Currently at Prestige level 5, I’m going to flip the switch in a few minutes.
WordPress 2.5
dishers.com is now running on WordPress 2.5
So far nothing seems broken. The admin pages are much nicer.
Bad Boys Bad Boys what ja gonna do?
The problem with having any amount of land is that people seem to think they can just use it. Our property is situated in such a way that it’s pretty convenient to ‘cut through’ it. We’ve tried to discourage that as much as possible. It is ‘fenced’ but that doesn’t seem to stop folks.
This morning was exciting. I was woken up by one of the girls letting me know there were kids in our field again. Last year they had built a hide out among the power lines. Which as far as that goes doesn’t bother me as much as they had taken tools from the barn to build their hide-out.
I’ve scared the bejezus out of the kids in the past, and have waited until they have crossed our property only to make them turn around and go back. Apparently this isn’t enough.
So I hopped up got dressed, grabbed the Excursion and headed out to the field and caught one of those nasty trespassers. I kindly explained that this was private property, and he was trespassing and I didn’t want to see him here again. Then I asked where his friends were, and he said there were a couple ‘over there’.
Over there as it turns out was a complete camp, with tents, tables, chairs, and a roaring fire.
Technically though it was on our neighbors property but I knew they didn’t have permission. So I decided to play camp counselor.
I popped in and introduced myself, let them know they were where they didn’t belong. I asked them to pack up and move along. They weren’t very enthusiastic, (I’m not sure I would have been either having slept through the cold last night). I explained to them that the Sheriff was on his way and if they left before then, well, that be in their best interest. Still they didn’t seem to move too fast, which was unfortunate for them.
Apparently this camp site has been there for a while. Possibly even last summer, which just proves my neighbor isn’t all that in tune with what happens at his property.
The ‘Law’ showed up, and hassled them a bit, and made them clean up. I think that probably scared them enough. Not like I ever did anything like that when I was a kid 🙂
We assume they’ll spread the word that the camp site is closed. We’ll keep an eye on it and have something special for the next round of visitors.
I’m thinking maybe we’ll drop a nice stink bomb in the middle of their camp at 6am next time.
I had tried to take photos of the camp site but my camera had spent the night on the bike and was essentially frozen. By the time the ordeal was over, it was working again.
It’s always something.
Call of Duty and Prestige Mode
OK, it seems there are different opinions on the value of Prestige Mode in Call of Duty 4.
Some folks embrace it, others just whine and call it dumb. The latter folks coincidently are either overly concerned with their stats or often times are the folks less skilled.
So basically it’s like this:
In most other First Person Shooters with online play you have a couple modes:
1) You have nothing or limited weapons. You run around the map and pick them up. Doom/Quake or Unreal tournament style. This is Old School mode in Call of Duty 4.
2) You have all the weapons and abilities that you’re ever going to have when you start the game (from an online perspective). You play, and it gets old.
Call of Duty is different in that you have to earn new weapons, and ‘Perks’ or add on. When you start you’re at Rank 1. You have available to you 3 simple weapons classes with limited weapons.
For example you have an M16 available, and it has the grenade launcher attached. No special sights. Just the standard Iron sights.
As you score points, generally by killing the enemy, you increase your rank. As you score kills with each weapon you unlock add-on for them including a red dot laser sight, to silencers, grips or even ACOG scopes.
Each weapon has milestones to unlock each of it’s add-on. Typically; 25 kills for red-dot sight, then 75 kills for a silencer, then 150 kills for the ACOG Scope. Of course there are different add-on for different weapons. An ACOG scope wouldn’t be useful on a shotgun.
In addition to weapons upgrades you score points by completing some in game challenges. They can be as simple as ‘Vandalism – Blow up x number of cars’ to killing each member of the other team at least once, etc.
As you progress you unlock more challenges.
So here’s the rub, or the fun depending on how you want to look at it.
You work your way from level 1 to level 55. By the time you get to level 55 you should have all of the perks and weapons available. Doesn’t mean you’ve upgraded each and every one though. I have yet to max out a sniper rifle, I’m just not patient enough to sit in the bushes and snipe people all day.
Each of levels brings with it an icon, from a simple Sargent strip up to 55 which is a 5 Star General.
When you get to essentially level 56 you have a choice. That is move into ‘Prestige mode’.
If you take the leap, you basically give everything back and start again from Level 1. The difference is your in game icon is now a Prestige icon for all 55 levels.
There are 10 levels to prestige:
I’m currently a Level 4 working my way up to the gold cross. (each of them is modeled after a high ranking medal of honor in one of the armies represented in the game as explained here)
There’s one more twist… For each of the weapon classes; Assault, Sub Machine Guns, Light Machine Guns, Shot Guns and Sniper Rifles…
If you complete all of the weapons challenges for each class you’re rewarded with a gold version of one of the guns. For the assault class it’s a Gold AK-47.
This in itself kinds of says your bad-ass, because completing these means you’ve scored a really high number of head-shots with each weapon. Some folks work very hard to achieve this, yet when they kick over into prestige they lose those weapons. The gold version doesn’t have any other attributes other than it’s gold.
I liken them to Chad Johnsons Gold Grill he wears when he plays. It’s all about ‘bling’ and nothing else. While it means you’ve accomplishes something, it isn’t all that.
Because it’s painful at first you’ll find a pretty large number of folks who will end up stopping at one level and staying ’55 for life’.
I think that’s kind of weak.
Make no mistake to get to the gold cross it takes a lot of work and more importantly a lot of time.
But that’s what drives the game and keeps it interesting. If you couldn’t dump and start over, the game would get routine rather quickly.
I don’t plan on stopping until I’ve gotten the gold cross.
It’s a new day at dishers.com
Well sort of, more like it’s a new HOST at dishers.com
In light of things happening around me I’ve decided it’s time to move dishers.com. It’s now placed with a recommended 3rd party host. So far I like it. The transition was simple enough because I already hosted my own DNS. (Although in the process I have migrated that back to GoDaddy because it relieves me of the burden of keeping another box up too.
So far everything still works. gallery.dishers.com is still on the old box and www.dishers.com/Gallery/ is currently broken and I’m in a quandary as to what to do with these. Newer stuff is in the Google/Picassa gallery but it isn’t really easy to organize.
There is almost a gig of photos in the old gallery and to be honest I’m not really looking forward to the process of re-uploading them and re-organizing them anywhere. It’s going to be a very time consuming process.
Please do let me if you run into something that’s horribly broken. eMail me or leave a comment.
Additionally www.twowheeltouring.net. is probably going away. I haven’t really decided yet what to do with that but I think it’s run it’s course. I may just start fresh with newer forum software and see where things go.