2002-11-26 - 9:23 a.m.

:)

I'm very happy this morning. Last night we had a great AA meeting... it was by candlelight to recognize gratitude month, and we had a dessert potluck. It's definitely left an impression on me. I had already been thinking of how well off I really am, even if I'm not doing the best I can, but last night's meeting really cemented the feeling of shared progress and distance from my past lost self.

At the end of the meeting I talked to a few people around my age, Jessie who also recently started playing guitar and told me of a group that gets together to play. She volunteered to chair some meetings next month. We had quite a few things in common and I think I made another cool friend! Oh and while we were talking about guitar playing, she showed me her fingertips and got me to feel them so I could see that they had calloused a bit. Let's just say I was surprised.

Aside from that, Bella came up to me quite unexpectedly, gave me a hug, and told me to call her some time. Then she proceeded to give me her number. I was pretty shocked. Ohhhh yeah now I remember.. she invited me to her housewarming that I was unable to attend. We had talked a bit at the CR group.. but still.. very strange happenings indeed.

On the home front I'm progressing nicely in my guitar studies. I found a wicked website (www.wholenote.com) that has user-contributed lessons that are extremely easy to follow and that are available at every conceivable level and for every conceivable topic. Wait.. I'm sure I mentioned this before. Well, whatever, I went back over the basic major chords lesson and did C A G E D. It's easy to remember that sequence for me because ns_caged is a map in Natural Selection =O) I want to practise those chords daily till I can switch from any one to any other with ease.. that'll be the day. Then I can move on to more chords and try to play stuff I make up in the groove builder.

Last night I also tried a fingerpicking lesson and had a surprisingly easy time. I have a natural sense of rhythm (I actually think I'd make a better drummer than anything else) and so playing in time and in different patterns with 4 fingers came fairly easily. The hard part is remembering where to put my fingers for the chord that I'm picking. Switching from D to G is going to take me some time to master, I'm sure.

So I'm completely in love with playing guitar all over again. Not that I had really lost the desire, but I had gotten out of the puppy love stage. Now I'm right back there :) This is even competition for NS!

Speaking of NS, I tried a new server last night. I read a thread on the forums about people who wanted to play on a team-oriented server and so I checked this one out. The first few times I checked, there was no one on it... But last night, after playing on a sad sad server where the teams stayed at 6-3 for 10 minutes after I politely asked if the marines had any intention of evening them, I noticed a single lonely person on this supposedly good server. I figured what the heck, I'm just killing some time before my meeting.

So I joined in and he picked the aliens team which natch made me commander. The map was ns_nancy, which I'm fairly comfortable in and so I proceed to build my base and secure the first resource point down the hall. On my way back from the resource point I noticed that a third person had joined the server and was on my team. Great! Not only that but this person had a mic and wanted to work with me as a team! I was thrilled.

Together, we quickly scoped out the level and figured out where to move in. We secured a few resource points while I researched motion tracking and before I knew it, a few people had joined the aliens team and a few more had joined the humans. Suddenly, I was reacting to a major battle in the hallway outside the mess hall heading towards base, and having been in the situation before, knew what to do.

Up went the turret factory and turrets and down went the medpacks to save my guys. I only lost one marine to a determined alien attack, and so when they had regrouped I sent them as a squad to secure the next resource point.

This point was the mess hall and this is when the feeling of being commander crystallized. As they started building, I did a scanner sweep and noticed a skulk nearby and warned them and told them it was outside the window (cause I knew the map well enough.. finally!) another battle ensued and I dropped medpacks just as everyone needed them and really got a feel for the battle from an overhead view. There was a cool moment where I asked them how it was going when all seemed quiet and Recoh, the first joiner and assumed squad leader, said he could use a medpack and I told him I had already given him one :D He was kinda surprised hehehe. Now that this area was secure, I naturally had them head out for a hive.

Talk about awesome! A 4 person squad moving out in sync... they were all on my screen at once! (This is unusual from my public server commander experience, which is severely limited mind) So it was a snap to drop medpacks on members as they were injured on the way and guide them safely to the hive.

When they actually got there, we all saw there was an alien resource tower present and just as I was saying "please don't shoot that tower", some newbie opened fire and alerted every alien on the ship of my squad's exactly location. By this point I was frantically repeating "don't shoot the tower! don't shoot the tower!" and the guy who joined my team at the very first we cursing as well.

However, by this time my motion tracking research had completed so I could see every bogey on the ship and as my squad built up a rudimentary mini-base around the hive's resource point, I was able to warn them of an incoming skulk and give the squad leader enough advance time to turn around and track him with his headset motion tracking. With enough advance warning, we fended off the enemies fairly easily.

Within a few minutes there was a phase gate up between the hive and base and some weapon and armor upgrades were on the way. My squad was able to resist steady fade attacks with their new HMGs and my dropping medpacks on them as they were injured. This was now a full-fledged war with full teams of 6 on 5 I believe and no clear winner by any stretch!

My squad moved out to secure the second hive and ran into some heavy alien infestation on the way. We managed to successfully siege through this stuff, and the commander-marine relationship was starting to gel because some fool was shooting at the alien offensive towers and I and Recoh basically simultaneously told the guy to stop shooting the towers and he actually did!

They moved on unhindered to the hive, only to find it quite built up, so I dropped them back into the adjoining hallway and started a siege farm. This went well until I noticed some fool aliens lurking in my base and also an unbuilt building right in base. The turret factory at the new assault position was upgrading for siege so I told the crew I'd hop out of the command chair and take care of some business.

I took out the nearby aliens and found out that someone had built that building after all, but meanwhile someone else had jumped in the command chair! I was a bit distraught but figured what the hell, I'm not here to complain, so I hopped in the phase gate and headed out to join the squad.

On my way to our advance position, I was trying to explain what I was up to to the guy who had jumped in the chair. I wanted him to understand I was upgrading the tf and that he should build sieges soon. When I got there, however, the tf was down with just the two turrets left standing. 3 of us marines were there all set to build quick, though, but .. and get this.. we could NOT guide this guy to building a simple tf at our location! I tried.. I was extremely patient and explained down to the point of telling him where on the commander screen the little icons were to build each thing. It was pointless.

This guy finally gave up and got out of the chair. So here I am way across the map from the commander's chair.. it took a while to get back to it. When I did, we had 250 unspent resource points! And our advance position was a complete shambles. What should have been a quick and easy takedown of the alien's second hive turned into what was probably a losing battle for my marines.

Also, around this time I was running out of time. My meeting was starting soon and so I had to break the news to my team that I had to leave and I needed a replacement. They actually pleaded with me not to go! It was so awesome.. I need to get back to that server soon! I can't wait to play at my clan practise either because it's going to be fantastic to command troops that listen again.

Last night I forgot to bring my herbal tea to the meeting so I had some regular black tea. Let me tell you, I had that tea around 8:30 and I didn't fall asleep until AT LEAST 2am. Wow.. I really need to respect caffeine a lot more than that. It was a careless decision and one I don't care to repeat. I still feel a little weird from it.

Anyway, it's 9:20 and I haven't eaten breakfast. It's easy to see how hooked I am on Natural Selection since I was able to rip off a riveting account of a simple half hour of game play. I've been playing this game steady for just over a week and I'm just starting to see how deep the game is. This is one of the biggest, most challenging game universes I've ever taken on.

Anyway, gotta go.

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