Movaging!

I have a new place. I move in on Thursday. Ironically, it's quite likely that my first update to my blog there will be entry number 100.

I've never had a place of my own before. Setting up utilities are annoying, but it's good to have things done. So I've got phone, and electricity. Gas is taking a bit longer, since PG&E has a wait time of something like an hour and twenty minutes (Jebus!). But now ... I must undertake the most unfortunate of projects.

Having my DSL service taken down so I can transfer it. Which means I'll be without a net connection. And can focus on filling my room with easily transportable boxes. Mmm. Boxes.

Well, I'm looking forward to the new place, so ... happy day! And all of you need to tell Wally how cool he is, because without him loaning me some cash (for ... one ... day ... damn you, need for cashier's checks!) I wouldn't be able to get the place. :D

It came back again tonight.

The old rage, and urge to rush to violence. As per usual (with only rare exception), I didn't want to hurt people, outside of myself.

I don't really know where this destructive desire comes from.

But I know that letting myself get upset doesn't help it. Now my knuckles hurt, and nothing's changed. I should consider myself lucky I didn't cause any damage.

Why do I post about crappy things? Why do I go on about bad things in my life?

It just makes everyone thing my life is way suckier than it actually is. And when I look back at the website, I just think, "Man. My life used to be really lame."

And that's not the case.

I need to remember the positives more.

So:

Starfarers is not yet dead.

I've got the idea for my next SR game already halfway finished.

I've got one or two sessions left in my Apocylpse!!! campaign.

I was approved for the new apartment (I move in on Thursday).

My friends are really awesome.

I like to think that I'm relatively smart.

I don't know if this is true, but I like to think it.

I have a pretty good understanding of what motivates people to do things, I can usually look at things I'd never really want to do and understand why someone else might.

But for the life of me, I will never understand what makes people think that tactical/strategy games are fun.

I liked Starcraft, but then, that game was beatable. It's like every developer looked at Starcraft, and then said, "Well, we'll do that. Only, we'll make it harder."

Warcraft III was just insane on some of the missions, and they made if complicated enough that the casual gamer isn't intimidated -- he's catatonic.

I tried playing C&C;: Generals. I got to mission seven before finding out that I could, in fact, fold a double-CD case (with both CDs in it!) in half, twice. I guess that means folded in quarters.

But I cannot fathom how someone can look at the mission I was on, and think, in any sense, that it would be fun to play. You have about seven units, and have to build a base. This is well and good, except your force is too weak to take out the enemy. And when you build a base, about the time you're ready to start building new units, you run out of money, and need to wait to make more.

The main problem with this mission is that the enemy is able to drop a rain of missiles that will destroy structures and vehicles, and then cause a toxic cloud to linger. All normal troops die instantly, and vehicles and buildings take damage over time. Now, the AI can do this every five minutes, and there's no defense against it. The game makes mention of a commando that only units with detection (I only have access to one, and it's unarmed) can spot. However, I never saw this commando, only an endless rain of missiles that destroyed every fortification I spent five minutes building, followed by a stream of about forty suicide troopers, tanks, biological weapon tractors, and so on.

I put up with it for a while, but trying to figure out what to do while constantly failing -- how is that rewarding to a player? I cannot believe that more than three or four people ever managed to beat that mission on their first try. I imagine that a significant number of people got through it on their third or fourth try.

Is this 'content'? "We'll make it so hard you continually have to start over. That's replay value!"?

I don't exactly want victory handed to me without effort -- where's a game without challenge, after all? But I also don't want the game to basically destroy me without giving me any idea what I'm doing wrong. If their clue is that I'm supposed to build a troop transport to detect the commando, well, someone failed here. Maybe it was me, for not knowing where to find this command to and kill it (I'm reasonably sure that the AI could build a new one anyway; the hero units the player gets aren't unique).

But realistically, as a consumer, this game was made for my entertainment. It failed to entertain me. So I'd like to say the failing is on the part of the developer.

And yet ... other people apparently enjoy this masochistic cycle.

I could understand if it were a game were cautious and careful planning yeilded a victory. I could see it if it were about learning optimizating and knowing exactly how quickly and efficiently to set up buildings and advance up the tech tree.

But it's not about those things.

It's about memorizing where the enemy stealth commando is and killing it -- at least, I assume so, anyway. I was never able to find it the first time, and so, could never assemble a strike force to try and take out the enemy. It may just be about sending out some kind of decoy to be killed by the missile rain of doom. But if it is, then that's not a satisfying gameplay mechanic to me ("You can't actually win. But you can lose less!"), and I can't see how it is to other people.

So, how DO people enjoy these games? The only thing I can think of is that the players of these games enjoy being stuck, and attaining their eventual victory after however few or many attempts it takes them to master it. But I get enough of THAT struggle in my real life -- why would I want to simulate it on my free time?

Is that all it is?

I guess I just don't have the patience for tactical games.

It's all coming together.

Slowly, but I'm starting to understand.

Or maybe, learn not to need to.

After being sick (though, I still am sick) I lost four pounds. Ended up revising my diet, too. I'm cutting fast foods and anything with a lot of either salt or sugar out. There's way too many things in life to enjoy to let food take priority over them. Especially at the expense of my own health.

It's late ... and I've got a day off tomorrow. I expect to be keeping myself surprisingly busy, though. Lots to do, and not all that much time for it. My overtime hours are over, which means I now get to sleep in for thirty minutes.

But hey, that's 30 minutes more than I would have gotten. After consideration, I've decided to look into knitting again. You never know. I could make an awesome woven hat, or something. We'll see.

Been a while since I've updated.

I've been sick -- really sick. My mom had me stay with her for a few days to recover; I was worried about exposing my grandmother and giving her what I had.

Which was diagnosed as some viral thing. Whee virii.

I've got all sorts of medications, including an inhaler for when I have trouble breathing. "When you can't breathe, just take a deep breath of this." (How does that work?)

And some nasty nasal spray stuff, and some pills that make you dizzy. Bleah.

Anyway, on Friday I GMed a bit, but I think I did a really horrible job, because I was very severely out of it.

I got home at about 2:00 AM. Went to sleep. Woke up at 8:30. Puttered around a bit, took some medicine, and then went back to sleep. Woke up at 7:00 or so, and saw that the house was on fire.

Yeah.

The house was on fire.

Well, apartment, really. I was having trouble breathing -- didn't know what was going on. So I took a shower, hoping the hot water would clear my lungs up, and remembering that the doctor said the inhaler was kind of potent, and should be used only as a last resort.

After cleaning up, I got out, and smelled smoke. So I dressed as quickly as I could, opened the door (thought about testing the knob to see if it was hot, but didn't actually do it), and saw that the upper half of the room was flooded with smoke.

Now, my grandmother has an incredible penchant for burning food. Does it all the time, in fact.

So I looked at her, to see if she was okay, had passed out, was injured, etc.

She was watching the television, about fifteen feet to my right. About five feet to my left, a pot (a metal pot. A METAL POT) was on fire.

I grabbed it and flung it into the sink, immediately turning the water on, and then ran to the back door to open it and provide ventillation. Then I set up the fans to clear the air up, and set up the fan I use in my room (to keep smoke from my room out of the rest of the house). There was a brief interval where I repaired my grandmother's fan, and she asked me what was going on. I stood up straight, even though this meant my head was surrounded by smoke, and said, "Grandma, there was a fire."

She looked at me incredulously, and then looked around at all the smoke in the room, apparently just then noticing that she had left something on the stove.

I checked the contents of the pot once it was out (and it was ruined, but I wanted to know what it was -- maybe I could figure out how long she'd just forgotten it on the stove). She had been boiling some beans for soup. But the pot, which is about eight inches across, was filled about two inchest deep with water, and a quarter inch with beans.

It'd been on the stove long enough for every bit of water to be evaporated and the beans to catch on fire. Apparently the smoke that spilled around the edge of the pot lid bore some atomic bean-components which then stuck onto the lid and caught on fire, which is how the pot itself burned.

I'm guessing she'd just forgotten about it for an hour. Not fallen asleep. Forgotten about it.

I'm way too sick to deal with this kind of stuff, and it's depressing. But it kind of shows that my suggestion that my grandmother move into some kind of assisted living situations is not entirely unfounded.

So now I'm sick and depressed.