I was nicely watching Samurai Deeper Kyo on my brother’s VAIO yesterday to stay awak through the day. Unfortunately, when I reached episode 6, it starts to fuck up. You know, the time when videos go blotchy and messed up pixelated and bits and pieces all over the places because it wasn’t recoded properly.

I’m so not enjoying the holidays…I’ll be looking forward to getting back to Melaka ASAP. Yuckamogrifications…

Indeed they are. Luckily My bro keeps his VAIO at home when he goes off to work, at least I can watch Samurai Deeper Kyo to keep me from sleeping all day long.

Well, well. Looks like the harddisk I brought home didn’t help much. Only let Syafiq copied some videos, and then his tiny harddisk got full. Geez…

Tonikaku, I’d like to rant about my mother’s old PC. It’s running on a 667 MHz Pentium 3 processor, with 64 MB of RAM, and equipped with a non-updated Windows 98.

“Fazri, kenapa PC mak tu asyik haaaang aje?”
“PC mak kan memang lembap?”
“Dulu lajuuuu je?”
“Dulu takde barang dalam tu, skang ni harddisk nak dekat full, program dah berapa puluh dah…”
“Mak rasa PC tu kena virus la”
“Scan la”
“Tolong scan untuk Mak”
“La.. scan sendiri la, bukan susah.”
“Alaa, Mak tak reti!”
“Dulu kan Kak Zela[my sister] dah ajar?”
“Dah lupa”

I buried my face in my hands. Being IT ignorant is fine, but boasting your problems and then panicking and bitching about it ignorantly is not. So, calmly I went to her machine, and waited for about 10 mins for the thing to load and get stable [mine takes less than a minute, including logon].

Patiently [and reluctantly] I ran Norton Antivirus 2001. Obviously it reveals nothing. I tried to download the update, I remember my brother cracked it last time so I nvr bothered to worry about registration and shit. Guess what? 5.5 MB worth of updates to download. 56K? Hahahahah, you gotta be kidding me.

Off I went to pickup my WD 800, as I plan to connect the old junk with it. I have both NOD32 and Zone Alarm Pro in there, and I plan to share it with her. Guess what? It won’t detect my bloody HDD. Damn, I went into the BIOS Setup and activated the IDE channel I used. “That should do it”. Boy was I wrong.

Its BIOS detects my harddisk, but dumbass windows doesn’t. Tried ‘Add New Hardware’, it gave me a ‘No Driver Installed’. -.-;; Harddisks don’t come with a fucking CD. So I scooted to get Windows Update, on 56K. Narrowed down the downloads to about 1MB, and installed it. “OMG Please work…”. It didn’t. If it wasn’t 12 am, I would’ve screamed my lungs out. Yaargh.

So pissed. So so pissed.

But I don’t have any papers to worry about, thankfully.

I feel kinda left out in the frenzy, y’know. I mean, if it’s the exam week, everyone, including myself would have adrenaline pumping around, and quite honestly, I enjoy that kind of feeling, especially when you have mates to share the rush with.

But this time around, all my housemates are going through the trouble of studying and crap. Yet, here I am, lazing around. As if I’m the only one floating aimlessly about the world. I hate feeling. Sure, I have my own task at hand, but then, only ONE subject? Ish, what a waste. Oh well.

I think I’m slowly turning into a zombie, I can’t live another day without switching on my PC. It’s eating the life out of me. Sigh. I want to change. Current circumstances are holding me down. SHIT!

But rest assured, once I’m back with my homies, I’ll start walking again. I want my life back, I’m not going to let it end this way.

Madness. Babbling. Rambling. A PC that sounds like a vacuum cleaner. These are the things you can picture in your mind whenever you want to describe this particular companion of mine.

If Lim Yun Chuan (YC) lowers his head to look at you over his glasses, you know he’s gona hit you with some uber sarcastic punchline. Yeap, that shows just how much I know him. Third of 4 Johorians in the house, he stayed overseas for quite sometime, which brings about his fluent command of english [though I beat him at it sometimes, mwahahaha], and brilliant sarcasm. This smart-ass takes up Mech Engineering for his degree, but that aside, he’s a pure genius by registering for too many subjects, that his schedule is now oh so fucked up. He rarely has any free time, with all his commitments and crap.

What’s even more impressive, he can drone on his complaints like a freight train but he still devotes himself to it. He enjoys the fucking pains of commitment, i think. But that’s a quality you don’t see in particularly some people [read: me].

Whenever he DOES have free time, what does he do? Occasionally, this stick insect barges into my room and goes “Come Fazri,….let’s continue in our quest….to vanquish evil (with tongue sticking out)…. I shall weild the power to destroy…while you-” and he get’s interrupted by a casual “What?”. Then his train of thought dissapears and leaves him speechless, empty-headed and wide-eyed. Super good shit i tell you. Sure, he’s skinny, but he’s proud as hell of his ‘carpet needle-like’ spam rod [we're talking length. yeah, right]. Wordplay.

Now lets take a tour into his skull. Despite his invisble brain, the grey matter residing within carries lots of knowledge and experience. He can babble on and on like an overexcited geek who just got his hands on a brand new PC [hey, that's a good thing, you noobs!] or hit the swearing off like a Texan redneck who just swallowed a whole plate of sambal petai. Yup. His logic is usually reliable, although it’s more binary than anything else [it's either 0 or 1]. But at times when logic saves the day, we let him do the thinking.

Don’t let his mantis appearance [no, his butt his flat, unlike a real mantis] fool you. This guy takes up Aikido and Karate, and has a pair of batons for him to fool around with. His lightweight[lol] frame gives him the speed he needs, and when he has less flesh, that means his punches are uncushioned bone clubs flying at you.

Otherwise, we pretty much share the same flow of thought, since we both reacted the same way over the same video [it was a britney spears video, what do you expect?] and we happen to be able to sense each other’s sarcasm when no one else could. If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be his housemate today, so he’s the main person to thank lah. Did I mention that this mofo has a HUGE collection of anime? And I mean HUGE as in,

“Hey, don’t need to DL that, I have it”,
“What abt this one?”
“I got oso”
“This one?”
“I got oso”
“This one?”
“Here, take these, these and these [hands me several cd files], and tell me what I don’t have, then you download that”
“oh, okay.”

So there. YC will be mentioned very frequently for the next few months, for classified reasons. So, now I’m going to bug him to study for his mid-term papers, LMFAO.

After about 2 weeks away from Battle.net, I decided to drop by Irelax after lunch today. Fortunately for me, there weren’t many surfers or RO players around to hog the bandwidth. So, I took a seat in my usual spot, PC01, and fired up good old Warcraft 3.

Ping was 235, which I consider pretty good, that usually means a 4 or 5-second command/response delay. Again, the AMM screws me up, putting me up against lvl 20+ players. And I lost all the 3 RT matches I played, due to [mostly] horrible play/tactics on my part, and late assistance from allies.

However, I met an old friend. Commonly known as Ah Yap, he’s the kid [i think he's in form 4 now] who has beaten me countless times and also one who taught a few pointers when it comes to decision making in games. Ultimately, he’s the one who inspired me to play on random instead of picking a race. If you hadm’t noticed it, playing as random can sometimes intimidate your enemy and give yourself a tiny boost in confidence.

So, I asked for a friendly solo game, to which he eagerly agrees to.

The first game was on Twisted Meadows, both of us being random, with me being Orc. I wanted to be a little different today, as tried a more passive approach, by getting a Tauren Chieftain[TC] and creep as I plan for a gruntavern build. The scouting peon I sent found him a few seconds before my TC pops up, and I caught a glimpse of an orc burrow.

I was already guessing a Farseer [FS] and a gruntaraider coming at me. Just at the moment when I hit tier2, sure enough, a Farseer with a group of grunts reached my base. So, I just had to teleport [TP] back to shoo him away. I chased him, back passing by the tavern at the center, and i got myself a Pandaren Brewsmaster [Panda], just for kicks.

Just when I was about to move to his base, he already outside with 2 wyverns, while i have 2 myself. He brought his own TC. We had 2 TCs, mine being the stomping one, and his the waving one, to complement his chainwave AoE, I assume. I’m sure my Haze+BoF+Stomp works better than his regular chainwave. So the skirmish goes on, good thing i had burrows behind barracks, so he couldnt touch it, lol. I only barely managed to kill his TC but my Panda had to die due to surround. Damn wolves.

By then, I already had some adept docs so I was practically ready to stun him all around.

A few minutes later, he came again, this time with wyverns replaced with raiders, as expected. The flow of thought goes Oh shit, he’s got air, damn. Air to air combat wont be easy, might as well pull them down. Yeah, the raiders came, and sure enough, netted the few wyverns i had earlier and of course, i had my grunts ready to pummel them around.

Unfortunately, my TC got stuck in nets and got surrounded where he gets beaten to crap by grunts. Fortunately, I also took his TC down with pretty much the same method.

The fight goes on, and suddenly the weapons of doom came. Demolishers. Damn. Down went my bestiary. Down went my burrows. That’s game.

Round 2.

So this time around we both went random, and played on my favourite map ever, since RoC right until now. Gnoll Wood. Great for 1v1, 2v2, 3v3 AND FFA. Map layout is perfect, comes with merchants, merc camps, and taverns. It’s got a handy fountain at the center, too. Brilliant map.

So yeah, again, I got Orc. Spawned at the 6 o’clock spot so since its GW, I thought it’s best to go FS, and wolves to scout. So, there i was, thinking of going taurens and walkers [i call this build supercow, because the dead taurens come back to life].

A brief moment later, one my wolves found him. Blight on the ground at the 12 o’clock spawn. Greaaaat, undead. I have this thing against UD. I suck against them, I suck with them. Yeesh. So anyway, since its an OvU matchup, I was thinking of going the Walach way. Wyverns, and getting myself a Shadow Hunter [SH] as 2nd hero.

I learnt the hard way not to harass Ah Yap if he’s ud because he’s bound to screw you good. So I got myself some grunts and crept the day away. Just when I hit lvl2, I moved to the 3 o’clock merchant. Guess what? Yeap, a Death Knight [DK] at 50% hp with crypt fiends [fiends]. So, its good old fiends/statues and all the garnishings, I thought. I was too hasty to not let him engage the creeps first. But witha 50%hp DK running around without Death Pact is too tempting.

I had with me a lightning shield wand [i usually call it lightrod] and about 3 healthy grunts. So, summons my trusty wolves and split my forces. Let 2 grunts hit one fiend, the wolves bite the DK, and my FS+another grunt pounding another fiend. Just my luck, 3 of the fiends clumped together. One gets a lightning shield from me. Mwahahah, I can sense Yap’s annoyed feeling as he tries to micro between his fiends and his hero. I killed one fiend and lost 2 grunts. But hey, I thought the dmg goes to him because at one point, his DK’s hp was at 20+ left before he TPed out.

So lets see the brunt from the first skirmish;
Me: 2 grunts = 400 gold + lots of experience
Him: 1 fiends + 1 TP = 215 gold 30(?) lumber + 350 gold = 565 gold 30(?)

Hahaha. I just kept my grunts to a limit of 6. I went creeping ahead, and added a SH. Then I started to pump wyverns. I was getting scared of a novacoil at this point so i got health potions [Hpot] for both heroes. I also expanded, because I know I have no choice but to outnumber him to win. A quick scout and I found that he’s got banshees made. hehehe, the ‘garnishing’ was there allright. So I rallied up my 4 wyverns+2 bats and my grunts for the strike. A quick air ambush from behind the trees ridded me of an obsidian statue [stats] and the few banshees I saw.

Yap came home a few seconds later to be greeted by my grunts, and off the fight went. I was lucky, he didn’t get a Lich, but instead a Dreadlord[DL]. Perhaps he wants to tank against my grunts. Since my SH is lvl2, I employed a powerful trick I learnt from Walach that works oh so well against UD. Hex.

I never realised how powerful Hex was until I saw Walach’s replays. Once, with a Blademaster as first hero, he hexed to slow, ensare for the stun, windwalk for the kill. There’s also another one. And boy it worked well.

I focus-fired [FFed] one of his fiends. A usual response in such an attack would be Death Coiling to heal the FFed undead fiend. But not this time. One shot from 4 wyverns brought one fiend to 50%. Immediately, I hexed it into a living pig. Death Coil does not heal living units. That’s where Hex becomes very powerful.

So the sequence goes;
Wyverns - FF a fiend
SH - hex that fiend, then heal the grunts up front
FS - fry it with chain lightning.
grunts - stay in front and keep them from touching my heroes

One by one, his fiends go down. At one point, I had about only 3 seriously injured grunts and only 2 wyverns left, I decided to back out. So there the tables have turned. Wyverns increased to 6, and 3 bats were added. And I stayed with 6 grunts :D

I went to buy myself some healing and protection scrolls. Just in case.

The next trip, I managed to pounce him on his way home from creeping. Guess what? Fuiyoh, his DL was at lvl 3 and he swept me with a lvl2 swarm. Good thing I had scrolls and that pretty much negated his AoE.

He went gargs, and gargs get the DL aura. No way dude, it gets hexed, fried and blown up by bats. The same happened to his destroyers too, except that i hexed his DK to keep him from coiling it.

So I kept him in his base and got myself some demolishers. At that point he turtled and tried his best. Unfortunate attempts only got my FS to lvl6, where I quaked all his towered and it was his turn for the gg. That, was the first [i hope its not the only] time I beat yap in a fair and square matchup. Yeh.