New Recruit

I got another person to start playing Starcraft! Unfortunately it's the first RTS she has ever played...
So while she was over this weekend I decided to use my influence (charisma modifier +11) to get Ashley to play Starcraft. But I guess since I'm making a post I might as well do the whole weekend.

Friday was pretty much just another day. Math chapter quiz at 8:30, English essay due 9:30, and midterm for programming at 11:30. Math quiz was cake, English essay was a lot of work but felt good turning it in, and the midterm was fairly easy since I had an hour after English to study up in the library. After school I was able to catch the earlier of the two possible buses I take home. Unfortunately this was because the bus was late and I missed my transfer at Aurora Village, so I walked home from there. Ok actually I realized I would miss it so I stayed on the bus for the next stop at 200th and Burke, but the bus driver decided to pass the stop so I got to get off at the stop light on Meridian and 200th so 1 less block to walk. Got home at a decent time, was semi-surprised when I realized Kelsey was home and didn't have school, but continued on my daily schedule. Cup-noodles, peanut-butter toast, and today I decided to spoil myself with a grapefruit. Grabbed some wheat thins and went down to the basement. I imagine at this point I played Guild Wars and took advantage of the Canthan New Year event to play some Dragon Arena (dodgeball), but I can't remember for sure. I wanted to throw a disc around to prepare for the Ultimate game on Saturday so I planned to pick up Ashley when she got home from school around 5pm and go to Shoreline.

WAIT WHAT ULTIMATE GAME?!?
Yeah so I had been chatting on facebook with Eric and he said he had a game at Shoreline on Saturday, and I could show up and possibly play. Ashley could come too since they needed girls.

It ended up being pretty cold by the time Ashley got home, and she hadn't eaten all day, so we decided to just hang out instead. I think we were both feeling lazy so we just watched Monk OnDemand and went to sleep early. Woke up around 5-6am and she went home with her eyes burning since she had been wearing her contacts for a really long time. We had breakfast at our respective homes and met back up around 8:45am to walk to Shoreline A+B (will be shortened to "Shoreline" from now on) and play some Ultimate. When we got there 30 minutes late at 9, we were told people would show up at 8:30, only Eric was there for their team. Another team was there and they were throwing around so we took the field and started getting warm. I felt really rusty but luckily I realized later that the consistency of my throws really didn't effect my game too much. Eventually more people showed up and we played. It was really fun, even though Eric's team is highly unorganized and we were facing a decent team with good organization. Needless to say we lost, but either way it was a lot of fun. Eric's teammates were all nice and inviting (no way, nice Ultimate plalyers? Who woulda thought.) and I felt fairly good with my play. Blocked a few, dropped a few, made a few good passes. It was fun. Afterward we walked home and Ashley went home to do homework. This is when I know for sure I played some Dragon Arena and had some fun.

Later Ashley decided to come over since she couldn't focus or something, and we hung out while she tried to study/do homework. After some time she decided to take a break from doing homework, and I suggested Starcraft. I already had her download Starcraft from ICcup so everything was pretty much ready to go. She doesn't have a mouse but I have a spare wireless that is decent so she used that. It was really weird at first since she had never played an RTS. I don't think I skipped over important aspects, but it's weird having to explain every little thing. Like, right click to move units, you can make a box around units by holding left click and dragging a box around them, really elementary level things. She learns really quickly though, and after 1 learning game we were playing 1v1s PvP with only gateway level tech. Limiting the tech to gateways and zealots was a great way to introduce her to the controls and basics of economy, military, and map control. I must say, teaching someone an RTS for the first time is really easy on Starcraft, since it can be viewed on a very basic level. But yeah I see a lot of potential and at the speed she learns she could be playing "4v4 noobs" in no time. The most interesting thing I found about her play is that she focuses a lot more on macro than micro, which is great but unexpected. I'm pretty sure when I was a noob, and I know this is probably still true for others of the clan..., I would watch my military attack the enemy and forget to build more unites. Ashley is almost the exact opposite. She will send her units in on attack run (or an attempted attack run), and then go back to her base to build more probes and zealots. One thing she forgets is pylons for population, but I've started to stress that a lot. Anyway 1v1 with only gateways and zealots yields some very interesting replays which I will upload on some site and link to here later. I'm thinking that next time we play I will add vespene gas and add dragoons into the mix. Then again maybe I should just add forge+cannons instead I haven't decided yet.

Alright well back on the Guild Wars subject, Canthan New Year was fun. I got to make use of the autoclicker to go afk on Nine Rings to gain lucky/unlucky and drunkard points simultaneously. One suggestion I have for David: make sure your autoclicker is set to click every minute EVERY time you use it, otherwise you might end up going through an entire stack of booze in half a second like me. 25k down the drain... oh well. I got really good at Dragon Arena and acquired quite a few Lunar Tokens which I exchanged for Fortunes (3 tokens for 1 fortune) for the 0.33% chance of getting a Celestial Ox miniature (1 in 300 I believe? I would have had to acquire 900 Lunar Tokens to "secure" that). I got one having used somewhere around 150 Tokens. The luck was on my side I guess. In addition I got the dragon mask festival hat and 15 crates of fireworks, which produce a 10 minute long firework show used only in a guild hall. I'll have to treat SOT to one of my 15 shows once we can get the guild (2 + me) online.

Great weekend overall, I enjoyed waking up earlier and increasing my weekend hours by 25% (yes I normally oversleep for many hours). However, I must end this post on a somewhat down note. I'm once again going to attempt to lessen (and if possible eliminate) the amount of hours I spend playing Guild Wars. Hopefully I will be able to fill my time with SWUF practice and school work. I'm not quitting games altogether, as I have a great time deriving new teaching techniques for the game of Starcraft.

Ok I lied, I'll end on a happy note. At first today (Monday) was a bit of a downer. I had that depressed feeling again. But then in math this morning my instructor mentioned my last quarter's final. There was one problem I may have mentioned to some of you that ticked me off because it involved remembering some random equation from a side note in the book. Well since I didn't remember the equaion, I attempted to derive my own equation given what I had. I don't remember fully, but I think I was given 2 questions, both involving an output of a function which I asssumed to be exponential, and something about the difference between the two. Somehow I managed to find my own constants by doing some logic steps, and apparently my answer was off by only a minute (like a 0.5% error or something). Anyway he told me about how he thought it was really good and how he bragged to his colleagues about it. That lightened my spirits. Then when I was in a better mood I realized that 24 would be on, and Heroes would be starting back up, so today ends up being a very happy day. Alright I guess that is all for now.
-pronoob5