Golden Anvil

...is that I end up rambling about a variety of topics instead of staying focused. Ah well. Such is life. Want to know what I've been up to lately?

You must, otherwise you wouldn't be reading...

Let's see, my free time this week (you know, the time when I should have been writing nice posts for you guys) was pretty much spent playing Microsoft Flight Simulator. This game (yeah, yeah, the hard core fans would probably shoot me for using that term) has actually been entertaining me even beyond my expectations. I've had fun flying around all sorts of places I'm familiar with. I've enjoyed going through the tutorials and flight instructions, and I'm just now starting into some of the various missions.

My first attempt at landing a passenger jet went horribly wrong as I oh so gently touched down on the houses short of the runway. I haven't even tried my hand at helicopters yet. Still, the smaller prop planes and gliders seem to be working out fine for me. Of course I still haven't turned up the realism sliders yet, so I'm sure I still have a good bit of practicing to do.

The game is surprisingly immersive (as a result of the nice visuals and sounds, and things like moving traffic (in the sky, in the water, and on the roads) and extensive use of 3D scenery (such as trees and buildings)). All in all, I'm not expecting any difficulties at getting my $35 worth out of this game.

Of course, I'm taking a break from it soon, because S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and Quake 4 should be arriving on Monday. That was the other half of the order I placed last week. I figure I'll take a break from flying, play through Quake 4 (which is the older game), then take a shot at S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Then I'll get back to flying at some point. Yeesh... computer games certainly keep me busy.

Of course, that's not all I do... Today I finally finished up the Rhapsody trilogy by Elizabeth Haydon. I can't really recommend this series. I'll likely be taking it back to the used bookstore. There were just too many things that jarred my sense of disbelief, too much sappy love story, too much rambling off onto tangents. I'd rate the series as 3 out of 5 stars, which given the things in there that are not "child appropriate" means that I really don't have any good reason to keep the book in my library. Ah well...

As you can see below, the next series on my plate is the Assassin's Apprentice series by Robin Hobb. This is a series of which I've read the first two books, but never had a chance to read the third. I'm looking forward to going through this one again. We'll see if it lives up to my memory of it.

Let's see... gauntman and I did a bit more work on our Roguelike game yesterday. We've officially named it Way of the Fist (which speaks of its oriental martial arts kind of feel. We're getting close to actually having a playable game. I've been working on random creation of the world map, and that's actually going quite well. Gauntman has been getting a lot of the basic execution flow in place, as well as getting things like the save/load system, and scripting systems in place. We'll probably continue plugging away at it.

Mrs. Kheldar and I got to go to a movie theater on Friday. This one was a little different though. We went to the Organ Loft to watch a Charlie Chaplin (Pawn Shop) and two Laurel and Hardy shows, all accompanied by a live organist. The organ itself was pretty impressive, featuring 5 keyboard, 378 tab stops, and 2400 pipes (and cymbals, and gongs, and horns, and other such things). All in all, it was a very impressive and very unique experience. We're both looking forward to going back some time.

Let's see, other tidbits of note...

I sort of, kind of, almost forgot Mrs. Kheldar's birthday this week... Fortunately I'd already figured out a plan B (in case I didn't get around to coming up with a plan A), so when I got home from work and she told me that my sister called to wish her a happy birthday, my panic only lasted for a few long seconds. Fortunately, plan B worked out very well, and we had a very enjoyable evening after all.

I also got the motorcycle back from the shop yesterday. YAY! It cost us a bit of money, but that was expected, since I had to replace the back tire. Ah well... With the wonderful weather lately I've sure been missing riding, so it's good to have it back. Mrs. Kheldar and I took a ride after church today, and it was so nice. We're contemplating the possibility of toughening up our hind ends so that we can think about the possibility of taking a road trip up to Boise sometime. We'll see. That's kind of a long trip for two people on one bike...

Well, I think all that pretty well covers the last week. Expect an update Monday on our roleplaying, and we'll see if I can't update you guys a little more often. Maybe if things were a little less hectic...