Sitting at Work

Building our current project. I sincerely hope that I can catch up to where I'm supposed to be within the next week.

As is, I'm not pleased with my progress for tomorrow's milestone .

Return!

Life happened.

Here's what you missed:
* Weekend Camping: Goldfire gets a Dragon Kite
* Strael and Contrae raid Karazhan a few times
* A friend gives up on WoW and then returns a few weeks later
* Naxxramas Approaches: Saturday Run This Week
* My game gets announced
* And More!

And now that that's out of the way, I think I can go back to posting random stuff without feeling like I'm missing a lot.

[WoW] Quick Post 2

Still haven't gotten around to a more meaty post, and it will probably take some more time. We have another build due out tomorrow, so I'll be staying late both today and then. Which is a shame, since 2.4 hit.

Quick Notes!

• Sonnik has cool stuff from Karazahn. She had a very nice run.
• Strael and Contrae are either very near to 67 or at it. Hooray!
• [2.4] I look forward to respeccing to a better tanking spec without having to repurchase skills.
  
• [2.4] Sunwell Plateau comma woot.
• From the hearsay, I need to grind some Battlegrounds with Laheth or else I won't be able to finish the S1 Arena gear, since when S4 hits it will disappear. Sad times.

Right. Back to work before lunch. Lunchtime gaming was N+ last week, and is Army of Two this week.

The End of Vacation is Nigh! Also: Fake Guitars.

Tomorrow I'll have to resume work. I like work, but it'll probably be the end of the week before I'm back on a project, so I'll get to continue doing random tools tasks.

Of course, this doesn't count as musing (not that many of my posts in the past have), so I'm going to stop right here and change tracks entirely.


You guys have heard about Guitar Hero, Karaoke Revolution, Dance Dance Revolution, Rock Band, et cetera, right? Well, I dig those games. I dig them because they offer a facsimile of musical/rhythmic talent while not actually requiring me to know how to sing, dance, play guitar, and so forth.
The one exception I can think of to this is that Rock Band's drum set (the part of the game I'm least interested in) is functionally equivalent to actually playing drums. Given that all the instrumental parts are input by a series of button presses timed to the music, I can understand why it's practically the same, but it's just not for me: I tried to learn playing drums before, and that didn't turn out great.

Now, last night, while hanging out with some of our friends who aren't as video gamer as others, I heard an opinion that just seemed strange to me: Somebody didn't ever care to play any of the guitar facsimile games because it wasn't like playing an actual guitar.

I can see his point, but (as I just stated) it's completely opposite of my own reason for playing them, and I'm not sure if a title that was playing an actual guitar, or something that was just like playing a guitar, and being scored for it, would ever be more than completely niche.

Three Days To Save Dyluck: Day Two

Well, that was short.

No, we haven't saved Dyluck yet. You're supposed to work on this for most of the game, so it was a ridiculous title for this week anyways... but we're not going to get anywhere near that this week, since the player of JOE, who owns the game, is taking tomorrow off.

Oh well, at least we got to take down a couple of bosses and make some headway.


Also, I'm tired today.

Three Days To Save Dyluck: Day One

Our intrepid adventurers (JOE, GIRL, and TRUFFL) made their way to the royal castle at Pandora and met their foe, Thanatos, who has captured Dyluck (and somebody else, but we don't care). Before being able to retrieve him, however, we were dropped into a pit, where we were set upon by...

WALL FACE

Dispatching it at the last moment before being crushed against spikes, we rushed back upstairs only to see Thanatos escape again.

Dyluck Status: Still Captured.

Who knows what tomorrow will bring?

Three Days To Save Dyluck

At work during lunch, we've been playing Secret of Mana. We had some setbacks last week with getting our group together (I was taking care of pets during lunch for 3 of the 5 days, and one of the other players was occupied with some official company visitors), so Dyluck has remained captured.

But no more! During this abbreviated week we have a goal: Three Days To Save Dyluck has begun!

Tuesday is Monday this week

Which means my brain hasn't entirely switched on.

This week's random task at work has me learning Perl (it was that or Python, and I already have a little bit of Perl knowledge). I'm actually enjoying reading through it more than I was while I was poorly attempting to learn C# for the past few weeks... just wasn't grabbing me, although some of that was (and still is!) post-vacation-relaxation.

Otherwise I don't really know what to say today. We played a hunter/mage combo last night, gaining a level each... but there's not a whole lot to say about that right now. We were tired, so we didn't play much.

So, I'm going to go back to listening to YouTube Muppet Show videos while I read about syntax. You should go play some WoW. I hear 2.3 has landed.

Woo! Friday!

I'm having a hard enough time focusing on work and all the stuff that we're doing this weekend that I can't come up with a single thing to talk about.

So I'll talk about multiple things! Solution!

• Reading about the science of science fiction is heady stuff. I submit to you: Atomic Rockets. Be warned - this site covers much physics and sciences.
• I'm looking forward to Rock Band but I'm torn... we have a 360 and it is shiny. Plus - achievements are awesome (someday I'll link my Gamertag, but not yet). However, we also already own two guitars and a couple of microphones for the PS2, since we are fans of Guitar Hero and Karaoke Revolution. Ah well. We won't be getting it until we don't have to deal with the bundle anyways (I'm not super-excited about the drum-kit).
• I need to find a good site for tips on grammar. I tend to want to write little asides when I'm blogging, and I also would love a reference guide for apostrophes and other punctuation.
• Secret of Mana is fun with three people. It's what we're playing during lunch these days.
• I want to draw a bunch of stuff, but my sketchbooks are all at home since I stopped bringing my briefcase to work. I need to draw superheroes and spacemen. Seriously.
• Also, I could fill several posts with things I want to talk about that I'm doing at work. But then I'd be in trouble, and that's not good. I should write down drafts for when I am allowed to say stuff. Or I could just wing it when the opportunity arises. I'm a fan of winging it.
• And finally - I'm a little sad that the bits of plate mail I have for Strael are light gray or dark blue-greenish. He was looking pretty bad-ass in black and red. Our tabard doesn't go with anything either.
  

How's it going?

Since hitting 70, Coperiana and Laheth have gotten a bit less play-time, and we've been catching up on other things. Since I do so love lists and ramblings, I'll combine them now, for my pleasure:

• Sonnik is at a very respectable 66 now.
• I've been crunching for the last week, so I haven't played many games at home.
• We have our 360 now, and just rented Oblivion, which Goldfire is enjoying today.
• Halo 3 multiplayer has dominated my lunch hours since it came out (and a bit of at-work dinner breaks), and I finally have a copy to call my own.
• Our last session of Burning Wheel was... interesting. Almost a total party wipe (unconscious and not dead, fortunately). We'll see how things turn out later.
• I finished a couple of books. Re-read Soul Music and finished If I Pay Thee Not In Gold, which I was apparently borrowing for over two years. Fancy that.

Alright - the build is nearing completion, so it's back to work for me.

Random Updates while Building

World of Warcraft

• Vandren (and Sutcha) got new stuff - Vandren's outfit was updated to be pretty close to his level, thanks to my wonderful wife and her (now level 60!) hunter Sonnik. Also, Vandren hit 24.
• Ashcraft ran around with Belgore the Voidwalker and hit 22.
• The Paladin Triplets are playing in Un'goro Crater, and are between 48 and 49 now.
• Untraining a leatherworking specialty costs 100 gold!? Crazy.
• Strael is getting close to 40... so very close. A few more sessions and he should get his mount, which will alleviate some of the issues with playing as him (Aspect of the Cheetah spoiled me).
• I'm not allowed to make a dwarf, because my character slots on our preferred server are full. Which is probably a good thing, since I'd be making a class I already have 1 or 2 of (Because he'd have to be a hunter or a paladin, more likely a hunter). Maybe when I hit 70 I'll drop one of my two rogues who sit at 21 and hold things in their banks, inventory, and mailboxes for everybody else.
  

Other Stuff

• We're getting a 360! Yay!
• Earth Defense Force 2017 is a hilarious game.
• I love adventure games. And I appreciate those who continue to make them.
• For the next book I read, I have to decide between a Mercedes Lackey/Piers Anthony book, the next Wild Cards volume, or re-reading some more Discworld stuff. Tough decision.
• My build is done - back to work.
  

Wrath of the Lich King Announced: Productivity Down

Yup. It's official.

There's lots of information at various places (I've been checking out the live blogs at WoW Insider), and that's hitting my productivity a little bit today.

Although having ReMaze running in the background with it's massive cycle eating effects doesn't help either.

And now, Pipe Dreams:

• Possibly changing Laheth's hair color from wonderful green-that-doesn't-go-with-anything.
• Possibly changing Djellin's hair color from similar.
• Arthas related content.
• Death Knights... of any race (I'd be tempted by making a human male, if only I could stand their old-style faces and texturing... they've learned so much since then).
• Pre-ordering instead of waiting in line. That was a silly mistake I don't plan on making again.
  

Near Alpha

So very tired. Second week of crunch, with our alpha milestone on monday. Efficiency/productivity is way down on my end, which is bad, since I've got a couple medium tasks to finish today.

Wish me luck.

This Blog Is My Blog, This Blog Ain't Your Blog...

Yeah, I said that I was going to probably talk about stuff other than WoW on this blog, and I haven't done it much. Know what? Too bad. I don't want to talk about my personal life (I had a LiveJournal account before (still do, but I don't update it)), and work is tightly under Non-Disclosure Agreements... pretty much all I can about that is where I work and what platforms we develop for (Foundation 9 Studios / Amaze Entertainment / Griptonite; Primarily Nintendo DS currently).

I guess I can give a tidbit of information regarding non WoW stuff though. I've been reading over The Princes Kingdom, and I plan on running a trial to learn the rules and then hopefully an actual game this weekend. We have a group of folks (all friends) who we play roleplaying games together with, but at some point it became a sole member's role to be the Game Master. Which is a shame. He's a great guy, and a great GM (he was my Best Man, and his speech at our wedding was about pen and paper games), but he's been wanting to play in something for a while. A few of our other friends ran games, but they've all had issues (Ah, Fallout. What an appropriate name for our group dynamic, as well as a witty pun about how to gain pertinent information: Drop out of the campaign for a bit).

So I'm taking it on myself to try running something. I'm fairly quick on my feet, I can be engaging enough in conversation, and I wouldn't mind being the leader sometimes. My only real fear is that it won't be fun, and it will be my fault. Which could be construed as being silly, but it's a big deal. Everybody will be there to have fun and hang out, and they are all really good friends who I hate to disappoint.

I had a talk with my friend about it (The Best Man, for lack of a better name that wouldn't link his online presence or mine to this blog), and I'm better mentally prepared for it... but now I'm in the middle of an alpha crunch, and am not sure if we can pull off the trial run before the main event. Maybe I'll try it the morning before the game, if I'm still working late by Thursday (Friday is always taken).

At Work

Don't you hate it when the linker has an issue, and you have to recompile all the code in your project?

Doesn't it take a long time?

No? Well it does for me.