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wizard = no fun (Friday, December 17, 2004 - 12:48:01 PM)
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On Sunday afternoon, I finished playing through the Neverwinter Nights original campaign with my katana-weilding halfling rogue. With that fun over I was curious, so I started playing through again with a wizard elf. Gaaah! Is it ever tedious! It follows AD&D 3.5 rules well enough, but that doesn't work well for playing wizards in a video game. At low levels, you only get to cast 2 spells per level and even then, only once per day. This means if I want to use spells after each piddling little battle, my character has to rest AGAIN! That is, if he even survives these encounters. Such low levels are when you need spells the most because wizards are these weakling little cream puffs that die if you sneeze on them! I don't think I'll stick with this play-through the game for very long. Even the shortest, easiest quests at the beginning of the game are taking 4-5 times longer than with any other type of character. It keeps making me want to start over with a burly, huge human fighter with the biggest sword he can get his hands on. Ug.
I finally got my Christmas bonus, so xmas shopping can begin! Since we've had to start so late, not everything we order will arrive in time for xmas, unfortunately. So far, it's not looking much like a happy Christmas for us. She's been badly sick lately and just now getting over it in time to go through another PMS period from Hell. On top of that, she's finally gotten some work at the Carmichal Community Center over the holidays. Carolaina and I will continue to struggle through in survival mode.
A lot of Penny Arcade strips have resonated strongly with me in recent months. Those guys have just been in rare form this past year and their commentary on the video game industry is always spot-on. Check them out:
Wow, after looking back through them I realized that most of the strips that I loved involved Star Wars in some way. Interesting...
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Beginning to [look|feel|sound] like Christmas (Monday, December 6, 2004 - 12:43:07 PM)
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It's getting to be that time of year again. A time when most of my favorite radio stations inundate us all with bad Christmas songs. If you've read this blog and/or know me, you know I hate most Christmas songs. It's because I've heard them TOO MANY times in previous years. As a result, the only Christmas songs I even like, much less put up with, are Christmas in Sarajevo by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra and an xmas song by the Eagles that I can't remember the name of.
This year, 94.9 FM started playing Xmas songs EXCLUSIVELY right after Thansgiving. Don't they know that's what killed KLOV FM a couple of years ago? I got the feeling that advertisers started bailing out on them in droves. Not many people want to hear Xmas music ALL DAY LONG--especially since there are so few of them worth listening to.
We got our Christmas tree put up yesterday. Carolaina and I tag-teamed the tree: I assembled it and she fluffed the limbs. We didn't get any ornaments on it yet, just the lights and streamers. It's also our kitten, Hobbes, first Christmas. It's been a major pain to keep him from climbing the tree. He's still just small enough to climb all the way to the top. >:[
Early yesterday morning, I finally reached a video game goal of mine: I finished Metroid Zero Mission in under an hour. I've long been inspired by the skill shown by others who are real experts at speed running through the Metroid games. Using Jason Baum's 29:54 run as a guide, I finally got a run of 57:08. For proof, I enabled the Time Attack Mode. To get screenshots, I had to transfer my saved games to the computer and open it up in an emulator. I tried taking photos of the screens on the GBA itself, but Carolaina's point-and-shoot digital camera doesn't do well in low light and the GBA-sp doesn't do well in bright light. Trust me, though, I did accomplish this on the GBA without any cheats whatsoever.
This weekend, Carolaina rented some movies, amoung them were Shrek 2 and Harry Potter: Prisoner of Azkaban. Shrek 2 was ok, but I really enjoyed the latest Harry Potter movie. Not to give too much away: I was afraid that in this one Harry would end up fighting some form of Voldemort yet AGAIN! I was pleasantly suprised by the storyline. I really should buy the rest of the books and read them, but watching the movies before reading each book has served me very well so far.
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Dude... where's my room? (Friday, November 26, 2004 - 10:51:43 AM)
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On Monday while I was at work, Carolaina did the unthinkable--she rearranged my room! If you know me well, you know why this is such a cardinal sin with me. >:{ It will take me months to get it all sorted out again.
Yesterday we went up to Mountain View to spend Thanksgiving with the family. Unfortunately the food wasn't so good, so today for lunch we'll cook up our own little Thanksgiving-style meal. Last night and tonight, Carolaina and I have watched/will watch a good bit of some Doctor Who episodes.
It's nice having a couple of extra days off for the holidays. It works out really well as a mini-vacation since this time of the year is always the busiest up at work--all our clients want something done to their site(s) and completed by the end of the year.
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slow, quiet weekend (Monday, November 22, 2004 - 12:11:12 PM)
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We had a very quiet weekend--just what I wanted. No events to attend, nothing urgent requiring my attention, no major demands on my time. So what did I do? I played lots of Neverwinter Nights. I've been going back through the origional campaign with a katana-wielding halfling rogue. He's got a smart mouth and a good heart--with a small, vicious dark side. He's a fun character to play and I've been doing every possible side quest. Doing so makes the game a lot more fun (for me, anyway).
Carolaina's Dad came up and stayed with us last night. This morning, I cooked breakfast for us: eggs, sausage and biscuits with gravy. It was good. At 1:30 this afternoon, she will be taking him to the airport. He will be spending just over a month with Carolaina's sister and her family in California for the holidays.
Our kitten, Hobbes, just continues to grow and grow. Some mornings, it appears that he has grown overnight. He should be able to grow faster and stronger now that he's had a round of meds to eliminate the worms. He's also getting our other two cats to be more active by constantly playing with them. In addition to that, he's being a normal kitten--cute and precocious.
UPDATE: This blog has never been as "mini" as intended, so I've went and renamed it everywhere to just "blog". I origionally thought that I would do small, quick, daily updates to this thing, but I've fallen into doing once-a-week updates (usually on Monday), which is fine by me.
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Insanity... can (NOT!) be fun! (Wednesday, November 17, 2004 - 12:09:19 PM)
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I've got a lot of pressures on my time recently and it's beginning to get to me. That's why I haven't posted in a couple of weeks.
I knew that with the opening of the Clinton Library, that it would get crazy here in Little Rock, but it's gotten insane. Tomorrow and Friday they're closing all the exits off of I-30 between Broadway in N. Little Rock down to the 630 exit. There also closing about half the streets in the downtown area--mostly those near the River Market. It's going to be a major pain in the butt to get to work on Thursday and Friday--not to mention the traffic here downtown is already crazy enough here this week. It seems everybody and their dog wants to be here; I just want it to be over.
I've become involved with the Armchair Arcade site in an official way now. I'll be helping them out with different projects. You might notice that I now have the "moderator" tag under my info on my message board posts and profile.
With so much of my time being taken, I haven't been able to play as much of Neverwinter Nights as I would like. I could use a good lazy weekend or a vacation of some sort. Next week we'll be getting a couple of days off for Thanksgiving, so I'll just hold out until then.
This past weekend, we took Hobbes to get his first round of immunizations. He's grown quite a bit since that photo I've linked to was taken. After that, we went and ate at the Jade Garden--a chinese restaurant. The food tasted wonderful, but we ended up feeling sickly all afternoon because of it. On Sunday, I got to meet Tim Ernst! If you don't know about him, he's a famous Arkansas photographer. He put on a digital side show of some of his best photos. It was sponsored/set up by the Natural State Photography Club--a new photo club that started in Searcy over a year ago. Carolaina and I may try to get involved in this club. They go on photo trips around the state every other month or so. It should be fun.
One last note about the weekend before last: Highway church had a fall family fun get-together that Saturday afternoon. Carolaina helped out with an activity booth where kids got to play "firefighter" by using squirt guns to put out candles. She had created the background art for that booth. I had manned the small concession table and was kept busy making popcorn and cotton candy. That cotton candy got everywhere and I had to take a shower when I got home. I really enjoyed doing it, though. It reminded me of the times during high school when I would help out in the concession stand/area during home basketball games.
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