Twitter is down.

How do I tweet about this?

Post from Phone (this may not work)

The Lovely Jenny is on vacation all week, so I've been on my own here. Some quick thoughts:

Pro: I can stretch out in the middle of the bed!
Con: I'm the only one in it.

Pro: I can leave my stuff lying around upstairs without worrying about it being moved ('cleaned up').
Con: I have to clean it all up.

Pro: All the string cheese is mine!
Con: I'm almost out of string cheese.

Pro: I know how to take care of the fish now.
Con: I don't think they like me. They don't say much, but I can tell...

Con: I didn't get to sit on the beach with her, watching the ocean all day.
Pro: I visited my grandma on her 90th birthday after work, and she was surprisingly lucid and upbeat.

I won that last one.

*Edited in-browser next day, because I can't leave well enough alone.

Gaming.

So my newly upgraded PC has led me astray from LotRO and into other games that I didn't think I'd realistically be able to run... in my lifetime. My PC budget is basically $zero, so I was lucky to pick up our friend Haley's old PC for $150, which is more than $zero, but still a good buy. This PC killed not one, not two, but three hard drives, so I'm expecting a crash at any time, but I can live with that.

I actually gutted that computer, along with my old one and the lovely Jenny's, and used all the bits to cobble together two new computers. I'm now running an Intel Quad-core at 2.5GHz with, somehow, 3.25GB RAM and my ATI HD 4870. Jenny is now running, in a different case, basically what was my old rig. An AMD 4000+ with a Gig of RAM and the NVIDIA whatever-it-was video card from Haley's comp. I'm no good with NVIDIA. Dunno what it was, but it was a massive step up from the ATI 1350 she had before, as is the RAM and CPU.

So now I can finally run games like Assassin's Creed II and GTA IV, and she can finally play games like Spore and The Sims 3, and can max out LotRO. And let me tell you: Assassin's Creed II alone was worth the upgrade. Seriously, that game is fucking amazing. I'm pretty much done with it now, in that all that's left to 100% completion is finishing all the annoying races, and I'm thinking about starting a new game to play it all over again. I've been playing GTA IV at the same time, but fuck that game. So far, it's not as fun as GTA San Andreas. Massive disappointment. I mean, it's good, but nowhere near as good as I expected. Instead of diving into it after finishing AC2 before returning to LotRO, I'm probably going to go back to LotRO and keep playing GTA on the side. I miss my Champion...

Never pay full price.

Steam is in the midst of a summer sale, and this is what I wait for. I can't remember ever paying full price for a PC game, except for the occasional retail bargain, like a boxed Painkiller trilogy or Half-Life 1 compilation. This week I nabbed the Grand Theft Auto IV complete pack for ten bucks, Assassin's Creed II for less than seven, and Bully for three and change. That's three full AAA games plus two expansions for the price of four Arby's value meals. I win.

I've got something like sixty games on Steam now, all but a handful purchased while on sale for a deep discount. Risen, a game I really, really want, is on sale today at 66% off. That still puts it at a little over ten dollars, so I passed. Discipline is the name of the game with Steam.

In other news, the lovely Jenny got a job with my company today, and she starts tomorrow. This is awesome. We'll be on the same sleep schedule now, and can carpool, saving tons of money on gas I won't spend on my 19-year old Explorer, since we'll take her Accord. And we can eat lunch together every day (double bonus points). Well, every day that I'm not out of town or on a PM, which is most days (minus 50% on double point bonus). Still, it will up our combined income hugely (financial stress level minus 60%). And I won't have to sweat in the heat all day and then drive home in a truck without air conditioning that's been sitting in the sun all day long (endurance level increased 50%).

On the downside, it's critical that we get her Accord serviced ASAP for all the warning lights that have been coming on lately, and I have no idea what repairs they might require. But that should be an affordable expense once she gets settled. Probably.

New mouse. This is big news.

About a month ago my mouse died. I loved that mouse. I even blogged about it. I bought it on my birthday, three years ago. Since its untimely death I've been using this cast-off, HP-branded piece of shit I dug out of a bin full of old computer cables. I hate it. I mean, it works, but its DPI is incredibly low, it's uncomfortable, it's ugly, and its cable is too short. Well, today is a new day.

I bought this thing tonight at Kmart. At $20, it's clearly the cheapest laser mouse you can possibly buy at retail. But it was there, so I bought it. And it ain't half bad. I mean, it's slightly too small for my hand, and somehow the DPI toggle button below the wheel keeps getting hit even when I don't actually click it, but I've had far worse mice. It's relatively comfortable, looks sharp, and the nicely clicky scroll-wheel glows red all the time. They had a purple one, but I went with red, because that's how I roll, motherfuckers.

You see, this is what Twitter has done to my blog. I'm on Twitter constantly now, so there's not much left to blog about. Twitter.com/Maladhros, for the record.

Another family crisis (getting good at this).

Just when things seemed to be getting back to normal, it's another trip to the hospital. My dad called me from work Friday afternoon with severe abdominal pain. He's still trying to recover from Miller-Fisher syndrome, an incredibly rare neurological disease that almost killed him last October, so I had no idea what to think, I just dropped everything and drove to midtown.

Wheeled him in an office chair to the car, because he couldn't stand, and drove to the ER. Turns out he had an "incarcerated inguinal hernia." Rushed to emergency surgery. Lots of doom-and-gloom, worst case information from the surgeon. Imminent-death sort of talk. Scariest two hours of my life. Then he came out of surgery with a best-possible outcome. The next morning he was cleared to go home. My personal life expectancy dropped one month due to stress.

The Lovely Jenny went above and beyond this weekend. She was there for my dad, and she was there for me. Genuinely my personal hero. In less than a year, I've dealt with my mother having multiple surgeries, including a double-mastectomy and the complications that arose from that, my dad being ambushed by Miller-Fisher and almost dying from it, and now this severe hernia. Jenny has helped me and my parents through it all. And meanwhile, her own aunt died of cancer and both her grandparents have been hospitalized, for a stroke in one case. She is officially the best person who ever lived.

Bored. Uploading screenshots.

Kwali and Arahwen farming at night. The sun is overrated.

Fendic arrives at Elrond's pad. Took a nap, moved on to Eregion.

Aurrok is trying, but Nalshara appears to be pointing at a distant rock.

Double flirt! Maethur and Ahryslan share a moment between kills.

I'm more online. That's a thing now.

So I'm on Twitter now. I still have absolutely no interest in creating a Facebook account, so I might as well do this Twitter thing. I found myself following multiple people/organizations on Twitter, so I figured it would be easier to just make an account and follow them so I can track everything at once. This is mostly regarding sports, particularly the Memphis Grizzlies and Tigers. But it also allows me to enter Turbine's Twitter LotRO contests, and gives me a link when commenting on Casual Stroll to Mordor articles, so I made my Twitter account LotRO-centric. My name on there is Maladhros, my main character's name.

So, whatever. Follow me at twitter.com/Maladhros. Or don't. I don't have any followers, which is fine. I just want to reply to people and track tweets. I hate that I just wrote that, but really, you kinda have to these days. I have a basic (meaning slow) data plan for my cell phone now, and that's where Twitter really shines when I'm trying to keep up with what's going on, particularly when I'm at work.

In other me-centric news, I went the whole weekend without logging into LotRO. I wanted a break from the complexity of all those characters with all that stuff to do with all those people in my new kinship, so I re-downloaded Call of Duty: Modern Warfare on Steam and spent my spare weekend time shootin' at crap instead of swingin' axes at crap. Really felt a need to get back to my FPS roots. And I was busy this weekend. Mowed the front yard, did an epic amount of laundry, went shopping like three times. Watched The Matrix. So it was easier to just jump into an FPS and kill dudes for a few minutes. LotRO is fantastic, but you have to set aside more than just a couple minutes here and there to play it.

That's really one of my only major criticisms... Well done, Turbine.

Busy elf.

In lieu of doing any actual leveling progression in LotRO this week, I've been taking my level 50 elf Champion Maladhros out to grind some deeds. I killed 150 trolls in the Lone Lands, all in one go, for Troll Slayer 1 and 2. The next night, I did the whole Quick Post run and Shire Brewmaster to complete Shire quests. Then I traveled to the North Downs and killed 70-something goblins in Dol Dinen for something I don't even remember, and found three or four points-of-interest for two more deeds.

Delivering what is probably really unimportant Hobbit-mail

I also completed two tiers of sickle-fly slaying in the Bree-lands and three deeds in the Old Forest: found all those Ent-wife flowers, finished the POI deed, and killed 40 Huorns. Quick aside: I still have Head-butt traited and slotted on my level 33 Dwarf Guardian Aurrok, and I always try to finish off trees with it. Just so I can head-butt a tree to death. Also, even with the map, I still get lost in the Old Forest all the time. I think it's great.

Bears like glowy, blurry areas. I learned that watching Survivorman.

Next night, I rode back to the North Downs and killed 50 Drakes and something like 260 Worms. I was going to just work a little on Worm-slayer, but I got carried away and finished it and went ahead and did Enmity of the Drakes*. In all, I leveled up six or seven virtues (three slotted) and earned one race trait, plus I finished two class traits in the process, even though I was only fighting grey mobs.

Added bonus: I looted absolutely everything. Vendored the trash I picked up in the Drake/Worm run alone for just shy of 2 gold. That'll help offset the 5G I spent on the Mathom Society horse last week. And the 5G I spend on the same horse for my level 47 Hunter, Maethur. And the 4G I spend on the Bree rep horse for Aurrok. It's a lot of money for just horses, but I want all four of my active characters to have a 250-morale mount. Kwali, my 41 Rune-Keeper, got his 250-morale goat through the Ale Association last year during the Fall Festival.

Then I bought the Steed of Night for Mal, so. Yeah. I did. I still like the Mathom horse, but I wouldn't have bought it if I'd known I was weak enough to buy that stupid damn Steed of Night. Jenny bought one, too. We actually had to buy points (double bonus point sale) for her to afford it. So well done, Turbine. You put it on sale before pulling it from the store again, and we spent twenty bucks on points to afford it. Are you happy now?

Anyway. My only other character is a level 23 Hobbit Burglar. I'm not leveling him because I don't like the class and I'm hanging onto him for the name until I roll another Hobbit. But he isn't totally inactive. I've been fooling around with him, swimming rivers from border to border, killing low-level mobs for cosmetic drops, stuff like that. Just running around Middle Earth goofing off, because I don't have anything to really do with him.

Has anyone ever farmed here? I mean, ever?

So I decided to do something really fun. I rode, on his slow starter pony, from Celondim in Ered Luin to the Last Bridge at the edge of the Lone Lands. The plan was to see if I could get him to Moria. But first I think I'm going to send him some silver, ride him back to Hengstacer Farms, and buy a standard mount (+62% speed, I don't want to try this on the old +32% slow pony). Since he's a burg, it'll obviously be the bay pony.

*Going back to the race trait slayer deeds... Drakes? Really? Race of Man has wights, hillmen, and wargs. Not too difficult. Dwarves have goblins (not orcs... goblins), trolls, and dourhands. Even easier. Hobbits have to kill wolves, spiders, and goblins. That's a walk in the park. But elves? What the fuck, man? Goblins, orcs, and drakes? We have to kill friggin' dragons? I don't care if the ones in Ram Duath were grey, those big ones beat me up. I didn't die or anything, but I had to stalk them and get them away from the worms before attacking them. Took forever, and that was only for Enmity of the Drakes ONE.

/rant

It was a fun couple of days, really, and I'm not finished. Still two or three left in the Shire, and then I start on Evendim and the Trollshaws. See you on Meneldor.

Beyond Black Mesa

This is just something all Half-Life fans have to see. It's a short film based in the Half-Life world, after the Black Mesa incident but before the events of Half-Life 2. It's eleven minutes of awesome.

Over the years, Valve has continually turned down offers to buy the film rights to their signature franchise, and with good reason. I think of this as just a glimpse of what could be made if the film was in the hands of people who really cared.

I'm not going to embed it here. Hit the link, and watch it full-screen at 720.

http://beyondblackmesa.com/

Blake Griffin might be Superman.

I'm not kidding. This is getting ridiculous. I'm not a Clips fan, I mean, who is (really)? I mean, there's this video. There are several dunks in this reel that I have never seen anyone do before, ever. And it's only from the first two months of his career.

Now I want you to watch this one. It's his 47-point on 24-shot humiliation of the admittedly-terrible Pacers.

Total number of dunks: one. On a team rebound broken play (ok, Griffin broke it, he got stripped). Point is, he doesn't have to kill you in the no-charge zone. He can kill you on fade-aways and wild, double-clutch layups, just about anything but three-pointers.

Don't even call him Blake Griffin anymore, you might as well start calling him Clark Kent.

Opposites attract.

Tonight Jenny came home from school all wound up, for some reason, like a Jack Russell on speed. I'm trying to wind down. As she was (rapidly) talking, I leaned back in my chair and started this song:

She paused, and said, "We're like complete opposites right now."

Can't really argue with that, but I wouldn't change it for the world.