Posts tagged with "games"

Team Fortress 2

On nights like this, I won­der how I’m going to kill the time before it’s late enough to fall asleep, wor­ried that I’ll be bored on a Friday and con­se­quent­ly faced with the fact that I’m so very alone. I was crav­ing some kind of human con­tact tonight, but spend­ing time with peo­ple takes too much ener­gy nowa­days so I decid­ed, instead, to play Team Fortress 2.

I pur­chased it on an impulse, but this was still three years after TF2 first came out. There’s a very good rea­son I avoid­ed buy­ing it for so long: it’s the sequel to Team Fortress Classic, one of the games I was most addict­ed to in my life, and a huge time sink1. An entire day could go by with­out real­iz­ing it when I was play­ing TFC, and I pur­pose­ly did­n’t buy TF2 when Aaron was get­ting into it too; I knew I would­n’t stop if I had friends encour­ag­ing the habit.

TF2

 

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  1. Also the same rea­son I haven’t tried World of Warcraft. [↩]

Christmas Wish-List '07

A look into my cur­rent tastes, updat­ed for 2007. This list is some­what short­er than last years because the ones I haven’t checked off still apply, and I’ve been guilty of some spend­ing this month; The first two sea­sons of Robson Arms on DVD (which I des­per­ate­ly wait­ed two years for), sea­son six of Trailer Park Boys, my mit­tens, a RAZR 2 (the cell phone I’ve had for five years died), an elec­tric tooth­brush, and var­i­ous gifts.

Photography

  • Bogen / Manfrotto Background Support System 314 ($280) — To quick­ly set up dif­fer­ent coloured back­grounds in my pho­tog­ra­phy room.

    Bought it on sale, which was still $260.

  • Arca-Swiss Monoball Z1 Ballhead ($475) — My cur­rent tri­pod isn’t strong enough to hold most of my lens­es in place, and the lock­ing mech­a­nism is extreme­ly chintzy. Very frus­trat­ing when work­ing with dark shots. A ball­head would give me tremen­dous flex­i­bil­i­ty.
  • Gitzo GT3530LSV Mountaineer 6x Carbon Fiber Tripod Legs ($625) — Carbon fiber tub­ing makes for an extreme­ly light and portable set of tri­pod legs. Packed with all the impor­tant lit­tle fea­tures like an anti-leg rota­tion sys­tem, the Gitzo leg lock­ing sys­tem, and remov­able rub­ber feet.

Furniture

  • Rubix Cube Ottoman ($129) — A black, two-toned square ottoman to go with my leather couch.

Housewares

  • Bodum Assam 2‑Cup Tea Press ($25) — I have one of these at home, but it would be great to have one at work too, so I can make more than one cup of tea at a time.

    Julie bought me a Stokes gourmet Formosa tea infuser for Christmas 2008. A lit­tle cham­ber for loose leaves dan­gles from the top, as opposed to a press, which can cre­ate bit­ter­ness in tea.

  • Braun Impression WK 600 Kettle ($90) — A large ket­tle for my tea. Right now, I have to boil water in two cup inter­vals, which takes a while when guests are over.

    Andrew and Alex bought me a sim­i­lar mod­el for my birth­day, and it’s SWEET.

  • Tingler Head Massager ($15) — On Jason’s rec­om­men­da­tion on my recent post about man­u­al stim­u­la­tion. The reviews say that it helps put you to sleep, and that can nev­er be a bad thing.

    Found a cheep one at Zone for five dol­lars! Doesn’t vibrate or any­thing but still pret­ty good. Next is find­ing some­one to use it on me.

Games

  • Orange Box ($50) — A nos­tal­gic trip back to the days of my favourite game ever: Team Fortress Classic for Half-Life. I hear the game­play has changed a lot, but I don’t care. We’ll prob­a­bly be play­ing this at the next LAN.
  • Odin Sphere ($40) — A side-scrolling fan­ta­sy RPG for the PS2 that I don’t want to miss.

Movies/Shows

  • JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure OVA ($52) — My favourite ani­me of all time: a com­bi­na­tion of fas­ci­nat­ing uni­verse, and very intel­li­gent action. I cur­rent­ly have a copy in Japanese with French sub­ti­tles. While this helps me learn more French, I also don’t under­stand much the phras­es.

    Found a copy of this for down­load.

  • Reno 911 sea­sons 2–5 ($90) — An hilar­i­ous, orig­i­nal look at law enforce­ment. Trailer Park Boys from the oth­er side of the law. I have the first sea­son (thank you Music World for going out of busi­ness and giv­ing me 20% off), but I’d love to get the rest, along with the movie.

    Bought all of these on a lark. Did not regret the deci­sion.

Pita And Friend

After the last house­warm­ing par­ty, Pita stayed the night, hav­ing come all the way from Montreal, not want­i­ng to dri­ve back after a few hours of drink­ing. I asked him to stay on Sunday, and we end­ed up play­ing all the old Gamecube games that we used to play and mas­ter, back when we lived togeth­er. We nev­er had the chance to do this since he moved to Taiwan and back to Canada over two years ago, so it was quite a rem­i­nis­cent expe­ri­ence.

Discovering I had a free week­end, I invit­ed him over a lit­tle while ago for two days of pure gam­ing. The invi­ta­tion was extend­ed to his room­mate, after Pita said that I should meet her, being a hard­core gam­ing chick who appar­ent­ly can kick his ass in Soul Calibur 2. I have yet to observe this ass-kick­ing chick phe­nom­e­non for myself, and unfor­tu­nate­ly, I haven’t had any time to prac­tice with Kilik or Raphael, so I’m pre­pared to get my ass hand­ed to me. I’m hop­ing to make it up in Super Smash Brothers Melee.

This is the last week­end of fun before I start to get seri­ous about work (aside from a LAN par­ty I have planned for the first week of November). I decid­ed not to take the job at the book­store, and put my full focus on a web solu­tions busi­ness that I reg­is­tered this week.

They should be here any minute.

Assorted Daily Life

So yeah.

Got my hair bleached blonde. I’ve always want­ed very pale blonde hair, but mid­tone is about as far as it goes.

Trolley, Aaron, and wheaties got me Half-Life 2 for my birth­day. I did­n’t have a chance to real­ly play it until this week­end, but I decid­ed to play through Half-Life: Source first, because it was four years five years since I last fin­ished it, and going through the game again would help me appre­ci­ate all the lit­tle details being put into the sequel. The odd thing is that I remem­ber tak­ing weeks to play it through, where­as I start­ed play­ing HL:S Friday, played a bit last night, and am almost done now. It’s nice to be able to sit and play through a game, tak­ing my time, not hav­ing to wor­ry about class­es, or assign­ments, or tests, etc. This makes me real­ize that I haven’t real­ly got­ten into a game like this since I fin­ished uni­ver­si­ty.

Finally get to go for some pho with Loo today. We haven’t been almost two weeks.

Aaron bought me a quadruple/quadruple from Timmies yes­ter­day, and it was good. I’ve been try­ing to cut down on sug­ar and creme for years now, so four of each being so sati­at­ing (almost can­dy-like) is very scary.

I took my first puff from a cig­a­rette yes­ter­day. It was a Matinee Extra Mild, and it was­n’t pleas­ant. I was stoned, and the weed tast­ed way bet­ter.

The Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex tracks that Number18 sent me are amaz­ing. She rules.

Been busy as fuck.

That’s all. I’m going back to sleep.

The Half-Life 2 Hype

I won­der if any­one under­stands how much the release of HL 2 means to me. I won­der if any­one can under­stand how emo­tion­al I get just see­ing the con­cept art. The first Half-Life defined more than a year of my life, the way decades have defined phas­es for pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions. Half-Life was my favourite game of all time, not even sec­ond to Chrono Trigger. It was an expe­ri­ence, a jour­ney, not just a game, and the sequel is being released tomor­row.

I for­mat­ted my machine yes­ter­day (some­thing I haven’t done in over a year, even though I used to every quar­ter before the release of XP), to clean up my sys­tem in prepa­ra­tion. I’m hop­ing I’ll be able to run it on a decent graph­ics set­ting; my video card is a lit­tle dat­ed now, but it’s still a DirectX 9 gen­er­a­tion ATI Radeon.

I can’t wait. The entire idea that some­thing I’ve been wait­ing more than four years for will be released tomor­row has­n’t quite set in my head yet.