It's free, just costs your time and soul

A lot of my free time, as always, is spent on playing video games. I was not lazy in that regard during last year as well.

I really like MMORPG genre in games, but unfortunately it eats a lot of your time. Because of that, for a time, I had switched to pure FPS till I discovered Warframe.

Warframe is a blend between an RPG and FPS. Sure there have been quite many lately, but not every each of them is successful at that. Warframe is kinda like Mass Effect + Ninja Gaiden + enemy spam. Really an engaging game (with all of its grind), that I have spent more than 1k play-hours on.

After a while I rediscovered another game that brought me back to MMORPG, RIFT. The game itself was launched couple years back, but at first it was a pure p2p game which was not that appealing. Last year, however, it switched to f2p and it's really awesome at that. Basically it is just a regular game of its genre and it first it might seem that it does not hold all that much content. However, while playing it you discover and understand that there is just so much stuff to do that you will never get bored of it sitting at main city and chatting (unless you want to, ofc).

Third in the lot is a game that's not really a game - Ingress, a reality that reshapes your life in the most unexpected ways. You can get the mobile app on play store for Android. I first met with ingress a lot more than a year ago, however my Samsung Galaxy Mini could not run the app. Recently my gf got a new phone so I confiscated her old Samsung Galaxy Ace (not that it was much easier to run it there). Ingress is very engaging and forces you to change your lifestyle. A important part of it is the community that's certainly very friendly and since you do have yo cooperate with it, you can forget about your anonymity. I can't tell much more about it without spoiling the fun. However I was forced to drop the game because its too demanding on for my old phone. I do plan to return to it one day.

A year and a bit

It has been more than a year since I last made any meaningless posts here. Not that I even completely forgot about my blog, I just didn't feel like writing anything here. I have kept notes of things to post, but now when I look back at it all, it's kinda out of place, so I will still keep them for some other time.

As for today, today I wanted to look back at this past year and maybe recount things that have changed, for Golden Time anime right now).
the worst and for the best. However, it might be just the pessimistic me, but still I can't name a single thing that has turned for the best. I had broken up with my gf for some time, my world got broken in parts, yet I`m still in the same place where I was, working in the same place, living in the same apartment, wearing the same clothes and stinking all the same. (and it's so damn sad to watch
What I need and what I want is a rollback of myself and my emotions from couple years back. I need to return to my apathetic self and not care a damn about what is the purpose of my life. Kinda like what I am inside games.

It's time for another brainwashing.
Time to reboot.

And time to continue...

Just remembered that I completely forgot to write a review on my experience with Chinese restaurant.

Together with my usual partners, we decided to visit a Chinese restaurant and did so on 14.12.2012. Our restaurant of choice was Ginger (see attached location), mostly thanks to the location, but also the reviews weren't as bad and they did have a nice deal of 50% off everything on Fridays in December.
To put it short - it wasn't a regrettable decision.
To elaborate, let's start with the food. It was our first time having anything Chinese so I wasn't sure what to expect. We managed to order 3 different portions with 3 different kinds of meat, with seafood included. Thanks to the Chinese tradition of serving one big portion on 1 separate plate, from which you put stuff on your own, I managed to taste-test everything and I`m now in awe of Asian culinary. I did like Japanese sushi better, but if I had to bring someone to a restaurant and raw fish wouldn't be an option, a Chinese restaurant would be my second choice.
The restaurant was filled with colorful lanterns and our seats were put on a kind of elevation (I think it resembled some kind of a boat harbor or something). It was enough to put up a nice setting girls would most definitely enjoy, but, above that, it didn't feel cramped there. I dislike most restaurants because I always feel somewhat cramped there and thus can't relax, but Ginger didn't have that vibe on me.
I will, have, have to deduce a point for service. The boy that served us didn't really seem very professional. I mean, he was trying to be nice and did know his stuff, but he just wasn't a professional waiter and didn't really know how to handle customers. Not that it matter to me much, but there are lots of people for whom it does matter.

Here is a bad quality photo of my damn sweetheart and  Armands, as
we were leaving.

Recap series - Sick leave

What sucked about previous month and still does - i was on sick leave from job for 3 goddamn weeks. It all started with a simple fewer of 39.7 but, obviously, while all sweaty and hot, at some point I cooled down too fast and caught myself a pneumonia. So basically I can't remember a crap about first week, as I spent it with the 39.6 temperature and it's like being constantly drunk. At the second week my doctor finally figured I had pneumonia and pumped me with even more antibiotics. And the experience of second and third week too wasn't very pleasent, since I spent most of my time coughing. Even made my muscles sore from constant cough. Well, at least I did get away relatively cheap and fast from it (after spending a bit more than 40Ls on medicine, that is), but still, it meant that I got no bonus on my paycheck whatsoever and still have to visit VSAA to get the rest of my salary.

Never again .

And it's Christmas soon and I can't afford a crap as a result.

Recap Series - Colleagues

The_guy_I_know_since_kindergarten - finally got him to work at TWWL. Obviously I can tell he is not too enthusiastic about the job, who the hell would be in his place, but at least it's something he can earn money on now.

Oh, Latvia, why do you never present any chances at all to young students? Everyone has to fight with their teeth to get a decent job in their respective profession...

Recap series - Tex Mex

Continuing our adventures, a week later after visiting Kabuki, we decided to try out Mexican food.
Our course was set to Tex Mex (see location). After arriving I concluded that it's a place you should visit at summer and eat outside, not inside. Unfortunately for us, as it was a cold autumn evening. I guess the atmosphere was ok, but personally I didn't find it comfortable, as we couldn't get seats that would cut us off from other people and I felt extremely exposed. However, you could feel from the waitress, that her heart most definitely belonged to that place and thus she helped me to feel a little like at home - it did help to relax a bit. The Mexican food itself wasn't really anything special. I guess I could compare it to a pizza. I probably will return there some day and try something else from the menu, like I occasionally do at pizzeria, but not until summer.

Overall it was a nice experience, but it did leave a lot of space for improvement.

Recap series - Guild Wars 2

A few years back I managed to hook that girl  to a Runes of Magic MMORPG game that she kept playing  even after I left it and after we broke up. Anyhow, as the game has been getting older, she kept playing it less and less and only was attached to it due to the people she met there, in the online world. Why is this important? Because most of those people were leaving for Guild Wars 2 as soon as it would launch and, feeling sorry for her and wanting for her to keep contact with people she cares for, i bought that game. Unfortunately her computer can't run it, so it's currently installed on my computer and mostly I am the one playing it...well, till recently, since i got bored of the game. Not to a surprise, because the game is PvP centered, while I enjoy my PvE.

tl;dr I own a Guild Wars 2 account that i bought for my damn sweetheart.

Recap Series - Kabuki

Believe it or not, it's 21st century and I have never tried Sushi. Up until recently, that is.
In my conquest to broaden my world, I got together with my damn sweetheart and the_guy_i_know_since_kindergarten and we went on exploring the menu of Kabuki restaurant (see location).
Musty say I enjoyed the experience a lot and the choice of restaurant wasn't bad as well. Well, sushi is a bit too expensive for me to eat it every weekend, but I will most definitely occasionally order some sushi from and then and if I will have to take someone to a restaurant - that will be my first choice.

A successful experiment.

Recap series - Something new

Now then, I have established my own comfort-zone and I`m fully assured that my identity is completely worked-out. What now?
Now is the time to willfully leave my comfort-zone and start expanding my world by trying out new things. Not taking it to the extreme, but recently from time to time I buy something new for my dinner, I started trying out all kinds of alcohol (which I do not enjoy all that much, no matter how often I drink...in fact I regularly have unfinished bottles at home, that I can't bring myself to finish) etc. etc.
Sometimes I end up wasting money, sometimes I discover that I love Japanese kitchen.

To confess, I have been thinking of trying out some hard drugs too, but due to my personality I`m not up to doing it unsupervised by someone I trust. And also I have no idea how to acquire them, as I never had real interest in that. What am I expecting? I`m expecting to have a chemical reaction that will mess up my brain activity and I would like to see weather I`m able to keep it together even when under influence of drugs. Seems to work with any amount of alcohol. And yeah, finally being able to understand people's though patterns when are under influence - that's a nice bonus too.

Trying out new stuff keeps the illusion that the world hasn't stopped for me yet.

Recap series - girlfriends

I hate how she edits her pictures!

I have gotten back together with my damn first-love-sweetheart. Not entirely sure why anything happened, why it came to us breaking up, why did she take me back, but I blame it all on women anyway. Anyhow, we are spending time together for the most part of the week now and all my leftover money mostly goes to buying her whatever she needs.

Trying my hardest to change and adapt myself as fast as I can. It's not easy to adapt to women, as they never really know, what do they want. And there are things I will never achieve/possess/be able to do, no matter how much she wants me to...

Recap series - promotion

Worth mentioning, but nothing big though.
Finally two spots in Help Desk @ TWWL were freed and I actually somehow managed to get one of them, thus I was promoted to something seemingly above entry level worker and seemingly had my bonus increased.
I`m no longer working at hotline, but rather do written communication with clients, help hotline workers out with stuff they do not understand or can't solve and I`m at the controversial position that should be more or less respected but seems to be disregarded as useless by everyone. Well, whatever, It's fine. Written communication and helping people is more back my alley and I regret nothing.


Several weeks of me being the dumb newbie followed. As well as several months of workload no European should ever be tasked with still going on.

Recap series - purchases

I think it was back in July, though I`m not sure. Thanks to working overtime (frigging 225 work-hours in a month, lots of night shifts e.t.c.) i got a hold of another nice paycheck and upgraded my computer a bit.

First, and most notoriously, i bought a new monitor (silly picture related) a Samsung SyncMaster S23B300. It's a decent HD LED monitor, nothing fancy, but my eyes will never see the difference between a 500bucks worth screen and a 128bucks one. Even with my perfect vision (color or otherwise).

Secondly, bought a new cooler. An ass-kicking Titan Skalli. Be sure to take a look at the package if you follow the link. It looks great, other than that - it works so good and quiet, that I never even notice it doing anything.

Lastly, I upgraded my RAM. Since i have this old_like_the_world_itself gigabyte motherboard, I went for the small upgrade from 2GB to 4GB. However, to my great disappointment, it turns out, if your motherboard is limited to 4GB, you will never be able to use more than 3GB of ram, as a goddamn 1GB gets reserved for fucking nothing I will ever need. And that's how I discovered, that I have reached my limits at upgrading my old PC and should start saving up. If not for a whole new PC, at least for a new motherboard, sound card and 16GB worth of RAM.
Disappointment of the year.

Well...at least I thought that was the last of it. A couple of weeks later, while messing with my BIOS, i managed to accidentally turn off my PC's ability to recognize the hard drive. Since my hard drive was quite old and getting glitchy at times, after some time I concluded that it died and just went and bought 500GB of empty space. Long story short: new hard drive wasn't working either and after few ours of trying out EVERYTHING i finally managed to get both of my HDDs working.

And this is what becomes of me when I don't have to worry about my next meal anymore. Spent more than 200bucks on that and no fucks were given back then.

Recap series - job interview results

Oh, yeah, about the interview back then - it turned out i was right, i didn't get the job because my test scores were way too low. Really didn't surprise me, but it was still worth trying.

And the company, btw, was Cytec.

And even if I know it shouldn't, failures like these do get to me and I was feeling kind of down and doomed for a few weeks after that. Did carry on like nothing happened though.