My Corner of the Interweb

Dings and Scrapes

Mood: Friday. Thank God.
Music: Leave Home, Underworld.
Game: World of Warcraft, Call of Duty, Guild Wars.
Book: The Samurai Sourcebook, Stephen Turnbull.
Muffin: None.
Punchline: "I am venting."

I actually have stuff to say...so if this gets long and rambling, it's because I have a lot on my mind.

First, I just finished doing maintenance on our main laser printer. Needed a new fuser, and the fuser comes with new roller assemblies and such. I replaced the fuser because we were getting those fun blotches that you get when your fuser has dings and such and has started peeling. Looks like this started when someone jammed self-adhesive stuff in the laser printer. Whatever...fuser gets replaced pretty easy, provided you don't burn your hands off replacing it.

Putting in the roller assemblies? Basically, you get to stick your hands into the sharp, pointy guts of the printer and replace 15 little roller thingies by prying a little tab up and puling the roller off. At this point, my hands are numb and tingling from the force required to move the little tab, and I have cuts and scrapes all over my hands and fingers from slipping and brushing against internal workings. The little dots of blood and scraps of skin all over my hands provides character. Or so I believe. Whatever. My hands actually hurt.

But the job got done. And so printing happens again, blemish free...until the next bad jam.

I haven't really been playing my role-playing games lately. Truthfully, I haven't been enjoying them. I don't really feel like going through some sort of process to play. I've been playing CoD a lot recently...because I can jump in, shoot people in the face, and leave when I like.

In both World of Warcraft and Guild Wars, we continue to lose people from our guilds because we apparently aren't committed enough to the high-level game. I suspect that's largely true...but I further suspect that it's because I've stopped playing.

Recently, we lost a pretty good member of our WoW guild because he felt like he wasn't doing the stuff he wanted to do, and didn't view us as being able to get to that point because the rest of the guild was splitting their attention between WoW and other games. I was pretty ticked at him, not for leaving, because you gotta play your game your way. I was ticked because he posted a generic non-descript message to everyone, and just left. He didn't discuss it with anyone...least of all me...and I was vaguely offended by that. When I tried to discuss it with him last night, after not speaking to him since he left, he didn't even respond.

Truthfully, guilds and games come and go. People go through phases where they play a lot, and phases when they don't. Right now, I suppose I could get back into World of Warcraft, and I would probably really enjoy it. I think I don't really enjoy playing with the guys who are in the upper ranks of the guild right now...not because they aren't good people or good players...but I just don't think I mesh well with their play styles. Which is fine...I don't have to be good with everyone. But when the guys I did play with all of a sudden make new characters, or stop playing, or leave the guild I'm in, I'm left soloing...and the level 60 game doesn't really tolerate that. So I'm sort of in limbo. Life's like that.

Maybe I'll start playing again.

This weekend, there's talk of having a barbecue in the park. I really want to barbecue, so I've already bought stuff for grilling and marinades and such. I hope it happens...and I hope it doesn't rain.

Last, in the CoD league, we had a mixup. A bunch of teammates forgot they had plans to go to a ballgame, and so we scheduled a match for a date where a chunk of them, good players all, will not be available. This overextends us...we're now relying on 6 of 7 remaining players to be available. We're all good players, so it's not as if we're going to lose a huge amount of skill by using other folks, if at all, but we don't know if they're available. I really would prefer to not take another llama...that would really suck.

We're undefeated when we play...so we really should play. If we can.

Anyway, think I'll get some lunch, and maybe it'll make the rest of the day go faster, as opposed to really dragging.

Oh, remind to pick up some cash so I can pay for my laundry tonight. Thanks.

Posted by Glenn at June 3, 2005 12:27 PM