*whine* *rant* *bitch*

Colleen's party on Friday night was largely a success, in spite of clashes with various other events (Land of the Dead and Philip's band doing a gig). There was an insane amount of food (some of which is still knocking around), and I think everyone had a good time. Someone managed to erase all of the pictures on Colleen's camera. We're not pointing any fingers, but all of the pics that Dave Sharpe took are there but nothing before that, he was falling-down drunk, and Julie said he was pushing loads of buttons and didn't seem to know what he was doing. Okay, so maybe we are pointing fingers a little. We can't be sure, but the evidence seems to suggest... Colleen was unbelievably upset, since a large part of the motivation for the party was to get a whole bunch of pictures of all of her friends before she leaves for PE. I really think Dave would do well to steer clear of Colleen until she leaves.

At about 11 (I think?) a bunch of us went through to The One Ring for the zombie afterparty. Well done to all the zombie winners, the shirts really are very cool. Also, I really really love Foosball. We should go play more often. Dave was a severe handicap to anyone whose team he was on, since he could actually not even focus, and I'm not exaggerating. He was being irritating and grabbing the wrong ends of the opponents' rods at one point, but wisely stopped when Al threatened him with physical violence.

Very rudely, I thought, the bouncer dude threw us all out when he wanted to go to sleep. I mean, honestly. Al, Waynne, Lucas, Claire and myself went through to Cornerhouse at that point since we were all too tired or drunk to know any better. It was terrible, as usual ;) Fun!

11am the next morning saw me at Al's place ready to LAN. Dave arrived a little later, still drunk apparently (here's me not being surprised), followed shortly by Conrad, Yancke and Adrian. Waynne also made a shortish appearance, timing it quite nicely with the party that Adrian was going to, so he got to play with us for a while. The entire time, Dave was just dropping bombs, either in the room we were goddamn playing in, or in the bathroom. You'd think this would be better, except that it wafts. And the toilet is effectively off limits for an hour. Thank fuck I had just put deodorant on, so I could pull my shirt over my mouth and nose and breathe mostly unimpeded.

Jesus fuck, Dave and Yancke can whine like whores. One starts, and then each has to have the last word. Has to. I'm also sick of people whining about being unable to use the game interface. Watch the minimap! Bind your hero to group 1! Push 1 before every command you issue! Communicate! Use the in-game messages! In the last game of the evening, Adrian and I really showed people how it all works. Yes, I had a pretty good hero, but not a broken one unless you let me run away with it. Adrian's hero was mediocre at best. Yes, the stun was pretty cool. The dragon mage and the quillboar are perfectly decent heroes. The myrmidon wasn't, I'll admit that right now ;) Communication was key, and we were typing messages to each other all the time. It was handy that Adrian could feed me item information, but really I didn't play it any differently to any other Agility hero I usually play, apart from late-game items. Boots, 2x Wraith Band (change these to Null Talismans for casting heroes, my skills were all passive), followed by Butterfly. And by the time I got Butterfly, I was already ahead of the opposing heroes. The Stygian Desolator was just extra overkill.

Oh, and Oopman better steer clear. When trying to get UT2004 working as a break from DotA, we discovered all these weird versioning anomalies. The only thing that's changed since last we all played together is Adam installing ChaosUT on our boxes, without our fucking permission. That's an ejection-from-LAN grade offense, and is part of the reason why we just don't invite him anymore.

I was really looking forward to the Ravnica prerelease on Sunday, and even managed to drag myself out of bed in time for it after the LAN. Sadly, and with zero warning, it was cancelled. Some shit about customs problems. Jesus, people, sort your shit out. You're a fucking business that sells Magic cards. Surely you can organise getting Magic cards? Apparently not. Anyway, sleep was an acceptable substitute.

Sunday evening was an awesome TV movie evening, with MIB on e being followed by Chicken Run on SABC something. All good =)

My american co-workers have apparently not lost any of their retardedness. They proved this amply yesterday afternoon, and followed up with some emails for me this morning to cement their mental acumen firmly in the lower echelons. Them: 'Uh, your new file is not being included in the project, Jason.' Me: 'Did you update the project file which, SURPRISE! updates the list of files being included in the project? No? DIDN'T FUCKING THINK SO!' Cockpunches all around, seriously.

Things are starting to come together re: my move to Julie and Al's place. I moved my chair and a few more boxes in last night and helped J&A move shit out of the room, and vaguely decided how I would arrange things. After that, Al and I threw down in a couple of matches of Soul Calibur. Sore thumbs! I really need some more practise, I just don't know critical things like recovery times, strike ranges and speeds of attacks. Also, I need to get out of the habit of instinctually kicking. A good button to press in Tekken is not always a good button to press in SC. I learnt that the hard way. We played most of our matches as Charade, which is their version of Combot/Mokujin. Good practise for learning all the characters.