Happy Bums

Happiness seems to go hand-in-hand with laziness. The more content you become, the more you begin to slack off. Of the late I’ve begun to sleep for longer periods of time and my naps have become more frequent. However, there are those hours where my sleep schedule has been hacked into pieces and I find myself awake in the wee hours of the night. During this newfound insomnia I think of everything and nothing. All of my thoughts drag on and on in my mind but in reaching for my pen, pencil, or laptop to record them they dissipate. Eventually I fall into a good passing out.

I did manage to ensnare one floating thought, though. I’ve been a firm believer since before I can remember that a human can never be satisfied. We all seek happiness. Could it be that even if we were the happiest a human could ever be, that we would miss our sorrows? Maybe for the same reasons that a child wants to be an adult and an adult misses being a child, all of us want things we can’t have. This is probably something that we all know already and I might even seem stupid for pointing out, but I figure that we all need a reminder. Perhaps there is no way to cure this disease called desire. I don’t know. I do know that it can get the best of all of us so… Be happy while you can!

Well, the good news is that my inspiration is back. Not even sure what all the above meant but… Fear not! Heh, the fat, happy, chip-eating couch potato in me will be back soon.

Things to Come and Such!

I have another slew of tech reviews coming soon so keep your eyes out for those! I plan on taking a new approach to this particular one as it does need a second opinion for all fair intents. It will be pretty sweet!

I have returned my machine to “OEM” spec with Windows XP Media Center Edition and await for my new machine purchase hopefully later this semester. However, due to the temporal return… I have been bitten by the gamer bug again and I have a few of my favorite games. I just need to get my vintage favorite game Quake on my system and all should be golden.

My family has been bugging me to set them up a machine so they can start trying to use the web again. My last experiment was a bit of a failure as Adobe’s implimentation of Flash for Linux in combination with Firefox and Konqueror on KDE didn’t quite pan out as well as I had hoped. From what I experiences with Ubuntu 8.04.1, Adobe is STILL slacking on the job there… So I am at a loss of how to make a safe and “idiotproof” machine for them that I won’t get the lovely service call at college of “Zero! We broke the computer! HELP!!!”

To close, I leave you all with a notice that “Zero’s Farewell to College” party is almost done on the details… From that, we wait for completion of everything and I will post the invite here, on social networks and personal e-mails. Expect it to be goofy and fun!

Real Time Strategy – Chess on a more grand scale

With the past days… Miss Wyno has prodded me more and more to play strategy games as well as to wet her bloodthirsty taste for victory. For a while it was friendly games of Settlers of Catan which made me remember my occasional ventures into the comic and game shops when I was a wee lad. It’s almost amazing how deep a board game can make Risk look like child’s play. From that… Wyno wanted to move into active digital mediums rather than stare at a passive Java applet of Settlers of Catan. I am a Blizzard fan and so is Wyno and Sol (who’d be dragged back in to this) so naturally, WarCraft III was the game of choice.

I will concede to the fact that I am not a “perfect” player… If anything I enjoy the recreation of playing. It was fun to see that Blizzard still supports the competitive spirit for even their “vintage” titles such as WarCraft II BattleNET Edition, StarCraft (Brood Wars), and WarCraft III even though they have bigger projects looming (Diablo III, StarCraft II, etc). I don’t harbor hate or distaste for the Command & Conquer series, just I was never much into theme of an alternate reality… That is actually somewhat odd as StarCraft is sci-fi based, but that’s another tangent…

In chess, the seasoned player knows that even the pawn can be one of the more lethal units of the game. Like knowing that if you can get your pawn to your opponent’s side that you can promote your unit to become any unit you desire. Most (wise) people would opt to promote the pawn piece to a queen to ensure best possible returns on their “investment” as their movement is far wider than most pieces. In WarCraft III, Blizzard retweaked the game’s errata from the earlier sequel (WarCraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal) almost in reverence to this principle. Sadly, I didn’t take note of this back in 2003 when I originally got into the game… rather, I learned the merit of this a few nights ago with Miss Wyno and Sol in our 4 person match.

Wyno would attack my human encampment that was woefully doomed to a swift death. My town was overrun by many of my peasants just harvesting materials in hopes of being able to fund my army of dwarven gunners. Unfortunately, my hero, footmen, and buildings were being savagely beaten… In a final rallying cry and more for novelty, I decided to hit the town hall’s “Call to Arms!” command, converting my peasants to a militia unit for a time frame of 45 seconds. I’d see the animation of my peasants dropping whatever they were doing, be it chopping wood or harvesting gold to run back to the town hall to grab armor and a sword to give a last stand. What I would see was something amazing… I saw my peasants encircle her hero unit, just laying down their swords for battle and slaying her hero. At the same time, my peasants were also fending off her armies fairly well even though the game was set and match. From seeing that, I will never underestimate the power of a lowly peasant or peon be it in game…