Monday, February 17, 2014

February 2014 Play Log - Day 15 to 21

15 - This week is not starting off on a good note. Didn't feel well most of the day, so very little gaming. I did try Netflix on the 3DS and was pleasantly surprised on how good it is (especially after seeing how bad the Youtube app was). There's something comforting about being able to watch a real movie on a little screen late at night. Computer issues still keeping my main system offline. Do I buy a new system I don't really need or fix the one I have? Leaning toward buying a new computer.

16 - Have to say things are getting worse. One of our Shibas, Keiko, got her leg twisted while we were trying to brush her. Nothing worse than thinking that you might have to have your dog put down because you broke her leg by accident. She's had issues with her legs before and I've taken her to the vet for it only to have her have a miraculous recovery in the doctor's office. (Anything to get the heck out of there, I suppose.) She wasn't doing much better by the evening, so it's definitely a vet visit in the morning. Computer plans on indefinite hold.

17 - Well, a partial sigh of relief. Nothing broken or dislocated, but probably a torn ligament. At nearly 13, surgery for her is out of the question, but she was given extra pain meds and the hope is she will recover from it. As the day went on, she was moving around more. She actually surprised me a few times by "disappearing" from where I thought she was - I was so used to her just sitting in one place because she didn't want to risk hurting. She's also eating and drinking more, which is a good sign. Game wise, I did play some more Mario & Luigi Dream Team and actually got to the dream parts...after 2 hours of play time! I can't say I'm very good at these games where you have to time jumps to either do more damage or avoid attacks. I think that was one of the reasons I stopped playing the SNES Mario RPG game back in the day. Thanks to a Fry's President's Day sale on a 120gb SSD drive, I've decided to not give up on Sabertooth - although I am going to re-skin him with a new Cooler Master case. That RaidMAX case is falling apart. Also, I put in a little time on FTL on my laptop, Aragorn. Good game to play on it, but I think I really need to geek-up the laptop. Way too plain for a gamer.

18 - Doge Watch continues. She'll go through stages where she won't want to move hardly at all, then, like last night before bed, I followed her around the house three times before she was ready to get into her crate/bed. I'd be happy for her to sleep outside the crate, but it's been her "home" since she was two months old (well, not that specific crate, but a crate nonetheless). I can't help but cringe every time she moves thinking she will start screaming again. Pretty nerve wracking. I did finally give up the idea of spending $2,000 on a new computer. If I can get Sabertooth up and running again in a new box, I'll have more than enough computer power to play my Steam games. In the meantime, I played more FTL on Aragorn and am really enjoying it. I've covered five sectors and only have one crewman (crew-woman, actually). I'm not sure how you replenish your crew members or use the droids, but I will say it's a tense game. I keep expecting every fight to be my last. Some sort of bug creature got on board and I thought I could kill it by opening all the doors, but I guess they can live in a vacuum. I can definitely see how people got addicted to playing this - very absorbing! And I needed some game time last night to chill from worrying about Keiko so much.

19 - First night where I felt things were getting back to normal...except for my computer, of course. Keiko is doing much better walking around - she's such a trooper! I bought a new case, a big red LED fan, and a PCIe network card for building up my "new" computer, but only played on the laptop last night. After hearing so much about it, I finally played enough Spelunky to get past the demo. At first I didn't think it worked with a controller (it didn't seem to recognize the ancient Logitech gamepad I plugged in), so I just used the keyboard. Not something I would recommend to anyone. I'll give them credit by assigning U/D/L/R to the arrow keys and not the usual WASD, though, but having jump and attack on Z and X was a little hard to get used to. According to the Steam page, it does fully support controllers, so next time I play it, I'll make sure I have my Xbox controller plugged in.

20 - (Gee, I thought you'd forgotten all about me.) Sorry, Raven, just had a lot of other stuff going on. (Yeah, I saw. I'm glad you're puppy is doing better.) Thanks, but she's hardly a puppy anymore. (Shush. They're all puppies to me.) Anyway, I see you found that inn we skipped over before. (Oh! It was driving me crazy! I knew there was an inn around with a couple of bangers in it and...) Excuse, me? Bangers? (Yeah. You know, those things over NPC's heads that look like exclamation points to show they have quests? Don't you programmer types call those "bang" symbols?) Well, yes, we do. Makes sense then, I suppose. (Thanks. So glad you agree. As I was saying before being so rudely interrupted, I just got a few quests done there. Nothing major. Just took down some brownies, sprites, and threshes. I'll tell ya, those threshes are not fun. And I made it to level 15, too.) Congratulations, just 30 or more levels to go! (I hate you.)

21 - A quiet end to another week. I did forget to mention that a new computer has been ordered - the impasse has been broken! In the end, CyberPower PC had a really good deal (free shipping and a 5% discount) coupled with a "downgrade" of video cards. My original pick, the GTX 770 is something like almost $400, way more than I usually spend on a video card. However, a just released model, the GTX 750Ti will give me more than enough graphics power. If you figure from my previous system, I'll have doubled my processor power, memory, video performance, and O/S disk drive space. Not a bad deal, but I'll still be on the laptop for a couple of weeks. Takes time for them to build it. Meanwhile, I ventured out into the perils of space with FTL some more...and promptly lost my ship. I had gotten my one-woman ship up to sector 5,  but subsequent attempts haven't even gotten me out of the second sector in one piece.

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