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.

cycling.

i'm going through a gaming phase right now. it's kind of weird. i guess it really started back in the fall with Dungeon Siege 2, and interspersed that with a little Legend of Zelda: Windwaker. then, having beaten neither of them, i went on to DOSbox and Darklands. it was somewhere in there that i realized i was using my athlon64 3500+, geforce6800gs, and 1gb ram to play a game that came out in 1992. so instead of going back to the final boss battle in DS2, i bought Morrowind GOTY edition, and now i've purchased Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles.

do i like RPGs? maybe.

what's funny is about this time last year was when we actually bought the gamecube and a bunch of games for it, which i haven't beaten either (pikmin, pikmin2...)... i wonder what it is about winter that sends me headlong into the comforting arms of interactive electronic entertainment. the really funny thing is that the downstairs is always cold in winter, so we went and bought the gamecube and then didn't use it for like 6 weeks until the weather warmed up and we could sit in the living room without wrapping up in the blanket.

videogames are, i guess, pretty task-oriented, which makes them different from reading in that the unfolding of the story is incumbent on the player for progression. there's a fair difference between solving a problem or whacking away at enemies and turning a page. maybe there's something about the effort involved that makes videogames more distracting than books.

Alison at Blue Bell.

last friday, we went to Alison at Blue Bell for my dad's birthday. we went there last year too, but last year i had a fever topping 101F, so i'd have to say that was probably a less-than-representative experience at the little BYO. why did we go? i don't remember. it seemed like a good idea at the time. this year we were back in the same table, the big round one in the corner of the tiny blue-and-gold dining room, the only table set up to take more than 4 people at once. alison barshak herself came over to introduce herself at about the end of our meal and was very gratified to learn that my father is also an acquarius (her birthday had been the previous sunday).

the menu is very seafood-heavy, perhaps recalling her intial big splash in the philadelphia restaurant scene at the now-scandal-ridden Striped Bass. previously-scandal-ridden, perhaps i should say. neil stein is heading to prison, and stephen starr's new chef, christopher lee, has launched the restaurant into inquirer food reviewer craig laban's coveted four bell rating.

i had smoked salmon with potato pancakes and sour cream for my appetizer, a cute little take on jewish deli food. the salmon was delicious, and paired perfectly with the smooth sour cream and the warm crunchiness of the pan-fried potato pancakes. this also went really well with the blanc de noirs my father had brought to celebrate his birthday, although uncharacteristically for him, he had also brought a 1996 Ridge cabernet sauvignon, which meant that he and my mom and anyone else who wanted to drink the wine really only had a choice of two dinners on the menu.

i had the crispy monkfish, which i think was crusted with potato starch and pan-fried. then the steaks were balanced over possibly braised frisee and new potatoes. as soon as i handed my menu to the waitress, i instantly managed to forget how it was described, so even when it came out from the kitchen, i wasn't sure what i was eating. monkfish doesn't go with cabernet. mom and dad both had rack of lamb with minted yoghurt sauce, reflecting alison's recent trip to turkey. arcade had a greek salad for his appetizer which came with a deep-fried tube of phyllo dough wrapped around creamy feta, which i split with dad and so at least got to taste the wine.

the kitchen is also extremely flexible. when my sister mentioned her discomfort with truffled cream as a garnish for her crab cakes, the waitress instantly and kindly suggested they be made with ordinary cocktail sauce instead.

we weren't originally planning on dessert, but then we saw the dessert menu. so mom had a goat cheese, fig, and walnut tart, dad and his mom both had sorbets, i had a chocolate-espress-chile pot de creme. yes, chile. wow, that left a zing in your mouth. being my family, everyone had to have a mouthful, and everyone said, "where's the chile?" and then i would say, "just swallow." and then you could see eyes widen, and, "whoa." i don't remember what everyone else had. dad and i traded off desserts about halfway. hehe

much better than last year's experience. i'm sure the lack of flu had a lot to do with it. i'd like to go back, actually, and try the duck taco again, because i remember it being disappointingly dry, but i'm not sure it was the duck, not me. she does only take cash or cheque, which can be a bit awkward when everyone has unplanned desserts. i'd still say it was worth it for that pot de creme. zowie.

regression.

i didn't make the ginger cake in the end. i downloaded DOSBox and spent 2 1/2 hours playing Darklands. how pitiful a gamer do you have to be to get yourself re-addicted to a game that was already being given out for free in 1995?

i am lost forever to its pixilated glory. "Endless replayability" is something of an understatement. viva open-ended RPGs.

cabin fever.

there is over a foot of snow on the ground. i have not been out of the house all day. having made inauthentic cornish pasties for dinner, i am now tempted to make gingercake (it's caffeinated!!!) oh dear *grin*