redhedlvr2

I haven't posted in forever, it seems.  Actually, I haven't been on LJ in a while.  I think I relied on the Crack Van more than I thought to give me a broad look at what's being written, fandomwise.

( Gaming )

( Knitting )

And the rest is just life going along doing its thing.

So, apparently my Playstation 3 has this ability to actually, you know, play video games!  Who knew it was good for anything other than streaming Netflix and playing blue rays?  It has nifty free to play games like, oh say DC Universe Online.

Like I need more gaming in my life.  hee he

Heh, never was much of a soap fan, anyway.

Eldest Daughter was up for a two week visit last month.  It was great except I had the head cold from hell the first week, so we didn't do much except watch dvds and knit.  My "knitting" consisted mostly me holding the work in my lap and nodding off, then waking up with a stiff neck, but, to each their own.



( Diablo III )



( Mass Effect 2 )


In the meantime, my WoW and SWTOR toons are getting an extended rest.  My guild from WoW (Daughter-Type's friends) haven't been playing any of the games we started together, so I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything.  I know things will change once all the new patches and expansions hit and that gives me something to look forward to when they do.

I just finished reading Tom Clancy's Dead or Alive.  Has anyone else read it?

( Cut for bookish spoilers )

My gaming life is, well, I'm not sure I can describe it.  I've gotten 3 toons up to level 85, one of which has finished her Cataclysm loremaster achievement, but now I feel like, what's next?  I don't raid and I've never done much as far as grouping due to much trauma early in my WoW career.  Their tradeskills are maxed out so I don't feel much urge to log on the game except when the guild is on.  It's my daughter's guild and we boast a whopping six members.  We only really are able to group on Saturday or Sunday afternoons and then I'm playing a warlock alt I made just so the guild would have one of each class.

Anyway, so Rift has a new patch, which I've not downloaded yet.  I'm thinking of taking advantage of the free server transfers and getting one of my three mains off Wolfsbane and on to a lower population server.  Except...I downloaded Everquest II, the free version, and have been playing that instead.  Even though I had to pay for the race/class I wanted.  Greedy bastards.  I really liked playing it last year until my WoW got hacked and Daughter-Type got the guild going.

Finally, my father, who is 80, is moving out of the house we lived in since 1966.  Talk about your traumatic experiences.  I have mixed feelings about the move.  There are just so many memories tied up in the place, both good and bad.  He's buried two wives living in that house, one just two years ago in July.  He has to be feeling conflicted as well.  My sister has been there every weekend to help.  But he is NOT listening to her.  She schlepps boxes, old half full paint cans and other toxic waste and minds the burn barrel in addition to general cleaning and the like, but whenever she ventures an opinion he shuts her out.  To me, this isn't new behavior, but he and I have a different relationship and always have had.

Anyway, he finally closed on a condo nearby and he is going to settlement on his house mid-July.  However, he doesn't want to part with the eight dining room chairs, both leaves for the dinning room table or any of the filing cabinets (six) to fit into his new, two bedroom place.  I have visions of the movers stacking up in the hallway outside the place with all that huge furniture going, "Where ya wannit buddy?" and not being able to get in the door.

Finally, our prima donna sales manager here at work has allegedly resigned.  The rumor mill has it that one of his prima donna sales team has caused him to have to do extra work, since he did not enforce proper returns policy with said sales dweeb, fondly dumbed King Baby.  So today, Sales Manager is absent, although the rumor mill does not believe it's a permanent thing, just a temper tantrum of some sort.  This place is just a laugh a minute, that's for sure.  One of these days, when I grow up, I'll have a real job at a real company, with a Ranger and Morellie dilemma like Stephanie's.  Oh well, dream on, right?

So, I did what I swore I wouldn't do last year when the Star Trek Online open beta started.  I'm playing the Rift open beta. Ugh.  But maybe not so bad as STO.  I did not have any trouble downloading or patching which is a plus.  As with STO, I took forever at the character creation screen.  So many choices, and colors and other options!  I love it.  And then it loaded up the game with no problems.

It seemed all the servers (shards?) were at high or full capacity, but I expected that.  Apparently the server I'm on, or maybe all of them, are set for Pacific time, which really suits my play style fairly well, since I tend to solo a lot.  I didn't have any trouble with picking up the basics, and yes, it's a lot like WoW.  But I also see elements of some of the other MMOs I've played.  I like the public group feature when you encounter rifts, which is similar to the auto grouping feature STO has. 

Finally, the big problem I had with the STO beta and first week of play was server stability.  I think they underestimated the number of people who were going to participate and the servers were always crashing.  I missed most of the head start weekend for that reason.  Hopefully the Rift folks will have learned from that.  However the shard did crash last night around 7pm Eastern.  I figure lots of West Coast folks were getting home from school/work and the East Coast folks had all had their dinner and wanted to play.  Something to watch for and hopefully they will have taken it into account.

Just my two cents worth on the subject.

I'll be watching my 7 year old grandson on Thanksgiving day before we go to dinner at my sister's house.  I thought I'd get a PS3 game for us to play.  What sort of stuff is good for that age bracket?  I read somewhere that racing games are good.  He'd like that I think.  More action and less thinky stuff.  Any suggestions would be great!

Thanks in advance

Sleep?  What's that?  It's just so much better to wake up at 1:30 in the morning and not be able to go back to sleep.  I get so much more fanfic read that way.  zzzzzz.......

On the gaming front, I'm giving Runes of Magic another try.  Daughter-Type and Boyfriend are playing and she told me I'd like it.  And, now that I have a computer that can handle it, I loaded it up.  It's quite a bit like WoW, but sometimes feels a little clunky.  Targeting is an issue, too.  My toon is a Warder and his pet keeps getting in the way.  Also, the crafting system is SLOW!  But I like the fact that you have a chance to craft a green or even blue item.  As far as the best crafting system I've played so far, I have to go with EQ2. 

This week is AUDIT week!  Who knew, right?  There have been no maniacal rants, yet.  Yes, yes, New Boss has hired New Auditors and he has dealt with them exclusively.  No problemo there.  That's why he gets paid the big bucks, yanno?  Somehow I feel a bit let down though.

Eldest Daughter has started her own business.  She's cleaning houses.  She was having bookkeeping issues and I suggested getting Quickbooks.  I took a course in that a few years ago and it seemed fairly easy.  But, she's not an accounting type and getting it going is giving her trouble.  As an added complication, she lives in Florida so it will be difficult for me to help out. 

***Enter fantasy.  I get fed up with the crap here at work and tell Boss and New Boss where to shove it and load my doggie, dvds and computer in my Ford Focus and take off for the wilds of Daytona Beach.  Once there, I invest in Eldest Daughter's business, become her bookkeeper/financial advisor and then she becomes the most successful cleaning service in the area.  We hire many underlings and become millionaires.  Enter reality***

It's Friday, threatening to rain again and I just want to go home.

I'm going to change my name to GameHarlot.  ( Read more... )

Well, I'm highly disappointed. Finally got to log on to the game yesterday but it was toasting my vid card big time. It looked like the old tv sets used to when the vertical hold went with the scrolling lines and jitters. The exhaust port was HOT in a serious way. Now this is a brand new Alienware M17 computer with dual vid cards. There should have been no reason for it to be over heating. But I closed that puppy down when I realized what was happening. Too bad though. The game seemed to be a free version of WoW. Everything from the logon screen to quests, mini map, just lots of things. This was in the five minutes I was on. Oh well, such is life. Will continue to look for new games. I have been meaning to try CoX for a while and even though it's not free, I've heard good things about it.