If Not For Bad Luck

Started playing Army of Two: TFD a few days back with Jinpachi. Its actually a good co-op shooter, and quite entertaining. The only downside we saw was the horrendous lag. For the most part, we blamed EA, but I came to find later that there was a connection issue on my end.  After tweeking my system, the game ran with no lag whatsoever.
Instead, it started booting me randomly. Jin said it was at least better than playing with lag, but it was more irritating for me. After a couple hours, my connection dropped completely, and I needed to call Windstream to have them reset my service, which had to wait until the next day, as I had to leave by that point.
After navigating their robot service for a while, I eventually got a hold of someone who could try and fix the connection from their end, and after much ho-do, they issued a ticket to have a technician come and take a look at things. Not really having faith in this, I called back and talked to someone else, who managed to reset my service, and after asking me to visit various sites to test it, did indeed notice that my line was running slower than needed. So the technician was still scheduled to appear.
After hanging up from Windstream, I checked my e-mail and noticed that their was a technical problem with my pre-order of Mass Effect 2, and I needed to contact the bank to have them allow payment.  I would then have to go into the site I ordered the game and resolve the issue with them.  Shortly after this I discovered that one of the random sites I visited had infected me with System Security, which had bricked most of my programs and been a general pain to rid myself of.
I bypassed sleep the next day to completely fix this so that the system would run properly when the technician arrived Monday to check the line. While I did clean the system up, the technician never showed.

Left 4 Dead Demake

I never even knew this was in production. Hooray for Indie gamers! I’ll be downloading this ASAP, to say the least.
GO DOWNLOAD THIS NOW!

Also, Dragon Age Expansion is due out soon. Personally, I think expecting us to pay another $40 for 12-16 hours of extra content may be a bit much、especially considering we just paid $70~ for the retail version a month ago…
Minor Spoilers Alert:

Line Piece

This has to be my favorite video this month so far. Yes, I’m eccentric.

In Other News

This was beautiful.

Lunar Event

Well, its officially being released stateside. What you ask? The Next remake of Lunar: The Silver Star. I think I’ve bought this game four times already, but I still know I’m going to buy it again. I’m not even sad about that.
…I miss Working Designs…

Tis the Season

I’m sure everyone had fun this week. I know I did. Despite the Storm of the Century falling over most of my family, they say they had fun. I wouldn’t know, because I wasn’t about to drive through that mess.
I did, however, finish a sort of personal ritual. I spent Christmas Day with three cartons of egg-nog and Popful Mail on my Sega CD.
It sort of felt like going home…
With less swearing though.

Left 4 Dead 2

Ahem.

By The Grace of Azeroth p2

Jinpachi was very anxious while he was logging back on for the first time.  I’m told he was second-guessing himself many times a second.  I think I can understand the trepidation.  He kept his hand poised over the keys in case he was ready to cancel his $25 server transfer.
Apparently it went through faster than he thought it would.
So his Warlock Graul popped back into WoW for the first time in almost a year, right where he last logged off.
Which was in Grizzly Hills.
He wasn’t logged into the new server for a ful 10 seconds before he was getting ganked by an alliance paladin.  The more things change the more they stay the same I guess.  Anyway…
Fully prepared to die and be annoyed, he prepared to face this threat that smelled of vinegar, when the most amazing thing happened.  He heard a battle cry.
“Purple Faggot Lasso!!” rang through the forest, as a Death Knight used Death Grip on the paladin.  Jinpachi said it was a full half minute before he could stop laughing enough to help out with the fight.
After all was said and done, he decided that that moment alone was worth the $25.

Somethings Missing

I recently heard about Ghibli’s new adaptation of Mary Norton’s Borrowers. I haven’t been keeping with current events all that well, so it was a little nice surprise. The comments under the main article were more than amusing as well:
“Never heard of this “Borrowers” before. Anyone care to give a synopsis?”
“Basically when your shit goes missing, you can blame these fuckers.”

Golden.

By The Grace of Azeroth

Jinpachi finally made the move to go back to WoW. I’m not sure what brought it on. In all honesty I may have still played had not the entire world conspired to make me quit. I was fine with that though.
Anyway, the point of all this, is that he transferred his warlock, Lendri to another server to play with another we know. Unfortunately, he was forced to change his name to Graul. For some reason this just irked me a little. Lendri was a staple of the entire experience of that game for me. It was almost always Lendri and Sotai. Graul was the warrior he started out with (and leveled mostly on the side), but its hard for me to even think of that character as anything else. /rant
Regardless, I got to thinking about my time there, and missed it a little.  Granted, there was a lot I didn’t miss, but the good moments were pretty damn fun.