October 5, 2013

“Tell me where the girl is, and I'll go find her.”

“I don't know where she is.”

“I'm going to have to ask you to be more specific.”

(The Shadow Of The Wind, p.454)

I played a little bit of the PC beta for Battlefield 4 today and it was kind of a fail. I experienced the same problems I have playing Battlefield 3 on PC. But with worse lag. I've heard the lag thing is a pretty widespread issue with the PC beta so I won't judge it too harshly for that. So then my main problem was just getting into a game. I only found two or three servers that actually had people in them and then had to wait at least ten minutes, usually closer to twenty or more minutes, to actually get into the game. And the same thing happens when I want to play Battlefield 3, even when I pick Quick Match, so that's not a beta thing and would probably be the same with the actual game. When I decide to play a game, I want to play the game. I don't want to spend more time trying to get into a game than I do actually playing it. And in this case all the waiting was pretty much for nothing because the lag was so bad in the game that I couldn't kill anyone. So even though I like that on PC there is more going on in the maps (more people and vehicles and capture points), I probably won't be buying the PC version of Battlefield 4. I'm going to try again tomorrow to see if anything changes but it's not looking good.

I played more Terraria and did a lot of spelunking. I experienced my second Blood Moon since the update which makes me think the frequency of those have increased because in all the hours I played before the update I only experienced a few Blood Moons. I now have claw boots and gloves which allow me to jump up walls, slide down them, and stick in one spot on the wall. That has been pretty convenient. I also spent enough time in the jungle biome today to get the material for an ivy whip which is like a grappling hook but it has three hooks. This is helpful when trying to get out of holes or get up to hard to reach ores. It has also saved my life many times when I was falling because I could grab a wall or something before hitting the ground.

Tonight at work I spent a little time finishing The Shadow Of The Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. It was a good book but I'm sick of actual or potential incest. And it was a confusing book to have week-long breaks between reading sessions because the two main characters live very similar lives and I was having trouble remembering what happened to which person. The flow of the book was also interesting, being broken up between the present and the past, with a different narrator at times. I liked it, though. For the most part. My favorite character by far was Fermin, mostly for his comedic relief.

I also spent some time tonight crocheting with the tiny crochet hook I have and knitting with toothpicks, using the same string I use to cross stitch. I am thinking of putting a little crocheted square and a knitted square on the flower I have to decorate for work, and they need to be pretty small. So I went really small. Knitting with toothpicks is pretty tricky. My main issue was the length of the toothpick, which made them hard to hang onto. I was also using cheap toothpicks so I would get the occasional splinter of wood coming off. The hardest part though was the first row and then getting the string off the toothpick to finish the work. Finishing was a bitch really. But I managed to make a tiny square with a basket weave pattern and it looks pretty cool.

We had a midnight show of Gravity tonight but that was pretty much wishful thinking because it really hasn't been that popular this weekend. Probably nowhere close to selling half the theater for any given show and usually well under twenty people for the last set. We don't really need two prints of it. Or to have a midnight for it. And thankfully the patrons agreed and no one came to it. I probably would have been sent home anyway but it was still nice.