Monthly Archives: October 2007

Listen… do you smell something?

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Identify that quote! Who said it? Where? When?

Here are Matthew McAndrews’ Modem Problems strips for the past week:
Matthew McAndrews’ Modem Problems #398 – It’s The Principal That Counts – October 22nd, 2007

Matthew McAndrews’ Modem Problems #399 – School Daze – October 25th, 2007

I’ve had another one of those weeks that really doesn’t have a lot that stands out as particularly interesting.

Health: My back is getting better every day. Mhari’s isn’t doing so good some of the time. Other times not bad. We are looking forward to our visit with Dr. James this Sunday.

MMOs:
Eve Online: The training continues. One of them is working towards Cruise Missiles and the Stealth Bomber. The other is working towards Heavy Assault Cruiser. Other than that… nada.

Lord of the Rings Online: Nada. Only here because of the lifetime account.

City of Heroes/Villains: It’s Halloween in The City, so that means that all our groups are standing around outside doors and clicking on them in cycle to get ‘Tricks’ (spawns of Halloween themed mobs, with Kill X based badges as rewards, as well as ‘loot’) or ‘Treats’ (Level 3 inspirations, Event Salvage that can be turned in for a 5th costume slot, and Temp Power based Costumes). The Temp Power based Costumes are the new thing this year. 33 unique different ones, and 3 badges based on collecting costumes in this manner. If the costume that ‘drops’ is one you already have, it doesn’t give you the award message, but it does increment the counter for the badges, which are at 10, 25 and 50 total (don’t have to be unique) costumes that you collect.

Then there are three more badges related to the Giant Monsters that can spawn in every city zone. One of the GM’s is fairly common, the other happens 1 time in 10 of the other. In addition to the badges for defeating Eochai and Jack in Irons, there is one for defeating the members of the Unseelie Court that tend to follow the two Giant Monsters around, but as everyone wants the badges, this last badge actually is the hardest to get as it goes only to those involved in 20 defeats of Unseelie Court mobs. And the go fast.

The Thrilling Adventures group (our Monday and Thursday heroes presently below level 20, which have two characters with ‘thrill’ in their name, thus how I named the group) went up against Eochai (the more frequent GM) along with a good collection of other heroes in Steel Canyon. Only Jandre (Mhari’s character) suffered a defeat, and she came back swiftly and helped in the defeat of the big beast.

This Halloween stuff continues until November 4th, so likely next week’s report here will be full of more of the same.

As a final thing… I’m worried about my eldest brother. He lives in Lake Forest, California… As far as I can tell that’s not in the fires areas. But I am still worried a little. And my prayers go out for all those involved down there. I worry about a lot of the furry, sci-fi and filk community folk that live in San Diego and environs. I hope they’re all okay. I am keeping them all in my prayers.

Time for me to get out of here and get to work. Thanks for reading.

Yeah? So What?

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*shrug* So it’s been a week. So what.

Here are Matthew McAndrews’ Modem Problems strips for the week:

Matthew McAndrews’ Modem Problems #396 – Playing The Victim – October 15th, 2007

Matthew McAndrews’ Modem Problems #397 – Creeps Me Out – October 18th, 2007

Sorry about the title. It’s just that I really don’t feel I have done anything worth writing about other than actually making it through the week. It’s just been an ordinary week, doing ordinary things. And in many ways it has felt peaceful for all that.

Health: I’m fine. Mhari’s fine. We both have our aches and pains that are a normal part of life for people of our age and lifestyles.

MMOs:
Eve Online: Yup, still there. Still training. Still paying for 2 accounts. Will for at least another month. Haven’t seen hide nor hair of the others other than Whyaylooh in passing now and then. Corp window shows the other two players in our corp haven’t been on for a month or more. At least when I looked on Tuesday that was the case. Is there still a point to all this?

Lord of the Rings Online: Didn’t touch this to even check for updates. But it will still be there for whenever it is I have time for it again. Who knows, if Eve falls through, maybe I will. Don’t know.

City of Heroes/Villains: Still playing. But some of the playing I am doing is covered by an NDA so I can’t comment on it. But I have been doing a lot of that. On the live servers we played as ‘Two Thrills and Friends’ on Monday. It went well. I hear Mhari and Whyaylooh and Zefel went out on Tuesday as villians. Wed was a session of ‘Knight and the Angels’ that went rather well, though Knight did go face down once. But Victor’s Daemon Valkyrie helped him back into the frey. And he got over the experience swiftly. The Council did not fair so well. But really this was all standard fare, and pleasant with friends.

So, there you are. Nothing much to report. This weekend will be a Further Confusion concom meeting, a pen & paper gaming session, and a relaxing Sunday. Again, no big deal. So, that’s all for me for this week. I’m off to work, before it has a chance to start raining.

ZZZZzzzzzz

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I just want to be sleeping. Preferably without any durn blasted dreams that wake me up with ‘Too Weird’ or ‘Ick!’ hovering on the top of my brainpan.

Here are Matthew McAndrews’ comics for this week:

Matthew McAndrews’ Modem Problems #394 – But… How? – October 8th, 2007

Matthew McAndrews’ Modem Problems #395 – Reputation… Lost – October 11th, 2007

Health:
I’m okay. In back pain and various discomforts, but okay. Mhari seems to be doing well, perhaps better than I am at present. I get to see Dr James this Sunday and that will help a lot.

MMOs:
Eve Online: Not a lot to say. Been training. Been mining as a background task while doing other things and playing elsewhere. Mining in high security areas has little risks. The income isn’t high, but it will be better than none so that I can keep buying skills and keep training, and save up for a good ship once I feel competent enough. Working on cruise missiles and the support skills needed to learn that right now. That way when I fly the stealth bomber I will be able to use the weapons it is designed for. My secondary character on my second account is working on her gunnery skills now that she knows Interceptors real good. Don’t know when I will transfer her to the other account. We will see. My anniversary date on that account is the 20th at 3am in the morning, so next weekend I will either transfer or keep training her for another month.

Lord of the Rings Online: Nothing happening here. I haven’t touched it this week. I’ll likely just load the updater and maybe sign in once a week to keep the character marked as ‘active’. Not like I pay for this any more, from the look of things. So it doesn’t matter if I play or not.

City of Heroes/Villains: Lots of excitement about the upcoming Issue 11. But other than that, nothing I can really report on. Oh… Task Force Fission (A Tale of Two Thrills n’ Friends?) completed Positron’s Task Force on Monday. We are back to earning XP again. But we (both the Thrills) were feeling too out of it last night to carry on this week. So we will return to things on Monday. Don’t know if Zefel and Nightwind are getting back from their vacation early enough to have energy to join us or not.

See, nothing much to see here… time to move along. It’s RAINING outside, and I left my umbrella at work earlier this week… guess I am going to get wet.

Edit: Had the backup Umbrella in the car. So I am less wet. It’s still raining out there. Sure is nice to see and the air feels GOOD.

Guess What?

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Yup. That’s right. Another week has passed. So here are Matthew McAndrews’ Modem Problems strips for the week:

Matthew McAndrews’ Modem Problems #392 – D.o.W.E. – October 1st, 2007

Matthew McAndrews’ Modem Problems #393 – It Takes One To Know One – October 4th, 2007

Health:
I’m fine. My back is getting even better. Though both Mhari and I are still having issues with our backs. Most of the time we are okay. And we have our health otherwise.

MMOs:
Eve Online: Nothing really new here. Skills are getting learned. I will have electronics V soon, and that will let me learn cloaking. I am getting on a little in the ‘background’ and letting one of my alts do mining to earn some ISK so that I will be able to afford the Cloaking Skill and the device and everything. ayukawataur has nicely offered to cover getting a Covert Ops ship for me. I may take her up on it. But I am not in a huge hurry. And if I don’t stick with the game, or don’t seriously play it, she shouldn’t waste her ISK on me.

Lord of the Rings Online: I barely touched this, this week. I’ll go back to it at some point when I have the time. Which I don’t right now.

Second Life: I think I only made sure my client was up to date. Nothing more. It’s in the ‘no time for it’ catagory. And I only miss it for some of the role playing aspects. And its less and less the place to do that any more.

vSide: I stole an hour from other things and tried this out. Not worth messing with. I uninstalled it again. Second Life is better.

City of Heroes/Villains: What can I say that I haven’t said here before. This is where my MMO time is going into. And will for a while yet.

Our ‘Two Thrills and Crew’ is doing Positron’s Task Force. We did our third session of working on this, last night. It’s a long task force with lots of missions. We are getting better at not getting KO’d by Vahzlok zombies. Getting better at our teamwork. For these sessions ‘Two Thrills and Crew’ are Omega Thrill (RP – Broadsword/Invul scrapper), Storm Warning (VB – Storm/Elec Defender), Jandre (Mhari – Mind Control/Empathy Controller) and Professor Thrill (me – Warshade). We also have 3 others that join us from time to time. Pale Eclipse (Zefel – Peacebringer), Asii (Nightwind – scrapper of some sort) and Tekka (D – I don’t remember what). They were unavailable on Monday when we started the task force, so they are not on this mission. All of us in the Task Force capped out the level for the task force half way through. So we are not earning XP any more and are just doing this to get the badge at this point, and to see the content.

On Tuesday on CoV, Whyaylooh’s Broulin was able to hit level 50! It was fun. And no, Fulldark, that does NOT mean we will never play the team again. You are our project now. We need to get YOU to 50! The group this session was Black Maria (Mhari – Thugs/Poison Mastermind – Level 50), Commander Kitty (me – Mercenaries/Force Fields Mastermind – Level 50), Fulldark (Zefel – Dark/Dark Corruptor – Level 43?) and Broulin (Whyaylooh – Mercenaries/Traps Mastermind – Level 49 (50 now!)). It was fun. We took down Lord Recluse in the future again. Always pleasant. 😉 Then we went and did War Zone missions of Brou’s. Not so good. These missions are MUCH harder with a group than they are solo. We failed one and completed the other.

Tonight I am not sure what we will be doing. Fulldark is away on vacation. Likely we will either do lower level characters, or whatever comes along. I know we don’t want to use up too many of the missions remaining to the level 50’s as they are good XP fodder for helping get Fulldark up to level 50.

Okay, that’s it for the games of the week.

I was going to put a short (which started to become long) section on my schedule here. But it was just blathering and unimportant. Leave it to say I have limited hours to play ANY MMO. Only 4 hours a day. 28 hours a week. Period. And right now 90% of that time is devoted to City of Heroes/Villains. And to be able to afford my family playing the MMOs, keeping food on the table and a roof over our heads, I can’t extend those hours. I would love to be able to have enough $$$ coming in without having to work that I could spend a lot more time playing MMOs.

I -may- be freeing up 4 of those MMO hours for Eve Online ONCE a week sometime in the future. But it is NOT happening this month. It -may- not happen this year. I would like it too, as I think the game deserves a little more of my time before I give up on it all together. I am presently paying for TWO Eve Online accounts so I can train TWO characters at the same time. Once the 2nd character is to a ‘stopping point’ in her learning, I will pay to have her transfered to the empty slot I have in the other account and then cancel the 2nd account. That point is coming soon. Likely another month or so. My 2nd character is focusing on fighting ships and skills. Interceptors at the moment. But I am starting to wonder why I am bothering. We’ll see.

But enough about me. I stole an hour of sleep to write this. Time to save to flash and I will upload it during a break at work. Thanks for reading.