I'm moving blogs.

Because of the way Movable Type has changed their code, and the way my hosting provider has their servers set up, I won't be able to upgrade my blog, which would have allowed me to to do all sorts of stuff.

Suffice it to say that the thing I wanted to do most was be able to blog from my new iPhone...because I have downtime on the bus, and the reason why I haven't blogged recently is because of lack of time.

So.

My new blog can be found at: thisgaminglife.wordpress.com.

Thanks for following me!

The other day, my four year old nephew Ethan was playing in the living room with a map puzzle of the world.

After a few minutes of playing quietly, he wandered into the kitchen from the living room and said to the assembled group of adults: "There's a country called Chad. I have a friend named Chad."

His mother said "Yes, isn't that interesting?" Whereupon Ethan turned around and went back into the living room to keep playing.

After a few more minutes, he came back into the kitchen and said "There's also a country called Jordan. I have a friend named Jordan."

His mother said "That's very observant of you!" And Ethan nodded and went back into the living room.

A few minutes later, Ethan walked into the kitchen and declared "I don't have a friend named Saudi Arabia."

Taking a cab down the Viaduct alongside the harbor at night with the windows open ain't exactly like driving down the FDR with the windows open...but it's become pretty close for me.

So, last week, Funcom ran an Open Beta for Age of Conan.

Frankly, the game isn't even close to ready for prime time. Crashes, horrific lag, and all sorts of bugs and quirks (NPCs that lock in place or won't talk or you can't kill locking you inside an instance...)

But wait...there's more. At the end of the beta period, they advanced everyone to level 20, placed them in a free-for-all PvP server, and let them go for a day or so. Literally the second you ended up outside a town, you were killed. You couldn't talk to any quest givers, because if you turned your back, or locked yourself up in dialogue with an NPC, someone would kill you.

In addition to this, it came out that the list of servers was posted on a Gold Farming website before they were announced to the public.

The guys I game with were largely so pissed at the state of the game and the overall experience that most of them decided not to play it after all.

Now, this right here is exactly what I've been saying: If it isn't ready, don't launch the fucking thing.

The guys I game with have limited gaming time, and if they perceive, even for a minute, that they'd be wasting their valuable time with a game that was annoying or frustrating, they'll just skip it. And I strongly believe that once they've made their minds up on a game, they're extremely unlikely to revisit that opinion.

Not because they're stubborn (although they are...) it's just that there's ALWAYS a new game coming out. Why go back to an old game?

And MMOs are notorious for being difficult to deal with once there's a stable, mature population on a server. The economy is locked already, the early zones are usually unpopulated, or populated with people on their third or fourth character, and they usually don't have the desire to deal with new people/players.

So, I've pre-ordered it...and actually, I'm looking forward to dealing with the game at my own pace on a PvE server. I'm still looking forward to the game...but I think I'm a little less excited now that my friends largely won't be playing. Which is unfortunate. I honestly feel like I'll end up playing a lot by myself...which isn't really all that unusual since I've moved to the west coast. I miss playing with a regular group of guys, but I suppose between time zone differences and other factors, it just works that way sometimes.

My brain's already set to: "Looking forward to six months of beta?"

Yesterday, I received the MagnaVisor that I had ordered from Amazon.

I've picked up Warhammer 40K as a hobby. The fellas at work play it, and it really plays neatly into the things I find enjoyable: social gaming, strategy, miniatures (especially the modelling and painting aspect), and the whole planning aspect, from army building to model acquisition to painting...THEN playing.

Anyway, I started by borrowing a few Codices from the fellas at work. A Codex is an army-specific rulebook...there's one for each army, and there are over a dozen armies, I believe...but I didn't really want to play an army that other people were playing. So, after reading about a few of the armies, I'd decided on the Orks.(WAAAAAAGGGHHHH!!!!) The Orks are great. They're all about running headlong into the other army and chopping them into little bits. They don't have much in the way of armor, so they're almost always all offense...and, on top of that, because they're fundamentally insane, their own equipment occasionally fails and kills them instead. I figured comedy is really my style of play...so I went with the Orks.

I played around with building an army. Basically, there are rules governing how an army can be put together. Each unit is worth a certain number of points, and how they're outfitted affects their point total, and you must have at least one of this kind of unit, but not more than this many of that unit, and so on. But given the number of types of units, and all the options, there's a lot of ways to build an army.

Lots of people sit down with a piece of paper and a pen, and scribble notes and totals and so on. But that wouldn't be me, now would it.

As it turns out, there's this really excellent piece of software called Army Builder. I figured before I dropped cash on models I might or might not need, a great investment would be a tool that helps me figure out what I wanted to do from an army perspective, then pick up the units I needed. Turns out that Army Builder was far more useful than I had planned. Aside from helping me build armies and such, it basically gave me all the options and warned me when I was doing something illegal. I could mix and match pieces and units and options, all while watching the point totals, and keeping me legal from a rules perpective. It's a really clever piece of software. Then, when I was done building, I could print out my army list, and it listed all the units, along with all of their abilities and which books and pages I could find the rules about the specific abilities. For a beginner, all that stuff is key.

Having built my army virtually, I went to a Games Workshop store and dropped some (understatement) money on a bunch of Ork models, some modelling tools and supplies, and a bunch of paint and such.

I proceeded to build the models and figures when I realized I couldn't see. Like really couldn't get my eyes to focus on the stuff I was working on. I've since realized that I've been basically looking at everything within two feet in a blur. I literally cannot focus my eyes on anything inside 18". My monitors have been getting bigger, and further away from me. I don't really look at my keyboard when I type any more. Yes, when I read, I find that I'm holding the book further away from me than I used to. But now when I was working with small plastic pieces and knives and glue, I realized that I couldn't see what I was doing. My work was sloppy and I wasn't too happy about it.

I've always been farsighted. Always. But, with some effort, I could always focus on things about 8 or 9 inches away. I can't do that any more. I definitely need glasses now. So I'm making an appointment with an optometrist...but I had all these models and miniatures I wanted to work on. Now.

So I ordered the MagnaVisor. Yes, it's hugely geeky. But I got it yesterday, and last night, after dinner, I grabbed the visor, a freshly primed miniature, and my paints and brushes. Two and a half hours later, I had a painted miniature...and it's REALLY good. The visor made it so I could see things ridiculously clearly...and my hands are still plenty steady as it turns out. I'm really pleased with the way it came out. I'll post a picture of it tonight.

So, while I still need glasses, the visor was an awesome purchase, and I'm excited to get my army all painted and on the front lines!

WAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!

Quick news: Got into the Age of Conan Beta...and I am, of course, psyched. Starts in a few weeks...that oughta be awesome.

Now, back to your regularly scheduled blogpost.

I have well and truly fucking had it with the media.

It appears that Barack Obama's comment about life difficulties making people bitter and them turning to religion as a result is a big deal. In fact, I heard it referred to as "Bitter-Gate."

Bitter-Gate.

Does that even fucking make sense?

Every time something happens in politics that can remotely be construed as having a slightly adverse affect on a politician, it immediately becomes "WhateverTheFuckHappened"-Gate.

The Watergate scandal was over THIRTY fucking years ago, resulted in the threat of impeachment proceedings against a sitting US president, and ultimately, his resignation.

The suffix -gate does NOT have any meaning whatsoever. It's a bullshit reference to what happened to Tricky Dick Nixon...as if Barack Obama's gaffe (if it even WAS a freaking gaffe) certainly is in NO way even close to as serious as what Nixon did. Still...it's Bitter-Gate. Like we're gonna arrest the man for wrongdoing.

Iran-ContraGate. MonicaGate. Moron-Gate. It's fucking STUPID.

These people write for a living, and they use the name of a building that was the scene of a criminal act as some sort of reference to the fact that something bad for a politician has happened, regardless of magnitude, what was actually done...or the fact that Watergate is a FUCKING PLACE. NOT AN ACT. Why don't we call it BitterNam? Or BitterIraq?

Jesus, people. I don't know what pisses me off more...the fact that they -Gate trivial nonsense, or the fact that Watergate is a place, which makes it even MORE stupid.

And the media just propagates the use of a fake suffix, like it's English.

Damn all of them to Hell.

So, last night a bunch of guys from work decided to play Warhammer 40K, and, not really having anything to do, and seeing as just about everyone in the office was playing, I thought I'd tag along and see what it was all about.

Warhammer 40K is a tabletop miniatures wargame. Basically, everyone decides what army they're going to play, runs out and buys a mess of metal and plastic miniatures, paints them in ridiculously amazing detail, then puts them on a large slab of wood, painted foam, resin, and so on, and "fights" with them.

Of course, there are tons of rules, dice, tape measures (LOTS of tape measures), templates, reference charts, and so on...but the net of it is that you move your guys according to rules, line 'em up, say who's attacking what, consult charts to see what you need to roll to "hit" a unit, then determine how much damage they took (if at all) and so on.

Like any social game (even one as geeky as this one,) the draw is that it's social, full of laughing, good-natured arguing, assorted cursing and questioning of heritage and parentage. The fact that you get to shoot your friends in the face (metaphorically, of course) is a bonus.

The models I saw last night were fabulous...very detailed, well-painted...the tanks some of the guys had were hysterical.

I'm idly thinking about joining them (they play once a month...) and choosing an army, buying little figures, and spending some time painting miniatures, something I used to love years and years ago.

I need a new hobby, and this definitely meets the criteria. It also gets me engaged with some folks here socially, which would be welcome as well. I've lived here now for about two and a half years, and I don't really have any friends out here. It's be nice to start meeting more people and doing stuff....

I just pre-ordered Age of Conan. A couple of the guys from IJSMP pre-ordered it, and that was pretty much the trigger for me to go ahead and get it.

I admit that I'm somewhat skeptical about the game. As with any title that has a lot of hype, rarely does it live up to expectations.

The game itself looks pretty much like any MMO. Quests, characters, levelling...however, this game is the first to be unapologetically rated M (Mature) for language, graphical violence, and sexual content. The world promises to be a lot more rough and tumble, and with any sort of luck, the player base will not be a bunch of kids. (Wishful thinking, I know.)

The part that I'm concerned about has mainly to do with the fact that I wonder if I'm completely jaded on MMORPGs. Since EQ, (and WoW refining it...) the genre hasn't really changed. Make a character, kill little thingies, gain experience and loot, get stronger, kill bigger thingies, rinse and repeat. Eventually, you get to a point where you need you and a group of your friends to kill the thingies, and then you wait until more thingies get added to the game. I think I'm pretty much done with that aspect of MMORPGs.

I've never really been loot-oriented...yeah, I'll grab gear and loot when it's available, but I don't go looking over complete lists of all the gear in the game and make a checklist of what I need, where I can get it, and plan my gaming sessions to advance myself in that manner. Never have. I'm all about the experience with friends, crafting, and commercial systems.

Having said that, most MMOs move in a completely different direction. Now, the big thing is PvP, solo and team. Siege the city! Take the castle from fellow players! Compete in tournaments!

That direction is no different than the MMO cycle I mentioned before...except that instead of trying to stay ahead of the developers, strategy and gearwise, now, you're staying ahead of other players. You can imagine how that goes over. It becomes a race of who can spend the most time in game, racking experience and loot so that you can beat your fellow players. Clever, devs...clever.

Conan is a mix of all that stuff.

So why bother?

Well, the guys are playing (at least to start...) and so it'll provide a few weeks or months of diversion. And there's always the chance that the game is actually engaging, and can hook me for a year or so.

So with all that, why the hell did I order the collector's edition?

For those not in the know, a collector's edition of a game release is often a version that costs anywhere from 10 to 40 dollars more. In this case, it's about 40 dollars more. What do I get for the added money? A map, a book of art, a soundtrack CD...but in this case, I also get some in-game stuff.

When you pre-order from places like Amazon or EBGames, you often get an in-game thingie as an added bonus. Amazon gives you an "amazonian bow" while EBGames gives you a ridable woolly mammoth. (So it's EBGames for sure. Ridables are cool. Weapons get replaced a lot during your play...but a ridable? You can ride that shit forever.)

But if you get the collector's edition, you get two other in-game things: A ring that gives you an experience bonus (Hell yes.) and a drinking cloak that gives you free drinks in every tavern in the game.

Sucker that I am, it was the drinking cloak that did it.

I think, fundamentally, I'm a role player at heart, and the idea of being a drunken archer or barbarian is really appealing to me.

So yeah...I shelled out additional cash up front just to get free drinks in an RPG.

What can I tell you?

Smitty organized the first IJSMP Podcast. Nee-hah, Jehoshaphat, JaH, and I joined him.

WARNING: This is completely NOT worksafe. Wear headphones...and might be offensive (nay, WILL be offensive) to some.

IJSMP Podcast Numero Uno

But it is a mighty funny hour or so of dialogue.

I mentioned before that it's almost my 40th birthday.

Naturally, many people are starting to ask me what I want for my birthday.

Traditionally, I get toys and games for my birthday...I'm not down with the whole idea of socks for my birthday (or any holiday. Socks suck.)

So I started thinking. What do I want?

The answer? I can't come up with a freaking thing.

Seriously. I have every game I want (and a few I only kinda wanted...), there's no hardware I need (console or otherwise), I don't need music players, books, I have more grill-related paraphernelia than I know what to do with....

I can't even find anything on Netflix I want to rent. Seriously.

I can't recall a single instance in my life when this was the case. There was always some expensive toy I wanted, or was saying "If I save up for x, I'll be able to get it when..." but, really...nothing at all.

I'll need to redouble my efforts to think about fun things, or I'm gonna end up with socks.

I'm rousing myself from blogslumber to congratulate my friend Paul/Firethorn and his wife Carol/RedLeader on the birth of their new son, Frank.

The crew over at IJSMP has already started calling the little yeller "RageSpawn" which, to be honest, is an AWESOME name. (Paul is known, often, to refer to himself as RageFarm.) He's pretty sure RedLeader won't like that name...but, FRANKly, when are we EVER known to concern ourselves with such things?

Paul and Carol, I wish you both the very best of luck, a long life, fabulous health, and a prosperous future for your first son.

In a few short months, I will be 40 years of age.

I can't even believe I wrote that...even less so that it's true.

When I think about all the things I've done over the last 20 years, and all the things I've wanted to do, I realize that I probably COULD have done a chunk of them if I had committed myself to them earlier, and just done it.

Among the top of the list of things is definitely cooking professionally. I really love to cook. I read cookbooks like other people read novels. It's pretty interesting that I actually rarely cook things from cookbooks (I do sometimes) but more often, the recipes inspire me when I do cook something.

I'm reading "Heat" now. It was written by a former editor/writer for the New Yorker, who decided he wanted to see what it was like to cook professionally, see the food world from the inside, and ended up working at Babbo, Mario Batali's restaurant. The book is largely anecdotal, with plenty of insight into Batali and other things.

Up until a few weeks ago, I was still entertaining the idea of maybe trying cooking professionally. When I went to Olivier's and Co, a really excellent olive oil shop, I guess my appearance and behavior led the manager to ask me if I was a professional chef. Of course, she could say that to everyone...but I still was a little flattered.

In any case, while reading Heat, I realized that I really couldn't do it. Not any more, really. I don't think I'm temperamentally suited to such a thing. I know I don't have the kind of energy I used to. Motivationally, I don't think I could really put in the kind of hours a restaurant would require. I do like the idea of working hours doing prep...seeing how a kitchen is run. But in reality? Probably not. Like anything else, work is work.

In one of my favorite books, Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson writes the following:

"Until a man is 25, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial arts monastery in China and studied real hard for 10 years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad.

Hiro used to feel that way, too, but then he ran into Raven. In a way, this is liberating. He no longer has to worry about trying to be the baddest motherfucker in the world. The position is taken. The crowning touch, the one thing that really puts true world-class badmotherfuckerdom totally out of reach, of course, is the hydrogen bomb. If it wasn't for the hydrogen bomb, a man could still aspire. Maybe find Raven's Achilles' heel. Sneak up, get a drop, slip a mickey, pull a fast one. But Raven's nuclear umbrella kind of puts the world title out of reach.

Which is okay. Sometimes it's all right just to be a little bad. To know your limitations. Make do with what you've got. "

I take a lot of inspiration from that. It mirrors exactly how I feel. I used to think that if I just said "fuck it" and went off to do something, I could be awesome at it....but now, maybe it's better that I enjoy it at my scale.

I'm still a good cook.

And Andy, I cook outdoors, on propane. While it doesn't have the brute enjoyment of wood/charcoal, it does give me a lot more control, especially for true barbecuing, like ribs or pulled pork. I have a smoke box I use in the gas grill, and I get really good results.

Nobody's perfect.

Especially not the New England Patriots.

I'd like to thank the New York Giants for finally stepping on Tom Brady's throat. Can we please stop with the "Tom Brady is the greatest QB of all time" now? The man was rattled all game, and that last possession made me laugh hysterically. Watching Brady get sacked on second down to put them at 3 and 20, Brady flat on his back, wondering what the license plate number was....

When Burress caught that touchdown with less than a minute to play, I remember saying "OK, Greatest QB ever. Show us how great you are." Good kickoff, no return.... Four and out. Watching the Giants absolutely slam Brady into the turf and saying "Boy...that looks like a team in trouble." Brady getting up screaming at his offensive line. Screaming at Welker as he missed a pass he couldn't have caught if he had a rocket pack on his back.

Brady isn't a great quarterback. When things go wrong (which, to be fair, isn't that often in New England) he screams at everyone...as if it's not his fault. When Eli Manning threw a ball that, by all rights, should have been caught, you SAW him slap the receiver on the shoulder and say "My fault." Brady got in the face of one of his key receivers and gave him shit for not catching a pass that was well behind him.

I've been saying it for years. The man is lucky, and blessed to be on a team that is talented, and all the playcalling goes to his strengths, which is short, quick routes and screens. He doesn't throw the ball long, and has no touch for it. Under pressure, he gets snippy and starts playing the blame game. In short, he's not a hero. He's a component.

The Giants figured it out in week 17. They knew what they had to do. Going in to the Super Bowl, the defense had a clear plan...fuck with Brady. Rattle him. All that talk about how calm he is, what a great leader he is...the Giants knew better. They got to him. Got in his face. Put him in the turf. "Giants defensive end Osi Umenyiora walked up to Michael Strahan and said, "Do you realize if we don't hit Brady, we don't win the game?"" They knew what to do. ""All week long, we talked about even if Brady gets the ball out, we have to hit him to disrupt his rhythm," Spagnuolo said. "The more we do it, the more it'll pay off in the end.""

The Patriots believed their own press. When Burress said the Patriots were only gonna score 17 points, Brady laughed. He LAUGHED. You know what, Tom? 14 is less than 17.

Every person on that field is a professional football player. They know that on any given day, things can go your way...or not. "Any Given Sunday" son. Guess what? You fucked with the football Gods. On week 17, the Giants put every starter in...played their guts out. You would have thought that their playoff spot was on the line. It wasn't...but the football Gods remembered. They let them beat a superior Dallas team. The football Gods killed one of their all-time favorites, Brett Favre. In freezing weather. In fucking Lambeau. Did Tom Brady think that the football Gods were gonna let him walk away with this? If Brady was gonna win this one, he needed to be hungry...needed to understand that this was gonna be a serious challenge.

But he didn't. He laughed. And the Giants, while not the old Giants of LT (the REAL LT,) Harry Carson, Carl Banks, and the rest...they made the Patriots hurt. Brady, probably already wobbly on that bad ankle, learned the hard way.

Bill Simmons, the ridiculously Boston-biased writer from ESPN, actually had a pretty good article today, and an excellent point:

"...after the Patriots stunned the Rams in Super Bowl XXXVI. This time around, we were the Rams. We were rooting for the unlikable double-digit favorites with an unstoppable offense. We were the arrogant fans who dismissed the chances of the other team. We had the Super Bowl postgame party looming that had been a hot ticket all week. Then the game started, and everything went right to hell. We looked flat from the first minute. Our underdog opponent gained confidence, punched us in the mouth a few times, kept punching and punching, caught a few breaks, threw a few more punches, ran out of gas near the end, looked to be done ... and out of nowhere, rallied for a miracle drive to steal the championship. We stood there slack-jawed while the other fans celebrated; we were unable to breathe and wondered what the heck just happened. And then we hustled out of the stadium like we were fleeing a crime scene.

The symmetry was incredible. It was staggering. It was epic."

The football Gods smiled.

When you work in marketing/design, things like this definitely make you laugh out loud.

Silverlight training is over. I'd forgotten how much I miss coding. I really do like it...even if it doesn't pay that well, the hours suck, and you're constantly being hammered over timelines.

Have a long weekend this week, so I'm looking forward to getting some sleep, playing some serious game, and generally chilling.

OK...since I last blogged:

- I got married. 31 October, 2007.
- I bought a house. 31 October, 2007 (Yes ,same day.)
- Moved into said new house. 19 November, 2007.
- Worked on a project that had me working 114 and 134 hours in consecutive weeks. (Last week of November, First week of December.)
- Had a bunch of time off between Christmas and New Year's.
- Got a PS3 for Christmas...and a new keyboard and mouse and other toys, including a Nerf sniper rifle.

Now you're caught up.

This week, I'm in intensive Silverlight training. I could explain what Silverlight is...but suffice it to say that I'm basically being forced to remember how to code in Javascript, when I last used it about 10 years ago. It hurts my brain. A lot. I remember the structures and theory, but the syntax is just plain painful. Doesn't hurt that the Javascript I need to manipulate is attached to a file format call XAML, which isn't what you think it is.

If I had more time, I'd really be enjoying this...but instead, I'm getting crunchy trying to force code by trial and error.

Anyway, I'll try to write more frequently. Yeah, I said that before. But I really will be trying this time. Even if I have to slack off in a training session to do so.

Peer pressure occasionally works.

So there.