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Memories of a Gummi Bear.

sargglow

Talking with some folks today about UT, and being invited to play some UT2k4 in an interdepartmental gaming group that gathers over lunch got me thinking. It made me remember one of *the* most epic moments in LAN Party history in my life, and one of the hallmarks of what was so amazing about being honored with the Gummi Bear clan tag, both in game and out.

We were at Asylum Lan. The exact one I don’t remember sadly. I think 2k4 had been out for less than a few months though. GB was in the final match (no surprise there) playing the new and awesome Onslaught mode. Now bear with me because the details of my memory are fuzzy, as are the exact mechanics of ONS and the map in particular. Perhaps a fellow Gummi will drop by to flesh out anything I forgot. Sadly, I think this was one of the rare matches we don’t  have a video cap of :(

It was best 2 out of 3, and on round 1 we steam rolled fairly well. I think we linked up the nodes to their core, and damaged it down in under 2 minutes. Nothing spectacular, about on par with our performance the whole tourney, but fast enough to demoralize the other team a bit. Then round 2 came up. Now, this particular map, if memory serves me correctly, had 2 nodes outside each teams core, where only one was needed to link up to the chain across the board. (For those who have never played ONS mode, you take over nodes to build a straight link from your core to theirs, which drops the shields on their core and allows you to damage it.) We strategically had people in the right place at the right time to take over the first node faster than normal, and two guys in place to start capping the second node the instant we had #1. By time #2 was then taken, the team that took #1 was already at #3 bunkered in and ready to start the process, using link guns all along to speed things up. In the time all this went down, the opposing team was still at the alternate #3 taking it, and preparing their vehicles for a convoy to #2 to try to take it from us en mass. Something major was about to go down though that no one other than Stale knew. While we were working on #2 and #3 he had peeled off in a vehicle and flown up to grab the Redeemer, and then hauled his ass up high in the air. Before #3 was even fully ours, to complete the link to the Core, he fired it off on a slow path to their core. Because of this, when we took node #3 the message popped up on everyones screen saying the Red Teams core was exposed. Before the message even faded and anyone had any time at all to react however, BOOM the core was destroyed and we won the match. I think it was a good 20 seconds before the other team realized what had happened and it sunk it.

My hazy, 5 year old memory wants me to think it was 45 seconds into the match.

Yeah, we fucking rocked that shit in record time. I still have the trophy from it! Ahhhh memories. Such a different time in my life that I do indeed miss at times like this!

Gummi for fucking life, yo.


Back to the future!

So I just got a new toy. Dating someone from Apple has its perks, not only do I have someone incredible awesome to spend my time with, but I was able to get a Time Capsule for my laptop to backup against for about 30% off! ;)

This thing is great. Its a much better secondary wi-fi point for the front half of our house due to its increased strength, and the 802.11n speeds. Also its nice being able to turn time machine back on, and not having to worry about the fact I am backing up against something that I have to physically remember to plug into my laptop anymore, so now its always-on! I am such a geek sometimes… sheesh.

On another note, why is it people who have cats that are “scared of people” always seem to love me? Yet again an antisocial cat thinks I am quite awesome after just a few hours around me. I don’t get it.


Blog necromancy

I really didnt let this blog die, I just got lazy and unmotivated, thats TOTALLY different. I swear!

So time for the obligatory blog-catchup. In feb I moved to the Bay Area when EA relocated me to the Rupture team, this was a Huge Thing. Then 2 weeks ago I was laid off. This was also a Huge Thing. I am currently waiting to hear back this week on a (hopefully) pending job offer for another team at EARS. If all goes well I can hopefully land that and stop worrying :)

Living in San Francisco is amazing, and I think I have found my last true Home. This place, is so me. I wish I had moved here years ago. I have some awesome friends here, and some equally awesome room mates I have known for years, and just this weekend started hanging out with someone new who is even more awesome than all of the above, but I wont go into detail on her for fear of jinxing myself ;)

Lastly, the first day I started work out here, Tucker passed away. I hadn’t seen the little guy in weeks, so this really sucked. As soon as as I have my life settled and am in my own house, I plan to get a Yorkie of my own, but it sure wont be another Tucker, he was one of a kind.

So yeah thats the most important bits I guess of the last few months. I’m gonna make an honest effort to get back into updating this regularly, but we will see just how well this actually works. History does not favor my track record.

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I’m moving!!!

That’s right! I’m moving, AGAIN!

My new boss, Shawn, has deemed me worthy of a relocation out to San Francisco. However I will be working out of the Rupture office in downtown SF, and not at the main EA campus in Redwood City (this is a good thing really). Current plans look like I will be moving around mid Feb or so.

RAWK!


pax day 1 part 2

aaaand I’m back at the condo :) Its VERY rare for me to be at a gaming event and call it a night at 11pm, but when you factor in the time change, its 2am, and damn it I’m tired!

Today has been an absolute fracking blast. After getting in the hall early around noon (yay media badges!) I spent the two hours of media-only quietness trying things out before the lines got stupid, and saying hi to tons of people who would be otherwise busy the rest of the day. I finally got to meet Spyke, our Beta Producer for Warhammer Online in person, and ran into a random person in the food line who, it turns out, is our EA rep to Wal-Mart down in arkansas. After eating food while ignoring all the chaos around me I teamed up with BananaHammock and ran around to various things, and he introduced me to a handful of people I know but never met in person. After that I bounced around between hanging out with him and E and Kitty, and catching up on old times with The Girls, and watching V3nus destroy every single person who came up against her at the Plantronics booth in UT3. (Even I tried.. it was… tragic..) On day 1 the hall is only open from 2-7, so it wound down fairly quick on the show floor side. I got side tracked and missed out on the Key Note speech by Ken Levine, which made me a sad panda :( AND forgot all about the Final Boss/Freezepop/Jonathon Coulton concert… grrrr. Instead though I had just as much fun at the GamerDNA party at the hyatt.. Rockband FTW! (speaking of.. i saw rockband 2… OMG!)

Forgive me for the lack of insight into WHAT I saw, as I spent little time playing games and seeing new stuff today. I last was able to be social in person with my gaming community crowd in SEPTEMBER of last year, at WSVG Toronto, so I was really longing to say hi to a lot of people. Tomorrow I plan to “play tourist” and check things out, and flex my Media Pass muscle to skip a bunch of demo lines, heheh. I’ll upload some pics later tonight or tomorrow and link em here when I can.. however I shall be calling it a night now, my feet are absolutely KILLING me.


end of pax day 1 part 1

so day one is not over but winding down. Eating at Fox Sports grill with BananaHammock, Litheon (the poor guy who has to run major nelsons blog) and some others. Just left the Gamerdna party in the hyatt which was a rockband and free beer filled blast, and after this who knows. Day one at the hall was kick ass, a long recap will come sooner or later tonight methinks, once I get back to the hall and can use my own laptop. (I’m carying stales Air for the day right now since its light and fits in my messenger bag, hehe)

God I’m so glad I came on this trip… oh yeah got invited to E’s inafamous PAX Party sunday night, gonna be a blast, will be taking my suitcase with me and getting ferschnickerd, and catching a ride in the morning to the airport with one of the many who will inevitably have to do the same, lol.

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Blogging from my iphone!

So I’m testing a new wordpress app for my iPhone that let’s me post right from it to my blog. All hail the almighty iPhone! Hehehe


Glad to know im not the only one frustrated by windows!

I saw *the* most delicious thing ever on ./ today. This following email complaining to someone at MS about the difficulty of installing something from them on windows XP, from 2003.

I am quite disappointed at how Windows Usability has been going backwards and the program management groups don’t drive usability issues.

Let me give you my experience from yesterday.

I decided to download (Moviemaker) and buy the Digital Plus pack … so I went to Microsoft.com. They have a download place so I went there.

The first 5 times I used the site it timed out while trying to bring up the download page. Then after an 8 second delay I got it to come up.

This site is so slow it is unusable.

It wasn’t in the top 5 so I expanded the other 45.

These 45 names are totally confusing. These names make stuff like: C:\Documents and Settings\billg\My Documents\My Pictures seem clear.

They are not filtered by the system … and so many of the things are strange.

I tried scoping to Media stuff. Still no moviemaker. I typed in movie. Nothing. I typed in movie maker. Nothing.

So I gave up and sent mail to Amir saying – where is this Moviemaker download? Does it exist?

So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated.

They told me to go to the main page search button and type movie maker (not moviemaker!).

I tried that. The site was pathetically slow but after 6 seconds of waiting up it came.

I thought for sure now I would see a button to just go do the download.

In fact it is more like a puzzle that you get to solve. It told me to go to Windows Update and do a bunch of incantations.

This struck me as completely odd. Why should I have to go somewhere else and do a scan to download moviemaker?

So I went to Windows update. Windows Update decides I need to download a bunch of controls. (Not) just once but multiple times where I get to see weird dialog boxes.

Doesn’t Windows update know some key to talk to Windows?

Then I did the scan. This took quite some time and I was told it was critical for me to download 17megs of stuff.

This is after I was told we were doing delta patches to things but instead just to get 6 things that are labeled in the SCARIEST possible way I had to download 17meg.

So I did the download. That part was fast. Then it wanted to do an install. This took 6 minutes and the machine was so slow I couldn’t use it for anything else during this time.

What the heck is going on during those 6 minutes? That is crazy. This is after the download was finished.

Then it told me to reboot my machine. Why should I do that? I reboot every night — why should I reboot at that time?

So I did the reboot because it INSISTED on it. Of course that meant completely getting rid of all my Outlook state.

So I got back up and running and went to Windows Updale again. I forgot why I was in Windows Update at all since all I wanted was to get Moviemaker.

So I went back to Microsoft.com and looked at the instructions. I have to click on a folder called WindowsXP. Why should I do that? Windows Update knows I am on Windows XP.

What does it mean to have to click on that folder? So I get a bunch of confusing stuff but sure enough one of them is Moviemaker.

So I do the download. The download is fast but the Install takes many minutes. Amazing how slow this thing is.

At some point I get told I need to go get Windows Media Series 9 to download.

So I decide I will go do that. This time I get dialogs saying things like “Open” or “Save”. No guidance in the instructions which to do. I have no clue which to do.

The download is fast and the install takes 7 minutes for this thing.

So now I think I am going to have Moviemaker. I go to my add/remove programs place to make sure it is there.

It is not there.

What is there? The following garbage is there. Microsoft Autoupdate Exclusive test package, Microsoft Autoupdate Reboot test package, Microsoft Autoupdate testpackage1. Microsoft AUtoupdate testpackage2, Microsoft Autoupdate Test package3.

Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable? The file system is no longer usable. The registry is not usable. This program listing was one sane place but now it is all crapped up.

But that is just the start of the crap. Later I have listed things like Windows XP Hotfix see Q329048 for more information. What is Q329048? Why are these series of patches listed here? Some of the patches just things like Q810655 instead of saying see Q329048 for more information.

What an absolute mess.

Moviemaker is just not there at all.

So I give up on Moviemaker and decide to download the Digital Plus Package.

I get told I need to go enter a bunch of information about myself.

I enter it all in and because it decides I have mistyped something I have to try again. Of course it has cleared out most of what I typed.

I try (typing) the right stuff in 5 times and it just keeps clearing things out for me to type them in again.

So after more than an hour of craziness and making my programs list garbage and being scared and seeing that Microsoft.com is a terrible website I haven’t run Moviemaker and I haven’t got the plus package.

The lack of attention to usability represented by these experiences blows my mind. I thought we had reached a low with Windows Network places or the messages I get when I try to use 802.11. (don’t you just love that root certificate message?)

When I really get to use the stuff I am sure I will have more feedback.

Now are you ready for the kicker? the author of this email?
Bill Gates
Yes that’s right, Gates himself sent that email to the XP group. When asked about the email, this was his response. “There’s not a day that I don’t send a piece of e-mail … like that piece of e-mail.”

This is his last week at MS.. I think I might miss him a little :)

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Link re-do

So my links block on the righ hand side has been re-organized and updated. Anthony’s amusing blog over at http://www.anthonysullivan.net is still there, as is Stales at http://www.angry-cripple.com and I have also added a few more, including two very good friends of mine. One is Maddy, who is, well, quite insane really, you can check hers out at the link there, which is http://www.maddgoddess.com and finaly I have added Caitlin, who is the very reason I got to met and know all the wonderful girls of PMS and my fellow guy gamers in h2o, and so MANY (were talking 4 digits here) friends scattered around the gaming world now :) hers is http://www.sun3v.com. Check them all out, as I can assure you they are all far more entertaining than mine likely is! haha


My birthday and the insane weekend before.

Yes, the weekend was indeed insane. Between friday morning and sunday late afternoon there was a fluctuating number of roughly 25-30 people in my house at any given point.

Stale had several other friends on the Penny Arcade forums who had birthdays, so they came to town as well, plus a large contingency of their little social circle from all over the us (plus a poor guy from Ireland who suffered an 8 hour flight and jet lag just to join in!) The house was a nonstop party and it was fun as hell. Well into 2 thousand dollars in alchohol was consumed, enough food to feed a small nation was cooked in cycles regularly and destroyed in minutes each time. (Chris makes a glorious cheesecake that I would happily move to Seattle to be able to have all the damn time!)

Fortunately there were no casualties of war this time, like last, where one of Dan’s couches was utterly destroyed by the projectile contents of an over intoxicated stomach, however I found out after the fact Kovak did have a little mishap all over the wood floor of my downstairs office, but it was quickly cleaned up (although the carpet outside the door of the room, at the base of the stairs does indeed bear some battle scars, come to think of it.)

Good times were had by all, there was more rockband going on that I think Harmonix ever envisioned, tons of Smash brothers and Mario Kart on the Wii up in the game room, plenty of pool (and weird schenanigans ON the pool table), tons of drinking games (the concept of Zoom still makes my head hurt) and I also learned when trying to find peace and quiet at 6am when everyone else is up still yelling, sleeping in the back seat of a Honda Accord coupe is NOT a good solution.

Then there was my actual birthday on monday… good lord. I must say, I was not looking forward to my birthday this year. It is the first time in 7 years (since the beginning really) that my birthday did not fall right on MML week, so I was not going to be home in Louisville with a few HUNDRED friends around, plus another 1,500 more gamers as well for several days. It was just me, and work, and Dan and Summer around and that was it, I have to admit i was really not planning to enjoy my birthday. However, Dan surprised me with the most insanely awesome present ever that morning at work, two front row seats to see Eddie Izzard live tonight! There is someone very special I would like to take more than anyone else in the world, but sadly she is not available.. but its ok, a great time shall still be had. Also, my facebook profile is setup to text me when someone writes on my wall, I left this on because at MOST I get 2-3 wall posts a week, if Im lucky. I had to turn the damn feature OFF yesterday. I’ve never felt so appreciated by so many people, my wall was literally destroyed with an untold number of posts, as was my myspce profile (by mostly the same people, LOL!) It certainly cheered me up a ton. Thanks to EVERYONE who left me a message on Aim, Myspace, Facebook, voicemail, email, and everything else. I love being reminded how many friends I have scattered all over the country, and the world, thanks to my love of gaming and all my traveling related to it. Its kind of cool to know I could be stranded just about anywhere in the US and know I have great friends not far away in some odd direction :)

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