2009, 2011...no big whoop

Uh, so I may have missed a few posts. Only two years worth. Life happens, and I re-discovered my own blog and thought that maybe I would pick it up again. Two years can add a lot of stories to a person just venturing into geekdom and now I have a place to share them. I think a good place to begin might be how World of Warcraft almost ruined my life.

World of Warcraft was pretty much my second lover for about five years. It is a fantastic game for people who didn't play games as well as "gamers." Perhaps the real appeal for me was the social aspects of WoW. It really felt like I was hanging out with friends. My final toon that I played religiously was a tankadin. There was nothing more exhilarating than holding aggro as my raid group downed a boss, of picking up new gear, or of jumping into random dungeon queue and never having to wait. Unfortunately, it was my experience that being in a real relationship with someone (my husband, Z) who does not play WoW means there will be bitterness on both sides. I resented the fact that he resented the fact that I played. Ha! That is a ridiculous sentence. What happened, long story coming to a quicker close, is that he felt I was spending more time with my online friends than I was with him and he didn't like the time commitments/obligations of guild life and dungeoning. Certainly I can understand that now, but at the time all I could think was "how did I manage to be with the one guy who is mad his girl is playing games!?" At this point in time, there are hundreds of these "WoW ruined my life" stories and mine isn't really even that exciting. I certainly do not believe that it ruins everyone's life because seriously, that would be 6 million ruined lives. Some kind of record or something. No, in my puny and unimportant case I realized I was hurting Zack's feelings and more importantly this:

If I am playing this one game religiously, I am missing out on a lot of fucking games. For someone who wanted to introduce myself to this (now large and growing) subculture, it was dumb to limit myself, and also to pay so much stupid money to stupid Blizzard.

So I know I could have sold my account and made some money, but I did the cathartic thing and sold all of my gear, donated my gold to my guild's bank, and deleted every single one of my toons on each of my servers. Lator tators, thanks for all the memories. Or something like that. I don't actually remember all that much now, probably due to the corresponding drinking that went with playing.

I have been WoW free since right before Cataclysm. I would say that my life is so much more awesome, but honestly, it is pretty much the same except now I play many more games and my husband is much less bitter. Sometimes he even plays with me.

New Computer.

Already I am going to suffer a blow to my street cred...

I went with the pretty computer. To be fair, I tweaked its stats so that it will suit my needs better than the base-build laptop, but I went with a lap top...and a pretty one...and it comes with Vista. The one up side (aside from it's gorgeousness) is that I get a free upgrade to Windows 7 when released that, while a pain in the ass, will be worth it. Vista is one of the five elements attempting to open a vortex to hell. For non-techies like me, it is maybe not as aggravating as it is to computer-savvy people, but it isn't user-friendly, either. I grew up using macs, so any PC OS is not easy for me to navigate around. Vista is the worst. I can only hope that Windows 7 will be every bit the improvement I hope it to be.

In some non-nerd news, I've lost 10 pounds. Six years ago I met my husband, I fell in love, and I also discovered anime/videogames/sci-fi and fantasy. With all that catching-up, I had to drop an activity...namely exercise. That, combined with the mutual love of food my husband and share, has caused me -2o to appearance, or +20 to fattiness (whichever you prefer). When I quit WoW in February, I made a bet with my father--the first to drop twenty pounds wins $400. Since then we have dropped the bet but I have not stopped my attempt to drop the pounds. Not only is this for my health, but it will allow me to do two things I very much want to do. The first is to get a chest tattoo. The second, and the one I am most excited about, is to cosplay Jean Grey from X-Men. The costume will be worth the money and, to mimic those terrible Mastercard commercials, looking good in it will be priceless. In fact, if I manage to pull this off, you better believe I'm wearing that costume to work. And the movies. And to do grocery shopping. To type e-mails. Anywhere. Everywhere.

P.S. What the Hell?!

Wait, am I the only one who didn't know they were making a Warcraft movie?

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118006299.html?categoryid=13&cs=1

This makes me sad, though not as sad as I was when I discovered they were making a live-action Cowboy Bebop movie with Keanu Reeves starring as Spike.

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2009-01-15/live-action-cowboy-bebop-proposal-officially-announced

It all just feels...dirty. Is it wrong that I am so NOT excited about this?

New Computer

I have a c-c-confession to make. It isn't that I do cocaine, like the creepy clown in Metalocalypse. Nope, I killed my computer about a month ago. It was a super noob mistake. At first I thought it might have been porn, which almost would have been ok. I mean, everyone has bad porn experiences on the Internet, right? If that had been the cause of my technological downfall, I like to believe I would have been forgiven because:

1. I am a girl who was looking at porn.
2. Porn kills computers.

I don't get that excuse. Instead, it was Invader Zim who caused my downfall.

I love Invader Zim. It was a cartoon on Nickelodeon that was on at a time when I didn't enjoy cartoons and I was deprived of its awesomeness until a couple of years ago. We had all of the episodes on my husbands old computer, but he wants to run it on Linux and it is currently unavailable. So about a month ago I saw him watching Zim on his computer.

Me: "Sweet, where are you watching Invader Zim?"

Him: "TV Links."

A week later I was bored and I too wished to watch. But instead of calling him and asking him where, I remembered the conversation ending with "tvlinks.com." So I went to tvlinks.com, which might be the portal to techno-hell. It had Invader Zim, I clicked on it, the opening song played...and my computer freaked the fuck out. A few weeks and an EPIC battle later, worms claimed my computer and I am now at the mercy of Zack, the husband, to let me use his.

So here is the real issue: I need a computer. I am still in school and take all of my classes online. With school approaching, I can't not have my own computer. Now, I know it would be cheaper to build my own. I've been learning all about hard drives and memory and processors and what-not. I think I could build a better computer than the one I had for about $500 cheaper. As a girl on a tight budget, cheaper is clearly the better option. However, desktops are so big and bulky and, most importantly, they don't look like this:

























I'm sorry the image is large but its so pretty. I could spend the extra money to make sure my beautiful laptop of perfection was not obsolete in two years (heh, it probably will be anyway). And it would be so pretty. It would be pretty on my desk. In my bed when I want to kick back and play DemiGod. In the coffee shop where, with my hipster glasses, everyone looks at me and thinks I'm a tool...but a smart tool. With a pretty laptop. To sum up: I want I want I want.

Do I do the right thing and build my own box? I get geek street cred and it is a much better investment. It would be easier to upgrade in five years when Diablo 3 comes out. However...just look at that picture!!

How does a girl decide?

Harry Potter

I gotta admit, I am super stoked about seeing the new Harry Potter movie. Now, obviously it has already arrived in theaters, so this post is a little delayed. You could argue that a true fan would have been there for the midnight released, possibly dressed in their Hogwarts robes. That may be so. It does not bother me, however, as I am not a die-hard fan of the Harry Potter series. Don't get me wrong--I loved the books, and I have enjoyed the movies thus far. J.K. Rowling created a truly fun and fantastical world with characters that are easy to relate to (if you remember the tragedy of your own high school years, in any case). I've also enjoyed the dark progression of the books and the level of seriousness Rowling brings to her audience. Unlike many young adult novels, she doesn't skimp around issues like jealousy, sexuality, and death. The reward, then, is a novel that while juvenile in some aspects offers up an enjoyable story and I am a fan.

This will date me a bit, but my first time reading the novels was over seven years ago. It was my senior year in high school and I had caught the flu something awful. My father had purchased the books for his own reading and generously lent them to me while I was ill. I tore through all four in just under two weeks. I don't need the highest-quality literature, I just want a good story, and that is exactly what Harry Potter was. Now my fandom falls a little short, because I read the fifth book...and then kind of skipped the last two. Realizing last Saturday that the sixth movie was about to be released, I borrowed the last two books from a friend and finished them this past week. As a rule, I try not to see movies like Harry Potter without having read the books first. It makes a large difference, because despite good intents, valuable information is always missing from movies.

The last two books were exactly what I wanted them to be: fast-paced, full of the whimsy and magic that I love, the predictable twists and that age-old struggle between good and evil. I'll admit that the ending of the final book was a bit of a let-down for me. The final fight between Voldemort contained too much dialogue and that, I feel, took a bit of the intensity out of the battle and its resolution. Also, the epilogue-type ending with all the pieces falling into their happy little places was reminiscent of Steven Spielberg--I simply don't agree that such tidy, happy endings are necessary. However, I still enjoyed both thoroughly.

So when will I go see the movie? Probably in another week or two, when the popularity has worn off. My father and brother will go with me, as they have for the other five movies. We'll go to a matinee where there are only a few other patrons; the one mom with her kids, perhaps two or three couples of various ages, and inevitably the solo guy, the one who looks like comic-book guy from the Simpsons with a huge tub of popcorn and a gallon of soda. He is prepared. He'll watch the movie with intensity, memorizing every deviance from the book and comparing the new director to directors past. He probably has a giant crush on Emma Watson (and who can blame him? She is both beautiful AND legal). I used to make fun of him, but now I understand. It really is the best way to experience a movie.

I'm stoked.

Gaming

On gaming there will be much discussion, and it is a good topic to start with. I am not a "gamer" chick per say, but I'm no novice, either. For me, a gamer chick is someone who plays more than just World of Warcraft or Rock Band. I would recognize a girl as a gamer if she could list more than three consoles she has played on, can hold her own in first-person-shooters, and collects beaten games--not just MMORPG's.

The games I've played are user-friendly. For many girlfriends or wives of gamers out there, or boys, I guess, I think there can be an automatic frustration and gaming revulsion that can happen if you try to jump straight into Halo with experienced players. FPS can be tough to get the hang off, and having the person next to you yelling at how he head-shotted your ass can be demoralizing. So the games I started with were computer, because a)there are buttons I understood and b) no one was shit-talking me while I tried to learn the games.

In late high school I started playing Warcraft 2, Diablo 2, and Quake. These games are a great starter for anyone looking to computer game, and each for their own reason. Warcraft 2 is a real time strategy game, which simply means that you build armies and destroy stuff if you can strategize well. Diablo 2 is an easy RPG with a fun story line, good cinegraphic intros and an easy to understand interface. If you are a girl trying to impress a boy, this is an ok game to start with. It will be inexpensive and, while it is outdated, it prepares you for the awesomeness that will be Diablo 3 and you can join in the geek-anticipation. Lastly, Quake is a FPS that is computer-people friendly, exciting, and has a good teaching program: you won't start an feel thrown to the wolves.

Now it is time for me to fess up. I am a console loser. The only games I have ever beaten through and through on a console are Fable and some Megaman game when I was longer. So this next two weeks I have decided to venture into Final Fantasy land. My sister-in-law, Carly, has loaned me most of the FF games. I plan on playing FF1 for the geek street cred. Then, according to trusted sources, I will play FF's 3, 4, 7, and 9. It is my understanding from the many shocked faces I get when I mention my Final Fantasy virginity that it is simply unacceptable to call myself a gamer without these titles under my belt.

I'll let you know how it goes!

If I gain readers, I'd be interested in knowing what where your first games, what games you think are CRITICAL for a person to play, if you prefer consoles to computers, etc. Let me know!

The Beginning of Almost-Geek Girl.

The other day I saw a bag that said "Geek is the new Black." It made me laugh, I admit, and it also made me think. For a couple of years I've been classifying myself as a geek girl. I did this because I had played some video games, I had watched some anime, and I knew a bit of the lingo (i.e. "frag", Star Wars jokes, etc). It helped me meet my husband, a pretty large geek, and it allowed me to fit in with his friends and earn nerd street cred.

I'm not really a geek, though. Just because I have some World of Warcraft t-shirts does not mean I can fix my computer if it needs fixing. Not that WoW provides IT skills, but it shows that I am not universal in my geekage. I'm actually fairly computer illiterate. My anime knowledge is restricted to popular names, my manga collection weak, and I can count the video games I've played and won on one hand.

This blog is something of an opportunity for me; I want to be a better geek. See, it isn't that I want to gain even more of the "cool factor." I'm over that. I snagged the husband, I'm already in the "scene" (or whatever it is called), and I'm pretty comfortable with myself as a person. No, my goal is to not just know the lingo, but what it means. It would be nice to build my own computer and be able to fix it. I want to know why I should be excited about upcoming tech gear, games, music, toys, conventions...you name it.

My plans are to talk about my learning progress as well as review products and games from the point of view of an almost-geek. For other almost geeks like me, or even to help out those other ladies who agree with that bag that geek is the new black and wish to fit in, I will be discussing how noob-friendly the things I try out are--after all, not all of us are born with an innate understanding of science, computers, or even which buttons to push on an XBox controller.