Ugh 2

I'm still kind of sickish. My temperature has normalized but I'm at that stage where I'm sore all over the place. I'm also feeling kind off tired and lethargic.

Talking about temperatures, when I went to the clinic the medical assistant took my temperature and it was actually lower than normal as opposed to being higher. I thought that was a bit odd.

I'm on the recovering side of things right now so I should be ok in a few days.

Interestingly enough, there is actually one thing that I do enjoy about getting a slight fever\flu. When I start feeling better, I get this warm fuzzy feeling which I like a lot. I also like the way how some things seem brighter than they are normally, especially in good light.

That sounds quite crazy, I know. But there you go. Other than that, being kind of ill brings back good memories, believe it or not. Something to do with an old girlfriend. The first one, in fact.

Perhaps the warm fuzziness is there because I subconsciously associate being slightly ill with a good memory from the past?

Or am I just a little loopy from the medication? Which would be odd since I haven't taken any since a few days ago.

Anyway.

While I was ill, I decided to reinstall Brothers in Arms: Earned in Blood and replay it. What a bloody good game that is. Even better now because I can now play it on maximum graphic detail.

The French countryside, hedgerows and burnt out buildings never looked so good... Also, I'm finding the game a lot harder this time around for some unknown reason.

The sequel Hell's Highway is coming out soon. I'm looking forward to it.

Talking about looking forward to stuff...




















Can't wait for this to finally come out.

Ugh

I'm feeling a little under the weather these last few days.

It's annoying how flu medication can cause forgetfulness. I paid my road tax last week and this morning it suddenly dawned to me that I haven't put up the new road tax disc yet. The old road tax expired yesterday. I hope there are no cops on my way back later.

I could use a professional massage. I'm stiff all over the place. It's very uncomfortable.

Thankfully, today is my last day of work for this week. That means tomorrow I can try to sleep off the rest of my flu. We can't let illness get in the way of days off from work now can we?

It's quite strange how turbulent one can feel despite the fact that literally nothing is going on in one's life. I think it's just a bad habit on my part. I'm probably so used to inner turmoil and being frustrated/heart broken that when I'm not, I secretly yearn for it. Maybe subconsciously I need it like a crutch so that I have some justification for being bitter and cynical. Maybe.

Or maybe it's just the flu talking?

Flu or otherwise, I do have some self destructiveness built into my emotional/psych DNA, that much I'm definitely sure off. It's important for me to note that otherwise I'll forget and gravitate towards said self destruction like I used to when I was younger. Must not forget. I'm not young anymore and I can't afford to spend another decade wallowing in melancholy and self pity without any direction.

I guess it's my cross to carry.

Which reminds me of another fact. There's a lot of pretty screwed up people around. I sometimes wonder if they are aware of it.

Ok then, time for more pills. Hopefully when I get out of bed tomorrow morning, everything will be better and I won't feel so stiff.

Offline

Like what the title says, I haven't been online most of the last week aside from downloading some bits of music and patches for the games I play. I haven't even played WoW much. Been playing Company of Heroes instead. What a fine game that is.

The extra time off work has been quite refreshing. All I did was play games, read all my old Stephen Ambrose books, watched Nat Geo and generally just lazed around. I didn't even read the paper which is nice actually.

It's near the end of March so it's that time of year where I spend a whole mass of cash on car insurance. It sucks but it's necessary.

No, I don't have much else to write about unfortunately. Life in general is very quiet and I appreciate how trouble free it is at the moment when I remember how bad it used to be.

Things sure have changed and thank God for that.

This is quite a short blog entry and hopefully I'll find something interesting to write about soon. Or does anyone have any suggestions?

Randomly Typed Post

It is Friday. It rained this morning and thank goodness for that.

I have a slight headache. It's the kind that is concentrated in a small area of your head, in my case this morning, the back of my head on the right side. It's very annoying. I've had myself checked out in the past but all the docs say that it's nothing. Perhaps, but I really want to get rid of these headaches that I regularly get.

I'd also like to know what really causes it. Nowadays, it seems that I get it when I'm tired, go to bed and sleep more than 6 hours. I think it's caused by heat. Sometimes when I get it at home, I wash my head and feel slightly better.

Anyway, that is why I'm happy it rained this morning.

In other news...

I need more blogs for my blog roll, but I haven't found any recently that I would like to read regularly.

I'd like to put up more gaming blogs but again, I haven't found any that I really like. To be fair I haven't done a really exhaustive search. Anyone got any recommendation? It can be any kind of blog.

It's the middle of March. Already. How time flies.

Apart from the above, there's not much else to write today. Looking forward to the weekend. Hopefully, I don't accidentally oversleep and ruin the next day by getting a headache...

Three Movies

I watched 3 excellent movies on Tuesday night and the early hours of Wednesday morning.

The whole bunch of us watched 300 at Star. It was brilliant. The Frank Miller feel of the movie was very, very obvious. That's a good thing. Later we had dinner and discussed how many of the critics who panned the movie completely missed its point and looked for things that the movie did not show.

After dinner, I went and picked up a DVD containing rips of Letters from Iwo Jima and Flags of Our Fathers. Also brilliant. Both of them.

I was about to say that Letters was more impressive. Certainly, it's different from your usual war movie fare. The story revolves mainly around the commander of the Iwo Jima garrison and a somewhat hapless, soft spoken ex baker draftee.

Before watching this movie I read some posts on some movie forums about how this movie was controversial because it made Imperial Japanese soldiers more "humane" and "sympathetic" than they were supposedly.

I say these people either didn't watch this movie or weren't paying attention if they did.

Yes it did portray some Imperial soldiers as a more human creature than your usual Jap soldier stereotype, but the Imperial War machine and the fanaticism was right there as clear as day. This movie does not "glorify" the WW2 Imperial Japanese Army in any way, that much I can say. I remember one scene where during a briefing the men were instructed specifically to look out for and shoot medics. This is illegal in warfare, for those who didn't know.

Again, this movie didn't make the Japanese Army look any "softer" than they historically were.

Flags of Our Fathers was also brilliant. My first impression was that it wasn't as impressive as Letters, but when I thought about it, it was great also albeit in a different way.

The movie tells the tale of the six men who raised THAT flag on Mount Suribachi in Iwo Jima and what happened to them after the war.

I felt this movie was more "conventional" that Letters, but it was great all the same. While Letters had a kind of sad and touching ending, Flags ended in a more bittersweet manner.

In in all, a great series of films and a nice way to spend 8 hours of your day off from work.

In other news, I have a looong break coming up which is great. The last month had been quite trying at work, what with all the night shifts and the overtime. It's a relief to have some extra off time away from the office.

Just as well, since I have loose ends to tie up.

No Content

I wanted to write a new post but it's one of those times when I can't think of anything. It's been like that for a while now. New blog posts don't come as easily as they used to.

So I will talk about games again.

I just finished the single player campaign in Company of Heroes. It was great and very challenging on Normal difficulty. I dread to think what Expert level is like.

I don't normally play RTS games so it's a testament to the game's great quality that I like it so much. It's surprisingly authentic for an RTS. All the models in the game are drawn to scale so you can imagine how menacingly large tanks are. As they should be just like in real life.

The game has great sound and excellent (and colourful) voice acting. If only the Germans spoke actual german instead of german accented English.

The graphics as I mentioned before is mind blowing and this game does require a heavy weight graphics card to make the most out of it. It's a good thing I have such a card. The graphic detail is unbelievable and you can literally zoom right in to the action and count the bogie wheels on tanks and halftracks and see spent cartridges fly out of machine guns.

I rate this game very highly. It's brilliant and I hope to see an expansion pack or two with new maps and added campaigns featuring new armies like the British/Commonwealth forces and the Soviet Red Army. I would really like to play a German campaign. There aren't enough games that show the German/Axis side of things.

Speaking of a different perspective, I'm really, really looking forward to watching Letters to Iwo Jima. I think it's a huge change to watch a WW2 movie from the "enemy" perspective. They aren't too many of those around either.

I remember Das Boot and Stalingrad as the other great movies that show things from the Axis side. Suddenly I want to watch both those movies again. It's a good thing I happen to have the Das Boot DVD at home.

That's it then. I had a quiet week and there is nothing significant to report or rant about.

Have a nice day.

Something Cool I Found

I was reading random blogs and found this.

I never imagined that red giants were THAT big in relation to the sun.

I have one night of work to go. I'm extremely tired.

Overall, this week was fine. Nothing to report and nothing to complain about. I've even gotten over that thing that happened in WoW.

Actually, there was something that happened at home but I think it's in my best interest to keep that kind of thing where it belongs i.e at home and in private.

In other news, about 10 days ago my dad was asking me about notebook PCs and how much they cost and etc. I showed him a few things and quotes from shops I go to and also the Dell website.

Two days ago, a Dell Inspiron 1501 notebook arrived at the house. I was quite surprised. My dad isn't the type to buy stuff on a whim, especially stuff that costs RM2500++. Anyway, everyone was quite excited.

The notebook is quite nice. Its CPU is the AMD Turion64 MK-36 2.0Ghz. 15.4 widescreen XGA display, which is very cool indeed.

I quite like the silver case with white trim. It has adequate space for my regular usage (80Gb) and it has a DVD burner. The built in speakers were impressively loud and clear but not as bassy as I would've liked it.

The bag that came with it is very nice as well. I also used it to test my wireless coverage by walking around the house with it. I'm quite pleased to see that my signal strength is good and constant even outside the house and behind walls.

The notebook does have its drawbacks however.

It came with only 512Mb RAM which is enough if you use Windows XP. The notebook however, came with Windows Vista Home edition so one can imagine how long it takes to boot up. I've tweaked the hell out of it and can only get maybe .25 seconds off the boot up time.

All in all, a pretty decent notebook with a ultra low price. Very good bang for buck.

On the whole, having the notebook is a pleasant surprise and it also allows me to get familiar with Vista before I think about using it on my own PC.

If only it was powerful enough to handle WoW...

WoW Rant (Mostly)

I had wanted to write earlier this week about things like tactless WoW players who expect everyone to be as "hardcore" and "knowledgeable" as they are while completely ignoring tactical suggestions because of the fact that other players are not as "hardcore" as it were, but I chose to hold back and write after I have calmed down sufficiently.

Which is today, since said event happened 2 days ago.

Anyway, tactless WoW players. If you go to the WoW forums and run dungeons and group quests in the game enough, you will know that there are many of these socially inept, rude, grammatically challenged, basement dwelling, munchkin troglodytes around. I've also discovered that as you level yourself up, they become more and more common. Which is no surprise really.

Most casual players I know don't powergame as much.

Anyway, when I think about how some MMO players behave and the general chaos on internet
forums, is it any wonder that some people write books about computers concluding that the human race is bad for the planet and therefore must be eliminated?

Because it's true sometimes. This world is a beautiful place, except for the humans in it. People are just really, really bad.

Anyway, I have digressed. Back to WoW now.

I also encountered 2 more types of players in WoW, The Beggar and The Tourist.

Now, what The Beggar is is quite obvious. He begs. For money. And equipment. And assistance for things that he should be able to do himself if he was arsed enough to do it. It is of course perfectly okay to ask for help. But some players ALWAYS ask for money/stuff when they see you. And usually type their appeal in a very badly spelled, "leet" kind of way.

It gets annoying after the 3rd consecutive day.

The Tourist?

He wants to see all the cool places and all the cool creatures who drop all the phat lewts relative to his lowish level. But he can't go there because the creatures/enemies there are like 27 levels above him and will wallop him dead in 0.05 seconds. Usually, Tourists are low level and the world of Warcraft (as well as many other MMO universes) is set up in such a way that some areas are just too dangerous for low level guys.

Anyway, so what can he do about it? As soon as you log on with your level 20-ish toon, he will send you a private message asking you to log out and log back in with your uber-ish level 58 character. This is so that you can spend the next 2 and half hours walking him through a dungeon. Or taking him on a guided tour to see (and kill and loot) things like dragons and whatnot in more dangerous parts of the world.

In other words, you exist to help him and only that. Who cares about leveling your own toon. Usually I don't mind helping and doing stuff for other players who are lower level than me. Countless players have gotten free stuff from me. Or be saved by me. Or be buffed by me. And countless other players have done the same to me.

But if people ORDER me to do it as if I'm their butler, it gets annoying.

I could also write about the stereotypical munchkin "hardcore" power gamer who looks down on you because you're a casual noob and because you don't spend 40 hours a week raiding, but thousands of words have been written about people like that. So I won't do that.

Besides, this is the worst type of MMO player and it just pisses me off to think about it.

And there goes my WoW/MMO rantage for this week. Despite all this, I'm still playing but I've decided to be a little bit more careful with players I group with. I don't pay USD14.99 a month to be aggravated by thoughtless people.

Anyway, after that unfortunate spat of incidents earlier in the week I haven't played WoW much over the last 2 days.

First thing, I discovered the glorious wonder of a game that is Company of Heroes! It's bloody brilliant. And the graphics have to be seen to be believed. I haven't finished playing it (and this post is getting a little long) so I'll write about it next time.

The second thing?

The eagle-eyed amongst you would notice that I used the word "munchkin" in this post. Twice.

Jerome came back from Singapore with a gem of a card game. And let me tell you, Munchkin is absolutely brilliant. And evil. And has many expansions that I want to buy!

I'm actually looking forward to playing it more than WoW when I get off work.

I'll also write about that next time. Now I will go and contemplate helping boost our game of Munchkin with some expansions of my own...