Role Reversal & Parental Mortality

I guess this is one of those rare times when it gets deep here...

After going through a stressful day of worrying about my mother-in-law's surgery today we were relieved to hear that everything went fine and that she's now recovering. Unfortunately our relief only lasted for few hours. Late this evening we got a call from one of my mom's friends informing us that she had taken my mother to the ER because mom was having some chest pain and trouble breathing. With mom's history of heart trouble (she had a triple-bypass done just four years ago) they decided to keep her overnight for observation and run some tests tomorrow.

Talking with my sister about it on the phone, we mentioned how preferable it was when we were younger, free of responsibility and our parents worried about us. Now, as the years race past us each one seemingly faster than the one before we find ourselves being the ones who worry about our parents. Now we're the ones who have to rearrange our routines so that we can spend time in hospitals, wondering and worrying about the people we care about most.

I'd like to think it's not so much about selfishness on our parts but more about wondering just when this happened. I don't remember getting older so how did they? We're faced with the stark realization that these people who we've known our whole lives won't always be there. And along with that realization comes the knowledge that our own children will go through similar thoughts and feelings about us in a future that will be here before we know it.

For now, mom is resting in a place where caring professionals are there to take care of her. I hope to know more in the morning and maybe get to talk with her, to reassure both her an myself that this isn't that dreaded yet inevitable day of goodbyes. Some call it a "circle of life" but sometimes it feels like a giant wheel that's bearing down on us at breakneck speed.

Back To Paragon City

After giving Champions Online what I think is a reasonably fair try I've decided that City of Heroes is still the better game. For whatever faults it might have and the missteps of various new issues ("Architect" anyone?) it still comes out ahead for playability, graphics and just plain fun.

Champs' approach to missions just didn't sit well with me, it seemed like other players could easily swoop in and get the glory for my work. And the graphics in CoH are much more fluid, especially after I'd made a major upgrade for a system that would be Champs-compatible. And I never saw the benefit of having a super group in Champs while CoH lets groups build bases with lots of perks for the members of such teams. And "Going Rogue" is still ahead...

Thankfully, I'm not alone in this choice. At least one other CoH teammate who crossed over to Champs isn't impressed with it either. So for now the Nova Killers (our super group on CoH)* is still alive and functioning. New members might be needed, we'll see but I think we're going to make another go of it. Congratulations, NCSoft - you can keep tapping my bank account every month...at least until Sony releases DC Universe Online sometime next year. Then all bets are off.


* - We decided on the name because the core members at the time consisted of several Blaster archetypes and we could mow thorugh most opposition with a series of Nova attacks

ET Visits IM2

Random Can Be Good

A fairly accurate random sampling of stuff I listen to...

Champions Offline

Not exactly the start to a long weekend I was hoping for when I got home from work today...

Bugger. You'd think they would have sorted these sorts of things out in beta, which I've been enjoying taking part in for the past few weeks. But the game just shipped retail on Tuesday and I guess some problems just don't manifest until the Teeming Hordes^® are allowed in to overtax the servers and give the devs some real headaches. Pretty impressive, not only are the game servers down but the web site as well. I wasn't on board when City of Heroes launched, I wonder if they had similar issues.

"You are in the Village...again."

Okay, I'm sold enough to really want to watch this when it comes to AMC in November. Thanks, and a tip-o-the-hat to Sean for sharing this link to the preview footage shown at this year's San Diego ComicCon.

Be seeing you...

"We choose to go to the moon..."

Ten Things You Didn't Know About the Apollo 11 Moon Landing - I already knew some of these things but I was surprised by some of the others, like the drinking water being bubbly or the lander going four miles off course. And it turns out that "one small step" wasn't quite that small after all!

It's kind of sad to think that they were able to accomplish this and several other missions only to let the lunar program languish in favor of the space shuttle. But plans are underway to go back and establish a permanent presence on our celestial neighbor as a staging area for explorations further into our solar system. I hope I live long enough to see humans walk on Mars!

Even sadder is that 6% of Americans still think the Apollo missions were a hoax. Talk like that is a slap in the face to the hundreds of brilliant men and women who accomplished an amazing feat of engineering by delivering on President Kennedy's promise to put Americans on the moon by the end of the '60s. Getting to the moon was an incredible achievement and to dismiss it as just another conspiracy theory is insulting to everyone involved.