January 2014 - Page 8 of 8 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Disker Du

January 3, 2014 by Belghast

Disker Du

I want to start off this mornings post with a bit of a public service announcement. There is a big of a troublesome malware circulating through the WoW player community and wreaking havoc with compromised accounts. At this point there is not a lot of absolute hard facts about it. You can check out the full thread on the wow forums for more details. According to support it seems to be occurring on systems that…

Are New or Newly Formatted
New WoW installs
Have Recently Downloaded and Installed Addons

If you follow the rest of the thread there is a lot of blaming going on with the Curse Client again. I do not really believe that this is directly involved as I personally use it and seem to be free of the malware. The worst part about this is that it seems to be really hard to detect. In order to check your own system you need to create an MSInfo file export. You can get into MSInfo by opening a run prompt in windows and typing “MSInfo32”. This will bring up the system diagnostics window, and under the File menu there is an option to Export. Once you have created this file, open it in a text editor like Notepad or my personal favorite choice Notepad++ and search for the string “Disker”.

So far on infected systems they have add the following entries that pop up in the search…

Disker rundll32.exe c:\users\name\appdata\local\temp\w_win.dll,dw Name-PC\Name Startup
Disker64 rundll32.exe c:\users\name\appdata\local\temp\w_64.dll,dw Name-PC\Name Startup

It is presently uncertain how the infection is happening. However there is lots of talk in the wow forum thread about potentially compromised ads on the wowhead website. Others complain that they got it while running the Curse Client. So right now there is just a bunch of speculation. One of the Blizzard forum MVPs Ressie has posted a really great guide for removing it from your system. The virus definition has been sent to the various malware scanner providers so hopefully it will start catching the pattern soon. While this is far from a zero day infection, it has been slipping through the cracks and malware software has been failing to detect it.

I highly suggest you take a moment this morning to create the MSInfo dump file and search it to see if you are infected. Currently this seems to be limited to the WoW Community but due to the nature of the trojan it could in theory compromise many of the authenticator based game clients. So even if you are not a wow player, I suggest you check your system just to make sure.

Junking Continued

Yesterday we did in fact leave town and head up to Muskogee for the purpose of hitting as many of the little junkshops as we could find. In theory we have been mostly looking for a very narrow cabinet to go behind the bathroom door and serve as a jewelry box, and lingerie and scarf storage. We only have about 26 inches to work with, so it is one of those situations where we will know it when we see it. As a result we are doing a lot of looking around. At the local hastings I found the above Tardis Jewelry box that I submitted as an alternative… but my wife didn’t really think that was the best option.

Additionally to this furniture search my wife is always on the lockout for interesting antique jewelry and scarves, whereas I am mostly interested in finding Legos and other interesting toys. While I have not broken into the bag yet, I think I may have found the mother lode or at least the best I have found so far. I don’t have pictures yet, but I will likely post some tomorrow. At one of the junk shops I found a huge bag of Legos. The bag itself is I believe is one of those ziploc “big bags” so far larger than a gallon… filled to the brim with Lego pieces. I got it for $20 and it seems to have the remnants of several sets I remember from the late 80s/early 90s.

Based on the pieces I can see it seems to contain most if not all of the above Lego ship the Caribbean Clipper from 1989. Additionally from what I can tell there seems to be pieces from the pretty epic Black Monarch’s Castle mixed in with it. There might be a few other sets mingled in, but immediate those are the two with iconic pieces that stood out to me. I remembered both sets from my childhood I just did not know them by name until looking them up this morning. At first glance I do not see any minifigures, which would be disappointing but regardless it seemed like a really good deal on some pretty old legos for only $20. We unfortunately are no closer to finding a workable cabinet than we were before we started. However the journey so far has been really enjoyable. Sifting through these junk stores is kinda like going to a really odd hands on museum. I keep snapping photos of the various nifty things we find.

And here are some of the oddities from yesterday…

Early Cartridge System

Not that these will mean much to anyone, but once upon a time there was a dark age of video gaming history ruled by Pong. In the second generation of home gaming systems there was an interesting entry called the RCA Studio II. At face value it was another Pong clone, but it offered the ability to have interchangeable cartridges to play other games. All of these were essentially just as primitive as pong as, but it offered some variety. While I didn’t see the actual Studio II base unit laying around they did have a wide assortment of the cartridges yesterday which was not really something I was expecting to see in a local area junk shop.

Pre-dazzler?

Ronco was notorious for hawking all manner of cheap stuff on the airwaves during the 70s. Apparently one of these was a Rhinestone and Stud setter. While I technically I was born in the 70s I did not remember this product at all. I do however very vividly remember the 80s version of this known as the “bedazzler” which at its core looks like exactly the same machine. So the question is… did is this then the “Pre-dazzler”? I snapped a photo because I think it was quirky, but the absolute best thing is I managed to dig up the original TV commercial on youtube. So much campy 70s goodness. Who wouldn’t want to wear rhinestones on their ass?

Unbearable

The other day I snapped a picture of a really creepy life sized Native American doll that was guarding one of the booths. When I stepped into that booth I literally jumped a little bit. Well it happened again yesterday. Yup you are seeing that right, it is quite literally a bearskin rug, strung out across a bed. From what I could tell it was in fact an actual bear, and not some sort of fake thing. It looked like real taxidermy, and was creepy in so many ways. Kinda makes me a bit sad to see such a pretty animal flayed open like that.

Don’t get me wrong I have nothing against hunting, I grew up here in Oklahoma and as a boy scout went through my hunters education class. I know how to shoot a rifle and could go hunting at any given point… I just choose not to. I do however love the taste of “game meats” and appreciate the folks that go out and fetch them for me. I have just never really found the notion of going out and shooting an animal enjoyable. If I faced this in the woods… I would more than likely want to pet it… and wind up mauled horribly.

Something Fruity

This one I just don’t really have words for. I could see having a single wooden pear with a break away section as a conversation piece or for decoration. However why would you ever need three of them? I personally find them fairly ugly, but I find it even more bizarre that someone obviously bought these at one point. You could create some sort of a pear tri-force I guess, and maybe have a Pear-Link try and rescue the Pear-Zelda? I am trying to make sense of this… and failing miserably. I figure we will end up going to a few more places today, so hopefully they give me some equally bizarre blog fodder in the process. I got home around 8 last night, so I really did not have much time to do anything of significance game wise.

Bronze Rhino

January 2, 2014 by Belghast

A Light Dusting

I have been struggling to try and get my sleep pattern under control. Last night I had all intent to go to sleep early. However when I got laid down around 10 pm I just could not keep my eyes closed. It is like the act of laying down gave me a second wind. Additionally while I didn’t have breathing difficulties sitting up, the moment I stretched out in bed my lungs started bothering me. Had I gotten up and taken a breathing treatment right then I probably would have been fine and gotten to bed at a decent hour. Instead I piddled around talking with my wife and finally coming to that same decision about midnight.

All the while we were laying in bed we kept making comments about the moon being really right. When I got up to go upstairs I noticed that the entire world was blanketed in a thin veneer of snow. I find it completely insane that our icestorm from a few weeks back could coat everything in ice, but not cover the roads… whereas this tiny snow managed to stick. I guess the temperature has been low enough to bring the radiant ground temperature down just enough. It did however serve to make the world nice and bright last night. While taking my breathing treatment I got to piddling around online… and wound up falling asleep at the keyboard. When I woke up it was 2 am and I once again troddled off to bed later than I had intended.

Bronze Rhino

Earlier in the week we had talked about going to Muskogee, but I am not sure if that will still happen with the over night snow and the obvious cold and windy climate. Tuesday we went out junking for a bit again, or more so we went to pay my wife’s car tag and happened to hit a couple of places in the same town. One of the stores we had been to before long ago when we used to go junking for fun. I didn’t remember it being the claustrophobic place that it apparently is today however. I have no clue how anyone would find anything in it. It has what appears to be booths, but each and every one is crammed with so much completely random stuff that I was afraid I would cause an avalanche.

The gem of the day however was a bin of Barbie dolls that looked like a scene from Law and Order SVU. My wife has made me promise not to post the picture of it, but all I will say is I felt bad for the Ken doll. Obviously someone was very curious about what was under Ken’s pants. The other thing I snapped was this large bronzed rhino… because seriously who doesn’t need a giant bronze rhino for their house? I am having trouble pulling together the situation that would have led someone to actually purchase this for their home. Even more so, I struggle with the logic that would have lead someone to purchase this for resale. I remember the junk store being run by a nice old woman, and this time it was by a much younger man. I am wondering if maybe the woman has passed and left him the store… and he simply no longer cares about it the way she once did.

Like I said before I had talked about going to Muskogee today. If you remember way back that is where I found all the great deals on LEGO sets, and they also have a large number of these antique malls along Highway 69. No I am not making up the name of that highway, we have to be adults here… no snickering allowed. Additionally my wife has found some good deals at the various shops in town so if we don’t go today I think at some point before next Monday we will end up going there. I find it hard to believe that my long vacation is almost over. I guess that is why I am most concerned about trying to fix my sleep patterns, because I know next Monday is going to be a massive pain.

No Love For Rogue

Yesterday I did my big years retrospective post, but another thing I would have written about had I not done that was that on New Years Eve I managed to ding 90 on my rogue. Within a few minutes of dinging I had equipped a whole slew of Timeless Isle gear. The funny thing is… each and every character I have gotten to 90 has been short a single item from completing a full set of gear. On my shaman he was missing shoulders, and on the rogue he was missing boots. However upon reaching the isle and doing the various onetime and weekly chests I quickly got a set. I am still missing a trinket, but hopefully I will get one from LFR. I managed to boost my gear score high enough to be able to do throne of thunder, so off and on throughout the day yesterday that is exactly what I did.

For some reason this game hates giving me weapons. So I managed to get four pieces of gear to drop, two of which were set pieces, and the other two were the exact same pieces as the set. So functionally all I gained was a two piece bonus. I did however manage to get enough motes on my paladin to craft one of the 463 weapons. I have bumped that up to 471 so it is at least “almost epic”. I feel bad in LFR because quite frankly until I get better weapons I will not really be of much use. Rogue is so weapon dependant, and quite honestly all of the classes I play tend to be. There is very little you can do to be of use with a complete crap weapon. I still feel this is a massive shortcoming with pandaria… it is extremely difficult to get weapons if you do not like PVP.

2013 Retrospective

January 1, 2014 by Belghast

Grand Experiment in Review

2012 was an extremely horrible year for me and at least professionally I would rank it as quite possibly the worst year I have ever had. I would put it as worse than the year I was out of work for six months after the dotcom crash. On September 11th 2012 my company suffered what they thought was a network attack, that only later the security guy pulled his head out of his ass and realized it was a regularly scheduled security scan… that he himself authorized. The results of this was a massive overreaction that caused me and my team to spend the rest of the year and a good chunk of the beginning of this year rebuilding damned near everything that touched the web. Why did we have to do this? Because they quite literally pulled the servers out of the racks and sent them to the FBI, leaving us next to nothing to work off of.

So next to that year, this year has seemed like an absolute dream. However it has been more than that for me. 2013 has been a year of personal growth and exploring new things. In April when I finally pulled my head above water after the “faux” security incident, I really wanted to make a break back into blogging. I fell off of the planet shortly after the security event and simply could not bring myself to write about anything. Coming back I devised what I called a “grand experiment”, namely to blog each and every day even if I didn’t think I had much to write about. At this point there are 237 posts categorized as “The Grand Experiment”, and without fail I have blogged every day even when it was a struggle to do so.

Has the experiment worked? Well functionally yes I have managed to blog every day, but more importantly has it provided an interesting stream of content? Quite honestly I don’t know. Most of the time I feel like I am a little kid writing to a make believe audience. When I talk to someone who mentions something I have written… I am always shocked. I feel like no one actually reads my stuff, that I am mostly just writing it for my own benefit. People seem to enjoy what I write, and I have a regular stream of readers… but I will never have the type of audience that the bigger bloggers have. I am just too rough around the edges for that sort of thing. For the most part I am happy with the results of a year of blogging and my long-term goal is to make it at least one full year of posts without pause. That of course will be up April 26th of 2014, which seems like it is far in the future right now. However I don’t see myself losing steam at any point soon.

A Healthier Me

Another big change in my life over the course of 2013 is that I am considerably lighter. In March my wife and I began to shift the way we relate to food. I say it in terms like that because really we have completely changed our relationship to food as a whole. To say we went on a diet doesn’t really encompass the level of change. Diets are about the short term, but we wanted to make permanent and long-term changes in the way we ate. Namely we focused on trying to find a new and sustainable way to live. At this point I am 70 lbs smaller and have hit a bit of a plateau over the last month. However the fact that I survived both Thanksgiving and Christmas without breaking that plateau makes me happy enough.

My wife on the other hand continues to lose at a steady pace and is now down roughly 60 lbs. At some point I need to get super serious again, as I have become lax of late. However the current weight seems to be a place I can comfortable stay without any real intervention. I have reached my goal and it is time for me in this new year to refocus myself and set a new one. I will never be a small man, I come from a long line of really big people. I am however happy enough being able to say I am a “smaller” man. The thing I was not expecting to be honest were the health benefits. As a whole I am far healthier than I was a year ago, and the primary benefit is that my Asthma that I have struggled with my entire life… and have even been hospitalized for… is really a mere nuisance these days. I can go months on a single inhailer, and that is not a thing I have ever been able to do in my life.

Professional Growth

In the last year I have grown more into the role of the manager of my group. I have learned to delegate more, which is something I have always struggled with in my life. I was good at accepting assignments, but never very good at passing them on to my troops, instead trying to take them all on myself. My team is pretty amazing and I would be lost without them. I guess in some small way I have learned to have more faith in them, and trust that they will do as much diligence with an assignment as I would have. As a result I have shifted more into the architect role for my group and part-time project manager and full-time traffic cop. Making sure all of the assignments are going to the right places and all seeing at least some progress.

We usually have 50-60 active projects for a team of three people. So it involves lots of juggling. Various forces in my company want me to move up into a permanent management position. However I simply do not want to distances myself from the “real work” enough to take them. Additionally right now I am responsible for three extremely highly functional people, and I don’t think I could cope with being put over less functional people that I would some how have to whip into shape. I am not really great with confrontations, and as a result I think I would flounder. Either that or it would be similar to me as a raid leader, and I would turn into a real asshole. For the time being I think I am happy with where I am and what I am doing.

I Wrote A Novel

One of the things I have always wanted to do in my life was to write a novel. I made several false attempts at various times over the years but never could seem to push myself to do it. This November I joined the NaNoWriMo event, and over the course of the month knocked out my first novel. I have no idea if it is actually any good, because honestly I have not even read it since finishing it up. I plan in the new year to tear it asunder as I edit it, and fix any issues. However regardless if it completely sucks, I have accomplished a goal. I managed to write a novel, and that is a thing most people can’t say about themselves. I didn’t do it to get famous, or be published, I did it mostly just to prove to myself that I could.

The weird thing about it is, November seems like a lifetime ago. The whole concept of writing 1500 words per night was just absolutely draining. My entire life revolved around that novel for those thirty days, which is honestly longer than I have stuck with anything like that in my life. More than anything I feel like it was a venue of personal growth. I did a thing I never thought I could, and I did so in a methodical way in which it felt like success was assured from the moment I started. Sure I faltered a few times along the way, and there were a few days I didn’t write a blessed thing. However I kept moving forward towards the eventual 50,000 word count goal and I achieved it. I think more than anything I am proud of this accomplishment from 2013.

A Year of Gaming

This is a gaming blog afterall, so during 2013 I played a lot of games. I played way more games than I can ever manage to remember, but I will try and run down a few of the big ones. The list of major titles is as follows.

Oddly enough I am beginning this new year not entirely differently than I began the last year. January 2013 I was still involved in the launch of Mists of Pandaria, and it was not until April that I really began to distance myself from that game entirely. World of Warcraft and I have this love/hate relationship. I get frustrated with it so much, because it seems that they always seem to take the most short sighted solutions to problems, and there are so many games that there that do various things it does…. so much better. However as a total package I feel like the game is unbeatable. It offers the most good things in one package. The realization for me however after my 2+ years of absence from being serious about the game is that it is not about the game at all. World of Warcraft is about the people playing it, and I had missed the ragtag group of people known as House Stalwart immensely.

The game I probably played the most often during the year however was Rift. I want to love rift so badly, the promise of the game is really great. The problem is it just lacks something that I can’t quite put my finger on. It is a technically superior game in every aspect, but it is like it lacks a cohesive narrative that makes me care about the world every single day. The dragons were a thing I thought I could get behind. But now that we have systematically killed each of them off, I cannot say in a single sentence what the world of Rift is. I think that might be the problem, there is no one clear narrative to the game. You cannot say “this game is” and have even half of the people agree on it. I still play it occasionally and there is still an incarnation of House Stalwart there that Psynister and Fynralyl are keeping alive. I thank them so much for being there, but I just can’t seem to care about the game right now. I am sure at some point I will again.

Final Fantasy was another major force for the year. This was a game I never intended to like because really I feel like me and Japanese RPGs had a messy divorce quite some time ago. I had a group of friends actively wanting to play it, so against my better judgment I went along for the ride. What I found however was a really well crafted narrative and dungeon experience. If I could have kept experiencing new bits of immersive content, I would have likely stuck around. However once you reached the end of the game, it was exactly that… the end. All paths lead to massive amount of grinding, and for whatever reason… while I can stomach grinding all day long in World of Warcraft… I could not stomach the particular FFXIV brand of grinding. Namely I blame this on the overall lack of meaninful drops in the game. If I have a chance of getting something cool while killing mobes, no matter how remote the chance… it feels exciting to me each time I open a loot window. There was nothing that could drop from mobs in the world that I would ever care about. Additionally gearing up to get to a point where we could raid, was just not a bridge I was willing to cross.

Games for 2014

There has been a game I have been in super secret closed door testing since February. I cannot name the game by name, but I have to say I am still extremely excited about it even after most of a year testing it. I have watched the game grow from something that felt polished to something that really is amazingly rich and polished. I don’t think I will quit WoW this time for another game, because I have set down some pretty solid roots there again. However I know I will also be playing this game, at the very least two to three nights a week. It is probably the least wow-like game I have played in a long while, and because of that I feel like there is room in my heart for both games to have a unique space.

Past that I am really not certain what 2014 will hold. I know that I am not really interested enough to purchase a PS4 or an XBox One, so I think I will be exiting the console mainstream once again. I am mostly a PC gamer to be honest, and since my gameloft has been taken over by my wife I am okay with not having access to the consoles. More than anything I am looking forward to the various stores beginning to liquidate their stocks of PS3 and XBox 360 games, so I can pick up the titles I always wanted to play but didn’t have the desire to pay for. Additionally there are still a lot of things on the DS/3DS that I want to play, and I am looking forward to picking up the newest Zelda game. I am sure there will be a number of surprises along the way, games that catch my fancy enough to deserve lots of blog posts.

I hope that 2014 will be as positive force in my life as 2013 has been. Additionally I hope each and every one of you out there can say the same. My friend @AlternativeChat has declared 2014 the “Year of Faff”, and I am down with this notion. I think we all need to learn how to faff about in the game worlds we are in, because stopping and smelling the roses is the only real way I know to break the cycle of burnout. I have tried my best to embrace this concept, and hope to continue to do so in the year to come. More than anything, I feel like I am sick of jumping games every three months, and I get the sense that the gaming world as a whole is somewhat sick of that as well. I hope we can each embrace our own faff, whatever that might mean.