I finally, due to my wife's machine dying, got to upgrade my machine. I had been running an Athlon 64 3500 with a geForce 6800 card and 1 GB of RAM. That is now my wife's machine.

I now have an AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200 dual-core CPU, running on an MSI K9N SLI Platinum motherboard. I've got 2 GB of DDR2 RAM. The new video card is an eVGA geForce 7600GT card with 256MB of GDDR3 memory on it. This machine fucking screams! No, it's not the absolute top of the line. But it is insanely fast and I can run most games with full detail @ 1280x1024 (the native res of my monitor).

The actual upgrade process was a fucking nightmare, though. 28 hours of work. First the RAM was DOA. So had to borrow some from my office, no big deal. Ok, so, WinXP didn't like all the hardware changes, so it wouldn't just boot and re-detect like a sane, well-designed, operating system should. Nooooo, it had to fucking keep rebooting right after start of load. Ok, so, have to do a repair install. Buuuut, XP doesn't like the LILO MBR on my drive (for my Slackware Linux dual-boot). So I have to get into recovery console and fix the MBR. Then the repair install finished. Ok! Now it's time to clone my old boot drive (an ATA-133 drive) to the new drive (a much nicer SATA drive). No problem... Just takes forever. Sigh.

Anyway. Was worth it in the end but what a pain in the ass!

Like I said before, I just don't write much, or often. Sometimes I get in a mood to do it, and I do. Other times I think about doing it, then wonder if I have anything to say. I don't really have much to say this time but I feel like writing. So I am. :P

Anyway, let's see, recently... I got started on treatment for a nasty sleep disorder (severe OSA; AHI ~111) that I've been dealing with for, oh, 15 years or so. So that should be a Good Thing(tm). Haven't been doing much... Just gaming, working, watching movies, enjoying life, etc, etc. Just got invited to the Alpha stage for a killer MMORPG I can't name but has been mentioned here before. That will take up a lot of time! Also! Majorly upgraded my computer -- but that's a whole other post.

2 (or 3?) days ago the beta signups for LotR Online went live! I don't think any phase of external beta has started yet, but (obviously!) I and most of my friends are signed up and we're all waiting for that wonderful acceptance email.

Everything I read about this game gets me more and more excited! I think this will be as big or bigger than EQ for me. I put probably 400-600 DAYS of real life time over the course of 7 years into EQ, and I think this will surpass it easily! I'm even considering cancelling my other game subscriptions once/if I get into Beta. It's that big for me.

I'm about to undertake re-writing the system that drives the Amphigory site. When we first started out, 10 years ago, I wrote a custom shopping cart system in PERL. That same system still drives the site, though of course, it's gone under hundreds of changes since those days.

Now, our product line has grown so much, we need a way to streamline page generation (all the pages now are simply static HTML pages!) and allow visitors to search by various criteria. Here is where 15 years of work as a professional programmer and database developer will pay off...

Oh yeah -- the new system will be written in PHP, no more PERL for me. :P

The new trailer (it's "Trailer 3" on that page) for Lord of the Rings Online looks awesome! It's the first trailer with a lot of actual in-game footage and it really just makes me wish the game was in Beta now (and that I was in said Beta, heh).

If you watch the trailer, you'll notice one of the characters has a bird following him -- which seems to be his pet! It doesn't fight (at least not that I could tell) but who knows, maybe you can use it for scouting or something. I wonder which class it was... Must find out more info!

Ok so it's only been a week. :P I've been hellishly busy...

Anyway finally listened to Mindcrime II this morning. It's good...very good. It doesn't have nearly the same power or "punch" the original did, but I didn't really expect it to; that kind of thing only happens once in a band's career I think. It's still a very good album and definitely one any Ryche fan should pick up.

Now I've got to sort through the lyrics and unravel the story. :P

Got a new digital camera this weekend. A Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT. This is our first digital SLR and OMG it's nice!

Will post some sample shots soon!

The sequel to Queensryche's killer story album Operation: Mindcrime is out! I picked it up last night at our local non-chain record store but haven't listened to it yet. I'll get time to do that in the next few days.

They're going on tour this year too, and will be performing BOTH albums in their entirety with live actors playing the stories' characters!

I was thinking to myself, wondering why I'm so adamant about keeping my blog self-hosted rather than going with a community site like Xanga. I came to the conclusion that the main reason is control.

There's a quote, and I don't know the exact wording, or who said it, but the gist of it is:

Freedom of the press exists only for those that own a printing press.

Well, this is my printing press. No one can tell me what I can or can't say here. Sure, the community sites pretty much allow you total freedom...but what if they decided to start restricting content? They could. It's their "printing press", they control what it "prints".

But here I can say fuck shit cunt twat motherfucker cocksucker asshole fuck fuck fuck all I want. And I can say that Bush shouldn't be President. Or whateverelsethefuck I want.

So now in addition to the Warlock, and the Hunter I've been working on (now 30, and I got the white lion finally), I started an Undead mage... and love it! I may be switching to Horde permanently, I dunno. I'd miss the Hunter but hell, I can always make a Horde Hunter!

It's fun being Undead. And I got Braineater for a name! Muahhaahahahaa.

I'm not going to import all the old posts. If anyone's really curious, they're archived at http://www.sentence-ov-desire.net/Pazuzu/.

Some/most of the good/important ones are imported and that's the end of the importing!

Obviously, I've moved my blog/site to a new platform. This is b2evolution, pretty nice stuff. I shall be working on getting all my old posts imported into this -- it's a manual process, so it's going to take a while. :P

Of course, as usual for me, my "alt", my hunter, has been taking up more of my time this week. I'm trying to get my hands on a rare pet... There's 2 rare lions that can spawn in the Barrens. One is white, the other black. I've been camped there in the Barrens, the heart of Horde territory (I'm Alliance...), all week. I've missed nabbing the white lion (it spawns as part of a low level horde quest) 3 or 4 times. The black one just hasn't spawned; it's a normal rare-ass spawn.

I'll get one of those fucking lions...Somehow.

Yeah, I promised I'd write more... And then didn't. I'm weird. I tend to latch onto "one thing" and mainly do that. Sometimes it's updating this site, sometimes it's gaming, sometimes it's things we won't talk about here. I try to work in a variety of things but it never works out. One thing will always be all-consuming. But I shall try again.

Since last update... Zev and I played EQ1 again seriously, for a couple months. But due to RMI pain in her hand she really couldn't play much so we sort of ... stopped. So I picked up WoW again and am playing with some local friends as well as an oooold EQ1/EQ2 friend. It's fun. Still watching LoTR Online though. Beta needs to start.

Got our Internet Radio Station and and going. That takes up quite a bit of time, especially working with the website interface. All the now playing, etc, comes live off the streaming manager software's database which is located at our home, whilst the web database is at our host 1000 miles away. Fun stuff.

Anyway. Will try to write more. Heh.

Let's see... Lots has happened since I last wrote! Zev has fully recovered from her nasty ankle break. We're not playing MxO anymore, though we are watching it and may play again. Actually, "we're" not playing anything -- Zev doesn't really want to game much anymore, and I kind of understand why. I do want to, though, and so I've been playing SWG for 3-4 months. She did play with me for a while and probably will a little again. We're in a guild with a few local people we met. It's a lot of fun!

Instead of gaming she's been working A LOT which is good for our bank accounts. :P

We had an EVIL storm this summer that took out the tree in our backyard. It hit the house, sort of, but only damaged a couple sections of raingutter. Thankfully.

I'm not-so-patiently watching The Lords of the Rings Online, and have been for many years. It's finally nearing reality though and I'm getting excited as hell. More on that later!

We've been in The Matrix Online beta for quite some time now, but due to an NDA haven't really talked about it. :P

NDA is lifted so now I can talk. MxO is a great game. It's casual-friendly. The W. Bros are involved so the game should have a deep and interesting story line. They've implemented the classic MMORPG playstyles quite well and of course made them fit into the Matrix milieu. You've got tanks, DPS melee, ranged melee, healers, pet classes, debuffers, nukers, and crafting types. You can also unload all your abilities and load in another set at will (if you can afford it). So you're not locked to a class. You can change at will, without making a new character!

Graphics are outstanding. The world is very Matrix. Music is great too. Community is insanely top-notch, especially considering it's still a beta game! I'm excited for the game -- can't wait until it's released and the story line starts!

I've been playing WoW when I can lately. It's very casual-gamer-friendly. If you have even as little as say 30 minutes, you can play the game and feel like you got somewhere. Be it getting a bunch of exp or finishing a quest or 2. Soloing is a totally viable way to do quests and grind exp. In fact it's the preferred way for many players. Groups are very fluid, forming to do a quest many levels before you're "supposed" to, then breaking up when done. You don't have to group but people do for fun and finding groups is easy.

There's basically no endgame content right now, which pissed off a lot of people that rushed to the endgame, but I'm taking my time, seeing the sights along the way. By the time I reach the endgame, if I do so, there'll be a lot more cotnent I bet. :P

After playing for some 3-4 months, we've both decided EQ2 is likely not the game for us. Sure, it's a ton more casual-gamer-friendly than EQ1. By far. But it's still not quite as casual-friendly as we need right now, and into the future.

It seems to me that the dev team only half-understood the soloing thing. They let you solo. No doubt about it. But it's like they forgot that people want to get something out of their soloing. You can solo, but it takes ages to kill a mob, and if you get an add, forget it, you're dead. And you get so little exp that it's not even worth it in the first place.

There's now a spectrum of casual-friendliness in MMORPGs. EQ1 is at the extreme unfriendly end. WoW is at the extreme friendly end. And I'm not sure where EQ2 is. It's not dead center, but I can't really place which side of center it's on. At any rate, Zev and I aren't playing EQ2 much if at all anymore.

Well, it's been a little over 2 months since I've written anything here. A combination of being busy and a little apathy has kept me silent. :P

Quite a bit happened in 2 months... Zev broke her ankle -- hardcore. As in, "had to have surgery and plates/screws used" hardcore. She's almost fully healed now, thankfully. We both survived our birthdays (I won't state our ages here, heh). Our children's python that was our first anniversary gift died. :( She was the tamest, most "friendly" snake we ever met, and we miss her. :(

That's the major events of the last 2 months...

El Indio, the best Mexican restaurant in Lafayette, nay, in all of Indiana, closed like a week ago and I have to say, that sucks. :P We knew it was going to happen but it still sucks. Withdrawal is the suck. Might as well have been CRACK... :(

Zev and I went to Suncoast last night looking for ... anything ... to buy and watch. :P Well we ran into the McFarlane toys displays, and saw that they've done a series of figures with none other than Clive Barker.

If you've never seen McFarlane Toys stuff it's insanely detailed. They're not really "toys" in the sense you'd think... They're more 3 dimensional art. And these are incredible. A site for the first series is at http://www.spawn.com/features/ip1/home.html.

Oh, and there's a portion of an original story by Barker in each package (each portion is about the character in the package; you don't need to get them in any particular order).

I'd just like to state for the record that UO is still a lot of fun after seven years! Say what you want about pre-UO "MMORPG's" -- as far as mass market is concerned, they didn't exist. UO put MMORPG gaming on the map and paved the way for all the titles that came after. And it's still a fun game.

Sure, the graphics aren't the latest card-melting 3D uberness, but who cares. Since when has gameplay been only about graphics? UO has the best character development system out there IMO -- based on skills rather than levels. And now, with yet another expansion about to come out, allowing storage of skills and swapping them on the fly, it's only going to get better. Plus the new ninja and samurai classes will be fun.

I'm extra-glad I never sold my current account. Sure, I sold my original, Day-1-of-final-release account (still kicking myself for that; it'd be an 84 month account today), and I've been banned from the game twice, but I still have this account and it's not going anywhere. <3 my 2nd GM Tamer. :P

About the Author

Here is where you get to fall asleep reading the boring details of who I am and such. Yipee for j00! :P

I am (as of writing this!) 38 years old; birthdate is 01-16-1971. I am Male, married (since 09-30-1994!), a high school dropout yet employed fulltime as lead programmer for the same company for over 10 years. :P I am a homeowner (finally - as of 05-2003... a long journey it was to get there). I am a Libertarian and an Atheist.

I've been programming computers for fun since I was 10 and have been
doing it for pay since I was 18. I love computers and technology and even at home, I'm using a computer a large percentage of the time. I'm an avid gamer; I play MMORPG's almost exclusively, starting with UO when it was
released, then moving on to EQ and finally EQ2, World of Warcraft, LOTRO, and Warhammer Online. I've also played AO, Shadowbane, AC1, and CoH. I don't really like single player games much anymore since the dawn of commercial MMORPG's. The medium really is lightyears above single player games.

I'm also 50% owner (my wife owns the other 50%) of Amphigory, an online
store. I wrote the shopping cart system from scratch and assisted with the HTML design and such; she does the "real" work day-to-day. We started it back in 1996, long before the Internet was heavily used for stores and such. It's been interesting seeing the Internet grow and change.

We used to run an Internet Radio Station called The Sanctorium, too. But the RIAA took care of that. :(

I am also a radio controlled airplane pilot, and am also just getting into playing Warhammer tabletop.

More shall be added later I suppose.