Update – Don’t block cookies on your on web blog February 16, 2008
Posted by aticron in Books, Family & Friends, Life in general, Video Games, World of Warcraft.add a comment
Took me a good 5 minutes to get the exception list fixed so I could log in. So much for troubleshooting skillz!
Let’s do some brief monthly updates to catch up shall we?
July – Got married to Jen at the end of the Month, went on honeymoon to Oregon Coast and had a great time with our California family.
August – Went to PAX which was awesome. So much so that we are going this year for the whole 3 days and booking a room down town to fully enjoy the experience with friends.
September – Worked worked worked.
October – Applied for Senior Analyst position at work.
November – Promoted to Senior Analyst, mayhem ensues (actually I just continued to do whatever I wanted).
December – Had two Christmas’. One at our Apartment in Seattle with Jen’s family, another in Vancouver the weekend after with my family. Received a sweet LCD TV from my parents.
January – Made New Years Resolutions: Get less fat (not working), love life (working as intended), keep in touch with friends (going well!).
February – Jen is traveling alot for work, I am trying to maintain a Job at my company as my group is currently being looked at for Outsourcing… hopefully I can keep my awesome momentum at the company.
This weekend we are driving down to Vancouver to visit the family. We plan on eating out at our favorite restaurants (Burgerville, Lindo Mexico, Sushi) and seeing our friends. This will be fun but I am missing my second week of LEAGUE BOWLING. Yes that’s right, I joined a practice league with some friends. I take it very not seriously so it’s great. Every Sunday I drink a bunch of beer and bowl with my fellow “Tacocopters” (the name chosen after the compromise for the two most voted names, “Taco Fiesta” and “ROFLCOPTER”) . I used to be a fierce bowler but I don’t much care anymore. This weekend I hope to purchase my own Bowling ball… surpisingly the one of my choice is LIME scented, did you know bowling balls came in scents?
I still play the WoW! I have 33 druid on Jen’s brothers PVE server. It’s a nice change of pace once you pass level 20. I’ve also been playing REZ which is such an experience I highly recommend. Also we play Rock Band almost every weekend with friends and drinks which I can’t stress enough how fun that is. Call of Duty 4 on Xbox and getting delt by my own brother online (it was bound to happen).
I’ve been reading various self help style books. Cool Time which is nice Time Management book that explains why you are bad at managing your time both psychologically and physiologically. I’m working on Project + Certification book which is dry but necessary for the resume. Also plowing through Never eat alone as I never really thought about networking at all until this book which is also a great read. Also reading a book about finding the leader within but I really don’t remember the title. Mostly work related since I used a work gift card to buy them. Learning a lot and hopefully enough to land at some position in the company after the sourcing.
Game Review: Trauma Center – Under the Knife February 7, 2006
Posted by aticron in Game Reviews, Video Games.add a comment
It’s either this or Italian Homework so I thought I’d write up my thoughts on the game thus far, because it’s not like professional game journalist ever write a review without actually playing through the entire game…
Briefly put, TC-UtK is one of the games on DS which utilizes the stylus for the entirety of the gameplay. No hokey “let’s steer Mario with our left hand while trying to jump with our right” control scheme, this game was made for the DS and thus the gameplay is truly benefited by this design. You play as a young, unfocused Surgeon in the OR of a hospital. The game takes you through the progression of the young Surgeon to hotshot doc through small chapters which divide the game up into nice bit size chunks, great for just picking up while waiting for the bus or for your friends to pick you up for the night out. Each little chapter pushes the plot line along and gives you a little more insight into the little doc’s stressful life, while giving you one “level” worth of surgery.
Surgery itself is the bulk of the game, while you must still click through a few moments of dialogue reminiscent of Gray’s Anatomy written for Japan, the briefings for surgeries are very useful. Game play takes place when you are literally thrown into your first operation and are explained on the fly how to proceed. This can be a bit stressful for your average gamer, as you will not progress first try through the introductory levels. This game challenges both your ability to remember several steps that make up the procedure for the current operation, what specific tools you will use, and your coordination with a scalpel.
Mother 3 (Earthbound 2) to be released after 11 year wait January 25, 2006
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Not sure what this digg thing is all about but that’s how I should link it so I will. To be blunt and quick about it, Earthbound is my favorite videogame and because of that I have made many friends and contacts across the country and world because of our shared affinity for the game. My interest in gaming today persists because of the memories I had with that game. Anyway, I just wanted to spread the news so that maybe we can get a US release instead of making us translate it, cause God know’s we would.
Eve Online and Raiding Woes January 23, 2006
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Yes, my first post entirely game related! First up, I’m really sick of raiding in WoW. It honestly isn’t fun at all. In general I’d say it’s not fun after the first time, and for most just one more thing to do to help feed the addiction, or the want for purple loots. When I first signed up I honestly meant that I wasn’t too interested in raiding, and pretty much for the reasons that I don’t enjoy it now. People lost concept of it just being a game, they go too overboard about certain administrative aspects of leading raids and not tough enough on those that keep raiding worth doing. People who were fun to do small group quests and raids turn into bitches, barking out and yelling orders, not showing any respect for their colleagues and hardly accepting blame for simliar faults of their own. The worse of all traits of high end raiding has to be the “not knowing when to quit” syndrome which honestly to a normal person would be obvious be to these people is not. When you’ve been raiding for 6+ hours, and 2 or 3 of those hours spent sitting around not doing anything usually, people get fatigued, bored, and need to move on with their lives. Worse yet we don’t quit when it’s obvious that we have no control over what is hindering our progess, server lag, fatigue, whatever it may be we just keep running into that wall for the sake of running up repair costs at some points. The few times raiding has been enjoyable are usually when it’s most casual but people are still within that time frame of being interested in what they are doing so they try to perform better. But god that last time that happened it was aroung Christmas and it was a Karaoke Zul’gurrub raid not hosted by any particular officers.
So I’m going to try and keep the raiding to a minimum, I’ve gotten the stuff I wanted and wished for, and the things I want now would be cool but not wholey necessary for my survival in high end content. While at work my boss was showing me screens and such of Eve Online, which sounds alot like some of my favorite palm pilot games, trading space merchandies, flying around fighting pirates in a huge galaxy. Gonna give it a test go pretty soon here and then get back to you on how it actually plays.
Mother 3 Links and such January 19, 2006
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Not every day you see M3 as an article where M3 is a main reason for buying a DS because I still find it amazing that perhaps anyone outside of Starmen.net knowing and having love for Earthbound. And then reid finds this freaky blog thing with Mr. Saturn plush dolls.
