Return to Minecraft

When it Rains…

The old euphemism “when it rains it pours” is fitting today because it is absolutely drenched outside… and additionally we have been dealing with all sorts of issues this week.  Over the weekend we had to deal with my wife’s vehicle and the tensioner going out in a rather dramatic way.  For those that don’t remember we were driving Sunday and the bolt essentially sheared causing pretty much every light on the dash to come on at once and us to barely make it home before the engine overheated to the point of no return.  Monday during the day we got that issue fixed and it was a rather simple mistake that lead to it.  I thought we were done with our auto troubles for the time being, but reality seemed to have other ideas.

Yesterday over lunch I ran to Target to pick up cat food and while I was out something to eat.  When I started up the jeep there was a very loud mechanical whirring noise that I didn’t recognize, but otherwise the vehicle seemed to perform fine so I tried my best not to think about it.  As I was heading back from lunch and entering the edge of downtown I noticed that the red battery light had come on.  At this point I am not really sure what to do… I’ve had a few alternators go out, and generally speaking that light combined with the whirring noise I heard earlier probably meant mine was dying.  I parked in the garage and went into the building calling the shop to see if they could work me in.  Sure enough they could, so I thought I would try and make my way there, hoping I did not get stranded along the side of the road.  I mean we have AAA so in theory there was never really the chance that I would truly get stranded…  but I crossed all my things in hope that I made it through successfully.

When I got out into the jeep I turned everything off that could possibly be drawing power.  So by the time I made it to the shop I had a rather sweaty windblown hairdo that I am sure was extremely attractive.  Thankfully the shop we use is around the corner from my house so I could drop the vehicle off and walk home.  Just about the time I walked in the front door my phone was ringing.  They had been able to assess the issues and said it was in fact the Alternator, that the bearings were bad and it would need to be replaced.  About three thirty they called back letting me know the vehicle was ready for pickup.  It is probably a bad thing that the girl behind the desk addressed me by name when I walked through the door.  That means we have been in there entirely too often lately.  Good news is that my Jeep appears to be fine now, and since both of our vehicles are paid off… I guess paying a car payment a piece worth of repairs is not too bad in the long run.

Return to Minecraft

javaw 2014-07-10 06-26-05-352 A few days ago Zeli mentioned that she would be setting up an Alliance of Awesome Minecraft server so that her child could have a safe place to play the game.  It is a whitelist based server, and since my Minecraft name is pretty easy to remember I asked her to go ahead and set me up.  Last night I finally got around to logging in and playing.  For some time House Stalwart has had a Minecraft server run by a member, and at this point we have conquered pretty much all of the land surrounding the spawn point for a few days worth of travel. While this huge sprawling city is awesome to behold, it doesn’t leave much room for you to go out and tame the wilds.  So I opted to start fresh on a brand new server, since really the “taming the wilderness” phase of a new server is the most enjoyable for me.

Zeli started us off with a stack of steaks, a steel pick and steel sword, which is a pretty good toolset to gain a foothold in the wilderness.  I however squandered this horribly.  Having been so long since I played on a server, I forgot about all of the controls like /sethome and wandered around at night for awhile and down into a cave managing to get myself killed… and as such losing all of the nifty baubles that I started with.  I really had no clue where I was in relation to the spawn point, so I pretty much set out to start fresh.  We have a village near the spawner, and I managed to find it… which means that we also have the village trackstar zombies at night spawning near us.  It took me a lot of deaths to finally get to a place where I had enough tools to defend myself.

I did not get terribly far, but right now I have the start of a mine dug into the side of a hill, with a bridge extending from it out into the water where I am slowly building a tower of sorts.  I figure the mine will feed my need for resources and the tower out in the middle of a pond will give me plenty of defense.  Just going to have to come up with a clever way to get in and out of said tower.  The area I am in for some reason has a couple of golems spawned near me, which do a fair job of keeping the baddies away at night.  I am guessing someone spawned the golems at the spawner and they just wandered off.  Additionally there are mass amounts of horses and cows where I am set up at, meaning I have eventual transportation and a ready source of meat and leather.  This time I did remember to type /sethome.  Right now I am very much in the “locking things down” phase, trying to create something that will protect me entirely during the nights.

Farscape

farscape_characters While playing Minecraft last night I opted to hang out downstairs and watch Farscape.  This is one of my favorite television shows, but I have not actually made it all the way through the series.  I was at the very tail end of season three when Netflix lost the license to the show the first time.  For awhile I was having them ship me individual DVDs but that process got rather frustrating.  I could have of course gone out and found the episodes otherwise, but I got sidetracked.  At some point in the last few years they managed to get the licensing set up again and all of the episodes are now ready for streaming in all their glory.

The thing I love the most about this show is that it actually has some pretty diverse aliens that are both a member of the crew and ones that you encounter along the way.  The claim to fame of the show that it was done by the Jim Henson creature shop, and because of this the aliens that are brought to life by master puppeteers just have a realness to them that you cannot get with CGI.  Dominaar Rigel feels like a real character and not a small puppet, and because of this the show has held its production value, whereas most science fiction feels cheesy a few years after it is made as our graphical standards keep increasing.

At this point I have just finished season three and am ready to start the fourth and final season.  If minecraft continues to hold my interests, I will probably spend a few more nights watching Farscape and building away in the Alliance of Awesome server.  In fact I think that is what I did last time I watched Farscape…  build away on the House Stalwart server.  Minecraft and watching television seem to go hand in hand for me.  If you’ve never seen Farscape I highly suggest you check it out, as it has this whole Buck Rogers meets Star Wars feel to it.  I pretty much like all of the characters except for a late addition to the crew … Jool.  It is not that I mind her character, it is that I mind the sonic assault that is having her in any sort of action situation.  When she gets freaked out she emits this high pitched scream that drives me up a wall.

6 thoughts on “Return to Minecraft”

  1. How active are you of late – in regards to blogging compared to when you started WoW blogging?
    Be a sport and drop by here: Linky here – calling all bloggers
    I’m doing a writeup to see how many WoW bloggers are still “active” – if you’d be interested in a link exchange, just let me know, it’d be good for some extra pageviews ^,^

  2. I dunno what it is, but Farscape just never really grabbed me. I want to like it…. I love Claudia Black and Ben Browder. I’ve seen the 1st season 2x. Once was years ago when someone loaned me his dvd set and it didn’t grab me enough to make me want to watch past that. Then maybe 3 or 4 years ago when it was on Netflix I gave it another go. Started at the beginning again to re-familiarize with the overall story. Made it into the 2nd season, but I can’t recall if I ever made it to the end of the season or simply petered out on watching it again. IIRC, I finished S2 but still wasn’t feeling it and reading the episode descriptions for S3.. I thought they sounded really silly, so I just didn’t keep going.

    So Farscape’s on my “don’t see what the big deal is” list. I won’t say it was bad…. I just didn’t find it compelling. I’m glad to hear that you’re enjoying it, though.

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