Tonight was my first current content raid in World of Warcraft.

Sure, some guilds I'd been in had done legacy content like Molten Core and Onyxia's Lair, long after they were actually a serious challenge. But tonight, was special. I got randomly invited to a Pick Up Group to hit Obsidian Sanctum (10-Man). I admitted to the raid leader i was just barely geared for the content, but he seemed confident. Turns out he organized these PUGs fairly regularly, and has it down to a fine science.

Sure enough, we went in with a minimum of fuss. Downed two drakes and accidentally got wiped by a patrol while getting briefed on the boss. The raid leader apologized, we rezzed and quickly waxed the last drake. Moving on to the Sartherion himself, we wiped again, this time due to several of us not getting the whole "avoid the waves" thing. Second attempt we faired a bit better, and I got the pattern to the dance so I could avoid them. Unfortunately the off tank was a bit less skilled and things got hairy at the end with one healer and the OT dead, and the second healer going Zero Mana with 5% left to go on the boss. Then the MT dropped, and it was down to just us DPS to kill the bastard as quickly as possible before we died.

I have never been so glad to be a hybrid class in my life. My unused bubble and Lay on Hands "oh shit!" button kept me up long enough to help drop that bastard dragon with those of us left nearing the end. We cleared, the raid, I got the achievement. And with a bit of personal gloating, the Tier 7 glove token dropped for my class, and I won the roll with a 100, getting me my first Tier 7 drop without any competition. Given how hard its been for me to get groups and gear with my current work schedule, this was a bloody miracle and I all but squeeed aloud.

The group starting expanding for a whack at the Heroic (25-man) version of the instance, but i knew with my borderline 10-man gear, I'd be a hindrance so I bowed out. All in all it was a night of exciting (well to those who like this sort of thing at any rate) firsts for me. It's been a good night.

As most have already heard, Ricardo Montalban passed away late last week. Most bloggers and online newspeople have already reported on it, but while reading those articles, I found a user comment so very appropriate, I just had to repost it here.

"I feel sorry for actors cast as Star Trek villains following Khan. He is such an awesome villain that other characters essentially have to be god to top him. In fact "god" shows up as the villain in Star Trek V and Khan still outclasses him."

Too bloody true.

Via con Dios, Senor Montalban.

I've been playing World of Warcraft since Live Beta 2 ( I think thats what it was called). Hell, I've tried most MMOs before the proverbial gorilla went on the market. I never stick with them. I'm a single player gamer at heart, and too many good games keep calling my attention away. Couple that with the tedium of grinding to endgame content, and I just never stick around

Given all this, it is with great joy, and no small amount of shock, that I announce I have made level 70 in World of Warcraft.

Yes, I know everyone else on Earth has 3-5 lvl 70 toons and twice as many alts, but for me, this is an achievement, and I'm particularly proud of it. It also means that when Wrath of the Lich King hits on Nov. 13th, I'll be able to actually jump straight in and see Northrend. I'm... just giddy to be honest.

And my Ebon Gryphon flying mount just looks cool!

Okay, yesterday was made of win and awesome.  Not only did Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core come out (it being the prequel to the best JRPG ever made, imo and one of the two main reasons I bought a PSP in the first place).  I've played through the prologue and it's everything I'd hoped.  The combat system is... odd, but it plays like a cross between VII and XII, making this quite possibly my favorite FF game since VIII came out.

But the fun didn't stop there.  C&C3: Kane's Revenge also came out.   Now I'm not a big RTS fan, but the C&C series has a special place in my heart for one reason:  live action cut scenes of such Shatnerian melodrama that it makes me giggle, with the titular character played by none ofhter that the former producer of the C&C series, who throws himself into the role like the aforementioned Captain James T. Denny Crane himself.  The mssions are, as ever a royal pain, but its worth it.

And last but not least, the coup de grace:  World of Warcraft Patch 2.4: Sunwell Isle.  Not only does it release new class balances and quest fixes, it revamps a fair bit in the way of PvP, Honor and Arenas, adds a SLEW of daily quests (the new way to make money for you non-WoWers), AND an entirely new zone with two new raid instances and an addition to the lore of the blood elves that makes me positively giddy inside.  I'd just about left the game behind, but one day in and I'm already re-addicted.  Dammit, they never let you go, man, they never let you go.

From my new all-time Game of the Friggin' Millenium, Mass Effect.  This is Tali, a cute-sounding, enviironemnt-suit wearing engineer who's joined up with you because she made the bad mistake of uncovering the bad guy's evil scheme and needed protection, and Garrus the cynical cop who's grown sick of red tape and left Citadel Security to work for you in stopping said BBEG. 

Tali: Garrus, do you ever regret quiting C-Sec?
Garrus: Chasing a rouge Specter accross the Galaxy, saving billions of lives, no red tape to get in the way; I'd say that beats C-sec any day.
Tali: I'm glad the imminant doom of all organic life in the galaxy has afforded you new career oportunities.

Well, I just finished what is my new favorite RPG.  Bioware's latest, Mass Effect, is a science-fiction RPG set in a non-licensed universe of Bioware's own creation.  After ton after ton of fantasy-based RPGs, this is a welcome sight.  With the promise of episodic content, a la Half-Life 2, and two sequels, this is the beginning of a powerful new franchise.  But is it any good?  
 
( Here's my two cents. )

even a Sith Lord.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/teban32/820515816/in/set-72157600806917315/

Getting ready to move again. Strangely enough, back to the place I was in such a hurry to get out of a year ago. Though this time we're going into the much nicer professional section, so YAY no more stupid drunk frat boys! Don't particularly want to have to replace my side mirrors again.

Lessee, what's going on in the world? My long standing roommate Ryan has gotten himself a new girlfriend. She's a little on the co-dependent side, as is readily apparent from how she drove down here to see him after being told no less than four times that this was about the WORST possible weekend for that, all because things "weren't going well." *rolls eyes* Whatever. Let him enjoy his happiness while it lasts. I just hope she gets out before we have to throw her in a box and move her too.

My job is more boring then ever right now. I can't wait to get back to late evening shift. Right now there are too many staffers (except on Sunday) and I keep feeling like I'm gonna be told they don't need me anymore for how little work I actually do right now. On the upshot, in just under a month, my one year probationary period ends and their ability to just fire me with no paper trail or explanation goes away. There's also another position in the library thats opened up that I'm trying for. Cross your fingers people. Daddy needs a promotion. :)

Its funny, a year ago this time, I was stuck in a dead-end job at OfficeMax, feeling like I'd failed in almost every respect. This job I have no isn't the greatest, but its the first step UP I've had in a long while, and its really helped change my longterm view of getting through life. Things do improve, though not at the rate we always want. I'm still nowhere near close to where I want to be before I'm 35, but even a single step forward was enough to seriously reverse alot of my psychological deterioration of recent years. I'd hesitate to say I've become a positive, upbeat person, but my perpetual storm cloud has gone away it seems, for which I'm thankful.

Life is kinda lonely right now. I'm single, though that really isn't what's bothering me. My pool of friends has shrunken down to next to nothing. Like-minded groups are hard to find, and most people here who are my age are either long-term town residents. or grad students who are married to their thesis. Combine that with my odd work schedule and I have very little human interaction that isn't based on mindless pleasantries and simple chit-chat with co-workers 20 years my senior. I miss alot of you guys who've left over the years. I know I was never the most sociable person back in the day, and that was my own stupidity. You never know what you've got till its gone, right? Ah well. Hope life finds all of you out there doing well. Peace.

I've played with this guy before. :)

http://www.parkercomics.com/RID/index.php?comicID=54

Okay, just got back from seeing Michael Bay's Transformers, and I'm pleased to say it was pretty good. Its a solid film whose biggest flaw is that it DOESN'T take itself too seriously.

The movie starts off like your basic coming-of-age story. Boy likes girl, boy needs car to impress girl, etc etc etc. In fact, the bond between teenager and his vehicle is pretty much the heart of this movie. Only in this case, Sam Witwicky's first car is an sentient alien mechanical lifeform. Guess they don't teach you how to deal with this kinda thing in high school nowadays, huh?

The plot is fairly straightforward. Decepticons have come to Earth to find the Allspark (think the Matrix from the original cartoon movie), and the Autobots have come to find it first and save us from them. Sam unknowingly has the key to finding it in his possession and thus every alien transforming robot on the planet is looking for him. This is what drives the movies set-piece action scenes and general mayhem that Bay is so well-known for. If robot-vs-robot action is what you want to see, this film won't disappoint.

Wow, that looks really bad when you read it back...

Anyway, Sam, played by Shia LeBouf, is essentially the centerpoint of this film. This is a very humancentric film, and the Transformers are really not given the bulk of the screentime. This may offend a lot of people, but it went with the movie as a whole. The Decepticons are largely faceless boogiemen, so one really doesn't care that they don't' get developed much. What is disappointing is that th Autobots are given voices and names and interaction time with the humans, and you're left wanting to know more about them, and you don't get that. Megatron, the main villain, doesn't appear till the last act, and barely has any lines, aside from his battle with Prime (which was pretty awesome).

However, this was not the most disconcerting creative choice in the filme. As I said above, this movie has a LOT of comedy. In some ways, the movie feels like part-sitcom. Most of it works. Some of it doesn't. This is best exemplified in John Turturro's Agent Simmons. The moment he walks on screen, his completely over-the-top and LUDICROUS secret agent is so JARRING it yanks you right out of the movie. Was he funny? Yes, in small doses. But you got large doses of him, and he was so erratic and high-strung that you couldn't for a minute believe he'd be a high-ranking agent of a super-secret government agency, that it made the middle of Act II seem almost like a different movie.

As my friend, Soran, pointed out, there are two movies here. One is an alien invasion flick with military action and gigantic battles, with humans struggling to adapt to this incredible situation they just found themselves in. The other movie is about alien robots coming to Earth searching for the source of their life, and learning about humanity by living among us. Unfortunately, these two plots don't always blend together and I really wish this had been two separate movies with both plots given full attention. Instead we get a 75% developed human plot that you kinda wish the decepticon invasion and its impact had been better explored. The other 25% was the Autobots vs Decepticons and it was just stripped of nearly all its dramatic potential and reduced to a great action epic and then shoe-horned in with the disaster movie.

Was this a bad movie? HELL NO. I actually rather enjoyed it, and I'll be owning it when it comes out on DVD. I recommend it to Transfans everywhere. Just be aware, the movie is not perfect. But before you go out and lambast Michael Bay, I just want to make this clear. This was an incredibly faithful adaptaion of the original cartoon, with better writing, characters, and more cohesive plot. The 8yo inside me was LOVING every second of the movie, and thats really who this movie was made for, when you get right down to it. Hopefully we'll get a sequel that will give more emphasis on the Transformers and take what will hopefully be a successful franchise in new directions.

On a livejournal?! Why this could be the beginning of something new and amazing!

Yeah, maybe 5 years ago.

Anhywho, I've got this friend (YES he really is a separate person and not some weirdass way to talk about myself!). Some of you know him. When I first met him, I thought him a bit of a self-important prick. Well, he thought I was the embodiment of seething rage and mental instability. *Shrug* Live and learn. For the moment, lets call him Clark.

After a couple of years, we began to tolerate each other, and even became friends. He was constantly trying to tell me the world was not this dark, dreary emo place I thought it was and that I basically needed to stop being so thrice-damn cynical. Of course, I waved my hand dismissively in the air and continued on my pragmatic, "realist" ways. Suffice to say, my nickname should have been Bruce.

Well a couple years ago, I went through nine kinds of emotional hell and nearly broke completely. Since then, my life has slowly turned around. My outlook on life has shifted somewhat, and I find myself being a generally more upbeat person. As if in some kind of cosmic irony, his life went the other way, at least emotionally. Now I find myself in the odd position of trying to do for him what he tried to do for me, with about the same results. And so, I've become Clark and he's become Bruce.

If this thinly veiled attempt at analogy comes off as kinda silly, there's something you have to understand about us. For all that we're friends, we fight. A lot, actually. Half the time, it seems like we're seeing every issues from the exact opposite direction. It can be frustrating at times, but amazingly, neither one of us has told the other where to shove it, so I see that as a testament to friendship. :) Trust me, to those few comic geeks who might be reading this, the weird-ass analogy makes sense in my head, and really, isn't that what matters?

Right now, he's off in some far-off land (Seattle) having wild adventures (going to a concert) and hanging out in hives of scum and villainy (goth clubs) and I HOPE, that he's finding some inner answers. Long distance trips to new places are good for that, and so I hope that Bruce comes back with a bit less Dark and a little more Knight again. Or better yet, he goes completely 180. Red and blue tights were never really my style anyway.

Well just got back from my midnight screening of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, and it was pretty much what I expected, namely the series equivalent of Return of the Jedi.

The movie is almost exactly 3 hours long, and its acts are broken up exactly like that. Act I, the Rescue of Ha... I mean, Jack Sparrow is where the movie unfortunately drags, and you go nearly 45 minutes before our errant captain even appears on screen. While I wouldn't call any single scene "nonessential", every scene throughout the film could have had a minute or two chopped out, and the first Act needed about 3-5 minutes removed out of every scene.

Fortunately, once you get through the first hour, things begin to pick up. Unfortunately, for fans of the first movie, there's still very little action, beyond a big bar brawl amongst Pirate Lords, and there's a great deal of exposition and character development for all concerned. Personally, I LIKED that, but I know many won't. It does "slow" the movie down, but I didn't really seem to mind.

Act III is the Big Pay Off. Pirate battles, sword duels, cannons firing and general mayhem. In fact, over half the last hour is nothing but one giant extended naval battle/sword duel between various members of the cast, switching between sub-battles throughout the extended engagement in the heart of a giant maelstrom. Great stuff, really, and those bored by Act II will soon have little reason to complain about the film.

Fans of the respective characters, rejoice! Nearly EVERYONE gets closure in their respective plots, even Jack, whose ultimately left a bit open-ended. The Will/Elizabeth/Jack "love triangle" is resolved and many do get to live happily ever after. Not all, unfortunately, and I won't give spoilers here, but be warned, there is a touch of tragedy to the movie. Though I will offer this ray of hope: stay till after the end credits for a redeeming touch to one of the more melancholy subplots.

One given special attention was Davey Jones, played by Bill Nighy. At first, I thought he'd be little more than a big monster and a foil for Jack, but even Jones got multiple character development scenes, where the story of his great love is explored as well as what drove him to cut out his own heart. In fact, we even get a brief scene of Jones as a a human captain (and its NOT via flashback!), not that it really matters. How Nighy brings across such a range of emotion under all those prosthetics is just amazing, and he was easily one of my favorite characters in the last two parts of the series.

I actually foresee this movie being lambasted by many. The die-hard action and Jack-Sparrow-Comedy fans will hate all the drama and exposition and lengthy serious scenes. The action junkies will hate that that aside from the opening and the occassional small scuffle, all the action is saved for the end. And the critics will, of course, hate the interminably long setup of the first act followed by Non-Stop-Pirate-Action-Theater of Act III.

Fuck 'em. This is a popcorn movie AND an EXCELLENT end to the story thus far. If you're like me and found the darker story and more serious tone of the second movie to your liking, you'll love At World's End.

Since September, we've wondered how exactly saving Claire Bennett would stop the explosion this season on Heroes.

The most popular theory was that by denying Sylar the ability to regenerate, he could be killed, and thus the world could be saved. Of course, with Peter being the seeming source of disaster, that didn't hold up for the entire season. Next, of course, was the one espoused towards the end of the season that she was the only one who could kill Peter if he went nuclear.

But last night, we found out the truth.

She was the only one who could be the one thing Nathan Petrelli lacked in his rich and privileged life: a conscience. She made him see something his own doubts or even his brother could truly convince him of. That the future is not set in stone. And faced with the defiant attitude of a daughter he'd never really known, Nathan finally got off the fence and showed us what a Hero was.

The finale of Heroes had its issues, but for all that, the finally have the answer to this question was worth the wait.

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

Yeah, that was a surprise... :)

According to stories going around school, Prof. Librescu was shot because he jumped in front of the gun to give his students time to try and get away.

EDIT: CNN and other agencies have been reporting on this story since I posted this, possibly before since I stopped watching the coverage earlier today.

BTW, if anyone hasn't read it, head over to trystanknight's LJ and read his post concerning the media response to this tragedy.

As some of you may or may not know, I am a graduate and employee of Virginia Tech. Since I'm posting, you can be fairly sure I'm alive and well after yesterday's tragedy. I never thought I'd be thankful for an evening shift.

I'm not going to repeat any of the usual stuff thats been said in the last 24 hours. We all know how bad it is. I just wanted to put up a little something that puts a more human face on the whole incident.

As a librarian (assistant), I deal with a lot of Tech faculty and students, so I wasn't entirely surprised to see the names of the one of the victims as someone I recognized. Prof. Librescu was an engineering professor that came in regularly for books and reserve material and the like. I can't claim to have known him personally, but I saw him regularly enough to know his name and pick him out in a crowd.

Well today, reading a CNN article giving quick blurbs on the few victims identified, I learned that he was a Holocaust survivor.

A man who lived through something UNTHINKABLE: the planned extermination of his people; who had the strength to survive, to move on, and to become a professor of engineering is gunned down by someone who couldn't handle his girlfriend leaving him or that his mommy didn't hug him enough... I don't know why, but something about that offends me even more than mass shooting itself.

I know a lot of people were cut down in their prime, denied a chance to live a rich and happy life and that should make me upset. It DOES make me upset. But this... there's a tragic irony to it that makes me want to weep.