Time Marches On

Yeah, I know it’s March.

I barely had a chance to see February.  It was busy, had a store build, was sick for a solid week, then spent the last week just playing catch-up.  Now, as the new month begins, I’m trying to get more organized.

My workload has increased, but in a good way, I think.  My office has recently become an HP certified partner.  What this means is that I can now crack open laptops and non-user repairable parts without voiding the warranty.  Because HP will credit us for the time we spend fixing things they used to send techs out for, it will be a huge cost-cutting measure for us.  Since I’ve taken apart pretty much everything I could get my hands on since I was two-months old, I dove right in.  Now, I’m the go-to guy for hardware repairs around here.  Being as I enjoy doing it, and time absolutely flies while I’m fixing things, it’s a good thing, even if it is getting to the point where I can’t see my desk.

Guess I’ll just need to work harder.

Oddly enough, as my work has gotten somewhat more enjoyable, my leisure time has become somewhat less so.  And I have Microsoft to thank for that.

Jerks.

I was surprised at myself when I bought the X-box 360 awhile back, Microsoft somehow having created a system I would prefer over Nintendo and Sony.  For the most part, I have loved it, but with the 360 came something dark and insidious into my household.  I invited it in like a demon, and now it feeds off my very soul, leaving me weak and despondent.  I called in several exorcists, and they all have run away screaming, crossing themselves as they fled.

I speak, of course, of achievements.

For those blissfully ignorant, an achievement is an objective in a game.  When you meet the conditions for the achievement, it will permanently show up in your gamer profile, which looks you in the face every time you turn on the system.  Not only does it list the achievements you have, but it’ll show you the achievements you DON’T have.  Every. Single. Time.

For an obsessive person like me, this is a problem.  When I see something amiss or incomplete, it drives me nuts.  It’s like a little demon inside my brain scratching its claws against my skull.  I have wrung my hands when I see a crooked picture on TV, wishing I could straighten it, I have been distracted during a meeting by someone who had one sideburn slightly longer than the other.  Now, when I see those empty, unfinished achievements, I am compulsed to get them.  I HAVE to.

Sometimes, this isn’t so bad.

Get 100% on a song on Expert in Rock Band?  Difficult, but fun getting there.

Assasinate all your targets in Assasin’s Creed without them noticing?  Frustrating, but ultimately satisfying.

Many achievements are like this, but some take FOREVER.

The achievement I’m working on right now, is discovering all locations in Two Worlds, which is the very last achievement in the game, making it the second game I’ll have gotten all the achievements on.

The problem with this achievement is that Two Worlds… well, it kinda sucks.  It’s a typical hack and slash RPG, done as horribly as such a thing can be done.  It’s poorly programmed, unbalanced, stutters and freezes (unforgivable for a console game, imo), and I have to wonder if the plot and voice acting were purposely done as badly as they are.  When I bought it, I played it for a few hours, unlocking nearly half the achievements.  I was already there, so I decided to finish the game.  Unfortunately, this was before I had Xbox live.  This means the game did not get a critical patch, which fixed a glitch that prevented getting the discovered all undergrounds achievement.  So despite spending countless hours uncovering the map, I did not get the achievement.  Worse than that, the patch is not retroactive.

So here I stand again, running through the buggy wilderness, discovering location after location, in a bid to unlock an achievement I have, by all rights, already earned.  But on the plus side, once I finally complete it, that’ll be one less thing I have to worry about, and I can focus on getting other achievements on games I actually enjoy.

Zel-kun out.