Category Archives: games

Video games, board games, card games, or roleplaying games. Games. Games. Games.

Blog Stays at /log

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Remember when I said I was going to move the blog under the main page, I lied. Or rather, I changed my mind. I’m going to leave it right where it’s at /log. I mean, it’s a blog, it should be off on the side and the main page should be something flashy and cool. Now I just need to come up with something flashy and cool. Maybe I’ll even put up some more pages.

I’m a big fan of the way my posts get imported into Facebook with that giant RSS feed logo or my PSN card. Makes every update doubly annoying. Gotta figure out how that works/why it’s happening and make it stop. And I didn’t really do anything, but the twitter posts are getting imported once again.

My brother picked up a PS3, and unlike when he had a Xbox he’s online with it. I’m thinking I’ll be getting my football on… nope, not gonna happen. He doesn’t want to buy Madden 10, he’s going to wait for Madden 11 to come out next August. That’ll work nicely for me, in that Kevin and Jay have probably decided never to buy a Madden game again. Without them I won’t have the leverage I need to get Denis to buy next year’s game. Joel might be coerced in if everybody else was playing, but without them, it ain’t gonna happen. So all my football dreams are shattered. It’ll probably end up being me and my bro playing Madden come next year… I love it when a plan comes together.

Zachary is involved with a girl now, according to his Facebook page, I have no other details. Haven’t heard anything more about Tyler and his lady friend, beyond him wanting to borrow the car. Karin… yeah, I don’t know what she’s up to. Kirra is making noises about coming to stay with us, she’s saying end of April, but I’ll believe it when I see it. Rascal (Crooktail) is doing better, swelling is gone and he’s actually got some flick in his tail at this point, but it does have a nice crook in it about an inch-and-a-half from the base. I keep meaning to take a picture, but I’m lazy and forgetful.

Tasha and I have decided not to move. We’re going to stay put for another year. We’re in a nice enough place and the rent isn’t going up all that much. It’s mostly a financial decision, seems like the bills always roll in when you’re saving your pennies for something. We  don’t hate it here, we’d like a house, but Tasha is just getting regular paychecks again and we’re going to just sit tight for another year. As a plus, none of our friends will have to relearn where we live. I am toying with the idea of getting a second carport, it’s silly but I think the one next to us is available and that’d be almost like having a two car garage and as such my bike wouldn’t be nearly as crowded and I wouldn’t have to worry about the neighbors bumping my car.

That’s it for now.

Light, Write, Play

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I spent far too much time working on the exterior lighting at one of my branches today. What I thought was going to be maybe an hour ended up taking all day; and I get to go back with parts tomorrow. Such fun. Kinda screwed my plan for the day and subsequently my plan for the rest of the month. Now I’m going to have to scramble around tomorrow to get everything done.

NaNoWriMo is right around the corner. Sunday will be the first day of actually writing the novel. I feel pretty good about the notes I’ve got and the outline I’ve put together. There are holes. Holes in character. Holes in the story. But they’re good holes. The kind of holes that I expect to be able to fill easily as I write and get a better handle on the story, characters, and relationships within the novel. Like I said, I feel good about what I’ve got and I think this is going to be a good story.

Jay and I have the bye in our Madden league. Denis played the Rams tonight and lost. They beat me a couple weeks back. They played like superstars in both games, which is great for a team that is 0-7 in the real world. Between both our games the Rams grabbed a total of 8 interceptions. I think the AI online is being handled by a supercomputer. It’s maddening because I’ve been tweaking my settings to duplicate the AI performance online and I can’t seem to do it. Makes practicing a little difficult. Okay Kevin, play your game so we can roll the week and go face-to-face, Packers vs. Lions.

Standing Desk, Maybe, We'll See

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I lost my fantasy football game. **SIGH** That leaves me with a 1-6 record and a sinking feeling about the rest of the season. Damn you, Roy Williams. Damn you, Calvin Johnson. And a big FU to all my runningbacks.

I started piecing together my ‘standing desk’ tonight. I picked up a two drawer cabinet as the base. Then I used some galvanized pipe to create a monitor stand. I found a bracket to use for a tilting keyboard tray and screwed a board to it. It’s very rough right now, but I don’t want to put a ton of effort into making it pretty until I determine if it’s going to work for me. So far I’ve put about $60 into it between the cabinet itself and the pipe and fittings, so even if I hate it, I’m not out much. I’ve already got the monitor and I should have a keyboard around here somewhere. I think it’ll be a grand experiment. Tasha thinks it’s dumb. Tasha thinks I’m not going to like it. Tasha thinks it’s a waste of time, effort, and money. I hope Tasha is wrong. :)

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I should be working on my novel. Gotta get the Josh Hale character sketch up. Later.

Games I'm Not Playing

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I picked up Champions Online a couple weeks ago. I enjoyed City of Heroes while I was playing it so I thought I’d give this new super-powered MMORPG by the same studio a chance. Strangely, I wasn’t particularly geeked about the purchase. I actually left the damn thing in the truck for 3-days before I even brought it in the house to install it, which is very unusual for me. My excitement didn’t increase after the install either, I downloaded the patch and started using the character creator…. but I shut it down before I’d even finished making a character. I didn’t pick it up again for a week. Then, I did make it through the character builder, but shut it off two minutes into the tutorial. I just don’t care. I don’t like the graphic style of the game, I found the character builder to be clunky and not very intuitive, it’s just not doing it for me. I’m not willing to invest myself in this game.

My City of Heroes account expires next month and I have no interest in renewing it. I’m not going to pay for anymore time for Champions. I tried the free/pirate version of WoW and found it lame. Really, the only MMO that I’m playing is Dungeons & Dragons Online and that’s only because it’s free and I have a few friends playing it. Friends make these games worth it, otherwise… I’ve learned that I don’t care much about them. I guess I’m not a MMORPG kind of guy.

nfl vikingsnfl packersRRampantFootball isn’t going much better. I lost again in my fantasy football league giving me a 1-5-0 record and one of the lowest point totals in the league. Sadly, I don’t care. I’ve managed to get my QuickHit team to level 13, but haven’t put much time into that either. And as for Madden 10 on the PS3, I beat Denis in overtime, 48-42, but it’s been more than a week and Jay and Kevin haven’t played their league game. I don’t think either of them is having any fun with it, which means this won’t last. And my Lions are doing not-so-well. At least they won one game.

Forza 3 comes out next week for the 360 and I’m looking forward to that, but with NaNoWriMo I won’t have much time to play it. Maybe I’ll hold off and hope I get it for Christmas.

Charting My Path

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I’ve been working on my story. Getting my ideas put into some sort of order. Fleshing out the characters. Determining locations. And I’ve got to say it’s coming along pretty good. I haven’t heard from Doug since I broached the NaNo subject, so I can only hope that things are going as well for him. Tasha has been helping me out with some of the psychology, motives, and general story stuff as this tale is more along the type of stuff that she reads than what I read. I’ve read some suspense/crime fiction but mostly my connection to the genre is through the television, so it’s nice to have her input.

I started to fill out a character chart for my main character, with the intention of completeing one for each of my primary supporting characters. But the chart I was working from was a 5-page survey and a lot of the questions I couldn’t answer, didn’t seem to fit, or didn’t seem relevant to the character or story. I understand the point of the exercise is to know your character, but this seemed excessive. I stopped that particular exercise for the time being. It’s just not how I do things and it felt uncomfortable. So I’ve been working on a plot diagram. I don’t think it’ll make a lot of sense to you. It makes sense to me, and I guess that’s what’s important. This is what I’ve got up to this point.

Story Connections

Story Connections

Sunday was a bad day for Fantasy Football if you’re the manager of the Rampant team, which I am. Monday wasn’t any better. I didn’t pay enough attention and started two players who had bye weeks. And the players that did start didn’t do so well. My bench outscored my starting roster. I lost the game. I suck. Oh well.

That’s about all that’s happened over the last couple days. I’m giving myself headaches thinking around corners and getting my ducks in order, but it’s all good, and I think the story will benefit from all the effort. That’s all for now. Later.