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...

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.

I still remember my Blogger password. Neat!

It's Father's Day, but I'm broke so I called my dad to tell him I'll take him out for dinner next weekend when I'll have a small amount of disposable income. But he didn't hear the phone ring, so I left a message saying, basically, gimme a shout. He did a few hours later, and I'm going to pick him up after work next Sunday to go get some awesome Italian at Garibaldi's. It's basically a neighborhood joint near the U of M, but it's friggin' sweet. He loves it, I love it, I took The Lovely Jenny there a couple weekends ago and she loves it, it's just all-around a very cool place to get a pizza or a nice plate of ravioli while watching the Tigers on TV. Can't wait for next weekend.

What else. It's been hot here, like Africa hot (Biloxi Blues reference FTW). Well over 90 degrees every damned day for weeks. The only break I've had from it at work has been driving out of town, and those jobs have been scarce. Last Wednesday I drove out to a prison a stone's throw west of Reelfoot Lake with Richard to install a new forklift battery and bring back the old, scrap battery. That was a decent day of air-conditioned truck cab, brief, beautiful views of a soon-to-be-gone lake, and random talk of our addictive MMO's (LotRO in my case, WoW in Richard's).

Tomorrow I may be sent to another prison in something called Able, TN, which is apparently a town a little ways past the Tennessee River, to do the same job. That's going to be an all-day trip, and as easy as that will be for me, I don't want to do it. Driving east on I-40 is like hypnosis for me. It's two lanes, straight as an arrow, for hours. The most boring drive on earth. Nothing to look at but lines of identical trees on both sides of the road, for mile after mile after soul-sucking mile. No curves, no hills, no nothing. Hopefully, I won't have to go alone. I could do the job alone easily. But I tried to convince my boss that another person is necessary, so I don't have to drive all the way out there and back as well. I'd rather ride back, so I can read a book and not fall asleep and plow off the road into a fucking tree.

What was I talking about?

Look, I'm going to pretend it hasn't been four months since my last post. Are we all okay with that? Yes? Good, moving on.

Today we had some hellfire and brimstone-style storms blow through the city, and because of reports of widespread flooding in Raleigh, I drove Jenny to work in my truck for her three hour shift. I decided to spend the time shopping at Poplar Plaza rather than driving back home, and that was not a great idea. Walked into Spin Street and immediately found $20 special editions of Serenity and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which I really, really wanted. I didn't need them, but it was close. I settled for a couple of used CD's. First, Live's Throwing Copper, one of those seminal Gen-X albums that I always meant to own but never got around to picking up. Sure, I could download it, but that's not the point.

Second is Lewis Black's classic live CD, The White Album. Ten years ago, when I was living in Germantown with a couple guys I worked with, we Napster'd this record, and spent night after night laughing at it while we Quake III'd the night away. I've tried to find it a number of times recently, both in record stores and with things like Soulseek. Never came close, but today there it was, for $7.99. Money well spent, my friend. I'm going to rip this fucker and put it on my cell phone so I can inappropriately laugh my way though a few days of boring, grinding work on industrial battery chargers.

So after spending a few bucks at Spin Street I spent a few more at McAlister's, where I got to meet Jenny's new manager and get a very good lunch. Then I went to Bookstar and forced myself not to buy at least a dozen books I really wanted. I've become so used to randomly finding cool books for next to nothing at places like Goodwill and Salvation Army and that used bookstore in Millington (latest buys: Band of Brothers, Life on Earth, and Harry Potter 5), that I forgot what it was like to find exactly what I want for full price. I won't list all the stuff I had to make myself put down, but the last one, Hell Hound on his Trail, was a real struggle. I stood there and read the entire first chapter. I'm not kidding.

What else. Oh, I'm loving this Netflix thing. Jenny talked me into it a couple months ago, and damn if it isn't worth the nine bucks a month. Even setting aside the fucking awesome instant, unlimited streaming of all kinds of movies and TV shows whenever we want, I'm just hooked back into renting movies again. I'd slipped into a mode of selectively buying cheap DVD's that I really wanted, which severely limited what I got to see. Now we're throwing whatever seems interesting into the queue, and with a 2 to 3-day turnaround, even getting just one disc at a time is plenty. Right now I'm watching The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Two days ago we watched Where the Wild Things Are. Next up will be Kindergarten Cop and Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. It just makes having esoteric tastes for movies so simple to satisfy, and it comes wrapped in the convenience of never having to go out in public to rent something. Okay, that was a joke, since there's nowhere within 20 miles of here you can actually go to rent something in person. Seriously, every Blockbuster, Cinemagic, and Hollywood I was aware of is shuttered now, excluding the Blockbuster outlet store on Summer. That would really suck if I didn't have a Netflix subscription, which is why they're all closed in the first place. Is that good or bad?

Anyway I'm off to my new obsession, The Lord of the Rings Online. Wait. Fuck. It's three in the morning. Okay I'll play all day tomorrow. Wait. I have to go to Aldi, the awesome low-price grocery store for 70% of the stuff you need from a regular grocery store. Right, so I'll spend an hour doing that, then it's LOTRO for the rest of the day. If you need me I'll be on the Meneldor server. Don't look for me. I'll find you (creepy, but true).