Tuesday -- Pete! And DDR! And carpentry!

[dr4b]

I didn't update last night because I conked out and slept instead.

I left my cellphone at home today... if you need to get in touch with me during work hours (ie, before 7pm) email me.

Yesterday Pete (diskozombie) came to Uwajimaya and we hung out for lunch! It was very exciting, we got lunch line food and chatted and then looked through CDs at Kinokuniya and through the Sanrio stuff in the gift center. We got bubble tea and then I had to head back to work.

After work there was Eastlake and then sushi train with Eli. Eli got a pretty nasty nosebleed while eating sushi, but he was okay after a while and we ordered some random weird rolls. I'm becoming more fond of spider rolls as long as I don't have to eat the end one.

Then there was Puzzle Pirates, where I was jobbing with Carl for an hour... I know Nykkel is *still* laughing at me over this, but I finally learned how to carp, after two months of playing. I didn't know you could flip the pieces using right-click or whatever... Farren didn't laugh at me per se, but he was like "Don't you write docs for a living or something? And you didn't bother reading them?" See, so I was looking for help on the distilling puzzle and in the meantime found the carp thing. And then while jobbing with Carl I said "I'd like to try carp after I finish gunning and get the boat up to speed, ok?" and I did, and I pulled consistent Excellents for 4 leagues in a row, and he was like "I don't get it. I thought you suck at carp." And then I admitted what a moron I am.

The funny thing is that I expect to never pull less than a Good on carp ever again, because I have crazy good spatial abilities. *sigh* Maybe my alter ego will become a master carpentress.

I went to play DDR with Pete for an hour around 11pm at Sunset. He got there after I'd played like 4 sets though, so I was already pretty tired. The machine was full of dust and the sensors were crap, and I'm out of practice, so I wasn't doing particularly well at anything, but I got good exercise. It was fun to see Pete and all, but I was in a kinda bad mood because of how lousy I was doing at DDR. And then we played KCET as our last song and someone started smoking behind me. Bleh.

Came home, played some more puzzle pirates... My lovely ship, the Famous Blowfish, was being sailed back from Orca, so I came aboard to help sail her. And she was out of cannon and rum. WTF. I know I don't really have any right to be sad, but... Stiiv docked her at Tinga with an absolutely empty hold (and a bunch of money to cover the rum/cannon), and I was like "fuck this, I'm sailing her back to Diamond." Jammer and Stiiv logged off for the night, but Parka (well, Parka's alt -- that was pretty funny, I was like "hi, you're obviously an alt since you're getting Incs on carp... wait... PARKA???" "dammit. how does everyone guess it's me?") came with me all the way up to Guava, with a stop on Ep for some cannonballs and grog (since rum is too expensive). Good stuff, good battles, and aside from my network sucking, it was actually a pretty pleasant trip.

Comments

[oren.livejournal.com]

I knew about right click but you only get one flip rather than four which is frustrating. Unless I'm really missing something.

I suck at carpentry. There should be a fishing minigame called carp.

Swordfighting was fun even though Carl was trying to run away a bunch and failing.

[oren.livejournal.com]

I see the error my ways

"The mouse controls are as follows: the left button picks up or puts down a piece, the right button flips the current piece horizontally, and the mouse wheel rotates the current piece clockwise or counter- clockwise. The middle button also rotates the current piece, clockwise. A mouse wheel is a big advantage; without one you will want to keep one hand on the C, X and Z keys."

So I have no mouse wheel and totally missed this. No middle button either. Time to relearn this. Should help though.

[dr4b]

See, now I've spared you two months of feeling dumb :)

[mg4h.livejournal.com]

I know this will end up sounding bad, but I can't help myself.

Twice now you've specifically said that people in your crew have been jerks to you. And I don't mean the "taking your ship out" because technically it does belong to the whole crew, yadda. I mean the utter lack of respect, the non-replacement of resources, and the insult of leaving a ship docked at an UNINHABITED island. Why do you put up with it? PP is a game, and you play games to have fun. This doesn't sound like fun - yeah, you're having fun otherwise, sometimes - but you're allowing people to walk all over you. And it is definitely something you can control.

I just don't get it. And I don't mean for you to defend them, because I don't see what they're doing as defensible - I just want you to think about why the detriments of these idiot fellow crew persons outweigh the benefits of the good crew persons. Are they really that good? And why isn't the captain beating those idiots over the head more for abusing the privilege of taking a ship out?

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

Carl continually misses the "You are being pursued by..." notices, and wishes that they triggered a sound. Sounds are good. Sounds cause Carl to glance at the right side of the window to see what's going on.

[oren.livejournal.com]

Carl talks about himself in weird ways.

[dr4b]

Well, of course they don't make a sound. Ships would hate it if they couldn't sneak up on you. :)

I'm actually really good at noticing, unless they just swoop in. Maybe I have better peripheral vision? Or maybe I'm always keeping my eye out for them, because I love getting intercepted?

[dr4b]

I mean the utter lack of respect, the non-replacement of resources, and the insult of leaving a ship docked at an UNINHABITED island.

Well, I was on board at the time -- Stiiv was just like "agggh, that took forever to get back - I'm stopping for the evening here now that we're in Emerald." He didn't just leave the ship at Tinga (although he would have if I hadn't been there). And he did give me some money to cover the rum/cannon, although giving it to me at Tinga was a kinda iffy proposition, I suppose.

I don't see it as an utter lack of respect. We're not a democracy. Stiiv outranks me. So did the other guy (Tavis) who took out my ship last week and left it elsewhere - they're Senior Officers, I am an Officer, that's the way it works. I order Pirates around to do stuff, I get ordered around by Senior Officers. It's not a big deal.

And actually, I like these guys a lot. One or two actions they do that annoy me doesn't outweigh that I think they're cool people who are fun to sail with and smart and competent. I really like our flag, we've got a lot of good camaraderie, and a TON of good resources for trading information, maps, etc. We're set up extremely well. No crew in the game would ever be entirely perfect, and I think what I have in the Yo-ho's is probably the best fit I've seen in the game so far - not to mention the "perks". I'm in our flag's king's crew; I know that I have a good chance of making Senior Officer; I have a lot of in-game friendships in our crew/flag with other pirates; and there is NOBODY in the game I could respect more as a king/captain than Spinn. There is no other crew I'd rather belong to. It's that simple.

[nykkel.livejournal.com]

And it doesn't hurt that the circle around your ship fills in when someone is chasing you.

[dr4b]

Aye, but I think he's talking more like, if he's doing a puzzle, he doesn't see *anything* else in time... so not the circles filling in or the "You are being pursued by 'Retarded Selfish'" warning. It really did take me a few days/weeks to get the hang of doing a puzzle AND paying attention to crew/vessel chat, for example, and I think this might be similar.

See, I knew there'd be a great use for my attention span deficit someday ;)

[nykkel.livejournal.com]

Talk to Spinn and see if you can get him agree that the following rules should apply (either flag-wide or just in YHY):

1. If you take a ship out, you are responsible for making sure it gets back to where you picked it up. If you cannot stay on long enough to do this (you should have thought of that earlier :P ), you must find someone else to take it back for you.

2. Make note of the rum/shot aboard the ship before you take it out. The ship needs to have that much rum/shot aboard after you bring it back... if the crew cut doesn't cover this, it comes out of your own pocket.

3. If you can't follow rules 1 and 2, you shouldn't be taking ships out.

[dr4b]

I *think* those will be the rules once we get out of empire-building mode, wherein people are supposed to be pooling resources and donating to the crew and flag. For now, it's still "ships belong to the crew".

And actually, Stiiv was mostly in league with what I said about the Infamous Blowfish in the first place - "Anything you leave in the hold may disappear if I take it out pillaging. Caveat Campor." Of course, I wasn't taking that to mean "And so will your cannon and rum" :)

I may have to deactivate comments on entries like this. I try not to write too many details about my PP playing because I know it's boring to most people, but then people keep reading a lot more into my comments than there actually are (and seriously, I am very rarely still annoyed at anyone in the game come the next morning).

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

Indeed. The tougher the puzzle, the more attention I pay to it rather than the chat. I've gotten sailing and carpentry down well enough that I can usually do them and watch the chat, but Navigation is new enough (and I'm starting to get the 4 and 5-star constellations now) that I often accidentally pay too much attention to it.

[mg4h.livejournal.com]

people keep reading a lot more into my comments than there actually are

Rather, I have a good idea how you think. I think like it too.

When something happens that makes me unhappy, I want it fixed. Later, if time goes by, there's a chance I might rationalize it as being somehow okay. That's why you're not annoyed the next day.

*shrug*

Things may get better. There's a launch date now, at least.