Rorschach.net

Sooner than you may think (about 6 weeks) we’ll see an expansion for the game I’ve been helping out with for more than a year now. Full details are at the publisher’s site, but here’s the highlights.

• 1 new race – the Zuul – with 80+ ship sections and Tunnel Drive FTL technology.
• Massive Zuul slaver disks allow them to take slaves and use them to boost production on Zuul fortress worlds.
• Over 15 new weapons to battle with including Boarding Pods!
• Over 25 new technologies to research and deploy.
• New diplomatic Data and Comm systems. Make demands! Ask for help in attacking specific targets. Warn players off from the worlds you have yet to claim!
• More Intelligence technologies allow you to keep track of enemy ships, tech and battles.
• A new trade route system making economic control and output even more vital for military success. Star freighters ply the trade routes making money for the player but are also vulnerable to raiders. Active piracy and escort battles enter the SotS universe with a bang.
• Details combat results and status graphs allow you to track the rise or fall of your empire over time.
• A variety of new ship sections for the original races to help meet this new threat.
• More tactical combat options.
• New combat arena as ships are called upon to battle in the dangerous depths of Node-space.
• New random menaces / exploration threats.
• 2 new Scenarios (for both single- and multiplayer).
• 5 new galaxy types.
• Various GUI and multiplayer enhancements.

I’d forgotten the wind in Kansas. It was one of those days where you have to lean your body weight into the car door to keep from slamming it on yourself Friday. The time with my family was wonderful – if short. I did a lot in a three days though.

- saw Kent and Amber’s new house and gigantic lawn
- spent a relaxing day lunching and shopping with my Mom and Mother-In-Law
- made disgusting desserts with my nephew from a kids cookbook
- played mad libs (yes they still exist) and star wars action figures
- ate a massive home made roast beef & mashed potato going away dinner
- went to a going away party for my brother Joe
- took a driving tour of our old house & haunts
- helped my brother Kent learn to drive a bit better through constructive criticism
- helped Joe pack and get ready to move

Now I am home and doggie has become fully mobile! I am impressed with Paul’s amazing care of Roe – but alarmed that he’s on the go so much now. I feel that I should sit still so he doesn’t drag his bum leg around behind me. It’s good that Joe is living with us now, he can watch him until he starts working. The final part of Roe’s saga is in editing and should be up shortly. Now, back to work after my incredibly restful weekend.

The Shuttle AMD 2800+ and Nvidia 6600GT with 2GB of RAM just doesn’t cut it with Supreme Commander. Honestly the only reason I’ve made it this far (the system is over 3 years old) is I play so many more games on the Xbox than PC and Sword of the Stars doesn’t have big performance requirements.

So this is the beginning of the end for my current system. The quest for a new one begins, although with vet bills and tax time it may be a while before things are realized.

The good news is we found out what’s been bugging Roe the last few days. His bandage has been rubbing against his good leg and caused a lot of irritation. I took him into the vet yesterday and got him cleaned up, ointmented, and cut away the bandage to relieve the irritation. He’s much happier now (we slept pretty well last night) and he’s willing to walk around a bit even on the tile floors. The bad news is he’s got more freedom now and can get his mouth on the edge of the bandage so every time I turn around there’s a bit of gauze on the floor and the top of the bandage around his neck is wet. Wet bandages are not good and he may eventually compromise the integrity of the bandage so Roe will get that goofy cone thing on his head when we’re not around. Embarassing pictures forthcoming.

Dunno if you’ve seen this making the rounds yet. A little on site tech support from an upgrade from Scroll X to Book 1.0 via YouTube:

Sorry about that. I upgraded the blog software (Wordpress) to the latest version and forgot to reload the .htaccess file. Basically this meant you couldn’t reference individual articles in the /date/name configuration. Apologies to the LJ and RSS people who like to click through to our posts. It’s all better now.

Some people get an extra day off for President’s Day. I get to be in at work at 4:30 am on Sunday to make sure my systems come back from a major downtime. I guess it could be worse though, I could be bringing the systems down and be there from 1 am on. I was on the road last Sunday, so it’d be nice to have a weekend one of these days.  Time for bed.

It’s nice to be back on the West Side (a.k.a. da best side). KC was fun, I got a reminder that winter still exists, but home is where your family is so I’m back home. Thanks to certain friends for coming out and having dinner with me. It was a nice break from the surreal experience of coming back to your previous company as a client.

Part Two: Finding Roe
I got Roe in trade for a cell phone in 1997. Graduation was only a few weeks away and I was waiting tables and working 30 hours a week at the Steelcase dealership in Spokane Washington. To top it all off, my roommate JoAnn had just carpeted here house with beautiful white carpet. In every sense, it was not really in the best time in life to be assuming responsibility for a small fluffy creature that was not housebroken. Continue Reading »

You may notice a new section on the sidebar of this site (LJ and RSS friends please come visit) titled “Paul is Reading”. I spend a fair amount of time browsing sites on the Internet both for personal and work reasons. Instead of visiting 30+ sites a day I use Google Reader to organize and check all the sites I’m interested in and give me summaries of the latest posts. This is done through Real Simple Syndication (RSS) which has an icon of an orange square with waves coming out of the bottom corner. There’s many ways to use RSS and feeds to manage your sites but I find Google’s implementation the best considering it is very mobile and easy to use.
Anyway the new section is the last 5 articles I’ve marked as something I want to share. So if you’re wondering what I’m thinking about on any particular day chances are my thoughts are at least in part around those articles.