Catching Up

Okay so this post will be extremely long.   Due to work and other issues I have been too focused to even sit down on a computer.   So let me start off where I left off:  Shogun 2.   I finally was able to play the single player and finish the campaign (not short but turns go by pretty easily) and I like what I saw.  The graphics and battle field encounters are nearly flawless and the ease of use for toggling between formations and grouping your units is pleasurable.  This can not be said about the Multiplayer.  I would have bitched earlier but they have fixed about 90% of the issues.  Pretty much out of the box you couldn’t do Multiplayer.  None of the matches would work and more importantly you were only likely to get about 2 matches in an 8 hour span due to all the crashing that was occurring.  Now they did finally patch it and it is working much better.  The only issue now is that if you queue up in a 3v3 team you have a chance of getting placed on a 2v2 map, in which you have to alt+F4 out to get back though.  There is no way to cancel or leave the game.  My only other complaint is how they do match making.  Now I can’t completely berate them because all the times I have played it has been at about midnight, but they seem to have an issue of matching players around your “avatars” level.  The game works much like an RPG, you level up, get more unit choices, navigate around the map, get more unit choices, etc.  So you have to earn your units.  You start with basic units and slowly get stronger and stronger.  What I have found is that all it takes is for one person to be level 10 and for one person to be level 2 for the game to completely be lost.  In fact, I queued a game up as a level 4 and got 2 level 1 opponents.  The other team had a level 2, 1, and 1.  Both my opponents got slaughtered due to tactical mistakes, but I was able to literally just roll through the other team because of Avatar and damage units were so much higher than theirs.  It actually took some of the fun out of it.  But I’ve also been on the flip side.  Matt, Craig, and I played one night and got these Knights of the Round Table asshole fuckers who were level 10, 10, and 9.  Meanwhile we are 5, 4, and 2.  They slaughtered us every single time due to the fact that we can’t compete.  I would send in my swordsman to take out their archers and they would take one volley and run away (morale was lowered).  Literally I could do dick to them.  We could have tactically been better but it wouldn’t have mattered.  Their Avatar could probably take 2-3 ranks of our units alone.  Then they had the balls to talk shit like they were gods or something.  Who does that?  That’s like someone in college dunking on someone in middle school.  It just wasn’t necessary.  We could have done everything perfect and nothing would have mattered.  Anyways, my overall impression of Shogun is extremely good now and would recommend it to anyone.

Next, I got a new laptop.  Picked up the budget gaming computer that everyone has suggested to get the: ASUS G73SW  Funny thing is that it was really an impulse buy.  I just got some additional funds due to a bonus and I haven’t really purchased anything of significance in probably the past year so I was looking to get something big.  While at my buddy Matt’s house, I decided I wanted a laptop, looked online, found some reviews, and purchased it.  Probably took about 1 1/2 hours to decide that it was the laptop I wanted.  Once I got it a week later it was well worth the investment.  Screaming fast, competes with my desktop computer, and on some games it outperforms which is even more surprising.  I got the 460m and it does wonders.  The real key about the laptop is the fact that it remains extremely cool under high stress actions.   We ran Prime 95 which is a program that overloads your processor with the technique of trying to determine every prime number.  The laptop, while internally hot running at 72 degrees Celsius remained at room temperature externally.  For a comparison, I had this laptop on me for about 4 hours and there has been no change in temperature on my lap.  I don’t have that typical, sticky, itchy, burning hot feeling you get after having the laptop running at full blast.  This is also the case of being under full load, which is equally impressive in its own rights.

Other than that it has been pretty easy going for me.  Work has been bad due to the unlucky timing of me just finishing training other users on our product and huge storms plaguing the South Texas region so I really haven’t gotten to see the light of day.  By the way, I’m writing this in Minnesota (up here for some work on our SmartGrid product at the Siemens headquarters) in which it is still snowing.  Apparently some locals are calling this the worst winter they have ever had.  As a kid from Texas though, it is nice to see snow more than twice a year if that.  Pretty interesting.

“There’s a time when a man needs to fight, and a time when he needs to accept that his destiny is lost… the ship has sailed and only a fool would continue. Truth is… I’ve always been a fool. ”

-Big Fish

Shogun 2:Total War

So today has completely sucked.  I went to work, no one was there … because everyone had a meeting or there was some crap that had to happen.  Furthermore, I have been so busy preparing for a 4 week training class I’ll be delivering and assisting my boss for our manager meeting that I haven’t had a chance to play a single game.  Anyways I made a new purchase a couple days ago called Shogun 2: Total War.  Let me tell you about my first impression of this game. OH WAIT.  I can’t because I get a Blue Screen of Death every time I load the game through Steam.  So naturally I assume my video card drivers are out of date.  I update my video card drivers and load it back up…. BSOD.  So then I’m furious and I go roaming through their forums .. which by the way do not work well with an Internet Explorer browser.  So I installed Firefox finally (yeah I know .. it wasn’t just because of this game though .. seems like people are choosing to support a certain type of browser interface and performance is lacking in multiple websites for Internet Explorer) to view the forums in a cleaner, less glitchy way.  After finding some posts about people who were having the same issue (by people I mean about a few hundred posts) I see that I need to update my soundcard drivers (why I didn’t think of this I don’t know).  So I update my drivers and load it back up …. BSOD.  So now I’m pissed and I know I have the most recent sound card and video card driver.  I login, try to register, and their forum registration is down (of course right).  Finally it comes up 4 hours later and I register and post my problem.  First thing someone says is did you update your BIOS? BIOS?!? What the fuck?  Why would I update my BIOS to play a video game … yeah sound and video driver I get .. but BIOS?  Anyways I update my BIOS and hurray! It works .. but I had spent 6 hours trying to get it to work that I haven’t been able to play it.  Maybe this weekend I’ll get some free hours.  Until then, happy gaming!

My Blog

So I’ve decided to make a blog.  This is definitely something out of the normal for me but I have always had a fascination with capturing things I think, do, and enjoy in some tabular form.  I’ve never been a guy to go around taking pictures or looking for some form of acceptance for what I do.  I tend to just let things roll in the moment and not take the time to pause and get those details.  That is where this blog comes in to play.  Think of it as a storage tank for the life of Greg Nichols.  A habitat in which I will fill with mindless oddities stretching from normal life to online video games to political arguments to just general pyschotic rants of nothingness.