Today was a bit more active I must admit...I was in a constant state of sleepiness but otherwise it went well.
Woke up and tested to see if the primary application I use to work with currently works via VPN. Previously it was not functional but I had an idea and fortunately it worked so I was able to work from home and not worry about fishtailing (though I enjoy fishing) my way out of my dad's housing area.
There was a good bit done today mostly communication which isn't exactly my cup of tea but I honestly don't mind. Lunch took care of the last few checks I accumulated over this year, got food and filled up my gas tank at Sheetz. On a similar note I'm planning to eat out less next year to a) Improve my diet overall and b) It'll help my budget in the long run. The rest of the work day was straight forward. Eventually Dean stopped by (even though i was going to see him Friday) to pick up Golden Eye and his wii motes.
After that I watched a portion of the Quake speed run and played some HoN, had a couple good and bad matches of course. Tried to take a nap earlier but for some reason I was kind of worried of falling asleep. It may sound silly but I was worried I wasn't going to wake up or sleep through my alarm as I didn't wanna mess up my sleep schedule. In either case after laying in the bed for about 1.25 hours I went back downstairs and spent the remainder of my evening cleaning up the downstairs area and finishing the last tweaks and fixes on my sister computer.
I did have a great spur of inspiration though when looking at my dad's computer I realize that is uses DDR SDRAM and likewise my first machine I use also uses DDR SDRAM. The speed is noted to be a bit slower but from what I've experimented with so far its definitely much faster but will see in the long run. Equally back to my sister computer its running much smoother now and without the 'extra options' that were there before... Computer wise I think I'm done optimizing machines. Did mine earlier this month then tyler's yesterday followed by my dad's and sisters. I'm actually out of machines to upgrades. At least I believe so but will see.
Think that's about it for now... I really should be off to bed and get my 6ish hours of sleep.
Nite all!
Edit: One more quick add my plans for New Year's is set I'll be spending it in Midlo with a few friends, good times :).
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Monday, December 27, 2010
Keeping up with the Blog.
For starters I'm looking forward to a fairly quick and conclusive week this week. There's a handful of things I need to do but honestly not too concerned about it. Today wasn't bad woke up and got to work a bit late due to the icey roads but made it none the less. Nothing too excited happen I'm suppose to finish this one particular ticket I've been working on for 2 weeks but I've honestly haven't made any head room for it as of yet. Have gathered a great deal of information but a good bit of it doesn't make sense...so will see how that goes.
As for the evening two friends stopped by. Another session of teach individuals how computers worked ensued and basically merged two computer systems together. After that played a few rounds of Monopoly Deal which I'm thoroughly enjoying so far. Honestly can't get enough of this game. Though in retrospect I'll need to catch up on sleep so hopefully tomorrow is pretty laid back and will provide an opportunity for additional rest. One of my goals next year is to get on a psuedo normal sleep schedule and end the silliness relating to sleeping for about 5-6 hours a day.
No other real news for the moment aside from cleaning the house which is just basic normal stuff and likewise no real plans for the week. Maybe a hang out session or two and possibly plans for New Years which is mostly in the air...while I do miss having Magfest during this time can't be helped that I have nothing better to do during that time. I mean it might top last year as I was in the registration line giving people discounts on excess tickets I had from registration.
Haven't had a great deal of time to play any video games today though I do hope that if time allows I can squeeze in some HoN and maybe get to the next level in Super Meat Boy or IWBTG not sure as of yet.
Pretty much out of things to say at this point so off to bed. I'll have some sort of creative rant tomorrow sense I think things will be calmer by then.
Night all!
As for the evening two friends stopped by. Another session of teach individuals how computers worked ensued and basically merged two computer systems together. After that played a few rounds of Monopoly Deal which I'm thoroughly enjoying so far. Honestly can't get enough of this game. Though in retrospect I'll need to catch up on sleep so hopefully tomorrow is pretty laid back and will provide an opportunity for additional rest. One of my goals next year is to get on a psuedo normal sleep schedule and end the silliness relating to sleeping for about 5-6 hours a day.
No other real news for the moment aside from cleaning the house which is just basic normal stuff and likewise no real plans for the week. Maybe a hang out session or two and possibly plans for New Years which is mostly in the air...while I do miss having Magfest during this time can't be helped that I have nothing better to do during that time. I mean it might top last year as I was in the registration line giving people discounts on excess tickets I had from registration.
Haven't had a great deal of time to play any video games today though I do hope that if time allows I can squeeze in some HoN and maybe get to the next level in Super Meat Boy or IWBTG not sure as of yet.
Pretty much out of things to say at this point so off to bed. I'll have some sort of creative rant tomorrow sense I think things will be calmer by then.
Night all!
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Da Weekend after X-Mas (and X-Mas)
The past few days haven't been too shabby but seeing how I should probably be in bed soon along with the fact that it wasn't too interesting I'm gonna breeze through them fairly quickly.
X-Mas:
For Christmas morning I wasn't really awake in any real way shape or form. In fact I slept through my alarm and my dad came to my room to wake me up. I was able to get ready and over to my mom's house in about 30 minutes which I have to say is a mass improvement. The morning was eatting pancakes and opening gifts. My dad and myself picked up my sister a laptop for a surprised gift, she broke down into tears cause she was so happy it was great. As for my own gift the best one was socks and later on in the evening got a bear clock (basically its a clock with 3 bears surrounding it quite nice). After the gifts were done we tried out the "Monopoly Card Game" my mom picked up. Have to admit pretty freakin awesome and definitely encourages aggressive game play. That and unlike monopoly takes about 15-45 minutes to play so there's no overly exaggerated games which take forever due to trading stale mates. Amusingly enough I won the round and from there we went to my Aunt's place.
As usually I made my way upstairs to relax and read. My cousin got some sort of reading gift which I had to set-up but that didn't take long. Also wrote instructions how to install additional books for later. When that was done read more 1984 and then rested my eyes on the floor for a bit...yes actually rested my eyes not fall asleep, lets keep that straight. When my mom was ready to head out warmed up and cleaned them off and departed. After taking my mom back home (and almost got stuck in the culdesac) made my way back to dad's. Stayed up a bit late but did go to bed at a decent time.
Saturday wasn't all that exciting along with Sunday both pretty calm filled with mostly gaming and relaxing. I would right more but getting tired needed rest work tomorrow.
Night all
X-Mas:
For Christmas morning I wasn't really awake in any real way shape or form. In fact I slept through my alarm and my dad came to my room to wake me up. I was able to get ready and over to my mom's house in about 30 minutes which I have to say is a mass improvement. The morning was eatting pancakes and opening gifts. My dad and myself picked up my sister a laptop for a surprised gift, she broke down into tears cause she was so happy it was great. As for my own gift the best one was socks and later on in the evening got a bear clock (basically its a clock with 3 bears surrounding it quite nice). After the gifts were done we tried out the "Monopoly Card Game" my mom picked up. Have to admit pretty freakin awesome and definitely encourages aggressive game play. That and unlike monopoly takes about 15-45 minutes to play so there's no overly exaggerated games which take forever due to trading stale mates. Amusingly enough I won the round and from there we went to my Aunt's place.
As usually I made my way upstairs to relax and read. My cousin got some sort of reading gift which I had to set-up but that didn't take long. Also wrote instructions how to install additional books for later. When that was done read more 1984 and then rested my eyes on the floor for a bit...yes actually rested my eyes not fall asleep, lets keep that straight. When my mom was ready to head out warmed up and cleaned them off and departed. After taking my mom back home (and almost got stuck in the culdesac) made my way back to dad's. Stayed up a bit late but did go to bed at a decent time.
Saturday wasn't all that exciting along with Sunday both pretty calm filled with mostly gaming and relaxing. I would right more but getting tired needed rest work tomorrow.
Night all
Friday, December 24, 2010
X-Mas Eve
Overall today wasn't too bad, definitely had one of those mornings where I woke up about 2-3 hours after crashing then went back to sleep for a couple more hours. Ended up going to bed at around 5-6ish then woke up at 9 (not sure why) then woke up at noon (not sure why again) and then finally decided 3rd time was a charm and felt it was necessary to actually get out of bed. From there woke up got dressed and made my way over to my mom's place.
Recently she injured her right arm (think its sprained) so I provided assistance with some shopping, cleaning, and setting up the tree. Dinner was also made but I didn't stay long wanted to get back and do...um...not much to be honest. Played a good bit of HoN once again but that's about it. I need to practice for Magfest but its been on the backburnder for a bit. I did spend sometime running anti-'bad stuff' on my sisters computer though I don't think I'll meet my original quota of x-mas but I want to make sure its 100% complete.
That's about it for now going to accumulate about 5-6 hours of sleep and then enter my multiple sleeping stupor until my family members decided to depart. Good nitght everyone and of course.
MERRY CHRISTMAS!
Recently she injured her right arm (think its sprained) so I provided assistance with some shopping, cleaning, and setting up the tree. Dinner was also made but I didn't stay long wanted to get back and do...um...not much to be honest. Played a good bit of HoN once again but that's about it. I need to practice for Magfest but its been on the backburnder for a bit. I did spend sometime running anti-'bad stuff' on my sisters computer though I don't think I'll meet my original quota of x-mas but I want to make sure its 100% complete.
That's about it for now going to accumulate about 5-6 hours of sleep and then enter my multiple sleeping stupor until my family members decided to depart. Good nitght everyone and of course.
MERRY CHRISTMAS!
Its 4 o'clock...and I'm awake why?
Honestly I'm not sure why I'm awake at this hour but seeing how my day is finally drawing to a close I figured now would be a good time to start blogging about how it went.
For starters worked at home today and it wasn't all that hectic. I did have an interview this afternoon and below is an excerpt of how I was feeling afterwards that I posted on my fb notes page.
"Ever seen me nervous? Trust me you obviously don't its a terrible sight and what pretty much happen for the first 15-30 minutes of my one hour interview. I've never seen myself triple question my thoughts, go silent for periods at a time attempting to formulate answers and on top of that I don't remembering saying ah or um...At least I nailed the first handful of SQL questions..I think. In all seriousness though the only time I've seen myself that nervous is when I'm thinking (keyword here 'thinking') about asking someone I'm deeply interested in out...Either that or when I climb up water slides but that's more fear than nervous.
For starters worked at home today and it wasn't all that hectic. I did have an interview this afternoon and below is an excerpt of how I was feeling afterwards that I posted on my fb notes page.
"Ever seen me nervous? Trust me you obviously don't its a terrible sight and what pretty much happen for the first 15-30 minutes of my one hour interview. I've never seen myself triple question my thoughts, go silent for periods at a time attempting to formulate answers and on top of that I don't remembering saying ah or um...At least I nailed the first handful of SQL questions..I think. In all seriousness though the only time I've seen myself that nervous is when I'm thinking (keyword here 'thinking') about asking someone I'm deeply interested in out...Either that or when I climb up water slides but that's more fear than nervous.
In regards to the title though I was prepared for it so wasn't caught off guard...but some of the stuff like 'have you ever encounter an issue with a boss or co-worker' or 'when given a set of possible solutions and given the best one how do present it'...it all felt like it came from Interviewing101...something I knew 2-3 years ago but definitely not now. I spent so much time worrying about my knowledge in SQL in being immersed in it that I forgot the basics of an interview...luckily it was over the phone though...god forbid if it was in person.
I'm honestly not expecting a follow-up in anyway shape or form cause every time they sound interested and telling you all about the position that you'll probably never get a glove on your just left feeling, empty. Have to admit though the fiber optic x-mas tree that my dad set-up is making me cheer up a good bit.
Any who won't dwell on it there's always better things in life, and things to be learned...just some lessons learned are bigger than others...some people drink during downs, I myself prefer delightful digital debauchery.
La ta."
In short I was feeling pretty awful about the whole interview process and raging a good bit around the house and trying everything in my power to reduce the rage. I must admit some of it was physically exert but at a much lower capacity so I'm grateful to myself restraint for that. Approximately 1 hour after I finished the interview I got a call from my recruiter telling me the interview went well and there looking to do a second interview/lunch.
Sort of have mixed feeling about this because on one hand I'm really glad that they found me interesting while on the other hand I find it frustrating that they thought that my performance was 'good', 'acceptable', 'qualifier' I dunno. It could be that I set my bar for myself silly high and never able to leap over it, but I have a separate post for that...found out something interesting about an actually classification relating to some of the games I play.
After the whole interview silliness concluded my workday had a light dinner and spent the rest of the watching tv, playing Super Meat Boy, and Heroes of Newerth...pretty relaxing day if I have to say so myself. This seems a bit condensed so I'm gonna go ahead and hit that gaming interesting thing i found out today.
So for those that don't know I'm a strong advocate of game that actually teach you through trail and error along with being difficult leaving little room for error. There's actually a name for this genre called 'Masocore' or as defined by the internet (specifically Giantbomb.com)
"Through trial and error gameplay, complex game mechanics and intense difficulty, masocore games are specifically designed to frustrate players over and over again...Masocore (a portmanteau of "masochism" and "hardcore") is a video game sub-genre specifically designed to frustrate players by combining complex game mechanics with intense, seemingly impossible difficulty, in special "trial and error" scenarios."
This probably contributes why I don't enjoy a lot of games unless its on Hard/Difficult setting. Not to mention seeing how I enjoyed "VVVVVV", "Super Meat Boy", "Cave Story Hell" amongst other titles this is no surprised. Supposedly there's one called "N+" but that requires a system I don't own so don't see myself picking that up anytime soon. However now that I do know what it is I'll be looking for more titles of this genre (such as Mighty Jill Off {thank you super Meat Boy}, I want to be the guy two {I avoid this game like the plague but I'm actually gonna sit down and give it ago...on the second screen after 12 deaths....good start} and some others i can't think of atm...oh ya Super Kaizo Brothers) as I believe they'll keep me interested longer than...most titles where I go 'oh...this was hard...but I finished it in 12 hours and well lacking'.
That's about it for now need to head off to bed get some rest and be ready for the eve of x-mas...nite all.
P.S: To clarify any confusion from this post relating to the "masocore" this does not mean I'm a "masochist". By using that prefix logic that would be assuming that all 'homo sapiens" are "homoncul..." I mean "homosexuals" which is definitely not the case.
Anywho nite again!
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Blog Post Inc
So finally I've finally decided to take the opportunity to actually get some of my thoughts out my system over the past 2 weeks and I must say a good bit has happen all the up to this point. Some of it has been super productivity while other parts of it have been rather lazy and laid back. As 2010 concludes itself I can only really reflect at this point on the mistakes I made along with parts I felt I did far beyond I would have original thought (more 'I's please). None the less this maybe a lengthy post or broken down into 3 post...I can't say for sure but in either case let me get started.
Vacation Week:
For starters this is the first period of time in my life in which I had honestly had an entire week off work...though probably unlike most I did not have anything played out what so ever. This week I'd have to say was partly wasted/experimental. Originally I had planned to visit my friend in Ohio or visit Chicago to see the US's second largest arcade. However both of those were canceled due to snow, I ain't mad at you snow. From there I plotted a second course of action of perhaps visiting several board game stores in VA...I also choose not to take that one as the travel cost would effect my overall budget for the year so it was declined as well. It may sound like penny pinching but the main thing I want to be is comfortable for retirement and I've effectively started my retirement plan about a year or two late so I wanna make sure I'm on the ball for the remainder years. Not to mention it seems like its the best idea to start planning in your mid 20s but that's a topic for another day.
As for I actually did on my vacation was a bit of well...reflection I would say. I relocated my computer and spent most of the time watching TV, playing games and staying up into the late hours of the morning...basically reliving my college days. Overall I didn't mind it though I would not want to make habit of it. I did find recently that if I do stay up late all the time I do get a little bumped out but I'm not sure if that was a result of the lack of planning for the time off or just the effects of staying up multiple nights late and sleeping for 12+ hours. The other thing I've learn is that I'm probably better off going with hourly in the future. I still have about 3 days of vacation saved up and no real urge to spend them... rather just take the pay hit and recover it later with the compensate cost.
There were a few highlights game wise though, I effectively avoid Cata which I'm extremely proud of myself for doing so, it was some what tempting but after going through a handful of steam games i.e: Dead Space, Sol Survivor, Disregard for Gravity, Beat Hazard, Metro 2033 I figured I'd be set...that and I have this thing called morals which surprisingly exist in this day and age. Also located GSN and National Geographic a good and an evil I suppose. That's about it for the vacation week.
Week following Vacation:
This week after the vacation was a bit more stressful and more than I bargained for. During the vacation week I got a potential interview opportunity for a Support Analysis position along with following up with Magfest contacts and catching up with work I missed in the last week...fun times. For the Support Analysis position I knew there was a possibility of an interview but didn't find out till Monday that I was definitely green light for one for the early portion of the afternoon. Its got a lot to do with SQL so I've been reading up on that a good bit and make sure I have a firm understanding that I can talk about it. That and looking over my resume mentally for accomplishments that I could point out and relate to the potential position...I really do hope it goes well...but will see.
Magfest wise things were hectic for a bit there was one individual that kept changing his mind approximately every week and after a month ( I was being exceptional nice) just dropped him and have recomposed a group along with a second group (which broke down) sense then. So I'm feeling pretty confident there. We have about 4 people in our room might add a 5th if people weren't lazy at responding but will see. That and the challenge both looking forward to actually maybe giving it a bit more effort this year.
As for work its been a bit on and off. there's been some cases in which its been exceptional busy while other days its been a bit slow. Can't complain too much just keeping up with the task at hand.
This week however has been a bit different with work becoming exceptional heavy. The main issue being that while I'm suppose to be working on one urgent request I've been assigned another request in my queue which I've been staying up into the late hours of a couple nights working on it....not fun I must admit, but was able to complete a majority of it. Any free time accumulate has been used to play Killing Floor (finish x-mas achievements in 3 days yay!), steam sales started so grabbed Super Meat Boy...loving it, and a good bit of HoN...which I might take a break from for a bit but undecided. Shopping has been taken care of and bought myself a new book, 1984, in light of the recent Net Neutrality rulings I've felt it necessary to obtain a better idea as to why people keep referencing this book when they hear about Net Neutrality. Gave the SC2 demo ago and it wasn't too bad however I value it more at about 35-40 bucks rather than 50 still think that's a bit much for it. Rest of the time I've spent studying SQL and that's about it.
Plans Ahead:
With this year drawing to a close there's definitely been some highlights. Obvious Magfest each year is a huge factor along with the Distant Worlds concert ranking up there with the trip to NY which is always a nice break from the norm. I've already composed a list of things I plan to aim next year and complete to the best of my abilities.
1) Drop to 165-170 lbs. - I was about this weight in college don't see any reason why I can't go back to it.
2) Accumulate an average of 8-10 hours of sleep each day - There was a brief period where I was getting 12 hours of sleep....loved it but I think 8-10 is suitable.
3) Keep 3 tracks of the budget - Originally I just had a digital copy till it got corrupted so going to keep 3 records now. Digital, papers, and back-up of the digital...all encrypted of course.
4) Learn to cook - Its a life long tool just like riding the bike or playing an instrument can't go wrong.
5) Working out 3 days a week for 30-60 minutes - I use to love running in the cold gotta get back to it.
6) Pick up Meditation - Way over due.
7) Re-establish time schedule - One thing I use to do in college/early post-college was keep track of how much time I would spend on each task...definitely good for figuring out lost hours.
8) Read 1-2 books a month - I already due this with web documents but would like to do this with hard copies.
Leaving room for 2 more to expand upon or there either person and not listed though I am willing to share if people wanna guess lol . That's about it for now gonna do a daily update tonight if time allows. La ta
Vacation Week:
For starters this is the first period of time in my life in which I had honestly had an entire week off work...though probably unlike most I did not have anything played out what so ever. This week I'd have to say was partly wasted/experimental. Originally I had planned to visit my friend in Ohio or visit Chicago to see the US's second largest arcade. However both of those were canceled due to snow, I ain't mad at you snow. From there I plotted a second course of action of perhaps visiting several board game stores in VA...I also choose not to take that one as the travel cost would effect my overall budget for the year so it was declined as well. It may sound like penny pinching but the main thing I want to be is comfortable for retirement and I've effectively started my retirement plan about a year or two late so I wanna make sure I'm on the ball for the remainder years. Not to mention it seems like its the best idea to start planning in your mid 20s but that's a topic for another day.
As for I actually did on my vacation was a bit of well...reflection I would say. I relocated my computer and spent most of the time watching TV, playing games and staying up into the late hours of the morning...basically reliving my college days. Overall I didn't mind it though I would not want to make habit of it. I did find recently that if I do stay up late all the time I do get a little bumped out but I'm not sure if that was a result of the lack of planning for the time off or just the effects of staying up multiple nights late and sleeping for 12+ hours. The other thing I've learn is that I'm probably better off going with hourly in the future. I still have about 3 days of vacation saved up and no real urge to spend them... rather just take the pay hit and recover it later with the compensate cost.
There were a few highlights game wise though, I effectively avoid Cata which I'm extremely proud of myself for doing so, it was some what tempting but after going through a handful of steam games i.e: Dead Space, Sol Survivor, Disregard for Gravity, Beat Hazard, Metro 2033 I figured I'd be set...that and I have this thing called morals which surprisingly exist in this day and age. Also located GSN and National Geographic a good and an evil I suppose. That's about it for the vacation week.
Week following Vacation:
This week after the vacation was a bit more stressful and more than I bargained for. During the vacation week I got a potential interview opportunity for a Support Analysis position along with following up with Magfest contacts and catching up with work I missed in the last week...fun times. For the Support Analysis position I knew there was a possibility of an interview but didn't find out till Monday that I was definitely green light for one for the early portion of the afternoon. Its got a lot to do with SQL so I've been reading up on that a good bit and make sure I have a firm understanding that I can talk about it. That and looking over my resume mentally for accomplishments that I could point out and relate to the potential position...I really do hope it goes well...but will see.
Magfest wise things were hectic for a bit there was one individual that kept changing his mind approximately every week and after a month ( I was being exceptional nice) just dropped him and have recomposed a group along with a second group (which broke down) sense then. So I'm feeling pretty confident there. We have about 4 people in our room might add a 5th if people weren't lazy at responding but will see. That and the challenge both looking forward to actually maybe giving it a bit more effort this year.
As for work its been a bit on and off. there's been some cases in which its been exceptional busy while other days its been a bit slow. Can't complain too much just keeping up with the task at hand.
This week however has been a bit different with work becoming exceptional heavy. The main issue being that while I'm suppose to be working on one urgent request I've been assigned another request in my queue which I've been staying up into the late hours of a couple nights working on it....not fun I must admit, but was able to complete a majority of it. Any free time accumulate has been used to play Killing Floor (finish x-mas achievements in 3 days yay!), steam sales started so grabbed Super Meat Boy...loving it, and a good bit of HoN...which I might take a break from for a bit but undecided. Shopping has been taken care of and bought myself a new book, 1984, in light of the recent Net Neutrality rulings I've felt it necessary to obtain a better idea as to why people keep referencing this book when they hear about Net Neutrality. Gave the SC2 demo ago and it wasn't too bad however I value it more at about 35-40 bucks rather than 50 still think that's a bit much for it. Rest of the time I've spent studying SQL and that's about it.
Plans Ahead:
With this year drawing to a close there's definitely been some highlights. Obvious Magfest each year is a huge factor along with the Distant Worlds concert ranking up there with the trip to NY which is always a nice break from the norm. I've already composed a list of things I plan to aim next year and complete to the best of my abilities.
1) Drop to 165-170 lbs. - I was about this weight in college don't see any reason why I can't go back to it.
2) Accumulate an average of 8-10 hours of sleep each day - There was a brief period where I was getting 12 hours of sleep....loved it but I think 8-10 is suitable.
3) Keep 3 tracks of the budget - Originally I just had a digital copy till it got corrupted so going to keep 3 records now. Digital, papers, and back-up of the digital...all encrypted of course.
4) Learn to cook - Its a life long tool just like riding the bike or playing an instrument can't go wrong.
5) Working out 3 days a week for 30-60 minutes - I use to love running in the cold gotta get back to it.
6) Pick up Meditation - Way over due.
7) Re-establish time schedule - One thing I use to do in college/early post-college was keep track of how much time I would spend on each task...definitely good for figuring out lost hours.
8) Read 1-2 books a month - I already due this with web documents but would like to do this with hard copies.
Leaving room for 2 more to expand upon or there either person and not listed though I am willing to share if people wanna guess lol . That's about it for now gonna do a daily update tonight if time allows. La ta
Monday, December 20, 2010
Way behind...
Surprisingly life has been very burst...on and of per se and I haven't had a chance to really sit down and provide updates. I'll be doing so tonight and making it a future goal to stay on the ball on this...like seriously this time no more 'every day yay' and then going dead for weeks on end...anywho work later all!
Friday, December 10, 2010
Reasons I don't plan to come back for Cata....
Yes my friends in the early hours in the morning I've seen it fit to finally write this post elaborating on exactly why I don't plan to come back to the World of Warcraft. I feel this post (in addition to my time spent on vacation) is far overdue and will give an overview along with a detailed level reasoning as to why i do not plan to return. There all fairly valid reason from my point of view and of course can be argued as sense we are all humans (most of us anyways) we are capable of debate. However without further a due lets begin.
ActivisionBlizzard:
Instead of rambling on about how much I despise this overall merger I'm just going to link this 17 page article of all the changes that have happen to Blizzard sense the merger to June/July 2010:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=128252
This pretty much saves me a large chunk of hassle and pretty much states the facts without having me throw in the large amount of bais opinion that comes with my voice when delivering a message.
Friends on multiple servers:
This one is definitely a biggie on my list. Prior to considering coming back for Cataclysm there have been about 2-3 friends that have been interested in having me come back and play with them on each of there respective servers. In the past when attempting to level multiple toons on multiple servers while playing with several friends it never turned out well. I would spend approximately 8-12 hours a day leveling and socializing which in my current real life scenario I definitely don't have the time. Primarily this would cut into my other game time, job hunting, and A+ studies. Not to mention sense this is during the early phases of the game it might result in raiding with multiple guilds...another big no no on my list.
Enjoying the time away:
Since I quit back in the earlier portions of this year I haven't really had an urge to come back. Equally due to my knowledge in previous MMO there was already a plan in place to fill in the void of time that would result from quitting (which wasn't that large sense I mostly was playing arena at that point). As a result the list of my steam games has increased significantly along with my passion for board games. Now a days I find myself playing through my games on steam/wii, playing casual games of no stat hon and board games with friend. I enjoy the fact that my life/free time no longer revolves around a raid schedule and I'm free to do as I please. The choice of going 'hey I wanna go work on Kirby Super Star today or maybe Dead Space' rather than 'did I work on those dailys today..is the hope the heroic isn't occy' doesn't seem as a appeal.
Lack of time there of:
This kind of ties into the last point but rather as of late I haven't had a lot time (with the exception of this week) to really sink a large chunk of time into a game. With warcraft I would need at least 2-3 hours set aside to take care of everything I wanted to (on a single toon) while if I'm working on another title or reading I can place it aside when I please and go about to attend to another task. Not much to this point but felt another paragraph was necessary.
Its new and fresh...or is it?
I know not everyone can reflect on this but basically Cata has had this kind of feel on me. Do you remember playing Golden Eye and how insanely fun it was. Remembering the spawn points for special weapons, respawn after you killed someone to effective camp their body, Facility on 00 agent in under 2 minutes and 5 seconds? Those were solid and good times right? Back in the day where Rare made solid games that made you nod and truely appreciate the company (well at least till they made Donkey Kong 64...ranks up there with Super Man imo). In either case then Perfect Dark is released a little while later. Same solid game but with improvements. There's added functionality for bots, more weapons, added firing range feature, saved statitics the works...but I still have more fond memories of Golden Eye. Why? Mainly I think because it came first and even with all the fixes and tweaks the old dog is still one of my best friends.
I've used this analogy with Diablo and Titan Quest as well and the way I feel with games that follow this model is that its had its day in the Sun and just as Blizzard wiped away all there good memories of old world (with its bit of bad coding {honestly from a dev standpoint fixing it would have been nicer} old dungeons, and uneven terrain to be exploited for climbing purposes) I feel that I must to must say the old dog to rest and move forward. This also reflects back to being a 'gamer' rather than a 'warcraft player' but none the less I feel its time to move on :).
Not everything is new in Cata...early levels:
I know some people will disagree with me and my 1 week worth of PTR knowledge relating to this but based on what I played primarily the newbie areas had been revamped...well some of them. Orc newbie land is exactly the same along with a few others. Equally though while some of the new areas are updated (Gnome, Troll, and Undead to name a few) the secondary quest hubs are essentially the same...which was a huge let down. I always find the first 5 levels to be the easiest and chill but when your hitting that second quest hub area you'd hope the freshness would continue which is unfortunately not the case. You get a bit of stale bread with your fresh milk and it doesn't leave the freshest taste in your mouth.
PVP Balance:
This is basically blank till I see what's happening this arena season.
Endless Cycle:
I'm getting way to sleep at this point but basically this point is establishing that I really don't feel like sinking back into the loop again where I'm binded to paying 190 dollars (approximately 2.5 billion steam games or the 1/3 of a PS3) to play the game each year. I feel like my money could be better invested else where and I would actually have possession of whatever I own (steam is pseudo possession but good enough for me). That and I'll see myself come next expansion going 'well nope I don't wanna play...oh look my accounts been reupped and I'm good to go'. Just going to sit out and put my foot down.
I realize there's some points I missed here (seeing how its 5:30 in the morning) and the donut shop openned 30 minutes ago so I'm going to get myself a fresh donut...maybe sleep, nite all :3
Edit: 12/23/2010 - Just realized this was formatted incorrectly so tweaking this post
ActivisionBlizzard:
Instead of rambling on about how much I despise this overall merger I'm just going to link this 17 page article of all the changes that have happen to Blizzard sense the merger to June/July 2010:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=128252
This pretty much saves me a large chunk of hassle and pretty much states the facts without having me throw in the large amount of bais opinion that comes with my voice when delivering a message.
Friends on multiple servers:
This one is definitely a biggie on my list. Prior to considering coming back for Cataclysm there have been about 2-3 friends that have been interested in having me come back and play with them on each of there respective servers. In the past when attempting to level multiple toons on multiple servers while playing with several friends it never turned out well. I would spend approximately 8-12 hours a day leveling and socializing which in my current real life scenario I definitely don't have the time. Primarily this would cut into my other game time, job hunting, and A+ studies. Not to mention sense this is during the early phases of the game it might result in raiding with multiple guilds...another big no no on my list.
Enjoying the time away:
Since I quit back in the earlier portions of this year I haven't really had an urge to come back. Equally due to my knowledge in previous MMO there was already a plan in place to fill in the void of time that would result from quitting (which wasn't that large sense I mostly was playing arena at that point). As a result the list of my steam games has increased significantly along with my passion for board games. Now a days I find myself playing through my games on steam/wii, playing casual games of no stat hon and board games with friend. I enjoy the fact that my life/free time no longer revolves around a raid schedule and I'm free to do as I please. The choice of going 'hey I wanna go work on Kirby Super Star today or maybe Dead Space' rather than 'did I work on those dailys today..is the hope the heroic isn't occy' doesn't seem as a appeal.
Lack of time there of:
This kind of ties into the last point but rather as of late I haven't had a lot time (with the exception of this week) to really sink a large chunk of time into a game. With warcraft I would need at least 2-3 hours set aside to take care of everything I wanted to (on a single toon) while if I'm working on another title or reading I can place it aside when I please and go about to attend to another task. Not much to this point but felt another paragraph was necessary.
Its new and fresh...or is it?
I know not everyone can reflect on this but basically Cata has had this kind of feel on me. Do you remember playing Golden Eye and how insanely fun it was. Remembering the spawn points for special weapons, respawn after you killed someone to effective camp their body, Facility on 00 agent in under 2 minutes and 5 seconds? Those were solid and good times right? Back in the day where Rare made solid games that made you nod and truely appreciate the company (well at least till they made Donkey Kong 64...ranks up there with Super Man imo). In either case then Perfect Dark is released a little while later. Same solid game but with improvements. There's added functionality for bots, more weapons, added firing range feature, saved statitics the works...but I still have more fond memories of Golden Eye. Why? Mainly I think because it came first and even with all the fixes and tweaks the old dog is still one of my best friends.
I've used this analogy with Diablo and Titan Quest as well and the way I feel with games that follow this model is that its had its day in the Sun and just as Blizzard wiped away all there good memories of old world (with its bit of bad coding {honestly from a dev standpoint fixing it would have been nicer} old dungeons, and uneven terrain to be exploited for climbing purposes) I feel that I must to must say the old dog to rest and move forward. This also reflects back to being a 'gamer' rather than a 'warcraft player' but none the less I feel its time to move on :).
Not everything is new in Cata...early levels:
I know some people will disagree with me and my 1 week worth of PTR knowledge relating to this but based on what I played primarily the newbie areas had been revamped...well some of them. Orc newbie land is exactly the same along with a few others. Equally though while some of the new areas are updated (Gnome, Troll, and Undead to name a few) the secondary quest hubs are essentially the same...which was a huge let down. I always find the first 5 levels to be the easiest and chill but when your hitting that second quest hub area you'd hope the freshness would continue which is unfortunately not the case. You get a bit of stale bread with your fresh milk and it doesn't leave the freshest taste in your mouth.
PVP Balance:
This is basically blank till I see what's happening this arena season.
Endless Cycle:
I'm getting way to sleep at this point but basically this point is establishing that I really don't feel like sinking back into the loop again where I'm binded to paying 190 dollars (approximately 2.5 billion steam games or the 1/3 of a PS3) to play the game each year. I feel like my money could be better invested else where and I would actually have possession of whatever I own (steam is pseudo possession but good enough for me). That and I'll see myself come next expansion going 'well nope I don't wanna play...oh look my accounts been reupped and I'm good to go'. Just going to sit out and put my foot down.
I realize there's some points I missed here (seeing how its 5:30 in the morning) and the donut shop openned 30 minutes ago so I'm going to get myself a fresh donut...maybe sleep, nite all :3
Edit: 12/23/2010 - Just realized this was formatted incorrectly so tweaking this post
Saturday, December 4, 2010
What a wonderful and splendid party
Initially today was kind of blah at first but I have to say come time 7:15-7:30 it really started to pick up.
So ironically I woke up at about noon today (its ironic because that's the time I was born and went downstairs to check my cell phone, emails, facebook and so forth. Found out I had 2 miss calls one from my mom and the other from work. Wasn't too surprised to see the work one and found out that supposedly my timesheets for last week weren't submitted. So the second thing I do...boot up my work computer and get it sorted out. One has to admit that its kind of annoying that the first/second thing you have to do is work related but I didn't let is phase me too much. From there I spent most of the day sorting out the remainder of the task that needed to be done before guest arrived.
I probably spent too much time contemplating over and devising the overall set-up. There was one miscalculation relating to how many people can effectively sit at the 'awesome/epic table'. The most it can hold is about 7-8 people however there was a definitely possibility of 14-16 people being present at any point in time ( I believe the max was 13-14 but it was something I was keeping in mind. So after several measurements and coming to reality on things three tables definitely had to be used (awesome/epic table, my old computer desk and an extra folding table my dad had). The wasted time was trying to get the kitchen table in there and figuring out any last minute tweaks. There was a neat idea I had of hosting a computer in the other room to run old emulators but that fell through when I realized the extra Hard Drive had was installed with Linux and I have minimal knowledge running duel monitors in Linux. So I gave up on that idea and downloaded "Kirby Super Star" (which didn't get played but I might give it a go tomorrow.
After all those configurations were made I had about an hour or two of chill time so I decided to give Elder Scrolls 4 : Oblivion ago. I realized Bethesda makes really buggy games but then I saw the S2 logo and realized that there would be some quick easy bugs real quick. No more than I had played 30 minutes in that I found that when stealth around enemies (i.e: walking) it increases your stealth stat. So from there I rebound my 'w' key to '-' on the keypad and put something heavy (i.e: wallet or wood glue) on it to keep walking into a wall. The stats currently at 75+, it would be higher but there's a prompt that displays every 25ish levels or so. At that point I let it go into 'auto-pilot' and started to load sheets into the washer and attending to other task.
Around this time my dad came back and gave me his gifts...speaking of gits I got a couple of neat ones. My mom gave me 50 bucks (which I used to purchase consumables), dad gave me a $30 gift card to food lion, and Sarah Watson and her bf gave me a harmonica... overall pretty awesome gifts. I've been looking for something new to learn and well the Harmonica seems like the right direction to go in. The money I plan to spend on friends no real reason to spend any of it on myself. My dad departed around 6ish or so and at that point John was on his way over.
John arrived at 6:30 and I got his opinion on number of pizzas. I was thinking 4 to 6 and he agreed with me on 6 so that's what we rolled with. After the order was placed I put a sign on the door informing I might be late (which wasn't necessary as no one really came on time) and we made our way to Wal-Mart and Lil C's. John was harassed a bit by the bell but we were able to gather the necessary materials. At one point we found two Raspberry White Tea with different package but almost the same product information. The only difference was the sodium intact but calories, portion size, carbohydrates all the same. I believe sugar was slight different but otherwise same product. John went with the lower sodium sugar choice I grabbed a Moutain Dew and laundry sheets and we made our way to Lil C's. The total was a bit much when I heard it but completely expected. With a back seat full of pizzas we made our way back.
Upon returning we set-up the pizzas and started to consume which about 10-15 minutes from chilling in the kitchen Sarah and her bf Adam showed up. It was really good to see them again and lead them into the house. Pizza was offered and consumption and talking of animals ensued amongst other things. They were unaware Lil C's did stuff crust pizza but was pleased by the overall taste. There's definitely people out there that don't know about it primarily because Lil C's doesn't really advertise about it (sense their most popular for there $5 hot and ready) that and along with the fact that you gotta wait for it to cook before picking them up. After some time I realized that maybe some activity's need to be done to kill time so I suggested we make pilgramage to the board game room. Once again (I believe) they were impressed by the set-up but we sat down (Sarah grabbed some chips and dips) and we started to play Fluxx.
The initially round was quick however the following round was taking sometime and not to mention people were starting to show up as we were playing through it (two guest, even got through a game of boggle). I suggested we stop early and begin a game of "Eat Poop You Cat". The moment I began to describe the game Dean instantly knew what I was talking about (which was good cause I wanted to make sure I got the rules right). The basic objective was to write a sentence the past it to the next person which they would draw a picture. Once the picture is drawn then its passed again so the next person can write a sentence about what they think the picture is and so forth. Overall the game was a huge hit and went off really well. We got about 3 rounds in before a couple guest had to depart.
During these periods I got to try out one of the guest cupcakes with Marshmellow roses. After eating just one I had to give the guest a few as well. They equally thought they were delicious and gave the individual the well earned praise. At this point the Harmonica gift was up and it looked all sorts of pretty, really couldn't argue with how cool and well done it looked. After that gift but what else.... cake of course. 3 tier layed cake with 2 layers of chocolate...probably the main reason I'm up and writing this without any issues...chocolate keeps me awake/hyper yay! Cake consumption lead to game suggestion the primarily ones were Left Center Right and Mafia... Left Center Right was the selection. A good bit of rolling and stealing ensued but unfortunately Mo and his crew had to depart due to a personal issue which occured.
In all honesty it the thoughts that counts, even the people that didn't make I really did appreciate them give me their respective happy birthday and keeping me in their thoughts over the course of the day. Overall it was quite good couldn't ask for me. While the departure of some did even out the group and made it a bit small its the impression in time which they left in history and in my own and others memorys that count (please see pants cannon for details).
This left us with about 6 people for Left Center Right which went on for quite sometime until Mina eventually crushed us all with 9 chips left. From here there was a small break and I took the time to clean up garbage before proceeding to Catan as Sean had never played it before. Around this time Tyler had called and eventually showed up cleaning up a good majority of the food left over (which I was thankful for as I did not want the responsibility co consume that much). However before the game started two guest had to leave which left us with about 5 people for Catan...and 2 hours of madness which ensued.
Surprisingly I wasn't paying all that much attention (between harmonica practice and text messaging) and found myself constantly in the lead and winning...it was weird. Eventually I did win when people started trading me to help me win to get it over with (rofl). Tyler was close but unfortunately there was some favoritism. Ways were parted soon after and I found myself smiling at the remains of which was probably one of the top 5 birthdays I've had in quite some time.
Still fueled by the power of triple tier caked I spent the last hour or so cleaning up and putting furniture back in its place. Pretty much everything is back in its original order and I find myself typing the events of the evening.
Looking back at it I can't honestly express in words what good friends I have and the amount of entertainment/fun that occurred. Old friends along with new friends all in a central location with some cross communication. Everyone overall seemed quite happy and pleased with each game (well minus the one person that just doesn't like games I suppose) played and experienced. Big props have to go out to my dad for letting me use the place for the evening. I don't believe this would have been possible if I had been in my apartment due to the limitation of space and worrying about neighbors. Such a huge plus to have the spaciousness of a house to work with for gatherings such as these.
Well I'm slowly drawing to the conclusion of this post...there's not much left to do except wait for this sugar rush to wear off so I can sleep soon. I think I've found the best solution for this problem though...Honcast.
Good night everyone best of dreams and thanks again for the splendid times :D.
So ironically I woke up at about noon today (its ironic because that's the time I was born and went downstairs to check my cell phone, emails, facebook and so forth. Found out I had 2 miss calls one from my mom and the other from work. Wasn't too surprised to see the work one and found out that supposedly my timesheets for last week weren't submitted. So the second thing I do...boot up my work computer and get it sorted out. One has to admit that its kind of annoying that the first/second thing you have to do is work related but I didn't let is phase me too much. From there I spent most of the day sorting out the remainder of the task that needed to be done before guest arrived.
I probably spent too much time contemplating over and devising the overall set-up. There was one miscalculation relating to how many people can effectively sit at the 'awesome/epic table'. The most it can hold is about 7-8 people however there was a definitely possibility of 14-16 people being present at any point in time ( I believe the max was 13-14 but it was something I was keeping in mind. So after several measurements and coming to reality on things three tables definitely had to be used (awesome/epic table, my old computer desk and an extra folding table my dad had). The wasted time was trying to get the kitchen table in there and figuring out any last minute tweaks. There was a neat idea I had of hosting a computer in the other room to run old emulators but that fell through when I realized the extra Hard Drive had was installed with Linux and I have minimal knowledge running duel monitors in Linux. So I gave up on that idea and downloaded "Kirby Super Star" (which didn't get played but I might give it a go tomorrow.
After all those configurations were made I had about an hour or two of chill time so I decided to give Elder Scrolls 4 : Oblivion ago. I realized Bethesda makes really buggy games but then I saw the S2 logo and realized that there would be some quick easy bugs real quick. No more than I had played 30 minutes in that I found that when stealth around enemies (i.e: walking) it increases your stealth stat. So from there I rebound my 'w' key to '-' on the keypad and put something heavy (i.e: wallet or wood glue) on it to keep walking into a wall. The stats currently at 75+, it would be higher but there's a prompt that displays every 25ish levels or so. At that point I let it go into 'auto-pilot' and started to load sheets into the washer and attending to other task.
Around this time my dad came back and gave me his gifts...speaking of gits I got a couple of neat ones. My mom gave me 50 bucks (which I used to purchase consumables), dad gave me a $30 gift card to food lion, and Sarah Watson and her bf gave me a harmonica... overall pretty awesome gifts. I've been looking for something new to learn and well the Harmonica seems like the right direction to go in. The money I plan to spend on friends no real reason to spend any of it on myself. My dad departed around 6ish or so and at that point John was on his way over.
John arrived at 6:30 and I got his opinion on number of pizzas. I was thinking 4 to 6 and he agreed with me on 6 so that's what we rolled with. After the order was placed I put a sign on the door informing I might be late (which wasn't necessary as no one really came on time) and we made our way to Wal-Mart and Lil C's. John was harassed a bit by the bell but we were able to gather the necessary materials. At one point we found two Raspberry White Tea with different package but almost the same product information. The only difference was the sodium intact but calories, portion size, carbohydrates all the same. I believe sugar was slight different but otherwise same product. John went with the lower sodium sugar choice I grabbed a Moutain Dew and laundry sheets and we made our way to Lil C's. The total was a bit much when I heard it but completely expected. With a back seat full of pizzas we made our way back.
Upon returning we set-up the pizzas and started to consume which about 10-15 minutes from chilling in the kitchen Sarah and her bf Adam showed up. It was really good to see them again and lead them into the house. Pizza was offered and consumption and talking of animals ensued amongst other things. They were unaware Lil C's did stuff crust pizza but was pleased by the overall taste. There's definitely people out there that don't know about it primarily because Lil C's doesn't really advertise about it (sense their most popular for there $5 hot and ready) that and along with the fact that you gotta wait for it to cook before picking them up. After some time I realized that maybe some activity's need to be done to kill time so I suggested we make pilgramage to the board game room. Once again (I believe) they were impressed by the set-up but we sat down (Sarah grabbed some chips and dips) and we started to play Fluxx.
The initially round was quick however the following round was taking sometime and not to mention people were starting to show up as we were playing through it (two guest, even got through a game of boggle). I suggested we stop early and begin a game of "Eat Poop You Cat". The moment I began to describe the game Dean instantly knew what I was talking about (which was good cause I wanted to make sure I got the rules right). The basic objective was to write a sentence the past it to the next person which they would draw a picture. Once the picture is drawn then its passed again so the next person can write a sentence about what they think the picture is and so forth. Overall the game was a huge hit and went off really well. We got about 3 rounds in before a couple guest had to depart.
During these periods I got to try out one of the guest cupcakes with Marshmellow roses. After eating just one I had to give the guest a few as well. They equally thought they were delicious and gave the individual the well earned praise. At this point the Harmonica gift was up and it looked all sorts of pretty, really couldn't argue with how cool and well done it looked. After that gift but what else.... cake of course. 3 tier layed cake with 2 layers of chocolate...probably the main reason I'm up and writing this without any issues...chocolate keeps me awake/hyper yay! Cake consumption lead to game suggestion the primarily ones were Left Center Right and Mafia... Left Center Right was the selection. A good bit of rolling and stealing ensued but unfortunately Mo and his crew had to depart due to a personal issue which occured.
In all honesty it the thoughts that counts, even the people that didn't make I really did appreciate them give me their respective happy birthday and keeping me in their thoughts over the course of the day. Overall it was quite good couldn't ask for me. While the departure of some did even out the group and made it a bit small its the impression in time which they left in history and in my own and others memorys that count (please see pants cannon for details).
This left us with about 6 people for Left Center Right which went on for quite sometime until Mina eventually crushed us all with 9 chips left. From here there was a small break and I took the time to clean up garbage before proceeding to Catan as Sean had never played it before. Around this time Tyler had called and eventually showed up cleaning up a good majority of the food left over (which I was thankful for as I did not want the responsibility co consume that much). However before the game started two guest had to leave which left us with about 5 people for Catan...and 2 hours of madness which ensued.
Surprisingly I wasn't paying all that much attention (between harmonica practice and text messaging) and found myself constantly in the lead and winning...it was weird. Eventually I did win when people started trading me to help me win to get it over with (rofl). Tyler was close but unfortunately there was some favoritism. Ways were parted soon after and I found myself smiling at the remains of which was probably one of the top 5 birthdays I've had in quite some time.
Still fueled by the power of triple tier caked I spent the last hour or so cleaning up and putting furniture back in its place. Pretty much everything is back in its original order and I find myself typing the events of the evening.
Looking back at it I can't honestly express in words what good friends I have and the amount of entertainment/fun that occurred. Old friends along with new friends all in a central location with some cross communication. Everyone overall seemed quite happy and pleased with each game (well minus the one person that just doesn't like games I suppose) played and experienced. Big props have to go out to my dad for letting me use the place for the evening. I don't believe this would have been possible if I had been in my apartment due to the limitation of space and worrying about neighbors. Such a huge plus to have the spaciousness of a house to work with for gatherings such as these.
Well I'm slowly drawing to the conclusion of this post...there's not much left to do except wait for this sugar rush to wear off so I can sleep soon. I think I've found the best solution for this problem though...Honcast.
Good night everyone best of dreams and thanks again for the splendid times :D.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
So very sleepy but must press on
I'm already feeling sleepy but something tells me that if I don't go to sleep right now I'm probably going to stay up much later than I want to... I shall never learn.
Anywho the past 2 days haven't been too shabby. Work wise they've been quite busy making sure I tie as many lose ends as possible before my departure. Hopefully I can work at home Thursday but that's going to be playing by ear at the moment. If I have to be in the office I don't mind but I'd much rather be here relaxing and working without the random person walking over asking questions and such. Not much else I can say about work.
Aside from that the evenings have been focused on cleaning mostly. Have to admit its been quite sometime sense I've been this excited about a birthday gathering. Primarily due to the size of it as I haven't had one of this magnitude for a long time. 2 years ago only had about 7-8 people over and last year had about 4 this year... its like... 15-16 individuals. The whole part of thinking about room limitations has crossed my mind a couple times but overall we should be fine. My dad's got a reasonable amount of fold able chairs and I have my tab which will be put to good use. Cleaning wise the living room, and the 'lan' room are done. Today I've taken care of the kitchen and my room the only things remaining are the bathrooms.
Unfortunately I am running out of things to clean so I might spend the last 2 days just studying in my room or playing Dead Space...seems like the most reasonable course of action. The 'lan' room might be more effective for playing Dead Space...sadly I'm starting to think / consider upgrading my monitor...its not making games look as pretty as I want to and that's making mee feel pretty shallow :(.
That's about it for now, b-day coming up, cleaning, Dead Space and studies...I'm good to go...oh ya and work :). Later all!
Anywho the past 2 days haven't been too shabby. Work wise they've been quite busy making sure I tie as many lose ends as possible before my departure. Hopefully I can work at home Thursday but that's going to be playing by ear at the moment. If I have to be in the office I don't mind but I'd much rather be here relaxing and working without the random person walking over asking questions and such. Not much else I can say about work.
Aside from that the evenings have been focused on cleaning mostly. Have to admit its been quite sometime sense I've been this excited about a birthday gathering. Primarily due to the size of it as I haven't had one of this magnitude for a long time. 2 years ago only had about 7-8 people over and last year had about 4 this year... its like... 15-16 individuals. The whole part of thinking about room limitations has crossed my mind a couple times but overall we should be fine. My dad's got a reasonable amount of fold able chairs and I have my tab which will be put to good use. Cleaning wise the living room, and the 'lan' room are done. Today I've taken care of the kitchen and my room the only things remaining are the bathrooms.
Unfortunately I am running out of things to clean so I might spend the last 2 days just studying in my room or playing Dead Space...seems like the most reasonable course of action. The 'lan' room might be more effective for playing Dead Space...sadly I'm starting to think / consider upgrading my monitor...its not making games look as pretty as I want to and that's making mee feel pretty shallow :(.
That's about it for now, b-day coming up, cleaning, Dead Space and studies...I'm good to go...oh ya and work :). Later all!
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Quick reference
No blog as of tonight will update it tomorrow just making a quick reference for myself for this week (would use facebook 'notes' but figure that posting now would at least remind me to blog later. List as follows:
1) Keep house *spotless* on a daily basis to ensure maximum cleanness for event.
2) Study A+ practice test each night and choose a chapter to re-read each night.
3) Work as maliciously as possible to make sure there's no work to worry about next week.
4) Leave at least a 10+ hour buffer for sleep (not including tonight already doomed).
5) Finalize 'the list'.
That's about it for now need the rest. Nites.
1) Keep house *spotless* on a daily basis to ensure maximum cleanness for event.
2) Study A+ practice test each night and choose a chapter to re-read each night.
3) Work as maliciously as possible to make sure there's no work to worry about next week.
4) Leave at least a 10+ hour buffer for sleep (not including tonight already doomed).
5) Finalize 'the list'.
That's about it for now need the rest. Nites.
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Mid Week Update
So for the most part this week I've been kind of sick so not a lot has happen so far. Works has actually been pretty slow for the most part and already looking forward to the Holiday weekend. No real plans except to see family down in North Carolina but that's about it. No real plans for the weekend a friend from NY is coming down so were going to hang out. I'm just looking forward to taking some time off from work. Haven't taken any actually time off sense...well Magfest this year so definitely overdue. Every other occasion has revolved around the fact that I either have a 3 day weekend or just deal with having to go back to work on Monday. In either case a week ago I'm sure I can endure it.
Though this past week its not shabby Monday I just rested for the most part, no real highlights. Tuesday I hung out with a few friends and tried out Chornonauts and Fluxx 4.0. Chornonauts has a very fluxx feel but the initially instructions are a bit more complex. The default set of cards are pretty much the same but there's 3 ways of winning instead of one. Equally whenever you effect one date it ripples through out time and effects several other timelines as well. Its a bit difficult to explain but after a turn or two it suddenly makes sense. Fluxx 4.0...somehow they improved Fluxx...not sure how but they did it. So basically think negative keepers and more rules that don't conflict with one another. In either case I'm looking forward to more sessions of each.
After everyone left talk to dean about his financial situation which went on for a bit and had some distractions but definitely went in the right direction. Went to bed kind of like but not a huge deal. Not to mention kind of crashing a bit late tonight but hopefully it doesn't effect me too greatly. Anywho before I carry on further off to bed.
Nite all.
Though this past week its not shabby Monday I just rested for the most part, no real highlights. Tuesday I hung out with a few friends and tried out Chornonauts and Fluxx 4.0. Chornonauts has a very fluxx feel but the initially instructions are a bit more complex. The default set of cards are pretty much the same but there's 3 ways of winning instead of one. Equally whenever you effect one date it ripples through out time and effects several other timelines as well. Its a bit difficult to explain but after a turn or two it suddenly makes sense. Fluxx 4.0...somehow they improved Fluxx...not sure how but they did it. So basically think negative keepers and more rules that don't conflict with one another. In either case I'm looking forward to more sessions of each.
After everyone left talk to dean about his financial situation which went on for a bit and had some distractions but definitely went in the right direction. Went to bed kind of like but not a huge deal. Not to mention kind of crashing a bit late tonight but hopefully it doesn't effect me too greatly. Anywho before I carry on further off to bed.
Nite all.
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Weekend Update
Overall this weekend went pretty well, there was some minor sickness involved but beyond that cant' complain. Friday worked at the office and was feeling a bit sick but it really didn't hit me till that evening which resulted in not feeling well at all. Spent part of the evening up in my room studying for the A+ exam and the remainder was spent playing some games.
Saturday was partly the same however I took about a 3 hour nap which is something I hadn't done in a long time. By the end of it I was feeling a whole lot better. Than and soup definitely helped as well. At some point I did play Sol Survivor along with watching some Honcast. The last part of the evening was spent with of course more studying... think there's a pattern here.
As for today woke up at around 1ish. Went downstairs and relaxed for a bit before watching more Honcast. The Gosugamer finals are almost complete so I've been following it more closely as of lately. Had pizza for lunch and once the Honcast was done started working on Borderlands. Just finished getting my Hunter ready for Knoxx now and was thinking bed but might have some soup before I lie to rest. Seems like a reasonable idea.
Short but I would imagine a busy week ahead so looking forward to it. Conclude the blog post for now night guys.
Saturday was partly the same however I took about a 3 hour nap which is something I hadn't done in a long time. By the end of it I was feeling a whole lot better. Than and soup definitely helped as well. At some point I did play Sol Survivor along with watching some Honcast. The last part of the evening was spent with of course more studying... think there's a pattern here.
As for today woke up at around 1ish. Went downstairs and relaxed for a bit before watching more Honcast. The Gosugamer finals are almost complete so I've been following it more closely as of lately. Had pizza for lunch and once the Honcast was done started working on Borderlands. Just finished getting my Hunter ready for Knoxx now and was thinking bed but might have some soup before I lie to rest. Seems like a reasonable idea.
Short but I would imagine a busy week ahead so looking forward to it. Conclude the blog post for now night guys.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Bi-daily update, sure why not.
Well the past 2 days haven't been too shabby a lot of silliness but overall quite good. Tuesday in a nutshell was pretty good. Left the office a little bit early to head home and work on documentation. Been sinking a good bit of time into minecraft recently in constructing a massive hallway. I actually have a imagine in my mind which usually isn't the case with stuff like this so really glad its formulating. Still no Sol Survivor, or Borderlands yet but no biggie in regards to that. Did get a reasonable amount of sleep which is rare. Anywh0 on to today.
So woke up this morning and decided yesterday to work from home on Wednesday and Thursday. Worked at home last Friday so don't want to abuse the Friday spam too much. Spent most of the day working on documentation and closing out some tickets that were still lingering in my queue. Around lunch time helped take my dad down the car place to get the interior taken care of and stopped by Sheetz for lunch to get gas and lunch. Also made a pit stop by Food Lion that had frozen pizzas for about 2.70 cents...couldn't really pass on that. Original I thought they were Buy 2 get one free for 5.70 a piece but then got the register and it was totally different. I'm not complaining.
Spent the rest of the afternoon doing knowledge transfer related activities and finishing up the document. There was one portion where a requested raged at me for inaccuracies but I kind of shrugged it off.
After the shift (and during part of it I must admit) I jumped on Warcraft to check out the changes in old world for Cata. I love the new changes to the Gnome area. I did the undead area as well but wasn't nearly as impressed. I've already seen the Orc area and that was disappointing too. Hopefully i can get through the others spots by tomorrow. Due to my Hatred of Kotick I still don't see myself coming back. Its kind of like being in a relationship with an attractive but with a crap personality. While looking at it is great its what's inside that really counts. So keeping my distance from giving them money, though don't mind the PTR. The last bit of the evening was spent on minecraft. I might hop back on it for a bit just for fun. That's pretty much my day rewatching the Top Chef finale now and then off to bed.
Nite all.
So woke up this morning and decided yesterday to work from home on Wednesday and Thursday. Worked at home last Friday so don't want to abuse the Friday spam too much. Spent most of the day working on documentation and closing out some tickets that were still lingering in my queue. Around lunch time helped take my dad down the car place to get the interior taken care of and stopped by Sheetz for lunch to get gas and lunch. Also made a pit stop by Food Lion that had frozen pizzas for about 2.70 cents...couldn't really pass on that. Original I thought they were Buy 2 get one free for 5.70 a piece but then got the register and it was totally different. I'm not complaining.
Spent the rest of the afternoon doing knowledge transfer related activities and finishing up the document. There was one portion where a requested raged at me for inaccuracies but I kind of shrugged it off.
After the shift (and during part of it I must admit) I jumped on Warcraft to check out the changes in old world for Cata. I love the new changes to the Gnome area. I did the undead area as well but wasn't nearly as impressed. I've already seen the Orc area and that was disappointing too. Hopefully i can get through the others spots by tomorrow. Due to my Hatred of Kotick I still don't see myself coming back. Its kind of like being in a relationship with an attractive but with a crap personality. While looking at it is great its what's inside that really counts. So keeping my distance from giving them money, though don't mind the PTR. The last bit of the evening was spent on minecraft. I might hop back on it for a bit just for fun. That's pretty much my day rewatching the Top Chef finale now and then off to bed.
Nite all.
Monday, November 15, 2010
Been a while time to get back on track
Recently I was reminded that I indeed have a blog and quite honestly the thought did cross my mind the previous evening as there has been a lot running around my mind as of recently. Didn't really sleep well last night due to the entanglement of thought won't go into too much discussion here as I want to get upstairs study for a bit and then head off to bed. Overall though today went well and while I was a bit lazy for the evening portion I plan to not be as lazy tomorrow.
Today wasn't too shabby work was fairly busy and one of my co-workers was trying to push more work on me even though I told him I didn't have much bandwidth. It amuses me that the form he needed to load takes approximately 30 minutes but didn't want to because he hadn't load that specific form before. In either case he got it done around 4:30 and one less thing to do on my plate. Two main things I have do is some documentation for work which I was trucking through on the weekend, I'm about half way done there. The second thing is finish a list of accounts which is almost done and should be able to get that done by midday afternoon tomorrow.
Once work was done I went back home and was pretty lazy. Re-watched the MSI vs. OK Semi-Finals for the Fnatic.Play tournament and sadly it was better than the final. Once again almost feel asleep watching it but once I recovered spent the rest of the evening chatting on AIM and playing Minecraft. Generated a new server and one of my friends has already established a new home / base camp so good times there. Also located some Diamonds though would prefer to preserve them. As for the rest of the evening been updating the Event info for the birthday party and posting the blog entry. Planning to go upstairs soon and go over a few review chapters for A+. Going to schedule to take it in the next 2 weeks as my knowledge is starting to leak and I need to get it done. Something tells me I've may have repeated myself in this post as its getting late and I did write this over two sessions (took a break to update the event info). Think that's about it for now saw the Sol Survivor entered Season 2 for Survival so I might sink some time into that though I'll probably finish playthrough 2 on my Hunter first.
Unfortunately no time was spent on looking over Unity3d or C++ tonight, just lazy but perhaps tomorrow will be a bit more productive and once most of the work related stuff is out the way (assuming no more crops up) then I can start focusing on outside work related knowledge. Its a little past midnight so off to bed now.
Night all.
Today wasn't too shabby work was fairly busy and one of my co-workers was trying to push more work on me even though I told him I didn't have much bandwidth. It amuses me that the form he needed to load takes approximately 30 minutes but didn't want to because he hadn't load that specific form before. In either case he got it done around 4:30 and one less thing to do on my plate. Two main things I have do is some documentation for work which I was trucking through on the weekend, I'm about half way done there. The second thing is finish a list of accounts which is almost done and should be able to get that done by midday afternoon tomorrow.
Once work was done I went back home and was pretty lazy. Re-watched the MSI vs. OK Semi-Finals for the Fnatic.Play tournament and sadly it was better than the final. Once again almost feel asleep watching it but once I recovered spent the rest of the evening chatting on AIM and playing Minecraft. Generated a new server and one of my friends has already established a new home / base camp so good times there. Also located some Diamonds though would prefer to preserve them. As for the rest of the evening been updating the Event info for the birthday party and posting the blog entry. Planning to go upstairs soon and go over a few review chapters for A+. Going to schedule to take it in the next 2 weeks as my knowledge is starting to leak and I need to get it done. Something tells me I've may have repeated myself in this post as its getting late and I did write this over two sessions (took a break to update the event info). Think that's about it for now saw the Sol Survivor entered Season 2 for Survival so I might sink some time into that though I'll probably finish playthrough 2 on my Hunter first.
Unfortunately no time was spent on looking over Unity3d or C++ tonight, just lazy but perhaps tomorrow will be a bit more productive and once most of the work related stuff is out the way (assuming no more crops up) then I can start focusing on outside work related knowledge. Its a little past midnight so off to bed now.
Night all.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Overall Monday wasn't too bad
For starters woke up as I usually did and made my way down to work. Didn't have any bananas to put into much lunch today which wasn't a huge let down though I do need to go get some in the future. Tis a good idea to get that fruit serving it (plus lower the hunger I was starving for the most part today after lunch...almost missed lunch, more on that later).
Got to work and it was fairly busy. The jobs I run failed today unfortunately, also there's a handful of tickets which I have due tomorrow that are already done for the most part. That along with a surprising 2 day all day training sessions is gonna leave me pretty tied up for the remainder of the week. After work I called a Halloween place and got the last component of my costume, from there went to play Pump It Up and realized that I'm terrible at reading flat on PIU bit difficult. Came back home played some minecraft took an A+ review test and bombed it pretty badly. I'm gonna have to spend more time reviewing some portions I knew about 1 month ago. Shortly after went upstairs tried on my costume and it fit quite well...the question is how to disguise it so no one can guess what I'm wearing....got a few days will see how it goes. Anywho can't rant too long need to get to sleep, night all.
Got to work and it was fairly busy. The jobs I run failed today unfortunately, also there's a handful of tickets which I have due tomorrow that are already done for the most part. That along with a surprising 2 day all day training sessions is gonna leave me pretty tied up for the remainder of the week. After work I called a Halloween place and got the last component of my costume, from there went to play Pump It Up and realized that I'm terrible at reading flat on PIU bit difficult. Came back home played some minecraft took an A+ review test and bombed it pretty badly. I'm gonna have to spend more time reviewing some portions I knew about 1 month ago. Shortly after went upstairs tried on my costume and it fit quite well...the question is how to disguise it so no one can guess what I'm wearing....got a few days will see how it goes. Anywho can't rant too long need to get to sleep, night all.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Weekly Updates...sure why not
It seems I've fallen into the trap of updating on a weekly basis, so I might continue such. Or update more often though I don't see this as a possibility. In either case not a lot has happen as of last week. Been spending most of my time studying for the A+ example. Should be done with one of my books this week, the other book is in a .pdf format and I tend to review it while I'm at work. Different view points of the example is always a plus. There's also the practice exam on the CD-ROM I need to look over. One of the main benefits I've gained form this as a result is that I've become insanely addicted to reading technically stuff again. Not necessarily a bad thing but I'll probably need a library membership soon or the wallet may take a couple of hits in the future.
As for the past weekend spent most of it lying on my bed listening to Harry Potter book 5. The other remainder was spent on playing some Puzzle Quest 2 and reading about 2-3 chapters a day. For the week thus far its been more of the same. Reading, keeping track of the budget, small bits of gaming on and off. No specific games have been focused on as of yet. I did pick up Minecraft again so I'll be doing many silly things in that. Though I still do play Puzzle Quest during some down periods of say 5-10 minutes when I don't want to give something a good solid hour or two which is good. Though to give brief overview these are the titles on the top of my head with priorities in parenthesis.
Wii: Okami (Low), Twilight Princess (Medium)
Playstation: Final Fantasy 9 (Medium), Parasite Eve (High)
PC/General: Puzzle Quest 2 (Low), Killing Floor (Low), Borderlands (Medium-High), FF3 (Medium-High), Minecraft (Medium-High).
Only reason Parasite Eve is kind of high on the list is due to the nature of the game. After 5-8 hours of gameplay I'll either hit a wall or I'll be pretty darn close to finishing the game so not a huge deal. Borderlands, FF3, Minecraft, FF9 and Twilight Princess are all quite tempting and overdue for clean-up in terms of finishing them. As of right now I don't have a lot of time to play game (which is a bit different) but once I finish reading the book the amount of free time I have (with the exception of A+ practice examples) the amount of time should be more plentiful.
Anime wise I do have a handful of series I want to watch and/or give about 3-4 episodes a chance before I can be super critical on them. Sort of the whole "don't dis it before you try it" sort of deal. Arakawa Under the Bridge, Eureka 7, and then possible re-watching FMAB is current on the list. I might pick up a manga to read but that's extremely up in the air.
Last 2 weeks though I've spent inside my house for obvious reasons so I would definitely like to get out and do something different this weekend. Part of me wants to travel outside the state to do something completely random (sort of a mini road trip). While the other part of me kind of wants to chill with friends, though not 100% sure on this one. Been definitely enjoying the alone time and not sure if I want to 'chill' with peeps yet. On the same note though there is a plentiful pile of games and anime I wouldn't mind getting though uninterrupted and at my own pace. Heck for all I know there's a possibility that I'll lie in my bed upstairs and listen to Harry Potter book 7 lol. Won't try to predict the future on this one.
So overall in about 2 weeks I'll be at my dad's house for 2 months. I've ranted to myself about this several times but this will probably be the first time I'm actually documenting it. Overall I'd have to say I do much better lifestyle wise when I'm living by myself. Usually if I have a friend that I stay with (minus college where both individuals seemed distracted by studies) there's a tendency to kind of I guess 'walk through life' rather than 'climb the stairs of improvement'. I know a good bit of this depends on roommates overall as they can reflect your living style greatly. Have to definitely agree with this as when I was living with Chris-san I spent a great deal more time reading the Bible and with Tyler well.....I mean both have there benefits one is oddles of fun all the time the other is constant progression (wanted to say vigilance here so bad, curse you Harry Potter).
This by itself can easily contribute to low will power in my opinion as my will power use to be much greater. Though this can be argued as I haven't 'played' a mmo in well over 6 months (brief touched wow on PTR and BlackRO but didn't play them for months at a time). So on displaying a sort of control there. Finding as of recently going back to the single player style games in which if you screw up its your fault as compared to the recent move in the multi-player environment in which if Jim fails you also fail (which can lead to trolling, never an enjoyable thing and not deemed with discussion in this blog entry). So not surprised that I'm find that all these single player games are appealing to me again.
Nothing else really on the top of my head, actually looking forward to the weekend, getting home and pushing the studies a bit further. The break from this will be quite awesome. I may pick up a non-academic reading for the downtime or grab the Network+ book not sure as of yet. No longer worried about job options as I know once I get these certs I have a much stronger feeling that I'll be in a better boat. Team meeting about to start so gonna call it there and the thoughts are running low. Thanks for all that read this :).
As for the past weekend spent most of it lying on my bed listening to Harry Potter book 5. The other remainder was spent on playing some Puzzle Quest 2 and reading about 2-3 chapters a day. For the week thus far its been more of the same. Reading, keeping track of the budget, small bits of gaming on and off. No specific games have been focused on as of yet. I did pick up Minecraft again so I'll be doing many silly things in that. Though I still do play Puzzle Quest during some down periods of say 5-10 minutes when I don't want to give something a good solid hour or two which is good. Though to give brief overview these are the titles on the top of my head with priorities in parenthesis.
Wii: Okami (Low), Twilight Princess (Medium)
Playstation: Final Fantasy 9 (Medium), Parasite Eve (High)
PC/General: Puzzle Quest 2 (Low), Killing Floor (Low), Borderlands (Medium-High), FF3 (Medium-High), Minecraft (Medium-High).
Only reason Parasite Eve is kind of high on the list is due to the nature of the game. After 5-8 hours of gameplay I'll either hit a wall or I'll be pretty darn close to finishing the game so not a huge deal. Borderlands, FF3, Minecraft, FF9 and Twilight Princess are all quite tempting and overdue for clean-up in terms of finishing them. As of right now I don't have a lot of time to play game (which is a bit different) but once I finish reading the book the amount of free time I have (with the exception of A+ practice examples) the amount of time should be more plentiful.
Anime wise I do have a handful of series I want to watch and/or give about 3-4 episodes a chance before I can be super critical on them. Sort of the whole "don't dis it before you try it" sort of deal. Arakawa Under the Bridge, Eureka 7, and then possible re-watching FMAB is current on the list. I might pick up a manga to read but that's extremely up in the air.
Last 2 weeks though I've spent inside my house for obvious reasons so I would definitely like to get out and do something different this weekend. Part of me wants to travel outside the state to do something completely random (sort of a mini road trip). While the other part of me kind of wants to chill with friends, though not 100% sure on this one. Been definitely enjoying the alone time and not sure if I want to 'chill' with peeps yet. On the same note though there is a plentiful pile of games and anime I wouldn't mind getting though uninterrupted and at my own pace. Heck for all I know there's a possibility that I'll lie in my bed upstairs and listen to Harry Potter book 7 lol. Won't try to predict the future on this one.
So overall in about 2 weeks I'll be at my dad's house for 2 months. I've ranted to myself about this several times but this will probably be the first time I'm actually documenting it. Overall I'd have to say I do much better lifestyle wise when I'm living by myself. Usually if I have a friend that I stay with (minus college where both individuals seemed distracted by studies) there's a tendency to kind of I guess 'walk through life' rather than 'climb the stairs of improvement'. I know a good bit of this depends on roommates overall as they can reflect your living style greatly. Have to definitely agree with this as when I was living with Chris-san I spent a great deal more time reading the Bible and with Tyler well.....I mean both have there benefits one is oddles of fun all the time the other is constant progression (wanted to say vigilance here so bad, curse you Harry Potter).
This by itself can easily contribute to low will power in my opinion as my will power use to be much greater. Though this can be argued as I haven't 'played' a mmo in well over 6 months (brief touched wow on PTR and BlackRO but didn't play them for months at a time). So on displaying a sort of control there. Finding as of recently going back to the single player style games in which if you screw up its your fault as compared to the recent move in the multi-player environment in which if Jim fails you also fail (which can lead to trolling, never an enjoyable thing and not deemed with discussion in this blog entry). So not surprised that I'm find that all these single player games are appealing to me again.
Nothing else really on the top of my head, actually looking forward to the weekend, getting home and pushing the studies a bit further. The break from this will be quite awesome. I may pick up a non-academic reading for the downtime or grab the Network+ book not sure as of yet. No longer worried about job options as I know once I get these certs I have a much stronger feeling that I'll be in a better boat. Team meeting about to start so gonna call it there and the thoughts are running low. Thanks for all that read this :).
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
One week later and here be the updates
While the last few days have not been all that great, the past weekend kind of made it feel like a Karma system so really can't argue with that. I spent a good chunk of last week playing Puzzle Quest 2 and a small bit of HoN from time to time. As for the past weekend it was great. Got a great deal of gaming in with finishing up Puzzle Quest, getting absurdly buzzed off APM (hadn't had purple flavor in a while), wrote a sound HoN mod and got people addicted to random games. One neat part was working from home on Friday as i hadn't done anything like that for quite sometime.
As for this week so far I've begun my roomxile session of studying like a madman for the A+ exam. Trying to finish the book and possible re-read it by the end of this month. Planning to take the exams towards of November / December and order the Security+ and Network+ books sometime in the middle of this month. Forgot how much of an academic whore I was in the past and its definitely showing now. I require the knowledge. Aside from that work has been pseudo-stressful with my boss trying to poop on me as much as possible. No idea why guess everyone needs a scapegoat. As for plans for the rest of this week going to keep up the reading sessions and keep gaming a minimum. Going to watch some anime series over this weekend whil reading as well.
Life is actually getting simpler and cheaper at that so enjoying that. Think that's about it gonna no other updates at this time.
As for this week so far I've begun my roomxile session of studying like a madman for the A+ exam. Trying to finish the book and possible re-read it by the end of this month. Planning to take the exams towards of November / December and order the Security+ and Network+ books sometime in the middle of this month. Forgot how much of an academic whore I was in the past and its definitely showing now. I require the knowledge. Aside from that work has been pseudo-stressful with my boss trying to poop on me as much as possible. No idea why guess everyone needs a scapegoat. As for plans for the rest of this week going to keep up the reading sessions and keep gaming a minimum. Going to watch some anime series over this weekend whil reading as well.
Life is actually getting simpler and cheaper at that so enjoying that. Think that's about it gonna no other updates at this time.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
1 Week no updates...fail
Well have to admit overall I've kind of face planted in terms of keeping this updated. I partly blame myself in a combination of not really keeping up with it due to studying (still not going too great) , silly game addictions and keeping up with friends as a whole. In either case not a whole has happen to be honest. There's a couple of game reviews I want to get posted as I recently tried out Civ 5 Demo, Minecraft, Puzzle Quest 2 and several other games. Think that's about it for the moment not a whole lot is happen today. The last 3 days have been super busy as I'm trying to finish up some documentation that should have been done last week when I couldn't take screenshots for. That's a whole other problem though. Definitely looking forward to weeks more than I use to which I wish wasn't the case. Job wise nothing has popped up, more calls but that's about it no follow-up interviews...something's better than nothing. Nothing else really on mind at the moment listening to 'hastune miku head exercises' so any concerns I have are out the window. Will get back to update regularly starting today :).
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Keeping the Blog going
After this mornings fit of madness I definitely gotta use this space in a somewhat constructive manner. First though I'd like to cover yesterday.
Work wise yesterday wasn't too bad, pretty much listen to Harry Potter and studied some A+. Recently the application I use to perform all my work crapped out so I'm left trying to think of every means to get the typically day to day work done with the assistance of co-workers, fun stuff. After work came back home played around on the Warcraft PTRs then Tyler came over for some Mario Tennis and we got stomped on for several hours. Didn't really hit the bed till 3ish though helped out John with configuring some Warcraft macros. As interesting as the PTR is currently I really can't see myself getting back into it. Just doesn't excite me like it use to. The new is interesting sure but the actually game kind of meh about it. Sort of like how some people play Starcraft and follow it like a real sport but don't really play it. More fun to watch then do kind of like a toddler on a run away go-kart.
So woke up this morning and seeing how I've had 8 hours of sleep or so in the past 2 days figured it best to work from home today. Definitely glad I did. Was inquired by my manager what my workload looked like for the day (yay redundancy...to clarify she asked me the same question today as yesterday...notes people take them if you can't remember!) , had a requester come back about the information they requested, and another phone call with a decline. The whole resume process reminds me of the whole situation where you ask a girl out and they just say they want to be friends. Unfortunately I never went through that so having people call me then take a poop on me is kind of a bummer. Grab a cup of coffee and decline a resume, that'll boost my spirits. Have to admit though its given me some insight as to what people are looking for, primarily certifications. As a result I'm probably going to spend more of my time locked in my room reading as this endless cycle of silly really needs to come to an end.
So pretty much at this point I have to make some choices. I'm reminded of that shirt that has 3 pictures and it says 'choose 2' one is a guy sleep, another is a guy playing a game, and the last one is a guy socializing with some friends. Its something like that and I can't recall exactly what it was. In either trying to manage a social life, keeping up with the latest gaming trends, studying along with work with the stress of work is starting to press my patience to a thin point. That on top of the guy that called me this morning in regards to my resume pretty much said flat out "I would get those certifications as soon as possible, it'll definitely make you more viable in the market" in a paraphrased sense. That in a way was kind of an eye opener because basically within the last 2 months I've been told that 2 times which is more than enough for me to actually push myself a bit harder with it.
Think I'm done for now thoughts are a bit cluttered but don't want to type out everything as it may take more time then I have allowed. Will probably provide an update tonight with my feedback when my mentality is a bit less hostile / volatile.
Work wise yesterday wasn't too bad, pretty much listen to Harry Potter and studied some A+. Recently the application I use to perform all my work crapped out so I'm left trying to think of every means to get the typically day to day work done with the assistance of co-workers, fun stuff. After work came back home played around on the Warcraft PTRs then Tyler came over for some Mario Tennis and we got stomped on for several hours. Didn't really hit the bed till 3ish though helped out John with configuring some Warcraft macros. As interesting as the PTR is currently I really can't see myself getting back into it. Just doesn't excite me like it use to. The new is interesting sure but the actually game kind of meh about it. Sort of like how some people play Starcraft and follow it like a real sport but don't really play it. More fun to watch then do kind of like a toddler on a run away go-kart.
So woke up this morning and seeing how I've had 8 hours of sleep or so in the past 2 days figured it best to work from home today. Definitely glad I did. Was inquired by my manager what my workload looked like for the day (yay redundancy...to clarify she asked me the same question today as yesterday...notes people take them if you can't remember!) , had a requester come back about the information they requested, and another phone call with a decline. The whole resume process reminds me of the whole situation where you ask a girl out and they just say they want to be friends. Unfortunately I never went through that so having people call me then take a poop on me is kind of a bummer. Grab a cup of coffee and decline a resume, that'll boost my spirits. Have to admit though its given me some insight as to what people are looking for, primarily certifications. As a result I'm probably going to spend more of my time locked in my room reading as this endless cycle of silly really needs to come to an end.
So pretty much at this point I have to make some choices. I'm reminded of that shirt that has 3 pictures and it says 'choose 2' one is a guy sleep, another is a guy playing a game, and the last one is a guy socializing with some friends. Its something like that and I can't recall exactly what it was. In either trying to manage a social life, keeping up with the latest gaming trends, studying along with work with the stress of work is starting to press my patience to a thin point. That on top of the guy that called me this morning in regards to my resume pretty much said flat out "I would get those certifications as soon as possible, it'll definitely make you more viable in the market" in a paraphrased sense. That in a way was kind of an eye opener because basically within the last 2 months I've been told that 2 times which is more than enough for me to actually push myself a bit harder with it.
Think I'm done for now thoughts are a bit cluttered but don't want to type out everything as it may take more time then I have allowed. Will probably provide an update tonight with my feedback when my mentality is a bit less hostile / volatile.
Monday, September 13, 2010
Needs to be a bit more diligent
For starters I was doing an 'ok' job keeping this updated but unfortunately I've fallen fairly behind in keeping this up. So for this week I'll be giving my best effort to update this on a daily basis.
Overall thought not a whole lot has happen sense the previous update on last Wednesday. Thursday I went into the office to work and there was a gas car explosion about 6 cars down from my car. I did depart the office a bit earlier than usually and the rest of the evening twas pretty straight forward. Friday I worked from home and it was a fairly slow day, spent Friday evening hanging out with some of Mina's friends along with Dean and Scott. Didn't get back till way late where basically chatted with Andy into the late hours of the morning. Definitely a good time was had and honestly can't remember most of it, think most of it was college talk, finding random things on the internet, how to kill boredom that sort of thing.
Saturday was probably the laziest day of them all. Spent most of it sitting around letting UFC play in the background while the gaming was a mixture of HoN, Puzzle Quest 2 and at some painful hour in the morning Warcraft PTR 4.0.1 beta. For once I'm not all that excited for it, I'll probably wait a few patch cycles before I come back if I choose to do so. Still in the air at the moment. There was a tiny bit Saturday of work but not a lot got done. Ran the QTP scripts and encountered one random blue screen. Lastly Sunday mostly HoN (been playing a lot recently, will probably take a break in the future) and small bit of Puzzle Quest.
Prospects for this week:
***More reading A+ book.
***Cleaning around the house as this is a bit over due.
***Play around with WoW 4.0.1 PTR.
***Make some progress in Puzzle Quest.
***Regular running session?
That's about it for now time to try to stay awake today and maybe go to bed early. Later
Overall thought not a whole lot has happen sense the previous update on last Wednesday. Thursday I went into the office to work and there was a gas car explosion about 6 cars down from my car. I did depart the office a bit earlier than usually and the rest of the evening twas pretty straight forward. Friday I worked from home and it was a fairly slow day, spent Friday evening hanging out with some of Mina's friends along with Dean and Scott. Didn't get back till way late where basically chatted with Andy into the late hours of the morning. Definitely a good time was had and honestly can't remember most of it, think most of it was college talk, finding random things on the internet, how to kill boredom that sort of thing.
Saturday was probably the laziest day of them all. Spent most of it sitting around letting UFC play in the background while the gaming was a mixture of HoN, Puzzle Quest 2 and at some painful hour in the morning Warcraft PTR 4.0.1 beta. For once I'm not all that excited for it, I'll probably wait a few patch cycles before I come back if I choose to do so. Still in the air at the moment. There was a tiny bit Saturday of work but not a lot got done. Ran the QTP scripts and encountered one random blue screen. Lastly Sunday mostly HoN (been playing a lot recently, will probably take a break in the future) and small bit of Puzzle Quest.
Prospects for this week:
***More reading A+ book.
***Cleaning around the house as this is a bit over due.
***Play around with WoW 4.0.1 PTR.
***Make some progress in Puzzle Quest.
***Regular running session?
That's about it for now time to try to stay awake today and maybe go to bed early. Later
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Labor Day Weekend Goodness
Welling seeing how there's not much I can get done today (Job runs can't be run due to some coding change, can't query accounts because a team member locked out TA Web, and unable to update documentation as the main tool I use crashes whenever it loads...good times). Though this is for today and not relating to the weekend. So lets fast forward to the weekend shall we?
Friday:
This day I have to admit was pretty good start for the lazy weekend ahead. Left the office early around 12:30-1ish to attend to some work and signed off around 5ish. Spent the remainder of the day playing Titan's Quest and Plants vs. Zombies for the most part with a small hint of HoN toward the end. Originally I thought some randomness would be going down but that was not the cause as there seemed to be a communication break down in a couple of areas. Also to be honestly don't recall doing much more than that lol. I believe this was the day I went up to bed early to read my A+ book, listen to some Harry Potter book 2, and a little bit of Ferry Corsten...that was about it.
Saturday:
Was definitely a bit more productive, ended up finishing Titan Quest on Normal with my Brigand, finished Plants vs. Zombies first time through and completed the Recettear demo. That ate up a good portion of the day. That along with Star Wars Ep 1-3 was being played all day so I took the time to do that. Played a couple of matches of HoN before heading off to bed at a reasonable time. This was also the evening I watched another program on Marine Reserve Ops or something like that. Crazy stuff
Sunday:
Played HoN the entire day with about 2 loses over 10 games. Watched more Star Wars...that was about it.
Monday:
Woke up and found myself at about 177 lbs. which I have to admit I was quite excited about the prospects of getting back to 170 lbs. seems a bit more tempting to aim for. Given I was about up to 179 at the end of the day (and hovered back to 177 lbs as of this morning/Tuesday). None the less woke up fairly early and made my way up (down?) to Colonial Heights to Laser Tag as I heard they had many rhythm based games up there. The stories I heard were quite accurate. Given that yes it was a 30 minute drive it wasn't too shabby. ITG3 (modded stepmania), PIU, Pop N Music, Beatmania (found out I could play normal 7 key?) and Taiko Drum master. It was pretty insane. My only gief was the front counter not having the ability to break a $20 2 hours after opening. Had to venture to a BP to get the change. Spent about 2.5 hours there and drove back.
For the remainder of the day it was a combination of watching Star Wars Ep 4-6, trucking my Brigand further through Epic mode (might reach Act 2 tonight), played a handful of HoN matches (after this weekend might take a break for a bit lol), and made a tiny bit more progress in Plants vs. Zombies. Did end up seeing the 'Furry' episode of CSI which I found to be somewhat amusing. Believe that's about it.
Week ahead:
Definitely looking forward to the short work week with no real plans couple of objectives though.
*Planning to drop down to 175 or less by the end of this week. Should be plausible as I've made a commitment to myself which entails of if I obtain any food outside a grocery store I'll be consuming it on the way and not at home. This mainly applies to pizza as that's a main gainer there. On top of this I'll be working out an hour each day. That and trying to stick with sub 1k calories.
*Read a chapter of A+ each day this week. Hopefully get to chapter 10 when its all said and done.
*Planning to be upstairs by 11ish. No staying up silly late (I always break this why do I try :p).
*Need a new pair of headphones (1,000 times this).
*Discipline
Think that's about it for now. Going to get back to updating this on a regular basis as I have trouble recalling things from 3-4 days back. Not sure if its a good or a bad thing but meh whatever.
Later all.
Friday:
This day I have to admit was pretty good start for the lazy weekend ahead. Left the office early around 12:30-1ish to attend to some work and signed off around 5ish. Spent the remainder of the day playing Titan's Quest and Plants vs. Zombies for the most part with a small hint of HoN toward the end. Originally I thought some randomness would be going down but that was not the cause as there seemed to be a communication break down in a couple of areas. Also to be honestly don't recall doing much more than that lol. I believe this was the day I went up to bed early to read my A+ book, listen to some Harry Potter book 2, and a little bit of Ferry Corsten...that was about it.
Saturday:
Was definitely a bit more productive, ended up finishing Titan Quest on Normal with my Brigand, finished Plants vs. Zombies first time through and completed the Recettear demo. That ate up a good portion of the day. That along with Star Wars Ep 1-3 was being played all day so I took the time to do that. Played a couple of matches of HoN before heading off to bed at a reasonable time. This was also the evening I watched another program on Marine Reserve Ops or something like that. Crazy stuff
Sunday:
Played HoN the entire day with about 2 loses over 10 games. Watched more Star Wars...that was about it.
Monday:
Woke up and found myself at about 177 lbs. which I have to admit I was quite excited about the prospects of getting back to 170 lbs. seems a bit more tempting to aim for. Given I was about up to 179 at the end of the day (and hovered back to 177 lbs as of this morning/Tuesday). None the less woke up fairly early and made my way up (down?) to Colonial Heights to Laser Tag as I heard they had many rhythm based games up there. The stories I heard were quite accurate. Given that yes it was a 30 minute drive it wasn't too shabby. ITG3 (modded stepmania), PIU, Pop N Music, Beatmania (found out I could play normal 7 key?) and Taiko Drum master. It was pretty insane. My only gief was the front counter not having the ability to break a $20 2 hours after opening. Had to venture to a BP to get the change. Spent about 2.5 hours there and drove back.
For the remainder of the day it was a combination of watching Star Wars Ep 4-6, trucking my Brigand further through Epic mode (might reach Act 2 tonight), played a handful of HoN matches (after this weekend might take a break for a bit lol), and made a tiny bit more progress in Plants vs. Zombies. Did end up seeing the 'Furry' episode of CSI which I found to be somewhat amusing. Believe that's about it.
Week ahead:
Definitely looking forward to the short work week with no real plans couple of objectives though.
*Planning to drop down to 175 or less by the end of this week. Should be plausible as I've made a commitment to myself which entails of if I obtain any food outside a grocery store I'll be consuming it on the way and not at home. This mainly applies to pizza as that's a main gainer there. On top of this I'll be working out an hour each day. That and trying to stick with sub 1k calories.
*Read a chapter of A+ each day this week. Hopefully get to chapter 10 when its all said and done.
*Planning to be upstairs by 11ish. No staying up silly late (I always break this why do I try :p).
*Need a new pair of headphones (1,000 times this).
*Discipline
Think that's about it for now. Going to get back to updating this on a regular basis as I have trouble recalling things from 3-4 days back. Not sure if its a good or a bad thing but meh whatever.
Later all.
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Review: Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale - Demo
Alright so after about 3.1 hours of play and completing the demo I figured that a review on this wonderful game was definitely needed necessary. So here go.
[b]Ovewview[/b]
For starters I'm not going to give a review of the story as that's said in the demo and it would spoil it just a tiny bit. Not huge spoilers but I'll give a premise as to what's going on. For starters you begin as a character known as Recette (sp?) where your partner Tear (a Fairy) are responsible for running a shop and generating a profit. To go about doing this you higher an adventurer (which you control) who goes into a dungeons killing monters, hunting for treasures, and escaping alive (sometimes this is a biggie). After the dungeons are complete you place the found items into the shop to sell the town folk and other adventures by bartering and getting the best price possible. There's also a duel leveling system one for your adventure and one for your merchant level that gains you more access to the game. This is a fairly high level of the game sense I mentioned earlier no spoilers.
[b]Enjoyed...[/b]
*Multi-style based play - While 'adventuring' the game plays like a sort of dungeon crawlers similar to Diablo, Torchlight, Chocobo Dungeon...you get the idea. So it has the element of wondering around finding cool stuff and trying to escape alive.
*Shop/Barter System - This was neat as well as the whole game didn't revolve around crawling about and then selling all your stuff to the vendor. The game actually discourages selling items to the vendor and prompts you to sell items to the townsfolk. Fairly neat system.
*3 hours of play from an psuedo-RPG - I honestly can't complain and don't need to elaborate too much beyond that point.
*The humor - not much else to say here, there's just some parts where I honestly just bursted out laughing.
[b]Not so keen on[/b]
*Delayed explanations - There are peroids of time where you go to perform action a. and then its explained later if its a good or bad idea. Wish they gave come clarification as to some concepts sooner.
*Initially price - $20 bucks for most indie games are not my cup of tea. Its a great game but the price make me iffy if I want to initially grab it.
*Slow start up - For those who don't enjoy much story and really just want to jump into the game. Either you'll have to bare with it or find something different to play. For at least the 1st hour is just plot with a tiny explanation of game play...that's about it. Once you break that threshold though it picks up quickly.
[b]Wrap-up[/b]
That's about it for the game as a whole. Pretty good and I may pick up before release though not quite decided on it as of yet. In either case will wait and see...my work here is done later all.
[b]Ovewview[/b]
For starters I'm not going to give a review of the story as that's said in the demo and it would spoil it just a tiny bit. Not huge spoilers but I'll give a premise as to what's going on. For starters you begin as a character known as Recette (sp?) where your partner Tear (a Fairy) are responsible for running a shop and generating a profit. To go about doing this you higher an adventurer (which you control) who goes into a dungeons killing monters, hunting for treasures, and escaping alive (sometimes this is a biggie). After the dungeons are complete you place the found items into the shop to sell the town folk and other adventures by bartering and getting the best price possible. There's also a duel leveling system one for your adventure and one for your merchant level that gains you more access to the game. This is a fairly high level of the game sense I mentioned earlier no spoilers.
[b]Enjoyed...[/b]
*Multi-style based play - While 'adventuring' the game plays like a sort of dungeon crawlers similar to Diablo, Torchlight, Chocobo Dungeon...you get the idea. So it has the element of wondering around finding cool stuff and trying to escape alive.
*Shop/Barter System - This was neat as well as the whole game didn't revolve around crawling about and then selling all your stuff to the vendor. The game actually discourages selling items to the vendor and prompts you to sell items to the townsfolk. Fairly neat system.
*3 hours of play from an psuedo-RPG - I honestly can't complain and don't need to elaborate too much beyond that point.
*The humor - not much else to say here, there's just some parts where I honestly just bursted out laughing.
[b]Not so keen on[/b]
*Delayed explanations - There are peroids of time where you go to perform action a. and then its explained later if its a good or bad idea. Wish they gave come clarification as to some concepts sooner.
*Initially price - $20 bucks for most indie games are not my cup of tea. Its a great game but the price make me iffy if I want to initially grab it.
*Slow start up - For those who don't enjoy much story and really just want to jump into the game. Either you'll have to bare with it or find something different to play. For at least the 1st hour is just plot with a tiny explanation of game play...that's about it. Once you break that threshold though it picks up quickly.
[b]Wrap-up[/b]
That's about it for the game as a whole. Pretty good and I may pick up before release though not quite decided on it as of yet. In either case will wait and see...my work here is done later all.
Friday, September 3, 2010
Its been a Cat & Mouse week (Chu Chu Rocket song)
Have to admit the past 3 days have been a bit crazy/hectic/fun I must admit. Overall its been filled with a good bit of traveling, good fun, and many random activities. Definitely looking forward to the weekend. Once again as a result of work I've completely forgotten that the weekend ahead is an extended weekend so that may fluctuate my plans a little bit. May do something a bit outside the norm in terms of typically expected. Well without further I'll go through each day of the week.
Tuesday:
Come Tuesday morning (partly as a result of Monday evening...Mario Tennis, good times). I decided that after the work day to head over to a friends place to help them fix there PC issues. Recently they started to play a game called Titan's Quest and were unable to exercise the LAN feature. Once 5 o'clock rolled around I made my way over there and resolved the issue. In terms of troubleshooting it seemed they were going in the right directions and checking the correct screens. Though one element I forgot to factor in for was prioritizing Hamachi on the connection. Once that was set they were able to join and play with great ease. After the PC issue was resolved I accepted a payment of playing one round involving "Risk:Reinvented" got stomped (I blame Putin...)but definitely like how the game encourages a bit more aggression as compared to the original version which seems to result in many stalemates.
The evening however didn't end there. Between these intervals I kept in contact with another individual who I would be going bowling with later that evening. Our first game was pretty bad but we both scored around the 100-120 range. For myself the best round of the evening was when I 148, best game so far. The rest of the games were ok, not great and not too bad. Unfortunately the bowling buddy couldn't get the turkey he wanted but we were both definitely glad to get a few overdue rounds in. He also hinted on a new rhythm based set-up (that I also heard from random person at putt-putt) that was now running in Colonial Heights. I'll need to take a trip there in the near future. When we finished bowling I dropped'em back off at home and drove back.
Wednesday:
This one was another fun day. Woke up and a couple hours into the work day and via discussion through facebook was grated another opportunity to assist someone. Recently their engine light had been turning on and need it checked out. So after the seemingly slow work day (glad it was slow today) meet'em over at the car place and drove down to Micheal's to pick up some supplies. For board game and tabletop purposes I wanted to have a few extra bags on hand to store pieces and simplify a few things. Was getting a bit tired of opening up a box of catan and seeing the chit spread all over the place whenever I opened the box. Not to mention that sense I purchased the new risk game and the only way the pieces were separated were by dividers along with Quelf cards could use some sort of repackaging method...well you get the idea. So as a result we browsed the store, observed random objectives, bought our respective supplies and departed from the store.
After this we went over to IHOP to grab dinner. Nothing spectacular happen here except for consuming food...unless you thinking eating food in a restaurant is awesome or out the norm. Or find it odd that someone would go to there after filling up the back of there car with food, but that's about it. The Chauffeur stylings of Tonberry continued as the next stop was Target to pick up some pet food. They didn't have the exact type needed but there was a substitute that may do the trick. This conclude the travel portion of the trip which the last bit consisted of general conversation. I was a bit stuck and tucked into my chair for a bit as I must admit I still find the individual I chilled with attractive so I was only able to converse until bloodflow was only working towards one part of my body. Which at this point i departed drove back home took care of a few things and went off to bed.
[b]Thursday:[/b]
Another fairly busy day (and another reason how his putting his friends first and study second...catch-up this week, god knows). For this day I decided to work from home sense there was the anticipation of having another friend come visit and assist him with building his computer. He had never put in a process before and was freaking out about bent pins, putting it in the wrong way, misalignment, collateral self implodedment (made up word!) of the universe and extratransversal (another word made up of other words!) reverse of the timeline paradox. So pretty much my day consist of more waiting and troubleshooting a few issues. At one point he arrived we unloaded his car and tied a few lose ends and we started work. There was a brief period in which I play a demo of a game on steam but I'll put that in its own post.
This next section just involves the assembly of the computer. It maybe interesting/boring for some so you can choose to skip it or just read ahead. Without further a due.
To began I would like to thank the individual who bought the computer to allow myself another friend help assemble it. For myself it definitely expanded my mindset as to how top of the line motherboards for intel are designed. First to note the last time I had built a computer was about 2 years ago and it wasn't anything complicated. This was definitely a fun experience. Admittedly the process installation was the most enjoyable and painfully. We definitely encountered a few issues. For example when we removed the PnP cap from the top of the process two of the pieces broke off and we had to fetch them from underneath the CPU claps was not fun but my dad did provide a small array of tools to help us :). Next was the heat sink. Another great reaction from the fellow who hadn't seen one up close.
After a couple handful of "That's what she said jokes" and realizing that we need to unscrew the mobo from the case again we were able to apply thermal paste on the CPU with Heat Sink on top. Another +1 on the amusement meter was his amazement at how simple it really was to install a processor unit. Though it must be noted that if ya screw it up that's no fun. The last hic-up we encounter were the screws falling out the motherboard but this was quickly remedied. Dean did an excellent job with the wiring and the few hours worked payed off as our friend stood completely mesmerized (and soon to be brother's bench pressing tool) of new computer. It shuts down in about 3 seconds which is a bit absurd but he seemed quite please as there was constant thanks.
For dinner we all went to IHOP (after 2 trips I'm haven't gone above 180 so confused) ordered some food. Somehow Ali (friend with new computer, bit tired of typing in the vague) got yellow stuff in his Chocolate Milk that looked like eggs. That's about it though. We went back played a round of Catan as he sat absorbed by his new machine. Evening concluded shortly after that with watching some HHDDVVDDBVD and bleep bloop related videos. Have to say I slept well that night.
Today and Ongoing
Should be an interesting day going forward, there's plans tonight but no idea exactly what's going down. So will wait and see chillage of some sort and maybe a nap as I would mind a tiny recharge. That's about it this weeks been a blast and definitely enjoy hanging out with all you guys. Thinking about booking out of work early so I can run the scripts in a timely manner and perhaps finish that Reccetear demo. That's about all. La ta everyone.
Tuesday:
Come Tuesday morning (partly as a result of Monday evening...Mario Tennis, good times). I decided that after the work day to head over to a friends place to help them fix there PC issues. Recently they started to play a game called Titan's Quest and were unable to exercise the LAN feature. Once 5 o'clock rolled around I made my way over there and resolved the issue. In terms of troubleshooting it seemed they were going in the right directions and checking the correct screens. Though one element I forgot to factor in for was prioritizing Hamachi on the connection. Once that was set they were able to join and play with great ease. After the PC issue was resolved I accepted a payment of playing one round involving "Risk:Reinvented" got stomped (I blame Putin...)but definitely like how the game encourages a bit more aggression as compared to the original version which seems to result in many stalemates.
The evening however didn't end there. Between these intervals I kept in contact with another individual who I would be going bowling with later that evening. Our first game was pretty bad but we both scored around the 100-120 range. For myself the best round of the evening was when I 148, best game so far. The rest of the games were ok, not great and not too bad. Unfortunately the bowling buddy couldn't get the turkey he wanted but we were both definitely glad to get a few overdue rounds in. He also hinted on a new rhythm based set-up (that I also heard from random person at putt-putt) that was now running in Colonial Heights. I'll need to take a trip there in the near future. When we finished bowling I dropped'em back off at home and drove back.
Wednesday:
This one was another fun day. Woke up and a couple hours into the work day and via discussion through facebook was grated another opportunity to assist someone. Recently their engine light had been turning on and need it checked out. So after the seemingly slow work day (glad it was slow today) meet'em over at the car place and drove down to Micheal's to pick up some supplies. For board game and tabletop purposes I wanted to have a few extra bags on hand to store pieces and simplify a few things. Was getting a bit tired of opening up a box of catan and seeing the chit spread all over the place whenever I opened the box. Not to mention that sense I purchased the new risk game and the only way the pieces were separated were by dividers along with Quelf cards could use some sort of repackaging method...well you get the idea. So as a result we browsed the store, observed random objectives, bought our respective supplies and departed from the store.
After this we went over to IHOP to grab dinner. Nothing spectacular happen here except for consuming food...unless you thinking eating food in a restaurant is awesome or out the norm. Or find it odd that someone would go to there after filling up the back of there car with food, but that's about it. The Chauffeur stylings of Tonberry continued as the next stop was Target to pick up some pet food. They didn't have the exact type needed but there was a substitute that may do the trick. This conclude the travel portion of the trip which the last bit consisted of general conversation. I was a bit stuck and tucked into my chair for a bit as I must admit I still find the individual I chilled with attractive so I was only able to converse until bloodflow was only working towards one part of my body. Which at this point i departed drove back home took care of a few things and went off to bed.
[b]Thursday:[/b]
Another fairly busy day (and another reason how his putting his friends first and study second...catch-up this week, god knows). For this day I decided to work from home sense there was the anticipation of having another friend come visit and assist him with building his computer. He had never put in a process before and was freaking out about bent pins, putting it in the wrong way, misalignment, collateral self implodedment (made up word!) of the universe and extratransversal (another word made up of other words!) reverse of the timeline paradox. So pretty much my day consist of more waiting and troubleshooting a few issues. At one point he arrived we unloaded his car and tied a few lose ends and we started work. There was a brief period in which I play a demo of a game on steam but I'll put that in its own post.
This next section just involves the assembly of the computer. It maybe interesting/boring for some so you can choose to skip it or just read ahead. Without further a due.
To began I would like to thank the individual who bought the computer to allow myself another friend help assemble it. For myself it definitely expanded my mindset as to how top of the line motherboards for intel are designed. First to note the last time I had built a computer was about 2 years ago and it wasn't anything complicated. This was definitely a fun experience. Admittedly the process installation was the most enjoyable and painfully. We definitely encountered a few issues. For example when we removed the PnP cap from the top of the process two of the pieces broke off and we had to fetch them from underneath the CPU claps was not fun but my dad did provide a small array of tools to help us :). Next was the heat sink. Another great reaction from the fellow who hadn't seen one up close.
After a couple handful of "That's what she said jokes" and realizing that we need to unscrew the mobo from the case again we were able to apply thermal paste on the CPU with Heat Sink on top. Another +1 on the amusement meter was his amazement at how simple it really was to install a processor unit. Though it must be noted that if ya screw it up that's no fun. The last hic-up we encounter were the screws falling out the motherboard but this was quickly remedied. Dean did an excellent job with the wiring and the few hours worked payed off as our friend stood completely mesmerized (and soon to be brother's bench pressing tool) of new computer. It shuts down in about 3 seconds which is a bit absurd but he seemed quite please as there was constant thanks.
For dinner we all went to IHOP (after 2 trips I'm haven't gone above 180 so confused) ordered some food. Somehow Ali (friend with new computer, bit tired of typing in the vague) got yellow stuff in his Chocolate Milk that looked like eggs. That's about it though. We went back played a round of Catan as he sat absorbed by his new machine. Evening concluded shortly after that with watching some HHDDVVDDBVD and bleep bloop related videos. Have to say I slept well that night.
Today and Ongoing
Should be an interesting day going forward, there's plans tonight but no idea exactly what's going down. So will wait and see chillage of some sort and maybe a nap as I would mind a tiny recharge. That's about it this weeks been a blast and definitely enjoy hanging out with all you guys. Thinking about booking out of work early so I can run the scripts in a timely manner and perhaps finish that Reccetear demo. That's about all. La ta everyone.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Well Over due on a Blog Post
I'll be providing an update in the near future...in the mean enjoy this youtube channel with a lot of Acceleration Suguri Music. Just search "Suguri" in the channel.
Monday, August 30, 2010
Start of a new week
Alright well another day has come and gone with me plotting sleep in the near future. So lets get this started.
The work day wasn't too bad we have a new room where everyone is suppose to work in now. There's a total of 4 power outlets in the wall, 2 ethernet cables, no windows, 2 whiteboards, 1 door, and 2 sets of tables... I'm loving it so far. The main complaints have been of course, 'nothing on the walls' and ' there's no windows' kind of made me laugh inside. When I told another co-worker about those complaints at lunch he agreed that those were the two best features. Aside from that the day was still same old same old. Worked on request in the queue and listen to Harry Potter book 2 for the most part. The day after lunch kind of went slow, the scripts are fairly automated and the only other issue is QTP crashing when I'm going to focus on tomorrow.
After work came back home, worked out on some weights and watched Daria. Almost done with the series only have the movie left then need something new to watch, might pick up Code Geass (sp?) at some point an old roommate of mine came over and we played about a good 2 hours of Mario Tennis before we finally won a round against an Intense opponent. Part of me believes I I subconsciously choose one of the most difficult combination in the game. Though through the trails and tribulation we had finally succeeded. After which we parted ways (and I maybe over at his place tomorrow) and called it a night. Now I'm here blogging for a bit before I head off to bed.
Honestly this is the first day I actually just sat down and played video games. Gosh knows what else is going down this week. Suppose to help one friend with building a computer, another 2 trouble shooting a computer issue, might take a trip to Ohio for a job interview... so much stuff that could potentially go down this week. In either case going to head off to bed. Night all!
The work day wasn't too bad we have a new room where everyone is suppose to work in now. There's a total of 4 power outlets in the wall, 2 ethernet cables, no windows, 2 whiteboards, 1 door, and 2 sets of tables... I'm loving it so far. The main complaints have been of course, 'nothing on the walls' and ' there's no windows' kind of made me laugh inside. When I told another co-worker about those complaints at lunch he agreed that those were the two best features. Aside from that the day was still same old same old. Worked on request in the queue and listen to Harry Potter book 2 for the most part. The day after lunch kind of went slow, the scripts are fairly automated and the only other issue is QTP crashing when I'm going to focus on tomorrow.
After work came back home, worked out on some weights and watched Daria. Almost done with the series only have the movie left then need something new to watch, might pick up Code Geass (sp?) at some point an old roommate of mine came over and we played about a good 2 hours of Mario Tennis before we finally won a round against an Intense opponent. Part of me believes I I subconsciously choose one of the most difficult combination in the game. Though through the trails and tribulation we had finally succeeded. After which we parted ways (and I maybe over at his place tomorrow) and called it a night. Now I'm here blogging for a bit before I head off to bed.
Honestly this is the first day I actually just sat down and played video games. Gosh knows what else is going down this week. Suppose to help one friend with building a computer, another 2 trouble shooting a computer issue, might take a trip to Ohio for a job interview... so much stuff that could potentially go down this week. In either case going to head off to bed. Night all!
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Objectives for the Week Ahead
Stop by Ben Franklin and locate small tiny plastic bags (similar to Catan).
Practice a bit more of a Final Fantasy music on the keyboard/piano.
Accumulate a reasonable amount of sleep (6-8 hours).
Choose a room and organize it.
Began/Continue to read on a nightly basis.
Clean bathroom.
Workout everyday.
Practice a bit more of a Final Fantasy music on the keyboard/piano.
Accumulate a reasonable amount of sleep (6-8 hours).
Choose a room and organize it.
Began/Continue to read on a nightly basis.
Clean bathroom.
Workout everyday.
Post Beach Vacation Update
Alright so the beach vacation is complete and I'd have to say the break from the norm was definitely needed. I'll go ahead and provide a day by day analysis as to what events occured through Friday, Saturday and Sunday. So here we go.
Friday:
Friday woke up and decided to work from home for that day. To be honest though for the most part I was pretty lazy/easy day overall. Not a whole lot of work due and the only thing on the agenda was to pack up. Though the packing up hit a bit of a hiatus and really wasn't done till last minute. Though even with the hick-ups (and being 10-15 minutes late) I wen to my sister's place and then we went over to pick up my mom. I initially was driving (for about 5 minutes) but my mom wanted to drive instead so basically got out and chilled in the back listening to harry potter for most of the trip. Once we got to the hotel we order pizza (stupidly overpriced pizza) and went to our respective rooms (suite style I got the living room) and head off to bed. I didn't crash till a bit later in the evening. Spent most of the time watching Adult Swim sense it had been a while and my dad doesn't get the channel as part of his standard cable package.
Saturday:
We woke up fairly early like 10/11ish and from there (after room service for breakfast) went to the mall. Usually at this point my mom and sister shop for cloths and I head off to the arcade...what I didn't realize was the arcade was no longer there. Though the plus side of it all was that there was Barnes and Nobles with the A+ book I was reading in my free time. So I called up my sister informed her of the new location and read there for a good bit. Once we were done there we went back to the hotel. I took a quick nap and at some point we went to Lone Star for dinner. It was either this or Olive Garden but didn't matter to me which we choose. Dinner there was alright, took them a while to get our food out so it was 1/2 off. On top of that once I got my food (chicken tenders and fries) the chicken was cold so sent it back. Finishing from there we stopped by a 7-11 and shortly after a Toys-R-Us. I went ahead and grabbed Risk redesign, its a new version of Risk that came out that makes the game go a bit faster. I did find a piano there and could play a tiny bit of the Aeris theme...seeing how my dad has two pianos I might practice it in the future (or find the score sheet to make life easier from guessing). As for my sister and mom they picked up a gift for one of my friend's sons. After the Toys-R-Us adventure we went back to the hotel and went swimming in the pool. Pool wasn't shabby, it had been a bit so it was good to get in the water. I was opposed to it at first but after some consideration I don't regret it. My sister got bored after 15 minutes so at that point we departed. Not much else happen at the end of the day went to bed early.
Sunday:
Today has definitely been the day of rest. Woke up and we left the hotel by 11ish. Though we hit a good bit of traffic so we weren't back in Richmond till 2ish. After we got back I spent most of the day watching the MLG Raleigh stream for Warcraft 3v3 and zoning in and out of consciousness. I might head off to bed early catch up on sleep or reading. Not feeling like doing too much. That's about it for today thanks for reading :).
Friday:
Friday woke up and decided to work from home for that day. To be honest though for the most part I was pretty lazy/easy day overall. Not a whole lot of work due and the only thing on the agenda was to pack up. Though the packing up hit a bit of a hiatus and really wasn't done till last minute. Though even with the hick-ups (and being 10-15 minutes late) I wen to my sister's place and then we went over to pick up my mom. I initially was driving (for about 5 minutes) but my mom wanted to drive instead so basically got out and chilled in the back listening to harry potter for most of the trip. Once we got to the hotel we order pizza (stupidly overpriced pizza) and went to our respective rooms (suite style I got the living room) and head off to bed. I didn't crash till a bit later in the evening. Spent most of the time watching Adult Swim sense it had been a while and my dad doesn't get the channel as part of his standard cable package.
Saturday:
We woke up fairly early like 10/11ish and from there (after room service for breakfast) went to the mall. Usually at this point my mom and sister shop for cloths and I head off to the arcade...what I didn't realize was the arcade was no longer there. Though the plus side of it all was that there was Barnes and Nobles with the A+ book I was reading in my free time. So I called up my sister informed her of the new location and read there for a good bit. Once we were done there we went back to the hotel. I took a quick nap and at some point we went to Lone Star for dinner. It was either this or Olive Garden but didn't matter to me which we choose. Dinner there was alright, took them a while to get our food out so it was 1/2 off. On top of that once I got my food (chicken tenders and fries) the chicken was cold so sent it back. Finishing from there we stopped by a 7-11 and shortly after a Toys-R-Us. I went ahead and grabbed Risk redesign, its a new version of Risk that came out that makes the game go a bit faster. I did find a piano there and could play a tiny bit of the Aeris theme...seeing how my dad has two pianos I might practice it in the future (or find the score sheet to make life easier from guessing). As for my sister and mom they picked up a gift for one of my friend's sons. After the Toys-R-Us adventure we went back to the hotel and went swimming in the pool. Pool wasn't shabby, it had been a bit so it was good to get in the water. I was opposed to it at first but after some consideration I don't regret it. My sister got bored after 15 minutes so at that point we departed. Not much else happen at the end of the day went to bed early.
Sunday:
Today has definitely been the day of rest. Woke up and we left the hotel by 11ish. Though we hit a good bit of traffic so we weren't back in Richmond till 2ish. After we got back I spent most of the day watching the MLG Raleigh stream for Warcraft 3v3 and zoning in and out of consciousness. I might head off to bed early catch up on sleep or reading. Not feeling like doing too much. That's about it for today thanks for reading :).
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Bit of thinking (me = unplugged)
*Warning I did not spell check/proofread this, may god have mercy on your soul*
At first I contemplated over this but then realize that the more (turns off TV) I think about it the less good it does. Honestly the best approach is to just sit down and start writing whatever comes to your mind...so here we go.
A lot of stuff has been crossing the brain as of recently some I like and others I don't like. Finding it a bit unsettling that helping other people out is starting to unnerve me a bit. Like the first thing that comes to mind is "Do I actually enjoy making people happy". The answer I have to say is sometimes. Ask me that same question back in the early years of college and the answer would have been totally different. The joys I use to get from helping other people even as a result of screwing myself over were still worth the effort (even if at times it sacrifice grades). Now a days I've become more of a troll, I do help people yes but there's times where I come out of it thinking 'wow I'm a bit annoyed at myself for helping them there'.
Guess it could be due in part that I'd rather have someone figure out something rather than me tell them. Or if I tell someone how to solve something and then they come back later asking the same question. Bit annoying to be honest. I feel live I've gained this dislike towards helping others in such a way. On the same accord though i really do want to get back to helping other people...let alone if I'm studying for A+ certification I should feel like its contradictory...but really its not to me. When people call into the help desk you realize that most of them (not all of them) are clueless you so you expect a bit of computer illiteracy. But ya know like people I've been hanging out for 3-5 years, playing games with, helping them troubleshoot repeatable issues, you'd think some of it sink in.
Prime example tonight while I was typing this post out had two friends encounter an issue with openings. I'm not exactly an elephant in terms of memory but it does quite well related to tech issues. The main problem was involving opening the ports to allow each to connect to there respective games. Came to me to help troubleshoot in the moment I said open ports they were clueless. I also want to blame the current game market as well. Its honestly spoiled gosh knows how many people knowledge wise in terms of opening ports, forwarding packets, configuring to run in various comparability modes...bit frustrating. Cause these same problems have occurred with Diablo 2, Unreal Tournament, Puzzle Quest, and the list goes on. Given its a bit late as I can't recall a majority of the titles so I'll give some credit for forgetfulness.
I must admit in terms of intelligence I honestly don't view myself as that bright of a person. Yea there's times where I go 'Bryant your a genius' or 'wow I'm on a roll today' but in all honestly its just self encouragement. In the grand schema of things (in respect to work and friends) I have to say I am actually smart. Just the amount of non-con-valuated (?) thought that comes to my mind isn't shabby. It could be that other people aren't that bright (I can believe that) but I honestly can't 100% believe that. Though I do enjoy being around techies that make me awestruck who can just do stuff on the fly that I sit down and contemplate over for a good bit. Perfect example of this is the other side of our team that deals with mostly Unix related work...wouldn't mind doing that constantly expanding the knowledge.
Though from a general knowledge standpoint I'm not all that bright. Quite terrible with directions, have a difficult point at times formulating thoughts and stuff that comes natural to others I'm a bit slow at. It kind of bums me a bit because sometimes I think I'm brilliant when I realize its not all true. Hell some people that might read this may believe it was formulated by a 9th grader or something. In all honest though I wouldn't mind improving a bit in some of those aspects. Probably one of the main reason I picked up blogging again to hopefully remove bad habits involving train of thought and expand the vocabulary a bit. God knows I won't stay on topic.
This leads me to one of my most dreaded thoughts...the future. A part of my life I hate thinking about. First it was the goal of getting through high school, finishing college, then landing a job. Yup I've done all that but really, not feeling motivated anymore. I've attempted establishing relationships (one totally) and while it felt good just didn't seem right. It felt like another dead end initially like 'here's your life sir, you'll spend time with this other individual talking about day to day stuff with physically enjoyment and then continue living'. It just didn't feel right like there was no scope and even without one the scope still feel small, tiny, live and die.
After 3 years I have formulated new goals from getting experience in the field. Obtaining a couple certifications but once that's done where does it put me. New job, new place, new place new experiences but when that said in done what next? Will I be feeling burned out another 3 years from now in my 30s being just the same grumpy middle age man limited by the amount of knowledge. I honestly don't know the trip to Ohio is sounding better but the short term (3-5 years) end result seems to be the same.
It could be me just assuming though...heck I know its a 100% assumption what I posted up there but history is a mean mistress and is very good at repeating itself. Not to mention there's that uncertain aspect of seeking a relationship. I wouldn't mind getting back into one but would actually like to date someone (the last 3 were a bit up there) with a more eased back 'sex' drive per se. Unlike typically guys I don't think with the other head too often. To be honest I haven't done that sort of activity in a couple days (which is odd for me as I tend to do it as a ease off sorta deal). So I know I have built up emotions if stuff like that is going down. I'm not too worried there though if something or lack of something happens there, its not much I can do. Its like going to Disney World for the 1st time and guessing everything that's going to occur...not likely. Plus I feel I'm taking a step away from my dad's pimpness...most likely a good thing.
Physically I'm fairly comfortable with myself. Wouldn't mind losing about 10 lbs but honestly not in a hurry. If I somehow shoot back up to 190 then well the ddr machine and me will become good friends real soon, either that or running will become my new hobby. I'm glad I took a break from P90X today the constant soreness was really starting to drag on me. It doesn't take me 7-10 seconds to get up from the computer now. I actually can move *gasp*. I might pick it up again but unsure yet. I'll definitely keep working out though as it makes me feel good and supplies the energy.
Due to all the above think my overall motivation is down a bit from the norm. Ya the exercising and everything is helping a bit but not sure how to best approach getting the 'old' bryant mentality back. I mean I have my old emotions and passion back for things which is great but if it hurts from time to time then what's the point, might as well just tune them out and feel nothing again. Now looking at my current self my perfectionist side doesn't really have a presences anymore. I have more of a 'well its good enough' feel to life now rather than 'well that's 4 greats its freakin terrible', 'I was off one minute getting to work' or 'I stayed in bed for 5 minutes'. I tend to throw whatevers at these now...that could be a possible issue. Then again it could be a ton of stuff.
Now considering it, it could be that I really need a challenge. Cause looking at all my current activities none of them really provoke me and go 'well you failed do it all over again'...think that's what makes me different back then, then I am now. For example time attacks. One thing I rather enjoyed was the amount of precision involved in making sure the pixels were perfect to go up the wall correctly. Have a good bit relating to IT class. INFO250 it either worked or it didn't A or F (one of the seven who passed). INFO495 SAP Introduction, if you did everything right the first 2-3 weeks then the rest of the class wasn't as bad (still nightmarish) if you screwed up then well guess what start over your screwed out 2-3 weeks. I miss being penalized for when I screw up, the pressure being so great that you really didn't want to. Final exams, are probably the only test I excel at due to boarderline grades of doing ok on test (MGMT325 (?) Test 1: D, Test 2: C, Test 3: D, Final: A....wtf)....never thought about it from an academic standpoint but makes sense...minus the bad teachers who couldn't teach.
So it just sounds like I need a challenge, but it seems in today's world of 'its ok to use 4th generation programming languages' , 'do as reps as you can', 'oh you died start from this last checkpoint' it seems more difficult to have something like brought to you. Now when I mean difficulty I don't mean insane and abstract like Zelda Parellel worlds, Metroid Redesign, carving objects out of wood, painting, or predicting variability of electric flow in a power case. Something more along the lines of...well honestly no idea guess that's what I'm looking for...bit hard to do though when the scheduled full with job hunting, working, hanging out with friends, helping friends out (which I enjoy of course as long as its related to life issues), and studying for A+ certification. It could be bad time management as gaming has been limited this week due to the above.
That's another odd thing I started P90X this week and haven't had the urge to play games. Could be due to the twitching hands or what have you but even then could easily do something simple like tower defense. The hunger for gaming has been low on the digital basis. Did play Catan tonight which broke the streak but overall haven't touched it much. Don't get me wrong there's several titles I want to play/wish to play (WoW: Cata, Sol Survivor, TQ and many others)...just....just not feeling it. I'm sure I'll pinpoint it at some point but don't feel its really high priority.
I must admit though based on the results of using various dating sites and submitting applications I could definitely work on my overall life style in terms of making myself more desirable to potential mates and employers. Might pick up volunteering again as I don't think I'm too far from Willow Lawn now...could be totally wrong on this though. Either that or be more diligent about studying for A+. I must admit though if it wasn't for that one individual that took me to the library that day I probably wouldn't have consider taking the new course in life I'm currently on.
Sometimes I must admit it is tempting to go back to school or just quit my job order a bunch of books from Amazon, put my computer in the closet and just read mindlessly. Use to do something similar at the VCU library. With times between studies I would either go to the 2nd floor of the commons or 3rd floor of the new school of business building or 4th floor of VCU Monroe campus library and read. Hell might even read the chapter twice for comprehension purposes (comes from my dad I know that for sure he tends to read everything twice). Either that or become a Monk but seeing how I am an IT major and still enjoy using the computer don't see that happening any time soon.
Though as far as IT majors go have to say I'm probably one of the not so interest person in the fields in terms of keeping up with the latest and greatest. For example I still use my Razor for a cellphone, not a smart phone my Razor. Why? Simple fact is I use it as a cell phone and not a computer. If I need to check facebook, twitter, play some random app, do what have you I can usually wait till home to attend to such things. The only reason I tend to keep my computer updated is to play some of the more up to date titles, which isn't all that many now a days. Though i must admit the blue glow that comes from the case does make me smile.
Ok so after searching my mind for a good bit, I feel as though I've dumped out all my thoughts into this text format. In all honesty it feels pretty good and is probably exactly what I need to do. Some of the stuff I typed I do recall while others was just thoughts on the fly I'll read tomorrow morning and smile remembering that such silly things crossed my mind at 1:30 on the 27th of August 2010. None the less I'll know that I'll be heading to bed with a head with slightly less thoughts. It definitely feels good.
At first I contemplated over this but then realize that the more (turns off TV) I think about it the less good it does. Honestly the best approach is to just sit down and start writing whatever comes to your mind...so here we go.
A lot of stuff has been crossing the brain as of recently some I like and others I don't like. Finding it a bit unsettling that helping other people out is starting to unnerve me a bit. Like the first thing that comes to mind is "Do I actually enjoy making people happy". The answer I have to say is sometimes. Ask me that same question back in the early years of college and the answer would have been totally different. The joys I use to get from helping other people even as a result of screwing myself over were still worth the effort (even if at times it sacrifice grades). Now a days I've become more of a troll, I do help people yes but there's times where I come out of it thinking 'wow I'm a bit annoyed at myself for helping them there'.
Guess it could be due in part that I'd rather have someone figure out something rather than me tell them. Or if I tell someone how to solve something and then they come back later asking the same question. Bit annoying to be honest. I feel live I've gained this dislike towards helping others in such a way. On the same accord though i really do want to get back to helping other people...let alone if I'm studying for A+ certification I should feel like its contradictory...but really its not to me. When people call into the help desk you realize that most of them (not all of them) are clueless you so you expect a bit of computer illiteracy. But ya know like people I've been hanging out for 3-5 years, playing games with, helping them troubleshoot repeatable issues, you'd think some of it sink in.
Prime example tonight while I was typing this post out had two friends encounter an issue with openings. I'm not exactly an elephant in terms of memory but it does quite well related to tech issues. The main problem was involving opening the ports to allow each to connect to there respective games. Came to me to help troubleshoot in the moment I said open ports they were clueless. I also want to blame the current game market as well. Its honestly spoiled gosh knows how many people knowledge wise in terms of opening ports, forwarding packets, configuring to run in various comparability modes...bit frustrating. Cause these same problems have occurred with Diablo 2, Unreal Tournament, Puzzle Quest, and the list goes on. Given its a bit late as I can't recall a majority of the titles so I'll give some credit for forgetfulness.
I must admit in terms of intelligence I honestly don't view myself as that bright of a person. Yea there's times where I go 'Bryant your a genius' or 'wow I'm on a roll today' but in all honestly its just self encouragement. In the grand schema of things (in respect to work and friends) I have to say I am actually smart. Just the amount of non-con-valuated (?) thought that comes to my mind isn't shabby. It could be that other people aren't that bright (I can believe that) but I honestly can't 100% believe that. Though I do enjoy being around techies that make me awestruck who can just do stuff on the fly that I sit down and contemplate over for a good bit. Perfect example of this is the other side of our team that deals with mostly Unix related work...wouldn't mind doing that constantly expanding the knowledge.
Though from a general knowledge standpoint I'm not all that bright. Quite terrible with directions, have a difficult point at times formulating thoughts and stuff that comes natural to others I'm a bit slow at. It kind of bums me a bit because sometimes I think I'm brilliant when I realize its not all true. Hell some people that might read this may believe it was formulated by a 9th grader or something. In all honest though I wouldn't mind improving a bit in some of those aspects. Probably one of the main reason I picked up blogging again to hopefully remove bad habits involving train of thought and expand the vocabulary a bit. God knows I won't stay on topic.
This leads me to one of my most dreaded thoughts...the future. A part of my life I hate thinking about. First it was the goal of getting through high school, finishing college, then landing a job. Yup I've done all that but really, not feeling motivated anymore. I've attempted establishing relationships (one totally) and while it felt good just didn't seem right. It felt like another dead end initially like 'here's your life sir, you'll spend time with this other individual talking about day to day stuff with physically enjoyment and then continue living'. It just didn't feel right like there was no scope and even without one the scope still feel small, tiny, live and die.
After 3 years I have formulated new goals from getting experience in the field. Obtaining a couple certifications but once that's done where does it put me. New job, new place, new place new experiences but when that said in done what next? Will I be feeling burned out another 3 years from now in my 30s being just the same grumpy middle age man limited by the amount of knowledge. I honestly don't know the trip to Ohio is sounding better but the short term (3-5 years) end result seems to be the same.
It could be me just assuming though...heck I know its a 100% assumption what I posted up there but history is a mean mistress and is very good at repeating itself. Not to mention there's that uncertain aspect of seeking a relationship. I wouldn't mind getting back into one but would actually like to date someone (the last 3 were a bit up there) with a more eased back 'sex' drive per se. Unlike typically guys I don't think with the other head too often. To be honest I haven't done that sort of activity in a couple days (which is odd for me as I tend to do it as a ease off sorta deal). So I know I have built up emotions if stuff like that is going down. I'm not too worried there though if something or lack of something happens there, its not much I can do. Its like going to Disney World for the 1st time and guessing everything that's going to occur...not likely. Plus I feel I'm taking a step away from my dad's pimpness...most likely a good thing.
Physically I'm fairly comfortable with myself. Wouldn't mind losing about 10 lbs but honestly not in a hurry. If I somehow shoot back up to 190 then well the ddr machine and me will become good friends real soon, either that or running will become my new hobby. I'm glad I took a break from P90X today the constant soreness was really starting to drag on me. It doesn't take me 7-10 seconds to get up from the computer now. I actually can move *gasp*. I might pick it up again but unsure yet. I'll definitely keep working out though as it makes me feel good and supplies the energy.
Due to all the above think my overall motivation is down a bit from the norm. Ya the exercising and everything is helping a bit but not sure how to best approach getting the 'old' bryant mentality back. I mean I have my old emotions and passion back for things which is great but if it hurts from time to time then what's the point, might as well just tune them out and feel nothing again. Now looking at my current self my perfectionist side doesn't really have a presences anymore. I have more of a 'well its good enough' feel to life now rather than 'well that's 4 greats its freakin terrible', 'I was off one minute getting to work' or 'I stayed in bed for 5 minutes'. I tend to throw whatevers at these now...that could be a possible issue. Then again it could be a ton of stuff.
Now considering it, it could be that I really need a challenge. Cause looking at all my current activities none of them really provoke me and go 'well you failed do it all over again'...think that's what makes me different back then, then I am now. For example time attacks. One thing I rather enjoyed was the amount of precision involved in making sure the pixels were perfect to go up the wall correctly. Have a good bit relating to IT class. INFO250 it either worked or it didn't A or F (one of the seven who passed). INFO495 SAP Introduction, if you did everything right the first 2-3 weeks then the rest of the class wasn't as bad (still nightmarish) if you screwed up then well guess what start over your screwed out 2-3 weeks. I miss being penalized for when I screw up, the pressure being so great that you really didn't want to. Final exams, are probably the only test I excel at due to boarderline grades of doing ok on test (MGMT325 (?) Test 1: D, Test 2: C, Test 3: D, Final: A....wtf)....never thought about it from an academic standpoint but makes sense...minus the bad teachers who couldn't teach.
So it just sounds like I need a challenge, but it seems in today's world of 'its ok to use 4th generation programming languages' , 'do as reps as you can', 'oh you died start from this last checkpoint' it seems more difficult to have something like brought to you. Now when I mean difficulty I don't mean insane and abstract like Zelda Parellel worlds, Metroid Redesign, carving objects out of wood, painting, or predicting variability of electric flow in a power case. Something more along the lines of...well honestly no idea guess that's what I'm looking for...bit hard to do though when the scheduled full with job hunting, working, hanging out with friends, helping friends out (which I enjoy of course as long as its related to life issues), and studying for A+ certification. It could be bad time management as gaming has been limited this week due to the above.
That's another odd thing I started P90X this week and haven't had the urge to play games. Could be due to the twitching hands or what have you but even then could easily do something simple like tower defense. The hunger for gaming has been low on the digital basis. Did play Catan tonight which broke the streak but overall haven't touched it much. Don't get me wrong there's several titles I want to play/wish to play (WoW: Cata, Sol Survivor, TQ and many others)...just....just not feeling it. I'm sure I'll pinpoint it at some point but don't feel its really high priority.
I must admit though based on the results of using various dating sites and submitting applications I could definitely work on my overall life style in terms of making myself more desirable to potential mates and employers. Might pick up volunteering again as I don't think I'm too far from Willow Lawn now...could be totally wrong on this though. Either that or be more diligent about studying for A+. I must admit though if it wasn't for that one individual that took me to the library that day I probably wouldn't have consider taking the new course in life I'm currently on.
Sometimes I must admit it is tempting to go back to school or just quit my job order a bunch of books from Amazon, put my computer in the closet and just read mindlessly. Use to do something similar at the VCU library. With times between studies I would either go to the 2nd floor of the commons or 3rd floor of the new school of business building or 4th floor of VCU Monroe campus library and read. Hell might even read the chapter twice for comprehension purposes (comes from my dad I know that for sure he tends to read everything twice). Either that or become a Monk but seeing how I am an IT major and still enjoy using the computer don't see that happening any time soon.
Though as far as IT majors go have to say I'm probably one of the not so interest person in the fields in terms of keeping up with the latest and greatest. For example I still use my Razor for a cellphone, not a smart phone my Razor. Why? Simple fact is I use it as a cell phone and not a computer. If I need to check facebook, twitter, play some random app, do what have you I can usually wait till home to attend to such things. The only reason I tend to keep my computer updated is to play some of the more up to date titles, which isn't all that many now a days. Though i must admit the blue glow that comes from the case does make me smile.
Ok so after searching my mind for a good bit, I feel as though I've dumped out all my thoughts into this text format. In all honesty it feels pretty good and is probably exactly what I need to do. Some of the stuff I typed I do recall while others was just thoughts on the fly I'll read tomorrow morning and smile remembering that such silly things crossed my mind at 1:30 on the 27th of August 2010. None the less I'll know that I'll be heading to bed with a head with slightly less thoughts. It definitely feels good.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Physically and Mentally exhausted (in a good way)
As of recently I've been making a good amount of strides in terms of improving my lifestyle. Been doing workouts every day (which have been pretty killer), going to bed at a reasonable hour (minus tonight) and eating fairly well (also minus tonight, lol). Definitely feeling better about myself overall and starting to feel my willpower come back slowly. The one positive / negative effect of all this working out has been killing my arms which as a result has lead to a good bit less gaming and reversely more productive activities. As my hand/arm is shaking then I can't play many games that require high APM let alone some focus.
The other thing I'd like to note tonight is that definitely made someone feel better. Recently she's been through a lot mentally and felt that it was definitely necessary to hang out. So glad we did. Plans for the evening consisted of walking to the Silver Diner having a meal and walking back. During that period much randomness ensued and many ideas were scattered all over the place. Once we arrived at the diner each of us had a reasonable meal (good bit of water) and a small carry out. Trip back was pleasant as well due to the shorten root taken. What happen next definitely got me thinking.
Have to say there was much discussed that evening, mainly about physically presentation, mental wants from potential individual partners, motivational causes/purposes along with many others. It did get me thinking though, not sure where to begin. Regret I guess was a bit there in my mind but always wish the other the best. One thing I've come to count on more than anything else is friends. Was quite glad to see a friend I haven't seen in a while (as I always am, reminds me I need to hang out with the VCU kids in the future) as even with distance one should definitely keep up with people. In all honesty its probably the only set back to my dad's house but that's a rant for another day. A bit more on topic note it really did make me wonder what I'm looking for and how can I help other achieve it. At first I was tired of playing the 'me' game and looking to play the help other game....actually between this and watching the Colbert Report (on mute) I lost my train of thought...not to mention is 2:05 a.m. off to bed night all.
The other thing I'd like to note tonight is that definitely made someone feel better. Recently she's been through a lot mentally and felt that it was definitely necessary to hang out. So glad we did. Plans for the evening consisted of walking to the Silver Diner having a meal and walking back. During that period much randomness ensued and many ideas were scattered all over the place. Once we arrived at the diner each of us had a reasonable meal (good bit of water) and a small carry out. Trip back was pleasant as well due to the shorten root taken. What happen next definitely got me thinking.
Have to say there was much discussed that evening, mainly about physically presentation, mental wants from potential individual partners, motivational causes/purposes along with many others. It did get me thinking though, not sure where to begin. Regret I guess was a bit there in my mind but always wish the other the best. One thing I've come to count on more than anything else is friends. Was quite glad to see a friend I haven't seen in a while (as I always am, reminds me I need to hang out with the VCU kids in the future) as even with distance one should definitely keep up with people. In all honesty its probably the only set back to my dad's house but that's a rant for another day. A bit more on topic note it really did make me wonder what I'm looking for and how can I help other achieve it. At first I was tired of playing the 'me' game and looking to play the help other game....actually between this and watching the Colbert Report (on mute) I lost my train of thought...not to mention is 2:05 a.m. off to bed night all.
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