John Zeitler

Today was… blissful. I saw a movie, I played some arcade games at Dave & Buster’s, and I had a very good meal at the Hokkaido buffet. And, to top it all off, I accomplished something I’d been meaning to try out– I replaced my pillows, which should hopefully cure the worst of the sleeping troubles I’ve been having (my old ones were flat and causing my spine to flex painfully).

Tomorrow is set to be just as relaxing– I’ll be watching and listening to some football, in between marathonning through the rest of The World of Narue. I’d watch more of that tonight, but once it got self-referential by having the anime characters watch anime, my brain kinda went into revolt. So, yeah… peace. At long last, a little bit of peace.

At 7:33a, I defeated the Earth Mimicry, final boss of Sin & Punishment on the N64 (via Virtual Console). This is the eighth game cleared in 2009.

Something occurred to me this evening while watching some anime, with my computer happily idling on the desk. While this week was indeed a week of new beginnings, it has nothing on next week’s schedule. Case in point: when I last took a screenshot of my desktop, about three weeks ago, I had but five tasks scheduled for the coming week, and four “ongoing” tasks; the stack of reminders reached only about a third of the way up the screen.

Tonight’s glance at the list reveals thirteen reminders for the week ahead, seven pending reminders, and the whole pile stretches almost to the point where it would overlap the info panel of whatever podcast I might have been listening to, at the very top of the screen.

The obvious lesson to be learned from this is that I do too much stuff. However, what I’m more likely to take away from this is that my idea to step up my usage of iCal and other scheduling tools is working perfectly.

As expected, I missed a post yesterday due to being utterly exhausted. The hour and a half long walk that I had to take in order to and as a result of finding a place to park for the Japanese class kinda took a lot out of me. On the plus side, however, I can honestly say that I am going to be slightly more in shape at the end of this class, to say nothing of more educated. So, apologies for the skipped day, but trust me, if I had had the presence of mind to tweet my troubles, you would know that I had a good excuse.

Actually, the fact that I didn’t have the luxury of stopping in my tracks and tapping out up to 140 characters of useless complaining probably should tell you enough about how dire it was. So let’s just move on.

Except that nothing interesting happened yesterday, and nothing pertinent and interesting happened today. Something interesting did happen, but as it was resolved shortly afterwards (and involves work stuff, and I have a pretty good feeling that the fine folks I work for would not like the deepest secrets of their systems revealed here), it is not pertinent. And really, I hardly think “interesting” was the word I’d have used at the time. Probably closer to “AGH HOLY CRAP WHY DID YOU DO THAT NO NO NO BAD I THOUGHT WE FIXED THAT“, to put a fine point on it.

So yeah. This weekend, like so many others, is both needed and appreciated. May I also add to this the continued insistence that 2009 has sucked ginormous donkey sack so far, and if we could all just agree to skip ahead to 2010 that would be peachy.

(Before you ask: I slept better last night, but not perfectly. Tonight should be short but better, and then tomorrow night will be as close to perfect as I’m likely to get, I think.)

I kept this relatively quiet at the time, but around the end of April I picked up the “starter set” for Warhammer 40,000, called “Assault on Black Reach”. This was partly the fault of TV Tropes’ incessant pimping of the game, partly due to an attraction to the fluff, and partly due to the fact that I like da Orks. Orks is green an’ Orks is big an’ Orks is always ‘ard, an’ dey kin stomp da oomies wheneva, wereva. As you can see, the Orks’ particular mindset is… infectious, to say the least.

I’ve yet to actually field the army due to the fact that Warhammer, like most miniatures games, is obscenely expensive. The Black Reach set cost $65, even after discounts through being a member of the club, and it only has enough figures to create the barest minimum fieldable squads for both the Orks and the Space Marines. Furthermore, the “big” units included for the Orks (Deffcoptas) aren’t quite what I’m looking for, as I’d be much happier with just a huge, greenskinned tidal wave of rage swarming over the battlefield.

So, at GASP this past weekend, I looked into picking up some additional figures in order to make up the difference. They start at about $2 per figure, and armies sufficient for a legal match might have up to 100 units or more. In my case, “more” is the operative word since I’m eschewing the heavy artillery in favor of more or less Zerg Rushing. (Some lesser support units, in the Ork parlance: Gretchin, go for about $1.50 each.) The actual numbers crunched to make a legal army differ from faction to faction, and are standardized in faction-specific Codex books that run $25 each. I did mention that it’s in addition to a required rulebook that is itself $50, right? And that the units are seldom sold individually, instead in boxes of 10 or more? And that on top of all of that, units are pretty much expected to be painted, after you assemble them, sometimes with specialized tools? And as a final coup-de-grace, there are army carriers that can run $50 plus $20 per foam layer, so as to prevent damage to the miniatures?

I did say “expensive”. And that’s not why I’m complaining– in fact I’m more than happy to compensate Games Workshop by buying the legit gear when possible and plausible (as amiable as I am, there is no way in Hell I am going to pay a 150% premium for the GW-branded paints when similar or better ones are at the craft store just up the road from my house).

What bugs me is the idiotic way that Games Workshop has managed to “protect” the value of their goods. There are countless horror stories about the draconic controls that GW has placed on the stores that sell models and supplies. A certain percentage of the store’s floorplan must be devoted to their products, and they’re required to hold events (read: release parties and tournaments) at certain times of the year, even if that conflicts with a local club’s events. Ordering from GW is a convoluted process that requires a high-level degree in mathematics to figure out. And purchasing the minis online used to be impossible, because GW found that online sellers were pricing them at significant discounts off the retail value and quickly pulled the licenses of those sellers.

I say “used to be impossible” for a very good reason. Amazon, through its partners program, makes the ugly business of scouring the net for sellers willing to discount far simpler. I managed to find a set of Ork Boyz listed for $15– 40% off the labeled price. For ten Boyz, that’s not bad… multiply that by a few more, and you’ve got a less expensive route to having your own army. To add to the thrill, Amazon is too big for GW to raise a stink at, and there’s a fairly large pool of sellers who’ll offer discounts of varying amounts. Overall, it mitigates a significant portion of the high barrier to entry that the game has.

But it also illustrates an interesting point about capitalism. Even if you hold a monopoly on an item or resource, in this day and age you cannot completely control the end-to-end price points of the goods in question. The free market, or as free as it gets, is always governed by people, and sometimes people will break “the rules”. Nine times out of ten, that’s bad– see all the other cases of big companies screwing people just because they think they have the money to buy themselves out of trouble. But the one time out of ten that it’s good, the lucky or savvy consumer will take advantage of it ten times out of ten.

In all honesty, this isn’t just good for the consumer, it’s good for Games Workshop, too. Sure, they take a hit on the cost of their gear. But they also introduce a lot more people to the game; and like it or not, there will come a day when I’m at a game day or a GW event, and something will break or chip, and I’ll shell out for the expensive, proprietary-branded supplies to fix it (it’s just probability). Like I said, my problem isn’t that it’s expensive, it’s that it’s needlessly so, and that the steps taken to keep it that high are ultimately locking people out of a game that’s, in my opinion, kind of cool.

It’s all a moot point right now, as I’m not exactly in the green enough to go on a major Ork-buyin’ binge. For the time being, I’ll content myself with the books and the computer games. But, well, piecemeal is how these things are supposed to go anyway, I think. And the Ork Codex is on my list for this week.

So, as you may have inferred, I didn’t sleep well last night.

AGAIN.

However, tonight is different. I have no obligations for the morning, everything is prepared ahead of time, and I’ve even made sure that I don’t drink anything for an hour before bed.

So naturally something else is going to happen, like an earthquake. Or a tornado. Or both. At once.

This weekend has been… let’s not talk about it. It’s been frustrating. However, I’ve found the source of the trouble. See, every time I’ve needed something to happen, I’ve used the phrase “With any luck…”, forgetting one very important point.

My luck is, traditionally, horrible.

I understand I have not been exactly loquacious over the past couple of days. Some sleeping problems have contributed to this solemnity, and for that I apologize. With any luck I should be able to get the amount of sleep I need to get caught up tonight, and then things will resume as normal.

Or, in other words, I have 24 hours to catch up on 36 hours of sleep.

By nature, I am not terribly competitive. I play certain games without the eye towards dominating an opponent that’s oftentimes not just necessary, but taken for granted if one wants to come out on top. So it’s probably not surprising that I stay in more or less a comfort zone, without venturing too much into the hardest difficulties of those games. In short, I see the game itself as my opponent, and not necessarily the players set against me.

When translated to Rock Band, this means I pretty much stay on Medium and don’t stray unless I think I can get away with it, or if I’m forced into a higher difficulty. However, in playing through The Beatles: Rock Band over the past few days, I’ve found myself becoming a little more adventurous, jumping to Hard every once in a while just to see if I can. I’ve yet to five-star any Hard songs, I think, but I’m getting better.

In any event, that doesn’t tell you much about the game itself. This should: Go buy it. Like, now. Yeah, it’s that good.

Sorry for the terseness, I’m a little frazzled after this week’s havoc and I’m running out of steam very quickly. I need these two days off just to cope, I guess… Catch you all tomorrow.

I’m not ready to make a blog post about The Beatles Rock Band yet. Tomorrow.