Balls, Pedestrians and Cold Coffee

This week is out to get me. Tuesday evening I nearly got hit with a 5 pin bowling ball. They're not the massive 10 pin ones, but a 4-5 pound ball travelling 20-50km/h could potentially kill me if it hit me. So I'm at work and I go to retrieve a bowling ball for a kid that didn't throw it hard enough down the lane and to fix the pins for him. The guy on the next lane, however, continues to whip balls down the lane as hard as he can while I'm there. Suddenly I see this blue object fly past about 5 feet to the right of me as the ball launches off the gutter and bounces off the top of the pinsetter.

5 pin balls regularly launch off the gutters there and fly into the back room. They bounce around a bit and dent walls and get chipped. They also sometimes bounce off the catwalk in front of the pins and smash into the black lights used to light up the pins when we do the glow bowling. I've seen that happen twice now where the black lights will get knocked out and fall, smashing all over the lane. Apparently there was some Russian guy in the bowling alley a few nights before that who got pissed that the scoring system didn't give him a spare and he ran down the lane, ducked under the board and kicked the pins over. He was removed. Also one of my coworkers has been spreading rumours about theft (multiple month old rumours actually) and now people are worried about being spied on by hidden cameras in the back room. Trust me guys, there's no cameras back there. We haven't been given the budget for it.

Then yesterday must have been a full moon or something because people were doing such stupid things. All the stupid. So downtown after I picked up Shauna to take her to her apartment walkthrough, there's this guy who just starts walking out into the middle of the road. I have a heart attack because I think I somehow missed a red light, but I looked up and it's green. The dude just crosses, staring at us like we personally offended him (I wonder if this is the same guy Kristy encountered...only this happened to me at 5pm and that happened to her at 12am). So I continue to drive and he just stands in the middle of the street. Meanwhile everyone behind me is confused and unsure of what to do cause he continues to cross after I've passed him.

I spend an hour taking pictures of Shauna's old place in case she needs them while she negotiates the moving out conditions and then we have to listen to the landlord go on and on and on about literally nothing. I have no idea what he was talking about the entire time. He was giving us some lecture on how some people like to clean a lot more than other people and then brought up some unrelated tenants and their cleaning habits. I had absolutely no patience for any of that so finally I just walked between him and Shauna, picked up my bag and just started opening the door. I think he finally got the idea at that point that at least I was done talking.

Then on my way home on Deerfoot (one of our cross-city highways) I was driving, turn a corner and see a guy running up the right-hand lane in the dark with a pylon. I nearly have another heart attack because I thought he was running at me and I didn't want to hit him (the speed limit on that road is 100km/h). Then not even five seconds later I see someone riding a bicycle with no lights in the dark on Deerfoot.

Sigh.

I guess this is what happens when you officially reach level 27. Thankfully I'm not a famous musician, or I'd be screwed.

Okay here's some soundtracks:

Uncharted 3 - Finished this game last weekend. Was good, but Uncharted 2 was better. I didn't have to deal with an angry shot-gun wielding Russian though. Just had a confusing warping fist-fight with a British guy. Onto Uncharted 4 right now, which is supposed to be excellent. So far it's been pretty good and not nearly as frustrating on the hardest difficulty as 3 was.

Age of Mythology - I played this one quite a bit as a kid as well. I only remember snippets of the game currently, but I remember a lot about the underworld and the shades as well as the Norse Mythology units. I also remember that Ajax was my favourite character but I can't remember why. This game had some good variety for map clear conditions in the campaign. I'm likely going to play this one again soon (see last week's rant on RTS games).

Started playing Myst 4 and got a few hours in. I was stumped on a stupid rod/hammer (lol) puzzle...mainly because I had the wrong conceptions about how it was supposed to work. I showed Oliver the puzzle and he ended up solving it, mostly because it made him angry. He accidentally figured out I was wrong about how to solve it and it was actually a lot more simple than anticipated. Again I over complicate things. I saved it after he figured it out, but I'm going to go back and do it myself. I'll probably put both of our struggles into the final video.

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.

Alternator

Summer heat is getting to me a bit. Took a week off, binge watched Orange is the New Black, and worked on videos and writing. The phone I got to replace my old one (as it was beginning to fall apart) is defective (are you really surprised?) and so I must go and get that replaced. I expect the rest of this week to be filled with writing, uploading, encoding and trying to figure out if I should post anything special for 500 subscribers. I probably won't have anything ready in time, but we'll see. I have a couple ideas.

Half Life 2 Episode 1 and Dishonored DLC will continue to alternate. I will run out of Half Life videos first, so I'll probably start uploading some other content when that is finished. I still need to record Episode 2. I am just clearing off the Neverwinter videos off my drive and then I can start Dark Souls. I expect rage.

Got menaced by another dude in a truck yesterday. I swear I'm going to develop a nervous twitch every time I see a pick-up now. I pulled over to text message someone and figure out if I had the address right, and about 30 seconds later this man in a black truck speeds into reverse (seriously, he was going about 50km/hr in reverse) and accelerates towards my car and stops less than an inch away from my back bumper. So I'm effectively wedged between him and the car in front of me. Then he just sits in his car. At this point I'm freaking out because I had no idea what this person's deal was. I didn't do anything. I was actually going to leave before he did that, only I wasn't sure if I could still get out. Eventually this woman comes out from across the street, talks to the guy in the truck and then comes over and tells me I need to move to the loading zone. I told her I just pulled over to send a message and that I couldn't get out, but she wouldn't tell the truck driver to back off like AN INCH (he had like 5 metres to work with behind him...if he wanted to park where I was all he had to do was back off for a second at most). So I had to slowly inch my way out past the car in front of me, which I almost hit, and I got out of there. Seriously had no idea what these people's problems were. It wasn't an illegal place to park and the truck was faffing about in the street before I parked there. I hate downtown man.