New Year

Well here is my first post for 2006 - and it didn't take 7 months! I've been having a blast playing PlanetSide again and I have been getting really involved in the command structure since very few other people want to. Nothing else major going on - been waiting for the new Star Wars RTS to come out it looks like it will be a blast. I have also been working on a new (or old?) project you will be hearing about very soon. Only my most evil stalkers will understand what might be to come.

Cell Phone Contracts

So recently Jen and I realized that our cell phone coverage was far to expensive for us at this time. We are currently with NEXTEL or Sprint, whatever the hell they are calling themselves now. Anyway this leads me to the issue at hand Cell Phone Contracts.

Now these things have been around for a long time where if you sign X amount of your life away you get this great rate for that period of time. The problem here is that if you decide their service sucks ass (NEXTEL doesn't work AT ALL during several parts of my morning and evening commute) you are pretty much screwed. It's not that you can't get out of the contract at all but the great thing is they make you shell out like $200+ dollars just so you can cancel your (Shitty) service. The greatest part about all this is that half the time you don't sign shit but you are stuck in a contract.

So if we wanted to get new phones we would have to shell out $400 JUST TO SWITCH to a new provider. Needless to say I am skipping out in May when our contract(s) expire. We could get 2 plans for the cost of the ONE we have now. There is at least one other way to get out of these plans and that is to exchange your plan with some other poor soul using an online service such as Cell Trade USA but honestly that is kind of a pain in the ass.

Well that's enough ranting for now, if you wish to do some research on Cell Phone Contracts just do a simple Google search can give you a bit more information. In case I don't come back here until next year I hope everyone has a great new year!

Hamma Update

Once again I come to you after months of not posting I really suck at blogging mostly because I always forget to come here. But nevertheless here I am with another update.

Christmas has passed finally I had a pretty good holiday considering. Since it starts well before Thanksgiving now I am so glad to have it over, when I was a kid Christmas kicked ass but now it just sucks.

There have been very few games to keep my attention over the past couple months. Usually during the holidays there are more games than I can handle but it seems that this year it's all about the XBOX 360 which I won't be buying until the price goes WAY down.

So I have headed back to PlanetSide along with CDL. We had a great time in the game when it came out and we have gone back again. We are having just as much fun as we once did in the game. The Merits that are in now give some incentive to continue improving your character. We've started right where we left off with our Tip of the Spear operations and tower ownage and it has been a complete blast. I am getting involved more in Command considering it seems any of the other CR5's don't give 2 shits anymore and just talk about random dumb shit on the command channel. I've found it quite rewarding relaying information for people and helping to organise assaults.

So keep an eye out for us in PlanetSide - until we meet again (I'd say 3 months?) in all seriousness I am going to try and update way more often. So until next time :p

At last..

Well the weekend is finally here, I got so much done this week at work that it feels good to have a few days off. Monday is Columbus day and being in education, I get that day off :D Anyway on to what has peaked my interest for games recently.

So as I posted several days ago about Star Trek Online it turns out today they did a new Q&A over at Star Trek Online.NET with a few of the developers. I am really really hoping this game does not dissapoint as it will probably be the only MMO I would ever play again. So far, it is looking great - here is a quick snippet from their Q&A:

Brief stint at the academy. This is an opportunity to immerse the new player in our world, set up our premise, and potentially teach a little before launching the new recruit off into the galaxy. Note that the player will likely only choose his race at this time.

Assignment to a training vessel. The player will use this time to test department content and then lock into his chosen department. This gives him the chance to see what those departments are actually like before having to choose.

Entry into the larger hub network. This phase has the player adventuring within Federation space. The missions in this area of the galaxy capture the traditional one-shot episode-like content you know and love.

Commission. While he has already gone out on training missions with small, temporary ships, or as crew members of other players’ ships, this is his first real permanent commission.

Exploration into disputed territory. The conflict we’ve hinted at is a major factor within this phase of the game. The stakes will be higher, but so will the rewards

As you can see there it is looking pretty damn appealing it's to bad it's still at least a year off :( There is much more to read over at Star Trek Online.NET so head over and check it out.

Massholes..

Last night me and Jen went over to my grandparents house to meet up with a bunch of family. My cousin is back on leave from a deployment and was in town and my uncle whom Jen has never met was coming up for a few days. He had been gone for at least 5 years and she never met him and only heard of him he lives down in the Florida Keys where I need to get my ass down to soon. Needless to say we had to go over and hang out with the family. My family is most certainly strange at times, from my grandmother talking about sex toys to me and my cousin talking about his recent drunken blog entries. None the less it was a great time and I love to spend time with my family, I think its the first time in several years that I was in the same house with all my closest cousins.

So got on the highway today headed home from work, everything appeared great at first no traffic and high speeds. Perfect for a 30 minute drive home, but all was not well further up the raod. As always, some asshat managed to drive his car into the median grass - god knows why or how he ended up down there alone. This managed to back up traffic for about 5 miles or so and add another 20m on to my 30 minute commute. And of course the traffic on the other side southbound was also backed up because they had to look and see what was going on. I've heard talk of police putting up tarps and stuff in front of accidents and such but what will that do? "Hey look at that tarp I wonder whats going on behind it!!"

Anyways thats about all I have to complain about today, I'm tired as hell and I really am not in the mood to talk about the Red Sox who have once again dug themselves into a win or die situation.

Life goes on..

Well life continues and I have been completely stretched these past few days at work. Been working on implementing an in house intranet for people to read IT Department info and also submit service requests. This invovled building a Linux server to install PHP/mySQL/Apache. I used Linux because if I had used a Windows 2003 server I would have had to reboot it 3000 times and it would have taken me 3 weeks instead of 2 days. I ended up using Redhat's free OS code name: Fedora Project which so far has been fitting the bill very nicely. I also used Wordpress as a news page of sorts (Sorry blogger, You don't work standalone)

On the home front I have cancelled my World of Warcraft account, I decided it was time to put it on the shelf. High end content sucks ass for a casual player so there is no point to leveling anymore. Maybe in the future I will renew. Jenny and I have been playing Fear which has been a blast. Overall it's more of the same as far as FPS's go but - its a change of pace and its fast paced which is alot of fun. Plus I can just pick up and play, no need to fly to another zone for 25 minutes to shoot someone.

Future MMO's

As many of you know I used to be an extreme hater of the RPG. Truth is I had always feared that if I had gone near one I would meet the fate many of my friends did and be sucked in. Well that's just what ended up happening.

Anyways things in WoW are still fun - but the new is starting to wear off and people are starting to get bored with it. When Blizzard made high end raid content only applicable to high end hard core guilds they really screwed the pooch with me and my guild. 40 people to raid an instance? Screw that, it means you need like 60 level 60's to constantly run something like Molten Core.

So my outlook on the future has begun. Many people have talked about Vanguard and how it could be the next big thing but, I am not so sure. From my limited reading about it, and my conversations with other people it seems like it is going to be the most hardcore of hardcore RPG. The case where, if you are a lumberjack that is level 5 and you try and chop down a level 25 tree you suffer a painful death by wood. Personally that is not appealing to me.

I have always hoped for a Space based futuristic RPG that did not suck, all the one's I have read about and talked to people about have no appeal to me. Thus I have set my eyes on what I am most excited to see come out.

I have always been a Star Trek fan, and Star Trek games have almost always been doomed to fail. As if they are cursed in some way. I am hoping against hope that the upcoming Star Trek: Online reverses the evil curse and finally allows me to captain my own ship. So far it is looking very promising, the ability to choose which way you want to go in terms of Helm, engineering, Science, Tactical etc. It will give everyone no matter the path they choose the ability to enter into Command and perhaps one day command your own ship. Ships will be full of players and NPC's and captains it appears will have the ability to invite people to their ship and even reject/kick people (Out the airlocks perhaps?) .

In my opinion any good game needs a good backbone in terms of a community. So far it looks like Star Trek Online.net is taking up that role pretty well. They have up a great FAQ compiled of all the known information about the game including the fact that it is still a ways off in terms of development. You can take a look at their FAQ over here.

that's about it for today, overall boring so far. Tonight I am meeting up with my cousin many know as MattxMosh from the forums for a few brews, more on that tomorrow.. Maybe.