Sunday - December 14, 2008

Aaaaaaand, one month!

I suppose I shouldn't be proud of not posting in exactly a month, but I suppose you've got to take your victories where you can.

I do apologize to anyone who actually reads this blog for the delay. I have a mental block against writing in this blog when I have a crappy attitude and/or nothing nice to say on a subject, and it's been difficult not to. I've been jobless for almost as long as I've not posted here. Work was just incredibly slow, and Hank was unable to find a true direction for the company. The economy being slow as it was, and the influx of cash being what it wasn't, we simply could not continue, and he had to lay me off.

So, I've been searching for something in the videography arena - the job I feel most comfortable with - but I simply have not found anything yet. The frightening prospect of needing to move out of Michigan and away from everyone I know and love looms on the horizon. Part of me will love the adventure, should it come to pass, but a very large part of me will uproot kicking and screaming. Alas, we must do what we must do.

So, that stated, I'll write things on a lighter note.

I am officially a year older than I was when I wrote my previous post. My birthday was pleasant - my crappy mood was accompanied by a small, "leave me the hell alone" celebration(s), which is exactly what I was looking for. I went over to Ed and Amber's to hang out with Amber and Jason (Ed's out a'truckin') and they kidnapped me and dragged me to Rob and Vicki's, who then kidnapped me and dragged me to Bucca de Bepo's for dinner. It was awesome of them, and we basically spent the evening sitting around playing Guitar Hero and chatting about everything and nothing.

That weekend, my parents treated me to the traditional dinner-of-choice and a quiet evening of gifts and cake at their place. Mind you, I say traditional in a good way - I've found that this arrangement is very comfortable for me, and I greatly enjoy it. Those of you who know me know that I'm greatly annoyed by fuss and muss, and these evenings with my family have none of that. This year, I once again tried to squeeze Osaka past my family, but they vetoed it... although they compromised on Mongolian Barbeque since you still get an "asian" flavor and get to eat with chop sticks. Though they had to twist my arm, I conceded Mongo to them.

Two gifts that stood out mightily that evening were from my parents and from my brother and sister-in-law respectively: an 8 gigabyte iPod nano, and a Shure vocal microphone. I'm utterly blown away by both of these gifts, and they both encourage something I've been neglecting for a long time - music. I actually have yet to hook up the microphone and test it out. I may do that directly after writing this post, though. The iPod is... well, if you want to see it's list of features, I'm sure you can find them up on Apple's website. You don't need me to reitterate them all here. What Apple may or may not tell you though, is that it's WONDERFUL.

My Warcraft guild has made our first stabs into 25-man raid content (now known as Heroic raid content, which was a brilliant move on their part, in my humble opinion - those of you who know, know why) and it's been pretty fun so far. I'm not a terrible tank, and my gear has been getting progressively better. I feel more comfortable with tanking now, and healers have stopped cringing when I volunteer to go under the blade for them. I feel I've made a wise choice with making Maricyl my main character. I never feel gimped in any situation, and can just as easily tank as I can deal damage.

That's about it for now. I'll try not to make it another month before I post again.

Friday - November 14, 2008

As a Bee

Sorry I've not posted in so long. Things have been busy.

I'll not spread drama or air dirty laundry here on the blog - half of the reason I've not posted in quite some time, but suffice to say, there has been drama at the office, and that's where I have my blog software set up. It's been highly distracting at best, so I'm just now getting time to post something constructive.

Ed's 40th Birthday Party was last Saturday. I have no photos from it, but things went reasonably well. I find it difficult to weigh the value of the party, as large gatherings with lots of drinking aren't really my thing, but Ed seems to have enjoyed it immensely, so I suppose it was a success. I dealt poker half the night, and that was pretty fun, like it was last year.

For the first time ever, I've gone to a midnight release of something. Be it a movie, a video game, or otherwise, I've never waited in line at midnight to be the first to get anything. I mark myself a patient man - as I like to say, my patience is only second to my modesty. Usually, I don't see a difference in experiencing something JUST as it comes out, or waiting a day or two to let the crowds die down.

World of Warcraft : Wrath of the Lich King was the notable exception to this rule.

GameStop was offering a pretty nice incentive program : bring in a bunch of your old games when you buy your WotLK expansion, and we'll give you 20% more for them. So, Meg and I cleaned out a bunch of the old PS2 and Wii games (titles like WarioWare and Elebits, that we never play anymore) and ended up getting both of our expansion packs for a grand total of $23. I'd say that was a good trade.

I expected the gathered masses, in some strange, misanthropic way, to be unshowered, greasy neckbeard gamers. I took a moment to wonder why this was - ordinarily I have no problem expecting the lowest out of humanity and being proven right, but this happens to be a community of people I actually belong to... The WoW players, that is, not the stinky neckbeards. Why can I belong to a community, know I'm not like that, know plenty of other WoW players that are like that, and yet still expect the stereotype of the stinky fat WoW player? Maybe because it's somewhat true, and the type of people who look like that, you'd expect are the type fanatical enough about a video game to show up at GameStop at midnight to buy it the moment it's released.

I'm happy to say my lowered expectations of humanity were sorely misplaced. The people at the midnight release were actually pleasantly clean, normal looking people. You wouldn't know most of them on the street. There was nobody notably overweight, greasy, or hairy. Nobody in costume. Nobody shouting "FOR THE HOARD! YUS!" at the top of their lungs. I stood in line and chatted with a nice guy about various things I'd read to expect of the game. I turned in my old games, purchased my new one, and left $23 poorer.

As for the expansion itself : OH EM GEE. Blizzard, thus far, has outdone themselves. I really liked the changes they made in 3.0 thus far (even if they did fail to address core issues with the Priest class, but I digress) and the expansion content, thus far, has been no different. I'll write a more extensive review of it later - this post is already getting long enough as it is - but suffice to say, leveling up my Death Knight was an amazing thing, and still is. The cinematography they've added... the epic feel... and that they pulled no punches making it clear you've begun your career as an agent of horror and death.

I'm also glad that, somewhere in this setting, I've gotten to make Maricyl the way he's SUPPOSED to be. Behold, mortals, and despair.

Wednesday - October 29, 2008

A Gentleman and a Scholar

The below post from the World of Warcraft forums sums up my thoughts on the Zombie Plague nicely. All people from the Morlock family should take heed of these wise words and well thought-out argument.

Monday - October 27, 2008

The Zombie Apocalypse

Okay, I know this one's a touchy subject for a lot of people right now, but this is my blog and therefor my opinion. If you hate Blizzard and think this was their worst idea ever, you're wrong, plain and simple.

"Scott? What the hell are you babbling about?" you might ask.

... okay, that doesn't narrow it down much, as you usually ask that, and rightly so. But this particular instance, I'm rambling about the current event running in World of Warcraft - the Scourge Invasion.

Roll back the clock to whenever the heck Naxxramus was put into the game. During that patch, for about 2 weeks or so, they had a "Scourge Invasion," to commemorate the fact that the Scourge were back and bad as ever! ... only, they weren't. In a few lonely, out of the way corners of the world, there were these little glyph circles on the ground, and a handful of level-appropriate undead meandering around minding their own business. They weren't invading so much as poking their heads out to say "Hello, we're still here, and if you don't want to fight us, that's cool. No prob. Just go around us." It was, in a word, pathetic.

Wheel the clock forward to about a week ago. I hear whisperings of another Scourge Invasion to make the lead-in to Wrath of the Lich King something special. I remember the last one, and half roll my eyes. I see zombies meandering around, and think, "okay, cool, so they're at least ATTACKING the major cities rather than politely waiting outside of them." They were weak, shambled slowly, and died quickly. A few bursts of Holy Nova took out a whole pack of them.

However, I got hit by them once, and was infected with their plague. "Oh neat," I thought, "they can spread a zombie plague." Sure enough, if you died to this plague (which had a 6 minute timer before which you had to find a cure) you would turn into a zombie yourself, and could run around PVPing other players (even of your own faction) and spread the plague further!

As neat as this was, allow me to restate that zombies were weak, slow, and fragile. I lived for all of 2 seconds, and was killed by some random player 1-shotting me.

That was a few days ago.

What I had no clue of was Blizzard was slowly escalating things. I thought the constant message of "Servers will have rolling restarts" every day was to address continued stability problems... it's actually to tweak the stats on the zombies each and every day.

See, the plague is getting worse. Lasts night, for instance, the first chance I've had to play in a while. zombies had a lot of hit points, hit for a decent amount, and the plague - most importantly - had a 1 minute incubation (which gets reduced every time you get hit by a zombie). So, even if you can't kill someone through damage, you can usually hit them enough times to zero the clock on their plague and convert them over. I decided to try this out, and got myself infected in Booty Bay, and head north.

Ganking in Stranglethorn is a time-honored tradition. It's one I've admittedly rolled my eyes at in the past, but I figured, in the spirit of the holiday and all, I'd give it a whirl. Seriously: how often do you have the chance to maraud through an area with your own horde of zombie minions? I found very quickly that any HUMANOID NPC you killed came back as an equal-level zombie. Abilities given to you in your PC-zombie state gave you limited command over them; effectively, a "hey guys, follow me" for 20ish seconds, and a 10 second burst of speed "Get'm!" ability. Other than those, they were mindless, and would aggro just like normal mobs. So, you could herd them, but not truly control them.

I got some friends, and practiced in one of the Troll ruins. I wiped the entire place out with a sweeping tide of contagion. After everything there had gone from Troll to Scourge, I was ready. I cut across some wilderness, and hit the Ogres right outside of Grom'gol Base Camp. After "recruiting" a few friends to help out, we rushed our way into the base camp, and hit the guards at the gate.

I saw their levels compared to my level 35 zombies, and though, "This was a waste of time. This is going to be over quickly." I forgot entirely that the plague will run its course whether or not the target actually dies... and within a few hits had a fresh pair of zombies. These 4 ran into the next few NPC guards, and the domino effect was well under way. I had already won the camp.

I stuck around making sure my zombies had enough direction to fully spread the plague and wipe everyone out, and then decided to head for greener pastures. Some friends wanted to kill Onyxia, so I asked to be included... only I couldn't get to Onyxia, because I had overrun the travel hub to Orgrimmar! Every time I tried to step foot in Grom'gol, I was beset by NPC and PC zombies alike! It was wild seeing something so persistent after all the "if you don't want to, you don't have to" style events. This was real. This was in my face. And best of all, it was player created. The undead hadn't overrun Grom'gol because Blizzard arbitrarily decided to invade that town for a short amount of time, it was overrun because I overran it!

Now, I can see a lot of people having a problem with this : major cities and quest hubs are being overrun. Quest givers, bankers, and auctioneers are getting killed. What's worse, is that they just add to the Scourge's numbers... I say suck it up. This event isn't going to last forever, so have some fun experiencing a REAL invasion.

Monday - October 27, 2008

Why I love 4chan.org

Ah, 4chan. You'll never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.

However, every so and then, when you're looking for some random goofiness, gems like this pop up that make you laugh until you cry :

Monday - October 27, 2008

Congratulations, Arica and Trevor

I'd like to congratulate Arica and Trevor on their beautiful wedding this Saturday, and wish them a long and happy marriage. I meant every word I said in my speech : You're truly the greatest friends a person could ask for.

Yes, it's a crappy picture, but it's the only one I had. I'll post prettier ones when I have'm.

Wednesday - October 22, 2008

Second Wave

Old Guard hobbies is shutting down.

This saddens me greatly. Old Guard was the only real reliable local game shop around. They had tons of 40K stuff, as well as a lot of other miniature games like Warmachine and Flames of War. You could find all sorts of roleplaying books there, from GURPS to D&D to Paladium, and all sorts of obscure stuff you'd never think to look for. Their paints and modeling supplies were always well stocked, they carried primer and green epoxy putty. And if they didn't have any of that stuff, they'd order it for you. They even offered a 20% discount on Games Workshop stuff as an incentive to buy there, rather than at the official GW store. I was more than happy to oblige.

I think the thing that saddens me the most, though, is that I've been going there for my gaming needs since high school - that was where I got my first Battletech miniatures. I continued to go there for D&D books and the like, then Reaper miniatures when I got heavily into painting, and then 40K when I started playing that a year or two ago. I suppose I'll miss the memories.

One good thing did come from this though : Their 40% off fire-sale during which I procured (narrowly) their last Necron Battleforce. I gained 28 Warriors and 3 Destroyers in that box, and one extra Destroyer for a total of 4. Add those to the 30 Warriors I have painted, and the 2 extra I cobbled together from left-over sprues, and I'm standing 60 warriors strong, and 9 Destroyers strong.

I got them assembled and based pretty quickly - more quickly than I thought I would. I suppose when you buckle down and really press to get it done, it's not so bad. Once everything was all assembled, I did a little experiment. Instead of my usual priming black and painting codex grey, I primed grey and used the new black wash to put all my shadows in. It worked remarkably well. I noted a few problems with it, but nothing that's impossible to solve. I took a comparison picture with my phone's camera since the digital camera's on the fritz, but it didn't come out good at all. I'll be doing the rest like that, I think, due to the ease of use.

I also got my Heavy Destroyers 100% finished off.

Unfortunately, crappy camera phone is crappy. But you get the general idea. If I can get ahold of a better camera, I'll snap some better pictures.

Next up, 30 warriors and a TON of Destroyers... I might actually do the Destroyers first, since I don't think I'll have occasion to field more than 30 Warriors any time soon. I'm not sure when I want to paint my Monoliths, also. More later on that.

Monday - October 13, 2008

Weekend Warriors

The weekend was... strange... ish.... I'm not entirely sure if it was relaxing or not yet. I guess we'll see whether or not I explode with rage Tuesday or Wednesday. If I do, then maybe my weekend didn't go so well after all. *shrug*

Friday was more or less uneventful, that I remember. On my way into the apartment when arriving home from work, I saw a big praying mantis in the bush right outside our door. It was just sitting there nicely. I found that mantises have creepy eyes that seem to follow you wherever you go. I snapped a few pictures and moved on - cuz seriously, when do you get to see a praying mantis nowadays?

I spent the evening trying to relax. I took care of a few things around the apartment, and retired for an evening of WoW and beginning to put together one of my Monoliths.

Saturday was a bit more interesting. My parents and I drove out to Mt. Pleasant to visit my sister at Central Michigan University and watch their Homecoming football game. Apparently, it was also a chance for Jamie to introduce us to the tailgating experience.

The drive up was uneventful. We popped in, made up some lunch for everyone which barely anyone ate because half of them were too hung over to stomach food. After that, we went to the stadium to tailgate. Sadly, we only made it around the corner before we hit the huge line of traffic, and were forced (with some great frustration) into a side lot away from the main action. Having to abandon the vehicle there, rather than being able to tailgate where we were sitting, we grabbed a few pops and went into the student parking lot. We were supposed to meet up with some of Jamie's friends there, but those plans never materialized for various reasons. At that point it was waiting for the game, talking to Angela, surrounded by a sea of beer bongs and loud music. I now know why I avoided this scene in college... and, well... at every other point in my life as well. The redeeming factor to the lack of a tailgating locale was that there seems to be general sense of community. Some guy turned around, stuffed a piping hot hamburger in my hand, and said, "This guy looks like he needs a burger, man! Enjoy!" I was flabbergasted.

The game was decent - still football, so not really my cup of tea, but decent. We won, at least. After that, we went back to Jamie's apartment, but that was a wash because ALL of her roommates were asleep. Apparently, Saturday night is not the party night I thought it was, but rather the night to go to bed early. Who knew?

All in all, Jamie felt pretty bad because NOTHING that day went as she planned. I won't pretend it wasn't a little annoying, but at the same time, shit happens. I got to visit with my sister, which is really all I went up for anyway. So, regardless of tailgaiting tomfoolery, mission accomplished.

Sunday was spent trying to get off my rear end. I slept late, got lunch late, and got motivated to go to Ed and Amber's even later. I was shooting for 1pm-ish to be at their place, and got there about 4:30. We hung out for a short while, and within an hour we were on our way to Livonia to visit Arica for 40K night.

I didn't get a whole hell of a lot accomplished with regards to my models - I only got my Pariahs primed - but I had a long discussion with Rob about my LARP rules. Apparently, he knows a thing or two about how LARPs go, since he was a long running GM at Kanar, and, if I'm understanding correctly, one of the people who helped write the rules. I'd say that's a decent resume. He tossed my rules set on the grill, and I'm happy to say it didn't burn as much as I thought it would. I didn't say it didn't burn, but just not horribly charred beyond recognition. All in all, a good night, but just ran a bit late. I got to bed entirely too late for a work night, and stumbled into the office this morning to a busy work load.

Monday - October 13, 2008

Not all conversions are serious

I've seen a few really funny conversions lately, and I wanted to share them with you.

Also, I would TOTALLY field this Necron model with my regular army.

Thursday - October 09, 2008

A general sense of unease

That's the best way I can think to describe myself right now. I can't really put my finger on any one thing, really. There's nothing wholly, or even mostly, making me feel like this... but there it is, none the less. Apparently, some of my friends have been wondering about this lately, and why I've been acting like a jerk. This may explain it.

It doesn't excuse it, though - there's no excuse for being a jerk to those who love you most - and for that I apologize.

That said, allow me to explain as best as I can how I've been feeling lately.

There's been a lot going on lately, and those who know me know that I don't function well on a full schedule. I get overwhelmed when there are a million different things going on, and that's the stage on which I'm currently playing. My nephew is getting baptized soon, and Meg and I are the Godparents. That in-and-of itself isn't really stressful, but between family, scheduling, and the church, it's doing a wonderful job of aggravating me. Arica's wedding is looming on the horizon on the 25th, and being in the wedding party, I need to worry about that and Trevor's bachelor party, and anything else anyone needs me for. The apartment is - perpetually so - a mess that we never seem to get cleaned up totally, so free time is devoted to at least making an attempt at that. There's never enough clean laundry, and never enough groceries, so more time needs to be made to get out and do those things.

Then, add in friends. I love my friends. I truly do. They're my support structure. I don't want to make it sound like my friends are in any way wrong for what I'm about to say, because they aren't. Nobody has made demands of me. Nobody has said anything out of sorts, or anything really out of the ordinary... but with my busy schedule right now, I really don't have time to hang out too much. I'd love to, really. But please, please, please don't take it personally if I don't see you for a week and a half. It's not that I've stopped loving you. I'm not avoiding you. But making me feel as such, even in jest, does not reduce my stress levels, nor does it solve any problem that can be solved. I will make time for you when I can. Please do not take it personally if I cannot.

There are other factors as well... more personal than I want to get into on my blog for the world to see; those of you who know me know what's going on. But suffice to say, the above listed issues are only about half of what's going on right now. Add in the failing economy, the difficulty of doing business, and the stress of being the provider for the house on top of all of that, combined with a healthy (unhealthy?) mix of seasonal allergies / sinus problems, and you've got a recipe for me being a real bastard sometimes.

Again, I'm sorry.