Grass, Laundry Detergant, & Motherboards.

The future has become the present yet again. 6 weeks ago Wyza and I were giggling like school girls at the thought of Million Man Lan 8. Now the time is upon us, it is almost surreal. All of the excitement has been building and we are on the precipice of the event and yet everything around me seems to be pulling me towards other thoughts. The grass needs to be cut, laundry needs to be done, trash must go out, 4th of July cook outs and all of the amenities therewith. There is so much to do before the event. It will be a great time and Wyza and I plan on posting photos applenty.

Electrocution, Sledge Hammers, and Withdrawls

I take a anti-depressant every day, well mostly. I do forget every now and again. The interesting thing is, I don't notice I forgot because of mood changes, 1 day won't do that, but because of the physical withdrawal that my body goes through. The symptoms can best be described as being electrocuted, getting hit in the chest with a sledge hammer, and touching the mirror in the matrix all at once. Another symptom is that my sleep is filled with extremely vivid dreams. This isn't necessarily a bad thing except that it inevitably means that I wake up with my heart racing for one reason or another and thus my night sleep is less than enjoyable. It definitely makes for an interesting time.

Hard Modes

What an evening! Tonight our 10 man group did Flame Leviathan, Deconstructor, and Hodir Hard Modes. We 1 shotted Decon. 4 attempts for FL and 3 attempts for Hodir. We did work on Iron Council hard mode for a while but ended up moving on as it wasn't going well for us. We also did razorscale, ignis, kologarn, and auriya. Definitely goes to show that we don't totally fail.

In other news i had some really good corn on the cob and pork for dinner. It was awesome.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Is freaking awesome.

Twighlight Vanquisher

Today we had another 10 man achievement. We did 10 Man 3 drake sarth and got Twilight Vanquisher. Huzzah.

WORKIN

Welcome back to the show. I have neglecting to write on this blog due to the work load at Geek Squad. I have found myself taking on more responsibilities and have had less time to slack compared to before.

I spent the weekend with Larisa's family and it was nice. We had the best homemade ribs i think i have ever had. Not to mention we had dessert as well. So overall it was tiring weekend but well worth the effort.

I will write more later. maybe not today though.

The old god of Death is dead

Huzzah. After a couple of weeks trying, we finally got Yogg Saron down in 10 man. It actually only took us 5 attempts.

Again, gratz uod.

3 Weeks Till MML 8

3 weeks from right now I'll be settled into my seat at Million Man Lan 8. Now in all reality there won't be more than 500-600 people there, but it is going to be awesome just like last year. Also, for those of you who are lanwar fans, Burden is sitting on the other side of the table from me....awesome.

This year I suspect my game list will be:

DotA
Demigod
Left4Dead
WoW
and if I'm lucky, some IRC based UNO.

Of course there could always be other things to play, but those are the likely contenders. Drinks will of course consist of Water, Bawls, and Bawls G33k B34r (hopefully). The G33k B34r is a new addition to the Bawls regimin and its fantastic. Caffinated root beer!

So ok, 4 days of gaming, caffine and overall fun. What could possibly make it better right? The fact that I get to spend it with my best friend. Huzzah!

2 for Special

Also Jon Wyza the much hyped best friend on mine has been added to this site so he will publish some quircky thoughts every now and then as well.

-Crawly out
(Yes I misspelled it. Jon will catch the reference)

Demigod

Lets talk a bit about a game that showed up a few months ago from Stardock Games called Demigod. If you have ever played Warcraft III: Defense of the Ancients (DotA) mod, then you'll feel somewhat comfortable in this game. The overall premise is that you control a hero and are tasked to accomplish some goal for the round. There are a total of 8 different heroes. 4 generals and 4 assassins. The generals have a following of creeps that aid them in whatever they attack. Upgrades allow them to have more and stronger creeps. Assassins don't have any helpers but make up for it in sheer power.

There are several things helping and hindering you in the goals.

• Buildings
  • Energy Towers - Attack anything near them. The more towers it can connect to the more powerful it is
  • Arrow Towers - Has a cone AoE attack
  • Fortresses - Lots of health, has a cone AoE attack
  • Item Shop
  • Artifact Shop - Has expensive and powerful items
  • Energy Crystal - Standing next to this gives you health and mana quickly
  • Flag - Gives a buff or debuff and often control of nearby buildings
  • Portal - Periodically spawns fighters that automatically attack the opposing team
  • Gold Mine - slowly gives gold to the team controlling it
    
  • Citadel - Lose this and its over. Gives you access to upgrades for all buildings and creeps.

As the game progresses your hero gains experience by capturing flags, killing creeps, and killing other heroes. Additionally you get large sums of money for killing other heroes. Each time you level you can upgrade or add new skills to your hero. In total there are 20 levels, however, there are closer to 30-35 upgrades available so you must find a good setup that works for you. Additionally as you upgrade things in the citadel your buildings get new abilities, stronger, and heal faster. New fighter types can also be added to the waves.

There are 4 levels of difficulty in the game. Easy and Normal feel undertuned. Hard feels more like what normal should and Nightmare is more like what hard should feel like, but that might just be me. Additionally there are 2 single player modes. 1 is tournament where you play 8 levels to get the highest amount of favor (earned by killing other things mostly). The second is a quick skirmish.

Overall I enjoy Demigod. It has had alot of patches in the last couple months to balance it better, but the patching has slowed and I believe we are up to a more stable point in the games lifespan.

Tuesday Night is Raid Night.

Well it has happened again. The hands of time have happened to stop on yet another Tuesday. Why is that so poignant that i should write a blog about it? Because it is RAID NIGHT YA'LL!!! Every Tuesday & Sunday my fellow cyber comrades-in-arms march into digital dungeons and control our pixelated avatars in a fight for justice and more pixelated items that incrementally increase our avatars statistics.

Now why do grown men and women do this? what could drive them to shun society and go into a hermit like existence? There is but one answer....

Escapism.

That is the essence of fantasy gaming. Without it no one would have any need to play these types of games. Plus there is a sense of comrodery that comes with playing one of these games. You get to know people by their handle rather than by their real names. It is a strange and yet rewarding relationship that you form with these cyber comrades.

On a side note:

My wife is also very hospitable to my wants and she graciously lets me play WOW on these days. So to you my lovely wife i must say that i love you and appreciate your patience with me as I indulge in childish activities.

TGIF

Thank God it is Friday. These past few weeks have been very taxing on me mentally and physically. But next week everything will be better. We are going down to 9 hours next week and Larisa is starting a new job as a Student Services Advisor. I am very proud of her.

With her getting this job it is lifestyle changing. No more worrying that my 50 hour work weeks aren't enough to pay the bills. No more having to bum meals from parents. This is the best thing to happen to us in a year. We look forward to tackling the credit cards and getting control of our finances now that we have more income. Debt free here we come. It is so good to have breathing room.

In WoW news my guild and I (Jon was there too) got all the way to General Vesax in Ulduar in one night. This seems like a trivial accomplishment, but for the brave few of us who sat down at our desk it was a good time and we were stoaked about.

Nerdgasm

So E3 was last week, and I must say there were a lot of very exciting games that were announced. Of them all I have to say the most exciting game annoucement (to me) was Metroid: Other M. Not only is is exciting that there is going to be a new Metroid game, but it is being developed by none other than Team Ninja the legendary team behind Ninja Gaiden. I hope that this will be a face-meltingly awesome game becuase I expect no less from Team Ninja.

In other nerd news, Million Man Lan is only 4 weeks away. It is Louisville's own sausage fest/LAN party. Me and Jon have made these a tradition to attend and this year should be the greatest one yet. Debra (Jon's Wife) is coming down and my wife (Larisa) is really excited. She is calling it Debrapalooza '09. She needs the company becuase she gets really bored and ends up calling me every 15 minutes (I love you, Larisa :P).

Also, Larisa is now a teacher at ATA Career Solutions and she is soon to be a Student Services Admin as well. I am very proud of her.

Josh, Out!

Long Time No Update

To be honest i thought that i would update this daily, but life can be hectic and not give you a chance to slow down for a while. I have found the last 3 weeks of my life as a blur. I have been working 50 hour work weeks and Larisa has been working on her new job as a teacher. So my time has been split between being there for her and fixing more laptops than i ever thought existed. Not to say that there has been no down time, just writing about my life and my thoughts did not come to the forefront of my mind when presented with some time to veg out. When your 2nd love (Larisa being my 1st) is video games, 3 weeks is an eternity to go without a digital fix, so i found time to play during these hecktic days. Larisa lovingly lets me play WOW with my best friend Jon 2 nights a week. I play WOW for 2 reasons 1.) it lets me keep in touch with Jon and have something in common with him despite the distance & 2.) it is a very fun game. I will try to update this weekly. Which is still more than i update my facebook :P

Wifey's Blog

Also for all of those who know me, I have a lovely wife and her blog is located here http://joshandlarisacrawley.blogspot.com/

Mission Statement (<---To make it sound legit)

Ok so I have made a blog. Hopefully now that I have made this I can change the world one post at a time. The reason i decided to make this blog is to have something to do on breaks at work and also as a creative outlet to discuss video games and the happenings therewithin. So hopefully this will be a clever and well thought out site. We shall see.....