Buh?

I completely forgot it was Thursday today, so I'll postpone soundtrack day to tomorrow. I blame a poor sleep. I woke up at like 430am cause I was too hot, then I threw off the covers and it was too cold like ten minutes later, so I put the covers back on again and then had to throw them off a few mins later etc. Eventually found a happy medium and then my abdomen started complaining because of something I ate or w/e. Anyway when I finally dragged myself out of be I noticed the window was wide open next to me.

So since I fail, here's the song I haven't been able to stop listening to the last couple of days. Also, I think my mind is tissue paper because it ripped in half after this.

I feel like I should at least give you an update, so over the past week I've mostly been working on clearing out the Saints Row 4 stuff. I found an old Thief 1 test recording from...who knows when taking up 13GB of my hard drive so I processed that and uploaded it to the unreleased folder. I made the decision to take all the Guild Wars 1 footage I have and just process it into unedited footage (i.e. not pair it down into a clip show like SR4) as we are unlikely to continue it at the moment and if we did pick it up again we'd likely start over. That way I clear up space. I have two Dead Space videos uploaded, but unreleased and am considering that series finished. I will likely still lower the difficulty just to officially finish it, but I'm mostly moving on now.

I'll likely just marathon a good 4-5 hours to finish the Murdered series so I can move my focus to Evil Within for the co-op series. I'm continuing to record VTM with Shauna today actually. I need to bring my external to her house though since she's running out of hard drive space.

As for writing I've actually been mostly focused on that lately. I'm still re-editing Mesk's Ret Tech document and working on the RPG as well as WMRR. My productivity has been drastically reduced due to a struggle with motivation and mood issues. I'm slowly crawling my way out of that, but for now, business as usual. Looking forward to when I get my poop in a group and release the stock pile of videos I have built up over the past couple months. It's been pretty sparse due to laziness lately. Sorry 'bout that.

I'll also have to take time in the near future to tell you all the tale about my boss, his inherited Italian Apartment and the saga of the squatters. I swear to god he has the best stories.

Patience Test

Well, on the driving related topic of last week, I got my class 5 GDL license...but at a hefty price. Yeah sure, I passed, but it was expensive both for my wallet and for my patience. The person who tested me was confusing, took me on the wrong route, pointed out random things that had nothing to do with the test CONSTANTLY so I was distracted, then would announce when I missed the important things to the point where I was so confused and flustered and made more mistakes because I had no idea what the hell she wanted. It's taken me a full week to get over this. Whatever. I passed. It's done. I don't need to do another test until I'm old and probably shouldn't be driving anyway. By then we'll likely have all self-driving cars anyway.

So this week I've been working on some side projects including writing, some Left4Dead2 with friends, working on that RPG I started weeks ago and re-editing some stuff for Mesk. Pro tip. Don't edit a document across 3 computers under two different formats. Apparently you lose half of what you've done. I still don't know how this happened. Also participated in a dodgeball tournament and came second. I have some lovely trophy bruises on my legs, so I've been wearing pants all week to work despite the heat. I actually participated in the Quick Draw as well this year so, you should see me losing horribly in that video.

Update on that RPG: Mesk sent me a bunch of the scripts he used for his Captain Planet RPG and I'm slowly beginning to plug those in and test them. There are a couple that work independently and a couple that need a few of the other scripts to work, so I'm going through them, figuring out what I'd like to use, and testing them out. Nothing too complicated has been added...yet, but I expect everything to snap in half at the slightest provocation. I'll make the second dev video of this soon. First can be found here if anyone's curious. It's mostly just me getting confused and laughing at my own oversights/stupidity.


Uncharted 4 - Not quite done this yet, but I don't see much harm in listening to the soundtrack. I can imagine what's in store for me. It's a really good game so far though. I've been enjoying a lot of the random little dialogue bits and just the detail put into the different environments and the way you interact with them. Simply fantastic.

Tomb Raider (2013) - I plan on playing this series sometime in the future. I have a collection of the games on Steam, so I just need to find the time to play them (hah).

Thief (2014) - Oliver is still afraid to play this because he's worried it'll taint his perspective of the original 3 games (which I also still need to play).

Oh man where am I at right now? Currently finishing Uncharted 4, continuing VTM with Shauna, occasionally making more Saints Row 4 (will be posting those soon), haven't touched Shadow of Mordor or Planet Alcatraz in awhile, need to continue Myst 4 and...I think I have some outstanding projects with Delta.

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.

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.