Daily Update

Not a ton to really go over today.. worked on getting my new computer setup at work; which I'm excited about... but no real progress on it.

I did, however, sit on a call with a Pakistani man named "Elvis" for 2 hours trying to convince Microsoft that I wasn't a software pirate and that I needed my office key activated... but the key they printed was off by 1 digit. It took a freakn act of congress; I even read them the retailers Invoice number.

Got home... Ran for a little bit; played with the boys (who were in crazy moods) and then chilled in the living room with mah Lovely wife while we watched Glee and a little bit of Mythbusters.. came upstairs and she worked on homework and I played MW2 with Carlton till now.

I think I'm in a WoW rut... I tried to play it a little this afternoon; but quit before I even really started. 77 is like, the last milestone before 80.. and the 77-80 grind sucks. So it takes a little bit of mental prep to push over that hump and finish the drill. Probably will pick it back up once the newness of MW2 wears off a little.

Peace!... off to bed... soooo sleeeeepy

Número once

Or Number 11 in english...

So been playing a lot of CoD:MW2... and by a lot, I mean like 2 days straight. Incredible Multiplayer... the weapon & accessories combos are nuts; and each item that you get feels like it has its place, but isn't overpowered.

There'll be sometimes where you'll focus too much on the heartbeat sensor.. and get racked from someone to your left or right; and you'll beat yourself up for putting that stupid thing on your favorite gun... then there's times where you flash and charge a room, killing 4, cause your HB sensor told you they were in there. It's not like CoD:MW1, where not every accessory really felt like it had a place.

The perks are awesome too... Bling = 2 Primary Attachments... so SCAR-H with a Silencer and Heartbeat Sensor is the ultimate quiet killer. Couple that with Cold Blooded (don't show up on thermal scopes, UAV's, Pred Missle strikes) and you're basically undetectable until they see you.

Best gun to me so far is the SCAR-H... best blend of knock down power, range and accuracy. Fire rate is a little low, for when you gotta go rock-n-roll on someone.. but everything has it's trade offs.

Most disappointing... gotta go with the MP5. I thought they would've brought back the badass MP5 from the first Modern Warfare, but this one just feels really underpowered. You've got to either be ten feet from your quarry, or dump a whole magazine into them.

Coolest part... has to go to either the C130 kill combo reward or the Predator Missiles. C-130 is just sheer awesome; but you've gotta get really lucky to squeeze that reward out. The Pred missile is more easily attained, but still reaps almost the same 'fun' reward. Watching the CNN-Esque nose-cam as you direct the missile towards the earth is just an awesome 'oooOOOOooh' moment.

Ended tonight Rank 26.. which is over halfway of what I was in CoD:MW1. Crazy.

In non-MW2 news; the druid polished off 15% exp today to finally hit 77. Finally get to fly in Northrend.. making questing, grinding... and dang never everything go 300% faster.

Moving to non-leisure/Killing time activities... back @ the Grindstone tomorrow. We're prepping two new software releases; one to our main core processor and any of our redundancy boxes (7 of them), and another to our Scheduling product, which should take care of some "false" reporting we've seen. This'll let jobfile scheduler be a little more accurate when he says a job is "finished"... he'll tell you whether it really did finish, or if finished but with an error code.

No NWeds this Sunday... just regular 'ole church. We do have a party at a NWeds graduates house on Saturday though, after I get off of work.

In non-Greg News... Thanks to all of our Veterans. Americans truly do appreciate the sacrifices you make every day in order to ensure our protection. To all current serving armed forces personell and all past, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

-GTG-

EDIT: For anyone who doesn't know what Modern Warfare 2 is... or what it looks like:

INTENSE

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2... is.. INTENSE. JEEEZ.

Not sure I'm gonna fall asleep anytime soon, despite laying down and trying to.. it's very fast paced, and very frantic. The AI is extremely smart as well.. doesn't look like I'll be beating this on 'hard / veteran' any time soon. Trying hardened, but man that stuff is tough.

Dunno about the story... so far it doesn't feel as "solid" as Modern Warfare 1, to be honest. It's a little sporadic and jumps from here, to there, to here, to there. But I think some of the pieces are coming together.

But man; it is no stop action... defending a Diner in D.C. from waves of airborne troops felt like i was one of the poor little infantry I commanded in World in Conflict (another PC game).. it was pretty awesome.

bed time.. I hope.

Posting Early

and I'll probably post again tonight.. while I'm installing COD:MW2.

Hopefully I'll remember to take some pictures @ the Midnight release party; but the Gamestop off of Barrett is going all out for this thing. They're going to have snacks and drinks, demo's of the game on like, 22 different TV's, a rock band tournament going and they're going to (after 10pm when the other stores close) setup an airsoft field & game rotation in the parking lot for everyone waiting.

The last midnight release I went to was in Cartersville and about 70 people had preordered GTA:3 at that point... according to the dude @ Gamestop, they've already preordered about 470 copies of Modern Warfare 2... so this should be quite crowded.

Anyways... so talking about games / gamers; there's this cool, charitable deal that I've found out about, called Raid for the Cure and Azeroth United. AZU is just a basic charitable thing... donate a couple of bucks, and you feel good about something and a Game-Related site is giving a 25% discount. Raid for the Cure is pretty cool though... $10 and you reserve a raid spot with a dedicated group of 10 people who will run you thru a raid dungeon and let just the donatee's roll on loot. Additional $5 and you can 'bet' on how long it will take a particular group/run (of the 10 man and donatee's) to clear the dungeon.. closest person wins the non-spoken for items on the raid.. without having to go. It's a win-win for everyone involved... donate $10 or more and the Susan G. Komen charity 'wins', and then you 'win' for having a garanteed raid spot + loot.

I think it's just cool, and good for the gaming industry as a whole, to see gamers being socially concious. I think there's a negative / immature light painted on the gaming industry.. on MMO gamers specifically cause it's seen much the same as D&D is.. sort of a group of outcast / social misfits; despite the fact that the gaming industry has overtaken the film industry in terms of revenue. Doing charitable events and casting gamers and developers in a more friendly and "acceptable" light will only help to further the development and acceptance of the industry among mainstream media. Something interesting though, is that Blizzard is dedicated to their conciensous gamers as well... vowing to match the charitable contributions of the community to both causes (AZU is for 'Child's Play').

Anyways.. back to working.

Day 8 and still going strong!

So day 8 and I'm still hanging in there.

Not a whole heck of a lot went on today... me and Jill just kind of chilled and spent some downtime together. We didn't end up going to church, although we wish we had. we hung out, ate some leftovers, and watched some mythbusters... fast times at the Glawson household ;)

Went to NWeds and 'glommed' on some new people.... we tried to make them feel welcome and not uncomfortable, being the newbs that they were.

Here's to hoping Jeremy's prognosis goes well tomorrow, I'm really praying for him.

Another day another dollar tomorrow... BUT... COD:MW2 released tomorrow night!

Yes... I'm a 24year old successful grown-up adult, who works in an adult job, with a family and house etc... who will be at gamestop for a midnight release party. I'm a nerd and I at least I know it =)

Chattanooga.

7 days blogging in a row, how bout that.

So today I rode up to chattanooga with a friend on his part tiem job. He works for a marketting firm of pespi's, doing different shows / events involving pepsi products. So, they're trying to help drum up business for one of their few pepsi venues in Chatt.; so they sent us out with a pepsi-sponsored (via the Amp product line) item... the #88 Car (Dale Enrhart Jr.) from the Nascar Racing Series.

I'm not a nascar fan; lets just put that out front.,

however, it was really cool to be involved in. Just the trailer this thing is in is awesome, and nicer than some people's cars. But the race car is obviously the show stopper. While I'm not a nascar fan, I am a fan of really really fast things... so my interest was piqued. Because jeremy has a bum shoulder, I got to not only sit in, and crank... but drive a 765hp race car.

The amount of power this machine had was wicked.

First off though, this thing is LOUD. And by LOUD, I mean it puts a chainsaw without ear plugs to shame. It puts a rock concert to shame... sitting in it, reving it up to 7,500 RPMS is like sitting inside the engine. It's like a vision-rattling loud.

Second... it's uncomfortable as hell, and hot. The inside of the car is all sheetmetal or steeltubing, including the seat. It's made of a re-enforced steel tube skeleton, covered in sheetmetal with about 1/8" of padding between it and your ass. Sitting in that for 5 hours? No thanks.

But the day was really fun.. I got to drive around the parking lot of a mall; got to meet a lot of "interesting" Nascar fans... ahem. Played a game with myself.. "count the teeth"... and had fun just cutting up with Jeremy and people watching.

All in all, it was a really fun saturday.

Blog update

Figured... since i'll be posting on this at least once a day for this full month, I might as well make it look a little nicer.

I'm getting involved in an opensource programming project, WoWAce, that's a LUA Framework and full UI... in other words; helping 6 other people shore-up and polish a user-generated interface for a game I play. It's fun, something I can do on the side and at my own pace; just steady as she goes.

Not a ton has really went on today... slow day at work, which was the first we've had in about 3 months. Most of the top-level people weren't there... the ones that matter anyways (even they'd say that), so there wasn't much heat from up that direction. Apparently everyone on the user-side didn't have problems remember passwords, unplugging their printers and wondering why they didn't work, or figuring out the difference between the "computer" on the desk (aka Monitor) and the "computer" under the desk... cause I think we only had about 8 tickets.

I don't know why we've (tech services) been the black sheep lately. Well, really I do.. but it's just not fair. You see, Technology Services, in the eyes of people that control the cash, has been, is, and always will be an expense department. It doesn't matter if that $6,000 new server is going to let you process 18 more loans per hour, or 25 less dropped calls in your service center per day.. it's a $6,000 expense. Lending Departments can increase productivity by 10%, and you can't walk around a building without someone saying something about the great job Lending is doing.

Our Tech Services department has seen a reduction in staff of 2, an increase in work volume of 119% (thus far, 2 months left) and a reduction in response time and resolution time by 51%!

If our lending department increased approved loans by 100% and reduced the time to close the loan by 50%, with less staff... they'd all get a free 2 weeks vacation.

But if its us... there's 2 questions 1) How much did it costs, in $, the organization? 2) Why couldn't 51% be 60%? With us nothing is ever good enough... but you don't stop to think, that every single time you do, essentially, *anything* at your job... does it pass thru a wire? does the information you're looking for reside on the internet\a server\a shared folder? That printer you're printing to, was it just magically put into place? When the crap hits the fan, and you have to put a Disaster Recovery plan into effect, who's gonna be one of the first on the scene? When you need that Credit Report pulled that a $25,000 car loan is hinging on... or you've got that one customer with $400,000.00 wrapped up in CD's that's only using your web banking cause you export into QIS format... re-evaluate whether that "expense" department is really just an expense department or not.

Anyways.. rant time off. It's department evaluation time and budget time, all wrapped into one; and I'm heading the defense of Tech Services and the justification of the TS Budget, so guess I'm still in defense mode.

Jill's gotta babysit tonight... looks like I'll be bach-in it infront of the computer. What a wild 20-something I am! Ha!

I wish she didn't have to work tho ><