Ceri B.

City of Heroes: Some of the best NPC dialogue ever

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 10:50:03 GMT

Someone at the studio really, really earned their writing pay one day...

A series of really well-done missions in the upper teens starts off with the PCs helping out Faultline, a young man whose supervillain father was apparently responsible for demolishing an entire district of the city, rescue his impetuous would-be heroine girlfriend, Fusionette. And rescue her again, and some more, in fact. Then we get to find out what was up with Faultline's father and a lot of other skullduggery, and it's satisfyingly epic stuff.

Then, a dozen or more levels later, they turn up again, in the Rikti War Zone. They get kidnapped, too, and there is rescue action, and they help out with the next set of challenges. In the middle of a very big battle inside a Rikti vessel, the comments in blue turn up:

Yes, someone thought to have the NPC couple chattering exactly the way PCs do on the side. I love that.

Weight Watchers, week 42

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 13:07:36 GMT

No measurement this week, as I'm in the middle of something yoinking my metabolism around a lot. But then it'll be done.

Music moment: Queensryche doing covers

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 18:50:03 GMT

So it turns out that Queensryche has out an album's worth of cover songs, Take Cover. Here are the lads from Seattle giving a really excellent treatment to Pink Floyd's great "Welcome to the Machine".

In which there is real blood pressure progress

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 11:06:26 GMT

To recap: last fall my blood pressure got up to about 200/112 in the doctor's office, at which my doctor expressed some surprise I hadn't already had a stroke, and I started in on treatment for it. This last week I reached some important decisions and started putting them into practice, and wow, it's paying off. Last night, 143/86, and this morning, 145/92. These are the best I've had yet, and I'm really hoping it's sustained.

In which there is good mood

Sun, 14 Mar 2010 01:25:14 GMT

I'm around a couple of big turns this week, it looks like, and getting to look at new vistas of work to do and opportunities to reach for. I'll be writing it all up at more length soon, but for now I just wanted to say: I am a happy camper this afternoon.

Today's unmitigated good news

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 15:01:51 GMT

The Allegra I started taking on Monday is definitely giving me some relief. I'm getting some more sleep, and am moving from "profoundly exhausted and weary" to "tired and happy for more rest". Feels good. And it comes with no qualifiers, no hesitation, no nothin'. Just less congestion and more rest.

And now, the news in my mouth

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 13:14:44 GMT

Yesterday I went for my second session at the University of Washington dental school, to go over the results of the intake examination and talk about treatment options. It went very well indeed.

The student assigned to my case is a big fellow with a grin almost wide enough to look like something in Terry Gilliam animation, with a very clear voice and a genuine enthusiasm for answering questions. I had a bunch, and the friend who drove me had more, and he really welcomed them, going into extra details of lots of kinds and happy to do so. My fellow sickies know what a precious and reassuring thing that is.

The upshot is: at the foundational level, my mouth is much better than I had any reason to expect. ("Your bone condition is awesome", he said.) Just as I turn out not to have any developing glaucoma, so I have no major gum disease or anything like that, either. This is a genuine happy surprise.

I do have a lot of small areas of decay, which they can and will treat with straightforward decay removal and fillings. I'll be starting in with a comprehensive cleaning and the first of many filling sessions in a couple of weeks, after their spring break.

Two teeth got extra attention. One in the upper front has a very large visible cavity. But the nerve there proves to actually be still alive and well, to everyone's surprise. It's quite possible that a major removal of decay and a big filling will take care of it, rather than a root canal. In the upper back right, one is a little mysterious: X-rays suggest a nasty big cavity, visual examination doesn't offer any of the expected confirming signs, and as my guy explained, sometimes X-rays give misleading impressions. So they'll watch that for developments while tending the rest.

To my very great relief, Medicaid coverage in the flavor I have is really good. It'll pay for all the cleaning and filling, and for anterior (front) root canals, so if that one up at the front of my mouth needs it, it's set. It wouldn't pay for a root canal for the back one, though it would cover extraction; I can start a little saving fund for in case action's needed back there.

I did expect to be in for a lot of treatment, and I am. A dozen or more sessions may well be necessary, in the months to come. But the nature of the work and my overall prospects are way better than I'd have guessed.

Picture time: Seattle spring moments

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 17:41:02 GMT

It's been ages, hasn't it? But I have been taking pictures, and feel like sharing a couple.

Buds by *Cericonversion on deviant ART

Blossoms by *Cericonversion on deviant ART

Weight Watchers, week 41

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 13:27:35 GMT

No change. Commentary on current stuff later, but I'm mostly glad not to be gaining.

City of Heroes/Villains: Super-ize me

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 02:50:44 GMT

For my readers familiar with City of Heroes and City of Villains: If you were to thrust super-powers on me and put me to work in either Paragon City or the Rogue Isles, what would they be? I don't see myself as temperamentally very villainous, but I do have my "let it all burn" moments, and of course with the expansion pack coming up, some villainous months followed by semi-heroic reform are possible, so both sides are up for grabs.

What Nazis knew that Republicans don't

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 16:51:20 GMT

I'm reading Life and Death in the Third Reich, by Peter Fritszche, and finding it excellent. His material is letters, diaries, and other personal accounts of a wide range of Germans throughout the '30s and '40s, and his topic is the ways in which they made places for themselves in the Nazi regime, not just socially but internally: how they thought and felt, what they taught themselves and each other to do, how they reconciled some contradictions and lived with others, and so on.

The degree of similarity with Republican America is hard to overstate. Fritzsche on the effort to suppress empathy—to get Germans to make themselves no longer sympathize or care about designated victim classes, and to feel an interest in the well-being only of those approved for prospering—is particularly good, and particularly relevant. Ditto his look at how different Germans worked with the concept of constant impending doom, and its use as justification for aggression. The American soulmates of the Nazis have never been as intense or thorough about it as the originals, but the advantages of sustained effort do accumulate. The Nazis only had 12 years; the Republicans have had 30 years of really solid media hegemony, and decades of counter-New Deal effort running up to that.

But there's a particular thing the Nazis were good at that the Republicans are really terrible about: community life. The Republican machine's attachment to a particularly brutal kind of corporate capitalism makes them inclined to favor masses who are isolated and scared, and they lose out on the advantages of masses who feel strong ties to each other as well as to their shared abstractions. The Republicans' dupes are about as good as the Nazi public was when it comes to hating the Other and feeling their very way of life in imminent peril, but they are completely out of the habit of working together on their own common good, and this keeps them from the complete social transformation the Nazis set out for.

In short, we're not Nazi because we're more MBA.

Weight Watchers, week 40

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 13:44:37 GMT

Suddenly, nothing happened. :) Up 0.1 pounds, to 309.2, but I'm inclined to treat that as "no change", really. I'm happy about progress on other matters, and continuing to pull my Weight Watchers daily point total down a little bit.

Sunday notes: not dead yet

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 19:00:56 GMT

Whew. Been a wringer, though. Looks like I have had a cold, plus seasonal allergies, plus some medication reactions. Sorting it through, but yeesh.

It really is lovely to see everything blossoming again, though. It was a hard winter, and I like the symbolism and the physical beauty of spring coming in.

Further adventures with shaving cream

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 20:55:49 GMT

If you take a big handful of shaving cream, work it up into a really good lather, and then rub it into your scalp as if it were shampoo, it does no harm. But it does take multiple rinses to get it all out.

Think I'm still tired.

In which there's mending

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 15:14:00 GMT

Sorry for being quiet this week. I was sick. I could get a note from Mom and/or my doctor, if that'd help. :)

I think at least 2-3 things hit at once: allergies from stuff coming into bloom, plus environmental problems from nearby construction, plus a diet experiment not working out (that's getting a post of its own soon), plus some other stresses. I didn't actually have stomach flu, but things that worked about that way in terms of basic misery.

It's nice to be feeling better.

Weight Watchers, week 39

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 15:14:32 GMT

Now this is more like it. Down 0.7 pounds, to 309.1. Moving the right way again.

The A-Team

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 18:41:33 GMT

OMG. Allandaros, thank you.

Another City of Heroes moment

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 17:28:15 GMT

I'm having a lot of fun with this one. She's an illusion/radiation controller, and the ability to make bad people fight each other is always good times for me. She also has a good solid roleplaying super group: she's a history professor turned mutant rights activist, after her lifelong very minor mutant powers ramped up sharply in the wake of being attacked by a Rikti artifact. So she's an adjunct instructor at a Paragon City school for young mutants while pursuing her own career of direct action.

The look delights me. That's the wedding tux in white and silver, with blue boots, the stealth gloves in blue and white, blue tech belt, and of course blue and white tech helm. (I mention these things because apparently I'm getting some results out of the costume creator that some of my veteran player friends are curious about.)

I figured I was reasonably well qualified to play someone with immune problems, and that they hit some classic comic book mutant vibes. It's possible that future storylines could lead to her being able to breathe the air and have it touch her skin again; if so, I'll work out what she looks like underneath.

City of Heroes: That's no moon, that's pure jackassery

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 08:33:13 GMT

So here I am in a super group I've had some good play with, with an interesting setup, doing the first of their biweekly meetings I've been able to attend, and there are parallel in-character and out-of-character discussions...

And inspired by a stray remark that distinguished sex and gender, one of the guys bursts out with "I HATE SIMONE!!!" We were then treated to a harangue about how Simone de Beauvoir had invented the sex/gender distinction to make life hard for Jean-Paul Sartre in revenge for him ditching her, and how every use of that terminology is, whether we know it or not, traceable back to her bitter scheme.

After a bit of this, I spoke up and said, "I'm transgendered and it is not about de Beauvoir at all, it's about the lived experience, and what it takes for a sane and healthy life, and about how cultures deal with biology." After a bit more of this, I said that this is not something up for debate, and bailed out.

It's kind of a shame, in that I was really enjoying the company of other folks in the super group. They include several people with relatively old-school fannish sorts of acculturation and interests. But it only takes one such loser to make a place unsafe, and it's clear that they weren't going to toss him for being horrifying to me and threatening to my well-being. So out I went.

What a drag.

Music moment: The best love song I've heard in a while

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 06:09:09 GMT

Hat tip to Sean Collins for pointing at this guy's cover of the Talking Heads' "This Must Be The Place" a while back. I went to milesfisher.com and discovered that you can get 4 of his songs in 320 Kbs MP3s free, and immediately fell in a big way for this one.

An important marker of progress

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 17:08:36 GMT

Yesterday my counselor asked if I'd like to move from biweekly to monthly sessions...because she feels I'm doing quite well, managing the challenges that come along, and doing well taking new steps as old ones are done. She says I should feel free at any time to ask for more frequent ones if I need them, whether because of present stresses or because of working more on old backlog thanks to the present going better.

This is hugely encouraging to me. I trust her assessment very much.

Weight Watchers, week 38

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 20:14:04 GMT

Up a touch, to 309.8. I'm feeling okay about it, though: I got through the very-much-dread dental evaluation (and it wasn't as bad news as dreaded), and then a migraine on Sunday and Monday, and I am doing substantially better today. I look for progress to resume.

Speaking of CoH, a nostalgia trip

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 17:03:14 GMT

This was inspired by a robotic defender I grouped with named Force Field Drone. Meet a fire control/force field controller, Netnews XBot.

"Priorities: #1. Protect the articles. #2. Distribute the articles. #3. Engage with fire all designated threats.

"History: 1994. Activation. 1999. Human civilization destroyed in nuclear war and megavolcanic eruption. Self lonely. 2010. Self encounters Portal Corporation explorers, follows them to this timeline's Paragon City. 2010. Self-deployment in service of priorities.

World of Warcraft musings

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 16:58:21 GMT

I've actually done some Valentine's stuff on an alt, and in the course of that and talking with friends, I have a sharper sense of a particular source of frustration.

Overall difficulty is the one I'd already poked at: stuff is easier trivial or not really feasible, whether because of difficulty as such or requiring skills I lack. It was a combo of doing the Valentine's stuff as mentioned above and doing their counterparts in CoH that brought the other into focus to me: repeated effort for miniscule chance of reward. I don't mind repeated effort when it gets me something. But I feel worn about all the times I went for, say, Baron Rivendare's mount and never got it on any character, despite a cumulative hundreds of tries.

I understand that similar setups exist in various parts of CoH, but I am far from them, so they don't matter to my experience right now.

The week in hormones

Sat, 13 Feb 2010 07:37:04 GMT

Much, much better this week. I got very tired on Thursday, but almost all of that was dread. I've been dreading this dental examination for at least two years—it was realizing how much I needed it and how hard it was to do anything at all to seek out a way to do it, and the realization of impending suicide by self-neglect is what got me onto this path of self-appraisal and change in the first place. The news this week wasn't great, but there were no big surprises, only expected stuff that can be dealt with. And will be!

Anyway, with that load off, I am feeling about a zillion percent better. But my body's cooperating better, too. I was tired today both before and after the weekly shot, but just plain happy and productive. So this is working, I think.