enter the n00b.

i spent a fair amount of the time i would normally have been sleeping this evening playing the Guild Wars: Factions preview event with my brother (who is currently at uni in LA, and 3 hours behind me, hence the late nights)and his friend. i had never before stepped into the scary world of MMOGs, so this was an interesting event for me.

on the other hand, guild wars is not, as i understand it, similar to most of the MMOGs out there in that when you form a party with other players and then go out to slay dragons or whatever, the game servers create an "instance" of the world for you, so it's more like just loading up a LAN game and playing with your friends. it actually reminded me a fair amount of the hours i lost to the first dungeon siege game, except it didn't have the intelligence to back the monsters off if you had less than a full party, so your choices were to either pull up a bunch of NPCs and hope the AI is decent, or party with other players and hope they weren't assholes. one thing guild wars does do nicely that i have heard is an issue in world of warcraft is that when an item is dropped, the game decides who gets it, and no one else in the party can pick it up.

i found out very quickly why you turn off emotes and general chat in the common areas. why do parents let their 12-year-olds play these games?

alternatively, given that on the internet, no one knows you're a dog, how old can you really be if you think trolling around saying you're 12 is funny?

the other thing about MMOGing is that you have to have pretty fluent party communications, especially when one member (namely, me) is new to the environment and has no idea what's going on. so after a couple false starts, i got ventrilo working. they very kindly walked me through the interface and the distribution of various specialities of my class so that i would be a help, rather than a hindrance, in the whole monster-killing thing.

the preview allowed everyone to start characters at the level cap, which i initially thought was pretty cool, for a number of reasons: i wasn't at a disadvantage because i didn't have time to grind, and it allowed you to pick up any mission because everyone was at the highest level. they pointed out some disadvantages to it though, namely that you're given all these spells and "elite" moves, and not having level-ground your way up, you actually have no idea how they work or how to strategize with them.

it was pretty fun, all-in-all. guild wars does get rid of one of my main reasons not to play a MMOG, that is the monthly fee. once you buy the client, GW is free to play whenever you want. on the other hand, i'm hardly all that social in meatspace; i'm really not about to group with a bunch of grinders or griefers just so i feel i'm getting my money's worth. also, factions appears to be heavy on the PvP (player vs. player), and the whole reason i like RPGs is because i'm not interested in deathmatch. i did also spend a fair amount of time this weekend waiting for my brother to be done eating, or playing raquetball, or doing homework. i'm not sure i'd like to make this a weekly event. so i probably won't end up buying the game. but at least now i'm no longer a complete n00b.

spring.

today is the first day of spring (ok, in the northern hemisphere).

it snowed this morning. promising.

it is also, not coincidentally, the second anniversary of getting our cat. two years ago, the first day of spring fell on a saturday, and i was feeling bored, so i said, "want to go get a cat today? i found this shelter online." and he said, "sure." so we went down, and we looked at all the cats, and we fudged the paperwork, and we got approved to take a cat home.

he seems to be pretty happy with the arrangement.

a discovery.

in an attempt to demonstrate something to my somewhat technically challenged sister, we switched the SIM cards in our cell phones this afternoon. this let to a fascinating and completely unexpected discovery: my phone's firmware appears to be unlocked. while hers complained about being loaded with a cingular SIM, mine happily accepted her t-mobile SIM, signed onto the network, and made calls.

what does this mean? well, nothing really as far as practical considerations. theoretically, it means, should i ever find myself stranded in europe, i could purchase a pre-paid SIM and use my phone on the european networks. which is kind of a cool thought.

impulse purchase.

my old printer finally gave up it's ghost this evening; it must have been at least 10 years old. we got it as an upgrade to the dot-matrix with our first 486 computer, so it was fairly well along in life. having been built for such a computer, however, the thing was nice and fast on modern equipment. ah well.

since i had a pretty much a good experience with a canon printer, we replaced it with another one, the Pixma iP4200 (who comes up with these names?) while pondering printers in staples, we happened to notice that this printer came with a rebate if it was bought simultaneously with a canon digital camera, camcorder, or any desktop or laptop printer.

now, i have read pretty much nothing but good things about canon digital cameras, and i admit to wanting one for a while. a couple years ago, i won a free kodak digital camera, but it was already showing its age then, and is even moreso now, to say nothing of eating batteries like candy (i know, i know, maybe i shouldn't buy such cheap batteries). so, pretty much on a whim, we also purchased a PowerShot SD450

o.O

i look forward to playing around with it once its battery is charged.

fixed.

i couldn't find this information anywhere on pages and pages of google searching, so i'm posting it here. now, everyone link ;)

how to fix the font for cmd.exe in fullscreen mode in windows xp/2k:

1. open up c:\windows\system32\autoexec.nt (c:\winnt in 2k).

2. put "mode con: lines=25" at the bottom of the file.

3. save the file.

and there. no registry hacking, no downloading of extra fonts necessary. just one line of text and you get normal, unsquished console font in fullscreen mode. yay!

stupid brain.

i wish "i had nightmares last night and now i'm having trouble concentrating" was a valid reason to miss a day of work.