Programmer, Analyst, Learner, Leader, Gamer

This weekend I was at PAX 2008 meeting Jeff Hickman, Paul Barnett, Josh Drescher, and James Nichols from Mythic Entertainment. I got my picture with Paul and Jeff (while wearing Paul’s signature shades), signatures from Paul, Jeff, & Josh, and an “Elder Beta Tester” T-Shirt from James. I was spending so much time at the Warhammer booth showing off the game to other people at the convention that Jeff even joked “Give this guy a job”. Some of the other people who were paid to be there to demo the game were learning things from me. When Warhammer had it’s official presentation at the event, it was SOOOOO packed and overflowing that they had to cut the presentation in half and do it twice back to back “in fear of a riot” if they didn’t.

Back in June, I blogged about seeing a preview on Paul’s video blog showing the new Lord of Change model. When I met Jeff and Paul this weekend, I asked them directly about the new model. Jeff assured me that while there are still several different Lords of Change in the game there is one which is the “impressive looking one” which I believed he said was in the Lost Veil. I was rather pleased to hear about this and went on my merry way. Later on in the day I was showing some people the Inevitable City. Well upon zoning into the Inevitable City, I ran into none other than the Lord of Change. This was expected, but unexpectidly, he looked truly amazing. Just like I would expect with huge wings, 3 stories high, white robes, golden staff, and all the little details. Later on in the day I told Jeff that I saw him and was impressed. He was glad to hear that.

Speaking of glad to hear about it, I showed Paul where he could put in another “plunger of the world”, a location near the chaos starting area that he didn’t know about. He was rather pleased that I found it and said he’d get one put in.

Overall it was a fantastic event. It was kinda “meh” for me though because I was so excited about WAR and talking with people about WAR that nothing other than the concerts were really all that interesting. Spore was pretty amazing though as well as the One Ups, Johnathan Coulton, and Will Weaton. The World of Warcraft and other Blizzard BOOTHS (yes plural) made me giggle. Tabula Rasa and Guild Wars booths also had a brief visit by me.

There will be WAR starting September 14th. Oh yes and HILYMI will reign again!

Even though I was at the Saturday market off and on all weekend freezing my fingers off, I had a really awesome relaxing weekend.

It all started off Wednesday night where Kerrie and I cracked open the latest Mario game, Mario Galaxy for the Wii. She loved it and I loved the nostalgic feel of Mario 64 in this game. The controls are great, the music is classic, and the whole game feels like Mario 64 v2.0. I give it an 11 on the 10 point Win scale.

Thanksgiving and “turkey hangover day” was really great because neither of us overstuffed. I think it’s the first thanksgiving where I think I might have actually had a net loss in weight instead of gaining 3-4 pounds.

Finally the cherry on the preverbial cake came when Kerrie had her best weekend of sales ever. The cold was insane, but the sales went nuts. She ended up selling around $450 in product over the weekend. Hopefully it wasn’t just because of Turkeyday weekend and hopefully the slight tweaks to our merchandising has something to do with it.

Overall the whole 4 day weekend was full of win. Finding out that HILYMI has pretty much died last night didn’t even spoil my weekend. I just shrugged it off, sadly I was the last to know, but oh well. At least that means the vent server is 100% for the Browncoats.

An interview that Kevin Flick of Microsoft (aka Fhearl of HILYMI), conducted with me a few weeks back. He’s going to conduct a series of interviews with gamers for his blog with the sneaky and underhanded goal of helping to demonstrate that gaming is just like any other hobby we may engage in. The interview of me was the first of the series of interviews. He’s not to great with post production work, but it’s a greater interview. http://blogs.technet.com/immerse/archive/2007/10/19/gamer-interview-1-victor-f-laurence-aka-livistos-aka-soriathus.aspx

The interview itself covers my history in gaming and about half of it covers my leadership of the guild Hit it like you mean it. We really went into a lot of high level philosophical stuff in there and really put somethings I do for the guild in perspective. Sometimes I’m too humble about all the work I do.

Today I woke up late, had some breakfast, and jumped on first thing to do some homework. I did all my CIS homework, posts, and my mid-term only to be interupted in the middle by hearing that Baliku had just /gquit. After putting an immediate band-aide on the situation I jumped back to my mid-term and kicked it’s ass.

I played WoW for a little bit helping my brother blow through STV quests with his alt, then proceeded to play some Paper Mario. That game is so fun and relaxing, it’s nice on Sunday to get away from WoW and just do something non-WoW, but gaming related. I think I’m going to continue to do this. I mean even if I’m together with Kerrie on Sunday, when I get home wind down with an hour or two of Mario before bed. Good times.

Ended up having a long talk with Brian about his health and his friendship with Amanda. It seems like she is putting undo distance between them amoung other things. I tried to give him as much advice as I could and tried to make him not feel “crazy” about what is going on. I just want the three of them to be in game again, drama free, and not hating each other. Regardless about what goes on IRL, it shouldn’t affect everyone’s ability to enjoy each other’s time in game and having fun.

It was nice to have an even bigger BBQ today. Most of all it was nice to see Adam. It’s amazing how much he’s developed in growth since I’ve last seen him. His face especially is becoming more scultped and less “kid” like. He still talks and acts like a big kid, but that’ll grow out of him in time. It’s good to hear he’s doing well with school, his job, and actually gaining some responsibility. Sat back and chatted it up, drank some Te-kill-ya and played Wii. Good times!

That’s what they might as well have called the Nintendo Wii which is the “supposedly new” name for the Nintendo Revolution. Most of the gaming media isn’t falling for this bullshit ploy Nintendo is making to stir up hype about their new console just prior to E3. I mean seriously I’ve always believed since last E3 that the PS3 and the Revolution were both nothing more than fairy dust, but I knew at least that the PS3 was at least closer to having SOMETHING ready for this year than Nintendo. So instead of Nintendo being prepared to answer questions to waiting Mario/Zelda fan boys like myself about specs, launch titles, how the controller works, etc. Instead they are stirring up hype. Or are they in fact prepared to answer those questions and are seeming like they are under-prepared to throw off the competition. Either way it’s all marketing B.S. that just puts a sour taste in most gamers mouths. We’d rather the gaming industry be strait up with us and not hide the truth.

Tonight is Brian’s wife Jazmyne’s birthday. We met up with them at 7:00 at New York New York in Tigard. The food as usual was fantastic and it was great finally meeting the owner Pat. I had previously only been to their other location closer to downtown. Pat made Jaz a really great cake which was a ton of food. We ended up going to the Voodoo Lounge where we had the Red Room reserved for our private party. I can’t remember his name but one of Brian’s friends was really cool to meet, the guy with the Nintendo belt. We talked about old school gaming and he said he’d keep in touch and liked us (me and Kerrie). Anyhow fun was had by all and even ran into Rasuli while we were there.

I stumbled across this video after a friend request from the band who made the video. http://keithschofield.com/et/. After watching the video I decided to add them to friends and I’ll make a promise to check out more of their music. The video tells the tale of the death of a generation in video gaming history (single handed thanks to one horrifically bad video game) and killed the video game industry for almost a decade until Nintendo resurrected it with Mario.