I wanted to apologize to everyone for my lack of presence around here, lately. Please, rest assured I'm not disappearing again. I won't bore you all with the details, but most of you probably already know (or have anticipated) the vague details of the Chinese Hell of Eternal Poverty that I live in, coupled with the recent reunion of my year-long estranged sweetheart.

I'm looking into finding better work right now (and have been for a month, I'm afraid). Once I have a little more time I'll be back in force; until then, I'll keep popping in as I can.

Again, sorry, everybody.

New job pays less, but isn't nearly as demanding. Still looking for something that pays better, but at least for now, I think I can provisionally announce my return. I'm glad to be back.

Yay, somebody returns to our diminishing heard of people =D

Happy B-Day punk-ass.

Welcome back.

Welcome back, Seph. It'll be good to see you around again.

Dawn

Happy birthday you ugly fucker.

Still his birthday? Great. Happy Birthday ass =P

Welcome back Seph. Sorry I missed your birthday.

You know, I realized it was your birthday on the twenty ninth, and I had signed onto N!Prime with intention of wishing you a decent birthday, but than I got all lethargic.

I'm sure you understand.

Happy late birthday, you fucking athiest.

Dude. Thanks, guys. It was a pretty uneventful birthday, but this thread alone bumped the number of well-wishes I received by something like 500%, so that's pretty awesome.

Coming back and finding I didn't miss a lot is a bit of a double-edged sword. It'll be easy to catch up, but...seriously, what the fuck happened to everyone?

I'm kind of asking myself that, too. The fucking 2017 forums were completely dead, save the Word Association thread (See also: Completely dead.) I know that the reason I don't post too often on week days is because my lack of access to a computer, and the times when I do have access to a computer, I am just busy playing my DS.

So whats the new job?

It isn't so much a new job as a new site. I'm still doing security work, the only real difference is now I'm doing it twenty minutes away from home at a shelter for battered women instead of an hour-and-change away at a department store distribution center. It is boring, shitty work, and has got me thinking about putting together a clerical resume and seeing if any of the staffing services nearby can just get me a 9-to-5 pushing paperwork for more regular hours and a couple more bucks an hour. It's become apparent that my background and experience aren't really worth anything to the organization that I work for, so it's time to start looking for a better deal.

At least for now it keeps a roof over my head and is minimally demanding, so I can be here. Woo.

I'm still waiting for all the fallout from Waki's conversion into a charred ribcage to sort itself out.

Also, I'm in the closed beta for Tabula Rasa. It's got quite a grip on me.

Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck! Holy shit i can't believe I am about to say this, but I am so fucking jealous.

How is it? Is it as fantastic as it looks?

I enjoy it rather a frigging lot. It plays like a first person shooter, but the mechanics of shooting and being shot are pure RPG. There's a dice-rolling system in the background that compares levels, skills, weapon types, cover, and so forth which assigns the results of actions. Character development follows a tier progression, in which you choose further specializations at levels 5, 15, and 30. For example everyone starts out as a recruit. At level 5 you choose soldier or specialist. At level 15 a Soldier can choose ranger or commando, at level 15 a ranger can select spy or sniper. However, you KEEP all of your old skills after promotion, so there's no reason your level 30 sniper can't keep on using the stock soldier's rifle, only with far more devastating effect.

And of course there's the usual MMO quest fodder: go kill 10 things and bring me their skulls and I'll give you a grenade launcher; escort this idiot to the caves and I'll give you a new flak vest, and so on.

It is a hardware beast, however. Bring dual cores and a modern video card with 512 megs of VRAM and at least 2 gigs of system RAM. My system, a 3.0GHz P4 with 1.5 gigs of RAM and a ATI X1650PRO barely runs the game. At 1280x1024 with most of the sliders set to low quality, it chugs at about 15-25fps, with the occasional excursion down into slide-show land.

Yeah, wow. I assumed that game wouldn't run fantastically unless you had anything short of the devils rig itself.

I really need a computer. And a good computer, too. Not like Sephs crappy not-gaming computer.