Weekend Update

I spent the weekend downloading the patch to City of Heroes.

Of course, after the first couple hours, when it was obvious that the 20 hour estimated duration might be a little optimistic, I ran the wizards to turn on connection sharing so that I could access the net from my laptop, and pretty much just left the desktop on all day and all night, trying to ignore it, and mostly succeeding. At least, for the 'day' part.

After spending far too long on Tapestries, I started to get really restless, and brought everything I was involved in to a close as quickly as possible without being *too* rude, and went running out... to realize that it was already dark, and everywhere was closed. So I drove around until I found a QFC somewhere near Snoqualmie Pass, and got some Mike's Hard Lime. Then I went home and got drunk, ate some chocolate low-fat frozen yogurt, and watched a whole bunch of Fruits Basket.

Fruits Basket's name is actually quite innocent, despite how it sounds, since it's named after a Japanese kid's game. The show itself is full of fruits, though. }:P And I don't think it takes advantage of its premise (a family is cursed so that they turn into animals when stressed out or hugged)... it's mostly about relationships and people talking about their feelings. And apologizing. EVERYONE apologizes CONSTANTLY, even the too-cool-for-school loner types.

I didn't really get that drunk, but I drank enough to feel it, and for some reason it felt really good. -.- This is much different from previous attempts, where it made me stupid and dizzy (vodka) or just made me uncomfortable because my bowels suddenly loosened (beer at work parties). It was more or less the same sensation I get taking ibuprofen, if I haven't had any in a few months.

By the time I wanted to go to bed, the CoH patch was still downloading (and wasn't really even closed to finished), so I went to sleep with the glow of the monitor acting as a giant nightlight. I was woken up several times during the night by the computer spontaneously rebooting; apparently, the default settings on newly installed XP install the patches they automatically download and go ahead and reboot without user intervention. Luckily, CoH's downloader is able to continue from where it stopped if it gets interrupted, because it got interrupted a lot.

So I hadn't gotten much contiguous sleep when I woke up Sunday, and the patch still wasn't finished. I watched Friday's Stargate Atlantis and SG-1 (the SG-1 one was funny, with Carter and whatsisname hamming it up as nerdy academics), and more Fruits Basket, and played some GBA Duel Masters, and basically wasted time until 12:30 pm, when the patch was done. Finally!

I made a claws/hyper reflexes scrapper named 'Ferrific' on Protector, and couldn't really make him look much like a ferret, although I gave him grey skin and a black mask. And a tail. Those details are sort of overshadowed by the bright shiny orange and purple tights, though. }:P I spent an hour and a half doing newbie quests and asking newbie questions ('how do you use enhancements?') and not interacting with other people much, because the chat was clogged with broadcast messages that should have been private. >.< No, the entire zone does not have to hear you ask 'where are you wildstorm?'.

The game runs pretty well, but the frame rate isn't really what I'd have hoped for given that CoH is supposed to be a pretty easy game to run. There's probably some mucking about with settings I could do to optimize things, and I have no idea what resolution I'm running the game at, although I don't think it's 1600x1200. Or maybe the card is just not-very-good, and I should have gone with the ATI, or one of the $500 monsters. q:3

At any rate, just as I was getting into it, I realized that I was already late for the Sunday gather. So I ran out to that. Southcenter was unbelievably crowded and LOUD, to the point where I could only barely hold a conversation with the people right next to me by shouting. Everyone remarked that I looked pissed off, but I think I was mostly just tired, although the atmosphere definately contributed. After a while the lunch rush died down, though, and then it was okay. I avoided the magic that was going on, for the most part, because they were all playing tournament decks, and I fear the Kai Budd deck. q:3 But they were actually not playing that deck, so I might have enjoyed it. Big group games are so slow, though.

I did a couple duels instead, and spent most of the meet (once the noise level dropped enough) talking about politics with Grey and Legend. Legend is convinced that the world is doomed, and Grey kept apologizing for being too conservative even though the only conservative view he seemed to hold was that gun ownership was a good thing, which no one was disagreeing with.

Afterwards I went back to Lex's, and played with his ferret, and watched cartoons, while Brellan decided to practice saxophone. I don't know what possesses people to practice saxophone while they have guests over... I guess I've seen people do the same thing with piano, but practicing piano is less painful to listen to and usually less loud. On the other hand, it's not like HE invited the people over... it's probably some passive-aggressive thing. }:P

Oh! One last thing...

When I got home from Lex's, I'd planned to get back on City of Heroes, but I found a note tacked to my door (and everyone else's door) saying that they were going to pressure-wash the building, so they were giving 2 days notice that they were going to enter the apartment at 9am-5pm on Tuesday-Friday to make sure the deck was clear of foreign objects.

First of all, that note wasn't in place at 2pm on Sunday, so it wasn't really 48 hours notice as required by law. But then again, they're unlikely to actually enter at the stroke of 9am.

Secondly, I don't have a deck. NONE of the apartments in the building have a deck.

But what it meant was that I had to drop everything and clean, because it was the last chance I'd get -- today I have work, and then a D+D game that usually runs until too-late-to-start-cleaning. That took up most of the rest of the night, even though I've been keeping the place mostly clean. There were some empty boxes scattered about (MtG deck boxes, mostly) and the bathroom was kind of filthy.

Still, even though that leaves the place is about the same condition that the previous management company said was acceptable, I'm always nervous about them coming in to do an inspection, especially when they lie about the reason for entering.