Tales of the Aggronaut

More Things Going Wrong

May 3, 2018 by Belghast

Today I have a riveting tale from our long running compendium of things not going as planned, soon to be made into a major motion picture. The sequence of events that I was expecting yesterday was to go to work and then around noon head home to wait for the air conditioning folks to come service our unit. When we upgraded to the nonsense thing as tall as I am… one of its quirks is that instead of a small filter it has a mega HEPA filter and a light that is supposed to kill bacteria as it circulates through. This apparatus is supposed to be replaced every year, but for the last three visits they have not had the correct part on the truck so we are going on two years with the same bits. I made certain that I asked ahead this time when we scheduled the maintenance that they bring the correct part so that it could be changed. In theory the serviceman was supposed to arrive around 1 pm and my thought was originally that I could have a relaxing afternoon as soon as he left.

What actually happened was that the guy showed up between 2 and 2:30 and immediately stated that he did not have the correct parts because for whatever reason they had us down with the wrong unit in their system. He called around to try and get one of the other trucks to bring him a filter… and when that failed he decided to do all of the bits he could do without the filter and then would have to go back to the shop and get it himself. I had every indication that this was a thing he was going to do when he left my home and come right back to finish the job. So I attempted to patiently wait… and not really get into anything I could not drop immediately if the doorbell were to ring.

It was around 5:30 that I called into the business who stated that he was still scheduled to finish the job, but that he had gotten diverted to another site temporarily. They assured me that we were next on the list and that he would be there shortly. When my wife got home around 7:30 she was also perturbed and called in again after two hours had passed since the previous call. She got the after hours on call service, and someone got back to us extremely quickly… at that time they seemed to have no clue what was going on. It was around 8:45 that he finally showed up with this nonsense filter and uv light in hand… wrapped up the job and paid.

The problem with all of this is the fact that I felt like I couldn’t actually do anything because I had to be available for someone to swing by and deal with our stuff. So what could have been a leisurely afternoon of gaming silliness turned into an anxiety riddled one where I was afraid to put on my headphones for fear I would miss the knocking on my door. Hell there was an interlude in there where I ordered a pizza but was too afraid to actually sit down and eat for fear the guy would show up while I was attempting to chow down. I am annoyed with the service company because I expected more from them. Usually their estimates are pretty accurate for when someone will be showing up, but the whole not having this part on the trucks is frustrating. If you are actively selling this system then you should be actively prepared to support it.

Anyways… so you my readers get another “non-post” because I didn’t really get to sit down and do anything involved until around 9 pm last night… at which time I logged into Monster Hunter World and got one more Kulve run in before we say farewell to that event for an unknown period of time. I managed to get another orange Hammer and another purple Light Bowgun… but even then I was more than happy to say goodbye knowing how much I have managed to get from it. Still kinda annoyed that I never got a decent bow from the event, which only means that I now need to research what bow to craft so I can fill that gap in myself.

Too Soon

May 2, 2018 by Belghast

I really do not have a lot to say this morning because I did next to zero gaming last night, nor do I really have a huge back log of topics that I feel like I need to talk about. Instead of gaming I saw Avengers Infinity War and I have plenty of words to say about that. However I also feel like maybe it is just too damned soon to really be digging into that movie as of yet. When there is a huge spoiler laden experience out in the wild I try really hard not to be part of ruining someone else’s experience. I used to be one of those folks that thought so long as you were quiet during opening weekend you were perfectly fine.

Then life happened and I have turned into one of those people who so very rarely actually goes to see a film on opening weekend. Like as it stands right now the only absolutely guaranteed movies for me are the Star Wars films. Even then I largely feel like I am going only to insulate myself from any possibility of having the experience completely ruined. The truth is I don’t much enjoy the theater experience because above all I don’t like having to deal with the people. I also don’t like having to deal with either paying a lot more for a ticket to get reserved seating… or getting there a massive amount of time ahead of the film just to sit there twiddling my fingers while someone makes bad jokes and shows me advertisements.

In my perfect world I would be able to stream a film on opening night in the comfort of my own living room and much like the “millennials” supposedly killing things like diamonds… I would love for them to kill the theater going experience. Then again I also sorta want to just pay one licencing fee and have access to whatever I choose to consume at any given moment. I also would love to stop having to pay the ESPN tax to get the other channels I want in a cable package… but now I am just talking nonsense and mentioning a bunch of shit that won’t actually happen. The movie industry is predicated on the concept of a limited experience and making all of its money in a very short up front burst to fund the next project, and the theaters are the drug pushers distributing the product for them. It will take a thermonuclear shift to dislodge that bond, but I think it is also something that is going to happen inevitably.

With Infinity War I would love to be cool and quote Morgan from Walking Dead and say “It is not gonna work out how you think”… but it might… I honestly don’t know. There are a lot of theories that have circulated around, some of them are more right than others. Additionally I think it all depends on your ability to cherry pick things from the comic book source material. If you read comics heavily back during the early 90s you have very specific expectations as to what is going to happen. As someone who did this thing… I went into it with a lot of thoughts on my own and while some things did in fact play out just like my expectations… there was an awful lot that didn’t.

In the grand scheme of things it was a good film and a film that needed to happen to make this long slide to this moment make any sense at all. I highly suggest you check it out and get to the theater before major plot points are spoiled. What has annoyed me the most however is the flood of YouTube videos that were up and available by Friday night… that were so blissful to dig into the minutiae of every single bit of the film. I realize they are trying to get that early money from people exiting the theater and feeling they need to talk about it… but can’t talk about it with anyone. However even the titles of said videos and thumbnails are often spoilers in themselves. I can at least go into a huddle room at work now and talk to the folks at work who have been dying to talk about the events.

Red and Gold

May 1, 2018 by Belghast

One of my favorite aspects of Monster Hunter World has been the constant revolving door of limited time events. It seems like at some point we will run out of brand new ones, and that they will begin cycling through the past happenings… but for right now it seems like every time I turn around there is something brand new and shiny to interact with. Starting on April 27th we got the Code Red event which involves fighting four “red” monsters in the standard arena, one after another. So you have to work your way through Anjanath, Odogoron, Rathalos and then finally the Elder Dragon Teostra. Doing this gives you a special currency that looks like a monster gem called a Red Orb. Collecting seven of these and a slew of parts from all of the monsters included in the quest allows you to craft a set of rank 8 gear patterned off of Dante from Devil May Cry.

What makes this set really interesting is unlike past offerings… this is not a complete suit but instead individual pieces allowing for some interesting Mixed Build options. For the unindoctrinated… armor pieces have specific stats on them and by mixing and matching them you can often times come up with really interesting builds that benefit specific weapons. The boots for example have two levels of weakness exploit which I can see very easily mixing into other sets to achieve the desired affinity boost while hitting weak areas. The other special thing about this event is the fact that we get a brand new Charge Blade that is themed after Devil May Cry as well and starts out Rank 8 without any need to do a follow on upgrade quest. Instead of a sword and shield… it is a short sword with a run that serves as the shield… that then turns into a giant two handed sword giving it a very unique appearance and feel while using. A good chunk of my last week and some change has been spent collecting bits for this set and weapon… and last night I finally managed to craft the final piece when Teostra dropped that last piece of webbing.

The other big thing I have been participating in is the Kulve Taroth “raid” quest that drops materials to create a really awesome set of armor that you can see me wearing in the above image. Other than that it is also a chance for a lot of really interesting semi-random weapon drops. During the course of the runs that I have participated in I have managed to get a purple or better weapon for every slot other than bow… which seem to be extremely stingy for some reason. I had enough blue weapons that when I sold them all last night I jumped from 10,000 zenny to just shy of 300,000 zenny. The keepers have been 9 orange rank 8 weapons and 23 purple rank 7 weapons. Like I have talked about before the real benefit of this quest is it gives you a stable of usable weapons that allows you to branch out a bit. Like I have a decent Hunting Horn now… why not try it out and learn to use it?

Among the weapon drops I have gotten one of the more interesting ones is this Rank 8 longsword with 330 paralysis on it. If a monster is at all susceptible to this status effect… it seems to proc quite often. I was clearing out some of my quests last night and took out a Lavasioth and during the short time it took me to lower it to skull territory and trap it… I managed to proc paralysis four times. While these weapons won’t likely ever outdo a truly tuned weapon… because they are spending some item budget on defense… I like them as well rounded general use options that I didn’t have to spend a lot of materials to create. The Kulve Taroth quest goes away May 5th and the Dante quest goes away on May 10th. I am curious to see what replaces each of them which I guess we will start to see late in the evening on Wednesday? The content release schedule is odd and ends up with some things releasing Wednesday night and others releasing Thursday night. I want to get some more farming in of Kulve tonight for more attempts at shiny gold weapons, but in the grand scheme of things I am pretty happy with the progress I managed to make.

Blurry Cats

April 30, 2018 by Belghast

I’m somewhat all over the place this morning and struggling to get started, so in the meantime here is a picture of a confused cat. This is Kenzie, she is my real life palico and “helps” me do lots of things… including fetching me rubber bands and string that I didn’t even know I needed. She then wants me to throw the string or rubber band so she can find it again and prove how good of a Palico helper she is. She is trying to show how much better the real version is than the in Monster Hunter World version. She also largely looks like this every time I take a photo because it is like she has never seen my phone before.

I guess this is an upgrade from the ferret who won’t stop wiggling and then yawns… so that every photo looks like she is about to bite me. Example in the photo above… I promise she did not just bite me after the photo was taken. In fact the most aggressive thing she ever does is lick my hand and she is a lovable wiggly fluffball. I wrote on twitter the other day that I am consistently jealous of people who can take good photos of their pets. Ours seem to exist in two states… asleep or shapeless blur. By the moment I get my phone out, unlock it with my thumbprint and open the camera app… the moment of adorableness that was just happening is always over. What you end up seeing are the hollow after moments of what was a really cute photo ruined by the fact that my pets do not understand photography.

They are however great at sleeping on me or around me. Like right this very moment Kenzie is laying on my headphones because apparently that is a comfortable thing to do… just sort of drape your body over an awkwardly shaped object. Basically she likes being near me at all times when possible and meows incessantly the moment I lock her out of the bathroom to take a shower. Similarly when I record a podcast on Saturday nights she gets really confused that she cannot also be in the room… and if you have ever tuned into one of my streams you have probably hear her talking to me or me talking to her. The thing is… I have several blankets on my desk for the cats to lay on… but more often than not she is just going to lay on a controller or something else that cannot possibly feel comfortable.

Since this has apparently turned into a post where I just sit here talking about pets. This is Allie, she is our old lady and mostly just wants to lay on things. The majority of the time she is either laying on the blanket I keep on my recliner end of the sectional or draped over top of me while I am sitting there using my laptop. She is awesome in that she has figured out how to lay in such a way as to not obstruct my keyboard and mouse movement. The only problem is when she is doing this thing I basically cannot type with my right hand. When I am using a controller she has figured out how to basically cradle herself up against my beard as not to obstruct the use of said controller. She is a great girl but is starting to show the signs of age and ultimately we are just going to love on her as long as we have her. Once again… the moment I took this shot she moved slightly causing it to be a little out of focus.

Then we have Mollie our youngest and most blurry cat. I took like six shots in rapid succession and this is the least blurry of them all. She had a rough start of her life and as far as I can tell she was found as a kitten in a parking lot and taken directly to a primarily dog animal shelter. So she lived there for like the first six months of her life having to content with the constant barking of puppers. When we first got her she was insanely skittish and over time has improved… but she also isn’t quite there yet. For whatever reasons she seemed scared of me at first, but I largely chock this up to the fact that the lady running the shelter was about the same height and build as my wife and she maybe thought she looked “safe”. Over time she has become my little shadow as I move around the house, hopping up on things and wanting attention. However she bolts the moment she hears a loud and strange sound or sees Kenzie. There are times though when kenzie is sleeping on the blanket on my wife’s end of the sofa… and Mollie will sneak in and snuggle with me and those are the best times ever.

Since this morphed into a pets post… I figured I should also show off a picture of Shiloh when she is sleeping and adorably curled up in her toy box. Ferrets love toys and she will drag them around the cage and shove them into the toybox or under blankets, though she rarely falls sleep in here. I am guessing she was playing and got tuckered out. Ferrets are sorta like windup toys in that they have all sorts of motion and action until they run out of charge… and then basically conk out wherever they happen to be at that moment. As a result you will find your ferrets sleeping in all sorts of weird positions because they ran out of energy at exactly that moment. There have been times I have woken up in the morning and Shiloh will be conked out halfway between the litter box and one of the beds… because apparently she woke up just long enough to go potty and then ran out of steam again. She has always been a sleepier girl than any of our other ferrets have been and when she is sleepy… she is REALLY sleepy. Then again when she is active she is really active and wants to be picked up and subsequently tries to climb up my shirt. The funniest thing is that she also plays with the cats… especially Mollie and she will wait at the side of the cage when she is near by. Mollie also tries to pull on her blankets when she wants Shiloh to wake up and play… so inevitably there will be a tuft of fleece blanket sticking out through the cage in the morning.

So those are my pets… I did not exactly intend on the post to take this trajectory but it is what happened. I hope you have a great day and a great start of the week.