Author Archives: The500footBuddha

Enjoying Saturday

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Rick and Melissa came up from Columbus to spend the day with me. They brought a birthday card. The card was a Far Side comic that I think I might have seen before, but more interestingly was Rick’s choice of the word “DING” for my birthday. While I do not know whether or not they exist I am positive that they have to, because this seems to perfect. Simple yet sort of funny thinking about getting older in the same light as leveling.

They picked up their copy of Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts that I bought them for Christmas. I know it’s early for that kind of thing, but I just thought it would be pretty cool. We plan on getting online some time and checking out the multiplayer. There is supposed to be racing and some other stuff to try.

Renee came over and we all went to have lunch at Dave’s Cosmic Subs in Hudson. It’s a pretty neat place, but a bit of a drive. Renee remarked that she thought the sub would have been better toasted, and honestly it probably would have been. I don’t even know if they do that there. I just sort of assume they would have asked if I wanted it prepared that way if they did.

Rick and Melissa started their characters on Balnazzar, and so I will have them in my Thursday WoW Update with their new characters names and all about what’s going on with that. They played for a few hours while I cleaned up. We ordered pizza for dinner, and that worked out.

Anthony and Andrew stopped over for a little bit, but they had to go. Derek came over and he had plans for later tonight as well, so he just got some time in with Mirror’s Edge. It’s a very frustrating and enjoyable game. I can’t wait to play it more.

WoW Thursday Update

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There isn’t a whole lot to say about the World of Warcraft today, except for you either have the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, or you don’t. That’s the big thing for this week, and probably the upcoming weeks, as now you can start a whole new class with the Death Knight. I’m not really sure what a Death Knight is, and that answer would probably be revealed to me if I spend more time playing the class.

The problem is Death Knights report to Arthas, who is basically the supreme evil guy in the World of Warcraft. The Death Knights are all swearing allegiance to him, and they start at level 55, and they apparently are in this to kill everyone. I don’t think it’s an Alliance vs. Horde thing so much as Blizzard not wanting to take the time to make a legitimate third team. From everything I’m seeing it should be Arthas vs. Alliance vs. Horde. It is sort of a shame they didn’t go that way.

Who has the expansion already? I know Tim and my brother waited in line for the midnight release. Dan had it shipped to him, and I only know this because he was making regular updates on Twitter concerning where the shipment was.

The reason I’ve never mentioned Dan before is simply that he doesn’t play on the same server as any of my characters. He plays Alliance, which I don’t play at all, and if I’m not mistaken he plays on a PvE server. While I’ve often considered moving to such a server to get away from the whole hours of getting ganked fun, I have yet to actually commit to that. I have more of a chance running in to him at a Jonathan Coulton concert in Cleveland.

Jo said he would be picking it up today. He had it preordered and paid off, but weighed standing in line at midnight to be far more trouble than waiting till the next day. I had to run to Wal-Mart at 5 AM in order for a certain member of the US Armed Forces to have the game last night.

Renee, Rick, and Melissa might not have picked it up, but then again they don’t have any real immediate use for it. I could include Jo into this demographic as well, but he can at least see the finish line now. None of them are necessarily close to being 70 to take advantage of the new content in that respect. They could start Death Knights, but they still have the aforementioned characters to take from whatever level they are to 70.

Expansions cause so much activity!

Snow

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Seems as though it were just yesterday that I was talking about the leaves changing color the all the wonderful things about Fall and here we are with snow. It’s not sticking to the ground, but that’s not far away. I still haven’t found a pair of gloves for the season as the gloves that I usually buy are no where to be found. I still have to make sure the kids have enough gloves and hats for the season as well, even though they probably won’t wear them.

I can’t even get them to wear shoes outside when it’s 50 degrees outside.

I remember when Will said “it’s Wal-Mart”, and that has really become a fitting motto for a place that just stops carrying gloves that I’ve bought there for years.

I still have to buy a shovel, because I had a really hard time shoveling the driveway last year when the snow piled up. The cheap shovel in the shed just isn’t going to cut it this year.

I should make sure I have an ice scrapper in my trunk. You should to.

I have this plastic stuff to put over some windows and one door so that the heat doesn’t escape as readily as it normally would.

Really though I’m just glad that we are almost half way through November before I’m talking about snow. There have been years where I would have been having this discussion in the middle of October.

Thursday WoW Update

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First thing is that it doesn’t look like I’ll be adding that many names this week, but I will be soon. I guess Rick and Melissa did not start their characters on Balnazzar and while they have plans to do so in the future I don’t see it happening any time soon.

The names that I expect to have in the future are those of all the people coming back to World of Warcraft. Blizzard is reporting that 46% of the people who listed that they were quitting to play Warhammer Online are reactivating their WoW subscription. I think I mentioned that the guild we were previously in, before we started The Holiday Loggers, was PK who went from quite a few members to none. I honestly expect most, if not all, of those people to return, and then I’ll be adding them to my update.

Umori and Tsugutoshi have been playing together and they’ve been gaining a few levels. They are getting closer and closer to 70, just in time for the expansion to have to go to 80. I might get the expansion.

Remana is level 29 already, so that means that I have at least one person to pal around with my alts. I really should play them a little more often.

Basically in the upcoming weeks we will be adding more names and have more to talk about in these updates.

Mirror’s Edge Trailer

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Does anyone get the feeling this might be 2008’s Portal? It’s got a really catchy soundtrack, cool game mechanic that you have to perfect, and it’s looking like one neat story. Speaking of the story there is a story video that helps give you an idea what this game is about. I think this is a new and cool trend from EA doing story trailers for games they are releasing.

I probably already mentioned this, but just for preordering the game you get a neat bag, and there is another bag from Timbuk2, but I guess that one is around $120 preorder and I’m not really ready to make that kind of investment.

They are supposed to be releasing comic books as well to help give the story more depth. I still kind of dig comic books. I’ll have to see if the comic book store in Barberton is getting them. I hope I can find them.

Grandma’s Birthday

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Grandma wanted to go some where special to eat for her birthday, so she suggested the Imperial Wok in Solon. It’s a really great Chinese place that you only want to go to once a year. It’s a bit pricey, but you get a lot of food and it’s much better than a Chinese buffet. It’s approximately a 50 minute drive from here, but she wanted to go, and it was her birthday, so we went.

The food was as great as I remember. I got to do the same thing to the kids as my Dad always did with us, which is to say that I had them try the hot oil stuff that they bring out to your table so you can make your food spicier. They did the same thing all of us always did. They took a dab, and then they remarked that they didn’t think it was that big of a deal, and then the burn started. I love Asian spicy stuff.

I have to say that as long as I remember Solon it’s barely changed. It’s pretty much the only area of the world that I remember fondly. If I ever had the money I’d move there.

The Park

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Michelle came over for a visit this weekend. I went and picked her up Saturday evening and took her over to see her Godmother Becky. We only stayed for a little while, since Becky was cleaning up from her celebration of passing the bar and Abby’s birthday. I drove us home and that’s all we got around to doing on Saturday.

Sunday I woke up early and woke all the kids. We made breakfast. Patty and Michelle experimented with making cinnamon pancakes and I made scrambled eggs with ham and cheddar cheese on top. I probably would have added green pepper or something, but we didn’t have any. It all turned out pretty good. When the dishes were done and the kitchen cleaned up a bit we all got dressed and went to the park.

We drove down to the park and played catch for awhile. I brought the Nerf foam football that we had on the porch. It’s a good thing that I played catch with them, because Eddy can’t catch and I think that’s something we need to spend some devoted time to remedy. We all walked down to the Mini Mart to get something to drink. We went back to the park and we played monkey in the middle until everyone was tired and it was time to go home.

We came home and had chicken and rice for dinner. Michelle called her mother and let her know that we were going to be leaving soon. It was a fun day.

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When Things Break

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I might have been having some trouble getting the time I wanted in the demo for Mirror’s Edge, which if you haven’t already I suggest you check this game out. The end result is that a controller might have received the brunt of this frustration with the game.

I have several broken controllers in my basement. Jo and I bought them a while ago in order to take the cases and see if we could dye, paint, or do something to change the color on a more permanent basis. I believe the final verdict was no – everything eventually rubs off. What I am left with though is a plethora of parts to cannibalize in cases like this where I need to fix something.

This was basically the first time I soldered anything. I watched Jo do the LED’s when we were changing LED’s on controllers, which was a huge success, but I only helped a little. This was different. This was a piece of hardware held on to the board by about a dozen points.

I went to a local store and bought about $20 in supplies. I needed solder, wick (which is basically this braided copper wire that is supposed to take solder off boards), a vacuum gun (you push the handle in and it sucks the solder off the board when you press the button), and a solder gun holder, since I just had the really cheap one that came with my solder gun.

That accomplished I set about my task. I started to remove the piece that broke. I put on another piece from another controller. Everything went slowly and I sort of learned how to do certain things. Put the controller back together, and sure enough the piece that I took was broken. It’s the right analog stick, so it controls in FPS games which way you look, and this piece wants to look up.

Back to the basement I take another piece from another controller, and this time it went a little faster. I was starting to get the hang of taking pieces off boards. I put the controller back together, brought it upstairs, and this time it was a success. The controller is working perfectly now. I’m glad it was that piece and not my solder job or something else, because I wouldn’t have known where to begin checking the solder.

I feel very accomplished today.

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Halloween 2008

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It was a pretty good Halloween for the kids. I took them to Stow, because Akron apparently does their Halloween at bizarre times. I guess this year Halloween was a week before. I think a lot of things came together to make this one of the best Halloweens we have had in recent memory.

The weather was probably the best it’s been in years. It was 60 degrees by the time the kids went out for trick or treating. That’s warmer than it was at the beginning of the week and it’s probably one of the warmest Halloweens I’ve seen in years. I’ve seen snow, rain, and cold and windy conditions, so it being sunny and warm was nice.

Stow was a perfect place to trick or treat this year. The kids were out from about 6 to 8 and managed to secure themselves pretty heavy bags of candy. I think this is going to just get better for them as they get bigger and are able to get to more homes. I know in years past they would have to stop because they were tired or time ran out and they didn’t get to every house, but this year I think they just about got every house in the development we always go to. Might be time to find a bigger development.

Watching them run around makes me wonder how much longer they are going to need me to tag along. Eddy found a friend to run to every house with and Patty went completely off with her friends. Of course there was an adult present either way, but I know that the time is coming when the parents jobs will be just to drop them off and pick them up.

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