Many minor annoyances today. Took yesterday off from work for a few appointments and two of them ended up canceling at the last minute. Now there will need to be some shuffling and juggling and additional time off taken and much hassle all around. But the Big Picture, at arms length, is actually looking pretty good.
The PROJECT is being slowed down a bit. During the phase three drive wipes one of the core drives decided to reveal a large batch of bad blocks and has started losing the ability to speak with my computer. While that drive would have been the first to be retired at the end of the PROJECT, during the process it was supposed to provide some crucial maneuvering space. With that gone I need to be a lot more conservative about how much I move at once so that there is always a second copy of my data.
The easy solution would be to just buy another drive, but living on a budget has imposed many restrictions on my impulse purchases. The PROJECT does not rate dipping into one of the buffer funds.
At this point I am almost ready to give up any pretense of the deck drying out enough to be painted before winter.
Big Picture. Maybe if I squint...
Wednesday, September 10, 2014
Monday, September 8, 2014
Coping Mechanisms
We each have our own ways of dealing with things. Comforting routines, distractions, mental shelters that we can turn to when things get to be too much.
For the last few years one of my favorite games to relax to has been Minecraft. There's a certain zen to visualizing, discovering, and shaping the world. I've spoken about it here before, but it has been a great help in getting through these last few days. The beauty of Minecraft is also that it is 'light' enough that I can play it while having my computer perform other tasks in the background.
I've started what I will call the "PROJECT." The PROJECT is to finally overhaul the terabytes of storage attached to my machine. Various drives and backups and dusty data that has been copied, transferred, or transplanted from way back when. I have save-game states from games I haven't played in over a decade. I have a lot of junk. Outdated driver packs. Game-patches from back when that was still a manual process. ISOs for obsolete tools. A lot of stuff that's easier to just keep copying than to abandon it.
The PROJECT will force me to consolidate to a single location. The PROJECT will condense my multiple photo, funny picture, infographic, ebook, pdf, TXT notes, RTF notes, DOC notes, ODF notes, into one sustainable folder structure. The PROJECT will use several root folders to consolidate this data onto dedicated disks that can then be mirrored to paired external disks for backups.
That is what has been running in the background on my computer for the last few nights. Copying files around to empty various drives so that I can start those locations fresh and slowly feed in the data and build up the new hierarchy. Phase 1 was weeding out old backups and redundant copies to create space. Phase 2 was backing up key locations to external drives. Phase 3 is half-way complete and involves wiping the internal drives. The end of Phase 3 is pretty brutal but feeds into Phase 4. A complete, fresh, reinstall of the Operating System. That's a little scary. I've collected so many little tools and modifications to my system that I've usually just copied or restored back to my fresh installs that I'm worried that I'll overlook a key feature that won't find out about until I'm missing it... but that worry is evenly matched with the dozens and dozens of things that have been installed, uninstalled, reinstalled, and left various components of themselves resident in my system. Ghost folders and DLLs that are long obsolete but still getting loaded because the Registry is a convoluted mess.
So while my system is copying 850 gigabytes of stuff from location A to location B I dive into Minecraft (running on location C) and try to wrap my head around integrating IndustryCraft2 power production with the Forestry mod machines utilizing BuildCraft power. As an added bonus I've discovered that the IC2 version this pack is running is considered experimental and there are some things that haven't been really documented anywhere. For instance, I created a canning machine to 'normalize' the various stacks of food items I'm creating. Roasted chicken, beef, pork. Carrots, bread, berries, cake... each use precious inventory space when exploring. A canning machine sticks the nutrients into a can and lets you carry a stack of them without having to worry about what's inside. Fun, right? Right?! Anyway, I built the machine, hooked it up to power, and then it turned out that the cans I had created to put my food into weren't compatible. They were from a different mod. Unbeknownst to me, at the time, the recipe for the food cans had been changed. Instead of utilizing three tin ingots in an upside-down bucket formation, it now requires a single ingot to be flattened into a sheet, flattened again into a panel, and then fed through an extruder to create two cans. Or at least that's what my research last night seems to indicate. I'll be trying it tonight, while the next victim of Phase 3 formats and scans in the background.
The next challenge is exploring the various power generation cycles to begin self-sustaining loops. I have a stack of wind-turbines to keep entropy at bay, but some of these machines need more oompf to get rolling.
There's an interesting Apple-Tree farm -> Squeezer -> Fermenter -> Still -> Biofuel that I'm exploring that will hopefully power all the machines to produce the fuel and hopefully some excess for my electric jetpack. Because flitting around the world with an electric jetpack is a lot of fun.
And all this is just to distract me from worrying about tomorrow. I hope tomorrow goes well. I really hope it goes well.
For the last few years one of my favorite games to relax to has been Minecraft. There's a certain zen to visualizing, discovering, and shaping the world. I've spoken about it here before, but it has been a great help in getting through these last few days. The beauty of Minecraft is also that it is 'light' enough that I can play it while having my computer perform other tasks in the background.
I've started what I will call the "PROJECT." The PROJECT is to finally overhaul the terabytes of storage attached to my machine. Various drives and backups and dusty data that has been copied, transferred, or transplanted from way back when. I have save-game states from games I haven't played in over a decade. I have a lot of junk. Outdated driver packs. Game-patches from back when that was still a manual process. ISOs for obsolete tools. A lot of stuff that's easier to just keep copying than to abandon it.
The PROJECT will force me to consolidate to a single location. The PROJECT will condense my multiple photo, funny picture, infographic, ebook, pdf, TXT notes, RTF notes, DOC notes, ODF notes, into one sustainable folder structure. The PROJECT will use several root folders to consolidate this data onto dedicated disks that can then be mirrored to paired external disks for backups.
That is what has been running in the background on my computer for the last few nights. Copying files around to empty various drives so that I can start those locations fresh and slowly feed in the data and build up the new hierarchy. Phase 1 was weeding out old backups and redundant copies to create space. Phase 2 was backing up key locations to external drives. Phase 3 is half-way complete and involves wiping the internal drives. The end of Phase 3 is pretty brutal but feeds into Phase 4. A complete, fresh, reinstall of the Operating System. That's a little scary. I've collected so many little tools and modifications to my system that I've usually just copied or restored back to my fresh installs that I'm worried that I'll overlook a key feature that won't find out about until I'm missing it... but that worry is evenly matched with the dozens and dozens of things that have been installed, uninstalled, reinstalled, and left various components of themselves resident in my system. Ghost folders and DLLs that are long obsolete but still getting loaded because the Registry is a convoluted mess.
So while my system is copying 850 gigabytes of stuff from location A to location B I dive into Minecraft (running on location C) and try to wrap my head around integrating IndustryCraft2 power production with the Forestry mod machines utilizing BuildCraft power. As an added bonus I've discovered that the IC2 version this pack is running is considered experimental and there are some things that haven't been really documented anywhere. For instance, I created a canning machine to 'normalize' the various stacks of food items I'm creating. Roasted chicken, beef, pork. Carrots, bread, berries, cake... each use precious inventory space when exploring. A canning machine sticks the nutrients into a can and lets you carry a stack of them without having to worry about what's inside. Fun, right? Right?! Anyway, I built the machine, hooked it up to power, and then it turned out that the cans I had created to put my food into weren't compatible. They were from a different mod. Unbeknownst to me, at the time, the recipe for the food cans had been changed. Instead of utilizing three tin ingots in an upside-down bucket formation, it now requires a single ingot to be flattened into a sheet, flattened again into a panel, and then fed through an extruder to create two cans. Or at least that's what my research last night seems to indicate. I'll be trying it tonight, while the next victim of Phase 3 formats and scans in the background.
The next challenge is exploring the various power generation cycles to begin self-sustaining loops. I have a stack of wind-turbines to keep entropy at bay, but some of these machines need more oompf to get rolling.
There's an interesting Apple-Tree farm -> Squeezer -> Fermenter -> Still -> Biofuel that I'm exploring that will hopefully power all the machines to produce the fuel and hopefully some excess for my electric jetpack. Because flitting around the world with an electric jetpack is a lot of fun.
And all this is just to distract me from worrying about tomorrow. I hope tomorrow goes well. I really hope it goes well.
Wednesday, September 3, 2014
Anxiety
The weather hates me. We've finished the sanding despite the weather. But now we need enough sunlight to dry out the wood, and then enough sunlight to cure the two coats of paint required to finish the deck. For the last few weeks and the foreseeable future we get maybe enough for one but not the other. Right now the deck is dry, but there is rain and storms in the forecast for the next three days. Then there are two days with sunshine... and then more rain. Worst case we'll rip the darn deck out and set up a stepladder. So that's gnawing at the back of my mind.
Then there's the cryptic good news from last post. The news shall remain cryptic for now, but steps are being taken. Steps that should help confirm that the news is actually good news and not just good news because of its potential (and our hopes) that it is good.
When we first got the house we took one of those "What Breed is Right for You?" Quizzes online. We're both pretty sure that we want a dog in our lives. The quiz came up with a breed called the Wire-haired Pointing Griffon. Which was great up until we started seeing more and more Corgi pics and videos. They are freaking adorable dogs. Now it looks like one of the local kennels has a Corgi puppy and is testing our willpower.
Why did I label this post "Anxiety?" Because I'm feeling it. There's so much in flux right now. Global politics are a mess. Global economies are rebalancing and shifting. The environment seems on the cusp of... something. Stress is high. Desperation is high. It seems more and more likely that someone is going to push for an endgame rather than coasting along until the future happens. I'll grant that this seems to be a repeating theme these last few decades, but it feels so much more immediate in this world with near instant communication. And that's just the faint background noise for my own personal issues.
Possibly more on that as I get time. For the moment though? Minecraft just launched version 1.8, and I've been spending time with a modpack version called Direwolf20 which is running on a much older version. I'm enjoying the mods a lot, but it makes it a much different game. In hindsight I kind of regret picking such an ambitious package of changes. There are hundreds of new recipes for conflicting, duplicating, parallel devices. So far I've encountered three different 'power' models that are not directly compatible with each other. I won't embarrass myself by trying to list them here, but basically a lot of my confusion with the various added items was alleviated when I focused on two or three core packs. This makes me think that maybe I should just start a new server with just those packs installed so I don't have to fight the clutter of all the extra stuff that I'll probably never touch. The mods I'm actively trying to work with: BuildCraft, Ars Magica 2, Thaumcraft (not as much though since I've explored that one independent of this pack), Forestry, and IndustrialCraft2.
I also found a PortalGun in a dungeon chest it is my new favorite thing. It works just like the portal device in the game Portal. Which means it breaks the game a little but in a great way! Point the gun at a wall and right-click to create a red portal. Then point the gun at a wall anywhere else and left-click to create a yellow portal. Going through one instantly teleports you to the other. It took me a while to recognize the full potential of this. Going on exploration runs is hard. Limited inventory space means that you're constantly balancing picking up something new and dropping something you might need. With the portal gun you can pop one portal in your base, and then just pop the exit portal wherever you happen to be! No more spending the twilight rushing together a hasty shelter in the dirt to huddle in for the 9 minute night cycle. Portal. Sleep in your base. Empty your backpack, top off your food and torches and portal right back to where you left off! Like I said, it breaks the game a bit, but now I also don't have to commit several gaming sessions to finding the biomes that spawn the materials I need to progress. Something as simple as a chicken or carrot can take in-game weeks to locate if the random generator gods are not smiling.
I'm having fun, and using the 'down' time to keep building my own world and catch up on podcasts.
I've set myself a bit of a coding challenge and I want to see if I can follow through with it. But more on that later.
Then there's the cryptic good news from last post. The news shall remain cryptic for now, but steps are being taken. Steps that should help confirm that the news is actually good news and not just good news because of its potential (and our hopes) that it is good.
When we first got the house we took one of those "What Breed is Right for You?" Quizzes online. We're both pretty sure that we want a dog in our lives. The quiz came up with a breed called the Wire-haired Pointing Griffon. Which was great up until we started seeing more and more Corgi pics and videos. They are freaking adorable dogs. Now it looks like one of the local kennels has a Corgi puppy and is testing our willpower.
Why did I label this post "Anxiety?" Because I'm feeling it. There's so much in flux right now. Global politics are a mess. Global economies are rebalancing and shifting. The environment seems on the cusp of... something. Stress is high. Desperation is high. It seems more and more likely that someone is going to push for an endgame rather than coasting along until the future happens. I'll grant that this seems to be a repeating theme these last few decades, but it feels so much more immediate in this world with near instant communication. And that's just the faint background noise for my own personal issues.
Possibly more on that as I get time. For the moment though? Minecraft just launched version 1.8, and I've been spending time with a modpack version called Direwolf20 which is running on a much older version. I'm enjoying the mods a lot, but it makes it a much different game. In hindsight I kind of regret picking such an ambitious package of changes. There are hundreds of new recipes for conflicting, duplicating, parallel devices. So far I've encountered three different 'power' models that are not directly compatible with each other. I won't embarrass myself by trying to list them here, but basically a lot of my confusion with the various added items was alleviated when I focused on two or three core packs. This makes me think that maybe I should just start a new server with just those packs installed so I don't have to fight the clutter of all the extra stuff that I'll probably never touch. The mods I'm actively trying to work with: BuildCraft, Ars Magica 2, Thaumcraft (not as much though since I've explored that one independent of this pack), Forestry, and IndustrialCraft2.
I also found a PortalGun in a dungeon chest it is my new favorite thing. It works just like the portal device in the game Portal. Which means it breaks the game a little but in a great way! Point the gun at a wall and right-click to create a red portal. Then point the gun at a wall anywhere else and left-click to create a yellow portal. Going through one instantly teleports you to the other. It took me a while to recognize the full potential of this. Going on exploration runs is hard. Limited inventory space means that you're constantly balancing picking up something new and dropping something you might need. With the portal gun you can pop one portal in your base, and then just pop the exit portal wherever you happen to be! No more spending the twilight rushing together a hasty shelter in the dirt to huddle in for the 9 minute night cycle. Portal. Sleep in your base. Empty your backpack, top off your food and torches and portal right back to where you left off! Like I said, it breaks the game a bit, but now I also don't have to commit several gaming sessions to finding the biomes that spawn the materials I need to progress. Something as simple as a chicken or carrot can take in-game weeks to locate if the random generator gods are not smiling.
I'm having fun, and using the 'down' time to keep building my own world and catch up on podcasts.
I've set myself a bit of a coding challenge and I want to see if I can follow through with it. But more on that later.
Wednesday, August 13, 2014
Stop me if you've heard this one
Owning a home is rough. The House that the bank bought for me in exchange for a few decades of my life has a deck. A deck that has been roughed up by a few hail-storms and was probably long-overdue for some TLC before we decided to move in. So, in blinding flash of optimism, we've taken it upon ourselves to refinish the deck. Stripping off the remains of the current covering, cleaning, sanding, and then repainting the wood. We are now at phase three... the sanding. That's what I'll be doing tonight. I hate it already. In my mind I am calculating numbers. What number of moneys would I pay to not have to do that tonight, tomorrow, and weather permitting, the next few days. But that's defeatist talk! Despite the difficulties with the weather things have gone relatively smoothly. The stripping of existing covering was a little messier and involved than expected. With determination and elbow grease we've gotten the wood to a state I would call "Good Enough." Whatever the detergents and oxidizers didn't dissolve shall surely succumb to the abrasive charms of my new orbital sander. For the detail work around the bannisters (of which there is more than I consciously realized when planning this work) I have a smaller sander that, I believe, will be able to fit into the narrower concave ares with a smaller sanding surface. If not... I have a sanding block and hands that can grip. Woe is me.
In other news... We've started watching Heroes again starting at season one. Hiro's enthusiasm is quite infectious.
In other other news. We had great news yesterday. If things keep going this well there may be more great news sometime down the line but at this point we're going one step at a time. Cryptic. You're welcome.
More soon!
In other news... We've started watching Heroes again starting at season one. Hiro's enthusiasm is quite infectious.
In other other news. We had great news yesterday. If things keep going this well there may be more great news sometime down the line but at this point we're going one step at a time. Cryptic. You're welcome.
More soon!
Friday, August 8, 2014
Interrogation Logs: Resistance Subject 00342
Listen, the mind is a terrible thing. It can betray you. These words are hitting your consciousness and you're already discarding them as 'silly.' That's your mind protecting itself from the truth. My name is Michael and my mind betrayed me.
I don't know how I am speaking to you. My body hasn't been my own for so long, my senses bludgeoning my awareness with data I have no way to respond to... maybe I'm finally insane. Maybe you're my delusion. A spark of comfort imagined from this sea of torment. I was never this eloquent in my body. I had the words. I was educated, damn it. But my vocal cords would stumble and blunder while enunciating, so I keep things simple. When you're a cop in a big city big words come from the people that make your day hell. Nosey detectives. Supervisors. The Governor's office. Any number of alphabet-goons looking down their noses at the local 'talent' they are saddled with. So you keep it to yourself. Internalize. And slowly it atrophies. That itch between your eyes when someone says 'irregardless.' That sigh when you're reading barely legible memos from your superiors. You trade it all in for the occasional slap on the back and the invitation to the neighborhood barbeque. The alternative is lonely.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not some suffering genius. I'd say I'm comfortably above the median of the bellcurve. Hell, I'm dumb enough to spend 25 years on the same beat, when I know damn well the asses that needed kissing for me to move up the chain of... Don't go! Wait! It's been so long. I can feel you there. I know you want something from me. This part of me. Otherwise I wouldn't be here.
My memories? Memories are strange here. Out there they seemed like fleeting mists. Distractions. In here... I wish I had better memories. I wish I could bear to face her without... You want the beginning.
I remember being afraid. I am sitting at my desk at the station. My keyboard under my fingers, my eyes on the pages of my pocket notepad propped under the screen. My eyes are on the words, but I don't see them. I feel my pulse pounding in my ears. Sweat beading on my skin. The constant drone of the big room filled with people is a muted hum in my ears. I can hear the electronic whine of my monitor, I can see the film of dust forming around the pictures of my family under the screen. My legs are shaking. I can feel the panic forming behind my eyes. I know that it is panic. I know what my body wants to do. I know that I'm losing control. My hands shake as I lift them from the keyboard and slowly reach for the foam globe my shrink gave me during our last session. Destroy enough office equipment and they send you to a shrink. I close my eyes and my hand tightens around the foam. Knuckles cracking. Tendons stretching and contracting. Skin white from the pressure. I don't scream. I don't wail. I keep it inside. I don't scream. I don't scream. My chest hurts. Hurts bad. Like I've been running. I hunch forward, eyes closed, fist pulsing, and try to breathe. A phone rings. It won't stop. Stop! STOP!
"STOP!!"
The room is silent except for the whine from dozens of screens and the traffic outside.
I keep my eyes closed. I know what's coming next. The muttering. The anxious laughs. The concerned coworkers. The meeting with the supervisor. I take deep breaths while wondering if I managed to kick my chair away when I lunged forward. The room stays silent. I smell gunpowder. I SMELL GUNPOWDER! My hand is holding something. I know it's my pistol. I KNOW it's my pistol. Why am I holding my pistol? When did I... My eyes are still closed. I can't. Why? I'm shaking but my shoulder and arm don't. I can't feel them. What did I do? What have I done! I don't want to see this. I don't want to see the fear in their eyes. The doubt. The disgust... I can't. I picture the gun under my chin. The flash of heat. I open my eyes and see my arm holding my smoking pistol. It is gripped in fingers I can't feel. Can't twitch. The arm held forward rigidly while the rest of me shakes like a leaf. I see the others in the periphery. I see my fellow officers, secretaries, perps, persons of interest... and none of them are looking at me their eyes fixed on the floor in front of my desk. I can hear the screams now. Screams that don't matter because there's something laying in front of my desk, out of my sight. I'm panting. I can't catch my breath. I picture a child. I can see enough of the floor to know it couldn't hide a man or woman unless they were small. WHY WON'T ANYONE MOVE TO HELP!? Suddenly my arm drops and the pistol rattles off my keyboard and onto the floor. I can move again and I stumble sideways to see what I have done.
That was the first time we saw one. One of them.
Tuesday, August 5, 2014
Taking a break
Happy Tuesday!
Thanks to an extended network outage at one of the offices I serve I got to work late yesterday. This means that the deck sat idle for one more day. The project started last weekend and at this point 75% of the wood surface has been stripped and is ready for cleaning and sanding. I am hoping to finish the harsh chemical phase either tonight or tomorrow, weather permitting, and move to the sanding and possibly starting the painting this weekend. I can't tell you how much I didn't miss working with harsh chemicals again. The nostalgic sting of chemical burns on my arms brought back ghosts of crappy jobs left long behind. The tightness around the chest when you get a faceful of fumes. Good times...
I've finished book seven of the Dresden Files and now I face a dilemma. I purchased those seven books as e-books at a huge discount. "Huge discount" is also known as "a rational price for e-books" in my world.
The odds of the remaining books being discounted any time soon is pretty slim, and for as much as I'm enjoying the books while I'm reading them, the odds of me revisiting the stories are also pretty slim. It might be time for me to venture out and see if I can suffer through visits to my local library without damaging my anti-social persona.
Until then I'm digging into some titles that have been sitting on my to-do pile for a while now. More on them if they tickle my fancy.
Reading through the Dresden books did give me some food for thought. I am back to sketching out my story ideas and was struck by the effect of a forced first person narrative. Since the universe I am imagining has many moving parts I am considering pulling together a few first person narratives in essay or short story form to help me flesh out the rules of the world. A day in the life of a mining-crew engineer. A day in the life of a trading-base vendor. How do people inhabit these scenarios. What is their motivation for maintaining the infrastructure I'm forcing them into... sounds fun and something that may provide content for my larger narratives.
I really need to find those writer-workshop podcasts I keep hearing about.
Time to prep for work!
Thanks to an extended network outage at one of the offices I serve I got to work late yesterday. This means that the deck sat idle for one more day. The project started last weekend and at this point 75% of the wood surface has been stripped and is ready for cleaning and sanding. I am hoping to finish the harsh chemical phase either tonight or tomorrow, weather permitting, and move to the sanding and possibly starting the painting this weekend. I can't tell you how much I didn't miss working with harsh chemicals again. The nostalgic sting of chemical burns on my arms brought back ghosts of crappy jobs left long behind. The tightness around the chest when you get a faceful of fumes. Good times...
I've finished book seven of the Dresden Files and now I face a dilemma. I purchased those seven books as e-books at a huge discount. "Huge discount" is also known as "a rational price for e-books" in my world.
The odds of the remaining books being discounted any time soon is pretty slim, and for as much as I'm enjoying the books while I'm reading them, the odds of me revisiting the stories are also pretty slim. It might be time for me to venture out and see if I can suffer through visits to my local library without damaging my anti-social persona.
Until then I'm digging into some titles that have been sitting on my to-do pile for a while now. More on them if they tickle my fancy.
Reading through the Dresden books did give me some food for thought. I am back to sketching out my story ideas and was struck by the effect of a forced first person narrative. Since the universe I am imagining has many moving parts I am considering pulling together a few first person narratives in essay or short story form to help me flesh out the rules of the world. A day in the life of a mining-crew engineer. A day in the life of a trading-base vendor. How do people inhabit these scenarios. What is their motivation for maintaining the infrastructure I'm forcing them into... sounds fun and something that may provide content for my larger narratives.
I really need to find those writer-workshop podcasts I keep hearing about.
Time to prep for work!
Monday, July 21, 2014
The worst part is the waiting
This week is shaping up for a crazy mix of emotions for me.
On the one hand... fantastic news on the family front and we are a) relieved that nature hasn't thrown an insurmountable roadblock in front of us and b) anxiously waiting for the outcome of said nature's processing of our efforts. But even if it doesn't work out this time we are on the right track and there is a track to follow.
On the other hand... crunch time at work. It's that lovely time of year where everyone has the same deadline and I'm pulled a dozen directions simultaneously. So I can't spend too much time editing this post or I'll be pulled away again.
On the gripping hand... Another thread has been nailed to the ground. I now own a grill. And a grill cover. And a propane tank has been purchased. And this weekend we grilled on our deck. And it was delicious. And nothing feels weirder than that possessive feeling you get when you start planning out a major project like refinishing your deck. Long-term we want to alter it into half deck, half patio, but for now we just need to refinish the wood we have. I've ordered a sander and paper. We've scouted the stains and cleaners. The In-Laws have a powerwasher they've agreed to loan me once we're ready to proceed. It's kind of weird. I hope I like it. There are a lot of little projects I have churning in my head, but snapping out of a decade plus of apartment thinking is tricky.
The CD has finished. Taking a pause to keep the plates spinning.
I took a break from Drox Operative this weekend. I felt the need for something a little more hands-on and was actually debating finding my Sniper Elite installation again, but then I ran across Just Cause 2. Just Cause 2 is a fantastically fun game. You play as Scorpio, a physics defying acrobatic assassin demolitions expert one man army bullet sponge ragdoll science experiment, and are dropped on the island nation of Panau to destabilize the despotic leader before he can do... I honestly forget what he was going to do, but it is bad, I'm sure. The savegame I loaded was dated 2011, so it has been a few years since I played this for any real amount of time, but after a few stumbles and a lot of cursing I'm back in the groove. The cursing is because the game has some buttons mapped to unconventional keys. For instance... in 99.9% of driving games the hand-brake is mapped to the space-bar. So you're running from a literal herd of enforcers, or in a hard-contested race, or flying down a mountain pass way too fast and approaching a hairpin turn in front of a giant cliff.... the gamer instinct is to whip the steering into the turn and lock up the wheels with the handbrake to the power into the following straight. In this game, the space-bar activates your parachute. Think James-Bond Ejector seat. So now you are floating thirty feet above the ground while your vehicle barrels on and you slowly drift to the ground. It's fantastic if you meant to do it. Remember that cliff scenario? It makes for some fantastic escapes. But if you were actually trying to keep the vehicle, plane, helicopter, etc and accidentally hammer the space-bar it can elicit some acidic language. The helicopters and planes have a similar issue.... 99.9% of the flying games use the keys to the left and right of WASD for rudder control. In this game E exits the vehicle. Regardless of how high off the ground you are (physics defying, remember?). To alleviate the pain this causes the game does give you a hilariously fun button. If you press it Scorpio will jump out of the vehicle and balance on top. So now you're standing on top of a garbage truck being chased by police jeeps and motorcycles barreling towards a cliff... epic.
Panau is huge and the terrain is varied. From tropical beaches, to vast deserts, to jungle valleys, to swampy plains, snow-capped mountains... and lots of things to do. Find an airstrip and snag a little prop puddle jumper. Buzz some military bases and play chicken with their anti-aircraft defenses. Find a military airport and snag once of their fighter jets and do bombing runs on oilrigs out on the ocean. Grab an ATV and see how far you can make it through some of the jungle terrain. Find an elevated position and go base jumping with your instantly-replenishing parachute back-pack. And I haven't even mentioned your Spider-man grappling hook! Snag an armored APC, attach a Tuk-Tuk to the back with your unbreakable cable and go driving through a military checkpoint at high speed. It's fun.
As with most games I turn off the in-game music after a while and supply my own soundtrack. The Starbound music worked very well with the gorgeous scenery and an interesting counterpoint to the sometimes Michael Bayesque explosions and action sequences. Scorpio, powered up, can stand his ground against an armored attack chopper for much longer than you would think. (and then snag it with his grapple. Swing to the nose of the chopper. Take out the passenger gunner with his smg. Swing over to the pilot and fight him for control. Throwing the pilot out of the chopper and then fly it to the party blimp circling the islands.)
On the one hand... fantastic news on the family front and we are a) relieved that nature hasn't thrown an insurmountable roadblock in front of us and b) anxiously waiting for the outcome of said nature's processing of our efforts. But even if it doesn't work out this time we are on the right track and there is a track to follow.
On the other hand... crunch time at work. It's that lovely time of year where everyone has the same deadline and I'm pulled a dozen directions simultaneously. So I can't spend too much time editing this post or I'll be pulled away again.
On the gripping hand... Another thread has been nailed to the ground. I now own a grill. And a grill cover. And a propane tank has been purchased. And this weekend we grilled on our deck. And it was delicious. And nothing feels weirder than that possessive feeling you get when you start planning out a major project like refinishing your deck. Long-term we want to alter it into half deck, half patio, but for now we just need to refinish the wood we have. I've ordered a sander and paper. We've scouted the stains and cleaners. The In-Laws have a powerwasher they've agreed to loan me once we're ready to proceed. It's kind of weird. I hope I like it. There are a lot of little projects I have churning in my head, but snapping out of a decade plus of apartment thinking is tricky.
The CD has finished. Taking a pause to keep the plates spinning.
I took a break from Drox Operative this weekend. I felt the need for something a little more hands-on and was actually debating finding my Sniper Elite installation again, but then I ran across Just Cause 2. Just Cause 2 is a fantastically fun game. You play as Scorpio, a physics defying acrobatic assassin demolitions expert one man army bullet sponge ragdoll science experiment, and are dropped on the island nation of Panau to destabilize the despotic leader before he can do... I honestly forget what he was going to do, but it is bad, I'm sure. The savegame I loaded was dated 2011, so it has been a few years since I played this for any real amount of time, but after a few stumbles and a lot of cursing I'm back in the groove. The cursing is because the game has some buttons mapped to unconventional keys. For instance... in 99.9% of driving games the hand-brake is mapped to the space-bar. So you're running from a literal herd of enforcers, or in a hard-contested race, or flying down a mountain pass way too fast and approaching a hairpin turn in front of a giant cliff.... the gamer instinct is to whip the steering into the turn and lock up the wheels with the handbrake to the power into the following straight. In this game, the space-bar activates your parachute. Think James-Bond Ejector seat. So now you are floating thirty feet above the ground while your vehicle barrels on and you slowly drift to the ground. It's fantastic if you meant to do it. Remember that cliff scenario? It makes for some fantastic escapes. But if you were actually trying to keep the vehicle, plane, helicopter, etc and accidentally hammer the space-bar it can elicit some acidic language. The helicopters and planes have a similar issue.... 99.9% of the flying games use the keys to the left and right of WASD for rudder control. In this game E exits the vehicle. Regardless of how high off the ground you are (physics defying, remember?). To alleviate the pain this causes the game does give you a hilariously fun button. If you press it Scorpio will jump out of the vehicle and balance on top. So now you're standing on top of a garbage truck being chased by police jeeps and motorcycles barreling towards a cliff... epic.
Panau is huge and the terrain is varied. From tropical beaches, to vast deserts, to jungle valleys, to swampy plains, snow-capped mountains... and lots of things to do. Find an airstrip and snag a little prop puddle jumper. Buzz some military bases and play chicken with their anti-aircraft defenses. Find a military airport and snag once of their fighter jets and do bombing runs on oilrigs out on the ocean. Grab an ATV and see how far you can make it through some of the jungle terrain. Find an elevated position and go base jumping with your instantly-replenishing parachute back-pack. And I haven't even mentioned your Spider-man grappling hook! Snag an armored APC, attach a Tuk-Tuk to the back with your unbreakable cable and go driving through a military checkpoint at high speed. It's fun.
As with most games I turn off the in-game music after a while and supply my own soundtrack. The Starbound music worked very well with the gorgeous scenery and an interesting counterpoint to the sometimes Michael Bayesque explosions and action sequences. Scorpio, powered up, can stand his ground against an armored attack chopper for much longer than you would think. (and then snag it with his grapple. Swing to the nose of the chopper. Take out the passenger gunner with his smg. Swing over to the pilot and fight him for control. Throwing the pilot out of the chopper and then fly it to the party blimp circling the islands.)
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