Monday, February 22, 2010

The Final Count down!



No, I'm not leaving the blog o sphere. I can't leave. Where would I find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy, certainly Mos Eisley space port, but no place here on earth for certain. I just wanted to let everyone know that interesting posts are coming and I'll be posting again soon on ITG.

I'm actually in New York City, Manhattan, just off Central Park west to be precise, this week for work. I love to visit this city, but I would really hate to live here. It is too expensive, but its exciting to see all the architecture, hear the cabby's yell and honk their horns and experience the hustle and bustle that is NYC. However, personally give me a town that rolls up its streets at 9pm any other day and I'm happy.



Btw, doing a pub crawl in New York City is fun, just beware, there are over 200 Irish pubs in Manhattan alone, or so says one google search, so bring a big liver or a donor. That number gets inflated by the fact that there a lot of pretend Irish pubs. If your server isn't from the old country chances are some dude in Brooklyn just bought the name to the pub.

Again, I hope to blogging fairly regularly again soon. I have lots of topics. Some don't even include World of Warcraft so those might actually be interesting, probably not.

Friday, February 19, 2010

Irony




World Of Warcraft Irony:

This scene takes place in the middle of Hellfire Ramparts...

Tank: How am I doing?

Group: Your doing great!

Tank: This is only the second time I've tanked. :)

Group: Well, your doing great, just work the agro a bit more and you'll be fantastic.

Tank: Well, I have got to go, early work tomorrow.

Tank leaves group!

Recue for new tank!

Thursday, February 4, 2010

No Star Trek



I have no desire to play Star Trek Online

I am and always will be a huge fan of the series. When I was a child, I would spend evenings trying to tune in the show on a small black and white set my parents had in the bedroom. Let me say, that is dedication. I owned at one point a phaser, communicator and tricorder toy set as well as a model of a Romulan Bird of Prey. Trust me, I love the Star Trek IP.

I just don't have the confidence that Cryptic will do a good job with the IP. There are a good many people who are die hard fans and I don't see them as a company that can pull off an epic Star Trek game, especially after the debacle of Champions online. They just haven't made very many good decisions as far as providing a great game for fans based on top notch IPs and if your going to produce a game based on an IP that is as epic as Star Trek, you have to bring the top talent because if you fall short just by an inch, they will crucify you for it.

The second reason I'm not going to play is that I'm currently enjoying WoW, although at times I do get bored, which happens with all things done to excess. I have found that there is just too much for one person to do in a single MMO and that to try and spread yourself over two or more would just make it impossible to fully enjoy any.

I do hope I am wrong about Cryptic, because I'm sure there are a lot of people hoping to take part in that voyage into the final frontier. To be a part of a fantastic IP and to boldly go where no player has gone before.

At least there is always Star Wars to look forward too.

I only have eyes for you!



Fair warning, this is not a gaming post (Boooo) but it is a rant (YEA!)

For the last week I've had an eye problem, not anything too major, but some how I managed to scratch it pretty good. Now, the first thing I did, when I realized I had an issue was to go see my ophthalmologist. Now for those not in the know an Ophthalmologist is a eye doctor that specializes in Ophthalmology, deals with the medical treatment of the eye and its diseases, not one who check your vision and prescribes glasses. That is an Optician.

I see (I love that pun) an Ophthalmologist once or twice a year because I have diabetes and during the course of that disease serious eye problems like glaucoma and such can occur, which may result in vision loss if I don't keep it in check. The regularity at which I visit the specialist depends on how well I am controlling my diabetes. To date, I've only had to see him once a year, yea me.

Now that the eye doctor education is over I will continue with my story.

So, decide to go see my eye specialist, whom I have been visiting for about 6 or so years now. I trust him and he knows me pretty good I would suspect. His diagnosis is that I have a small scratch on the bottom of my eye and that it requires some antibiotic and that if it doesn't get better in 48 hours a second visit will be required. Of course this all happens 72 hours before I'm suppose to head out of town for a week on business.

Two days later, my eye started to feel much better. I continued with the drops but didn't go see the doctor on account of the fact that I was out of town at the time and my eye was feeling, well... much better. Then, on the third day after the visit, I subjected my eye to some chemical haze and fog, which was being used at an event I was working. Course, when I say chemical haze and fog, I'm not talking about recreational drugs, I'm talking about foggers and hazers similar to those used at rock shows to produce stage effects. These things cause a smoke like fog in the air so laser and light shows will look awesome. This effect, however, can cause some serious eye irratation. Now my eye not only starts to hurt, but it feels like someone is shoving and ice pick into it.

So now my eye is hurting again, irritated and red. The best way to fix this is to rest my eye and continue to use the antibiotic drops. However, I can't rest because the event I'm at doesn't get done till 1am and we are back at the venue striking the equipment at 8am in the morning. So the much needed rest will have to wait and my eye will stay irritated for another 2 days.

Once I get the rest I need, my eye starts to feel much better, again. This lasts for a 2 days till I have to limit my sleep once again, because on the next job we have to do, the client decides they want to rehearse at 5:30 am two days in a row and therefore, no 8 hours of sleep for me and my sad little eye. My eye feels okay during the day hours but the morning and evenings are a huge problem for my scratched eye, because of the lack of sleep and rest.

I arrived back home this past Tuesday and crashed as soon as I was able too. Upon waking up Wednesday morning, I wasn't unable to keep my eye open, any little bit of light annoyed it immensely and the pain was pretty bad. I called my ophthalmologist and luckily was able to get an appointment that morning. He reexamined the eye, notating that it was a scratch, prescribed a different antibiotic and told me I needed to rest the eye. I took the day off, layed on the couch and napped and by yesterday evening I was feeling much better. As a matter of fact, it felt great today as well. I just had a follow-up visit with a different doctor, since mine wasn't going to be in the office which I thought was OK, since all he had to do was see if it was improving or not improving and I would be good to go.

My luck is never that good.

This new doctor, whom I've never seen nor met, suggested that my problem wasnt' a scratched eye at all, but ulcers caused by ocular rosacea. He then proceeds to prescribe two more eye drops, besides the antibiotics I'm already on, hands me a pamphlet where he has writtem Ocular surface disease and ocular rosacea written on it, all the while telling me to look them up on the web so I'll have a better understanding of my condition and sends me on my way. Now this is a lot to take in. Apparently, the single scratch I had yesterday and for past week has over night turned into two ulcers. I questioned him about how this happened in less than 24hrs and he said that my doctor apparently felt that it might have been this all along, course I don't know why he wouldn't have mentioned it to me yesterday when I asked him about the scratch and what we would have to do if it wasn't healing.

Talk about someone hit with a brick. I was blind sided. I've got my reqular doctor telling me its a scratch and this new doctor, who I didn't know from Adam telling me I have some kind of surface disease on my eye. And the more questions I ask the less information I'm getting from this new doctor. Apparently, my regular doctor had discussed my case with this new doctor which is why he confirmed the diagnosis was something else. Now I have to apply two new eye drops, one of them I have to use, well, forever because now, over night, I have this new condition.

I understand now why doctors get sued. So, now that I'm stunned. I start the drive home. I called the wife, who was just as confused as me, but had some very good advise, "Don't do anything till you talk to YOUR doctor." So, I got her to call the eye care place. They told her a P.A would call me, which she did. We talked, I explained how I wasn't comfortable with this new doctors diagnoses and how I needed to talk to MY doctor. She said she would call him and see what he said. She called me back and by the tone of her voice, I could tell that MY doctor didn't think much of the new diagnosis. Although, he didn't tell her to tell me it was BULL SHIT, I could tell that he didn't think I had ulcers or that I needed all those drops.

Monday, I'll be making an appointment to see MY doctor. As long as my eye is getting better, which it is, I don't see the need to do anything about this dry eye conspiracy. I did discover that like all things, a second opinion isn't always what its cracked up to be. The power to get the right answers is always with the people themselves. Doctors work for you. Don't let them bully you if you feel they don't know what they are doing. Sure, at some point you have to pick a side, but make sure you feel confident in the people your asking that opinion of.

Oh, by the way, the second doctor, Mr. Ocular Rocacea, I knew there was something wrong with him the minute he walked in the room. No sane man would sport a Mr. Brady perm.

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Puzzle Quest!



I've been AFK this past week from my favorite consoles and MMO's but that hasn't stopped me from gaming. Lucky for me, I had my trusty DS and man, I was able to rediscover how much fun can be had with Puzzle Quest Warlords.

I have to say that in the past I've treated Puzzle Quest as a variant of Bejeweled. I would take it with me while waiting in a doctor's office or when I was meditating in the morning before work, because it was a quick game and you could make small advances while not getting to involved. I'd always approached it as nothing more complicated than matching gems to get mana and then using it to cast spells to do direct damage or defend against your opponents fury of attacks. But there is a complex set of strategies and a really nice story as I happen to find out this past week.

As I found out, getting the handle of this game all starts with playing the right class. On this go round, I decided to play a druid, which allowed for some nice healing spells as well as some good direct damage ones as well. This time I decided to employ a little more defense to stop the smack down getting laid to me every other round. Apparently, its not only about getting mana for your self, but also about preventing mana from going to your opponent to stop them from tossing damage spells at you all the time.

So far I'm enjoying it the more I play and plan to stick with it instead of popping in Planet Puzzle League when I want some puzzle action. As soon as I get my Xbox back, I'll start up my arcade version just to see how much different it is, but I am sure that it will be a blast as well.