Damn Diablo 2!

Yes! I am playing Diablo 2 again! Dammit!

It is such stupid fun, I find myself getting re-addicted to it every year or two. It is absolutely the appeal of skill-tree building and random magic item finding that always hooks me. And then... I do nothing else. I spend every waking hour killing Baal and Mephisto.

And Cows. Yes! Hordes of cows. Moo! MOOOOO! Moo? I know my wife hates that sound with a passion. When I play other games, she's like, "Well at least there's no damn mooing." Bah, what does she know? She doesn't understand the mindless wanton slaying of multitudes of thousands of bipedal bovines! How could she?

But there it is. I'm lost again. This is why some of you haven't seen me in a while. And... oh god, Diablo 3 is coming!

"Drag Rat" Sketch

Borderlands

It seems like very few of the games I get nowadays do much for me. I don't know what's missing. It might be me, I'll admit. I don't really care much for most first person shooter style games. The content bores me in most of these games, with few exceptions.

Borderlands is one of these exceptions. I just got it yesterday. Then I played it for the next 6 hours. Wow!

One of the things that appeals to me the most about it is that it seems to be a Firefly/Serenity type setting. You're on a planet, one of those dust-bowl type worlds that they are frequently seen stopping on in the Firefly setting.

The artwork is fantastic. A blend of comic book and cartoon, tending closer to the graphic novel.

I was constantly blown away by how smooth it was. I was running it on a dual-core 1.86 mhz machine with only 2gb of ram (so... NOT a beast), and it ran like a bat out of hell.

The characters each have their own skill trees, and I was playing the girl character who can step into another dimension where she goes really fast, and can move around the battlefield quickly. When she is in that other form she can get skill builds that affect the real world, and do damage when she comes back to the real worlds, etc. etc. 

Anyhoo, a big thumbs up, Borderlands is lovely, get some on you.

Magic Mushroom Coffeehouse progresses

My partners and I met at the IHOP over coffee to finalize some details about the coffeehouse.  We are at the "going to the banks" stage now, and I think things are about to accelerate.

Magic Mushrooms, and Flickr

Business plan is basically finished, other than some formatting (by Shana the grammar format nazi).

I also just started a new portfolio of creations at Flickr.

Tim Minchin is one of my heroes and pretty much sums up how I think here:

If you open your mind too much, your brain will fall out.