Friday Night Queue

Now this is something new and unexpected. I logged into Lord of the Rings Online and was greeted with a login queue. The first one I've seen in this game. My guess is all the peoples checking out the new housing. Makes sense now that I think about it. New patch with piles of upper level content. Of course players will want to explore it.

I rolled an elf loremaster and played the first few levels. I'll post my impressions of the class after I've unlocked more core abilities and experienced its gameplay.

Friday afternoon the managers gathered the teams together and told us we were working again this weekend. Damn. Project FUBAR refuses to die. I wish it would. It's seriously cutting into my MMO time. I've been playing more Puzzle Quest on the Nintendo DS lately because I find it easier to jump in and play for a brief session. When I play LotRO, I want to play for longer blocks of time. That doesn't work well when I'm nodding off early. I apologize for whining... but it's my blog, so nyah.

Sleeping on the Keyboard

I've been so exhausted this past week, knocking myself out to test this rush project at work. I wrote an automated test tool to speed up manual testing. It's a simple thing really... just shortcuts the tedious prep work to set up for each test case. Not to brag too much, but it worked like a charm. We were completing tests five times faster then expected, but with a 30% failure rate. Not good, but not my problem. I just find the defects and log them. Except for this FUBAR project. Friday was a twelve hour day, and we spent half of it proving the test tool was solid and the defects were real. Just venting here.

I tried playing Lord of the Rings Online this week, but I couldn't seem to get a good session going. I logged in a couple nights and I just wandered around the Lone-lands or the North Downs. My eyelids were heavy and within 30 minutes I was heading off to the shower before bed.

Saturday night I played for a few hours, but the shine's worn off the game. Hard to describe. Level 24 isn't as much plain ol' fun as level 14. I'm still enjoying LotRO, but I'm not as excited to play. Let's assume it's more me being exhausted than anything else. I hope...

The 2.3 patch for World of Warcraft is looking damn sexy. Not saying I'm going back any time soon. Just mentioning I think the changes are hot.

Random Junk Oct 15

We're in crunch time at work. Ten hour days. Plus six hours over the weekend. We should be done by the end of the month. My company has a few projects at different stages in the software development process. One is in the elaboration phase, another in construction, and a third in transition. Then the parent company dropped a hot project on us. Everything is paused; everyone is thrown on to Project FUBAR (my name for it). We've had busy periods before, but nothing like this. What does this mean? Less time gaming because I have to go to bed earlier.

Speaking of gaming, I hit a small wall in Lord of the Rings Online. Pluck is at level 22 now. I completed all quests in the Lone-lands that were doable at my level. I'm too low to tackle the higher level ones. I tried. Red means dead when your a semi-squishy hunter and you pull two mobs by accident. To be honest I was frustrated. Then I remembered I had one quest that took me into The North Downs. Beautiful... more level appropriate quests.

My son and I are working on a Heroscape battlefield. I should post some pictures when we're done. We're taking longer than usual because we keep coming up with new ideas to try out. I set up a table in the garage for a more permanent table top gaming area.

I bought a new computer chair over the weekend. The local office supply store had a sale for 40% off. I like stumbling on to a clearance sale. I am so comfortable. Padded arm rests and everything.