Archive for the ‘Gaming’ Category

Budget Gaming

Wednesday, March 17th, 2010

Recently I came to the conclusion that I a complete budget gamer.  This is actually kind of funny, because I own a “Gaming System” as my desktop PC.  With the exception of W0W expansions, I do not bay full price for any game and I usually wait until it’s been out awhile before purchasing.  A great boost to that is Steam.  I can get games that are older for next to nothing.   I had been wanting to get Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic for just afew dollars on Steam.

Another favorite place for older games is Half Priced Books.  You can get games very very cheaply there too.  Last weekend, I picked up a copy of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl at HPB for $6.  I had read about this game last year and was really psyched about the concept and storyline.  And at the price, if the game only provides me 1 hour of enjoyment, it’s still cheaper than say a movie or many other activities.

Another cheap gaming option I recently got was Star Trek Online.  I discovered about 2 weeks ago that Cryptic was running a promotional where you could get $10 off the game and a free 60 day game card on top of the 30 days of play you get with the game.  60 days of game play for one of my favorite media story lines for $40.  Who could beat it.  That’s like $13 a month or like $.44 a day for the game.  At deals like that, I’d be a fool to not give the game a try.

Lastly, my all time favorite cheap gaming experience still has to be Anarchy Online.  This is the MMORPG that I cut my teeth on and started me into the genre.  Even though the game is 8 years old, they have opened extensive portions of the original game and the first booster for free.  Pretty much you can get the “classic” version of the game with just afew minor ingame ads.  Most of the time, I do not even notice these ads.  Another bonus to this game is the due for a graphics engine upgrade in the near future.

Having said all this, I hope I have pointed out that there are alot of cheap options for PC gaming around.  Another benefit to waiting for games to cool off a bit before jumping on them is that the hardware requirements are usually less.  Meaning you can get the full gaming experience without having a built up “gaming rig”.

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Geeking it up, Getting in touch with my volient side, & More Jeep Goodies

Saturday, January 9th, 2010

With the holiday past, I finally have a chance to stop and decompress, and post.

During the holiday seasons, somebody had given me a $20 Best Buy gift card.  I don’t normally shop there, so I figured I’d swing by and see what games they had for $19.99.  I ended up snagging Grand Theft Auto 4.  For $1.34, I figured if it provided me with an afternoon’s amusement, it would be worth it.  After playing it for a bit, I remembered why I loved GTA 3 so much.

Other Christmas goodies were for the Jeep.

Recovery Shackle

Lastly, my webhost decided to stop their offering for MySQL version 4, at a version lower than what the current version of WordPress requires.  They do offer a version 5 for MySQL, but there is no direct upgrade path.  I ended up having to create the new database, wait for it to be ready, backup the blogs as an XML, rename the config php file (as a backup method), re-run the install & configure for the new database, re-import the XML, and test/make corrections to the theme to make it look right again.  All of that was in an hour and a half for 3 WordPress blogs.

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Jeep Goodness

Thursday, March 26th, 2009

This is going to be a quick update. I’ve started doing the maintenance and upgrades to the Jeep. I replaced the saggy rear lift gate struts with a new set. They came from ebay and I suspect they were designed for something a bit heavier, as the liftgate raises on it’s own when opened and you have to push kind of hard to get it closed. No big deal, as the struts wear they won’t go all floppy as quickly.

The next upgrade was to replace the crappy original gauge cluster with a real one. Below are before and after:
Original Gauge Cluster
The original gauge cluster.
Replacement Gauge Cluster
The new gauge cluster. This mod alone makes the Jeep feel 100 % better.

Somebody backed into the Jeep and cracked the tail light. Below is the original tail light and the replacement.
Tail Lights

Lastly, I took some poser pics of the Jeep last week. Here’s my favorite:
Poser Pic
You can also see the full album from that shoot here.

In other non Jeep news, I downloaded the trial for the Warhammer MMO. It feels alot like WoW, but the graphics are less cartoony. I just wish they’d give you more than 10 days on the trial (maybe 14) and allow you to progress beyond level 10. Oh…well… I’ll play until the trial is over and be done with it. I doubt I’m going to see enough in the glimpse that they give to sell me on the game.

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I LOVE the Outland

Sunday, January 25th, 2009

Over the last week, I’ve been on vacation and had a chance to play so serious WoW. My new main, my Death Knight was already level 62, but was still grinding through Western Plaguelands, gathering herbs to raise my inscription profession.

I had visited The Outland afew times with my Death Knight and my old alt (Blood Elf Priest). Mainly I had only messed around because I have quests I want to finish with the Priest, and I wanted to get my inscription up to 300 on the Death Knight.

On Friday afternoon, I finally hit 300 on my inscription and headed off for The Outland. In literally no time flat, I had gained 2 levels (almost 3), and had earned about 150 gold by just grinding through quests. I knew after Wrath of the Lich King, Blizzard had changed the dynamics to allow for faster leveling between 60 and 70. I have to say I am enjoying the ride.

Out of that 150 gold I earned in 2 days, 100 of it went to my alt so that I can get my epic riding training and use the Zhevra mount I earned by recruiting my girlfriend, and forcing her to play for 3 months.

This whole past week has rekindled my enjoyment of WoW. I can’t wait to wander through the Outland.

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Thanks Blizzard

Wednesday, November 19th, 2008

First off, let me say wow. Two posts in the same week. Now down to business.

Last night was what I thought would be an awesome event. I hit level 60 on my main, because I decided to give my dk a chance to gain some rested XP. I was so happy to get the chance of an epic mount. I had assumed that training for riding would be 50-75 gold, so the 90 I currently have would have covered it. I also have the recruit a friend mount, so I wasn’t in a hurry to buy a new mount.

Anyways, first off after hitting 60, I try to equip my mount. No dice. So I head off to Brill to hit the riding trainer, but I’m not exalted with the Undercity, so I head off to Silvermoon City (being as I’m a Blood Elf). After searching for the training, I finally find him and discover it’s going to cost me 500 gold to learn the higher riding skill.

At that moment, I truly understand why people buy gold. I used to think that the people who bought gold were greedy people who didn’t want to pay their dues and were really cheating themselves out of alot of the content the game had to offer.

What I think really sucks about this is that I have two options. Either forge forward with the game, which allows me to earn XP and wait until I have 500 gold to spend. Or start doing things like SM, where I don’t earn XP but can make some ok gold.

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Wrath of the Lich King

Sunday, November 16th, 2008

As was alot of people, I was at my local Game Stop on Wed. Nov 12th, waiting for the midnight (on Thurs. Nov 13th) launch of the new World Of Warcraft expansion “Wrath of the Lich King”. This is my thus far review.

First off, as with most Game Stops, the store was tiny. When I got there at about 11:30 pm, there were about 20-30 people in line. I lined up and listened to some WoW nerds discuss the lore, while a TV blasted WoW trailers continuously. By go time, there were another 20-30 people behind me waiting.

After I got my copy, I rushed home to install. Once I got it installed, I took a quick zeppelin trip to Northrend on with my main. After that, I had to get some sleep to be at work very early the next morning. I that spent the day at work reading the WoW blogs, FAQ’s, and other information. Mostly I wanted to know about creating a Death Knight. Originally I was under the impression that I would have to sacrifice my level 59 Blood Elf Priest.

This was surprising and disappointing at the same time. From a lore and RP standpoint, it would have been cool for a back story to take an existing character and and convert them to a death knight. I was disappointed when I discovered that I would have to create a completely new character. This allows me to now have two somewhat high level characters that I can swap between in order to get the most from my rested XP. The only problem I have with creating a new character is that when you choose a profession, you are starting out at 1. I choose Inscription and Herbalism as my professions. It sucks to have to wander around the lowbie areas to gather herbs to get my Herbalism up.

I have to give Blizzard props for starting every death knight out with a full set of green plate armor. And doing the start area quests replaces most of that with blue armor.

Once you get out of the death knight starter area, you end up in your racial capital. You have to find the leader as your race. The problem is that you are only neutral with your racial faction. So you have to endure the cat calls and getting fruit thrown at you until you speak with your racial leader and gain enough repetition to no longer be neutral.

Since creating my death knight, I have only logged into my former main character long enough to go to the Undercity to so she can start to gain rested XP. I’m very very impressed with playing my death knight character, and quite enjoy the experience.

If you have not upgraded to the new WoW expansion, I would suggest you try it. It’s a blast and gives new life to the game.

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Fuck You Franklin County CSEA

Sunday, December 9th, 2007

I swear the fucking Franklin County CSEA (Child Support Enforcement Agency) are the biggest bunch of fuckers on the face of the planet. This is a follow up to my last rant about them.

I changed changed jobs and had to change all the stuff. Well…even though I provided them the information as soon as I had it and follow all the rules, they fucked up. The best part is, that it’s my fault that they screwed up the deduction and I have to write a check to make up the difference. Why do I have pay for their fuck up? The whole situation is completely screwed if you ask me.

I’m also still waiting on on my child support amount to be reduced. I met with my attorney this last week to sign the paperwork. My ex-wife’s attorney once again managed to drop the ball and not have the paperwork right. So I’ve Been paying double the agreed upon amount for over a 2 months. In the long run, this will work out. Because the extra money will have to go towards the trumped up back child support I owe. With the rate this is going, I’ll have it paid off and my stupid ass ex-wife will have to pay me. While I relish this thought, I need freaking money for Christmas. Out of my last paycheck, over half of the net went to pay child support to fix their fuck up.

On afew other side notes, I lost 5.8 pounds when I weighed in yesterday. This brings my total to loss to 31.2 pounds. My 31st birthday passed about a month ago. It was pretty good. Carrie gave me the burning crusades expansion for WoW. I’ve not had a chance to play it much , but I should have time in the coming weeks.

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Another infrequent update

Friday, August 31st, 2007

I know, once again I’ve been lacking in posting, but things are quite busy right now. First off, I’ve had 2 weigh in’s since my last post. I lost 0.8 pounds the first week, and 2.0 pounds the second week. This brings my total loss for the last 7 weeks is 20.25 pounds. I’m very excited about this, not to mention I’m finding my pants are having a hard time staying up.

If you think about it, 20 pounds is alot. 20 pounds of weights is alot, but picture 2 pounds of beef on your kitchen counter. That’s a hella lot of flesh. Now consider that muscle is more dense than fat. So 20 pounds of fat would take up even more space. I’ve heard estimates that 1 pound of muscle is about the size of a baseball, and 1 pound of fat is three times that size. So picture 60 baseballs on your counter.

The other thing I have been doing is, I downloaded a 10 day trial to the World of Warcraft Burning Crusade Expansion. This seems to put a whole new face on the game. I started one of the new races, a Blood Elf, and I must say I like the race, and the starting area. In addition, I choose the new profession of jewel crafting. This also puts a new spin on the game. I found that I was making alot more money faster by doing mining & jewel crafting than any of the other profession/race combo’s I’ve tried. Sadly my 10 day trial ends on Monday, so I’m making the best of it until then. But I can promise you I will be investing in the expansion soon. I thing anybody who doesn’t have the expansion should try it out. You might just be surprised.

Posted in Computers, Gaming, Global, Personal Ramblings | 3 Comments »

In Addition to Cars….

Monday, March 12th, 2007

As you already know from my previous post. I like cars. Alot. And on that note, I dropped my car off at the body shop to get fixed. I should have it back Thursday or Friday.

Another hobby/love is gaming. I’m not a hard core gamer. But I play WOW & AO. I don’t play much, but I enjoy them. I also got a Playstation 2 around the first of the year.

I must admit, I have started to amass a collection of games. Most of which were purchased used for between $4.99 & $9.99. But I have to say my favorite game was purchased last Friday night used for $9.99. The name of the game is Destroy All Humans.

I had seen the game in several used games shops and never felt the price was right. I must say after playing a weekend of it, I very much like the game. The basic storyline of the game is an alien invasion into 1950′s america.

Anyone that is looking for a fairly simple, but really fun game should check it out.

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