Home Made Porn

I have a lot of customer stories that I've accumulated over the years, but this one probably takes the cake. Nudity is nothing new in my line of work. Matter of fact, I've been dealing with nudity since my college days delivering pizza. One would think that wouldn't necessarily transfer over to the computer repair field, but...yeah it does.

A couple days ago, I picked up a computer from a customer who, for the most part, has been a good one but has pissed me off a couple times with semi-unrealistic expectations. The problem I was addressing this time was the typical "slow computer" complaint. Malware being the most likely culprit.

As I'm talking to him and bundling things up to leave, he remarks:

"Oh don't mind the porn on there. Save it if you need to reload windows."

I've heard that request a few times. More often times than not, the "porn" that's on someone's computer involves semi-racy pics of various Hollywood actresses. Still, part of me cringed a little when he said it because I felt like I was about to back up a bunch of gay porn this guy viewed in his free time. My initial impression of said guy was obviously that he was single and that he was gay. Nothing wrong with his choices. I just have no interest in learning about what he does in his free time. I mostly just chalked this comment up as a joke since I had joked around with him before about the sheer amount of porn I run into while repairing computers.

Back at the shop, I hook his computer up, load it up into Safe Mode (fastest way to start a malware cleaning), and am greeted by a picture of a middle-aged woman posing on what looks like some sort of stool in see-through lingerie.

Uh...ok. So probably not gay, just overly happy.

The woman herself wasn't particularly attractive, but the image on the background looked professionally done. I figured it was probably off of a site he frequented since he was middle-aged himself.

After running a few utilities to see what was going on with it's sluggishness, I came to determine that he did have a malware infection and a rather nasty one. I called him up to let him know I could clean it, but it'd probably be faster if I just wiped it and started from scratch given the sheer amount of data he had on it.

(250GB hard drive, 210GB taken up...)

He approved the wipe and gave me a list of things to back up. Among the items...

...his "home made porn collection".

My original inclination was to tell him no. I really had better things to do than to back up what amounted to 200GB of home made porn. Then I thought about it for a second.

All I'm really doing is just copying a folder from one hard drive to another. I won't actually be viewing the content, which was my only issue. It became apparent to me this lady that was on his desktop was likely his wife and I really had no desire to see anything more of her or anything more of him.

So ok, I shot him the price, he approved and off to the data backup process I went. After backing the data up (took about 2 hours to transfer that amount of data...), I went to open Picasa so I could check out some of the results from a different data recovery process only to find that Picasa had indexed all of the pictures I had just transferred over from the backup job...

First pic: Full nude of said woman.
Second pic: Another full nude.
Third pic: Full nude of said woman getting her boob sucked on by fully clothed customer.
Fourth pic: Nude of said woman having oral sex performed on her by fully clothed customer.

That was quite enough for me. I closed Picasa and tried to figure out a way to burn the images from my brain, but to no avail. I'm sure a screwdriver through the temple would have worked, but I do prefer living. You can't un-ring that bell.

I finished the job up for him and delivered this back to him yesterday. Clean reload of Windows, all of his home made porn in a directory on his desktop (instead of hidden 7 folders deep in his my pictures directory...). I made sure I pointed out where it was at and that it didn't make any sense to bury it that far down if you were just going to display a picture from it as his desktop background.

As he's writing the check for it all, none other than his wife comes home.

Or, as I was introduced "This is my ex-wife".

Now this story just got really interesting to me. You see, the thing about seeing someone naked on the internet is that odds are, you aren't going to meet them face to face. It's generally human nature to think of things in their simplest forms and once you see someone naked, that's pretty much the first image that will pop into your head any time you talk to them or see them.

This guy had 200GB of home made porn on his computer starring the woman that I was just introduced to as the ex and the only thing that ran through my head when I shook her hand was:

"I'VE SEEN YOU NAKED AND GETTING PLEASURED HOLY SHIT WHAT WERE YOU THINKING"

To each their own. People are allowed to live out whatever sexual fantasies they want obviously, but it becomes a bit of a different ball game when what was supposed to remain private ends up being viewed by someone else. Given the image that was on his desktop, I seriously doubt I was the first one that viewed it. Hell, I went out of my way to try to avoid viewing it.

Ex: Did you save all his data?
Q: Yes Ma'am.
Ex: How much was there?

(At this point, it becomes rather clear from the glance she gives him and how fast he's trying to finish the check to me that she knows...)

Q: About 200 gigs.
Ex: Is that a lot?
Q: Let's just say they don't make flash drives that size yet.
Ex: What was it mostly?

(Oh shit...how do I answer this.)

Q: Pictures and movies, like any large backup job.

She looked over at her ex...

Ex: What have you been downloading?
Q: It was a bunch of old stuff.

(Oh damn. I said too much.)

Ex: Pictures of me?

(God, I'm dying on the inside from laughter and I think it's become rather obvious she knows it too)

Q: A few.
Ex: I thought I told you to delete those.
Customer: I did!
Ex: Were they naked pictures of me?
Q: Yep, a lot more than naked.

At this point, my customer just hands me the check and hangs his head. Also at this point, it's pretty obvious why this lady became his ex and quite possibly the reason he's flamboyantly gayish now...

What was not so obvious was why they were still living together in the first place...

I decided it was a good time to leave before I got caught in the line of fire. I'm expecting a phone call later today from said Customer with the inevitable ass-chewing that will likely result. :)

Hate RMT Tell Bots

Who doesn't?

SE's filters obviously are a piece of shit. Until they do something semi-drastic like limit the use of tells for people under level 30 to those on their friend lists, the problem isn't going away no matter how many times we report the stupid bots. So after receiving the same tell from oosale.com 5 times in a row from the same bot character, I decided I'd have a little fun at their expense.

When going to their site, the first thing I noticed that was extremely odd was the fact they ask you for your character name, your Paypal email address, your phone number (which I put in as 888-382-5633, spell that out on the phone if you're that bored) and what game you play. Not particularly sure why that information is relevant unless you already have an account, but since it was a required field, naturally I made a bunch of shit up.

Please wait for a site operator to respond.

You are now chatting with 'Tolly'

Tolly: Hello,welcome to Live Help.How may i help you please?

Haklfjfhkhklhas: Hello Tolly, I had a quick question for you.

Tolly: ok

Tolly: What is the matter?

Haklfjfhkhklhas: How does it feel to work for a company that harasses the piss out of random people multiple times an hour in an illegal manner?

Tolly: It is really bad

Tolly: What is your feeling ?

Haklfjfhkhklhas: Is it really or do you get that question a lot?

Tolly: Yes , so many

Haklfjfhkhklhas: Awesome, do you mind if I waste about 3 hours of your time?

Haklfjfhkhklhas: Can I have all your personal information too?

Tolly: If it is necessary, i will let you know

Haklfjfhkhklhas: Where is your company located?

Tolly: Why need i tell u?

Haklfjfhkhklhas: Well, I figure since for a chat, you require player names, paypal email addresses, etc, you can at least tell me where your company is located.

Haklfjfhkhklhas: I'm guessing China

Tolly: Have you ordered before?

Haklfjfhkhklhas: Nope and I don't have any intention of doing so. I just want to waste your time.

Tolly: You waste your time, not me

Tolly: lol

Haklfjfhkhklhas: Not really. You see...

Haklfjfhkhklhas: You're sitting in a cubicle farm having to deal with assholes like me.

Haklfjfhkhklhas: I'm sitting at a desk being the bored asshole with nothing else to do at the moment.

Tolly: In fact , i like you

Tolly: So do i

Haklfjfhkhklhas: Riiiight. So where's your company located?

Tolly: You can guess

Haklfjfhkhklhas: What type of legit company doesn't disclose that information?

Tolly: I have not asked your information

Tolly: so please do not ask me , ok?

Haklfjfhkhklhas: No, you "Tolly" have not asked me in this chat for my information, but to even get to the point where I can talk to "Tolly", your chat form required personal information.

Haklfjfhkhklhas: It required...Phone number, Paypal Email address, Character name...

Haklfjfhkhklhas: Just for a chat

Haklfjfhkhklhas: and that's not to even mention all the bullshit you guys cause in the various games you "service"

Haklfjfhkhklhas: So again

Haklfjfhkhklhas: Where's your company located?

Tolly: on the earth

Haklfjfhkhklhas: That's a start

Haklfjfhkhklhas: now narrow it down to the continent it's on

Haklfjfhkhklhas: then the country

Haklfjfhkhklhas: then the province

Haklfjfhkhklhas: then the city

Tolly: then the street

Tolly: then the door

Tolly: then the room

Tolly: then ??

Haklfjfhkhklhas: you're getting the idea

Tolly: Yes, so you want to know , where i am sitting ?

Tolly: What i am eating

Haklfjfhkhklhas: No, just where your company is located.

Tolly: Who i am talking to

Haklfjfhkhklhas: how much do you get paid an hour?

Tolly: Why you want to know that fucking answer

Tolly: Nothing

Haklfjfhkhklhas: you work for free?

Tolly: Yes

Tolly: I am so boring

Tolly: and need somethings to do

Tolly: So i am here just for some food

Haklfjfhkhklhas: so you write bots that spam personal messages to anyone who's currently signed into a game for fun?

Haklfjfhkhklhas: or is that a diff. department?

Tolly: It is not me

Tolly: I do not do that stupid thing

Haklfjfhkhklhas: Does that guy have to talk to people at all?

Tolly: I even who you are saying

Tolly: do not know*

Haklfjfhkhklhas: The guy that writes the advertising bots, you're not him?

Tolly: Yes, i am so sorry

Tolly: I am a new guy here

Haklfjfhkhklhas: and you don't write the advertising bots?

Tolly: Of course

Haklfjfhkhklhas: who does?

Tolly: Today is my second time

Tolly: work here

Haklfjfhkhklhas: who writes the advertising bots?

Tolly: So sorry , i have no idea

Haklfjfhkhklhas: Can you find out?

Tolly: It is a little hard

Haklfjfhkhklhas: I'm sure if you work at it, you can find out.

Tolly: But i have no right to do it

Haklfjfhkhklhas: Sure you do. You work for a company that's using an illegal means of advertising.

Haklfjfhkhklhas: As well as selling illegal goods.

Tolly: I am unable to do what you hope to do

Tolly: so sorry

Haklfjfhkhklhas: So back to my original question for now. Where's your company located?

Tolly: Why are you interested in it ?

Haklfjfhkhklhas: Why are you interested in hiding it?

Tolly: Becaues it is private

Haklfjfhkhklhas: Why is it private?

Tolly: i do not know

Haklfjfhkhklhas: You guys make a public nuisance of yourselves. One would think the rest of the company would be public.

Haklfjfhkhklhas: Is it private because the boss told you not to tell anyone?

Tolly: Bingo

Haklfjfhkhklhas: So you willingly work for someone doing illegal things?

Tolly: illegal?

Haklfjfhkhklhas: Yep, illegal.

Tolly: It is legal

Tolly: Why you say that

Haklfjfhkhklhas: Is it? You guys pretty much violate the Terms of Service for every game you provide currency for.

Haklfjfhkhklhas: The whole "not allowed to advertise the sale of virtual goods" and "not allowed to sell the intellectual property" part of the Terms of Service

Tolly: What is the difference between legal and illegaal?

Haklfjfhkhklhas: the difference between legal and illegal is often times just the border to a country.

Haklfjfhkhklhas: or hiding behind one's govt. while essentially stealing someone's property and profiting off it.

Haklfjfhkhklhas: Which is why you guys are doing.

Tolly: But we do not do that thing

Haklfjfhkhklhas: Do you not?

Haklfjfhkhklhas: You sell WoW gold right?

Tolly: I am just talking to you, it is my job, i do not care other things

Haklfjfhkhklhas: So if you were employed by someone selling child sex slaves, you'd just sit at your desk and do it cause it's your job and not care about anything else?

Haklfjfhkhklhas: Here's an example of what I'm talking about:

Tolly: But that thing my company do not do

Haklfjfhkhklhas: Section 11:

Tolly: ok

Haklfjfhkhklhas: World of Warcraft Terms of Service:

Haklfjfhkhklhas: Ownership/Selling of the Account or Virtual Items. Blizzard does not recognize the transfer of WoW Accounts or Blizzard Accounts (each an "Account"). You may not purchase, sell, gift or trade any Account, or offer to purchase, sell, gift or trade any Account, and any such attempt shall be null and void. Blizzard owns, has licensed, or otherwise has rights to all of the content that appears in the Game. You agree that you have no right or title in or to any such content, including without limitation the virtual goods or currency appearing or originating in the Game, or any other attributes associated with the Account or stored on the Service. Blizzard does not recognize any purported transfers of virtual property executed outside of the Game, or the purported sale, gift or trade in the "real world" of anything that appears or originates in the Game. Accordingly, you may not sell in-game items or currency for "real" money, or exchange those items or currency for value outside of the Game. "

Haklfjfhkhklhas: There's a section like that in virtually every game you guys "service"

Haklfjfhkhklhas: and yes, your company does not sell child sex slaves, but to say "it is my job, i do not care other things" is simply turning a blind eye to the actual issues

Tolly: I just want to say that if you want to buy something and the other buy want to buy it , this is busniess

Tolly: sell*

Haklfjfhkhklhas: That's the drug dealer mentality.

Tolly: So you care all things

Haklfjfhkhklhas: The whole reason drugs exist is because "you want to buy something and the other buy want to buy it, this is business"

Haklfjfhkhklhas: No I just find it humorous there are actually people in this world who get involved in things like that in the first place.

Tolly: I agree with you

Tolly: It is not good

Haklfjfhkhklhas: LOL! no you don't. you wouldn't be working there if you did :)

Tolly: But i can not find other work

Tolly: Maybe one year later

Tolly: I can do it

Haklfjfhkhklhas: That's still no excuse.

Tolly: I am just leaving school

Haklfjfhkhklhas: Lots of people can't find work. Don't see them resorting to illegal business practices to make ends me.

Tolly: it is difficult to find a desired job for mr

Haklfjfhkhklhas: So go back to school?

Haklfjfhkhklhas: Work fast food?

Tolly: I have graduated

Haklfjfhkhklhas: Where from?

Haklfjfhkhklhas: Did you just get fired or are you currently selling something illegal to another person?

Tolly: I am a good boy

Tolly: Just the life is hard

Haklfjfhkhklhas: Still just excuses.

Haklfjfhkhklhas: Your life is hard, your boss' life is hard (although probably not as hard), so to make ends meet, you guys make things hard for other people by irritating the piss out of them

Tolly: But what can i do to satify your need?

Haklfjfhkhklhas: Well for now, you can find the guy that writes the advertising bots and punch him in the nuts repeatedly.

Haklfjfhkhklhas: Preferably once for every person, every day he's irritated.

Haklfjfhkhklhas: Which should come out to around a few million ballsack punches.

Haklfjfhkhklhas: Then go do that to your drug lord/boss.

Haklfjfhkhklhas: If you were playing a game to get away from things after a hard day of work, would you want to be receiving advertisements for a product you're not interested in repeatedly?

Haklfjfhkhklhas: Likely not. So why work for a company that does that to other people.

Haklfjfhkhklhas: How many customer service representatives do you guys have?

Haklfjfhkhklhas: And can I just say, your english is a lot better than the guy who writes those advertising bots?

Haklfjfhkhklhas: Hello?

Haklfjfhkhklhas: I think I'll do this at least once or twice a day. This was a lot of fun. I'm sure we'll run into each other again. :)

Obviously, "Tolly" has had several of these conversations. Obviously, he doesn't care and he's a smart ass. However, I managed to waste about 30 minutes of his time and because this was such a fun exercise, I think I'll go through with my promise there at the end.

That or I'll find someone to write me a bot and just spam their LiveChat...

Abyssea Thoughts and Other News

I got invited to do Salvage with Ringthree last night to help him kill a frog. Prior to entering, I witnessed a lot of debate between the other members on how best to handle the organization of their Abyssea runs and it got me to thinking about Obsidian's.

As it stands, we basically just go free lot on items. I know over the long haul, that's probably going to end up leading to a lot of butthurt over various items. That's been one of my biggest issues thusfar in organizing Abyssea runs is that people seem to be a lot more adamant about what they want to do and willing to force an organizer's hand to get their way. Really kind of irritates me to no end.

My priority in organizing these things has been to try to nail down as many pieces of Abyssite for our members as we can. I feel like getting the core a large number of these will just make our runs that much more efficient since it seems they really only take effect if a person holding a particular Abyssite actually gets killshot. If only 2 or 3 of us have Kismet Abyssite, for example, then our odds of capping Azure light faster are rather small. Some will look at that and say "just make sure the people with kismet get killshot". I can only counter that with "have you ever tried to get 18 people on the same page as far as killshots go?"

Getting Abyssite is boring though. Most people don't see the usefulness in doing this. They just see a pair of Tumbler Trunks and want to go kill that damn tiger or want to go XP a job somewhere. The worst ones are when people want to come as a melee job so they can skill up or refuse to come as a critical support job because their PUP needs XP. It's because of things like this that I've probably sent more Obsidian people off to other groups. Bottom line is, if you're not the one organizing it or are unwilling to do what it takes to help the team accomplish it's goals, then we don't want you in our runs. I think this is the major thing that has to be understood from the onset. It's not a doctrine on anyone personally. It just takes everyone being on the same page to make the best use of the time allotted in Abyssea.

The Basics:

Telepoints: We're to a point now in our runs where we'll likely stop allowing people to come if they don't have all the telepoints. They don't take long to get and it really just means you're going to miss only one run.

Abyssites: A number of Abyssites can be picked up via cruor purchase or via quests. These are generally things to get on your own time.

Understanding of Time: This is probably the most fundamental aspect of Abyssea. Learning how to manage your time. Going in with an ally of 18 people where 10 of them only have 2 stones and the other 8 have 120 mins is just maddening. Try to always have 90 mins available for any organized run.

The Categories:

You can classify Abyssea runs into one of three categories. I tend to think the structure for the overall group hinges on these three categories.

XP/Farming run: Pretty self-explanatory. You spend copious amounts of time farming up key items via gold chests or leveling jobs all while building up a time buffer for a future run. These seem to be necessary. It doesn't always work out where people end up having just as much time left over as they entered with, but as long as you're running out with pop items and whatnot later on, then you should be in good shape.

Basic/Forced Pop NM run (Bazaar pops): The vast majority of the items that come off these NMs have silly drop rates. And by silly, I mean insanely high. Not all of the details have been fleshed out on a number of them, but from what I can tell, if it's a pop item you can buy from a Bazaar, it's got a good drop rate and is easy to get to. I don't necessarily feel these are important enough to allow any form of bidding on since the drop rate is what it is. Using Obsidian's current rules, we'd basically end up with a ton of 4 point bids and no real exodus of points.

The biggest issue with these types of NMs is that people see how simple they are and don't particularly understand anything beyond "We can just go do this real quick". "Real quick" is 15 mins. 15 mins is a huge chunk of time if everyone's only going in with 90. There are a number of ways to handle this sort of issue though.

Obsidian Dynamis/Einherjar style bidding:

The first idea is to simply do bidding the way we normally do for Dynamis or Einherjar. On paper, it looks like you can just pick the zone and then just do blanket bidding for every item that can drop in the zone (or just further classify what you're going after). It's easy. It's painless (from an admin standpoint). The cons to this are that we end up with some butthurt if we don't go after an NM we listed or potentially set up someone to believe we were going to go after. Or we kill something that wasn't on the list to kill originally because it happened to be up in our way (clusterfuck). Are you going to just leave an NM sitting there if you know it drops something good because it wasn't on the original list to kill?

Lists:

Have everyone make out a list of the top 5 items they want from each zone and limit bidding to that. You can easily build runs around this and knock out a couple items at a time potentially. The pros to this is it basically provides a lot of input from the members themselves. The con to this is when do you decide to move on to a diff. item? You have 10 people wanting tumbler trunks, but 5 have it listed at number 1 on their list, 3 have it listed at number 3 and 2 have it at number 5? Do you build an entire run around those 2 who have it listed at number 5 (should you run out of time and only get 8 done) or do you wait until more people have it listed before doing it again?

Freelot:

Because of how frequently stuff drops, we currently employ this tactic. Again, it's not something I'd like to permanently use, but it's doing it's job for now. There's about 14 of us who make it to every Abyssea run, so the primary con to this (having someone who rarely comes get something over someone who's there every run) isn't a huge issue. The pro to this is it makes everyone feel like they're on equal footing for every item which, in some cases, can cause people to enjoy their time more. I'm not a big proponent of this mentality, but I do acknowledge it exists.

Key Item Pop/Big Shit: This is the third and final category and where I feel points should be used heavily for anything that drops as they seem to generally requires a ton of people. There's a lot of stuff that drops from these particular baddies that I feel really isn't much better than some of the stuff that you can get from the 2nd category, but because of the time involved in farming up the key items and such, this is where a member's time invested becomes important.

These are also runs where, odds are, this is the only thing you're going to do during the run. That might not make a huge difference to some people, but I tend to view events where I'm potentially going to be spending an hour or more fighting one thing, and one thing only, as events where people need to go all out in terms of preparation and research. The people who do are generally the ones who spend the most time in the events themselves and should have a mechanism in place, from an organizational standpoint, that gives them a better chance to obtain what they want and get rewarded for their work.

Points Allocation

Final topic on Abyssea revolves around how to reward points. There isn't a cookie cutter method to it since there are so many different things to do. If you go by what I've laid out so far, I tend to think points should be awarded accordingly:

Category 1: XP/Farming Session

No points per hour, points per key item that drops.

Category 2: Basic/Force popped NMs (Bazaar)

Points per hour, points per key item (if you're going after those).

Category 3: Key Item popped/Big Shit

Points per hour, points per bad guy killed.

How many you reward is up for discussion, but that's generally how I feel about how rewards should be distributed. I think most groups have found themselves with members who have a lot of different ideas about how to run things. Obsidian is no exception. We have yet to really open an official debate on this subject, but a lot of the sacks have discussed these sorts of things at length amongst themselves. Most of us are on the same page even though our agendas for what we want to do are slightly different.

I think the biggest thing all of us understand though (and I find this to be completely critical to the success of any group):

We all know we're going to get what we want individually eventually and have the patience to wait and develop something that's good for everyone.


Other News!

Trial 1850

This trial fucking sucked. Not because of what I was killing, but because of the lack of options. You basically have:

Ifrit's Cauldron: Bombs. Spread out like crazy and involves a lot of running.

WotG zones with Djinns: See previous entry. Plus the perpetual Bio effect I'd probably have on me will just make the damage range of Geirskogul even more ridiculous. (Remember, most infuriating part of these trials is using the WS and leaving 1% of life on the target...)

Sky: Not exactly the paragon of kill speed excellence up there. Do I want to risk getting Despot'd killing dolls or do I want to watch my wyvern die a lot to the AoE from Golems? That leaves...

Ro'Maeve: Needless to say, I'm not the only one who realized these things about the other 3 locations. You basically just run a loop and grab whatever arcane critter is up and kill it. On good days, I'd get somewhere around 70 kills/hour. On most days, it was more like 30 kills/hour because people loved to team up there. Not that I blame them. It's just hard to work in a huge group when the relic trial requires the kill shot and you don't have much HP on a monster to build TP to begin with.

I made up my mind around the middle of last week to not leave Ro'Maeve until this damn trial was done. I started the day Friday with about 700 kills to go. I knocked out 200 on Friday night. I then got some help in the form of Kaelis and Jance for the remaining 400 or so. We essentially set it up so that they would pull and I would kill. This worked out for them both as Jance should have knocked out about ~200 (since he joined far later than Kaelis) of his gun trial and Kaelis got a few random completions for a BLU sword trial (needed thunder day/weather).

I also need to point out the following:

If I'm in the zone with you and you need the same kills as me, don't even bother trying to ask me to team up. If you don't understand what the relic trials involve, then there's no need for you to waste my time or yours unless you're capable of being self-sustaining and willing to pull for me.

I've already snapped at 2 idiots in Ro'Maeve because they started bitching that I wouldn't team up with them. It's not that hard to understand:

"I have to get killshots, the more people you have, the less likely I build TP."

"I have to get killshots, the more people you have, the more likely it is someone's an idiot."

One guy even offered to let me join his party and continue to let me do my own thing. Anyone care to guess what type of response that got out of me?

"I'm not doing the work for you."

Anyway...by about 11PM Saturday night...



And about 11:01PM Saturday night...



I promptly went to help Theora kill off Tenzen and unload about a month's worth of frustration.

Plus I hate Tenzen anyway and any chance I get to skullfuck his ass, I'm taking it. (That's another story for another day...)



Trial 1851

After 1850, I was semi-dreading 1851. Mostly because it's 500 MORE killshots. The good news is that there are far more options for these than that of arcana. Generally speaking, vermin are in packs and in areas with 6 min respawns. Arcana are not generally in this category. On top of that, I can drag my pocket RDM out with me to help speed things along.

Pretty much just screwing around testing various camps out yesterday, I managed to knock out 250 of these in around 4 hours of killing stuff. There was probably about an hour or so of me wandering around to boot. It makes me feel a lot better at the moment that I likely won't have to invest 2 entire workweeks to get this trial done.

That still doesn't make me hate SE any less for piling this amount of shit on a relic holder. The only real silver lining to this is that I have a very effective way of shutting people up when they start bitching about their trials.

(Glacian) 750 more Tachi: Goten uses >.<
(Qtipus) You can log in as me and do my trial if you hate yours so much.
(Glacian) No thanks.
(Mav) Q takes all the fun out of bitching about trials.

Hopefully by the end of the weekend, I'll have a level 80 Gungnir, but realistically, I'd put it by the end of next week.

Cookout 2010 Stories: Vol 4

This final entry into the cookout stories will consist of some random things that happened over the course of the trip and the final day/night.

Cooking Out!

Most of Sunday was spent loafing around and actually doing what the name of the event implies. Cooking out.

The menu included the basics:

Hot Dogs.
Burgers.
Potato Salad.
Actual Salad.
Sangria.

Kay fixed the potato salad. Eri grilled the burgers and dogs. Kreo fixed the sangria and I'm not sure who fixed the actual salad.



Drakus + Food = Amused.



Shootin' the shit while eating out on the deck.



More shit-shootin'...



I need to smack someone for managing to get both my bald spot and my gut in the same picture...

Gracie the Sidekick

Stripes got his own column mostly due to his ability to find hiding places, so I figure I should at least put a small blurb in here regarding Gracie. She's a rather laid back kitty that's been declawed. So she was an easy one to play with whereas Stripes, still having his claws, could pretty much maim you in a heartbeat.



Doesn't mean Gracie couldn't still kick your ass though...dog better not be on my porch bish!



Patrolling the window...



...more patrolling.

Gracie was often times found on the backs of furniture or on top of keyboards and would often times go limp when you picked her up.

A Collection of...Backs of Heads...

We apparently managed to get a near complete collection of the backs of our heads...



Kreoss...



Kaylea...



Kaelis...



Suraph...



Me...

Not sure how we managed to do that, but slightly humorous that we did...



To Baltimore! Again...

As Noon on Monday rolled around, it was time for a number of us to depart. Kaelis and Eri were driving back home. Kreoss and Kay were flying back home out of Baltimore. This means that we were going to have to drive to Baltimore to drop 'em off.

This also meant we were going to have to take 5 people in one car or someone was going to be sitting at the house for a number of hours...

Drakus was highly amused and stayed at the house.

Off to Baltimore we go yet again. This drive seems to get faster each time we made it. The odd thing about this particular excursion was that I actually got to see what the outside of BWI looked like. Every other time I had been there, I was changing planes, so I couldn't actually get out to roam around much.

One thing I do have to note about this airport is:

Their parking system is f***ing fantastic. They got these little sensors above each parking space that relays a signal to a post out on the main drive areas as to how many spots are available in each row. Makes finding a space incredibly easy. This is being compared to BNA's airport parking system of "LOT FULL" only to see about 50 spaces open as you pull in or "582 SPACES AVAILABLE" and I can't find a single one.

We go through the whole check-in process. Kay and Kreo have both checked in online, but couldn't print passes. Kreo had some bags he had to check anyway, so he got to go stand in line.

Kay, on the other hand, just had a carryon, so she had the option of going up to a kiosk and just reprinting her boarding passes...

...if she hadn't forgotten what her confirmation number was.

She swore up and down she had it memorized, but obviously, she didn't. Reception was rather bad there, but after fiddling with our phones, we finally got logged into AOL mobile and got her correct confirmation number. But!

In that time, Kreo managed to go through the line, get his bags checked and his boarding passes reprinted...



Final picture at the airport before parting ways.

Final Toys R Us?

After Suraph and I saw them to the security line, we left and headed to the last Toys R Us we had mapped out from a couple days prior. It wasn't too difficult to find, but again, nothing new as it relates to Transformers.

Unless you count this:



Really? A fkn fishing rod? WOO SLAP AN IDENTIFIABLE BRAND ON ANYTHING AND IT'LL SELL I TELL YOU WHAT!

Although...now that I think about it. That fishing rod could probably transform into a nice whipping stick for the dipshit marketing execs who thought this would be a good idea...

Oddly enough as well, Suraph found a game for $5 that he's apparently very fond of:



Upon exiting the Toys R Us, we stopped to take a picture at a very easy target:



Back at Launchpad...

Suraph, Drakus and I spent the rest of the evening just relaxing and cleaning things up. While watching TV, eating pizza rolls and broccoli-stuffed chicken, and playing Southpark's tower defense game, we got wind of some air travel troubles coming out of Baltimore.

The first was rather obligatory. Kreoss wouldn't have luck if he didn't have bad luck. He had basically cursed himself on the way to the airport by remarking that his flight will probably be delayed. I just piled onto said self-cursing by confirming it would be and sure enough...his flight was delayed by about 30-45 mins. Nothing too bad really, especially when compared with the later shenanigans.

Kay's flight ended up being delayed by about 6 hours. This was due to a litany of reasons. The first was a mechanical problem. The second was they had missed their window to take off due to the mechanical problem despite being out on the runway ready to leave. The third was they had reached the max amount of time they could be on the plane out on the runway and had to get off. The last was weather-related. Don't get me wrong...Southwest rarely has issues like this and Suraph could speak more to the conditions surrounding the problems, but it seems to me the BWI-Hartford flight could have just piled onto a bus and got there before they ultimately did.

On top of that, and I usually hate "if we had known...", but if we had known this sort of stuff was going to happen, Kay could have just caught a ride with Suraph the next morning on his way back to NH. Needless to say, clusterfuck.

But while she was miserable at the airport, the 3 of us were comfy and cozy pigging out on junk food and playing games. :)

(Yes, that's a rub-in...)

She ultimately got in around 1AM.

The Drive Home

Tuesday morning came too quickly. We had packed up most everything the night before, so there was really little to do when we got up aside from shower and do some final checks to make sure we didn't leave anything.

The plan this time was for Drakus and I to take the 68-79-64-BG PKWY-65 route back to Bowling Green. We had mapped out a few Toys R Us' to visit along the way, so it was indeed, not the final Toys R Us visited on this trip.

We got down the mountain and about 20 minutes out though when it hit me.

No I didn't forget anything.

Unless you count taking a poop before leaving as forgetting something...

Not even 30 minutes into the drive and I already had to pull off. We pulled off at a gas station that had a rather nice bathroom, but skimped severely on the quality of the toilet paper. You couldn't pull more than one or two sheets out at a time without it breaking and that's rather infuriating.

It's also a sign you should probably pull out a little extra if it's that brittle. I spent more time getting the toilet paper ready than I did doing my business.

Anyway, now that I was done, back on the highway we go! First Toys R Us we pulled off for wasn't open yet, but we were close enough to it opening that we just killed some time exploring a nearby K-Mart, Wal-Mart and Target. Said TRU had nothing new though, so back on the road.

Second TRU, we hit the jackpot. I found some figures I had been looking for. Thrust and Drift specifically. Drakus ended up buying the 4-pack of Generations: Wave 1, which included the 2 I had just picked up along with TF: WFC Prime and TF: WFC Bumblebee. After picking up some McDonalds, we got back out onto the highway headed for the third, and last TRU mapped out for us along our route. That TRU had nothing new either, so it was time to just kick back and drive.

Until we ran into some of this...





Yes that's me driving while taking a picture.

The weather got a little rocky after that last TRU, which slowed us down somewhat. On top of that, there was a ton of construction happening on I-64 at the WV-KY border that kept having lane closures and jamming traffic a bit. There was also apparently some sort of wreck or cop convention that actually had us stopped long enough on the highway for me to get one of the new Transformers out of it's package and show it off.

Once we were about 15-20 miles into KY though, it cleared up completely and the rest of the drive to Lexington was w/o incident. Drakus had never seen a castle before either, so this was a treat for him to get pictures of as we were driving by:



(He obviously doesn't know which way is up on his camera...)

About 5 miles after this though, we discover the on ramp to the BG Parkway was closed. This resulted in us having to drive around to Versailles and get onto said parkway there through a huge clusterfuck of traffic as we had managed to hit Lexington during rush hour. Once past that, everything else went smooth.

We get back to my place, divvy up the luggage and then head in so that Drakus can log himself in to one of my comps. The purpose for this is that he wasn't going to be home in time to catch Einherjar. The other thing he didn't count on was that I was still seeking vengeance for the joke played on my character while I was sleeping.

You see, I woke up to find Gungnir stuffed in storage on one of my mannequins and I was carrying around a Gae Bolg instead. Turns out Lect was the mastermind behind this joke, but since Drakus, Kreoss, Kaelis and Suraph were all there to take part, they're getting the favor returned.

Drakus got home a couple hours after Einherjar ended to find:

- His mog house furniture all shoved to one side a la Tetris.
- All of his gil divided up and sent to each of his 10 mules.
- His HP was set in Rabao.
- The idea was planted that some of his BLM gear was moved.
- His 8 DB slots had 1 gil ea. in them.

He made it home safe obviously as did everyone else.

Conclusion

It's hard for me to say "most" as it relates to anything to one of these cookouts. Each one of them have something awesome that happen each year. First year was awesome just cause it actually happened. Second year was awesome because it involved a pool and a pair of people that really need to show up to the next one, but having kids kind of puts a bit of a wrench in the ability to do so. Last year, in Maine, the locale was obviously one of the awesome pieces there along with the cooking clinic Kay's mom put on. This year was awesome because of the locale and a number of other things.

It's obviously a tradition we've started that we hope to keep going. Next year has been discussed to take place in FL, but we're still a long way away from that time period and who knows what circumstances will be around when it comes time for this to happen again. Tons o' fun was had by all.

Bonus: Married Man Wins...Twice

I alluded to this in the previous post, but here's your Cookout: Moment of Zen

We had a number of multiplayer games we were abusing while hanging out. One of these was Mario Party 8. I was taking a nap when the shenanigans were going on, so I only got filled in when I woke up.

One of the mini-games in MP8 is apparently reminiscent of an SNL skit featuring Alec Baldwin:



There's not really much else I can say to introduce this...



...but there's a whole lot I can say about it after you watch it. Left to right is Kreo - Drakus - Kaelis - Suraph. Out of that quartet, Kaelis is the only married one. This video is actually the second time the four of them got stuck with that mini game...

...and Kaelis won them both despite the fact he never played MP8 up until this cookout. Anyone else find it odd the married guy is the best one at masturbation wii games? :)

Not so sure about that whole marriage thing myself now...

Cookout 2010 Stories: Vol 3

Most of our third day saw us descend from high atop Mt. Cranky to mingle among the commoners 2 hours away in Baltimore at Camden Yards. This day of the trip was pretty much the only thing we had pre-planned prior to actually getting together.

Odin

Before heading to Baltimore, we had some Einherjar business to take care of. As luck would have it, our Einherjar timing worked out so that we had an Odin to fight during our cookout for the second year in a row. It's always interesting doing an event like this with a group of people as opposed to the general solitude most of us play games like this in.

Since the level cap increase, we've done Odin twice. Both times have been ridiculously easy. We started utilizing Odin on Odin crime at the starts of the fights, so our team really only has 80ish% of his health to deal with. I tend to view this as a way to make up for time lost actually entering Valgrind, but that really didn't have anything to do with the level cap increase itself.

Both times we've fought him, we've been done in about 15 mins tops. He's pretty much a cakewalk now. Don't get me wrong, he can still cause a lot of havoc at times (looking at you 50% mark + valks or 30% mark + valks), but he's nowhere near the time nailbiter he used to be.

Drops yielded a long overdue E.Body and a pair of M.Legs Kreoss actually won the lot on, then inexplicably dropped his lamp before they distributed to him and Jess ended up getting them. Not that he cared much about them to begin with since it was a 3-way lot of 4 point bids on them, but that was still cause for some ridicule. Once done, the rest of us that hadn't showered yet got cleaned up and we loaded up the Vue and the Crankyvette to make our way to Baltimore.

FUCK SLOW DOWN

Normally I drive a 4 door sedan, not a 4-door SUV. Driving along I-68 in the mountains was rather challenging for me. At one point, there's a curve that lasts for literally 2-3 minutes. The Gs presented on one's body on this curve in an SUV with an ABS system about as sensitive as a WoW'er that just got dumped by a man he thought was a girl actually got me to get Kay to call Suraph and tell him to slow down.

Y'see, I'm lead-footed by nature. That's the irony presented in this story. If I'm asking someone to slow down on the highway, it's akin to McDonald's running out of hamburgers AND fries in the same night. If it had just been me in the Vue, I probably wouldn't have asked, but since 3 others were with me, it had me a little concerned. Naturally, the only thing that was my saving grace was the fact that Kreoss was getting carsick and actually falling asleep with his mouth open.

That translates to an escape from ridicule. :)

Sports Talk Radio Makes Erimentha Go ZZZZZzzzzz

One other thing I discovered during this drive that was rather comical was the effect of Sports Talk Radio on Erimentha. Eri had just finished telling a story or having a conversation or something and I decided to try to catch up on what was happening in the sports world before we actually went to the sporting event...

I flipped the switch on the radio, found a station and, I shit you not, Eri was out cold in a matter of seconds.

So naturally, just for testing purposes, I turned the radio off.

She woke up.

I turned it back on.

She went to sleep.

Ok, probably not that exaggerated, but still funny nonetheless. :)

Toys R Us Hunting

Naturally, on any road trip, I'm going to stop off at Walmarts and Toys R Us'es to hunt for Transformers. Before we left, we mapped out that there were 3 of them along our way to Baltimore. We figured we'd get some lunch in the area around the first one.

This was also a great example of GPS fail. The GPS in BOTH vehicles got us to the vicinity, but pretty much made us drive an extra 10 miles through city backroads to get to it when it was actually sitting right off the interstate about 5 miles ahead of the exit the GPS told us to get off at. I forget the name of the first city we pulled off at (I want to say Hagerstown).

Anyway, after getting into the vicinity, I'm still following the Crankymaro. I spot the Toys R Us and then get led around the mall it's in. After about 3 minutes of this and getting further away from said Toys R Us, I remarked that Suraph is either screwing with me or he's lost. Turns out...he got lost.

In a mall parking lot.

With 2 GPSs.

TALENT! :)

After realizing he wasn't getting anywhere, he pulls over into a remote section of the parking lot and lets me take the lead. After about half a dozen nearly-hit pedestrians (GTFO OFF MY ASPHALT OLD PEOPLE! TOYS R US OR BUST), 1 dozen zigs and 2 dozen zags through one of the dumbest parking lots I've ever seen, we arrived! And I promptly corrupted someone else's kid by cussing the minute I got out of the car. Even to the point Suraph was embarassed to be seen with me cussing in the presence of a 3 year old I didn't know was there. :)

And all of that turned out to be for naught. Nothing new there. So we piled back in and headed up the parking lot a ways for lunch...

Olive Garden

Since we knew we were going to have one more Toys R Us stop along the way, we figured we'd rearrange passengers based on the following criteria:

"I give a shit about Toys R Us"

and

"I don't give a shit about Toys R Us"

The first group would pile into the Vue. The second would pile into the Crankilac. In my car wound up Drakus, Kreoss, Kay (there cause of me and not cause of Toys R Us...) and myself. In the Crankybaru, Kaelis, Eri and Cranky.

This is the sort of stuff that happens on a road trip when you have a 15-20 minute wait to seat a group of 7 at Olive Garden.

Lunch was rather uneventful outside of that. Lots of conversation about a wide variety of topics along with Kreoss' introduction to Touchdown Jesus and what's left of him after getting smote by lightning. Anyone else familiar with the region also knows that lightning bolt was probably aimed for porn shop, but in typical Ohio fashion, somehow managed to even cause that to fail in a football-related manner.

Lunch done, piling back into the vehicles and...off we go.

Toys R Us #2 - Frederick, MD

We pretty much agreed we'd just meet up in Baltimore from that point as trying to stay together on the highway is far more of a pain than it needs to be. About 30-40 miles later, we come up on our next Toys R Us exit. Yet again, both GPS's failed. Apparently, the highway the exit lands us on actually ENDS in the middle of a Toys R Us.

Nevermind the fact that said highway actually goes on for miles afterwards and the Toys R Us itself is actually a right turn off said highway. Again my keen Toys R Us senses saved us some time and I spotted the sign for it before anyone else did. This trip proved fruitful however. We picked Drakus up the newly redone Seaspray figure and I picked up the core combiners 5-pack called Bombshock. This excursion actually didn't cost us much time as it relates to the Crankibu since they had to stop off for some meds or something I can't remember...

Unfortunately, time was a little short and we weren't going to be able to make it to the third Toys R Us that was actually in Baltimore. So we just headed straight for the game.

Parking Disaster

I've been in enough big cities to know that during a huge sporting event, Downtown Anything = Long Waits in Traffic. Baltimore was easily the worst in this regard. We literally spent about 45 minutes trying to drive about a mile to a parking structure off the interstate. There's pretty much 3 things in this world that make me insta-tantrum:

1. Dishonesty.
2. Stealing.
3. Idiotic Traffic Congestion

Anyway, we finally found a place to park and walked up to where Suraph, Kaelis and Eri were all waiting for us.

For the record, I went asshole on the parking structure and parked my big ass SUV in a "Compact Cars Only" spot.



We're here!

Camden Yards has always been ranked rather high on the list of "Best Ballparks". I became somewhat enamored with it after watching the 1993 All-Star Game when I watched Ken Griffey Jr. hit the warehouse during the home run derby. It wasn't some out-of-the-park-and-bounced-to-the-warehouse dinger. The guy hit the warehouse wall on the fly. Seeing that warehouse brought back a lot of the memories I had as a kid watching baseball. Not that I really liked my memories of Jr. roughing up my favorite pitcher (Steve Avery, at the time) the following night in the All-Star Game, but yeah, that's why I wanted to see a game here.



View of the warehouse from our seats.

So after the huge parking struggle, we get up to the gate and find...a long ass line. Starting to think it would have been a better idea to pre-order the tix. BUT! That didn't sway us. Stand in that line we did. Sweat and Stand. Walk 2 steps. Sweat and stand. Walk 2 steps.

Are we there yet?

No?

Fuck.



Only 4 more cattle herd rows to go! (That's no one we know in that pic...she just got in the way of me trying to get a picture of the stadium section picture on the wall).

Section 58, Row 15 x7 Please!

Turns out the Orioles number their sections funny. I found what I thought to be section 58 only to discover the numbers hanging from the rails were deceiving. Normally, I'd think the section was identified on the outside, but nope...designated on the inside. So we had to move once we got seated the first time. Was rather odd (or just a sign of how much the Orioles suck..) that we found the same 7 empty seats (seats 4-10, row 15) in section 60 that we did in Section 58 (seats 4-10, row 15...).



With it being 96F with 100% humidity, Drakus made a good call regarding getting tickets along the third base line. Why? No sun on us. Was still cramped seating and hot as fuck though, so this picture of this Diet Coke is to commemorate the one, and only time, I've ever been happy paying $5 for a Diet Coke. Not pictured is the empty canister that was housing the $4.50 ice cream I crushed.



Miguel Roidjada. One fan, after watching Tejada almost hit a homer declared:

"HEY TEJADA! GET BACK ON ROIDS!"



The outfielder's last name in this picture is "Pie". Simple right? Fuck no. It's pronounced "Pee-a" Suraph just resorted to calling him "Cake". Much simpler and, probably not coincidentally, reflected the opinions of some fans.

"HEY P.A.! GOD FORBID YOU GET THAT UNIFORM DIRTY!"

Fan was right. Cake managed to go the whole game w/o so much as a smudge.



Pictured Lower Right to uh....Guy with Ballcap:

Suraph - Kreoss - Erimentha - Kaelis - Drakus.



This is a picture of the Baltimore sky line during the night. Just random picture. :)


Onto the game itself in quick-note style:

- Before we were even completely seated, the Toronto leadoff hitter knocked the very first pitch out into the bleachers. 1-0 Blue Jays.

- Whoever is employed as the "Other Games" scoreboard operator needs to be fired. That damn thing was barely updated the entire game.

- Baltimore took the lead a few innings later 2-1.

- Baltimore quickly lost the lead later. Down 3-2.

- Some guy a few rows up had an entertaining conversation with the Beer Guy. It ended with:

Guy: MILLER LITE SUCKS
Beer Guy: IT'S COLD! THAT'S ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW!

- Toronto ended up winning 3-2. The important thing to note here is that no one in the ball park seemed to care. At least the 7 of us didn't. I cared more about the 10-5 drubbing Drakus' Yankees got at the hands of Kreoss' Devil Rays.

- The only thing missing from this event was someone who's been MIA for a long while. We needed a Canuck there since the game was basically USA vs. Canada.

Random pictures from the game:



Down at field level after the game was over.



The Orioles' retired numbers.



The shop Kay just had to get hats out of before the game started. :)



I amused Drakus.



Group shot! Left to right: Erimentha, Kaelis, me, Kaylea, Suraph, Kreoss, and Drakus.

And with that, we left...getting out of downtown Baltimore after a 30,000ish people event wasn't as bad as I thought it'd be. It really only took us about 20 minutes to get back to the interstate.

"If It's More Than Two Miles Off the Interstate, It Shouldn't Get a Sign"

The Crankyvenger had a decent head start on us though. We weren't exactly racing to get back, but we had agreed to meet up as we got closer to home so I could follow Suraph back up the mountain. At one point, Cranky had to pull off for gas, discovered the gas station mentioned on the road sign was about 7 miles off the highway, cussed a lot and got back onto the highway.

This waste of time caused him to mutter about the sub-title of this section for a good while. It also gave us a chance to catch up to him completely. I ended up actually passing him on the highway before he actually found a gas station.

State Trooper

As we got closer to home and back onto I-68, I happened to look in my rearview mirror and see the unmistakable headlights belonging to a Ford Crown Victoria. Anyone who's done any significant road travel understands that if a pair of these are tailgating you, you're probably about to get pulled over.

Well these were tailgating me and, trust me when I say, I've been pulled over enough to kind of get an idea of their habits. Yes I was speeding down that mountain highway to the tune of about 20mph over, but I was also in a huge crowd of cars all doing the same. I took the next opening in the right lane and merged into the traffic to try to force the trooper's hand. If he was going to pull me over, he'd follow me.

Fortunately, he didn't. However he got right up on the tail end of the Crankyolstice and proceeded to tailgate him for a good long while. Suraph didn't change lanes or even bother to slow down. Come to find out Suraph thought it was me the entire time. Eventually, the Trooper just decided to pass on the right and zip on down the highway at speeds easily exceeding 100mph (we were doing 85 when I saw him...).

The great part of this story is, Suraph apparently thought I was the one that was passing him and had his own special "WTF?!??!" moment as it relates to it. This was either due to him remembering that I didn't want to go too fast around those curves in an SUV or due to him forgetting about that and thinking I knew the way home myself...

Back Home

All of us were happy to get back after spending approximately 6 hours on the road and 3.5-4 hours outdoors, most of which were in sweltering conditions. After a short round of Castle Crashers and the obligatory checking of our AH items and whatnot, it was time to crash.

More Stories next week with (hopefully) a surprise video proving a long standing observation. :)

Cookout 2010 Stories: Vol 2

The second day was relatively uneventful. We mostly just hung out and shot the shit. Between various video games we were playing and Drakus' obsession with Magian trials...we managed to squeeze in some quality outdoor time under the stars and we managed to watch Zombieland.

However, my day started off with...

Stripes the Cat

Stripes is one of Suraph's two cats (the other being Gracie). Stripes doesn't like people much. This shouldn't come as a surprise given who his owner is, but I digress. It takes a bit for Stripes to warm up to you. Combine that with the fact that Stripes had never been to this particular environment before and you have a recipe for one scared cat.

So Friday morning rolls around and I stumble into the bathroom after waking up to be greeted by this:



Yes, Stripes the Cat, despite my door being shut, had managed to come into the room and hide out in the bathroom sink.



Obviously, my presence didn't scare him off.



He even stayed in the sink long enough for me to go find my phone to take pictures of him.



This apparent "fraidy cat" isn't too scared of cameras.



As you can see, he likes to pose.

Suraph says this is Stripes' way of showing he's warming up to you. It was also a game he seemed to like to play called "Let's see if those idiots can find me now".

At one point a couple hours after finding him in the sink, Suraph went to look for him since he didn't come up for food. We couldn't find him anywhere and started thinking a door had been left open and Stripes got out. We gave up after a bit hoping he'd just turn up once it got a little more quiet around the house.

About an hour after the search, Eri comes up exclaiming she had found Stripes.

You see...Stripes apparently found a small opening in the mattress Eri was taking a nap on. Upon laying down on said mattress, Stripes started moving around giving Eri the feeling she had just somehow landed herself in a Japanese anime. After a short bit of searching, she discovered said opening and Stripes the Cat's head peeking out of it.

Throughout the rest of the trip, we found Stripes the Cat in places like:

Laundry Hamper.
Luggage.
Bathtubs.
Trash Can.
Inside various cabinets.
Drakus' Beard.

(Ok, I'm kidding about that one...)

My personal favorite...



This would be Stripes the Cat figuring out how to enter the TV stand from the backend. The last day Suraph, Drakus and I were up there, we're eating dinner and playing Southpark's Tower Defense game when we see Stripes' head peek up over the TV. Mind you, this is a 40"ish LCD TV, so he had to do some work to peek up over that thing. Before we knew it, he was down in the stand crawling around before coming to rest next to the satellite box and the DVD player.

Needless to say, Stripes the Cat stole the show on many occasions.


Japanese Steakhouse

Dinner Friday night was provided by a Japanese Hibachi Steakhouse that Suraph was fond of. This, in and of itself, is surprising given everything at this place had flavor in it, but that's beside the point.

During dinner, I kept trying to figure out how to convince our chef to tilt the onion volcano in Kreo's direction to burn off his goatee.

The primary things of note during the dinner though were:

This restaurant has disco balls that light up when they sing Happy Birthday to someone...

This restaurant also buries little flashing fake ice cubes in bowls of ice that sushi is served over. This cube fascinated me to the point I basically unburied it and wondered just how water-proof it was. One toss into Kay's water later and I concluded it was indeed completely waterproof.

Once finished, we retreated back to Chateau de Cranky and lazed around some more.

4-Player-Palooza and Late Night Castle Crashing

Just reading this title makes it sound like we filmed our own version of "Harold and Kumar". So I probably need to say, no, we did not make "Kaelis and Kreo Go To White Castle" (although we did try to make "Kreoss Does Mountain Critters"). This title refers to a rather fun game called Castle Crashers.

http://www.castlecrashers.com/

I had been told about this game by Inbred before. I didn't bother downloading it at the time cause I already had enough on my plate to play. He professed how great this game was time and time again. While we were on a 4-Player, button mashing game kick playing games like TMNT: Arcade and TMNT: Turtles In Time, Suraph suggested we give Castle Crashers a try and that he had it stored on his USB drive.

So we pop it in and holy shit is that a fun game. Personally, I can't imagine trying to play this game solo, but if you got some buddies over and you got 4 controllers, hook that sumbitch up and play it. The humor is right up a group of guy's alley for the most part. For example:




Rocket-Shit Deer.

Trailer:



We generally traded off who was playing. Before we knew it, the women had gone to bed and it was 3 AM...

Looking back on it, I'm half surprised we didn't wake them up laughing at the Owl that shit itself to death.

On top of that, the music for this game is goddamn outstanding. If I ever find the soundtrack for this game, I'm buying it. I'm probably buying a copy for random people too since it's that goddamn outstanding.

Main theme for example:



I mean, how does that not get you pumped up to kick some ass? That's seriously a piece of music you put on while driving down the interstate challenging a Hurricane to come try to knock you off the road.

Anyway, as stated before...nothing much happened the 2nd day we were there. Just a whole lot of lazing around. More to come soon. :)