New TVs Every 16 Years

11.28.2011

I've got 22 DVDs in various stages of being on the way to the house from Amazon. There are another 10 DVDs on my desk waiting to be entered into the RussFlix database. Can you tell what I was doing during the holiday shopping frenzy?

Thanksgiving Day Gina and I went to Florence to see my grandparents. When we arrived, my grandfather wasn't in the living room watching football. Something was amiss. I asked my grandmother where he was, and she told me he was back in the bedroom watching TV, as the TV in the living room died that morning. After 16 years, it finally gave up the ghost.

A couple of things went through my head, some with prodding from Gina. The first thing was that my 90 year old grandfather doesn't need to be stuck in the bedroom watching a little TV. I've got a job that will allow me to fix that! Plus, this was the perfect weekend to have to buy a TV. Thursday proper was not the perfect day for it, but still, if you have to ask for good timing you can't get much better than needing to buy a TV at Thanksgiving/Black Friday.

16 years ago, Mom and her 2 sisters went in together to buy that TV for my grandparents. I want to remember it was $100 apiece from the 3 of them to get the TV - a huge, 25 inch, heavy, tube-laden monstrosity that's been sitting on a TV cart for most of those 16 years. I lot of sports ending in "ball" have been watched on that TV. I'm pretty sure $300 of enjoyment was cashed in on that purchase.

After Mom's divorce, when it was just me and her (maybe around the 6th grade), our TV died and we made a deal with my grandfather. He was going to get us a new TV and in exchange I was going to mow his grass for the summer. He got us the TV, and I think I might have mowed his grass once. So the way I see it, I owe him a TV. Or a summer full of grass mowing. I think I'm going to opt for the TV to ease my conscience.

The new TV should be getting to my house on Tuesday; that was the earliest Amazon's shipping would let me get it, even though I was willing to pay more and make things go faster. I'll hook up the TV at home to make sure everything works, and afterward pack it into the car and take a quick road trip to Florence and hook it up at my grandparents.

Even though it was a good weekend for me to buy them a TV and get a good deal, the delivery time is just right for Paw Paw to miss all the weekend football games. Although I bet he was staked out in the bedroom with his eyes glued to the little TV :)

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Battlefield 3 - Level 8

11.17.2011

I mentioned last week that I was loading up Battlefield 3 on the PC. After going the the fun that's been documented on the web that's known as BF3 installation, I finally got around to playing the game. I spent 10 minutes on the single player/intro, and then I wanted to go fight some real people! For someone who doesn't like fighting real people, this is the game series that brings it out in me. I think it's because player vs player is the only way to unlock weapons and progress through the ranks.

I've slacked off on my World of Warcraft playing - after completing 1000 daily quests in my last post I think that's a good thing. In BF3, I haven't gone hardcore looking for people to fight. Quite the opposite. I've been hanging out on servers practicing on the vehicles and tweaking my setup.

The amazing thing of it all is that for pretty much hanging out by myself practicing, I've managed to reach level 8. Granted, that's playing for 6 and a half hours, but I'm amazed that the game will let you level up like that. Actually, I'm happy, since leveling up was always hard for me in BF2142 as I'm a lousy shot (but enjoy these games).

Speaking of BF2142, I had some stats listed in an old post which, unfortunately, now have some out of date links. At the time, I was comparing BF2 and BF2142 and how I was doing after a comparable time with each. After roughly an hour of playing each game, I had:

Battlefield 2:	28 Kills	41 Deaths
Battlefield 2142:	7 Kills	46 Deaths

Here's my K/D from BF3 after 6½ hours:

Yes, you can now append to the above list:

Battlefield 3:

6 Kills

50 Deaths

In 6 times the playing time, I've died more and killed less. But here is where the difference in the games shows up. In both BF 2 & 2142, I was stuck at the first level at this point (granted, I was an hour into the game). Although with BF3 my stats suck, I'm leveling right along since I'm playing on mostly abandoned servers.

Back in my old 2142 days with the SFC clan, I would practice on servers waiting for enough people to start a match, generally ¼ of whatever the max number of people the server would handle. Generally, a minimum of 4. While waiting, I would fly around, drive around, etc. The BF3 servers don't have that restriction, and a lot of people allow for a minimum of 1 person to start a match. In fact, for BF 3 you can't run around and practice (as in BF2142) until you have the minimum number of people required for a match to start. I've logged into some servers and sat there with the message "Waiting for 7 more players to join" and there's not a thing you can do but sit and wait. Or go find a server that doesn't have that restriction.

I haven't just been playing with myself sitting on empty servers. Not all of those 50 deaths were me crashing into stuff. At least 30 were. Twice I've been "practicing" when someone else would log into the server I was alone on, and we would end up having a little skirmish. Both guys were nice, and I was up front in telling them whatever stupid thing I was practicing at the time.

I logged into a 64-player map that had roughly 50 people logged in yesterday. I died 3 times in 2 minutes. There was way too much going on. Once I found Titan maps on BF2142 I had found the proper game mode for me -instead of straight out shooting I would fly transports and repair equipment the majority of the time. Now I've got to find my sweet spot of player number and map mechanics for BF3.

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1000 Quests, time to move along!

11.14.2011

I've been wanting to straighten out my schedule and make sure I get the things I get to the things I want to get done. I've been putting various things off for at least the past month to where I feel like I'm just kind of spinning my wheels. Ever since my last cold that kept me at home for most of a week, I just haven't gotten back on track.

I'm still piddling around with Warcraft, playing for roughly an hour per day. Maybe that should be "at least" an hour per day? It's still a mindless diversion that I don't really have to think about, as it's not a reflex oriented game. Having maxed out my level, I've found I enjoy some repetitive quests that will eventually (roughly 2 months from now) let me acquire a nice set of PvP gear. I don't PvP, but the stats on the gear are good enough for my random solo questing and running around.

Since sticking to my main character on WoW, I've racked up 52,356 seconds of play time (why repeat what the image above says?). 36 days. With over 3 days since maxing out my level 3 weeks ago. I guess those 72+ hours in 3 weeks does factor out to more than an hour a day...

But that's why it's time for me to get organized and make a list of what I want to get done and when I can realistically get to it. The holidays are coming up (yes, it's just around the corner) and the last thing I want to do is waste away my Christmas vacation. 2 weeks of not going to work to look forward to. I can't just sit around playing the new wrestling game that comes out next week (I should be well finished with the story mode by the time vacation rolls around!).

I'm not putting down my list of things to do right now. I've still got to figure that out. Not something to do spur of the moment-wise when pushing out a blog.

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No Time For Bored!

11.09.2011

I got a new game. I've got plenty to do, why do I have a new game?

I guess I fell into the hype for Battlefield 3. I loved BF 2142, it was my first venture into online gaming. Everybody has said great things about the new game. They've also had horror stories over the installation and how it's acting as a competitor to Steam.

I hate to be on the side of the horror story makers, but my installation process has been painful. Originally, I got an error that a file could not be accessed during installation. It turns out, after deleting the previous install, cleaning out the registry, and deleting various files and directories associated with the install client, that the proper way to handle this error message is to delete the file in question. The install process will gleefully write a new file and everything will move forward.

Much like Warcraft, I'm installing today but don't really expect to play today. Between initial installation and the updates that are sure to follow (oh, there's a 471MB patch downloading now) it'll be the weekend before I have time to sit down and remember/learn how to run around and properly shoot people. I don't think I'll join up with another gaming clan this time. I'm going to keep it real low key. And fun. I'm prepared to die a lot. But they will be memorable, fantastic deaths!

Along the way I need to program some Unity, paint some miniatures, and play on the Mac. Is it Christmas vacation time yet?

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Delving Deeper Into the Turtleneck Cult

11.07.2011

Last week I got a new toy. Actually I got a new computer, which isn't as much of a toy to me as one was 20 years ago. To Gina's chargin, I didn't get excited about the new computer, even though it's cool (a 17" Macbook Pro). In fact, it sat in the box on my bookshelf for 3 days once I got it home from the Apple store.

This isn't my first Mac. It's not even my first Mac laptop.

Years ago, actually 8 years ago, I picked up an iBook for testing websites. I think I may have used it five times. It was loud, took forever to boot, and to this day it looks like a toilet seat.

But this Mac has a different purpose. Along with valued co-Spiritans JJ & Chas (not their given names, but their cool handles that would be used in online games or CBs) I'm moving to the world of learning video editing snazziness. First up, Motion 5, an effects package that I'm hoping to learn to make templates for so that with a click of a button one can have whiz-bang snazziness. I'm watching/reading tutorials right now to learn how to properly manipulate the snazziness, but just give me a little time and I'll be all learnt up in it.

So it seems I have another hobby/thing to learn. I've been taking a break from Unity for a few weeks now, but I need to get back into that groove. Painting gaming miniatures is on hold since I had gotten to the point I was glopping paint on the figures. The WWE Xbox game comes out the Nov 22, so I've got to get my hobby time straightened up and alotted before then!

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