Permission to Cry?

So yesterday I took my car in for servicing because I have a recall that's over a year old and as it turns out I don't want to take the chance that my airbag might not deploy if the worst should happen. Turns out my car isn't in great shape and I'm going to end up spending about 1/3 of my car's total value (don't freak out just yet, it's a 2003 Civic). And this is after I opted out of half the repairs they suggested in favour of taking it to a guy I know for a second opinion. Fixing the most vital stuff at the moment and hoping everything else will hold out until August/September ish. Budget is going to be pretty tight this summer as I replenish my savings.

Age of Empires 2 - This soundtrack is extremely nostalgic. This was one of my favourite games as a kid, and remains to this day one of my favourite games of all time. As Kathleen likes to say...I'M A MAN ON A HORSE.

Uncharted 2 - I really liked this soundtrack out of the three games the most. Maybe it's because some tracks reminded me of the Legend of Korra. I also think this game is the best of the series so far (I haven't played 4 yet, which is supposed to be really good). The entire series is delightfully ridiculous. - Mesk, you might really like a few of the tracks in both Uncharted 2 and 3.

Unreal Tournament - Always enjoyed this soundtrack.

Work has been slow lately as I've been struggling with finding the motivation to get things done. I've also been playing a lot of Uncharted 1-3 (currently near the end of the third one) because I get to sit on the couch, be lazy and occasionally scream obscenities at the game because I elected to play the third one on the highest difficulty possible and everything can kill me in essentially two hits. I promise I'll return to my current projects soon...I just need to get out of this funk first.

Had some new requests on one of my recent videos with Delta. Apparently I haven't been playing enough mainstream or "classic" games. I have to admit, the last couple months I've been playing a lot more obscure things, but I didn't think that bothered anyone really. Regardless, I'll be continuing those until I finish them. I also have all the Saints Row 4 and Myst series in reserve.

I think I've touched on why I don't generally LP RTS games. It's recently come up again, so I figure I can give you the run down. It's not that I don't like them. Warcraft 2, for instance, used to be my favourite game when I was 8 years old...before I discovered Dungeon Keeper 2 and Diablo. The problem is that I find micromanagement very difficult. I am terrible at focusing on multiple elements at a time. I can't remember order of operations easily, I constantly forget things like upgrades and I haven't taken the time and effort to learn when to build what and when to act. I am a lot better at strategy and game plan, but that doesn't matter when you can't make your units and buildings come together in a logical way to orchestrate that. One of the reasons I really like Dungeon Keeper 2 and War for the Overworld is that things kind of just...take care of themselves in the background and I can focus on crushing my enemies. Pro tip if you ever play against me though: I often get tunnel vision.

I'm also, historically, an extremely defensive player. As a kid, I always built up my base and army exactly how I wanted because the AI allowed me to do so. I got into a lot of bad habits doing this (and I was really gutless in a lot of ways). I had to learn (and am still learning) how to be aggressive. Playing against real people really screwed me up, because I got used to losing every single game and the constant humiliation because of it. I learned an extremely valuable lesson about people during those years. Let's just say that I'm still friends with the people who were patient with me and never made me feel like shit no matter how bad I was.

That said, a) I don't think I would be good enough to be entertaining (I would just frustrate people who have taken the time and effort to get good at the genre), b) I don't think I can handle the criticism that would result as well as I could with any other LP type (as I'm already criticising myself constantly). The only RTS games I would probably do in the foreseeable future would be the Age of Empires series, Age of Mythology or Warcraft 2 (which I've already done a little dabbling in).

Don't get me wrong, I'm still pretty awful at virtually every other game, but I have patience with both those games and myself...to an extent. Evil Within is always the exception. God that game was awful.

Unholy Grail

Last night I expected to find the holy grail of documents, music and other files on the hard drive I pulled out of the old laptop. I have to admit I was a little disappointed. I spent a good hour+ trying to get into it too. The one good section I recovered was all of my old school and writing class stuff as well as a dump of all the early WMRR documents (of which I was looking for one particular piece of information and it turned out to be lame so I'm not using it). I also found a section of old conversations I saved for whatever reason and god I used to know some annoying, pretentious people. That's not to say I wasn't annoying myself. It's amazing what 8 years can do to a person. I hope I'm not as irritating as I used to be back in the MSN messenger days. Also half the conversations make absolutely no sense. I think we were all on crack. At any rate, unless I find something particularly useful, I'm going to obliterate these logs permanently once and for all.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to find any of Mesk's old video. I think everything I had was copied onto the externals, so what I have there is what I got. There's some ancient backup CDs, but I'm pretty sure I've already scoured those. One entertaining bit I found, however, was a lot of Sonic the Hedgehog soundtrack stuff. God it's hilarious. I can't believe I listened to this stuff seriously:

Shadow the Hedgehog - So I listened to this entire thing at work today. I was squirming in my seat at some points and stifling laughter. I have to admit though, some of it is a little catchy. I can see why I liked it with some of the heavier rock tunes. Man "Almost Dead" and "All Hail Shadow" are terrible though. I really need to do something silly with these tracks. Oh god...the memories. NO VECTOR, SHUT UP ABOUT THE COMPUTER ROOM. NO I WILL NOT TOUCH YOUR GLIMMERING JEWELS. Just...the reveal at the end...the gas...the blobs...okay, Michael and I need to LP this.

My soundtrack Thursday got a little derailed. All right...

Sonic Adventure Battle 2 - Again, just...some truly awful tracks. There's some great level music though. Michael and I used to spam the sound test tracks. That "Follow Me" song is perpetually stuck in my head. It takes like 2 seconds of the song for it to take hold.

I refuse to play the Sonic Heroes soundtrack. At least for now.

"When there's nothing left to lose, you win!"

...what? Well, I suppose it's...optimistic, but in a depressing way.

Allergies Suck

Spring hates me. Understatement of the season. I'm pretty sure I sneeze more than my entire office combined. If I don't sneeze at least once an hour, assume that I died in a tidal wave of support tickets. I should be recording LPs right now. It's basically my trademark that I'm wasting here. Though, Mesk would likely argue that my trademark is either being RIP or laundry.

Lightbulbs also apparently hate me to as I have made three explode simply by turning on the lights in the past couple months. Either I'm cursed or we have really poor quality lightblubs in the house. That said, according to YouTube commenters I sold my soul to the devil to make Diablo 1 work, so maybe that's the problem.

Mad Max: Fury Road - I can't remember if I did this one before, but I watched the movie again recently and I really love it.

Pacific Rim - Quick! Go watch/listen before YouTube strangles the life out of it! Too bad about the audio blips in between tracks though.

Lord of the Rings - Ooooh I found a really nice compilation. Fun fact: I own that poster in the background. Mildly awkward story about how I got it. However, this isn't the time or place to tell that story, so I'll let you all make up your own story.

My friend wrote a book and it is now published/released! Between Fire and Pines by Kathleen Sawisky is now available online through Amazon. You can find it here: https://www.createspace.com/6226638

I think she's also got a contest going to win one of her books for free if that's more your cup of tea: https://giveaway.amazon.com/p/fc18c34d940eff6a/?ref_=tsm_4_fb_h_o_li_r#ln-ln

Also finished Legend of Korra for the first time over the past couple of days. I think I have my favourite scene from it. I enjoyed the whole series quite a bit, but this is the only part I actually went back to watch again immediately after seeing it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmmP4uHRmkk

It's right up there with my favourite scene from The Last Airbender: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZ8aLRnd80k

I think you may be able to determine the sense of humour I have based off these clips alone...

Shouting and Shout-outs

I cannot begin to describe my hatred for Tableau. Every time I use this program there is an endless struggle with the formatting and maps. I really just need to take a crash course and just sit down and learn how to use this effectively, because so far I'm just using what's been given to me and I keep having to come up with dirty little tricks to get it to work in my favour. I'm not sure what changed since last time to make it so I can't refresh all extracts at once. I didn't do this report last month so something may have been adjusted without my knowledge. The good news is Argentina isn't disappearing. The bad news is Tableau hates Cameroon. Oh and Japan. Japan was a problem last time. Maybe it's included in another filter list for some strange reason...ah hah! Why is Jersey AND Japan included in South Asia? I don't recall doing that. Wait why is Jersey included in North Asia too? WHO MADE THESE FILTERS? Oh yeah...

It's okay, I found Japan. I still have no idea what happened to Cameroon though. It's fine. I cheated either way.

Noooo Russia you're too big. Also how did Algeria get included with Eastern Europe? I swear it's, not me for once. It's the list I was given. How...? Okay whatever. Congratulations Algeria, you are now located in Eastern Europe despite actually being in Africa.

As for the actual built report, China somehow broke. Wait...how did the number of active users exceed the total users. What snapped in half? Oh god...

Also, fyi, if you're running a report and it takes 7 hours, maybe consider that you have accidentally entered the year as 2015 instead of 2016. I have no idea how it ran when the start date for that period was before the start date of the previous period. With all the things that have broken for less...THIS ran the full way through.

Civil War is out this weekend and a friend got tickets so we're going to see it. Figured I'd reflect that in my soundtrack Thursday.

Captain America: First Avenger - Have fun getting track 26 out of your head.

Iron Man - I just love how all pre-existing full compilations have ceased to exist thanks to YouTube's copyright rampage. There was another big one recently and now there's companies claiming on behalf of other companies. It's confusing. And annoying.

I have some shout-outs to a few people here. Right now on the Legends are Gaming website (http://legendsaregaming.com/) they're finishing up a week of streaming (mostly Diablo 3 and World of Warcraft) and are currently in the middle of a Diablo 3 giveaway! Check out this link if you're interested in winning a copy of Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls. You should be able to find all the links to LAG's YouTube etc. on the previous link.

My friend and fellow Extra Life player Kathleen is publishing her book! Last I heard it was almost ready for release (she's writing the blurb on the back). I will post an official link to where she'll be selling it online, but if you want to learn more for now, check out her GoFundMe page: https://www.gofundme.com/fireandpines

PS - This blog should really just be renamed "Schwa's Adventures with Macs and Reporting: A Saga of Occasional Lost Laundry." You'd have to dig through a lot of confusing rants to piece together the context.

PSS - I forgot to press "publish" yesterday.

Sunday at the Calgary Entertainment Expo 2016

Man I was lazy with a lot of my pictures this year. It's a lot easier to ask for pictures cosplayer to cosplayer rather than creepy random to cosplayer. I mean I don't normally find it creepy personally, but I always I assume I'm being creepy. Anyhow...

Met up with Shauna at her house and we went down to the con together, mainly with the objective of seeing Nolan North. We wandered around for a short time (kind of the theme of the con unless you have a dedicated schedule for autographs and pictures) and went to go pet more dogs.

Because dogs. =D

Did another loop by the LEGO display (I forgot that half of my pictures were hosed and forgot to take more...or rather when Shauna mentioned it I'm like NO I TOTALLY GOT SOME...'cause I'm smart), and we checked out the autograph times for Mr. North. He was there at the time, but we decided to come back after his panel. 

We came across a table with some incredibly derpy looking Game of Thrones figures. Brienne was probably one of the worst. Shauna said I needed to take a picture and do a caption contest. There's a lot of photos and pictures I feel this needs to be done for (*cough cough Testament of Sherlock Holmes*).

On our way back into the other halls I ran into this guy:

Good to see you again Mini! Also wow, a picture I don't look like a major dork in (intentionally or not). There's a rare sight. 

Outside we found some awesome cosplayers. I got the Fallout crew I missed yesterday as well as...this fellow:

Shauna and I weren't sure exactly who or what it was, so if anyone can enlighten me I would be grateful. Awesome, terrifying, but I honestly have no idea. 

We checked out the gaming and arcade area (of which Shauna was a disappointed in as she assumed it would be a massive section). Some of the units they had there had multiple games available, but all were in use. I believe there were about 10 units total in addition to all of the consoles, a computer cafe and a special stage for tournaments (there was a League one set up for noon, but we were in a line-up by that point).

We lined up for Nolan North about an hour early, happy to sit in the shade and watch all the random cosplayers. We met a pair of Bioshock Infinite cosplayers (who Shauna got a picture of, so I may grab that from her) who had excellent costumes (and were very photogenic) as well as a young man (whose name I THINK was Sydney...I'm really sorry if I misheard you) who had lost his friends and decided to line up super early for the panel after ours. 

So the time finally comes to go in to see Nolan North, we're at the front of the line and it's awesome. Then the dude takes us to the wrong door by accident. So all the people behind us see an opportunity to get ahead, so we literally waited an hour in line for nothing. Thanks guys.

Thankfully it didn't matter too much as we were the third row up or so. Still...principle of the matter.

After another short wait and Shauna becoming increasingly tired of my Streetpass farming, Nolan North took the stage with Sam Maggs as the moderator (that was an awesome appearance I didn't expect). Nolan talked about his experiences voice acting, mostly with Nathan Drake in the Uncharted series. When the time came for audience questions, the gentleman behind us opened with, "Would you rather fight 100 duck sized Troy Bakers or 1 Troy Baker sized duck." He just kind of stared at the guy for a few minutes, said "Who's Troy Baker" and "Have you eaten today, sir?"

Nolan gave some great in-depth answers, some samples of his voices and some advice on voice acting and his experience. He stated that if you wanted to break into voice acting, become an actor in general as you have a wider range and the ability to add facial expressions, tones and actions to the words. He also stressed the importance of saline nasal spray to avoid colds.

I ended up taking quite a few pictures as Shauna's camera wasn't working too well and I was trying to get my own to cooperate. My phone camera crashed twice in the process. Apparently it doesn't like it when I zoom in and try to take a picture anymore (it also completely crashed for no reason a couple hours ago so I may need to fix this). My other favourite bits of the panel was Nolan taking about face capture technology and acting out scenes you'd see in the game (including holding his breath even though it really wasn't necessary). I also enjoyed him talking about auditioning for voice acting positions and just straight-up recommending other voice actors to the people holding the auditions if they thought they'd be a better fit.

We went to get lunch after the panel where I tried a butter chicken poutine, which...actually wasn't half bad and listened to a father who didn't understand how the internet worked explain to his son why he couldn't go play video games at the con (apparently if you log onto a public network it'll give your home computer viruses). 

After lunch we went to go line up for autographs and discovered Nolan was already there early. We got up to the front, had a quick chat with the volunteer there about autograph logistics and met Mr. North. I haven't actually gone to meet anyone like this at a con before. I've waited for OTHER people doing that, but I figure I have nothing interesting to say to most people (at least nothing they haven't heard before). This was different cause both Shauna and I were interested and I have an appreciation for good voice acting (mostly thanks to Mesk telling me a lot about it).

Anyhow, went up and shook his hand and said hello to Mr. North, who promptly told me to call him Nolan. My interaction mostly boiled down to him asking if I had played the whole series and I said I was on the second game still because I got stuck in the stupid museum for a long time. He said I should hurry up because I have about 7 days before the next one comes out. I wasn't too sure where to go conversation-wise from there, but Shauna joined in and talked about my recent life changes and our friendship. 

Nolan went to shake hands with her, but he was like, "give me your hand," but he was holding it out as if he wanted her to place it there and both Shauna and I got very confused, then he's like "oh I want to shake it." Nolan signed her picture (Last of Us print) and talked in David voice for her saying that as you know from the game, friendship never really goes away. I thought that was really nice. Shauna was hard on herself after thinking she sounded lame in front of him, but everything was fine. While Mr. North will likely never read this (if you are I think I'd pee myself a little), I'm sure he'd reassure her and say it was a pleasure (and that there are way weirder things to talk about). We got him to do a little voice acting for us, so I consider that a win. Thanks Nolan! 

So that concludes my con experience in 2016. I am fairly exhausted (but less exhausted than I have been in other years as I didn't cosplay and wander the con in heels for 8+ hours). Looking forward to next year (where hopefully Troy Baker will make an appearance) and to see what else the con has in store for the future.