I finally have a job interview of some kind later this evening. I’m not too confident that I will get the position but I figured it’s worth a shot. Hopefully since it’s St Patrick’s Day the luck o the Irish will be on my side. Oh well, if I get it or not I’ll be having many drinks this evening. 😛
Standing back and watching it all burn
My mind has been lost in a lot of thought lately, having to depend on small distractions to at least keep myself at least half sane. I don’t want to go into full detail about it but I might be changing jobs soon within the company. My mother is getting a promotion and we can’t be in the same section according to the rules. Unfortunately the areas that I was interested in either don’t have a place for me, or just want to drag their ass hiring anymore people.
So I have to make a decision to go back to ordering bread and coffee and learn how to be a cashier, or be a cashier. Considering the latter pays more I may end up going that route. Although the former has more hours, but then I would be ordering, being called to cashier nonstop (like everyone else in the store) and whatever other responsibility they want to add to the job for less than a cashier… I might as well be getting paid to do my actual job.
It’s still a suck deal either way. I don’t like standing in one spot for hours on end, but maybe I can hold out until I can find work elsewhere. Which has still been pretty impossible. Although a new place has opened it’s doors. I plan to walk in there on my next day off and apply.
I love this town, but when it comes to finding work it absolutely sucks because there is hardly anything.
My current gaming adventures: Serious Sam 2
I have been having an on again off again relationship with Serious Sam 2, this is definitely one of those games that has it’s pro’s and cons. For example I like the graphics and game mechanics that were introduced (like turrets, vehicles etc) and the general FPS gameplay which is an epic gorefest (to be expected in any Serious Sam game).
Then there are the cons… I didn’t like what they did with some of the enemies. For example the werebulls have been replaced with wind up rhinos, and the kamikazes have bomb shaped heads with a different voice. It’s like Mental decided to assault an entire planet with windup toys, spiky hamsterballs and outcasts from Halo. There are some good additions though! I was amazed by the cyborg T Rex that I found tonight, and I also laughed when a drunk witch got hit by a train while riding on her broom.
Then there’s the dialogue. Sam is supposed to be a smartass, but his dialogue overall has been total derp. In First Encounter and Second Encounter he had some of the best one liners you could hear in a game. I’m really hoping in the later levels that picks up again…
Then there’s the music. It isn’t horrible and in most cases it does fit the scenery. But in the other games if there is a boss battle the game cranks up the heavy metal. So far that hasn’t been the case. I’m hoping that the other worlds will have better boss battle music.
And the weapons? Most of them look like Fisher Price knock offs. I know Serious Sam isn’t very serious but, c’mon… The first game had a perfect balance of nutty and not. This so far makes TF2 look like Battlefield 4.
Let the butthurt begin: XBox Live will be free for PC gamers on Windows 10
Yep, that’s not a typo. Microsoft is making XBox Live a free thing for Windows 10 users.
Now, it may seem unfair that the XBox users have to pay and PC gamers don’t. However they did make the mistake choice of buying the console all ready and willing. Whereas on PC you have to pick and choose the best hardware for your gaming experience instead of just getting it all in one box. Hell even choosing between GPU’s, processors, ram etc takes more thought than choosing between the XBox One or the PS4. Microsoft also has to apologize for the horror that was Windows 8 by luring people to Windows 10 with Direct X 12 and “Hey! We’re finally thinking about you PC Gamers! So here’s some free XBox Live!”
Of course I have no intention of using XBox Live let alone jumping to Windows 10 on launch day. I’ll do what I’ve always done and let the others beat the hell out of it until I find a reason to upgrade. In the meantime Win 7 and Linux are the way to go for what I do.
And now for an overdue post
Been playing more gmod lately with friends. I recently installed the stargate pack on my sandbox server and we’ve been having a blast. I’ve recorded quite a bit of it, just need to go through the footage at a later date.
I’ve also been paying attention to the latest tech news. Like how Unity, Unreal and even Source 2 are going to be free (some of them within reason). Makes me wonder what games will be produced in the near future.
I’ll write more later (threat intended). I need to get some sleep for work.
Contemplating a revival of Comedy Night
Once upon a time in the Myst/Uru community my group The Guild Of Slackers had a community thing called Comedy Night. In those days The Guild Of Comedy would dress up as the comedians and perform on a stage in the Guild Of Comedy Neighborhood (or The Blue Neighborhood if the act was rated 18+) and the person presenting the comedy audio would dress as the comedian. It stopped gaining interest during the first run of Myst Online. I’ve been stewing on this for well over a month now. I want to revive it, but not in MOULa.
Why? I’ve been in there a few times, and between the forums and the people who play in game themselves I doubt there would be much interest. That and quite a few people these days including myself are annoyed with the ancient voice chat system. We could stream it on a shoutcast server but it wouldn’t be as immersive, plus there would be those old sticks in the mud who refuse to listen to streams because you know… An audio feature from the early turn of the century is sooooo much more immersive than Speex or Opus codecs that are used in modern voice chat programs like Mumble, Vent, etc.
So where would I want to hold this? In the Garry’s Mod cinema gamemode.
I’ve been watching my server for awhile now, and people have been gathering in there to watch all sorts of things. Sometimes it’s some pretty stupid stuff, but I’ve seen some people come in and have anime marathons (the latest one was a Deadman Wonderland), dance parties and one of my regulars held a movie night! So why not have a comedy night? There are lots of full comedy videos on YouTube, and YouTube is supported in the gamemode.
Of course you would have to own a copy of gmod to get on the server, but the map that we use doesn’t require any assets from other source games. At the very least they would need to have the cinema map and gamemode, and optionally download any playermodels they would want from our workshop collection. Then bam. Comedy Night in a nutshell. I don’t expect people to buy the game JUST to join in on this. But for now this seems like the best way to hold an event.
Due to my work schedule it won’t always be on the same day and might not even happen every week. But once I can get people to agree on one solid day and time we can have a few laughs.
Yes I still exist.
It has been brought to my attention that I haven’t written anything in a few days. TBH I haven’t been feeling very well, plus I’ve been busy. Oh, also I haven’t had much to write about. Other than this because someone HAD to bring it up…
Thanks for reading enough to bring it to my attention. :v
Post Valentines Day Open Thread
I didn’t really celebrate Valentines Day this year, much like the other years. I spent it with friends and family which is always nice. I was monitoring my server traffic and noticed that we hit a new record of 31 people across all servers! I even had to up my cinema server slots from 12 to 24 and add in reserved admin slots. We’ve been getting more popular lately. In fact we’ve been looking into a more powerful dedicated server box to relocate everything to.
Although in the meantime the hardware should do well enough to hold us over. Just can’t put up anymore servers in the meantime… and I have quite a few server projects that need to be carried out once the new server is acquired (as soon as they come down in price). Plans for a Starbound Server, a goof off Mann vs Machine and an experimental Shoutcast server are on the fabled to do list.
More new toys
I finally got my hands on a wireless keyboard so that I can type from within bed. This makes it a bit more seamless when moving from the desktop to the living room/bed/wherever I want to go… maybe the bathroom? 😛
My choice is the Logitech K830. It has a built in trackpad and illuminated keys. It lacks a numpad but that’s not really necessary to me. I just want something to control things from afar because, you know… I’m an Overlord? I have to have full control from everywhere…
It also has some built in hotkeys so that you can change your multi-monitor setup, do a file search, play, start and stop music, and more. All of this works out of the box without any additional software, although you can install Logitech’s Options Software so you can personalize it (which I haven’t yet).
So far it’s been working quite nicely. I curled up with it and my wireless controller and tackled a game I haven’t played yet called Freedom Planet. Which I’ll go into further detail in another future post.
So now my nerd setup is finally complete! Well… Until I decide otherwise.
Please tell me this is a joke
I stumbled upon this video from another blog I frequent. It’s about how GameStop employees can better understand the mysterious species that is the female shopper. O_o
This HAS to be some form of satire. The videos they make us watch at work have a hell of a lot of cheese factor in them, but nowhere near the amount presented in this disasterpiece of a video.