Oblivion: still fun after several weeks…and the death of a demi-god

Oblivion has been and continues to be a fascinating game for me.  I know full well that some people claim to have completed the main quest in as little as a couple of days, but I’m now up to over 70 hours of play time…and I’m still not finished. 

The main quest isn’t hard and, in fact, it’s arguable that its easier to complete if you do it quickly.  Oblivion “scales” your foes as your character goes up in level- so if you work on a quest when you are level 5 your opponents will all be around the same level as you.  If you wait until you are 20th level, your opponents will have “kept up”…and although this may sound like the challenge is the same, the powers (spells, items, and so forth) at higher levels are (in my opinion) more challenging
to deal with. 

So how is the game keeping me busy?  Well, I’ll give a few examples, including my most significant accomplishment to date…

***** WARNING *** SOME SPOILERS FOLLOW *** WARNING *****

Continue reading Oblivion: still fun after several weeks…and the death of a demi-god

Microsoft’s new error reporting feature- WE-SYP

Microsoft is giving clearer and clearer signs that they really “get” the frustration and pain their complex and sometimes buggy software causes.  Their error reporting features within Windows XP have allowed Microsoft to reduce system problems significantly.  But what’s next?

Continue reading Microsoft’s new error reporting feature- WE-SYP

Mary Carey running for governor of California

I was browsing through my blog feeds today and came across a reference to Mary Carey, a well known porn star, who has decided she’d like to earn more for screwing people. Yes, that’s right, she’s decided to become a politician. She’s gathering signatures so that she can be listed on the next election for governor of California. I must say I like her campaign photo…

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Microsoft Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor not compatible with Windows XP X64

I enjoy…perhaps that’s the wrong word, but I’ll use it for now…catching vendors in obvious disconnects between words and action. Here is one I just found:

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Ecto 2.0 for Windows and Ultimate Tag Warrior revisited

I mentioned previously that I had installed Ultimate Tag Warrior on my site.  In that posting, I implied that I had Ecto for Windows working with UTW.  The truth is, it only seemed to be working- in reality, Ecto was creating tags that UTW could work with, but it wasn’t able to read them back in for editing purposes. 
It’s been a bit of a struggle getting it to work…

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Blog spam continues to pour in: Akismet starting to miss some…

It’s old news for the big bloggers, but for me its somewhat novel- the sheer volume of spam comments to my blog is growing at an amazing pace. You don’t see the spam in my comments because I both use Akismet (the spam filter for WordPress 2.x blogs) and moderate all comments. But here is what I have observed on this very blog you are reading right now: Continue reading Blog spam continues to pour in: Akismet starting to miss some…

“Art” versus “Design”

I spent a few minutes the other day following a series of threads about a disagreement between a website designer and a “famous” blogger. In summary: a guy paid for someone to re-design their website. Some people criticized the design, and the guy who paid said “anything that’s wrong here is my fault”. Someone sent him a
of a different way the site could have been done
, and he posted it saying “there are some good ideas here, I think we might use some”. Then the designer resigned, and some people went ballistic.

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Irene wants to play EverQuest….

I’ve been playing computer games for…<shudder> decades. The first computer game I played was probably a text adventure game I hand-typed into my Apple II from a magazine. I saved it to cassette tape…I think the game had something to do with exploring an abandoned mine, but I’m not sure. That would have been about 1979/1980 or thereabouts: my memory is a bit hazy.

Continue reading Irene wants to play EverQuest….

Vanguard’s move to SOE because of Microsoft Vista exclusive?

I mentioned in previous postings that Vanguard, an upcoming MMOG originally to be published by Microsoft, has now switched publishers to Sony. This is interesting at least in part because the founders of Sigil, the developers of Vanguard, originally jumped ship from Sony’s EverQuest team to develop their game.

Continue reading Vanguard’s move to SOE because of Microsoft Vista exclusive?