No, really. The past week+ has been fairly uneventful. Despite this, I still have several things to do around the house that I haven't made it to yet. I feel like I've been busy, but I also don't feel like i've done/accomplished much - how does that work?

Sheri & I did have our 4th anniversary on thursday. :-) That was a good day. We went for a walk around sycamore shoals (cause it was such a nice day), and then went out to dinner. We then went to look for a movie to watch (we were going to go see Wall-E, but our theatre wasn't showing it at a time that worked well) and bought disney's The Sword in the Stone. I love cartoons.

I guess in terms of my hobbies' time ratio, gaming has gotten the lion's share lately. I've put a significant chunk of time into continuing to develop my new(ish)/experiemental system/setting but i'm still not happy with my progress - it seems to be going much too slowly. Hopefully I'll get a little more momentum soon. We had a last-minute game session last night for my surviving d&d group, which was quite fun - though it took the party about 3x longer to get to where they did than I figured it would.

Apart from that, i've been working on some large projects for work - even some on my own time. There's one in particular i really want to get done, but I never get enough time to spend on it. It's going to make things a lot easier on several of us once I do though.

Got to hang out with Sam a little on friday. That was cool. Haven't seen him much since he's been at Berea. Got to hear a couple new songs of his - they're pretty cool (as was to be expected). I've been sadly neglecting my music stuff lately. I did play a little yesterday and discovered my fingers are way out of shape. My callouses are still there, but my index finger cramps on bar chords pretty quickly. I need to start compiling ideas for a new album for next year's album recording month too. If i can write most of it beforehand, i might have a prayer of actually finishing one.

Tony & I (and Sheri, to some extent) have been working through the obsessive-collecting madness that is Lego Star Wars. There are minikit pieces on some of the levels i swear don't exist: i've gone back and forth through some of these levels like 12 times and they're still nowhere to be found. It's a fun and funny little game though.

Anyway, that's pretty much it.

~PS

See Also: Recycle T-Shirt

So I was having some trouble sleeping the last part of last week. On thursday night I was half-conscious out on the couch at about 3am when I got this crazy idea. For some reason, I was thinking about this old video game I used to play on the Apple IIgs we used to have when I was about 10. It was called the The Bard's Tale II. It was basically a step up (technologically speaking) from a text-based adventure game and it was the first rpg (computer or otherwise) I ever played. I remember having uber high-level characters, but I never even passed the first dungeon. Wanting something to do with my insomnia, I thought "i wonder if there's some way I can play that again..."

I did some quick googling and I found a DOS version of the game. The entire game was one file that was about 500k. Yeah. 500K. It took about 3 seconds to download. I was able to get it to run on my xp laptop, but it was only in 16 colors. The version I remembered from our old computer was a much-prettier 256 colors. Also, the controls and interface were a little different.

Thinking that if I'm going to go for nostalgia here I might as well do it right, I decided I'd try to get as close to what i had before as possible. It took a while, but I dug up an Apple IIgs emulator for OSX and the IIgs version of the game - which was *exactly* what I used to play. It took me a couple more hours to get it to work, but i was successful. So now I have the ghost of our old computer running in a window on my computer here, playing a game that was put out 20 years ago.

So this game has been lots of fun to play - both because it brings back some memories and because it really is a fun game. Having been playing Twilight Princess recently (All the bugs collected!!), I've been remembering the amazing difference between how games used to be put together vs how they are now - and not just in terms of flashiness.

Also, I know why i never completed the first dungeon when I was a kid. OH. MY. We've been so spoiled by games like Zelda where a) there's a map you can find in the game and b) where said maps also make some kind of sense. I have 4 pages of graph-paper maps drawn out for the starter dungeon. And I haven't completed it yet. The dungeons in this game are basically multi-level 22x22 mazes full of random walls, doors, tons of monsters and a handful of objectives, few of which were explicitly stated at the outset. This also makes getting in and out of the dungeons difficult - since there's no spiffy 'warp me out' item/spell (well, there is an uber high-level spell that teleports you to The Guild, but you lose all your gold when you do and I can't get it for several levels anyway). I've resorted to consulting a walkthrough already - because i've hit quite a few literal and figurative dead-ends. I'm trying to do it as little as possible though. It doesn't matter much anyway, since I've only found one walkthrough duplicated on about 12 different sites - and it seems to be...wrong...with respect to locations in the dungeons. Perhaps it was for a different version of the game and the mazes for this version are slightly different.

So yeah, I have a Wii and several modern-ish computers, and the game I've been playing lately came on one 3.5 floppy and required 200k of ram to play.

~PS

...your ordinary, less-exciting life.

Not that I'm not somewhat glad for the return to normalcy. The last couple of weeks have been pretty hectic. In a good way, but hectic none the less.

My parents came in for a visit last wednesday night and hung out here until yesterday afternoon - making this the longest span of time they've ever been able to stay. It was a lot of fun - my parents are great. :-)

I think I got them a little hooked on the Wii. They're *really* good at the bowling game. We also had a lot of fun with Mario Kart together.

My dad also fixed a few things around the house - something he's compelled to do whenever he's here. We spent most of saturday trying to get sheri's car working. We fixed a few problems with it, but found out that it has a more major issue with the oil pressure that we can't do much for. I think i'm gonna have to take it to the shop.

On thursday we went & played golf out at Buffalo Valley. I only played so-so, but it was still lots of fun. I'm hoping I can go out again soon.

On friday (the 4th), we went to Rucht & McKenna's house to hang out and watch the fireworks. We had a terrific view from the top of the hill across from the field they set them off in. Next year i'm bringing my camera.

Oh, and I learned how to make Lemon Cheese Bars from my mom. Yum.

...

So... ...after all the preparation and the Oots meetup and then a couple days of complex development at work and then several days of fun with my parents, things are settling down now. We did have a game session last night which was great. It was the first one in 2 and a half months for that group. We're planning to have another game this week as well, but other than that, not much on the calendar.

It's ok, I can use the rest.

~PS