majestic

The servers seem to be working as of now. Stable ping, no lags. I don't usually play online when it is optional, but the game doesn't seem to cloud sync characters so online it is for me. It's just very, very different from four years ago. Back when I first tried it (backed it as "Umbra" on Kickstarter) it was an open world action RPG and the story - what little there was - was something else entirely. I wonder what Anita might say to those female characters. Especially since one can apply empty skins to your armor, leaving you in a strapless bra, black panties and dominatrix style high heels with leather wraps.

NJO was pretty divisive. As far as the novels go (of which there are 19) there are better and worse ones, the writing can be a little uneven, but that's to be expected with a dozen authors contributing to the series. I'd say the absolute low point is Dark Journey which is about Jaina Solo, the Dark Side of the force, royalty, a terrible romance plot and pretty dresses. And no, I'm not making that up. Exaggerating? Sure, for effect, as it were. But not much. The hubub came from certain creative decisions, like the deaths of major characters, a somewhat significant expansion or change to the way the force works, which didn't sit too well with some fans (but I'd venture without NJO we'd never have gotten Kreia). It was an entertaining read. It drags here and there, but overall for it's length and volume it was fine. The scope was perhaps a bit too, say, ambitious. The follow-up books were really something else though. Dark Nest was... bad, Legacy of the Force made no sense for a long while, the standalone books had time-travelling Sith and a weird history of the Millennium Falcon and by the end of Fate of the Jedi Luke and his son duke it out with a literal dark side Cthulu creature causing an apocalypse on Coruscant. Still, everything, even the terrible ideas, even the force Cthulu is better than the travesty Disney put out. Heh.

Time to vent. We've spent the past nine months at work upgrading our ERP system and our customizations to the next major release. For compliance and quality assurance reasons (or whatever the reasons behind certifications are, screw that crap, seriously) - had to migrate to newer server operating systems and the old version wasn't officially supported running on the newer OS version. I'm not generally a violent person, but the people responsible for this major release need to be put out of their misery for their own benefit and those of everyone else's life they might ruin by working on some other project. And by put out of their misery I mean locked up at Guantanamo and waterboarded every day until they hang themselves with rope made by their own hairs. Here are some of the fun things that happened. I'm not entirely sure anyone that isn't Malcador is going to appreciate the sheer insanity, so feel free to skip ahead, I'll just leave them in a spoiler tag:

No, don't feed the spell casting hedgehogs!

Master of Orion 3 after patches was a decent 4X game. Turn based combat is boring and for complete boons who can't hack it. Baldur's Gate had good combat. Even before mods.

Huh, well, I'll take that Kickstarter as a slightly cheaper pre-order this time. No need to back super-special-wowzer editions any more. Heh.

Time for more food porn! Or possibly some mild irritation. Pasulj/Grah is a great base to use leftovers and fairly easy to make: And... well, roasted blood sausage with potatoes and sauerkraut:

Don't bother. As of episode two it went full Kurtzman. That was... terrible. In every way. This Romulan plotline makes the first season of Discovery appear sane by comparison.

I feel like I've posted this before, but what the hell... Also, some Masterplan! \m/

No, that's fine. I actively wanted to hate the show - who knows, I still might get to, we haven't seen the Romulan Samurai guy yet - and was convinced I would hate it after the initialy fight sequence with Matrix!Girl and her Foreheadalienoftheweek lover. Just somehow I didn't. This feels so much like Rise of Skywalker. Except that one was awesome for all the suck, and this one's at least somewhat interesting in all the scenes that probably aren't from Kurtzman even if they are completely misplaced because the Federation is the worst possibly plot device to reflect upon current political issues.

There's probably an app for that. Of all the wonders of the internet that one's my favorite. Ordering and paying online, limiting my interaction with people to accepting the delivery and tipping the wage slave delivery guy. Same with online banking. Except for the tipping. Tipping bankers. Tsk. What a concept. If that post doesn't make sense then that's because I just spent the past 24 hours fixing problems with data migration scripts that were made by the monkeys that run around calling themselves IT professionals, developers or software engineers. Morons, the lot of them. Probably "majored" in "CompSci" at the Advanced Computer Engineering Ape University of Monkeyland at some point.

Seconded. That was much better than expected. The premise for the show is still silly, but I've griped about that in the past and it is what Star Trek writers have to work with thanks to Jar Jar's, Orci's and Kurtzman's inane idea of how space works.

Started the second season of Sex Education. I liked the first one for the most part, except for the very end when it crossed from interesting into teenage sex comedy with awkward drama territory, i.e. it became something I generally detest. Well, the opening episode of season 2 didn't help. Talk about a nosedive.

I know that's a fairly unpopular opinion amongst greens but nuclear power is a decent way to reduce the carbon footprint of power generation.

Finally caught the last episode of the first season of The Mandalorian.

Funny how I always assumed the narrative issues of the Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix movie were due to a somewhat cropped adaptation. The novel is a door stopper after all. Turns out they weren't. Eh. That was a chore to read through.

This is one of the times I disagree with them. I think they're enjoying a turd based on the fact that the other turds set in the same universe are so much smellier. I'm also surprised neither of them had an issue with Baby Yoda being super force potent diminishing Luke's interaction with him (honestly Yoda, what the hell, you're born with force control beyond anyone else, why bother the poor farm boy?) when they complained about Palpatine's being alive in Rise of Skywalker takes away from Vader's sacrifice.

Oh, by the way, in case someone doesn't know, RLM has not only one, but two episodes of Best of the Worst dedicated to the Star Wars Holiday Special:

Stir, whip, stir, whip, whip, whip, stir!

So it actually is masturbating, then?

Merry Christmas guys, I'll probably be off until early January (as in Orthodox Christmas).

The best part is their gloss-over explanation for actually having a final big space (sort of) battle. I'm kind of hoping that Rise of Skywalker will eventually show up on a Best of the Worst episode.

I looked through a list of games released this year and realized I played very few of them, and of those only two for any meaningful stretch of time: Sunless Skies: Joined its predecessor insofar as that I still haven't finished a playthrough by achieving my chosen goal, which of course was The Truth - how could anyone possibly pick otherwise? Alas, it seems as if the Truth is still out there. Sekiro: Was fairly straightforward for a From Software game. As such it's less... burdened by an insane fanbase glorifying the narratives failures of the other Souls games as fantastic storytelling. Superb gameplay, fun glitches, great vertical movement. Decent choice for Game of the Year. Special mention goes to Anthem which I played for a bit with my Origin Access subscription. It was fun for a while, actually, but barely more than a proof of concept. What a waste.