My theme is all screwed up!
I’ll fix it later, though.
You understand.
Apr 182013
Mar 272013
There are two things I almost never do: respond to memes on Facebook, and write blog posts. I’m going to do both things today.
My mother, who is a saint, recently re-shared a list that my cousin Jennifer also shared on Facebook titled “20 things a a mom should tell her son.” Despite being good intentions, most of the list rubbed me the wrong way. Badly. I’ve reproduced it in its entirety below:
1. Play a sport.
It will teach you how to win honorably,
lose gracefully, respect authority, work with others, manage your time
and stay out of trouble.
And maybe even throw or catch.2. You will set the tone
for the sexual relationship,
so don’t take something away from her
that you can’t give back.3. Use careful aim when you pee.
Somebody’s got to clean that up, you know.4. Save money when you’re young
because you’re going to need it someday.5. Allow me to introduce you
to the dishwasher, oven,
washing machine, iron,
vacuum, mop and broom.
Now please go use them.6. Pray and be a spiritual leader.
7. Don’t ever be a bully
and don’t ever start a fight,
but if some idiot clocks you,
please defend yourself.8. Your knowledge and education is something
that nobody can take away from you.9. Treat women kindly.
Forever is a long time to live alone
and it’s even longer to live with somebody
who hates your guts.10. Take pride in your appearance.
11. Be strong and tender at the same time.
12. A woman can do everything that you can do.
This includes her having a successful career
and you changing diapers at 3 A.M.
Mutual respect is the key to a good relationship.13. “Yes ma’am” and “yes sir”
still go a long way.14. The reason that they’re called “private parts”
is because they’re “private”.
Please do not scratch them in public.15. Peer pressure is a scary thing.
Be a good leader and others will follow.16. Bringing her flowers for no reason
is always a good idea.17. It is better to be kind
than to be right.18. A sense of humor
goes a long way
in the healing process.19. Please choose your spouse wisely.
My daughter-in-law will be the gatekeeper for me
spending time with you and my grandchildren.20. Remember to call your mother
because I might be missing you.
Instead of doing my normal song and dance of ranting and picking apart the above list piece by piece, I decided to try something different. I decided to improve the list. So here are my not-quite-twenty things.
- Find hobbies that make you happy. Your best friends will be there with you.
- Don’t put women on a pedestal. They like the same things you do, and you’re not going to break them.
- Anything you mess up is your own responsibility. Someone cleaning up after you is a kindness, and not to be expected.
- Save money when you’re young, because compounding interest is amazing, but don’t miss out on experiences you can only have when you’re young to save a few dollars.
- Listen to your heart and your head when it comes to your spiritual beliefs. Don’t let anyone bully you into fitting in, and don’t feel bad if you believe something different than everyone else. Even if that something is nothing.
- Don’t pick on anyone, but don’t back down from every fight, either. Some battles are worth fighting, even if you can’t win.
- Education is not knowledge, intelligence is not wisdom, and the best men know the difference.
- Everyone has to earn respect. That means you, but it also means the people who assume you owe it to them.
- Authority is a fragile thing. Don’t abuse it, and don’t let yourself be abused.
- Marriage is a choice, not a requirement, in your life. The gender of your spouse, should you have one, is also your choice alone. As is the decision to have children.
Nov 022011
Release day in League of Legends is always a pain in the ass. When you get a large number of anonymous internet fucktards together who all want to do exactly one thing, and only one out of a five person team can do it at a time, what you end up with is troll city. Last night was special in that, in addition to the normal new champion craptacular events, I also played like complete garbage, which turned the entire night into a extravaganza of me feeling terrible about myself and hating half my team at the same time.
So here’s what I learned.
Game 1
Game 1 our Cassiopeia didn’t bother to connect for awhile, so I had to take my teleport/flash Shyvana mid. Against Kassadin. I played so poorly in this game there’s not even anything to learn from it.
Game 2
I took Morgana mid against a Malzahar. Now, normally, my Morgana is pretty badass, but I made a strategic mistake in this game that I don’t think I’ll ever repeat again, and our jungler made a rather large mistake that cost me dearly…but also because I played a bit poorly.
My mistake? Trying to keep up in a pushing battle with a Malzahar. Under most normal circumstances Morgana pushes her lane like a mofo, Malzahar not only does that, he does it using less mana. So while I managed to keep Malz below half health the entire time, I was running out of mana and he wasn’t, and he was always right up against my tower.
Now, many months ago, I used to get frustrated with junglers that never left the jungle and never ganked. Now I’ve learned to survive in more difficult lanes and I generally accept that the jungler can’t be everywhere at once, although I may disagree with where they are at any given point. What our jungler Skarner did, though was just stupid. He was queued with his friend in top lane, so what he did was…keep ganking top lane. When I asked him, hey, could we get some pressure elsewhere, his response was the rather unhelpful “I’m shutting down top lane. Deal.”
There are quite a few problems with this. First, the entire point of the jungler is to stop people in lanes from doing stupid shit. Malzahar could push my turret as hard as he wanted, because he knew that Skarner wasn’t there. The enemy team knew where Skarner was at all points, and if they didn’t, they knew he was only ganking top, so mid and bottom just didn’t have to give a fuck. Meanwhile, their jungle Warwick had far fewer kills than our Skarner, but he made me and bottom play safe, because he wasn’t just chilling in a lane. Essentially, they had a jungler, and we had a duo top that just happened to be farming jungle creeps. Very frustrating.
What I should have done was realize that he was never going to capitalize on the fact that Malz was taking random shots of turret aggro just to push the shit out of me and that I was on my own. What I actually did was keep going “Hey, look, easiest gank in the history of ganking! Malz no flash!” All that happened was that I stuck around my turret too long and got dived for my troubles.
Game 3
I actually think I did reasonably well this game. I’ve been practicing my AD carry and my Corki was able to shut down a Graves in lane. The problem was that I was on life-tilt from the previous two games so instead of pushing to go to a lane where I’m good (mid or top) I let our Kennen and Talon take them. Kennen went 0-7 and Talon 0-4. By the time the laning phase ended, bottom lane was the only one that had done reasonably well, and their Nocturne was 4-0-4.
Sometimes I start to feel like I’m getting good at LoL…and sometimes I have nights like this one. There was only one thing to do.
Game 4
Play a game of Dominion where Peter and Kenny carried and I ran around going I LIEK DRAGGGGOOOONZ. And we won it, obviously.
Aug 032011
Inexcartographal: Something that cannot be mapped for unknown reasons.
You’re welcome, Google.
Jul 222011
Social networking is the death of blogging.
Jul 112011
If you follow me on the various social networks I’m much more active on than I am on my blog, then you should know that I just won my second pre-release in a row, after taking 2 months off of Magic. That’s an actual two months off, mind you, where I played zero games and did nothing but grind League of Legends.
I guess I need to get my constructed skills back up to snuff.
I didn’t have quite as much to work with this time, so I had to actually play games and win them rather than just wait to take home packs, but it ended well. I lost exactly one game all day, but that was to Peter, so that’s alright.
[deck title=More Fair than it Used to Be]
[Creatures]
*1 Adaptive Automaton
*1 Aegis Angel
*1 Assault Griffin
*2 Blood Ogre
*1 Bonebreaker Giant
*1 Goblin Piker
*1 Grand Abolisher
*2 Griffin Rider
*1 Griffin Sentinel
*1 Inferno Titan
*1 Stonehorn Dignitary
*1 Stormfront Pegasus
*1 Wall of Torches
[/Creatures]
[Spells and Equipment]
*1 Chandra’s Outrage
*1 Fireball
*1 Greatsword
*1 Incinerate
*1 Mighty Leap
*1 Pacifism
*1 Swiftfoot Boots
*1 Timely Reinforcements
[/Spells and Equipment]
[Lands]
*8 Mountain
*9 Plains
[/Lands]
[Honorable Mentions]
*1 Celestial Purge
*1 Combust
[/Honorable Mentions]
[/deck]
I give some honorable mentions up there for a reason. I played against 5 black decks in a row to go undefeated, so I played as many games with Celestial Purge as I did without it. I never cast my Swiftfoot Boots once, but I sure as hell cast my Purge, including purging my own Mind Controlled Inferno Titan.
3 of the black decks also had green. The other two had either white or blue. Hellooooo combust!
May 092011
Always remember children, Magic is a skill game.
So this is the deck I piloted through the New Phyrexia pre-release in Huntsville this weekend:
[deck title=Seems Fair]
[Creatures]
Alpha Tyrranax
Bellowing Tanglewurm
Blind Zealot
Chancellor of the Dross
Geth, Lord of the Vault
Iron Myr
Pestilent Souleater
Phyrexian Metamorph
Phyrexian Swarmlord
Tangle Angler
Wall of Tanglecord
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
Beast Within
Dismember
Enslave
Glissas Scorn
Grasp of Darkness
Grim Affliction
Leeching Bite
Parasitic Implant
Slice in Twain
[/Spells]
[Artifacts]
Nim Deathmantle
Tumble Magnet
[/Artifacts]
[Lands]
*9 Forest
*9 Swamp
[/Lands]
[/deck]
The other rare that I opened was [card]Asceticism[/card], which means that it was on-color and just not worth using. The only cards I sided in all day were [card]Corrosive Gale[/card] and [card]Darksteel Sentinel[/card]. The Sentinel match was the only one where I lost a game: the guy had the new black Wrath of God and [card]Wurmcoil Engine[/card], which explains why he came in well enough I think.
Best crushings of the day include having my opponent cast [card]Galvanic Blast[/card], Grasp of Darkness, and use [card]Barrage Ogre[/card] to kill my Chancellor, which I responded to by paying 4 to my Nim Deathmantle. Me forgetting was his only hope, although it did [card]Fog[/card] for a turn.
Or against Scott, where I had out Geth, Enslaved his copy of the Chancellor, and then Geth’d back [card]Myr Battlesphere[/card] to fight for me, after slicing it in twain.
It was a good day. And then the almost-box of product that I won (32 packs) that we split between us had 8 mythics in it. Seems good.
Apr 122011
Write a blog post already.
My cold, dead eyes.
Apr 042011
I’m posting this here so that I can NEVER FORGET:
(4:33:35 PM) Peter Rosconi: Holyyyyyy shit
(4:33:43 PM) Peter Rosconi: C# parralelism is the shit
(4:34:31 PM) Graeme Hefner: Explain
(4:34:43 PM) Peter Rosconi: List
actions.Add(() => LoadIdentificationTexts());
actions.Add(() => LoadAssociations());
actions.AsParallel().ForAll(a => a.Invoke());
(4:34:57 PM) Graeme Hefner: …wait, seriously, it just runs them all?
(4:35:00 PM) Graeme Hefner: In parallel?
(4:35:03 PM) Peter Rosconi: Yup
(4:35:09 PM) Graeme Hefner: That is the most badass goddamn thing I have ever seen.
Mar 212011
Almost 8 long and lonely years out, what other videogame can really cause emotions this extreme? Bold added by this editor.
(2:16:15 PM) Graeme Hefner: Right as you said that, the Silent Hill 3 theme started.
(2:16:25 PM) Graeme Hefner: I miss that series so much.
(2:16:32 PM) Graeme Hefner: 1-4 are my favorite videogame series of all time.
(2:16:38 PM) Graeme Hefner: Mostly because of how they fucked up Final Fantasy.
(2:16:39 PM) Graeme Hefner: :(
(2:16:49 PM) Kenny Knapke: dude, i hear the riff from my ringtone in everything now
(2:17:29 PM) Kenny Knapke: just like random song, i’ll hear those notes at random and be like ‘wtf’
(2:17:32 PM) Graeme Hefner: “You’re Not Here” evokes such strong emotions, just hearing it.
(2:17:42 PM) Kenny Knapke: yeah
(2:17:54 PM) Kenny Knapke: should play that again
(2:17:58 PM) Kenny Knapke: or 2
(2:18:03 PM) Kenny Knapke: or the original
(2:18:10 PM) Kenny Knapke: i should get it on PSN
(2:18:11 PM) Graeme Hefner: I’m thinking of rigging up an emulator
(2:18:15 PM) Graeme Hefner: And doing a “Let’s Play X”
(2:18:20 PM) Graeme Hefner: Of my own.
(2:18:35 PM) Kenny Knapke: we should do dual commentary!
(2:19:01 PM) Kenny Knapke: i’d be cool watching
(2:19:08 PM) Kenny Knapke: and just being like ‘zomg, i just peed’
(2:19:15 PM) Graeme Hefner: hehe
(2:19:25 PM) Graeme Hefner: My commentary would be “This haunted house is the most brilliant thing ever.”
(2:19:30 PM) Graeme Hefner: “Oh my god, it’s that fucking room.”
(2:19:33 PM) Kenny Knapke: no
(2:19:37 PM) Kenny Knapke: we won’t even go in the room
(2:19:40 PM) Kenny Knapke: fuck that room
(2:19:45 PM) Graeme Hefner: I have to go into that room
(2:19:46 PM) Graeme Hefner: Every time.
(2:19:54 PM) Graeme Hefner: It scarred me for life.