Tuesday, January 18, 2005
One for the Everquest II fans out there... My character Grimgit just reached level 20 and became a Paladin.
While this may seem dull, I set my sights on becoming a paladin the day I ran the game for the first time. I love that I get to stand front and center and pound away at enemies while all their hate is directed at me, freeing others in my group to beat on them and the healers to keep me up and running.
Perhaps the neatest thing about being a Paladin is the ability to cast a spell called Holy Steed, which summons a horse - useful for covering some of the larger environments (and some of them are truly huge).
While this may seem dull, I set my sights on becoming a paladin the day I ran the game for the first time. I love that I get to stand front and center and pound away at enemies while all their hate is directed at me, freeing others in my group to beat on them and the healers to keep me up and running.
Perhaps the neatest thing about being a Paladin is the ability to cast a spell called Holy Steed, which summons a horse - useful for covering some of the larger environments (and some of them are truly huge).
Thursday, January 06, 2005
i-mate Jam case can't take the heat
We just got back from vacation in the UK over the Christmas and New Years holidays. Funnily enough its actually colder in Austin right now than it was in England... Well, Texas will get its own back soon enough.
While I was there I got to check out the new 2006 Audi S4. The dealer I visited (Audi Reading) had a waiting list buyer pull out the previous day and they had the only S4 on a dealer lot in the country! The new S4 looks pretty mean from the back as it now has 4 tailpipes like the BMW M5. I also got to play with the nav system, which is a real one (in the center console!!). Sadly they weren't going to let me drive it as I surely wasn't going to buy it, so I test-drove the 2005 model this morning back in Austin. Nice performance, but I didn't like the ride. Ok on the freeway, but choppy on the backstreets, transferring a lot of the bumps into the cabin. It actually seemed worse than the BMW M3 in that regard, but I didn't get to do the same route in the M3.
Also while I was in the UK, I managed to drop my new phone a couple of times. What I found was that the cool looking aluminum case that I like so much was not very bump resistant, and the phone now sports a nasty bump in one corner and two nasty gouges on the back (from separate falls) - see the photos below. If you're looking at the i-mate Jam, you might want to take better care of it than I did. The phone still works fine, which is the good news.
With any luck Vaja will give us an i-mate Jam specific version of their i-volution cases, though even that might not have saved me from the large dent on the top corner
While I was there I got to check out the new 2006 Audi S4. The dealer I visited (Audi Reading) had a waiting list buyer pull out the previous day and they had the only S4 on a dealer lot in the country! The new S4 looks pretty mean from the back as it now has 4 tailpipes like the BMW M5. I also got to play with the nav system, which is a real one (in the center console!!). Sadly they weren't going to let me drive it as I surely wasn't going to buy it, so I test-drove the 2005 model this morning back in Austin. Nice performance, but I didn't like the ride. Ok on the freeway, but choppy on the backstreets, transferring a lot of the bumps into the cabin. It actually seemed worse than the BMW M3 in that regard, but I didn't get to do the same route in the M3.
Also while I was in the UK, I managed to drop my new phone a couple of times. What I found was that the cool looking aluminum case that I like so much was not very bump resistant, and the phone now sports a nasty bump in one corner and two nasty gouges on the back (from separate falls) - see the photos below. If you're looking at the i-mate Jam, you might want to take better care of it than I did. The phone still works fine, which is the good news.
With any luck Vaja will give us an i-mate Jam specific version of their i-volution cases, though even that might not have saved me from the large dent on the top corner
