LadyCrimson

We bought a cheap gas grill when we moved into this house...used it a while that summer and haven't since. It works fine, but it's just not the same as charcoal BBQ. Mostly tho, I don't like cleaning the grill all the time. The old Webber, you'd fire up the coals and let the high flames burn the gunk off the grill and scrape it off with a metal brush ... the gas grill you have to scrub/wash. But they're definitely great when you want to cook a lot of meat at once.

Never been to Act3 in PoE before (didn't exist at one time...). (oops meant Act3 not Act2 .. fixed) Aha, the overwhelm you with numbers trick... ...not as bad as it looks, just funny. I do need better gear now tho...

Caught up on 2nd season of Grimm now. We had watched the 1st season and then I stopped paying attention a couple episodes into the 2nd. I like the new developments, feels like the show is smoothing out more ... although there's still some moments of cheese or stupidity that I don't like ... but any character/plot turn that gives Captain Sean Renard (Sasha Roiz) a bit more air time is ok by me. I hope it survives another season or two. Don't think it has much more in it than that, but I'd like to know more about a couple plot lines....

Is this going to be a pic of a large, manly grill, or a pic of some mouth-watering BBQ that's immediately going to make me want some of my own?

I'm still waiting.

^^ Why can't beaches in N. Calif. look like that? What hubby does summer mornings. Not my cat. Not my cat. My cat.

Got to lvl 30 in Path of Exile with my Shadow chr. -still liking him best. It's the farthest I've gone in the game since ages ago, and the improvements they've made over the past 1.5 years or so are more obvious. Normal difficulty is definitely harder, for one thing. Not hard, but harder than it was. And it looks a lot better, lighting, shadow, effects wise. And I've found 6 lower level Unique items (useful ones), way more than I did in Diablo3. I still like the ol' Diablo2 way better, but PoE has shaped up to be a decent modern-day loot-aRPG. Way too many junk items fall, tho...they're going to fix that supposedly.

I'm sorta feeling the same way, although less about character mechanics as the lack of variety in items. It's dull to open chests or have enemies drop loot. "Oh another chainmail with +10 more to defense." I've looked at the stuff you can currently craft and same thing. Zzzz. To me action rpg's are half about phat loot and the loot in Neverwinter is boring. It's possible when you're lvl30+ or whatever it gets more interesting but I'm not motivated to keep going. I don't dislike the game and I still personally like the dungeons and stuff, but as a solo-runthru, early WoW had a lot more going for it that kept the interest up.

Hubs and I stayed up way too late marathon-watching the 2nd season of Grimm episodes. Also, changed my mind ... if I felt like spending $1000 I'd probably buy one of those Acer Iconia's. But I don't feel like it, so I won't. Mostly, I like the fact it has actual Windows on it, and the display is largeish/so nice. Has a USB mouse dock on it too. Definitely like it more than the iPad/typical tablet.

Hubby brought home one of those Acer Iconia W700 thingies (client wanted him to look at it to see if they'd be good employee option vs. iPads). Don't know what "version" but it looked like this. The display looked great, altho the 1080 resolution made menu's really "small" for the screen size. Bumping it down to 1600x900 was easier on my old eyes. It had a funky pen tool if your fingers are too big to double tap the menus. Having it actually be Windows/programs (vs. just "an app") is very nice, and I liked the physical KB, but it's a bit heavy vs. an iPad and the KB arrangement made it seem like it wouldn't be all that great for, say, sitting it on your lap in a park. And for it's supposed price, not sure why one would buy it vs. an actual small laptop/notebook. But it was fun to look at.

I love Henri the cat! Also ... "woohoo!" ... why can't US talk shows be like this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKPGIdcF_sI

Great, now I want some sweet cakes and ice cream, thanks. ...I don't remember too much. My father's parents didn't do much cooking. They traveled a lot and I don't recall seeing them a whole bunch. My mother's mom (her husband died before I was around) ... I don't remember her cooking much either, we usually went to some seafood place for dinner ... but I do remember she always seemed to have great breakfast sausage. Pancakes and sausage. Mom's mom was laid back and pretty cool. Now I'm hungry.

Did you find any chainmail tassels, yet?

Yeah, I was wondering about archers ... seems weird not to have a bow slinger in a game like this. I keep staring at the race icon of "available soon!" or some such and wondering what that'll be, too.

What in blazes ....

I hope, for Volourn's possible sanity, that the new Gatsby meets his expectations and he thinks it's awesome.

Still trying out Neverwinter Online. I have mixed feelings about it ... pick the right class that fits you and the action combat/dungeon zone quests are kind of fun. It's nice you can solo pretty much all main content. But there's also so many little gameplay/interface things that rather annoy me. GUI issues, camera angle issues in combat (get knocked back/trapped against a wall, can't see anything but a giant head/torso in front of you) and lack of camera zoom/control at all in play-mode, lack of variety in gear, (so far) a lack of a sense of spacial grandeur. Yet it's still combat fun and that kinda keeps me driving forward. But I think for me, for solo aRPG type gameplay, I still prefer something more in the mold of Diablo/Path of Exile/Torchlight/whatever. Or even WoW.

I have a feeling each class is pretty stuck in weapon choice at the moment. I saw a video of a lvl50 Great Fighter and he still had a giant sword on his back. The official wiki only lists armor crafting, not weapon, so if that's correct, you can't make your own weapons either. Everything I've seen indicates my Cleric is going to always use those religious tokens or whatever they are ... no maces etc. Don't know if that'll change later or if the Foundry allows one to do/create other things. Nope, but I did see Chewbacca the cat.

Slept about 4 hours. Which is better. Enough to keep me from being a complete zombie today at least. Usually I have no trouble falling asleep once I lie down, and it's just a mental issue of "don't wanna go to bed" that keeps me up late ... when I do have actual insomnia tho, it's often a combo of not being able to fall asleep and not being able to stay asleep if/once I do fall into a snooze. Morning social meetings done, came home for a bite to eat/feed the cats...still have a store run to do, then I can relax a while.

Angry Liam Neeson is the only reason to see that movie. I love angry Liam Neeson.

Does the game open up more at some point? I do like the dungeon instances and whatnot - altho they're pretty linear - but so far, following the main questline at least, it all feels very closed in. Do we get to wander giant open areas, exploring etc. later, or is it all "go to this small dungeon instanced zone for a quest" and "go to this small outdoor public area" to do quests? Since there are mounts, I'm assuming one has to travel more at some point... As much as I joked about constantly running in WoW, I did like its sense of open exploration/wandering, in terms of feeling like it was a huge, connected world. I'm not getting that from NVO yet. I'm about lvl12 I think...going to try to stick with it until I can get a companion at least.

Yeah...that's sorta it for me too. I don't mind general markers on a map, say, because if I really want, I don't have to look at the map. And I'm not trying to rag specifically on Neverwinter...it's becoming more common in a lot of games I've been trying. Giant colored "within this area" circles, path lines, all quest items highlighted so you can't miss them, and so on. For me that takes away a lot of the satisfaction of completing an objective. *shrug*

I'm pretty confident that everyone who initially played WoW made do without line trails telling them where to go. I say initially because I know they've changed the game dramatically and it may be different now. I just object to the developer notion that players are too dense to figure out where to go themselves, if, as I said, it's a well designed system. Assuming that, it's typically more that players are too impatient. imo. Games have become too streamlined in this way ... being an MMO isn't an excuse.

Still not able to reasonably sleep so I bought some antihistamines, which I usually avoid even tho I have allergies. Maybe they'll put me to sleep in a few hours. Hope so, because I have a busy morning planned.

Thanks, but that's really not the point. Skyrim had a similar thing going on - not trails, but follow-me markers. If a game is well designed that sort of thing shouldn't be necessary at all.