Moving Cheese

Wow. I'm both amazed and thoroughly sickened...

No, not by the I7 preview features, but by the outcry and rampant speculation that just exploded across the forum boards once people read about them.

Oh noes, my to-hit enhancements just switched from 33 to 20 => rad and dark be NERFED, NOoooooooes, help, FOUL!

Oh noes, I didn't get any mez protection from my patron pool power. FOUL! Everything sucks!

Oh noes, all the other ATs got holds, dominators are going to be even more unwanted!11!one! DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM....

*rolls eyes* It's not even out on Test, and we have doom-cryers already. Wtf? My tank has a hold. I can't even stack it on a boss, you think this is going to give dominators a run for their money?

And apparently, there are some changes for dominators in I7. I won't mince words. I -am- scared. I'm terrified that the devs are going to bow to player pressure and change the dominator so drastically that I won't like playing one. But I'm not howling and foaming at the mouth going noooooo, don't change the dominator - Why? Because...

I DO NOT KNOW WHAT CHANGES ARE COMING. I CANNOT SEE THE TOTALITY OF THE CHANGE.

Now -after- the change hits, and you've tested it and played it through, feel free to bitch. Just like I tested the invul tank changes and realized, yes, it is a 'nerf', a drastic cutback of an overpowered AT, and thus feels worse...Yet, a tank is still survivable if you go the regen tank route...But admittedly, a bit more resistance would make invuls feel more 'tanky', rather than relying on a sackful of hitpoints...

But all this is AFTER. AFTER!

Seems like freaking out before is just a waste of everybody's time. See what the changes are, and how they feel before you go nuts, hey?

If this was a sharing session where the devs are coming to you for your opinion, then yes, feel free to add on your thoughts. But you know there aren't going to be any changes, this is I7, there's a big monster machine moving in the background and the issue change will hit, like it or not. So why waste your breath now? Sheesh.

I think I might avoid the forum boards for a while. The pre- and post- issue boards tend to devolve into nothing worth reading.

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Good RL news. Made a spontaneous decision to learn a new hobby, and in a funny kind of chain reaction instigated by one change, I'm now 'getting a life' outside of stumbling back from work and playing one of two MMO's all night long till sleep time.

Or it could be that Black Jeremiah's at the stage where I start to lose major interest in my alt characters. The 22-25, post SO, stage. Feels like, yay, I got the SOs I wanted. I now feel like I can rule the world. No need or goal to go further, that kinda feeling. :P

Maybe it's a combination of both.

I've always thought musical intelligence way beyond me. Just not something I was born with. Practically tone-deaf sometimes. Rhythm? Trust me, ain't got any - I think I nearly drove my piano teacher to suicide by tormenting her with an unpracticed, rhythmless stumbling, stuttering set of songs every week I was -forced- to go to a music lesson by my parents. I HATED the piano and the organ. The sound of it. The implied lessons and performance to outsiders and parental authority associated with it.

So what if my father likes instrumental piano music? He should be the one learning, not making ME learn. Of course, for years, I've had visible demonstrations of failed attempts at doing so. He comes back home with some new musical keyboard, some new musical software, uses it for a week, packs it up and it stays a white elephant in the house forever. My mom constantly maintains that she is bad at music and repeats it again and again until she believes it. If you've ever heard her attempt to sing, you'd have to agree.

Nature or nurture. Whichever way you look at it, I'm not much of a music freak. And certainly, zero or negative parental support.

Until a couple days ago, when I was just listening and enjoying my MP3s, I realized I had quite a taste for filk music. And what is filk but a bunch of people with a bunch of guitars and other stuff and singing their hearts out, regardless of whether it sounds good or bad? Rather medieval-esque, in a way.

The idea flashed in my head. No other word for it. It came and stuck there, glued by a whole bunch of factors.

What if I self-taught myself how to play a guitar?

I can't do teachers. I hate interacting with people. Especially STUPID prosaic ordinary MUNDANE Singaporean people with boring MAINSTREAM interests. I don't like the kind of music they like. So little wonder that I failed to find an interest playing classical tunes on a piano which didn't sound like a sound I liked in the first place. Little wonder that I grew massively bored trying to play 'pop piano' which according to the teacher I had, consisted of oldies that I'd never even heard of. D'oh.

And to do all this, at a time when one had no time at all to even do homework, let alone waste precious travel time going to a music lesson...Let's not even talk about finding practicing time, hey?

But now we have the Internet. Now we have 1001 "how to play a guitar" tutorials. Now we have video. And CDs, VCDs, DVDs, books, "for dummies" or otherwise.

And it would be just for me. The only person hearing my own screwups would be myself. That's liberating for me. I can progress along at my own pace, without feeling obliged to do anything for anyone, without feeling like I need to earn my money's worth from a lesson or whatever.

Hey, if I could teach myself how to paint 3D miniatures this way, it was DEFINITELY worth a try.

It would open my eyes to an entire SIDE of life that I've never taken the trouble to appreciate before. (Art and music appreciation are not my strong suits.) And surely, the best way to learn is to be intrinsically motivated to do so.

You can imagine my parents reacted with incredulity with this. Such confidence in me. Disbelief, an unspoken implication that the guitar I bought would be a white elephant, that our family is 'doomed' to be un-musical and un-artistic. So much for any kind of support or encouragement. Well, screw 'em. They may be happy being uncreative and horribly mundane, I'm different. And they can't say anything because all this is coming out of my own pocket anyhow.

Moved pretty fast on this. Bought a cheap guitar the next day. Just to practice with, and not feel guilty if I ruined it or anything. It /sounds/ good though, very deep and reverb-y, it's a thrill hearing it that I've never gotten before from a piano.

First day, I just contented myself running through the first exercise on the internet. Learnt the parts of the guitar. Yay. Made a desultory attempt at tuning, gave up. Played a scale. On a very probably untuned guitar - who's to know, though. Tried a few chords, left hand hurt much, realized to slight depression that my fingers are fat, stubby, and very weak. Especially ring finger. Can't lift it by itself, the other fingers insist on coming along with it.

Welp, bright side, this would put some muscle tone in the hand. Needed to be careful of posture though. Especially do NOT want to inflict carpal tunnel on myself after fifteen years of skirting it on a keyboard.

Second day, felt the beginnings of calluses forming. Not formed yet, of course, but they're on the way. Got to be careful not to blister. Same thing, made a more serious attempt to tune and found out that I have biiiig problems hearing sound.

New resolution, get a guitar tuner. Found a shop online, found the address, made plans to go the next day. Also saw another guitar that looked pretty nice. Thought I wanted it, but to justify spending that kind of money, I'd have to prove it to myself that I was serious.

In a night and a day, I cleaned up a room that I thought could NOT be cleared up. And yes, I didn't play any MMO's while doing so. I played some music CDs, watched some DVDs, did some cooking. Addiction breaking... life rebalancing. All this from one new hobby. Very encouraging.

Unfortunately when I went to the shop, it looked a little more run down than I'd expected based on the website, and the guitar I thought I wanted didn't look that impressive up close. Didn't have enough time to spend there anyhow, so I just picked up the tuner. On the bright side, I now know that shops are like birds, they flock together - I saw more guitar shops there than ever I saw in my entire life before.

Some other day, I'll get a new guitar. For now, the reward money went over to a whole set of DVDs instead. Among them, I picked up Neil Gaiman's Mirrormask. Muhahaha. Can't wait to see it.

Third day - I learn to tune a guitar properly, with help from the tuner. Now it actually sounds like the notes I'm supposed to be playing. Playing the scale is getting easier, though my hand posture is still garbage. Chords are a MAJOR problem. My fingers are still weak, they're smeared all over the place, and contorting my fat stubby hand into position is very tricky.

On the bright side, I hear everyone figures out fingering differently, so I should be able to eventually get it. When I dunked the guitar flat, and tried to play it like a zither, I had zero problems. The chord actually sounded like a chord. Which is encouraging. Now all I have to do is keep at it in the correct position until my fingers build muscle tone and muscle memory.

I reached some success yesterday. I actually figured out that my ring finger tended to be the culprit slumped across strings that shouldn't be touched. So by straining a little, managed to lift it off the string by the few mm needed to sound the chord properly.

Welp, practice makes perfect. Went to try and find a book on guitars from the library. Nada. Did find a book on beginner music theory though, so I got it to learn about 'tone' and 'pitch' and all those strange words. Picked up three other books on writing.

As I said, tis' encouraging. Life re-balancing is always good.

Now I need to find time to meditate and look to the spiritual side, and things should be even better. Life is good.