Off to Kingsmouth

Posted by FelizB on May 27, 2012 in Blog, The Secret World | 0 comments

I am on the road in New England this week, where they all talk like the people on Solomon Island. My internet connection will be spotty and I will be busy with other things. Chances are, I won’t be doing much blogging this week.

In case you can’t find Kingsmouth or the Solomon Island on the map, check “The Secret World”.

All the Cool Kids are Nerds

Posted by FelizB on May 25, 2012 in Blog | 0 comments

But who am I kidding, nerds are still not cool. I also feel misjudged. The quiz asks for my GPA score. I didn’t go to school in the US and don’t have a GPA score. I am at an age where nobody asks you about your GPA anymore. PSA level perhaps, but not GPA.

Weekly Zombie Survival Tip

Posted by FelizB on May 21, 2012 in Blog | 1 comment

With the recent posting of my home for sale, I wanted to give a few tips for those who own and don’t own homes during a zombie outbreak.

It’s always best to at least know where the “weak points” are in a home. This includes (but is not limited to) low or first floor windows, doors and walkways. You have 2 options here:

1) Know where to get (or have handy) a supply of 2x4s and long strong nails to board up the windows and doors. Remember lots of hammering means lots of noise, it’s suggested to use hard-rubber mallets over iron hammers and have a few partners (or family members) handy to make it happen as quick as possible.

2) Alternatively if you live in a two story home, just take out the stairs with axes. It’s faster , you’ll only have 1 point of entry to worry about and the noise is more easily concealed. Just make sure to prepare for not having a down stairs PRIOR to taking them out.

If you are an apartment dweller you have more “people” to worry about, but the great advantage of having a 2nd+ floor full house option, thus limiting your entrances to the stairwells and elevators, which area easier to block and guard from zombie pests. When searching for a new apartment home, remember, NEVER the first floor. Cheers!

Introducing Tweak

Posted by FelizB on May 21, 2012 in Blog | 0 comments

Yesterdays post about my gamer family wasn’t entirely accidental. My stepson has been posting regular zombie survival tips on his Facebook page. He has agreed to post them here as well under the account “Tweak”. I think they will be helpful for the upcoming release of “The Secret World”. Besides, being prepared will pay off, eventually.

My Gamer Family

Posted by FelizB on May 20, 2012 in Blog, Everquest | 4 comments

My wife and I  just dropped off my stepson at the airport after a weekend that was way to short. Many of the things we’ve been talking about this weekend were about our common interests: online games. He didn’t need me to get him a “Secret World” beta key, since he’s already pretty busy with other games: Diablo 3, Aion, Vindictus and Everquest on the retro servers at Project 1999.  I’ve known him since I met my wife ten years ago. We were all playing Everquest back then. Since then, we’ve been going more or less through the same online games: Everquest 2, Dungeons & Dragons Online, Runes of Magic, Rift and probably some others. Over time we’ve been bouncing game suggestions back and forth between the two of us. His approach to most games is the geek path: Get into it deeply and intensely. Once the last secrets of his preferred classes are explored, it is time to move on.

He his my wife’s oldest son. She got introduced to gaming through his console games, just to do things together with her kids. You know how moms are. However, it took her youngest son to get her to play Everquest. He had asked for it as a Christmas present and played it passionately over winter break. It took only three month until they got a second account and a second computer. They actually ended up with a total of four computers and four accounts over time, with the oldest son dualboxing. My wife now plays World of Warcraft, with occasional dips into EQ2, Rift or SWTOR, but she returns to WOW when I get bored with the new game I dragged her into. She favorites healers, but by now with all that time spent on WOW, she’s played all classes but hasn’t raided with rogues, hunters or warriors.

My youngest stepson plays mostly WOW with his friends on a pvp server. Ever being the social type, he gets involved into groups and instances quickly and raids frequently. There have been forays into other games like Rift, but he returns usually to WOW as well.

As for myself, there’s been told a lot about me already on this blog. But let me assure you, it is certainly great to have a family that is as involved into gaming as I am. There’s no need to justify extended play times or the frequency of gaming sessions. We are also our own support group to deal with raid or loot disappointments, or to ask the other to remind you when you crossed your own playtime limits. As a stepfather, it was also a great way to bond with my newly found family and as already said, it is still our common interest.

However, we do have a black sheep in the family. The middle child, the stepdaughter, never got into computer games, but went out to safe the world, one drug addict at a time. We occasionally get some flak from her about our gaming, but it hasn’t exceeded a groan here or there. She even tolerated a WOW playing boyfriend for a while and the breakup didn’t have anything to do with the game.

Okay, that’s four gamers in the family. What’s your situation?

NBI by the Numbers

Posted by FelizB on May 16, 2012 in Blog | 0 comments

Since we are halfway through the month of May and the Newbie Blogger Inititative, here are a couple of numbers I could collect around the event and its influence to my blog and my blogging environment. If you end up comparing these numbers to your own blog you need to  consider a few factors:

• Your blogging frequency
• Your activity on social media
• How well established is your blog at the search engines

In short, this is just a glimpse ino this blogs specific situation.

Some more remarks

Inbound links are difficult to interpret, since the main page links are most likely blog roll appearances, but Google sees those links on every single page of the blog, be it front page, archive pages or single article pages. Article links face other difficulties like links coming from dynamic blog rolls, like the one I am using myself.

In general I have to say that I’ve found my community. Getting into the newbie blogger initative made it pretty easy for me to find fellow bloggers, willing to interact with me. Of course, this would have happened eventually by following all blog rolls of my friends and following all comment authors on other blogs, but it would have taken 6 months or so.

Now I am looking forward to the second half of #mmonbi / #nbimmo