Well I have to update this, because God is holding down the lucky button in my favor this week.

Monday – Dana was selected to go backstage before the Goo Goo Dolls Concert on New Years Eve. She won this once before, but was too in shock to say anything to them (and she was scared she was almost taller than the, :P). This time she’ll get to meet them again and at the biggest show of the year, and hopefully explain how they’ve played such a huge roll in our lives. We also got paid for a website we built TOGETHER and it was a very generous.  I was finally able to buy a monitor for my computer I’ve been dying to get. We also bough a calibration tool for our monitors.

Tuesday – I got a message from a company I was dying to hear from about a job. They offered me a job with excellent benefits and experience. Getting this job after months of looking for post-graduation work is a blessing. I’m so excited!

Wednesday – Nothing really happened today other than still being all smiles about the job

Thursday – I just won tickets to see the Red Wings in a suite for tomorrows game from Facebook! Totally didn’t expect that!

Now all I have to do is get my monitor and calibration tool in 100% condition and win a Newegg and Best Buy competition and I’ll consider my week complete!

Well I’ve had a very interesting week… From forgetting to shave half my face (don’t ask), to trying to install CS4 from the wrong disc for 4 hours (again, don’t ask)… But I learned some more valuable information this week that I should have thought of before.

I constantly ignored a message on Photoshop saying that the calibration of my monitor is defective. The reason I ignored it was because it is a 19″ LCD monitor I got from Dell about 4 years ago when I bought my computer. I have since had a replacement (and upgraded) computer sent to be because Dell’s products tend to fail. Ever since, I’ve not been able to change a lot of the setting on my monitor. I couldn’t adjust the contrast, gamma, nor the color settings. I’ve been using my ATI Catalyst program to adjust the properties as needed.

Well, Dana has been diving head first into photography and really trying to develop her talent. She spent hours post processing a lot of her images. She made an awesome collection of pictures of our niece as well as some brilliant shots from our past travels. She’s been post processing on my computer using my monitor… Here’s where I messed up.

Because my monitor was not calibrated right, Dana was processing all her prints according to what my monitor was outputting, and for some reason I never thought about how it might be deceiving… She sent a few images she created to a professional printing company to see how they would turn out. After she got them back, she saw that none of the images looked the same as she saw them on the computer. That’s when it hit me that my monitor was totally screwing up her pictures.

I feel terrible that she’s spent so many hours on her pictures and most of them are not what she wanted…

I searched around on the internet trying to find a free calibration software, but everything I found didn’t really help me at all. Then I found out that Windows 7 has a calibration program built in. I tried that out and my monitors look a LOT better. I’m hoping they are calibrated right. I’m going to have to get a new monitor soon regardless, but for now this should work. I’m gong to print off some photos this weekend and see what happens.

Anyone have any ideas on some better ways to calibrate a monitor?

I just wanted to say that the best part of Halloween is…

 

The Nightmare Before Christmas

 

That is all 🙂

We have the great Junk Yard site for Junk loot, but why not one for relics? Do you feel it would be worth the time to have a website for relics? I am creating a database for my senior project on this new system, and I am considering throwing it on the web when I am done for everyone to submit and search for NPCs and Relics they want specifically. Please answer this survey to help decide if this will be published or not.

First and foremost, if you are trying to get the most out of your Combat Entertainer as possible, I strongly advise you to read this guide created by the one and only BadgerSmaker. This gives a great detail on how to properly prepare for combat and how to approach it. Read it, learn in, love it.

This guide is intended to help you understand what buffs your Combat Entertainer should have. I am going to specifically list the buffs I feel are best for me currently, and this information may change over time as I play with different builds. Please note, that I have recently started playing with a new toon. My focus with this character is 100% Drama Entertainer build and I will be using every attack and debuff.

Profession Buffs

Entertainer does not offer combat profession buffs other than Void Dance and obviously the Ent Buff. I use Void Dance when I run up and encounter 3+ mobs at a time. The entertainer buff is extremely important and can be the best buff you can get. I HIGHLY recommend that if you’re serious about combat, get your Ent Buff from another player. This is the Entertainer Buff that I find to most useful for me.

• 1/1 Action Cost Reduction
• 1/1 Critical Chance
• 1/1 Glancing Blow
• 2/4 Second Chance (Reactive Heal)
• 1/5 Strength

Obviously we need ACR, and I feel that getting it from the Ent Buff is vital. I stack Critical Chance, so I need this to make the most out of my damage. GB is great to stack with my already innate amount and also with my debuffs. Second Chance is my new toy. 2/4 Second Chance gives me enough to see the reactive heal occur often. Healing for 800 every few seconds is a huge boost, especially when we do not have an innate heal! If you’re stacking Healing Potency, it will increase the Reactive Heal, though I do not advise stacking HP being the stim heals from Officer and GCW do not increase.

In addition to the Ent Buff, you need to get Medic Buffs as well as Officer tactical stims.

Grouped Buffs

The buffs all follow a grouped order, so certain buffs will stack, while others do not. In my build for Combat Ent, I find the following buffs to be the best combo:

• Lair Crystal (Betray Obi-Wan)
• Mustafarian Injector (Sickness of the Storm Lord) or Bio-Capacitance Discharge Bracer (Glowies)
• Shard of Retaliation (Obey Obi-Wan)
• Wild Force Shard (Offensive Burst)

This combo of grouped buffs will give you some great bonuses. Not that the Lair Crystal and Shard of Retaliation are impossible to get on your own. You need to do the quest and get the Lair Crystal, then buy the Shard of Retaliation. You can only pick one and the Lair Crystal is No Trade.

Food

There is nothing specific that will help Combat Entertainers, but something to consider using is Flameout or Accarragm

Heroic Jewelry

Unfortunately, we only have Heroism set right now, but that’s not to say it is not worth it. Get it if you can as the extra +150 to all stats adds up fast!

Obviously, from here you stack your Power Ups and any other additions you get from your group members. Being self sufficient is important.

If you have questions, post a comment below!

-MC

Okay, I know that tales of Vampires have been around for ages. Numerous books have been published about them, but for the love of God, enough with the movies!

Why are vampires the cool thing right now? Is it so all the gothic and emo kids can come out and play? It’s alright children, the sunlight won’t hurt you.

I’ve had enough of vampire movies for my life time. I mean really, Twilight… If the books are good, then that’s great, good for Stephenie Meyer. She’s making a fortune off of her novels. It’s the biggest series of books since Harry Potter and kids are going psychotic over these movies! All I hear about is Twilight and New Moon and OMG Robert and Kristen are a couple! ENOUGH! Vampires, if anything, are supposed to scare you. They are products of the horror genre. The last thing I’m worried about is someone sparkling…

And if that wasn’t enough, we have the new movie The Vampire’s Assistant coming… This movie looks absolutely terrible.. It has John C. Riley in it, which should conclude my rant about this movie.

There seems to be another Vampire movie every few months, but the Twilight series especially annoys me to death. Anyone else as sick of this as I am?

A question for you… Please answer only once so we can get a good understanding of what the community might like to see regarding the DRAMA entertainer only. Please write a comment if you feel something else should be done!

I saw the Phantom of the Opera at the Detroit Opera House with Dana yesterday night. It was great 🙂 It gave me chills a few times. I know Dana was lost as she’s never been to the performance before, but I know she loved the imagery.

The music has been stuck in my head all day! I wish I didn’t lose the only CD I had of it…

This was a busy weekend! Saturday we leave EARLY in the morning to drive th Grand Rapids again to go to the Meijer Gardens. What a cool place. So many sculptures and flowers… Dana had so much to take pictures of! After that, we left to visit a friend at Michigan State. Bad time to drive there. Michigan State just lost to Central where a series of lucky events had to happen… Everyone was angry. I laughed driving through the traffic. To rub it in to all the Spartans, U of M beat Notre Dame with some good playing. Where is all the facebook spam now? Spartans lose and everyone hides… hmm…

We hang out with Steph for a while which was nice. We ate pizza and got ice cream, walked around MSU, saw drunk people laying all over the place, the usual.

After the drive home, we pass out.

Sunday hits and we’re up and off to Best Buy to buy a laptop! We go to one store and they tell us they don’t have one AGAIN! that’s twice they don’t have the Laptop we’re going to look at… fail. So we went to a different Best Buy and they took care of us 🙂 Kinda weird to see a lot of the same faces working there from when I worked there about… 6 years ago? maybe 5… I dunno anymore…

But Dana’s laptop is awesome. It is a 16in wide screen monitor and a very solid performance. Now we can watch movies without having to use my small school laptop! yay.

Today is Monday and I had a job interview! I think it went well. I’m hoping to hear from them soon about a skills assessment test they want me to take. That should be easy enough. It will certainly be weird moving out of state, but we both realize that we will be moving away soon.

A lot going on, but I’m anxious to try something new!

ps. I’m using Windows 7 right now, so far, it’s a LOT better than vista… thank God.

I’m sure everyone has heard about this by now. At least anyone that reads my blog has heard about it… But I wanted to give my thoughts on this.

In case you don’t know what the heck is going on, TenTonHammer reported that an inside source leaked that SOE was making a new MMO for the Star Wars Universe. This will be the 3rd MMO to be launched under close watch by Lucas Arts. Obviously we have Star Wars: Galaxies (SOE – which has been kicking for over 6 years now), we have Star Wars: The Old Republic (BIOWARE – Soon to be released), and the rumored Clone Wars era MMO. This is the best article on it that I could find – http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/73904

IF (a big big if) this was true, I would expect the see the new Star Wars MMO from SOE to be very similar to Free Realms. SOE has proven that Free Realms is a huge success (I believe they are about to hit 5 million subscribers soon after only being out for a short time).

The following is a breakdown of how I see things playing out:

• Free to Play*
  • The game will follow a free to play method with the * meaning an optional subscription. If the game follows closely to the Clone Wars series, this will draw the same audience that Free Realms is drawing: Tweens and Teens, and all the rest of us that can’t get enough gaming (and if it’s Star Wars? Easy audience, even after the scarlet NGE Badge SOE will wear forever)
  • The monthly subscription will be low. The $4.99/mo is working well for Free Realms and I expect there will be no change here. This is very affordable for everyone, especially through the turbulent times in the economy, and it will be easier for kids to talk their parents into a $4.99/mo subscription over anything higher.
  • The real Money Maker: Micro Transactions. SOE has been moving into a more micro-transaction based system for many of their games as of late and Free Realms is dominating in that category. More and more items show up through Micro Transactions and there is no sign of this stopping. Every update offers more and more items to purchase using station cash. Expect to see Station “Credits” here too.
• World Map
  • The World Map will actually be a Galaxy Map. There will be a series of planets that players can travel to and explore. These planets will include Christophsis, Coruscant, Tatooine, and Teth. More will be added in later releases. Travel between planets will be instant after going to designated travel zones.
• Playable Classes
  • The first and foremost class is Jedi. This WILL BE FREE TO PLAY. They must draw their audience in right away and give them something great from the start. Jedi is obviously going to be the popular class to play, much like Ninja is in Free Realms. Making the most popular class Free is a perfect way to draw people in, and then of course dangle the carrot in front of them with all the awesome weapons available using station cash. It worked for Ninja, it will definitely work for Jedi.
  • Bounty Hunter will only be available to those that pay the membership. All bounty missions will be against mobs and not against players.
  • Miners will be free to play. Similar to Free Realms, these players will be able to get the materials, but will have to sell them to a Weaponsmith to get some use out of them.
  • Weaponsmith will be pay to play. Craft weapons for all classes
  • Many more classes will be available including Soldier, Medic, and Sith Warrior.
• Instances Battle Systems
  • Again, another aspect very close to Free Realms, it will allow the developers to provide many areas for players to explore and not have to worry about people camping spawns and ruining the experience for others. All instances will have missions for the player to complete and things to collect.
• Music
  • The music provided in this game will be from conductor Kevin Kiner. The tracks will include some original tracks, but mostly straight from the Clone Wars series on Cartoon Network.
• Combat
  • Straight forward system like Free Realms that will not add clutter and complexity. The game is geared towards children, so having multiple hotbars with 30 spells and abilities won’t work. Expect to see around 6-10 actions available in combat (including abilities, items, and attacks)
  • Expect ground combat to be at launch, but space combat to come out in the future
• Misc
  • There will be a collection system, where the players will collect various items around the planets that are from the Star Wars Universe. Completing a collection will reward the player unique clothing, rewards, and items.
  • Pod Racing is very possible. Expect to see post launch the ability to customize your pod racer and whip around tracks on each planet
  • Pazaak and Dejarik may be available as mini games for players to compete against the computer or other players.

This is what I feel will be a major focus if the new game is really true. I was thinking there would be a card game like in Free Realms, but there is already the TCG from SWG, and I don’t see making a second as a possibility, though you never know… A TCG with the same rule set as Free Realms has could make it all the more possible.

SOE has learned from their past, and even though they will always be criticized for the NGE and other decisions, they have succeeded with Free Realms more than most ever thought they would. If they apply the same strategy and dedicate a massive team to make the new Star Wars game work, it is very likely another major MMO hit is in the works.

I’ll return to my dream land until this is confirmed.

-MC

It’s been quite some time since my last update. Things have been extremely busy! Dana and I are doing our best amidst all the latest drama going on to enjoy our first month as a married couple 🙂

Since we’ve been married, we’ve traveled to San Diego, Cincinnati, Grand Rapids, and went to see Kate, Mike, and little Lauren more than we have in the last year it seems. We went with them to see Nickelback which was a great show. We’re the only ones that are married in our group of friends so it is good to get together with them and talk. Heck, Mike even had me making food the other day and I didn’t burn the house down, which was a plus.

In the last few weeks I have seen a lot of movies. 2 movies I have liked were “I Love You, Man” and “Taking of Pelham 123”. 2 movies that I didn’t really care for were “Horsemen” and “Night at the Museum 2”. The only reason I liked Horsemen was because Zhang Ziyi was in it and she’s my asian crush, and because the movie was based in Chicago, and they main character and his sons love the Red Wings over the Blackhawks. Night at the Museum was just meh… Not really funny in the end…

I haven’t really done a lot of gaming lately because of how much we’ve been running around and trying to have fun. I logged into SWG for about a total of 15 minutes… Sad I know. I played Team Fortress 2 for a few hours, and I don’t think I logged into Free Realms in awhile.

Right now, FPS games are my IT game. Taking a break from the RPG style is good to do once in awhile.  Now that the wedding expenses are paid for, minus the wedding pictures which is already budgeted for, we’re going to start saving up for a TV. We’re not going to get anything crazy right now since we’re looking at just entry-level stuff to get us by for now as we don’t know exactly where we’re going to be in the next few months. After the TV, we’ll be getting a PS3 Slim and I’ll probably be playing many of the great FPS games for that system.

I start school in 2 days… This will be my LAST semester of my Bachelor’s Degree era. HURRAY! 12 credits until I’m done! After changing my degree like 3-4 times and losing many credits in the process, I’m finally done after 6.5 years of school. It took a long time, but I had to find what was right for me and find the right school for me. I’m pretty proud of myself for graduating from Lawrence Technological University with honors (potentially highest honors if I get all A’s). Especially because I’m one of the few that I know at that school that have worked full time and taken 12+ credit hours every semester. I’ve busted my ass to get where I am so I am certainly happy. I can thank Dana for kicking my ass when I needed it too 😉

That’s all for now. Hopefully everyone has had a great summer break from school, and for those done with school already, get to work!

-MC