The Franco-Taiwanese Alliance

The DMV’s web server must be borked… whee!

Chaos being okay might mean just focusing on one thing at a time (for the most part) and ignoring future plans (to some extent).

I have lost interest in both Dark Messiah and Command and Conquer 3.  Dark Messiah was just getting annoying, in that the tasks involved were getting both boring and somewhat frustrating.  Command and Conquer 3’s campaign ran me into a defense mission that proved beyond my meager RTS skills… I ended up resorting to a trainer to break the mission, and haven’t been able to go back to the game since.  Like all Command and Conquer games have to some extent, C&C3 really just makes me miss the old days of Dune II.

Being unable to wait another month for Forza 2, I’ve been poking around Forza again, and messing with the paint/vinyl/decal system.  It’s amazing how much satisfaction you can get out of such a little thing as having your own custom visual scheme on a car you’re racing.  When Forza 2 finally drops, I’m going to take it, a wheel, and this, and disappear.  Until then, I have to decide which of the myriad other games I haven’t finished playing yet to start or revisit… maybe Twilight Princess or God Hand.

One thing I’ve always had to work on was not putting things off.  Even the smallest task that comes up, I’ll tend to procrastinate on, even if it’s just for a few more minutes of clicking idly around the interweb.  That applies to posting blog entries about things that happen, too.

Alice and I spent our Sunday in San Francisco, poking around Chinatown and the Embarcadero, joined partway through by Ryan and Dani.  We got some pretty awesome pictures, especially in the Best Pet Store Evar.  We also hit the Stinking Rose restaurant, a garlic-oriented place on Columbus that was fairly awesome.  Unfortunately, I forgot to bust out the camera inside there.  Boo Eug!

I got my new motorcycle boots today… track boots by Gaerne.  Now I have no further excuse to not get out there and ride!  It’s time to FINALLY begin the process of slowly getting miles and experience under my belt, and move on from the plateau of “new rider” that I’ve been sitting on for a year.

I was feeling weak and shaky at the bank about twenty minutes ago, Faye’s springs suddenly started creaking significantly where they were silent before, and Helen just bluescreened and rebooted herself… what’s going on today?

I didn’t go to the gym again today… it’s hot, I’m lazy, and my legs are sore.  Bad Eug!  I did, however, do some light stuff here… I hopped up for a set of squats (only 100… damned soreness!), and tried to do some push ups.  Apparently my left wrist and shoulder are still borked, though… I only did 5 before stopping from pain.  It wasn’t terrible pain, but it was definitely there, and slowly building, so I didn’t push it.  What am I going to do?

Last night and today, I cranked through the first two-thirds of the GDI campaign of Command and Conquer 3.  Fun game so far, with fast-paced action and a fun aesthetic.  It’s a far cry from the epic buildup and large-scale strategy of Supreme Commander, and damned if I don’t miss dynamic camera zoom (damn you, Chris Taylor!), but churning out (relatively) large masses of infantry and tanks in no time flat is something I’ve been missing.  It’s like the two games are polar opposites, and each one does its specialty really, really well.

In any case, the GDI campaign has been as fun as I expected from the series, so far.  The objectives have been interesting and have had enough variation to be an improvement on the “Destroy everything” mission objectives of the past games.  One thing is that the GDI campaign has been quite easy so far, especially once they gave me Mammoth Tanks.  It seems that once I start building Mammoth Tanks, I just kind of stop taking losses.  Ryan thinks that means EA’s going to nerf them soon… I sure hope not!  I am afraid of moving on to skirmish mode though, and deathly afraid of multiplayer… the quick tactical shifts, fast reactions and micromanagement necessary to succeed in a game like this are beyond me.

Pretty productive day today… I paid some bills and did some other paperwork, worked, played a nice chunk of Dark Messiah, got bored, installed Command and Conquer 3 and played a few missions of the GDI campaign, and went to Dollar Scoop Night at Baskin Robbins. Somewhere in the middle of all that, Alice and I more or less cleaned the whole house; we cleaned off the kitchen counters and oven/stove, swept and mopped the kitchen and the bathroom, reorganized and vacuumed our room, and spot-vacuumed the living room. Still have to clean the stove drip pans and fully vacuum the living room, but ah well… a good day’s work. I didn’t end up doing any real exercise today, but we did bike to Dollar Scoop Night… does that count? My foot pain is subsiding, but now I’m feeling more sore in my legs and back.

I wrote a fairly comprehensive to-do list for the week on Sunday night, and it’s about half-done now, with the remainder being split in approximate thirds between long-term items (Ninja parts), easy things (recharge camera batteries), and real tasks (Camaro smog check and registration).

So I was right, and my foot is still wonky today. No gym today, no running today… I’m actually pretty sad about it. I was hoping to build up some momentum this time. I guess I’ll just do some sit ups today, maybe some pushups to try out my wrist, and some squats if my foot and legs don’t complain.

Starting work right now, I’m watching the Speed Channel in the background. I just watched the end of the Spanish Grand Prix 125cc championship 2nd round… what an incredible finish. Gabor Talmacsi (I’m new to following the races, so I don’t really know who these people are yet) led Hector Faubel, both on Aprilias, for at least the last 4 laps of the race, pretty much no gap separating the two of them. Faubel refused to take the lead, even when Talmacsi let off fairly significantly, until the last few turns of the last lap. Faubel turned inside Talmacsi into one of the last turns and took the lead, but then Talmacsi drafted him and pulled alongside him in the home straight and took back the lead… by 14 THOUSANDTHS of a second! I love motorsports.

I went to the gym today for the first time since December (I think the last time before that was sometime in January of 2006).  I ran for 2 miles, with a 2 minute break between each mile, and it felt pretty good (meaning that I felt like I was going to die, but after I was home and cooled off, I was happy with myself).  I was thinking about going for a third mile (honestly, boss!), but my left knee started feeling like it wanted to lock up, so I quit while I was ahead.  I didn’t do any lifting or anything, because I still don’t trust my left wrist.  It’s been hurting upon use ever since the last moto crash, and I’m not really ready to try using it for any serious work.

Theoretically, this gyming thing is going to continue every weekday.  Tuesdays and Thursdays I’m supposed to go with Alice in the mornings before lunch, and Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays I’m supposed to go by myself when she goes off to band in the afternoon.  I don’t know about tomorrow, though… after the run today, my right foot’s been hurting something fierce when I walk on it, and I don’t know if it’ll be much better by tomorrow.  I’m really not built to run!  Give me a good bench press any day.

Ryan and I beat Gears of War (on Hardcore) on Saturday.  It was pretty satisfying to finally get through it, after five or so short and hard-to-plan sessions.  Co-op gaming is so much harder when you live two hours apart!  But it was worth it… all the chainsawing, all the active reloading, the sniping and the shotgunning, all the shoulder-clapping and walking-it-off… for a good, solid manly nod at the end.  Ugggghhhh.  I don’t think I’m going to venture much into Insane difficulty, unless I’m feeling really bored and masochistic one of these days… I’m completely sure that I’ll get creamed.

Alice and I have been playing Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance on the trusty PS2 lately, courtesy of Eric.  Yet ANOTHER dungeon crawling RPG to get through.  I love playing games with her, though, so it’s worth every moment of slogging through thousands and thousands of enemies for experience and loot.  Hit points!  Mana!  We haven’t been playing much WoW, what with the past couple of weeks containing many, many other activities, but it’s still on the chopping block.  She’s currently playing around with her Troll hunter, Mariel, at level 12.

Also on the action RPG front, Game Night with the guys tonight went off with only a minor networking hitch on my end.  Titan Quest: Immortal Throne is serving us very well, and we snagged another handful of levels tonight and finished off the first act at around level 18 or 19.  I honestly don’t remember, mostly because our post-game debriefing was dominated by oohing and ahhing over the super-powerful artifact that we’d managed to craft, and wondering how to decide who’d get to use it.  My character, She-Legolas, would love to have it, but she two-shots most things as it is, so a huge damage boost, which is the artifact’s main benefit, would only be adding fuel to an already roaring bonfire.

I need to get through Dark Messiah.  I need to get through it so that I can get to work on all the other tons of games that I have to finish playing.  I have yet to even finish FFXII, and have been meaning to do so for four months now.  That, combined with other as-yet-untouched pieces like Neverwinter Nights 2 and SSX Blur,  unfinished jaunts like Need for Speed Carbon and Contact, and eager beginnings like Twilight Princess, and I’ve got work to do… to top it off, I borrowed Metroid Prime, Metroid Prime 2, and God Hand from Ryan and Dani.  It just never ends!  But I have a terrible habit of not finishing games, losing patience with them and whatnot, and dammit, I need to break that for good.

Note to self: bread website, via Amy.