Fortressing It Up, In A Team Environment

by Jenn on Tuesday, November 29, 2011

I’ve owned Team Fortress 2 since, uh, a while. I was even giving them away like candy on twitter back when it was on sale for a toonie or whatever. TF2 went Free To Play back in June, so now everyone can jump in and run around ignoring objectives at no cost! Huzzah. Note: I’m not bitter ^_^

Obligatory: One cannot have any discussion of Team Fortress without someone linking this. Check!

Owning Team Fortress is not the same as actually playing it and, unsurprisingly, it is even farther away from being decent at it. The last time I was going to pick it up and finally spend some time learning the ropes, everyone was all over hats and crafting (that’s right, crafting) and I decided to back away slowly instead. My loss, alas. It is a lot of fun, even though I stink. This is no false modesty, btw. I completed the training modes and did an offline bot Control Point match (normal AI) and only barely won. Very barely. We won while I was waiting to respawn. Anyway, I surprised myself a ton when I jumped into a live match right after and finished second in the points. I should have saved the match because I have no idea how that happened. The next four rounds were progressively worse. Then I discovered the Payload mode. I love it. I’m usually top third in points because I will actually move/stop the cart. I see myself spending a lot of time here, but I should continue exploring (read: sucking at) other modes and classes. So far I’ve been a Soldier and, while playing D, a Heavy. This could be me one day! Maybe. I really don't know. I might be a better Heavy, really

I’m not much of a front line warrior in team-based first person shooters. Borderlands stands out as a title that rewards my Crazy-Go-Nuts playstyle. Playing like that in TF2 will just end up with me counting down my respawn timer for most of the match.

No one wants to be a Pro Bullet/Rocket/Knife/Fire/Fist Catcher.

My brother is one of the best Enemy Territory Engineers in history, and I have a ton of respect for the class across all games. I thought that I’d end up as one in TF2, but I need to learn a lot more maps first. And maybe see someone play Engineer that doesn’t just idle at the spawn point. That’d help. If nothing else, TF2 is still fun even when you suck, though I do feel horrible for the teams I end up on. One day, I’ll my groove and really make a positive difference out there :)

One of the biggest adjustments I’ve had to make involves what used to be the most basic of things…. mouse aiming! I decided not to plug in a controller so I could re-learn how to play an FPS properly. I’m left-handed, and I mouse left, except when playing shooters on PC. Weird, I know. I had to rearrange my desk a bit to make swapping things around easier. I first learned to mouseshoot right-handed, and it just feels weird using my right-hand on the kb to move if I try to do it my normal way.

So, uh, you guys have any tips or links I should read? I was reading some good pieces on ubercharged last night, but then they died so I’m looking for other guides to help aid my progress. I should have asked if any of you are playing, and as what and why, but I figure you’d volunteer whatever you feel like typing! It’s all good.

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A Short Story

by Jenn on Monday, November 28, 2011

Chapter: Eleventy Thousand
I’m not sure this has come up in the past, but I’m slightly vertically challenged. Not super short, mind you. I can reach a fair amount of shelves and definitely jump for the rest, but short enough that on television they made me stand on a box behind the counter so that Leo Laporte’s eye-level wouldn’t be looking clear over my head.

Anyway, I now have a kitchen table and some kitchen chairs. I swear this is going somewhere. Though a large family effort, we got my Grandma into a really bitchin’ home. I’d live there tomorrow if I had the money. I don’t. It costs 2.5x my rent here, but does include food. Since her new place didn’t quite hold all her furniture, I got to take possession of the table and chairs. I’ve never ever ever had a kitchen table. This’ll be glorious. I’ve grown so accustomed to eating at my desk the last, gosh, forever, that I’m really looking forward to spreading out and enjoying my meals without a screen and keyboard in near it. Yes, yes, I know about hygiene and how horrible it is to eat at your desk. It was the desk or on my lap and I stand by my choice :)

The kitchen chairs are bonus for another reason. No more jumping for shelves! I put anything I use frequently on the bottom shelves anyway, but now the chairs completely eliminate the need to hop up on the counter to retrieve something! It also let me see on top of my fridge for more than a split second in midair. This, as it turns out, was a mixed blessing.

Have you checked the top of your fridge lately? Ewwwwwwwww. This set off a massive cleaning spree and now everything is spotless. Cleaning the top of the stove fan was also less than fun. My mom came over after I signed the lease to help me clean everything, though that was many moons ago and I’ll sleep easier tonight knowing that everything is sparkling in the kitchen. There’s also no way in heck that I’ll be making a mess in my kitchen tonight so I think it’s time to go treat myself to a decent dinner out, woo.

A New Quest Tally:
1 watery pop — because I’m a goof. I had to resort to drive-through in the middle of a long drive last week, asked for a chocolate milk, they gave me a pop and I wasn’t paying attention and drank it. It tasted so very weird after not having it for a while.
0 energy drinks — for real! Not buying any makes them harder to drink. I really thought that this would be where I slipped and not the pop, to be honest.

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OCRemix needs a hand!

by Jenn on Sunday, November 20, 2011

When you think of people posting “spam, scams, and commercially deceptive content” on YouTube, I’m pretty sure you don’t think of OCReMix! Well, that’s what happened. Unbelievable. I LOVE OCR. I listen to a piece from there, either locally or on youtube, daily!!

They’ve setup a quick tweet link to let @YouTube know that this has to be a mistake. I don’t know how much it will help, but it’s probably worth you spending a minute or so letting YouTube know so they can at least review this suspension.

I’ve been on the wrong end of Google before and it totally blows. You only get automated replies, don’t even bother going to their ‘help forum’, and you’re left going “What just happened here???” with nowhere else to go. Since Google has, well, Google, and AdSense, and YouTube… well, get shut out of your Google Account and you could end up with almost nothing left of your online presence.

Scary, eh?

Yes, yes, I know that some of us out there run our own email servers, use other search engines, and have vimeo accounts, but, like it or not, that’s not where most of the eyeballs are. No other company — that isn’t an out-and-out scam — has so few options for contact, so few ways to get issues resolved. People love to pile on Microsoft, but at least you can get a person if you push :(

I hope that OCReMix gets their account sorted out quickly. I also hope that Google creates a way for users to contact them with issues that involve communicating with a reasonable human being, and not an automated wall. Not sure which is least likely >_<

UPDATE: Monday, November 21st, 2011: Wooooooo, they got their page back! Unfortunately, still no word on what the initial problem was or why YouTube overturned the suspension.

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A New Quest!

by Jenn on Monday, November 14, 2011

I’m giving up pop.

Sure, I could have done some sort of fancy lead in, whipped up a quick photoshop, and maybe an Achievement Unlocked pop-up to finish up, but that seemed like overkill for such a simple thing :)

might as well eat sugar, eh?

might as well eat sugar, eh?

I had actually almost totally kicked pop — or ‘soda’, as people that enjoy being wrong prefer to say ;) — habit back in the summer. Then I ended up spending a lot of time with family and all that went out the window. Eating on the run = I got a combo with pop. Eating at a restaurant = Sure, I’ll have a pop. Late night work at my desk = Dr. Pepper will keep me company. And so on and so forth. Well, here we go again!

I’m giving up pop.

Since I’m the one in charge of groceries at my place, it’s waaaaaaaay easier to sidestep the temptation by making sure that there aren’t any around to taunt me from the fridge. I’ll still have to be careful when getting together with my brother and other family members. I used to always have water at restaurants, so that’s not a super difficult thing to go back to.

Energy drinks, however, will be harder. I kinda had a ‘soft launch’ for breaking that particular habit the last couple of weeks since I plain old didn’t have any around (ok, except this one) and knew that going to buy some wasn’t a good idea. This is the one I am most likely to cheat on. It won’t be in the next two weeks. Nah, that’s the easy part!! It’ll be as Christmas gets closer and my plate gets far too crowded and, gosh, wouldn’t a Red Bull be just lovely right about now, eh?

Yeah. I’m going to be reasonable there and limit myself to TWO A MONTH. No more, preferably less. And by ‘two’, I mean two of the smallest possible cans that they sell, not the scary nearly half litre one. I promise I didn’t drink that all at once! It was really good, though.

I’ve said it before and I will again: I actually drink Red Bull for the taste. The caffeine is mostly a bonus. If they made one with no sugar and no caffeine that tasted the same, I’d be all over that. Not going to happen though, so let us all hope that I don’t post a picture before the end of the year of the gajillion cans of Red Bull/Dr.Pepper/Coke/Ginger Ale that I drank in a hurry because I missed the taste so much.

Oh, and I don’t drink coffee (never, ever, ever) or beer (really not my think) or more than six glasses of wine a year or, really, any alcoholic beverages outside of E3 so I’ve got nothing to worry about there ^_^

Stage One: Present Day to end of December 31st, 2011
No pop.
Less than three energy drinks.

I’ll fess up if I slip up and will edit this post accordingly if/as energy drinks are consumed.

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