Saturday, December 07, 2002

Score one for Everyone, except Eric, and then Eric

So I played a rousing game of Blood Bowl with Denis last night. The Lothlorien Arsenal trounced the Appleby Mashers by a score of 4 -1, with one death on the pitch. This is the first game of BB I have played with another opponent, besides myself, that has actually finished using minatures in probably over 5 years. I had a blast!

Point:Eric

Hogshead Publishing, the fine folks who took over the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay license from Games Workshop, and the fine producers of Nobilis, are calling it quits. It is sad. The license reverts back to GW, and they will probably sit on it and let it die instead of sell it or use it themselves. Boo. Here is the sad quote from the Hogshead site on the matter:

"GAME OVER! As of 30th November 2002, Hogshead Publishing Ltd is leaving the adventure-gaming industry. Please note that the company is not going bankrupt. It is refreshingly solvent. However we are bored, creatively frustrated, and increasingly despondent about the future of the specialist games industry. After our successes in 2002, particularly the mould-breaking and critically acclaimed games Nobilis and De Profundis, we think we've gone as far as we can, and this seems a suitable high-point on which to call it a day."

The quote in an of itself makes me sad, seeing as Wizards has taken a large chunk out of the total creativity of the gaming community and destroyed much of the niche gaming market for smaller, upstart companies. Instead of making a whole new game for whatever cool idea someone may have, they just make a D20 sourcebook for it instead. Boo.

Point: Everyone, except Eric, for the demise of WFRP.
Point: WotC, for keeping their chunk of the market large and ever growing by elimi-date-ing the competition.

lET'S MAKE FUN OF FUCKING MIDGETS

Carsin Daly is a fucking lame fucking prick. I woiuld use meaner words, but Im driunk enough to knwo not to be TRHAT mean. YAY- asshole that is Carson DALY! FUKCING LOSER. You ever see his show? FUCK THAT GUY.

ok myt friends- thanks for the tips!
San jose Sharkees

Oh, Enron, you suck ballz. One for nixing the basketball game, but second and more severe is sleeping before midnight, especially when I call you! That's a sine.

just kidding enron, your good in my books. Anyways tonight, my company had some free tickets to the San Jose Sharks game, so I went. 55 bucks a pop and 15 dollars to spend on food and beer and good stuff like that. We usually get the VIP box seats, but today I guess they were cutting cost. Anyways, the game was pretty exciting. The game was close all the way until the end, in fact OT, when the sharks who was trailing the entire game, made a comeback and scored the winning goal. So they WIN! Go sharks! While there, I met an interesting girl, she's thirty though, but very cute. Pretty high standards, into the leather pants and stuff. Not really my type. So anyways chatted up with her all game, and I think I'll email her. She's a pretty cool cat. Wish she was a few years younger.

I'm a little drunk. I had two beers, but that's enough to get me going. ok.. I'm going to bed, but maybe not before I get in a good game of warcraft III.

Night all.

Friday, December 06, 2002

The Action Team: It's LEARN-tastic!

Nice work on the job Eric Hessington! Gainful employment at last. I suppose this means an end to our afternoon makeout sessions. Hopefully the market won't crash again in three days and take out your job. Then you'll have to go back to your usual entertainment.

ERIC: More tea and cookies, Mr. Kitty?
STAMPY: Meow!

Also nice work on the router/hub edutainment. I guess this blog is turning into "blow Eric" so I'll touch on some other points real quick.

1. I know none of you have a GameCube so this is totally fucking moot, but Metroid Prime is good. Real good. I've been spending my free time alternating between playing it and working on a story ("my story?"). Basically it's like any other fps except it's the best game ever. Plus did you know Samus is a chick? Wow!!

2. Number one was pretty much it. Gee, my life is sad.
Oh my God! I killed so many people virtually tonight. As Dennis and Eric whooped it up at Blood Bowl, I whooped it up myself by murdering countless civilians and police officers, many of them suffering head shots. Then I got the Katana blade and cut those fuckers up! Grand Theft Auto Vice City is a really fun game. Another Friday night... wasted.
Case Closed

Thanks for all the help guys. Thanks for the tips Eric. Aaron- I will buy it- maybe for a little cheaper, plz thx. Time to drink.
Gnarly Ga-hrilla

Sorry I have been lagging on the Blog. To make a long story short I am in the process of looking for a new apartment. Current roommate=bizzatch. So I have quite busy between work and the quest for the holy grail. Johnny I think I am going to have to nix the Basketball action jackson. I will be running around like a nut this weekend. I hope that very soon I will be moving. Looking at moving into places right away. The sooner the better. I think I am going to start packing up non-essentials this evening.

Rude-dog, the Netgear Roto-Routers are pretty good too. The one I have is pretty old (In terms of SOHO routers) and it has a pretty good interface. The old routers were tough to configure. They seem to be even more user friendly now and pretty damn affordable.

Congrats on the Jobby-job Elric. What is the name of the company? Lemme guess. www.axewound.com? You dirty man. Does Leslie know you are working for a internet porn service? You should try and have that job while you work at a school. Good combo once a student finds out and blackmails you to sell crack to him at a cutt-throat loss. Then forces you to run a prostitution ring out of your backyard. Have a brothel set up by digging tunnels under your house. Grim future Elric. Maybe you outta quit while you are ahead.

Rudy I have a 3DfX VooDoo Banshee card. Its real fast. Like I bet you could get 1.2 fps in wolfenstein. Want to buy it at a low low cost of $250? Didnt think so. PCI video cards are pretty rare these days. You can find them here and there, but most manufactures do not offer a PCI version.

Bortz
On the side note,

Enron, are you stuck covering up some financials or what?! Get back to me regarding the basketball thing fucko! Email me or give me a call.

jael
Bitch Switch, Glub Hub

Switches and hubs are used in conjunction with routers to share internet connection, or for connections on LAN's only. They don't understand IP's, they use something called a MAC address, which is basically a computer serial number. The internet doesn't understand the MAC (for all intents and purposes), and the switch/hub doesn't understand the IP.

A router keeps something called a "routing table", which is just a list of IP's and their "hostnames" linked to MAC addresses. So the router can assign an IP to a computer and keep track of their MAC address as well. Here is another fine ASCII diagram:

{internet} <--> DSLModem <--> [router:with routing table] <--> switch <--> Computer #1 with IP, Computer #2 with IP, etc.

This allows the computers on the LAN (local area network) to communicate with each other through the switch or router, and allows the LAN to connect to the WAN (wide area network, aka internet) through the router. To make a long story short, a switch/hub is basically a wire splitter. You can share the same signal though multiple computers with a switch/hub. There is much, much more to this story, but that is basically it.

And no, you don't need the exact brand of D-Link Router, but man, it's cheap and its a great router. It's the only one that I have really found that allows firewall configuration and port tinkering out of the box. I think Enron mentioned to me awhile back that my old Linksys could do it to, but I needed to flash the firmware, and I just never did. Again, think back to the computer mantra, "more or less, you get what you pay for." If you skimp on the router, who knows what kind of service it will give you and for how long. Food for though, Mr. Mannings.
shoot my face

Well, thanks for the info Eric. It was only $20 bucks, and I don't wanna swap out my ethernet card to save 10 bucks. Hey- what the FUCK does the switch do then? I'm gonna keep it- if it just gonna be a paper weight? Fuckin' switch! Also, I'll go to frys tomorrow- I saw a shit load of those D-Link router types o things. If they don't have that exact brand, I just gotta make sure it says "router", right?

Jael: Ya, lets play, but now the next big obstacle I hit is my computer itself. I'm pretty much just below the min spec of most games these days. Anyone have a PCI graphics card for sale? :(
Thanks guys...
49 bucks thats el-cheapo!

Prices have sure dropped since I bought my router, or maybe it was just the linksys. For the price that i paid $249 vs what it does, yeah I would say that that's pretty pale in comparison to the 49 dollar unit. I don't know too much beyond that as I only use the basic features, and never really had to mess around with the DCHP and proxy stuff. To it's credit though, I've only really had problems with the outdated firmware, which I downloaded new patches for. And since then I haven't had any connectivity problems.

Rudy: Glad that the installation was simple. I guess they've made it a little simpler than when I had the installs or they just made it look complicated???

Let's go meet up and play some online games!

Jael

Router Router Router

You need a router. Thats why. Switches and hubs don't understand IP addresses, so when DSL comes in, you get one IP address and that's it. Which means only one of your computers will get the IP to use on the internet. An IP address is like a mailing address for the information being sent over the internet, if you have no IP, you cannot recieve any information, ie no internet. You should be able to communicate between the two machines on the hub using "hostnames" or the name of the computer, if you care, probably not, but you will only be able to go on the internet with the one computer that was given the IP first, meaning the Mac.

If you have a Router, the router uses the one connection to the internet and assigns its own IP's to all the computers on the network, effectively sharing the IP you are given and dividing it between all the machines on the network. Looking kinda like this crappy ASCII diagram:

{internet} <---> DSL IP - [router] <-->IP#1, IP#2, IP#3, etc., etc.

Hope that helps, you need to drop some cash, or your parents do, to get two computers on the internet using a router. Or routo-rooter as Enron would say. Get something like this, its what I have and its great. Don't bother with a Linksys, they blow Lich's.
I HATE COMPUTERS b/w MY DSL WAS REAL EASY TO SETUP

This has been one of those *real* frustrating computer days. I work until 8pm, Fry's closes at 9pm, so I raced down to M.B. and just got into Frys before they closed. I had heard my DSL modem came in the mail, so I wanted to pick up a cheap Ethernet Card - tried Radio Shak, and they had one for like $25 bucks. Ha, no. So, I found this bundled ethernet card AND switcher/hub thingy for $20 bucks, so thats what I got. I don't really need the hub, but my folks do, so I thought I'd kill 2 birds with one frikkin stone. FUCK. I can't for the life of me get my Dad's computer hooked up through this switch. I spent almost 2 hours fucking with it, and nada. My mom's MAC was working fine through the device, but I had NO LUCK with the pc. Any ideas? Any fuckin website I can go to that will explain it to me?

My computer. The DSLExtreme bizatch told me I'd be "live" on Dec 10th. Well, heh- its working right now! I can't tell how fast it is- i mean, its hella faster, but I haven't fully tested it, so we'll see. Dude: After I installed my new ethernet card (easy as shit), all I had to do for this dsl was plug in a filter they gave me between the wall plug and my phone. Then plugged the modem into the computer. Then it worked. Thats it. I went in to my control panel and setup my email, etc, and POW. So, WHY THE FUCK COULDN'T I GET IT TO WORK AT MY DADS HOUSE! WE HAVE THE EXACT SAME COMPUTERS! :(

Alright- gotta test this shit out- LATE

Thursday, December 05, 2002

I Got a Job

Today I got a job. I start Monday. IT crap at a startup with a VERY successful "boss" who has sold previous companies of his for upwards of 25 million. So maybe ground floor will be promising for me, or it will turn out to be a shite job. I'm the third employee. Great.

Man, Jael, you're breaking my heart passing up a rousing game of PBI to go to a Golden State (7-11) game? Sheesh, you might as well be wasting your time at a Laker (7-13) game or something. PBI dude!

ADDED:Also, in celebration for getting a job, I just ordered a pizza for dinner on the web. So easy, its sick. Pizzahut.com guys, check it out and see if they deliver to your area!
San Francisco The number 1 single city in US

Continuing on my SF story last night, ate dinner at a bar. My cousin and I were happily discussing different topics important to life, Basketball, Sex Life and money making business concepts. While we were on the topic of Sex life, I had mentioned it's been a while since the pipes been cleaned. It's a little rusty. But I was sharing my new philosophy of serious relationships and finding "the one". I didn't want to stay on the dating track anymore, not that it has ever been a runaway success, but I just felt, it's time to switch gears. Hence the reason why I've been single for so long. My cousin pointed out that that afternoon he had gotten 2 telephone numbers AT LUNCH, and that SF is the bustling place to pickup asian girls. After years of being non-dating I guess he's switched to the dating scene. Good for him.

Anyways we moved on to a topic of Basketball and two guys started talking to us. This indian guy was pretty cool and professional looking and he ended up inviting me to a Goldenstate warriors basketball game on Saturday. I was looking forward to a good PBI game but Enron if youre interested in a basketball game, we can do that for a while and play PBI later. Anyhow email me sucka! I pity da fool! I got one free ticket and I'll split you the cost on the second.

Jacko roody: My experience with DSL is when they were installing the filter, they just put something behind the jack in the wires. I can't remember. It's been a while. But the hard part comes when your not getting the signal and you have to fiddle with something outside, and then you have to log into the DSL company website for access. I'm sure they'll provide some instruction, but it's not a quick and painless process. Usually takes the guy 30-45 minutes to do the job. It might take you hours. But give it a shot!

jael

Why, I oughta!

Ok- MY BAD. I meant to say: "My cable tv provider wasn't offering CABLE INTRAWEBSURFGO!" I went to the websites for my 2 possible cable companys, and both of them said "no intraweb for you!" Oh well- I get a 30-day trial with this DSL company- if its slow as shit, I'm cancelling. If its fast, then cool. :) Why would it be hard to do the self install? I think I need to install some "filter" thingys and set up my Explorer and Outlook Express. What am I missin, jacko???

Wednesday, December 04, 2002

Crazee Nutzecles

RUDY MANNINGS your fucking nutz! Lots of Luv player.

But you gotta lay off the crack pipe. Your cable provider not providing DSL you say? That's odd since they should provide cable modems... =) Ethernet cards are cheap and abundant. You shouldn't have to get anything though. If you get DSL, they SHOULD provide the initial installation, that comes with a DSL modem box, and an ethernet card OR a choice of a pcmcia card (for laptops). Mine were usually offered for free due to some promotion, but installation fees run you ~40-80 bucks. one time setup fee. If you are looking to do it yourself, your in one hell of a job ahead of you. I'd call eric to come over and maybe help with the install as you may have to run a couple of phone wires. Hope your DSL is fast around your area! Otherwise ethernet cards should run you 10-15 bucks for a no namer brand, or spend about 30-40 bucks buying a kingston, usrobotics, or netgear card. The only difference is the driver support... especially in the future.

Eric: I've been contemplating gun running and dope smuggling. We can run a pirate ship off the barbary coast! (Suddenly wakes up)

well reality is the gaming industry is hard to break in and is run by a small elite. I would even go as far to say the people that works there are assholes. I called Blizzard tech support once and they treated me like shit. And to be honest that tech support dude could probably care less if I quit buying their games. He probably fields hundreds of calls a day. Anyhow, First, I would concentrate on high tech gaming companies, such as Blizzard, Acclaim, EA sports, Hasbro and such. Companies with royalties up the ass from successful titles in the past or current. You certainly don't want to go digging in companies like broderbund (old failing companies). I don't think you'll make it as a graphics designer or a programmer, so I would probably leverage your technical administration skills in applying for a network administrator job. Internet gaming based companies are looking for those, eg Blizzard (check out their website) Origin etc. Also keep in mind you might need to relocate.
Anyways, I thought about gaming as well and have tried this avenue.

Ryan: DAng dude, glad to know your alive!!! So your mom still washes your clothes eh? =D

Sony Playstation 2: Went up to metreon tonight and debated with my cousin what's better: PS2 or Xbox. Then I was playing some games on the PS2. They had about 20 PS2's for people to play with different titles on display. There were some pretty cool games, like UFC. It was pretty realistic. You can grapple and punch people on the ground and stuff. I'd say definitely PS2 wins the number of games but I think Xbox did the right thing to allow 4 controller devices and is the pioneer in internet and laplink capabilities. As of right now, I think I'd rather buy an xbox.

Whew, alright night all. Write some intelligent shit. I'm getting bored at work.
Jael


Once the game is over, the King and the pawn go back in the same box

You should definately try and make it in the game industry- I just don't think there's a whole lot of "it" to "make." Even over at Wizards, I doubt they're making THAT much money. But, its not about the money. It's about you being happy. You love games- get involved. Go make games. :)

xXx Treme
I ordered dsl! I looked through lots and lots of reviews and found an isp that seems to be cool, and it goes live on Dec 10! YAY. I need to get an ethernet card. How much are those? BOO. 40 bucks a month- not too bad. I tried to go cable but my cable provider doesn't do dsl in my area yet. Weird.

MIKE- DONT THROW PENCILS AT ME I MISS YOU!@!@!@!
AND RYAN 2!!!

Hello, Cruel World.

Why must there be so many good games out there? That being said, why must there be so much good stuff out there in general (of course there is so much bad stuff too, but I am being a consumer/optimist right now)? I seriously need a job. Moreover, I seriously need a job that has to do with games. I mean, games are what interest me, and that is about it. Games and hockey games, and music somewhat. And surfing. Mostly games though.

I am sitting here (waiting for a callback from a potential employer...) looking at the WWII rules I bought from Brookblurst thinking, "Man, I would LOVE to play this." Beneath the WWII rules resides the Lord of the Rings Miniatures game rulebook, which is a surprisingly good system for skirmishes. A similar idea to chainmail, very similar, but more streamlined, and a bit less clunky in parts; not a better game, just different. And underneath that are the Mighty Empires rules. To the left of that stack is my painting area for the week as I paint my new Blood Bowl Dwarfs that have been re-released with the game, and behind that painting area is a White Dwarf opened to a some neat paint jobs I am using for inspiration. To the left of my painting area is my Blood Bowl pitch with a game between the Lothlorien Arsenal and the Reikland Reavers X in stasis. Yes, I am playing with myself. Along with all that crap I am thinking about all the cool stuff I have in my closet to play: PBI (what a great game!!), DBA, Battlefleet Gothic, Twilight Imperium, Age of Renaissance, History of the World, Squad Leader, Ban-jo-Man Combat, Formula De, Family Business, Chainmail, D&D, Warhammer, Call of Cthulhu, and the list goes on.

I need to be working in the field of gaming. Seriously. Any ideas?

Yeah, as Eric stated a couple of days ago, Super Mario Cart Advance has seen two cycles of warm water wash. I was going to pitch it in the garbage, but I decided to give it a try anyway and low and behold, it worked! God bless Nintendo.

Sorry I don't post as much. My computer sucks and I am using my mom's to do this right now.

I like Halo too.

Tuesday, December 03, 2002

Punt

Mike is alive and well, well sort of. From the sound of it, he has been having a truly crappy time trying to dance the dance for his supervisors and keep them thinking they are super-cool by writing them 2-3 thousand word weekly installments of bullshit as well as fielding ~60 or so daily emails for some sort of graduate community calendar restructuring. So, he has been a bit busy as they say. He will be back from across the pond on the 14th and remain here until january 8th, which sounds like cool beans! Sounds like a lot more Yay-lo nights! Now if we could only figure out how to get Enron and Jael here as well, everything should be rockin' and rollin'!!

Monday, December 02, 2002

Thailand Nights

This weekend was awesome, second to none except maybe next to a vacation with Rudy to Thailand with cheap hookers and best VD sex nights!! Bring lots of rubbers! :) That way all we have to worry about is the crabs and the rice. I hear they serve some bad rice.

Good Salsa and Chips, Good Team Flag Halo, Good Dinasaur xbox game, Good Railroad game (tough game) Times.

Traffic back was pretty bad compared to a non-thanksgiving weekend. There was jams all the way up the 405 to the 5 freeway and was a little congested on the 580 on the way back. Not bad though considering we made the trip in 8 hours. Stopped by on the way to in-and-out at one of the local rest villas. Some street engineer must have been sleeping when they designed the streets. Fucking idiots. I guess the entrances slash street lights slash traffic flow couldn't accomodate extremely heavy traffic due to oddly designed entrances, small streets and a slow light T junction. So What ends up happening? There were about 6-10 local sherriffs directing traffic at the in and out, mcdonalds, mobil station. Fucking great way to spend tax payers money. They should get sued. No wonder we need to hire so many useless governement employees, so that they can direct traffic at fast food restaurants. Great.

I can't wait to start making my PBI guys and have aaron over to play some games!! yeah.. I don't know when I'm going to have time to do it. Already all the things I've been procrastinating is starting to creep up on me. It's back to the grinding board.

Coolio

Sunday, December 01, 2002

Humanity Point Lossage/Gainage

Awesome seeing everyone, especially Jael and Enron. Cool driving with you nutz. So, here's to hoping tech industry gets back on its feet, Prosti'stuition is wrong, and Jael could have spent that $150 on 8-10 hot sex (but empty) VD sex nights. :)

See ya guys soon. (YEAH- REAL FUCKING SOON.) ;)
An Fun Weekend

Good Halo, bad Seranissima, good Brookblurst, bad house fire in Garbage Grove, good LOTR: The Confrontation, bad hair days for me. Overall, good good fun. Kudos to Jael for dropping a cool $150 on PBI stuff.

And as a side note, Ryan, yes, you all remember Ryan, told me that Gameboy Advanced games still work after going through the wash, twice. You know, just incase. Funny shit.