Curse is over?
August 16, 2008
Maybe it’s a bit early to announce this but I think my curse is over.
I mentioned a few days ago that my camera is being fixed. That’s one good piece of news as of late.
On Monday, wifey and I hauled the dead laptop, dead camera, and a bunch of Haagen Dazs gift certificates out to Yodobashi Camera. I recently noticed a repair center in the basement and thought I’d give it a try. What would I have to lose with a dead camera and computer already?
For one thing, I would lose my life savings. To fix the camera, the dude gave an estimate of 18,000 yen. No way guy! Again, reading some forums online, Fuji is repairing this problem for free. Hence we made our way to the Service Center.
Next, we went to the computer repair center - it’s in the same place but they have an individual counter for computers. The guy did a quick looksee. He plugged in the AC, tried turning it on, and then turned it off. What the heck? Just from that he said it was probably a motherboard problem. Oh yeah, he estimated that it would cost about 60 to 70,000 yen. I can buy a new laptop for that.
Actually he didn’t say “motherboard” exactly, he said, and I translate, “It’s a foundation problem”. OK. A computer’s foundation can mean anything. For me, the fundamental component is the motherboard but to my lovely, hardware-illiterate wife, it just might well be the nice shiny plastic box or case. Unfortunately I also thought the same but I made my guess by opening up the laptop and testing stuff out piece by piece.
The vast quantities of ice cream consumed after helped sooth my frayed nerves. I was hauling my very heavy laptop in the hottest time of the year, oh and with a big sunburn on my back. Ice cream saves all. Whenever I feel my temper flaring, I will think, “What would Ice Cream do?”
Wifey tried to console me on the loss of my laptop. I, however, would not give up so easily. Coming home, I opened up the laptop and examined each component down to the dust particles. I noticed a couple of things: a screw holder thingy had become very loose - it was hanging on by millimeters of metal. It came off completely as well. Since the issue was power, I guessed that maybe this little metal thingy was somehow shorting out the board. Out it went. Then I noticed some melted paint near some transistors near the video card. The video card gets really hot and probably melted it a long time ago. I wasn’t sure how the melted paint might affect things but I scraped it off.
Slapping everything back together and plugging in the AC… hmm… no amber light! Power on… Yup. It booted up. Whatever it was, it wasn’t the motherboard. I had won. I wanted to go back and spit on the guy who didn’t even bother looking at my computer.
I just hope it stays alive this time. I’m writing this update on the laptop watching some George Carlin as I speak. I hope that only George rests in piece and my laptop continues to work, albeit very slowly, for another few years.
Doom 3
April 22, 2008
I finally finished Doom 3 after weeks of 10-15 minute playing sessions.
Wow, Doom 3 has got to be one of the creepiest games I’ve ever played. There were times that the game really felt demonic - it went beyond a video game and sent chills down my spine. There were a few times when I couldn’t bring myself to play at night when the woman went to sleep.
The Cyberdemon was a beautiful creation. It was much more intimidating than the one back in the original Doom. Still, one begs to ask, where was that loveable thumping noise that he makes when he’s walking around?
Anyway, the game reminded me a lot of System Shock 2 with the PDA audio logs. Unfortunately it didn’t have the scope and the story of SS2. Most of the game was very linear and simple - find the exit by killing everything and trying to conserve ammo.
The shotgun was yet again the bread and butter weapon but I was very glad that my personal favorite Doom weapon, the plasma rifle, was just as cool and devasting as before.
Soothsayer, party of five
December 11, 2007
Recently started playing Titan Quest - a Diablo-like game built to be better than Diablo. The designers have taken the time to implement many nice things that were missing from Diablo. Every character starts in exactly the same way - you begin customizing your character by picking up to two masteries and within each mastery choosing skills. In that way you have a fairly unique character each time you play.
Here’s my Soothsayer (Nature and Spirit masteries). She’s not so strong in combat but with four pets, she just sits back and picks up spoils of war!
Party of five
In this picture you should see my character with the shield, a scantily clad dryad on bow and arrow duty, a lich on crazy lightning shit duty, and two wolves on nasty elemental biting your face off duty.
I serve to the wise and powerful. Are you sure YOU should be shopping here? - Delphi magic seller
Thanks Mr. T for introducing me to this highly addictive game!
D&D 3.5 Character Sheet
December 03, 2007
I got bored of filling out the character sheet by pencil and erasing each and every time so I took the existing template from the wizards website and slapped it through the Adobe form creator. This will help keep my sheets looking a bit cleaner:
Get it here (1.2mb)
You will need Adobe Acrobat or Reader to open it. Once you fill in the data, remember to export the form data into an .xml file or else you will lose all the data. To edit the data, open the form and import the data and make your changes (then export the data again).
What it does: it automatically sets ability modifiers to skills and most other rolls.
What it does not do: it does not automatically sum things up yet. I’ll be looking at adding some scripts to it so that skills, saves, AC data is summed up automatically.
Complete Geek
September 07, 2007
I had really wanted to meet Thierry’s new baby girl for a couple of months now and given the opportunity, I also wanted to try the D&D Miniatures game. Armed with two Wardrums booster, I met the msot fabulous baby ever and got owned in a miniatures booster game.
The game is quite fun but a lot more in-depth than what I gave it at first. I think I forgot all about the different abilities. It takes quite awhile to play though. As expensive as each booster box is, I think in the long run it will be cheaper than Magic, but unfortunately, take up more room which is even more limited.
At Yellow Submarine, the guy who usually speaks to me now knows I play Magic, DnD, Vampire, and now DnD Miniatures. Even he was a bit surprised. I am so glad I got married before I turned.
The big giant guy I got in my starter box
Desert
August 28, 2007
This one didn’t turn out as well as I liked. It’s a plain desert setting. Our last fight in Mike’s game was in the desert against a Rust Monster.
I’ve also been thinking of a Rifts Japan story and also thinking how my current favorite anime, Claymore, could be adapted. Hmm… dou shyou kana…
My first dungeon map
August 26, 2007
After a lot of dungeon crawling in Mike’s game yesterday, I was inspired and made myself a small map for fun. Pure photoshop and a couple of downloaded textures. This is not for any real game but I even have a back story for it. This is for low level characters (level 1-3).
Click for a larger version
10th Edition Sealed
July 28, 2007
This month’s sealed featured the newly released 10th Edition. I haven’t been thrilled with the cards so far. A lot of my favorites were taken out of core from 9th and replaced with retarded and janky filler. Limited though, is always different and today I got maybe the best cards for limited I’ve ever had.
I ended up with a green/red aggro zoo deck backed up with a lot of removal. I splashed black because… well, you’ll see.
Aggro Burn Zoo
9x Forest
5x Mountain
4x Swamp
—– 18 Land —–1x Siege-Gang Commander [2/2]
1x Anaba Bodyguard [2/3]
1x Earth Elemental [4/5]
1x Rhox [5/5]
1x Stalking Tiger [3/3]
1x Llanowar Sentinel [2/3]
1x Giant Spider [2/4]
1x Enormous Baloth [7/7]
1x Karplusan Strider [3/4]
1x Elvish Piper [1/1]
1x Pincher Beetles [3/1]
1x Troll Ascetic [3/2]
—– 12 Creatures —–2x Terror
2x Assassinate
1x Chromatic Star
1x Naturalize
1x Hurricane
1x Lure
1x Shock
1x Blaze
1x Incinerate
—– 11 Spells —–
Seriously! Look at those cards! I have 8 removal spells! TWO freaking Terrors! How could I NOT splash black?! A Blaze, Shock, and Incinerate!!! I might as well had thrown in a Char. Then, I had a Troll Ascetic, my bomb today and definite favorite card from 10th backed up with Earth Elemental, Enormous Baloth, and a Rhox all called by Elvish Piper. The mana curve was quite steep but I was generally able to get going from about turn 4 or 5. I lost once in the 1v1s from mana screw but aside from that, I did rather well.
The lone Naturalize was thrown in when Thierry “accidentally” announced that Guillaume got a very bombalicious Loxodon Warhammer. While it never got to kill the Warhammer, it did come in handy in the DHG when a Pariah was thrown onto our little monsters.
Ultimate Topdecking
July 05, 2007
That draw was worth $16,000!
Oh yeah, if you understand all that, you’re a geek. Wanna play?
Oh yeah!
June 08, 2007
3 boosters: 2x Planar Chaos, 1x Time Spiral
Damnation
Lotus Bloom
Soltari Priest (ok, not technically a rare, but there’s only one Timeshifted per pack yeah?)
Chronozoa
Null Profusion
Magus of the Arena
Anyway, I bought the PC hoping for a Damnation, and bam! That’s my third… just one more for a playset. The Lotus Bloom will help. Guillaume and I are going to try a Dragonstorm build just to see it work.
So far my best booster is still probably a Bogardan Hellkite and timeshifted Sacred Mesa.
Future Sight Sealed
May 17, 2007
While I’m on a roll with updating I might as well write about our latest MTG event. The Saturday following the wedding, there was a mini sealed event at my place: 3 Future Sight, 1 Planar Chaos, 1 Time Spiral.
I got a great set of cards and made a UGr (2 Ghostfires, 1 Conflagrate - how could I not splash red?). I pulled an Aeon Chronicler (my bomb for the day), Ancestral Vision, and a couple of back-up card advantage creatures (Citanul Woodreaders for one). It was a rather strange day for wins as the usual pecking order of wins went awry. I went 3-1 in the 1v1s and then did fairly well the DHG as well!
The new set is interesting. There are some cool library effects but as a whole, I’m not as impressed as I was with PC and TS. The new set has some very beautiful art - my favorite is definitely Blind Phantasm. What a beautiful card.
The next event will be a FS Preconstructed with 1 or 2 boosters. That should be quite interesting too.
Planar Chaos Preconstructed
April 14, 2007
1st Otaku category post!
Well I must say that was an interesting time. I invited three friends over for some Planar Chaos preconstructed deck action and I must say I learned a lot about cards that I would have never played otherwise. I’m definitely going to start using those Undertakers in my Madness deck and will make my own Endless March deck with white and green I think.
Today’s format: one of the four preconstructed decks determined by a die roll, one Time Spiral booster, one Planar Chaos booster. I rolled Endless March - the one I wanted to get (to nab another Avalanche Rider) and inserted a Pyrohemia and a couple white support cards like Dawn Charm and another lion. In the 1v1s I walked away 2-1, losing to the almighty French guy. Then we did two Two Headed Giants. Unfortunately losing both.
With Future Sight coming out soon I’m “looking forward” to another precon event to learn the cards.
