Office Birthdays Part: 2

Today was the monthly birthday celebration here. Remember that last time, it was pretty cheesy with only a handful of people showing up to get some pretzels. Well, this time, the head HR person decided that instead of providing the food, they would hold a dessert taste-off. Basically, anyone who wanted to enter would bring their favorite dessert to share while 3 mysterious judges would decide on who wins. The first thought in my mind was, dang, they are so cheap, instead of providing the food for the birthday, they will just make the office people bring in food in the disguise of some contest.

2 o'clock rolled around and I head to the room not really expecting to be surprised. Well...I was totally surprised. There were SOOOO many yummy dessert things on display. From bite-sized chocolates, to custard pie, to strawberry cheesecake, to this strange cottage cheese mix, everything was home made! There were enough desserts to fill up an entire conference table. HR provided some default chocolate cake and some rice crispies squares just in case no one brought anything. My personal favorite has to be the bite sized pretzels. They had a little bit of caramel used to hold a chocolate covered pecan in place on the pretzel. The biggest question running through my head was, how would Faalena's cookies stack up to these others?? I have tasted the rest, but the taste of the cookies seem to be fading from my mind. I think I need a refresher!! Shameless attempt to extort some cookies!!!

Update: Seems like the chocolate cheesecake was the winner. The pretzel things (known as Poor man's Turtle) was a runner up.

Back to China

Dropped Mom off at airport this morning. She's off to China for a while then probably back to the US to go job hunting again. Yesterday evening, we went to eat at the local Razoo's Cajun kitchen. The food was good, but nothing specifically extraordinary until dessert. Normally, I never order dessert, but this time, I had to try their "Zydeco Dancer." This thing was possibly the most awesome dessert I have ever tried. It's like strawberry cheesecake, but served on a graham cracker/walnut bedding. It wasn't thick cheesecake filling either, it was fairly light and fluffy. Except for the fact that it was probably about 1000000000000000000000000 calories, It was perfect.

In other random news, I read an article this morning about this Spanish bank robber who thinks of himself like Robin Hood. He's fighting back against the evil corporate institution that is banking and was about to start attacking insurance agencies too. Sounds good? Well the little footnote at the end says "Citing police, Spanish media reported he kept the money he stole, depositing it in several different bank accounts." Ummm, so he's stealing money from banks, just to redeposit them into banks?...It's like stealing friendly engineer's mines and placing them in the exact same spot just so you get the kills instead of the other engineer!!! So Noble.

I can totally see Eastwood with this!!

Just imagine Clint pointing a pistol at some bandit, pulling the trigger, then puffing on his electronic nicotine atomizer. What's amusing is this thing even has a red LED at the end to give the illusion that the person is actually smoking. What's next? E-drinking maybe?

New BF2 Map

EA has just announced a new expansion map for BF2. Set in the African savanna, this map features all 3 factions battling for dominance: Battle at Kruger. The US War machine, having righteous cause, has thundered it's way down to Africa to liberate the oil fields of Nigeria. Unfortunately, because South Africa had the word Africa, Bush sent the USMC advance force there. MEC and PLA have no idea how they ended up there, but thanks to large bags of "laundry" from EA, they have decided to stay and fight. This map also features all new artwork done with facelifts to all three original factions.

Lion: USMC
Water Buffalo: PLA
Crocodile: MEC

Why Spec Ops rule!

Ahh, Spec Ops, those sneaky, annoying, beret-wearing, little bundles of death and destruction. They get an amazing gun, grenades, anti-armor capabilities all in 1 package!! But what makes them unique is C4. Sure, they can use it to blow up stuff, but there are far more important usages of C4. For instance: "Because C-4 burns slowly if simply ignited with a flame, rather than detonated with a primary explosive, soldiers would sometimes use small amounts of C-4 as a fuel for heating rations "

This is totally awesome, airfield going down, but hunger pangs getting to ya? Just whip out some C4, shoot down a few coconuts and have a BBQ.

Have you ever had one of those days where you JUST don't want to go to work? Well, never fear because: "a soldier would occasionally ingest C-4 ... in order to be sent on sick leave." Everyone would have C4 around just for doing this.

Why.....

Why Hollywood...WHY THE HELL ARE YOU MESSING WITH THE CLASSICS!!!! Before they totally destroy the legacy that is this movie, watch it here on Youtube.

The Growing VGI Family

Our nightly adventures of BF2 have attracted the interest of another lost soul in search of ruthlessly slaughter! Lemon's roommate recently ordered the Deluxe version of BF2 and will hopefully join us soon on the fields of battle. Lemon is tremendously awesome at coming up with names. He can now add TheDragOnfruitS to his list of creations along with eLemonator and jOrange. Pspmator will be in Guyana for a year so DOS's arrival is at an opportune time.

A minor Skirmish

After surviving a fierce barrage of Myspace and Runescape, I have managed to reclaim the computer. Scans only revealed 2 tracking cookies so my computer has survived relatively unscathed from this experience. While I would like to claim that I fiercely defeated the oppressors and freed my machine at the end, what really happened was they simply left...to go home to Nigeria. Kinda like in BF2 when you shoot at a plane with IGLAs and claim victory as it flies away....it actually left because it was out of ammo.

Well, I was a little bit too hasty in my assessment that my computer was unscathed. It seems something DID get on it although it didn't really infect my system. Friday night, my Norton started detecting this program: w32.sillyfdc, that was trying to execute a .exe in one of my temporary internet file directories. With Catnipped's help, I went through a whole long list of instructions on how to remove this worm. After 3 hours, I finally figured out that the virus hadn't actually infected my system yet. It was just that temporary file that needed to be deleted. A quick restart in safe mode, a quick delete, and my computer is healthy again. +2 revive points, with +1 assist to Catnipped.

Chipotle 2: Burrito Combat

After many months of hearing how amazing this Chipotle place was, I finally had a chance to go today. There were many previous failed attempts caused mostly by the unwillingness of my coworkers to walk about 1/2 mile to the location. I had heard many stories about the fabled "Chipotle Burrito" and was quite eager to see how my encounter with it would go. I went with the chicken fajita burrito with no beans. This burrito truly is massive in size, and tasted pretty good. Next time, I think I will skip out on the guacamole as the taste of it was a bit too strong. Overall, Chipotle was a great experience. While the burrito there is definitely good, it didn't really present itself as unique outside of it's size. It could be the fact that good Mexican restaurants are in ample supply in Houston.

They won the battle, I won the war..sorta

After surviving a fierce barrage of Myspace and Runescape, I have managed to reclaim the computer. Scans only revealed 2 tracking cookies so my computer has survived relatively unscathed from this experience. While I would like to claim that I fiercely defeated the oppressors and freed my machine at the end, what really happened was they simply left...to go home to Nigeria. Kinda like in BF2 when you shoot at a plane with IGLAs and claim victory as it flies away....it actually left because it was out of ammo.

The only sure thing in life

The house guests are finally leaving today, thereby leaving my computer in peace. While this is a semi-joyous occasion, there is also a great bit of sadness mixed in.

Last night, I received a phone call from my uncle in China telling me that my grandmother had passed away that morning. She went peacefully and without much suffering so there is solace in that. She was actually the one who raised me until I was 2 and 1/2 years old in Shanghai. Even though because of medical malpractice she was confined to a walker/wheelchair for almost half her life, she remained a very strong and kind woman, never becoming one of those old, bitter, grouchy hags. Because of the time differences, she actually passed away on the morning of 8/1 which is a bit chilling as this is exactly around the same time my father passed away.

Death of a Ninja

My ninja died a horrible death. Not in battle or during the course of a mission, but by the most grotesque, most foul entity known to man. Yes, I speak of poor software design. I had just completed the last mission and wanted to try a female avatar to see all the cool clothing. I swear, half the fun is dressing up your ninja in various kinds of interesting things like eyepatchs, parrots, frogs, even a machine gun. But anyways, after creating a new ninja and selecting all the different features, the game just automatically saved over my existing file, didn't prompt me to create a new file or give me a warning. I found out later after reading the boards that it was because autosave was on and the game only allows 1 save slot per profile. Why the heck does it only allow 1 freaking save file per profile? It has 10.3 gigs of HD space and yet, the designers didn't think to add the option to save "in another slot?"

On the bright side, I think a lot of the clothing looks better on a female avatar, plus I get a chance to play all the missions again. This must be the way that the developers thought of to increase replayability.

Overall, I think Tenchu Z was great fun. I really think a higher penalty for being detected would be nice. It is so easy to get Ninja 5 rankings in missions that it definitely takes away some of that satisfaction after a perfect run of a level. The Xbox Live coop certainly adds a higher degree of difficulty since if your partner screws up, and you are close by, you will get spotted as well. Here's to looking forward to more Coop wackiness.

On the computer side of things: The packing company is coming today to pack up all the stuff our house guests bought. My dining room looks like a miniature Sam's Club with all the bulk quantity items in there. Hopefully, this signals that they will be leaving soon. I didn't mind the 10-year old and was actually kinda starting to like him, but I certainly wish some ninjas would SK the 13-year old. I hope to regain control of my computer sometime this coming week.

Computer breaking

It seems like I have finally computer broken the 10 year old. He plays whatever he wants while I am not home, but when I get home from work, he knows that his time is up and that I can kick him off the computer at any time. When I do kick him off, he doesn't go into emo mode and start ranting and complaining like the 13 year old. He just walks away and goes to play Xbox.

While using the computer, he loves to play runescape. I had read about the fierce rivalry between WoW and Runescape and how the two communities hate each other, but I don't really see how people can like Runescape. The graphics are so horrible and the combat so boring. He whacked this goblin for 15 minutes before finally killing it. 90% of the time, both he and the goblin were hitting each other for 0 damage.

The most amusing thing was that some other player, let's call him Snal, had told the kid that he could customize armor. Being completely naive, the kid gave his armor to Snal, who promptly ran off with it. Ahh, brings back memories.

I am a spider!!

Catnipped had been telling me about Tenchu Z and how exciting and satisfying it was to pull off these amazing stealth kills. This brought back fond memories of Hitman 2 and pulling off "Silent Assassin" rankings on all the missions. The allure of the cooperative multiplayer (all 50 levels in the game!!) through Xbox live was the icing on the cake.

After a failed attempt at acquiring it from walmart, I was able to pick it up from the local Gamestop. I popped the disc in with illusions of being the ultimate silent assassin, blending in with the shadows, and all that other cool ninja stuff. Sadly, that was quickly shattered as I screwed up on the training mission with the VERY FIRST guy. He even had his back turned. Instead of actually pulling off a stealth kill, I decided to sneak very quietly up to the guy and proceed to make menacing slicing noises behind him without actually hitting him. Of course this alerted him to my presence and I had to run away as that "I am a spider" thing totally didn't work.

The next part of training was supposed to teach me how to use the grappling hook. Now, this would seem like a piece of cake but because my TV was so small, I couldn't read the instructions given on the screen. After finally figuring out how to shoot the damn thing, I decided to do my first ultracool ninja type thing. The plan was to grapple onto the ceiling, then leap into the middle of these three patrolling archers and quickly stealth kill them in rapid succession. The attempt went well enough at the start as I was able to quickly grapple onto the celing; however, I forgot to take into the account that the ceiling was a little too high and so instead of landing gracefully, I ended up falling face first onto the mat right in the middle of the group.

The next part of the training was about how to quietly move through the water. The instructions said to press the green button to "roll quietly into the water." What it failed to mention was that if you press it while you are ALREADY IN the water, your ninja does this amazing high jump out of the water and then proceeds to do a cannonball back into it causing a huge amount of noise.

After going 0/3 on steath kill attempts, I made it to the last part of the training which was doing rapid chain stealth kills. The guys were lined up perfectly for the attempt: backs turned, unaware, never turning. I crouched forward towards the first guy and just when it looked like I might actually pull this off, instead of kiling him with a cool move, my ninja decided to choke hold the guy, creating a lot of noise and alerting the entire room. I figured out that this was because I did not have my sword drawn when attempting to execute a stealth kill. So this time, I snuck up quietly to the group again, and then drew my sword.....which instantly caused all of them to turn around again because the act of drawing a sword causes noise which they can hear.

DunX5 Tourney

Since there was talk of team VGI participating at the PAX 6-man team BF2 tournament, KiraTomato and I have been trying out the 16 player versions of the maps against bots. This makes even the most boring maps into fierce infantry CQC maps. All the 16 player maps are also Double Assault so no side has a uncappable (except Karkand, where USMC has a uncap). We put the bots up to max difficulty and while they do provide a fair challenge in terms of shoot-outs (they actually aim pretty well), their sense of tactics was severely underwhelming. Oftentimes they would just sit there and not do anything when near a enemy flag even if the point was undefended.

Hopefully with some practice, Team VGI can make a good showing and pwn some other teams there. If not, then real life C4 maybe be needed to "auto-balance" the teams =)

Sweet Reprieve

The kids are staying with some other friends for the weekend, so I can actually use my computer!! Of course, let the little kid use the other computer for 3 days, and he breaks it. I am not sure WHAT he was doing, but the 10 year old has managed to destroy the hard drive on the old computer. I really wish I had some C4 right now.

Set for Life

Bless the people who developed this. Now, whenever I have kids, I will never have to worry about doing chores again!! Kabitzin is a noob!!, I already have a level 70 toiletmaster, 70 laundrylord, 70 Dark Vacuum, 70 Carpeteer, and currently leveling a 64 Lawntamer. Just 74 more gold until I can afford my epic.

Karaoke Television

The new string of Karaoke game shows are great and all. They certainly try to make it VERY suspenseful by taking well timed commercial breaks. But....since you can just Google the lyrics, kinda takes the edge off.

Happy...Birthday?

Apparently, birthdays in a corporate environment are a little different from birthdays elsewhere. Today was the designated "birthday" for people born in July. There was much talk from my officemates about how awesome the company birthdays were so I was curious as to what it was all about. 2 pm rolls around and it's time to attend this birthday. I was expecting some decoration, some festivities, maybe a song or two.

I was sadly mistaken. The entire "party" consisted of our going there, taking a birthday...pretzel? (actually quite good) and leaving without even uttering a "happy birthday" or making any small talk with the sparse crowd that had gathered. What a way to age another year!

Totally Organic Experience

Ate at this little restaurant called the Field of Green's today. It came highly recommended by another family friend (with whom the owner bought insurance) who was treating us and our house guests. It's a restaurant that specializes in organic food and vegetables. The overall experience was pretty nice considering I came in with extremely low expectations. The strawberry banana smoothie was actually quite good. It had no extra sweetening and the natural flavoring made it very tasty.

Many different things were served, I personally enjoyed the Salmon steak hamburger and the wild pita pocket the most. The salmon burger was arguably better than a regular beef burger. The salmon was seasoned just right and was nice and juicy. The wild pita pocket had some soy "chicken" and pieces of seasoned tofu which mixed together very well. The house special is the eggplant sandwich, but according to the owner (and chef), the other cooks didn't cook it to her specification and so she decided not to serve it to us.

While the rest of us were busy enjoying the foods that the owner recommended, the two children had other ideas of fun. The 13 year old girl ordered this ginormous Greek salad that must have had 10 lbs of beans and rice in it. I was equally shocked when she actually ate the entire thing. The 10 year old boy was too busy playing with his Pokemon cards to eat, but when he was finally hungry, he ordered.....French Fries. I think he totally missed the mantra of the restaurant.

The meal ended with a dessert of chocolate granola pie. This was an interesting concept as the chocolate was supposed sweetened with maple syrup instead of processed sugar. Instead of pie dough, the bed of the pie was made with granola. It was pretty good..if a bit thick in texture.

Your Space? NO!! MYSPACE!!

I don't quite understand the allure of myspace and how someone can spend 25/8/366 on it. Out of curiosity, I asked the resident addict just what was so important that she couldn't leave my computer. Her response was that "it would be rude not to reply to the comments on her myspace." When asked to consider that it may also be rude to hijack another person's computer without permission, her reply was "psssh, whatever!!" A strong rebuttal indeed.

However, during dinner with our house guests last night, she revealed a critical weakness that may be exploited to rescue my computer from the depths of spyware. The Harry Potter book release! Her parents will not allow her to go to the midnight premiere nor will they get up early the next morning to get a copy. My plan is to get a copy of this fabled book, then slowly tear pages out of it one at a time in front of her until she caves in and abandons my computer. Harsh? yes. Necessary? absolutely!

Wanna buy some knives?

Both Catnipped and I have experienced the awesomeness that comes with selling Cutco Brand knives. We were both duped into attending their "interviews" where the only requirement to get the job is a working car. Even though the whole recruiting process was a bit sketchy, apparently the knives themselves are quite awesome.

The house guests came by and while casually ransacking the home, came across the Cutco Super Shears that I had bought as part of my demo kit a long time ago. They were also one of the first families that I sold some knives too. They went on to rave for 30 minutes about how good the knives were, how awesome those scissors were, and how everyone that uses them immediately want a set of their own. They have been using them for over 8 years now and and are quite satisfied. Certainly makes me feel better about taking their money.

Woe is me...

My computer is no longer safe. The house guests' 13 year old daughter is a devoted myspace addict.. This may be the last transmission before impending doom....h...e..l....p

Simpsons MMORPG

Never saw this episode until now... it's pretty funny.

The Adventures of Friday the 13th

Friday the 13th, woooooo, how scary is it? So Scary! Anyways, I am not superstitious at all and didn't really care, however, my mom seems to have had some interesting adventures. Started yesterday when she wanted to swap cars with me so that she can get the oil changed in my car. After telling her that the steering wheel has some problems and asking if she was really sure she wanted to swap, I finally agreed.

Woke up this morning, drove to the park and ride and all was normal. Around noon time, I get a hysterical call from mom stating she had locked herself out of the house. What happened was, the garage door opener was kinda flaky and didn't open the garage when she pushed it, as she went to manually open the garage, she somehow managed to lock the garage from the inside instead of opening it. For some strange reason, she didn't have the key to the front door and the backyard door had that extra cross-bolt on. Because of the steering problems, she didn't want to drive to downtown either but the bus I took to get home apparently doesn't run until 3 pm!!

However, my mom was much more crafty than I thought as she was able to convince a nearby Nissan dealership that she wanted to have her car "fixed." As a result, she was able to use the showroom to get some free food, tea, and AC. She even snuck the groceries she bought inside and hid them underneath the sofa so they didn't spoil in the sun. Good stuff!

Jury Duty

Yay, my second official summons for jury duty. Last time I got one, I couldn't make it because I was at Cornell. This time however, I am not sure if I will be able to get an excuse not to go. Now before any of you recommend saying really dumb things at the hearing to get out of it, it did not work for this guy....

Return of the Mom

Mom's back in Houston for a month. Looking forward to some good food and lots and lots of nagging! Yay! =) So glad to be employed...

Keep the Change!!

So today, I went to buy a monthly metro pass since I figure I would be taking public transportation for all my commuting needs. The lady calculated the total and it came out to be $74?? I was thinking, 2 bucks per round trip, 20ish days a month that I will be commuting, which comes out to be about $40 bucks. How the heck is a monthly pass more expensive than just paying per day? Well, it turns out that the ACTUAL fare is supposed to be $2.50 per trip, so $5 for the round trip. Seems like I accidentally underpaid metro last time round...Funny how the driver didn't even bother to tell me.

So How Awesome is Houston Metro?

Sooo awesome. No rain today, even though the weather guy predicted a 80% chance for rain. This allowed my trying out Houston Metro. I basically go to my local "park and ride" and take 1 bus all the way downtown. It was super smooth and I arrived downtown even faster than if I had driven. Plus parking is free and the bus fee is only 1 dollar to and from downtown resulting in a massive transportation expense of 2 bucks. The best part is that Accenture allocates $100 per month for taking Houston Metro while only giving out $50 for parking.

The First Day

Had my first day of work today. It turned out to be pretty much your average first day of work as I was bombarded by about 50 billion different bits of information that I am still trying to grasp.

The day didn't start out too well as it was absolutely pouring rain in the morning. Plans to take the bus were soon scrapped as I didn't really feel like walking half a mile in wind-blown rain. I decided to drive there as it seemed safer. Thank goodness I left 1 hour earlier because the traffic was inevitably horrible because of accidents caused by the rain.

The last time I went to downtown, I had no clue where to park and ended up with a $18 parking fee for 5 hours of parking time. This time though, I was prepared as the nice folks at Accenture had drawn a map of downtown showing all the one-way streets and all the cheap parking garages. There was one slight problem though, they had marked all the one-way streets as going in the opposite direction as what they actually went. With 15 min to spare, I arrived at downtown, but thanks to the ludicrously wrong map, it took 10 minutes to find parking. The lot marked as only $6 bucks a day for the "early bird special" (arrival before 9 am) turned out to be $13. Damn, obviously these birds have taken the Latrell Sprewell path to financial freedom and need that extra 116% to feed their families.

The rest of the day turned out pretty well with nothing particularly disastrous happening. Hopefully tomorrow, the rain will let up a little and allow me to take public transportation.

On a slightly irritating note, it's pretty apparent that Roger Ebert really didn't do much research before writing his review of Transformers.

Transformers?

Who needs special effects when you have good old fashioned human imagination!

Tales of the Abyss

While waiting for people to come back from vacation and between sending out resumes, I was able to finish Tales of the Abyss for PS2. Some interesting points:

1. Although there was no Japanese language option, the voice acting for the characters were done quite well. After hearing some of the Japanese voices, I think that some of the English voices were a lot less annoying than the high pitched Japanese voices. The jokes the characters make are genuinely funny and often times I was LOLing.

2. The fighting system is awesome and improves upon the already fun Tales system. Tales of the Abyss uses the new Flex-Range Linear Motion Battle System (FR-LMBS). Aside from sounding like a BF2 assault rifle, the system allows the player to move around a fully 3D arena with ease and makes comboing enemies all the more amusing.

3. The story was superb. It never really slows down and it alternates between seriousness and comic relief. It all plays out in the end and every loose end is tied up.

4. The character development is also done very nicely. The main character is soooo annoying at the beginning of the game that you really don't feel bad for him when everyone (except 2 people) ditch him halfway through the game. But then after a while, he becomes more likable and eventually, you see his progression from teenage angst to something a bit more mature. Of course all the other characters have mysterious pasts and they are all revealed as the game passes.

5. The game was very challenging. Especially the boss fights. I decided to play it through on the "Hard" difficulty the first time through (Beating it once unlocks "Very Hard" and Unknown" difficulties) and many of bosses were pretty rough, taking quite a few tries to beat.

All in all, Tales of the Abyss was a great game, and I look forward to the next Tales game.

Waiting finally over

After 2 and 1/2 years, Accenture's HR department finally had enough people return from vacation to process my paperwork. I will be starting this coming Monday. Ironically, my manager, Bru Three is going on vacation today and won't be back until Tuesday. I look forward to taking lots of vacations once I start working if the hiring process is any indication...

The waiting game

This must be a particular hobby for companies as this is the 4th time I have been told to wait for the "final decision." While the recruiter keeps telling me to hang in there, I am pretty fed up with this crap. I think I will just schedule my tickets and if it happens to be in conflict with anything, too bad. Luckily, there are some other interviews on the horizon just in case Accenture is playing the dog on the leash game with me.

So...I guess they DO look at it

Got a phone call this morning from a background checking service for Accenture saying that they could not verify my employment at Shell Technology and Service Center. I let them know that it was a contracted position through BluWare and gave them their number. Hopefully it will get resolved. Now, I used to think that companies didn't really verify this information and just took it for granted. I am glad I didn't put something like First Sergeant in the USMC!! While this wouldn't have been entirely "untrue", I think forcing them to look through the military ranks for a certain "Cucumbernator" probably would have pissed them off further. Hmmm.....I hope they don't find out about that harem I used to run...

Goodbye to WoW

After more than a year of playing World of Warcraft. I decided to step away from this game for an extended period of time. While the social aspect of the game was still very awesome and I enjoyed the company, the game itself was getting rather repetitive and boring to some degree. Here's to exploring new challenges and to my friends still visiting Azeroth on a daily basis: Pleasant Journeys and may all your loot by phat!

Bird rescue

The BlupnutMM couple were walking their dog, when all of a sudden, they found a baby chick that had fallen from it's nest. After a bit of convincing, I was swindled into simply picking up this baby chick and putting it into the nest. Sounds simple? Not really, since after I had picked up this bird, BlupnutMM informed me that she had no idea where the nest was.... So okay, after wandering around a bit looking for a nest, a decision was made: Let the bird die, or attempt to save this bird by taking it to an animal hospital. After little deliberation, it was decided to take the bird to the animal hospital. When we got there, I was informed that they did not accept birds, and that the local wildlife shelter did. So after another 30 minute drive, we managed to get the bird to the right people. The bird turned out to be a dove, and apparently was only a couple of weeks old. Consider it my little contribution to world peace.

MisBehavior

Just finished up the Behavioral Interview. It went very well and I think that's the last step in the process. I called the recruiter afterwards and she told me an offer should be made on Thursday if all goes well. I would really like to thank Moonfleck for the excellent links to the behavioral interview questions as all of the questions asked were listed on the page, some even word for word. Almost makes up for her C4ing my LAV last night!!

Misconduct

Accenture has scheduled a "Behavioral" interview for me tomorrow. I am not sure exactly what kind of interview this is gonna be, but the recruiter told me that it's going to be scenario based. So something like, angry customer calls regarding something, how do you react. I am pretty sure that "Convince them to give Lans all their gold" isn't the best answer.

Dog Days of Summer

The BlupnutMM couple are crashing over at my place for this weekend. Of course, they had to bring their lovable dog, Teddy. Being a pretty laid back lazy person, I have never really wanted a pet. There was a brief brush with insanity where I almost got 2 kittens at once, but thankfully I recovered just in time.

I try to ignore this dog as much as I can, as I just really don't want to play with it, get slobbered on, etc etc, but he seems to have some kind of power with those eyes of his. Must... resist.....gah, have to go walk it...or something, randomly barking at door.....

Okay, so this dog seems to want to go out, it goes out, sits on the grass for 2 min, then immediately wants to go back in....what the heck...isn't it supposed to pee or something???

Judgement Day

Went for the Accenture interview today. I believe the interview went very well. Met the members of the team and they were all pretty enthusiastic about having me on board. The project lead was also quite happy with how the entire thing went. I also had lunch with the team and it felt like I was a member of the team. There are still 2 more candidates after me and since I don't know who they are, I cannot send my ninjas.

Update: Apparently, just the mere thought of sending ninjas has discouraged my other competitors and the Accenture recruiter has informed me that they will be extending an offer next week! yay!

Sweet...

Which Programming Language are You?

Completely unrelated note, ahh fond memories.

Basketball at it's Best

Awesome article about flopping in the NBA. Big Shot Brob takes one for the team, but the BEST flop evah has to be this one....he wasn't EVEN touched.

2nd Interview

The recruiter told me that I have an on-site interview with Accenture this coming Friday. Time to prepare for this interview!

BasketCrawl

Ran full court basketball for the first time tonight in about 4 months. All I can say is that man, I need to do more cardio instead of just weight training. I was so winded at 5-5, I am not sure how I managed to survive to the end. Also, the things I used to be able to do, I couldn't pull off. The shooting...well let's just say if I hit the rim, I counted it as a moral victory. Luckily, this has given me new perspective and I look forward to doing a lot more cardio and playing a lot more ball this summer.

On the non-outdoory note, Papaya's brother recently picked up BF2 and is having a blast. This stirred some very fond memories of =VGI= turning many a tide of battle. The thrill of parachuting out of the Blackhawk on Wake 2007, and our awesome moments of domination. Who can forget Ender's famous "Go get that tank".... Soo, anyone interested in picking this thing up again?

Not so impossible after all

Kolaap recently posted about what a Mario Bros. level would be like if I designed it. Well, perhaps it's not so hard after all, as here is a video of a speedrun through it.

Curses!!

Today, had lunch with Papaya, Frank, and some Russian guy from Frank's work place. Apparently, this Russian guy is trying to learn Chinese and Frank had been "teaching" him choice phrases. Well, these phrases turn out to be cuss words. This lead to an interesting question being asked. Does Mandarin have many cuss words/phrases? Or is it just a few choice ones and people recycle them with random additions?

Tonight, we dine in HELL!

Awesome video of a Doom3 speedrun on nightmare difficulty. If you are bored and have nothing to do, check it out.

Kung, this one's for you!

Kung loves his Elite Beat Agents. These people go around, singing and dancing to help cheer up people in need. Apparently, there is a line they won't cross.

PAX

Those of you interested in the brouhaha in Seattle during PAX, March 31 is the last day to register for the discounted 3 day pass ($40). Of course, if you register afterwards, it's only $45...so not THAT big of a change, but still 5 bucks is 5 bucks.

This is.. SPARTA!!!

Finally saw 300 over the weekend. I went into this film expecting a bloodbath of epic proportions. While I was not disappointed at the amount of killing, I was quite surprised by the quality of the acting. Sure some of the roles came off stiff, but these are killing machines, bred for battle. Probably not much time for sensitivity training. The choreography in the fight scenes were superb. The fluid motions of block/parry/stab in one motion was cool enough, but watching the entire Spartan force do it was just awesome. I was also surprised at how historically accurate the portrayal of Spartan society was. All in all, great movie. Makes me want to build a bottomless pit of my own so I have a way to deal with wandering mormons/salesman/etc etc.

Mormon: Hello sir, how are you doing today?
Me: This is STAFFORD!!!!!!! *KICK

The Hunt Continues

The job hunt continues. Had an interview on monday, but it turned out to be one of those "group" interviews where everyone gets into a huge room, then the "interviewer" proceeds to make a sales presentation instead of an actual interview. Ended up costing me 4 bucks parking since I parked for 1 hour and 32 min which pushed me into the 4 dollar bracket. While the product was this identity theft shield/pre-paid legal service, it actually seemed pretty useful to have a lawyer on call 24/7. Not that I would need a lawyer....for anything....of course.

Veggie invasion of PAX?

The Penny Arade Expo (PAX) will be on August 24th to 26th of this year. I think it would be a good time for the Veggies to meet up again, much like the one held on New Years. Catnipped, being the gracious host she is, has decided that we can crash at her place and has offered to pay for all of our tickets (okay maybe not quite, but vicious rumors is what I do best!). What say all you Veggies?

The Hunt continues

Been pretty busy signing up for all different kinds of job searching services and such. So far, I have tried Monster, Robert Haff, Texas workforce commission, and working on getting the Houston Chronicle for the classifieds. Anyone else have some other strategies to share? On the lighter side of things, I believe this is a good example of how to motivate a geek to work out.

Second worst day of my life

Well, as of tonight, I am officially unemployed. I was let go today from my company because I "didn't fit in" the company. When I joined, they had just received a very big project and needed the extra help. Now that the project is completed, they no longer have ample work for me to do. At least that was the basic explanation.

Obviously, now lies two paths to follow:

1. Go to business school: This option is available to some degree as my boss did say he would still be a reference should I decide to choose this route. However, this is not the most financially reasonable option.

2. Find another job: This is probably the most likely route I will take if I cannot get any major grants for business school since as it stands I can hardly afford even a single semester at a reasonably ranked business school.

Although I must admit, I was not particularly enjoying my job as a programmer there and I certainly did feel like I was on the outside looking in the entire time. Here's to rolling with the punches

Chinese New Year!

This past Chinese New Year, I went over to the BluPnutMM couple's house. The food was great, but the highlight of the night was playing Taiko Drum Master. It's just really really fun banging to great classical hits like Beethoven, Hungarian Dance, and William Tell Overture. What's interesting is there were actually some relatively recent songs like "Toxic".

And speaking of rhythm and beats games, check out this guy playing Freebird on his...keyboard? I didn't even know Freebird existed as a DDR song. While obviously not as exciting as my epic duel with Kung in Karaoke Revolution, this contains quite a bit of drama. Just when you think it's over....it's not

Don't like playing the default songs? Put in your own songs!! Full Song here.

If you had a succession technique..

What would it be? Well, find out here!

FC on Freebird?

This is a very interesting video of a 100% FC of Freebird on expert. Some say he used the hyperspeed "cheat" but meh, it's still pretty damn amazing.

What is Love?

Baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me, no more... donedone donedone donedonedone donedone donedonedone donedone donedonedone..

Seriously though, very interesting study about the brain activity of people in love and of people who have had their hearts broken.

On another note, my faith in humanity was increased a bit more today.

And today during lunch...

Lunch with the BlupnutMM couple always leads to interesting topics of discussion. There has been a huge increase in the number of rhythm and beats games lately. Games like Guitar Hero/Karaoke Revolution/some kinda Drum game so this got us to thinking about possible new games in the same genre.

Chef Hero: The main prop for this game would be a cutting board and knife with fake left/right hand. As you chop your vegetables, it measures how thin your slices are. You have to hold the left/right hand on the food as you chop so if you accidently chop off a piece of the fake hand, you get points deducted. Sounds like a winner to me.

Vaccum Hero: Ahh, it's impossible to get children (and adults) to vaccum the floor. So why not make it fun and exciting. The prop for this game would be an actual vaccum and you get points on how much dirt you collect using the vacuum. The more you suck, the more you rock. Maybe some kinda star power mode where your vacuum goes into overdrive and tears the carpet from the floor.

Harp/Piano Hero: While having the same mechanics as the other music games, it just forces you to purchase a larger and more expensive prop. $$$ for the win.

Best Around

So the local radio station I listened to had a contest to give away some Gwen Stefani tickets. The game they happened to be playing was movie trivia. The DJs give out some hints about a movie and two listeners have to guess the title. They take turns and whoever has the most at the end wins. So anyways, today was "Favorites" day as the DJs got the favorite movie of everyone in the studio and used those as the movies. Let's see if anyone can guess these:

1. Scrawny neighbor boy learns martial arts from an old hermit to defeat local bullies and gets the girl at the end.

2. Grizzled Vietnam Widower leads neighbor kid to success over the local gang

3. A troubled boy learns lessons in life through painting houses, washing cars, and sanding patios

4. Inspirational tale of the fight of one individual against the oppression from many through the help of an elderly hermit who likes to cut Banzai trees.

5. So and So DJ's favorite song is from this movie: "You're the Best!! Arrrrrouuuuuunnd.."

The sad thing is, neither of the women participating in this game knew what any of these movies were. You would think they would catch onto the pattern after the first couple...

Why we watch

The titanic struggle of teams, leading up to the ultimate battle for dominance. Weekend warriors preparing for the final clash with the winner tasting the thrill of victory and the loser a humiliating defeat. Eternal glory for the winner and simply the first loser for the other. This is the reason we watch Superbowl commercials. Oh and there was some kinda sporting event or something involved too.

A Change of Surroundings?

A good friend of mine in California recently encountered a startup that was looking for people to do data analysis and some SQL/Java work. This seemed right up my alley so I am submitting a resume and hoping for the best. I have always loved the West coast and so this may be my chance to finally move back there. Hopefully it all works out.

I think I'll name it...Pony

Thanks to the charitable donations of a few Oomites, I was able to purchase my epic flying mount in WoW. It's worth every penny imho as it speeds up travelling significantly. It also makes mundane tasks such as mining/herbalism incredibly easy. Blizzard really should allow players to name their mounts (maybe just the epic ones since it's such a big investment).

The Force is definitely strong with this one

Wish I could find the full length of this video. Notice the awesome special effects and the severe decapitations...

The Grind

So, WoW expansion is already out and the first level 70 occurred a mere 28 hours after the release. Some helpful tips I found for questing/grinding:

1. Get an epic mount. Yes, it's expensive, but it's also fast! I would say, at least 40% of the time it takes to complete a quest is simply travelling back and forth between destinations. Even if it takes every last penny, getting an epic mount should be a #1 priority. Gold is really easy to make in the expansion; since tuesday, I have already made over 850 gold (not selling any greens/blues/playing AH) which is more than enough to get epic mount/training.

2. Get as many quests as possible (ideally all of them) from a specific quest hub. Take a general look at all the quests, and plan a route that knocks out as many of them as possible in an efficient manner so that you can...

3. Go to town as little as possible. This reduces travelling time significantly (increases exp/hr) but runs into one very small problem...

4. Get at least all 16 slot bags. Bank all things that can possibly be banked. Not going to town very often will lead to a vast collection of vendor trash/crafting materials/etc being accumulated. This point sucks for a hunter since I have to give up 1 whole bag space for the quiver.

5a. Use crowd control as a method of queuing up mobs. As a hunter, when I have to kill X number of a specific mob, I usually put pet on one, then pull another one into a freeze trap. As soon as first one is dead, put pet on trapped one, then go trap another. Basically leads to constant stream of mobs. Disadvantage is when unlucky spawns occur which leads to way too many mobs to handle. If your class doesn't have a way of reliable crowd control, or is very mana intensive and requires frequent breaks....

5b. Kill every yellow mob while questing. This helps reduce the significant downtime when searching for mobs to kill for a quest. It also ensures that when actually killing the quest mobs, no other mobs get in the way (since they are dead already). It also leads to a good amount of income from the extra vendor trash.

6a. Quests that go by better in a group:
i. Kill X quests: pretty obvious since all group members get credit
ii. Kill X to get Z item: Group only if it's a SURE drop and everyone gets credit (usually the case if only 1 item is needed)
iii. Kill exceptionally difficult mob: These are usually the end of a chain and leads to good rewards.
6b. Quests that go better solo:
i. Kill X to get Z number of items: These suck, since every other player adds more mob kills
ii. Gather X number of items: same reason as above
Of course, all quests go by better in a group if team members are good friends/family/Class with special skill that speeds up travelling.

No internet makes Velius something something.....

Internet down....thanks to the bad weather here in Houston. Windstream says that 134k of their customers are without internet and that they are working around the clock. Woke up this morning....still no internet.... Urge to kill rising.....risinnnnngggg

TBC Hunter

I believe hunters got a pretty big buff in TBC. The beastmastery tree has often been the laughing stock tree for endgame hunters. Despite this, I always liked the beastmastery tree and I just thought that a hunter should always have a good pet at his side. Well, thanks to the expansion, Beastmastery is weak no more.

With the improvements in the tree, I now gain health/armor/attack speed/frenzy along with my pet. My pet also does more damage and everytime it crits, everyone in the party gains a damage increase. My attack speed now hovers around 2.2 seconds thanks to serpent's quickness. This is perfect with the newly implemented steady shot.

With steady shot, I can weave a shot between each autoshot which gives me an effective attack speed of ~1 second. The old 9 second cycle has been replaced with my own customized 5 second cycle.

I don't wanna be...

Before going to China, my mom charged me with a very important task. I had to swipe a discover card twice each month. Apparently, as a stipend for taking out a large no-interest loan, Discover required them to use the card at least twice a month or else the interest rate would skyrocket to something like 27%. The card itself also had a very high 19% interest on items purchased. Luckily, I usually circumvent this by buying 2 packs of gum at 20 cents each.

Well, today, as I was doing my usual round of purchasing 2 packs of gum at a local store. There was quite a long line and this guy behind me was obviously growing inpatient. So as I proceeded to scan a pack of gum twice, he looked at me VERY suspiciously. The problem is this card is in my mom's name, so in essence, I am committing credit card fraud twice every month by forging my mom's signature (with her permission) on the receipts. This guy kept staring at me like I was a criminal until I finally finished, and kept staring at me as I walked briskly to the exit.

Oh where does the time go

A non-WoW related post? What is going on?? Yes yes, this post is actually going to be about work. We always complain about how some programs we use can be faster, how we can do a better job programming them. Well, it may not be as easy as it seems. After toiling away at this project for a month, I have managed to optimize a routine used in it. The total net benefit? I managed to shave 1.5 seconds (3.5s -> 2s) off the run time....whoopie... Of course, this is cummulative, so in regards to runs with huge amounts of data, this change could save hours in overall runtime.

Okay, gotta have SOMETHING WoW related sooo uhhh, Expansion in 7 days!!! Looking forward to powerlvling all my characters to 70! WSG tonight.

3-man Onyxia

I have always advocated the idea that paladins are the most mana efficient healers in WoW. I would almost say better than priests. Here's the power of paladin healing as a group 3-mans Onyxia.

Patch Day

Today is patch day. All my mods will be gone....again......

Darwin Award winner....

Oh the Beemanity!!!!

Please don't eat me.

Recently found that my house was infested by termites! While I do enjoy watching what kinds of intricate patterns they can eat into my walls, I enjoy not having my roof collapse on me more. As such, I hired Orkin to come and eliminate them. Didn't start out too well as the first lady I talked to accidentally signed me up for "pest control" instead of "termite control" and so I wasted half a thursday waiting. After getting signed up correctly, the people did a overall fantastic job.

They came and drilled holes in my walls and foundation, then foamed the house up good! Then they replaced everything they cut and left it pretty much just as it was before. Overall, I rate their service as very professional.

On a completely different note: I was finally able to pick up my Grand Marshal's Dirk this morning. All I need is a +15 agility enchant and I am all set. Never realized how much fun Combat Daggers can be!

Passionate Love for lunch...mmmm

Had lunch with Papaya couple, BluPnutMM couple, and squash at this new place called Cafe 101. What is supposed to set this cafe apart, was that the waitresses all had to wear a flannel shirt and really short shorts. BluPnutMM advertised it as the "Asian Hooters". A look at the wonderful drinks menu gives you an idea of what kind of atmosphere they wanted. I felt really really awkward ordering.
Waitress: "What would you like"
Me: "I'll have have the pork chop with blackened bean sauce"
Waitress: "And would you like a drink"
Me: "Yes, I'll have Passionate Love".... or
Me: "Yes, I would like a Young Girl's Dream".. or
Me: "Yes, gimme a Little Lover"....
Besides the obvious gimmick drink names, the food really wasn't that good. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't good either. The service was pretty bad and it took them FOREVER to calculate the bill properly. So.. in conclusion, as much as I would like to have Intimate Love everyday, I will have to pass on Cafe 101.

I suck at poker

The last day went by pretty fast. Dropped Catnipped off at her aunts house in the morning, then went to breakfast at IHOP with the rest of the crew. Kung displayed his awesome pancake eating ability by ordering the all-you-can-eat pancakes and devouring 4 plates. This was followed by another session of Guitar Hero.

After Guitar Hero, we tried to play table tennis at the local Chinese Civic Center, but didn't have any ping pong balls. We decided to go to the grassy field across the street to play some football, but the rain cut our game short. After getting back, we decided to play some Texas Hold'em poker (no actual betting of course). This was my first time playing the game and it obviously showed since I repeatedly lost my house/car/firstborn to Ender. Thinking back, I got cleaned out by Tochi twice and Ender 357569875478 times. Kung was the most experienced poker player out of all of us and he pretty much went conservative the whole time and let us enjoy screaming "All In" on hands where we had pocket 3s.

The day ended with dinner at Pappadeux's and a round of some PS2 card game that I cannot remember the name of. I do remember Ender owned the other team with his Vampire toll booth.

Legomyegolas

Day 4 brought about the unveiling of Ender's amazing archery abilities. The day started off with... Guitar Hero, much like the other days. After rescuing Catnipped, who was briefly kidnapped by her aunt to have lunch, we proceeded to Viking Archery. At this location, you could either shoot regular Recurve bows or the more powerful Composite bows. Being beginners, we all shot the recurves. The shooting range there was called Viking LANES.

We each had a paper target (the usual concentric circles with a red center) to shoot at, placed at about 30 yards away or so. We intimidated the targets all day long. Shooting many arrows in a circular pattern around the target, but not actually hitting it. I am sure they were quivering in fear at the end. The highlight of the day was a brilliant display of shooting by Ender.

About halfway through our session, Ender drew back his bow and let an arrow fly. What happened next left us all unable to draw our bows....because we were laughing so hard. Ender's arrow had managed to fly over the targetting board and pierced the "E" in Viking Lanes. The "E" then hovered there for a split moment, then split in two and crashed onto the ground, leaving the sign reading Viking Lans.
We took some hunting-pictures (Note: Picture is just a random example of what the pose in the actual picture was) of Ender posed with the mortally wounded "E". Here is the kill-shot. Ender didn't want his identity revealed so I altered the picture using my 1337 MS Paint skills to depict his Tomato roots. After Ender's spectacular kill, we went to Korean BBQ to finish the day.

Day 3

Ender and Tochi stayed up pretty late playing this Gundam fighting game. The game seems very fun and all, but the way the characters scream was a bit annoying. Nothing like going to bed to anime battle screams.

In the morning, we went to have dim sum at Kim Son (not Kim Sum). We were able to make it there JUST before morning rush. It was good for us because all the carts were filled and there weren't that many customers. The instant we sat down, the carts came to us like vultures circling prey. Our table was filled with various foods in a matter of seconds. The entire meal lasted no less than 20 minutes. Usually, Dim Sum lasts quite a while because people chat or read newpapers....we just ate.

The BBQ went just fine. Kung demonstrated his mastery of the grill by cooking up some very juicy burgers and hotdogs. He also added some grilled chicken breast. The BluPnutMM couple brought asparagus wrapped in bacon (Doug would be proud!!!) and some spinach/cream cheese triangle thingies. Potato provided the dessert and Squash/Plum brought some rolls. List of things we did:
1. Karaoke Revolution: My throat hurts......we separated into teams and did a sing-off. Team Awesome (Me, Ender, Tochi, BluPnutMM, and Papaya) won the first game 3-1 but Team Better Than Awesome (Kung, Catnipped, Papaya's wife, BluPnutMM's other half, and Potato) came back with a string of 5!!! perfect songs and took the next 2 games 3-0 and 3-1.
2. Super Monkey Ball: Lots and LOTS of button mashing, no real monkeys were hurt in the playing of this game.
3. Mafia: Nothing like a game of mistrust and deceit to finish off the night. Many villagers were slain, but the mafia for the most part didn't stand a chance until the very end when we altered the rules a bit to give the mafia a better chance. Catnipped and Ender make particularly deadly mafia.
4. Guitar Hero: Ongoing still, but I am pretty sure Ender is hooked =p

Day 2

Things went very smoothly today. Picked up Lemon/Tochi/Ender without a hitch. The nice thing was that all three of their flights were late, so the mutual lateness cancelled each other out. This was thanks to a perfectly executed Triangle offense. Lemon/Tochi flew into Houston from IAH but Ender decided to be cool and fly in via Hobby. This is truly awesome because I had to travel along a triangle in order to pick all of them up. However, the sheer amount of driving involved allowed me to give a very brief tour of Houston on the way back.

Had lunch at umm some Golden Cafe place that's VERY big (according to Blupnutmm). The food was good for the most part. After dropping off their belongings, we hit up the local Walmart to pick up the grillables and other necessities for the 1st. Picking up the grill though proved to be quite a bit more challenging.

Not only was this grill not at the original intended location, but it turned out there was no way I could pick it up in my Camry. Essentially, I had to borrow a truck just to get the BBQ pit from some random person whose daughter had borrowed the grill from the original owner. But, everything worked out again.

The rest of the night was filled with varied amounts of Gears of War, Guitar Hero, and Karaoke Revolution. I found out that, trying to imitate Whitney Houston can cause much pain... My throat is sooooo sore this morning. Went to sleep on bloodcurdling japanese battle cries. Grill is today, should be fun!

First Day

Picked up Catnipped today from the airport. Even though her flight came in 45 minutes late, the TV monitor brightly displayed her flight as being "on time". My Xbox360 is working just fine. We spent about 6 hours playing the Gears of War Coop campaign. This was a terrific experience.

The ambient sounds and general atmosphere of the game is just so creepy and very well made. The coop elements made it actually feel like we were helping each other, instead of just the usual "it's just another extra life for me." Gotta pick up Lemon, Tochi, and Ender tomorrow. Should be fun!

Remember, it's Houston, TEXAS

Those of you coming, please remember that your destination is Houston, TEXAS. If you happen to mistype and get yourself lost, I will not be held accountable for your inability to type. However, being the nice guy that I am, I will provide the information on some possible other Houstons that you may end up at:

Houston, Renfrewshire: Claims itself as the "original" Houston. Has some breweries and some castles. Why practice archery, when you can do REAL archery?

Houston, British Columbia: An awesome mining community. Go find some gold!

Houston, Alaska: Sooo, Catnipped, you are coming down here to escape the cold. On the bright side, if you end up here, Washington will seem like a tropical rain forest!

Whitney Houston: Not really a geographical location, but I am sure she can host a better party. You know, drugs and all. "And I will Alllllllways Love youuuuuuuu ouuuuu ouuuuu ouuuu" probably referred to her drugs.

Paris Hilton: Not sure how a person can mistype sooooo badly as to end up visiting her, but just throwing it out there in case

Pure Grillage

Found a nice gas-powered grill, courtesy of Mrs. Papaya's network of friends. Supposedly, it's about 3 feet long! Time to pwn some n00b chicken/beef/etc.

A bit chilly

Might be a bit chilly in Houston, so those of you coming, please bring a sleeping bag or some extra blankets. I have a few extra blankets, but when it gets colder, they may not be enough.

Carry-On please!

Because of the bizarre nature of this incident, I hereby advise that a certain electronic device being brought from Washington be brought on as carry on. =p

Wedding Bells

Saturday was the wedding of Papaya! The ceremony was held at this medieval castle sorta looking place. It looked more like a medieval chapel than a castle, but the entire atmosphere was still very good. I am probably just too geeky for my own good, but the very first thing that popped up in my mind when I went inside for the first time was: "Hey, this place looks like the final level from Hitman 2!"

We were "supposed" to have a rehearsal the night before at 6 pm. People were told to get there at 5:30 (Me and the Best Man showed up on time) as to give plenty of time to rehearse. Of course, 5:30 actually means "whenever the hell you feel like showing up" in Chinese speak so most people didn't get there until 6:30, leaving only 30 minutes to "rehearse." Needless to say, we got very little rehearsing in, and so I was a bit sceptical about the next days wedding running efficiently. Of course, just the opposite happened. (You know, this is strange as everytime I think something is gonna be totally bad, it turns out totally good. Most of my WoW friends can attest to this. Everytime I complain about a raid being terrible or something, we usually do really well...) We had a rehearsal dinner afterwards at some chinese place and the conversation floated between religion and Chinese politics.....so much fun, I know. On the bright side, someone managed to get "Do or do not, there is no try" as a fortune from a fortune cookie. It's official, Yoda is now on par with Confucius.

The wedding itself turned out to be very very smooth. The wedding planner, Audrey, did a spectacular job organizing and directing the whole thing. The wedding went off without a hitch. Some points of interest:
1. The grooms side were all very tall, while the bride's side were all pretty short. This lead to some strangeness while walking down the isle as me and the Best Man had to kinda hunch.
2. The bridal bouquet was caught by none other than BluPnutMM. She informed me that she is planning her wedding to be around the same time next year.
3. The bridal garter was caught by.... the flower boy. This was obviously a blow to any of the other guy's hopes as they won't be able to get married for another 15 years or so since the boy was only 5 years old.
4. The wedding rocked because they played Numa Numa as one of the songs.
5. The Best Man (Papaya's brother) gave a spectacular speech. It was funny and heartfelt at the same time.
6. Plum and Squash were hired by the CIA (pictured)

Congrats to the new couple, may they have many happy memories together!

For Great Honor!...and lewtz

I never actually pvped much in WoW. Always thought it was a pointless grind where the rewards weren't really worth the effort. However, with the recent PvP changes, the rewards became a lot easier to obtain. I was still against PvPing, although probably just based on laziness and not wanting to endure the long long queue waiting times.

However, with some inspirational talk from Ender, (Okay, maybe not THAT inspirational, more along the lines of "yo, why don't you pvp?") I decided to take a foray into the great unknown. Turns out, PvP sure is a lot of fun!! Some observations:

The queue times weren't very long at all. This is because you can queue up for all 3 battlegrounds at 1 time. You can then play in whichever one comes up first (usually Warsong Gulch), but you can STILL be in queue for the other two. I usually just turn on the TV, or play FFXII until they pop up for me. Currently, I am trying to hoard Arathi Basin marks for the Field Marshal/Marshal epic sets for my rogue so I spend a lot of my time in Arathi Basin.

Alliance for the most part, SUCK at AB. Of the 14 or so AB matches I have played, I have only won 2. However, this may be because the Horde groups are almost always premades, and they usually outnumber us by at least 3 or 4.

Alliance for the most part, ROCK at Alterac Valley. Only played two games, and both times, the alliance rushed Drek, and down him in a mere 15 min.

Warlocks suck......Deathcoil, Fear, DoT, DoT, DoT, Death. Repeat at nauseum. I have only managed to kill a warlock twice. First time, I think the warlock sucked or was totally focused on someone else, as he went down before he cast anything (His warrior friend, charged blindly into 2 other alliance, quickly dying as well). Second one, I had to use all my cooldowns and a vanish, only to die about 2 seconds after I killed him from DoTs. The other 80 times I faced warlocks, I get off 1 cheap shot, 1 kidney shot, before I go down.

All that talk about being "pvp" speced and stuff. It all doesn't really matter since it's very rare to have 1v1 situations. The times you win will be when you have numerical superiority, and the times you lose will be when you are outnumbered or facing warlocks.

Ringing in the New Year with Yao?

Tochi has added a comment about possibly attending a live Rockets basketball game sometime during the gathering. I have been to two of the New Years games so far, and they were just pretty average games, nothing out of the ordinary. Your thoughts?

World of Gnomecraft

Many people feel slighted that there were no gnomes in the BC intro video. As such, someone has recreated this video as Blizzard INTENDED it to be.

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow..

I don't pvp much, but this certainly looks fun =p

NOOOO WAYYYY

ZOMEGADEMONCHAOS. There may yet be hope for the Dodo. To think, it only took a massive historic power outage.... Next step: WoW?? Maybe if we found life on Mars.

_____ : It's what's for dinner

To the people coming to the nice little BBQ here in Houston:

What would you like to see Kung Grill? So far, we have chicken, beef, beef burgers, corn, potatoes.
We are thinking about maybe some Salmon or Pork ribs.

Just think of some other foods that you wanna try and Kung will grill it. Be reminded that if you request a food then you MUST eat it. Itching for some grilled Bald Eagle? Well, if somehow I manage to get some and grill it, you better eat it.

Tier 2

I have finally picked up my first piece of Tier 2. It started with the Tier 0 SNES. Afterwards, I was able to do the Tier .5 upgrade to PS. Then I picked up two pieces of Tier 1. One was at half price (Bought used PS2, complained it was broken, got new replacement PS2), and the other one was free (exploitable MS tests FTW!). Now finally, I have purchased a brand new Tier 2 Xbox360 from a member of the evil empire who will remained unnamed. This person also promised a free copy of Gears of War to seal the deal.....how nefarious.

Apparently, also included in the bundle is Viva Pinata. This game masquerades as a children's game, but I got the inside scoop from unnamed member of evil empire.

These pinatas seem cute but DO NOT BE FOOLED. They are actually vicious cannibals who devour each other in a battle for survival of the fittest. The fittest then get to have incestuous relationships with their fellow brother and sister pinatas to produce pinata offspring. You would think that the best pinata would retire to a luxurious existence surrounded by beautiful pinata cousins, but NO. They get sent to the execution house also known as children's party. At this "party" they are strung up by their necks, then brutally beaten by blunt objects repeatedly until their bodies explode. These "children" then greedily gather up the pinata's internal organs, and hungrily devour them in a violent ritual, often times getting high and causing untold destruction.

A Brief Poll

As most people know, there will be a Raid of Houston going on this New Years. Lots of people should be coming, so I am just trying to plan out what sorta activities we will be doing. Here is what is set in stone atm:

January 1st: Hunt down various gentle woodland creatures from Randalls/Walmart. Visciously skin them, grill them, and devour their corpses. Kung will serve as master of the grill. Expecting about 14-15 people here, so it should be a good time. If any druids object, too bad. I personally do not drink, but I am sure some of you do, so whatever you all want, lemme know so I can pick it up.

January ??: Have dim sum at the Kim Sum next to my house. Probably need to get there a bit early so we won't have to wait too long.

That's about all I have that is set in stone. Other things to consider:

Kemah Boardwalk: This place is pretty nice, has some nice views but mostly, it's just a shopping district with some very nice restaurants. It has some rides and stuff as well.

Space Center Houston: Oh yay, Space the final frontier. These are the voyages of the blah blah blah. This place is pretty interesting for first time visitors, but it's a bit too kiddy museum-esque. This will probably be an all day affair if we decide to go as it's FARRRRRRrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr (Mmm, Deviate delight) away.

Galveston Island: Fun place, lots of beach and surf. However, this is the dead of winter and so, going to the beach may not be the best of ideas. Also, very far away.

Museums and stuff around Houston Area: Any of these are fair game. Most of them are fairly nice. Personally, I really have no gift for artistry, nor do I know how to truly appreciate it enough to enjoy Art Museums.

Sightseeing in Houston: Ummm, see this, take a good look. Done? Good, you've seen Houston, Congrats.

Board games/Card games/Video games: We have lots of fun party games to play, including Taboo, Pictionary, Cranium, etc etc. Card games: Mafia (Random, Senseless Killing, so awesome), Bang! (Random, Meaningful Killing), maybe some others. Video games. I am gonna pick up an Xbox360 and Patronus will be bringing some of her games so it should all work out.

Please lemme know what you all wanna do ahead of time so I can plan it out and stuff (Sheep Star, Sleep Triangle, Sap Circle, Kill X, etc etc). If there are other places or events you all wanna go to (Bowling, Achery, Basketball, Movies, Giving Me all your money) let me know as well. Hopefully this will be a blast for everyone and maybe we can make this some kinda annual event.

With no power, comes no responsibility...sweet

Apparently, there was a miscommunication of some type and it turns out that I am actually NOT the Best Man for this upcoming wedding. Papaya's brother, SourTomato, will actually be the Best Man. This makes sense, since he is the brother and all. I am actually just a groomsmen. I won't have to sweat over making a speech anymore....though that might be for Papaya's benefit ^^b

Reservation: Confirmed

Yay, Patronus has confirmed her flight for Houston. Looks like it's shaping up to be a nice little gathering. Change your plans Grapes, change them NOW! =)

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Edit: Well, apparently, the peer pressure tactic is working and Catnipped is now trying as hard as she can to get tickets to come on down to Houston. While her penny-pinching asian conscience is still nagging at her to not purchase those tickets, I am sure the elaborately spending American cultural influence will prevail. Come on Grapes, I KNOW you wanna come on down too now =p

Aftermath

As expected, the servers were down for much longer than initially stated. I think overall, the patched introduced some very good concepts:

The Good:
Arenas: Haven't tried, don't PvP so no real opinion
New Talents: For the most part, the new talents were very good. I didn't actually get to experiment too much except on mage.
Empowered frostbolt is a tremendously awesome talent. I was criting so much with spells, it was rather surprising.
Water Elemental seems like a very good "offtanking" pet sorta deal. It actually does very good damage with the waterbolts it was tossing (~500 average, ~800 crits) and has surprisingly decent tanking ability.
Additional Bank slots are now capped at 25 gold. This is just awesome as storage has always been a problem.
Balance druids got a major boost in this patch. I was watching Molridia in action, and only with a paltry amount of spell damage (~110), she was doing ~400 wraths (700 crits) and ~800 Starfires (~1300 crits). Plus the INSANE mp5 from Dreamstate (10% of intellect) helped keep her mana from going down rapidly. I believe we may have to rename the "Oomkin" to the "Pwnkin".
Purchasable "book" skills: The skills that were previously only available through books are now fully trainable from trainers. I am SOOO glad I didn't pay those ~200-300 gold buyouts for the new skills.
Armor upgrades: Most plate pieces had their AC significantly boosted. Items that add to defense, also had this increased by quite a bit. While I think this is because the formula has changed and you need more defense to mitigate criticals, it's still a solid boost.

The Smern (Bad):
Threat Reduction nerf: I am not sure if this is a bug, or if 20% less threat is just THAT significant. But I was easily pulling agro off the MT with frostbolts. I could usually start dps with 1 sunder and if the tank continued sundering, I could dps the entire time (crits included) and not pull agro. However, last night in BRD, I would start dps at 3 sunders, and if the first hit was a crit, I would instantly rip agro off the MT. This happened many many times.
Hunter Agility->RA normalization: 1 point of agility only gives 1 ranged attack now. This was actually quite a severe change as now, my hunter who previous had around 1100 RA has been dropped down to ~ 980. This makes items like tarnished elven ring not nearly as good as they used to be. +Agility enchant effectiveness is also effectively cut in half.
AQ20 loot: The only real reason to run AQ20 was for the class books. The loot for the most part is pretty lackluster. I am hoping Blizzard ups their loot tables.


The Ethereal Tabard (Vomit-inducing):
Addons: As expected, this patch broke just about every addon. While some have already been updated, many very useful mods remain incompatible: Gatherer, SmartAssist, SmartBuff, Lockbox, Decursive, Itemsync, Theorycraft just to name a few.

FFXIII

No, not a typo, here is the trailer for FFXIII. Finally, a female protagonist main lead. First one since FFVI. (No, Fanfare Fantasy X-2 does not count)

Respec

Since the 41 point talents are made available today for WoW. Here is how I plan to spec my characters:

Cattie: Not as mana efficient as my previous build, but I do regain Ice Barrier and Improved Blizzard. Empowered Icebolt should make up for the lost damage/crit from losing arcane instability.
Lans: Lose Blessing of Sanctuary, but overall healing capacity is much increased
Lilis: Everyone is saying how nerfed warriors are gonna be, but I actually like this talent build a lot more, the only thing I really lose is 10 defense
Velius: No aimed shot...whee. But since aimed shot resets the autoshot timer, probably only get one of these the whole fight anyways.
Xhandra: Should be Just as effective as before
Tishani: Probably massively less direct damage than before, but much much stronger DoTs
Nadiya: Reading up on the new Balance Talents, I would really like to try a Moonkin druid and steal all the casters' spell damage gear. Molridia, give this build a try and lemme know how it works out =)

RAID!!!

It's worth mentioning here that the "Veggies" will have a meeting this year to Raid Houston! Ender, Lemon, and Tochi? (I am sure it's a fruit or veggie in some ancient dialect) edit: Tochi are already signed on. Hopefully also coming will be a few members of the newly formed OOM squad on WoW. It's gonna be around New Years and should be a good time. I am hoping this entices fellow members: Grapes and Catnip into signing on as well. A fun time would be had by all. There is plenty of bed/sofa/floor/cardboard box space for everyone!

Once we are all gathered, the plan is to Raid Houston. This probably includes just lounging around and playing video games, but still, other more active pursuits may occur: We will first clear the trash mobs to the local Walmart. Afterwards, we will "take a 5 min break" since it was soo tiring. Then after a prolonged 20 minutes of downtime, we will engage the Walmart boss known as BXox063. The main strategy will be to pull it away from it's adds, WeeWee and the PiEs3. I am hoping to call upon Catnip's expertise in this encounter.

That is just one of many different encounters, all fruits and veggies are welcome.