40,000 Volts of Justice!

My inhibitions no longer being lowered by alcohol I am now free to dispense with the mildly embarrassing comments on my personal life, and kick the geek up a notch for this post. I’ve been talking about it long enough here is the dreaded post about City of Heroes. What is prompting this post is the fact that two fairly momentous events (momentous events at least within the context of the game) have occurred within the last few days. I had a character reach 14th, and then 15th level.
Before I can describe why this is so cool, I really need to explain some basics of the game. First City of Heroes is an example of what is know as a MMORPG a rather impressive looking acronym that stands for Massively-Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game. If you need an explanation of what that is, and don’t feel like following the link I provided then let me say this; the name is pretty self-explanatory. Massively-multiplayer as in lots and lots of people playing at the same time; World of Warcraft, one of the most popular MMORGPs has something in the neighborhood of 6 million subscribers worldwide, now naturally not all of them will be playing at the exact same time, but even a small percentage of 6 million is a pretty big number (1% alone is 60,000 people). Online as in it happens over the Internet. Role-playing game as in it’s a game where you pretend to be somebody else. In City of Heroes you play the role of a superhero defending Paragon City from crime and the forces of evil.
The first two things you do when creating a new hero are decide on the archetype and origin of the hero. There are five basic archetypes: blasters, controllers, defenders, scrappers, and tankers. The archetypes define in broad strokes what type of hero you are creating by determining what your primary and secondary power categories are, whether your hit points will be low, medium, or high, and whether your damage output will be low, medium, or high. Blasters for example have low hit points, but high damage output, and as the name implies their primary power focus are ranged attacks (think for example of The Fantastic Four’s The Human Torch). On the other hand you have the melee archetypes scrappers and tankers. They lack ranged attacks, but excel at getting up-close-and-personal with their foes, however each type goes about that in a different way. Scrappers have high damage, medium hit points, their primary power category is melee, and their secondary power category is defense (think Wolverine). While tankers have medium damage, high hit points, the primary power category of defense, and the secondary power category of melee (think The Thing from the Fantastic Four). So a scrapper can deal out more damage in a fight, but cannot last as long as a tanker who can soak up more damage because the archetype will take less damage per attack, and will have more hit points in the first place. Within each archetype there are numerous different power sets so one blaster could focus on fire attacks, while another could be an archer.
Origins determine how characters received their powers. There are also five types of origins: magic, mutation, natural, science, and technology. Magic heroes gained their powers from the mystic realms (Dr. Strange or Wonder Girl). Mutation heroes were born with their powers (the X-Men). Natural heroes derive their powers from either training (Batman), or their powers are the natural inborn traits of their species (The Martian Manhunter or Superman). The powers of science heroes are the results of either scientific experimentation (Captain America), or an a fortuitous accident (Spider-Man or The Fantastic Four). Technology heroes derive their powers from devices (the Green Lantern or Iron Man). To some extent origins exist mainly for flavor, as they have no effect on what powers can be selected or how those powers work, but origins do effect which NPC contacts a hero will start with, and what types of equipment can be used to improve the character. Origins also grant each hero a ranged attack (albeit a fairly short range) that does very minor damage, and has a possible secondary effect that varies by origin.
Once archetype and origin are out of the way the primary and secondary power sets are chosen. First the primary power set is chosen. Blasters for example can chose between archery, assault rifle, electric blast, energy blast, ice blast, fire blast, and sonic attack for their primary power set. Each set then has a list of nine powers tied together by a common theme that as the characters advance in level the more advanced powers on the list will become available to them. The first two available powers in the archery set are snap shot, and aimed shot with their difference being snap shot does less damage, but recharges more quickly then aimed shot. A starting blaster using the archery power set would be able to choose one of those two powers at first level.
Then the secondary power set is chosen. There can be some overlap between archetypes on power sets. For example the defender has ranged attacks as a secondary power category so can choose some of the same power sets as the blaster, but not all of them, and has access to some ranged power sets that the blaster doesn’t. In other cases there is little to no overlap scrappers and tankers both have access to the melee and defense power categories (differing in which category each archetype has as primary and secondary), but they share only one power set in common in their respective defense category, and no power sets in common in their respective melee category.
Even when different archetypes have power sets in common the archetype that has that power set as a primary power will always be more effective then the archetype that has the power set as a secondary power assuming the two characters are the same level (or really within a level of each other). A blaster using archery powers will always do more damage then a defender of the same level using archer powers. As another example defenders who select one of the power sets that grant healing powers will always heal more hit points of damage per use, then a controller of the same level using the same power set because for the controller it will be a secondary power while for the defender it will be a primary power. Another difference between primary and secondary power sets is the speed at which the powers on the set become available to the characters. As a character goes up in level the more advanced powers on the primary set become available at a lower level then the more advanced powers on the secondary set. Sticking with defenders and controllers for an example a defender using the empathy power set will be able to select the power resurrection (being able to bring defeated heroes back to life is a popular power when heroes team up) as early as 6th level which is when the forth power on a primary power list becomes available to characters. A controller with empathy as a secondary power set won’t be able to choose resurrection as a power until 10th level, because that is the level a character has to before the 4th power on the secondary power list is available.
In any event starting heroes are only able to chose the first power available on their secondary power set, so a defender who selected archery as the secondary power could only take snap shot at first level. Armed with those two powers one primary and one secondary, along with the inherent power of brawl (any hero regardless of archetype can punch somebody), and the minor power granted by the chosen origin the hero is now ready for combating evil. Actually character creation continues on to what may be my favorite part - costume design, and then wraps up with selecting a name and the optional writing of a description (usually of the characters origin), but that doesn’t really factor into why I’m writing this post so I’ll move on.
As a character goes up in level different things happen. There is the obvious (at least to anyone who’s ever played a RPG) the character gets more hit points, and does more damage, and at 2nd level and every two levels after that the character can select one new power from their list of available powers drawn from their primary and secondary power lists. There is another often highly anticipated event that happens at 6th level. At that level charactesr can start selecting powers from the pool power sets. The pool power sets each contain four powers the first two of which are available to be selected by any hero regardless of archetype as long as they are at least 6th level. The third power in each pool can be selected at 14th level (or later) as long as the hero as previously selected at least one of the first two powers in the pool, and the fourth power in the pool in the set can be selected at 20th level (or later) as long as the character has selected the third power in the pool at an earlier level.
The idea behind these pool powers are there are some abilities any hero should be able to pursue if desired (the power sets are optional and don’t have to be selected). Among these power pools are the four travel powers flight, leaping, speed, and teleportation. The first two powers in each of these four pools are all pretty interesting. The true gems, however, that most people want their characters to have at least one of all happen to be the third powers on the respective lists. Those coveted powers are fly, super jump, super speed, and teleport. Each one of these powers allows the character go get around Paragon City very quickly. As implied by the name MMORPG (or at least the first M) Paragon City is a pretty big place and it can take a while moving your character from one location to another (a not uncommon complaint in MMORPGs) especially when the area you have to travel through is filled with numerous villains of a higher level then your character. Once one of these travel powers is obtained much of difficulty (and time spent) in moving from place to place is removed.
This of course is the first cool thing I mentioned that happened to one of my characters recently. I have an electricity blaster named The Sparkstress (pictured above) who as of 14th level has super speed. It rocks. I absolutely love watching her zip across maps in about 30 seconds that would have taken a few minutes to cross before (and that is before factoring in additional delays caused by running into groups of villains). The second cool thing that happened at 15th level is I got to select a title for The Sparkstress. So she now displays to all the other players as The Extraordinary Sparkstress (in retrospect I kind of wish I’d opted for startling because The Startling Sparkstress would have been pretty damn cool).
Okay that’s probably enough about City of Heroes for the time being. I likely will have more to say about the game in the future. However before I go I do have a chess update for you. I have received a move from Erik, and remarkably responded to it with in 24 hours. Erik was no doubt extremely shocked.

29.   a4      Kd6

30.   Bb3

I'll leave you with one final picture of The Extraordinary Sparkstress.

Another first, if a dubious one

Man am I hungry. Actually while that statement is true as I type it, by the time I get around to posting this it will likely no longer be the case, as I am cooking spaghetti as I type to rectify that vary situation. However until I actually eat that spaghetti the statement stands, “man am I hungry.” I am not surprised that I am hungry, because I always get hungry when I go out drinking. I went out drinking because today one of my coworkers got married. My immediate supervisor, in fact, and since the wedding dance was held within walking distance of my house, and I wasn’t working, and she invited everyone at work who was interested, it seemed like a good idea to go. So this marks another first for this blog; I’m posting while tipsy. I’m at that lovely state where I’ve had just enough to drink, that I feel very good, but not so much that I’m going to do anything really stupid. I know this because as I was walking home I was drunk enough to think driving to Alexandria to go eat at Perkins sounded really good, but not so drunk that I didn’t immediately veto the idea as being pretty stupid (and let us not forget unsafe).

I had quite a bit of fun. This evening reminded me that I should go out more and make an effort to be more social. No offense to the people I regularly get together with for gaming, since that is in fact me going out and being social, but in addition to that I should go out and be more social in situations where there are strangers, and women present. The evening really brought home for me the fact that I have now officially been single for far too long. In what would have been an unlike me fashion I very nearly made an attempt to do something about that tonight. One of the bartenders there was very cute, and I had actually convinced myself to ask her for her phone number when alas I noticed the engagement ring. I take some solace in the fact I noticed the ring before asking her for her number, as opposed to after, but never the less but for that ring I would have taken a very big step tonight regardless of the outcome.

I did somewhat surprise myself by actually dancing at this wedding dance, which is more then I did at the wedding dances of my last two cousins who got married. I would go so far as to say I haven’t danced this much, at least this much in public, since my college days, and even then I only actually danced after I had consumed enough alcohol that I didn’t care that I was dancing. I cannot say that was the case this evening, I had only finished one drink when I started dancing tonight. I can only say that apparently when your other supervisor (as opposed to my immediate supervisor who was the bride) whom you have a small crush on suggests you join her on the dance floor your only correct answer is yes. Before anyone gets any ideas about there even being a slight possibility of an office romance in my future let me quash those thoughts by saying she’s a married woman. For that matter even if she wasn’t a married woman, the idea of dating someone I work with strikes me as being such a bad idea, that I’d never pursue it.

Well this post does in fact guarantee I will never tell anyone I work with that I have a blog. Let me end this post by saying two things. First my spaghetti was very good. Second, and in proper MasterCard commercial fashion, rum and coke at your supervisor’s wedding dance: $2.50. Being on the dance floor at the same time as your call center manager and dancing to “Baby Got Back” with her: priceless.

w00t - post number 10

Gaming on Sunday was pretty normal. Just about everything I said about the last gaming session I ran also applies here just in a slightly different order (and I’m talking about BESM and not Shadowrun). We started late, we were easily amused by each others company, we paused to eat, and when we continued we remained easily amused by each others company. Most importantly we had fun. I will admit I sometimes wonder if we don't let ourselves get too distracted, I even mentioned my concern regarding that, but my players assured me they were having a good time.

This last session I realized I’d allowed the PCs to become quite powerful. I had intended this from the start, I’ve been giving XP awards roughly 25 times larger then what is recommended in the rules. The official BESM character advancement rules suggest giving one character point per five sessions, whereas I’ve been giving around 5 character points per session. So really the PCs becoming extremely powerful is precisely what I was shooting for (although it is worth remembering when I originally started this campaign I didn’t think it would last as long as it has), but this last session really brought home for me just how much my PCs had accomplished this. After one character slaughtered an ancient dragon (built on 105 points and for reference most starting characters are in the 20-40 point range) in two swings on his sword I made the pronouncement that the characters could officially “bring it.” More then anything after this last session I’ve come to the conclusion that I should probably redesign my main villains (yet again as I’ve already gone back and increased their power twice). Mostly I just need to give them more hit points, and maybe some more active defense, just so when the final conflict finally comes it doesn’t go like this:

Player 1:
Hey there’s Weifan the Demon Dragon King who had been manipulating us into doing his bidding since day one.

Player 2:
And there is his lackey, Kyomatsu the Demon Lord, who has cursed our NPC exorcist.

NPC Exorcist:
Yeah he’s a jerk. This totally nondescript curse that has never been fully explained in game has really made my life difficult.

NPC Kitsune:
I don’t like him either, for equally vague reasons that haven’t been fully fleshed out in game because the GM keeps forgetting what they are, and because the PCs don’t care that much since I’m only an NPC.

Player 3:
Let’s waste these turkeys.

(General sounds of combat.)

Player 1:
Wow that was a close one Kyomatsu almost got to attack me.

Player 2:
Yeah. Hey how about when Weifan was all trying to run away, and I was like “oh no you don’t,” and I totally cut him in half with my sword.

Player 3:
We pwned those guys. Who wants sushi?

Okay so I’m reasonable sure none of my players would say, “Let’s waste these turkeys,” but the scene stands.

Alright a few things in brief:

I have met a lot of interesting people. I know this because they send me e-mail with highly amusing things in them like this following statement: “In other news, I know a *lot* more about trebuchets than I did a week ago.” Just take a moment and ponder the inherent awesomeness of that statement. I am in awe.

Nothing really new to report on the anime front. I haven’t received anything new in the mail, but on the 18th the second disks of Saiyuki Reload, and Twelve Kingdoms were mailed to me so I should get those in a few days. A new episode of The Prince of Tennis is up on Toonami Jetstream. I will likely watch that tomorrow. I also started watching Hikaru no Go, and Naruto on Toonami Jetstream. I hear a lot of good things about Hikaru no Go, and found the episodes I watched to be enjoyable enough, but I didn’t care that much for the dub (not a horrible dub mind you, just not a great one either). Naruto seems to be firmly in the category of guilty pleasure anime (by the way really not liking the English dub of Naruto) thus far it seems to be a fun little ride, but nothing too deep. The friends I have who watch a lot of anime seem to come down all over the map on it, from not really caring for it at all (at least after the first 20 or so episodes) to liking it quite a bit.

As far as chess goes I am awaiting Erik’s response to my last move so nothing new to report there.

I am uploading (and in some cases downloading) music to iTunes at a greater rate then I can listen to it. My iTunes library now has 1497 items (3.7 days worth of media). My iTunes jazz collection is up to 170 songs (14.5 hours). My anime OST collection is sitting at 240 songs (13.7 hours). The music in my never played folder is up to 432 songs (1.1 days worth of songs), which actually isn’t that big of an increase over my last update. That is mainly do to the fact I’ve been making a concerted effort to listen to new things I put on iTunes and before my last big upload binge I had whittled my never been played list down to about 17 hours worth of music.

Guilt - it is a powerful motivator.

Okay time bring up a new subject here at Irregular Blathering namely the game of chess.

I’ll spare everybody the detailed analysis of how I became a chess player if for no other reason then I’ve already written such a post for roleplaying games, and I am planning to write another for anime. I will say many of the same players who were featured in my post about roleplaying factor into me picking up chess as a child. Namely my parents directly because they were basically just good parents, and more indirectly because they owned a really cool chess set that I like to play with as a child. Add to the mix a decent chess program that I’d play on the family computer (an IBM PCjr just to give you an idea of how long it has been since I’ve “owned” a computer). And to bring it all home my local public library had a book called Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess by Bobby Fischer, Stuart Margulies, and Donn Mosenfelder. I highly recommend the book to anyone looking to learn chess, because it focuses on teaching how the pieces move, and how they can be used to either checkmate your opponent, or avoid checkmate yourself.

I bring this up because this evening I received an e-mail from a good friend and former college roommate, Erik, with whom I’ve been engaging in a chess match via e-mail since November 2005. In his message he was nice enough to compliment my blog, but suggested it was taking time away from our chess match because it had been quite sometime since I last made a move (for those interested I’m inferring here and not actually quoting). He went on to request either a move, or at least a post about chess. I have in fact given him both (obviously I’m a very good friend).

For a number of different reasons I’ve decided to post the moves of our chess match here. I’m doing this mainly because I hope it will provided me with additional incentive to promptly reply to Erik’s future moves. Also chess and kibitzing go hand-in-hand. For anyone curious this is an example of the opening called the King's Gambit Declined. I am white, Erik is black:

Move	White	Black
1	e4	e5
2	f4	Nf6
3	fxe5	Nxe4
4	Nf3	Nc6
5	d4	f6
6	Qe2	d5
7	exd6	f5
8	dxc7	Qxc7
9	c3	Be6
10	Ng5	Nxd4
11	Nxe6	Nxe6
12	Qb5+	Qc6
13	Qxf5	O-O-O
14	Be2	g6
15	Qa5	Nd4
16	Bg4+	Ne6
17	Bf4	Bd6
18	Bxe6+	Kb8
19	Qd5	Bxf4
20	Qxc6	Pxc6
21	O-O	Be3+
22	Kh1	Rhf8
23	Na3	Nd2
24	Rfe1	Bc5
25	Nc4	h5
26	Nxd2	Rxd2
27	b4	Bf2
28	Rf1	Kc7
29	a4	. . .

While on the topic of Chess, I have a certain other good friend from college with whom I've also been engaging in a game of chess via e-mail, and I'll just point out it has been a few months since I sent you my last move.

A few other things in brief. . .

Well I finally did it, I forced myself to watch the fifth disk of Tenjho Tenge. It wasn’t as bad as I was afraid it might be. The first two episodes continued the flashback that had been going on and on since the last disk. The events depicted remained confusing, but at least the fight between Tawara Bunshichi and Natsume Shin at the beginning of the first episode (and continued from the final episode of disk four) was interesting. The third and final episode on the disk returned to the present, where the majority of the characters I care about are active, so that was pretty good. However I fear I’m do for another visit to the past as it has yet to be explained how and why Takayanagi Mitsuomi kills Shin, nor has Mitsuomi and Natsume Maya actually started dating which the present alludes to them doing before Shin’s death.

After that I moved on to disk one of Saiyuki Reload. It was a pleasure to watch, but none of the four episodes advanced the plot in any noticeable way. I’ve heard from a friend that much of Saiyuki Reload is like that, but if I hold out I will be rewarded with plot advancement before the end of the series.

My BESM campaign should continue on Sunday, so I’ll probably post something about that on Monday. I’m really looking forward to it, I’m even more excited that for the first time in quite a while I won’t have worked the morning before running the gaming session. So game mastering while wide awake will be quite the treat.

Finally on the iTunes front the total number of items in my library is up to 1166 or 2.8 days worth of music. My jazz collection is up to 140 songs or 12 hours of music. My anime OST collection is up to 204 songs (11.8 hours of music). There are 419 songs on my iTunes that haven’t been played (1.1 days worth of music). That is actually fewer songs then last time that haven’t been played, but the songs themselves seem to be longer in nature since last time I had 24 hours worth of music that hadn’t been played.

It was bound to come to this

When I started this blog there was one particular occurrence I was dreading. That moment has finally come. Something happened today at work that made me stop and think to myself this will make a great blog entry. And yes I’m going to post about it.

This does give me an excellent opportunity to actually write a bit about what it is I do. I debated for awhile whether or not I’d actually mention the name of the company I work for, and in the end I decided no I wouldn’t. It’s not that it is any great secret, I’m happy to tell people I know what company I work for, but given the possibility that total strangers may actually read this post (or people connected to the companies involved in what I’m going to relay) I’d rather not make identifying the players involved in anyway easy.

I work for a telecommunications company, that does an awful lot of different things relating to information technology. I, in fact, have only a vague idea of all that they do beyond my immediate (and in the scheme of things rather small) division known as Operator Services. Their corporate offices are located in Minneapolis, MN (technically I think they are in a suburb). My own little corner is a call center located in rural Minnesota near the town of Morris (where I live). I work at one of two call centers they run (the other also being located in rural Minnesota).

The first thing people tend to think when they hear call center is telemarketing. We are not, repeat not, telemarketers. We do not cold call people and try to sell them things. We are what is known as an inbound call center, basically meaning people call us. And we do basically what the name of our division says we provide operator services. Our direct customers are telephone companies (a mixture of mostly small CLECs, and ILECs) around 300 in number spread out mainly through Minnesota, Iowa, North Dakota, and South Dakota (but also Arizona, Oregon, Utah, Washington, California, and probably a few states I’m not thinking of). The two main things we do are provide directory assistance, and toll call processing (the aforementioned operator services). What this all boils down to is when customers of one of the telephone companies we serve pick up their phones and dial either 0 (or 0 + (area code) + 7 digit number) or 411 (or 1+(area code)+555+1212) they come one of the two call centers my company operates. From there the operators at the call centers either provides assistance in placing calls for the people who dialed 0, or look up a listing for the people who dialed DA.

That is the main thing (but not the only thing) my call center does. I find my job is mostly clearly described as a shift supervisor. While I am on duty I am responsible for assisting the operators with difficult calls (or callers), managing the current staffing level (which can involve taking calls myself if needed, or getting extra operators to come in if needed, or sending operators home early if they aren’t needed), and generally doing what ever needs to be done to get the center through the day. I am also responsible for ensuring the operators both know how to process the different types of calls, and that they are correctly processing the calls they receive. My actual job title is not in fact supervisor, but Lead Customer Contact Representative, and generally in house my position is informally referred to as In Charge (I guess as in my position is in charge of the floor). However if a caller asks to speak to the supervisor of one of my operators I’m the guy that gets the call (assuming I’m on duty otherwise it goes to one of the two other people who also hold my position in the call center).

So that is the crux of what I do. Now back to the whole reason for this post. Another service my call center provides is what we call After Hour Repair Service. Again our direct customers are other companies (mainly telephone and cable providers) and while they are closed if their customers are having a repair issue with their service (such as having no dial tone on their phone line) they can call in and speak to us, and we’ll take a repair report and get their problem reported to the company in question (and if needed call out a tech for repair). Most of these companies have us fax a copy of the repair ticket we create to their business office, but a few of the companies instead have us e-mail them a copy of the ticket. Now of the companies that have us e-mail them a ticket a smaller subset has us e-mail the ticket to multiple people inside their company, and of that group a even smaller subset sometimes replies to the e-mail. These replies are usually from the technicians looking into the problem, and almost always directed towards the other members of their company. I suspect they either forget that my company will also receive the message (since we are the ones who sent out the original e-mail), or more likely they just don’t care. I say I think they just don’t care because generally the reply we receive is a few words about how the problem was resolved along the lines of, “replaced cable box service restored.”

Today however when I arrived at work and checked my e-mail I found a real gem, and I quote:

"As far as I can tell, the profile he is using is borked, I couldn't find the main profile to change it globally though, so I changed his line directly to bar premium and operator, but allow everything else which is how I think the voip should be set up. I didn't call him to let him know its fixed though since this is the "data" guy and didn't want to get into an hour long conversation about dhp dll subinfrastructure disabling to increase the throughput of his bearshare filesharing or something like that… again. Also, Im assuming he was told to expect a reply Monday, so if he tries it, it should work now, and if not, who the hell makes calls out of the country? C'mon ppl, write a letter, send an email, it's probably O'Dark O'clock over there, let em sleep. Unless its Canada of course, and unless you have Moose relatives, there ain't much reason to call up there."

They only response I could think of that was appropriate was OMG and LOL. And lol I certainly did.


A few things in brief:

I enjoyed the two new anime on Adult Swim this last Saturday. Of the two I found the first episode of Trinity Blood more interesting, but I found Bleach to be cute I guess is as good a word as any. I look forward to seeing more of both. Sticking with anime I watched another episode of The Prince of Tennis on Toonami Jetstream, and still find it to be an enjoyable little diversion. I actually watched the Saiyuki movie. I liked it, really it was just like a long filler episode, and has no real effect on the ongoing plot, but it was fun. I still haven’t watched disk 5 of Tenjho Tenge, which I guess says something about my opinion of the series. I received the first disk of Saiyuki Reload in the mail at the end of last week from my anime rental service, and I look forward to watching that soon.

Going with TV as a theme (and anime) I’m considering actually canceling my cable service, because aside from Adult Swim on Saturday I don’t watch TV any more. Of course I really like watching Adult Swim on Saturdays, so I’m not sure where that leaves me.

Okay that HeroClix thing I was going to talk about. . . Back in August about the same time I received my computer I also received a Venom figure from WizKids. This figure is their send away figure for their Marvel (tm) HeroClix Sinister set. Basically each time WizKids releases a new HeroClix set if you buy what they call a brick (12 booster packs) you can fill out a form, send in the receipt, the 12 proofs-of-purchase, and pay shipping and handling and in return WizKids will send you a limited edition figure from the set that you cannot get any other way (well not directly anyway). This was all fine and dandy, and I was quite happy until near the end of August I received a letter from WizKids that said at the end of July some of the credit card information relating to certain orders of this particular promotion were compromised. The letter goes on to say the incident was quickly discovered, and there is an ongoing police investigation. The letter advises me to pay close attention to my credit card balance, and tells how to contact the police detective running the investigation if I see any suspicious activity on my card. I have been paying close attention to my credit card, and I’m happy to say there has been no suspicious activity on it, but the whole situation just makes you want to say, and I'm quoting an ex-girlfriend here, “Nerrr.”

I amused myself this weekend by ripping all of my Beatles CDs, and most of my jazz CDs onto my computer (okay so I amused myself for at most 45 minutes doing this since it takes like 3 minutes to upload a CD onto iTunes). I now have 135 Beatles songs on my computer (6.2 hours worth). I have 120 jazz songs (10.7 hours) on my computer, but I haven’t finished ripping all of my jazz CDs yet. I have 192 songs coming from anime soundtracks (10.9 hours) I have 425 songs (24 hours worth) on my computer I haven’t listened to yet. Of course that just means I haven’t listened to it in iTunes, not that I have never listened to those particular songs. In total my music library at this time has 1059 songs (2.5 days worth of music). I’ve come to realize iTunes is like the ultimate mixed tape.

City of Heroes continues to be enjoyable, and a major reason I’m not watching much TV. At this point it is probably safe to say I could devote an entire post to the game. The likelihood of me buying City of Villains is pretty high. Which means the likely hood I’m going to continue playing the game for a while is also pretty high. That of course means I’m unlikely to get into World of Warcraft anytime soon, although it remains a game I am quite interested in. That is a shame, because I have several friends who play World of Warcraft, and only one (that I know of) that plays City of Heroes. And while logging onto City of Heroes by myself is fun, logging on at the same time as my friend is a great deal more fun, so having a lot more friends I could play with is a major attraction for World of Warcraft.

Well Crikey, I'd like to stop posting about people's deaths now

I was saddened last night when I heard the news of Steve Irwin’s death. I have a nostalgic fondness for his television series The Crocodile Hunter as it reminds me of my time in college and the early days of the relationship with my most recent ex.

I cannot help but think of Steve Irwin as being larger than life. He seemed to me like Paul Hogan’s character "Crocodile" Dundee ripped from a celluloid womb and shoved into a real person. I can picture Steve and Terri walking the streets of New York and being accosted by a herpetologist street gang (if herpetologists are going to form a street gang anywhere it would be New York, NY). Terri would say, “Be careful Steve he’s got a croc.” Steve would chuckle, “That’s not a croc.” He’d whip Aggro out of his belt and say, “That’s a croc. Isn’t he a beaut.”

My expectation of what I think an Australian man should be like has been inexorably colored by Steve’s TV persona. Consciously I know that is silly, but never-the-less Steve forms a large portion of my view of the stereotype of the Australian man. The other major portion of this stereotype is formed by David Morgan-Mar (creator of Irregular Webcomic!). Ian Thorpe also contributes to a small portion to this view, but that is mostly because “Thorpedo” has got to rank high among the greatest nicknames ever. So yes I subconsciously expect Australian men to be astrophysicists and conservationists with a sense of enthusiasm for their jobs equaled by their obvious knowledge of their fields of expertise. I also expect them to have a wicked command of puns, good computer and photography skills, and a great nickname. I expect them to wrestle crocodiles and unruly gamers with equal aplomb. I probably expect them to be good swimmers too.

As I’ve frequented my usual haunts on the Internet I’ve been cognizant of the ones that mentioned Steve’s untimely death. When the subject has been broached condolences for his family have been practically universal, a sentiment along the lines of I thought he was invincible was quite common, but what surprised me some was a strong minority view that his death was inevitable. This view was sometimes intertwined with the idea that Steve was foolishly reckless. I fail to see how being killed during a freak accident with a stingray (only the third such know incident in Australian history) is in any way inevitable or the result of reckless behavior. Even if Steve had been killed by a crocodile, I would have seen that as unfortunate, maybe even sadly ironic, but hardly inevitable. That any job involving the regular interaction with wildlife (especially predators, and venomous animals) is dangerous is a given, but filming wildlife documentaries is not a death sentence.

Anyway in brief:

There is nothing particularly new going on in my life. City of Heroes continues to be quite enjoyable, and I’ve managed to keep my playing time down to a reasonable amount as opposed to the every-waking-moment-I-was-not-at-work that I indulged in for the first few days I owned the game. However still nothing new to report on the Tenjho Tenge front.

I did watch some The Prince of Tennis on Toonami Jetstream. The site is pretty interesting, but I’m annoyed that it doesn’t support Firefox (you are also SOL if you use a Mac). Naturally the available anime on the site is dubbed, but The Prince of Tennis dub wasn’t all that bad as dubs go. In any event, I found the four episodes of The Prince of Tennis I watched to be pretty enjoyable.

I’ve got a few ideas that I’m working on for future posts. I’ve got some HeroClix related news I’ll be talking about soon, and I’d really like to do a post on comic books. I'd also like to write something about webcomics. I’ve actually spent some time working on a post about how I became a fan of anime, so expect that pretty soon. I’m also likely to be posting about music soon; probably a “what I’m listening too now that I’ve got a computer, and iTunes, and what not” post.