The Rem Awakens

Now look at this, all dusty and rusty…

*deletes spam comments*

*updates theme and layout*

*sweeps the place clean*

Better. So, is anyone still reading? Looks like I haven’t posted anything in … oh, just over 4 years. What I’ve been up to all this time, you ask? Well…

I’m still working at the job I started when I stopped blogging. It quickly became obvious that it’s pretty much my dream job. Likewise, my employer thinks highly of me as well and I got promoted fairly frequently. Now I’m on my way to “lead level”, which is a more complicated process than previous promotions.

Two and a half years ago I met a wonderful girl. She’s my best friend, the love of my life, the best conceivable partner for everything and my dearest darling. We married last year.

This summer, we moved from Berlin to Frankfurt to increase the probability of me getting project assignments near my home. And indeed, after four years of weekly flights and being recognized on sight at hotel receptions, I’m now actually sleeping at home most of the time and traveling to work by bus. Amazing!

I played (in many cases “tried”) a number of games over the years, which I might elaborate on in more detail in future posts. I know, you’re not holding your breath. Can’t blame you for being skeptical.

• RIFT – unsubscribed pretty soon after writing I wouldn’t.
• Skyrim – took all of 16 glorious hours for me to lose interest.
• SWTOR – shortly after launch, stopped one level short of the (original) level cap.
• EVE Online – loved its incredible depth, subscribed for 6 months, stopped playing after 3.
• The Secret World – pretty much at launch; it was great, it was weird, it was different, it was awesome, and it sadly failed to grab me.
• Guild Wars 2 – some good ideas, but not my cup of tea.
• SWTOR – shortly before meeting my future wife, played a new character to level 45 over the Christmas holiday period.
• Titan Quest – a first attempt to introduce my  (then not yet) wife to gaming. We both hated it and the introduction almost ended there.
• Neverwinter Nights – a second attempt at playing together and first signs of fun. The game felt incredibly dated though and weirdly unwieldy.
• LotRO – we played for a bit and she liked it! I felt incredibly annoyed by the spineless cash-grab the game had become. Didn’t get out of the starter area. However, she said she enjoyed having a nice story, so…
• SWTOR – oh look. There we go again, this time together. We played a pair of characters all the way to level 35, then stopped because we had lots of stuff to take care of (getting married for example). Didn’t play anything for a year and a half. There was a good chance that that would have been it for good.
• SWTOR – here we go again! Having settled in in our new home and our new life rhythm, we decided to give the hobby another go.

That’s where things stand. Let’s see where they go.

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I am not, in fact, dead

Quite the opposite, the reasons for my sudden radio silence have been solely positive. I interviewed for a new job, got said new job and have since been busy being happy about finally being able to do the work I want to do, attending my new employer’s summer party, as well as preparing for the changes to come. I’m starting next week, and speaking of changes: as an IT consultant I’ll be on-site with clients for most (if not all) of the work week. That does, naturally, change a few things.

Gaming-wise, it means that at least for the next few months I’ll be a weekend gamer at most. The timing is pretty good, because right now, to put it harshly, there is no game I’d really deeply want to play anyway. I am (purposefully) without a guild and without strong ties, therefore, while RIFT is a good game and quite fun, emotionally, to play it or not to play it are just a shrug apart right now. I’ll write about my more detailed opinion of RIFT soon (I’m not cancelling my subscription, by the way).

Blogging-wise, it might actually mean that I’ll be blogging more. Until now, blogging has basically competed for time resources with gaming. In the future, I’m quite likely to find myself with time to blog but not to play, and I still have lots of thoughts to express – might even get through my draft folder 😉

The new and improved Rem is ready to take on his new and improved life. Just wanted to let you, my faithful readers, know that all is well and more is to come!

Now with previous content!

Inspired by a conversation with a guild mate last night, I had a look into the content import functionality, and, look and behold, it’s there aplenty! So, now the archives have migrated, including comments. Nice isn’t it.

Next I’ll have to sort out the categories – as I didn’t exactly plan to continue using my previous mess of those. But given what I’ve seen of the WordPress functionality so far, this process should be much more pleasant than it would have been in Blogger. Yeah, I’m rather happy about the move.

Hello world!

Hello WordPress. It’s nice to meet you. You seem flashy and modern, and, what shall I say, I like flashy and modern. I’ll try to update more frequently again, but, as usual, don’t say I promised you a pony. I have tons of thoughts I’d like to blog down, but sometimes my writing mojo is occupied with other topics. So, let’s hope for the best!

If you, dear WordPress, would like to know what I’ve been up to so far, feel free to head over to my Old Home (at which you also should Not Try This) and have a read.

This blog I am starting with a more pronounced intention to write about gaming in general and World of Warcraft in particular – which is pretty much what happened to my old blog anyway. Do not be overly surprised, however, if you stumble now and again into posts that express my thoughts on totally different subjects as well.

And now, let’s have some fun together!

In which we call out bullshit

Not in the mood for a lengthy rant, so I’ll just add my voice to the many and point out that this guest post on World of Matticus is complete and utter bullshit, from the first to the last sentence. Shame on you, Matticus, for even allowing it to be posted on your portal. As for the author, he is either an idiot with a very limited and tunnel-visioned grasp of the game (yes, I just publicly called someone an idiot – for calling members of his team “meat in the room”, “a dime a dozen” and so on. Deal with it), or cunningly sparking controversy for the sake of clicks to his own blog. For my part, I decided to never again click on a link leading to We Fly Spitfires. Sir, you are blacklisted.

Kind regards,

Rem
a tank

Don’t Cha

I can’t say much about the value of the content in this blog, but the top graphic made me laugh. A lot.

Dude, you have a blog now?

Yes. I do. This might be a little surprising if you’ve heard me ranting about blogging and all the “user provided content” that’s slowly taking over the net. So, why am I doing it myself now? Well, I realised something. A few things actually.

First, I came across a few blogs I actually enjoyed (and enjoy) reading. Now, this is as such no big deal. I’m easily hooked up, especially if the subject at hand are eloquently written texts (heck, I’ll read a manual for kitchen scissors if the command of language exposed is impressive enough). It’s more that I began to accept that this specific form of writing is hardly possible in anything but the loose “notes of the day” blog scheme. The tripping point was, I guess, when I found myself interested not only in the blogger’s writing, but also in what the commenters might have to say on the matter. Which brings us to…

The Revelation. The moment I finally understood what blogging is all about. No-no, this wasn’t yesterday. As a matter of fact, it was more than half a year ago, and I still regard it as the moment of revelation. I was watching TV – an activity I don’t pursue very often these days – when they brought a report on something, or had someone say something, complain about something … I really don’t remember anymore. What I do remember quite clearly however, is my own reaction of thinking “Hey, that’s a pretty flawed view on the subject, and it’s also pretty ironic for you of all people to state it, for the following reasons…”. Now that in itself isn’t that revealing, but something someone watching TV probably experiences every 10-15 minutes or so. The remarkable thing was, that I caught myself mentally reaching for the post comment button to “reply” to that report, inwardly celebrating that it’s just been “posted” and thus my comment with the well reasoned criticism would be up top (also known as: “First!”) thus gaining the attention it’d need to disclaim the unfounded statements. It’s somewhere along those thinking lines that my mind stopped short and realised that I am watching TV.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not someone who tends to leave a comment on every piece of stuff he finds on the net. Not at all. But, this way or other, most topical input from the outside tends to reach me in interactive form these days, be it via internet or, old fashioned, via people telling me something (in other words, I just really don’t watch much TV, since that’s pretty much the only non-interactive topical medium still pretending to be alive). And it was that moment when I realised just now much I am used to having a reply button attached to everything I consume (or, you know, the ability to open my mouth and reply). And also realised that those are exactly the cases when people just log into their blog accounts and post their thought of the day. Screenplays life writes.

So, here we go. Blog. Expect all sorts of random thoughts of the day on all sorts of subjects that might be interesting to me. You’ve been warned.

Oh, and, no, don’t expect to find any instructions on dangerous stunts you should not try at home – the title is yet another example of me being really uncreative when it comes to names and titles. That, and maybe, just maybe, my recently having watched this. As for the URL? That’s supposed to be rm -rf /, a Linux/UNIX command you really should not try at home. Oh … maybe there is some consistency in my naming scheme after all!