Smile! You're On CandidGamera.

I've been in a pretty bleak mood for the last few days - and I can't really pinpoint anything that specifically triggered it recently. I don't think my usual ironclad optimism ever fully recovered from the quadruple whammy of "Grandmother dying, City of Heroes closing, Emergency room visit for possible kidney stone, and a week of being unable to eat normally due to bad medicine reaction."

So it was nice to get a little bright spot this week. Someone figured out a hack you can use atop existing City of Heroes installations - it lets you get into character creation, meaning that CoH's world-class costume creator is accessible, even with the servers down. I'd already deleted my installation, but was able to download it anew.

It's not much, but it helps.

I was incredibly saddened by the loss of City of Heroes. I logged in for the last few hours and just hung around with other members of the Straight Dope supergroup that made it online. Went to bed miserably sad.

On Saturday, I put up a Christmas Tree in my house for the first time. My parents are actually bringing Christmas to me this year. That should be a nice change of pace.

City of Heroes ends Friday. I've been wanting to get back into it since the end was announced, and I finally made some time last night to log in and re-familiarize myself with the controls. Hopefully tonight and tomorrow I can play through a few more of the awesome missions before it shuts down for good.

One of the things I will miss most? The game's ragdoll physics engine, wherein you could send a bad guy flying and his unconscious body would get snagged on a tree, twitching hideously, until it de-spawns. Never fails to make me laugh.

Bullet list, go :

• Ended up with pallbearer duty at the funeral.


• Managed to find rare Ghost Rider action figure I'd been looking for.


• Making excellent progress on my Pokemon collection.


• Apparently passed a kidney or bladder stone amidst pain and blood, ending up in the emergency room at 1:30AM Monday morning.


• And I just learned City of Heroes is unexpectedly shutting down.

To sum up : Goddamnit. Couple of good things, but overall? Goddamnit. I need a good week at some point in the near future, because it's been a while.

I played DC Online last night, just enough to get through the tutorial area before I got called in to work. I like it, but the controls were absolutely baffling to me. I found an options screen that let me put things in a more usable input mode, thankfully.

It's definitely more action-y than City of Heroes, and it has a lot of nice little touches that enhance the experience. Unfortunately, it also has gear, but I think there's a way to turn off the gear's effect on your character's appearance. All the costume options look really good, but there are way fewer than in CoH. There are three origins - Tech, Magic, and Genetic - which isn't a bad way to break them down. I still haven't fully grasped the logic behind the way the power sets work, though. You basically pick an attack form (martial arts, brawling, weapons of various sorts) that doesn't really reflect any particular power set, then you pick a power set for secondary abilities and attacks. The options are a little limited, but not hideously so.

I whipped up The Incarnate, based on a character I'm running in tabletop right now. I tried to call him simply 'Incarnate' but it was taken. (Boo, Sony, for not allowing duplicate names. My favored account name, candidgamera, was taken also - that's the first time that's happened since I signed up for XBox Live.) I fixed up his costume as best I could, gave him Brawling/Psychic powers, and a Magic origin, and played through an escape from Brainiac's vessel.

An MMO with a 'block' key? Wow.

Trying to respond to threats on all sides was a nightmare for me under the default controls. I'm definitely going to need practice.

Once out of the ship, I got some more info-dumping from Oracle, and then got to wander around a little - bumping into Zatanna, Dr. Fate, and Donna Troy.

I woke up with a sore throat yesterday and generally felt icky, but the pain has retreated today - there's still some ick, but I felt well enough to not waste a sick day.

Most of the weekend was spent playing City of Heroes, and I got all but one of my heroic characters to level 20 or higher. Woo! I saw a metric ton of people using the new Dual Pistols powerset - at one point I was on an eight person team where we had four defenders who ALL had dual pistols as their secondary powerset. And two shield-primary tankers. I was drowning in flavor of the week!

My roleplaying session on Saturday was cancelled, but I did talk to the players and decided on a good course going forward. Golden Age superheroes,to be run alternately with my giant robot game.

The roads were clear enough last night that I picked up my comics and did a grocery run - normally the groceries are picked up on Saturday, but with the way things have been, I figured I should take the shot while I had it. I am also back in the office today.

I was amused yesterday by something in City of Heroes - after downloading the test server client for 30-odd hours, and getting logged in, I discovered that my character 'Shield Scion' was still there. I'd made him when they were beta-testing the shield powerset over a year ago. As surprised as I was that the character was still there, I was even more surprised by the fact that he'd somehow been increased to 50th level.

Ironic, then, that my first 50th level character in City of Heroes is a forgotten one on the test server that I hardly played to begin with.

First appointment with my new physician is this evening. Haven't met him yet - hopefully, he's not a jackass.

I had intended to play City of Heroes last night,t o work on the badges for the Halloween event, but just couldn't work up the enthusiasm to do it. Part of that was just a general case of the blahs, and another part of it was trying to beat Street Fighter 4's Arcade Mode with Chun-Li on the second easiest difficulty setting, which took far more attempts than it should have. The main boss, I finally beat by luck. Zangief was also troublesome. Apparently, Russian Wrestling teaches you how to automatically throw someone anytime you're within a hundred yards of them.

Time to start writing down directions, making lists, and the usual rigmarole. Going to take some time out tonight and tomorrow for City of Heroes though - it's a double XP weekend, after all.

One more week, and then I get a week of vacation.

One more week.

This weekend I need to put up Halloween decorations. I doubt I'll end up getting a costume this year, but next year, dammit, I need to get one. I live less than a hundred yards from the Illusive Skull costume shop. I just need to make the effort.

I've decided to give up on World of Warcraft for the time being. I got a couple of offers to team up with other folks I know online, including new acquaintance booniverse, but I think I need to give it a rest for a while. Maybe I'll pick it back up later on. Updating the little plug-in user mods every time there's a patch is kind of a pain, anyway.

In the meantime, I am still plugging away at City of Heroes. I know one or two people on my list here have it, and maybe some others do, too. I am also occasionally to be seen on the Wii and on XBOX Live, for those who wish to game with me. Friend codes / usernames provided on request.

Edit to Add : I saw this picture today. Totally awesome.