That is all.

Today is a special day for me, because it marks the one year anniversary of me deciding to lose weight. I've detailed it in more details in an earlier post, so I won't go over all that again. I'm just happy over how well it's gone so far, and that I've been able to keep up my new lifestyle for a whole year now. So yay for me!

There's a possibility that I might be in London a few days in May (my WoW guild is planning a trip to Chessington World of Adventures, which I kind of want to go to). I can get plane tickets there pretty cheaply, but as it would be my first time in London (my first time outside of Sweden ever, really) I have no clue at all when it comes to hotels/lodgings. So I was just wondering if you have any suggestions for good and cheap places to stay for a few days during May? I've been looking at a few hotels, but the cost of staying there for two or three days would run me two to three times the price of the plane tickets.

Just found and old picture of myself, and decided I had to post this if for no other reason than to remind myself how I looked back in the day (and well, also to be a little proud over what I've accomplished :):

Me, two and a half years ago.

Me, today.

I was astounded at the difference myself. Having gradually lost weight over the last 9 months, I've not really been able to notice how different I look myself. So it's fun to see that old picture, and compare it to a new one. But also very, very scary to realize just how heavy I was back then...

112.5 pounds gone, 55 left to go! :)

I hope you all will have a fantastic 2007!

And have a good new year, as well.

A question for you UKeans who read this (yes, both of you):

Is Nottingham a nice place?

I'm thinking of applying for a job that would mean a relocation to Nottingham.

Does this thing work?

I doubt anyone ever reads this anymore, but anyway: Got a new blog up and running on my own server. Check it out if you want to, I will try to keep it a bit more updated than this one, and a lot less teen angsty. Angst is so 2004.

Wow, my first update in 6 months.

I was sad to hear about what happened in London today. This terrorist attack make a lot more upset about the one against the US on 9/11 2001, mostly because London is a lot more closer to home, and also because I know a few englishmen through various online games etc. But luckily they all seem to be okay.

My life is proceeding pretty much as it has the last few years - I have no job, I sit at home and play WoW. But hopefully that'll change come fall, as I've been accepted into school to complete a few courses I never finished. After that is done I'm hoping to go on to higher studies, or maybe finally find a decent job.

But yeah, at the moment WoW takes up most of my time even though I a few months back had a period where I really loathed the game. Changing server types from RP to PvP did a lot give me back the enjoyment of the game though. I visited my old server and guild earlier today, and remembered how much I miss everyone there. I kind of wish I had started the rogue over there instead, but what's done is done. Hopefully I'll be able to keep in touch with them all anyway.

Time for another update.

My grandfather has been moved to another hospital, where he's recieving training to try and get back the abilities he lost in his stroke. There does seem to be some progress - at least it's a lot easier to hear what he's saying now than it was a few weeks ago. His mood has changed a lot though. While he was never the most cheery happy person, now he's mostly just angry and bitter. I don't think he enjoys life very much at all right now - which is easy to understand. Going from being fairly healthy and able to take care of himself, to being paralyzed on the right side of his body and needing help with EVERYTHING must be a very big change. I, together with some other relatives, visited him yesterday and he suggested that I should slip him an overdose of sleeping pills.

It was an odd feeling. While I AM an supporter of euthanasia, it was a bit of a chock to hear my grandfather ask me to kill him. And the worst thing is that I'm not entirely certain he was joking - he sure did look serious. Hopefully he's mood will improve a lot once he's able to walk on his own again, as the doctors are confident he will if he train enough.

The interview for the job in the Mac store took place on Friday, after being delayed due to one of the interviewers being sick. It went OK I guess, but I don't think I'll get the job. My interview took a lot shorter time than the others, and the fact that I have no experience and haven't really used a Mac in a lot of years work to my disadvantage. Funny thing is even though I haven't gotten the job yet (and, as I said, probably won't), I'm already worrying about if I'd be able to handle it! Silly, I know, but that's just the way I am. Will keep looking for decent-sounding jobs, but if I can't find something soon I might have to go back to school, even though I really don't want to.

Have begun watching a lot of anime again recently. Had a little break from it for a while (mostly because I was watching Buffy/Angel and didn't have time for anything else!), but got the urge again a few days ago. Am switching between a lot of different show, but the one that really caught my attention was Paranoia Agent. I've just seen one episode of it yet, but it was excellent - as to be expected from a show directed by the incredibly talented Satoshi Kon.

Also bought myself a new PS2 (I sold my previous one) because there have been a lot of very interesting games coming out recently. I finished Shadow Hearts: Covenant a week or so ago, and it's one of the best RPGs I've played in a VERY long while. Was happy to find out that it's going to be released in Europe in march - the EU market need more high quality RPGs.

Been a while since the last update, so time for some random news.

First of all, I've got a job interview next tuesday. While I'm excited about it, I get more and more terrified every time I think about it. It's for the position as a clerk in a store that sell Apple products. My fear rises from the fact that I haven't used a Mac in year, even if I've kept up-to-date on their new products. So I have a pretty good grasp when it comes to the hardware, but have no clue about software. This, I think, might be a problem. I'm considering calling of the interview, because I'd like to be spared the embarassment of not being able to answer the questions they'll ask me. Blah.

Secondly, my grandfather's gotten very ill and is in the hospital. At the age of 79, he's pretty much been spared from age related illnesses up till now. But during the past two weeks he's suffered two or three consecutive strokes. The first one wasn't too serious, relatively speaking. But second (and possibly third - the doctors doesn't seem to know for sure) rendered him unable to move the right side of his body. So now he can't walk, or do anything at all on his own, and he's got problems speaking. It's really very saddening to see him in such a state, especially when he's been so healthy up till now. For the first time, he's really showing his age.

My grandfather falling ill isn't the only tradegy to happen to the family in the last six months. First there was the car accident my mother was involved in (by the way, all the injured survived, and the girl who was the most hurt is on the way of being recovered, which is a great relief), and just a few days before Christmas one of my mother's cousins commited suicide. Not that it affected me much personally, as I hadn't met this person except for when I was very small. He was pshyically ill and suffering from depressions, so his suicide didn't come as a total surprise, but it did put a damper on the holiday.

Thirdly, the final beta for the european version of World of Warcraft has finally been released. After playing the game some more, I've settled on the decisions that I'll play WoW at a very leisurely pace. I won't make any effort to try and keep up with the rest of my guild, or play for hour long sessions every day. I had enough of that in DAOC, and now I just want to be able to log on, play for a little bit and talk to friends. There's enough stress and demands in the real world for me to want to put up with it in World of Warcraft as well.

Note: Am really sleepy so expect more spelling and grammar errors than usual

I can't sleep tonight, so I thought I'd blog. Haven't done it in a while. Me not being able to sleep is nothing new - for the last several years I've been having troubles sleeping at night. When I try to sleep I always begin to think about upsetting things, most usually death. Both my of my own death, and for those I care about. I don't know why I think so much about death (every night, in fact). Most of us think about death from time to time, and the majority fear it. But others seem able to block it out most of the time. I can do that just fine at day, but when I lie down in my bed at night I invetibly start to think about it.

I wish I knew WHY I'm so preoccupied by death, so I could do something about it. But I don't so I can't. It's getting to the point that I acutally try to put off sleeping for as long as possible so that I don't have to go through the ordeal. Oh well.

On to other things:
I've been playing a lot of Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines recently. It's computer game adaption of White Wolf's popular p'n'p roleplay game, and it's a lot of fun. Or at least the roleplay part is, the combat is very chunky and awkward. But the roleplay possibilties are great. Right now I'm playing a Ventrue vampire with really high skill in persuasion as well as blood powers (the magic of the game). He's an upper-class vampire who'se very good at diplomacy and can talk his way out of most situations. And in those instances that words just don't cut it he can use his powerful mind controll blood powers to make all his enemies commit suicide. Great stuff :)

And the more I play the game I feel that the Vampire franchise would make a GREAT MMORPG. I don't know how the p'n'p game works, but in Bloodlines there are two opposing factions of Vampires - the Camarilla and the Sabbat. Both groups consist of seven different vampire clans, as well as human vampire hunters and werewolves.

In the Vampire MMORPG in my mind you, as the player, have the option of chosing to play as either Camarilla or Sabbat, and chose between the Clans in the respective factions. This would be a great setup for some Player Versus Player combat, and the werewolves/human vampire hunters could work very well for providing Player vs Enemy content. With the popularity fo the MMORPG genre I don't find it entirely impossible that someone makes a Vampire MMO. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Speaking of MMORPGs, I decided to pre-order World of Warcraft (and thus gain access to the Final Beta) after all. I blame it on Anssi.

As there's some time left before the WoW Final Beta starts I've been looking into other MMORPGs to play in the meantime, and got interested in Project Entropia. It's a game developed by a swedish company, and it's totally free to play. How it works is that you exchange your real world money into the currency used in the game to buy weapons and items. It also works the other way around - you can sell game items and recieve real world money for them. It's intruiging, and I think I'll give the game a shot.

I really feel like just selling my PC, get a Mac and then a few consoles for my gaming needs. I'm so fucking sick and tired of PC hardware and software never working as intended.

Finished watching the last episode Angel a few minutes ago. Now I've watched through all of the "Buffyverse", and feel a bit empty - what the hell am I going to watch now?

All in all watching Angel and Buffy was a great experience - both shows had some real stinky episodes, but most of the time they were both excellent. Gonna miss watching them.

Also, I know there's been a lack of updates recently. But as always, that's because nothing really interesting has happened. Still lazy, unemployed and pretty bored.

After more 0.x-versions, preview builds and pre-releases than you can shake a stick at, the first final version of Firefox has been released. Go download it right away - you know you want it.

I'm not sure when it happened. Perhaps it was when I was killing some monsters for a quest which required me to collect 60 of their hooves. Or maybe it was when I died for the fifth time while trying to collect some copper ore to support my crafting. The exact time doesn't really matter, the point is this - I'm not so sure anymore if I'm going to be playing World of Warcraft when it goes live.

I'm having a lot of fun in this open beta/stress test, but I just can't shake of the feeling that WoW is like any other MMORPG out there, even if it's a bit more polished than the rest. The core gameplay is the same - group up with people, kill some monsters, do a quest, get some xp, level up. Rince and repeat. I did all that in DAOC already, and it feels a bit of old.

It was the same thing when I started playing City of Heroes. At first I loved the game because it's nice graphics, cool premise (who doesn't want to be a super hero?!) and character customisation. But after a week or two that initial excitement wore off, and I got bored by the repetetive quests.

Perhaps DAOC ruined the whole MMORPG scene for me. Not by being a great game that none of the others can compare with (because it wasn't), but simply because I played it so much that I grew tired of the basic gameplay that is shared by all MMORPGs.

Because no matter how fancy graphics they have, or how cool the classes and quests are, it always boil down to one thing:
Kill monsters and level up.

That's all there is. Sure, a game might have crafting, great opportunities for human interaction and so on, but that doesn't change that one core game element. It's all about killing things and collecting items. And that I had a lifetimes worth of in DAOC.

It's been a while since I posted last. I've been kind of busy, altough not in a very interesting way. So here comes a short summary of what's happened during the last week and a half.

1) I got myself a new computer. This is what's been taking up most of my time. I wish I could say that I upgraded my computer because I needed the extra processing power for some heavy duty creative stuff, but the sad truth is that it's only soley for the sake of games. After playing in the World of Warcraft and EQ2 Beta Tests I came to the conclusion that my old computer really wasn't up to the task of running the new MMORPGS at a decent framerate. Another big reason for the upgrade was that it'd enable me to give my old computer to my brother, so that he would stop coming here every weekend and play bloody Sims 2 all days.

So I've spent the better part of the last 10 days building and setting up the new computer. Most of them I've used to try and come up with a way to get decent cooling. The biggest problem is my case fans. The once I bought together with the case are very, very loud but do a fantastic job at cooling the computer. But the noise the produce (45 decibel!) is unbearable, so I replaced them with a pair of 16 decibel fans, which do a much worse job at cooling the system. Blah. So now it seems I might have to get a third pair of fans to get a decent temperature/noise ratio. But before I do that I'm going to install a new fan on the graphics card, one that will blow the hot air from the card OUT of the case (and not into the case as the stock cooler does). I hope that will help a bit, seeing as the graphics card produces 60 degrees celcius at idle, and upwards 75 under load.

2) I turned 22. It's not a big deal at all - these days I care very very little for my own age. Truth to be said, I try not to think about it at all. When I think about the fact that I'm 22, still lives at home and got no job I just get depressed.

3) I no longer have to have the TV on too sleep. Yay! It might sound odd, but for the last five years or so, I've had to have the TV, or some other source of audio, on when going to sleep. The reason for this is that whenever I try to sleep without something to listen to, my thoughts start to wander and I end up thinking about unpleasant things. Usually death. But recently I've gotten it under control, and don't have to listen to anything to fall asleep any more. As a result I seem to sleep better, and I've even been able to remember some of my dreams, something that hasn't happened since I was in middle school.

4) I've been playing various MMO betas. Mostly EQ2. I managed to get a hold of a third account for the game - it seems like SOE are throwing beta invites at anything that moves. Not too much of a suprise, I guess, as the game is being released on Nov 18th. By letting more people into the beta they create a bigger buzz about the game. I have to say that EQ2 isn't all that bad. I'd still rather play World of Warcraft, though.

Speaking of World of Warcraft, I pre-ordered the game today. The web store I ordered from have some kind of pre-ordering special that will grant you a beta key if you pre-order from them. What beta that is they don't say, or when it'll be available. Guess I'll have to see.

Have also ben playing a little of the Matrix Online beta. My first impression of the game isn't very good at all. The character creation system is very bare-bones, and the tutorial flat out sucked. I think it did, at least, as I haven't been able to progress in it. The tutorial throws you into a small room together with a NPC, and tells you to "make a choice". Thing is, there's nothing in the room that in any way indicates that I can make a choice about anything. I haven't found a way to interact with any of the objects in the room, the NPC doesn't have any helpful dialouge, and there's no way to leave the area. Will try the game out some more later, but the fact that you're only allowed to beta test it during certain hours (3 PM - 9 PM Pacific Daylight Time) is off-putting.

5) Been watching more Buffy and Angel. I'm really happy to see that Buffy S5 is up to the same quality as the third season, with a minimal of filler episodes. Unfortunently I already know what happens at the end of season five (I accidently saw the first episode of season six on swedish telivision, and it was filled with spoilers), though. Also glad to see that Angel is developing a strong, continous storyline in Season 2, and isn't just a bunch of "Monster of the week" episodes anymore. Looking forward to seeing more of both series.

And I guess that's pretty much what I've been up to the last two weeks. Still haven't had any luck in finding any decent jobs to apply for...

Bleh, I'm feeling a bit sick - probably catching a cold. Stupid autumn.

I just fell in love with rss. Yeah, I know the technology has been around for a while, but I've never really used it untill now - but I should have! It's very very nice to have all the updates on the sites I read collected in one place.