13 weeks to go…

You do the math… Anyways, here’s Matthew McAndrew’s Modem Problems strips for this week:

Matthew McAndrews’ Modem Problems #338 – The Trap – March 26th, 2007

Matthew McAndrews’ Modem Problems #339 – God is WHO? – March 29th, 2007

The week at large:

I don’t know. It’s been a mixed bag. Mhari got Pink Squirrel to level 48. Commander Kitty is ALMOST to level 47. And Purple Moose is level 20. Over in EQ2 land Filthi is level 49 at last! Woot! Now the hill up to level 50. In EQOA we are back into the grind after all of us made level 49. I took a look on-line at what is invloved in the level 47 side quests and decided it wasn’t worth doing yet… too much to do before Whyaylooh headed off to All Fur Fun. So we might start it next week. Or wait to level 50.

So, yes, I played EQOA, EQ2 and City of H/V. Life is good though I had some minor health issues over last weekend that cost me a day of work (though I did work from home, like on Friday, so I won’t lose pay over it or need to use sickpay). That seems to have settled. Now I am back to the normal back and shoulder pains and just general mood-swings from blood sugar levels over the course of the day. (My blood sugar is acting a little strange… it seems to be staying under control rather than heading into ‘highsville’ after meals… this is Supposed to be a good thing. So why don’t I feel so great??)

Didn’t play Wow. And I am almost ready to uninstall Vanguard from my computer, like I already did with that adult MMO thingie I mentioned from last week. I did spend more time on Second Life. It’s something I can do while working from home while babysitting the mainframe as it runs the jobs I am testing. Just wandering the world seeing the sights. Checked out City of Lost Angels. It looks like a fun project. There are LOTS of people almost always in the sim. It’s an interesting idea. If you are interested in actual role-play on SL, do check CoLA out.

About the only TV I watched was the news during dinner for the weather, and a little bit of Good Eats. Went to bed earlier and got a little bit better rest. Though something about my resting seems to be making it not seem to ‘stick’. I keep wanting to go back to bed for ‘just a few hours more’.

The pen and paper roleplaying I did last Saturday was okay. I can’t remember a lot about it. I’m in a ‘down’ phase where I feel like my characters are just numbers on paper and not roles I am playing. I think I am going to need to take a break from the games for a while. I suppose I could do like some of my friends do and write up some new characters for the game and get the GMs to allow me to switch characters. But one of them is really written into the story that the GM is telling quite closely. (My present feeling about him is that I would be just as happy if he walked off into the sunset with his mate and raised a family and formed a clan, rather than me play him.) The other game is a little too new. And so is the character. But I am just not ‘connecting’ or ‘resonating’ with her right now at all.

Of course, part of the problem in both these games is they are set in ‘Fantasy worlds’ (D&D style in one case). And I don’t resonate with the standard fantasy world roles of fighters, mages, clerics, and rogues. And I don’t do all that great in games where things are ‘grand quests’ and the like. What I prefer is to play in games revolving around smaller things – Like crime in the city, or travelling in space to see what’s around the next star.

But right now, I’m not so interested in living someone else’s life (except online, sort of – my SL character in CoLA for example). I want to live the one I have. With the woman I love. I want those hours I spend every other week doing the pen and paper roleplaying back to do other things with. Though I wouldn’t mind spending half the day with those friends, doing movies, shooting the breeze… things like that. But the gaming is starting to feel… old… and distant.

And that usually means I need to take a break. 🙂

Thanks for reading.

13 weeks and counting…

Just a short one

I’ve worked from home, today, so I got up and went ‘straight to work’ so didn’t have time to write this before heading in.

Anyways, here’s the Modem Problems strips from Matthew McAndrews for this week:
Matthew McAndrews’ Modem Problems #336 – Treasure – March 19th, 2007

Matthew McAndrews’ Modem Problems #337 – Epilog – March 22nd, 2007

And onward:

I really don’t have a lot to say. Lets see if the length of this agrees with that.

The week’s MMO playing was all like the past few weeks: EQOA, EQ2, Second Life and City of Heroes/Villains with no WoW or Vanguard or any other MMO. I have just lost interest in WoW again, and Vanguard just isn’t good enough or unique enough to hold my interest.

I -am- hearing some cool things about Lord of the Rings Online. We’ll see what happens. And I got sent an invite to return to Auto Assault and see how it’s changed. But I don’t expect to even visit it. I’m just not interested in spending my time there.

Oh, I DID check out one other. It’s an ADULT MMO social space called RedLight Center. Do a search for it, you’ll find it. It’s got a fraction of the appeal of Second Life, and it’s whole purpose is selling you on going to live sex chats and movies and photosets online, and as an adult chat line with avatars and the like. Second Life does THAT part 10 times better (if with more bugs) plus has all the non-adult content one might want. In general the Free part of RedLight Center is going to appeal to people that just want to ‘get off’ on cybersex, but they aren’t going to stick around long. And you have to pay $20 month to ‘get naked’ and play in the real adult areas.

Again: Not worth it. But it does show that the adult industry is starting to take notice of the apeal that a 3D online world may have to folks.

But for me, I will delete it from my hard drive and not bother with it.

Over in the rest of the world, I think after 18 months in my current job, I am settling into it. We’ll see if it lasts. Sure pays nice.

As those of you that have been reading my journal know, Mhari and I will be getting married this year. Well, we’ve chosen our ‘undisclosed location’ to honeymoon at, and we have settled on a date in the final week of June. There will not be any formal gathering until we get back from the honeymoon. Friends and family that feel they just must come watch us get married should contact us privately by email… they know our email addresses. The venue where we will be getting hitched has very limited space. And it will be a very informal affair. We want a quiet and relaxing experience. 😉

I’m starting to get nervious! I almost can’t wait! And the venue is one that supports that ‘can’t wait’ sort of thing. So we might jump the gun if the anticipation gets too much. *grin*

I have been approved for my vacation time, and all Mhari and I need to do now is decide on the rings.

Anyways, that’s all for now. Thanks for reading!

Another week, another entry…

Yes, it’s that time again kids! It’s Matthew McAndrews’ Modem Problems time! (Applause goes here)

Matthew McAndrews’ Modem Problems #334 – Bored – March 12th, 2007

Matthew McAndrews’ Modem Problems #335 – Cuteness Jiu Jitsu – March 15th, 2007

This week has been another quick one. Thankfully without the painful back. On health issues I am suffering from swollen ankles if I sit too long, so I have adjusted my computer chair at home, and have contacted my doctor about renewing my lasix perscription. When it gets hard to walk due to water retention in my feet, I start to worry. Could be a early sign of a number of things, or mearly the side effect of one of my other medications (as it IS listed in the possible side-effects for one of them). Better to be safe than sorry.

My workplace has opened up the stairwells, so we can use them. That means I am taking the stairs more often than the elevators. It feels really good so long as my feet are not bothering me. Healthy for me, too!

In other news, we’re (Mhari and I) making progress on our wedding plans. For those that have not heard by other means, this is the early notice that we are presently targeting late June. We will likely do a small civil thing for the legal wedding, though that is not yet engraved in stone. Then following the ‘small civil thing’ we will have some sort of gathering/reception/less-legal ceromony for family and friends. Then we are going to sneak off on honeymoon to a ‘undisclosed location’. I will report more as we work on formallizing our plans. I have filed for and gotten my vacation approvals for the timeframe, so that’s part of what is getting the ball rolling. That and the ‘undisclosed location’ arrangements.

Over in MMO land… EQOA continues. We all got to level 49 this week. Yay! And The Luck quest is back as usual for this time of year, so we have kicked in our The Luck’s from last year and are earning double experience once more. And we are on 100% XP, so we are trying to charge swiftly for level 50 if we can.

In EQ2 things are slow. Why and I are slowly proding my character up in level. We did quests, mostly, on Monday, and last night it was some XP grinding. But I ‘pooped out’ early.

Second Life I did some minor dabbling in last weekend. Nothing much really.

Nothing going on with me in WoW or Vanguard. Just not interested in either of them right now. Though if Eric Z calls and wants to do WoW this coming Sunday, I will do it.

In City of Heroes/Villians, Commander Kitty made level 46… And I believe Pink Squirrel may have hit 47. I am not sure, I don’t remember clearly if Mhari said she made it or not. But she is really charging along. Of course it helps that Eric P. brought on Demon Voltage (level 49 brute) and helpped us trouce through some of our missions that otherwise were too rough for us. And we helpped Fulldark take care of one that was keeping him down.

Over on the Hero side, Wed Knight of Power got level 30, Avenging Flame got 28, and I think other fun was had by all.

City of… continues to be the game of choice, drawing more attention and more time from me and friends than any other two MMOs I play put together.

I’m rather looking forward to this weekend. I don’t have any out-of-house obligations other than my appointment with Dr. J on Sunday Night (for which my back will be very happy). So I get to sleep in and relax… maybe relaxingly do my taxes (they don’t stress me out… much, like for some people). And maybe, just maybe, Mhari and I will go look at rings or something. I don’t know. 😉

Thanks for reading… and BlackCypress… tell your dad to read his email…

Off to work I go…

Keeping it short

I’m doing a work from home, today, so I am going to keep this short. Here’s Matthew McAndrews’ Modem Problems strips for this week:

Matthew McAndrews’ Modem Problems # 332 – I Just Can’t Do It – March 5th, 2007

Matthew McAndrews’ Modem Problems # 333 – H.R.E. Crusader – March 8th, 2007

This week was… this week. It started with Consonance 2007 and has ended with me at home, today, taking Ibprofen for my residual back pain. The two are NOT connected. It just has worked out that way. And my back pain was a LOT more yesterday until Dr. James was able to work on it for me by special appointment. I am mostly home today to make sure I don’t agravate it.

Other than last night, and last Friday, I did most of the usual things. During Consonance I even got on City of Heroes from the hotel. The convention was very nice with wonderful people during the whole of it. I’m only into Filk Music as a listener, not really a fan or a performer or anything, and mostly I was there in support of Mhari, who was doing their Registration for the final time. She’s retired from doing registration for them now. Someone(s) else will be doing it next year.

I will still be doing their website, but I have rewritten their webpages to be easier for them to maintain in case I am not available for whatever reason. And the site is going to stop living off my personal webspaces sometime in the not too distant future. I started doing their site back when I was working for Merant (now a part of Serena) and thus it was all maintained in a Collage 4.0 environment. I have now written it into a manner that no longer uses the special function calls of the collaboration and content control software, which means it can be edited in notepad once more.

On the MMO front, I played City of…, EQOA, and a small amount of EQ2 this past week. And spent some time on Second Life that was pleasing. But Vanguard: Saga of Heroes (VSH) and World of Warcraft were left neglected and I didn’t miss them. This usually means that I will, in a month or so, if this continues, suspend my WoW account again. I would suspend my VSH account, too… but as it is a ‘Station Access’ game like EQOA and EQ2, there’s no need for me to do so. I’ll likely just uninstall it at some point. And maybe revisit it down the road.

EQOA is upping their cost. It doesn’t effect me, because I use Station Access at $24.99 a month already. But it does effect Mhari. She has been doing the yearly fee thing. EQOA was very reasonable at $89.99 a year, but it’s going up to $143.99 a year… This brings it in line with the new $14.99 a month cost. (It started at $9.95 a month, and went up to $12.99 without upping the yearly fee a while back.) The big jump will mean that Mhari will be seriously rethinking what EQOA means to her, when the account comes up for renewal in September.

Way I hear it online is that Planetside (another Station Access MMO, though more of a FPSMMO than a MMORPG) is the other of Sony’s games that saw the same jump in fees. I have not heard of any increases in the Station Access price or for any of the other Sony titles. Of course, these price jumps bring EQOA and Planetside up to the same cost that all the other titles in the family of titles had already. So now they will all be the same. And it makes Station Access all the more tasty, really.

I still suspect that EQOA and Planetside might not be around for that much longer. But considering that Everquest (the original, not the newer ones) is STILL going…who knows. (And other, lesser games, like The Matrix Online, are still going….)

Wait, this was supposed to be short.

I’m still MMOing. I am mostly healthy with occasional hicups in the form of back issues and whatnot. And I will be getting married sometime this year. So all is good. (BTW, that event is looking more and more like it will be in late June. Maybe early July. But most likely late June.)

Be well, all!

With a song in my heart…

I have a filk convention to go to this weekend. Consonance is the name of it. But first, time for this week’s comics from Matthew McAndrews:

Matthew McAndrews’ Modem Problems # 330 – Again With BABY – February 26th, 2007
Matthew McAndrews’ Modem Problems # 331 – Surreal – March 1st, 2007

What is it with things? Does work somehow KNOW that I want to do ANYTHING but be there today and Yesterday? They schedule meetings late in the day making it so I can’t leave at my normal time of day. 4pm meetings just are NOT right. Isn’t the fact that no one is AVAILABLE earlier in the day give people a CLUE that there might be too many meetings in that day? That perhaps they are trying to squeeze too much into too few hours? Sorry… I just had to get the rant out of my system.

This week, other than in the way mentioned above, hasn’t been too bad. I’ve managed to get to bed at a semi-reasonable time each night, and that makes a WORLD of difference in how I feel in the morning and how well I get through the day. Guess I am addicted to sleep. 🙂

Okay, so what did I do? To be honest, I don’t remember a lot of it clearly. I went to my bi-weekly sit-down pen and paper role-playing games on Saturday and enjoyed the company of friends. I played MMO games at mostly the usual times on the usual systems. EQOA, a bit of EQ2, a MINOR amount of Vanguard: Saga of Heros, some Star Chamber, a little bit of Second Life, and a bunch of City of Villians and Heroes. No World of Warcraft as somehow I didn’t find the time for it.

The things that stick out in my memory from the week was getting a little more sleep, having good food on Wednesday and Thursday nights out on the town with friends, gaming with other friends last Saturday, and beating on other villians in CoV.

Mhari’s all busy with Consonance, as she is queen of Registration for the convention, as well as a proof-reader for the program book and the person that took the program book to the copy shop. I do their website, and got the bare bones of the 2008 site ready for them. It will go live late in the weekend and doesn’t look that different from the current one. Just behind the scenes it’s been rewritten to be maintainable by almost anyone.

This weekend, while I am at Consonance I plan to transplant one of my computers into another body. And also provide a means for Mhari to MMO from the con if she gets bored, without leaving the reg-desk. Basicly I plan to geekout in a public space. 😉 It’s a FILK convention. I don’t sing, and I usually don’t go to the concerts. I am Mhari’s personal gopher for the convention. I usually sit there when not needed to fetch something and play on my laptop or read. Mhari usually looks at me MMO’ing on the laptop and gets envious because she can’t do that. Hense my project. It’s not a laptop I am getting for her as I orginally planned as we can’t really afford anything like that. And I have a spare proto-computer I can build for her. So I am doing that.

Anyways, first I have to get to work and make it through all the durned meetings. Maybe I will be lucky and the 2pm one will get cancelled… then I can maybe escape for the afternoon. We will see.