One thing about Lich King, though (or more specifically, WoW 3.0) is that it takes up a ton more memory, assumably due to the new graphics extras, and more precaching. 1.25GB, to be exact.

This really hurts on my Vista 32 machine with 2GB of RAM.

So, I just ordered a 64-bit media from Microsoft and another couple of 1GB sticks… hopefully that will speed things up a bit. It sounds like driver and application support for Vista 64 is close to parity with Vista 32, so hopefully I won’t have any issues with that.

Well, I decided I needed a vacation, and since Maggie really wasn’t able to take one also, just decided to coincide it with my other favorite pastime.

Blizzard really did a good job with this one. The environments and storylines are very well put together, and they seem to have been much more prepared for this than they were for the last expansion; realm stability is very good and bugs seem to be few and far between.

Although at the moment I am taking the time to write this post as I am unable to get connected to my realm. Oh well.

Well, since I’m currently being kept awake by my upstairs neighbors (who have apparently conspired to keep me awake a lot lately), I guess an update is in order.

• Making progress on CocoNES. Finished the initial code for the NES core, minus the audio processing unit. I think I came up with a fairly slick solution that fits the code neatly into the Objective-C/Cocoa framework while still being able to cut out the overhead on some repetitive operations. More on that in another post.
• I have my second concert with Masterworks Chorus this weekend. I’ll be singing the solo movement 17 from Brahms’s Liebeslieder-Walzer. It’s a lovely tenor solo… too bad I’m not a tenor. I’ve managed to almost convince myself I could pass for a lyric baritone, though. At the right time of day. In any case, as long as my voice cooperates it should be fun. I enjoy singing it, it’s a lovely movement, it just hinges on how my G4 and A4 are feeling that day. If you HAPPEN to be in Omaha this Saturday, you should stop by the Strauss Center at UNO and take a listen.
• Hockey season has started. I’m making generous use of NHL Center Ice. Watched most of Minnesota’s season opener on Saturday (except for when I was fighting with my routers), and caught the end of another game last night. Minnesota’s looking really sharp this year, and Marion Gaborik hasn’t figured much into that, which is a really good thing, because I’m guessing that he will no longer be wearing a Wild uniform by Christmastime. Fuck him, if he wants to be greedy there are plenty of other great players out there who realize that Minnesota is the envy of the league as far as market and culture, maybe beaten out only by Detroit. Doug Risebrough did a bang-up job this summer bringing in Antti Miettenen (who had one goal in the opener and two last night) and Marc-Andre Bergeron.
• I’m finally working on some new music, a different setting of a poem that I already set in college and wasn’t really happy with the result of. I’m shopping around for a digital piano; Yamaha has a new line of home digital pianos that are really tempting. I need to work on my piano… I’d love to teach private lessons once we get a place of our own, but I won’t be able to do it fumbling around on the keyboard.
• World of Warcraft 3.0 was released yesterday. All sorts of cool new shit. I’m forcing myself to NOT get up and play it right now and throw my sleep schedule even more out of whack.

I think that’s about it.

In a word… this game is awesome.

First of all, it’s difficult. No, I don’t mean God-of-War-difficult-setting difficult. I mean omg-tear-your-hear-out-in-frustration-because-you’re-so-on-edge-you-jump-the-gun difficult. I’m a Mega Man buff, I’ve played all the games over and over, and I was still ready to scream after about my 8th attempt at the first stage.

A few words of wisdom for you Mega Man fans out there who are going to try this and haven’t yet:

You will find that you become averse to taking risks. That powerup on the high shelf near the spikes? You’re going to think twice (unless it’s a 1-up). This is because, unlike other Mega Man games, lives matter. When you run out and get to the continue screen, it’s not continue-from-the-last-checkpoint continue like it is in other Mega Man games. You start over at the beginning of the level. Which means you have to run that entire gauntlet one… more… time. Or two. Or five, depending on how jumpy you are at this point (see above).

There is no margin for error, at all. Thankfully, there is also no input lag to speak of; I ran into this issue playing through Mega Man 1 on the anniversary collection on my PS3. The controls are very precise, and oh boy are you going to need it. You have an margin of a couple of PIXELS in which you’re going to be in the right place to actually make that jump.

This, my friends, is why I fell in love with videogames. This game is nailbitingly difficult, and a stunning example of a classic 2D sidescroller. If you like a challenge and you want to take a trip back in time, you must get this game. If you’re a Mega Man fan with a current-generation console and you don’t already have it… well, I don’t know you.