Month: March 2011

Lord of the Rings Online

On By Michel McDonaldIn Games, MMORPGLeave a comment

I was first introduced to the world of MMORPG video games in late 2001 by my cousin who had played EverQuest since beta.  He wanted to play with me and so he bought me the game at Fry’s Electronics for $10.  I played for 6 years and quit for personal reasons.  Believe me, I didn’t want to quit but things were going on here at home that was a direct result of my neglect thanks to me being on EQ for up top 16 hours per day.

I haven’t played an MMORPG game in about 4 years now and I really miss it.  A friend of mine who was my EQ guild leader introduced me to Lord of the Rings Online ironically in 2007, the same year I quit playing EQ.  I only played it for an hour with him then I never played it again because I was too freaked out that things here were going to go south again.

Since I’m home alone for about 12 hours a day now, I figured it wouldn’t do any harm if I started playing LOTRO.  So without emailing my friend to ask him what server he was on, I just got on and created a character and started playing.  A week later I emailed him and found out that he’s not even on the same server.  So I have a choice, I could either delete my character and all of my progress and create a new character on his server or pay $25 to move my character to his server and that’s what I did.

I had already bought a horse with real life money and I couldn’t justify deleting that character or even playing on 2 regular characters on 2 different servers so I just bit the bullet and transferred.

My character’s name was Rego on the Riddermark server but since that name was already taken on Silverlode, the new server, I had to change the name so I chose Xanapus.  It’s not very original but I couldn’t think of anything else on the spot.  He is a Hobbit Burgler and his trade skills are Crafting Yeoman; Cook, Farmer and Tailor.  And his hobby is fishing.  I figured the fishing and farming would help in cooking, the tailoring is just bonus.

I really love this game because it gives me the feeling of being in the world of The Lord of the Rings.  There are many differences between LOTRO and EQ such as the never-ending zone.  When I was in EQ and went to go from let’s say Butcherblock Mountains to Lesser Faydark, I would have to go through the “zone” which took time to load.  Sometimes fast depending on my computer speed and/or my internet speed.  In LOTRO there is no zoning.  All of a sudden I see words on my screen saying I’m in such and such place.  There is a jolt sometimes when that happens and I tend to spin out of control when it freezes me up but I recover.  The only time I zone is when I go into a building.

Quests are much different in LOTRO too than in EQ in the way that they have a Quest window and a Deed window which allows you to see what quests you have going and what your progress is so you know what you have to do to complete the quest.  I have done quite a few quests and deeds in the shire since my character is a hobbit.  I am only level 13 but I hear when I get to level 15 I can buy a house.  One of my hobbies is Fishing and they have certain fish which are mountable and I have already mounted 10 for the walls of my future house lol.

Yes, I do plan on buying a house in this game because they really aren’t that expensive.  I would have to do a lot of farming and selling what I make to be able to make up the money to buy a house and to keep it up but I’m willing to put in the effort.

I’m having fun in this game and even if that fun wears off I won’t regret playing because I’m doing it because it’s what makes me happy.  Yes I have other things that need attention in my life but my brain needs this too, not just those other things.  I can play this game during the daytime when I’m alone then at night pay attention to Darrin so he doesn’t feel neglected.

I’m A Gardening Moron

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily BlogLeave a comment

Sit me at a desk and I can not only build you a computer but I can also make a slow computer fast again.  Put a lawn mower in front of me and I’m completely clueless.

Darrin bought this lawn mower from the local family owned hardware store maybe 6 years ago because we just couldn’t afford to keep paying a gardener to mow our lawn every week so the job fell into my lap.  Well, that sucks for me because I have really bad allergies.  When the gardeners came and I could smell the fresh cut grass, my eyes would start to water and burn and my nose would get stuffed up and I’d start sneezing.  So it wasn’t good that I had to start mowing, for me anyway.

So every year we have to bring this lawn mower back to that hardware store to have them service it before summer comes because all of a sudden it wouldn’t start up again for me.  We usually have them change the oil and spark plug and clean the filter, you know, the usual maintenance.

So Darrin has been paying them up the nose to do all of this work every year and I get 3, maybe 4 mows out of it then that’s it for the rest of the year and we have to have someone mow our lawn for us because our lawn mower doesn’t work.  We can only afford to have the hardware store service it for us once a year.

Our lawn has gotten so out of control with the high grass and weeds that Darrin decided to ask our neighbors across the street if they could mow it and he paid them $30 (for 2 houses, our lawn is HUGE) and also paid him $20 to look at ours to find out what’s wrong with it and fix it.

He said that the filter really needed to be cleaned so he cleaned it.  Well, I’m so stupid, I didn’t even know how to access the filter to clean it.  Darrin kept telling me it was the filter but I didn’t believe him and I had no idea that that’s what was wrong with it.  All these years he could have saved $60 every time they serviced it because all I had to do was clean the filter.  And, they would keep it for 2 weeks.

And you know, I’ve asked that hardware store to tell me what was wrong with it and they wouldn’t tell me.  Why wouldn’t they tell me?  Because if they told me what was wrong with it then we wouldn’t keep bringing it back to them to have them clean the filter out.  We’d continue paying them every year.  So telling me how to fix it isn’t good for their business.

So, I’m feeling stupid right now but at least now I know for future reference so I can clean it after every use so I never have to worry about it giving me problems starting up again.

You know, I had an issue with our weed whacker.  Every time the line would get small I’d have to unscrew the thing that had the spring in it and pull out some of the line.  Edging with the weed whacker took forever.  I had no idea that all I had to do was smack it on the sidewalk so the spring action would pull out more line lol.  I didn’t even know why it had a spring until I saw a video on YouTube.

Look, I’m not a gardener.  I am so stupid when it comes to that.  Well, knowledge is power and it saves $60 every year.  So screw you hardware store for not telling me how to find the filter lol.

My Recent Blog Absence

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily BlogLeave a comment

Well I’m sure my fives of tens of fans may have noticed that I haven’t been writing very much lately.  I guess I’m getting bored with the whole thing.  I have so many things going on… ok that’s a lie, I’m bored out of my skull which means I have absolutely nothing to talk about anymore.  It’s like my brain has seized up on me.  Writers block if you will.

Or maybe I was abducted by some aliens who took away the part of my brain that allows me to function.  Maybe I need to make myself a hat out of aluminum foil to block the signals.  Or maybe just get unbored and get my mind on other things to give me new things to obsess over.

Actually, I did start playing a game called Lord of the Rings Online for free with a few premium features.  I’m not paying for the monthly subscription because I just can’t afford it so I have given them $8 so I could buy a few things that I wanted like a horse.  But that will be a post in itself that I will write tomorrow or in the next week.  Let’s face it, I’ll get to it but I can’t promise when.  Yeah, I’m sure you’re on the edge of your seat even if it’s because the person whose seat you are sitting in refuses to get out of first.

Yes I will have some pictures, first impressions and tips for new players wanting to learn trade skills.  What not to do to get into trouble, not that I haven gotten into trouble which is why I can tell how to stay out of it.  Ok so my advice will probably be horse manure since I’ve only played the darn game for a week so you don’t even have to listen to me at all lol.

I do have 6 years of first hand experience  in EverQuest which was one of the very first MMORPG games so I think I might be taken a little seriously but I doubt it.

Anyway, I will get right on that LOTRO post quite soon, soon as I wake up maybe?  Wait and find out.

It’s Our 17 Year Anniversary

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily BlogLeave a comment

Today is our 17 year anniversary.  We met in 1994 and we just clicked and became a couple.  Most people count their wedding anniversary, not the day they became a couple but considering gays still can’t get married in California, I count our relationship years instead.  Even if we could get married, I would still count how long we’ve been together.

Ok so the cake doesn’t look great, I was running out of frosting, you know how those frosting containers only have so much and I think I put too much in some spots but not enough in others which is why there is a hole on the side in the front but it’s ok, at least I didn’t have to pay $20 for it from the grocery store.

The cake doesn’t symbolize anything really, I just wanted an excuse to have cake lol.  Obviously I had to photo shop the rainbow heart and 17 years because it was too plain for this post, I wish I had the talent to draw that onto the cake with colored frosting.

Well… to another 17 years.  Cheers!

Wonder Woman 2011

On By Michel McDonaldIn TVLeave a comment

I loved Wonder Woman when I was a kid.  As I was running away from the bullies to run home, I was also running home to watch this because it was on at 3pm.  I would come home just in time for it to start and I was allowed to watch this before I had to do my homework.

When I heard that they were going to remake Wonder Woman into a new show on NBC I thought, great, wonderful, I can’t wait to see how they redo it.  But then I got to thinking about how they remade the Bionic Woman and Knight Rider and how those shows didn’t even last a full season.  I now see her costume and am thinking the same thing about this new remake because people are not liking this costume.

I found the link to this article on the Yahoo front page as I was checking my email – See the First Photo of Adrianne Palicki as Wonder Woman. That link is dead… new link ‘Wonder Woman’: First look at Adrianne Palicki in costume.  At first glance I thought, oh well, it looks nice.  But then I went down to the comments and I’m seeing all of the negativity about the costume and how her boobs look fake so I go find the picture of Lynda Carter in her costume.  At first the negative comments were pissing me off but then I started thinking, I kinda have to agree with some of them.

First I just want to say that no matter how her costume looks, I will still watch this show from the beginning to end.  Wonder Woman and any super heroes have my loyalty forever, no matter how their costumes look.  I am not trying to be negative in what I say about her costume so don’t take that in the wrong way, these are just my opinions.  So getting that out of the way, this is what I think about the before and after.

I do like the new costume but here are a few things I don’t like about it:

I think her boots should be red as Lynda Carters were and as they were red in the original comic books.  She is missing her stars on her costume, they should be on her pants somewhere.  And why is she wearing pants now?  The original comic book Wonder Woman wore shorts.  Why not stick to that standard?  She has the body for shorts so why not show it off?

I do like her top but her chest area is too plastic looking, not just the outfit but her boobs.  It’s like the seam line of the boobs on the costume match perfectly with her actual boobs which make it look like she’s a plastic blow up doll and the costume was painted onto her chest.  As you can see in the original Wonder Woman costume, her boobs aren’t that pronounced.  Yes I realize that women’s boobs are more pushed up these days and people think that’s sexy but there is a huge difference between sexy and plastic.  All they have to do is take out that seam line in the costume and push her boobs up with like a push-up bra or something.

Like I said, I do like the costume but it’s too shiny.  If they could just tone down the plastic and give her some fabric instead, that would be much easier to move around in and to breathe.  She’s going to be sweating up a storm in there.  Remember, she’s going to be wearing that costume for hours every day doing scenes about 4 times each.

I don’t want to sound too critical, I’m just saying that they have gone way off the reservation is all.  I do like it but it’s just a bit strange and different.  We’re all used to the old and most people don’t like change, especially when it’s this dramatic of a change.  Like how they changed Batman as much as they have.  I liked the original but on the other hand I didn’t mind the new changes they made.  It’s sort of the same as this, I do like the original but I also like this, I just wish they would make a couple of modifications that’s all.

I can’t wait for this to premiere this fall on NBC.  I don’t know the day of the week it will be on or if it will be on at 8pm or 9pm but will soon find out this summer when the Futon Critic website posts the Fall schedule.  In the meantime, check out this original 5 minute pilot episode of Wonder Woman from 1967 that never made it to air and never turned into a series.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilIodk5wQ6c

Edit: Apparently NBC heard all of the critical feedback (bitching and moaning) from people so they changed the costume. It still doesn’t look right because it’s pants but it’s a lot better than before.

Paul (Movie)

On By Michel McDonaldIn MoviesLeave a comment

I’ve been waiting to see the movie Paul since they began advertising it and finally got to see it on opening day with a close family friend. I wasn’t quite sure she would like it but she laughed so all was good.

If you like Simon Pegg and Nick Frost then you will love this movie.  I’ve seen them together in a couple of movies together like Shawn of the Dead and Hot Fuzz maybe 50 or 100 times each because I’m so addicted to these guys.  Seeing them in a movie with so many stars like Seth Rogen, Jason Bateman and Sigourney Weaver and a few SNL cast members was good and now it’s my new favorite movie.

I don’t want to give out any spoilers because it’s just really a good movie and you should go see it for yourself.

I do warn that if you are a born again that you don’t want to see this movie.  It’s rated R, it has a lot of cussing, 1 scene with drug use (smoking pot) and they might kill your belief system lol.  Other than that go see it.

Darrin doesn’t like these type of movies so if I didn’t see it in the theater with a friend then I’m pretty sure I would’ve had to wait for it to come out on DVD.  Waiting sucks doesn’t it?

The only thing that sucked was that the theater had it in one of the medium-sized theaters, they didn’t have it in the large theaters because it wasn’t as big as Battle: LA.  If they don’t do better this weekend then I’m sure it will get passed along into the smaller theaters.  I think it was good enough of a movie to get put into the large theaters.  But that’s just me.

Also on opening day there were only maybe 10 other people watching it at 11am.  I’m sure it will do much better tonight since it’s a Friday night though.  Then again, who goes to see a movie at 11am on a work day?  Well, besides us slackers, that’s who.

Here’s to hoping the movie makes millions so these guys will keep making movies together.

The Situation Roast Fail

On By Michel McDonaldIn TVLeave a comment

Did anyone catch the roast of Donald Trump last night?  It repeated and I watched it 3 times.  It was just so funny that I couldn’t resist.

There were some very funny people and one not so funny person, the Situation.  I don’t know who wrote his jokes for him, that is if he didn’t write them himself, but assuming he wrote them I think he should have gotten some advice from a professional comedian to help him with his homework.  He didn’t do so good.

A couple of his jokes were funny but the rest was just tragic.  I really started to feel sorry for him.  If that were me I wouldn’t have kept going, I would’ve stopped and said “ok that’s my time, you’ve been great” then slunk back to my chair to sit quietly, or leave to go crawl under a rock for the rest of my life lol.  But he didn’t, he just kept going because he apparently thought he was funny enough to continue despite all the people who were booing him.

I don’t watch Jersey Shore so his jokes were lost on me and apparently nobody else who was there watch the show so maybe that’s why his jokes were lost on everyone.

His roast of Whitney Cummings was ok, poorly executed but ok but his roast of Anthony Jeselnik is where things went wrong.  He said that he was telling one of Anthony’s jokes to a super model while he was banging her with tons of money on the floor in his mansion.  Who says that?  Then he said he banged 5 or 6 more models.  That’s not even funny.  Was he trying to say that he’s a stud?  Because bragging like that just makes you look even more pathetic.

Well, despite this idiot, the roast was great.  Anthony Jeselnik was a great replacement for our friend Greg Giraldo who passed away last year (rest in peace).

Mike… keep your day job, whatever that might be.

Watch the clips of his suckfest then watch the funny clips on the Comedy Central website.

My Tribute to Diana of V

On By Michel McDonaldIn TVLeave a comment

I was totally devastated tonight during the season finale of V on ABC when Anna killed her mother Diana.  Why such devastation?  Well, let me take you back about 27 years…

It’s 1984 and my family lost our home.  Long story short, we had to move in with my aunt and with 10 people in the house, tv time was limited to whatever everyone agreed on in the living room.

The “V” Miniseries starts and the entire family watched the first part but not everyone was into it but my mom and I.  We watched it together in my parents bedroom and it was one of 2 things that really brought us together in a long time.  I was 14 and resentful of her for all of the abuse that I had to endure, really, I hated her.  I wanted to love her and this was our common ground.

We watched the entire mini-series together then V the Final Battle, which was sort of a second mini series, then they brought us V the TV Series and we watched that together every week.  The show ended with peace on all sides and although it gave us closure for the show, it ended our “thing” that we had going.  Life back to normal.

I have to admit that even though I was rooting for the fifth column, I was also rooting for Diana because she was just such an awesome character in the show.  Not just her hair but the dramatic look on her face every time the fifth column would foil her plans for victory.  The constant fight that she had with Lydia and, well, everyone.  She was very entertaining to me.

During the early 2000’s I hear rumors of a return of V.  The rumors that I heard were not a remake or a series but a movie, sort of a “V Returns” type of thing, you know like Superman Returns where it’s 25 or so years later.  I liked the idea of a return, prefer a series but I’ll take whatever I can get.

Summer 2009 comes and I hear from the futon critic website that ABC is bringing V back as a new series and I couldn’t be more thrilled.  Naturally I watched it.  At first I wasn’t sure I liked it because it wasn’t exactly as it was in the 80’s but then I started thinking that I like it because it is a remake and the best way to remake an old show is to change everything.

I was very happy with the first season but then I heard rumor that Jane Badler was coming back to reprise her role as Diana.  What?  REALLY?  HAPPY!!!

I think she was great during her short time in the 2nd season so I was very heart-broken and devastated when Anna killed her in the middle of the season finale.  I didn’t expect the show to give her queendom back to her but I had hoped that she would have become a regular in the show again and not just a guest starring role.

I’m not truly convinced that Diana is dead, after all, Anna has brought some of her visitor friends back to life.  She brought Dale (Alan Tudyk) back (then Joshua killed him again lol) and she brought Marcus (Christopher Shyer) back.  I’m sure the fifth column could secretly take Diana’s body to a secret lab room and bring her back to life the way Anna brought those other people back to life.  The only true way to kill these new aliens is with a pill that dissolves the entire body.

This isn’t just a goodbye to Diana, this is a I will never forget you.  Not only how V brought my mother and I together before she passed away but because you talk to me on Twitter.  I will always be grateful for that, you have made my day, no, my lifetime.

This show means more to me than anyone will ever know and bringing back my favorite original character means even more than that so I thank the producers and writers for bringing my beloved Diana back to me, even though it was for a very short time.  You too have made my lifetime because I know that my mom was watching it with me every week just as we watched it together 27 years ago.  Thank you for bringing us back together one last time. </3

Updated to correct facts in the show that I missed, some nerd I turned out to be.

Kitrics Nutritional Label Scale

On By Michel McDonaldIn Diet, Gadgets, Products I LikeLeave a comment

I remember reading about this scale last year and thinking how cool it was and how it’s a shame I will never be able to buy one because of the $50 asking price. Well, that is no longer a worry because a friend of mine found one in a shop in St. Louis, MO for less than $10, bought it and mailed it to me.

The problem was, there was no manual or food list but luckily they had one and made copies for me. Unfortunately I can’t read them so I found them online in pdf format so it’s a win win. I’d love to turn them into epub format one of these days to make it easier to read on my Nook. Maybe one of these days I’ll get around to it.

This is the description and info from the Kitrics website:

A scale and a calculator all in one, this essential dieting tool calculates portion weight, and displays all the information the way you’re used to seeing it on food packaging labels: an at-a-glance breakdown of calories, fats, carbs, proteins, fiber, sodium, cholesterol and sugars. You can also total your daily nutritional intake, and store up to 99 of your own food entries into a database of nearly 1000 others. So the experience is always customized to you, your goals and your lifestyle. Ideal for: portion control, medical requirements, type A personalities.

Bottom line:
Not just the weight, but the total breakdown. Calculates calories, carbs, fat and more.

– Weighs in grams and ounces
– Maximum weight: 72 oz/2 kg
– High precision: +/- .05 oz/1 g
– Automatic power off
– Requires 2 AA batteries, included

What’s great about this is that you can weigh your food and it tells you all the information you need so you can make sure you either go under the recommended or stay within the range, you’re choice. Personally, I don’t know if I want to know all of this information and so far I’ve only used it to weigh chicken so I have exactly 1lb for the chicken helper which I’m sure trumps the diet lol.

When I start my diet back up, I will start taking it seriously again. In fact, I will probably take it so seriously that I will be storing my own food entries in there for some of the diet recipes that I have so I can weigh my plate as I’m putting the food on it. That will make counting calories so much easier because I know how much food I’m eating by the exact weight.

I have a regular food scale that isn’t digital, it just has a bowl on the top and I’ve been balancing plates on it for the last few years and not knowing the exact measurement so this is much better.

So thanks Sue for sending me this scale.

AT&T’s New DSL Data Cap

On By Michel McDonaldIn NewsLeave a comment

I saw this story on Attack of the Show on G4 today and went over to Engadget to find more information on this oh so glorious (NOT) news. Apparently, AT&T has decided to give all of us DSL and AT&T U-Verse users a monthly data cap.

AT&T will cap DSL and U-Verse internet, impose overage fees – Source Engadget

So if you have regular DSL from AT&T, you have a cap of 150GB per month and if you have U-Verse you get 250GB which somehow doesn’t include video for U-Verse customers which I assume means they stream from the internet. I wouldn’t know, it’s not available in my area.

So I guess it had to happen sooner or later and I probably don’t have anything to bitch about considering I don’t even play online games anymore. Although, I had planned on starting again, this has squashed that idea.

The Engadget article says that AT&T will be sending emails to their DSL customers next week telling them of this new suckfest with instructions on how to check your data usage so you will be able to tell how much bandwidth you are using so you don’t go over. If you do go over you get charged a penalty of $10 per 50GB you use over your cap.  They send you an email warning you that you are about to go over a certain percentage so you can either turn off your computer or switch to the Verizon 3/4G on your phone or CR-48.

They say that 98% of their customers won’t have an issue with this because they only use maybe 17GB per month. Well, to that I say that those people must only check their email and maybe go onto facebook and twitter once per day unlike those of us who like to play online games for hours, watch movies, YouTube videos, tv shows on Hulu and Tweet about it all about the same time.

Since they haven’t emailed me the data usage tool, I won’t know where I stand but I’ll bet it’s almost at the data cap. I have my Desktop going for TweetDeck, Lord of Ultima (online game), MS Money and whatever else and my CR-48 netbook for email, FB, Blogging and looking at websites with.

And to think, I was going to cancel our cable for internet TV via the Roku box to stream our tv shows and movies directly to our TV’s. So much for that idea. I’m sort of glad it didn’t pan out for us now because I’m sure we would have gone over our 150GB data cap the first week of the month.

Ugh, I feel like we’re living in the electronic age depression now lol. I’ll be standing in the data lines instead of the 1920’s depression bread lines. Then in about 40 years, if I’m still alive, I’ll tell kids “why when I was your age we had to wait in line for our data and we had to walk 5 miles to school uphill both ways in the snow.”

I can’t wait to see my data usage, I will update this post when I get my email from AT&T.

News and Image Source Engadget.

Update: I finally got the email today and this is the url that they gave me to see my usage www.MyUsage.att.com but they say in there that my usage will not be calculated until I’ve gone over 70% so that doesn’t show me anything.

I’ve installed the “Lord of the Rings Online” MMORPG game so I’ll play that for a few days and see what happens.