Decided to do something a little more productive today. I made cranberry muffins.
They taste amazing. I decided to try the recipe from one of my old time life cookbooks. Also decided to go out and enjoy the sunlight for awhile, then a little bit of ESO.
The new year has been pretty boring. Work has been pretty steady, and every day off I’ve had so far has been too friggen cold for me to go out and wreck the town. I got out of my PJ’s, took a shower, and got back into fresh PJ’s to give you an idea. So I’ve been pretty much staying in bed and playing. I decided to play a little bit of Half Life: Blue Shift on the Steam Controller today with a custom config someone wrote. I’ve also been working on my latest video project, which has forced my hand at trying to remember all the in’s and outs of Source Filmmaker. Goes to show I really need to get back into animating, I’ve really gone stale. I forgot how to copy animation sets and had to lookup a tutorial. DERP.
The other day when I wasn’t feeling well I decided to venture off into a game called “Life Is Strange” which I’ve been meaning to play. It’s one of those choose your own path type story games, and the protagonist has the ability to rewind time. So if you don’t like how one particular situation, or if you messed something up you can just rewind time. I made it to episode two before I decided to take a break from it. So far I like it, this game gives me the feels at particular situations.
And the protagonist… I know I’ve seen her somewhere before.
One door closes and another opens. Last year had some of what I could think would be my sadder moments, but I got through it and things turned out better in the end thanks to friends, family and not giving up on myself. I have great friends, family, a job I’ve actually been enjoying and amazing co-workers who all respect one another. It’s not all perfect but it’s nowhere close to what I expected to end up with, and for that I’m happy.
As usual I don’t have any new years resolutions outside of 1920×1080 since I don’t really believe in doing those. But I have been putting together a list of things I want to do regarding video making.
I’m not sure if I want to do reviews still, I’ve been having fun recording my gameplay with friends and sharing it. But I think I might take more time with those types of videos and add something more special. Everyone else records their gameplay with colorful commentary, and for the most part they facecam it. I won’t be doing that because my face has been known to break cameras out of sheer horror (and no one needs to see my eyes), but I might do something with SFM to create that type of experience. You’ll understand in my next video.
Another thing I want to do is maybe do some vlogging. I get hour lunches quite frequently and as I’ve said before I bring my gaming laptop to work for entertainment. I was thinking of recording some gameplay depending on what it is, why I’m playing particular said game, and if I like it or not… maybe some other things. Perhaps I could call it “What I had for lunch today” or something along those lines. If anyone has other suggestions I’d love to hear them.
There’s more regarding videos I’d like to explore, but I’ll take it in baby steps. I’m a busy person these days and don’t want to overload my plate. Which btw has some really nice brass on it.
There are some other things I want to do too when I find the time, like put up some more servers (like Starbound and some Serious Sam’s when I can get around to it) and other technical stuff.
Then there’s things I want to accomplish under my screwoff category, like finish more games in my collection. I only finished one last year and it was Shadow Warrior (one of the greatest FPS’s of all time btw, looking forward to the sequel!). The rest of what I spent my time on were games that really don’t have endings. Like Skyrim, ESO, Gmod, Carmageadon, TF2 etc. Skyrim for me was a gift and a curse at the same time. All that modding, adventure, soaking in the lore, making my game as ridiculous as possible. I mean… At some point this was a female Khajit.
But this year, more games are there, more waiting to be played and modded, and between my Keyboard and Mouse, and my Steam Controller I have fewer excuses.
I should probably see a dentist about my teeth…
Work has been keeping me pretty busy. On the brightside I had an actual weekend where I spent most of the first day in bed playing and chatting with friends (online you pervs). I would of had another day off today but I covered a sick call. On the brightside I get asked more in advance these days since my new job switch, they can’t do last minute scheduling with me which means I have more consistency and control over my job.
I’ve been getting some freaks these last couple of days. One of which, an old coot who has been pursuing me for the last nine years even after being told numerous times I’d like to be left alone… He stopped for a couple years but seems to be trying his shit again. He found out that I work mornings now and next thing I know he’s trying to talk to some of my co-workers about me and even showed up yesterday loitering next to some bluetooth speakers, giving me the “please come talk to me” look… pathetic. This is the same guy that tried to give me gifts years ago and even a letter about how I reminded him of a lover who died in his arms… I’ve been on alert again telling people what’s been going on and even giving a history lesson.
At least today I didn’t see him. Instead I had another old guy who apparently recognized me from another job, though I didn’t recognize him. He wanted to know what my job was and when he found out he was rather disapproving, because he knew a lady who lifted heavy things down at the docks with her husband. Apparently she broke two of her vertebrae and became a heroine addict… Not sure where he was going with that story. Then he started telling me about how he recently found out that he had a 24 year old son and began mouthing off about his “bitch cunt wife”, because for some reason some people seem to think that people like me are paid to listen to them… I found someone off by the TV’s that “looked” like they needed help. So I kept asking if this asshat needed any other help, and he kept prattling on… I said the same thing about 5 times while pointing that I needed to leave, I needed to leave NOW. All he did was apologize if he offended me and continued talking. Finally I told him to have a good day and walked off. Then he started speaking loudly to me about crushed vertebrae. He followed me over to the other customer and stared at us for 30 seconds, then left… I’m glad I have a midnight shift. I’ll only have to deal with the public for an hour and a half tomorrow.
When I get old I hope I’ll still have a life. Because if I end up like any of these people I think I’d rather be put out of my misery.
Happy Holandaise!
I survived another year of Christmas, gripers and all. I’ve either been working or in bed fiddling with the Steam Controller some more, and thanks to the latest sale it looks like I have more fiddling with it. I woke up tonight to presents in the form of games. So I revenge gifted a bit in return.
Speaking of the Steam Controller I’ve been playing more FPS games with it. I mentioned TF2, but I’ve also been dabbling in the Serious Sam games. It still takes some getting used to but I’ve been doing better than expected, at least when playing the campaigns. Survival mode in Second Encounter has been tough to adapt to, but in BFE and Revolution I get about the same survival time. I actually had to write my own config for Serious Sam Classics: Revolution. It took some time to get the buttons in the right places but I got a good setup for it now, at least for me anyway. I even uploaded the config in case anyone else wanted to take a stab at it.
Another nice feature I found was finding game configs for non-steam games. I run my gog copy of Witcher 3 through Steam, and when I’m in Big Picture if I check community made configs I see a small list of configs. Pretty handy.
The client likes to randomly crash on me when using it for too long, and there’s a bug where certain games will get stuck in an infinite loop when you try to launch them. For me that’s just been Portal 2 though. Other than that everything has been going well. With the weather being extremely cold lately it’s been nice to kick back someplace warm and play anything I want.
In other news I’ve still been addicted to Elder Scrolls Online. I’ve made it to Level 10 and made enough gold to create my own Guild. My friends have been showing me around the game whenever we get the chance to sync up. I’ve mostly played with Yutram so far.
One of the things we did aside from wandering around and doing quests was fish. I had some bait to get rid of and he showed me the ropes. In the end I think I managed to catch a couple fish and a nice collection of used bait…
After completing one of said quests we burst into dance for no particular reason. In fact whenever any of us former Uru players got together we either danced or jumped up and down numerous times to remember our roots, and remember that we could actually become more versatile if the opportunity presented itself so that we wouldn’t be stuck playing the same dead game years later whilst wearing rose tinted tunnelvision glasses.
Yesterday I took it for a field test on one of my TF2 servers to see how it stacks up compared to other controllers or a Keyboard and Mouse. I went in as a Pyro with the default layout tweaked a bit to my liking. Not many people know it but the Steam Controller comes with a built in Gyroscopic sensor not too different from what you would find in a VR headset or a smartphone/tablet. I used that combined with the right touchpad and managed to get the drop on my enemies multiple times. Keyboard and Mouse will always be king IMO but this makes it great if you want to get away from your desk and just sprawl out in another area while doing basically the same thing.
The response time over wireless was amazing, in fact I didn’t notice any latency when I pointed my controller towards an enemy. The gyro sensor does take some getting used to though. I played it with some racing games and it does take some practice if you want to use the Steam Controller as a steering wheel, but it’s fun once you get used to it!
The Steam Controller also supports DOS games. I tried to play some Wolfenstein 3D but didn’t really care for it on the controller. However it handled the original 1996 Tomb Raider like a champ. I didn’t use the D-Pad as I find it to be too stiff compared to your typical controller, but the analog stick worked perfectly. Someone made a config that makes it handle kinda like the old Playstation controller. It was comfortable and I think even better since it has extra places for button assignments. For example sidestepping was assigned to the bottom bumpers of the controller instead of it’s more traditional spots like LT and RT, which to me felt more natural.
Overall I still haven’t regretted the pre-order. In fact it keeps getting better and better with every update. They recently introduced a shortcut menu that you can use to bring up keyboard shortcuts. It’s handy if you play games like Skyrim which have a big keyboard layout.
I came back to my desk with a snack and found that my antivirus found Infostealer.Limitail hiding in an old copy of gzdoom (1.8.02). At first I thought it was a false positive because I get those from time to time with other games that may not be popular enough, but this actually made some registry changes to my system (which have since been repaired). Fortunately the Trojan is only troublesome if you use Internet Exploder or Microsoft Firewall. Which in my case I don’t use those, I don’t believe in setting all my eggs in one companies products. I also don’t believe in using shit programs.
Still this was an unpleasant surprise since I did download gzdoom from the original website, which for some reason is now gone. I did find a newer copy of gzdoom that was released in December of last year. I scanned it and this version came up clean, although it also came up clean the last time. I scan any executables I download unless it’s something obvious like Waterfox for example. I’m surprised this didn’t trip sooner.
Today wasn’t one of my better days. I broke down all my freight and things were going well, that was until the store opened. It’s geriatric discount day and everyone came into shop. My first customer bought a prepaid cellphone card, and in Oregon we have a 911 tax, 75 cents goes to the state to fund 911 calls since less and less people are using landlines and moving to cellphones. And this customer was bitching about how he shouldn’t have to pay this tax because he never needs to call 911… Kinda makes me wish there was a program where you need to signup just in case you need to use 911, and if you don’t signup for it then you can’t dial it with your phone. Then on the off chance where they need to call 911 and can’t then we can at least say we’re thinning the herd.
Then I had to help a bitchy lady with a camera purchase. She wanted me to pick out the SD card for her because she didn’t understand how storage capacity works. She literally told me in her own words “Please do my thinking for me.” Then she also wanted me to pull out the camera, put the batteries in and the SD card before buying it… My boss gave me the ok to do so, so I did. And I may have “accidentally” set the SD card to read only mode. :v
I also had to activate a phone for someone and help another who didn’t know how to turn his phone on because apparently the red button where it said “PWR” alluded him. But they were much nicer so I took the time to help them, even though reading instructions was too hard for them. Everyone else was actually quite pleasant. And my bosses didn’t get on my case about not getting the freight finished or put away, probably because I looked like I was going to beat someone with a wii controller. Or shove a selfie stick up someones arse. That would actually be a good use of one now that I think about it. A selfie AND a colonoscopy all in one? That could be marketable!
Oh and on the ride home we almost got hit by another dumbshit’s car because he was too busy looking in another direction while swerving behind us. They looked to be about my age so they weren’t senile, just fucking dumb. There were lots of dumb people today. Dumb dumb dumb.
I’d have gone to sleep by now but needed a bite to eat and needed to take out a bit of my rage in Elder Scrolls Online. I escaped Cold Harbour and made it to the world of the living near a ship. I made my character a Khajit Sorcerer. It’s been pretty fun so far, but it’ll take some getting used to. This isn’t like Skyrim where I can live out my random fantasy of being a khajit tailed cyberninja with dragon wings, troll moons, pogo hammers and anything else that could feed my absurd imagination. But it certainly did bring back good feelings like I used to have in Uru when I still had a warm happy feeling for that game. I’ll need to get back to it. ESO that is… People seem to be friendlier there.
Now that I’ve regained my energy I felt it would be time to tell people that I survived the Thanksgiving/Black Friday weekend. I had to work on both days and as expected it was pretty insane. I got off early on both days so decided to buy myself a couple pairs of boots and finish up on the rest of my Christmas shopping. All I need to do now is wrap everything and send it off.
I didn’t go anywhere today.. I spent the day in bed at the computer playing games on the Steam Controller, mostly Rocket League and even some Ground Zeroes. I had to adjust the sensitivity so that I could aim my weapon faster but all in all it worked perfectly. I also spent some Cinema time with one of my friends watching YouTube videos together. It was great.I stayed in my PJ’s all day and had no regrets.