Programmer, Analyst, Learner, Leader, Gamer

Got a haircut and decided to have a picnic with Kerrie today. We got some ribs, strawberries, pineapple, cornbread, and Newman’s Own Pink Lemonade and headed to a random new park on the GPS. The weather was nice and we sat under two very large trees over a park bench. The food was great and the company even greater. We weren’t at the park for long, but it was nice to completely get away from technology and life for a while. We need to do that more often. I doubt Kerrie would complain.

After the Picnic we headed to Ikeawhere we dreamed a bit more about out future house together. It was nice being able to completely skip over the couch section at Ikea since we now have that awesome leather couch we got a little while back. Kerrie got some storage cubes for her yarn shelf / bookcase thingie. Of course meatballs were had and we grabbed coffee on the way home. The rest of the day was spent reading my book and relaxing with Kerrie.

I’m finally pleased with my site. I got the Google ads doing what I want them to do. I have a Google site search implemented (better search than the built in WordPress searching). I installed a collapsing category and archives plug-in and now have those situated in the right place on my blog. I made custom “clean page” template for the static pages on my blog like About, Resume, Videos, etc. A while back I cleaned up some encoding problems with about half of my posts. I’ve now categorized all my blog posts and have multiple category tags. I expanded my blog roll to include all the blogs, comics, MySpace’s, and other such content I check regularly.

Most importantly, I’m very happy with my blog and have been blogging every day again. It’s a lot faster for me to blog using WordPress. Thanks to the additional features of WordPress, I’m even more motivated to blog because now I can go back and re-read my thoughts more easily than using LiveJournal.

Today hallmarked a new day in the lives of pen and paper geeks everywhere. When Wizards of the Coast bought TSR many many moons ago, many Dungeons and Dragons fans were skeptical. DnD 3rd Edition alleviated most of the fears people had with a slightly expanded core rule set, expanding the D20 structure to allow 3rd parties to write modules, and graced the rulebook with the art styles we’re accustomed to from the Magic: The Gathering team. DnD 3.5 made a decent step forward for the game witha lot of new  classes and again further expanding the game. With the release of 4th Edition next week, apparently the game is going to change in ways no one saw coming.

Victor Hermenzee, great friend/co-worker/DM, is apparently spending his evening tonight going over the new rule set. According to what I’ve heard to far, “This is a completely different game. A great, but different game.” From another friend of mind I heard, “The changes between 3.5 and 4.0 is like the differences between 2.0 and 3.5″. It will be interesting to see what this does for the pen and paper genre and hopefully, if we’re lucky, we’ll get another DnD campaign going.

Read any Warhammer novel that contains a witchhunter as a major character or some riteous warrior priest. Then tell me who’s more evil: Tzeentch or Sigmar.

I was reading a short story once where a holy and noble squire was hoping to become a Knight of the Burning Sun. He was sent on a mission of utmost stealth and danger as a final mission before becoming a true Knight. When he was finished with the task given to him, upon delivering the prize (a minion of Chaos alive for questioning), he was asked to relay every minute detail of the encounter. He explained the details of the encounter with the Scaven and the minions of chaos to the Witchhunter and the Knight Lord, at the end the Lord just walked away shaking his head. Then the Witchhunter said to the poor boy “Sorry I can’t let you become a Knight, you’ve become corrupted.” Confused, the boy asked “Why, what am I to do now?” The Witchhunter said “Nothing” and blew his head off point blank with his hand cannon. He carried out his orders perfectly… except one thing. He accidently touched some warpstone with an ungloved hand.

Sigmar is about 1,000,000 times more evil in my opinion than Tzeentch. I guess it’s a matter of perspective. At least followers of Tzeentch are killed the instant they think you have “gone soft”. Sigmartians are killed on sight the moment they are judged as “corrupt”.

Want to know more about evil? Google the term “Exterminatus”. Yes that’s WH40K, but the Impermium has the same “mentality” as the Sigmartians. Britoneans on the other hand… those guys are a great bunch. I have no ill will toward them. Their gods are quite noble.

P.S. Read “The Cold Hand of Betrayal” printed by the Black Library.

[digg=http://www.victorlaurence.com/gaming/warhammer/498]

In an MMO, guilds and players define themselves as either “hardcore” or “casual” and there seems to be very little middle ground between the two. The reason why guilds do this is to attract players that are like minded and have similar objectives to them. The reason why players do this is to define themselves when looking for a guild. Unfortunately, I believe that these terms have been bastardized over time. At one time I believed that “hardcore” when applied to MMOs meant that you invested 40+ hours a week to raiding minimum. Casual was a term given to guilds that raided but didn’t require attendance, at least not as much as the hardcore guilds.

These definitions of “hardcore” and “casual” have changed over the years from their MMO-centric definitions to now conform with the console and general gaming definitions of the words. As I’ve been told by others, hardcore means “skilled” and casual means “dumbass”. You see, when you are a console gamer and you play 1, maybe 2 hours a week (or less), you are a casual gamer. Gamers who usually play this little, generally suck and don’t play games very well in general. They rerely beat games and generally don’t compete in online play. Hardcore gamers on the other hand play games in general 20+ hours a week.

The thing that’s confusign is that MMOs require 20+ hours a week of general committment if you think you’re going to develop your character. Some weeks less, some weeks more. So as my friend puts it, the very fact that you play an MMO means that you are NOT a casual gamer. But there still needs to be a definition for a hardcore gamer that is not a HARDCORE raider.

I’m going to coin a new term, “midcore”. Midcore is a mix of hardcore and casual mentality. Midcore by my definition is a guild or player that requires or has Hardcore skill and pride in character development, but casual game play commitments and requirements. So there you have it. I am a midcore MMO player. Hit it like you mean it is a midcore guild.

Worked further on the skit today and the hood. I worked on cleaning up stitching details on the skirt while Kerrie worked on stitching up the hood and working on the middle front layer of the skirt… err I mean manly kilt thing… yeah. Anyhow things are coming a long quite nicely, when appropriate we’re using simple looking stitching, but in other places that should be more elaborate, we’re using really complicated “magical” looking stitching with metalic gold thread. The whole thing is really coming together looking rather professional.

Now I just wish I could lose some weight… /sigh. Looking at myself on camera taking progress photos made me realize how big I really am. I need to get back on the weight loss horse.

Kerrie and I got the final bits of cloth today for my Warhammer Zealot costume. Kerrie hasn’t begun her Magus costume, because I haven’t finished helping her size her bust thingie. Both of these costumes as well as a Luigi / Daisy costume set are going to Pax 2008 with us.

The skirt part of the costume is going to be composed of three different fabrics with three different color / stitching designs including some really rad gold stitching. The hood is going to be incorporated into the shoulder design which will have feathery looking black faux-fur with two kinds of black feathers. Instead of having a completely bare chest I will be wearing a black sleeveless shirt out of a very cool breathable material (since the rest of the costume will be hot as hell). We have a really neat “belt” that we’ve designed out of a black fake leather which we will be encorporating grommets on the bottom to hang all kinds of crazy stuff like shrunken heads, skulls, bird skulls, and bunches of feathers. Along the top of the belt will be a ribboning of leather with small grommets which will then criss-cross around my chest up over the shoulder pads acting almost like a suspender but also holding down the shoulders. Oh forgot to mention we’re going to incorporate chain into the design and link the two shoulders together across the front of the neck with some chain. Finally the bracers will be made o more black leader coming to a point around my middle finger. My fingers won’t be gloved but will have the gauntlets covering half of the back of my hand. The gauntlets will also have a lot of leather strips wound around them to give them a tight look. The whole costume will come together thanks to some really cool props including a raven skull ring which I’ll be wearing on my right hand middle finger and a realistic human skull replica in my left hand.

The bottom layer of the skirt and the belt were completed today. Some more work needs to be done on both, but they’re mostly complete. Tomorrow, more work on the skirt and the hood.

Yes, you read that right, Hit it like you mean it has decided that we’re all going to play GuildWars until WAR comes out. It’s a fun game, minor financial investment, and will offer us the chance to explore PVE content as a group and enjoy each other’s company in a game once again.

I’m really proud to see everyone excited again. Many folks have been in vent and rather excited about GuildWars. It really amazes me how good the game looks. In some ways, the game is prettier than WoW and more complex advancement than WoW, but in some ways the game feels like a glorified Diablo. I do see why the game is doing so well though because on a fundamental level, it feels… richer and more story driven than WoW ever did. What I’m most happy about is playing a game again where healing is important and useful. From what I hear most monks are morons so it’s nice to hear there’s a difference between a smart, good monk and one who’s a douchebag.

Yesterday Scott sent out an email that’s really got my grey matter flowing. It is a 111 page PDF document (WITH NO BOOKMARKS, ARG!!!!) that illustrates and describes the core values and core competencies of IHS and how they line up with the 5 separate paths (not including management path) of IHS. Software Quality Assurance, Technical, Development, Program Management, and finally Business Solutions. I’m obviously on the Software Engineer path right now, but my desire is to be on the Business Solutions path. Actually, technically right now I’m on none of the paths, but hopefully that’s going to be fixed soon.

The nice thing about this document is that I have not only a visual picture of the path (Business Solutions Architect, Senior Business Solutions Architect, Principle Business Solutions Architect, and Executive Business Solutions Architect), but clear job descriptions and the core competencies IHS views that play a role in job performance / reviews. An extra bonus is that it gives me even MORE excuse to talk to my colleges about it and share my career goals openly while telling them WHY I’m interested in that path even more so than the engineering path. I had a very long conversation wtih Don and he agreed with me that from my passions, education, and experience that the Business Solutions Path is there I should be going.

NOTE to Self: change the Dolphin Software category it IHS…

Who deletes an account off of a website without telling the person why?
Particularly who deletes a friend off of your website without telling them why?

A day ago after watching more and more videos about Age of Conan, I was thinking about playing Age of Conan for a little bit. Particularly a Priest of Mitra. Why? Well because from a single player, story driven RPG standpoint, it seemed like that alone was worth playing. So I made an account on TheConclave.Org and posted on their boards letting them know I was thinking about playing. A lot of the Browncoats/HILYMI members are hanging out there until Warhammer launches and a lot of the other cool people I knew from Tabula Rasa. I said I had my doubts because I wasn’t sure if the healing was “up to snuff” for my taste, but there wasn’t anything horribly negative. Again, I am still at this moment downloading the client. /shrug

Well apparently somebody (I don’t know who… yet) thought it was a good idea to not only delete my post, but delete my whole damn forum account. Now I can’t even PM anyone asking why. I’ve had to go to PlanetTR and PM the moderators of TheConclave.Org, asking them why my account was deleted. Maybe it was a misunderstanding and someone who didn’t know me from TR nuked my account unknowingly (like a conclave member who didn’t play TR). Still though, it says a lot about their moderation policies if a potential friend of the guild can just up and get deleted out of the blue like that.