God Damn Steam!

Hehe.  

No, this will not be an article about the faults of Valve's Steam gaming system.  This is about the heated evaporation of dihydrogen oxide.  

Steam as a mechanic is nothing new in video games.  It is often used as a permanent barrier or an intermittent one for the hero to cross on their way to Point B.  I don't know about you dear reader, but it's been one of those obstacles that I have often felt was a bit over the top and over exaggerated.  "What do you mean I can die if I get caught in a jet of steam!?  There's steam in the bathroom when I take a shower.  There's steam that comes out of a tea kettle and I'm pretty sure I haven't died from that."  It's been one of those annoying barriers that is, well, annoying.

From Penumbra: Requiem.

Then the event of Monday November 3rd, 2014 happened.  It was in the morning and I was making coffee for myself and Conklederp as I normally do.  So I had the water in the kettle boiling and letting me know that it was ready to be moved by way of its shrill whistle.  I walked over, turned off the stop top and prepared the Aeropress with filter and grounds.

That's when the steam still jetting out of the kettle hit the back of my hand.  I pulled my hand back immediately and may or may not have uttered an expletive, but I'm thankful that I didn't have anything coffee related in my hands.  I was genuinely surprised by the temperature of the steam.  Yes I know that H2O boils at 100° C (212° F), but I had never thought of it as scaldingly hot.  I then ran my hand under cold water for a couple of seconds and I didn't give it a second thought.

Throughout the day, the back of my hand felt like I had received a contact burn from something hot, which I had and I realize how stupid this makes me sound, but in my head I had rationalized it as "But it's only steam."  I've even been trained multiple times (every two years since 2007) in first aid procedures through American Red Cross, but for whatever reason, I just figured this out.  The next day the pain was still somewhat present, but by  the following Wednesday (November 5th), the pain was gone and I didn't give it a second thought.

Later in the week, Saturday I believe while visiting my parent's, my Mother asked what had happened to the back of my hand.  It was then that I noticed that about a two inch by one inch blob shaped region on the back of my hand had become slightly puckered and rough. What I had chalked up to a very minor contact burn on par with being out in the sun for an extra 13 minutes had changed the appearance and texture of my skin.  A few days later (probably around the 11th or 12th) the skin began peeling, similar to a sunburn, but really shiny (do not do a google image search).

I would like to think that now whenever I come across steam in a game, that I will think twice about trying to sprint through this caustic barrier as if it were a minor hindrance.  And if you find the time, take a first aid course.  The courses are helpful and hopefully won't make you oblivious to the harm that heated dihydrogen oxide can do to the epidermis of your largest organ.  

And don't go running through jets of steam!



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
It's So Hard To Believe

Life, Torchlight and Multiple Endings: Special Wednesday Edition

Today's broadcast is brought to you because of aforementioned apartment/condo/housing issues which are still in the process of being completed.

I just "finished" Torchlight about 30 minutes (as of this typing) ago and it got me thinking.  The game took me 25 hours to complete the main story line and now I'm just running random side missions in order to increase my character's level.  This seems to be a lot like the way I have lived my life.  

Bare with me.  

Take my Tank Grontog

Everyone, meet Grontog and his pet cat, Mjolnir.

who took 25 hours to "save" the town of Torchlight and is now embarking on level enrichment, I took 23 years to "complete" my primary educational career before I embarked on, whatever it is that I'm doing.

I could just leave him be and continue onto Torchlight II, or I could level Grontog up to level 100 (he's currently at 41), or I could go through the game with either of my other two characters:

Valkaria and her wolf Fenris:

Not her starting outfit and weapons.

Irwin Blaze and his wolf Ferrous:

I plan on having him focus on fire magic for obvious reasons.

I am somewhat tempted to go through the game again, but I think I have just decided (as in while typing this sentence) that I will go through Torchlight II first before revisiting this game again with a different character, although I have already played Valkaria for about an hour.  Either way, there are a lot of other games that I want/need/have to play so a second run through and/or level enrichment may just have to wait.

That being said, I like when games have either a New Game + option or in the case of open worlds, continue playing after the main storyline is completed, but doing practically the same thing as before.  Now, even though I like this in games, I often don't take advantage of this.  I just don't have the time, especially with RPGs, to spend another 40 hours reliving the experiences that I just finished.  Now, there are some exceptions such as when games offer divergent storylines and you want to see other aspects of the story that were not experienced the first time through.

I think I'll go and play some of Reus, because that was a fun 50 minutes that seemed a lot less intimidating than the 15 minutes I spent looking at Civ. V.

Also, I don't think I can finish Doom II: Hell on Earth.  FPS/motion-sickness is just getting too much for me and I get annoyed at only being able to play for 15 minutes before needing to turn the game off.  

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

And I Looked Back on My Busy Day

NES Adventure Series: Ole's Assault IX by X-Dog

So here's the story behind the reason why there was no blog post on Monday September 17th.  

Dr. Potts, Conklederp, and others (Vorlynx, Siddmesh, Coolman and one other of whom I don't know/have a handle for) went to outside Astoria for an adventure run.  Video games were not involved in anyway but like the logo on the NES box says, it was an "Adventure."  We didn't though have to use a rope swing over any bodies of water.  For those, we either just waded or were forced to jump over.

So this was my first "adventure run" and from what I heard that weekend, it was a much smaller group than some of the larger adventure/obstacle course runs; a la Tough Mudder, Spartan Race and Warrior Dash.  There were only ~300 participants and we all started at the same time, something different than other races apparently where groups of 250 start every 30 minutes for a couple of hours.  It was a nice group; both our group and the entire group of people running, as well as the organizers.

So the course.  The course started out with a mile and-a-half run up a road, then a logging road that went "up" a hill.  We then turned off the road and into the woods/forest/wild.  The majority of the obstacles were naturally occurring, as in climbing over/under felled logs/trees, jumping over streams/creeks, climbing up hillsides and wading through mud pools.  There were some man made obstacles such as a cargo net, log walls, a barbed wire net and a log tunnel.  I was half expecting something to do with fire, but by the end, I wouldn't've been able to jump over a matchbox wall.  I should also mention that I was also wearing a Nalgene pack with close to three liters of homemade Gatorade, a couple of Cliff Bars, a package of FRS energy chews and a mini Leatherman.  The total distance for the run came out to a little over seven miles, which is three and-a-half miles farther than Conklederp and I have run in the past or any reason.

Anyway, I'll sum up the whole experience by saying that it was quite amazing and something that I would very much like to do again.  Our team (The Night's Watch) didn't come in last (partly because two teams got lost/turned around), but I think we had the most fun out of all the groups there.

On an actual gaming side for this post, I was introduced to the card game Munchkin.  It was a little confusing at first, which was partly due to the fact that I was becoming more-and-more intoxicated as the game progressed.  We did manage to get through an entire game though after returning back to the Portland area.

So in the end, why was I unable to put up a post on Monday the 17th?  Because I was tired/sore had a shit-ton of laundry/cleaning to do with all the mud that we adopted the previous day.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Apparently You Don't Need to Sign Any Forms.

Any Photoshopping Skills are Due to the Fact that I Don't Own Photoshop.