What Have I Gotten Myself Into?

I made the mistake of caving to the Queen's pressure to get a Facebook account in an effort to shut her up make her happy and I think it has backfired. I'm now playing this Dragon RPG on there and slowly becoming addicted to it. Woe is me...

Anyway, It's at least amusing and it plays pretty well. It isn't WoW or W:AR (Warhammer: Age of Reckoning) by any stretch, but I can at least amuse myself a bit by playing it and we have another thing in common.

You know you want to get a Facebook account and add us as friends. :) You KNOW you want to...

This post was brought to you by the letters R, P, G, and the number 6.

First Impression...

My first impression of Warhammer: Age of Reckoning is this. FUN! I have a few minor issues with the interface, but I'm sure I'll either figure out an alternate way to do what I'm trying to do, or Mythic will correct it within a patch or two. I won't tell you any specifics other than the fact that there isn't a built in PTT system like in WoW. I guess I'll have to make use of Ventrilo like most of the other folks I play with. :)

Anyway, I'm happy with the game overall in that it's fun and the graphics quality is actually a bit better than WoW's.

This post was brought to you by the letters U, I, and the number 5.

WarHammer Online

I'm going to give new game a try. It's called WarHammer Onling: Age of Reckoning. Go take a look. It's supposed to be a bit like World of Warcraft, but more Player vs Player centric.

The biggest reasone for me to try this game is that the people I used to play WoW with have all quit and I have a ready-made guild waiting to begin WarHammer Online. I'll give it a try and we'll see what happens. I always have the option of going back to WoW since my character will remain on their servers indefinitely. :)

We'll see if I like it.

By the way, the open Beta has just begun. :) Come give it a try.

This post was brought to you by the letters W, H, O, and the number 18.

Get Paid to Post

So I have a chance to get paid for informing you nice folks of my opinions. Of course, this requires you fine people to read my posts. :) So if you all kindly read and occasionally click on the included links, I'd really appreciate it. Please read up on the word of mouth ethics I need to follow. Let me know what you think!

I also have a chance to make a few bucks by doing this and I'd love to make enough to purchase a few nice things for my family. The wife and kids deserve something for putting up with my crap for all these years.

One of my tasks is to review something that I'm interested in and let you all know about it. So, I'm going to tell you how much I enjoy World of Warcraft and why. This game allows me to step out of the real world and into the imaginary world for a brief amount of time each time I play. The down side of the game, as with any game, is the possibility of the player to blur the lines between what's real and not, resulting in hours and hours spent online and ignoring the real world. My advice to the new player is to play with moderation.

If you intend to play this game, I'd suggest using a relatively new machine with a wide aspect LCD monitor to get the most out of the game. Be sure to crnk up the settings and be pleased by the amount of detail in the imaginary game.

This post was brought to you by the letters P, P, P, and the number 20.

Vista?

So... M$ releases a new OS at the end of last year and so far, in nearly a year since the release, they haven't solved some simple compatibility issues with software that's LESS than a year old. In fact, software that's been released since the new OS was released doesn't work with it because of OS issues. M$ says there are issues with it's memory management which is at the root of a bunch of problems. Yes, I'm talking mostly about games (and the demos).

The argument can be made that it's the game manufacturers' responsibility to make their software compatible with the OS, but it also means that the OS manufacturer needs to make the OS able to deal with NEW software and give the game manufacturers USEFUL tools and specs (that aren't out of date immediately and/or changed every 2 months) to use to develop their games. I don't think M$ has lived up to their responsibility, especially since their OS costs so much more than it should.

If you compare the features that Vista offers, to the other OSes out there that offer comparable features (notably nearly any version of UNIX, any distro of Linux, or release of MacOS), you'll find that Vista is over-priced by a factor of 10! MacOS X for instance costs about $40 and Apple is still making money on each copy they sell. If Vista cost only $40 a copy, I think we could more easily swallow its flaws. As it is, $400 a pop should buy me an OS that was ready for the main stream and has all the tools that was promised. This thing is reminding me of what happened with Windows ME (and even M$ admits that ME was a failure).

This may or may not happen with this OS, but I'm only partially impressed with the OS. It has NOT lived up to the hype so far. Sure, you can perform word processing, web browsing, and other mundane things in this new OS, but you can't play the graphically intensive games people want to play. There are 3 versions of Battlefield, for instance, that you can't play on a Vista box. There are a number of other games that perform significantly WORSE on Vista than on any other OS. This was after making adjustments for Vista's memory issues.

Oh, by the way, WoW seems to work fine, but then again, this machine is so much faster than the other machine I was using that I wouldn't be able to notice any performance issues Vista did or did not introduce because the rest of the equipment is so much better.

I think I'll have to dual boot my machine in order to run the apps I'd like. Currently, it looks like I should get a second hard drive and install XP Pro on it. That way, I can have my gaming setup on one drive and everything else on another.

This post was brought to you by the letters X, P, and the number 2.

Finally

Hello all. It's finally happened. Last week, I was allowed to order my laptop. I got the rep to expedite it and it arrived yesterday. I'm using it right now! :) Of course, the Queen isn't happy with me at the moment because I've installed WoW on it and I'm waiting for the updates to download. :)

I'm so far really happy with my new laptop. It's a Dell Inspiron 1720 and it's pretty much maxed out. I'm stoked! I just have to finish installing the rest of my software. That'll take the better part of the rest of the week.

I've been diagnosed with mycoplasma (walking pneumonia) and I'm on meds to clear it up. I'll be better in a few days.

This post was brought to you by the letters U, D, I, S, and the number 8.

2 Weeks

It's hard to believe it's been 2 weeks since I last posted. The dates don't lie about it though. :) No changes as yet.

Why is it that I can't ever get on track the way I want? It's as if the universe has decided that no matter what, I'm always going to be just a bit short of my goal.

On a happier note, a different group of friends has decided to form a guild on a different WoW server and have asked me to join. I'm running an undead warlock on the Horde side. I'm interested to see some of the play from the other side. We'll see what happens, I might stick with it for a while.

This post was brought to you by the letters G, I, W, Y, and the number 45.

Finally...

Phew! The giant project at work is finally over! Everything's been done and deployed so now there are just a few minor issues to mop up. I should have time to post more entries and comments for a while. :)

The weather is finally beginning to act like spring. Warm days and mild nights. It's caused the grass to grow green and a few flowers to peek out at us. It's caused me to start working on an area to put in a garden as well as look into other projects that need to be completed.

It also means that it's finally warm enough in the basement to spend a bit of time down there without sprouting icicles on my nose. :) Look forward to hearing about more of my WoW exploits as well as how geeky I am.

Let's hope my friend, M, is good for D&D this week. He took last week off to spend time with his wife. Kinda silly to cancel a session for that, right? :) Kidding!

Anway, it's good to have the pressure valve opened a bit at work so there's not quite so much managerial stressing gonig on at work. :)

This post was brought to you by the letters, G, R, E, E, N, and the number 12.