All Hallows ‘09

Halloween weekend turned out to be a huge success, and a lot of fun.

Friday afternoon after I got off of work I proceeded to cash my check and run some errands. I had to gather some after-thought accessories for my costume. From comments made, I looked a lot like Brett Michaels, and not from his VH1 reality show days. I wore the tightest leopard print pants I could find… yes, they were spandex and from the women’s department.

There was a party that night were many of my still-employed-at-the-casino ex-coworkers were throwing. Ted drove me Hollee and Traci, and there were a few other people there that I knew. I’d say about 50% of the people there were casino employees, the rest were friend’s of somebody… still a good turn out, there was plenty of alcohol to go around, and it was a good time. Gonzalo was the DJ on duty, and he’s always good at mixing things up. We ended up leaving relatively early because Ted had to work in the morning, but it was long enough for me to get a good buzz and want to pass out as well.

Saturday me and Hollee were up pretty early, and we ended up going to breakfast. There’s a little cafe in town I had never been to and she raved about. It wasn’t too expensive and the food was great, so I was happy with the choice. We hung out for a while after until it was time to head out. Her band had a gig, and I had to be at Amanda and Keith’s wedding by 5. So I got all dressed up again and drove out to the wedding. I was one of the first people there aside from family, so I hung out with those I did know and had a couple beers. The ceremony commenced, and after it was over The Adey’s were married and we ate some (horrible) catered food. I didn’t think much of it, but there was plenty of liquor to wash it down. After dinner Keith’s Dad’s band played a couple songs, and by then most of the older family and little kids had left, so we decided FOS would finally play. We did our best, and I think we sounded good aside from a couple minor errors. Keith did mention that he’s met another guitar player and we just might have a 2nd one for our band. After our show Hollee finally showed up and we all partied it up. Me and Hollee spent the night but relatively no one else did, it was rather empty in the morning.

Sunday after noon was spent on the couch. Me and Hollee watched football all day, and no I don’t want to talk about my Packers loss. In all fairness, we should get Petersen since Minnesota has our QB. Wonder how the game would have ended then? San Diego won so Hollee was happy, and I drowned my sorrows in Pizza we ordered for dinner. Not wanting to let the fun end there, I decided we should go see a movie, so we went and watched Saw VI. It was just as entertaining as the previous five, and I will definitely be picking up a copy of it when it’s released on DVD.

Yesterday I had the day from hell at work, and as a result I played hooky today. I decided I didn’t want to go in, and I decided to be productive with the time off. I went and made a payment on my fine, and then went and picked up some cleaning supplies because this place has gotten filthy! While I was at Wally World, I decided to grab a Wii points card, as they didn’t have the DVD I wanted to pick up that came out today. With the card, I ended up downloading another old Sega Genesis game, “Landstalker”, an RPG I owned as a kid. I also downloaded one of the Wii Ware titles, “Contra: Rebirth”. It plays identically to the games I remember playing as a kid, but the graphics are at least updated a bit, so it’s not quite as retro. I also checked out what I could download through Guitar Hero 5, and found that there are a bunch of songs that can be downloaded for free. Only problem is, by the time I figured this out my Wii’s internal memory is almost maxed out. So I downloaded a couple (only one for points, the last that I had) and will have to wait on the others. Time to buy a microSD card.

For the rest of the night I don’t really have any plans, but I know that I don’t have to work until 12 tomorrow, so I have all night literally, and my girl will be here sometime around 6. Life has been great lately. I haven’t gotten to play EQ2 all that much because of the busy weekend, but I’ll be back to it, as my first month sub is gone, but I decided to continue to pay for it.

Similarity on a Different Day

My EQ2 play time has been somewhat limited, but I’ve still managed to log on every couple of days. Because of my noted Alt-itus, I have been unable to pull away from the Wizard I had mentioned creating. He’s now over level 20, has quite a few AAs (I actually decided to use the AA slider on him, set at 25%), and is pretty much finished with the TD questlines. From here, it’s time to run through other lowbie zones and gather up disco and the like, and then head to BB to continue the leveling path. Avoiding quests in Antonica and the Commonlands is definitely a good leveling path, as cities such as Neriak and Timerous Deep have shown. They both encourage you to go straight to Butcherblock after the starting areas, and the leveling seems to go a lot faster than I remember in the past.

I still need work done on my mains, but I’ve found some fun with this new character, so I pretty much play what I feel like when I feel like it. I’m enjoying the game again, so I feel using this “I do what I want” plan is working for me. Maybe some day I’ll have the time and motivation to be in a guild again, and raid again, but I think getting my toons to max level is a priority before even thinking about it, and with another level cap increase coming sooner than later, I’m sure I’ll stay behind for a while. But I’m ok with that. I was never one of the elite raiders on my server, so it’s not like I have a reputation to uphold.

Some of my gaming time has been spent on consoles. As I mentioned previously, I purchased Guitar Hero 5. I have since beaten the career mode, though I still have some work to do as far as stars go. Ted also picked up a new (old) game, Soul Caliber IV, and we’ve been playing that quite a bit. The survival mode is quite challenging, and we’ve been working towards beating it, slowly but surely. There are a few other console games I wouldn’t mind trying, but I haven’t gotten around to making any other purchases.

The big event is coming up on Saturday. I’m ready. It’s going to be a blast. I will definitely have an account of the night here this weekend. I have the weekend off, and it’s going to be a good one. Don’t expect much life here on the site until the aftermath.

I Love The Fall

It could be just because I’m a fall child, but I really enjoy this time of year. Once October arrives, the weather cools off, we start seeing some rain, and my personally favorite holidays are right around the corner.

Halloween is coming, and I think I finally figured out what I’m going to be. I can’t recall if I mentioned it, but FOS will be playing our comeback show on that night. Our drummer is getting married and having a Halloween party in the same night. So of course costumes are required, and I was having trouble figuring out what I was going to be. My costume has to be especially prevalent, mainly because I’m the frontman of the band, so I’m going to be getting the most attention. Don’t want to have the worst costume and be the center of attention. So I’m hoping I’ve picked something appropriate.

My second favorite holiday is Thanksgiving, mainly because of the food, but I enjoy the gatherings as well. I don’t have a large family, but we manage to have a decent turnout anyway, and a feast is always promised. Can’t forget either, that football is a cornerstone of the weekend, and we all love football don’t we? Speaking of football, did you see the one handed catch my receiver Donald Driver caught yesterday? Sweet christ, what a catch! My Packers went on to destroy Detroit, shutting them out and keeping them win-less this season. Not a huge feat, but fun to see nonetheless.

I had some extra cash for once this weekend, and since I had paid all of my bills, and got everything with my car squared away, I managed to purchase some things. I’ve had a Boost Mobile phone for over a year now, but because I bought the cheapest phone possible at the time, I thought it was time for an upgrade. I ended up getting a new phone at Radio Shack, the newest Motorola that looks like a blackberry, the i465. It’s still not a touch screen, it’s still not a top of the line phone, but I don’t really care about all those bells and whistles. It does what I want it to do, and it’s a bit more “new” than the piece of shit I had before.

I ended up having the urge to play my Wii for the first time in a couple months. Because I hadn’t had any money for a while, I had been bored with the games I had for the system, and I started back up in EQ2,  I hadn’t been playing the console. Ted had gone through a dry spell with his Xbox as well, up until a couple days ago when he bought a used copy of Soul Caliber IV, which is a decent fighter, but nothing to write home about. I see games I want for the 360 all the time, but because the system isn’t mine I’m hesitant to buy them, although I did by Street Fighter 4 for it a while back. If I was to get another console, I’d buy a PS3 anyway, so Xbox games aren’t going to do me any good, save for store credit at Game Stop.

So the other day I went to Game Stop and found a copy of Guitar Hero 5 with a guitar. It was a bit pricey, but I needed the guitar controller, and now I can play any of the other games without purchasing anything but the software. The Metallica edition interests me, and I might go and get the last game, World Tour, only because I never got to play much of that one. I’m not really interested in the drums, so the only other peripherals I would purchase is another guitar, and the microphone. I know Hollee would love to sing along. But any of that can wait, I’m having fun with GH5 with just the guitar. I’d say I’m about 50% done with Career mode, but there’s a lot of other features to the game that give it quite a bit of replay, not to mention the ability to download new songs (which is new to me, having only played the first 3 guitar hero games on the ps2). It’s nice to have a game around that is more socially oriented, and I’ve been finding myself broadening my musical tastes through it. I’ve downloaded a lot of songs recently that I’ve learned to love only because of guitar hero. Now I’m sounding like a fanboy so moving on…

In EQ2 land I got sidetracked for a couple days playing my little Wizard in Timerous Deep. He’s nearing level 15 now, and is a lot of fun to play. I’m thinking this might be my next level 80, after I finish off the Paladin of course. I really need to start working on getting shard armor and upgrading all of my spells on my Brigand, but I’m enjoying the leveling part of the game again. Being cap is great, but grinding for AA is a lot less fun than grinding levels. You get so much more to look forward to when leveling a new toon. But I digress. I’m hoping to get some solid chunks of play time here on my couple days off.

Yesterday Hollee’s band was playing at the SoCal Fair in Perris. I’ve never been to this fair, so I thought it would be pretty cool to check out. Ted’s sister had already invited him to come out and see the Destruction Derby, so we all rolled out together. We ate food. We ate snacks. Me and Ted got FOS stickers made for our cars. Hollee’s son rode rides. We watched a bit of the Derby. We watched Hollee’s band play for a while. We came home. I drank some beers and played some Guitar Hero. Not only is my girlfriend fucking hot, but she’s an amazing singer. It was a great day. And now, it’s time I return to my vegitative weekend.

Tank n’ Spank

I remember now so fondly of why I stuck things out with my Paladin.

I started the game so long ago, and even with a near-year absence, and some dull spots in there, I remember why I got hooked to this game.

The absence was brought upon by real life coincidence. My re-entry of the game was brought about by a combination of boredom, a fond remembrance of the game and a lack of any real “contenders” in the industry (this of course is my own personal opinion, though I read most of my fellow [former] EQ2 players’ blogs and notice that most are either playing multiple MMOs at once, or just playing ones that aren’t EQ2).

Anyhow, I’ve been concentrating almost solely on my Paladin since my first month back has begun. I’m planning to take him straight to 80, without utilizing the new AA slider, because I’m confident that I have enough solo quests in front of me (being not half through ROK, and not even started on TOS) to max out AAs without worrying about the slider. I’ve been gaining AA like crazy, and it’s been way too easy.

My Brigand had the advantage of being created about a month late. I figure if I would have created him a month earlier, I would have had him to cap on AAs and level before ROK released. But as it was, I was 67 or 68 when Kunark released, so I gained above 100 AAs before reaching 70. My Paladin is a different story. He was created long before the level 80 cap increase, so he had his 100 AAs at level 70 (actually achieved them way after being 70 because it was before they changed the AA system around with EOF). But even with the slight disadvantage Thalinos has 115 AA and is only about halfway through the Fens. I see no problem reaching 200 AA with the content I have yet to conquer.

So with that said, I’m enjoying my comeback. I’ve found a happy medium where I play for just enough hours in a day, and don’t necessarily play every day. I’ve found that I now want to play the game rather than need to play the game. When I felt that need to play, it began to lose its luster in some aspects; it felt as if I was being controlled by the game (or maybe the players therein).

30,000+

I forgot to mention the other day that I rolled over 30,000 hits. Granted, it took a hell of a lot longer to reach 30,000 than it did to reach 20,000. I’m sure the reason for this is obvious, seeing as how I didn’t blog for 6 months. Either way, chock up another milestone. The next milestone I’ll be expecting is my 500th post, which is fast approaching.

We had band practice last night. We have two more before we play Keith’s wedding. I still have yet to figure out a costume for the event. Him and Amanda decided to get married on Halloween, and he decided that we should play our 1st “come back” show that night. So costumes are a requirement, and me and my other band mates are the groomsmen. It’s an honor really, and I know it’s going to be a blast playing in front of people again. I just can’t figure out what the hell I’m going to dress up as.

Our practice went well, as they have been going for the past month or so (before that was a little too sporadic to make any real progress). I have been working on my “stage presence”, trying to move around more and being more creative with my vocals. I’m hoping that my work will show. Our “core” songs, “Nothing Wrong”, “Fat Chicks”, “Honesty”, “Broken Bottles”, “Push the Button”, and “Life in the Pit”, went off without a hitch last night. I could really feel the energy as opposed to other practices. We started working on our covers, as Ted still needed to learn them, and he picked up bits and pieces of “In Your Eyes”, although it still needs polish, and he needs to learn “Dead Cities” and “London Dungeon”. The latter being one we picked to cover specifically for our show Halloween night. The last song we worked on was “Greedy Little Girls”, which was the last new song we created when Steve was still our guitarist. I think Ted’s got it down, just has to figure out the exact timing. Overall it was a productive night.

Me and Ted had been working on a new song, which is still untitled. He came up with a couple really cool guitar riffs, and I was having trouble putting lyrics to them, as his structure wasn’t working for me. So I advised a change in the song structure, and I finished off the lyrics based off that structure. I’m thinking it’s going to be a great song, vastly different from what we’ve already done, just have to get the other guys on the same page.

Otherwise it’s work work work all the live long day. Feels like I haven’t had a day off in forever, but that’s mostly due to the fact that I’ve been going in on my days off. Hopefully this upcoming week I’ll actually get to enjoy them.

I’ve managed to play a couple hours of EQ2 here and there, almost daily. With my random schedule it’s hard to guarantee when I’ll play, but I’ve managed to play at all different times of the day. I haven’t done much with my Brigand, aside from some quests in Lavastorm with my Dad. I’m pretty much leaving him sit unless my Dad is on, because I don’t really know what’s going on with the new expansion, and he’s already level 80. Granted, he needs about 60 AAs, but those will come. For now, I’ve been working on getting my Paladin up to level 80. I want to have the option to tank or play dps, so having two level 80s will give me a broader range to experience quests/raids/grouping. Also, with two level 80s I’ll get a bigger xp bonus, so any of my little alts can be leveled that much faster.

I did create a wizard in TD. He’s almost level ten, but definitely a backburner toon. My main focus is to get the Pally to 80. From there, I can max out his and the Brigand’s AAs and really focus on getting their gear. Having my Mythical on both would be awesome.

Since I have a couple hours before work, I’m going to see what progress can be made.