My kid, who I pushed to the registration line at the local polls, is on jury duty today. Haha. I've never gotten pulled for jury duty. Maybe I'll have to offer to take him out for dinner tonight.
I'm taking a mushroom foraging course. First class is next Monday. So, I'm going to be fungi collecting this weekend.
Been a good week for me. The fiance finally got a job, so we'll be able to start putting some more money away for plans down the road. I won a writing submission contest, so I'm now a staff writer on a small australian gaming editorial site, which is kinda cool. Should be a nice first step/resume builder.
The weekend will be spent working security for a horse show w/ the fiance for some extra cash. Should just entail standing around in a colored t-shirt. Maybe giving some directions.
Might fit in some Borderlands when I can. Been working through the DLC here and there.
Sweet, sweet football on Sunday. My fantasy teams look to be pretty solid.
Working tonight. Some friends of mine had an early early stage miscarriage, so I'm going to see if they want to go out. If not, it will probably just be dog walking and such.
I went morel hunting once with a girl in college who lived downstate. Was pretty fun, even not counting the company.
I need to tear down the decrepit play structure in my back yard and my personal project is to finish properly tagging all my mp3s. Ugh. Interesting side note, I have mp3s that are older than my son who is in 7th grade.
Christ, I'm old.
Edit: Oh, and I started Dragon Age: Origins the other night. By "started", I mean "Spent 90 minutes adjusting my earlobe length and nose hair color."
Yeah, I've got some big meaty mushrooms that have been growing in the shady end of my yard. They smell really good, are very meaty and seem like they'd be awesome to cook up. I've even attempted to id them, but have not dared, yet, to eat them. I think they're a bolete, perhaps the King Bolete. It should be a fun little class anyways.
We have real plans for the weekend - a trip to the mountains tomorrow. We'll be having a picnic on top of Brasstown Bald, and then driving up to three wineries in North Carolina for a nice afternoon of wine tasting.
My brother and I are taking turns swapping kids this weekend. He and his wife will be out wine-tasting Sunday while we watch his twins, so tomorrow he gets Thom while my wife and I...figure out what to do together.
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publiusvarus wrote:
we all know liberals are well adjusted american citizens who only want what's best for society. While conservatives are evil money grubbing scum who only want to sh*t on the little man and rob the world of its resources.
More unpacking for me tonight and tomorrow, as I still have boxes and suitcases full of stuff that needs to be put away before I have company Saturday evening. Copious amounts of beer will be involved at some point this weekend as well.
Sunday is for Da Bears.
Jophiel wrote:
Edit: Oh, and I started Dragon Age: Origins the other night. By "started", I mean "Spent 90 minutes adjusting my earlobe length and nose hair color."
FWIW, I f*cking loved this game, and if you have enjoyed any BioWare games in the past, you will as well. The DLC can be easily skipped, although I admittedly never made it all the way through DA:Awakening.
Edit: Oh, and I started Dragon Age: Origins the other night. By "started", I mean "Spent 90 minutes adjusting my earlobe length and nose hair color."
FWIW, I f*cking loved this game, and if you have enjoyed any BioWare games in the past, you will as well. The DLC can be easily skipped, although I admittedly never made it all the way through DA:Awakening.
Also, never waste your time with the abomination that is DA2
Since I'm in San Diego, I was enjoying the fog that rolled in with no lights anywhere in about a 200 mile radius. It was very romantic.
Power came back on early this morning in my neighborhood at about 2:00 a.m.
Selena Gomez concert tonight (of all the things that were getting cancelled due to the power outage, this wasn't about to be cancelled. I think the event coordinators are too scared to see what power and rage pre-pubescent teen girls can harness).
Pick up my new contacts tomorrow and Charmaine's photo shoot is tomorrow (I'm going to have to confirm with the photographer if she needs to reschedule due to blackout).
Celebrate my younger son's birthday this weekend since we couldn't do it yesterday due to the blackout.
FWIW, I f*cking loved this game, and if you have enjoyed any BioWare games in the past, you will as well. The DLC can be easily skipped, although I admittedly never made it all the way through DA:Awakening.
I never made it through Awakenings either. Apparently something else got my attention. I burned through Origins though, doing many of the encounters more than once to try out the different bosses you can pick from.
Edit: Oh, and I started Dragon Age: Origins the other night. By "started", I mean "Spent 90 minutes adjusting my earlobe length and nose hair color."
FWIW, I f*cking loved this game, and if you have enjoyed any BioWare games in the past, you will as well. The DLC can be easily skipped, although I admittedly never made it all the way through DA:Awakening.
Eh, I like plenty of Bioware games but I can't stand DA.
Main complaint is that they took the half turn-based, half real time combat system from KoTOR and made it worse by taking away your ability to queue attacks and shifting the focus of the combat to positioning, something which is incredibly fiddly to do with that system.
Honestly, I wasn't a massive fan of the system in KoTOR - I'd prefer it to be entirely turn-based or entirely in real time - but combat did, at least, feel satisfying. I'm glad they made it more difficult, because KoTOR was really ******* easy, but they way they did so bought the system's problems into agonising relief.
The game's visually uninspired where it isn't downright ugly, the world-building's great in an abstract sense but doesn't feel connected to the actual story, and the characters are pretty uninteresting.
Eh, I like plenty of Bioware games but I can't stand DA.
Main complaint is that they took the half turn-based, half real time combat system from KoTOR and made it worse by taking away your ability to queue attacks and shifting the focus of the combat to positioning, something which is incredibly fiddly to do with that system.
Honestly, I wasn't a massive fan of the system in KoTOR - I'd prefer it to be entirely turn-based or entirely in real time - but combat did, at least, feel satisfying. I'm glad they made it more difficult, because KoTOR was really @#%^ing easy, but they way they did so bought the system's problems into agonising relief.
The game's visually uninspired where it isn't downright ugly, the world-building's great in an abstract sense but doesn't feel connected to the actual story, and the characters are pretty uninteresting.
All fair points, I'd say. I definitely found the combat to require incessant fiddling, which got old.
I liked it, but it was my first introduction to Bioware and their conversation system, which I adored. That helped carry a lot of the game's weight for me. It had also been a long time since I played a high fantasy RPG, so the nostalgia was pretty potent.
I'm not in love with the combat system but I'll get through it. I had heard that DA2 was a big disappointment so I passed on it during the Steam summer sale.
I'm not in love with the combat system but I'll get through it. I had heard that DA2 was a big disappointment so I passed on it during the Steam summer sale.
Smart move. It's an atrocious cash grab. I had heard bad things, but bought it because I literally had nothing else to do with my time for 2 weeks. It was even worse than advertised.
Feels like the whole thing was slapped together in a couple months. The combat system is improved (more fluid, and with a better sense of power), the voiced main character helps, and there are at least 2 notable moments in the narrative, but almost everything else takes a step down of varying severity. The environments are some of the worst of gaming's current era, and the recycling of areas goes beyond egregious and treads into the absurd.
Speaking of video games (this is MY thread now!), there was a Cracked article a while back about kids and video games which boiled down to "They don't give a **** about plot or dialogue or even game play, they'll just barrel through using hacks and cheats to the end. And they'll have no idea why you find this strange".
So, I loaded up Portal onto my old computer and let my older son take a crack at it. He did well except for getting stuck on puzzle... 15? The one where you have to hit two buttons to open a door for the energy pellet. Anyway, even in that one he had the concept down and was just struggling with the timing. So I did it for him and he continued on to reach puzzle 18, with the tall pillars in the water and had to log off. He was stuck but was getting the jist of what it'd require.
About 15 minutes after the logged off, he says "I know how to do the puzzle". I said "Did you figure it out or did you just watch a play-through on Youtube?" It was the latter. It was a little disappointing but, whatever. I asked for help in another thread on one part (although that was after over an hour of being stuck, not three minutes) so who am I to judge.
Then, this morning, he starts spouting off parts of GLaDOS's speeches at the end verbatim. I say "Wait.. did you just watch the whole ending portion of the game on Youtube before playing it?" Yup. And he seems genuinely confused as to why I'd facepalm over this