An RPG's Main Downfall

I am a D&D geek. Not a gigantic one, but one nonetheless. I didn't play the pen and paper D&D as a kid, but I did play Battletech which was basically the same thing but with more gigantic robots and less role playing. My D&D geekiness came in playing the original Gold box AD&D computer games, reading the AD&D novels, and playing Spellfire (AD&D's version of Magic: The Gathering).

As I went into college I seemingly grew out of my D&D phase. I still played Spellfire with my brother every now and again, but that was about it. I did, however, start playing more RPG video games. I loved Baldur's Gate, Nox, Fallout, and whatever other RPG's came out for computer. Once I got an Xbox I started playing console RPG's as well such as D&D: Heroes and Knights of the Old Republic.

I loved almost all of the RPG's that I played, but I rarely finished them all the way through. For me they were just too long and suffered from being either repetitive or just pretty level-grinding styled games. I would just get sick of doing the same thing over and over again, no matter what the small derivations of the tasks might be. Basically they all boiled down to the same thing repeated with a different, shiny coat.

I bring this up because I stumbled across this image at Gamespy that pretty much describes my feelings about RPG's. 95% of all RPG's can, at their essence, be boiled down to that one graphic. Because of that, I have decided that in the future I will only play RPG's that can be completed in 10 hours or less or are somehow revolutionary (which is pretty rare). I just can't dedicate a ton of time to doing repetitive tasks over and over again.

Staring Down a Highway

In the last five days I think it wouldn’t be too much of an over exaggeration to say that I’ve spent a good majority of my time within the confines of an automobile. For me, one of the places I most hate to be is inside a car, so there is little need for me to explain to you that being in a car usually causes me to be grouchy, overly snappy, and sometimes worse, depending upon if I get a headache while driving, which has been known to happen.

Saturday afternoon, after a quite lazy and introspective morning, I left Rochester for the Twin Cities to meet up at the Mall of America with Kristin as she was already in the area since she was at a friend’s birthday bash the night before. We met up, slogged through the crowds, I picked up some cleats & dress shoes, we both got some Dairy Queen, and then we headed out to Jared’s place for the evening. Oh, side note, did you know that Dairy Queen no longer has the brownie batter blizzard? Well, they don’t.

The next day Kristin, myself, Andy, his little brother, and another friend all drove over to the Metrodome parking lot for this year’s iteration of the Warped Tour. It was a good time, but extremely warm. You’ll get a more detailed look at this year’s tour when I finish my writeup for Decoy. After the show we all returned to Andy’s place, from which Kristin and I took off for St. Cloud.

Monday I had to return to Rochester, which was a wonderfully dreadful drive thanks to the pouring rain the entire day. It took nearly 3 and a half hours to get home. Once home, I pack for my Chicago trip, tossed it all by the stairs so I didn’t forget it, and nodded off for the night.

Tuesday I left for a business trip to Chicago. It took almost seven and a half hours to get to downtown Chi-town at which time we had enough time for supper, checking in, and a little bit of relaxation time. The next morning we had a five hour business meeting with a client and then hit the road to return home. I pulled into my driveway at a little under 10:30 pm.

Now it’s Thursday and it feels like it’s been ages since I was not confined by the borders imposed by a motor vehicle. Who would have guessed that I would be thankful for the spaciousness of my cubicle at work? After so much time in a car, though, it sure is nice. Now I just have to get caught back up and get back on my normal schedule. That should be a fun task, and short lived since I’ll be heading to St. Cloud this weekend and house sitting all next week. I want off of this ride. I’m starting to get woozy…

And I'm Off

Man, life is terribly busy right now. This weekend, despite my last post claiming I was bored and felt as if my life was slowly wasting away in front of me, actually picked up shortly thereafter. I headed to the cities for some shopping at the Mall of America with Kristin, then went to visit some friends in the cities, then went to Warped Tour all day Sunday, spent a stormy day in St. Cloud on Monday, and today I’m off to Chicago on business for a couple of days. I’ll be back late Wednesday. Go me.

Weekends Shouldn't Suck

Thank God for weekends, right? You don’t have to worry about work. You can chill out if you want. You can stay up late and sleep in even later. You’ve got two solid days to yourself to do whatever the heck you please. How can that not be unbelievably awesome? It can’t be, right?

I used to always think so, and still do most of the time, but I’ve also found that the weekends are the times at which I find myself feeling most alone. During the week everything I do is structured and I know I’ve always got things to do and stuff to try and accomplish. Every hour of the day I feel like I’m working towards something or that at least I should be doing something towards a purpose.

Monday through Friday I have work for eight hours a day. Monday nights I have my softball league. At least one of the nights I usually end up going out with friends. Every afternoon I go for a run and exercise. At night I have my “relax time” that I use to unwind from the day by watching tv, a movie, or doing some reading. Then I get up and do it the next day. I don’t have time to feel lonely.

Weekends are a different story altogether. I don’t have work. I exercise quick in the morning or early afternoon. I try to do any chores I have to Saturday morning to get them out of the way. Sometimes I’ll get together with friends or my family or Kristin, but when I don’t I really feel aimless.

When left to my own devices I have such a hard time trying to figure out what to do with my day. I’ll sometimes try to amuse myself with video games, but usually I feel like I’m wasting my time. It’s different when I have someone to play games with, but when it’s just me sitting in the basement by myself I feel like I should be doing something more substantial with my time.

So then I try something else. I’ll read or send emails to people or tidy up my room or do other little tasks, but I still have that empty feeling. Compounding that, I hate being alone and I think that’s part of the reason I feel so listless when I’m trying to entertain myself—I crave someone else’s company.

Which makes weekends that I spend with Kristin or weekends where I have something planned, such as the camping trip I went on a couple of weeks back, feel worthwhile. That and I just enjoy being with Kristin and being in the company of friends.

I’ve noticed, though, that as I grow older it’s so much harder to get friends together. So many of them are getting married or already are. Others move away. Others have become secluded or are simply content to doing nothing. It’s not like college where there were a ton of people around to do stuff with at any hour of the day. I HAVE to entertain myself at times simply because everyone I know is doing something else, and it really, really sucks. I hate being alone and doing things on my own. I had enough of that throughout elementary, middle, and high school.

What really drove this home is the fact that I was happy to have to come in to work today, a Saturday, to get some work done. It made my day, or at least part of it, feel worthwhile. I’ll be heading to the Twin Cities later to visit with Kristin and then to go to Warped Tour tomorrow, so it really shouldn’t have been too bad of a morning for me since it was just a part of a day that I had to try to entertain myself, but before I came into the office, it was terrible.

I’m trying to figure out what this has to say about me and my personality. Some might call it a dependency problem. Others might call it a dumb fixation that I manufacture myself in order to force myself to do something. Another way of looking at it is that I might be searching for something “more” in my life right now. I’m not sure. I really don’t think it’s any of those things. I just want to spend time with friends and loved ones whenever I can. I don’t want to do things alone. Life, for me, is something to be shared and I want to share mine.

Nural - Weight of the World CD Review

Everyone grows old, and in that process of growing older people usually tend to grow more mature, become a little more tempered, and express themselves in less volatile of manners. People calm down as they grow older—it’s just the nature of the game. Youth and adolescents usually don’t examine their feelings, their state in life, or the nature of the things around them like adults—they live awash in their emotions, expressing them with what little ability they’ve managed develop in their short experience with them. There’s a certain rawness and uncertainty, as well as some overzealousness, that comes with how you express yourself while growing up. You don’t really know how to properly express yourself, but you know you have something to express. It’s this urgent expression of emotion that is evidently on display throughout Nural’s debut full length, The Weight of the World. They’ve got emotion to share, but they might not always know how to do it.

It will be quite apparent upon first listen that this young fivesome (no member is older than 20 years old) are putting their heart on their sleeve and trying to make themselves heard, something you don’t always get from a band that’s older and a little more weathered to this world. At times this youthful exuberance will lead to songs that feel slightly forced or unoriginal, but would you rather have raw, emotion playing that could use a little fine tuning or perfectly polished, yet hollow, songs?

Along with their hearts, Nural also wear their influences on their sleeve. Their brand of emotional hard rock is far from original, but they somehow manage to take influences from across the modern rock landscape and shape them into a very authentic and genuine sounding mesh that feels familiar as well as refreshing.

The leadoff track has a very big and deep hard rock sound to it, something you might hear from Finger Eleven, minus the screaming. Many songs manage to mix a fine balance of older Nickelback flavored song structures with heavier guitar textures (a la Smeer or Strata) to create a thick, exuberant sound. There’s even the occasional quick guitar solo thrown in every now and again. Nothing like what you’d hear on a Van Halen album of course, but just having solos on rock albums is rare in today’s radio friendly rock market. Complementing the music, the very mature sounding vocals feel like a younger version of Brad Arnold from 3 Doors Down but with a little more pliability to them.

Now as much youthful fun as most of this cd is there are a few songs that really fall flat. “Sign of Life” screams out for modern rock radio play in its cliché ridden structure. The first two minutes are made up of acoustic rock with slow, mellow vocals followed by a booming, radio rock passage only to return to acoustics at the end of the song. This type of song has been done a million times before and this version is no different than any of the others. “I Told You So” is also, unfortunately, pigeonholed into the modern radio rock template that’s been done to death as well.

In the end, though, this cd is actually a breath of fresh air from a very stale genre. Leave it to a bunch of kids to show all of the veterans how to make an album that feels genuine and heartfelt. Now let’s hope that as these boys grow older that they don’t grow up and lose the youthful enthusiasm that makes this release the fun listen that it is.

Movie Theaters Used to be Cool

I stumbled across this blog entry over at The Big Picture talking about how it’s not piracy that will kill the movie industry, it’s movie theaters. From the article:

5 factors are hurting theater revenue:
1) Social factors eroding theater environment (talking, cell phones, babies crying, etc.)
2) Sacrificing long term relationships with theater-goers for the increase in short term profitability (commercials, no ushers, etc.)
3) Higher quality experience elsewhere (Home theater)
4) Declining quality of mainstream movies
5) Easily available Long Tail content alternatives (Netflix, Amazon)

I agree so completely that it’s almost uncanny. I really love movies and I’ve been watching a lot of them recently as I’m on a movie kick again, but I find myself more apt to rent a movie and kick back at home than go to a theater.

The first reason provided is the one I agree with least. Here in Rochester or Austin, I haven’t noticed more unruly movie goers than I used to recall when I was younger. The one thing that is more prevalent, though, is people who don’t turn their cell phones off. It’s annoying, but I notice most people will quickly turn off their cell if it starts ringing so I assume it’s usually just a slip of the mind.

The second reason is also not as prevalent here in Rochester but it is starting to get to the point of a larger annoyance than it should be. We have probably anywhere from 1-5 minutes of ads before a movie, which isn’t too bad, but we also have the annoying slide reel thing that plays all the way up to the movie’s start time on the screen. It’s always the same local ads and the same boring movie trivia. I wish they’d just go back to the good ol’ days when they’d just have the radio on. If there gets to be too many more actual advertisements that are shown before a movie, I’ll probably be a little more miffed.

Reason number three is a biggie with me. See I have my own home theater at my house. 57” widescreen high def television. 300 watt dolby surround sound. A nicely broken in and comfortable couch. Convenience. No one to bother me. I love watching movies at home with that setup. The only movies that I really feel I have to see in theaters any more are the special effects laden sci-fi flicks that come out, like War of the Worlds or the upcoming Serenity. Any other movie that I don’t have a real strong urge to see I’ll just wait until they come out on DVD and watch them at home.

Number four is a problem. A big one. Over the last few years it seems that moviegoers have been content to watch movies that sucked as long as there was action, sweet special effects, or fart jokes in them to spice it up. Personally, I find myself more and more disappointed by every big budget movie I see. More often than not, I’ll find myself fascinated by smaller indie pictures that never hit theaters, like The Machinist or Primer or Mean Creek for example, rather than the latest blockbuster, such as Fantastic Four or Stealth.

I will admit, I have been impressed by a few of the movies I’ve seen in the theaters lately (Batman Begins, War of the Worlds, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), but I find there’s a much higher crap to masterpiece ratio when going to see Hollywood blockbusters that are in theaters in comparison to smaller indie studio productions.

Reason five might be the one that eventually kills movie going as we know it. It costs me $5 to go to a matinee or $7 to see a regular showing of a movie in the theater, which is relatively cheap in comparison to other venues in the US, but still seems a little spendy, especially if you get pop, popcorn, or candy. For the same price as a regular movie and refreshments you could rent like 3 movies from Hollywood Video (I hate Blockbuster, by the way, and try to avoid them). When you think about it, for the same price you could often BUY a dvd. Maybe not a new release, but you could easily find a dvd you’d like to watch to buy for that price and with most dvd’s you’ll get way cool extras (or at least just some ok extras).

With the used dvd market in full swing as well, it’s pretty darn easy to find movies you want to own for cheap. I do a lot of movie trading on BarterBee.com and I’ve recently been scoping out used dvd’s at Gamestop since they’ve had tons for $5 and also have buy 2 get 1 free sales. It’s just so much more cost effective to buy or rent dvd’s than it is to go to movies. There’s also a much higher variety of movies on dvd than there are in the theater. I see this as being a monstrous problem for theaters. Let’s just hope that the MPAA can change their business model a little quicker and friendlier than the RIAA is changing their business model.

Goth, My Ass

Goth 56% Punk/Rebel 50% Prep/Jock/Cheerleader 50% Drama nerd 50% Loner 38% Geek 38% Ghetto gangsta 31% Stoner 25% What's Your High School Stereotype? created with QuizFarm.com

A Very Furry Housemate

For the last month or so, and for the forseeable future, I've been renting out the basement of a house that a friend of mine lives in. His house is only four miles away from work and is much, much closer than the 38 my parents' place was. I also felt the need to get into town instead of being out in the boondocks. It was just so hard to do things with people that lived in Rochester when I lived so far away. Anyhow, this doesn't really matter so much for what I was actually going to talk about--an addition to the household, Mori the dog.

Mori the dog is a Soft Furred Wheaton Terrier (or something of that nature). I'm horrible at remembering breed names. Anyways, she's about eight weeks old and weight probably six or seven pounds right now. Since she's a puppy she's plenty playful, likes to bite things, and doesn't always remember to go to the bathroom outside. Beyond that she's been a lot of fun.

Yeah, I don't really have much else to say about her so here, look at a picture of her:

His Final Beam Up

Sadly, our beloved Scotty has passed on to the next life early this morning. Being a closet Star Trek nerd, it hurts a little each time one of the original crew passes away. It's obviously impossible that they'd somehow live forever, but seeing some of the actors who portrayed characters in tv shows and movies that I admired, and even worshiped, as a child puts into perspective how time is moving along unphased and how it keeps aging me, slowly but surely. I don't recall ever giving Father Time my express written consent to make me older without my permission, but I don't think he'll stop any time soon.

Star Trek has sadly taken another blow with the loss of James Doohan. I know I'll definitely miss the man who played the best damn Scottish engineer in a sci-fi television show ever, if anything just for his candor about how much of a self-absorbed prick William Shatner is.

Playing It Safe

In most sports I’m unbelievably competitive. I will give everything I can to win. I’ll take chances. I’ll push myself. I’ll trust my instincts. I’ll try as hard as I can. I’ll do all of this because I want to be the best and I want to win. That is, unless I’m playing softball or baseball. For some odd psychological reason I am always playing it safe when it comes to this sport. I never really thought about it much until after my softball team’s league game last night.

We won the game to bolster our record to 7-2, but I felt like I had lost. There were three key moments that made me realize I play this sport way too safe and that I’m afraid to take chances on the field.

The first was a play I made from the outfield. The other team had a baserunner on first and the batter hit a blooper out in my direction. After I closed on the ball and scooped it up on two bounces, I saw the runner from first making his way to third. I had an urge to gun it to the third baseman to try and throw him out, but instead I held off and hit the cutoff man at second. I might have been able to get him at third, but I was afraid of making a bad throw and potentially allowing a run in. Luckily we got out of the inning without the runner scoring.

The second two moments were baserunning instances. I was on first with no one in front of me when the batter jacked one down the left field line. I made third easily and I could have possibly made home but I held up not wanting to get gunned down at the plate, losing us a run. I’m fast enough where I think I could have made it, but I held up wanting to stay with a safe thing—sitting on third.

The next batter came up with me still standing on third, anxiously wanting to get home as the game was tied at 5 apiece, and a runner behind me on second. Our guy cracked one to the shortstop and since the ball was on my side of the field I didn’t move too far towards home like I probably should have. After eyeing me up, the throw was made to first for the out. If I would have been daring, I would have made a solid 4-5 step start towards home and then jetted at the plate to score, but instead I held back not wanting to take the chance that the shortstop would fire the ball back at third instead of to first, even though the odds of that happening were pretty low.

I eventually scored on the next play on a single, but I couldn’t help but think that I almost stranded myself there without scoring. If the next batter would have gotten out I would have kept us from getting a run.

It kind of makes me wonder, why I play it so safe in softball but not other sports? Does it say something profound about my personality type? Probably not, but I think part of the reason is that baseball was the first sport I started playing when I was young and I was always so afraid of messing up that ended up overthinking everything. Every at-bat, every time I was in the field, every time I was running the bases, it didn’t matter. I was always trying to do the right thing.

Of course you can’t always do the right thing, but back then I was looking so hard for the approval of my teammates and my coach that any error or mistake I would take very personally and often I’d let it guide my future behavior. If I screwed up a stolen base attempt I’d be less likely to take off the next time. If I got burned by a long fly over my head I’d start playing extra deep. I was always trying to overcorrect for the mistakes I made, which many times weren’t even mistakes but just the breaks in the game.

It’s crazy how that type of mentality has managed to carry over into my adult softball playing career. Sure, I don’t play this way when I’m just goofing around with friends or playing a pickup game, but as soon as you put me in a game that counts for something my brain is on overdrive trying to outsmart itself and outsmart the game itself. What’s sad is that I can’t outsmart the game and mistakes are still going to happen, but I continually let them get to me. If this isn’t an argument to prove that environment helps shape a personality, I don’t know what is.