This post increases my posting streak up to 254 consecutive days of posting. In 112 days we’ll be back to April 22nd, exactly one year after this whole thing started. Part of me is surprised that I haven’t slipped up (although I have come extremely close a few times), but I’m also excited that I’ve stuck with it for such a long time. Having a phone I can post from now will likely solve any unforeseen issues that may arise between now and then, and the next thing that I expect to be a problem is our trip in planning to Australia. That’s in May though, so I’ll be working on year 2 then.
After a break of two days, I finally got back onto WoW today. I started off doing some quests and reached 54, and when I signed off a little while ago I was busy farming leather since I’m too cheap (with my 140+ gold) to want to buy it off the AH. I’d wager I could get to lt least 56 by the time school starts back up, possibly 58. I don’t even think that if I played 24/7 for the next 5 days that I could reach 70, but small steps is all I need to get there.
Oh, and before I forget, Happy New Year!!!
Personal - Dallas
Once again, no WoW today. Considering I still have a whole week left before school starts, I don’t think I’m going to be deprived of time for WoW anytime in the near future. Also, I’m still ahead of the person in my guild that I’m having a friendly competition leveling with, so as long as I’m not falling behind there, I can take my time.
This next week or so I’ll need to work on converting all of my music into non-DRMed formats in preparation for my Zune arriving. I think all my protected WMA files already are either in MP3 or AAC, so it’s really just going to be burning a couple of CDs from inside iTunes and then ripping those back (ironically, probably also with iTunes).
Personal - Dallas
I decided to take a day-long break from WoW, but for a majority of the day that wasn’t too hard considering I was either asleep or not at home. I was planning on going to see Sweeney Todd today but ended up seeing National Treasure: Book of Secrets instead (review in next paragraph). After that, I went over to my grandparents house and through pure luck was able to solve a problem with their computer. I’m going to be installing Windows on a hard drive approximately 10x the size of the one it’s currently on in a couple of weeks, but in order to do that I had to request a copy of the restore CDs from Dell since they’ve managed to lose the ones that came with their computer. This was something I was planning on doing over my break, but now it’s looking more and more like a weekend project.
National Treasure was very good; I guess that statement is qualified with “if you liked the first one”, but I did. All the important characters come back, the humor is enjoyable, and there’s quite a bit of action. Definitely a DVD purchase, and definitely one I’d recommend. My score: 9/10.
Personal - Dallas
I finally went ahead and ordered a new MP3 player that will replace my 4-year old 3G iPod. The device I went with is the Zune 80, the second generation of Microsoft’s entry into the world of MP3 players. For essentially the same price ($249) I could have gotten a similar sized iPod Classic, but I figured it was time to step outside of Apple’s world and try something different. I ordered it through Amazon, so it’ll likely get here at the end of next week. The software seems to be the most common point of complaint, so I’ll report whether or not I end up having any issues with it.
I actually wrote the first paragraph of this post without having come up with a title (unlike what I usually do, create a title then write the first paragraph based on that choice). I guess I’ll go with the tagline Microsoft was originally using to market the Zune. Not sure if it’s still in use with the newest players, but I think it fits my situation pretty well.
Personal - Dallas
Very early this morning before I went to sleep, I got an email saying that my Live account couldn’t be renewed because the credit card on file had expired. A couple years ago this had happened, and we no longer had the CC that it was linked to. This involved a fairly painless process of calling Xbox Support, telling them the situation, and they gave me the last 4 digits of the card that was on file so that I could change it to a valid one. Oh how stupid of me to assume this process would be just as easy.
I went and got the only Visa card we have just to test if that might be the card on file. I put in the last 4 digits of that card and got the error message “Unable to continue due to technical difficulties. Please try again later.” Well, either the card was wrong or the Live servers were having issues, so I just decided to wait until sometime later today. After my mom and I had lunch, I decided I would try again: same error. So, I get on the phone to the support number and get connected to some Indian/Pakistani lady. Apparently in the past two years the call center has been moved overseas since the last time I did this, I spoke to an American.
I give her my name, gamertag, and all that fun stuff, then she wants my phone number and address. This is where the whole even began to become problematic. I couldn’t remember ever updating my account information after we moved (turns out I had), so I gave her all of the information for our house in HP. She seemed content with that, so we then moved on to what the problem was. I had to tell her about 5 times that I did not have a 360 and repeat the error to her at least 6 or 7 times, and we were still getting absolutely nowhere. Finally she tells me to log online and see if I can change it there, and it turns out that in the past two years that feature has become available. So, I spent 35 minutes on the phone trying to solve a problem with a lady that apparently could not have told you what my problem was if her life depended on it after multiple, step-by-step explanations of what I was doing and where I was running into trouble when I could have easily solved it on my own.
Personal - Dallas
Robert and I played some games tonight, but I was never all that worried about getting a post in. Why? Well, we played here at my house this time instead of me going over to his apartment. Our game of choice for this evening was the MapleStory TCG with a little WarioWare thrown in afterwards. What we did with MS was use playing cards and create various decks out of cards that we didn’t have just so that we could see how those decks would play against each other. The term Robert used was “play testing”.
While I played WoW today, I didn’t really make any significant progress. I’m still 50 (although closer to 51 that I initially was), I still haven’t done a ZF run, and I’m still dutifully questing towards 70. Such is the life of a NE hunter; some days just aren’t that interesting.
Personal - Dallas
Today is the first Christmas in quite a while that has been spent at my house without any traveling planned, so how did I entertain myself? With WoW of course!! I gained two levels today (although I was fairly close to getting the first) to reach 50, now just 20 away from the current level cap. Closer and closer to BC content I come, making that purchase actually almost worth it now.
Pending the final count, I was correct in my guess that I’d end up with close to $2000. I’ll probably just give all of that to my dad at the start of the new year to put into my IRA, but maybe not seeing as how I’ll be having two jobs for at least the first part of the year. My parents are claiming that they’re going to make me do my taxes for this year; as long as they give me a copy of TurboTax to use, I think I can manage.
Personal - Dallas
Aside from some very minor gift swapping tomorrow morning between my parents and me, the gift part Christmas is just about over for me. I have noticeably less random stuff this year (actually, almost zero) which is surprisingly nice. No need to find places to store it or make my floor more cluttered with additional piles of items that shouldn’t be there.
I’ll probably primarily be playing WoW for the remainder of my break since I’m now just 10 levels away from being able to access the content from the expansion that came out almost a year ago. At least I’m reaching this mark before the next expansion comes out so it’s not going to seem like a total waste to pick it up once it does get finished. Once I do hit the current cap of 70, I’ll have to decide whether I want to prepare for raiding or start on different characters and begin to level them up. Probably will all depend on how much fun I find the former, but I don’t see WoW getting displaced as the king of my MMO hill for a while.
Personal - Dallas
For the past five years, I’ve received over $1000 each year for my birthday and Christmas combined. Because of the Vegas trip, my parents were saying to not expect much from them or my grandparents (who paid for the shows we went to go see). Well, ignoring the $200 I got from my grandparents this morning as a Christmas present, I made it to $1000 off of birthday money alone. I think I’m getting another $500 from my parents, and combine that with what I’ll get from the remainder of my Christmas and birthday presents and I may even get close to $2000. This was unexpected.
For the immediate future, all of my time should be spent in Dallas. The next trip I have planned is going to LA at the start of my spring break to visit a friend and take a look at USC as a potential graduate school. They have two game development oriented programs that I’m potentially interested in applying to, so I’ll probably decide whether to fill out the application or not based on that trip. Then, only about two months later, Australia time!!
Personal - Dallas
Before discussing the game, I’ll finish up talking about my trip to Vegas. David Copperfield was again a totally different type of show than either of the other two, and some of what he did is just completely mind boggling as to how he does it (for example, making a car appear on stage). I’ll give it a 9/10 also since it was just as entertaining as the other two in its own way, but as far as wanting to go see any of the three shows again, it probably does fall to the bottom of the list.
I left Vegas at 12:40 this morning, arrived here at 5:00, and then came home for a little more than an hour before getting up to HP at 7:30. Pretty much everyone except one Dallas Morning News person was picking us to win over Lake Travis. As nice as that was to read, what people predict don’t matter when you never end up leading in the game. We should have been able to win the game; it was primarily missed opportunities and a questionable call or two that kept us from doing so in a 34-36 loss. The thing that separated us was the fact that Lake Travis made a 2 point conversion on their first touchdown to go up 8-0, but we missed our attempt on our first score. So, no 16-0 season, no 700 wins, and no 4th state championship. Apparently it just wasn’t meant to be.
Personal - Dallas