So tonight, after much debate, I decided to reinstall Warcraft 3, because I've been jonesin to play it since school ended, but knew I was going to be reinstalling my OS - whether on new hardware or not, it's gettin' to be that time. Past time.

Anyway, I decided, what the hell - I can skip past whatever I beat now with cheat codes or something and pick up right where I left off in the fresh OS install. It'd be a nice way of celebrating getting all the drivers installed and everything humming right.

Well, tonight I installed it, and played through the entirety of the Human campaign. That's a fourth of the game - like 9 levels. This is a loooong ass game. The first time I played through it it took me probably two weeks, and I was playing the thing any time I wasnt sleeping or in class. And either I am a strategy game god, (which, yes, I am, toot toot) or I spent wayyyyyy too long tonight playing. Either way, that was some crazy stuff. I whipped a lot of ass. I never even saved the game. It was great, but now I feel kind of conflicted about it. I'm sure part of the ass whipping was because generally I knew what was coming in the levels, which I didn't the first time, but I deliberately waited long enough to reinstall so that I would have forgotten most of the game's details. Still, seems like I bitchslapped a bit too much undead ass. At this rate, this game's replay isn't going to have that "what day is it again?" effect that it did the first time. Still, it's fun. And I whooped ass.

My profile is saved at the beginning of the Undead campaign, and chances are tomorrow I'm gonna dive into that head first, and I'll probably finish the whole damn game before the time comes to re-do the OS. Fortunately, other patrick got the expansion pack, which I've never played. So there will be that to tear through. Whee.

Oh, and the linux dedicated server for UT2004 is still doing strange things. Bugger.

I really enjoy being able to stay up late playing games without having some creeping deadline I'm having to shove aside to do so. Niiiiice. Guilt free. Niiiiicer.

Now all I need is some woman who's a fan of animated comedy and games, and also staying up incredibly late.

Can you imagine it? You both cooincidentally walk into the kitchen at the same time, barefoot and glossy eyed, for some more caffeinated liquids, and have the following exchange:

ME: Hey, how's it goin?
HER: Oh, some motherfucker just came at me with this +1 mace (insert upgraded laser cannon here if you are like me and generally dislike fantasy as a genre) and I was dead before I knew what happened.
ME: Ouch.
HER: Yeah, I'm gonna load and do that over again.
ME: Pssh. You don't need to take no shit off somebody who thinks they're all Mr. Jerrywinkles just because they got a fancy-ass mace.
HER: (laugh) Mr. Jerrywinkles?
ME: You know, the guy with the mace.
HER: No.
ME: I -may- have made him up. I'm pretty tired, anything's possible.
HER: (laughing again at my constant and hypnotizing wit) Hey, we gotta get to bed before too late tonight.
ME: Yeah. Poke with a stick pact?
HER: Poke with a stick pact.
<We kiss and go back toward respective activities>

And see poke with a stick pact would be this cute thing we'd have already worked out, where we both tried to remember to do something, and the first to remember got to take this stick, that is an honored and revered stick set aside in a prominent place in the home for just this use, and go poke the other with it until both of us did what was supposed to happen. It would be even cuter because it would be just some piece of shit stick from the yard that was arbitrarily deputized for this purpose.

In this case, I'd probably poke her with the stick an hour after we'd both wanted to be asleep.

Bearing in mind that if I had someone like that, we'd do tons of stuff together. She'd probably be totally sick of me. It's just sometimes we'd wanna be nearby but in our own stuff. Hear each other say "Oh what the hell is this?" and shout ribbings at one another. And have unplanned little kitchen pow wows every so often, or show each other really cool shit we found, but without the pressure to be joined at the hip that bogs down a lot of relationships.

Perhaps I've just gone off on a tangent and shared too much.

the world may never know.

[ah-one]