Short Week

I had to work on Friday when I’m normally off. We had a concert at the casino and when this happens, I always get my days off switched around. To compensate, my boss gave me Saturday/Sunday off, which is a nice change of pace. The concert was Don Henley (The singer of The Eagles, in case you were wondering), and it went pretty smoothly. It was a much smaller show than the KISS concert we had a couple weeks ago. Soon enough I was off and prepared to enjoy a much deserved weekend, having worked 6 days in a row.

Saturday I had planned to have a few friends over for some BBQ and Brew. I talked to Howard and he said he would stop by, and so did Drews and his girlfriend. I talked to a couple other people as well, but they never did stop by. I started out my day playing some EQ2, and my little Brigand hit level 30 jeweler, level 32 adventurer, and got his 27th achievement point. Me and Gina were supposed to play together, but she ended up going out with her Mom somewhere, and by the time she got back I was preparing for company.

Howard came over and we fired up the barbecue. I made some burgers and dogs, and we ate and drank some beer. Drews called me and told me that he had to work later than expected, so his girlfriend came over by herself to wait for him to arrive. Herbie ended up coming over, but he just came to steal Howard and go to the bar. So it was just me and the ladies. We sat around and bullshitted and drank until it was time for Drews to get off, and his lady went to go get him. When he arrived, we played some drinking games and polished off the last of the beer. They took off at about 4:30 a.m., and then me and Gina went to bed.

Gina had to work early yesterday, so I woke up alone. I played around on the computer, but I didn’t really have any plans. Howard called me around 2, and asked if I wanted to hang out, so I said sure. Gina got home and was really tired so she took a nap. Howard came over shortly thereafter, and we were just chillin. I started up Call of Duty 2, and messed around with that, and we were just talking while I played. I asked Howard if he was interested in giving it a try, and he said sure, so I installed it on Gina’s computer. After getting it all setup, I had to go online and find a cd key, because I only have one. The cd key worked as far as playing the game went, but it wouldn’t let him get online. With that said, I decided to try and set up a LAN game, so we could at least mess around a little.

This proved be be painstaking. You would think because my computer is already networked to the other, this would have been a breeze, but it wasn’t. Not only did I have to figure out how to make a LAN game (which isn’t as self-explanatory as in other games), then I had to go read some tech support stuff online because I kept getting an error. Turns out there’s .iwd files associated with the game. When playing online, if people use custom configurations/mods, you end up downloading more .iwds. Then eventually if the list gets too long, when trying to make your own server (dedicated or not, LAN or over the internet), you get an error message because the game has an input string that is only so many characters long. If the list is longer than the set length, you get the error, because it can’t verify everything. So I had to figure out which .iwds to get rid of. This fixed the problem, but then there was another.

Gina’s computer wouldn’t see the LAN game no matter what I tried. I messed with the filtering, the game settings, even the firewall settings, and no go. I read a bunch of different tech support articles, and finally figured that I would just disable the firewall momentarily to see if it would work. And of course, it did. So we played together, finally. We played a couple rounds against each other, and that got boring pretty quickly. I tried getting him on the internet, but it just wouldn’t work. So I though I would take a look around and see if they had created any bot programs for the game. Sure enough, I found one, and it was pretty decent sounding. There were some tweaks necessary to make it work, but I figured it all out. Basically it was another .iwd file that I extracted to the main directory folder. From there, I had to create a server config file, that contained a couple variables, one for bot skill, and one for bot number. I adjusted these to my liking, and then loaded the game. According to the website, this was only supposed to work on one map, and whatnot, but later I found a newer version that allowed use on all maps, including custom ones. When we first tried it out, we went with the default 6 bots, at the hardest difficulty. They were amazing shots and it was a bit too difficult. So I added in some bots and lowered the difficulty (learned a lot about what the console can do). Eventually we played some custom maps I had, with the two of us fighting 20 bots, and a decent difficulty. We mopped the floor with them, but it was a lot of fun, and now I have a source of entertainment for friends again. Howard ended up going home around 2, and I went to bed a little bit after that.

This week is a short week for me. I work today and tomorrow, and then I’m off Wednesday thru Saturday. On Wednesday we’re finally using the Knotts Berry Farm tickets provided by work, and taking the kids along. Thursday I don’t have any plans, but on Friday my Dad is supposed to come out and visit, and that will be nice. Haven’t seen the old man in a while. He’s supposed to stay until Saturday, so we’ll have plenty of time to do some shit. Anyway, that’s all I have for now. I’m out.