Mixed blessings

Turns out my copy of Oblivion wasn't defective, there was just another program messing up the install. People kept messaging me while I was installing, and I guess Oblivion didn't like that much. I shut down Trillian and tried one last installation, and it went off without a hitch (aside from a mysterious CRC error when installing the credits, but how often do I look at the credits for anything?).

I've already made more progress (quest-wise) in 2 days of Oblivion than I did in 4 months of Morrowind, which is a good thing. I'm playing a Nord Crusader (wheeee, combat!), but so far the only attributes I've been able to get lots of practice with (sneaking, security, athletics, and acrobatics) aren't my main attributes, so leveling up is going to be a long process until I start running into every random dungeon to commit heinous acts of genocide (in the name of Good, no less!). Once I do that, my blade, heavy armour, and whatever the healing magic is called attributes will start increasing, and I'll become so very powerful. I just hope I start running into monsters that use cold damage because I'm naturally resistant to it (one of the benefits of being a Nord)...

Complicating my Oblivion schedule has been the Guild Wars: Factions preview weekend. We have 3 days of access to a chunk of the Canthan conitnent, and a selection of quests from both the rival factions, the Luxons and Kurzicks. I like the Kurzicks more, mostly for their gothic architecture and non-snooty refinement. The Luxons seem like a pack of boors who only care about fighting, which is strange because the Kurzicks annihilate them whenever the two sides get into a fight.

For example, there's a Kurzick quest where you get ambushed by a few waves of Luxons, and it was easy. In opposition, there's a Luxon quest where you defend an area from a few waves of Kurzick attackers, and it was a bitch. Assassins were teleporting everywhere, elementalists were wiping out my spirits (I'm playing a ritualist spirit healer, in which I bind a spirit and then suck out its life to heal my allies), and I'm not sure what it was, but something kept pummeling our healing and protection monks, thus turning them into ex-monks. I spent a lot of the fight resurrecting them, let me tell you.

So, that's the good stuff. Everybody was happy in Scotty-land. Until yesterday, when I checked my email.

The strike is over.

The Ontario college teachers' union was on strike for 3 weeks, starting immediately after Reading Week. I'm coming off a whole month of doing absoultely nothing, of sleeping til noon and playing video games all day. Now I'm expected to go back to class, to get up at some ungodly hour and get on the stupid bus to cram my head with knowledge. (No sympathy from anyone expected)

I don't know for sure if I'm still supposed to hand in all the assignments that were due over the past 3 weeks, but I'm in the lab right now doing them. For some reason our swipe cards were disabled during the strike and haven't been reactivated yet, so I had to go to the security office and jump through hoops just to get in here, and I can't leave without having to go back there and jump through the same hoops over again.

Knowing I can't leave has given my the strongest craving for coffee I have ever had, and there's a Tim Hortons so close. So very close...

Argh