Asymptomatic

There must be intelligent life down here

Video Game Antics
June 08, 2006

I’ve booted up the good old XBox 360 over the past couple nights to play some more Oblivion. I downloaded a dashboard upgrade that was waiting there for me. I’m not really sure what the hooplah is. I mean, I’m glad for background downloads of content, but those downloads are just about as difficult to get to as they were before.

I watched this whole video last week about what the improvements were going to be, and background downloading is really the only one that struck me. Not that the whole thing needed an overhaul, it’s just when they produce a 20 minute video about changes to Live, I expect -well- changes.

While I was poking around in the dashboard, I noticed that there were some new content downloads available for Oblivion. I bought two of them, and will probably return for the third. The first is an armor pack for horses.

Horse armor doesn’t seem like a big deal at this point. I’ve completed the Dark Brotherhood quests and am now a Listener, so I’ve acquired the horse Shadowmere. I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but Shadowmere can’t be killed. He goes unconscious like all story-important NPCs in the game. Shadowmere is also cool because he is a black horse with red eyes. If they glowed it would be more cool, but their metallic look is still pretty neat.

The trick is that Shadowmere is always getting in the way when I’m trying to kill things outdoors, and always getting clobbered. Just last night I took him out with a Storm Atronach familiar I had summoned, and the two of them wandered around some ruins killing all sorts of things summoned by some lich that was floating nearby. Silly horse. So the armor was handy, even if a little impractical.

The other thing I bought was Frostcrag Spire. It’s a tower up in the mountains that when added to the game becomes part of an inheritance left to you. Once the property of some kind of wizard, the tower has many obvious treats that wizards might enjoy. You can re-furnish the place to enable these features by buying packs of things from a woman in a specific shop in the Imperial City.

I spent all of the gold I had refitting the place. What’s really ironic is that I can carry around 15,000 gold pieces wherever I go, but I can’t carry a 2000gp cuirass out of a dungeon, and end up ditching it just so I can walk. Bah!

Anyway, with these extra enhancements to the tower I can now enchant items, create new spells, and summon familiars all within my own “home”. The vault in teh basement now has chests for storage, and there is a complete alchemy lab and garden of all sorts of plants (including a nirnroot!) ready for use. Also, there is a platform with teleport pads that zap you off to any mage’s guild in the game.

So that was fun to do after having the tedium of paying my price for killing a member of the mage’s guild on a thieve’s guild errand. What a hefty price, too: 20 piles of vampire dust and 18 daedra hearts. Those things are not easy to come by. Do you know how many vampire nests and Oblivion gates I had to raid to get that stuff?

Pennsylvania Hates Gay People
June 07, 2006

I had written before about the Marriage Amendment to the US Constitution. About how it does not explicitly deny states the ability to grant similar rights to homosexual couples as to heterosexual couples. Well, Pennsylvania lawmakers are forging ahead with insanity and codifying discrimination into our laws.

You can’t make laws to tell someone how to behave unless their behavior imposes on your rights. Since homosexual coupling is not affecting you personally, you have no business telling anyone that they can’t do it.

Just Then
June 06, 2006

Sorry in advance for when this doesn’t make any sense.

I drove Abby to school this morning we were listening to this music on the ride. So we weren’t talking. I can try to think of it as a moment of quiet together, but really it’s just needless quiet. I wonder what she’s thinking. Every moment. Every second. Don’t waste it. Be together.

Best. Birthday Weekend. Evar.
June 05, 2006

This “best birthday ever” began on Friday when I decided that I would reboot my computer to allow a few Windows Update items to refresh. As I detailed in another post, the computer took a dive. I spent most of my spare time over the weekend fixing that. It’s still not complete, but I do have a working OS now. And that’s just the beginning of the fun.

Saturday morning while I was working on the computer and Berta was moving some laundry around, the kids decided to play on the stairs against all other instructions not to, and yes, there was an incident. Abby came out pretty much unscathed. Riley looks pretty beat up, like he landed on his nose. They had a good hour’s cry and nobody was happy.