Category Archives: Uncategorized

EQ2 again… eventually

Posted by Chris on May 26, 2009 None comments

For some reason this morning I decided to renew my EverQuest II account and check out how things have changed. I’ve done that a few times since I quit playing it a few years ago, but never stayed past that one month at a time. I did play the game for the first 9 months or so, starting on release day. I levelled a Wizard up to 45 (Provisioner level 50 – max level was 50 at the time), and switched to World of Warcraft mostly because of video card issues at the time, and my backup card just couldn’t handle EQ2.

I was hoping to log in after downloading/patching the game this afternoon, but for some reason the download just stopped part way through just after I went to bed. Oh well, maybe it’ll be done by the time I get home from work in the morning.

The game does seem to be much more solo-friendly than it was at release – that’s partly why I stopped playing. I wasn’t much into grouping back then, so it was hard to actually level after a certain point. Apparently it’s much easier now. And this feature from the newest expansion is sure to help future alts: “All of your characters will now receive a 10% experience bonus for each character at the maximum level. (Up to 50% max)”. WoW should have that… well, at least if it wasn’t so boring, I’d care.

Last upgrades to get

Posted by Chris on May 6, 2009 None comments

My new computer had almost all of the new parts it needed to be complete, and I did have some spare parts around to make it usable for now. But here’s what I’ll probably be getting at some point soon to make this a really nice gaming system.

  • Arctic Cooling Accelero XTREME GTX 280 video card cooling
  • G.Skill TITAN 128GB SSD – I was considering a Velociraptor, but if I’m already spending that much, why not go SSD and get even faster times and much less noise (well, NO noise)?
  • Logitech G19 keyboard (or a new G15, though I don’t like the amber backlighting)
  • Logitech G7 laser cordless mouse (maybe… I really want to test out some mice in my hand before deciding)
  • Probably a Blu-Ray drive of some sort. Might as well, since my monitor can do proper 1080p and my TV doesn’t.

Right now, I can barely hear my computer at all. Except when playing a game, the video card fans are noticable. But that might be partly because everything else is so quiet. At the moment my digital cable PVR is the loudest thing here, being louder than both of my computers combined. Of course, I’m not counting my Xbox 360 here – that thing is fucking loud.

Whee, new parts ordered!

Posted by Chris on April 9, 2009 None comments

So, my profit sharing cheque was in my bank account for maybe 15 minutes before I ordered these parts for my new computer:

  • Gigabyte EP45-UD3R motherboard
  • Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 2.83GHZ Yorkfield 1333FSB 12MB
  • EVGA E-GEFORCE GTX 260 Core 216 SC 55NM
  • G.SKILL F2-8500CL5D-4GBPK PC2-8500 4GB 2X2GB DDR2-1066
  • Scythe Orochi 10 Heatpipe CPU Heatsink (this thing weighs 3 pounds!)
  • Antec NSK 4480B II Mini Tower Case

I’m missing a new hard drive, DVD-R, keyboard and mouse – but I’ll use some spare stuff I have around until I get new ones. Should be nice for just gaming :)

Shiny!

Posted by Chris on March 10, 2009 None comments

I just ordered myself a Dell UltraSharp 2408WFP 24″ widescreen monitor. Mmm, shiny.

Future upgrades?

Posted by Chris on February 25, 2009 None comments

Thinking about building a new system for gaming… other than a monitor/keyboard/mouse, am I missing anything important? (will update later with actual parts I am considering)

  • Motherboard
  • Hard drive
  • CPU
  • Video card
  • Memory
  • Case
  • CPU HSF

Seems like there is something I’m missing, but I’m not sure.

Just thought of a couple more things:

  • Keyboard
  • DVD drive (or probably a Blu-Ray drive for one of my systems)

Mostly gaming randomness

Posted by Chris on January 20, 2009 None comments

Ah, WoWInsider wasn’t lying to me after all – my client is finally downloading the 3.0.8 patch. It’s about damn time. It’s another “extended” maintenance day – which we’ve had pretty much every week except for one since November sometime. It’s becoming pretty normal. I’ve been looking forward to this one – my Death Knight will be able to tank better with all the changes, and some crafting changes will be nice. Won’t be long before I have a level 80 healer and level 80 tank!

I recently bought an EDGE card for my Nintendo DS and a 2 GB microSD card, that thing is awesome. I can have a bunch of games on there, plus homebrew apps/games, and it works great. Already my sister has found it useful – there was a game she was considering buying, but after checking it out she definitely doesn’t want to get it. Saved some cash right there. I’ll probably check out some more games I’ve been interested in once I finally finish playing through Final Fantasy IV. I pretty much only play it during lunch (sometimes, not always) at work so it’s slow going. I don’t want to start playing it on my EDGE card, since I’m about six hours into the game already. Definitely don’t want to start over at that point.

Not much else new on the gaming front… I picked up Guitar Hero: World Tour. Some things I like, some things I don’t. Too much duplication of songs with Rock Band, though. Some play quite differently in each game, too. It’s interesting.

It’s a pretty good month for television, too. 24 Finally started up again, Battlestar Galactica is back, Lost is starting this week, and Hell’s Kitchen starts a new season as well I think. There’s some interesting looking new show too, Lie To Me I think it’s called? I’ll check it out.

I’m thinking about ordering a new hard drive for my laptop this week, too. Right now I have whatever stock 120gb drive that Dell offered when I got it (just over a year ago), but I want to get a fast 320gb drive for it :) And I’ll probably devote most/all of the drive to Ubuntu again. I miss it. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to get Quicken working properly there, but I can still use that on my desktop at least. Maybe I’ll stick that 120gb drive in my Playstation 3 then – not that I really need the space tehre. I don’t use it for much other than a Blu-Ray player. My Xbox 360 and computer are for gaming ;)

I also added a Flickr plugin to my WordPress installation, but it needs tweaking for my template. I decided to look for something like that after my old Gallery installation had massive amounts of spam being posted as comments – Captcha wasn’t working, and I couldn’t even find a way to disable comments completely. Oh well, I never liked that software that much anyway. Flickr is nice though, and doesn’t cost very much a year for a Pro account. Once I get that working better I should start taking and uploading more pictures again.

Futureshop is living in the past

Posted by Chris on December 3, 2008 None comments

Yesterday morning I placed an order on Futureshop.ca, for a Christmas gift for my sister and an iPod for myself. For some reason before work I just checked on the status of the order to see if it had happened to ship already, but it wasn’t even processed! As part of their “extended” customer service they phone the number you give them for the credit card holder, and they need to talk to that person about something or other. Screw that, I don’t answer the phone if it’s a number I don’t recognize, and I order things online to minimize the hassle of dealing with people. I’ll just have to get that stuff from somewhere else, I canceled that order.

From out of nowhere…

Posted by Chris on November 25, 2008 None comments

So, I’m still alive. I’ve just been spending less time on LJ and IRC – focusing on WoW and chatting with my guild/friends in the game. And having fun with it in general, of course!

I updated my WordPress install on my own server today, along with installing the Live+Press plugin, so I can crosspost things to LJ. It’s not like I post to either site very often these days, so I might as well do both at once :)

Starting my Christmas work rush now, too. I didn’t take my days off last week, and I aim to not take any days off until Christmas. That’s only a month more, nothing serious. The last few months have actually been pretty good at work, having a different job code and things to do now. I think the actual job name is Instock Associate, 3rd Shift. Or something like that. Essentially, I work out back in the warehouse doing different things and that’s pretty much it. Much much better than stocking shelves. Mostly, I decide what I do in the run of a night, unless there are specific things to be done.

I’ve been having a lot of fun with the recent WoW expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. Slowly questing my way to level 80 on my priest (almost level 74 right now), enjoying the scenery and lore along the way. My other chars coming up behind will likely use some addons to help speed the process, once I see it for the first time. And after playing the new class (Death Knight) a little bit – I’m having a lot of fun. My end goal is to have it be my tanking character, but it’s just a blast to have so much dps and survivability. I think this is going to be my second level 80 (currently 61) instead of my hunter (currently 71).

No promises on future updates, but I’ll try to post a little more often.

Lots of time off is awesome

Posted by Chris on April 2, 2007 None comments

I love it when I’m able to arrange extra time off without actually losing any days. This weekend coming up is my normal weekend off (Fri/Sat/Sun). I have Thursday off for the holiday. I have Wednesday off for my personal day (we get one paid day off a year). I would normally have Monday (tonight) off, but instead I’ll be working tonight and taking Tuesday off. That gives me six days off, almost like a week long vacation!

I haven’t found a decent theme that I’m happy with for WordPress, I guess I’ll have to make my own one of these days. And finish moving my existing old pages to a dynamic WP format. Then I can just edit them online – which is actually something I had written to do myself previously, but it’s nice that this is built into WP. Maybe I might actually get around to writing some of the pages I had been thinking about, too.

WordPress

Posted by Chris on March 31, 2007 None comments

I just switched over to WordPress – my other pages are still around, the links are currently next to the blogroll links on the side. When I get the time I’ll move things around, change themes, etc.

My site is in need of a major overhaul anyway.