You know that feeling in the back of your head when you know that you forgot something… but can’t quite figure it out.  It was something along those lines, with the key difference being I knew precisely what was different.  However I survived and managed not to write a single word… though I did find myself significantly more active on twitter, slack and discord than I normally am on the weekends.  I guess if I am not dumping out things in long post form, they ultimately make their way out regardless into tweets and such?

Sunday however was delightful, and I felt zero remorse for not making a blog post.  I think a huge part of this comes from the fact that I already scurry around like mad on Sunday mornings making sure that everything is done for the latest AggroChat episode.  After waging that battle I found myself struggling to try and find the desire to write a blog post.  Honestly had I done nothing but cut out Sundays… I think in the grand scheme of things my quality of life would have improved massively.  As far as the streak… it is not good and broken and I no longer have it looming over my head.  That said…  I do feel a minor bit of lament over having done it.  Once a streak is over… it is over.  Now I could start anew and begin working to beat three years… but I doubt that is going to happen.  I also doubt that I am going to permanently take off weekends from this point on.  In the back of my head how, weekends are optional time… and if I happen to have a post I want to make awesome, but I won’t necessarily feel pressured either way.

Table Saga

One of the constant topics of discussion for the last few weeks has been the backyard and whether or not we wanted to replace the table and chairs we had back there.  I know it is heady stuff and of extreme interest to you all.  The set that we currently have was handed down to us by some of our neighbors and while perfectly cromulent…  it is not exactly the easiest thing to sit at for long periods of time.  At the beginning of the season we picked up a set of Adirondack chairs that sit up straight rather than being permanently stuck in an awkward partially reclining position.  The idea was that we would get some sort of new table to go with these chairs that would work at their height level.  Further idea being that we could eat at the table or at the very least comfortably use a laptop or something while hanging out in the backyard.  Something you should know at this point is that we do the majority of our grocery shopping at ALDI these days.  Another thing you should know is that ALDI has some truly bizarre shit at times… not the least of which last week was a garden table that fit pretty much the dimensions we were looking for.  Even better is that it was just shy of $50, which moved it into serious contention.

With our neighbors out of town this weekend, we borrowed their pickup truck and used it to go pick up a table and haul it back home.  There was of course going to be “some assembly required” but after having seen IKEA directions we figured “how bad could it be”?  Now I love ALDI, but apparently there are some minor issues with construction tolerances when you are only paying $50 for a large garden table.  The first challenge was the fact that some of the screws seemed too large for the holes that they were supposed to go into.  The end result involved me essentially using the screw and truly silly amounts of torque to try and “drill” the hole larger with little metal shavings coming off of the metal piece I was screwing into.  I had to torque hard enough that apparently I ripped a chunk out of my finger in the process and had to take a quick break to apply a band-aid to stop said bleeding.  That hurdle solved we moved onto the problem of one of the six holes that the metal braces went into was not lining up… and not even vaguely close.  The end result there was to use a screwdriver to sort of bend the holes until we managed to get them to line up enough to slide the bolt through.  The resulting table seems nice and sturdy but what we originally thought was going to be fifteen minutes of our time… wound up taking close to two hours.

Another quick note… the photos attached to this post were taken while sitting on the back patio and watching birds come visit the bush across from where we sit.  This whole bird watching thing has turned into a bit of a thing for me while we are back there.  I don’t really know what any of the birds are other than the obvious Bluejay, Cardinal or Robin.  They are adorable however as they hop around the branches looking for nom noms.  They can completely decimate a full feeder worth of bird seed in no time flat, and as a result I have started limiting myself to feeding every other day.  When I do this they tend to do a pretty damned good job of cleaning up anything that happened to fall on the ground between feedings.  The other interesting thing that I have learned is that sunflower seed hulls break down into compost extremely quickly for some reason.  I realize this is not exactly the most exciting post to make as my return from the weekend break, but screw it… its my blog and my birbs!