#!/usr/bin/perl

Well, the Vendetta bug ran its course, maybe. The sparse population made the game feel like a big empty ghost galaxy. Which, while realistic (how likely is it you would run into someone in the vastness of space, after all?) isn't that much fun.

I might go back to VO when they implement player-controllable capships and other neat things. We'll see.

But now there's a hole in my thoughts where an MMO goes. It's distressing, but I think I have contracted something that goes beyond a single game. I'm going to give Eve Online a try, see if it is more my speed. I really enjoy tactical/strategic combat, so I think this could be a lot of fun...

I have avoided playing any MMORPG since the WoW beta. However, I couldn't resist the temptation this time. Vendetta Online is, simply put, a game I have wished existed for years. And it does exist. Granted, it's maintained by a company of 4 people. But they are 4 very awesome people. In fact, the whole thing has the intimate, work-in-progress feeling of an open source project (though the game is NOT open source). New features are added periodically. The client remains completely free, regardless of content updates. Users can even contribute their own quests and such.

A significant chunk of my free time is now going to this game. I suppose calling it an MMO is a little inaccurate. It's persistent and multiplayer, but due to a very small player base it is not massive. There are single WoW guilds with more players than this game has. I feel driven to change that, to find everyone I know who digs space flight/combat and make them play this game, blackmailing them if necessary.

But if you like space combat, this game is amazing. And you can get a free 8-hours-of-play-time trial. I can be found in the 'verse as Gjalfr.

Oh, and I wrote a review / overview of the game on my other blog.

I was just amusedly reading through the comments over on this blog post.

First, notice how the latest comments are from today, even though the post is 6 months old. Those are some dedicated pyros, right there. But second, lionlover23 posts, back on May 9, a hilariously random series of sentences. The best:

"And terrorism."

Just a nice little dependent clause. This sentence no verb. Just The Conjunction Out of Space and a provocative noun, nominally the subject of the sentence. Brilliant. I can't begin to describe how funny I find this. But oregano.

This needs to be stuck into a Lyttle Lytton contest entry.

Well, I figured out what I wanted to do with all those weird journals I made.  I've nixed them all, and created a new journal for non-personal stuff over at:

A Random String of Bits

I'll probably start making everything in this journal friends-only, when I do bother posting :)

I've made a rather rantful post about the new Wii firmware update over at slashsplat for anyone interested:

Nintendo and the Homebrew Arms Race

( Patrick ponders how best to use blogs... )

So, after that brain dump, I think my best bet is to keep using this journal for any random personal crap I feel the need to spew, and/or the occasional plug for things I think are cool (and things I post to other blogs).  For things I'm likely to rant about at length, I'll set up a separate blog with wordpress on my own site.  I'll probably just kill off uuddlrlrbas and make occasional comments here (turns out I don't have as much to say about video games as I thought) and 3edgedsword (a failed experiment - something more interesting may replace it).  slashsplat will probably merge into this journal.  Maybe not.  Still torn on that one.

Well, that was quite the waste of time, eh?

Update:  Meh, after all that rambling, I think I'll keep doing things the way I've been doing them.  /* can stay, as can uuddlrlrbas.  Trying to keep all of that under one journal will bother my burned-in need to use proper encapsulation.

That other journal (the one what no one reads) will go away, though :P

Anyone who is even remotely a fan of funny things and/or Joss Whedon, go here immediately:

Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long blog

That is all.  We now return you to your regularly scheduled LiveJournal.

At my friend Syntax' wedding, one of the groomsmen Rick-rolled the reception. Afterwards, we took the extra beer home as wedding favors.

I have decided to use this journal to aggregate posts in my other journals. It's sort of a 2-tiered tagging system, and still lets me separate any personal posts I feel like making from my information-centric journals.

Anyway, I've posted a brief rant praising the game Portal over at:

my gaming Journal

So, Co&Ca @ Winston-Salem on November 23rd.

Jamie & I will be there. Who else is there with us?

Myke, I'm looking at you. And Travis?

It's official, I'm training, and it still feel surreal: I work for Red Hat, a company that sells [Ff]ree software. This should be fun.

So, an interesting news bit on Colbert last night, for those who don't watch any Reliable News Sources :P

Bush has nominated James. W. Holsinger for Surgeon General. Back in 1991, Holsinger published this gem of a study. That's right, he thinks gay is a disease, and it's catching!

WTfuckingF, people...

There is nothing special about the following sequence:

09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0

Nothing special at all. Just posting it here because I thought it'd be nice to have this particular sequence on my journal.

Yep. Nothing special about it at all.

(Edit: for more information, see the comments section)

I just lost the game.

Okay all you Booninites, there's a LAN party happening today, 2006.09.23, from 1200 - 2330 in the Student Union. Gaming will be happen!

$10 entry, includes pizza and Red Bull. More info at this place.

Dear Penny-Arcade's News Page,

Please stop making Firefox crash.

Thank you.

With the imminent closing of the Dragon's Den, comic fans are bereaved of their fix. Well, rejoice! While buying supplies for my kittens, I noticed a new comic shop being readied next to The Pet Place at the Shops on Shadowline (where Harris Teeter is).

Hopefully the proprietor of Plan 9 will see fit to stock such essential gaming supplies as, oh, I dunno... L5R cards? This would make a LOT of gamers in Boone happy, and the proprietor of Plan 9 very rich.

The sign said either October 2nd or 9th for an opening date... don't recall exactly which. Oh well, go check it out yourself!

The following post is a bit of a rant. Be forewarned.

For the last two months, I have worked at the office supply store Staples. I sell electronics to the fine folks of my hometown, which includes an amazingly even mix of non-technical, semi-technical, and highly technical individuals. To all three of these categories, I have been recommending free, open source software for various reasons. It gives the user a valid alternative to expensive proprietary software, and the fact that I suggest it to people fosters a sense of trust that creates repeat business and helps with sales of our extended service plans (Staples' service plans are actually very nice, and I do genuinely consider them a good investment on most purchases). Doing this also promotes Free / Open Source software, which I advocate strongly.

Yesterday, I was informed via an anonymous note from management that this was a bad idea. I left a note of my own explaining some of my reasons (so sue me, I emphasized the ones that were beneficial to the company) and it was further clarified today that it is against nationwide corporate policy to tell customers about free alternatives to software we sell unless they specifically ask, and even then I cannot be specific; rather, I am to say something like "you *might* be able to find something on the Internet."

I was told that withholding this information was not "lying," but I think it a pretty fine line. It seems like very shaky moral ground to me.

That said, I'm redoubling my efforts to find a job that actually makes use of my degree. This is a placeholder job in the first place, and now it has the added annoyance of requiring a violation of my personal ethics. Anyone out there know of a job in software development or general IT work (admin, troubleshooting, you name it I can do it) in Western NC or that could be done remotely? I'm all ears.

Anyone with experience with any of the following PDAs, please reply to this and tell me your impressions:

Zaurus SL-5500
Palm T/X
iPaq rx1955 (running Linux)

Thanks!

I'm creating a new topic-specific journal. My original post will be updated to reflect it.

The new journal is slashsplat, and will be for ranting about technical issues. This could be programming in general, programs I'm working on, hardware I want, current trends in the industry. It could be abstract, or very low-level. Probably boring for anyone not technically minded.