December
So I haven't blogged and people are yelling at me. What is there to talk about? Nothing really... That is, until I read Myst Blogs, which is always a great source for material if you let it. Personally, I think it's a good place to go and get your daily laughs. I even spawned this joke I thought of:
What do you get when you take a bunch of arrogant, self-absorbed saucerheads who can't move on and mix them with a bunch of pathetic, holier-than-thou hypocrites who can never do wrong and give them both a platform with which to push their agendas? Open source Uru Live! That, or an Obama presidency. It appears to me that both results are made up of the same kind of people. Either way, it sure is a funny sight! Absolute and total chaos, just like I said it would be.
I shall recap, in no particular order, the days since NaNoWriMo finished.
1) I got a new computer, and it was fantastic. Up until the point where the primary hard drive failed and I lost half of my stuff. Mostly IM logs and emails and bookmarks and stuff like that, not to mention the saved games of literally everything I own. Apparently, it's a problem with the Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 series that Seagate won't address or even acknowledge as being an issue, so I went with Western Digital and a RAID mirror so I wouldn't lose stuff again. What does that get me? Another dead drive! Dead on arrival. I had to RMA that one and it's expected to arrive on the 30th. Pathetic. Until then, I'm running on a mere husk of a powerhouse. I don't want to settle in again until I can be assured that I won't lose anything in another crash.
2) I got to 80 in World of Warcraft and promptly switched up my character to a healing role because that's apparently what the guild needed. A month later, I'm still a healer and the guild hasn't used me once in any guild activity. A core group of high ranking members are constantly seen in the 10-man raids while, at the same time, dreaming about the day when the guild has enough 80s to run their own 10-man raids. That day has been here for quite some time already and they are still seen playing 10-man raids with other guilds while dreaming about the day when their own guild has enough 80s. They ignore those of us who changed their role to please the guild and don't go out of their way at all when we need help to get geared up to play their precious raids. I confronted them about the situation today and the leaders pulled a script from the book of the Kilrogg Ahrotahntee guild and said "we're too busy to help you, do it yourself". A far, far cry from the guild I joined to run Karazhan. I joined and was immediately innundated with offers and requests to run dungeons to get geared. I don't need the stress and irritation that I dealt with in Ahrotahntee, so I'm not going to put up with it in Militis Noctis, either. I left this afternoon with plans to create my own guild, perhaps. I need a name and a site and forums, but I think now is as good a time as any to start a guild, seeing as how more and more people are reaching 80 and wanting to run Naxxramas. That way, if I get upset at the guild... I can change it, since I'm the leader! Hah! I disappoints me a little... While we ran Karazhan, the guild was amazing. But after we had that on farm status, the leadership changed, a few core members left, and the entire mood of the guild changed overnight. So far, nobody seems to have missed me, but that fits the profile, so I'm not surprised.
3) I REDISCOVERED EARLY EDITION! I used StumbleUpon and it took me to the Wikipedia page for the show and I immediately set about acquiring the series. It has apparently just now begun to be put on DVD, so the copies I have are TV copies from the Hallmark channel. Not bad, but not great, either... But come on! Early Edition! Remember that? 1996? Guy gets tomorrow's newspaper every morning? Orange cat always delivers it? Mysterious life of the previous newspaper recipient? It's classic 90s television. It only lasted 4 seasons, but I only ever saw the first season when I was young, but I'd watch all the ones I could. Now I can see them all! I am absolutely beyond thrilled... I plan on buying the season sets when they're released.
4) Left 4 Dead is probably the single greatest game I've ever played. Nothing tops zombie smashing mayhem! The graphics quality is amazing, as are all of Valve's games for their time. The gameplay has been uniquely balanced with cooperative multiplayer in mind, and the brand new feature? An artificial intelligence that will actively monitor your progress and a massive amount of variables and use all the readings to adjust the positions of zombies and boss zombies to provide what is literally a different experience every time you play. If you breeze through a level? The Director is going to try to hurt you. If you struggle? It's going to lighten up a bit... Just a little, though! It's amazing... It simply hasn't gotten old since it was released late November. I mean, you get tired of it when you play it all day, but when you pick it up again, it ensnares you with its brilliant dynamically generated playing fields. Honestly, if you shut off the Director? Nothing spawns and you have an empty map. Every single zombie encounter is planned by the Director, period. Plus the Director adapts to maps it's never seen before... You can load maps from Team Fortress 2 and it will populate zombies and panic events just as if it was a Left 4 Dead map. The best part is that it's built from the ground up to be a multiplayer game first, and a singleplayer game second. It's good stuff!
So there's four highlights this month... Will I write more? Maybe. But I'm starting college again, which deserves a post entirely to itself, but I don't know when, so there!