The Downward Spiral

I’ve got some new stuff…

First I’ve put together a 250gb multimedia system for my car.  It’s discussed in great detail over at one of the Acura forums, so I won’t repeat it all.  And I first found it over at the legacy GT forums.  The parts and totals (including shipping)

Vantec AVOX Jukebox Portable Multimedia $103.94
NBHD 250G|WD 5K 8M ATA6 WD2500BEVE $109.99
AV400CIGAR LIGHTER POWER ADAPT (500503) $33.34
MG-35 IR Receiver $33.36
TOTAL: $280.63

That will allow the playback of all my mp3s (many times over) and several DVDs on my navigational unit display.  The unit will play DVDs directly by coping the contents of the VIDEO_TS folder, which is pretty slick.  The above parts will let me plug it all in and store in the center console with some drilling or put it all under the seat (with some drilling) or just kinda set it in there.  I dunno how permanent I’m going to make it.

To make it totally “extreme” I could add a Silex sx-2000wg to share that drive from my car wirelessly over wifi as a drive… that would be crazy.. I could part my car outside the house and copy music to it from inside the house making it so that I never had to unplug anything… crazy huh?  That will be much later.. if I do it.

Matt helped me install the video cable on the back of the navigational display.  He’s also obtained an Audiovox backup camera for me for about $70.  We’ll install that after I get in the molex connectors.  I picked up 5 of them from here.  Why 5?  We’ll screw up at least one

I also picked up a Valentine One for $415 (after shipping).  I’m not entirely sure that is the BEST radar detector right now, but it was at one time.  So we’ll just go with that one.  The Escort with the GPS in it was my second choice.  That’s still even a little more expensive than the Valentine.  Gone are the days of cheap detectors.. well they suck anyway.

Now.. did I have the money for all this?  Ha HA.. well, ya know

for the most part I cut out everything before January 2007 from my journal here, but I went back and turned on the emails about cbprotect and how ridiculous their “DRM” is.

just to recap, I really think I’m doing the right thing here by telling them how their product is broken and that they are selling someone to people that gives them a false sense of security. And then upon being told that their protection is protection against the “less savvy” out there, I decided to post the post about how to crack cbprotect is here.

That argument is stupid.  If someone takes the lines of code from that post and makes a windows executable, then it’ll be all over.  I had made this in to a php application where you could upload a cbprotected exe and it would mail you back a pdf, but I took it down.

I don’t even crack stuff for a living.. they just rubbed me the wrong way.. all DRMs do.. profiteering off lies based on ignorance is also something that irks me.

I’m not going to continue it.  I’m going to uninstall it here when I’m in front of the machines.

So, if I didn’t have all this LIFE, then I’d continue and see how far I got.  Well, then again, if I didn’t have a life outside of video gaming then maybe I’d pick a different game.. I’m not sure.

EVE takes a lot of dedication to play.  You have to be on top of, at least, your skillset.  You have to login and say “ok, I’m gonna train this next”.  If you don’t then you will never get anywhere.  Because doing the “cool stuff” requires you to do at least that.  So fitting EVE’s schedule in to my schedule just isn’t gonna happen… cuz then once I really do cool shit, then I’d have to actually play for hours and hours a day ALSO… and that’s also not gonna happen.

So.. GW it is. Still.

Goodbye EVE.. it was nice while it lasted.. well.. until I figured out you were a monopolist bitch

So I think I get the hang of most of the game now.  I played all night last night.  Now I just need to pick a direction.  Do I want to blow up stuff?  Do I want to mine stuff?  What kind of ship do I want to be in?

The excellent tool EveMon is great.  You can just pick something you want and it’ll tell you what you should train and in what order in order to maximize your time.

To get the highest stuff in the game, like the Tiitan, skill timers like 500 days occur.  So if you wanna be a big guy, you have to play, or at least your character has to exist, for a long time.

So.. ya.. I still dunno.

So I started playing EVE here about a week ago.. I’ve only given it about 3 short gaming sessions.  So far I’m not sure what to make of it.  I keep asking myself if I plan on paying for this when the trial period is up… I dunno.

So I spec’d myself as a science and industry kind of thing… so far I have no idea what the hell that means.

I know how to mine, how to move around, and how to attack stuff.  I also know how to load guns, how to tell what guns are better than others, and how to outfit my ship.  I have a basic understanding of non-weapon adons to the ships, but haven’t really used any of them.  I know how to train skills and I understand how the skill progression is disconnected from the game play.. you just decided on what you want “next” and how many hours you are willing to wait for “next”.

so ya.. I’m not sure if I’m specd right.. not sure if what I’m doing is a good idea or not.. and so on.

so.. just up in the air.. all of it.

Shannon and I took Scuba lessons over the weekend.

Saturday was all book work which we had studied for all week.  Out of the class, we were the most prepared even though we hadn’t done any of the eRDP stuff.  Turned out that that was way easier than we thought it would be and knocked it out in the half hour before class started.  The rest of everyone had to go over that stuff anyway, so we ended up being way ahead.  So we got done about 3pm instead of 4… rock on :)  I ended up with 100% on 3 of the quizzes, 80% on one, and then missed 3 on the final.  The final questions I missed were dumb.. I knew the answers and totally marked the wrong thing or misread the question… dumb mistakes.

Sunday was doing all of the 5 confined water dives at the Blue Springs pool from 8am to noon.  That was the real fun.

It started with 8 laps up and down the pool with mask, snorkel and fins.  It had been a long time since I went snorkeling so the whole breathing and putting your face in the water thing was a little crazy.  I’m not sure I’ve ever used fins before and so that was a little weird.. but I got more and more used to it.  We ended up doing 10 laps instead of 8 because another guy said 12 so we just split the difference.  I used my arms during this time.. putting them below me in a V and then shooting them out like a torpedo in front of me and then pulling back and that shot me forward, but turns out that you aren’t supposed to used your hands at all.. so my arms were sore as hell unnecessarily.. oh well

Then we tread water / floated for 10 minutes.. that was much easier than I though it would be… it was over before I knew it.

Then we donned our Scuba gear and got to it.  It was really easy to breathe out of the regulator… much easier than I thought it would be.  Of all the tests, it was pretty freaky to remove that from my mouth, but the rest was ok.. well .. after I got used to it.

The initial problem I had was kinda two things… one was sitting on my knees.. even weightless underwater I still had trouble… I just kept creeping forward or couldn’t sit still or whatever.. and that made me kinda freak out and breathe harder, which made me really uncomfortable… this was fixed by sitting on my fins and kinda laying straight horizontal in the water and “holding myself up” with my hands.

The second was that I kept blowing bubbles under my mask, which hit my nose, which is almost totally CO2.. so that would make me feel like I couldn’t breathe.  Problem there was I was exhaling too much… basically hyperventilating… which, with the kneeling thing was making it worse cuz I was freaking out… but I got it fixed by the end… breathing IN slow I got, but had to do the same out too.

So by the end I was pretty good.. pretty comfortable with everything.  I need more practice of course… more maneuvering under water, but I think the biggest thing.. the being able to breathe underwater part I got down.

Talking with Jon today, we didn’t do the scariest thing.. buddy breathing.  You take 2 breaths and I take 2 breaths from the same 2nd stage.  I dunno if that is by design or what.  They did say that’s the 4th of 5 options in emergency no air ascent situations, so maybe they just leave it out now.

Case in point, Jon had to use the spare 2nd stage on Dad’s equipment in Belize… not buddy breathing.. Jon ran out of air at depth.. and then they ascended too fast… big rick of DCS, but they were ok… Dad didn’t get it until later on another dive.

Anyway.. some scary shit can happen .. but a lot of it is in your head.. and you are your own worst enemy.. the rest is pretty easy .. I totally love it.

So I got it all installed, reupped my subscription, got in the game, and was instantly irritated… here’s what I told Al

From: Nick Mossie 
Date: Fri, 9 May 2008 09:51:16 -0500
To: Al Harris 
Subject: Re: SWG

so ya.. I dunno..

Bounty Hunter still has only 4 shots and 2 traps a heal and something
about 'gift of the elders' that we get cuz we are old.

I got all my rewards for the past 2 years of not playing, decked out my
yact ship some more (all the old decorations were still there), realized
how totally out of space I was, and then took about 10 minutes trying to
figure out how to get back in the pilot so I could grab the joystick and
land. (/pilot .. total guess.. sitting back in the pilot's chair is not
good enough.. which I tried to do for another 10 minutes before that)

When I landed I realized that Theed was totally fucking empty.  I
checked the galatic civil war status from the recruiter and he said it
was 0 to 0 on that planet.. so .. nobody was there.. I think I saw 2
people total.. ghost town.

I checked my imperial rank, and I'm a private... wtf?  I should be WAY
higher than that.. but I wasn't.  But I did check my accomplishments and
everything looked pretty ok there... still I thought I should have some
more in there tho... but maybe not.

All the new screens look like total crap BTW.. all the stats pages...
just ugly... 
So I took a mission from an imp terminal.... I went out to kill some
stuff.. it was 2000m away... took forever to remember that my vehicles
where in my datapad, which are in the same thing as waypoints (K)...
almost quit right there cuz no way was I gonna walk that far... but I do
have like 13 million credits.. so I could have just bought shit.

So I hopped on my bike and head out... got to the destination... killed
2 of the 3 people there with the assistance of my almost totally
worthless droids (I'd send them in to attack, while prone, and out of
range, and the guys would run at LIGHTNING SPEED up to me and shoot me),
and then got incap'd 3 times and cloned back to Theed by the captain.

Overall I felt like I had no idea what was going on.

I didn't know if my shit was still as good as it was or not.

I was very turned off by the combat.  There's no auto attack (by
default).. you right click on the guy (furiously!!) to shoot your base
shot.. it's like a FPS, only shitty..  really shitty.  You can shoot
your power shots like 4 times and then you are out of stamina.. and if
you are only auto-attacking you are totally dead.. cuz somehow the bad
guys will just dominate you... these were yellows.  We are level 80 and
there's up to level 90.

I didn't have ANY expertise in there tho.. I just opted to not spend
those points yet.. so that might make a (huge) difference... there are
mods for

I did just find this... turning on auto attack 
http://starwarsgalaxies.station.sony.com/players/guides.vm?id=80115

so.. I'll have to try again later.. basically I thought I should have
been able to totally destroy those guys I fought.. if my droids just
suck now, then I guess I can deal with that... and if I have to get new
shit I can deal with that too.

I'm still worried about the lack of players.. but maybe everyone is just
somewhere else.. I dunno.

I turned off auto-renew for next month... let me know how it goes for
ya.

I canceled my subscription right after that… the next day I thought maybe I was a little hasty.. so I tried again.. it got a little better. Again.. to Al…

ok.. so.. SIGNIFICANT different with all your expertise in there 
controls are a little fucked up still... you can't click to target and
then click and hold to bring up the radial... everything triggers on
only 1 click, no double clicks.. kinda sucks from how it was, but you
can work around it.

I tried space… my joystick was spinning in infinity.. probably broken.. so that sucked. And then it took me forever to find out how to put shit back on the skill bar. So my previously totally awesome ship was now getting me owned by a single A-Wing… and I was still all alone in space.. literally no one there.

I did some Bounter Hunter missions.. I knocked out those in my backpack (the ones they give you per level).. they were really easy cuz I was so much higher. I tried the regular bounty hunter missions from the terminal and I got fucking owned.. after traveling to Dathomir, getting a probe droid, and going 5k out in to NOTHING… and he was in the water… he incapped my twice…

so I quit.. went back to the Science Outpost, and saw a Master Jedi there. I checked out his stats.. he was totally awesome.. done so much.. and all that.. so.. some people out there really like this game still… since after it became terrible.

Kludgy. That’s how I think of the entire game now. One big cluster fuck.

So the next day I got back in to Guild Wars and I was reminded of how games should be. I love you GW.

Al and I have gotten SWG again and will probably reactivate our old accounts.. we are totally insaneo

Your results:
You are Dr. Doom

Dr. Doom 67% Mr. Freeze 61% Lex Luthor 57% Apocalypse 50% The Joker 50% Green Goblin 49% Venom 46% Mystique 41% Magneto 41% Dark Phoenix 39% Kingpin 37% Riddler 33% Juggernaut 33% Two-Face 33% Catwoman 28% Poison Ivy 18%

Blessed with smarts and power but burdened by vanity.

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