I'm having fun and everything, but this is the first time I feel I might have overdone it a little. Gonna finish one article today, somehow crank out the remaining three as we get closer to the weekend and next week it's time for another huge article, a medium article and a video. And then I'm just gonna chill for a week! I hope. Wait... I think that's when my column is due. Aw crap, I need a vacation! -_-
There's a very cool side effect to all this work, though: Money. So much money, in fact, that I'm starting to lose track of all the money I have or am about to receive. It's a great feeling when you check your bank account and find a surprise 300 Euros and you can't fucking remember why that amount has been paid out to you in the first place! Now, don't get the wrong idea - I'm not filthy rich now or anything. But I'm used to juuuuuust about managing to pay my bills and having a little something left for food. No money to go out, order a pizza or do anything fun. And right now, well... I think we're gonna make an appointment at the register office sooner rather than later. And wedding plans aside, we can actually afford proper, real food, the odd takeaway here and there, all our bills are paid and we're pretty much debt-free. I haven't slept so well (and so much!) in years!
I have started another playthrough on Dragon Age, hoping to finish both games before Inquisition is released, even though they probably won't let us import savegames, anyway. I'm dying to play Saints Row IV, but I didn't even buy the game, knowing I wouldn't find the time. I'd cry myself to sleep every night. Argh! Oh yeah and we're also doing this:
I could fill another 28 million paragraphs about how complex this game has become since I've last played it and how they finally made all kinds of ship and character types viable. In the past, you'd play a tactical officer in an escort ship or you'd suck. But with the addition of special duty officer abilities and certain skill tweaks, it's now entirely possible to run a cruiser or a science ship and outperform any hurrdurr cannonboat escort. Which doesn't mean they suck now or anything, they're just no longer the one and only way to play.
The downside is that the Bear and I are completely nerding out over setups and builds. You need to set up a skill tree. A selection of traits. Ship gear. Item sets for ships, which grant all kinds of bonuses. Choose bridge officers, whose abilities greatly affect the way your ship performs in battle. Choose duty officers, who provide buffs to your regeneration, cooldowns, resistances and all kinds of things, depending on how you set them up. Reputation passive abilities, which may raise your shield rating or your crit chance, depending on how you specialize.
Like all Cryptic games, Star Trek Online is very casual-friendly and you don't need to look into any of that stuff in order to beat 99% of the PvE content. On the competitive side of things, however, you can spend endless amounts of time and money upgrading, fine-tuning and optimizing stuff. It's so deep, complex and full of possibilities, I can't remember the last time I've seen anything like it. Probably never, at least in an MMORPG. Everything needs to be idiot-proof, streamlined, intuitive... STO feels rather nice and refreshing with its complex ship setups. Hope that's all here to stay.
Also, spiders. We're breeding them. Sort of. Having spent several years around reptiles and their creepy, crawly live food, my phobia of spiders has more or less fixed itself. I wouldn't exactly pet one of those many-legged fuckers, but I can tolerate 'em. Which turned out to be a bad idea. You know, I'm not a huge fan of just squishing them. They're living, breathing beings, creepy or not. They have to live somewhere. Doesn't seem fair to just kill them, because they happen to hang around the house. And there's a positive side effect: We didn't have any fucking mosquitoes this year. The spiders are incredibly efficient at keeping them away. Alas, they're also rather efficient at reproduction. What started out as half a dozen or so tolerated spiders has turned into entire families of them. The problem is gonna fix itself, now that it's getting colder and all, but the whole thing did get a little out of hand. Not a big deal for the most part, but it's a bit annoying when you touch one of the fait, hairy ones instead of the light switch.
Speaking of hairy - my hair's gone! You see, I was always rather proud of my long, wild mane. It's all rawr and manly and shit. But after more than a half decade of just growing that crap and never getting a haircut, I had so many split ends, the whole thing looked so thin and flimsy and awful, I needed a reset of sorts. So Claire shaved my head. We both expected the worst and we were both surprised by what a sexy beast I still am. I have a good face. Hurray! Let's wait and see what I'll grow this time. My entire scalp is covered in manly stubbles, there are no alarming bald patches or anything, which is always good. Maybe just go for short hair this time around, like normal people. Or let it grow if it's actually still thick enough. Can't really tell before it's back. Heck, maybe we'll do a regular shave, because it actually looks kinda nice. Who woulda thunk?
Oh well. Between the start and the end of this entry, I have finished my first article for the week. Only three more to go. More money. Awesome!
-Cat
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