We travel on the quiet road, the overload…

MASSIVE UPDATE TIME NAO PLEES…

On Life:  Life is pretty crazy.  With the addition of school to the mix, I’ve got virtually zero time between babies, work and everything else… and, honestly, I wouldn’t have it any other way.  School is going pretty well for only having one “true” day of class under my belt, and it was rather humorous to see that I was one of only a very few people who came to class fully prepared.  The girls continue to learn at an exponential rate; colors, letters, words, actions are all pretty much fair game and coming into their little heads (and out of their little mouths) by the truckload.  Watching them learn and grow is possibly one of the most amazing things I’ve ever had the pleasure of experiencing… although Amelia’s nightmares are more than a bit distressing.  The twins woke each other up last night about 1am screaming and, in the course of it all, woke up Ana through the monitor.  It was somewhere between 2 and 2:30 before everyone got settled down enough to go back to sleep… including us.

I try to not talk about work on here too much, as one never knows who might be reading.  Suffice it to say that things there are going fairly well of late, and with the company’s lifting of the salary increase freeze I look forward to the possibility of a raise come review time.

On Visuals:  Lina and I haven’t been watching much of late, except for stuff for the girls.  As noted by Lina, we’ve been pretty much relegated to watching Curious George’s A Very Monkey Christmas until recently… although for the last week or so the girls have seemed to prefer the old animated 101 Dalmatians.  I’ve decided that the line “Get out of here, or I’ll black your other peeper!” needs to go down in the annals of history as the 10th worst line for kids to hear spoken in a Disney film (the other 9 are all from Pinocchio). 

We HAVE managed to catch a few awesome things, though…  Snakes On A Plane was surprisingly entertaining, although it wasn’t without its share of “ewwwww” moments.  It was unashamedly a “B” movie and always seemed to take itself *JUST* seriously enough to not be discounted.  If you’ve ever enjoyed a movie that was “so bad it’s good” and aren’t squeamish about gore, check it out.  It’s worth it just to hear the now-famous Sammy Jackson line about “mothafuckin’ snakes on this mothafuckin’ plane” in context.  Also, the special edition of Watchmen (with the Tales from the Black Freighter bits integrated into the movie) is definitely worth a very very very long (nigh on 4 hours!) watchthrough, even if you’re already familiar with the theatrical version and / or graphic novel version of the story.

Also, fuckingDollhouseomgawesome.  I wish Fox would give Whedon a chance to finish one of his better shows… neither Firefly nor Dollhouse deserved the early cancellations they received.  Also, had Whedon been able to present his initially intended pilot for Dollhouse instead of changing his first 5 episodes to focus primarily on Echo as per Fox’s request, the show might have had a much larger following.  So, he gets to wrap up an intended 5-season show in 2 seasons, which is making the whole thing feel rushed.  Still more than a little awesome even as it stands.

On Gaming:  Lina and I are pretty much back into WoW, if it can ever be said that we were truly “out of” it.  The latest patch and its easy access to PUGs for heroic dungeons, along with the addition of the 3 new dungeons, has pretty much cemented us into sinking what very little gaming time we both have back to that game.  However, on rare occasions I’ve been able to squeeze in some time for Silent Hill:  Shattered Memories (of which I’ve been able to complete one mind-blowing playthrough… 3 more endings to go!) and Shadow Complex (which is just enough Super Metroid to whet my old-school gaming appetite).  I’ve put just enough time into Dragon Age to have advanced through about 1/2 of the game and gone down a romantic path with one character, and Torchlight has seen a bit of play on the occasions I’ve needed a quick time-filler.

So yeah.  Busy life, lots of awesome to be had.  Here’s hoping for an awesome 2k10!

A time, a place, a shattered memory…

This has been a pretty crazy holiday season for me and gaming.  For my birthday, Lina got me the Digital Deluxe edition of Dragon Age:  Origins (which I am absolutely in love with), and I was lucky enough to snag a copy of The Beatles:  Rock Band (and enough Microsoft Points to buy the Abbey Road album for it).  In the meantime, the latest WoW patch has rekindled our desire to play, so we’ve been tinkering with that.

For Christmas, I received an obscene amount of Microsoft Points, and used them to buy a boatload of RB2 tracks (Yay for a huge track pack devoted entirely to Queen!), Shadow Complex and Monkey Island SE… however, I also received a copy of Silent Hill:  Shattered Memories.

Not quite sure exactly what I was expecting when I popped that into the Wii, but it sure as hell wasn’t what I ended up getting.

So yeah.  What you’ve heard is 100% true.  There’s not one lick of combat within the game.  I knew this going into it, but I wasn’t quite aware of the implications of this.  I was expecting something a bit more stealth based, and not the heart-pumping “Oh shit oh shit it saw me and now it’s chasing me FUCKING RUN RUN RUN oh shit oh shit there are like six of them now FUCKING RUN RUN RUN!”  The nightmare sequences are at once hideously intense and somewhat frustrating because, more often than not, you end up getting looped around in your frantic scramble to escape the monsters and backtrack in what amounts to a great big frosty maze.  Of course, this is offset by the somewhat disappointingly “mild” exploration sequences… and the game’s deep backstory and plot do more than enough to fill the void.

So yeah.  About that story.  The core premise of this game is the same as the original Silent Hill:  Harry Mason gets into a car crash and spends the game searching Silent Hill for his missing daughter.  That’s where the similarities stop.  The town itself is vastly different, right down to the street maps, and the whole “cult” concept from games 1, 3, 4, 5 and Origins is completely gone.  Instead, this game’s plot plays out much more like Silent Hill 2; a forward march of unnamed guilt, sorrow, confusion and madness that pile up on the main character until he’s no longer sure of what’s real and what isn’t.  And, considering that the game is constantly profiling you (both during the in-game psychologist’s office sequences and while playing the game itself), that line may blur a bit for the player as well.

You see, I have yet to talk to anybody who’s had the same experience with the game that I have.  Depending on the playthrough, characters and locales may vary drastically both in decorum and, in the case of NPCs, personality.  You may also end up visiting completely different locales as another player, receiving vastly different voicemails and text messages regarding plot points, which is bound to alter the perception of exactly what happened based on who is playing the game.  For example, at a certain point in the game the main character meets up with a police officer.  During my playthrough, this police officer was very frumpy and matronly in appearance, and her demeanor was at once motherly, kind and yet firm and professional.  Another player I have spoken with had a police officer who was fit, trim, very gruff and downright rude; his girlfriend met up with the officer earlier in the game than either of us, and her experience  was an officer who was courteous and professional but certainly not kind.  The level of detail to which the game analyzes you is very well thought-out; even the monsters that chase you during nightmare sequences change based on what the game thinks might make you cringe the most; I’ve seen screenshots of monsters with an almost mechanical bent to them, whereas mine are very organic, very female and very much missing body parts.  o_O

And then there’s the soundtrack.  All I have to say is “Akira Yamaoka, your music will be missed in future installments of Silent Hill.” 

I got sumpin’ brand new for ‘dat ass…

I went to bed last night running Windows Vista.

I woke up this morning running Windows 7.

At first glance I wasn’t really sure the installation took. 

Yeah, for those of you who haven’t played with it or investigated it much yet, Windows 7 is Windows Vista 1.5.  The concept is the same, most of the driver and display architecture is the same… but it takes up less than half the ram.  It’s beautiful to pop into the task manager and see between 2 and 10% of my system resources being used at idle, instead of Vista’s 35-50% usage.

Spent part of the morning playing with the desktop slideshow feature… for those of you familiar with Webshots, it’s a similar concept; drag and drop a bunch of wallpapers you like, and then schedule Windows to change them at set intervals.  Don’t like looking at a wallpaper for more than an hour?  You can change that.  Nifty!

Think I got the last multi-user pack in the entire fucking United States.  Think it was worth it.

God knows I want to break free…

Everybody needs to read this.

Now.

A great musing, this.  There is a huge difference between a “freedom” as promised by the constitution, and what these “freedoms” have evolved (devolved?) into.  Freedom of speech is pretty much a bygone at this point, and if the government has their way we’ll probably lose the right to bear arms.  So, where do we draw the line between “protecting a way of life” as Will puts it, and defending what the constitution has set forth as our freedoms and rights?

Interesting to think about, for sure.

After all, I’ve tried for three years; seems like thirty…

Tomorrow, I become old.

I should not be looking forward to cresting 30 as much as I am, but the celebrations are going to last for 2 days between 3 sects of my family, and promise to be quite epic.

Bring on thirty, motherfuckers.  I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.

(No I’m not.  Can I just stay 29?)  D:

Because we can’t, we won’t and we don’t stop…

My life has been nonstop bouts of awesome the past couple of months; ergo the lack of updates.

So, a quick recap:

*Thanks to the help of my mysterious benefactor, I’ve registered for a winter class.  With my upcoming birthday I’m hoping to get money for books from family, but even if I don’t, I think I’ve got enough finances to pick up the used books I’ll need for the bio class.

*Things at work have taken some drastic changes.  Our general manager left for another facility, and we lost one of our supervisors.  The new manager started yesterday, and despite my initial trepidation he looks like he’s going to be a very good thing for us.  Time will tell, but I’m much more optimistic about the situation after working with him for an evening.

*Halloween was a fucking riot with the girls.  Lina, Moo and myself dressed up as zookeepers, with the 3 baby girls dressed up as various animals.  The result was an epic win… and the twins loved it because they got to stay up almost two hours past their bedtime.

*Finally caught season 3 of Dexter.  Lina and I got so hooked on it we actually started downloading season 4.  Well, part of that may or may not have had anything to do with the fact that Lina and I are *HUGE* fans of John Lithgow…  >_>

*I’ve not had much time for playing games lately… been eyeing up Torchlight as a suitable distraction, since I love Diablo clones, although the lack of multiplayer somewhat saddens me.  Even so, the buzz is so overwhelmingly positive that I’d be remiss not to check it out for $20.

*My kids love PBS.  In viewing it with them, I’ve decided that the only suitable replacement for the old-school Sesame Street (Y’know… before Elmo took the fuck over the whole block) is Between the Lions.  It’s made up of rapidfire linguistics-based skits that are catchy enough to keep kids interested, while providing subtle pop-culture references that only adults in their late ’20s / early ’30s would grasp (Gawain’s Word, Gawain’s Word, EXCELLENT!)  But, really, the show should take “best in slot” for this skit alone.

So yeah.  That’s my life in a nutshell lately.  I’m taking a vacation next week so I might have a bit more time to pop up a few more detailed updates then.

I’m drowning in my nostalgia…

I’ve decided, after far too much time, that I’m going to go back to school; with the aid of a mysterious and absolutely wonderful benefactor (<3), I have begun setting things in motion to do just that.

This post is not about that… well, not really.

Almost everything about my life has changed since I was last in school:  I have schedule constraints that have little to do with work (3 kids will do that to you).  I’m in a very different place in my life now than I was then, with a very different mindset and a very different view of how this psychotic little world works.  I’m in a financial situation that really prohibits me from doing anything “full-time” with school (as if my schedule would even allow such things).  I’ve also adopted a much more jaded opinion of school as a whole than I had back then.  Thus, I was just expecting my return to my old college to request transcripts to be a routine “blah” paperwork visit.

Turns out it was anything but.

I started to feel it as I stepped out of the car, looking down the grassy hill at the student parking lot below me.  The air was cool and crisp, but not too chilly, and my little windbreaker was more than sufficient to keep it at bay.  My earbuds were in, some good music playing to keep me in step on my way across the lot, and I remembered the last time I made this walk; this time, it was an iPod, but back then it was one of those bulky portable CD players that my feet moved to the beat of.  It was a nostalgia unlike anything I’d ever felt before… not even that longing feeling for days gone past that one typically associates with such things, but a fond remembrance and… shit, almost a throwback reliving of my college days.  As I walked into the administration building to file my paperwork, I felt revitalized, awake and more “with it” than I had felt even twenty minutes beforehand.

I looked at my watch as I walked back to the car; 15 minutes was more than enough time to “take the long way home” through the back-end of the campus… and as I did so, taking in the sights while passing through, I realized that I was really the only thing that had changed.  The buildings and backlots and walkways all looked just the same as they did when I took my unexpected and extended leave of absence from school.  Now, 10 years later, I’m going to be attending a different school, but even so, Academia is a faithful friend has been waiting patiently for me to return, and just thinking about it makes me, surprisingly, feel a little bit more alive.  I’ll never be that age again, but 10 years later I’ve found that the only thing that changes in the academic theatre is one’s own attitude towards the performance, and the stage.  I’m hoping that the play has the same feel that it did back then… in fact, after the great feelings I had about it today, I’m betting heavily that it will.

Hello Victoria, so glad to see you my friend…

(The following fiction is inspired by, and based upon, the Dream Theater album Metropolis Pt. II:  Scenes from a Memory.)

July 10, 1999

“Close your eyes and begin to relax.”  A man’s voice, low, monotonous and lulling,  blended with the rhythmic ticking of the metronome as Nicholas shut his eyes.  “Take a deep breath, and let it out slowly.  Concentrate on your breathing; with each breath you will become more relaxed,” the voice continued.  Nicholas complied, allowing his body to relax with some difficulty as his anxiety and desire to sleep began to tug at his consciousness.  As if sensing his anticipation, the voice advised him to “imagine a brilliant white light around you; focus on this light as it flows through your body.  Allow yourself to drift off as you fall deeper and deeper into a more relaxed state of mind.”  In his mind, the light formed a bubble around Nicholas, shielding him from the fear and pain of his daily life.  Without his prompting, almost as if it were happening millions of miles away, he felt his body relaxing.

“Now, as I count backwards from ten to one, you will feel more peaceful and calm:  Ten, nine, eight, seven, six… You will enter a safe place where nothing can harm you.”  With these words, Nicholas began to see a faint form materializing within his bubble of light, as the sounds of the monotone and the metronome faded into the distance.  He could not see the form clearly yet, but his heart swelled as he realized who would appear before him.  A light year away, a faded voice lulled him out of the last vestiges of his consciousness:  “Five, four, three, two…  If at any time you need to come back, all you need to do is open your eyes… One.”  With that last word, the vague suggestion of form solidified into the shape of a beautiful woman, dressed in finery from a time long passed.  Nicholas had never met this blonde-haired wonder, yet there was an instant familiarity and kinship swelling within his mind, as if he had known her for his entire lifetime.

“Hello, Victoria…”

With those words, the bubble burst, and Nicholas felt himself tumbling through an eternity of images from a life that was not his own.  He marveled at the torrent of unbidden memories that ran through his mind like pictures on a screen:  A young girl, growing up and living the life of the most privileged high class.  The love of a young woman for an older man, and the sadness at the ending of that relationship.  The frustration of seeing a loved one caught in a downward spiral.  The danger and excitement of forbidden love… and then an abrupt halt to the stream of consciousness, as though hitting the ground from a sudden drop, and Nicholas found himself sprawled in the street in front of an abandoned country home.

He stood, turned and faced the house that he had never visited, yet had seen every day in his dreams for more years than he could count.  The path, once paved with ornate brickwork, now stood overgrown with weeds and scarred by vandals.  The faded stain on the hand-carved oaken doors suggested a time when servants tirelessly wiped and polished unwanted fingerprints from its surface, but its hinges now creaked in protest of years of neglect.  Beyond the threshold, the paint on the walls rotted and peeled silently and alone, for there was a chill in the air here that kept even the most determined vandals at bay; it was here that Nicholas felt himself drawn, and as his phantom footfalls creaked their way up the ancient staircase he began to feel anxious again for the end to the dream he knew was approaching.  At the top of the staircase, his feet moved unbidden toward a room that recalled the decor of a girl in her youth, but was empty save for a full-height mirror on a frame.  Nicholas peered into the mirror, but the figure staring back at him was not his own; the woman he had greeted within his bubble smiled wanly back at him through the glass.  He put his hand to the mirror, and Victoria did the same.

“Young girl,” Nicholas pleaded, “Won’t you tell me why I’m here?”

Her response was wordless, but within her deep green eyes Nicholas could sense the longing of a story untold.  Something within her was tearing her soul into two; a guilt that cut at her heart and the frustration of a life cut short by a violent end.  Nicholas felt a strange deja vu; he knew he had played out this scene countless times and, as pleasant as this nightmare was, he felt himself opening his eyes as his consciousness drifted back to his physical body, and instead of Victoria the face of Doctor Sands peered back at him.

“Welcome back, Nicholas.”  The voice, no longer confined to monotone, was still warm and soothing to him.  “What have we learned today?”

Nicholas struggled for a moment to piece together the fragments he had seen.  “I think,” he stammered, “that the woman in my dreams was once real.”

Doctor Sands took a sip from a coffee mug, the black hair of his mustache standing in stark contrast to the white porcelain of the cup.  “What did you see within your mind?”

Nicholas absently ran his finger across his roughly unshaven cheek as he fought to retain the memories of the dream.  “Fragments of an extravagant life.  A house that I shouldn’t recognize, but feels as much like home to me as my own.  The girl… Victoria… staring back at me from a mirror.  A sense of loss and frustration, and yet a familiarity that I can’t quite put my finger upon…”

The hypnotherapist nodded slightly.  “The dream you’ve had, revisited?  More vivid, perhaps?”

“Yes,” Nicholas stated absently, as something tugged at the back of his mind.  “The same dream I’ve had almost every night for years, but I’ve never seen into her soul like this before.  It was as if I knew her better than I knew myself, like I was seeing myself through her eyes just like I was seeing her through mine.”

Doctor Sands nodded again.  “The practice of hypnotic regression can help one get in touch with themselves, their dreams… What do you think this recurring nightmare is trying to tell you, Nicholas?”

Nicholas paused for a moment as a realization struck him.  “I… think I was once that woman, Doctor Sands.  I think she wants me to find her and finish her story.”

Blizzcon 2009

New Diablo III class is the Monk.

New WoW expansion is the Cataclysm, featuring a redesign of Oldworld and trips into the Maelstrom.  New Horde race:  Goblins.  New Alliance race is confirmed as the Worgen.  “Classic zones forever changed by the Cataclysm.”  New secondary skill Archaeology.  Level cap 85.

Starcraft 2 beta confirmed to be starting in 2009, thank God.

More to come as it drops.

Editus Maximus:  Had to stop updating, as our router decided to go all unstable on us and I had to shut off my ‘puter to give Lina’s laptop the remainder of the bandwidth.  Glad it’s covered under an extended warranty~

So, lots of new shit at Blizzcon yesterday and even more coming today.

Diablo III looks to be shaping up quite nicely, although the panelists DID state that while they’ll be keeping the more vibrant motif in the areas they’ve designed, many of the new areas will be darker and more sinister.  The jury is still out on whether or not this is a concession to the pissed-off Diablo fans, or if this was the design direction they’d had all this time.

I *DID* like the panelists’ comment that they’d wanted the monk to feel much like “a much simpler 2d fighting game.”  Watching the monk in action was like watching warm butter glide across a flying pan…  wielded by Chef Ramsay in one of his more furious moods.  I also liked the fact that they did away with certain wizard abilities because they didn’t support their idea of having a giant lightshow for a class (stoneskin, for example, has been replaced with a spell that turns the wizard’s skin into crystal… which creates a very nice lightshow for all involved).  Also a huge fan of the fact that, if you see something drop from a monster, it’s yours.  Each person could kill a monster or boss and see something completely different drop.  NO MORE NINJA LOOTING.  WOOT~

Huge Battle.Net changes…  Looks like they’re aiming at making Bnet a combination of Steam, AIM and social networking sites like Facebook.  In order to play the newer games (DIII and SCII), you’ll ideally have to be logged into the service.  They’ve said that you’ll be able to play offline as well, but any progress made while not connected to Bnet will not be tracked and you’ll have to re-do it while connected to the service if you want to earn any of the achievements or other benefits attached to said content.  They’ve also made allusions to penalties for cheating:  Banishment of your Bnet ID, which will be attached to your game CD key (presumably).  Effectively, this will force you to go out and re-purchase the game of your choice if your key gets banned from Bnet.  Attaching a monetary penalty to cheating?  I can get behind that shit.

I’ll save the WoW changes and awesomeness for another post… that’s a whole huge matter of its own accord.

I bought a gerbil at the petting zoo…

Dear Will,

I saw this trailer on TV the other day.

For some reason, the mice chanting “POOP IN HIS HAND!  POOP IN HIS HAND!” made me think of you.

I seriously think this is something you would say in the same situation.

Sincerely,

~Gourry