judyonthenet

Blurry achievement says, “Achievements unlocked: 2 for 45G”
Didn’t even show the individual achievements!

Last Sunday, I held a Rock Band 2 party to do the Endless Setlist 2, which is where every song in the game is played in one go. 84 songs clocking at around 6 hours and 20 minutes. There’s achievements for completing the Endless Setlist, and Rock Band is much more fun played with company, so I figured it was a good excuse to hold a Rock Band marathon party, especially during the holidays when most people are free.

Note it’s still daylight

With the help of Kelvin, Andrew, Jeff, Ravi, Krang, and Avery (and Eubin stopping by to check out the action) we were able to complete the Endless Setlist 2 with three instruments (guitar, bass, drums) on medium without fail or pause, netting my account two achievements:

It’s the Bladder of Steel award that’s super tricky. No pausing means no hitting Start, Guide, or disconnecting the controller. So if the batteries ran out, we’d be screwed. If someone accidentally hit Start while trying to whammy, we’d be jacked. If there was a power outage… you get the picture. Thankfully, no issues came up, and the guys rocked out (well, as much as they could rock out on medium) and were very good at instrument passing when a break was needed.

Resting and snacking between plays

Though, it seemed like these guys had no problem playing for over 6 hours. I didn’t even want to play drums (thought it too risky even at medium), but they insisted. Before starting the marathon, I made Andrew “audition” one of the harder songs just to be sure. Andrew definitely gets the MVP award for doing the drum portions of the last few songs, which probably would have been our undoing without his mad skillz.

The last song, notice it’s much darker now

I feel kind of lame since I only played maybe 7 or 8 early songs, so I don’t feel I contributed much even though I’m the one getting achievement. (It’s technically both Kelvin’s and my account, and he actually played quite a few songs.) People seemed to be enjoying the challenge though; there weren’t many requests to switch off from the folks playing. At least I provided sustenance: chips, dip, sodas, and mini pigs-in-blankets!

Kelvin busting out celebratory cider

The session started around 2:20PM and lasted to around 8:40PM. Score of 466,729 with 405 out of 420 stars. The most ridiculous about this session is that the two achievements are only worth 45 points. Seriously, 25 points for Bladder of Steel??

New thing I learned today: Abnormality is a Massachusetts death metal band, and “Visions” is the first song they wrote. Their vocalist is a woman.

“Visions” has to be the hardest (and worst) song in the game, even though it’s third from the end of the setlist. The song is just… incomprehensible noise. The fact that the vocalist is actually growling words surprises me more than the fact that she’s female.

Kelvin and Avery goofing off at Waialea Beach

I finally uploaded our pictures from our trip to the Big Island back in October/November. It randomly poured today, so it was nice to take a second look at the our vacation pictures. If y’all are bored, feel free to check them out. I don’t have any videos uploaded, and I don’t know if I’ll ever do blog posts like I did for my honeymoon (which I STILL haven’t finished, sigh). Maybe I’ll eventually do a highlights post. Eh, whatever.

My gallery:
http://judyonthenet.com/gallery/v/vacation/big_island_2009/

The trip was for our 1st year anniversary, but after our anniversary, Avery joined us for the trip. He’s a photographer working on going pro, so he took some really excellent shots of us. His gallery for the trip is here:
http://www.averywongphotography.com/Vacation/Hawaii-2009/10399705_RMtAW#720385476_4whiW

New thing I learned today: A heiau is a Hawaiian temple.

Before this trip, I never realized how fascinatingly barbaric Hawaiian history is. Before, when I thought of Hawaiian culture, I thought of hulas, ukuleles, and roast pig. Now, I think of backwards laws, violent war, and human sacrifices.

At least in my game it does. I love Western RPGs, but I haven’t been able to finish (or even play) many of them because they often times have giant eight-legged bugs as a staple enemy. Dragon Age: Origins has these creatures, too. In fact, they’re notoriously scary, eliciting complaints from even non-arachnophobes. Like I mentioned in a previous post, Kelvin helped me through the first spider section of the game, but how would I get through the rest of the game?

The good thing about getting the PC version is mods. And the good thing about playing TF2 on the same server a lot is that you make friends with other video game nerds. Combine this together, and I get somebody who makes a mod for me that changes spiders to bears:
http://social.bioware.com/project/1013/

Brian is my hero <3 Because of this mod, I was able to spend most of my Thanksgiving fighting many, many bears. I was at a point in the game where the next two major sections would have a lot of spiders, and I don’t think Kelvin would have been willing to babysit me that long, so this mod came at the right time.

Waist-high in bears

All the spiders in the game use the same basic model, so even the spider queen boss was replaced by the bear model. The mod doesn’t replace everything spider-related: webs still show up, “bears” still make “spider sounds” (which mean nothing to me since I don’t associate any sounds with spiders), “bear” corpses decompose into spider skeletons (which is kind of funny), icons for spider spells still have spiders on them, and when Morrigan shapeshifts into a “bear” her profile pic is still a spider. Out of these things, I think only the last one remotely bothers me, but Morrigan is much more useful as a mage than a giant “bear” anyway.

Since there are no animations of bears falling from the ceiling, “bears” disappear when they fall from the ceiling and magically appear on the ground out of nowhere. I think it’d be hilariously awesome if someone came up with the animations so that giant bears would fall from the ceiling. That said, the game has been a touch more relaxing with less things jumping on top of me all of sudden. Even bears from the ceiling would give me a heart attack.

Because of mods, Dragon Age: Origins is officially arachnophobic-safe. Bears are significantly cuter (and die much more dramatically) than spiders, but if you’re afraid of bears, someone also made a mod that uses deepstalkers (little dinosaurs, basically) as a replacement instead:
http://social.bioware.com/project/1237/

New thing I learned today: Arctophobia is the fear of bears.

I also found “ursaphobia” on some websites, but arctophobia seems more legit.

Today I went to my imeem page, wanting to listen to my usual playlists while I study/surf internet, only to find this:

Double-you-tee-eff!

WHAT? I HATE MySpace. And where are my playlists?? Apparently, MySpace recently purchased imeem for less than a million dollars. And by recently, I mean yesterday. Instead of making a smooth transition for imeem users to get used to MySpace Music by integrating the two services, MySpace completely nukes imeem immediately, leaving imeem users stuck without their playlists and music with no warning.

For years, I’ve used imeem as a way to listen to streamed music while I work. I found it to be a great alternative to carrying music around or storing mp3s on multiple computers, and I liked that I didn’t have to buy/pirate the music I wanted. The interface was easy-to-use, and browsing music was a breeze. Now MySpace wants me to re-signup, re-search for songs (not that I remember 80% of them), re-do all my playlists, all through their crappy interface. Or I can wait some indefinite amount of time to see if they actually integrate any of the previous features of imeem. No, not doing it.

I looked for another alternative. I hear about Last.fm all the time, but my 2 second attention span wasn’t enough time for me to figure out how to use it. As far as I can tell, the interface is terrible, and I can’t find all the songs I want to listen to. So Last.fm is a no-go for me.

Then I found this reddit thread where several users recommended Grooveshark. After trying out the website all day today, I believe we do have a winner. It streams and organizes music just like imeem did, has more songs available than imeem did, and it has a really clean and intuitive interface (very generic mp3-player-looking).

Grooveshark interface, with my current playlist

I think I like Grooveshark more than imeem. The only complaint I have is that streaming has been spotty throughout the day, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Grooveshark’s performance may be suffering from an onslaught of lost ex-imeem users. We’ll see as how Grooveshark does as time passes and it becomes more popular. If it’s anything like imeem, I imagine there’ll eventually be a lot more advertising and less songs available to select.

New thing I learned today: Aside from the Myspace acquisition, I also learned that imeem was based in San Francisco.

Thanksgiving was mellower than usual this year. We usually find ourselves going to multiple dinners, with my mom, Kelvin’s mom, and Kelvin’s dad usually having their festivities going on. This year, we only went to Kelvin’s dad’s dinner, as Kelvin’s mom was having dinner with friends and my mom was hosting a dinner with lots of Chinese-speaking folks that Kelvin would probably be uncomfortable around.

Before Thanksgiving, I was getting an itch to make a few things. This is rare, so I made sure to act on it as soon as possible. The two Thanksgiving related things I made were a Pumpkin Cheesecake and Honey Pecan Ice Cream.

I’ve been craving more pumpkin cheesecake ever since having a really good pumpkin cheesecake slice at Forbes Mill back in October. On Allrecipes, I found a recipe for pumpkin cheesecake that was highly rated and seemed somewhat similar to what I had eaten before. It turned out really good (at least I think so anyway). The crust for the pie is crunchy and just the right sweetness, and it held the cheesecake together very well. This cheesecake, like the one at Forbes Mill, was just the right amount of pumpkin-ness and cheesecake-ness. You wouldn’t be able to tell by how much of this cheesecake I ate that I’m actually not that found of either pumpkin or cheesecake.

I gave this cake to my mom for her Thanksgiving party. Unfortunately, everybody brought a dessert, so mine barely got eaten. I asked for it back so at least I could enjoy it. (My mom, who loves sweets, doesn’t like cinnamon, which means the cheesecake would probably be wasted on her.) Of course, Kelvin hates pumpkin, even the little bit that was in this cheesecake, so I had to eat the whole friggin’ thing myself (minus a large slice I gave to Avery and a slice or two that was taken at my mom’s party). This cheesecake is pretty good, but even a slice a day is rough for me. I cut up slices and froze them, so I’ll be ready if my craving comes back.

For Thanksgiving dinner, Kelvin’s stepmother made a pumpkin-cake thingy (she had no name for it, so this is actually what she called it) for dessert, so the only thing she asked me to bring was ice cream. The recipe for the cheesecake require a little bit of heavy cream, so what to do with the rest? Make ice cream! I took another recipe from that Williams Sonoma book that Anna gave me for my birthday. I went for the Honey Pecan, since it seemed neutral and would compliment any pumpkin dessert.

I forgot to take pictures of it, so this is the only picture I have, where a scoop is paired with some of the pumpkin-cake thingy. I went light on the sugar and honey because the last ice cream I made from the book was too sweet, but it probably needed more honey in the end. Regardless, my ice cream was well-received by the family, so I was pretty happy. I thought maybe they’re just saying it to be nice, but people got seconds. Kelvin’s dad, I think, loved the ice cream; he kept raving about the nuts in ice cream and finished every last drop left in the container.

Thanksgiving dinner was good, as always. Lotsa food enjoyed with family. Avery joined us this year, so he got to witness to part of the mayhem that is Kelvin’s family, two little nieces included.

Kelvin and the nieces, and Avery’s punch

The family at the dinner table (except Susie and me, who are cut off at the corners)

After the Thanksgiving dinner, we did what we spent the rest of the weekend doing: playing Dragon Age: Origins. Seriously, ALL WEEKEND.

I hope everybody had a happy Thanksgiving!

New thing I learned today: Mace is a kind of spice. It comes from the nutmeg tree, with the seed producing nutmeg spice and the covering of the seed making mace. Mace is basically a stronger-flavored, lighter-colored nutmeg.