Work, Work!

After even more grunt work (pun intended - read on) on the Patio from Heck, I did free up a few hours last evening to continue with my RTS experiment while enjoying a few frosty homebrews.

Starcraft looked much better than I'd expected. You have to credit Blizzard's artists when a 640x480 game still looks attractive on a 24-inch 1920x1200 monitor!

That said, the 11-yr-old unit pathfinding AI has not aged gracefully. When moving groups of units through terrain of any complexity whatsoever, I ended up with Zerg-bait stragglers wandering around the landscape searching in vain for their compatriots. I don't think I'd have the patience to babysit individual units from point A to B in a protracted campaign. So, even though the story and voice acting were compelling, I think I'll give this one a pass and read the novelization instead in preparation for Starcraft 2.

The Warcraft III demo, on the other (albeit green-skinned) hand, sucked me in like a haywire Roomba. I had forgotten how absolutely fantastic the writing and art direction were, and the sound design perhaps surpasses even those two factors.

I played through the first few levels of the prequel campaign - Thrall is still too cool for school - and immediately thereafter logged on to Battle.net to purchase a download of Reign of Chaos. This exercise was perhaps the only disappointing part of my WC3 experience. I placed my order, updated my payment info to reflect a new card number, and purchased the game. Strangely, though, it took about a half hour for my order to process such that the download link was propigated to my Battle.net home page. I know Blizzard has been making a lot of changes to Battle.net, but they have to recognize that their customers are going to expect a digital purchase to be available instantaneously. I can only assume it was an anomoly?

"Time and moods are changing, attention spans quickening. Welcome to the Information Age." - Queensryche, "My Global Mind"

The House that Frank(enstein) Built

Coming up on two years ago, we bought the townhouse we'd been renting since relocating for this job. This is our first home purchase, and is working out fairly well so far. The place is a fixer-upper, from the standpoint that the decor and some of the exterior need some serious updating. We bought the property for a good price, with the intent of revamping it and reselling it for some degree of profit. As this point, we're doing well equity-wise, and we're happy with the way the projects we've competed have turned out.

We've replaced exterior doors, the downstairs flooring, redecorated our son's bedroom, and are now in the finishing stages of one upstairs bathroom. We needed to replace a tub, and insanely decided that a whirlpool tub would be an addition desirable to the next buyer (oh, and my wife would probably like it as well...). That project has been quite a ride, but we're seeing the end of the tunnel.

Next up, regrouting the shower in the bathroom in our room, some painting in there and replacing the vanity.

Looming on the horizon, like a hungry troll waiting for a billy goat: the kitchen. Ugh.