tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-189975822024-03-07T02:58:07.003-06:00ConflagrationIf a flame once burned within this shell, set me on Fire, one last time.BMatthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08254121351319676342noreply@blogger.comBlogger238125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18997582.post-44426319811146892232010-02-16T09:05:00.002-06:002010-02-16T09:09:33.939-06:00Time for a change.Greetings my friends.<br /><br />I'm posting this to let you know that as of today, I will no longer be updating Conflagration.<br /><br />The reason? Well because we've moved homes over to the fine folks at Wordpress!!<br /><br />Conflagration, Version 2, can now be found at <a href="http://thebmatt.wordpress.com/">thebmatt.wordpress.com</a>!<br /><br />Head on over there and take a look around, folks! I do hope you'll enjoy it, because I'm loving what all it has to offer.BMatthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08254121351319676342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18997582.post-78279231492775366992010-01-12T17:04:00.000-06:002010-01-12T17:04:00.114-06:00Avatar is a freaking REDEMPTION story, you morons!!Sigh.<br /><br />If I hear one more person blast Avatar for being an anti-capitalistic, anti-militaristic, pro-nature worshipping, white-people-are-evil-racists movie that isn't worth anything, I am going to punch them. Inna jimmies. If they don't have them, it'll be to the gut.<br /><br />Seriously. Shut the hell up. All of you. You're idiots.<br /><br />This is a film about a dude who's willing to do whatever it takes, hurt whomever or destroy whatever will get in his way, and doesn't believe in a thing beyond what he can see, all for selfish reasons, discovering that there is a much wider view of the universe than he has been led to believe, including a God figure that provides not just for the "chosen people", but any who will follow him. He changes. He sacrifices all that he knows for a better life, a simpler life, and relies on faith when all seems hopeless. And in the end, his example inspires others to do the same. He opposes those who kill and destroy for their own ends.<br /><br />Are we noticing any parallels here?<br /><br />Let's try looking a bit beyond the surface next time, shall we?BMatthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08254121351319676342noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18997582.post-83455514448981675172010-01-05T18:44:00.000-06:002010-01-06T14:46:47.889-06:002009 Predictions wrapup!Howdy everyone. You might remember back in January of last year that I made a set of 10 predictions that I thought would come true in 2009. Let's take a look at how I did, shall we?<br /><br /><u>1. The digital TV transition will be mostly hitch-free.<br /></u>Yeah, I'm gonna call this one correct. There was a lot of speculation that a ton of people would be suddenly unable to watch TV and wouldn't know why, and that it would cause a firestorm of complaining, something that would be newsworthy. As far as I can tell, that didn't happen, probably because most new TVs sold for the past few years have all had built in digital tuners and the continues information campaigns caught most of the rest.<br /><br /><u>2. iTunes will cave to the pressure and go fully DRM free in music.<br /></u>Kaboom. And about dang time too. 2 for 2 so far!<br /><br /><u>3. A really good Sci-Fi MMO will both come out and succeed.</u><br />Ooops. Here's our first biff. The Knights of the Old Republic MMO I talked about when I initially made this post has not yet been released, nor has Star Trek Online. The MMO space was still dominated, and quite hardily, by World of Warcraft.<br /><br /><u>4. The new Star Trek film will both be the Nerdtacular 2009 film, and will not be remembered fondly.</u><br />I am happy to say that in this one, I was only half right. It WAS the 2009 Nerdtacular film, but holy COW was it good. At the time I made this, we really didn't know much about this film, but there was a lot of speculation that caused longtime Trek fans to be nervous. We needn't have worried, because this film was spec-friggin-tacular. One of my favorite films of the year.<br /><br /><u>5. Both Marvel and DC will release more superhero films which futher build up to an eventual Avengers and/or Justice League movie.</u><br />Swing and a miss. Nothing from either of these 2 companies that built up to a big "team" superhero film.<br /><br /><u>6. The worship of Jesus Christ will explode in a formerly "closed-off" country somewhere in the world.</u><br />This one is hard to say, because I don't have any real proof to show this, given that most mainstream news sources won't cover something like this. I have heard, from several friends at my church in Waco, stories of large numbers of peoples coming to knew Jesus in several locations, including Vietnam. I trust these people absolutely, and since it's my blog and I don't really need to prove this to anyone, I'm calling this one correct, and happily.<br /><br /><u>7. Two out of the three major missing iPhone 3G features (cut and paste, Multimedia messaging, and turn-by-turn GPS directions) will be added via firmware this year</u><br />Two out of three. We got Cut and Paste and MMS for sure, but the spoken turn-by-turn directions are still a no. Yeah, that's right, I said they're a no. Why? Because the ludicrously expensive TomTom app and the even-worse AT&T "Navigation Plan" do not even come close to counting. They're pathetic. Actually, the GPS in the phone itself is probaly the one thing I absolutely HATE the most about the iPhone, because it doesn't even work. I know Tom Merritt over at CNET has predicted for the past 2 years that standalone GPS units would fade away as they were rolled more and more into cellphones and similar all-in-one devices. Personally, I don't see it, but my only experience is with the iPhone, and it not only shows me in the wrong area all the time, it also drops my location, repeatedly. Still, this prediction is a solid yes.<br /><br /><u>8. I will acquire one of the three current major game consoles this year, only to have the next generation of consoles be announced.</u><br />Wow, wrong on both counts. Didn't buy ANY of these consoles, and there's no new console news at ALL. Weird.<br /><br /><u>9. Megan and Julie will be living in the garage apartment before February ends. </u><br />I was kind of reaching for a prediction here. This seemed like something good at the time. Russell got em in there in time, though.<br /><br /><u>10. Josh and Angie's baby will be a girl.<br /></u>Much to Josh's happiness, I was wrong here. He's a boy. I'm his Godfather. ^.^<br /><br /><br /><br />So all in all, I got 6 completely right, 3 completely wrong, and about half and half on one. Not too bad, overall.<br /><br />I don't really have any set predictions for 2010. I could do some for technology, but the folks at Buzz Out Loud pretty much covered that fairly well in this episode. I'd recommend you all start listening to that podcast this year and keep yourself informed on tech!<br /><br />I could do some personal predictions, but none of them would be terribly interesting. I have plenty of HOPES for this coming year, and lots of wonder about all the possibilities it's got to offer, but nothing I can really "predict", per se. I'm just gonna look forward to what 2010 has to offer!BMatthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08254121351319676342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18997582.post-65874591977646113482009-12-21T22:42:00.002-06:002009-12-21T23:15:45.395-06:00Merry Christmas ya'll!Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, what few readers of Conflagration I have left! Heh.<br /><br />In all honesty, I hope all of you guys have a very good Christmas. I hope God fills all of your homes with joy, blessings, and love. I hope you enjoy seeing your families or friends, whatever it may be. And I hope you all never forget the magical joy of this season.<br /><br />As the year winds down, folks tend to look back on the year in retrospect, kinda evaluate where things are. Me, well, while the year has had it's up and downs in various places, and I have some regrets, there are 2 key factors that have entered my life this year that have made it absolutely a good year. The first one would be Josiah Henry, the son of my beloved friends Josh and Angie Henry, and whom I am proud to have been named the Godfather of. He's ridiculously cute and I'm amazed just thinking about what all is going to come out of his life, all the potential inside him.<br /><br />The other key factor? A beautiful woman named Karen Wilson. A lady who is amazing in SO many aspects, and I adore so very much. Our relationship is one of the most amazing things to ever happen in my life, and I am so happy that she'll be moving here soon. We haven't always had a whole lot of time to be together, but when we are, everything just seems better. I know the whole thing is going to change once we're able to see each other every day if we want, and I'm beyond happy. I know she'll be doing something she loves: helping God's children who are going through hard times. I can't tell you guys how happy I am for her because of that. I don't know the words to express it right. I say all this with complete honesty though, it's not just a side benefit to having her here, closer to me. Yes, obviously, I am extremely thrilled about that, but having her working for something that she truly loves, that's what brings more joy to me. I need you guys to know that, to understand that, because it's really important to me that you do. I'm praying for God to use her. Not for anything huge, or showy, or something that'll get her recognition, because I know that isn't as important to her as this: I pray that just one, at the very least, just one person will believe God is real because of her faith and her love for Him and her love for His people. Because nothing would make her happier than that.<br /><br /><br />Do I have regrets? Sure I do. There's plenty of things I regret, but if there's one thing I've had to have beaten into my head over and over, it's that you can't change the past, all you can do is make the future better. Well, I'm taking all those things I regret, and I'm gonna do all I can to change things for the better. To all those I have hurt or neglected my friendships with, I am sorry. Know I love you all. I do want to be a more active friend in your life again, if you'll have me.<br /><br />I really think 2010 is going to be an epic year. There's so much possibility in store for me, for all of my friends, for my family, for everyone now that I think about it. I really hope there's a lot of Epic in it for all of you guys.<br /><br />In the meantime, I'm going to look forward to Christmas...and New Year's with my beautiful girlfriend. Oh...and having a week and a half off from work after tomorrow! Love you guys, and once again, Merry Christmas!BMatthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08254121351319676342noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18997582.post-65327018076347783382009-12-05T17:05:00.004-06:002009-12-05T17:20:03.507-06:00Tis the Holiday Season!I know I'm way overdue for updating this, but I'm actually about to go Christmas shopping, so I'll just hit a few quick points.<br /><br />1. Karen is amazing, I had so much fun when she was here for Thanksgiving, and I can't wait to see her in a few short days for her graduation!<br /><br />2. If you're so inclined to purchase something for me for Christmas, thank you. It means a lot to me. You can find a list of things I'd like at my Amazon.com wishlist.<br /><a href="http://www.amazon.com/registry/wishlist/257AL93EL6GZ1?reveal=unpurchased&filter=all&sort=priority&layout=standard&x=6&y=9">http://amzn.com/w/257AL93EL6GZ1</a><br /><br />3. Champions Online was fun for a while, but ultimately several factors came together to make it not really enjoyable in the long fun. The graphics engine is terribly designed, the questing is repetitive and dull (bad for a game that lends itself well to making lots of different characters), the statistics and character building system is insanely overly complicated, and it does not lend itself well to community building. I did enjoy some of it's features (the character creator has a LOT of options and the Sidekicking system does wonders for getting folks to group together at any level), but it's got a long way to go to come close to WoW, and I've canceled my account until these issues are resolved.<br /><br />4. Speaking of WoW, my Shaman's level 78, the druid's gotten some great gear out of Ulduar, and I'm looking VERY forward to exploring Icecrown Citadel with my raid team next week.<br /><br />5. You might wanna keep an eye on the Doghouse Podcast at www.Doghousesystems.com. I'm not gonna say why just yet, but...just be ready for the next episode. ^.^<br /><br />Okay, off to go shopping. Later everyone.BMatthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08254121351319676342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18997582.post-34365152234136650702009-10-21T17:25:00.000-05:002009-10-22T08:38:25.735-05:00Playing Catch-up. Not Ketchup. Though that IS tasty...Howdy folks, I know it's been a long time. I been very busy, what with crazy stuff going on at work, busy weekends, and as much time with my beautiful and lovely Karen as is humanly possible!<br /><br />This past weekend, Karen was here with me for 4 days. We had a blast together, hitting up the State Fair of Texas, the Fort Worth Zoo, and plenty of delightful little eateries around here. I was extremely sad to see her go, but I know it's not too much longer until the next time we can see each other (which will be around her birthday). Hopefully soon we can be a lot closer to each other after she graduates!! I adore her so much.<br /><br />Funny little sidenote: on the Sunday before she left, I fired up my laptop and got her to try out World of Warcraft. She made a little Blood Elf Rogue (durn Blood Elves!) andI got her walking around, looking at quests, and making with the stabby stabby! I definitely think she got the basics down pretty quick, and seemed to be enjoying it. After she got back home, she told me she was having withdrawls of me, Firefly (which she had never seen and we got through 2 and 1/2 discs of), and WoW. Hehehe. My girlfriend is an extremely gorgeous geek. I think I'm the luckiest dude on the planet.<br /><br />Probably my favorite part of the State Fair? The bird show. Seriously, it was one of the coolest things I've watched. They had a wide variety of bird species ranging from exotic singing parrots, to crows which could retrieve dollar bills, to a stork which flew low over the crowd and nearly hit Karen, and a lot in between. I love animals, and most birds are pretty high up on that list, so this show was a wonder to see. Incidentally, if you ever want to know what my favorite color is, search online for an image of a Hyacinth Macaw. Their feathers are a beautiful dark blue that I just love. The Fair's over now, sadly, but next year I highly recommend you go and see this show, if nothing else. It's awesome. Incidentally when we went to the Fort Worth Zoo, it made going through the raptor canyon area a lot more enjoyable, having learned so much and witnessed the bird's behaviors in a semi-uncaptive environment. Which was really nice, considering that my usual favorite portion of the zoo, the Herpetarium, was closed down for renovation and relocation. Grrrrr....FAIL, Fort Worth Zoo. Bleh! Oh well, someday the snakes will return!<br /><br />In my last entry, I talked about the Mimiron Hard Mode encounter in the Ulduar dungeon of World of Warcraft.<br /><br />What I didn't mention was that all the other bosses have a similar "Hard Mode" achievement, in which you purposefully make the encounter more difficult for a better challenge and better loot as well.<br /><br />If you manage to accomplish all of these achievements, you earn a meta-achievement called "Glory of the Ulduar Raider". And you get a reward for your efforts, a reward that serves not only as an awesome looking form of transportation, but a mark of distinction, that your team was able to accomplish the truly difficult.<br /><br />That reward takes the form of a Proto-Drake mount. This one has been magically bound in metal as a hatchling, and now it's fully grown, covered in metallic plate that's slightly rusted. Hence, his name: The Rusted Proto-Drake. Rusty or not, I think he looks awesome. Here's a screenshot of my 10-man team on our new mounts.<br /><br /><img src="http://i766.photobucket.com/albums/xx302/weege72/WoWScrnShot_100609_225334.jpg" /><br /><br />We'd been working on this since gaining our first hard mode back on the 20th of May, and finished it off on October 7th with our defeat of Yogg-Saron on his Hard Mode, having the assistance of only 1 of the Keepers. Under the normal fight, all four keepers assist you.<br /><br />This fight is utterly crazy as it is. One of the mechanics of the fight is a numerical value known as your Sanity. Getting damaged by Yogg-Saron will lower your sanity, and if it drops to zero, you go insane, and Yogg essentially mindcontrols you into attacking your fellow players. You normally can restore your sanity by standing in one of the green beams of light that Freya, one of the keepers, places around the room.<br /><br />In the Hard Mode, Freya is not present, only Thorim is. Thorim must be present as he is the only one who can kill Yogg's Immortal Guardians in Phase 3 of the fight. You thus have to manage your sanity by taking as little damage as possible.<br /><br />For our successful attempt, we had 2 players down when we reached phase 3, and most of us were EXTREMELY low on Sanity. During Phase 3, Yogg Saron casts a spell called Lunatic Gaze. While this is active, anyone looking at Yogg takes damage and loses Sanity. If you're low on Sanity, you have to watch the timer for when Lunatic Gaze is about to go active, and turn away from him before that happens. If not, you're that much closer to going insane. Yogg will constantly spawn Immortal Guardians, which must be killed. Normally when they reach 1% of their health, they cannot be killed by players anymore. Thorim, however, has the power to kill them.<br /><br />Normally, the tanks and the melee DPS focus on bringing these guardians down, while all ranged focuses completely on ripping Yoggy apart. However, because I was so low on sanity, they told me to stay facing the Guardians, away from Yogg, and help bring them down. What followed was a lot of on-the-fly-moving folks around as people got too low on Sanity to safely attack Yogg. It was slow going, but it was going. Yogg's health was steadily decreasing.<br /><br />Then the worst possible thing happened. Our main tank, Servillia, lost all of his sanity.<br /><br />The guardians immediately turned and went after the rest of the raid, as did Serv. All we heard over our Ventrilo was the off tank, Thrakan, yelling "TURN AND BURN, TURN AND BURN!!" We all immediately turned around, faced Yogg, and unleashed everything we had. It didn't look good for us. With no one to control the Guardians, they ran around rampant, killing people, as we tried so hard to put out enough damage to bring him down, and it looked like we weren't gonna make it. I was furiously blasting with everything I had, waiting for when the guardians were going to come after me...<br /><br />...and it happened. The guardians despawned as Yogg convulsed and fell over dead. We all earned our achievements, and began yelling with joy in Vent. I couldn't believe it, we'd finally done it. All the hard work, the repeated wiping, the frustrations, it had all paid off. It was done, and one of the coolest things I've ever seen in the game. So very cool. Just wanted to share that with ya'll.<br /><br /><img src="http://i659.photobucket.com/albums/uu313/ckhayne2/yogg1_10m.jpg" /><br /><br />Us celebrating in front of ol' Yoggy's dead self.<br /><br /><br /><img src="http://biobreak.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/cobox.jpg" /><br /><br />I've actually picked up another MMO to play when I need a break from WoW. It's called Champions Online. You've probably heard of City of Heroes, NCSoft's semi-well-known superhero MMORPG, this is along the same vein. I never played CoH, but from what what I'm told from those who did, Champions is better in nearly every way.<br /><br />The game was initally being made by NCSoft, and grew out of a failed attempt to make an MMO on the Marvel Comics universe. However, they eventually sold it to Cryptic Entertainment, who finished the game and released it. You can buy it in stores or over the Steam download service.<br /><br />The first thing that's worth mentioning about this game is the literally GINORMOUS character creation system. As someone who was used to the bare-bones character creator in World of Warcraft, this was nearly overwhelming. You have SO many options, so many costume pieces to choose from, that you could spend hours just playing with that. It does make sense though. In WoW, your clothing and armor change appearance as you get new equipment and put it on. In Champions, your appearance is what you make of it here. The items you get do not affect it in any way.<br /><br />The first thing you choose is your powers "archetype". This is a collection of thematically linked together abilities and a base statisitics set. These range from Fire to Ice to Archery to Martial Arts to Power Armor to Sorcery to Telekinesis. There's a total of 18 archetypes to choose from, and what's truly killer is that you can actually pick around if you want to mix it up a little bit.<br /><br />And that is perhaps the other truly amazing thing about this game, the sheer amount of customization you have. In WoW, if you're a hunter, for example, you're going to want the same set of stats on your items at all time.<br /><br />In Champions, you gain the ability to, at levels 5 and 13, pick your "superstats". These two statistics will be what determines the strength of your powers, regardless of what archetype you select. Now, each archetype starts with a base set of statistics that gives you average values for all of them save two. These two are what they recommend you use as your super stats because they typically have other benefits for your archetyps, but they aren't required. You can thus mix and match whatever statistics you wish to focus on however you like. It's astounding.<br /><br />And the customization does not stop there. You need not stick to powers from your archetype's pre-determined set, either!. As long as you have a minimum number of powers from one archetype, you can start learning powers from other types as well, and many of them synergize with certain other archetypes very well. For example, let's say you have a Power Armor hero, and he's gained a set number of Power Armor powers. If he gains a new power, he can switch over to the Eletricity Archetype and take the power Electric Form. Electric Form gives you a boost to Electricity and Particle damage, and aids in your energy gaining. The Power Armor archetype doesn't have many electric powers, but it has plenty of Particle damage in the form of it's many beam abilities!<br /><br />The sheer degree of customizing, both in terms of character creation and ability gaining, means you will have yourself a truly unique character. Unless of course you fall into the truly sad realm of making characters that are blatant ripoffs of established superheros. I myself witnessed someone playing a Gambit copy known as "The Ragin' Cajun", and a Nightcrawler ripoff known as "Kurt Wagner" followed by a random series of letters. Those sorts of things are so very annoying.<br /><br />I haven't gotten terribly far in Champions (Fireball, my pyrokinetic alter ego, is currently a mere level 15, while the hi-tech-armored bringer of justice known as Night Raven is catching up at level 14), but it looks to be loads of fun and a truly epic experience. If fantasty MMO's aren't your thing, I highly recommend you give the superheroic world a try. There's far more to the game than I could cover here in my basic review, and it's well worth your looking at.<br /><br />I think that's all for now, my friends. Take care and I'll try to talk to you soon!BMatthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08254121351319676342noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18997582.post-47963960791686435272009-09-26T09:42:00.004-05:002009-09-26T10:42:51.757-05:00FirefighterWell, it's another weekend, which marks a break point in the continual 5-day drudge through the work week before I get to see my lady again. October 15th cannot get here soon enough.<br /><br />Well I suppose it COULD get here too soon, if it was right now, and then I'd be wondering why I'm writing this and not getting dressed and on the road. But then again, that really wouldn't be too soon either, honestly.<br /><br />At any rate, she is off on a retreat with her sorority sisters, so we're unable to communicate until she returns. Which given that my friends Alex and Tiffani are together this weekend when they're normally seperated by half the friggin' country, seems somewhat ironic. While I am fiercely jealous, I'm also very happy for them. They ARE my friends after all!<br /><br />Last night I completed a spectacular goal in World of Warcraft. To those of you who play and are at least mildly familar with the Ulduar instance, let me just say that our 10-man finally completed Mimiron Hard Mode and earned the Firefighter achievement.<br /><br />To those who do NOT play or don't know just how insane that fight truly is, let me run it down a bit.<br /><br /><img src="http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/wowwiki/images/5/54/Mimiron.jpg" /><br /><br />This is Mimiron. Mimiron is one of the Keepers of Ulduar, essentially a powerful being created by the Titans to watch over Azeroth, and more specifically the Old God imprisioned in Ulduar, Yogg Saron.<br /><br /><img src="http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/wowwiki/images/thumb/d/da/Yoggsaron.jpg/800px-Yoggsaron.jpg" /><br />Hey Yoggy.<br /><br />Unfortunately, Yogg has opened up cracks in his prision, and his power and evil has corrupted the 4 keepers, essentially driving them insane. Essentially, Yogg Saron's power causes the Keepers to destroy anything in their path using their areas of influence. Mimiron, as a clockwork mechanical being, is an expert in the areas of building machines. When you enter his workshop, he assumes that you're there to test our his newest and best invention yet. Which he does by unleashing its firepower on you.<br /><br /><img src="http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/wowwiki/images/5/5d/Mimiron_Tank.jpg" /><br /><br />His first part of his invention is the Leviathan Mark II, essentially a big ol' tank with mines, a napalm shell launcher, a battering ram, and worse. Once you wipe our it's health, he moves the tank away and moves on to the next part.<br /><br /><img src="http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/wowwiki/images/9/92/Mimiron_VX-001.jpg" /><br /><br />The second part is the VX-001 Anti-Personnel Assault Cannon. It's a stationary mobile turret. Mimiron rotates around the room and unleashes blasts of energy at anyone in his line of fire. He also radiates massive amounts of heat from the turret, launches rockets at you, and occasionally charges his turrets up for the P3W x2 Laser Barrage. That will kill you if he hits you with it, as will the rockets, instantly.<br /><br /><img src="http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/wowwiki/images/1/10/MimironACU.jpg" /><br /><br />After you destroy the turret, Mimiron summons the final part of his invention, the Aerial Command Unit. This thing looks like a big head with a pair of helicopter blades keeping it aloft. In this part of the fight, he shoots plasma blasts at you, drops Bomb Bots that walk over to your raid and explode, and also summons Assault bots as well.<br /><br />Now, if you manage to defeat the Aerial Command Unit, Mimiron will happily exclaim that the preliminary testing is complete, and now it is time for the true test.<br /><br />The Leviathan Mk II will roll out, the VX-001 will sprout hands where it's turrets used to be, and dock itself into the Leviathan. The Aerial Command unit will attach itself to the top of the VX-001.<br /><br /><img src="http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/wowwiki/images/5/53/MimironV-07-TR-0N.JPG" /><br /><br />The V-07-TR-0N is now formed. It has most of all of the abilities of the 3 parts, including the mines, the Laser Barrage, the rockets, and the Shock Blasts. All three of it's parts are independantly targettable. And you must bring all three pieces' health from 50% to 0% at the same time. If you don't, they repair themselves.<br /><br />So yeah, does it sound crazy? It's pretty nuts, to be sure. If you wanna see it in action, watch this video that another guild made of the fight.<br /><br /><object height="340" width="560"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/B_2l4X9ENqM&hl=en&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/B_2l4X9ENqM&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="340" width="560"></embed></object><br /><br /><br />And that's not even his HARD mode.<br /><br />His hard mode is activated by pushing that big red button you may have spotted during the video before the fight starts.<br /><br />That button activates the Self-Destruct Mechanism. It also gives all of his "parts" 25% more health, 25% more damage, and causes the room to start breaking up...and catch fire.<br /><br />The fire is what makes this encounter nightmarish. It's constantly spreading, is only randomly put out by some various extra abilities that Mimiron gains, and essentially means you have to be almost continually moving throughout the fight or you burn.<br /><br />It's insanely hard. Here's a video of the hard mode for you to see for yourself.<br /><br /><br /><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/dowAs9Q528U&hl=en&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/dowAs9Q528U&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="344" width="425"></embed></object><br />Yeah, we beat it last night for the first time. I was so happy to get that done. Now I never want to do it again, haha.<br /><br />Okay, I'm going to end this one for now, but I'll leave you with a pic of my newest little reward for completing an achievement that takes a year to complete, because it requires you to do all the achievements associated with all the holidays in the game.<br /><br /><img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v335/Bmatt7883/WoW%20screenshots/DrakeRisingup.jpg" /><br /><br />RAWR!!BMatthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08254121351319676342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18997582.post-58496302962723363552009-09-15T06:38:00.002-05:002009-09-15T06:44:22.937-05:00TenToday marks the 10 year anniversary of my rebirth, so to speak. 10 years ago today, I made a decision that has changed my life. I accepted the gift Christ offered when he died on the cross.<br /><br />This is the story of how it happened. It's written by my best friend, and the man who, at that point in my life, was almost entirely responsible for showing me what a life lived by following Jesus is really like, David Butler.<br /><br />"As some of you know, today marks the 10 year anniversary of the Wedgwood Baptist shootings. For those that don't know, a man named Larry Ashbrook walked into a Saw You At The Pole rally on Wednesday night ten years ago at Wedgwood Baptist Church in Fort Worth and began firing into the crowd. Seven people were killed and seven more were wounded. At the time I was a Junior in high school, and several of my friends had attended the rally, but I decided to stay at Southcliff for the evening instead.<br /><br />Obviously it affected our youth group quite a bit. Wedgwood Baptist Church was only a couple miles from Southcliff, where I went to church, and since many of our students had been there, there was a closeness to the situation that was very unsettling. But what I'd come to remember most about that night ended up not being the shootings, but that it was the night one of my best friends of all time came to accept Jesus Christ into his heart.<br /><br />Besides family, I've known and been constant friends with Brandon Matthews longer than anyone else I know. We've been through all the good times and all the bad times together, and I thank God to be a part of his life. It's really awesome to see how God can take a horrific tragedy and turn it into something that you are actually celebrating year after year. 10 years... how crazy is that! Through the last ten years I've seen true change happen in the heart of my friend Brandon.<br /><br />When I first met him as a Sophomore in Leach's english class, he was a jaded and cynical kid, without any real direction that mattered. Nevertheless we seemed to hit it off right away in class, with our nerdy love of comics! After about a year or so (I think) I started inviting him to Wednesday nights with me at church, with a couple other friends. We'd meet at my place after school and all go to eat and bible study together. That night, after we received word about the shootings, and my parents had come to pick us up, Brandon was shook up a lot I think. My dad took him aside and they talked for a good bit while the rest of us waited in the car, praying. Basically that night my dad was able to lead Brandon to the Lord, which in my opinion, pretty much destroyed any victory Satan could have claimed that night.<br /><br />Since then, Brandon has become one of the most caring, understanding, and devoted friends I have ever known. I've never seen such a change in someone like that. I think Brandon would say the same thing. Through the years we've grown closer, then farther apart, due to the miles between us, but we STILL get together, most recently for the worship projects we've been recording in New Mexico, and of course he was a groomsman in my wedding (and yes, I've even dragged him to a reenactment)! Add that to 3 years of high school together, 30 shows and 2 albums with Monkeywrench, and over 10 years of friendship... it seems like a lifetime! And in many ways, it has been...<br /><br />Shortly after the Wedgwood shootings, I wrote a song about the whole thing. Looking back on it, the lyrics might be a little cheezy, and my vocals certainly never did it justice, but the message is there. It was one of the first songs that my old band Monkeywrench (who Brandon was also in) ever wrote. I thought it would be appropriate to include it in this 10 year anniversary note. It is appropriately titled "9-15-99."<br /><br />9-15-99<br /><br />Where do you turn when your world is in shambles...<br />Where do you turn when there's no place to hide?<br />When the place that you worship is destroyed and undone...<br />When your faith is shattered across the sky?<br /><br />Where do you turn when your life is in shambles...<br />Where do you turn when your hate cannot hide<br />When the one that you worship leaves you empty inside...<br />When you're so confused you take your life?<br /><br />Turn to Him, he will take all your sorrows<br />He will make them better than before they'd begun<br />He will wrap His arms of comforting love around your heart from heaven above.<br /><br />So that's where you turn when your world is in shambles.<br />That's where you turn, though there's no need to hide<br />And the place that you worship will be restored in your heart<br />And your faith will be mended before your eyes.<br /><br />So turn to him, he'll take your sorrows<br />He will make them better than before they'd begun<br />He will wrap His arms of comforting love around your heart from heaven above."BMatthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08254121351319676342noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18997582.post-53786078277916803982009-09-01T23:16:00.001-05:002009-09-01T23:17:46.844-05:00Awake and Alive and Listening to something better.I love the band Skillet. I had mixed feelings about the first two albums of theirs that I owned (which would be Invincible and Alien Youth), so it took me a while to buy Collide. Finally, after my friend David threated me with physical harm, I bought it. And, well, if you've listened to the album, you know how A) incredible it is and B) what a massive departure it was from the previous stuff we've seen from Skillet.<br /><br />Collide was raw, passionate, and hard. It also included one of the most truly epic songs I've ever heard in the form of the titular track. This album threw Skillet into the list of my favorite musical artists. Their next album, Comatose, sealed it there forever. Comatose took everything that was great about the song Collide and made nearly an entire album's worth of greatness from it, blending the hard, nearly-metal rock sound with the symphonic intros and backing, resulting in classics like Rebirthing, Comatose, and Whispers in the Dark. There are plenty of great solid rock tracks on here as well, including Better Than Drugs, Last Night, Falling Into Black, and Those Nights.<br /><br />However, Comatose does have a downside to it. The album incorporates a couple of songs that can best be described (and in fact WERE described as such by John Cooper, Skillet's Frontman, on Comatose Comes Alive) as 80s power ballads, namely Yours to Hold, The Older I Get, and Say Goodbye. These songs are absolutely lame. I'm sorry, they are. They're boring compared to what this band is capable of and what they demonstrate on the rest of this album.<br /><br />The problem is that, on their live abum, Comatose Comes Alive, John mentioned that he LOVES 1980s power ballads just before playing Yours to Hold. I wish I could say that set off some warning bells in my mind, but it didn't.<br /><br />So now we come to the recently released Awake. After Comatose, I think we all had incredibly high hopes for this album. Was it too much? I don't think so, not really. The first single we heard off this album, "Hero", certainly sounded like the Skillet we all know and love! There's less symphonic backing, but lots of rock, and a passionate calling out to Jesus to help us make a stand in thie world. Plus it features vocals from their new drummer, and she ain't bad, singing or drumming.<br /><br />The second single, "Monster"....well lets just say this should have been the second warning sign. It's not an overall bad track on it's own. The first thought I had as I was listening to it was "Wow...these lyrics are really not as good as Skillet has done." But I continued listening...and then we got to the bridge.<br /><br />If you've heard this track, and not the radio version, you know what comes next. You get a dropoff of all instruments, and you're expecting to hear John sing (or even scream) the words "feel like a monster". Well, you get those words all right, but they're uttered by this synthesized monster voice. I don't know if they were going for creepy, or just scary, or what, but it is the cheesiest thing I think I've ever heard. I was in such shock and disgust at the sheer lameness of it, I had to stop the song. Seriously? You guys were gonna go with that??<br /><br />I've listened to the song a few more times since then, and that stupid monster voice aside, it's not a bad track at all, if you consider it on it's own, apart from anything Skillet has done before. If you factor that in, then yes, it's a bit disappointing. Monster's a pretty rocking track, but Skillet has done way better.<br /><br />So then we get the full deal. Awake debuts in stores, and I immediately grab that sucker off iTunes and get ready to rock.<br /><br />Oh wow, is this album disappointing. Really really disappointing. Why? Because it's about 50% lame 80s power ballads, and what few songs aren't, well half of them are just plain terrible.<br /><br />I'm not even going to talk about the power ballad tracks. I can't. I can barely stand to listen to them through once. So let's take a look at the rest of the offerings here. The title track, Awake and Alive, is not bad, really. It tries to capture the formula they used on Comatose: Blend good hard rock with their signature symphonic backing. For the most part it works, until you get to the chorus, specifically the lyrics "Now, it's my time. I'll do what I want, cause this is my life!". I'm sorry, I thought I was listening to Skillet, not "Angry teen emo-rock band #357". What happened, guys? You're too smart to fall into the whole "cater-songs-to-the-teenage-youth-group-crowd" that gripped otherwise good bands. I'm looking at you, Superchic[k]. The song kind of just falls apart from there, getting less and less mature, which culiminates in having to hear John sing "Wa-king-up, Waking up!" over and over prior to the bridge and at the song's close. I felt like I'd been bait-and-switched.<br /><br />Next we get "One Day Too Late" which has...oh right. Power Ballad. *pushes skip button*. Sorry, now we come to "It's Not Me It's You". And yet again, we have to check our CD to make sure we haven't been hoodwinked. This is not a Skillet song. This is a terrible piece of crap that some girl-power chick band threw together after they broke up with their boyfriend. I'm really disgusted at this point, and begging the rest of the album to impove.<br /><br />Sadly, our next track, Should've When You Could've? Yeah, ballad. Also, really annoying title. And the one after that? It's called "Believe", it's gotta be good, right? Hey look another one! Ugh. "Believe" sounds like something a jerk guy would sing if he was trying to blame a girl for all his relationship issues. I'm not kidding, go listen to it if you don't believe me (pardon the pun). I have no idea what has happened to this band by now. I'm looking for something, ANYTHING, to salvage this mess.<br /><br />"Forgiven" tries to do that. It really does. Again, they try to capture the sound that made Comatose so good, and the song itself FINALLY comes back to something that actually sounds Spiritual, a heartfelt confession of wrong and God's Forgiveness of it all. The problem is, there's enough of the power ballad influence in here that it just makes the song average at best. It's decent, but it's hardly a standout hit.<br /><br />Now we come to "Sometimes". Okay, I think we're getting somewhere here. This one gets it closer to the seriously hard rock we've heard on Collide. This is good stuff. Lyrics are a bit on the immature side, but at thsi point, i'm so sick of the power ballads I'm almost willing to overlook that. Do we have another classic hit here? I can't bring it up that high. It's good, but not great.<br /><br />"Never Surrender" is like that last grasp at safety before falling off a cliff. It's trying to stick to the good things that started being developed in the previous tracks, you can tell that in the opener and even during the chorus, but the rest of it? Yeah, back into the pit of powerballad. Sigh.<br /><br />Finally there's "Lucy". A downer tear-jerker about a girl that's died. Hey Skillet? No. Stop it. Just stop this. Please. No one likes you guys because of these kinds of songs. They love you for your epic, powerful, raw, uninhibitted anthems of the greatness of God and his love. That's why Collide and Comatose did so well. That's why Comatose Comes Alive is so great, because for the most part you stuck to those. With the exception of "Hero", you don't have anything close to that greatness on this CD. What happened here, guys??<br /><br />If you picked up the Deluxe Edition (and I'll go on another rant about why I hate these later), you got three bonus tracks. "Dead Inside" is, hilariously, better than almost all of the album. It sounds more like it was a song that couldn't quite make it on to Comatose, honestly. It's got a good solid rock feel, good lyrics, overall highly enjoyable. "Would it Matter" is a synth-backed power ballad. Lame.<br /><br />Finally, we're treated to "Monster (Alternate Radio Version)". If you're familiar with the practice of "Radio Versions" of songs, you know they're usually highly lame, softened up versions of normally good songs, done to maximize their appeal on the radio to all those folks who love happy-slappy contemporary Christian stuff that utterly bores me. Monster's "Radio Version" does not do that. All it changes is, yes you guessed it, the terrible monster voice during the bridge. Instead, we get the same dropoff, but the normal vocals continue to sing. It's amazing how much more enjoyable the song is.<br /><br />So, I have to ask, guys. Did you think "Oooh, that Monster voice is a little too extreme for the radio, we better just replace it with regular vocals"? Because, I hate to tell you this, but the Radio version is better. Like I said, that monster voice is cheesy and bad. This version would have been a far better choice.<br /><br />Overall, Skillet it seems has finally taken a misstep. They've taken the power ballads way too far and regressed badly on lyrical maturity. There's a few good songs worth listening to on this album, but the rest of it can just be marked as "Skillet's experimental power ballad album" and never spoken of again.<br /><br />I give it 2 out of 5 Stars, 3 if you bought the Deluxe version.<br /><br /><br /><br />Going to Waco again this weekend. If you see me seperated from Karen for an extended length of time, something has gone horribly awry. See ya'll then!!BMatthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08254121351319676342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18997582.post-57913763757801578812009-08-25T17:48:00.000-05:002009-08-25T17:49:03.994-05:00Cataclysmic.Okay, it's been a good solid few days since Blizzcon ended, so let's digest some info.<br /><br />First of all, the third expansion for World of warcraft was announced, and it's called Cataclysm. Pretty much what everyone was expecting. The "final boss" of this one will be everyone's favorite evil dragon covered in Adamantite plate, Deathwing, and is going to completely reshape the world as we know it. Literally. Hence the name.<br /><br />The story of this chapter of Azeroth centers around a massive disaster of such epic proportions that it reshapes the world. Deathwing, it seems, has been hiding in another plane of existence, the elemental plane of earth, also known as Deepholme. He's been there recovering from the last two major defeats he's suffered (all of which occured before WoW's story began) and it seems he's recovered enough to make his presence known again. Which he does by tearing a hole in existence between Deepholme and Azeroth. Now I don't know how much you all know about planar physics, but tearing a hole between two different planes of existence is NOT a good thing. The act breaks open massive cracks in the planet, exposing molten lava fissures across the face of Azeroth, reshapes the two major continents, causes the oceans of the world to flood areas previously locked by land, and does very bad things to many of the civilizations spread across the world.<br /><br />Kaboom.<br /><br />What does this mean for us, the Players? It means the "old world" (the two continents of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms, the only 2 that used to exist in the original version of WoW) are being completely revamped. In the wake of this event, known as the Cataclysm, whole zones have been reshaped or broken in half. Multiple areas that were previously unreachable now are. Other areas are vastly reshaped. Desolace, for example, is now a lush grassland. The Barrens not only has a massive molten fissue running across it, it's partially covered by a tropical rainforest. The Wetlands has been split in half, with the new half known as the Twilight highlands, occupied by Deathwing, his new Twilight dragons, and the Twilight's Hammer cult cowed into serving him.<br /><br />In essence, the leveling experience from 1-60 is being redesigned completely. New quests, new areas, the whole shebang.<br /><br />To go along with this, we get two new races: The Goblins and the Worgen.<br /><br />The Goblins as we've known them in WoW have all been neutral, part of an organization called the Steamwheedle Cartel. These new goblins are from another organization apparently that was sold out into slavery by competitors. The Cataclysm set them free, but it also stranded them during their escape. In need of protection and a new place in the world to make their own, they've joined the Horde.<br /><br />The Worgen are members of the former human nation of Gilneas, which isolated itself from the world during the Third War, in fear of the Scourge. Archmage Arugal, a Gilnean himself, summoned the creatures known as the worgen from another plane to help defend their borders. Unfortunately the Werewolf creatures broke free of Arugal and began spreading the werewolf curse among the kingdom. Though the Gilnean people have regained control of their minds, the Cataclysm destroyed the great wall that isolated them. With the Forsaken bearing down on them, they've turned to old friends in the Alliance to help them rejoin the world.<br /><br />Personally, I'll admit, the idea of playing a werewolf is EXTREMELY awesome. And I've seen the video of their transformation effect. I can only describe it as awesome. But they're Alliance, and most of my friends are playing Horde these days.<br /><br />The Goblins don't seem too bad either. From what I've heard from folks who attended Blizzcon, the Goblin starter area is FUN. Lots of explosions. Who doesn't love that?<br /><br />Both races are getting a super wide variety of playable classes too. The Worgen can be every class except Paladin and Shaman, and the Goblins get everything except Paladin and Druid. Oddly enough, that includes Death Knights for both. This would seem odd, given that the starting Death Knight chain story would preclude the involvement or even knowledge of either race, but at the same time, a Goblin or Worgen Death knight sounds really cool, so I can't fault Blizzard for including it. Maybe they'll deal with the discrepancy somehow, but I'm not going to care much if they don't.<br /><br />There's also going to be some substantial expansion in class choices for the existing races as well. Humans and Forsaken both gain access to Hunters. Dwarves are gaining Shamans and Mages; the Night Elves and Orcs gained the latter as well. Gnomes are gaining Priests, as are the Tauren. Tauren also are getting Paladins. Trolls will soon be able to be Druids. Finally, the Blood Elves will gain the Warrior race.<br /><br />Some of these additions are fairly natural extensions, such as the Human Hunter or Blood Elf Warrior. Some of them can be fairly easily explained by cross-racial teachings (such as the Tauren druids teaching trolls or Draenei shamans teaching dwarves). Some of them are just downright mysterious and will require some fairly good storytelling to explain, and in a few cases we see examples of this in game now. Regardless, we've got plenty more choices for characters now, and plenty of new opportunities for level 1 alts to explore the newly revamped world.<br /><br />And it really is getting revamped. One of the most often asked questions after flying mounts were introduced in Burning Crusade is "Why can't we fly in the old world". The answer is that the Old World may look three dimensional, but it's not. Many of the distinctive landmarks you may see in game are not really there at all, they're optical illusions of sorts, and if you flew over them, it would be terribly obvious. In Cataclysm, Blizzard is rebuilding the world to be truly three-dimensional, and thus we will be able to fly across all of Azeroth on our menagerie of flying mounts.<br /><br />I'm really excited about this one, because these two continents are BIG. I'd love the change to go explore them from a high up perspective now, and even though the world is gonna be wildly different, I'm still gonna love checking it out from the air!<br /><br />The level cap is only going up by 5, making 85 the new max level. Blizzard stated that they wanted to give us fewer levels to get through, but that they wanted the experience to be more enjoyable and more epic. We're not getting any new "tiers" of talents, so we'll have more points to spend on what we already have, but talents ARE going to get a pretty substantial redesign. They want to take away "boring" talents like "increases dmg" or "Increases x stat" and make them more enjoyable to choose from. To go along with this, statistics are getting an extreme revamp as well. Many of the more complicated statistics, like Spellpower, Attack Power, defense rating, armor penetration, and the like? Going away completely. Some of these will be provided based on base statistics (strength, Agility, intellect, etc), and some of it will be provided via talent selection. There's also a new stat called "Mastery". As best I understand it, Mastery will do different things for you based on your chosen talent spec. For example (and this is purely hypothetical description on my part), a warrior might have X points of Mastery. If he's Prot, his X Mastery will give him Y amounts of Armor. If he was Arms or Fury, that same X Mastery would give him Z attack power or Critical strike rating. It's a very nifty and fluid system, and it lets players use their existing gear for multiple roles, cutting down on the number of armor sets needed for various specs. How exactly it will play out, well I suppose we'll find out more as Cataclysm draws nearer, but I really like the concept myself.<br /><br />Obviously with all these new zones, we're getting new dungeons and raids. I won't go into a whole lot of detail there, but I will say this, because these got me excited. Shadowfang Keep and Deadmines are getting heroic modes and Ragnaros is coming back. He's at Mount Hyjal trying to burn down the World Tree. Oh and we're told he's about three times as huge as he used to be. Opposing him? Malfurion friggin' Stormrage. That's right. The baddest of the druids has returned and he is (we're told) going to help us kick some giant fire elemental butt. Excellent!<br /><br />There's a new secondary profession called Archaeology, and a new "progression system" called Path of the Titans. We don't know a whole lot about this yet, but from what the designers talked about, it's a system that allows you to continue to experience the fun of leveling, but takes away the "grind" feel of it, and gives you some pretty cool rewards to go with it. Again, not sure what that's going to mean exactly.<br /><br />So yeah, that's an awful lot to digest. And there was lots more. Heck, I didn't even talk about all the stuff they discussed for the final path of Wrath, Patch 3.3. But all in all, I'm stoked about this. It's way too soon to tell for any of us how we plan on experiencing this upcoming expansion, but the future of WoW looks really good (from an enjoyability standpoint, the future of Azeroth looks pretty painful, heheh).<br /><br />I can't wait for some nitty gritty details to come out so we can really see just how different things are gonna be, but its all pretty exciting.<br /><br />But for now, all we can do is wait. And see how many of our friends we can get to come along for the ride (*wink* at a certain someone).BMatthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08254121351319676342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18997582.post-25938413126519164292009-08-22T15:48:00.002-05:002009-08-22T16:15:18.444-05:00Yes!! Paid Race Changes!!!Blizzcon, as anyone who plays World of Warcraft is aware, is going on right now. And there's way too much information for me to process right now. I might go back later after it's all said and done and try to process out my own individual thoughts on everything, but one quick mention during one of the open Q&A sessions REALLY caught my ears.<br /><br />Since the paid faction changes are coming, they're also going to allow paid race changes as well.<br /><br />I've been asking for that since I heard about the faction changes, and it makes me very happy. I get to institute a series of changes to my characters I'd been thinking about for a LONG time.<br /><br />So here's my current set of characters I actively play:<br /><br />Dahkar - Troll Mage<br />Oldmanfranks - Undead Death Knight<br />Grothi - Tauren Druid<br />Durnit - Troll Shaman<br />Nihl - Blood Elf Warlock.<br /><br />They're a fun bunch, mostly. And I've enjoyed different things about them at different points during the times I've played this game. But if I had to go back and do it again, having the experiences I have now? I'd probably change some stuff up. And now...now I can!! Well, not now. But at least I know it'll be soon.<br /><br />But: One question remains....will we get this at the same time we get the new race/class combos? I'm hopeful we get them at the same time, and that it's BEFORE the new expansion. But I suppose we'll see.<br /><br />Okay, gonna run down the changes.<br /><br />Dahkar - stays the same. Heh.<br /><br />Oldmanfranks - My Death Knight will become a troll, and he's going to lose the OMF name and gain the name "Durnnit"<br /><br />Durnnit - The shaman will become a Tauren and gain the name "Grothi"<br /><br />Nihl - My warlock will become undead, with the name of, yeah you guess it, Oldmanfranks.<br /><br />Grothi - Grothi will gain a new name, which I haven't thought of yet. If I'm allowed to do so at this point, he'll become a troll as well. If not, he'll stay a tauren until I can.<br /><br />So why the changes you ask? Well, I'll tell ya.<br /><br />Dahkar stays the same because he's the first character I ever made, and I like him the way he is.<br /><br />The Death Knight will become a troll because, frankly, I don't much like the way undeads look in Plate armor. The exposed joints and everything....just seems wrong. So I'm turning him into a troll, which look awesome and are my favorite race anyway. I'm giving him Durnnit's name, because in the story I created for them (yes I did that, I'm a nerd, get over it), Dahkar and Durnnit are brothers who pursue different paths to better their people (the study of arcane mage and the path of shamanism, respectively). I can amend Durnnits story to include a heroic death and rebirth at the Lich King's hands to become a Death Knight, and the struggle to regan his humanity...er....trollity.<br /><br />The Druid is going to become a troll....well, because I like trolls! Plus....one of the things I like about Taurens is their spell casting animation. Because of how the druid works, you don't get to see that often. If I make the shaman a tauren, I will. Plus I can give him Grothi's name and amend his backstory to make him choose the path of the shaman instead of the druid, which will also give him more connections with Durnnit's past life. As for the new Troll Druid....well I don't know just yet how his past is going to play out, part of that is going to come from whatever lore Blizzard puts in for how the trolls learned Druidism. Still, I'm thinking it'll be cool.<br /><br />So that leaves the warlock, who is currently a Blood Elf. Fine, I'll admit it. I don't like Blood Elves. Why? Because, like Oxhorn once put it, they're so bloiting trendy. If you look at AIE's numbers, we're half blood elves. Everybody and their mother makes Blood Elves, and ONLY Blood Elves. It's like...come on people, try a different race already!! So yeah, even though I REALLY don't play him terribly much, that could always change, and so I'm going to make him undead, and he's going to become Oldmanfranks. OMF's backstory should be pretty easy to amend, just take it up to the point where he becomes a banker, but instead just shove in Nihl's story where he meets the legendary Grand Warlock, Evrae, and go from there.<br /><br />All things said, I'm stoked this change is happening and can't wait to get to do it.<br /><br />More Blizzcon thoughts later.BMatthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08254121351319676342noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18997582.post-35122442932188002402009-08-18T17:23:00.004-05:002009-08-18T17:29:54.044-05:00The Karen FAQ!!So, as many of you may know by now, I'm dating someone.<br /><br />Not just ANY someone, mind you. A particular someone. A very lovely, kind, caring someone. I'm still trying to figure out how God I decided I was deserving of her, personally.<br /><br />At any rate, her name is Karen Wilson, and those of you reading this are probably in 1 of 2 camps: You know who she is and are thinking to yourself "It's about darn time, Bmatt" or you've got no idea who she is and wonder where she came from.<br /><br />This post is for the latter of you guys. I call it "The Karen FAQ". I'll answer the most common questions I've gotten thus far about my now-girlfriend to the best of my ability!<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">1. What is this? How come I knew nothing about her?</span><br /><br />Very few people knew that I had feelings for Karen or that I was planning on asking her out. The only people I've talked to in detail about it before it happened are the guy who discipled me throughout most of college and his wife (who incidentally named me their son's godfather). A couple of close friends knew about it, but I didn't talk a whole lot about it, obviously.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">2. How'd you meet her?</span><br /><br />College! We both attended Baylor University (though in different years) and we also both attended the same church. I actually forget how we initially met, but we became friends very quickly. During my 4th year, me, my roommate and several other guys would bring a few TVs and Xboxes to someone's house and have a big ol' Halo party on Friday nights. Karen was the only girl who attended on a regular basis. She's hardcore, yo!<br /><br />She actually moved away a couple of years ago to attend another school north of Lubbock, for a variety of reasons, and we lost touch until recently, when she found me on Twitter. We reconnected and recently met up in Arlington while she and her mom were visiting friends. We had dinner, saw Star Trek (my 4th time, heheh), and in general just caught up. It was the most fun I'd had in a long time, and that's when I started to really fall for her.<br /><br />So this past weekend, we arranged a weekend in Lubbock to hang out. I had promised her I'd wait to see Harry Potter 6 with her, plus there was a really cool Science museum there she said she wanted to show me. So we got together, had a great time (disappointing Harry Potter film aside), and on Saturday night, we got to talking, and well, I asked her to be my girlfriend. She (happily I hope!) said yes, and here we are.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">3. So wait, she's in Lubbock? How's that gonna work?</span><br /><br />She's technically north of there, in Plainview, right now. Her family lives in Lubbock, but she's got one more semester of college in Plainview to finish. After that, well, I suppose we shall see what happens from there. In the meantime, we've got cellphones, Twitter, and other forms of communication available to us, and we're already planning our next weekend together. We're both stubborn and we like each other, a lot. I'm very certain we can make this work!<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">4. So what do you like about her?</span><br /><br />What's NOT to like? She's sweet, kind, caring, patient (at least with me, hah), very beautiful, adventurous, geeky (yes Karen you are!), genuine, I could go on. This is a woman who very obviously loves Jesus and genuinely does her best to walk with Him, and it shows. Any guy would be extremely lucky to call her his girlfriend!<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">5. Does she play World of Warcraft?</span><br /><br />Yes, this does get asked a lot, primarily because a large subset of those whom this FAQ is directed at are friends from my WoW guild! of Earthen Ring, REPRESENT!<br /><br />The answer is no, she does not play WoW. At least, not yet. :-D. I've asked her if she'd be interested, and she didn't immediately say no, so I suppose there's a chance! <span style="font-weight: bold;">EDIT</span>: She said she's willing to give it a shot once she gets her compy back! W00t!<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">6. So what's her twitter name?</span><br /><br />I don't think I'd better reveal that one without her permission. A sudden swarm of new followers might be a wee bit scary! I'll let you all know if she's okay with it. EDIT: I asked her and she said it's okay. It's twitter.com/tanzenmitgott.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">7. Man, she sounds great, and going by the pictures you posted, she's really cute too. So what's a girl like that see in a big doofus like you?</span><br /><br />I have no idea, and I'm not going to question it! :-DBMatthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08254121351319676342noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18997582.post-51429108602577335122009-07-08T22:19:00.001-05:002009-07-08T22:19:22.496-05:0026 years OldBMatthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08254121351319676342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18997582.post-10336404598421193482009-06-27T22:29:00.003-05:002009-06-27T23:09:35.308-05:00Revenge of the SEQUALSo I just got back from seeing Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.<br /><br />Overall, I'd say I enjoyed it quite a bit. It's a pretty standard Michael Bay action film, but it's got giant transforming robots. So you can imagine I happen to enjoy that sort of thing.<br /><br />I kinda dug on the whole plot, if for no other reason than it's adapted from IDW Publishing's Transformers: War Within: The Dark Ages trade paperback. It's always pretty cool when they take a concept from a comic and adapt it to the film, especially when it's a fairly minor one.<br /><br />Yeah, there's a lot of Shia Lebouf and Megan Fox in the flick, and neither of them are two of my favorite actors in the world. Lebouf annoyed the HELL out of me in the first Transformers film, and while yes, it's true, Megan Fox is a very attractive woman, her behavior off camera (insulting her fans and posing nude) makes her extremely UNattractive.<br /><br />That being said, both of them managed to, for the most part, make me give a crap about the characters. Lebouf was nowhere near as annoying as he was in the first film, and Fox actually did a pretty standard female-love-interest role decently. You get the usual tropes of "young lovers seperated by distance but trying to make it work, girl catches guy apparently cheating but its not what it looks like, both are scared to say they love each other, but a crisis brings them closer together" in this film, but somehow they both manage to pull it together to where you believe it.<br /><br />But of course, the real reason to see any Transformers film is the Transformers themselves. And we not only revisit all your old favorites, we get new ones to boot. LOTS of new ones. So many that it's impossible to tell in a lot of cases just who is who.<br /><br />One of the things I enjoyed about the first film was that every robot was clearly named, and in many cases had moments which showed you their capabilities and distinct personalities. Every Autobot and Decepticon got clear screentime, lines, action shots, and overall a lot of development. You could pretty clearly tell who was who.<br /><br />The same cannot be said here in this film. Several new Autobots are introduced in this movie, including the Twins (Mudflap and Skids), Arcee (a female Autobot that controls three bodies which transform into motorcyles), Sideswipe, Jolt, and Jetfire. The Twins get the most screentime out of all of them, as they serve as the comic relief of the film, a role formerly occupied by Bumblebee and his "using the radio to speak" shtick. Arcee, Jolt, and Sideswipe pretty much spend the movie as background characters, with each getting one distinctive thing about them shown (Arcee being a triplicate bot, Jolt using electricity, and Sideswipe getting to slice some unknown Decepticon in half and say "Damn I'm good").<br /><br />The Decepticons on the other hand....there were a ton of them shown that never got named, never had any distinctive shape or ability shown for them, and never had any real personality as characters. Megatron, Starscream, and the Fallen are about all you get, as they are the central villain characters that the plot moves around. Aside from them, you have a veritable TON of Decepticons show up: very few of them are mentioned have names. You see Soundwave as a satellite coordinating Decepticon activity, and of course he launches one of his more famous companions in the form of Ravage. The Constructicons also show up, but only recognizably when they combine into their bigger robot form of Devastator (and even then only because he is referred to as such in dialogue). What makes it so confusing is that the individual robots making up Devastator are seemingly re-used later on in the film, making them essentially in two places at once, and in some cases, three. One of the Decepticons who died in the first film (Blackout) even makes a reappearance in a battle against Optimus Prime with no explanation as to how he was still alive. Needless to say it becomes nigh impossible to tell who is who, and that bugged the hell out of me.<br /><br />I understand that none of the new robots are really central enough characters to the overall plot that the film was going after to really warrant a whole lot of screen time, but I would have appreciated some more indivual attention to them, and the fact that individual Decepticons were apparently in multiple places at once points to extreme laziness in the part of the writers.<br /><br />Sidenote, a quick check on Wikipedia shows that these "multiple places at the same time" Decepticons are explained by the fact that these are somehow "different characters with the same robot forms". Yeah, that's extremely lazy all right.<br /><br />Overall, don't expect anything deep or overly meaningful here: This is a Bay action movie. Enjoy it for what it is. Because overall, despite my nitpicking about robot re-usage and the lack of development for the newer characters, it was still a very enjoyable film. There's lots of good things to enjoy here. I recommend you go see it.<br /><br />Aight, that's it for now folks. Catchya laterBMatthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08254121351319676342noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18997582.post-17100111252895866632009-06-22T22:31:00.002-05:002009-06-22T22:40:47.041-05:00A little moving aroundHey, don't know how many of you guys still read the actual blog here, given that most of this cross-posts to Facebook, but if you do, you might notice a few things<br /><br />First up, my rotating picture script over there has finally been updated. I added some more recent images, but left a few classic ones as well.<br /><br />Second, the side bars over there have been cleaned up a bit. I got rid of the Last.fm app, since it hasn't been working for ages, and it'd mostly just list the various podcasts I typically listen to at work anyway.<br /><br />I also added a blogroll widget. It lists the most recent posts of a few of the blogs I read. Right now it only has a few blogs listed there, but I'll continue to add them as I find new and interesting ones to read that I want to share. I hope you enjoy them.<br /><br />I've also removed some other link compilations, removed most of the web 2.0 sites that I'm not actively on anymore (myspace, xanga, and delicious mostly) and reorganized my webcomic links. Thinking about experimenting some more with the comics, maybe making them similar to the blogroll listing but with thumbnails, but I'll have to play around with that and see if I like it enough.<br /><br />The next thing I want to do is play around with the colors and maybe find a new design I like more than this one, but I've got no eye for that sort of thing, so if anyone wants to help out, please, let me know.<br /><br />Aight, thats it. More later on!BMatthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08254121351319676342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18997582.post-52316686653911922122009-06-16T17:59:00.004-05:002009-06-16T18:28:50.451-05:00What's going on in Iran?What's going on in Iran? Well, all evidence points to the fact that the recent elections for Iran's "Supreme Leader" were rigged by the corrupt dictatorial incumbent, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Ahmadinejad" title="Mahmoud Ahmadinejad">Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.</a><br /><br />There are massive rallies and protests going on against the electoral fraud and in support of the opposition candidate, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mir-Hossein_Mousavi" title="Mir-Hossein Mousavi">Mir-Hossein Mousavi</a>.<br /><br />I just want to say that the internet, especially Facebook and Twitter, have been instrumental in people getting the word out to what's really happening in that nation. The goverment of Iran has shut down all internet connections to most blogs and social media sites, including those two. In response, people outside the country are setting up proxies for them to safely access these critically important sites. The goverment is also attempting to track anyone using social media to report anything critical of Ahmadinejad's goverment. Mobile Phone service has been completely shut down as well.<br /><br />People are disappearing. People are getting arrested for daring to oppose this injustice. We should help them however they can.<br /><br />Background:<br />Here's the ongoing article on Wikipedia<br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Iranian_election_protests">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Iranian_election_protests</a><br /><br />Article on the twitter help from CNET<br /><a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10265462-2.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20">http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10265462-2.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20</a><br /><br />How you can help: READ THESE<br /><a href="http://www.boingboing.net/2009/06/16/cyberwar-guide-for-i.html">http://www.boingboing.net/2009/06/16/cyberwar-guide-for-i.html</a><br /><a href="http://emsenn.com/iran.php">http://emsenn.com/iran.php</a><br /><br /><br />How to keep updated with what's going on.<br />You can use the internet to search for news stories from whatever sites you prefer, of course. MSNBC, CNN, FOX, practically anyone is reporting on this.<br /><br />But if you want to be absolutely up to the minute date, you can use Twitter to keep track of things.<br />You can go to <a href="http://search.twitter.com/">search.twitter.com</a> and search for the specific hashtags <a href="http://search.twitter.com/search?q=iranelection">#iranelection</a> <a href="http://search.twitter.com/search?q=gr88">#gr88</a><br />However, this may be a little overwhelming.<br /><br />My friend and guildmate, Loreleisigma, is doing an excellent job of spreading relevant news and help links via her twitter page. Keep an eye on <a href="http://twitter.com/loreleisigma">http://twitter.com/loreleisigma</a> and you will probably catch loads of information as it happens and as she can spread it.<br /><br />My friend (and most of yours as well!) John Fram has also been tweeting links and news related to this. Keep an eye on <a href="http://twitter.com/cobaltfram">http://twitter.com/cobaltfram</a> as well<br /><br />Most of all, please pray. Human beings who only want the freedom that they deserve are in real danger here.<br /><br />ThanksBMatthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08254121351319676342noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18997582.post-35410748168032622282009-06-08T19:31:00.000-05:002009-06-09T11:38:10.049-05:00WWDC Ruminatings<p><strong>"Hi B-Matt! Wow it's been a long time since you blogged!"</strong><br />Yeah, I know. My own personal life really isn't interesting enough to write about, and I haven't decided how to more focus this blog on specific subjects. But I think I have something good to write about today.</p><p><strong>"Oh Cool! What is it?"<br /></strong>Apple's announcements at the Worldwide Developers Conference, specifically concerning the new iPhone stuff. </p><p><strong>"Okay, so what's the deal there? What's new?"<br /></strong>Lots of stuff actually, but it can be divided into two major groups. New stuff in the software update and new stuff in an actual new model of the iPhone.<br /><br /><strong>"What's the difference?" </strong><br />People who have one of the current 3G phones will get all the features included on the Software Update (also called Version 3.0) on June 17th. People who get the new iPhone model will get all that, plus some new hardware features only in the Phone.<br /><br /><strong>"Okay, so what's in the Version 3.0 software update?"</strong><br />Lots of things, most of it kinda minor. The big things most folks care about are support for Multi-media Messaging, the additions of the ability to Cut, Copy, and Paste, support for tethering, and the addition of more of the GPS functionality to the API for developers.</p><p><strong>"The GPS to the What now?"</strong><br />Basically it means that App Store developers can use the GPS function to make their own GPS apps. In other words, companies like TomTom and Garmin can develop GPS apps similar to their devices, with turn by turn directions and the like.</p><p><strong>"And what was that 'tethering' thing you mentioned earlier?"</strong><br />Tethering is the idea of using a phone with web-browsing capability as a modem for a laptop. In other words, you hook it up to your PC, and it uses the ability of the phone to browse the web over 3G to transmit data right to the PC. So instead of looking around for a Wifi hotspot, you can use your phone to browse the web anywhere you can get a 3G connection (which is more widespread)</p><p><strong>"Awesome! So we can do this when the software comes out on the 17th you said?"<br /></strong>Slow down there, tiger. There's a problem.</p><p><strong>"What's the problem?"</strong><br />Three letters. Or more accurately, 2 letters, one of which is repeated. A. T. T. </p><p><strong>"Whats wrong with AT&T?"<br /></strong>Generally? They're jerks. More specifically to this case, they've announced their networks won't be able to support tethering -OR- Multimedia Messaging until "Later this summer". And they won't tell us when. Not to mention the fact that it's heavily rumored that they're going to charge you MORE to tether the iPhone.</p><p><strong>"What? But you already pay them all that money every month for the Unlimited Data plan! How can they justify charging you more??"<br /></strong>Like I said, they're jerks. Actually, they're far worse than that, but I don't want to document such obscenity here. I should point out that around the world, other carriers will be ready to support this on Day 1. And many of them have been supporting it for years on other phones. If you really look into it, you'll discover that the U.S. is so far behind the rest of the world when it comes to cell phone networks that it'll make you mad. Japan, South Korea, most of Europe, and even Canada has access to WAY more features of their phones than we in the US do, because cell carriers lock down so many features and are so pathetically slow to expand infrastructure. It's disgusting. </p><p><strong>"Sigh"<br /></strong>My sentiments exactly. </p><p><strong>"So, whats the deal with the new iPhone?"</strong><br />Okay, so the new phone model is called the "iPhone 3GS". The S, we are told, stands for SPEED! Bascially, it's got a faster processor and has some additional hardware features. There's a better camera in there (3.0 Megapixel), a digital compass for better navigation, and some hardware which supports Voice dialing and other voice-recognition features. It's also supposedly got better battery life. </p><p><strong>"Sounds good. How much is it?"</strong><br />Well Apple is keeping the 8gig model of the iPhone 3G at $99 as an intro model. The new iPhone 3GS is $199 for 16gig, and $299 for 32gig, with a new 2-year contract with AT&T of course.<br /><br /><strong>"That's not too bad at all. So are you gonna get one? You've been complaining about the battery life in your phone, and you could use more storage. So you're getting one, right?"<br /></strong>*amused laughter*<br /><br /><strong>"What's so funny?"<br /></strong>Well, there's another problem.</p><p><strong>"What's the problem?"</strong><br />What do you think?</p><p><strong>"AT&T again?"</strong><br />Of course. Those prices I mentioned earlier? Those are the subsidized prices. AT&T only gives you that pricing with a "NEW" 2-year contract. If you try to upgrade in the middle of your contract, they make you pay the unsubsidized price. Which is basically $200 more for each of the models.<br /></p><p><strong>"But you've been a loyal AT&T customer for years! Surely they'll let you just renew your contract for another 2 years and get the subsidized price, right?"</strong><br />You would think they'd treat loyal customers like that, but they don't. They're jerks, remember? They're not allowing that at all. You want one now, you pay the unsubsidized pricing, and your loyalty be damned.<br /></p><p><strong>"So you have to wait for your contract to get close to expiring before you can renew and get the subsidized price? When is that?"</strong><br />That's correct, and mine is up in April of 2010.<br /></p><p><strong>"Wait, can you cancel your contract and just get a new one?"</strong><br />Good idea, but there's 2 problems with that one. A) You incur the early termination fee of $175. B) you lose your phone number by doing that. </p><p><strong>"So basically, in order to get the 32gig model, the one you really want, you've have to pay $500, all because AT&T, whom you've been a loyal customer of and never been late with your bill, doesn't want to give you any good faith to renew your contract right now so you can get the pricing you can afford."</strong><br />That about sums it up nicely.</p><p><strong>"Wow. Those guys are assholes."</strong><br />You watch your language!</p><p><strong>"But I'm you. You're doing this whole interview bit with yourself"<br /></strong>You're not supposed to let the audience know that. You're supposed to represent their point of view, ask the questions they're asking!!</p><p><strong>"Sorry!"</strong><br />Look, just ask the last quesiton, all right?</p><p><strong>"So what're you going to do, then, if you can't get the iPhone without being ripped off?"<br /></strong>What'm I gonna do? I'm going to sit back and enjoy the 3.0 software update. And then I'm going to wait for AT&T to actually start supporting MMS and tethering. And pray to God I'm wrong about them charging more for it. And I'll probably skip getting the 3GS, and hope the next iPhone model that comes out is closer to when my contract expires, so I can upgrade without the stupid extra cost</p>BMatthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08254121351319676342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18997582.post-20736737623406768172009-04-12T14:12:00.004-05:002009-04-12T14:37:20.131-05:00Need tech advice and a check in on my predictionsMan, I'm doing really well with my promise to better update this thing, aren't I?<br /><br />So I'm in need of some advice. My desktop computer is randomly restarting. I don't really know what's causing it, so I turn to the wisdom of the masses for ideas of what I need to do in order to fix it.<br /><br />Here are the facts.<br /><br />1. It seems to reboot whenever it's been idle for a pro-longed period of time, and I try to start up a program, usually iTunes or Firefox<br /><br />2. It's also rebooted on me when I've tried starting up a few programs at the same time, typically World of Warcraft and something else like Firefox or iTunes.<br /><br />3. Sometimes it just re-starts, other times I get a Blue Screen of Death with the error "MACHINE_CHECK_EXCEPTION"<br /><br />4. My antivirus is fully up to date and scans nightly. Spyware is scanned about once a week, and rarely returns anything to delete.<br /><br />If you need any additional info, let me know I'll try to answer as best I can. If you've got any ideas as to what it sounds like is broken, let me know. I've been leaning towards backing up all my files and then formatting it and reinstalling everything, but I've never done that before and don't want to do that if it's a hardware issue. The process sounds a bit scary, heh.<br /><br />Now let's go check in on my 2009 predictions thus far in 2009!<br /><br />1. The digital TV transition will be mostly hitch-free.<br />Well, the transition has been officially delayed until June, but stations are now "free to choose" when they want to switch! Yeah, real smart, this issue is confusing enough for the average TV watcher, let's just make it worse! So far, there haven't been mass reports of people wondering why their TVs aren't working, but with the delay (sort of?) I think this one is too early to call!<br /><br />2. iTunes will cave to the pressure and go fully DRM free in music.<br />Yep. Right on the money with this one. The majority of their library is now DRM free (if slightly too expensive compared to the Amazon MP3 Store). They're still using AAC format, rather than MP3, but at least it's not locked down to hell.<br /><br />3. A really good Sci-Fi MMO will both come out and succeed.<br />So far, this one hasn't come true. Yet.<br /><br />4. The new Star Trek film will both be the Nerdtacular 2009 film, and will not be remembered fondly.<br />Well, I'm technically half right here, but the major portion of this prediction, that the film would suck, essentially, is not looking good. By all early accounts, this film is going to be incredible, and the Nerdtacular is going to be a ball of fun because of it!<br /><br />5. Both Marvel and DC will release more superhero films which futher build up to an eventual Avengers and/or Justice League movie.<br />So far, no new real announcements from either company about a new movie. Sure, there's the upcoming Wolverine flick, but that won't serve as a build up to an Avengers film (at least I don't THINK it will), so this one's currently a no.<br /><br />6. The worship of Jesus Christ will explode in a formerly "closed-off" country somewhere in the world.<br />To my knowledge, this one hasn't occured yet, but we'll see.<br /><br />7. Two out of the three major missing iPhone 3G features (cut and paste, Multimedia messaging, and turn-by-turn GPS directions) will be added via firmware this year.<br />Not just two, but ALL THREE of these are finally coming in the summer. About time, Apple. What the heck were you smoking??<br /><br />8. I will acquire one of the three current major game consoles this year, only to have the next generation of consoles be announced.<br />There's no news on any new generation of console systems yet, which is good, because I still haven't decided on which console I ultimately want to buy. God I'm so indicisive.<br /><br />9. Megan and Julie will be living in the garage apartment before February ends.<br />I think Russell got them in there before the end of that month. I'll call this one a win.<br /><br />10. Josh and Angie's baby will be a girl.<br />Wrong here. Badly. Josiah Allen Henry is due to enter the world this summer!<br /><br />Okay, well, it's Easter, lunch is ready, and I'm done here. So catch ya'll later.BMatthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08254121351319676342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18997582.post-24338274623900703972009-03-16T16:28:00.003-06:002009-03-16T16:39:47.281-06:00Whoah...where the heck has THIS idiot been?Hey folks. It's been an awful long time. But I haven't had a reason to update lately. Most of the things going on in my life can be quickly summed up with some updates to Twitter or the like.<br /><br />But I think it's time I started updating again, even if I turn this into a gaming blog of some sort. Well to heck with it, Conflagration's my little sector of the internet, and if I feel like rambling about World of Warcraft, then by golly, I'm gonna do it.<br /><br />But first....I have to say thanks to someone, and his name is Lee Kuhl. You probably know who he is, if you're reading this. If not, let me just say he is without a doubt one of the biggest blessings of my life in recent years. He helped me get some perspective on something going on in my life that was truly troubling to me, and thanks to his advice (plus a lot of prayer), I believe I've done the best I could to set it right.<br /><br />So I have a new laptop now. I saved up and put the money towards getting a truly awesome gaming laptop that I could take with me to my frequent trips to Waco, yearly Nerdtacular trips, or even if I just feel like going into the living room and not holing up in my bedroom. After doing the research, I ended up deciding to acquire the Doghouse Systems Mobius 17C. Yes, that would be the same one I participated in the naming contest of. My name, "Wardog" ended up coming in second. Mobius, ironically, was submitted by a US Marine recently deployed to Iraq. Still, as is my habit, I decided my lappy needed a new name, and if Wardog couldn't be the model name, it'd serve pretty good as a nickname. So there it is.<br /><br /><img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v335/Bmatt7883/Lappyclosed.jpg" /><br /><img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v335/Bmatt7883/Lappyopen.jpg" /><br /><br />How's it run? Well, like a dream, to be honest. I have the settings cranked to the max on World of Warcraft, and in high-traffic and high detail areas, I still get an average of 40 frames a second. In not crowded areas, it shoots up like crazy. If you get on a flying mount and soar over Northrend, the landscape looks gorgeous.<br /><br />I also installed Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare on it this weekend (the announcement of a sequel, Modern Warfare 2, got me excited to play it again) and did a couple of levels on that. That game is equally very beautiful. Infinity Ward did some amazing work with making the environments look as realistic as possible, and the Wardog showed it off well. I can't wait to see some of the Orange Box on it. I may never look at Half-Life the same way, heh.<br /><br />And speaking of gaming, I gotta say I had a LOT of fun with some folks in my guild in World of Warcraft yesterday. We had two raids scheduled for the afternoon/evening. The first one was kind of up in the air as to what was going to take place. Let me explain.<br /><br />In the new expansion, there is a world zone called "Lake Wintergrasp". It's a big open PvP zone, which means while you're in there, you're flagged for Player vs. Player combat. Every 2 hours or so, the zone becomes contested, which means that one side (Horde or Alliance) must defend the Wintergrasp fortress while the otherside tries to capture it. There is a time limit in place, which the defenders can shorten by taking out the attacker's towers. There are buildings you can capture which produce siege vehicles that you can drive to attack the walls of the Wintergrasp fortress or the attacker's towers. If the attackers capture the fortress, or the defenders hold out until the time expires, they win control of the fortress, and the zone. This has several benefits for the faction as a whole, but the main thing is that once you control Wintergrasp fortress, you can enter a raid dungeon called the "Vault of Archavon" and take on a Runed Giant boss named Archavon. He isn't a hard fight, and drops pretty good items.<br /><br />So our plan was If we had control of Wintergrasp, we'd do a 25-man raid on the Vault. Well, about 30 minutes or so before we were scheduled to start, the Wintergrasp battle started again. We'd been out doing other PvP battlegrounds for fun, so by the time we jumped back to Wintergrasp...the battle had been going on for a bit, and the Alliance were already inside the inner courtyard of the Fortress. Meaning they were pretty close to winning. We decided to rush to one of the Siege vehicle workshops, take it over, and get some siege vehicles to the attacking enemy towers to shorten the time. Well, didn't work too well. They defended them pretty ferociously. We ended up losing Wintergrasp, so we couldn't do the Vault of Archavon raid.<br /><br />So this left us to our second objective for the afternoon: Obsidian Sanctum. Obsidian Sanctum is a valley in a volcanic region in which the Black Dragonflight is hatching (literally) one of their new plans for more power. You see, the Black Dragons are pretty friggin' evil, and they want to rule the world. They've tried several plans, including breeding "superior" dragons with abilities from every dragon type in the world. Their latest plan is to breed black dragons infused with the raw magic power of Outland and raise an army of these powerful "Twilight Dragons". Obsidian Sanctum is where these Twilight Dragon eggs are secretly kept. Well, secret until the other dragonflights found out about it and asked some intrepid adventurers to stop them.<br /><br />Obsidian Sanctum is pretty much oval shaped. <a href="http://static.wowhead.com/uploads/screenshots/normal/115911.jpg">Sartharion, the Black dragon watching over the eggs</a>, sits in the middle. Around the perimeter, various draconic creatures patrol. <a href="http://static.wowhead.com/uploads/screenshots/normal/100023.jpg">Three Twilight drakes</a> (drakes are younger dragons that have not reached full adulthood, and thus full power) also stand perched on the ledges of the perimeter.<br /><br />You can <a href="http://static.wowhead.com/uploads/screenshots/normal/115993.jpg">click right here to see a picture of it</a>. Sartharion is in the middle, and you can see one of the drakes to the right, partially<br /><br />The idea is to kill the draconic patrols, deal with the twilight drakes individually, and then take on Sartharion. However, there is a challenge here. You can leave one or more of the twilight drakes alive before starting the fight with Sartharion if you want to make the encounter more challenging. Sartharion alone is not a hard fight, but if you add in the presence of one of the drakes, he becomes substantially more difficult. The drakes are mini-bosses in their own right, so they're not quite pushovers themselves. Why would you do this, you ask? For the challenge, and you get some extra loot if you do it.<br /><br />We had decided that we were going to leave one drake alive this week. So after dealing with the patrols and the two leftover drakes, we engaged Sartharion. Sure enough, about a minute into the fight, he yelled for Tenebron, the twilight drake still alive, to aid him. Apparently the twilight drakes are jerks, because Tenebron then yelled that he was amused to watch Sartharion suffer, but he'd help anyway. This is what happens when you breed an already evil creature with raw magical power, folks. They become evil jerks.<br /><br />Tenebron adds a unique dimension to the fight, because he periodically hatches numerous eggs into twilight whelps (baby dragons) to swarm the raid. These whelps will kill a non-heavily armored class pretty quick, so the tank has to get them focused on him, while the DPS players burn them all down. Mind you, this is all while dealing with Tenebron himself and avoiding the waves of lava that Sartharion routinely summons at you all.<br /><br />Tenebron did claim the lives of a few of our raid members before we dropped him, but after he went down, it became just another Sartharion fight, and we took him down, earning our extra loot, an achievement, and a lot of satisfaction for this challenging little element.<br /><br />Later that evening was our scheduled run into Naxxramas. <a href="http://static.wowhead.com/uploads/screenshots/normal/112078.jpg">Naxxramas is a floating necropolis</a>, a base of the undead Scourge. <a href="http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/wowwiki/images/6/6f/NaxxramasBossMap_v4.jpg">It's split into 4 quarters, with three bosses each, and then two final bosses after that to deal with.</a> In Wrath of the Lich King, you have the option to do raids in normal mode or heroic mode. Normal mode requires only 10 people. Heroic mode requires about 25, as the bosses are harder (most have extra abilities), but the loot you get is better)<br /><br />Last night we were going to take on Heroic Naxxramas, and try to fully clear it in one evening (meaning kill all the bosses). Heroics are much harder than normal raids, obviously, and we were hoping to be the first group to defeat every boss within. Well, I could go in to many of the fights, how they work, and how we did in each of them, but you'd get bored by that quickly i think, so let's just say that we did it. We cleared Heroic Naxxramas in one night and earned the achievements that come with it. It was a LOT of fun and I'm very proud to have been a part of it. The guys and girls on our raid team are spectacular players and a lot of fun to be around.<br /><br />Well I think I'll end this for now. I'm told some folks are coming up from Waco to visit me, Justin, and Stacy soon, with a possible trip to the zoo involved, so that should be fun. I think I get discount tickets from work, actually. I'll have to look into that.<br /><br />Talk to ya'll later.BMatthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08254121351319676342noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18997582.post-71894139275018728652009-01-06T06:42:00.000-06:002009-01-06T06:43:48.569-06:002009 Predictions. Lets see how well I do.These are my predictions for things that will happen in 2009. They cover technology, gaming, personal friend stuff, the whole gambit. Here goes....<br /><br />1. The digital TV transition will be mostly hitch-free.<br />For those of you who don't know, Feb 1st, all TV over-the-air broadcasts are going digital. This ONLY affects you if you get your TV via the antenna. If you have cable/satellite/whatever, you're fine. If not, you need to buy a digital converter box if your TV does not have one built in. I think the spreading of information regarding this changover will be enough that most people will be fine come then. There will be a lot of misinformation propogated out there by cable companies, but most people won't NOT be able to watch TV then.<br /><br />2. iTunes will cave to the pressure and go fully DRM free in music.<br />I think the pressure here and sales lost to the other DRM-free options, especially Amazon, will cause iTunes to finally drop DRM on their music.<br /><br />3. A really good Sci-Fi MMO will both come out and succeed.<br />The Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic MMO is probably the best bet to see this happen, but I predict that this year is the year a Sci-Fi MMO starts to give the fantasy MMO market (mostly World of Warcraft) a serious competitor.<br /><br />4. The new Star Trek film will both be the Nerdtacular 2009 film, and will not be remembered fondly.<br />I predict that many will see this film and that it will do very big box office numbers just because of the hype. I also predict the film will not live up to the hype and most watchers, especially the hardcore Trekkies, will not enjoy this film. All that being said, if it IS the 2009 Extralife Nerdtacular film of choice, I will still attend and hope I'm wrong.<br /><br />5. Both Marvel and DC will release more superhero films which futher build up to an eventual Avengers and/or Justice League movie.<br />Marvel's overtly done this in both Iron Man and Incredible Hulk. I predict that not only will it continue, but DC will begin hinting at a Justic League movie as well. I do not predict we will see the big team-up films in 2009, just the further build up to them.<br /><br />6. The worship of Jesus Christ will explode in a formerly "closed-off" country somewhere in the world.<br />Most folks will never know it because the mainstream media won't cover it, but I predict that a country where another religion is currently dominant and/or state-enforced will see massive numbers of people realize that Christ is the Way, Truth, and Life, and it will lead to major political change.<br /><br />7. Two out of the three major missing iPhone 3G features (cut and paste, Multimedia messaging, and turn-by-turn GPS directions) will be added via firmware this year<br />The Multimedia messaging is going out on a limb, but I really think we'll get at least two of these added to this phone this year, mostly due to the extreme competition this phone is going to get from Google Android-based phones.<br /><br />8. I will acquire one of the three current major game consoles this year, only to have the next generation of consoles be announced.<br />I predict I will finally decide to purchase an Xbox 360, PS3, or a Wii, and a very short time later, the next generation of consoles from these companies will be unveiled. That's just my luck, heh.<br /><br />9. Megan and Julie will be living in the garage apartment before February ends.<br />Not much to say here, I just think it'll happen, and within the next 2 months.<br /><br />10. Josh and Angie's baby will be a girl.<br />I got a 50/50 chance of being right on this one, and I think this is what it's going to be.BMatthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08254121351319676342noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18997582.post-21393012446439301362008-12-09T16:00:00.002-06:002008-12-09T16:01:08.499-06:00Ridiculously cute...ridiculously trueAwww....I can so empathize, little guy.<br /><br /><img src="http://ihasahotdog.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/cute-puppy-pictures-get-up-and-go.jpg" />BMatthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08254121351319676342noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18997582.post-9692936882472971862008-11-28T21:23:00.002-06:002008-11-28T21:25:08.297-06:002009 Christmas list from AmazonA call from Josh this evening prompted me to post this. I have updated my Amazon wishlist with possible Christmas gift ideas. If you're wanting to shop for me, first of all, thank you. Second of all, here you go!<br /><br /><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/wishlist/257AL93EL6GZ1/ref=wl_web"><img height="42" alt="My Amazon.com Wish List" src="http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/gifts/registries/wishlist/v2/web/wl-btn-129-b._V46776269_.gif" width="129" border="0" /></a>BMatthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08254121351319676342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18997582.post-84128196625202603332008-11-15T12:45:00.002-06:002008-11-15T13:06:44.752-06:00MeganI know, I'm long overdue for this, but I doubt anyone will be surprised by the information I'm about to type. Most of you who read this were either with me the day it happened, or were informed shortly thereafter. Still, as this IS my blog, and as I am yet again LONG overdue for an update to it, I feel compelled to put something down.<br /><br />Almost exactly one week ago (about an hour later, I suppose), I asked a lovely young woman whom I'd up to that point been very happy to call a friend to become more than just that. And she responded in the positive. In other words, ladies and gentlemen, she agreed to become my girlfriend.<br /><br />The lady in question is named Megan Thomas. And she is about as rare and exceptional as I've ever met.<br /><br />She's smart and posessed of a sharp wit. She loves to read sci-fi and is a big fan of anime. She knows the values in both being alone and of friendship and community. And holy COW is she gorgeous.<br /><br />But most of all, she has the quiet strength that comes from knowing Jesus on a personal and intimate level. And you can just SEE it by talking with her, interacting with her, or just being around her.<br /><br />There's probably many other things I could list here, and about a bajillion more I'm sure I'll come to learn about as this relationship progresses. But all these factors make up a truely unique individual whom I'm very very happy to call my friend and extremely ecstatic to call my girlfriend.<br /><br />Like I said, our relationship is very young, and somewhat complicated by the fact that we live an hour and a half apart. If you love either or both of us, I would greatly appreciate your prayers, and I know she would as well. Thank you.BMatthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08254121351319676342noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18997582.post-24287939932172698262008-11-04T23:00:00.003-06:002008-11-04T23:09:20.292-06:00"Tomorrow we wake up in a different world" - Really? Does that mean I don't have to work anymore?Yeah, I know, way overdue for a blogpost. Sorry guys, heh.<br /><br />Hasn't been much going on lately though. Obviously there's been a lot going on today.<br /><br />Yeah, Barack Obama's our new president. I don't think anyone's surprised by that. We all knew it was coming, really.<br /><br />What I am truly shocked over is the number of people who are seriously going nuts over this. I'm reading twitters from people who are seriously crying because Barack Obama won.<br /><br />Crying.<br /><br />Seriously?<br /><br />I seriously cannot believe that. Over a POLITICAL decision. Are people really buying into the insane hype this man has generated? Have you guys learned nothing from history? Politicians NEVER live up to their promises. Somebody please tell me a president in this recent generation who hasn't completely failed to live up to the expectations we all had for them. There isn't one. Not Bush (either of them), not Clinton, not Reagen, not Carter, Ford, none.<br /><br />I don't care. Finally, it's over. We can move on and just wait for people to realize that this guy isn't perfect either. We've reached the apex of the stupid political hatred. Now can we please tumble down the other side, quickly? I'd like to get on with my life, like we all will, like we all would if McCain had won, or Barr, or whoever else ran.BMatthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08254121351319676342noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18997582.post-15270480830401231592008-10-08T12:09:00.001-05:002008-10-08T12:09:29.242-05:00Testing Ping.fm out. Looks nifty, not sure how often I'll use it though...BMatthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08254121351319676342noreply@blogger.com0