It's CoD Ghosts Double XP weekend. Right now. And I'm not playing. I've warmed up to the game a little more, simply because I fucking love having a guard dog and a little vulture drone following me in multiplayer, but if it wasn't for Claire and our friend playing it, as well as the insane amount of money I have spent on those hardened editions, I would have uninstalled this stupid game a day or two after release.
This game sports some of the biggest maps I have ever seen in any CoD, some of them three times as big as any map on Black Ops 2. How they still can't implement a proper spawning system is entirely beyond me. You spawn, you get shot in the back the same second. And it happens a lot. You'd think that on a map, which is the size of a small continent, the game would find a safe spot for you to appear after death, which doesn't immediately put you into the crosshairs of an enemy player. Being 64bit only, Ghosts is also incompatible with VAC and the paranoia regarding hacks and cheats is growing every day. And rightfully so, if you're looking at what's currently going on over at Youtube.
I've been experimenting with Nvidia's ShadowPlay some more and for the most part, I like it better than Fraps. There is no huge performance hit when recording in full 1080p, which is a huge advantage over Fraps, Playclaw and the like. Unlike these programs, ShadowPlay also records in 2-4k ultraHD, which I like. I'm a bit dissatisfied with the recording options, though. Shadowplay automatically encodes footage in .H264 and reduces the output quality a little too much in my opinion. And it records everything in the exact same frame rate it plays, resulting in 60fps video material, which is nice, but utterly useless for Youtube. It also results in larger file sizes than necessary. Still, it's a very early version, it's all still in its testing stages and it's already shaping up to become a new favourite.
I've recorded some STO gameplay in UltraHD and am putting it on my Youtube channel right now. Again, the final result doesn't look any better or different than stuff recorded with Fraps, what with Youtube's awful compression methods and everything, but the whole thing is smoother, less choppy and more enjoyable to watch. I've recorded a Starbase 24 Scenario with dozens upon dozens of ships, so there's still some stuttering going on, but that's due to the crappy game engine and happens anyway, recording or not.
I'm also taking care of gaming-related weekend news, which is a bit of a pointless job right now. All the important people are covering Blizzcon and that's exactly what all the news is about. People wanna know about Draenor, the angel of death and the heroes of the storm and with all of that being covered by other writers, I'm kinda just sitting here looking for scraps. Oh hey, new update for Allods Online. Whee! :P
Warlords of Draenor looks awesome. Looking at my newsfeed I get this huge wave of negativity from people complaining about how it's just "filler" content and too horde-centric and not enough Burning Legion and all kinds of shit like that. I wouldn't go back to WoW if I got paid to do it (and in my line of work, that's an actual possibility), but even then, this thing looks like the most exciting expansion since Burning Crusade to me. There's also the usual amount of people on Facebook proclaiming the "death" of WoW. Yeeeah... wouldn't bet any money on that one.
With Hugo being tame enough for hand-feeding, I'm spending a lot more time around his tank. He tends to knock around his decoration a bit and his water bowl gets dirty all the time, but we used to wait for him to fall asleep before fixing any of these problems, because he gets a little too... attached to human hands when they get too close to his vivarium. But I think he has reached the point where he can tell fingers from mice, chicken and bacon, so you can actually reach right in there, rearrange his stuff, give him fresh water and all that. I come over there every night with a piece of chicken.
He's getting incredibly huge and heavy. He's by no means overweight - we're taking absolute care of that. He's just massive in size. It's really fun. Little dinosaur getting up on his tail and hind legs to say hello. Makes me wanna pick him up and hug him. He's not a huge fan of that, but he puts up with it. Most of the time. :P
-Cat
Samstag, 9. November 2013
Dienstag, 5. November 2013
Are you an idiot with more money than common sense? Buy Call of Duty: Ghosts!
I'm cranked on four cans of Monster and I could play Ghosts all night long. Except, first I couldn't and now I don't want to. Dear god, how much I wish I could have the 200 Quid back, which I wasted on these two Hardened Editions. And we were all so hyped up!
I've spent hundreds of hours playing every CoD online since Modern Warfare 2. I liked some of them better than others, but they were all good games and I liked them. Ghosts looked amazing, I was still having fun on Black Ops 2 and getting the next brand new CoD seemed to make sense. What the fuck have they done?
The game looks dull, grey and washed out. Yes, sure, we're in the war, everything is destroyed, there's no room for happy colours, but damn, this stuff is depressing! What's even more depressing is how the singleplayer campaign apparently only takes four hours to beat (yay, twice as long as Homefront!), the textures are low-resolution and seriously boring, yet the whole damn thing requires 50 gigs worth of space. How? Why? How the fuck can this pile of crap take up so much space?
Okay, I don't really play CoD for the visuals, but this thing was supposed to be "next gen". It was supposed to be a brand new engine (which later turned out to be a lie and they've just tuned up the same ol' Quake engine some more). It's only gonna be rendered in 720p on the Xbox One. On a next generation console. Sounds like one seriously demanding game, right? Well... strangely enough, it is. Game won't even boot up with anything less than 6 gigs of RAM - and it looks like something from 2008, if that.
Oh well. Claire and I tried to team up, which took countless hours of fiddling with our router. Our NAT shows as 'strict' with all ports known to man being wide open, UPNP active, we've even tried a fucking DMZ, but to no avail. And finding a lag-free game via matchmaking with a strict NAT is about as likely as finding actual chicken inside a McNugget. The real fun began when one of our friends back in Germany wanted to join the fun. Which worked, once, for about five minutes. Then all of us got kicked out of the game. "Lost connection to host". Because fuck dedicated servers in 2013. And since finding a new match took its sweet time, our friend tried to minimize the game (alt+tab is disabled, but ctrl+alt+del works), which caused the game to freeze his entire system.
When he got back, he could no longer connect to any multiplayer mode whatsoever. "Server is currently not available". Both the official forums and the Steam forums are full of complaints regarding that exact same problem, but there's no known fix as of yet. So, back to just Claire and I - after three hours of pointless messing about, trying to get our friend back in the game.
And even with just the two of us, the whole experience was punishing, to say the least. It is perfectly normal on CoD Ghosts to unload round after round after round into an enemy player when walking around a corner, only to die in what looks to be a single shot, within a fracture of a second. On the resulting killcam, you can see yourself casually strutting right into the enemy gunfire without as much as firing a single shot. Lag compensation? Client-side hit detection? Hard to say, because there's no way to tell your damn ping in the game. Ping rates are no longer shown in CoD Ghosts.
Speaking of missing features included in previous CoD games: Theatre mode? Gone. Emblem editor? Gone. A goddamn FOV-slider? Fucking GONE! Ghosts sports a default FOV of 65 - which, when sitting in front of a big PC screen results in headaches, as the whole thing looks seriously zoomed in. There is a 3rd party FOV-changer to help fix the problem, but Activision aren't too keen on people using it. The site hosting the FOV-changer has received a court order, the download had since been removed and one may get banned for using this handy little tool. I'm not kidding. Let me make this perfectly clear: There is a tool out there, which allows me to do something the game should let me do anyway (and has done in every CoD before) and I refrain from using it, out of fear that I might get caught and banned for it!
If you're somewhat familiar with the pre-release footage of the game, you'll probably know about the supposedly super awesome sound-overhaul and the best ingame sound effects in any Call of Duty and what have you. Well, my game sounds tinny, crappy and not overwhelming at all. So I figured, hey, maybe it's just my settings, right? So I checked, and... you're not gonna believe this, but the Ghosts audio settings consist of volume control and... and nothing. That's it. No speaker setup, no individual sliders for speech, music, sound FX, nothing. Just one master volume slider and that's it. And while we're already at it - sound effects changing with your environments was cool and new well over a decade ago, back when Soundblaster Live was new.
I could go on and on and on. About how they've recycled half of the soldier voiceover files from Black Ops 2. How they're still using the same pre-rendered death animations from ten years ago, including a hilarious headshot death sequence, where the character double-facepalms in slow-motion, seemingly trying to locate their nose. I've never been shot in the face before, but I'm relatively sure this is not the way I'd react. Ragdolls? PhysX? Nope. Floating guns, corpses and other crap all over the place!
So, the game looks and sounds mediocre at best. At least that means it performs alright, yes? Ha! Have you seen Battlefield 4? That shit looks amazing! You do get some frame-dips there, even on powerful systems, but damn, it looks SO good! Then there's Ghosts. You fire up the title screen and - BAM! 37 FPS! THE TITLE SCREEN LAGS! The sound stutters, the mouse jumps all over the screen, the fucking thing is so laggy, it's actually quite difficult to click on the online mode to start!
I'm running a decent Quadcore setup here. With a reasonably beefy GTX 770. The 4GB Zotac one. I play a seriously modded Skyrim with ENB and grass on steroids and god knows what else on a smooth, steady 60 FPS in 2k Ultra HD.
Ghosts? Look at the Steam forums! There are countless people demanding a refund, because the game won't even launch if you don't have at least 6 gigs of memory! Ironically, it never uses more than 2 gigs and the minimum requirements section at the Steam store page clearly states that 6 GB are required, but that's beside the point. Why is this game so demanding? Why does it run like crap, even on decent hardware? It sure as fuck isn't related to any stunning, breath-taking visuals, because there aren't any.
I want to like this game. Really, I do. Because it was hideously expensive. And some of the gunplay, when not completely ruined by awful lag and shitty matchmaking, feels pretty solid. I actually like the weapon handling, I think some of the scorestreaks are pretty awesome and a lot more exciting than the same old stuff we've been getting year after year after year. Problem is, when basic features such as a fucking ping meter, fov-slider or sound settings aren't there and the greatest challenge lies within finding a lag-free game that I can join with friends, then I can't help but feel seriously ripped off. But I suppose that's what you get when all the good folks from Infinity Ward are off working on Titanfall and the studio is but a shadow of its former self. Grrr!
Ghosts has a stunning user rating of 1.7 on Metacritic right now, with the console versions following somewhere around 2.3 and 3.0 as of this moment. And I've already seen some reviewers out there go crazy over how fucking good this game is supposed to be. Did they even play this thing? Incompetent fucks, the lot of them.
On a happier note, here's Hugo being fed by hand.
-Cat
I've spent hundreds of hours playing every CoD online since Modern Warfare 2. I liked some of them better than others, but they were all good games and I liked them. Ghosts looked amazing, I was still having fun on Black Ops 2 and getting the next brand new CoD seemed to make sense. What the fuck have they done?
The game looks dull, grey and washed out. Yes, sure, we're in the war, everything is destroyed, there's no room for happy colours, but damn, this stuff is depressing! What's even more depressing is how the singleplayer campaign apparently only takes four hours to beat (yay, twice as long as Homefront!), the textures are low-resolution and seriously boring, yet the whole damn thing requires 50 gigs worth of space. How? Why? How the fuck can this pile of crap take up so much space?
Okay, I don't really play CoD for the visuals, but this thing was supposed to be "next gen". It was supposed to be a brand new engine (which later turned out to be a lie and they've just tuned up the same ol' Quake engine some more). It's only gonna be rendered in 720p on the Xbox One. On a next generation console. Sounds like one seriously demanding game, right? Well... strangely enough, it is. Game won't even boot up with anything less than 6 gigs of RAM - and it looks like something from 2008, if that.
Oh well. Claire and I tried to team up, which took countless hours of fiddling with our router. Our NAT shows as 'strict' with all ports known to man being wide open, UPNP active, we've even tried a fucking DMZ, but to no avail. And finding a lag-free game via matchmaking with a strict NAT is about as likely as finding actual chicken inside a McNugget. The real fun began when one of our friends back in Germany wanted to join the fun. Which worked, once, for about five minutes. Then all of us got kicked out of the game. "Lost connection to host". Because fuck dedicated servers in 2013. And since finding a new match took its sweet time, our friend tried to minimize the game (alt+tab is disabled, but ctrl+alt+del works), which caused the game to freeze his entire system.
When he got back, he could no longer connect to any multiplayer mode whatsoever. "Server is currently not available". Both the official forums and the Steam forums are full of complaints regarding that exact same problem, but there's no known fix as of yet. So, back to just Claire and I - after three hours of pointless messing about, trying to get our friend back in the game.
And even with just the two of us, the whole experience was punishing, to say the least. It is perfectly normal on CoD Ghosts to unload round after round after round into an enemy player when walking around a corner, only to die in what looks to be a single shot, within a fracture of a second. On the resulting killcam, you can see yourself casually strutting right into the enemy gunfire without as much as firing a single shot. Lag compensation? Client-side hit detection? Hard to say, because there's no way to tell your damn ping in the game. Ping rates are no longer shown in CoD Ghosts.
Speaking of missing features included in previous CoD games: Theatre mode? Gone. Emblem editor? Gone. A goddamn FOV-slider? Fucking GONE! Ghosts sports a default FOV of 65 - which, when sitting in front of a big PC screen results in headaches, as the whole thing looks seriously zoomed in. There is a 3rd party FOV-changer to help fix the problem, but Activision aren't too keen on people using it. The site hosting the FOV-changer has received a court order, the download had since been removed and one may get banned for using this handy little tool. I'm not kidding. Let me make this perfectly clear: There is a tool out there, which allows me to do something the game should let me do anyway (and has done in every CoD before) and I refrain from using it, out of fear that I might get caught and banned for it!
If you're somewhat familiar with the pre-release footage of the game, you'll probably know about the supposedly super awesome sound-overhaul and the best ingame sound effects in any Call of Duty and what have you. Well, my game sounds tinny, crappy and not overwhelming at all. So I figured, hey, maybe it's just my settings, right? So I checked, and... you're not gonna believe this, but the Ghosts audio settings consist of volume control and... and nothing. That's it. No speaker setup, no individual sliders for speech, music, sound FX, nothing. Just one master volume slider and that's it. And while we're already at it - sound effects changing with your environments was cool and new well over a decade ago, back when Soundblaster Live was new.
I could go on and on and on. About how they've recycled half of the soldier voiceover files from Black Ops 2. How they're still using the same pre-rendered death animations from ten years ago, including a hilarious headshot death sequence, where the character double-facepalms in slow-motion, seemingly trying to locate their nose. I've never been shot in the face before, but I'm relatively sure this is not the way I'd react. Ragdolls? PhysX? Nope. Floating guns, corpses and other crap all over the place!
So, the game looks and sounds mediocre at best. At least that means it performs alright, yes? Ha! Have you seen Battlefield 4? That shit looks amazing! You do get some frame-dips there, even on powerful systems, but damn, it looks SO good! Then there's Ghosts. You fire up the title screen and - BAM! 37 FPS! THE TITLE SCREEN LAGS! The sound stutters, the mouse jumps all over the screen, the fucking thing is so laggy, it's actually quite difficult to click on the online mode to start!
I'm running a decent Quadcore setup here. With a reasonably beefy GTX 770. The 4GB Zotac one. I play a seriously modded Skyrim with ENB and grass on steroids and god knows what else on a smooth, steady 60 FPS in 2k Ultra HD.
Ghosts? Look at the Steam forums! There are countless people demanding a refund, because the game won't even launch if you don't have at least 6 gigs of memory! Ironically, it never uses more than 2 gigs and the minimum requirements section at the Steam store page clearly states that 6 GB are required, but that's beside the point. Why is this game so demanding? Why does it run like crap, even on decent hardware? It sure as fuck isn't related to any stunning, breath-taking visuals, because there aren't any.
I want to like this game. Really, I do. Because it was hideously expensive. And some of the gunplay, when not completely ruined by awful lag and shitty matchmaking, feels pretty solid. I actually like the weapon handling, I think some of the scorestreaks are pretty awesome and a lot more exciting than the same old stuff we've been getting year after year after year. Problem is, when basic features such as a fucking ping meter, fov-slider or sound settings aren't there and the greatest challenge lies within finding a lag-free game that I can join with friends, then I can't help but feel seriously ripped off. But I suppose that's what you get when all the good folks from Infinity Ward are off working on Titanfall and the studio is but a shadow of its former self. Grrr!
Ghosts has a stunning user rating of 1.7 on Metacritic right now, with the console versions following somewhere around 2.3 and 3.0 as of this moment. And I've already seen some reviewers out there go crazy over how fucking good this game is supposed to be. Did they even play this thing? Incompetent fucks, the lot of them.
On a happier note, here's Hugo being fed by hand.
-Cat
Mittwoch, 30. Oktober 2013
Living with Monsters
The mighty predator is stalking his prey in our living room: An unsuspecting shoe. He's gonna bite it, drag it into a corner and then he'll chew around on it for five minutes. I gotta keep an eye on him, because he's just waiting for me to stop looking, so he can sneak off into the kitchen and steal the cat food. He tolerates the cats, though, food envy aside. He's visiting my cat inside her little cardboard box, but I don't think they speak the same language. He's a bit hyper. Been a while since his last walk.
Hard to believe Hugo Bosc looked like that just a year ago:
Now he's a 4ft monster, which is still growing. And will be, for the rest of his life. Which may well be another two or three decades. And he fascinates me more and more each day. Look at this:
It's hard to describe how excited I am about this guy living with us, without sounding like a complete lunatic. What you can see here is a completely tame, friendly and extremely curious reptile. He stands up on his tail and hind legs and even climbs on his bag of soil to have a better look at what's going on in his tank, he plays with his shoe and he walks up to me to have a drink and say hello. Hugo rests and warms up in his tank, but other than that, he spends a lot of time walking around the house. It felt weird and I was a bit paranoid the first couple of times, because I didn't know what to expect.
I knew nothing about monitor lizards when we got him, the usual guides and manuals about proper care and feeding aside. The idea of having him roam around the place seemed stupid at best - he'd probably get stuck under some furniture and crap everywhere! But as it turned out, I didn't give the big guy enough credit.
Claire started "training" him for this sort of thing when he was still a baby. She'd hold him by the tail and follow him around the place as he explored everything. He wasn't even half the size of our cats back then, so if anything scared him or or he tried to run away, Claire would be right there. Nowadays he shares the place with our cats, he's fully housebroken and completely clean and he's utterly fun to watch. Sadly, what you can't see on the video is how he climbed up her leg at one point. That was pretty surprising, although he was probably just looking for food.
I'm amazed by this for two reasons. First of all, it's incredibly exciting to live with an intelligent, exotic animal like him. I've always had cats, my parents had a dog, but how much cooler is it to share the couch with a big freakin' lizard? Well... unless you're totally disgusted by lizards, I suppose. How many of you can say that they watch tv, cuddle and play with a lizard? And I'm not talking about something that just puts up with you like a bearded dragon. I love beardies, but let's face it - they just put up with it. You pick 'em up, place them on your shoulder or in your lap and most of the time they just stay there, because they have nowhere else to go and they do very little aside from eating and sleeping. Having a 4 foot monster play tug of war with you is an entirely different story. Yes, tug of war:
The other reason I'm so in awe of our monster is how monitor lizards are still so completely new as pets. Humans have owned dogs and cats have owned humans for as long as any of them existed. But while Mr. John Caveman took care of his domestic, furry sabretooth animals, he probably didn't care much for gimp dinosaurs. Especially since proper UV lighting and heating arrangements were incredibly hard to afford back in the stone age.
Big lizards aren't very well-documented. Self-proclaimed experts, reptile enthusiasts and pet owners argue about the perfect set-up, ideal food and substrate, as well as pet behaviour, intelligence and personality. Monitor lizards aren't as well-explored as more common pets and most pet monitors aren't tame and rarely ever leave their tanks. Having Hugo run around the place along with our other animals and getting him used to them, spending a fair amount of time playing with him and keeping him active every day - the whole thing isn't just new to us; it's new full stop. The fact that he could be so friendly and playful and have such an inquisitive nature is completely unexpected and utterly fascinating.
We'd fully expect this kind of behaviour from a cat or a dog, but associating these things with a cold-blooded reptile, a creature most of us would expect to be boring, aggressive and slimy, is forever changing the way I look at these guys. I dare not say how much of this is just natural, territorial behaviour and looking for food, but to be fair, when my cat comes sucking up to me, it's usually just about food, as well. We still love and appreciate them for that, so why not give a little credit to Hugo, who will play with you and climb up your leg, ulteriour motive or not?
- Cat
Hard to believe Hugo Bosc looked like that just a year ago:
Now he's a 4ft monster, which is still growing. And will be, for the rest of his life. Which may well be another two or three decades. And he fascinates me more and more each day. Look at this:
I knew nothing about monitor lizards when we got him, the usual guides and manuals about proper care and feeding aside. The idea of having him roam around the place seemed stupid at best - he'd probably get stuck under some furniture and crap everywhere! But as it turned out, I didn't give the big guy enough credit.
Claire started "training" him for this sort of thing when he was still a baby. She'd hold him by the tail and follow him around the place as he explored everything. He wasn't even half the size of our cats back then, so if anything scared him or or he tried to run away, Claire would be right there. Nowadays he shares the place with our cats, he's fully housebroken and completely clean and he's utterly fun to watch. Sadly, what you can't see on the video is how he climbed up her leg at one point. That was pretty surprising, although he was probably just looking for food.
I'm amazed by this for two reasons. First of all, it's incredibly exciting to live with an intelligent, exotic animal like him. I've always had cats, my parents had a dog, but how much cooler is it to share the couch with a big freakin' lizard? Well... unless you're totally disgusted by lizards, I suppose. How many of you can say that they watch tv, cuddle and play with a lizard? And I'm not talking about something that just puts up with you like a bearded dragon. I love beardies, but let's face it - they just put up with it. You pick 'em up, place them on your shoulder or in your lap and most of the time they just stay there, because they have nowhere else to go and they do very little aside from eating and sleeping. Having a 4 foot monster play tug of war with you is an entirely different story. Yes, tug of war:
April 2013
The other reason I'm so in awe of our monster is how monitor lizards are still so completely new as pets. Humans have owned dogs and cats have owned humans for as long as any of them existed. But while Mr. John Caveman took care of his domestic, furry sabretooth animals, he probably didn't care much for gimp dinosaurs. Especially since proper UV lighting and heating arrangements were incredibly hard to afford back in the stone age.
Big lizards aren't very well-documented. Self-proclaimed experts, reptile enthusiasts and pet owners argue about the perfect set-up, ideal food and substrate, as well as pet behaviour, intelligence and personality. Monitor lizards aren't as well-explored as more common pets and most pet monitors aren't tame and rarely ever leave their tanks. Having Hugo run around the place along with our other animals and getting him used to them, spending a fair amount of time playing with him and keeping him active every day - the whole thing isn't just new to us; it's new full stop. The fact that he could be so friendly and playful and have such an inquisitive nature is completely unexpected and utterly fascinating.
We'd fully expect this kind of behaviour from a cat or a dog, but associating these things with a cold-blooded reptile, a creature most of us would expect to be boring, aggressive and slimy, is forever changing the way I look at these guys. I dare not say how much of this is just natural, territorial behaviour and looking for food, but to be fair, when my cat comes sucking up to me, it's usually just about food, as well. We still love and appreciate them for that, so why not give a little credit to Hugo, who will play with you and climb up your leg, ulteriour motive or not?
- Cat
Montag, 21. Oktober 2013
Techno-Slave
The other day, I've spent a whole paragraph whining about people, who can't leave the house without checking Facebook every two minutes on their smartphones, giving me an excuse not to own one. One that sounds cooler than, "Can't afford it." Well, now I'm at home, Facebook is having issues and I can't post any status updates and there is a million completely redundant things I want to share in status updates. How utterly pathetic!
Stuff about dragons, for one. I'm playing Dragon's Prophet, playing with Poundland rubber dragons, playing Dragon Age: Origins, hoping to get in the right mood for Dragon Age 3, which I can't seem to care about very much right now. I've finished Origins the week it came out and forgotten about most of the story, so I'm having a lot of fun on my current playthrough, which is nearing its end, unfortunately. There were some big surprises, both good and bad.
For instance, I couldn't believe it when I realized the game was only released in 2009. In many aspects, it feels so old, ancient, awkward, eldritch even. Always wanted to use that word in my blog.
My character remains silent throughout the entire game and just blankly stares into the scenery while everyone else gets kickass voice acting and okay-ish facial expressions and gestures. I completely forgot about that! Switching to the tactical top-down perspective in dungeons causes the focused toon to walk right out of the screen most of the time, with the camera not following the action. Setting up AI tactics is annoying and complicated and makes characters like shape-shifting Morrigan completely useless if left to the AI. You just can't tell the AI when and how to use spells or change shape into animals, what animals to change into and what animal abilities to use. You gotta play her by hand or leave her out of the party. And the visuals... man, the game wasn't much to look at back in 2009!
 |
| Though with the right settings and mods... |
 |
| ...it still looks decent. |
But this game is so, sooo damn good! Specialising the three basic classes, turning a rogue into a sneaky assassin or a ranger, who summons animal companions to her side, teaching your squishy healer to become an arcane warrior and seeing how it all plays out on the battlefield is utterly satisfying. And I love the setting, because it isn't all happy happy joy joy, it's dark, it's depressing and everybody is just a little bit fucked. All templars are addicted to Lyrium and eventually lose their marbles, mages have a tendency to turn into vegetables or abominations and the oh so heroic Grey Wardens force you to drink the blood of your enemies (which is likely to kill you) and stab you in the face if you try to walk out. And then you're haunted by nightmares for the rest of your life - on the plus side, said rest is relatively short, because the Darkspawn blood causes people to go insane over time.
The whole thing is full of rape, murder, treason and plot. Sure, the story itself isn't the most original thing of all times and I'm nowhere near the edge of my seat, dying to find out how it all ends. But the characters are the most lovable and exciting bunch this side of Mass Effect.
I just hope I can get myself to finish Dragon Age 2 when I'm done with Origins. I tried it once and gave up after just a few hours. Character management was dumbed down, I didn't like the new party members very much and the interiours of caves, buildings, everything just fucking repeated over and over again. Turns out that higher resolution textures and faster-paced combat isn't everything. Oh well. Back then I was all hyped up and got disappointed. Now I fully expect DA2 to suck, so maybe I'm in for a pleasant surprise. Fat chance, right?
In other news, Blizzard won their lawsuit against the developers of Shadow Bot and Pocket Gnome. I love this bit in Ceiling Fan Software's official statement:
"[...]pursue our right to operate and our customer’s right to play WoW as they choose". Their right. Their right to use bots, to cheat, gain an unfair advantage over other players and to break the rules. Nice. They've also added a link to their paypal account in case you're interested in donating to help these assholes cover their legal fees.
The real fun started when I translated this article and posted it on my employer's website. Comments section. On top of the usual "Yay! Go Blizzard! Fuck bots!" and the teenage renegade "bots aren't so bad, I also buy gold on ebay ololol" bullcrap, another bot developer had taken the opportunity to advertise his own product underneath the article. The best part was when he shared stories about alleged thank you letters, which he supposedly received from a disabled player, who could now finally experience World of Warcraft by having a bot play for him. How touching.
What really fascinates me is how some users actually suck up to this asshole. Let's face the facts for a moment: This guy is one of the reasons why every BG in WoW is populated by bots, which walk in a straight line, spam auto attacks and are generally a waste of space and potentially lose the whole damn thing for your side whenever you get stuck with them. And the people using them get their gear in their sleep. This isn't fair, it takes the fun out of the game, it's against the rules and the guy selling this software doesn't give a shit, because he's sitting on a soft, comfy pile of money. And he's blatantly advertising his crap, because "it helps people with disabilities enjoy WoW". Yes, I'm sure that's what he had in mind when he decided to offer his bot for money. He's an asshole. He's the very definition of asshole. If you look up "asshole" in a dictionary, you'll probably see a picture of David Cameron, but this guy is close.
And then you get people, who ask the guy about his "motivation" to sell his bot, aside from money. "Certainly, it can't be your goal to upset the player base with your product or to annoy a huge amount of people. So what are you trying to achieve, what are your expectations?" Almost funny if it wasn't so messed up. He's SELLING a program that PLAYS THE GODDAMN GAME FOR YOU, what the fuck do you THINK his "motivation" is? He's exploiting lazy fuckers with more money than common sense, he doesn't give a shit about the community or how it affects the game. And he sure as fuck didn't have the well-being of sentient, limbless torsos in mind, who crave to play WoW, or else he wouldn't take money for the damn thing. Why the FUCK would you treat scum like that with any respect, let alone pretend they gave two shits about how their bots take a good amount of fun out of the damn game? What is this, Stockholm Syndrome 2.0?
Ah fuck it, I'm gonna go take a ragedump.
-Cat
Samstag, 19. Oktober 2013
Anniversary Fun
Claire checked Facebook yesterday and noticed a relationship status message. "Oh shit, it's our six year anniversary!" Thanks, Facebook! It's great how social media reminds us of all the important events in our lives from birthdays to anniversaries, making women a little more obsolete in the process. Of course there are certain disadvantages to these automatic reminders, as well. It's a bit awkward when one of your contacts has died and still receives dozens of birthday messages. You gotta keep that stuff in mind when you post on people's walls. "If you're still alive - happy birthday! Otherwise, please ignore this message." Problem solved.
I even have friends, who deliberately put up false birth dates on their FB to see who their "real friends" are, i.e. people, who remember the correct birthday. You incredible dickheads, you! Anyhow - as far as we know, Facebook knows our proper anniversary date, so we had to go out to town. I'm applying the finishing touches to my final ever Neverwinter class guide this very moment to cover our expenses. And we didn't go all nuts, either. Just the fancy burger place again. And damn, did we feel like a bunch of weirdos!
The Gourmet Burger Kitchen is incredibly hip. Or trendy. Or some shit term kids use these days to describe a stylish, modern eatery that attracts young folk. Young, beautiful people in fashionable outfits at every table. It was like a tiny, alternate universe, which exists in the middle of a city, where people go to the supermarket in their pyjamas. You can go to Nottingham any day of the week and run into people dressed up as cowboys. Or a fucking Borg from Star Trek, with an unsatiable appetite for dry spaghetti, straight out of the packet.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not making fun or anything. I'm a guy who plays video games for a living. I look like a guy who plays video games for a living. A country where absolutely no one gives a shit about personal appearance is a huge plus to me. Which only makes it scarier when you enter a restaurant and the first thing you think is: "Okay, we're the ugliest people around." Claire shaved my head a few weeks ago and it has grown back to the point where it looks like this:
You know, the perfect length to stand up in all directions, but still too short to be styled into anything useful. Claire was having a great hair day, but she was also soaking wet. She's a sweat factory. I don't know how she does it. Must be a glandular problem or something.
Okay. Ugly hair dude and sweaty girl looking at the menu. And the waitress babbled on and on and on about their "loyalty app". Apparently that's a thing now. Scan a qr code every time you get there, get rewards or some shit, I don't know. She wouldn't shut up about it. I tried to get a word in, failed twice, finally gave up and blatantly interrupted her: "We don't have a smartphone."
Silence. Absolute silence. If you had walked into the restaurant at that exact moment, you would have thought I had said something among the lines of, "Hitler was right." She just stared at me in disbelief. I wasn't sure whether she was gonna start crying, whether I was about to be stabbed with a fork or whether she was just going to quietly point at the door.
"Oh...", she said. Yeah. Oh. "Do... um... do you just want to look at the menu?" She quietly teleported away, not looking us in the eyes. It was surreal. Like telling a vegan you start every day by devouring one live baby cow. Whole.
Yes, I know. My job functions entirely through the internet, it's all about gaming and then I don't even have a fucking smartphone. Well - what for? It takes about ten seconds to get from my bed to my work place and there is no bus stop in the corridor. I get new jobs, feedback, all kinds of work-related stuff strictly by email. All my friends are in Germany. I'm not gonna call them on a fucking mobile when I go out.
Besides - believe it or not - I don't want to check on work-related stuff, Facebook or people's stupid Instagram photos of their stupid sandwiches when I go out!
Look... you've probably experienced this, yourself: You're having a conversation with somebody and they check their fucking phone. While you're talking to them. They don't look at you - they look at their damn smartphones! It's annoying enough when I get work-related phone calls and I can hear the guy on the other end typing away on his keyboard going, "mhm... hm... mhm..." and it couldn't be any more obvious that they don't give a shit about anything I have to say. I don't need that kind of crap when I go out. When I go out, I wanna have a good time, I wanna talk or, call me crazy, just enjoy the food and the moment without any god damn talking at all!
Oh well. The wild boar burger was off the menu and the "chargrilled" chicken burger was thoroughly burned. The rosemary fries were pretty awesome. It was fun, I don't regret it, but there was that lingering feeling of, "I could have cooked that myself, it would have cost 25% of what we just paid and it would have been better". I usually get that when eating in a pub, but not a place with "Gourmet" in the name. Still. Anniversary lunch and all that. And we still had a 50% off voucher from Domino's!
A much more exciting thing we've done to celebrate our anniversary was a trip to Poundland. Damn you, Stuart Ashen! I've never been to Poundland before. You know, one of those places where everything costs a pound. I've always imagined the place to look like some kind of indoor yard sale. All kinds of random crap piled up and lots of people rummaging through it. But actually, Poundland looks more like a supermarket. A really shitty supermarket. They had highly unpleasant Haribo halloween cupcakes, canned "food", screwdrivers, razor blades and, most importantly, toys. Tron Legacy action figures. Incredibly cheap wrestling action figures with faces, which didn't look remotely human. And blind bags with dinosaurs and dragons in them. You know, you just get a little bag with some dragons printed on it and you rip it open and there's some cheap lump of rubber inside, which is roughly molded into the shape of a flying lizard.
We bought ten of these bags. And fully expected to pay ten Quid for them, but they only charged us 7,50. Yay! And the dragons were actually quite nifty, though I usually avoid stuff that has 'Ubisoft' written on it. Apparently, they were toys that go along with some Nintendo DS game:
The dragons were okay for cheap Poundland toys, though their wings were strangely dented and out of shape and resembled... I dunno, bat labia, I guess. Nothing we can't fix with some hot water or an electric hair dryer. Except for one poor little cripple, whose wings came off when we looked at them for too long. Fortunately for him, I always keep a tube of superglue around the house for when I get bored and feel the urge to glue my elbows to the desk and my nuts to the chair. Let this be a warning to you, children: If you're naked and/or extremely hairy, don't operate with superglue!
We've spent the rest of the night sitting in Market Square, where dozens of people played XXL Laser Space Invaders and Asteroids. There were fat, ugly people who had programming jokes on their sweaters. Much less intimidating than the beautiful burger people. Obese, ugly, greasy people with no concept of personal hygiene. Cliché on fat, short, hairy legs. Claire dropped her coat and showed off her N7 hoodie with pride. A female gamer, among all these nerds. With girl boobs. And she was with me. Perfect! We need to go to these events more often and enjoy this kind of stuff until they finally come up with lovebots, who are more attractive and flexible than human females. What a great age we live in!
-Cat
I even have friends, who deliberately put up false birth dates on their FB to see who their "real friends" are, i.e. people, who remember the correct birthday. You incredible dickheads, you! Anyhow - as far as we know, Facebook knows our proper anniversary date, so we had to go out to town. I'm applying the finishing touches to my final ever Neverwinter class guide this very moment to cover our expenses. And we didn't go all nuts, either. Just the fancy burger place again. And damn, did we feel like a bunch of weirdos!
The Gourmet Burger Kitchen is incredibly hip. Or trendy. Or some shit term kids use these days to describe a stylish, modern eatery that attracts young folk. Young, beautiful people in fashionable outfits at every table. It was like a tiny, alternate universe, which exists in the middle of a city, where people go to the supermarket in their pyjamas. You can go to Nottingham any day of the week and run into people dressed up as cowboys. Or a fucking Borg from Star Trek, with an unsatiable appetite for dry spaghetti, straight out of the packet.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not making fun or anything. I'm a guy who plays video games for a living. I look like a guy who plays video games for a living. A country where absolutely no one gives a shit about personal appearance is a huge plus to me. Which only makes it scarier when you enter a restaurant and the first thing you think is: "Okay, we're the ugliest people around." Claire shaved my head a few weeks ago and it has grown back to the point where it looks like this:
 |
| AAAAAAAAH! |
Okay. Ugly hair dude and sweaty girl looking at the menu. And the waitress babbled on and on and on about their "loyalty app". Apparently that's a thing now. Scan a qr code every time you get there, get rewards or some shit, I don't know. She wouldn't shut up about it. I tried to get a word in, failed twice, finally gave up and blatantly interrupted her: "We don't have a smartphone."
Silence. Absolute silence. If you had walked into the restaurant at that exact moment, you would have thought I had said something among the lines of, "Hitler was right." She just stared at me in disbelief. I wasn't sure whether she was gonna start crying, whether I was about to be stabbed with a fork or whether she was just going to quietly point at the door.
"Oh...", she said. Yeah. Oh. "Do... um... do you just want to look at the menu?" She quietly teleported away, not looking us in the eyes. It was surreal. Like telling a vegan you start every day by devouring one live baby cow. Whole.
Yes, I know. My job functions entirely through the internet, it's all about gaming and then I don't even have a fucking smartphone. Well - what for? It takes about ten seconds to get from my bed to my work place and there is no bus stop in the corridor. I get new jobs, feedback, all kinds of work-related stuff strictly by email. All my friends are in Germany. I'm not gonna call them on a fucking mobile when I go out.
Besides - believe it or not - I don't want to check on work-related stuff, Facebook or people's stupid Instagram photos of their stupid sandwiches when I go out!
Look... you've probably experienced this, yourself: You're having a conversation with somebody and they check their fucking phone. While you're talking to them. They don't look at you - they look at their damn smartphones! It's annoying enough when I get work-related phone calls and I can hear the guy on the other end typing away on his keyboard going, "mhm... hm... mhm..." and it couldn't be any more obvious that they don't give a shit about anything I have to say. I don't need that kind of crap when I go out. When I go out, I wanna have a good time, I wanna talk or, call me crazy, just enjoy the food and the moment without any god damn talking at all!
Oh well. The wild boar burger was off the menu and the "chargrilled" chicken burger was thoroughly burned. The rosemary fries were pretty awesome. It was fun, I don't regret it, but there was that lingering feeling of, "I could have cooked that myself, it would have cost 25% of what we just paid and it would have been better". I usually get that when eating in a pub, but not a place with "Gourmet" in the name. Still. Anniversary lunch and all that. And we still had a 50% off voucher from Domino's!
A much more exciting thing we've done to celebrate our anniversary was a trip to Poundland. Damn you, Stuart Ashen! I've never been to Poundland before. You know, one of those places where everything costs a pound. I've always imagined the place to look like some kind of indoor yard sale. All kinds of random crap piled up and lots of people rummaging through it. But actually, Poundland looks more like a supermarket. A really shitty supermarket. They had highly unpleasant Haribo halloween cupcakes, canned "food", screwdrivers, razor blades and, most importantly, toys. Tron Legacy action figures. Incredibly cheap wrestling action figures with faces, which didn't look remotely human. And blind bags with dinosaurs and dragons in them. You know, you just get a little bag with some dragons printed on it and you rip it open and there's some cheap lump of rubber inside, which is roughly molded into the shape of a flying lizard.
We bought ten of these bags. And fully expected to pay ten Quid for them, but they only charged us 7,50. Yay! And the dragons were actually quite nifty, though I usually avoid stuff that has 'Ubisoft' written on it. Apparently, they were toys that go along with some Nintendo DS game:
The dragons were okay for cheap Poundland toys, though their wings were strangely dented and out of shape and resembled... I dunno, bat labia, I guess. Nothing we can't fix with some hot water or an electric hair dryer. Except for one poor little cripple, whose wings came off when we looked at them for too long. Fortunately for him, I always keep a tube of superglue around the house for when I get bored and feel the urge to glue my elbows to the desk and my nuts to the chair. Let this be a warning to you, children: If you're naked and/or extremely hairy, don't operate with superglue!
We've spent the rest of the night sitting in Market Square, where dozens of people played XXL Laser Space Invaders and Asteroids. There were fat, ugly people who had programming jokes on their sweaters. Much less intimidating than the beautiful burger people. Obese, ugly, greasy people with no concept of personal hygiene. Cliché on fat, short, hairy legs. Claire dropped her coat and showed off her N7 hoodie with pride. A female gamer, among all these nerds. With girl boobs. And she was with me. Perfect! We need to go to these events more often and enjoy this kind of stuff until they finally come up with lovebots, who are more attractive and flexible than human females. What a great age we live in!
-Cat
Mittwoch, 16. Oktober 2013
Dealing with Death
This may sound cheesy, but the saddest day of my life was when my cat died. I've always had pets. Fish, a tiny lobster, snakes, lizards and a whole lot of cats. But this one cat in particular was special. When I went to work in the morning, the cat would follow me to the bus stop. She'd be there and pick me up when I got home from work. She followed me into the store when I spent my humble wages on tuna. Sometimes she'd sit on my shoulder when I walked around town. She was tiny. Didn't wanna grow up. Just sat there.
One day she got ill, sat in the corner all day, didn't want to eat, didn't want anyone near her. It all happened very fast. I was seriously depressed when she was gone. Something was instantly missing - nobody to walk me to work and back, nobody to go buy tuna with me. And of coursed they asked about it at the shop - hey, where's your cat? My companion was missing and things would never be the same again. It's hard to describe the whole thing in a way that doesn't sound utterly ridiculous. It's just a stupid cat, right? But at that point I had never lost any loved ones before and the cat's death was pretty hard to ignore. We've spent considerable amounts of time with each other every day and all of that had changed from one cruel moment to another. Life-changing. The realisation that my pet is gone for good and would never come back.
My grandfather has died this morning.
I'm not sure how I feel. I mean, I know what to feel, but the whole thing just seems entirely unreal. We had the stereotypical grandfather-grandson-relationship. You know, me not calling him enough, because it's always so awkward. Him not calling me enough, because he doesn't want to bother me. And on those rare occasions when we do talk, it's about traffic, the weather... I remember sitting in his lap when I was six years old, not a care in the world. Now I'm in my thirties, he doesn't really know me anymore, so what is there to say? Of course it's a bit awkward when we try and communicate. Scary and depressing, too. He'd always talk about close friends and relatives, who were his age and suddenly just died. I don't think I could put myself in his potition if I tried. Like I said, nobody really close to me had ever died, aside from my cat. There's no way I could imagine what it's like when most of the people you've known and loved are dead, you kinda know you're gonna be next and you're afraid to call your younger, remaining family, because you don't want to be a burden. Sounds like a pretty shit way to spend your final days to me.
Funny how all the useful things you could say always come to mind when it's too late, isn't it? I'm grateful for all the time I got to spend with him as a kid, for every thrown frisbee, for every holiday I got to spend with him in the country. I'll always remember the happy days I had with him and I believe that, thanks to him, my life has been better. I'm not sure if he died knowing all that. He knew all about the weather in Nottingham and about the busy traffic over here, though. Man...
I don't know what's gonna happen next. Well yeah, a funeral, but that's not what I mean. I had friends who told me they didn't feel anything, when their loved ones died. Well, they all seemed to feel guilt for not feeling anything, for not crying. And they all said it happened much, much later, after the funeral, after the loss finally became real. When they finally understood that the dearly departed was gone for good and wouldn't come back. I really don't know what I feel. There's too much on my mind right now to feel anything.
Like the funeral. I don't believe in god, heaven, a soul or anything of that sort. I told Claire to take me to an animal preparator when I die and put me up in the front yard in a scary pose. I don't give a fuck about what happens to me when I'm dead. Burn me, feed me to the lizards, donate me to science, I'll be dead, I won't care.
Thing is, just because I don't give a shit about my own funeral or funerals in general, I can't really expect anyone to understand my attitude towards the whole thing. It'll seem disrespectful. On the other hand, I live in a different country now, I cannot afford a flight there and back and frankly, nobody even bothered to fucking tell me. Except for my brother, who first contacted me yesterday, after my granddad had already been in hospital for nearly two weeks. I don't know what I'll do. Never been in a situation like this before. I need to think.
-Cat
One day she got ill, sat in the corner all day, didn't want to eat, didn't want anyone near her. It all happened very fast. I was seriously depressed when she was gone. Something was instantly missing - nobody to walk me to work and back, nobody to go buy tuna with me. And of coursed they asked about it at the shop - hey, where's your cat? My companion was missing and things would never be the same again. It's hard to describe the whole thing in a way that doesn't sound utterly ridiculous. It's just a stupid cat, right? But at that point I had never lost any loved ones before and the cat's death was pretty hard to ignore. We've spent considerable amounts of time with each other every day and all of that had changed from one cruel moment to another. Life-changing. The realisation that my pet is gone for good and would never come back.
My grandfather has died this morning.
I'm not sure how I feel. I mean, I know what to feel, but the whole thing just seems entirely unreal. We had the stereotypical grandfather-grandson-relationship. You know, me not calling him enough, because it's always so awkward. Him not calling me enough, because he doesn't want to bother me. And on those rare occasions when we do talk, it's about traffic, the weather... I remember sitting in his lap when I was six years old, not a care in the world. Now I'm in my thirties, he doesn't really know me anymore, so what is there to say? Of course it's a bit awkward when we try and communicate. Scary and depressing, too. He'd always talk about close friends and relatives, who were his age and suddenly just died. I don't think I could put myself in his potition if I tried. Like I said, nobody really close to me had ever died, aside from my cat. There's no way I could imagine what it's like when most of the people you've known and loved are dead, you kinda know you're gonna be next and you're afraid to call your younger, remaining family, because you don't want to be a burden. Sounds like a pretty shit way to spend your final days to me.
Funny how all the useful things you could say always come to mind when it's too late, isn't it? I'm grateful for all the time I got to spend with him as a kid, for every thrown frisbee, for every holiday I got to spend with him in the country. I'll always remember the happy days I had with him and I believe that, thanks to him, my life has been better. I'm not sure if he died knowing all that. He knew all about the weather in Nottingham and about the busy traffic over here, though. Man...
I don't know what's gonna happen next. Well yeah, a funeral, but that's not what I mean. I had friends who told me they didn't feel anything, when their loved ones died. Well, they all seemed to feel guilt for not feeling anything, for not crying. And they all said it happened much, much later, after the funeral, after the loss finally became real. When they finally understood that the dearly departed was gone for good and wouldn't come back. I really don't know what I feel. There's too much on my mind right now to feel anything.
Like the funeral. I don't believe in god, heaven, a soul or anything of that sort. I told Claire to take me to an animal preparator when I die and put me up in the front yard in a scary pose. I don't give a fuck about what happens to me when I'm dead. Burn me, feed me to the lizards, donate me to science, I'll be dead, I won't care.
Thing is, just because I don't give a shit about my own funeral or funerals in general, I can't really expect anyone to understand my attitude towards the whole thing. It'll seem disrespectful. On the other hand, I live in a different country now, I cannot afford a flight there and back and frankly, nobody even bothered to fucking tell me. Except for my brother, who first contacted me yesterday, after my granddad had already been in hospital for nearly two weeks. I don't know what I'll do. Never been in a situation like this before. I need to think.
-Cat
Freitag, 11. Oktober 2013
Hitting Town Like a Manager Over Other Employees
Finally! We finally fucking did it! We went out! And we didn't just go out to look at all the things we cannot afford and go back home - we went out to have lunch. And dinner, too!
As I've mentioned before, I just had my busiest two months of all times and now that the money is finally there, we decided to treat ourselves to a little something. Now, before I go into the details, allow me to pacify those among you, who were (rightfully) sick and tired of my whining about how we couldn't pay our bills: It's fine. We could afford it this once, we've calculated it ten times over, all the bills are paid and we've put the rest in the bank, allowing us to pay the rent for another three months to come. I'm not even kidding, these last jobs paid so well, we're financially secure for months to come and we could afford to go out. It's all good. Plenty more work coming my way, as well. Life is good.
We didn't really have anything planned when we got up this morning at 2pm (no work today, wheeee!). There were some Tesco Daily Value chicken tits defrosting in the sink (the watery, bony ones that taste of nothing, mmm-mmm!) and we still had some Tesco Daily Value 3rd grade canned mushrooms and some Tesco Daily Value 29p penne to go with all that stuff. Yup, we live like kings around here! But for some reason we just didn't feel like eating any of that, let alone cooking it first. And it was such a nice cold, grey, rainy day outside, that we ended up hopping on the next bus instead. Originally, we were going to hop in front of the bus, but then we checked my bank account and didn't have to.
It was around 4pm when we arrived in town and we decided to start our trip with a fight. I wanted to go to Pizza Hut, because they're offering this right now:
Claire wanted to go to Burger King. Nevermind the fact that the above picture fucking contains burgers, nooo, it had to be the real thing. But on our way there we came across the Gourmet Burger Kitchen. You know, posh burgers. With buffalo, lamb, wild fucking boar! Claire didn't wanna go. Too fancy. Too expensive. Not our world. That kinda thing.
So we stood outside Burger King. Place was exploding with people and the only empty table was in front of the restrooms. We've made that mistake once, many moons ago. Turns out it's incredibly difficult to enjoy your Whopper when you're completely surrounded by a strong smell of piss. Okay, maybe there were more empty tables upstairs or we could have taken our food outside to market square or something, but there were at least 50,000 people waiting in line to order their food. So I tucked Claire under my arm and ran off, back to the Gourmet Burger Kitchen.
It was a bit scary at first. You see, we've never actually been to a restaurant over here. If you're somewhat familiar with the circumstances that brought us here, you'll know that we came with pretty much nothing (to the UK, not Burger King) and have been trying to make ends meet ever since. In four years time, we've been to McDonald's about six times, Burger King twice and KFC once. I'm not counting crap like a takeout tray of chips or anything, but only places where we actually sat down to eat. Just the two of us. So yeah, that's it. The most exciting place we've been to so far was KFC.
"Why scary?" you might ask. Well, imaginary reader, who doesn't understand where I'm going with this. We don't know how English restaurants work. We've been out a few times back in Germany. You pick a table, sit down and somebody throws delicious things at you, more or less. Then people pretend they can't see you, so you can't order any more drinks and you have to stay for two weeks before you're allowed to pay. And it's common courtesy to tip 10-15 per cent while you're at it. Things are a bit different in the UK, though.
We sat down, they gave us menus, then I had to memorize everything and order our food at the counter. And pay up front. Weird. Makes sense, though. I mean, in Germany you can eat before they even know whether or not you can pay for your meal. Over here they want to see your money before you get anything. So I went there, paid up like a good boy and in return I was brought this:
Best burger I had all my life. Which isn't very difficult, given the fact I usually eat at McDonald's, but damn, was that worth it! We also got free peanuts for the wait. Fresh ones, not those canned, salty ones that contain the urine of a dozen different people, who touch them before washing their hands. You know, like that:
And a chocolate milk shake that had little bits of chocolate in it. Mmmmm! Also had some amazing coleslaw and skinny fries, which were really long and about as thick as an ant turd. Never seen anything like it. We tried taking a picture, but... well, let's just say we don't have a smartphone or a good camera and Claire's mobile is about ten years old, so... brace yourselves.
That image really doesn't do the food justice. The fries also look a lot bigger on that shot than they really were. They were more like fried spaghetti made of potatoes. o_O
The place was really nice. Cozy, nice view at all the shops outside and strange music, which I can really just describe as "background music". Ever been to a pub or some restaurant that played music you really can't stand? Or stuff that simply doesn't feel like dinner music? I remember a birthday dinner at a pub where I tried eating some chicken whilst Freddie Mercury was looking for somebody to love. Don't get me wrong, I love his music and everything, but it was too loud, it wasn't good eating music and it only went downhill from there when they whipped out their best of 70s-80s collection.
The music at the Gourmet Burger Kitchen was more like ambient music. No singing, no particular style, just soft, soothing, barely audible electronic tunes. Mass Effect citadel music. It was just there, it wasn't annoying, nothing intense or memorable, but created a nice chillout atmosphere. We just wanted to stay and eat all the burgers they could cook for us. And looking at how dark and stormy it was outside, the great outdoors really didn't seem that attractive.
Oh, we also noticed some tip jars at the counter, so when we finally decided to leave after all, we just left a few coins in there. Tip jars are awesome! You can be as generous or as cheap as you want and nobody will know. And seeing how absolutely nobody tipped while we were there, I think we were pretty damn generous.
We went for a nice, long walk around the city and sat down at the market square, where everything began almost exactly six years ago. It's where we held hands for the first time and also held a few other things I shall not mention in great detail, because certain parents might end up reading this.
We stayed there until it got dark, then went to the Wetherspoon Pub. I wanted to go there, because they have a few nice tables upstairs, from where you can look all over market square. Claire ordered a sirloin steak, which was absolutely amazing and a lot better than this shitty picture suggests:
I was an idiot and ordered the Aberdeen Angus steak, mostly because it's the size of my face. Problem is, my "medium rare" steak was well done and as tough as old boots. Also, all the lights went out for a minute and we fully expected to be presented with a dead body when they came back on, along with a goofy inspector, telling people to stay until the murderer was identified. But instead of the Scotland Yard we just had annoying, flickering lights for the rest of the night, the place was drafty and there was a bunch of drunk, noisy kids on the table next to ours, so... well.
I'd say it was shit. It was cold, loud, the food was overpriced and not very good and the flickering light was insanely irritating. But guess what? I don't even care. I had fun. We had a fantastic night out, we finally had some time to ourselves and we could afford to eat something that didn't come out of a can or the freezer and had been cooked by somebody else. We wanted to do something fun, we wanted steak and we got all that. Sure - perhaps we'll never go to that particular place again, but that's beside the point. We've been wanting to do this kind of thing for years and we finally could. I couldn't be happier.
There was also a bit of exra money for two Hardened Editions of Call of Duty Ghosts. We're planning to set up our own dedicated server with friends and can't wait to get started! It should be a fun, smooth experience, thanks to the Radeon 7950 HD in Claire's AMD machine, kindly donated by the publisher of one of the games we've reviewed, and the new GeForce GTX 770 4GB edition I've ordered for my Intel/Nvidia setup. They're replacing hardware, which is currently being wrapped up and prepared for a trip to friends in Germany. All of our friends have been incredibly helpful and supportive when our situation was so awful, it's only fair that we return the love.
The rest of the money is in the bank and that's where it stays. Though we're gonna review our habits when it comes to weekly grocery shopping. Maybe we should have two or three cheap sandwich days a week, so we can save up a little something and make regular trips to town. It was nice to go out and I don't mind saving our money to repeat this a little more regularly.
-Cat
As I've mentioned before, I just had my busiest two months of all times and now that the money is finally there, we decided to treat ourselves to a little something. Now, before I go into the details, allow me to pacify those among you, who were (rightfully) sick and tired of my whining about how we couldn't pay our bills: It's fine. We could afford it this once, we've calculated it ten times over, all the bills are paid and we've put the rest in the bank, allowing us to pay the rent for another three months to come. I'm not even kidding, these last jobs paid so well, we're financially secure for months to come and we could afford to go out. It's all good. Plenty more work coming my way, as well. Life is good.
We didn't really have anything planned when we got up this morning at 2pm (no work today, wheeee!). There were some Tesco Daily Value chicken tits defrosting in the sink (the watery, bony ones that taste of nothing, mmm-mmm!) and we still had some Tesco Daily Value 3rd grade canned mushrooms and some Tesco Daily Value 29p penne to go with all that stuff. Yup, we live like kings around here! But for some reason we just didn't feel like eating any of that, let alone cooking it first. And it was such a nice cold, grey, rainy day outside, that we ended up hopping on the next bus instead. Originally, we were going to hop in front of the bus, but then we checked my bank account and didn't have to.
It was around 4pm when we arrived in town and we decided to start our trip with a fight. I wanted to go to Pizza Hut, because they're offering this right now:
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| So disgusting, yet so tempting. |
So we stood outside Burger King. Place was exploding with people and the only empty table was in front of the restrooms. We've made that mistake once, many moons ago. Turns out it's incredibly difficult to enjoy your Whopper when you're completely surrounded by a strong smell of piss. Okay, maybe there were more empty tables upstairs or we could have taken our food outside to market square or something, but there were at least 50,000 people waiting in line to order their food. So I tucked Claire under my arm and ran off, back to the Gourmet Burger Kitchen.
It was a bit scary at first. You see, we've never actually been to a restaurant over here. If you're somewhat familiar with the circumstances that brought us here, you'll know that we came with pretty much nothing (to the UK, not Burger King) and have been trying to make ends meet ever since. In four years time, we've been to McDonald's about six times, Burger King twice and KFC once. I'm not counting crap like a takeout tray of chips or anything, but only places where we actually sat down to eat. Just the two of us. So yeah, that's it. The most exciting place we've been to so far was KFC.
"Why scary?" you might ask. Well, imaginary reader, who doesn't understand where I'm going with this. We don't know how English restaurants work. We've been out a few times back in Germany. You pick a table, sit down and somebody throws delicious things at you, more or less. Then people pretend they can't see you, so you can't order any more drinks and you have to stay for two weeks before you're allowed to pay. And it's common courtesy to tip 10-15 per cent while you're at it. Things are a bit different in the UK, though.
We sat down, they gave us menus, then I had to memorize everything and order our food at the counter. And pay up front. Weird. Makes sense, though. I mean, in Germany you can eat before they even know whether or not you can pay for your meal. Over here they want to see your money before you get anything. So I went there, paid up like a good boy and in return I was brought this:
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| And she wanted to go to fucking Burger King! |
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| Cracking them open helps pass the time till lunch is ready! |
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| It looked so much better IRL! |
The place was really nice. Cozy, nice view at all the shops outside and strange music, which I can really just describe as "background music". Ever been to a pub or some restaurant that played music you really can't stand? Or stuff that simply doesn't feel like dinner music? I remember a birthday dinner at a pub where I tried eating some chicken whilst Freddie Mercury was looking for somebody to love. Don't get me wrong, I love his music and everything, but it was too loud, it wasn't good eating music and it only went downhill from there when they whipped out their best of 70s-80s collection.
The music at the Gourmet Burger Kitchen was more like ambient music. No singing, no particular style, just soft, soothing, barely audible electronic tunes. Mass Effect citadel music. It was just there, it wasn't annoying, nothing intense or memorable, but created a nice chillout atmosphere. We just wanted to stay and eat all the burgers they could cook for us. And looking at how dark and stormy it was outside, the great outdoors really didn't seem that attractive.
Oh, we also noticed some tip jars at the counter, so when we finally decided to leave after all, we just left a few coins in there. Tip jars are awesome! You can be as generous or as cheap as you want and nobody will know. And seeing how absolutely nobody tipped while we were there, I think we were pretty damn generous.
We went for a nice, long walk around the city and sat down at the market square, where everything began almost exactly six years ago. It's where we held hands for the first time and also held a few other things I shall not mention in great detail, because certain parents might end up reading this.
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| And because of all the fountains, we've also developed a serious watersports fetish. |
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| The steak was very blurry, but it was late and I had a lot to drink. |
I'd say it was shit. It was cold, loud, the food was overpriced and not very good and the flickering light was insanely irritating. But guess what? I don't even care. I had fun. We had a fantastic night out, we finally had some time to ourselves and we could afford to eat something that didn't come out of a can or the freezer and had been cooked by somebody else. We wanted to do something fun, we wanted steak and we got all that. Sure - perhaps we'll never go to that particular place again, but that's beside the point. We've been wanting to do this kind of thing for years and we finally could. I couldn't be happier.
There was also a bit of exra money for two Hardened Editions of Call of Duty Ghosts. We're planning to set up our own dedicated server with friends and can't wait to get started! It should be a fun, smooth experience, thanks to the Radeon 7950 HD in Claire's AMD machine, kindly donated by the publisher of one of the games we've reviewed, and the new GeForce GTX 770 4GB edition I've ordered for my Intel/Nvidia setup. They're replacing hardware, which is currently being wrapped up and prepared for a trip to friends in Germany. All of our friends have been incredibly helpful and supportive when our situation was so awful, it's only fair that we return the love.
The rest of the money is in the bank and that's where it stays. Though we're gonna review our habits when it comes to weekly grocery shopping. Maybe we should have two or three cheap sandwich days a week, so we can save up a little something and make regular trips to town. It was nice to go out and I don't mind saving our money to repeat this a little more regularly.
-Cat
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