When Did I Become Cool? O_o

Seriously, it’s a bit disturbing to me. In the 90′s, I was that socially awkward boy that loved fantasy RPGs, computer games, Star Trek and Star Wars, played Magic (which is apparently a nerd rite of passage). Not only that, I was a well-read, French speaking violinist who made a habit of spending his downtime in PE reading the latest works of Ed Greenwood and R.A. Salvatore. The actually shocking thing was that I was also very athletic. I had one PE teacher ask why I wasn’t playing football (hint: I’m smart enough to not be a lineman at a 5A school), and let’s face it, I was a soccer player too (still am). But those moments of contemporary coolness were quickly overshadowed by my preferred company.

This has apparently changed on me. The stuff I did in between classes and on occasional weekends is now becoming de rigeur. I’ve got little kids (5-10 year olds) thinking I’m cool and wondering how can they be like me.

My first suggestion is they learn how to juggle with their feet.

I give it enough introspection and I realize, I’m not cool to people my age. I’m still the socially awkward panda at the office that people go to with esoteric questions and spout out random trivia answers to incorrect statements.

It’s that the kids two generations younger than me like that I can run and kick with them and then go and play video games with them and talk to them like they’re a peer and not a pier. I’m an interesting jungle gym that sings and dances.

Edit: What follows is a conversation with my wife:

“You became cool when you met me!”

“Heh, well that’s modesty for you. You certainly thought this guy is almost cool. If I date him, he’ll become ICE COLD!”

“Hahahahha that’s EXACTLY what I thought! “

You Know You’re Right

Kinda been putting off blogging. Not much to talk about, which was one thing I was afraid of running into, and then I decided to just start typing and see what it took me.

2010 is mostly over. Sure there’s about 3 weeks and a day left of it, but overall, 49 of 52 weeks have passed. It was a pretty good year. Some very excellent things happened, some sad things, but the good far outweighed the bad in a personal sense. This year, I met my girlfriend, at the beginning of the year which did kind of help it move along at a much greater pace. Internet dating works, kids. Especially for painfully shy people like me who can’t bring themselves to talk to awesome people remotely interested in them. If you’re wondering “can it work for me” my only reply is “it did for me!”

This year, I’ve seen over twenty movies in the theater. Averaging about two per month. I imagine it’ll go up at some point, since the Christmas viewing season quickly approaches. I discovered the Mass Effect and Left 4 Dead franchises. I also rediscovered how much I suck at multiplayer first person shooters. I just don’t have the reactions to deal with the 15-20 year old crowd any more. That said, I’m more devious than they are, just not so good at jump twist shooting. Bad Company 2 was a lot of fun, and of course I’ve been having fun with World of Warcraft. I haven’t played it as much this year as I did last year. I finally found something in real life that would pull me away from the game (yay!). Also a new Rock Band came out. Needless to say where the last one brought me the Silversun Pickups and allowed me to remember how much I like the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the new one introduced me to the Flaming Lips and might teach me how to play a real guitar. That’s not due for a little bit, and might even be later than that since I imagine a real guitar controller for a game? That’s gonna sell well even at $300.

I started the year weighing about 330 pounds. I went up and down for awhile and after getting it to 320, April came (with Edward) and I spiked back up to my starting weight. At that point, I got fed up with myself and started kicking my own butt for the next seven months. Through that (and a better attention to what I was eating), I’ve gotten my weight to under 290. Total weight loss from the start of last year is a little over 60 pounds. My current short term goal is to lose weight over the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, even just a little because that would be a feat in and of itself. For the record, my weight the week before Thanksgiving was 292, I’m a little under that at around 289.

Other big things: I’m going to start playing soccer again in January. Hopefully I have enough muscle memory to keep up with it. I think I may actually be lighter than the time I stopped playing, so that can’t hurt. I started hanging out with Stacy S in a not “Let’s go play Rock Band” kind of way. Always fun. She’s a hoot when she tries, and I found a bar I can tolerate in the Bulldog. I got promoted at work. A decent pay raise went with the promotion, so happy there too. I’ve become more comfortable with social media. This might be a bad thing, since I can feel my brain eroding as I watch all of my typos being broadcast for the small self centered universe to see. I’ve got a Twitter account, I actually pay attention to Facebook (don’t always update it though), and I started a blog (which if you can see this, then you’ve probably guessed that fact). I started being a Dungeon Master for a D&D Campaign. I’ve improved. The start is by being less verbally critical of myself during the game. The guys don’t need to know I screwed up. Also small lessons…like read ahead a few pages so that you aren’t caught by surprise when reading the text. Sadly sometimes the text trips me up because it doesn’t read the way I like to (flows differently, so it gets confusing that kind of thing.

Also, I picked up trying to cook things I’ve never done before. The reasoning for this is three fold: Eric & Rochelle, Andrew, Stefan, & Nicole, and Stacy. Eric & Rochelle always have tasty things when I went to visit and it encouraged me to step out and try to make something new. Andrew, Stefan and Nicole got into the actual cooking side of Good Eats and not just the awesome science-y portions and started cooking in earnest. Finally, Stacy (probably the biggest influence) has specific things she likes, pad thai, shrimp scampi, things like that. Really stretched my cooking abilities, but I’ve been pleased so far with how I’ve done. Only missed on one thing with her in the Welsh Rarebit Macaroni, but my family loved it, so it did make me feel better after they devoured it. William actually took the rest home so he could have it. I was quite pleased.

I also started writing a bit of fiction here in this part. I’ve not expanded on it yet, but I figure I’ll start doing that soon enough. My usual problem is that I’ve got a good beginning in mind, but I don’t really have an end. Yes, I think that’s what I’ll do. Write a book that has no end. That’ll solve my problem. The more pragmatic approach would be to have the opening scene and closing scene written and then connect the dots. Hm…I’ll try that approach.

So, I’m off to work on that little epiphany and see how it goes from there.

Rock Band 3 and Why I’m Excited

Eight more days and the latest installment of Rock Band comes out. The second sequel actually adds a good bit of stuff that I’m stoked about.

In my opinion the cost of the disc is covered by the number of new songs introduced. But Harmonix is adding a new instrument, allowing harmony singing, changing up the song sort modes so you can sort by favorite songs and create and save playlists. Also you can make your own Battle of the Bands (a fun thing from RB2), and there are quickplay mode challenges if you want to go that route where they toss in challenges to spice up quickplay bands.

The two things I’m most excited for, one is big and obvious and the other is small and will go probably unnoticed by most people. The big thing is the pro mode. It’ll give me an opportunity to try to learn the guitar and help me work on drums.

The little thing I’m excited for is that drum rolls, tremolos, and trills will not be based on getting them exactly (nearly impossible since each type of music is never consistent even amongst real musicians) but on starting them, doing them, and finishing them at the right times. It’s a little thing but it takes a lot of frustration out of the game.

Only eight days…so excited

Big Changes in the World….of Warcraft!

A big change came to the game yesterday. The first bridge patch for the new expansion was pushed out and now we get to play with all of the class changes. Immediately I started playing my ret paladin since that was one of the class specs to undergo major changes to its mechanics. Overall I like the swap to be more process friendly and less “hit this button when it’s off CD.” Odds are good I’m going to have to learn which abilities to use and when so I’ve got to lose my old rotation and get a new one in place. Should also look at trying out healing to see how I need to adjust to the changes in healing.

Next I started a hunter this morning. This class also had major mechanics changes and right now I’m loving the new resource. The recharge on focus is slower than I expected but with using steady shot you get some focus back. I’d love to see how the changes work with the talents now.

I’m gonna be sucked back into this game soon. It’s getting fun again. I think I like relearning how to lay…

Vidjamagames!

I’ve talked about movies and music, I figured I should cover one of the last two major forms of entertainment I deal with on a regular basis (I’ll make cookies for the person who correctly guesses the fourth).

Right now, I have three games I play fairly regularly and a whole slew of games I play off and on. World of Warcraft, Rock Band (and subsequent sequels), and Left 4 Dead 2. I’m fairly good at a couple of these games, terrible at the third but I have fun playing it so it’s all well and good.

World of Warcraft is a game I’ve played for five years now. That’s rather unheard for a form of entertainment since most times you buy a game play it for 12 hours until you beat it and then move on to the next one. WoW is one of those games that grabbed me and didn’t let go. I don’t play as much as I used to, but that’s because I don’t have the same “gotta be on all night or someone will be disappointed in me” drive that I had when I was a raider and my close friends slowed down due to moves, work, and the odd ability to get into betas of various other video games so that they have new toys whereas I don’t get to play that just yet. Blizzard has managed to keep WoW fresh and fun with the changes they make in the game and for some reason I think I’ll be there until the turn the lights off at the server farm.

Rock Band is a bit different than WoW. Whereas WoW has kept my attention with ever changing things you can do and additional new things, Rock Band just challenges me with the same content and…it’s still fun. I just recently beat the classic rock monkey off my back called Green Grass and High Tides. I’ve been trying to successfully complete that song since it came out and I managed to get good enough at it in 2007-8. Two years to get my head around that one song…Between that and teaching me how to keep a rhythm with my hands and left foot, it’s pretty easy to say this game has sucked me in. With Rock Band 3 coming out in a couple of weeks (Squee!!! Or was it Huzzah!? I forget…) I’ll soon have a new instrument to learn (piano/keytar) and at some point next year Fender will be releasing a real guitar that can plug into the game and be used as a controller in order to learn how to play the game…yeah, I’ll be paying attention to this one for a good long while now. Harmonix really has figured out how to freshen up the genre and not churn out the same rehash to try and make money.

Third game (and the one I’m not so good at right now) is Left 4 Dead 2. It’s fun, it’s a four person cooperative game where you play as four survivors in a zombie holocaust trying to get to relative safety as you move through areas that are infested with infected individuals. It’s primarily a multiplayer game and that’s where I’m not so good. You can play with eight people (four survivors, four infected) and you can only play as the survivors in singleplayer. So, I know how to point and click with guns, I’m just not too good at pouncing people, or spitting on them, or what have you. I have a coworker who constantly pushed me to try it, I finally get the game…and he gets bit by the Star Trek Online bug. Go figure.

Other games I’ve played recently/sort of recently: Battlefield Bad Company 2 has funny single player, multiplayer is fun as well, but I’ve never been a fan of trying to play FPS multiplayers. I try to be too utilitarian so I end up dead a lot after I save lots of people or fix lots of things but don’t actually shoot anyone. Scott Pilgrim vs the World is a throwback game that I got for the PS3. It follows the story of the comic books rather than the movie. You can tell because you have to fight robots instead of a battle of the bands for the Katayanagi Twins. It has a lot of Double Dragon in it as well as River City Rampage (or something like that. Stefan really likes the game). It’s almost a mindless beat ‘em up but I just like the sillier aspects of the whole thing.